The Flat Hat March 22 2023

T HE F LAT H AT

REFLECTIONS ON UKRAINE: A DEPARTMENT UNITED

Russian Post-Soviet Studies department, students face challenges

navigating

JOSEPH WEHMEYER // FLAT HAT NEWS ASSOC. EDITOR

Richard S. Perles Professor of Government Paula Pickering was ini tially hesitant to move foreign policy to the front of her Russian and Post-Soviet Politics syllabus in the Spring 2022 semester. But, as signs of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine grew, Pickering felt she had no other choice but to restructure the course in response to the events.

“I was following things in December and January very closely,” Pickering said. “I believe it’s important to understand the historical, domestic, political, social and economic context of Russia in order to then understand foreign policy and security policy.”

Of all the departments and programs at the College of William and Mary, perhaps none has felt the impact of world events over the past year more than the Russian and Post-Soviet Studies program.

“I remember the night very distinctly,” former Rus sian House Co-President Kathryn Webb ’23 said. “We were all sitting in one of the Hardy [Hall] lounges with our friends who lived in the Russian House, but also from the general department. We just kind of sat there for a while. Nobody really talked.” Professors and students alike acknowledge the particularly di cult experiences for those with rela tives in Ukraine, Russia or both. Many have had to bal ance academics with the emotional toll of processing these events and supporting the community around.

Yasha Barth ’24 and former Russian House Co-President Daniella Marx ’24, both RPSS majors, are deeply involved in the program’s community. Marx highlighted the RPSS communi ty as a protective and welcoming space to support fellow students.

“While it’s been emotionally di ed us and made us stronger than usual,” Barth said.

Students and faculty also acknowledged that some com munity members have experienced unprovoked hostil ity and discriminatory remarks for having Russian ancestry.

“Even people who don’t have family [there], it’s upsetting to see the brutality,” Pickering said. “People who study Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, who are learning holistically the lan guage, culture, politics, economics, they want to be studying there. All of a sudden, that dramatically changed their possibilities.”

Nevertheless, discourse between the RPSS communi ty has remained respectful and somber in light of the war.

“I think moving forward, we’ve been very introspective into how the department approaches the Soviet legacy,” Webb said.

On February 27, 2022, RPSS faculty released a statement strongly condemning the war and pledging support for Ukraine. Many faculty members frame the current war in Ukraine not as a con ict that began in 2022, but rather, one that has been ongoing for nearly a decade. “It started during the [Russian] annexation of Crimea in 2014,” associate professor of Russian and Post-Soviet Studies Alexander “Sasha” Prokhorov said. “ e war has been happening for all those years.”

In March 2022, the Russian House organized a Ukrainian Solidarity event in partnership with the Rainbow Coalition and Student Assembly representatives where community members could demonstrate collective unity and sorrow. e RPSS program continues to sponsor events and maintains awareness about the war. Recent speakers at the Col-

CAMPUS

Russo-Ukrainian war

lege include New York Times Moscow Correspondent Valerie Hopkins ’09, Geospatial Intelligence Team Lead and Russia analyst at the stitute for the Study of War George Barros ’19 and U.S Army Colonel (Ret.) Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman, a senior member of the recently-created Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group for Ukraine.

e war in Ukraine sparked innovative data science research and collaboration between the RPSS program and other campus communities, including the Modern Languages, Film and Media Studies, Gender Sexuality and

“Since the war, we’ve tried to incorporate more lms outside a speci cally Russian ethnic context,” said Marx. “Having more variety and post-Soviet and post-communist narratives.” Barth is also president of the recently renamed Melodia Eastern European Instrument and Vocal Ensemble, formerly known as the Russian Music Ensemble.

“Music goes beyond political spheres,” Barth said. “Our ensemble is not making any political statements but is using music to show o what each country is about and show that we can unite through music to overcome di culties.” e war also prompted the relocation of the College’s Russian language and culture summer study abroad program from St. Petersburg, Russia to Vilnius, Lithuania. After canceling the program due to COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021, the program was postponed once again in 2022 after the invasion began.

“When the war started, everything froze,” associate professor of History and Global Studies Maria Cristina Galmarini, the faculty leader of the program, said. “It was impossible because of issues of visas and safety.” While many other universities in the United States relocated similar programs to countries like Latvia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. However, the College received a Project Global cer grant from the Department of Defense in 2021, which sponsors nationwide critical language education and overis grant established ties between the College and the European Humanities University in Lithuania and National Central University in Taiwan.

Both programs are set to have their inaugural sessions this summer should the security situation remain stable. Senior lecturer of Russian Language and Culture Bella Ginzbursky-Blum will lead the Project GO Russian Language program in the states, and Prokhorov will oversee the program internationally. For the College’s civilian program, the Russian language component will remain similar, but the cultural focus will shift. During the original study abroad program, a course taught in St. Petersburg would require students to select and research the history behind a site of memory in the city.

“Now, of course, I cannot keep doing that,” Galmarini said. “Instead, I will teach a course on the relations between Russia and the Baltics.” e RPSS community has also made impacts o -campus.

one third of students’ nal projects concern the war in Ukraine.

Ongoing student projects include analyzing speeches by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian troll activity on Twitter and comparing Spotify downloads between Russia and neighboring countries. Beyond the classroom, student researchers at the College are applying the e ects of the war to their own work. e Geospatial Evaluation and Observation Lab conducted research analyzing the environmental impact of armed con ict in Ukraine, and the Exodus Project researched the challenges of LGBTQ+ Ukrainian refugees.

Since the start of the war last spring, students in related organizations have fostered greater inclusions. Barth and Marx are both leading sta members of the student-run RPSS lm series, which presents ve to six lms each semester.

Prokhorova, Prokhorov, Ginzbursky-Blum and Assistant Director of the Studio for Teaching and Learning Innovation Mike Blum raised $3,500 for Salam Lab, a non-governmental organization in Krakow, Poland, which helps resettle Ukrainian refugees.

In January 2023, Prokhorov and his daughter visited Krakow for 10 days to deliver funds and goods, as well as volunteer at Salam Lab and another non-governmental organization, Soup for Ukraine, to provide food for refugees.

“It was a very rewarding experience,” Prokhorov said. “But what was also very heartbreaking was to see how many displaced people are in the area. And they all need living space and food.” Prokhorov noted the emotional toll of the trip. “ e ow is steady unfortunately,” Prokhorov said. ey keep bombing, people keep on arriving. It’s heartbreaking. It doesn’t go away. It makes me cry.”

Williamsburg Police apprehend one suspect in shooting on Scotland Street

MOLLY PARKS FLAT HAT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Sunday, March 19, The Williamsburg Police Department responded to a shooting on the 700 block of Scotland Street at approximately 1:54 a.m. According to the Williamsburg Police Department’s press release, the officers found three people wounded on the scene. Although the shooting occurred in close proximity to the College of William and Mary campus, no students were injured.

“Upon arrival, officers found three people who had been shot, a 25-year-old male, and two 24- year-old males. Williamsburg Fire units responded and transported the victims to Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News. All three victims are expected to survive,” the Williamsburg Police Department said in the press release.

The Williamsburg Police Department arrested 21-year-old Alvin Lapenze Jackson Jr. in York County at approximately 10:00 a.m. on Sunday in connection with the shooting. How -

ever, the investigation remains ongoing.

“Jackson was charged with nine felonies that include two counts of aggravated malicious wounding; one count of malicious wounding; three counts of use of a firearm in commission of a felony; and three counts of shooting of a firearm in a public place causing injury,” a City of Williamsburg news release responding to the arrest reads.

The College’s emergency TribeAlert system sent three notifications to students with updates on the incident. The original TribeAlert notification was sent Sunday at 3:34 a.m., informing students of the initial shooting. The second alert came at 7:35 a.m., updating the community that no students were injured, the area was clear and the Williamsburg Police Department investigation was still ongoing. The final TribeAlert notification at 10:58 a.m. contained the Williamsburg Police Department press release.

Sunday at 9:52 p.m., Co-Chairs of the College’s Emergency Management Team Ginger

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Ambler ’88, Ph.D. ’06 and Deborah Cheesebro, WMPD Chief of Police and AVP for Public Safety, sent an email to the College community. The Emergency Management Team Co-Chairs informed students of the College’s decision to increase WMPD patrolling of the campus perimeter near the area of the shooting for the remainder of the school year.

“Though this terrible incident occurred off campus, it is distressing to the entire William & Mary community given its proximity to our campus, to a residence hall and to establishments especially popular among students,” Ambler and Cheesebro wrote in the email.

“Out of an abundance of caution William & Mary Police have established increased patrols on the campus perimeter in the vicinity of Scotland Street and Richmond Road. These increased deterrence measures will continue on weekends through the end of the school year to ensure safety and to reassure students, families and other W&M community members.”

Cheesebro wrote in an email to The Flat Hat that ensuring campus and community

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ty was the main factor contributing to the decision to increase patrolling.

“The safety of our campus and community members is the number one priority of every officer in the William & Mary Police Department. We understand how concerning events like the incident that occurred Sunday morning can be, and we want to do all we can to ensure that the members of this community not only are safe but also feel safe when they are on campus,” Cheesebro said.

This shooting is the second to occur on the 700 block of Scotland Street this semester. Jan. 25, a shooting occurred at approximately 12:47 a.m. The Williamsburg Police Department immediately identified and apprehended Michael Trenton Rusk, a 24-year-old male resident of James City County, as the shooter. The wounded victim was not a student of the College.

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GRAPHIC BY YELENA FLEMING / THE FLAT HAT

The College relocated study abroad programs to Lithuania due to security concerns.

insight

J.D. ʻ66 to speak at Commencement

Comedian, actor and writer Patton Oswalt ʻ91 will be speaking at the College of William and Mary during the May 19 Commencement main ceremony. Oswalt will receive an honorary degree at the Commencement event, which is scheduled for May 19 at 7 p.m. in Zable Stadium.

Oswalt is best known for his voice acting as Remy in “Ratatouille” and Spence in “King of Queens.” He has won various awards, including a Primetime Emmy and a Grammy in 2016 for his San Francisco stand-up show “Talking for Clapping.” Oswalt has recently co-created the Marvel comic-inspired show “M.O.D.O.K” and has costarred in the NBC comedy “A.P. Bio.”

Oswalt began performing in comedy clubs during his time at the College and was a member of The Flat Hat Newspaper.

In response to the Collegeʼs request for Oswaltʼs presence as the Commencement keynote speaker, he said, “I would like a bag of bread ends and dip from the Cheese Shop for my services. Thank you.”

Alongside Oswalt, former College rector and retired Chief Financial Officer of transportation provider company Norfolk Southern Henry C. “Hank” Wolf ʻ64, J.D. ʻ66 will be receiving an honorary degree.

Wolf was a former economics major at the College and also attended the Collegeʼs Law School. He began his legal career in the United States Army and served for four years, achieving his rank as captain. Prior to his retirement in 2007, Wolf also worked with Norfolk Southern for over 30 years, rising to the role of vice chairman and chief financial officer.

Liz Cascone: “Give yourself credit for the small things”

Haven director discusses her career in social work, advocates for adaptable resolutions

EMMA HENRY // FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR

In the fall of 2014, students and faculty at the College of William and Mary established the Haven, a con dential, on-campus resource for students coping with sexual violence, relationship abuse and various other forms of harassment and discrimination. Two years later, the College began searching for an o cial director of the research center, a role Liz Cascone, who holds a master’s in social work, has now retained for the past seven years.

Cascone’s current role is to train student advocates, build a larger vision for the center and collaborate with other o ces on campus. Her presence has ensured that the Haven has an established role at the College and continues to maintain a safe environment for students. is is a place they can come and understand what their options are, understand what the resources are and then make informed choices about what they want to do moving forward,” Cascone said. “And sometimes all they want is support, so that’s a primary function that we provide.”

Growing up in Fairfax County, Virginia, Cascone studied sociology and psychology with a concentration in women’s studies at Virginia Tech before pursuing a master’s degree in social work at Virginia Commonwealth University. Following her education, Cascone entered a career in a community-based sexual and domestic violence program in eastern Virginia.

CORRECTIONS

CORRECTION (3/8/23): The article “548 upperclassmen placed on waitlist, second year in a row with 500+ waitlisted students” was updated by Sarah Devendorf, the Standards and Practices Editor, to give credit to Shradha Dinesh and Abhayprad Jha and for contributing to the writing of this article as co-authors. The Flat Hat wishes to correct any fact printed incorrectly. Corrections may be submitted in email to the editor of the section in which the incorrect information was printed. Requests for corrections will be accepted at any time.

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“My interest area became developed in and around advocacy and social justice and addressing sort of disparities and inequity and particularly around interpersonal violence and abuse,” Cascone said. “I got really into prevention work and started working with the school system and teaching young people about healthy relationships.”

Cascone said her interest in social justice was partly informed by discussions with her family growing up and exposure to inequities while in high school.

Understanding how systems of inequity function within the United States led her down an educational path with a greater focus on how certain communities experience various social barriers, as well as how violence is perpetuated and encountered at disproportionate rates.

“We’re not talking about just individual acts of inequity or racism or discrimination, we’re really talking about the history of our country,” Cascone said. “We’re talking about the institutions that really bene t certain types of people over other people.”

Prior to working for the College, Cascone worked for nearly a decade at the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, a nonpro t organization that supports local sexual violence crisis centers and domestic abuse shelters across the state of Virginia. Her role included aiding communities across the state to develop prevention strategies in order to address the root causes of violence.

Cascone mentioned that her time at the Action Alliance gave her some experience in the public health sector, too, helping to create communities and educate local organizations about prevention strategies. e roots of violence are around inequity; around sexism, racism, homophobia,” Cascone said. “How do we begin to address those root causes and how do we then create communities where this stu doesn’t exist in the rst place? What we want to do is prevent this from ever happening to anybody.”

Cascone said that the creation of her current role at the Haven may have been in response to Title IX adjustments in 2016 as the College attempted to navigate federal changes and add more spaces for student safety, support and accountability. roughout her time at the Haven, Cascone has helped create a sexual misconduct response protocol and training for

o ces such as Residence Life and the Dean of Students.

Today, Cascone is working with the Dean of Students o ce to create an informal resolution option for students, rather than just the current formal investigative process, for sexual misconduct reports. is new option, which Cascone calls an “adaptable resolution,” allows students to participate in speci c accountability actions in lieu of a traditional university sanction.

“ is type of informal resolution is being developed all across the nation at higher-ed institutions so that there’s more options to address accountability that’s more centered on the harm that was caused to the survivor rather than just the violation of the institution’s policies,” Cascone said.

To Cascone, the most rewarding parts of her work at the Haven are the educational components, as well as the fact that many students continue their advocacy work after volunteering at the center.

“I think it’s also really rewarding to be able to work with students in that most sort of vulnerable time and have them feel like they are heard and seen and believed and that they’re getting the support that they need,” Cascone said. “And despite an experience that was really harmful to them, they still feel like they are part of the William and Mary community.”

Another important factor of Cascone’s work is that it is often deeply personal and not only impacts survivors, but those who work in social advocacy and justice as well. Cascone emphasized the importance of creating a healthy relationship with her work as well as nding time to re ect on her career.

“I think that there’s sometimes an assumption that one can do trauma work forever and that if you’re good at it, it never impacts you, and that’s just not true,” Cascone said. “We have to normalize that we’re not superheroes, that we have limitations and that we have to take care of ourselves.”

To Cascone, strategies to mitigate her work-life balance include evaluating her work, creating boundaries and normalizing things such as counseling and career changes. She emphasized the importance of recognizing secondary trauma, and creating space to switch things up.

Outside of her work at the Haven, Cascone can be found hiking, exercising and spending time with family and friends. To Cascone, these factors help her decompress and mitigate some of the more isolating factors of trauma work. Along with this, she is currently pursuing her clinical social work license which would allow her to conduct therapy and counseling services herself. is would also allow Cascone to work with graduate student interns at the Haven who are pursuing a master’s degree in counseling.

“I have become more and more interested in the concept of restorative justice as it relates to sexual misconduct, and so that’s an area of interest that I have that I could see myself doing,” Cascone said. “It’s really about relying less on traditional systems of justice and creating other opportunities that really address the harm that was caused to someone.”

Cascone emphasized the importance of recognizing isolation within both trauma work and for survivors. To her, the Haven creates a space where students can feel heard and believed while being connected to a community as well as resources.

“I really would want students to recognize little successes,” Cascone said. “Sometimes we strive for those big markers of success or we’re very self-critical. And so I guess, letting students hear that small successes are sometimes bigger.”

Itʼs important to understand the historical, domestic, politica l, social and economic context of Russia in order to then understand foreign policy and security policy.

̶ Richard S. Perles Professor of Government Paula Pickering

COURTESY PHOTO / LIZ CASCONE

Cascone is working with the Dean of Students office to create an informal resolution option for sexual misconduct reports, creating more options for accountability.

Patton Oswalt ʻ91, Henry C. “Hank” Wolf ʻ64,

Valerie Jarrett visits the College to speak at Values Week

In honor of Womenʼs History Month, Obama Foundation CEO speaks to students

BETSY MAHONEY FLAT HAT CHIEF STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, March 7, Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to former United States President Barack Obama and current CEO of the Obama Foundation, came to speak at the College of William and Mary in honor of Women’s History Month and Values Week, re ecting on the importance of female empowerment and gender equality. Co-sponsored by Alma Mater Productions, Community Values and Restorative Practices and the Center for Student Diversity, the event brought together students and community leaders alike to hear Jarrett speak in Sadler’s Commonwealth Auditorium.

Jarrett receiving her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1978 and her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. In 1987, Jarrett left her corporate law rm to begin her public service career in Chicago, Illinois. Jarrett served as the Deputy Corporation Counsel for Mayor Harold Washington, the Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development and the Chair of the Chicago Transit Board. Jarrett also served on numerous civic and corporate boards ranging from Ariel Investments to Sesame Street Workshop.

Jarrett made history by becoming the longestserving senior advisor to a United States President, working throughout President Barack Obama’s 20092017 presidency. During her tenure at the White House, Jarrett chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls while overseeing the Public Engagement and Intergovernmental A airs for the White House.

Despite Jarrett’s myriad of achievements in the federal government, she called attention to the signi cance of local government throughout her career. Jarrett highlighted its importance as it helps people gain experience and create relationships through interacting with communities rsthand.

“I learned more in local government where you look right in the face of your constituents,” said Jarrett. “By the time I had served eight years in Chicago’s local government, people knew who I was. I couldn’t go to the grocery store or dry cleaners without somebody coming up to me and saying ‘this is what I want you to do.’”

Following her tenure in the Obama administration, Jarrett now focuses her work on nonpro ts and foundations. She is the current board chairman of Civic Nation, a nonpro t organization dedicated to education initiatives to address national issues, cochair of e United State of Women, which builds coalitions among nonpro t organizations that are focused on women and gender equality, and CEO of the Obama Foundation, which is focused on the impacts of ordinary people.

“

ere is something just so replenishing benign around young people who aren’t jaded, who do believe they can make a di erence, who are willing to be civically engaged and feel this sense of power that I think sometimes dulls as people get older,” Jarrett said. Jarrett stressed that the importance of young people

Proli c

stems from their engagement with societal issues, especially regarding college students who are admitted into programs led by the Obama Foundation.

“ e focus we admit into our programs all have already established at a very young age, far younger before I was actually engaged civically, that they care about their communities and that they feel this sense of empowerment to make a di erence,” Jarrett said.

“We want to inspire, empower and connect them even

When asked about how she integrates her values into everyday life and her surrounding community, Jarrett credits her parents for instilling a moral foundation within her character. ey provided me with a safety net, so if I stumbled and fell, I knew they would pick me up,” said Jarrett. “It was the adage, ‘To those whose much is given, much is expected,’ and the expectation was that I work really hard and that I would gure out my path to give back.”

more people would think that way, we’d be in much better shape in the country.

Punnammal Gross ’24, Impact Chair of Alma Mater Productions, said that the importance of inviting Valerie Jarrett as keynote speaker relates to empowering women and women of color, since the College has had a history of gender exclusion and racial discrimination.

“I know that there was a time where the school didn’t accept women, and on top of that didn’t accept Black women or other women of color, so seeing the intersectionality of these two identities being able to speak in a crowd full of students and community leaders was such an amazing opportunity,” Gross said. “I’m thankful that I got to a school where this is possible and I got to learn a lot about leadership and values and boundary setting.”

During the talk, Jarrett also discussed the importance of authenticity, as it creates con dence within one’s self and in other people.

“I think I try to be as authentic as possible, I have been really open with you guys here,” said Jarrett. “If you’re comfortable in your skin, which takes some time to get that comfortable, and you treat people well, and you work hard, over the arch, you tend to make a di erence and you build relationships with people.”

Shiyanna McLeod ’23, the O ce of Community Values and Restorative Practices Representative, stated the importance of a Black woman taking center stage as the Values Week keynote speaker.

“I thought it was amazing to have speci cally a Black woman be our keynote speaker,” said McLeod. “I think that it resonates within me to see such a re ection of myself be brought to our school to share her insights and her experience during Women’s History Month as our Values Week speaker.”

more, and have their di erences that they’re currently making make it to scale and help them to connect with one another.”

When asked about how she maneuvers the high level positions in the face of racial and gender inequality, Jarrett stressed that gaining people’s trust can help one gain respect.

- Valerie Jarrett, Obama Foundation CEO

“Yes, people might look at me a certain way because I’m a woman and they may look at me a certain way because I’m Black, my goal is to get them to trust me — to trust me as a human, to trust me because of my intellect and trust me because I respect them,” said Jarrett. “If you treat people pretty well over the arc of your life, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to face discrimination, doesn’t mean that life isn’t always fair, but ultimately there’s no better revenge to all those haters than success.”

Jarrett further explained that her father, Dr. James E. Bowman, gave her important advice, as he always emphasized having a strong moral compass.

“My father always said, beginning when I was about ve years old when I had a coloring book, ‘Color well within the lines,’” Jarrett said. “ at should be your moral compass in life. Just don’t get close to the edge.”

Williamsburg community leader Connie Matthews Harshaw, a retired Federal Executive and President of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, said that Jarrett’s words about morality and ethics was a notable theme throughout Jarrett’s talk.

“You know in your heart, you know in your mind what’s right and it is very black and white, there’s no gray area,” said Matthews. “ e di erence between right and wrong is non-negotiable. And I think that if

McLeod also said that Jarrett’s words on initiating connections with your neighbor is imperative because it can help bridge di erences, especially on college campuses.

“I think something that stood out to me from the talk was her advice to not exist inside an echo chamber,” McLeod said. “It really ties into her insights on being a leader and also getting involved in your community. You aren’t able to know what your neighbors are thinking without taking the rst step and asking them, and so I think that that is extremely relevant.

Jarrett’s advice to women who are seeking high level positions is to show up and work hard, and to be open to new opportunities and forging new connections.

“Do your job, I always say to people,” Jarrett said. “It is ne to aspire, but there are no easy steps to get to where I have been or where anybody goes who works in the White House.”

Jarrett’s nal advice to the audience was that life is not a clear cut path and that a diverging path can lead to new opportunities. “ e adventure is in the swerve, and I was on that straight line,” said Jarrett. “I’m so delighted that I had the courage to take a di erent direction. It changed my life.”

writer and survivor

of the

Holocaust gives talk at the College recounting stories of escape Erica Fabian, Artist in Residence at the Reves Center, speaks about life under Hitler, Stalin persecution

Friday, March 3, the Reves Center at the College of William and Mary hosted Erika Fabian, an 83 year-old Hungarian-born author, actress and singer, to discuss her experience surviving the Holocaust and the communist regime under Joseph Stalin in a talk titled, “Surviving Hitler and Stalin: One Woman’s Account.” is event took place as part of the Ampersand International Arts Festival.

“She models in this way much that William and Mary is and aspires to be,” director of the Reves Center Dr. Teresa Longo said. “Her CV is beyond impressive. She has worked as an educator at UCLA, the Actors Lab in San Francisco and the University of New Mexico. She has been an actress, a singer and a mime. She is a speaker at the Holocaust Museum, L.A.”

Fabian has also spent a large portion of her life producing books and articles about her experiences, recently publishing her twentysixth book, “Liars’ Paradise.” As the Reves Center’s Artist in Residence, Fabian sought to tell attendants about her story of struggle, escape and survival in 20th-century Hungary.

Giorgianna Heiko ’25 attended Fabian’s talk and shared the impact her story had on her.

“Erica Fabian’s detailed account of her traumatic childhood during WWII, during the reign of Nazi terror made the holocaust feel more real to me than ever,” Heiko said in an email to e Flat Hat. “I felt a sense of my own mortality. How lucky I am as a Jew today and to not have to experience such atrocity.”

Fabian began her story in chronological order, starting with her earliest memories from World War II era Hungary. She recalled rst being forced to move apartments at the age of 4 after Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Hungary. Fabian spent much of her childhood having to hide her Jewish-Hungarian identity in order to survive.

“We had to move from the big, beautiful apartment where we lived to another place, a much smaller apartment, which had a big yellow star on it,” Fabian said.

After Fabian’s family was evicted from their apartment, she, her mother and her

7-year-old sister sought refuge in safe houses throughout the city of Budapest. Fabian’s father was recruited into forced labor by the Hungarian regime and detained in a prison camp, where he was held until his death shortly after. Fabian spent much of her youth in hiding, moving between safe houses and hospitals to avoid Nazi persecution.

“Some people, when they grow up, they forget their childhood memories. I have a good recollection of the terrible things that happened to me,” Fabian said.

Fabian told attendants of the time she and her sister, Judith, were rescued by a Jewish man who was disguised as a Nazi o cer. Fabian and Judith had been placed in a ward alongside other children from the Red Cross Hospital, but with the help of their mother, Piroska, they were able to escape.

e Nazi o cer who came to get us was actually a Jewish doctor dressed as a Nazi o cer,” Fabian said.

Fabian also repeatedly emphasized the strength of her mother and sister throughout her story. Speci cally, she recounted how she found comfort in her sister’s words when they were forcibly taken from the hospital by Schutzsta el or Protection Squad O cers. Fabian also reiterated the tremendous lengths her mother went to in order to ensure the safety of her children.

Fabian and her mother and sister spent the remainder of World War II disguised as Christians in Hungary with false papers. She noted that during this time, roughly 80% of her family died while being held in concentration camps.

After World War II ended, Stalin’s regime swiftly began in Hungary. As Fabian grew up, she continued to experience the unspeakable hardships of living under an authoritarian regime. Religious persecution, poor living conditions and constant suspicion surrounded

her later childhood and adolescence.

“I was writing about this in my current book, which is called ‘Liars’ Paradise,’ because everybody in Hungary was lying to everybody about everything,” Fabian said. “Living under communism, you could never tell the truth of how you really felt.”

At the height of communist rule, Fabian

mother and sister were arrested and taken into custody. While her mother and sister were held in the Bratislava Central Prison, Fabian was taken to a separate juvenile institution due to her young age.

During this period of incarceration, Fabian and her mother and sister were forced to lie about where they were going and who had helped them, and were interrogated for hours on end with blindfolds and numerous intimidation tactics. Despite the circumstances, the strength of the family kept them motivated. After over six months in jail, Fabian’s mother managed to send for help to Fabian’s uncle, Frank Shatz, in Prague. The card, which was written in Hungarian, said: “I, and my two daughters, Erika and Judith, are in Bratislava. We need your help. Would you help us?” Since Piroska did not have Frank’s address, she addressed the card to “Ferenc Shatz, Journalist, Prague.” Shatz recognized Piroska’s name and tracked down the location, realizing that the women were being held in Bratislava’s Central Prison.

and was an instrumental contributor to the Reves Center for International Studies at the College. Shatz and Fabian were reunited in 2018 for the rst time in nearly 60 years.

Soon after the death of Stalin in 1953, the Hungarian Revolution began, and Fabian’s mother and sister were released from prison as the communist government reduced the severity of their punishments.

“Within two weeks, my mother, my sister and I were in the car of a Russian General’s driver and soldier, pretending to be going to a wedding at the border,” Fabian said. e Fabian family was dropped o at a safe location on the Austrian border. After sneaking to the border through a snowstorm and wading through a eld of mud, the Fabian family made it to Vienna, where they stayed for approximately a month.

After communicating with family members in the United States, they decided to leave Europe. On Christmas eve of 1956, the Fabians ew to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey and started their new life in America.

and her family then began their quest to escape Hungary and ee westward. After her mother met a human smuggler in Hungary, the family managed to escape to Slovakia in hopes of crossing over into Austria. e journey to Slovakia was not easy. Fabian recalled many of the most frightening incidents in her experience.

“ is is a very vivid memory,” Fabian said.

“We saw Hungarian soldiers walk halfway down the bridge, Slovak soldiers halfway down the other half of the bridge, and we were sitting just under them, practically under them, on the banks of the river.”

While crossing into Austria from Slovakia alongside other individuals in an attempt to escape communist rule, Fabian and her

Shatz was a well-known journalist in the Czech Republic and, upon receiving word from Fabian’s mother, came to rescue Fabian and her sister from Bratislava, Slovakia. He took the girls back to Prague, where they attended school while their mother stayed behind in prison. Shatz was able to secure food rations for Piroska but was unable to free her.

Soon after Fabian’s escape, she and her sister were requisitioned by Hungary and brought back to Budapest. During this time, Fabian and her sister returned to Bratislava Central Prison alongside their mother.

96-year-old Shatz sat in the front-row at this event, listening closely to Fabian’s talk. Shatz came to the United States in 1958 with his wife, Jaroslava. He began writing for the Virginia Gazette as an international a airs columnist

“What stuck out most was perhaps how many times she escaped death,” Heiko said about the talk. “It made me consider all the other people who died in the holocaust, like Erica’s father, and how they may have escaped death once, twice, even three times, but perhaps it was the fourth time that is the reason they are not here to tell their stories like Erica Fabian. It also stuck out to me how aware her and her young sister were of the situation. ey were just two kids who knew their lives, because of their Jewish Ancestry, were at stake.”

Fabian’s story tells a unique view of two tragedies that a ected millions. Fabian has faced tremendous losses, including the loss of her sister and mother to suicide shortly after their arrival in America.

Fabian continues to tell her story beyond the Reves Center through her work as an author. Fabian’s recently released book, “Liars’ Paradise,” is based on her prior experiences and is described as an autobiographical novel centering on love and survival during Nazi occupation and Hungarian communist dictatorship.

COURTESY PHOTO / SWISS IMAGE BASE

Jarrett spoke about the influence of her parents, who instilled her with a moral foundation and a safety net throughout her career.

If you treat people pretty well over the arc of your life, it doesnʼt mean that youʼre not going to face discrimination, doesnʼt mean that life isnʼt always fair, but ultimately thereʼs no better revenge to all those haters than success.

Some people, when they grow up, they forget their childhood memories. I have a good recollection of the terrible things that happened to me.

- Erika Fabian

“ ”

IAN HARMAN FLAT HAT NEWS ASSOC. EDITOR

Professor Fisher leads study-abroad trip with students to New Zealand

Fisher reflects on studentsʼ immersive experience with Māori people, discusses impact of settler colonialism

Professor Andrew Fisher is an associate professor in the history department and has been working at the College of William and Mary since 2004. He specializes in teaching modern Native American history, environmental history and the American West. He is currently teaching History 226: The American West Since 1890 and History 301: The Historian’s Craft.

Fisher’s interests align with many current events, prompting him to develop new classes that address these topics, such as climate change. In Fall 2022, Fisher taught a COLL 150 History course titled “Climate Change and Historical Perspective,” which covered climate change over the last 500600 years.

“I like to develop new courses, particularly that speak to current issues,” Fisher said. “So, that class was driven in part by my own climate anxiety, you know, desire to feel like I was doing something and to help students understand it as well. The ‘Historian’s Craft’ class that I’m teaching right now is focused on the history and historiography of the Federal Indian boarding schools and I’m connecting that also to the 300th anniversary of the Brafferton that we’re commemorating this year.”

Fisher is also the chair of the history department’s Tyler Lecture Committee. The committee is putting together a symposium that will bring speakers to the College in coming months.

“I like to teach classes that get students thinking about the connections between the past and the present, about how the past is never really dead,” Fisher said. “Those are probably my favorites, when I can come up with a new class and spin it that way.”

Over winter break, Fisher led a group of students to New Zealand to study history of the Maori people and the effects of settler-colonialism. He first had the idea for this trip during his time at the Native American Indigenous Studies Conference in 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia. During the conference, faculty and representatives from various universities in New Zealand encouraged people to bring students to the country.

“At that point, I had done the Galway program, which I did again in 2018,” Fisher said. “Then, in 2019, I went to Adelaide, Australia, with students on our established program there. The focus was settlercolonialism, which is an interest of mine, and Aboriginal history. So, I started thinking, could we do the same thing in New Zealand, which the Maori call Aotearoa? Couldn’t we go to Aotearoa and study Indigenous history and the effects of settler colonialism on Maori people?”

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed Fisher’s idea in prior years, but finally materialized this past winter.

“It was a great success,” Fisher said. “Students loved it. They loved our students. The University of Auckland faculty and international program staff that we interacted with, they love our students’ energy. They said that William and Mary students are highly engaged, even compared favorably to the Dartmouth program which was over there at the same time. They really enjoyed interacting with our students, even though the class they took, the Maori studies class they took, which was team-taught, was at 8AM”

Fisher remarked on the incredibly integrative experiences on the trip, which gave students ample opportunities to get to know native and Indigenous people from the area.

“For me, it was very gratifying because it actually engaged students far more than other programs I’ve been involved with, with native people, with Indigenous people in New Zealand,” Fisher said. “In addition to the one credit Maori studies course, which was team-taught by two Maori faculty, there was an excursion on New Year’s Day that took us to several important cultural and historic sights in the Auckland area and that was led by two Maori women, including Bianca Ranson from the Piritahi Marae on Waiheke Island. And then at the end of the program, our last thing really, was to go to Waiheke Island.”

The group of students who visited the marae, or fenced-in complex belonging to an iwi, or tribe, stayed for two nights in the wharenui, which is the carved meeting house. Students participated in various activities, including snorkeling for sea urchins, which are called kina.

“Kina have become a problem because their natural predators, like red snapper, have been overfished to the point that sea urchin populations are exploding and they eat all the kelp forests, which are really important for sustaining life in that ecosystem,” Fisher said. “The Maori and other people who are concerned will go out and catch as many kina as they can and then they crack them open and eat the roe that’s inside.”

“It was a very hands-on look at what sustainability means and what traditional ecological knowledge looks like in practice in the 21st century,” Fisher said.

Back at the College, Fisher has also been doing litigation support work over the last seven years in the form of research and expert witness testimony on behalf of the Yakama nation.

He also previously worked for Yakama citizens who own businesses facing conflict with the state in regards to taxation and treaty rights.

“I’m also very engaged and interested in, I guess what we’d say, applied research, where the rubber hits the road, history and the law, which is very important in Native American history especially,” Fisher said. “A lot of legal issues surrounding Native nations are really more about history than they are the law.”

Currently, Fisher is working on a biography of Nipo Strongheart, who was born George Mitchell Jr. to parents George and Lenora Mitchell in May of 1891.

“His ancestry is still a mystery to me, but he claimed to be Yakama, he claimed that his mother was Yakama and his father was white,” Fisher said. “There’s very little hard evidence to confirm that, but over a lifetime in show business, from the Wild West shows through theater, to film, he basically made himself into Nipo Strongheart and made himself useful to the Yakama nation and was ultimately adopted by a family and he’s now buried on the reservation.”

Strongheart joined his father in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1902 and the Lakota cast members gave him the name “Nipo.” However, the portrayal of Native Americans as “savage” individuals in the Buffalo Bill performance bothered Strongheart. He made it a priority to use his career to portray Native Americans in the entertainment industry without reinforcing harmful tropes.

“I’m using his career to look at both issues of Native American identity, what it means to be Indian and be accepted by a community and also the intersection between performance and activism,” Fisher said. “He was kind of a cultural edutainer. He was trying to use spectacle and entertainment and his persona as a chief to get the attention of white audiences but then deliver a message of the continued presence of Native people and their need for help and vindication of their rights, starting with citizenship and then also sovereignty as independent nations.”

is biography will be Fisher’s second publication. His rst work, Shadow Tribe: e Making of Columbia River Indian Identity, was published in 2010. e work was an indepth historical piece on the native communities of the Paci c Northwest’s Columbia River.

As Fisher continues conducting research for his new written work, engaging in litigation support work and teaching students at the College, he looks forward to taking a group of students to New Zealand next winter for another immersive experience.

COURTESY PHOTO / ANDREW FISHER

Fisherʼs next book will explore the story of entertainer Nipo Strongheart, who used his career to give Native Americans a respectful representation on stage.

COURTESY PHOTO / ANDREW FISHER

Students participated in group activities, including snorke ling and collecting sea urchins, which are commonly called “kina.”

COURTESY PHOTO / ANDREW FISHER

Fisherʼs previous in-depth historical publication was titled “Shadow Tribe: The Making of Columbia River Identity” and was initially published in 2010.

COURTESY PHOTO / ANDREW FISHER

The Tyler Lecture Committee at the College anticipates hosting an upcoming event this year to bring speakers together to discuss important issues.

Elizabeth Brady

GRAPHIC BY VIVIAN HOANG / THE FLAT HAT

The Oscars, as they usually do, happened again this year. Hot people put on sparkly clothes and are handed shiny things and then everyone goes home. There were some great movies in the nomination pool this year, including Baz Luhrmann’s widely discussed but selectively enjoyed “Elvis,” Steven Spielberg’s intimate and artful exploration of creativity and legacy in the “The Fabelman’s” and Daniel Kwan’s and Daniel Schienert’s epic whirlwind “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Well-represented in the nomination pool but absent among the winners was Todd Field’s and Alexandra Milchan’s “Tár,” a complicated, tense and mercurial movie about corruption, artistry and the evils of acclaim. “Tár,” although a favorite among movie snobs and critics (it has a 92% on Metacritic and an average four out of five stars from more than 289,000 reviews on the movie reviewing platform Letterboxd) failed to take home any silverware at the Oscars.

One of my favorite things to do is read one-star Letterboxd reviews of movies that I like. It’s the best type of disagreement; my interlocutor is hidden behind a Punisher logo in its profile picture, meaning that I’m anonymous in my reviews. I enjoyed “Tár,” but common complaints among those who didn’t were that it was too long, too boring or, to quote Letterboxd user @jas, “too damn quiet.”

Tár’s runtime comes in at a total of two hours and 38 minutes. In comparison, that’s 18 minutes longer than this year’s best picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but 18 minutes shorter than the 2022 remake of “Batman,” 24 minutes shorter than “Avengers: Endgame,” and three minutes shorter than “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

All three of the superhero movies mentioned earned over $350 million each in domestic box offices, so the problem isn’t with long movies — it’s with long movies that haven’t been churned out by a familiar franchise or bolstered by a multi-million dollar effects budget. “Tár”’s reception exemplifies what I’ve recently noticed to be a pushback of sorts to film snobbery that takes the form of indiscriminately dunking on any movie that comes close to being “too long,” “too boring” or “too pretentious.” We want our movies fast, we want them flashy and we want them simple.

This hunger for easy entertainment didn’t come from nowhere. Think about the way we consume media right now — the modern entertainment market is heavily geared towards short-form, easily advertisable content. TikTok, Instagram

ChatGPT: The future, not destruction, of scholarship

and Facebook — three of the most popular social media sites in the United States — are all organized with the purpose of pushing more and more content under the nose of the viewer. This takes the form of algorithmically suggested content and a video feed feature, in which the user scrolls up in order to access a new video. The second a user is bored, they can scroll past what they were watching and immediately move on to whatever’s next — and there’s always something next.

This pattern of consumption, in which the user can dispose of a piece of content the moment it bores them in the slightest, creates an impossible standard for longer-form entertainment. If film and television have to compete in an entertainment market where they’re up against a perpetual stream of content customized to individual users, they’ll lose every time.

Film as an artform is careful, deliberate, delicate and laborious. It took more than three years of preparation to make “Gone With the Wind,” and it takes almost four hours to watch it. Good things take time, but nowadays we hate to wait. There are also, however, bad things that take time. Sometimes, movies simply are way too damn long, scripts are slow, performances are lackluster and a story can’t support itself — it drags, slumps and falls apart. Herein lies the difference between a movie being long and a movie being too long. However, this line is getting blurrier and blurrier the more we get used to fast-paced algorithmic media consumption. When you’re used to a 15-60 second clip, every movie you watch is going to feel “too long.”

I don’t think that every movie has to be “Tár”; in fact, I do not want every movie to be “Tár.” We need movies like “American Pie” and “Zoolander” — our “Spiderman” movies and our rom-coms. What bothers me is not that “Tár” lost in the Oscars (I wanted to watch Michelle Yeoh win as much as the next guy), but why people seem to be averse to it outside of the critical sphere.

I watched “Licorice Pizza” in theaters more than a year ago. It has a two hour and 13 minute runtime, and I almost didn’t make it through. I went with a friend and smuggled in some snacks, so it should have been the perfect setup, but I was so bored. This was also the era of my life where I averaged around eight hours of screen time a day, most of it on TikTok. I deleted TikTok around a year ago, and aside from a few brief relapses, I’ve been clean ever since. I recently rewatched “Licorice Pizza”, no snacks, no friend and no big AMC Cinema screen; it was an entirely different experience. I was engaged the entire time and immediately had to do the walk of shame to change my Letterboxd score. The way I was consuming content had fried my brain so thoroughly that I couldn’t even watch movies the same way anymore.

So, if you find that your brain might be similarly fried, maybe consider a little detox, delete some apps, get some snacks, find a friend and watch a movie — the right way. ElizabethBrady’25isaPublicPolicy majorandanEnglishminor.Shelovesart, music and movies, and she is a member of AlphaChiOmega.Emailherateabrady@ wm.edu.

“This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality,” Socrates said regarding the craft of writing in Plato’s “Phaedrus."

Socrates was not alone in his sentiments. Throughout the ancient world, skepticism of the written word was widespread. To our prehistoric forebears, speech was their only means of communication, and memorization their only means of storing knowledge. To them, the written word seemed an existential threat to their traditions and way of life. Had their memorization of vast sums of knowledge been for naught?

Nevertheless, over the centuries, the written word has triumphed. Now, we can hardly imagine a world without it. Indeed, I would not hesitate to say the entirety of modern scholarship is built on the foundation of writing. We would live in a tremendously different world without it.

In hindsight, we can see that Socrates was quite obviously wrong. Yes, writing dissuaded memorization (I doubt most people go about their lives memorizing academic papers), but memory is not the only, nor the best, means to truth and wisdom, which our modern world makes abundantly clear.

And yet, as ChatGPT rocks our world, threatening the tried-and-true 19th century educational techniques and traditions we hold so dear, many seem fated to repeat that same fallacious logic that drove Socrates to his passionate opposition to writing millennia ago. Indeed, this very paper recently published an article decrying language learning models, and ChatGPT specifically, as the “destruction of scholarship.”

In truth, these models are little more than a tool, just as writing is. In their current state, large language models have a litany of flaws that prove that they fall far short of killing wisdom and truth as some claim they will. One, they often relay factually inaccurate information, especially when asked about niche or advanced topics. Two, they are unable to access the most recent scholarship because their training data is limited to when they are trained. And, finally, they lack the skills to fully explore and analyze issues in-depth. Additionally, recent advancements in plagiarism-checking technology to counter dishonorable usage of LLMs has ensured that they cannot be used to blatantly cheat without major consequences. To the chagrin of many middle schoolers, getting an A on your paper is still more difficult than pasting the assignment into a chat-box and letting a computer program do the rest.

Instead, the roles LLMs fulfill within academic life are, in truth, far more productive than not. By being able to generate ideas and inspiration, they act as incredible starting points and set people on the right path before they must strike out on their own. Rather than wasting our energy on excessive idea-generation and brainstorming, they allow us to more efficiently use our time on the more productive section of academic work: researching and communicating our ideas.

Just like every good technology — from the written word to bronze-working to computers — LLMs allow us to spend our time more efficiently, producing more and becoming a better, more prosperous society as a result. Let us not be luddites, wasting more time and energy rejecting this incredible advancement. ChatGPT and other programs like it are, in fact, the future of scholarship.

Kiran Savkar ’26 is a prospective International Relations and Economics double major hailing from Brooklyn, New York. He is a member of the William and Mary Debate Society andTribe Sailing club. He has a deep affection for Komodo dragons. Email Kiran at kssavkar@wm.edu

I’m literally begging you to watch a movie

GUEST COLUMN

Fuzzy 35: Fuzzy Goes to the Gym

GUEST COLUMN

COMIC

COMIC BY ARIANNA STEWART / THE FLAT HAT

GRAPHIC BY VIVIAN HOANG / THE FLAT HAT

Turn and Talk: Educational tool or not so cool

John Powers FLAT HAT OPINIONS ASSOC.

Other times, you happen to get a partner who is not in the mood to engage with the activity, which undercuts its whole purpose. However, they should not be blamed. I’ve been there. College is stressful, and we all sometimes just want to go to class to sit down and take notes, nothing more. Of course, I’ve also had some fulfilling turn and talk experiences on questions that necessitated its use, but these experiences are exceptions to the practice.

So, if it is clear that turn and talks do not quite work out the way they are intended to, it begs the question of why some professors choose to use it excessively in the first place. I would guess that one reason is purely for the sake of interaction. While social interaction is not the sole pedagogical rationale of turn and talks, it nevertheless is important to a class. For example, because one of my classes is large, I benefited from a turn and talk on the first day of class. I got to meet two peers and eventually began working with them outside of class on homework. Evidently, turn and talks are appropriate in some instances.

After taking an ethics course, I have found that many students at the College of William and Mary reject the validity of ethics and its approaches. Considering that most people seem to value acting virtuously, this is a regrettable turn of events. In this article, I address some of the common objections raised by the average student because it is their appreciation of ethics that will most benefit society.

The first misconception is that the method of creating thought experiments and reasoning is too abstract to be useful. For twamps who are used to modeling observations collected in the material world, craning your head back and imagining improbable situations seems alien. But is it really, though?

GRAPHIC BY SYEDA SAFDAR // THE FLAT HAT

At the start of this semester, I was expecting many changes in my classes, but one I did not see coming was the use of turn and talks. Any student has probably done one before: the professor poses a question to the class, students discuss their answers with the person sitting next to them and then the professor may call on a few pairs so that they can share their responses with the class.

I participated in turn and talks last semester, but their prevalence was minimal. Sure, I worked with my neighbor to fill in the blanks in Spanish sentences on occasion and had one discussion in an economics class. This semester, though, turn and talks are very common in three out of five of my classes across different disciplines. It is very reminiscent of high school and middle school. Don’t get me wrong, robust discussion and group work are vital elements of any learning experience. I love participating and gaining insights from my peers. However, the excessive use of the turn and talk poses a problem to students.

I see the underlying rationale for the use of the turn and talk as threefold. First, it serves to get students talking with each other, which promotes collaboration and makes the lesson less professor-centered. Second, it is designed to foster a synthesis of different ideas as students consider their neighbor’s response and make new connections. Third, it is an alternative to other discussion methods, which may be plagued by students who are more vocal and thus dominate discussions.

Turn and talks usually last just a few minutes, so it would seem rather unrealistic to expect fleshed-out ideas and connections to be shared with the class.

The problem is that it rarely works out this way. Turn and talks usually last just a few minutes, so it would seem rather unrealistic to expect fleshed-out ideas and connections to be shared with the class. Oftentimes, turn and talks are employed for simple recall questions with easy answers. What substantive collaboration is to be expected here? Time after time, my partner has said the same thing I would have said, and vice versa.

For the College of William and Mary, the emphasis on performative learning techniques like turn and talks do not meet the moment. Excessive turn and talks only exacerbate the declining attention spans our generation has from social media and technology.

But probing deeper reveals a more fundamental reason for turn and talks: to make classrooms more studentcentered. This is seen in the fact that over the past few decades, classrooms have generally become less strict, structured and soldier-like and instead more dynamic. American education has gone from the days of the 1950s, where “quiet” was upheld as the key virtue of elementary schools, to the days where teachers in New York City are asked to use discussion techniques that prompt “unsolicited contributions” from students. Turn and talks are one of many of the building blocks of this educational transformation.

It’s trickled up to higher education, and even to training sessions. It seems as though an expectation that students pay attention and take notes is wholly unreasonable and that every learning experience must be peppered with active learning techniques and collaboration. Yet the irony is that activities can look and sound active but involve no deep thinking. Indeed, turn and talks are often performative.

For the College of William and Mary, the emphasis on performative learning techniques like turn and talks do not meet the moment. Excessive turn and talks only exacerbate the declining attention spans our generation has from social media and technology. There is room at our institution for some learning experiences devoid of interruptions and full of professor expertise.

Professors should have the space to lecture for prolonged periods, and when the time for discussion comes, it shouldn’t be an experience in which they go through a monotonous routine of calling on a few pairs and moving on. Instead, it is the role of the professor to seek out responses, challenge them and really contribute to the learning experience.

Turn and talks may play a minor role in classroom discussion, but they shouldn't play a major role.

John Powers '26 is a prospective Public Policy major who hails from Brooklyn, New York. He is a proud member of the William and Mary Debate Society. Contact him at jdpowers@wm.edu.

What's the problem with the pickle?

Avi Joshi FLAT HAT OPINIONS EDITOR

The purpose of studying thought experiments is therefore to investigate your intuitions: comparing them in different situations builds the robustness of your convictions so that you'll know

When you see your crush in class and fantasize about them approaching you, you are imagining yourself in an improbable situation for precisely the same reason that ethicists use thought experiments —you want to know what you would do. However, ethicists also do it to break down why they do certain things. Though you might conclude that you would ignore “Chem Cutie" because your palms get sweaty, you probably also acknowledge that a better course for you might be to ask a funny question.

Ethicists do this same thing with an undoubtedly more important — and harder — question: what is right?

To reject the usefulness of examining why we believe what is right and what is wrong is to take an “I’ll know it when I see it” attitude to one of the most important questions. This seems to be an acceptable approach to assessing dinner plans but what about rightness? Our ethical positions seem like something we should at least make sure are logically consistent.

“This is nice and all,” one might say, “but what can considering thought experiments do for us?” They are, after all, absurd situations. “Maybe I’ll pull them out when I’m handling a trolley lever or have been caught robbing a bank with an accomplice.”

Thought experiments do involve absurd situations, but they were seldom intended to present realistic situations in the first place. Instead, they highlight clashes of values that may not be so absurd. You might never be a surgeon deciding whether to butcher the suburban dad in your waiting room, but do you truly expect that you will never have to weigh an action’s harm to some against its benefit to many?

The purpose of studying thought experiments is therefore to investigate your intuitions:comparing them in different situations builds the robustness of your convictions so that you’ll know what to do, when to do it and why.

GRAPHIC BY CATHERINE STORKE // THE FLAT HAT

A good chicken sandwich needs four things to be perfect. One: Soft but toasted buns, like clouds with texture. Two: A relatively medium-sized piece of crispy fried chicken. Three: A sauce of the consumer's choice. And four: some crisp, salty pickles. Yes, I keep the pickles on my chicken sandwiches. “Oh my!” you exclaim, “You must be some kind of adult who isn’t a five year old.” Yes, I am an adult, and I like pickles. It is not hard to like them either.

Dill pickles, pickled onions, pickled mango, etc. are all absolutely delicious. I have never truly understood why people do not want pickles on their chicken sandwiches. It is not that I am mad at these people, but rather I just question their decision aggressively. Let’s start with the positives of pickles, of which there are many. The most important thing about pickles is moderation. They are obviously not the star of the dish; they are more like the finishing touch. Pickled onions are perfect on tacos, pickled cabbage is great in salads and good ol’ pickles are essential on a fried chicken sandwich. They offer a different kind of crisp from the skin of the chicken. The flavor they provide to the sandwich is complex and unique. Yes, it is polarizing and can be harsh. However, it is exactly what the sandwich needs. Usually, fried chicken sandwiches are heavy and greasy — it sort of comes with the territory — so having a few pickles to cut through that grease and add some bright flavor makes the fried chicken sandwich a true culinary masterpiece. I ask again: what is the problem with pickles? I think the main reason why pickles receive so much hate is because of fear. People are scared of the complexity of pickles. The harsh and intense flavor frightens their taste buds. It could also just be personal preference, but I doubt it. Okay fine, yes, it is personal preference. Not everyone needs to love pickles as much as I do. However, I think that pickle haters need to give it another try. Do not just ask for no pickles without first giving it a try. If you have tried it and still hated it, then I think you need to try a different approach. For starters, you could try isolating the pickle. Now, this will only work for a small group of people, but it is definitely worth a shot. The most effective way of finding a love for pickles is by trying them on other food that you like. Pickles are not just a sandwich topping. A great place to start is with different variations of pickles, such as fried pickles and pickles from other parts of the world. For example, kimchi is fantastic. In India, there are hundreds of different pickle varieties that are eaten in many ways. So just please try and give pickles another try. Whether it’s on a fried chicken sandwich or some other culinary creation, just try some pickles. They are an incredible topping on all kinds of dishes and are severely misunderstood. Try some freaking pickles!

AviJoshi’26isaprospectiveEnglishmajorandEducationminor.Heisan

At least in the social sciences, many turn to economic measurement of measuring preferences or wellbeing to address many of the same questions. Doing so, however, completely neglects the fact that economics spawned from a school of ethics called utilitarianism. What economics traditionally recommends is, then, an approximation of what is right under utilitarianism. Limitations to this approximation lead to economic advice with seemingly morally repugnant conclusions. Economics is thus a complement — not substitute — for ethics.

To recapitulate, ethics lays the groundwork for righteous action. Its methods are natural to us and — more importantly — valid. It therefore stands that we should all study it to better ourselves and the world around us.

Stanley Wang '23 is majoring in Economics. He is involved with Club Rowing and the Citizens Climate Lobby. Contact him at sjwang01@wm.edu.

STAFF COLUMN

Stanley Wang THE FLAT HAT

Music to our ears

Symphony orchestra synthesizes spectacular sounds

Thursday, March 9, the Sadler Center’s Commonwealth Auditorium swelled with the sound of woodwinds, brass and strings. Murmurs from the crowd surrendered to melodies made by enchanting cellos, trilling trumpets and trembling trombones. By the fall of the first crescendo, it was clear to every ear that the College of William and Mary’s Symphony Orchestra had commenced its annually anticipated winter concert.

The third concert of the academic school year, this performance followed the fall concert, which took place on Dec. 10, 2022. However, the winter concert is far from the last of the year, as this concert precedes a joint concert with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra at Capital One Hall in Tysons Corner Center on March 25 as well as a trip to Vienna and Prague scheduled for late May.

Amidst these events, audience member Thu Luong ’26 described the importance of the winter concert as a source of publicity for the organization.

“I think it’s very important that they get recognition,” Luong said. “I knew we had an orchestra, but I didn’t know about it, and if you don’t know about things, you tend not to care about it. I think it’s lovely that they’re getting exposure like that.”

The $10 general admission ticket prices, in addition to the $100 reduction in individual travel costs funded by a recent Tribe Funding campaign, help WMSO musicians afford travel essentials for the trip to Europe. Additionally, WMSO Publicity Director and second chair bassoonist Meghan Kirk ’24 noted that the winter concert allowed the group to practice a live rendition of the program itself, including all four movements of the Symphony in G minor by Edouard Lalo, making excellent practice for future outings.

“Honestly, I always just kind of go in with a mindset of doing better than I did last concert because that’s just the easiest way of keeping myself improving,” Kirk said. “Since we’re playing that Lalo piece, maybe I’ll be like, ‘Oh man, I really need to practice that part more before we go play it in Europe.’”

The concert involved solos selected and performed by winners of a concerto competition back in November 2022. Associate professor and Director of Orchestras David Grandis emphasized that these solos were a point of significance for the event.

“It’s a great concert because they’re going to be able to perform one movement of a concerto with the orchestra,” Grandis said. “That gives them exposure in the soloist situation.”

Third chair french hornist Lydia Doughty ’24 played her solo during the Morceau de Concert Op. 94 by Charles-Camille SaintSaëns, and WMSO Co-Social Chair and fourth chair violinist Sarah Russell-Hunter ’23 played her solo during the Scène de Ballet Op. 100 by Charles Auguste de Bériot.

Doughty noted that she chose to perform Morceau de Concert Op. 94 because she took a special liking to it after she heard it on a Spotify playlist for best horn solos before the pandemic in 2020. She started playing it even before COVID-19 hit, and she has been practicing it with her instructor ever since.

“Working on it with my teacher, I got into the nuance of every single part and how every single note needed to be played horizontally,” Doughty said. “There are all these different things that you don’t think about with orchestral music that you need to think about with a solo.”

Russell-Hunter played after the Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte by Maurice Ravel. She learned her Bériot piece for the first time during fall 2020 over Zoom lessons, and she

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said she decided to refine it throughout the summer of 2022 because the song inspired her to continue with music during quarantine. She spoke about how performing the solo was nothing short of an ethereal experience.

“I honestly blacked out a little during it,” Russell-Hunter said. “It almost feels like floating on air to know a piece so well and to have people play so well behind me — I will never experience anything like it again in my life, I don’t think.”

Grandis described his favorite part of an orchestra performance as the moment when his ensemble is able to get lost in the music they find themselves playing — much like how Russell-Hunter did during her solo. He noted that while it is not a common occurrence, that singular sensation is what makes the whole experience so special.

his sister to take it up, he said he has stuck with the viola for the way its timbre fits into the greater orchestral sound. He said that sound had a particularly soul-stirring quality during the last performance of the winter concert.

“I kind of lost myself a little in the first and second movements of the Lalo,” Neifeld said. “I was feeling some feelings. I really got into it.”

However, detached from the music itself, one obstacle that emerged in regards to this event was the gas leak reported at One Tribe Place at 1:05 p.m. earlier the same day. Many musicians had to evacuate their dorms, leaving essentials such as sheet music, instruments and performance attire without prior notice. Neifeld said occurrences like these have convinced him of the importance of developing future contingency plans.

“Earlier today, there was the gas leak at OTP,”

people don’t necessarily always listen to each other,” Grandis said. “They rely too much on the conductor. So they can be sometimes a little bit out of sync because they are not aware enough about all of the things that are happening around them. So you have to treat this like chamber music, like a little group of pop or jazz. You have to listen to each other, be really connected.”

In addition to collective rehearsals, though, Kirk said individual-level study was another component of the preparatory process.

“Some people have a lot of time to practice and will just go down to the little Ewell practice rooms and hang out there and practice,” Kirk said. “I love seeing people when they post on social media, on Snapchat stories, when they just play on their violin in the practice rooms. It’s very fun.”

Ultimately, Grandis defined success for the winter concert as its ability to bring not just the audience, but also musicians and himself joy. He said these three tiers of accomplishment work together to make for a fruitful recital.

“There are very different ways to define success,” Grandis said.

“If people are happy, it’s already a success. That’s maybe the easier success, because people are not necessarily as demanding. Then there’s the second level of success, if [the musicians] are happy about what they did. And then it will be if I am happy about it. I am very often very happy about it.”

In regard to the first tier, Luong said she was deeply moved by the music. She came to the Winter Concert to support her friend and fourth chair cello Kevin Sae-Tung ’26, and she said she left with a feeling of satisfaction incomparable to other modern music.

“I think it’s remarkable how it’s just noise, it’s just a sound, and how that sound can keep me compelled and entertained for an hour and thirty minutes,” Luong said. “I can’t just sit and listen to music on YouTube and be like ‘This is fulfilling,’ but this was fulfilling.”

“We play the notes every day, we play the same notes, we play the same rhythm, but something is happening during the performance sometimes,” Grandis said. “That sublimates all of these things that we’ve learned for weeks since the beginning of the semester. We feel comfortable enough to let yourself go, and open your heart to the music, and something special is happening. And it doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. We try. You can’t make it artificial.”

Neifeld said. “Exec was kind of having a little crisis about how some people have their instruments there, some people have their concert attire, music. So I was kind of dealing with that.”

Another challenge was the difficulty posed by Commonwealth Auditorium’s stage design as its inability to accommodate the entire orchestra placed the winds on the stage but the strings on the carpeted area in front of the stage. The resulting height difference between the two sections was greater than the traditionally recommended dimensions for the orchestral pit and risers, which Grandis noted regrettably compromised the room’s acoustics.

“It’s completely disproportionate,” Grandis said. “For the balance of the orchestra, it’s very tough.”

Arrangements for the Winter Concert began directly after the fall concert in the form of group practices every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. However, the College recognizes WMSO’s time commitment by offering members one institutional credit through a course that can satisfy the Arts Proficiency credit after two semesters, meaning that members can devote more time to the rehearsals.

With regards to the second tier of accomplishment, Russell-Hunter said she noticed a distinctive quality among her fellow musicians. She said she enjoyed herself, and she could tell her sentiment was shared by her bandmates.

“It’s about having fun, getting into the spirit of the music, really letting that shine through with our personalities,” Russell-Hunter said. “When I look around the orchestra, I can see each individual person bringing their own sense of musicianship into what they do even though you never really hear people individually.”

Neifeld said the intellectual and academic diversity inherent within the event reflects the cross-disciplinary culture found at the College. Students from a wide range of on- and off-campus student organizations, co-curricular commitments, identity groups and extracurricular activities were represented in both the audience and the ensemble, which Neifeld said he appreciated.

“So many people from so many organizations that we know in different contexts all came to show support for us,” Neifeld said. “That’s totally representative of everything else I do here. Everyone supports everyone else in their endeavors.”

Co-Tour Director and third chair viola Ben Neifeld ’25 also found himself getting lost in the performance. Neifield has been a part of WMSO since his first semester in his freshman year, but he has had experience with the instrument since he was in the fourth grade. Inspired by

Grandis further emphasized the significance of practicing as a collective, given that his main advice to his musicians would be to learn to have a good group sound. He said that while it’s much easier to tell if bandmates are listening to each other in smaller pop, rock or jazz groups, the bigger, more complicated composition of a symphony orchestra means it is important to put in the extra effort to be sensitive to one another’s activities.

“With an orchestra, it’s so huge, that some

Luong also recognized the concert as an extension of what it means to be a student of the College. She found that her participation not only demonstrates the College’s active campus life, but also is holistic of the institution and its values as a whole.

“I really appreciate having the arts in my life — having some form of culture,” Luong said. “Every time there’s some sort of live music, I will be there. I’m a sucker for live music. I guess that’s a William and Mary thing.”

We feel comfortable enough to let yourself go, and open your heart to the music, and something special is happening. And it doesn’t neccessarily happen all the time. We try. You can’t make it artificial.

- David Grandis ”

Kindness that Binds Us

Random Acts of Kindness Club uplifts the College community, works to create postive environment for student body through tabling events, coffee sleeve decorations

In college, every student — regardless of major, academic path, extracurriculars or social life — is faced with life’s anxieties and challenges. These negative moments can lead to one’s college experience being diminished or soured, and this gloominess has the potential to spread well beyond its reasonable limits. However, at the College of William and Mary, one organization seeks to combat these daily stressors by providing students with a plethora of good-natured deeds to brighten their day, and hopefully, leave a long-term positive impact.

The Random Acts of Kindness Club seeks to be a supportive and uplifting group that serves as a bastion of compliments and generosity for students of the College to bene t from. As the name implies, the random activities of the organization are meant to cast a wide net to bene t the whole of the College. When it comes to the acts of kindness themselves, RAKC employs a range of endeavors, but one of their most common is setting up a table on campus to directly interact with as many members of the community as possible.

“We find that tabling is a great way to engage with the campus community — being on the Sadler terrace on a nice sunny day or on the weekend, usually there’s a lot of foot traffic around that area,” RAKC Vice President Garrett Macrae ’24 said. “It’s a great way to directly speak with students and really engage in the acts of kindness.”

However, tabling is far from the RAKC’s only initiative. Another major activity RAKC enjoys doing is its co ee sleeve decoration, which has become so prominent throughout the organization’s existence that it is seen as a tradition by many members. Hannah Jolene King ’23, the president and founder of RAKC, describes the experience as a standout part of the club.

“Nearly every semester that RAKC has existed, we have decorated co ee sleeves and put them in either the Daily Grind or Swem Aromas,” King wrote in an email detailing her involvement and passion for the group. “We have had a couple of instances of people contacting us or coming up to us while tabling to let us know that they received one of our co ee sleeves, and that always makes me happy to hear.”

King is far from the only member of RAKC that enjoys the decorating. Elsa Quillin ’23, the

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administrative executive of the organization, also highlighted this tradition as one of her favorite parts of the club. She talked about how she likes imagining the joy of the person receiving the special addition to their morning routine, and in turn, receives a great deal of happiness herself.

“You’ll be going to get your coffee, and you’ll have a note and some pictures on your coffee sleeve,” Quillin said. “That’s one of our favorites to do.”

Additionally, RAKC holds events that are related to holidays or other relevant happenings, as themes are not only enjoyable for the club members, but also can provide significance to the greater community.

“When it was Parent’s Weekend, parents and students could write notes to each other and give it to their parents or kid, or for Valentine’s weekend, we had little affirmations where people could write a valentine and give it to one of their friends,” Quillin said. “We also do other things that are related to whatever holiday or event is going on, so during finals week we might put little memes or notes around the library.”

In addition to providing acts of kindness to the College at large, RAKC also places an emphasis on being an uplifting and positive influence on its own club members. The organization makes sure to consistently foster a strong community, and it tries to cultivate a culture of acceptance for all students who join.

“I hope that all RAKC members feel a sense of belonging and pride in being a part of RAKC,” King wrote. “We always try to ensure that everyone feels welcome and that their ideas and suggestions are heard in our meetings.”

To maintain this goal and the club’s greater mission of promoting kindness as a remedy for stress, RAKC strives to remain a lowcommitment undertaking. Reducing the level of involvement required of members not only allows participants to pull back temporarily if needed, but also serves as a great way to remove barriers of entry to the group so that anybody who finds themselves interested can join.

“Because RAKC is a low-commitment organization, we love to have people come at any time during the semester, and because of that, we want to make sure that we know everyone’s names and give everyone a chance

to introduce themselves,” Macrae said. “We will always welcome you with open arms, and we want to hear your fun ideas, and we want to get to know you at any point in the semester, and we really want to emphasize that it’s a welcoming community all times of the year.”

Many members echoed Macrae’s sentiment, praising the community of support that they have received from RAKC.

“Even though we have some established acts we like to do every semester, we also try to just foster a community of kindness, as cheesy as it sounds,” Quillin said.

Although RAKC is a rapidly growing group at the College, the organization started relatively recently in the tail end of 2020. e club started with the simple aim of being a di erence in the College community, but its pure intentions have since captivated students.

“I was looking for a low-stakes way to get

involved on campus and spread kindness in the community,” King wrote. “I wanted RAKC to be a low-commitment organization where students could join and meet others with a common goal of making campus a brighter place without the stress of strict membership requirements.”

ough the organization may have come from humble beginnings, its strong impact has been re ected by its development as what the club’s founders described as one of the fastest growing organizations at the College.

Overall, RAKC is dedicated to making the College a better place for all students. ough the organization started small and engages in activities that are smaller in nature, sometimes the smallest things have the biggest impact in our life. Although every student at the College is faced with constant challenges and hardships, RAKC seeks nothing but to serve as a positive counterbalance to this negativity.

A Conversation with Van Neistat

JOSEPH WEHMEYER // FLAT HAT NEWS ASSOC.

Van Neistat thought he would only be gone for a year when he left the College of William and Mary.

Long before creating the HBO television show “ e Neistat Brothers” with his brother Casey, and making videos for his YouTube series, “ e Spirited Man,” Neistat simply wanted to earn enough money to a ord another semester at the College.

“It was my dad’s idea,” Neistat said. “When I moved to New York in 1998, there were hundreds of kids from William and Mary. ere was a whole network of people in the city.”

Neistat crashed on the couch of friends from the College for two weeks before nding an apartment in Brooklyn. Soon afterwards, another connection from the College helped him land a paid internship at Scholastic, where he was a writer for children’s magazines.

“I just sort of never looked back,” Neistat said, in reference to the development of his career.

However, despite the riskiness of this decision, it wasn’t the rst time Neistat made a bold and life-changing decision. His arrival at the College in 1996 came after an unful lling freshman year at West Virginia University led him to make the leap and go for a change of scenery to Williamsburg. He entered the College as a second-year transfer student.

“I loved how smart and focused the students were,” Neistat said. “It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was a huge accomplishment for me.” e students were a major selling point for Neistat, who not only admired their academic prowess, but also found himself connecting with them in deep and meaningful ways as well.

“I just immediately connected with people for some reason, which I never did in West Virginia,” Neistat said. “I had friends, but I didn’t really connect with people because, I don’t know, I’m kind of a nerd.”

Neistat’s rst house in Williamsburg was located on Scotland Street, and he later lived in a place colloquially only known at the time as “ e Hippie House.” People were constantly around, and rent was cheap.

That house embodied individualism,” Neistat said. “I’m still friends to this day with people from [there].”

It was also around this time that Neistat’s brother, Casey, ran away from their childhood home in Connecticut. Van became his legal guardian so that his brother could go to high school in Williamsburg. But Casey later returned to Connecticut shortly before having a son in 1998.

Neistat indulged in the College’s liberal arts education and diverse array of classes, taking English, American Studies, art history, creative

writing and the only two lm and media studies courses o ered at the time. As a student, he originally liked the idea of becoming a professional writer and spoke highly of the skills he learned at the College.

“I learned the mechanics of how to write, and usage, and I think that was extremely helpful,” Neistat said. “Also the fact that people read books for pleasure and fun. There were always books around.”

After two years of writing for Scholastic, however, Neistat was forced to choose between two options: take a permanent job o er at the company or quit for something new. Months earlier, a coworker had introduced Neistat to the artist Tom Sachs, whose art had a profound impact on him. In need of laborers, Sachs was hiring, and Neistat was interested. e decision came easily; Neistat took the job with Sachs, working as an assistant on his projects and helping make short lms for the artist.

Although Neistat didn’t have lmmaking on his mind as a potential career when leaving the College, especially when digital cameras were only starting to gain popularity and accessibility, he did have some background in it after taking some lm and media studies courses. e rst lm class Neistat ever took was with associate professor of English and American Studies Arthur Knight, who still teaches at the College to this day.

While working for Sachs, Neistat began making his own increasingly popular lms with his brother in the early 2000s. e Neistat brothers were surrounded by hard workers like Sachs, in addition to their friends the Safdie brothers, who have produced award-winning lms of their own.

ough made available to the public in his videos and craftsmanship, Neistat’s strong work ethic was already evident as a student. One summer, Neistat worked to save up $3,000 to go to Europe with his then-girlfriend, who was from Norway. He worked throughout the week and double shifts on weekends as a pot-washer at the Williamsburg Lodge and as a cook at the now-closed deli, Beethoven’s Inn.

ough it was Neistat’s rst time out of the country, he traveled all over Europe for over a month. He discussed the complicated process of buying a Eurail pass and navigating di erent countries’ exchange rates before the euro was a widespread currency. However, despite returning to Europe many times since and citing a special love for Paris, the memory of Williamsburg consistently remained a fond one over the years.

“[Beethoven’s Inn] made the best French Onion

soup I’ve ever had anywhere, including all over France,” Neistat said. “Including Provence, Paris and anywhere in the Alps. I’ve never had better French onion soup than I had at that place.”

He also recalled big names who visited Williamsburg, such as Margaret atcher when she was Chancellor, emphasizing the child-like excitement of attending these guest visits.

“I think the most interesting speaker I saw there was Jane Goodall,” Neistat said. “It was insane. It was super, super packed. I don’t even know how I got in. I think I had to stand and watch. Back then, there was no YouTube. You don’t have [the same] access to these people. You [could] maybe nd one Jane Goodall video at the video store.”

Despite growing up in an analog world, Neistat has stayed up to date with changing technologies and now posts most of his content on YouTube. His series, “ e Spirited Man,” is about “the spirited man or woman who lives inside all of us” as Neistat described. In these videos, Neistat gives his audience advice and re ects on topics ranging from life, creativity, parenthood, professionality and innovative repairs. Some recent videos have even delved into adventures with and xes of his beloved 1983 Land Cruiser.

Neistat, in his series, also spoke about some of the trips he made as a college student, including whitewater rafting in Western Virginia and occasionally going to Washington D.C. But after growing up in a small town and catching a travel bug, Neistat was primed for a move to a city like New York City.

As he grew older, Neistat would still return south to occasionally escape from the city. e family of a college friend of his in New York owned Orange Springs Farm near Unionville, Va., and this farm quickly became one of his favorite places to be.

“ at was sort of our respite,” Neistat said. “It’s really hard to live in New York. You really got to hustle and work around the clock. It’s extremely demanding and unbelievably expensive. So every couple months or so, a bunch of us would pile into a car and go down to his farm. at was a wonderful, wonderful tradition.”

Neistat eventually left the city and now lives in Topanga, Ca. with his wife and son. Although he did not envision himself being a pioneer in digital lmmaking when he left school, Neistat still remembers his time at the College fondly. When asked for advice to give to spirited college students today, Neistat echoed the words bestowed upon him by his mentor-turned-collaborator Sachs. “Work hard and be brave,” Neistat said.

COURTESY PHOTO / GARRETT MACRAE

community through

such as coffee sleeve decorating and tabling on the Sadler Terrace.

sports

Eight players drive in runs during offensive onslaught at Plumeri Park Tribe’s o ense shines during 15-1 win against Hofstra

Friday, March 17, William and Mary (11-10, 3-3 CAA) won 15-1 against Hofstra (6-12, 2-4 CAA) at University Field in Hempstead, New York.

The Tribe traveled to Hofstra for a three game series over the course of the weekend. Friday’s game was a decisive victory, with the Tribe taking down Hofstra in just seven innings. Sophomore pitcher Carter Lovasz started for William and Mary and was dominant through 4.2 innings. Lovasz gave up zero runs, with five strikeouts, two walks and allowed just two hits.

In addition to Lovasz’s outstanding start, William and Mary’s offense was electric. The scoring began in the second inning with senior catcher Max Winters drawing a walk, followed by a single from freshman second baseman Corey Adams. Freshman outfielder Tank Yaghoubi walked to load the bases, then graduate student infielder Cole Ragone drew another walk to score William and Mary’s first run. Senior center fielder Joe Delossantos singled up the middle to knock in two more runs for the Tribe, and the second inning concluded with William and Mary on top 3-0.

Sophomore shortstop Luca Danos reflected on the key to the Tribe’s success throughout the game.

“It starts with a guy like Carter on the mound who you know is gonna get outs,” Danos said. “Offensively, the key is waiting for good pitches to hit and making the pitcher throw strikes. We’re more than happy taking our walks and hit by pitches.”

Lovasz also stressed the importance of the Tribe’s ability to get on base.

“We were patient in the box and were able to draw a lot of walks and manufacture runs that way,” Lovasz said.

In the top of the third inning, William and Mary tacked on two more runs against Hofstra’s starter, graduate student pitcher Mark Faello, with a double from Winters, an RBI single from sophomore

WOMENʼS BASKETBALL

Nick Lottchea and an RBI bunt from Adams. Lovasz shut out Hofstra in the bottom of the third with three consecutive strikeouts.

The Tribe’s scoring carried into the fourth inning with a single from Danos, followed by a double from senior third baseman Ben Williamson to drive in another run. The fourth inning concluded with the Tribe leading 6-0.

Lovasz started the fifth inning on the mound for the Tribe, but with one out remaining, the team brought in freshman pitcher Owen Pierce, who kept Hofstra scoreless.

In the sixth inning, William and Mary stayed aggressive on offense, scoring six more runs and expanding upon their lead. Delassantos led off with a base hit, followed by a massive two-run home run by Williamson. Patience in the box proved effective for the Tribe. A hit by pitch for sophomore outfielder Lucas Carmichael and walks from both Winters and Adams loaded the bases.

Carmichael scored on a wild pitch from Hofstra graduate student pitcher Ryan Rue. Then, a double to right center field from Yaghoubi drove in more runs to make the score 11-0. Despite a pitching change from Hofstra, bringing in graduate student Brian Morrell, Danos doubled to left field to bring the score to 12-0 before the side was retired.

Pierce kept Hofstra’s offense to a minimum, allowing just one base hit in the bottom of the sixth. Hofstra was unable to gain any momentum, as Pierce forced senior outfielder Will Kennedy to ground into a double play that ended the inning.

The seventh inning began with William and Mary capitalizing on walks and hit batters to load the bases. A clutch walk from freshman pinch hitter Charlie Iriotakis scored the Tribe’s 13th run of the game. In the bottom of the inning, Hofstra managed to get on the board with a solo homerun from redshirt junior infielder Zach Bailey. Despite last chance efforts from Hofstra, Pierce still shut down the side. The game concluded at the end of the seventh inning on account of a presumed 10-run rule, with William and Mary on top 13-1.

“It’s big to win on a Friday coming into an opponent’s house. It really sets the tone for the weekend and puts the pressure on those guys,” Danos said. “We’re in the fortunate position to be able to clinch a series win from the reigning champs so that would be huge for us moving forward.”

Tribe’s season comes to end in loss to Towson in CAA quarter nals

Graduate guards Riley Casey and Sydney Wagner shine in final career games

SYDNEY WITWER FLAT HAT SPORTS WRITER

Saturday, March 11, William and Mary women’s basketball (18-13, 12-6 CAA) fell to Towson (21-12, 13-5 CAA) 76-59 in the Colonial Athletic Association Women’s Basketball Championship semifinals at the SECU Arena in Towson.

The first quarter of the game was tightly contested between the Tribe and the Tigers. With 10 seconds left in the quarter, the Tribe narrowly led 11-8. In the final seconds of the quarter, Tigers redshirt junior guard Kylie Kornegay-Lucas scored a layup on a fastbreak to pull the Tigers within one point.

The Tribe extended their lead in the second quarter with a dominant offensive performance. Graduate student guard Sydney Wagner and senior forward Bre Bellamy spearheaded the team’s offense, scoring 16 of the team’s 21 points in the quarter. The Tribe offense outscored the Tigers 21-14 in the second quarter and entered the locker room with a 32-24 lead against the topseeded Tigers.

Following halftime, the Tigers’ offense

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came out hot. The Tigers battled their way back to tie the game at 48-48 by the end of the quarter putting the Tribe onto their heels to start the final quarter.

The Tigers made a strategic decision at the half and began tightly defending Wagner throughout the third, who already scored 19

points in the first half alone. The Tigers also instituted a full court press to force frequent Tribe turnovers, resulting in easy points on transition plays. This approach proved effective for Towson, leading the Tigers’ offense to double their points production from 24 points in the first half to 48 points in the second half.

In the fourth quarter, the Tigers pulled away, outscoring the Tribe 28-11 and leading to a final score of 76-59.

Despite the loss, the Tribe’s fight against the top-seeded opponent is a significant achievement for the team. This was their first appearance in the CAA Semifinals since 2017, where they fell to Elon 88-60.

Wagner scored 30 points in her final game for the Tribe. Wagner was a sixth-year player for the team, as she was redshirted during her sophomore year after transferring from Stetson and gained an additional year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Wagner proved to be a crucial member of the Tribe and led the team with her experience and skill. Wagner ranks in the top 10 of the Tribe’s all-time highest scorers, led the CAA in free throw percentage this season and

finished her career with an average of 16.2 points per game. The conference named her as a member of the All-CAA second team this year.

Graduate student guard Riley Casey also played her final game with the Tribe in the team’s semifinal game. Casey formerly played for Columbia until she transferred to the College for her redshirt senior year. She ranked second in the Tribe’s all time highest scoring players and scored her 1000th career point against Drexel on Jan. 20, 2022. Casey finished second in scoring and free throw shooting in the conference this year. The conference named her as a member of the first All-CAA team and the Scholar Athlete of the Year.

In the 2022-2023 season, the team hit several impressive benchmarks. The Tribe tied its own program record for most CAA conference wins with 12 victories. Freshman guard Alexa Mikeska and freshman forward Kayla Rolph won CAA Rookie of the Week honors throughout the season.

Crazy hair for crazy game, Green and Gold escape Hofstra comeback

Strong offensive start, clutch late defense leads to win on annual Game Hair Havoc Day

Saturday, March 18, William and Mary (4-4, 1-0 CAA) beat Hofstra (3-6, 0-1 CAA) 13-12 in its first conference matchup of the season at Martin Family Stadium in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The Tribe started the season with a narrow victory in its annual Game Hair Havoc day, in which players wear their craziest hairstyles in support of the Headstrong Foundation, a group that supports cancer patients and their families.

Similarly to the hair on the field, the game was crazy from start to finish. The first quarter began with an almost immediate goal by sophomore midfielder Paige Gilbert, the fifth of the year. Just two minutes later, Hofstra responded with a goal of their own, and with just under four minutes played, both teams were knotted at 1-1. The scoring slowed until the end of the quarter when midfielder Emily Weigand scored a go-ahead goal for Hofstra with two minutes, 23 seconds left. That lead lasted less than two minutes, as Tribe freshman attacker Sydney Witwer found the back of

the net for her seventh goal of the year.

After the first quarter ended, the Tribe kicked it into a whole new gear — their offense came out of the break ready to take the CAA by storm. In the first eight minutes of the second quarter, the Tribe went on a 7-0 run with goals coming from all over the field. Senior attacker London Simonides led with three, freshman midfielder Maresa Moyer scored twice and junior attacker Ellie Shea and sophomore midfielder Serena Jacobs tacked on one each.

The Pride tried to slow things down with three goals of their own, but the Tribe continued their offensive onslaught with two goals within the last minute of the half from sophomore midfielder Justyce Barber and freshman midfielder Kate Draddy.

After finishing the first quarter tied 2-2, the Green and Gold went into the locker room with a commanding 11-5 lead, and of course, the same crazy hair they started with. Hofstra, to William and Mary’s dismay, was not ready to roll over and let the game slip away. The Pride went on a run of their own in the third, outscoring the Tribe 3-1 in the quarter. Junior attacker Kerry Walser scored two in the third for Hofstra,

increasing her match total to four goals, a game-high. Graduate student attacker Rachel Graff also scored a Pride goal, which Witwer matched with a goal of her own.

Along with the score, tensions began to rise in the third. Two of the three yellow cards in the game came in the third quarter, with one offense from each team. As the quarter came to an end with a 12-8 lead for the Tribe, both teams could sense the importance of a win.

Hofstra continued to attack the net and started to find success on offense. Senior midfielder Kate Fiola, senior attacker Lauren Coletti and Graff all scored within the first 10 minutes of the last quarter, almost completely erasing the William and Mary lead and making it 12-11 with just under six minutes left to play.

The Tribe needed to dig deep defensively, and with a little help from another Draddy goal, William and Mary secured some much needed wiggle room for the last few minutes of the game. The Pride was able to scratch across one more Graff goal with under a minute to play, but the Tribe’s lead proved too great to completely overcome.

The Tribe look to continue their strong start on Wednesday, March 22 in a non-league game against Longwood in Farmville, Virginia.

MAX GRILL FLAT HAT SPORTS EDITOR

COURTESY PHOTO / TRIBE ATHLETICS Senior attacker London Simonides charges up the field during the Green and Goldʼs win on Mar. 18 against Hofstra.

COURTESY PHOTO / TRIBE ATHLETICS

Graduate guard Sydney Wagner finishes a layup during the Tribeʼs loss to Towson earlier this season on Feb. 17.

COURTESY PHOTO / TRIBE ATHLETICS

Senior third baseman Ben Williamson fields a ground ball during the Tribeʼs win against Canisius on Mar. 5. Williamson finished Fridayʼs game with 3 RBIs.

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Buffalo Bills head coach returns to campus, enshrined in Tribe legacy McDermott ’98 joins William and Mary Athletics Hall of Fame

Friday, March 10, William and Mary Athletics inducted Tribe football alumnus Sean McDermott ’98 into the William and Mary Athletics Hall of Fame at the Sadler Center in Williamsburg, Virginia. The event consisted of a reception, social, dinner and the formal induction ceremony. McDermott, currently head coach of the National Football League’s (NFL) Buffalo Bills, was surrounded by friends, family and former teammates while cementing his legacy at the College.

little humbling and embarrassing, maybe. But, I think it’s one of the many things that motivated me to become the player that I became years later.”

Despite being a walk-on, McDermott proved to be a talented defensive back for the Tribe. He worked his way to a half scholarship, eventually earning a full one the next year. McDermott remembers being called into Laycock’s office and feeling emotional when he heard the good news.

“I felt like I had earned it to that point and showed the coaches I could do it,” McDermott said. “It just meant the world to me, because it was good to get that affirmation from them that they believed in me and they thought there was a future for me here.”

During his recent visit to campus, McDermott had the opportunity to engage in a “full-circle” moment when current football head coach Mike London asked him to inform sophomore long snapper Nick Levy of a new scholarship.

the 1993 and 1994 seasons. While on his trip to campus, McDermott reunited with other former teammates and coaches, reflecting fondly on the relationships he had with them and their old nicknames.

McDermott always had an eye and the talent for coaching. His father was a coach, and many of McDermott’s coaches and teammates saw the potential in him from his leadership and football knowledge as a player.

In 1998, McDermott joined the Philadelphia Eagles as a scouting administrative coordinator. He stayed with Philadelphia until 2010, ending his tenure there as the defensive coordinator. During Philadelphia’s 2004 season, both of McDermott’s starting safeties were named to the Pro Bowl for the first time in team history. The same season, Philadelphia made it to the Super Bowl.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, McDermott was raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. McDermott graduated from La Salle College High School in 1993, where he played football and won All-Southeastern Pennsylvania honors at defensive back in 1992. In high school, McDermott also wrestled, receiving honors as a national prep champion wrestler in 1992 and 1993.

As a high school senior, McDermott had three post-secondary options: accept an appointment to play football at the United States Military Academy West Point, wrestle for the University of Virginia, or play football as a walk-on for William and Mary.

Zgib Kepa, the Tribe’s offensive coordinator from 1984-2013, oversaw recruitment efforts in the Philadelphia area at the time. Kepa saw potential in McDermott and knew he had the grades for William and Mary’s academic standards. However, he acknowledged that McDermott would be a tough pitch to thenhead coach Jimmye Laycock, who coached the team from 1980 to 2018.

“He was about my height,” Kepa said. “He weighed less than me. I’m thinking, ‘This is going to be a hard sell — Laycock may throw me out the door.’ But then I watched his video and he was taking quarterback sneaks for 20 yards.”

Kepa invited McDermott down to Williamsburg for a one day recruitment visit, showcasing William and Mary’s campus and the surrounding area. Later in the day, McDermott stopped at the Crestar Bank on Richmond Road to use the payphone. He slid a quarter into the machine, dialed the number for Virginia’s wrestling coaches and told them the news — he was going to be playing football at William and Mary.

McDermott started his collegiate career for the Tribe in 1993 as a preferred walk-on. He redshirted his freshman year and wore no. 83.

“I wore number 83 as a defensive back and that wasn’t really a popular number back in the day,” McDermott said. “I think it’s a

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In 1996, McDermott became the Tribe’s full-time starter at defensive back, starting 26 games, including every game of his last two seasons. McDermott recorded 322 tackles and 20 passes defended, four of which he intercepted. He also forced three fumbles and recovered six during his career with the Tribe. He led William and Mary to a combined record of 32-14 (.696), including the Yankee Conference title in 1996. That same year, the Tribe advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals and set the program record at the time with 10 wins on the season, a record that still ranks third in William and Mary history today.

“It was ‘McDaddy’ and it was ‘McDirty’ and it was ‘Law Dog’ from the ‘Tombstone’ movie with Wyatt Earp that came out around that time,” McDermott said. “A couple of nicknames the guys used, I heard this weekend. It’s funny how, when they say it, my head turned.”

After his induction ceremony on Friday night, McDermott visited Paul’s Deli, a Williamsburg community favorite and a staple spot of his time spent here at William and Mary as a student-athlete.

“If there wasn’t a fraternity party we were attending, we would be at the Deli and it was just a popular hangout,” he said. “Pretty good tradition.”

On the picture-filled walls of Paul’s Deli, there are numerous pictures and jerseys of influential William and Mary alumni. One of these frames is a picture of McDermott and Laycock.

During his return to campus, McDermott visited other notable spots from his time spent at William and Mary. He recalls spending much of his time between the Commons Dining Hall, the Kappa Sigma fraternity house and Zable Stadium. McDermott had the opportunity to lead his family on the same route he would take to and from football practice.

“We would leave the locker room, go across the field and walk to the fraternity house where I lived and then the dining commons,” McDermott said. “I basically wore a path and that’s what you do as an athlete because you’re routine-based.”

For McDermott, this visit meant more than just a trip down memory lane. Joining him on the trip were his three children: Maddie, Gavin and Kelly. McDermott believes this visit will convey a special message to his children.

McDermott then became the defensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers in 2011. His team finished in the top-10 defenses in the NFL every year from from 2012 to 2015. In the 2015 season, Carolina advanced to the Super Bowl on the shoulders of an incredible defensive season that saw Carolina earn a 15-1 record.

In 2017, McDermott began his tenure as the head coach of the Buffalo Bills. In his first season, McDermott took Buffalo to its first playoff appearance in 18 years. This marked one of the longest active playoff droughts among all four major professional sports in America. In McDermott’s six seasons with Buffalo, he has led the team to a 62-35 (.639) record and five playoff appearances.

McDermott believes his coaching draws influence from Laycock, a coach he has both played and coached under during his time at William and Mary.

“The way he ran his program is very similar to what I would later experience in the NFL,” McDermott said. “His level of consistency, his attention to detail, his schedule of how we traveled and his standard that he expected from his players, both on and off the field has become a big part of who I am as a coach.”

In his senior year in 1997, McDermott was named team captain and recorded his best season, earning third team All-Conference and second team All-ECAC honors. The Tribe’s opponents completed only 47.5% of their passes that year, the lowest mark since 1979 and still one of the lowest completion percentages in the last 50 years.

Off the field, McDermott earned Academic All-Conference honors in both 1996 and 1997, and was named a National Strength and Conditioning All-American in the spring of 1998.

“Nothing is being handed out here whether it’s what you do on the football field or what you do in the classroom,” McDermott said. “You have to earn every grade. You have to earn every piece of success you have on that field.”

McDermott now joins fellow NFL head coach Mike Tomlin ’95 of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the William and Mary Athletics Hall of Fame. The pair played together during

“My message overall was to my kids more than anything — if you set your mind to something, you’ll achieve it,” McDermott said. “Years ago, I was just trying to get playing time and to think now I’m able to be in the hall of fame. Just years and years of hard work and dedication and those are lessons that I can now share with my kids.”

McDermott graduated from William and Mary in 1998 with a degree in finance. A few months after graduating, he began his coaching career. McDermott served as the graduate assistant for one season, which was his first official introduction to coaching.

“That was a cherry-on-top moment for me because I had been there five years as a player and I added an extra fall of coaching,” McDermott said. “It was my first introduction to coaching, and when you have to turn around and all of a sudden coach players that just a year ago I played with, it just led to a year of maturation and development for me.”

McDermott attributes much of his success as a coach and as an individual to his foundational experience at William and Mary. He strongly believes that his time at William and Mary has successfully prepared him for his coaching endeavors and beyond.

“William and Mary is not a place where things are handed out; grades, scholarships, you have to earn every inch of what you do here on campus,” McDermott said. “That combination of earning everything is what prepared me the most for after graduation.”

Costello, womenʼs gymnastics finish season with slew of positives Tribe places fth in GEC Championships, ties season-high record

Saturday, March 18, William and Mary women’s gymnastics finished fifth overall in the Gymnastics East Conference (GEC) Championship at Kaplan Arena.

The Tribe finished with a team score of 193.050, matching its best score of the season and winning the opening session.

Senior Emma Wiley led the Tribe on vault with a 9.700, falling just short of all-conference honors and tying for seventh as an individual in the event.

Junior Sofia Huang and sophomore Caroline Blatchford followed closely with matching scores of 9.675. As a team, the Tribe finished with a score of 48.125 on vault.

William and Mary excelled on bars, scoring a season-high 48.675. Junior Grace Costello led the Tribe with a career-high 9.800, earning her a

fifth place individual finish on bars and secondteam all conference honors in the event. Senior Amanda Jackson finished with a career-high 9.625. The other four Tribe gymnasts finished with at least a 9.700 on the event.

Beam proved to be a weak point for the Tribe. The team scored 47.600 on the event with sophomore Sarah Kuper’s 9.650.

However, William and Mary recorded several more records on the floor. Freshmen Hannah Burke and Michelle Ngo each scored a 9.800 to lead the team. Burke’s score marked a careerhigh. The Tribe’s third-highest scorer on the floor, Costello recorded a 9.775 to set a new career-high too.

Despite a wobbly beam routine, Costello finished the all-around with an impressive 37.275.

On the podium, Penn won the team title with a score of 194.925, closely followed by Yale at 194.200 and West Chester at 194.075.

JAKE FORBES FLAT HAT MANAGING EDITOR

Junior Grace Costello excelled on bars with a career-high 9.800, earning her a fifth place individual finish and second-team all conference honors during the Tribeʼs fifth place finish in the GEC Championships at Kaplan Arena in Williamsburg, Virginia.

COURTESY PHOTO / TRIBE ATHLETICS

Sean McDermott ʼ98 was enshrined in the William and Mary Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday, March 10 at Sadler Center.

COURTESY PHOTO / TRIBE ATHLETICS

McDermott quickly became an impactful defensive force during his time spent on the football team from 1993-1997.