The Dartmouth 01/09/15

VOL. CLXXII NO. 5

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Students visit startups on DEN trip to West Coast

SNOW SHOWERS HIGH 25 LOW 8

By LAUREN budd The Dartmouth Staff

COURTESY OF JAMIE COUGHLIN

MIRROR

ITS TIME TO TALK ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH PAGE 8

GRIEVING FOLLOWING SUICIDE PAGE 6

OPINION

VERBUM ULTIMUM: STAND WITH CHARLIE PAGE4

SPORTS

BASKETBALL PREPARES FOR

HARVARD PAGE 15 READ US ON

DARTBEAT TRENDING OVERHEARDS MUSIC FOLLOW US ON

TWITTER @thedartmouth COPYRIGHT © 2014 THE DARTMOUTH, INC.

Over winter break, 13 undergraduates and four Tuck School of Business students traveled to the West Coast on a trip sponsored by the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network to work for three early-stage startups founded by Dartmouth alumni, as well as visit an array of Silicon Valley startups.

Personal connections and collaboration were two topics emphasized during the program, which was the first trip of this type.

“They really got to immerse themselves in the respective

Students had the opportunity to visit large and small companies over the winter interim period.

SEE DEN PAGE 2

NLRB union decision unlikely to affect Dartmouth

B y Tim COnnor

The Dartmouth Staff

The National Labor Relations Board asserted the right of nontenured faculty members at private colleges to collectively bargain and unionize in a December ruling, rejecting claims by Pacific Lutheran University that its faculty occupies managerial positions. The ruling is unlikely to affect proceedings at Dartmouth, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences Michael Mastanduno said.

The NLRB also offered a set of standards for assessing whether or not faculty members serve in managerial roles, in contrast to the 1980 Supreme Court decision in NLRB v. Yeshiva University. That decision, in which justices voted five-to-four that faculty members of the university served in managerial roles and were excluded from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, led to a decline in efforts made by faculty members at private colleges and universities to unionize for subsequent

decades.

Executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions William Herbert said that the decision and the new standards reflect the NLRB’s recognition of major changes that have occurred in higher education in the years since the Yeshiva decision.

“They’re expressly recognizing that there’s been a change in how higher education is administered, and since the Yeshiva University decision, that

Stamps Scholars’ research projects are underway B y Parker Richards The Dartmouth Staff

With the support of $10,000 each from the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation, the projects of the six inaugural Stamps Scholars are underway, from studying ancient canals in Mexico to analyzing the environmental impacts of Dartmouth’s fuel source.

The organization aims to be the “Rhodes Scholarship for undergraduates,” program director of the Stamps Family Charitable

change on a national level has taken power away from faculty and centralized it with the central administrators,” he said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

Herbert said that the decision presented important standards for the analysis of future cases involving petitions for unionization and collective bargaining.

A second portion of the decision stated that the religious affiliation of SEE UNIONS PAGE 3

SALSA: HOT, MEDIUM OR MILD

Foundation Randy McDow said.

The projects of the scholars — which include five Dartmouth juniors and one senior — are varied, but each will involve intense individual research or experiential learning.

Most of the roughly 220 Stamps Scholarships given out annually are awarded to students entering a four-year university, but at Dartmouth, which does not give merit scholarships, the scholarships instead go to ELIZA MCDONOUGH/THE DARTMOUTH

SEE STAMPS PAGE 5

Students take a turn at Thursday Night Salsa in Sarner Underground.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

PAGE 2

DAily debriefing New Hampshire is among 43 states with “widespread” levels of the flu, the Concord Monitor reported. Influenza activity has been at that level for two weeks, with levels expected to continue or increase, which is not unusual, according to the report. One adult in the state has died after contracting the flu, though it is difficult to track all flu-related deaths, according to the report. Sixteen flu-related deaths were reported in New Hampshire in 2014. While some strains of flu have mutated beyond vaccines, health officials still recommend getting flu shots for protection against the virus. State levels of acute respiratory illnesses such as the flu have increased in New Hampshire over the past month, with the most intense activity in several counties including Grafton, according to the report.

A Wednesday vote in the New Hampshire House of Representatives approved allowing concealed weapons to be carried, which was formerly banned by Democrats in 2013, The Valley News reported. Republicans in favor claimed selfdefense as support for the change. Meanwhile the Republican party proved split, divided in a rule changing vote, which would have affected the majority leader position. Republicans have been divided since an upset for Speaker of the House, which the party-nominated candidate did not win.

Gov. Peter Shumlin D-Vt., was re-elected governor of Vermont Thursday morning after a vote by the Vermont legislature, VTDigger reported. Shumlin, a Democrat, was elected to his third term in office over Republican Scott Milne by a vote of 110-69 in the legislature. The vote was a result of neither candidate winning more than 50 percent of votes on election day in November. Shumlin and Milne received 46.4 percent and 45.1 percent of votes, respectively. Dan Feliciano was also on the anonymous ballot for legislators, after receiving less than 5 percent of votes on election day.

- compiled by laura weiss

Corrections We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

Students see startups in action FROM DEN PAGE 1

entrepreneurial ecosystems of the area,” director of DEN’s New Venture Incubator Programs Jamie Coughlin said.

About halfway through fall term, the students — who were divided into three teams — began working with their assigned startups: xMatters, founded by Randi Barshack ’88; Wrangle, founded by Sebastian DeLuca ’14 and Wickr, founded by Jennifer DeTrani ’94.

Each startup initially presented their student group with a problem or challenge, Coughlin said. The students conducted market research on campus over the next few weeks, using surveys and one-on-one interviews to collect data for their companies.

This experience not only emphasized collaboration between the students and the startups, but between Dartmouth undergraduates and Tuck students, Coughlin said.

DEN trip participant Kevin Neilson ’17 said that each student group spent weeks planning their solutions before traveling to the West Coast.

Wrangle will be implementing some of the suggestions, DeLuca said, and in exchange for their work students receive the opportunity to gain professional experience and possibly meet alums who can serve as advisors or mentors.

“This is a perfect example of how Dartmouth is leading when it comes to connecting on-campus experience and the community there with professional opportunities post-grad,” DeLuca said. “Even though Dartmouth is out in New Hampshire, they were able to come to the West Coast and meet people at large and small companies.”

The trip began in Seattle, where the program visited Amazon’s headquarters to get a firsthand look at how in-

novation and entrepreneurship occur inside a large corporation, Coughlin said.

Jeff Blackburn ’91, a founding donor and supporter of DEN, as well as the senior vice president of business development at Amazon, hosted and provided a private tour and a lineup of speakers, including Dartmouth alums Ian Freed ’85 and Steve Kessel ’88.

Freed discussed Amazon’s device strategy and displayed the company’s newest release: the Echo, an interactive speaker. Kessel, senior vice president of worldwide digital media and one of the founders of the Kindle, discussed his role at the company.

“The students were in awe the entire morning, listening to the stories and reality of what it means to be innovative at Amazon,” Coughlin said.

The group also visited Microsoft.

Long-standing Dartmouth alum supporter and former Microsoft executive vice president of law and corporate affairs Bill Neukom ’64 gave the group access to the invite-only “Envisioning Center” at Microsoft’s headquarters, Coughlin said.

“Here the students got a glimpse into the future of next generation products and experiences,” Coughlin said, adding that meeting with prominent technology executives was very meaningful for the student participants.

From Seattle, the group visited San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif., where College donor and venture capitalist Jeff Crowe ’78 hosted the group at his house for a “home-cooked” dinner and discussion on entrepreneurship, Coughlin said.

Neilson said that a highlight of his trip was meeting Crowe.

“He befriended everybody on our trip. It was incredible,” Neilson said.

“I feel like I gained a great friend watching out for me and a Dartmouth

alumni I can look up to.”

Later in the week, the group invited Andrea Reisman Johnson ’91, founder of online photo organization and storage site thislife.com, to a luncheon about women in entrepreneurship.

Funds for this trip and similar programming come from Dartmouth alumni donors in collaboration with the Dartmouth Advancement Office. The initial goal was to raise $2.5 million dollars for the program; however, donors raised $4.3 million, said Coughlin.

Though this was a large trip and the first of its type, Coughlin said he was satisfied with the outcome.

“I was just very pleased with the receptiveness of the alums in that area to hold gatherings in their home, to create workshops on entrepreneurship in their places of business,” Coughlin said.

Coughlin said he hopes these sort of trips will continue in years to come in different locations around the globe. Annual two-week trips to the West Coast will continue, as well as shorter, week-long trips to Boston, New York, Texas and other established entrepreneurial communities.

Neilson said that he gained a deeper understanding of the importance of person-to-person interactions within the context of entrepreneurship from the trip.

Trip participant Thomas Wang ’16 said that the reality of the process of beginning a business was highlighted in the trip.

“The trip was unique because it had two focuses: one was pairing us up for a strategy project with an early-stage startup and the other was hearing first-hand accounts from both successful and failed alumni entrepreneurs,” Wang ’16 said. “A lasting takeaway is a realistic view of the risks and rewards that come with starting a venture.”

Jan. 8, 2015: The original version of “$1.7 million upgrade in progress for Jones Media Center” said $1.7 billion inside the article, when the actual figure is $1.7 million. The Dartmouth regrets this error.

COURTESY OF JAMIE COUGHLIN

Venture capitalist Jeff Crowe ’78 hosted DEN students in his home during their trip to the West Coast.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

PAGE 3

Non-tenure faculty now able to unionize FROM UNIONS PAGE 1

a college or university does not exempt its faculty from unionization, determining that adjunct professors at Pacific Lutheran University did not perform religious work and are thus entitled to unionize.

Mastanduno said that Dartmouth attempts to treat its non-tenure track faculty fairly and competitively “to the extent that the market allows,” and that he is unsure whether or not unionization is a popular notion among Dartmouth adjuncts.

“As far as non-tenure track or adjunct faculty go, I suppose it opens the door in a more explicit way than it had before to the question of unionization,” he said. “I frankly don’t know if that’s been a burning topic in the minds of adjunct faculty.”

President of the California Faculty Association Lillian Taiz said that the decision is an exciting reversal of the Yeshiva decision, and that she and her organization, which is comprised of more than 25,000 faculty members in California, believe that adjunct professors at private institutions are entitled to unionize.

The evolving role of faculty at private higher education institutions sits at the core of the December decision, Herbert said.

“How much say in defining and determining issues that are mission-

related to a university do the faculty have?” he said. “That’s the crux of the inquiry that would occur under the new standards that the NLRB set forth. Those standards are particular to the issue of what the role of faculty is at a particular institution with regard to shared governance.”

While Herbert said this ruling opens the door to unionization, it still depends on the role of faculty at individual universities.

“At Dartmouth, it could be a scenario that’s similar to what the facts were at Yeshiva University as to the faculty’s involvement in the day-to-day decision making for the college,” Herbert said.

Mastanduno said that, unlike at other colleges and universities at which the faculty play a minimal role in central government, the decision will likely have a minimal impact at Dartmouth, where that is not the case.

“To me it’s all the more important that [the ruling] highlights the fact that faculty members have a governance role in what is essentially a shared-governance model,” he said. “It may be that there are national trends out there suggesting that faculty play less and less of a role in the governance of academic institutions, but at Dartmouth, I think faculty governance is still an important principle.”

Leave Term

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JIN LEE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Students promote Friday Night Rock in the Class of ’53 Commons.

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

PAGE 4

VERBUM ULTIMUM THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD

STAFF COLUMNIST AYLIN WOODWARD ’15

Stand With Charlie

Taking the Plunge

Following the Charlie Hebdo murders, we must reject all forms of extremism.

On Wednesday, three gunmen stormed the Paris office of the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and shot and killed 12 people.

The shooters asked for certain cartoonists by name.

The tragedy has made international headlines, and people remain stunned and appalled worldwide. We stand with the victims’ friends, families and coworkers in the aftermath of this unconscionable attack.

Satirical publications often provide cutting insight into important issues in an accessible, entertaining way. Satire holds a mirror up to society and is thus a crucial component of a free press and, by extension, a free world.

Nobody should fear for their life for exposing and critiquing the world as they see it.

The gunmen’s supposed justification for this heinous crime stems from Charlie Hebdo’s satire regarding Islamic extremism. The magazine has previously published cartoons that depict the Prophet Muhammad, and their offices were firebombed for doing so in 2011. The magazine’s critiques, however, are not limited to Islam. Charlie Hebdo lampoons religion in general — one 2013 cover depicted a cartoon mocking Pope Benedict XVI. Charlie Hebdo, like similar publications, seeks to challenge the status quo and foster dialogue through scathing humor. Many staff members have said that their mission is not to mock religion, but religious extremism of all forms.

The limits to which any given religion or culture may be mocked merit examination, but, ultimately, it does not matter if what the magazine printed was inconsiderate or offensive. Twelve people are dead. Cultural sensitivity and productive political discourse can never come at such an expense. These acts are indefensible.

Indeed, French Muslim leaders and the Arab League have condemned the attack.

Other Muslims across the world have followed suit, using hashtags such as #CharlieHebdo in solidarity with those killed. Al-Azhar, an elite Islamic university, called the shooting a “criminal act” and reminded the world that

“Islam denounces any violence.”

Despite this outpouring of support, there have been reports of aggressive incidents of retaliation against members of the Muslim community in France. We must condemn any hateful acts of violence that target innocent Muslims. Anti-Muslim sentiment, too, creates a threat to a free society.

It is notable that France has the highest estimated Muslim population in Europe, with at least six million Muslim residents. France’s troubled history with the Muslim-majority nations of its former colonial empire — particularly Algeria, where there was a bloody struggle for independence in the 1950s and 1960s — lends itself to high tensions, perceived or otherwise, between its Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Far-right parties, like the National Front, are becoming increasingly anti-immigrant and anti-Islam. Attacks like the one on Charlie Hebdo do nothing but confirm the biases of intolerant people who falsely see Islam as nothing but a violent, extreme religion.

Yet the stronger anti-Islam sentiment is, and the greater its impact on politics and society, the more terrorist organizations like the Islamic State can garner support — especially among the youth. The Islamic State has inspired and encouraged rogue actors, as the attackers on Charlie Hebdo are presumed to be. People from all around the world have been joining or trying to join their ranks.

Even in the face of tragedies such as this, we must remain strong, compassionate and reasoned. This was not an Islamic attack on the West. Three individuals, masquerading under the banner of Islam, murdered innocent people to permanently take away their right to free speech. The slain journalists at Charlie Hebdo understood what was at stake. As Stephane Charbonnier, the editor and one of those tragically killed, said in 2012, “I prefer to die standing than to live on my knees.”

Defending the liberty of all to live without the threat of violent retribution, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, is the only way forward.

212 Robinson Hall, Hanover N.H. 03755 • (603) 646-2600

Katie McKAY, Editor-in-Chief jessica avitabile, Executive Editor

Laura Weiss, Managing Editor PRODUCTION EDITORS emily albrecht, Opinion Editor carson hele, Opinion Charlie rafkin, Mirror & Special Issue henry arndt, Sports katie jarrett, Sports

Editor Editor Editor Editor

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Justin levine, Publisher luke mcCann, Executive Editor

jasmine sachar, Managing Editor BUSINESS DIRECTORS piotr dormus, Finance & Strategy Director Ashneil Jain, Finance & Strategy Director hayden karp-hecker, Advertising Director Addison Lee, Advertising Director Rachel Dechiara, Advertising Director Carla larin, Operations & Marketing Director

natalie cantave, Photography Editor Jin lee, Photography Editor

kate healy, Design Director

alex moushey, Multimedia Editor

Sean CANN, Layout Director

alison guh, Design Director Robert Neuhaus, Technology Director

ISSUE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

NEWS EDITOR: Sara McGahan, LAYOUT EDITOR: Lily Xu, TEMPLATING EDITOR: Erin Lee, COPY EDITOR: Steffen Eriksen.

SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth College, and should not exceed 250 words for letters or 700 words for columns. The Dartmouth reserves the right to edit all material before publication. All material submitted becomes property of The Dartmouth. Please email submissions to editor@thedartmouth.com.

Students should respect the recommendations of the steering committee.

Coming back from the last long break many of us will have for a while, I can’t help but notice how subdued our campus climate seems. More than a month of traveling, resting at home and enjoying a holiday devoid of papers or problem sets seems to have made us all more calm and collected. In many ways, winter term — the shortest term of the year — represents the epitome of our ability to focus and keep our Dartmouth experience in perspective. With such a short while on campus, we simply cannot afford to waste any time on unnecessary “excess,” whatever form that excess might take.

This term also represents the beginning of Dartmouth’s rebirth and renewal. We must now focus on those questions of purpose that, quite frankly, have been lost in the storm of outrage that characterized fall term — who are we as a community, what is our mission and what does Dartmouth aim to be and achieve?

What values do we embody as students and as an elite institution of undergraduate education? President Phil Hanlon’s plan of action, created as a part of Moving Dartmouth Forward, is the herald of that renewal, and when announced on Jan. 29, it will hopefully allow Dartmouth to return to a clean slate.

It’s our responsibility as students to try to be open-minded, to approach this impending announcement with clear heads and optimism.

After all, Dartmouth’s capacity for change does not lie in the hands of bureaucrats and administrative figureheads — people with pictures to take and hands to shake. Rather, the responsibility to change rests on each and every one of our shoulders, not only in our receptiveness to this top-down initiative and willingness to have faith in those decisions, but also in our decisions and everyday actions. We need to remember to keep these decisions in perspective and consider Dartmouth’s longterm future.

I have no doubt that some part of President Hanlon’s announcement will spark unrest and malcontent in various circles on campus, perhaps with good reason.

Regardless of the announcement’s content, it is imperative that the student body recognize it as legitimate, and should any of us seek a means of recourse against it, we must do so in a respectful and rational manner. We cannot afford to repeat the events of last winter and spring. Another headline splattered across media outlets like “Student Sit-In At President’s Office” could cripple Dartmouth’s reputation for students, present and future. At such a critical juncture, any sort of sensational uproar will likely prove even more devastating to the College’s legitimacy than previous incidents.

Clichéd or not, it is our responsibility as Dartmouth students to leave this school better than we found it. We must ensure that those who come after us enjoy a better quality of student life than we did. The presidential steering committee has been tasked with achieving that goal to the best of their ability. President Hanlon’s mission with Moving Dartmouth Forward this past year, though overly nebulous and suspenseful at times, aligns with students’ mission of improving campus life. Even if we all don’t agree with his ideas of what the best way forward will look like, we need to demonstrate our respect and support for that mission. Student solidarity with the administration will be imperative in the coming months, as the lens of media scrutiny may once again focus on Dartmouth and, ideally, our collective efforts to change it for the better.

So enjoy the January calm while it lasts.

When the time finally comes to take the plunge into a newer — and hopefully superior — Dartmouth, take a deep breath and jump in wholeheartedly. Here the onus is squarely on us. It’s about time we step up and act like the adults we are all so desperate to be. As adults, it’s our responsibility to have faith in the engine of change — even if the proposed changes don’t wholly align with our own wants and needs — and find common ground with those who ultimately share our goals. Only then can we truly improve Dartmouth, for fellow and future students.

1.9.2015 Grieving for suicide| 2

MIRROR There’s no place like om| 3

It’s time to talk | 4-5

Q&A: Ameer & Campbell| 8 ANNIKA PARK // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

2// MIRROR

EDITOR’S NOTE

Grieving for Suicide For some, grief persists, affecting lives in complex ways SPOTLIGHT

Hello, Mirror readers!

Greetings from toasty Hanover. I’m Charlie Rafkin ’16, and I’m already excited to take over as editor here at The Mirror. It can be an important vehicle for driving campus conversation, and more than ever, Hanover needs a magazine that will produce thoughtful reflection on campus issues.

In conjunction with other editors, I made a considered choice to devote the entirety of this week’s magazine to mental health at the College. In almost every conversation about this topic, people emphasized that mental health demands further scrutiny — when 28 percent of Dartmouth students are seeing mental health counselors, we must finally recognize that our peers are struggling.

This week’s Mirror, however, is also a magazine about the inspiring campus leaders who have challenged the timbre of campus conversation. There’s computer science professor Andrew Campbell, who pioneered an app that could help identify depressed students. There’s Student Assembly, whose “I’m Here For You” campaign was well-received from some pockets of campus, and of course, there’s Active Minds, the mental health advocacy group whose membership has swelled in recent terms.

The campus discussion on mental health has shifted somewhat, and it’s important to take stock of successes, even as we emphasize that hard work clearly remains.

A last note: Two of the Mirror’s most popular features each week are “Overheards” and “Trending at Dartmouth.” You might think that only a dunce would mess with features so successful — but that’s exactly what we’ve decided to do in order to experiment with different features to fill that space each week. You can get your weekly fix of “Overheards” and “Trending at Dartmouth” over at Dartbeat, the paper’s daily blog.

Happy reading,

follow @thedmirror

MIRROR R MIRROR EDITOR CHARLIE RAFKIN

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KATIE McKAY

PUBLISHER JUSTIN LEVINE

EXECUTIVE EDITORS JESSICA AVITABILE LUKE McCANN

B y ZAK meghrouni-BROWN

The Dartmouth community has endured its share of sorrow over the suicides of community members or loved ones. Just this past November the community was distressed by the suicide of a Geisel student.

Community members who have grappled with the suicides of loved ones said that grieving for suicide is a complex process.

For some, the loss affects many facets of their life, including their interactions with their communities, their close ones and their schools.

Aaron Ellis ’15, who has struggled with the suicides of three friends, none of whom were Dartmouth students, while in college, said that the experience has profoundly influenced his time at the school.

“It was such a life-changing event for me,” he said. “After that, nothing was really the same.”

Blaine Ponto ’14 was finishing her sophomore summer when a fellow Dartmouth student and close friend died by suicide. She recalled the shock she initially felt at the news of the death.

“Obviously you don’t know what to think at first, so it’s this atmosphere of mass notknowing-what-to-do, and that’s the problem with suicide in general,” she said. “Regardless of where you are, it leaves you saying, ‘Oh man, how could that happen?’”

Ponto noted that the resources available for her to lean on emotionally were comprehensive, even though she ultimately did not rely on them. After hearing the news of the death, Dick’s House made their counselors on-call to speak with students who needed help, she said.

“There was very clear support, but at the same time we were all still trying to deal with it in our own individual ways,” Ponto said.

Still, Dick’s House counseling has been found to have mixed results by other people grieving for loved ones who completed suicides. Ellis also sought counseling from Dick’s House. He said he was initially discouraged by lackluster treatment, noting that the counselors sent him elsewhere to find help outside the College.

Notably, since 2012, the College has overhauled its counseling services. Ellis has been back to Dick’s House since his freshman year and said that he has seen improvement in their services.

While reaching out to a professional can be helpful, Ponto found that these services were not sufficient for her to continue on as usual. Her friend’s death occurred close to finals, but when it came time to put pen to page or fingers to keyboard, Ponto could not

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS YOU WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK Q: Is Seasonal Affective Disorder a thing?

A: It’s not just a made-up excuse you use to justify unwarranted grumping at anyone and everyone during the months of January to March. According to an interview of SAD expert Kelly Rohan conducted by the American Psychological Association, SAD differs from the “winter blues” because SAD refers to the “regular seasonal pattern” where people display symptoms of depression during winter

focus on her work.

Despite the heightened attention and sensitivity that this sort of grief requires, after a grace period, students are expected to resume their lives according to plan — plaster on that veneer and dive back in.

“A lot of us just needed more time and were having difficulties finishing out the term because we had been really strongly impacted,” Ponto said. “But I didn’t feel like there was a lot of practical response from the College in that vein. My dean just told me it would be better if I powered through it.”

Sylvia Langford, associate vice president of student affairs for discovery and engagement at Syracuse University, was a Dartmouth dean when three students completed suicides in a short time frame in 1995. She wrote in an email that the deaths by suicide caused the community to question its own self-assuredness.

“Students rarely discussed not being star students or having challenges at home or struggling with finances or being deeply in love,” Langford wrote. “So this terrible series of events caused students to ponder what was going on for them.”

Howard Lunche, a clinical social worker and grief expert, said that because society codes grief as painful, people often try to bracket off their grief immediately. When people emphasize getting back to normal, sometimes the bereaved lose a valuable opportunity to come to terms with the death.

Ellis said that although he believes people should talk about suicide more frequently, he recognizes that discussion can render some uncomfortable.

“I think it just kind of makes it too real for a lot of people,” he said. “It’s still stigmatized to the point where people blame the person who committed suicide. They think they should have done something, and they’re at fault.”

Kristina Heggedal ’17, whose close highschool friend died by suicide, said that she now stresses discussing difficult issues like depression, anxiety and suicide. Heggedel believes we fool ourselves by tip-toeing around the topic and using more amenable vocabulary.

“Saying the actual, difficult words [is] sometimes really powerful,” she said. “You need to say them to get to talking about the more painful parts.”

With truncated academic terms and stressors both academic and social, it can be hard to make time to address grief. Nothing at Dartmouth will wait for you. Once the news settles in, what happens next?

Lunche delineated grief from depression.

Grief, he said, feels emotionally charged, while depression can feel “blue, muted, dampened.”

Q: What’s the dif ference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?

A: This question has hounded me throughout the process of putting this issue together.

It was particularly embarrassing when I emailed psychologists asking to interview a psychiatrist. A psychologist is a scientist (who typically has a Ph.D.), while a psychiatrist is a doctor (with an M.D.).

Lunche identified grief stemming from a suicide as particularly animated. Because some perceive suicide as a choice, they may feel angry at the person who completed a suicide. Some people jolt between extremes of anger, sadness and hope, he said.

“Grief is very alive. It’s all over the place,” he said. “People can laugh pretty easily. People can talk about the person. People can be down one day [and] be more hopeful the next day.

People can be really angry.”

Still, he emphasized that grief can thoroughly interrupt daily life. Some effects include distraction, loss of sleep and turbulent emotional states.

Grieving for suicide also takes on its own particular complexity, Lunche said, because some view the death by suicide as preventable.

When describing her own grieving process after her friend’s death, Ponto echoed the complexity of grieving for suicide. Because the death was so sudden and felt seemingly preventable, she said her grieving felt almost frustrating.

Langford, who met twice a week with one of the students who completed suicide in 1995, wrote that she felt personally culpable.

“I couldn’t help but wonder if I had missed something, or if there was something that I should have done but didn’t,” wrote Langford.

“Did I miss that he wasn’t getting better — or that by getting better, he was then able to do what he had been thinking about all along?”

Ellis said he felt that an emphasis on uncovering the motivations behind a suicide, as if the action is a “puzzle” to be understood, was unproductive.

Grieving for suicide has no constants — grief shows many different faces to those afflicted. For Langford, response to deaths by suicide requires an appreciation for this variability.

“During times like these, students grieved in many different ways, and professional staff needed to be mindful that some students didn’t show their grief and some did; some students were able to focus on their studies and some students couldn’t focus at all,” Langford wrote.

“In short, the many campus responses were as diverse as the students, and there was no one way or a right way to grieve.”

Staff writer Kalie Marsicano contributed reporting.

Editor’s Note: If you or someone you love is considering suicide, there are resources available for you.

Dick’s House: (603) 646-9442 during work hours or (603) 646-4000 at other times.

National Suicide Hotline: 1 (800) 273-8255 Q: Is mental health being addressed through Moving Dartmouth Forward?

A: Moving Dartmouth Forward attempts to address three tiers — inclusivity, sexual assault, binge drinking — and does not explicitly include mental health. Also worth griping about — the petition to improve counseling services at Dick’s House is listed as “complete” on Improve Dartmouth.

Really? They’ve improved their game, sure — but it seems clear that there’s more room for

There’s No Place like Om A whirlwind tour of Hanover’s meditation scene SPOTLIGHT

MIRROR //3

THE D RUNS THE NUMBERS

B y Mary LIZA HARTONG

Notice your posture. This is the first thing the voice on my computer told me when I searched for guided meditations, found a website and purposefully picked the shortest one — a three-minute mediation called “Body and Sound.” As instructed, I noticed that I was in my typical kitchen table position, one leg tucked under me, one curled around the side of the chair, a tad bit hunched and leaning a little to the right. It was the position I had been in since

“It becomes a point of reference, a place that you can return to again and again to reflect on where you are in your life.”

- GENDO ALYNN FIELD, HEAD OF DARTMOUTH ZEN PRACTICE GROUP AND DIRECTOR OF THE UPPER VALLEY ZEN CENTER. Thanksgiving, avidly searching the Internet for presents I could give to my extended family. It was, for me, the position of the hunt.

Next, I was instructed to focus on the sounds around me. I was specifically told not to make a story in my head about the sounds, so I shelved the line of poetry I had already thought up about the washer sounding like a tiny train making its way across the country at night.

Instead, I simply listened.

After a few minutes of thinking about the sound of the washer and the hunched position of my back, I emerged from my state of meditation. Before I had started meditating as the video instructed, I hadn’t thought I was feeling tense, or had any bad feelings in general. Yet, after my completion of the exercise, there was no denying that I felt, for lack of a more descriptive word, better. I had that feeling you get when you’re on the breaking point of having a complete meltdown, and instead you just decide not to freak out. I liked it.

It got me thinking. How much happier would I feel if I nixed three minutes of Facebook time about dropping your pizza slice face down on the kitchen floor, and instead started using that time for some more peaceful contemplation. What if I replaced some of my time spent scrolling through the internet, and instead got to experience that sentiment you ooze when you’re on top of the world, that yeah-that-

guy-just-took-your-cab-but-it’s-okaybecause-you’ll-walk-home-instead and replaced it with this?

As it turns out, I’m not the only one wondering this, and a number of leaders and practitioners of mediation and relaxation techniques exist around the Upper Valley and here at Dartmouth.

As the head of the Dartmouth Zen Practice Group and director of the Upper Valley Zen Center, Gendo Allyn Field leads students in mediation, conducts seminars on campus and brings speakers to the area to discuss the techniques and benefits of practicing meditation.

Field argued that finding time to meditate is essential. No matter how your day is going, he said, people can take stock of their mental health.

“It becomes a point of reference, a place that you can return to again and again to reflect on where you are in your life,” he said.

Dick’s House psychologist Mark Hiatt agreed that incorporating mindfulness into an everyday routine can make ones obligations less burdensome.

He noted that meditation can reduce stress, particularly for students caught up in the everyday rush of life at the College.

“Students have so much going on in their lives, it’s easy to get caught up in worries about the future and in ruminating about the past,” Hiatt said. “Mindfulness is really the process of trying to stay present, to be engaged in the here and now instead of being lost in thoughts and

“For the kinds of stressors that lead to overconsumption of drugs and alcohol, the lack of sensitivity that leads to sexual assault and the states of fear and the bias and prejudice that can lead to a lack of inclusivity, mindfulness is potentially the most effective method that we know of.”

- JOHN CHRISTOPHER, GEISEL PSYCHIATRY PROFESSOR worries.”

John Christopher, a professor of psychiatry at the Geisel Medical School and a psychologist at Hanover Psychiatry, focuses on health psy-

chology and behavioral medicine, using mindfulness-based stress reduction to help people regulate

“It’s easy to get caught up in worries about the future and in ruminating about the past.

- MARK HIATT, DICK’S HOUSE PSYCHOLOGIST their autonomic nervous systems.

His eight-week group program is based on the methods Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who sought to link buddhist teachings with science.

Christopher’s practice incorporates MBSR, yoga and a Chinese mindfulness practice called qigong.

To Christopher, meditation could alleviate concerns raised about the tenor of social life at the College.

“For the kinds of stressors that lead to overconsumption of drugs and alcohol, the lack of sensitivity that leads to sexual assault and the states of fear and the bias and prejudice that can lead to a lack of inclusivity, mindfulness is potentially the most effective method that we know of,” said Christopher.

For Lucia Pohlman ’15, who cofounded the Dartmouth Mindfulness Club in 2011, meditation could help improve Dartmouth’s social life but only if embraced by the student body on its own.

“If the President recommends that we all meditate, that feels a little silly, no?” she said. “If the student body at Dartmouth wanted to be more conscious and awake, that would be awesome.”

Sarah Berger teaches the Meditation and Relaxation P.E. class on campus, and noted that it fills up quickly each term.

Berger also emphasized that the skills taught in her class apply to student life.

“I can’t speak for everyone who decides to attend the class, but students have told me things like it helped them feel calmer. They used some of the skills before things like job interviews and felt better going in,” Berger said. “It helped them handle their term better, and they felt more peaceful with their stresses.”

The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine publishes a fact sheet on meditation, and the science substantiates some of these advocates’ beliefs. One trial suggests that practicing meditation may reduce high blood pressure and help practicers manage symptoms

of insomnia, anxiety and pain. However, while a review of 47 trials also suggested that meditation shows some evidence of improving anxiety or depression, the researchers noted that there was “no evidence that meditation could help stress related behaviors, such as substance abuse or sleep.”

Ben Packer ’17 came across meditation during a high school yoga

“Students have told me things like that it made them feel calmer. They used some of the skills before things like job interviews and felt better going in.

-SARAH BERGER, TEACHER MEDITATION AND RELAXATION P.E. CLASS

28

The percentage of undergraduates who reported seeing a counselor last year.

7, 2, 3, 2 The numbers of staff psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and nutritionists, respectively, at Dick’s House

48 class and began his own practice of mindfulness. Meditation, he said, helps him control his thoughts and see the world with fresh eyes.

Sydney Walter ’18 began to meditate after witnessing the change that meditating had made in her friends’ lives.

“After doing some research, I tried it out and immediately fell in love with the peace it gave me,” Walter said. “My favorite part of meditation is how individualized it can be. Meditation can be about whatever the person needs in that moment or that week.”

Even with a cohort of campus leaders, Dartmouth remains behind schools like Brown University, which has a contemplative studies concentration, and the University of Virginia, which boasts its own Mindfulness Center. Christopher hopes that Dartmouth will focus on creating similar programs on campus.

Some courses listed under Brown’s concentration, like “Meditation and the Brain” or “Good Vibrations: The Music of Everyday Objects,” may raise eyebrows at Dartmouth’s Office of the Registrar, but can contemplation really be a source of academic scrutiny? It’s worth noting, however, the major seems surprisingly rigorous — the science track requires a statistics course, for example, and the humanities track’s “Philosophy of Mind” course could easily fit into the Dartmouth philosophy department’s interest areas.

Senior staff writer Charlie Rafkin contributed reporting.

The number of students computer science professor Andrew Campbell tracked for an entire term with his student life app. The app could measure when a student slept, chatted, moved

4 The number of Through the Looking Glass features that the Mirror published last term that discussed mental health

4-5 Between these weeks, the students whom Campbell tracked stopped going to the gym

4// MIRROR

It’s Time to Talk Has campus discussion of mental health finally come around?

STORY

B y Caroline Berens

In her Apr. 19, 2013 article exploring the stigma surrounding depression, “Depression: What Everyone’s Not Talking About,” Reese Ramponi ’13 says the “discussion of the issue remains scarce on campus.”

Yet the past year has seen a significant growth in discussions of mental health on campus — Dick’s House has tripled its counseling staff and Student Assembly launched its yearlong campaign, “I’m Here for You,” aimed at breaking the silence around mental illness. Is discussion of depression at Dartmouth still “scarce”?

Let’s begin by establishing the basics.

If discussion has swelled, it’s because mental health on campus merits scrutiny.

The American Psychological Association, citing data from the 2013 National College Health Assessment, reported that one-third of college students noted having difficulty functioning in the last 12 months due to depression. Additionally, almost 50 percent said they had experienced overwhelming anxiety.

The 2014 Dartmouth Student Health

“People sometimes think those who suffer are narcissistic, lazy or spoiled — they don’t understand that depression and anxiety are diseases, and that, like any other disease, they can become dangerous if not treated with medication or treatment.”

-ivy schweitzer, professor of english and women’s and gender studies survey, administered to a random sample of half of undergraduates, indicated that within the last 12 months, 8 percent of students have been diagnosed or treated by a professional for depression and 11 percent for anxiety. More than a quarter of students — 28 percent — said that they had sought professional help from a mental health counselor within the last year.

While mental illnesses are caused by a variety of influences, some of the factors contributing to the survey’s results are specific to Dartmouth, Dick’s House psychologist Bryant Ford explained, “Dartmouth’s shorter academic calendar can increase stress since, for example, it’s very difficult to make up work in a timely manner if you miss class,” he said. “This pressure can exacerbate preexisting issues.”

Computer science professor Andrew Campbell, who helped start an app that tracks student mental health, agrees.

“As a faculty member I’ve witnessed the high levels of anxiety during the term and I wonder, is this the best way to teach our students?” he said.

With a sample of 48 students, the app uses data from the students’ phones over a term to assess trends in their overall mental health, academic performance and behaviors. According to results published online, the study demonstrated the students’ stress growing quickly as the term began, plateauing at about 28 days into the term. The buildup of stress comes as no surprise to anyone who has weathered a term in Hanover.

Students in the sample stopped exercising frequently after the fourth week of term, and engaged in brief, “businesslike” conversations around midterm time, the study reported. In the final days of the term, conversation behaviors began to rebound as students started having longer, more frequent conversations.

The D-plan, however, isn’t the only contributing factor to fluctuating levels of mental health. Hayley Son ’15 is copresident of Active Minds, a mental health advocacy student organization. An international student originally from South Korea, Son decided to join Active Minds due to her own struggles with mental health stemming from the difficulty of adjusting to life at Dartmouth.

“I definitely struggled at first. It’s so hard to feel comfortable and at home somewhere when you have to adjust to so many things at once — it’s all so different and foreign,” she said. “A lot of international students who have never lived abroad go through the same thing, to varying degrees of severity.”

She said her own involvement in Active Minds has made her more comfortable seeking out help.

Student body president Casey Dennis ’15 and vice president Frank Cunningham ’16, who began “I’m Here For You,” both acknowledge that Dartmouth’s fast-paced academic calendar can contribute to its “pressure cooker” environment, which puts an enormous strain on students, especially during finals.

If roughly one in 10 Dartmouth students has a diagnosed mental health problem — and that doesn’t even include those who don’t seek help — and one in four sees a psychologist, this issue still receives far too little attention. What causes mental health to have a stigma at all?

English and women’s and gender studies professor Ivy Schweitzer explained that the stigma associated with mental health arises from misunderstanding.

“Mental health issues are often seen as a failure of moral will,” she said. “People sometimes think those who suffer are narcissistic, lazy or spoiled — they don’t

understand that depression and anxiety are diseases, and that, like any other disease, they can become dangerous if not treated with medication or treatment.”

Schweitzer said students’ overwhelming fear of failure — what she called “the big f-word at Dartmouth” — might also prompt students to conceal their feelings to avoid

“Recognizing depression for what it is and not something that should be hidden — not talked openly about — brushed under the rug or feared is a great way to start destigmatizing depression at Dartmouth.”

-Andrew Campbell, professor of computer science weakness.

Fortunately, some groups have devoted themselves to discussing these issues, hoping to ease campus comfort in admitting that people are struggling.

For Ford, the Dick’s House psychologist, that’s the right approach to ending mental health’s stigma.

“The best way to continue destigmatizing depression is to talk about it,” he said.

“Hiding, ignoring or minimizing it will never make it go away.”

Son said that Active Minds membership nearly doubled during last spring and this fall. She said the group has tried to become more noticeable through an increased number of events.

She noted the increase in the Dick’s House staff — counseling now boasts 12 staff psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists and a handful of residents and interns. Still, if one in four Dartmouth undergraduates see counseling, that means these counselors are intended to serve 1,000 students. While many students may opt for outside resources, it’s fair to wonder whether a staff of about 20 is sufficient.

Campbell, who became interested in mental health due to his experiences growing up with a younger brother who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, is just one example of a faculty member who has demonstrated concern about Dartmouth students’ mental health.

“Recognizing depression for what it is and not something that should be hidden — not talked openly about — brushed under the rug or feared, is a great start to destigmatizing depression at Dartmouth,” he said.

Students involved in Active Minds are

not the only ones who have been exposed to support for mental health. This past fall, a banner displayed in Berry featured pledges from community members to show support. A Collis event during the fall featured Dick’s House staff, so they could speak with students in a casual setting.

Although Active Minds was involved with planning and executing these events, many were spearheaded by Student Assembly.

One “I’m Here For You” campaign event involved a story-sharing discussion during the fall where seven students, including Cunningham, shared their personal experiences with depression. With approximately 300 people in attendance, Dennis and Cunningham consider it a success.

Cunningham explained that since he’s shared his story, his “friends and classmates often send [him] emails asking to get coffee, checking in to make sure [he’s] doing okay.” Several people approached Student Assembly after the talk and asked how they could become involved in the campaign.

Son agreed that the campaign saw success, noting that the Dartmouth Hall auditorium was packed with students, but she said Student Assembly should increase the campaign’s reach.

“I had the feeling that a lot of students who came to the event were friends with Frank, Casey or other Student Assembly members and the panelists,” she said.

“Although that’s the inevitable nature of these events, I think that there are quite a few students who don’t know what ‘I’m Here For You’ is all about or even that Student Assembly is doing a campaign on mental health.”

Five of six students interviewed did not know about the campaign. The sixth student who did is a member of Student Assembly.

Right before finals began, Student Assembly also orchestrated a Relaxation Fest, which featured yoga and meditation sessions, nutrition booths and therapy dogs.

Dennis and Cunningham said that although campus discussions about mental health have increased in the past fall, more work remains. After all, Cunningham noted, “Suicide is one of the top five killers of college-age students.”

So the real question remains — have things changed? Professor Schweitzer, who has worked at Dartmouth for 21 years, believes they have. In the 1980s, she said, the US witnessed a “nationwide silence” about mental health. While students still suffered, they never discussed seeking treatment, she said.

“Obviously, things are very different than when I first began teaching here,” she said. “But I have seen several changes in the public discussion of mental health at Dartmouth even in the past one or two years. And it’s nearly all student-run.”

MIRROR //5

Annika Park // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

6// MIRROR

Through the Looking Glass My Father’s Illness COLUMN

BY Lauren Harris

My father passed away the summer before my sophomore year. That’s how I always start the explanation, and that’s often how I end it. When people ask about my father, they don’t expect a tragic story as a response, and I truly do not wish to present them with one.

Death is already painful and complicated. Loss of a parent is immensely difficult — the story is already sad, regardless of the circumstances.

One of the main reasons that I tend to avoid talking about my father’s death is that the words themselves are so melodramatic — “My dad committed suicide.” The phrasing makes it sound like a crime and an illness wrapped up in one. There are so many inherent associations with those words that it becomes nearly impossible to conceptualize the phrase as anything that could possibly have happened in my life. Confronting the reality of my father’s suicide has always reminded me of the visceral feeling I had at a funeral when I was younger upon seeing a corpse in a coffin for the first time. It is so grotesque that it seems as though it must be fake. I am seized with an intense desire to escape that mental space.

I was in middle school when I first realized that my father struggled with depression. I don’t remember how it came up exactly, but I recall my mom gently explaining to me that dad’s depression didn’t have anything to do with me or our family’s situation, and that he was seeing a psychiatrist for treatment. I never talked to my dad about it personally — our relationship wasn’t like that. He was quiet, intellectual and introverted — not overly affectionate or gregarious. But we were close and had a lot in common.

We shared intellectual discussions rather than emotional ones. He had a dry sense of humor and sharp wit that I inherited, and his mental capacity for factual knowledge was enviable and immensely impressive. He knew so much. Sometimes we would go for walks in a nearby park, and he would teach me the correct names for all the birds we saw. Once he explained to me, on our daily drive to my middle school, how vehicle traffic followed many of the laws of fluid dynamics. On the rare occasions that I was going to leave home for more than a few days, he would embrace me, and we would exchange “I love yous.” But as far as I can recall, we rarely verbally shared our feelings in a substantial way. I don’t think it bothered either of us.

I didn’t think about my dad’s depression much until I got older. Many of his symptoms could be attributed to an introverted personality, so his behavior didn’t seem remarkable. But I slowly began to understand that the extent to which he required time alone, as well as the occasional intensity of his negative emotions, was not necessarily typical.

In hindsight, his depression must

have worsened gradually, but it never seemed as though it was overtaking his existence. Though I sensed the distance that separated him from myself and everyone else, I never even skimmed the surface of what may have been an overwhelming and increasing feeling of despair . It’s still difficult for me to understand, because my dad never outwardly or explicitly expressed any sadness to me. There was so much he enjoyed doing — talking long walks on the boardwalk, caring for our cats, cooking dinner and driving me from piano lessons to ballet to horseback riding lessons without ever complaining.

When I left for my first year at Dartmouth, I rarely kept in touch with dad. That was normal for us. We spoke on the phone about once a week, and we emailed back and forth. He would send me links to blues music videos on YouTube, and I would update him with the day-to-day craziness of freshman year: my atrocious grades in Math 11, my deteriorating sleep schedule and getting to know my roommate. He seemed, for lack of a better word, okay.

I wasn’t thinking about his depression — after all, I usually didn’t.

When I came home for the summer and started spending time with him again, I sensed that something was different. Though my parents and I were living in the same house, I sometimes felt as if the three of us were leading separate lives. Dad spent most of his time alone, taking walks or listening to music, and he was emotionally even more distant than usual. He got angry about seemingly trivial things — a malfunctioning stove, a stain on the carpet.

I didn’t understand what was going on with him or what might have changed that was affecting his psychological well-being so intensely, but I suspected that he had begun using alcohol as a coping mechanism. The realization of this possibility shook me.

It was an immensely difficult few months for my parents and me. As the summer was ending, I finally mustered up the courage to try talking to my dad about what he was going through. I told him that I knew that he had struggled with depression in the past and asked him if he would consider seeing a therapist again. He resisted, noting that his previous experience seeking out treatment felt ineffective and that no one had ever been able to really help him. I expressed my love for him and retreated, deciding that he knew what was best for himself.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and dad is checked into an intensive psychological care unit for one week following an emotional breakdown, which must have been brewing since at least the beginning of the summer. Instead of coming home afterward, he tells me that he is planning on going on “a long vacation.” Maybe to Florida. He’s not sure yet. He avoids eye contact and

gives me a hug. I tell him I love him and ask him to stay in touch. I watch him drive away. That night, he attempts to end his life.

When the policeman knocked that night, I was already in bed. I thought it was dad trying to get in. The officer informed us that dad had tried to kill himself, that he had been found and that he was now in a nearby hospital in critical condition. A note for each of us was found.

The following week was a blur of hospital rooms. Though my dad had attempted an overdose, it had not resulted in his death. I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that dad had wanted to die. At the same time, I understood that this drive was the result of his depression. So maybe he wouldn’t have wanted all these doctors to try to save him. I didn’t know. There was no way I could know.

After about five days in the hospital, and the day before I was supposed to head back to Dartmouth for sophomore fall, my dad regained consciousness. We suspected enormous brain damage, but somehow — although he wasn’t totally himself — he seemed to be getting better. It was unbelievable. It was, maybe, a miracle. He smiled, took my hand and told my mom and me that he loved us and that he was sorry if he had “screwed anything up.” We told him we loved him, that everything was okay and that we were so happy he would be coming back home. I promised to keep in touch once I had moved in. The next day, he went into cardiac arrest. He passed away shortly thereafter. *** Because of my own profound difficulty with discussing the situation, I rarely divulge any information about my father’s death that I deem “unnecessary.” Until now, I have only shared the full story with mental health professionals and a few close friends. Occasionally I am presented with a specific question pertaining to the circumstances, but when this happens, I tend to mumble something about how he was “dealing with a lot of health issues” and “got bad really quickly.”

I’m still not sure how to feel about all this. On one hand, I realize that no one is ever prepared, when they ask me about my dad, for my response to include suicide. I do not wish to burden someone with any sense of obligation to discuss the circumstances further, but I am conflicted by my own personal conviction that mental health’s stigma in our culture prevents those who truly need help from seeking it out.

We need to consider depression and suicide as valid topics of discussion, not sources of shame or secrecy. I share the experience of my father’s suicide not simply to discuss what I went though on a personal level, but rather with a desire to increase the openness of our discourse on mental health.

Grieving for my dad was challenging and painful. Though I was surrounded by an immensely supportive

Courtesy of Lauren Harris

Lauren Harris ’16 writes about grappling with her father’s death by suicide. group of friends, I rarely discussed the depth of what I was dealing with internally. I’ve always been rather emotionally independent, and to be honest I wasn’t sure that talking about it with my friends would do any good.

That’s not to say that I am not eternally grateful for their support. I could not have made it through that fall without them.

It’s also possible that I was repressing a lot of what I was feeling.

I started seeing a therapist at Dick’s House when I realized that I’d been ignoring the symptoms of what were likely panic attacks. She suggested that I plan a memorial service in dad’s honor to help make my grieving more productive, and I found the process to be very healing. But the sadness still came in waves, knocking me down at a moment’s notice when something reminded me of him. I stuttered when I accidentally talked about dad in the present tense. Mom and I spoke on the phone often.

In some ways, understanding the intensity of my father’s mental anguish helps lessen the blow of his death. He was a truly wonderful father, with a sharp mind and a deeply good soul, and he also had been struggling with an intense sadness for most of his adult life. These aspects of his being coexisted. I try to find solace in the fact that, in the final moments I shared with him, he seemed to find clarity.

His final words to my mother and me conveyed the deep and true love that he had always felt for us. It seemed as though he had achieved a state of grace. His suffering has ended.

Of course, this is not how I feel it should have ended. I’m not sure what would have happened if he had ever placed a stronger interest in attempting to improve his psychological well-being, either with more intensive medication or new modes of therapy.

But I don’t think he ever would have taken either of those routes by choice, as I am fairly certain that he did not actually believe that he was depressed — there was an enormous amount of denial at play. Still, I wish I could have convinced him to try, and I continue to grapple with my inability to reach out to him in that way.

Taken at face value, suicide is a choice. But it is also a result of depression, which is not a choice — it is an illness. And one of its most troubling symptoms is a lessened ability to think in a way that would be considered

rational. When someone believes, on a fundamental level, that their life is not worth living, suicide may present itself as an option — and a depressed person may find this conclusion to be singular and inescapable. I refuse to the blame the victim of mental illness for attempting or committing suicide. In the future, I hope that we place more emphasis on encouraging people to seek out guidance to better understand their own psychological well-being, for mental illness’s stigma leads many to refuse to seek out treatment. Only by understanding mental illness for what it is — an illness — can we begin to approach understanding and healing.

I have read many articles that put forward the claim that suicide is selfish.

My dad did not choose to end his life because it was the easiest way out for him. He devoted so much of his life to caring for my mother and me that it would be impossible for me to view his death as a premeditated act of desertion. There is a difference between selfishness and hopelessness, and my dad’s death was a result of despair following an intense psychological breakdown. I truly believe that his depression caused him to feel that ending his own life was the least obtrusive way to exit. It is with this in mind that I am able to move forward.

I am not sure that I will ever be able to completely make peace with my father’s death. Though I am usually able to view his depression somewhat clinically through the lens of psychology, I do not wish to give the false impression that I have completely come to terms with what transpired. I continue to grapple with guilt, and I wonder if I could have done anything differently during his life to prevent such a tragic outcome. Another source of guilt is that, despite what has happened, I am pretty much doing okay.

Of course, I think about dad all the time, and I miss him. Some days are worse than others. The only thing to do now is to focus on the positives — all of his contributions to our family, the essential goodness of his being and my memories of our time together.

Editor’s Note: If you or someone you love is considering suicide, there are resources available for you.

Dick’s House: (603) 646-9442 during work hours or (603) 646-4000 at other times.

National Suicide Hotline: 1 (800) 273-8255

MIRROR //7

Boots and RallIES

FrIDAYS WITH MARIAN COLUMN By Marian Lurio

COLUMN

By Aaron Pellowski As a veteran whiner, I’ve found it useful over the years to get deep inside the object of my complaints. With due diligence, I research information that permits me to locate the tenderest zone of the person or institution I want to lambast, and there lay the jackhammer tip of my pen. Slurs and lies just don’t wound the way facts do.

Yet there are some things that boggle me so severely that I doubt I will ever understand them well enough to render a truly rigorous and systematic critique. One example is found in those who are somehow still ignorant that Winnie the Pooh is supposed to be the ghost of Christopher Robin’s dead infant brother. If it isn’t blazingly clear from the text, the internet should have filled them in at some point.

Another example — the people who come into One Wheelock and the Top of the Hop and begin playing the pianos. What is with you lot? You just walked into an entirely silent room of studying students and concluded that what these folks need most right now is your divine musical talent, and you, the 21st Century Orpheus that you are, could not settle for any of the sound-proof practice rooms available to students downstairs? You really thought it utterly chill of you to penetrate my tranquility with your dreamy blandscape personal composition?

Oh, and you’re going to sing along, too?

Good Christ. Either you have some truly Jurassic cojones, or you are just bizarrely clueless and selfish. I can only suppose your mother either never hugged you as a child, or hugged you far too much.

Another thing I don’t understand at all is cheating. The recent coverage of the so-called “Clickergate” has piqued my befuddlement in a few ways. Item one: our apparently helpless commitment to affix ‘-gate’ to the name of every last scandal. Nausea wells in me as I contemplate an incoming generation unfamilar with the historical origin of this awful bit of linguistics. Item two: Last November, The Dartmouth published its comparative report of the cheating scandal at Chapel Hill. In an ironic quirk, one professor trotted out his course as a good-faith example of an attempt to accommodate athletes struggling with overcommitment. Which professor?

Just Randall Palmer, the religion professor who taught “Sports, Ethics and Religion.” The episode came into the public’s eye a week later: Palmer’s students are the very ones who are the alleged perpetrators of Clickergate. Though our scandal hardly compares with the gargantuan “shadowcurriculum” affair at UNC, the tone of the article’s interviewees is overwhelmingly suggestive of a holier-than-they, can’t-happen-here attitude — an attitude that I expect was somewhat damaged a few days later.

I, too, would have dismissed rumors of a “culture of cheating” as a myth, mostly because I don’t understand cheating at all. While I wipe the crow-feathers from my jowls, however, I still feel great confusion over the matter. Now to be fair, as a mere exercise of the mind, I regularly think about how I could cheat on a multitude of assignments, just as I frequently indulge myself in contemplating the means to a perfect murder, as many others do. But why someone would ever actually cheat beats me to smithereens.

Because, for me, taking a class is about feeling smart. I try really hard in difficult classes because if I do well, it will make me feel smart.

I’m more lackadaisical about easy courses since doing well or poorly there doesn’t really indicate much. My transcript reflects this attitude. Until I was brutalized by a class on the reconstructive

linguistics of ancient Greek, my lowest grade had come in Italian 02 my freshman winter, which was by all means a cheesecake course. That same term I had taken an intensive five-person seminar on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In order to feel smart, I dumped almost every hour of my free time into preparing for the class. I did substantially better in a course untangling a tome of overblown German obscurantism than I did in an introductory course on the Italian language.

But no one can feel smart by cheating. Scanning a transcript of nothing but flat As could make one feel successful, but if these grades were obtained fraudulently, one could hardly say he or she felt smart. It’s not dishonesty or disrespect for a professor that concerns me here, since I concede the possibility that there are some professors whose conduct disqualifies them of the respect of their students. It’s about priorities.

Still, I am concerned with the discussion about the culprits, many of whom are athletes. I also wonder whether their status as athletes alters the ethics of the matter at all. While I do not want to apologize for or appear to endorse cheating, I do think that an athlete who cheats has to be judged differently from a NARP. I have always held great suspicion and distaste for students who speak pejoratively against the intelligence of athletes and, by extension, the legitimacy of their place at Dartmouth. Our athletes, though they are not the best in the country, are still miles above the median. They also have much more work to do, in the form of games, travel, practice, lift, etc. I am very careful about my use of the word “elitist,” since I feel that it is often a term hastily applied to winners by losers. But I can’t help but detect an elitist vibe in conversations in which Dartmouth’s status as an academic institution is given such unjustified priority over its status as an athletic institution — thus eliciting a lot of sneering remarks against classmates who have unbelievably higher amounts of commitments and expectations.

Unlike me, athletes are not enrolled at Dartmouth exclusively to satisfy two goals — namely, to feel smart and to feel academically successful.

They also have a third goal — they hope to feel strong or fast or precise or whatever attribute relevant to the sport they play. Even an extremely talented individual may have difficulty handling all three. Focusing on two of these goals, while doing what one feels is one’s only option in order merely to survive, not excel, in the third strikes me as a little less morally repugnant. Anyone who cheats in order to look or feel successful or smart is a criminal unto society and themselves. But cheating for other reasons, while not forgivable, can’t be considered quite so vicious.

Bigger questions should be asked. Is it just or fair that Dartmouth subjects some of its students to additional burdens without sufficient compensatory accommodation? Is it emblematic of a good and healthy culture that we tolerate these burdens and even perpetuate them through unquestioned negative stereotypes of athletes? I think no, but as I stated up front, I don’t really understand the issue perfectly. There’s a good chance I’m just laying the groundwork for a secondary argument that students should be allowed to major in pong.

According to the Gregorian calendar, 2015 is underway.

I must admit I have mixed feelings about what this year will bring for the human race.

It may be a new year, but the human race is none the wiser. It’s only the 9th day of the year, and not too much has happened at Dartmouth, but Kim Jong Un’s birthday was yesterday, so that’s a start.

I’ll indulge myself in philosophizing about the fate of the entire world’s population. And presumably, like the great philosophers of ages past, I could ponder this question until the apocalypse and still not have gotten anywhere (until I realized we were doomed because it was the apocalypse — but maybe I would survive so I just don’t know how I feel about that either).

I use the word “presumably” because I have never formally — or informally — studied philosophy.

But if I had to sum up my philosophy in a nutshell, I’d say this much. I think there’s a lot we can learn about humanity, as well as the human condition, from any and all events related to reality television.

RHONJ, known to most as Real Housewives of New Jersey, star and Jersey icon Teresa Giudice has begun her prison sentence. Despite being bankrupt (or something like that — I don’t know anything about financial statements or the IRS), her family manages to summer at the same Jersey Shore spot that I have visited every summer since I was a mere two-weekold. Not only did Teresa and former housewife Jacqueline Laurita rent a house together there — there being Long Beach Island, N.J. — but it was right behind my aunt/uncle/cousins’ beach house.

While I wasn’t as lucky as my two cousins to meet any castmates in the flesh — something I have secretly held against my relatives for the past five-and-a-half years — my father and I once hid behind the other Lurio family’s fence in an attempt to become Peeping Toms.

Unfortunately, there were no spottings. I did, however, recognize Jacqueline’s son Nicholas’ Italia hat, which he had even though he was an infant and which was featured in Jacqueline’s montage during the opening credits of the show, on the dashboard of a black Escalade parked in the house’s driveway. As for Teresa, I did drive past her oldest daughter Gia this summer as she walked the Jersey streets.

Moving on to other reality TV, 2015 will see the release of the important anthropological/ sociological work, “My Husband’s Not Gay.” Thanks, TLC! According to the channel’s website, the show “follows four men living in Salt Lake City, Utah, who don’t identify themselves as homosexual despite having an attraction to men.” Lest we forget, this is the same network that has always given viewers what they were looking for. The network’s

repertoire of hit shows includes “Sister Wives,” “My Five Wives,” “19 Kids and Counting,” “Buying Naked” and “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.”

As if that wasn’t enough, let’s discuss some exciting developments as we approach the 2016 presidential election campaign trails. Exciting yet predictable news — Santorum is strongly considering another presidential campaign.

This presidential hopeful isn’t letting his failed 2012 bid stop him from reaching for the stars again in 2016.

Let me put a little side note here. I own the exact same flannel (okay, I will admit that the pockets are a little different) that his son — the tallest Santorum family member — sports in the family’s 2014 Christmas card. Speaking of lumberjack attire, if you are really looking to take your flannel game to the next level, look no further than Vermont Flannel Company’s diverse array of flannel thongs. It is long past time for The Dartmouth to run an exposé on what Vermont Flannels bills as “Vermont’s Secret”: these flannel thongs, called vongs, would make a “great wedding gift” according to VF. Be sure to take a short trip to their Woodstock location or browse their online collection. Let me be 100 percent clear: While I can’t provide a personal testimony/recommendation, I can confirm that the brand really does sell flannel thongs.

Anyway, while I’m sure a strong contingency of evangelicals are undoubtedly #ReadyForRick, it seems that Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and star of his eponymous Fox show, “Huckabee,” is competing for this same group — which, for a Yankee like myself, is a shockingly large portion of the country’s population. Huckabee has excused himself from cable television in hopes that he will find even more success among voters than he did in his 2008 presidential election campaign. I’m not even being satirical there. He actually got lots and lots of votes from the evangelical base of voters. But there’s a lot of other “politicians” (a loose word these days in the Republican party) targeting this group and promoting family values.

I’m actually really upset about this development since “Huckabee” really was an entertaining show. What’s better than seeing the Fox News staff’s band, The Little Rockers, at the end of every show? I would imagine only a live broadcast of Huckabee on the electric bass with his rock band, Capitol Offense. Yes, he is really in a rock band. Goodbye for now, Mike. While I’ll miss you on my television every Saturday night, I can’t wait to see what you have up your sleeve for the campaign trail.

Next week on Serial (but actually I mean this column), it’s time to discuss the podcast that’s captured the hearts of millions. At least I’m guessing my readers number in the millions.

8// MIRROR

Q&A: Dean of the College Inge-Lise Ameer and computer science professor Andrew Campbell story

B y Charlie rafkin ||| These interviews have been edited and condensed

Dean Inge-Lise Ameer

Interim Dean of the College Inge-Lise Ameer is responsible for overseeing all aspects of student life — including mental health. In an interview in her Parkhurst Office, she discussed the D-plan, Dick’s House and medical leave.

If you look at the numbers, it is striking. A survey indicates that 28 percent of students seek counseling. Why is this not one of the single most important initiatives from the Dean of the College?

ILA: Oh, it is. This is why, two to three years ago, we added counseling positions, because the wait was totally unacceptable. I feel like the wait is much better now. We have a counselor on-call 24/7. For me, it’s one of the most important things that comes out of the Dean of the College area — is making sure that the area is fully staffed and supportive [of] students and also representing diverse perspectives.

I think that there’s definitely a sense that counseling has stepped up the game, but there’s also a sense that there’s still a lot of work to be done. On Improve Dartmouth this issue is listed as completed. Are there plans in place to make Dick’s House the best counseling services in the Ivy League?

Katelyn Jones/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Professor Andrew Campbell developed an application that tracked student behavior.

Professor Andrew Campbell

ILA: I think we have one of the best counseling services. We’re always assessing.

In the student deaths we’ve faced, the counselors have been right there ready to support students.

Computer science professor Andrew Campbell developed the StudentLife app, which tracks students’ mental health, academic performance and behavioral trends. In the spring of 2013, Campbell used the app to measure the ups and downs of 48 of his computer science students’ terms.

So you think that common student perception about Dick’s House counseling is a hold-over?

What were the most surprising results?

ILA: I’ll tell you, it’s really frustrating for me, because we’ve invested a tremendous amount of resources. We’ve got another psychologist. I just think it’s the lore a little bit.

AC: Wow. Conversation, sleep, location, movement around campus outdoors/indoors: We have this deluge of data. We found correlations with different things — for example, mental health. The interesting breakthrough that we made was that the phone actually did this. We found that students in this group who slept less were more likely to be depressed.

It seems like a very mysterious process how medical leave happens. I was wondering if you could explicate the process by which a student struggling with mental health could be placed on medical leave.

ILA: There are different entry points — it could be your dean, your [Office of Pluralism and Leadership] advisor, your faculty member [or] your [undergraduate adviser]. If somebody has indicated to us that you are in crisis, we’re going to try to help you here first through counseling at Dick’s House. In conversation with the student and sometimes their families, [they] will say, “You know what, these issues are huge. You need to deal with them full time.”

So can Dick’s House move without parental or student consent?

ILA: That almost never happens. I can’t think of one that I’ve experienced. Can we legally remove [a] student? We would if there were safety issues — harm to oneself or others. That’s the bar that would have to be met. Let me just tell you — the majority of medical leaves are initiated by students in consultation with Dick’s House. We don’t want to be in the business of saying, “You’ve got to go.”

Let me ask the converse. If Dick’s House doesn’t think that medical leave is necessary, but an outside psychologist or psychiatrist does, would the College have the authority to provide a student with medical leave?

ILA: All of those things happen in consultation with Dick’s House. Let’s say you as a student have a doctor off-campus. That doctor thinks this is too much.

They’ll work with the student and Dick’s house. We work with a lot of doctors who are off-campus.

There might be some students who don’t like working with those professionals, which is their prerogative. But it seems like if they wanted to obtain medical leave, they’d still have to negotiate Dick’s House.

ILA: I don’t think it’s a very difficult negotiation. If a health professional is telling us that someone needs time off, then we respect that.

I wanted to ask about confidentiality. I think that renders some students wary, because there is this link between Parkhurst and Dick’s House.

ILA: Dick’s House would not release any of that unless there was a waiver signed. Unless: harm to themselves or others. But that bar is extremely high.

So I’ve seen the website, and I notice there’s a number of intuitive results. Stress starts to plateau around week five. People stop exercising around week four.

AC: They stop going to the gym, that’s right. There’s some subtle things. Some people go to bed before 12, but most people go to bed between 12 and three. And we’ve got some vampires down here who go to bed at four, five, six. These are strong correlations, and they’re significant.

The less sleep you got, the more likely you’re depressed. The fewer face-to-face conversations you’ve had during the day was the strongest indicator of depression.

I’d say that qualifies as a surprising insight.

AC: Kids who are depressed are more likely to retreat into themselves. But on the flip side of things, we also looked at loneliness, and we found that conversation frequency had no correlation with loneliness.

When I talked to a psychologist, he said, “Yeah, that’s right.” As laypeople, we feel that somebody who is social wouldn’t be lonely. But it’s not

the case. Here’s another result. We found that students who had longer conversations and more frequent conversations did better in their exams. Causality? No clue.

Let me shift tack a little bit and ask more generally about your interest in this as a hard scientist. I think that, fairly or unfairly, hard science professors get a worse rap than professors in the humanities for their level of interest in student life. Do you think that reputation is deserved?

AC: I don’t think it is actually. I think we’re all, to some degree, motivated by personal experience. My brother, many years ago — because I’m an old fart now — had his first depressive episode, and he dropped out.

He went back to a different college and got a degree in computer science. Could the [app], perhaps, have allowed my brother to live a less disruptive life? Do hard scientists get a bad rap when humanities professors may be more connected with student life? Our department chair Tom Corman cares more about students than anyone.

Is Dartmouth doing enough to support its students?

AC: I don’t think so. That’s not to say that they’re trying to explicitly undermine people’s health. They clearly care about it. It’s part of the mission.

But I would argue that we don’t really have a handle on what’s going on in our campus. There’s wonderful people over at Dick’s House, both on the clinical side and on the counseling side, who absolutely care about the student body. But because of stigma and because walking across campus is a huge struggle for some students, it doesn’t matter if the services are there. There’s a number of stakeholders. They lack the complete information to move things forward.

And I honestly think that technology could fill that gap. I’m convinced it could.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

Scholars get funding for experiential learning FROM STAMPS PAGE 1

upperclassmen to fund independent experiential learning projects.

Currently, the Stamps Foundation partners with 41 universities around the country.

“Our goal is to identify and support outstanding students, but also to enable them to reach their goals sooner by providing financial support and a network that can help them move faster and higher than they would otherwise,” McDow said.

Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning interim director and government professor Lisa Baldez said that the Stamps program allows students to “apply what they learn in the classroom to new settings.”

The Stamps program will also incentivize students who might not normally engage in research to participate in large independent projects, she said.

“The funding they get from the Stamps Foundation is very generous, and my hope is that because it is so generous it will give the opportunity to students who would be constrained by finances to participate in this initiative,” Baldez said.

The scholars’ independent research programs of study are highly diverse.

Lucia Pohlman ’15 is attempting to integrate healthy, local food into Dartmouth’s dining system, and has used her funding, in part, to finance research on campus last summer and distribute surveys on food.

“When I first started this project, I had no idea what Dartmouth Dining Services was doing,” Pohlman said. “I felt pretty ignorant walking out of my first meeting thinking, ‘They did all this and I didn’t know about it?’ I felt stupid!”

Pohlman said that DDS already uses New England-made organic Cabot yogurt, humanely-grown meats and eggs from Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs, a local company. One of Pohlman’s ideas is to implement a communitysupported agriculture initiative in the Collis Student Center, through which students can purchase a box of fresh produce each week from local farms.

Pohlman said that initiative, along with many local agriculture-based projects, will be easy to integrate into sophomore summer, as it fits well with the local growing season. “[Sophomore Summer] not only matches the food production, but students have more time and ability to live and cook off-campus,” she said.

Pohlman hopes to use some of her remaining Stamps funding to visit other colleges and universities in the near future to gain an understanding of their methods of bringing organic and local foods to campus, she said.

Andrés Mejía-Ramón ’16 will use the Stamps funds he was awarded to study ancient canals in the pre-Hispanic

city of Teotihuacan in Mexico.

Mejía-Ramón first used satellite images of the ancient city to attempt to locate features that could be canals, then used geophysical methods to detect where canals are likely located. His next step will be to begin excavation.

Mejía-Ramón said that he has spent six to ten hours a day for the past month preparing to apply for permits to begin archeological digging.

Katherine Crane ’16 will focus on developing her ArtxChange Marketplace Social Enterprise — a website that aims to pair artists with nonprofit causes to which the artists can donate a portion of each sale they make.

Crane developed a prototype website last year in the Neukom Digital Arts, Leadership and Innovation Lab, and will use part of her Stamps funding to hire employees to develop the final version of the website, she said.

Crane is currently testing her prototype site and interviewing artists and nonprofits, and will also attend relevant conferences in the spring.

“I’m definitely learning a lot through doing this, especially about the start-up process, particularly commercial entrepreneurship,” Crane said.

Rachel Margolese ’16 is researching the net environmental impact of different fuels “from cradle to grave” — when the fuels are first extracted from the ground until they are burned at Dartmouth. Her project aligns with current discussions to replace No. 6 fuel oil — an inexpensive but environmentally harmful fuel source — and she hopes to explore alternative fuel sources.

Margolese’s project — which is partly run through the Office of Sustainability — will investigate greenhouse gas emissions, water usage and drilling practices, and she intends to travel to Texas during an off-term to learn about the oil drilling process.

Thomas Wang ’16 has founded the Millennial Action Coalition, a grassroots advocacy group that aims to mobilize millennials around a health care reform agenda. He said in an email that the Stamps scholarship helped reduce travel and promotional costs, as well as engage with leaders in the health care space.

Leehi Yona ’16, who is studying Arctic issues through a series of conferences on international Arctic policy, research and civic advocacy, was unavailable for comment, citing limited internet access while she is abroad.

The application process for the scholarship includes a written project proposal, a questionnaire and interviews both with Dartmouth staff and Roe Stamps, a Stamps Family Foundation co-founder.

Mejía-Ramón, who had his interview with Stamps through Skype from an internet cafe in Mexico, said that at the close of his interview, Stamps invited him to join his “army of geniuses.”

PAGE 5

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS

PAGE 6

DARTMOUTH

UNLEASH YOUR POTENTIAL

TODAY

APPLY FOR A

4:00 p.m.

“Alternative Spring Break Kickoff Event” with the Tucker Foundation, Brace Commons

4:00 p.m.

“Men’s and Women’s Track and Field Relays,” Leverone Field House

7:00 p.m.

“Birdman” (2014), film screening, Hopkins Center Spaulding Auditorium

PRESIDENTIAL FELLOWSHIP Polish your job skills, work closely with senior leaders, make great connections, advance Dartmouth's mission Information Session: 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 15th Collis 101

TOMORROW 5:00 p.m.

“Rosewater” (2014), film screening, Loew Auditorium

Multiple one-year positions with salary and benefits July 2015 to June 2016

7:00 p.m.

“Men’s Basketball, Dartmouth versus Harvard University,” Berry Leede Arena Court 2

Application Deadline: January 29, 2015

7:00 p.m.

“Boyhood” (2014), film screening, Hopkins Center Spaulding Auditorium

Learn more:

www.dartmouth.edu/~president/fellows

Apply Now for Off-Campus Programs!

Application Deadline for 2015-2016 Programs is

FEBRUARY 1, 2015 (11:59 pm) February 1 Deadline Applies to 2015 Fall Term and 2016 Winter and Spring Terms **Exceptions: Government FSP, D.C. and UCSD Exchange – please see the Guarini Institute/OCP website for deadlines

Applications are Online

Don’t Delay; Apply Today!

Apply on-­‐line at: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ocp/

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

PAGE 7

Dartmouth basketball teams prepare for Harvard on Saturday

B y Alexander agadjanian

The Dartmouth basketball program will commence Ivy League play on Saturday, as both the men’s and women’s teams will face perennial conference-contenders Harvard University.

For the men, the start to Ivy League play could not get stiffer. The Big Green’s first two conference games are against defending Ivy League champion Harvard (9-3, 0-0), which tied with the Utah Utes for 25th in the Associated Press top 25 preseason poll.

Two months of non-conference play have tested Dartmouth prior to the opener. The team went 6-6 and had several tightly contested games.

As the team organized its competition leading into Ivy League play, head coach Paul Cormier focused specifically on increasing the strength of schedule.

“We’ve played a very competitive schedule,” said Cormier. “On purpose, this year we wanted all of our opponents to be Division 1 programs.”

Among the highlights during this stretch, the Big Green travelled to play three particularly strong competitors. While the team fell 77-57 to St. Bonaventure University in the season opener and 69-49 to Pennsylvania State University, it nabbed a 67-51 victory against Mercer University, the university that notably upset Duke in

last year’s National College Association of Athletics tournament for their first tournament win.

Over the course of its first 12 games, Dartmouth has had its fair share of late-game drama. Clinching wins on two buzzer-beaters, the team also surrendered leads in the final seven seconds of two different losses.

“We’re 6-6, we could be 8-4 because we lost two games at the buzzer, but we also won two games at the buzzer, so we could also be 4-8,” says Cormier about this trend. “All in all, I think we’re about where I thought we might be.”

These types of close, competitive games will ultimately prove beneficial for the team, Alex Mitola ’16, a standout scorer and prolific three-point shooter, said.

“I think as a team we will be very comfortable and confident in close games, and we think we’re going to be in a lot [of them] during the Ivy League season,” Mitola said.

Co-captain Gabas Maldunas ’15 is continuing to recover from a torn ACL that occurred last year, and John Golden ’15, who was sidelined for the first eight games due to a minor meniscus surgery, is returning as well.

“We’ve had some things that all teams have that we’re trying to resolve — that’s injuries, [for] both our seniors,” Cormier said. “But I think we’re hitting the Ivy League [with] all of us being healthy and ready to go.”

In commencing the Ivy League schedule, Dartmouth will face a deep Harvard squad led by an explosive backcourt comprised of senior Wesley Saunders ’15 and co-captain Siyani Chambers ’16. The duo has contributed significantly to the program’s recent success, including NCAA tournament wins in back-to-back seasons.

The pick-and-roll game has figured as a key facet of the Crimson motion offense.

“We’ll be trying to help a great deal in their two-man pick-and-roll plays, and exaggerate shading and staying with Chambers or Saunders as they come off screens.” Cormier said. “As they come off the pick, the guy guarding the screener will be asked to help a little more than normal.”

The women’s team will take to the road on Saturday night to battle a formidable Harvard team (6-7, 0-0).

The Crimson has finished second place in the Ivy League in each of the last seven years. Before making the trip down to Cambridge, the Big Green amassed a 9-5 pre-conference mark, the program’s strongest start since the 2005-06 season.

The campaign began in a thrilling fashion against the New Jersey Institute of Technology. After the team squandered a first half lead, forward Lakin Roland ’16 forced overtime with a buzzer-beating tip-in shot that garnered national attention. The Big

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Green would go on to regain command in overtime, winning the season opener 68-63 in Leede Arena.

Streaky game-to-game performance would ensue and come to characterize the team’s pre-Ivy schedule. Dartmouth started the season by rattling off four wins in a row, with an average margin of victory of 11.25 points.

However, the team would split the next pair and lose four consecutive games by an average of 13 points a game, before turning around and winning another four straight.

Much of the team’s success this season has resulted from an increase in overall confidence and a simple solidification of all aspects of the team’s play, Fanni Szabo ’17 said.

“Our team is doing so much better than it did last year,” Szabo said. “You can see it on our record, and because we’re just playing more confident.

We’re moving the ball confidently, we’re looking for open shots, and our defense has been great so far this season.”

The guard also points to an improvement and now reliance on “ball movement, drives [to the basket] and our midrange game.”

Szabo, who has made an impact since the very beginning of her Dartmouth career as a freshman, has jumped from averaging 13.2 points per game her freshman year to a

team-leading 18.2 points per game her sophomore year.

“My teammates are really helpful in giving me the ball when I have open looks, they have created a lot of drives for me,” Szabo said.

Looking ahead to its game on Saturday, the Big Green will focus on slowing down the Crimson’s productive trio of Temi Fagbenle ’15, Erin McDonnell ’15 and AnnMarie Healy ’16, who produce on average 40.4 of the team’s 65.7 points per game this season. The trio does its most damage on the glass, as the three combine to grab the most rebounds on the team for Harvard.

As it prepares for its clash with Harvard, Szabo said, the team will look to shore up its play in practice and adopt a new mindset.

“We’ve had a week to prepare,” Szabo says. “We’ve been focusing on ourselves, we want to [use our practices to] improve and feel more confident on the court.”

Moving forward into the season, Szabo also said it’s important for the team to move past any of the losses they have suffered so far and refocus themselves for taking on the Ivy League.

“We have to stay confident,” Szabo said. “Now, since this is our first conference game, we have to think as if we’re starting a new season. We look at our record as being 0-0.”

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS

PAGE 8

SPORTS

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

FRIDAY LINEUP

MEN’S HOCKEY VS. UNH 7:30 PM

WOMEN’S HOCKEY VS. RENSSELAER 7:00 PM

Swim and Dive head into home meet

B y GAYNE KALUSTIAN The Dartmouth Staff

With two meets under their belts, the Dartmouth men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams head into their first home meet of the season against Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania this Saturday, led at the helm by backstroker James Verhagen ’16.

Verhagen is the lone holder of a first-place finish this season.

Verhagen swam the 100-yard backstroke in 48.74 seconds at the team’s first midseason meet at Brown University. Without the ability to know what the A cut will be for the National College Association of Athletics meet, Verhagen believes he will have to get his time down to around 46.4 seconds to qualify.

Nejc Zupan ’14, who has held nearly 10 records at Dartmouth, graduated last season and left the team without its most successful swimmer. To pick up the pieces, Dartmouth’s men’s team enlisted several freshman standouts, including Misha Tovmashenko ’18, Bruno Korbar ’18 and Tony Shen ’18. The team’s youngest class, especially the mid-distance and distance swimmers, is going to be one of the greatest weapons for Dartmouth during this and coming seasons, co-captain Ian Woon ’15 said.

Korbar took third place in the 500-yard freestyle by swimming a 4:32.71 in Rhode Island. Tovmashenko, who took eighth place in the 200-yard freestyle at Brown, was also a part of the record-setting 800-yard freestyle relay along with Woon, Shen and Aaron Athanas ’16.

The team took first in the event, and the 6:39.96 time knocked off a team record set last year by Zupan, Woon, Jack Long ’17 and Jun Oh ’16 . David Harmon ’17 placed fifth in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 1:49.65.

The rising freestyle unit, Verhagen said, is putting the team in a good position to be competitive in relay, individual distance and mid-distance races against the bigger teams in the Ivy League.

S h e n , wh o a n ch o re d t h e 800-meter relay team at Brown, took third as an individual in the

200-yard freestyle, swimming a 1:39.58 after taking second at the team’s opening meet against Harvard and Cornell Universities by swimming the same event in 1:40.12.

If the three strongest men could be combined into one swimmer, however, the result would be women’s swimmer AnnClaire MacArt ’18, who has emerged from her first two meets with seven top five finishes.

Her high-ranking events, ranging from the 1650-yard freestyle to the 200-yard freestyle relay, make her a dynamic and speedy freestyle swimmer who can be relied on to bring home points across the board for Dartmouth.

“She’s insanely fast,” co-captain Siobahn Hengemuhle ’15 said.

“We definitely need her in the distance events lately because two of our senior distance players graduated. It’s unbelievable how fast she’s going.”

While the high-scoring freshmen and Verhagen’s race to the NCAA tournament are the talk of the team’s success, injuries plagued some of the Big Green’s returning talent early in the season. Charlotte Kamai ’16, Brett Gillis ’16 and Daniel Whitcomb ’16 are all returning for the home meet this

weekend.

During the team’s training trip, Kamai hurt her foot cliff-diving and had to take a break from swimming. Hengemuhle said it shouldn’t affect Kamai’s ability to sprint, but could potentially weigh her down during a longer event.

Kamai, now in her third season at Dartmouth, anchored the 200- and 800-yard relays at Brown before the trip, earning third and second place, respectively.

Additionally, Kamai took sixth in the 100-yard freestyle and eighth in the 200-yard freestyle at the same meet. She is only swimming the 50-yard freestyle and two B cut relays due to foot concerns.

Gillis, the team’s one-meter and three-meter record holder, took third in the one-meter dive and fourth in the five-meter dive during the Cornell and Harvard meet, but hit his head on the board at Brown.

The accident necessitated a trip to the hospital and 32 staples in his head.

Whitcomb, who is currently a part of two school record relay times, has been unable to compete this season due to a concussion he suffered in practice caused by a kick from a teammate. He makes his returns this weekend for the home meet against Yale and Penn.

THE DARTMOUTH RELAYS

Kelsey Kittelsen/The Dartmouth Staff

Dartmouth hosts the 46th Annual Dartmouth Relays this weekend.

B y AUSTIN LIM and RICHard SHEN ‘Sup y’all? Hope everyone had a good winter break and hasn’t died of hypothermia yet (according to weather.com it feels like -21, woo!). Rich is back on campus this term and has decided to actually help out with the column, so we’re looking forward to another exciting term of “Any Given Thursday.”

With the college football playoffs coming to an end, we decided that we would write this article about which National Basketball Association player we would build a team around. With the emergence of several new superstars in the NBA this year, including Stephen Curry and Anthony Davis, we began dreaming of scenarios to play general manager. After much thought, Rich decided on Damian Lillard and Austin decided on Rajon Rondo.

The case for Lillard: If there were one fact about the NBA that everybody knows but no one wants to admit, it would be that no one — not even the players — cares about what happens in a game until the final five minutes.

In those waning moments, who do you want on your team? The guy who can hit the game-winning shot. No one in the NBA is better in those moments than Damian Lillard.

I imagine that most of us — particularly the Houston Rockets fans among us — can distinctly remember Lillard’s series-winning three-pointer in the Wester n Conference playoffs last year. Few players in the NBA would have dared to take that shot, and even fewer would have made it.

The remarkable thing about Lillard, though, is that he makes those kinds of game-winning plays all the time. Over his career, Lillard has played in 15 regular season overtime games. His numbers during those periods? Sixty-eight percent from the field, 95 percent from the line and — perhaps most impressively — 55 percent from beyond the three-point line.

Basically, if the Trail Blazers need Lillard to make a gamewinning three, it would be a better

bet to assume that he’d hit the shot than miss it. So, yeah, let’s be honest here — if you could pick any player in the NBA with whom to start a team, how could it not be Damian Lillard?

The case for Rondo: I’m going to start by saying that I know he can’t shoot. He has consistently proven that he is not a pure scorer, and he will never be the main scoring option on a team.

Having said that, his recent trade to the Mavericks and his performance, especially on defense, has reminded me how great of a team you could build around him.

By his own admittance, he hasn’t played defense in a few years (why would he since he played for the Celtics...) . A newly invigorated Rondo has shown how impactful he can be on the defensive side of the ball. Since he’s been playing with the Dallas Mavericks, he has the best defensive ranking in the NBA as point guard with opposing teams averaging 93.4 points per 100 possessions.

He rounds out his defense with unbelievable spacial awareness, as well as the ability to score enough to keep the defense honest. He’s averaging about 12 points, eight assists and six rebounds a game and is the league’s most veritable threat to have a triple-double every time he steps onto the court.

Since the Mavs already had an elite floor general in Monta Ellis, people have voiced concerns about how Rondo would fit into the Mavs’ system, but Rondo quickly proved that he’s capable of meshing with any type of player. Ellis’s numbers haven’t changed, and the Mavericks are rolling, looking like more of a contender after every game.

Rajon Rondo is a coach’s dream — unselfish, intelligent and incredibly gifted, and would be my choice to build an NBA team around.

This is our first installment of “Any Given Thursday” for the term, and we hope you enjoyed it.

If you have a topic that you think would be interesting, feel free to blitz either of us, and we’ll consider it — unless it’s bad. Anyway, thanks for reading. Stay warm, and don’t fail your classes. Peace.