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The Pitt News T h e in de p e n d e n t st ude nt ne w spap e r of t he University of Pittsburgh

SENATE TALKS DIVERSITY, ASSAULTS

Online: Interactive breakdown of fossil fuel investments

Sports: On the fence Page 8

February 18, 2016 | Issue 108 | Volume 106

Leo Dornan Staff Writer

Pitt’s graduate and undergraduate student governments have called on the University Senate Council to commit to focusing on diversity and inclusion in the 2016-2017 school year.

At Wednesday’s monthly Senate Council meeting, council members listened and responded to the proposition, where Student Government Board and the Graduate and Professional Student Government outlined four concrete initiatives focusing on diversity and inclusion. Chancellor Patrick Gallagher and Frank Wilson, president of the University Senate Council, called on students, faculty and staff to urge state legislators to pass a budget, as well.

Here are three takeaways from the meeting: SGB and GPSG propose Year of Diversity and Inclusion for 2016-2017 SGB and GPSG presented four potential courses of action to make Pitt more diverse and inclusive.

As a foundation for the initiatives, SGB president Nasreen Harun, SGB members Everett Green, Meghan Murphy and Natalie Dall and the president of GPSG, Joseph Kozak, suggested revamping The Pitt Promise. The Pitt Promise is currently an ethical conduct code for Pitt students. Students, faculty and staff would have the opportunity to sign the contract, promising to adhere to new standards of ethical guidelines.

“People need to know [The Pitt Promise] exists and know that it clearly states who we are and our values,” Kozak said. “The Promise needs to be a major part of the University.”

Dominique Johnson, a communication graduate student and head of the GPSG Sexual Assault Task Force, said the Promise will introduce a system for when people act counter to it that includes a way to reinforce it as a part of Pitt community.

Free the Planet performed a “waste audit” in the Quad Wednesday afternoon to kick off Recyclemania.

Jordan Mondell | Staff Photographer

PITT RELEASES FOSSIL FUEL INVESTMENTS Students call on University to divest the $26 million it has directly invested in fossil fuel companies. | by Dale Shoemaker, Zoe Hannah and Lauren Rosenblatt | The Pitt News Staff

Nine months after they promised to do so, Pitt administrators revealed that the school invests $26 million in the fossil fuel industry — information requested by a student group that wants Pitt to divest such holdings.

The group, the Fossil Free Pitt Coalition, requested the information last year and will present the investment information to the Student Affairs committee of the Pitt Board of Trustees, 9:45 a.m. Feb. 25, according to a press release FFPC sent Thursday, Feb. 11.

At the meeting, FFPC plans to ask the committee to recommend that the Board of Trustees divest the money and invest it See Senate on page 2 elsewhere.

FFPC representatives will present their case for divestment and propose two plans for the University to divest all direct investments in the large coal, oil and gas companies within three years.

The group will also ask the University to screen the remainder of the endowment’s direct holdings and commingled funds and cease all investments in the fossil fuel industry within five years.

“It’s a critical time because it’s a very time-sensitive issue,” FFPC core organizer Sage Lincoln said. “Climate change is the biggest threat to all current issues.”

Kenyon Bonner, Pitt’s interim vice provost and dean of students, granted the students the meeting when he and other ad-

ministrators met with the students Feb. 9, the release said. University spokesperson Ken Service confirmed in an email that the group is “being given an opportunity” to meet with the committee.

Lincoln said the University did not release the information in April because it had not purchased the Carbon Underground 200 list — which details the 200 largest coal, oil and gas companies based on their reserves. FFPC — which consists of 32 Pitt-recognized student organizations — spent nine months raising $600 to buy the list and give it to the University. The University then used the list to analyze its direct investments and come See Divestment on page 2

News Divestment, pg. 1

up with the numbers presented in the press release, according to Lincoln.

Service declined to comment on Pitt’s investments in the fossil fuel industry.

Lincoln, a senior geology, ecology and urban studies major, said she met with Bonner and Amy Marsh, chief investment officer, Feb. 9, where Marsh disclosed the University’s approximate direct investments in the fossil fuel industry.

According to Lincoln, Marsh said the University has invested $2 billion of its endowments in commingled funds, which in turn invest their money in many different companies. Some of those commingled funds might invest in companies that make fossil fuels.

The University invests the remaining $1.6 billion of its endowment directly in stocks and bonds, according to the release.

Marsh told Lincoln and the other students

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that the University has invested about $8 million in coal companies and about $18 million in oil and natural gas companies, the release said.

“We are thrilled that the administration has provided us this information and the opportunity to present to this committee, and we are looking forward to moving this issue ahead with the Board of Trustees,” Lincoln said in an email. “We believe that fossil fuel divestment is the fiscally and morally logical action, and we are excited to share the information supporting this to the board.”

Currently, the three- and five-year goals are FFPC’s only official plans to help the University divest from the fossil fuel industry.

Pitt is not the only university to invest its endowment in the fossil fuel industry, according to Fossil Free.

Divestment campaigns at universities across the country have been successful at

other schools, such as Syracuse University and University of California, according to Fossil Free.

“This argument makes a lot of sense, it’s not just us saying it,” Lincoln said. “This is a good idea both from a financial and moral standpoint.”

According to Lincoln, the Student Affairs committee members will hear the students’ pitch and then decide if they will propose the students’ ideas to the Board of Trustees.

In order to divest, the Board of Trustees must direct its investment committee to take the students’ campaign into account during the investment process.

FFPC met privately Feb. 13, and Feb. 15, to decide who they will send to represent the group at the Student Affairs committee meeting, but has not yet publicly released those students’ names.

The next Board of Trustees meeting is 10:30 a.m. Feb. 26, in the William Pitt Union.

February 18, 2016

Senate, pg. 1 The pitch for a reworked Promise set the tone for the next SGB-GPSG proposition — making the academic year of 2016-2017 the year of diversity and inclusion. Seeing the success of the Year of the Humanities, Harun said this proposition will bring diversity and inclusion to the forefront of the University’s focuses.

“The grants and incentives that come from designating [2015-2016] as the Year of Humanities has really made people think about this topic,” Harun said.

According to Kozak, implementing these initiatives will begin at the next Senate meeting, which he hopes to designate to discussing diversity and inclusion in greater detail.

The meeting would offer Senate members a chance to extensively discuss diversity and inclusion as abstract concepts.

The SGB representatives also proposed an See Senate on page 3

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Senate, pg. 2 advisory council specific to the Office of Affirmative Action, Diversity and Inclusion. The goal of the council, according to Johnson, would be fostering long-term commitment at every level of the University and facilitating conversations about diversity that would lead to solutions.

“The Senate is the most appropriate place for this to begin,” Kozak said. “We want to include feedback from all of you and your constituents.”

Gallagher discusses recent influx of crime alerts Gallagher said after four sexual assaults in Oakland within two weeks, various local news outlets reported on the influx. Gallagher stressed that there is no evidence for any sort of increased risk for Pitt students. Both the Pitt police and city police are still investigating the separate cases, but Gallagher said there is no “serial” trend related to the incidents.

“I want to highlight that we do live in urban environment, so it’s important for everyone to be responsible,” Gallagher said. “We’re hiring more Pitt police, there are more self-defense classes and the University is using social media and text messaging for crime alerts.”

Gallagher said students’ willingness to come forward about assaults signifies a positive step up, regarding campus climate.

Interim Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner said assaults like those over the last two weeks are inevitable in an urban setting, but that doesn’t make them unimportant.

“Even one incident is concerning to the University,” Bonner said.

Pitt expected to get nearly $150 million from the state when budget passes The Pitt Board of Trustees proposed increasing financial aid and employee salaries for Pitt’s budget this year, but Pennsylvania’s state budget — due eight months ago — still has not passed.

“Not having $150 million is real,” Gallagher said. “I don’t think we’ll see precipitous effects, but it could erode the long-term financial standing of the University.”

Wilson and other members encouraged faculty and staff to get more involved by writing letters to their representatives and asking their colleagues to do the same. He asked that as many people as possible attend Pitt Day in Harrisburg March 22, so the University’s push for state legislators to pass the budget is firm and clear.

“We need to make Pitt Day [in Harrisburg] a show of strength in numbers,” Wilson said. “We need to ask them why state universities aren’t appreciated.”

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Wilson requested a deeper level of political engagement from all students and staff, but specifically called on Paul Supowitz, vice chancellor for community and governmental relations.

Wilson proposed that Pitt faculty and staff push for a referendum of the legislature, suspending the representatives’ bonuses and pay in the same way that Pitt’s have been frozen.

Supowitz said students, faculty and staff can urge legislators to pass a budget through direct requests.

“Students, as well as all other members of the Pitt community — alumni, staff and friends — can all make a difference by contacting their

state representative, senator and Gov. [Tom] Wolf to implore them to put aside partisan differences on other issues,” Supowitz said in an email.

Wilson also encouraged students to engage the budget issue. He suggested students also write to their representatives, but he said the best results come from students attending Pitt Day in Harrisburg.

“Personal contact really made the difference last year in getting results,” Wilson said. “It’s a lot harder for legislators to look [students] in the eye and answer that they’re screwing you.”

February 18, 2016

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Opinions column

from the editorial board

Government oversteps boundaries in Apple case Invoking an 18th century law, the government is attempting to justify accessing our iPhones.

But Apple is refusing to let that crumble the firewall protecting its customers.

Using the All Writs Act — passed in 1789 — the FBI has requested Apple allow it to access the cellphone of San Bernardino, California, shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, asking the company to create a new version of the iPhone operating system to circumvent several security features.

In response, Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter Tuesday on the company’s website — you probably spotted the now-viral post on your Facebook timeline. The letter warns customers that such an alteration in the operating system could become a breach of consumers’ security. This “overreach by the U.S. government” could extend to intercepting everything from messages and iPhone camera access to health records and financial data.

The action would be an unprecedented and irresponsible use of power by the FBI, effectively putting millions of consumers’ personal information at risk.

The antiquated statute grants federal courts the authority to issue court orders that request third-party assistance, which the government has used in prior cases to request information for individual defendants in criminal cases.

But here, the FBI isn’t simply asking for access to a single iPhone.

A potential new version of the iPhone operating system that would satisfy the government’s needs would be a lofty request it has never sought

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before. It would provide the FBI the ability to access all iPhone users’ data, undoing decades of security research and advancements. But the two-century old All Writs Act was created when the only form of personal security was a musket.

Cook warns that compliance with the government could entail a “backdoor to the iPhone,” and the ramifications of such a precedent could be tremendous. Not only could the government use this 227-year-old law to collect information on millions of Apple customers, but it could directly interfere with the company’s products — which means the government is overstepping its role.

And Apple has every right to protect itself and its customers.

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American University Washington College of Law, told The Wall Street Journal, “The real question is where the line is between when the government can get an order to compel a third party to do something and when it cannot.”

When the government asks a technology company such as Apple to alter its products and undermine decades of security advances, it is within the company’s right to decline because it isn’t an agent of the government.

“We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications,” Cook writes.

Stakes are high, but Apple is well equipped with legal defense to assure customers their trust won’t be undermined.

We rely on Apple to protect our data — and for now, we can rest easy knowing they will.

Illustration by Annabelle Goll

UNION LAWSUIT HURTS EVERYONE INVOLVED

Henry Glitz Columnist

The norm for steel companies over the last 50 years has been to flee the Pittsburgh area — not return.

That’s why it came as such a welcome surprise for residents of Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, when Pittsburgh-based special metals producer Allegheny Technologies Incorporated opened the doors to its new $1.2 million plant last May. But while the company promised an unheard-of economic boost to the formerly industrial town, much of Brackenridge has been left waiting. Residents with jobs in the plant have been locked out for more than half of the factory’s life span. The lockout, which began Aug. 15, was in response to the factory workers balking at accepting the concessions ATI said were essential to help them compete

February 18, 2016

against domestic rivals and Chinese imports.

ATI left laborers without pay and might soon revoke the meager unemployment benefits that supported them through the winter.

The odd circumstances of Brackenridge’s situation don’t seem to fit together without one extra detail — the 2,200 locked-out workers are dues-paying members of the powerful and far-reaching labor union United Steelworkers. And when big, international unions like USW indulge in long-term feuds with management, it’s unlikely that local workers stand to profit.

Ideally, USW should stand for the wages of workers in the Brackenridge plant. But the reality of the union’s reaction to the lockout is that it has not accomplished that. The suit that the USW and others in big labor are now bringing against ATI only exacerbates the standoff, and locked-out employees — not See Glitz on page 5

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Glitz, pg. 4 union bosses — are the ones shouldering the conflict’s burden.

Yet this is exactly the strategy with which the labor syndicate has approached the situation over the past six months — making a dispute over new health benefits into a federal case in the care of the National Labor Relations Board.

Early last August, USW rejected a final contract offer from ATI that stipulated, among other things, mild employee contributions to health care premiums and what union leaders referred to as “two-tier wages” — a policy of offering new hires lower wages than current employees. As of December, the NLRB had accepted USW’s request to file a charge of unfair labor practices against the steel company.

USW, whom Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times called the country’s “biggest, most combative industrial union,” has seemed prepared to sacrifice much in the continuing lockout, which at seven months has become the longest in the Pittsburgh region in more than 30 years. But it’s not the union’s leadership Downtown who are taking the brunt of the blow. Instead, factory workers in Brackenridge are taking most of the hits in a battle union leadership is prolonging for its own interests.

“Any way you look at it, the steelworker is going to have a difficult time,” Gary Chaison, Clark University professor of industrial relations, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a Dec. 18, interview.

Functionally jobless members of the Brackenridge community obviously aren’t receiving pay from the plant management. But the alternative sources many have been relying on to cover the lockout interim are beginning to dry up.

Governmental unemployment insurance, which lasts six months, is about to expire. And while the $500 per week from the government was anything but comfortable for workers’ families, the USW’s replacement is even scantier. A union-provided fund assuring $200 per chapter member per week during a lockout is clearly inadequate as a worker’s family’s primary or only source of income.

If the point of the USW’s lawsuit with the NLRB is to defend its Brackenridge members’ livelihoods, the strategy of simply waiting out management until the company meets union demands is woefully misguided.

According to the NLRB, the agency has received and filed nearly 225,000 unfair labor practices charges over the past 10 years. But of the 148,000 charges that were eventually filed in court, a mere 9 percent ever saw complaints issued. What’s more, the legal process frequently took up to a decade.

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No one can be sure if the ATI-USW legal feud and the workers’ lockout will last a full 10 years. But if the situation in Brackenridge ends up like the labor impasse at a major Sherwin Alumina plant in Gregory, Texas, then workers need to be prepared for the long haul.

Four-hundred-fifty steelworkers in Gregory have been stuck in a similar lockout for nearly 16 months, despite membership in the USW and legal action pending with the NLRB. In July 2014, management at the Sherwin Alumina plant, which has been running in the small Texas community for over half a century, proposed an increase in employee contribution to employer-provided health care plans from $65 to $175. To this day, the USW has yet to come to an agreement with the company to allow workers back into the factory, and it’s a matter of concern whether it will be able to do so here in western Pennsylvania.

Accusations of greed against the company management may or may not be well placed, but it’s hard to deny that the USW’s tactics in what Chaison called “an old-fashioned Pennsylvania labor war” aren’t based in realistic thinking so much as in wishful thinking.

New Jersey-based steel industry analyst John Tumazos also saw an alarming amount of out-of-date thinking from union leadership.

“Leo Gerard, the [USW’s] president, is thinking of the century-old model ... the union isn’t making things better,” Tumazos told the New York Times in a Dec. 3, interview.

If Gerard and union leadership fail to comprehend the realities of competition — either domestic or foreign — in today’s steel market, their grasp of ATI’s ability to function with locked-out union workers is even weaker. A contingent of 32 much-hated scabs is still able to temporarily run the Brackenridge plant at a pace that’s just as profitable for the company as hundreds of union laborers. Certainly, this doesn’t bode well for local union workers hoping to return to their jobs in the plant any time soon.

The USW seem to be willing to gamble a lockout of indefinite length, with minimal credible leverage with ATI’s management and with the eventual outcome doubtful in general. Fortunately for Gerard and other higher-ups in the union with power to end the standoff, however, none of the losses will be too personal.

No matter how workers in Brackenridge look at ATI’s modified benefits, it’s not worth the pointless, collective union-led unemployment.

It seems like the USW have forgotten that a union’s purpose is to protect wages, not keep workers from their work.

Henry primarily writes on government and domestic policy for The Pitt News.

Write Henry at hgg7@pitt.edu.

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5

Culture

PAPERBACK WRITERS

Katelyn Prosachik’s dream growing up was to be a government spy — but while that dream hasn’t materialized in real life, a Pitt class is keeping her fantasy alive.

Prosachik is writing a novel about a fictitious 17-year-old version of herself, a teenaged federal government-recruited spy.

“The inspiration for my main character is the girl I always wanted to be growing up,” she said. “How cool would it be to go around the world and kick butt before even graduating high school?”

Every Wednesday night this semester, Writing Youth Lit II’s 22 students — including Prosachik — congregate in Room 216 in the Cathedral of Learning, where students peer edit and power-write their own young adult fiction novels for two and a half hours. In order to meet their novels’ required 40,000 to 60,000 word quota, students bring 3,000 new words to each class — a word count some students take entire semesters to amass.

“I knew the work load when I signed up for the class, but there was just something so appealing about finishing the class with a small novel,” said Prosachik, a senior and English fiction writing major. “Even if it is not the best, you can still say you wrote it and that in itself is impressive to most, be it friends or future employers.”

Writing Youth Lit II is a continuation of professor Siobhan Vivian’s Writing Youth Lit I, where students write the first 50 pages of a novel and finish it in her second class. She calls this semester’s Youth Lit II course her “first draft class,” as this is the first time the University is offering it.

“Together we are making something that you can do with your degree after graduation,” Vivian said. “It is important to learn discipline and to force yourself out of your comfort zone into writing what you don’t know.”

Every class students spend the first hour peer editing each other’s new batch of 3,000 words before discussing directions the author can take their project in the next 3,000. The class’s second half consists of character workshops or a writing power-hour, in which students work on the next segment of their stories.

Vivian, who studied screenwriting at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has worked for Disney as a screenwriter on a show called “Little Einsteins,” and has had eight

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books published — a number of which have earned various awards, such as the American Library Association’s 2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults award for her fifth novel, “The List.”

Vivian always knew she wanted to write for children and young adults and eventually went back to school to earn her MFA in creative writing. In addition to teaching at the University for the last five years, she is also working on her upcoming novel that will be available in April, “The Last Boy and Girl in the World,” about a town’s flood forcing its residents to leave and a girl to finally confront a boy she’s always loved.

“There are many misconceptions about teen lit. My job is not to educate but to entertain,” Vivian said. “I am simply trying to tell a story that will entertain you. Whatever I decide to be entertaining is what I am going to write about.”

Young adult fiction varies from adult fiction in that its protagonist — generally between 12- and 18-years-old — mirrors its intended audience, and often features a romantic or coming-of-age subplot. Adults are never the main characters and often are the story’s villain — think Count Olaf in “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

More recently, the “Twilight” series and author John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” and “The Fault in Our Stars” have popularized the genre within the millennial generation with tear-jerking teenage tragedies and imagined human-vampire relationships. However, students in Writing Youth Lit II prove it’s more than just fairy tales and a big imagination that go into writing a young adult novel. Most writers seek out authentic teen experiences — often those of their own lives — to impart to their reader. Topics range from first loves and sex to heavier issues of racism, cancer and depression.

“YA stories might seem like less than those of other genres because their character is a teen and not as important as an adult,” Vivian said. “[But] it’s very easy to remember what a first kiss felt like, from a vampire to a real boy.”

From “The Fault in Our Stars” to “The Hunger Games,” young adult fiction has some of the hottest selling titles in today’s literary market — both novels sold over 10 million copies in the United States alone. And according to a 2012 Publishers Weekly study, 55 percent of YA readers are, in fact, adults.

“As an adult you often look back on your own experiences, but when reading YA novels, adults can look back on their own past but experience it through a different lens,” said Ra-

February 18, 2016

Sarah Schneider

For The Pitt News

Illustration by Terry Tan

chael Lippincott, a junior English fiction writing major in Vivian’s class.

Lippincott transferred to Pitt before her sophomore year from Parsons School of Design, an art school in New York City, to major in molecular biology. However, after taking Vivian’s Writing Youth Lit I to fulfill a writing credit, Lippincott switched her major yet again to English writing. She is writing her novel about a star high school football player who gets blinded in an accident and must rediscover himself.

“I honestly was always interested in writing, but never thought I could make a career out of it,” she said. “Looking around my class and reading the work of my peers, somebody is definitely going to get published and write a book that sells. I don’t know who it will be but hopefully it’s me.”

Just as teen fiction can be an escape for readers, Vivian’s class is an escape for her students. For two and a half hours a week, Vivian’s students create their own worlds on paper, unrestricted by content or editorial pressures.

“I feel like I am very lucky to be able to teach this class because students are so passionate about their stories,” Vivian said. “This is the place where she or he can write whatever they want. It’s kind of like a safe haven for writers.”

6

IVORY CAST

Matt Maielli

Staff Writer

Actors Zev Woskoff, Anna Chen and Tori Anderson in “Rhinoceros.” Nikki Moriello| Senior Staff Photographer Even the most outlandish trends, be it political ideology or viral internet meme, can generate a following — even rhinoceroses.

Tonight, Pitt’s theater department will put that theory into practice in its debut production of French playwright Eugéne Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” which runs from Thursday, Feb. 18, through Sunday, Feb. 28. The shows open 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sundays at the Studio Theatre in B-24 Cathedral of Learning. Student performers have resurrected the nearly 70-year-old play without much change, proving its relevance and timelessness.

The story follows a French village whose inhabitants slowly turn into rhinoceroses. Their only symptom — aside from morphing body shapes — seems to be their changing ideologies.

Ionesco wrote the avant-garde, pachyderm-obsessed drama in 1959. The play was a theatrical post-war response to fascism, communism and the rise of other political and nationalist ideologies, as each of the town’s citizens transform except for the protagonist, Berenger, a drunk, pitiful everyman.

“Rhinoceros” cleverly deals with ideas of conformity, individuality and morality by showing what people go through when pitted against a mass ideology. While thoroughly avant-garde, the play also inhabits the absurdist realm, a period of play and literary creation that lasted from the ’50s to the early ’60s. Such productions adhered to French philosopher Albert Camus’ notion of absurdism, which posits that humanity’s attempts to attain understanding are ultimately futile.

In true absurdist fashion, the play offers up more questions than answers. It asks of the audience the classic question, “What would you do in this scenario?” It also gives the viewer many positions to choose from and side with, perfectly summing up the complicated and im-

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perfect issues at hand.

The play’s political undertones, hyperbolically represented by rhinoceroses, are not lost on the cast and crew — especially Claire Syler, an adjunct professor in Pitt’s theater department and the play’s director.

She said in choosing “Rhinoceros,” she was conscious that the production would coincide with presidential campaign season, which, inevitably, is a time of high-profile, polarizing rhetoric.

“It is my belief that the most robust theater does not tell an audience what to think, rather it provides a multivalent performance that demands interpretation,” Syler said. “That’s what we’ve tried to do.”

The performance feels like a parallel to our own American political process, which at times feels like a zoo from the citizen’s perspective.

Extensively, Berenger represents all of humanity as the last holdout against conformity and the spirit of individuality and free will.

The actors also see the humor in the philosophical noise. Ben McClymont, a junior Asian studies and theater arts double major, plays Berenger, and senior marketing and theater arts major Claire Sabatine plays Daisy, the receptionist at the newspaper at which Berenger works and with whom he is in love. They say the play’s humor keeps its heavier underlying themes accessible to the audience.

“One of my favorite parts about this world my fellow fearless cast members, director and I have created is the ability to portray comedy on the surface while layering in culturally relevant themes of conformity and social norms underneath,” Sabatine said. “I enjoy being in shows that start a conversation.”

Sabatine also appeared in “Good Kids,” a Pitt theater production from last November about sexual harassment surrounding a real

rape case in Steubenville, Ohio.

As a provocative and engaging play, “Rhinoceros” demands its audience to keep an open mind while examining their own perceptions of normality.

“With the Theatre of the Absurd, this distance is taken to the extreme, isolating and highlighting the idiosyncrasies of daily life that we have grown accustomed to,” McClymont said. “It is shockingly funny one second and just when you’re lulled into a sense of calm, a rhino comes trampling back in to disrupt everything.”

The relevant messages of conformity and groupthink aren’t the play’s only attraction. The set design beautifully accentuates the characters’ physical and ideological transformation, tracking the story’s progression. “[The design] itself is worth seeing — the production team exceeded all expectations,” Sabatine said.

The green-toned set pieces change with the play’s mood, along with darkening shades of green light, which mirror characters’ sickly descent into the body and mindset of the growing rhinoceros majority. As more characters turn from fleshy to leathery, the definition of “sickness” changes, resulting in the remaining human minority considering themselves undesirables.

The play leaves you with more questions than answers, but those same questions will stampede in your skull for some time afterward.

“We tend to fear what we cannot understand, and knowing that we tend to [marginalize] people who don’t fit precisely into the puzzle of society as a whole is important,” McClymont said. “Instead of tearing it down, we need to revere this uniqueness and understand that everyone has something they can positively contribute to society.”

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Sports

EN GARDE: STUDENTS FIND PASSION IN FENCING

Meg Millure

For The Pitt News

The Pittsburgh Fencing Association practice against one another at Trees Hall. Theo Schwarz |Senior Staff Photographer

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The tall, scuffed, white walls of the racquetball court in Trees Hall echo the sounds of sophomore Gabby Simon’s immaculate footwork as she leads Pitt’s fencing club in drills.

The fencers in front of Simon mimic her movement — squatting in a position reminiscent of a ballet plié — moving backward and forward at her call. When Simon raises a hand, they lunge, stabbing in synchronized jabs with imaginary weapons.

Next month, Simon will help lead the Pittsburgh Fencing Association student club in preparation for two tournaments — the South Atlantic Conference in New Jersey March 19-20 and the College Fencing Championships in Rhode Island April 2-3.

But the upcoming competitions haven’t distracted the club’s leadership from making every practice a learning experience, even for those who aren’t planning on competing.

The 50 total members of Pitt’s Fencing Club meet three times a week, assembling in the racquetball courts at Trees Hall to learn from one another.

Senior and club president Melissa Curioso alternates with Simon, a sophomore

February 18, 2016

chemistry major, in leading the practice.

“We don’t have certifications, we’re all students, but the people running the practices have had multiple years of training and we just apply what we know,” Curioso said.

Fencers who instruct other club members, like Curioso, gained experience in unaffiliated clubs before college.

“I started when I was 10,” Curioso said.

“And I quit my senior year [of high school] for two years and came back last year and I’ve been doing it for three semesters now.”

Unlike Pitt, whose club focuses on education and improvement, other universities like the University of Pennsylvania — whose men’s fencing team has advanced to 16 Ivy League Championships — place greater emphasis on competition.

Ivy League schools, where fencing is popular, take part in national championships that bring in elite teams from across the country, under the tutelage of professional fencers.

At Pitt, with no outside help, more experienced fencers critique and teach the less experienced fencers as they go. Not having a coach does not deter people with no experience from joining the club, though, See Fencing on page 9

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Fencing, pg. 8 according to Curioso.

“About half the people we have here today has had experience and the other half hasn’t, so we’re able to split up in pairs and teach each other,” Curioso said.

Bout pairings are often made to challenge newcomers and to ensure they are using proper form.

“Basics come first. You have to be meticulous and too nitpicky because bad habits build really quickly — especially in this sport. You’re really prone to accidents,” junior foilist Zihan Guo, who typically helps train new fencers on an individual basis, said.

Simon, who fences épée, wears a brace on each ankle due to injuries she attributes to fencing with bad form in her past.

When the club members don their elaborate white and sometimes electrified fencing gear, they separate by weapon to bout with people using the same weapon.

Each member specializes in one of the three weapons: foil, épée or saber.

The weapon a fencer wields determines where they are allowed to hit an

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opponent in a bout and what part of the blade the rules allow them to use.

The athlete’s choice of weapon is entirely up to their discretion. Even though some teams at Pitt are lacking in members — like women’s foil and men’s saber — the club encourages new members to practice

even consider fencing until arriving at Pitt.

“I knew what fencing was before coming to college, obviously. I went to the activities fair and saw them doing a demo. I thought it looked really cool, and it’s awesome that it’s a viable option in college,”

You have to be meticulous and too nitpicky because bad habits build really quickly.

Zihan Guo, foilist

with the weapon they feel most comfortable with.

There is no standard requisite for joining the Pittsburgh Fencing Association, as members join with various levels of experience. Some of the athletes, including first-year student Kalon Overholt, didn’t

Overholt said.

Sophomore épée fencer Jenna Cario also started fencing after attending the activities fair as a first-year student. She’s grateful that the chance to fence presented itself, noting it’s something she couldn’t have done prior to college.

February 18, 2016

“I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to do these things in high school,” Cario said.

“So to be able to come to this university setting and seeing all these neat activities and fencing being one of them, it’s just kind of wonderful to experience these things now.”

She’s since taken the position of armorer, using her skills as an electrical engineering major to fix broken fencing equipment.

“Being armorer is a really fun experience. I’m an electrical engineer, so fixing electrical equipment is right up my alley.

It’s nice to use my expertise, if you can call that,” Cario said.

Fencers said the benefits of learning from peers outweigh the negatives that could stem from a lack of formal leadership.

“It’s fun to suck sometimes,” Cario said of joining the club without any experience. “It’s an interesting dynamic when you don’t have a coach who’s a designated superior ... you get that kind of peer to peer experience. You can be friends with them but at the same time they teach you a valuable skill. It’s a humbling experience.”

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February 18, 2016

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February 18, 2016

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