Jan. 25, 2017: Family and friends remember Joshua Torres ’15

ARTS PAGE 9 The Yeezus effect

SPORTS PAGE 12

VOL. CXXXI, NO. 11

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2017

Ephs upset Panthers

Family and friends remember Joshua Torres ’15

By FRANCESCA PARIS COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Joshua Torres ’15 passed away in North Adams, Mass. on Dec. 15. His death is being considered a suicide, the circumstances of which have not been made public. He was 23.

Torres, who grew up in New York City and studied at All Hallows High School, graduated from the College in the spring of 2015 as a history major with a concentration in Africana studies. At the College, he put on four shows, two of which he wrote himself. He also participated in theater productions, sang a cappella in The Springstreeters, played in bands and left an indelible mark on those who knew him.

After graduation, Torres moved to North Adams, where he continued to pursue theater and music.

Loud and exuberant, Torres was a monumental presence in lives across campus and beyond.

He is remembered for his creativity and intelligence, for his propensity to tell the truth no matter the consequences and for his huge energy and colorful garb. Friends still picture him engulfed in an enormous shawl, spinning around the theater, with a big, geeky smile that reached his squinting eyes.

“When I think about Joshua,” his mother, Susan Diaz, said, “I see his smiling happy face, and I think about how caring he was.”

Torres's older sister, Sage Torres, said he was never ashamed to be himself. “I think that’s why a lot of people gravitated towards him.”

During his time at the College, Torres spoke openly about his struggles with his mental health.

He opened up about his depression and suicide attempts with his friends, and through theater and music.

Rehearsal-optional Torres became a performer early on; his sister recalls him putting on plays with toy cars and action figures as a child.

“I’ve been performing since I popped out my mother’s womb,” he told Parlor Tricks, a College literary magazine, in March 2015.

He worked at Mission Dining Hall, often swiping ID cards with a big grin. One Halloween, he dressed as a witch and brought his guitar down.

Jacqueline Simeone ’18 remembers fondly that he came up, sang to her and bit her finger. “To many he was considered ‘extra,’ maybe a little overbearing,” she said. “But I thought everything he did was so magnificent.”

The Halloween shows that Torres directed, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Nightmare Before Christmas, were rehearsal-optional productions, loud and unpredictable, as much dance parties as they were musicals. Joseph Baca ’15 was in Nightmare, which Josh had been talking about since he was a first-year in the Exploring The Arts orientation program. He says the cast had only about 20 minutes of rehearsal time before the curtains opened.

Trustees host reception

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN NEWS EDITOR On Friday evening, members of the College’s Board of Trustees and administrators held an open reception in the Faculty House for students, offering them a chance to meet the trustees and talk about issues of concern to the college community. Peak attendance at the event reached about 40 students.

“It is great to have the opportunity to speak to students, and this is one of many venues to do so,” Chairman of the Board of Trustees Michael Eisenson ’77 said. “It’s great for students to ask about what we do, how we think about things, and for us to hear first-hand what’s on their minds.”

The Board of Trustees held an open forum with over 100 attendees in October that allowed for larger groups of students to share their concerns and views with trustees (“Trustees hold second forum for students,” Oct. 19, 2016). Because of its size, Friday’s reception setting allowed for trustees and students to talk individually or in small groups.

“Different people like interacting in different ways,”

President Adam Falk said, “and this also provides an informal way for people to get to know each other.”

Several students appreciated the less formal setting in which to meet the trustees.

“I found this event to be really cool,” Oliver Yang ’20 said. “The trustees have gone through the same experience as me [being a student at the College] and can relate. I thought they’d be ‘people in big suits,’ but they really just want to get to know the students as people.”

The more personal nature of this reception may have contributed to the less tense and adversarial atmosphere than at October’s open forum.

“The forum and reception are basically apples and oranges … the one-on-one [setting] obviously allows for more private, personal conversation and to get to know each other before getting into issues,” trustee Martha Williamson ’77 said. “You can see the trustee as a person rather than an adversary, allowing for more satisfying exchanges.”

At a similar reception held last year by the Board of Trustees, students organized and gave a lengthy toast to SEE TRUSTEES, PAGE 5

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIANNA RETTIG

Joshua Torres '15 speaks to the cast of Revenge of the Inner City Catholic Schoolgirls, which he wrote, acted in and directed in 2015.

“Josh did not want to put a show on,” Baca said. “He just wanted to get everybody in the same room to have fun with each other.”

His other two shows were his more serious projects, tackling issues that he felt affected him and society around him, without res-

ervation. He wrote and produced Don’t Tell Tommy for his junior winter study after experiencing what he considered his “worst depression,” panic attacks and insomnia throughout the year. He told Parlor Tricks how he filmed those experiences. “By the end of that,” he said, “I had all these

songs chronicling how happy I was at the beginning of the year, to my attempted suicide, to ‘Oh, I’m not dead, now what?’”

Those songs became Don’t Tell Tommy. He moved his bed to the directing studio during the month that he put on the show and slept there. When the perfor-

mances finally rolled around, he was surprised to find how many people connected with the show.

His second show, during his senior year, was more radical, to the point where he received hate mail for it. Revenge of the Inner SEE TORRES, PAGE 5

WPD releases open letter on community policing and immigration enforcement

By NOHELY PERAZA CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Dec. 7, 2016, Police Chief Kyle J. Johnson of the Williamstown Police Department (WPD) issued an open letter to Williamstown Town Manager Jason Hoch ’95 addressing the police department’s commitment to serve and protect the community amid concerns about possible new immigration laws.

“We want the community we serve to know that the Williamstown Police Department will continue to be committed to building and maintaining positive relationships within the community,” Johnson said in his open letter.

Johnson elaborated that the WPD would not involve itself in any investigations involving civil immigration laws since these cases fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. “All of those within our boundaries should be completely confident that we are here to assist them in any crisis situation,” Johnson said. This statement resembles the prerequisites of the sanctuary cities and campuses that many individuals around the

WHAT’S INSIDE 3 OPINIONS

country have been pressing to safeguard immigrants and undocumented students.

According to the American Immigration Council, sanctuary cities are defined as “trust acts or community policing policies that ... make communities safer and increase communication between police and their residents without imposing any

On Nov. 17, 2016, President Adam Falk sent an email to the entire student body explaining that numerous petitions received from community members and activist groups across the College helped initiate this movement after the presidential election.

“The petitions vary in what they seek, but they are

"All of those within our boundaries should be completely confident that we are here to assist them in any crisis situation.”

WPD Chief Kyle J. Johnson restrictions on federal law enforcement activities.”

The term arose in the 1980s when many religious establishments advocated for the protection of thousands of Central Americans who sought refuge from civil wars and did not receive asylum. Known as the sanctuary movement, this term saw a revival in the most recent presidential election. According to the Washington Examiner, there are over 200 “sanctuary cities” across 32 U.S. states and in D.C.

inspired by sanctuary cities, where local laws prevent police from asking about people’s immigration status and generally don’t use local resources to enforce federal immigration laws,” Falk said.

He elaborated, however, that the application of this concept to a private college is somewhat unclear, specifying that the College does not have the ability to provide this full protection.

On Nov. 18, 2016, the day after Falk sent his all-cam-

pus email, students gathered to protest his statement and called on administration to make the College a “sanctuary campus” in solidarity with other #SanctuaryCampus sit-ins and walk-outs taking place on college campuses across the country.

Students demanded that the College vow as an institution to protect undocumented students and keep their legal status confidential.

After the 23 California State University campuses committed to being “sanctuary campuses,” students at private colleges across the nation began to protest and petition that their schools do the same, but few protests have succeeded in securing that change given how public and private colleges follow different protocol surrounding immigration status.

Students occupied Hopkins Hall, which hosts many offices of the administration, and voiced their personal concerns and stories about how immigration policies affect them as undocumented students, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students or as family members of immigrants.

SEE IMMIGRATION, PAGE 5

Paltry snow arrives at last SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR WITH LACK OF WINTRY PRECIPITATION RESULTS IN DREARY WINTER STUDY

Metaphorical abuse

4 NEWS

Re-examining the student paycap

7 FEATURES

Activism in the age of Trump

JANETH RODRIGUEZ/PHOTO EDITOR

Trustees and students met in the Faculty House Friday evening.

READ ABOUT OUR NEW DESIGN, PAGE 2

USPS 684-6801 | 1ST CLASS MAIL U.S. POSTAGE PAID WILLIAMSTOWN, MA. PERMIT NO. 25

8 ARTS

Quess Green’s vogue

11 SPORTS

Former teammates reunite in MLS

JASON LIU/PHOTO EDITOR

2 OPINIONS

The Williams Record

Editor-in-Chief Jack Brent Greenberg

Arts Editors Shaheen Currimjee and Li Yu

Managing Editors Michael Green and Emilia Maluf

Sports Editors Brooke Horowitch and Danny Jin

Communications Director Francesca Paris

Photo Editors Jason Liu amd Janeth Rodriguez

Executive Editors Marit Björnlund, Reed Jenkins, Ryan Kelley, Rachel Levin, Maddy McFarland, Neena Patel, Lucy Putnam, Rachel Scharf, Skylar Smith, Tesnim Zekeria News Editors Nicholas Goldrosen and William Newton Opinion Editor Michael Gordon Features Editors Jane Petersen and R.B. Smith

Production Manager Michael Rubel Business Manager Scatt Macdonald Financial Manager David Madding Director of Outreach Hayley Tartell Head of Advertising Isabella Wang Subscriptions Manager Greg Andreou

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE SINCE 1887 WILLIAMSRECORD.COM

THE WILLIAMS RECORD BOARD In the wake of the passing of Joshua Torres ’15, the College must reflect on how it engages its students when it receives tragic news. While the administration sends out death notices for retired faculty and staff as well as for current faculty, staff and students, it does not notify the student body of alumni deaths. The current policy fails to account for how recent alumni deaths affect the student body and, accordingly, must be amended.

Although the 2015 class agents notified their class of Torres’ death over email and the College publishes alumni obituaries, the current student body received no notification of his passing. The administration’s policy of not notifying students of all alumni deaths is a sensible one. Due to the College’s 224-year history, its alumni base includes many older graduates who regularly pass due to natural causes. It is implausible to expect the administration to notify the student body of the passing of every alum.

The death of a recent alum, though, strikes a chord with the

Word on The Quad What hobby did you pick up over Winter Study?

By JANETH RODRIGUEZ PHOTO EDITOR

Mourning together On the College’s death notification policy student body. Many within the community may have known and connected with this individual.

Accordingly, the administration should send out death notices for alumni who graduated within the past four years.

In this case, the deceased alum would still have ties to the community because their time at the College would have overlapped with some of its current students; their death would affect a portion of the student body.

In all likelihood, some students still attending the College would care deeply about the deceased alum. It is only fitting that the College should recognize such a death and offer resources and support for grieving students.

This proposed policy change fits within the College’s existing approach to death notices for retired faculty members.

The administration notifies the student body with all-campus emails when faced with the death of former faculty members who crossed paths with current students. Thus, the College should do the same for deceased alumni.

In the all-campus email including the death notice, the College

Collected dead plants and brought them back to life.

Also, being petty.

TERAH EHIGIATOR ’18

Choking on lemon slices.

JULIANA VEIRA ’17

Pottery.

To the college community:

should also identify resources for students who may need support during such a trying time. The Davis Center, Chaplains’ Office and Psychological Counseling Services could provide help to students in the wake of a recent alum’s death. The administration could also offer spaces for students to process the news and to support one another. Last August, the Chaplains’ Office did so in an all-campus email in the wake of the death of Leslie Brown, professor of history.

While the administration should seek to notify students in this way, these notices should require consent from the family of the recent alum. Additionally, the family should dictate the content of the all-campus email.

Circumstances of death are private matters; the family should choose which details they are comfortable sharing with the student body.

In trying times, our roles as a community are to unite, support and lean on one another. When confronted with the death of a recent graduate, it is only fitting that the administration provide us with the opportunity to stand in solidarity as we grieve.

On behalf of all of us here at The Williams Record, I am honored and thrilled to open up a new chapter in our paper’s history. Since 1887, our paper has undergone plenty of revisions but perhaps none will prove more all-encompasisng than the one that will unfold throughout this year.

Much of our evolution will prove clearly visible to you, beginning with this new layout that seeks to retain the best of what our print version has offered in years past in a modern, cleaner design. In addition, our new website launches today, replete with a much more userfriendly interface and the introduction of video content as well as podcasts.

Moreover, this new chapter of the Record brings with it a renewed commitment from all of us on the masthead to producing the most engaging, investigative and thought-provoking work that we can while constantly seeking out critique and opportunities for us to serve this community better.

Thank you for your support, and happy reading!

Jack Brent Greenberg Editor-in-Chief

DEAD WEEK

Just enough time to binge watch one more show before the next semster.

FROSH FORMAL

So many frosh actually showed up that there was a line out the door.

THE INAUGURATION

ISABEL PEÑA ’19

Letter from the Editor

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

JEROMY DIGIACOMO ’20

Stain glass tiling.

January 25, 2017

ICE RINK END OF WINTER STUDY

A NOTE ON OUR NEW DESIGN This issue, you may notice some changes in the Record; we are undergoing a makeover in print and online. With the onset of the new Record board, we decided to evaluate everything that goes into the look of the paper to make it the best it can be for all readers.

Our logo is getting a contemporary replacement to match the redesign. We have chosen a

At least it’s over.

Hopefully it opens before winter ends.

Time to return to real school.

new set of font families – serif and slab – to bring a more professional look to the paper. Our signature purple will appear in new details spread across each section, more sparse but also more distinct.

If you visit us online, you will notice an even more marked change. We have overhauled the Record website from the ground up with a contemporary and streamlined design. The site is now responsive to all of your devices, adapting in form and function to offer you the best access to the Record possible whether you are on a computer, tablet or mobile phone. With a new modern and immersive Record online, current, past and

future Ephs can engage even more with what is happening at the College.

This new approach, though, is not a one-off redesign. We will constantly improve and expand on our philosophy that every element of every printed and online page should be drawn, typed or placed with purpose.

Design is the medium to all of the Record’s content, so please let us know what you think of the changes. What you like, what you do not and what you want to see; this design is for the readers. We look forward to sharing our mission with you.

Michael Rubel Productions Manager

The opinions expressed in signed columns are not necessarily those of the Williams Record editorial board.

Op-Ed and Letter Submission The Record welcomes op-eds and letters from all members of the Williams community. The Opinions section is designed to reflect the varied views and ideas of the Williams community, and the publication of any letter or op-ed does not indicate an endorsement of the views contained therein.

Submissions should be sent to mjg6@williams. edu by Saturday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Op-eds range in length from 700-900 words and letters are 500 words or fewer. The Record will not publish pieces that have appeared in other publications. Pieces submitted to the Record are not guaranteed a spot in the upcoming issue.

For Record Policy information, please see our website williamsrecord.com.

KATIE BRULE ’20

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Make America greater The case for optimism in trying times

By ROBERT DELFELD This we can say with certainty: on the morning of Jan. 20, 2016, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.

Beyond that, there is not much we can predict with any reasonable degree of confidence as this administration begins. Outside of a few nebulous platform promises, even the most seasoned political observer is at a bit of a loss as to what exactly we might expect in the first week of his administration – let alone the first 100 days.

With a transition period marked by a tone eerily reminiscent of Trump’s wildly unpredictable antics on the campaign trail, he has done little, if anything, to prove to his doubters and detractors – a hefty 54 percent of the electorate – that he is ready to assume the complex burdens of the Oval Office. Trump is the most unpopular new president in recent memory; his unfavorable ratings are even higher today than when elected last November.

The perceived instability of the White House is certainly not balanced by stability in Congress. The recent carousel of cabinet confirmation hearings have featured a series of heated exchanges; Democrats, and even a few Republicans, have mixed it up with the President’s appointees – many of whom have serious policy disagreements with their administration. Right or wrong, Donald Trump has torn the political establishments of both parties asunder. House and Senate Republicans, many of whom opposed Trump in the primaries, are scrambling to figure out how to best collaborate with the incoming administration. Even the opposition party is in turmoil as Democratic leaders do some soul searching – questions of whether one is a “Hillary Democrat” or “Bernie Democrat” have sprung to the center of the race for DNC chair between Rep. Keith Ellison and Sec. Tom Perez.

Both the current political climate and the national mood as a whole take on a combative, belligerent air, not only from anti-Trump factions, but from his supporters as well. This nation has become an increasingly angry one; tapping into such frustration was the gas that kept the Trump engine going – the foundation for the sloganturned-movement of “Make America Great Again.” On the other side, protests from Williamstown to Washington have spearheaded a heated “Not My President” movement.

The pervading message of Trump’s inaugural address did not deviate

much from that of his campaign. This speech did not paint a very favorable image of the state of our nation. He described the plight of “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities” and the wealth of the middle class being “ripped from their homes” in an apocalyptic industrial landscape marked by “rusted out factories scattered like tombstones.” The most chilling line was yet to come: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Trump’s America is certainly one that is in desperate need of being “made great again.”

It is important to remember that the rhetoric of elections and the language of politics is that of the relative, not the absolute. While our politics do indeed push us forward, gratitude for where we are and how far we have come is an all too frequent casualty of the process.

The truth of the matter is that, despite this rhetoric and the discouraging stream of the evening news, we live in an exceptional nation.

High school graduation rates are at an all-time high of 82-percent. Poverty rates are declining again for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. Our own transition of power on Friday was, even with protests, a peaceful one. On the other side of the globe in Gambia, foreign armies were needed to remove a defeated incumbent after a recent presidential election. The stock market is breaking records. As President Barack Obama noted in his farewell address, “Last year, incomes rose for all races, all age groups, for men and for women.”

We could go on and on.

It is in times like these that we, on both sides of the aisle, need most to step back and recognize that America does not need to be made great again nor, in the same way, is it the hopeless mess some make it out to be. I believe that it is just as foolish to pound your chest during the national anthem as it is to kneel in protest during it.

Sometimes, we are blinded both by an overly conservative yearning for the way things were as well as an overly progressive desire for the way things ought to be. There is, however, a certain wisdom in optimistic realism, in recognizing that America does not need to be great again but needs to remember how great it already is, all without losing sight of the fact that it can be even greater. As Obama said in his final press conference, “At my core, I think we’re going to be okay.”

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

Embracing free speech on campus Political engagement in the age of Trump

By GRANT RAFFEL

and I did not hear him “embolden concealed racists and traumatize minority As our country now faces the reality students” with his “pseudo-Trump hate of Donald Trump occupying the Oval speech” as Oyakhilome claims he did.

Office, we at the College need a reIt is also important to point out that newed commitment to free speech and this event was scheduled well before engagement with opposing viewpoints; the election took place, and attenonly then can we make tangible prog- dance was optional. If students needed ress on the issues of concern to so many more time to grapple with the election in our community. results before debating them in an In these pages, we have heard from academic setting, that decision would conservatives who have ridiculed our have been entirely acceptable. liberal campus’s unwillingness to conThis event should be a model for pofront conservative views. And we have litical dialogue on campus. Nevertheheard from liberals who have detailed less, some students clearly felt differthe real trauma Trump’s victory has ently, Oyakhilome among them. She caused. I want to offer a new voice in the feels that our campus should be a “libcampus discourse as a liberal who is also eral space” and a “sanctuary,” free from liberal on the issue of free speech. all conservative views.

In the previous isOyakhilome goes sue of the Record, on to imply that Valerie Oyakhilome We should actively try conservatism and ’18 wrote an op-ed bigotry are one and to bring people into arguing that Scott the same, an utter Brown, former Refalsehood that hurts our movement, rather the liberal cause and publican Senator of Massachusetts, than actively trying to stifles real progress. should not have been This type of rhetoric kick them out. given a platform to only further divides speak at the College us, doing nothing (“Hate speech, safe to solve the actual spaces: The Colproblems at hand. lege’s duty to protect and failure to If liberals truly want to make progfollow through,” Dec. 7, 2016). While ress, we need a different approach.

I respect Oyakhilome’s right to her We should actively try to bring people opinion and willingness to publish it, I into our movement, rather than acthink it is grossly misguided. tively trying to kick them out. Instead Both Brown and Jennifer Granholm, of viewing conservative students as former Democratic Governor of Michi- “concealed racists,” we should look to gan, spoke at an event two days after the them as potential allies in the fight for Nov. 8 election in which they attempted progress. When we employ the strategy to explain the results and what might of divisiveness and alienation for which come next. I thought the event was Oyakhilome advocates, we unnecessarparticularly well thought out and well ily limit ourselves and fail to put liberexecuted, as they challenged each other als in the powerful positions necessary in a civil discussion about the American to affect change. By isolating ourselves from viewpoints that we do not like, political landscape.

Brown’s inclusion in this event should we, in fact, perpetuate the very harm not have been controversial. Not only that we try to prevent. When we fail to did he serve our very own common- engage with the other side, we lose the wealth in the U.S. Senate, but he devel- opportunity to work with others toward oped a reputation as a moderate and bi- progress and win people over with civil partisan Senator in Washington. While and reasoned discourse.

We need to acknowledge and underI disagreed with a number of his statements, I did appreciate his perspective, stand opposing views in order to counter

them with our own. And we need to offer better solutions to the issues of concern to others, rather than none at all.

I spent Winter Study and spring semester of 2016 working on the Bernie Sanders campaign. A year ago at this time, I was knocking on doors in New Hampshire, talking to voters about the issues on their minds. Some conversations were short and unfulfilling, and I was told more than once to get lost.

However, many of the conversations ended with a mutual respect for the other person’s perspective, even if I had not won them over to Bernie’s camp.

After Trump’s election, it is more important than ever to engage in these conversations with people different than us. When we can add a human aspect to politics, putting faces to otherwise abstract beliefs and ideologies, we can better work together and achieve meaningful progress.

Trump won because our country is divided. Many of us never see — let alone engage with — people of other backgrounds. The College is a place where we should be forced to confront different people and different viewpoints. We should welcome the opportunity to participate in such conversations on campus so we are best prepared to improve the wider world and create a compassionate and empathetic society.

We do not make progress by retreating to our corners and isolating ourselves from others’ beliefs. Progress comes when we get out there and engage with these opposing viewpoints, debating them on their merits and forging compromise where we still disagree.

With Trump in the White House, it is easier than ever for us to grow apart.

His divisive rhetoric and discriminatory policy proposals embody the worst of America. Yet I hope that Trump’s presidency can instead help us come together and appreciate the differences and diversity that make our country great.

Engaging with opposing viewpoints here on campus is a great place to start.

Grant Rafffel ’17.5 is a political science major from Palo Alto, Calif. He lives on Spring Street.

Robert Delfeld ’20 is from Colorado Springs, Colo. He lives in Sage.

Conflict and faith

Re-evaluating InterVarsity’s role at the College college campus organization in the U.S., in two ways.

Gay, and atheist; I come from a place First, IV’s theological positions are where to be placed in either category binding for their employees, one of is to be located outside of respectable whom works right here at Williams. society. The hierarchy of gender role Any employee who informs their suis a given in scripture and in life. Ho- pervisor of their disagreement with mosexuality is not only a sin upon the IV’s theological position will trigger individual, but a threatening, perverse an involuntary termination process of manifestation. This is not the only in- their employment; additionally, there terpretation of Christian faith; there does not appear to be a distinction are numerous churches that embrace between whether the information is LGBTQ+ people. But I write because voluntarily provided by the employee of an experience I had at the College, or provided by an outside source. For which forced me to confront faith in IV employees, religious liberty is not a its less tolerant form. And while I am privilege extended to them; their disgrateful that I have never experienced missal constitutes nothing short of a hate from our Christian community, it theological purge. has the potential to create confoundSecond, I do not know the poing questions regarding the deep ties litical landscape of the Evangelical InterVarsity (IV) has on campus. community. However, the result of In the fall, I was interested in a its actions is easily interpreted: IV spring breakout trip is signaling an al(SBOT) called ServeUP legiance to a more that involved building [InterVarsity] forced reactionary form of homes for needy folks Christianity. IV’s orme to confront in New Orleans. I had ganizing role in the some apprehensions, particular SBOT was faith in its but I did not conceive a clear signal that, that I would be unthough not officially less tolerant form. welcome, and on relibarred, I was not gious grounds, I was welcome. This was not. However, when I through no action, learned that ServeUp is organized by explicit or not, of the organizers of IV, my naiveté was shattered. the trip or any person here on camIV is a Christian college campus pus affiliated with it. Yet this tends organization. They provide cross- to be the mechanism of discriminacollege Christian interaction, coop- tion: its most powerful effects don’t eration and other support for the lie just in the hearts of individuals, community. In the fall of last year, but in structures of power that seek IV released a theological summary to perpetuate social hierarchies by dion human sexuality. In it, IV states viding people, most commonly along that the only acceptable sexual be- unchangeable, constituent identities. havior occurs within the bounds of I’m not asking for students at the heterosexual marriage, resulting in College to sever their ties with IV. a great impact on LGBTQ+ folks. If However, I ask for consideration of one accepts that sexual orientation is the costs versus the benefits, as well an immutable characteristic and that as consideration of individual relisexuality is an inextricable element of gious beliefs, and whether these coinhuman identity, the unavoidable con- cide with the actions IV has taken. I sequence is the exclusion of homo- would also ask the College to consider sexual people from moral virtue and its partnership with IV, in light of its social respectability. This was not the presumed commitment to provide an only theological interpretation avail- inclusive community for everyone, able to IV. IV made a choice when it regardless of their sexuality. formulated and adopted its exclusionary theological position. The impact Abel Romero ’19 is from Belen, is great for the largest evangelical N.M. He lives in Bryant.

By ABEL ROMERO

MARCUS IWAMA ’19

Metaphorical abuse

Why ‘victim blaming’ is the wrong route

By CHELSEA THOMEER In a recent opinions piece on sexual assault at the College, David Kane ’88 compared the problem of rape to students being hit by cars on Route 2 (“Looking Both Ways,” Dec. 7, 2016). If there was such an epidemic of car accidents, he writes, the “first thing” the College would do would be to warn students of the dangers, to tell them to “look both ways.”

Metaphors are undoubtedly great things. As an English major in my senior year at the College, I would consider myself to have a healthy appreciation for metaphors. Yet I would also have to agree with the writer Milan Kundera, who once wrote that “metaphors are dangerous,” things that are “not to be trifled with.” The beauty of metaphor is that it allows you to bring two things together; the danger is that it allows you to say that two fundamentally different things are the same.

A sexual assault cannot be compared to a car accident. In the first place, a car accident, while it may be due to drunkenness or criminal negligence, can also be simply an accident. Sexual assault, by definition, never is.

On the contrary, it is always intentional, always an act of violence that is morally despicable and legally criminal. No one would ever pretend that a physical assault — a robbery, a mugging — is accidentally perpetrated.

We should not pretend that sexual assault can be, either. Second, while the College has no jurisdiction over car drivers on Route 2, it does have disciplinary power over students on this campus. Those who forfeit the standards of common decency with which students at this College are expected to treat one another should also forfeit their right to attend it.

It is not that thinking about the risk and prevention are entirely irrelevant to this issue of sexual assault at colleges

and universities. Discussing the factors and dynamics of campus life that tend to enable assailants is important, and there are many groups and people on campus now attempting to bring to the fore these very issues, which have for too long been swept under the rug. Yet in employing a metaphor that places the emphasis on the “prevention” of injury, Kane effectively shifts the burden for decreasing the incidence of rape and sexual assault from assailant to victim.

To say that the prevention of sexual assault is a matter of “looking both ways” is to say that we ought to deal with problems as they manifest themselves in the world we live in, a world that is fundamentally unequal. Kane’s op-ed suggests that all students have a responsibility to prevent sexual assault (although he focuses primarily on the preventative steps that might be taken by women). In making such an argument, he implies that sexual assault is something that can be avoided, if we are all just more careful, if women just make sure they do not drink too much or, as another common argument goes, if they do not dress too “provocatively.”

This, however, is simply not the case.

Sexual assault is not about a mistake; it is about power, and the manner in which some people choose to abuse it. Indeed, the very fact that one’s identity has an impact on the likelihood that one will be assaulted is borne out by the facts. According to data published by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, 90percent of adult rape victims are female (to understand this is, of course, not to erase the suffering of male victims).

Moreover, transgender, genderqueer and gender nonconforming college students are more likely to be the victims of sexual violence than cisgender female college students. Income and education also make a difference. As reported in a 2014 op-ed in The New York Times, women who made less than $7,500 were six times as likely to experience sexual

assault as women who made more than $75,000 per year. College-aged women not enrolled in school were more likely to experience sexual assault than women who were.

As has become common in American political debate, there seems to be a confusion here between honesty and supposition, fact and belief. Kane implies that if the College opened up about sexual assault cases, such reports “may” (a key word) show that female students often claim that a sexual assault occurred on nights where they drank too much or invited a male student to their bedroom.

However, sexual assault is not about the way women drink, dress or seem to respond to men. It is about one person violating the voice and body of another person, how they speak, what they say.

As we enter an era in which America is led by a man who, by the admission of his own pick for Secretary of Education, committed sexual assault or at least proudly claimed to have done so, we cannot accept that the solution to violence and abuse is that those who have the least power in our society should simply walk more carefully, should simply “look both ways.”

Kane suggests that we address the issue of sexual assault by doing the metaphorical equivalent of teaching children to look before they cross the street. I would suggest that a better method, parsed in the terms of his own flawed metaphor, would be to teach drivers not to hit pedestrians, and give everyone the right, responsibility and power to be safe, considerate drivers. “Victim-blaming” is the wrong route, not (only) because it is politically incorrect, but because it is ineffective, and more importantly, unjust.

We cannot solve the many problems that face us today unless we go to the source, unless we change the system.

Chelsea Thomeer ’17 is an English and political science major from Williamsville, N.Y. She lives in Prospect.

4 NEWS

The Williams Record

January 25, 2017

College invites speakers to first symposium on sustainable investing

By MARK SISCO-TOLOMEO CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Wednesday and Thursday, the College hosted the first Sustainable Investing Symposium, a two day, highly-interactive event featuring discussions with various experts from every stage of the investment value chain. Over the course of the two day symposium, each panel offered unique perspectives on both the opportunities and concerns that come with investing in the future of our planet.

President of the College Adam Falk and Don Carlson ’83 offered introductory remarks.

Carlson is an adjunct faculty member in environmental studies and he spearheaded the formation of the symposium. In his introduction, Carlson spoke of the personal relationship one has with his or her investments.

“The way we invest our money has consequences,” Carlson said. “We can choose to be blind to those consequences, or we can choose to be cognizant of them. That is the leitmotif and governing theme of our symposium today.”

Falk then took to the podium to voice his support for the symposium and advocate for the relationship it has with the College. “This year, Williams has committed to a large campus conversation, Confronting Climate Change, which is part of the College’s relation to this existential crisis that faces our planet,” Falk said. “At Williams, we educate and foster dialogue, and those are two of the things that are going to happen over the next two days. This symposium represents how Williams produces people that go out and change the world.”

A number of alumni of the College were in attendance as panelists, moderators and spec-

PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHANIE STACY

Panelists at the Sustainable Investment Symposium discussed how to meet shareholder needs by investing in climate-friendly technology. tators. Many had interesting and unique backgrounds in energy policy and investing, such as Dan Wohl ’15, who spent a year in Israel as a professional basketball player before deciding to move back to the United States, and now works on the Democratic staff for the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources.

All the discussions fostered intriguing questions and heated discussion, but the

“Sustainable Investing for Endowments and Foundations” session was of special interest.

Moderated by Ralph Bradburd, professor of economics and chair of environmental studies, the panel discussed how investors can meet the needs of a diverse set of stakeholders. Panelists included Paulus Ingram of APG Asset Management, who made the point that it is very challenging to meet the wants, needs and interests

Investigating the cap on student pay

By JACK BRENT GREENBERG EDITOR-IN-CHIEF This piece is the first installment in a multipart feature examining the pay cap on student employment earnings at the College.

“We place great emphasis on the learning that takes place in the creation of a functioning community...,” the College’s statement of its “Mission and Purposes” reads. The testament to the virtues of liberal arts education, approved by the Board of Trustees in April 2007, goes on to mention the specific arenas of the college community in which those virtues are made manifest and developed further, concluding with a mention of “direct engagement with human needs, nearby and far away,” an eloquent – if flowery − means for both acknowledging how roughly 1400 Ephs will dedicate part of their time in the Purple Valley to campus employment across 50 departments and offices, and, in addition, asserting that work’s intangible, enduring value beyond biweekly paychecks.

Yet underlying the College’s claimed deep appreciation for student employment rests the reality that the administration seeks to limit the way students can explore and develop in this manner through the student pay cap, a $2,500 earnings bound ($2,100 for first-years) that claims to “safeguard study time and encourage active involvement in extracurricular activities,” according to the “Student Employee Guidelines” published by the Office of Human Resources (HR).

The College administration asserts that it is looking out for the development of its students and working to ensure a degree of balance in their lives through the pay cap.

“We expect students to focus first on their academics, secondly to be actively involved in the community or extracurricular life of the College, and fit their need to work on campus into their busy schedules as a third priority,” Director of Financial Aid Paul Boyer ’77 said. Janine Burt, Manager of Student Employment in HR, toed the same line: “Students don’t come to Williams to be employees.

Students are here primarily to be students. They are here to develop leadership skills through extracurricular activities, they are here for a whole host of other things long before ‘employee’ hits the list … if we’ve got a student who is hitting the earnings threshold or exceeding that earnings threshold, [they may be] working so many hours that [their employment] is perhaps detrimental to them being effective as students, being effective in their other activities here on campus that are really valuable for them.”

Financial Aid and HR both, ultimately, see the bureaucracy of the College as having a role in determining how students allocate their time to respective interests and make the most of their undergraduate careers, reserving the right to demand students resign their paid positions or cut back their hours if they exceed, or are at risk of exceeding, their pay cap.

The College additionally claims, however, that it relies on the student pay cap − or, as Boyer refers to it, “campus earning expectation”− as a means of making sure that all students, especially those on financial aid, have access to jobs on campus. “I know another component in [maintaining the pay cap] is also the idea of being able to offer as many opportunities to as many students as possible,” Burt said. “A significant number of students hold

multiple positions … we can look creatively at those schedules and determine what we need to shift [to prevent over-earning.]” Boyer expressed the same sentiment, saying “the student employment manager must also monitor that students do not hold too many positions to ensure that there are enough positions available across campus for all aided students who want to work.”

The claims of HR and Financial Aid, however, rest on the presumption that student jobs are difficult to come by. While some positions on campus are relatively competitive− such as teaching assistants, tour guides or tutors in the Math and Science Resource Center − plenty of on-campus employers are regularly and actively searching for additional help. In particular, at the time of publication, both Dining Services and the 62 Center’s Scene Shop were still seeking to fill positions for which they had initially sought applications prior to the beginning of the academic year. Moreover, even though the academic year is more than halfway complete, other positions remain open in academic departments, the Center for Learning in Action, Sports Information, the Office of Information Technology and elsewhere. These positions, conceivably, could be filled by students who are already working and are looking for an additional activity or extra money, but the pay cap limits the number of eligible student employees.

Furthermore, the manner in which the College deals with students exceeding the pay cap remains intentionally vague. According to HR’s “Student Employment Guidelines,” any student’s individual earnings limit is “subject to change for various reasons.” When asked for clarification on this policy, Burt explained that “there is some recognition that there is a margin on either side of [the pay cap]...I think we appreciate the idea that… there is a value in the work for students beyond the financial component, and there’s also value to departments. There is work in departments that wouldn’t happen or wouldn’t happen as smoothly or as readily without student employment. So the general attitude is [to] see what we can do to allow a student to continue to work, not only for their own benefit but for the benefit of the department.”

Burt did concede, however, that “you can’t deny that some departments hire a larger number of students than others....”

Accordingly, the relative importance of any student’s work to the College allows for differing responses to any student hitting his or her pay cap.

Boyer embraces this flexibility: “The College does understand the importance of students working consistently for particular supervisors, and Financial Aid does all it can to allow students to remain with a department.” However, Boyer stands by the College’s lack of transparency in handling these cases “basically because the College does not [want] students working too much.” Ultimately, so long as the College abides by the federal regulation that no student receives a financial aid package, including funds from campus employment, that exceed their determined need, then only the College is responsible for the fair and consistent allocation of its own resources.

The second part of this series will explore how student employees who earned more than what the pay cap allowed them to make or risked over-earning resolved this issue with their supervisors, HR and Financial Aid as well as consider the College’s pay cap in the context of the policies and practices of its peer institutions.

of a pool of investors that come from vastly divergent socioeconomic backgrounds.

Abigail Wattley ’05, managing director of the College’s Investment Office, agreed that it is hard to satisfy everyone, but thought it was a generational rather than a socioeconomic issue. Wattley’s statements stressed that it is hard to meet the wants and interests of a community that consists of past, present and future gen-

erations. She believes that, for the endowment to have the sustained, positive effect it has on the College experience, such as a generous financial aid system, the Office needs to consider the school’s financial needs before they can satisfy anything else.

The panelists also discussed how to invest on behalf of institutions that are engaged in fighting climate change. One panelist, Jigar Shah, rejected

the premise that sustainability necessarily complicated investing. He established his wealth in green investments and continues to outperform his competitors by grounding his investment strategy in sustainability.

He emphasized that those shying away from sustainable investing are overestimating risk, and are not capitalizing on the biggest value creation opportunity of a lifetime.

TL Guest ’17, student chair of the advisory committee on shareholder responsibility and co-organizer of the symposium, shares Shah’s enthusiasm for the potential of wealth creation through sustainable investing.

“This is a new but rapidly evolving space,” Guest said. “As the world undergoes an energy revolution, Williams needs to continue to explore investments in renewable energy. I hope this symposium introduces Williams to a network of sustainable investing resources, encouraging us to explore these emerging opportunities.”

Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, who was a panelist in the keynote conversation and is the chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is exploring and leading the way in sustainable investment. Recently, her fund decided to completely divest from fossil fuels and have committed to allocating twenty percent of their funds to impact investments. Just as the Rockefellers serve as a representation of American energy innovation, the College hopes to represent American education innovation in an analogous way. The Sustainable Investing Symposium helped to further the crucial discussion of sustainability across campus and the country and, in doing so, sought to establish the College as a thought leader in this space.

SPRING STREET BLUES Monday 1-16-17

Thursday 1-19-17

11:17 a.m. Hopkins Hall: An officer took a stolen article report (SAR) from a student regarding a wallet last seen two days earlier in Whitman’s Dining in Paresky.

12:33 a.m. Paresky Center: Dining staff at the ’82 Grill reported that some students had brought beer and were consuming it at the table while they ate their food. Officers identified the students and had them remove the beer.

1:49 p.m. Hopkins Hall: Campus Safety and Security (CSS) received a wallet found in the parking lot outside Chandler. The officer inventoried the contents in the hopes of identifying the owner.

9:45 p.m. Southworth School House: Williamstown Police Department reported that an individual at 96 School St., the Southworth School House, had fallen down a short time ago and was not feeling well. Village Ambulance had already been dispatched.

10:17 p.m. Morgan Hall: A tip line submission stated there was loud music in the basement.

There were five students in the basement listening to music. The responding officer asked the students to turn the music down.

Tuesday 1-17-17 6:49 a.m. The Log: Officers responded to an intrusion alarm. Officers did a check of the building and reset the system after finding no disturbance.

3:50 p.m. ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance parking garage: Officers responded to the parking garage on a report by several faculty and staff members of skateboarders in the area. They found two students skateboarding in the lower level of the garage. Officers explained that the complainants were worried about their cars and that, for liability reasons, they could not skateboard in the garage.

7:10 p.m. Hopkins Hall: An officer met with a student to take a report of a stolen laptop.

The student reported he typically leaves his room unlocked. He filled out a statement and SAR. Wednesday 1-18-17 10:37 a.m. Office of Human Resources: Officers responded concerning a person who has been verbally asked to leave campus in the past and who was there to discuss job opportunities at the College, complaining he is never considered for any of these positions due to negative remarks made about him back in 1983. He is a frequent visitor and repeats the same complaint. Officers asked the person to leave and gave him a written Notice of Trespass.

7:13 p.m. Lansing Chapman Hockey Rink: A trainer called 911 to request an ambulance for an injured female hockey player with a possible fractured leg. Village Ambulance responded and transported the player to Berkshire Medical Center South in Pittsfield.

11:10 a.m. Hopkins Hall: A family member asked for a welfare check on a student, as many family members had been attempting to contact the student for one to two weeks with no response.

2:20 p.m. ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance Parking Garage: Officers responded to a call about students skateboarding on the lower level. Officers met with a student who they had spoken to on Tuesday about skateboarding and he explained that he thought the warning was in effect for that day only. Officers explained that skateboarding freestyle is not allowed on campus at all.

3:06 p.m. Hopkins Hall: A student came to CSS to report that a backpack with a laptop had been taken from Driscoll Dining on Jan. 13 around 7:30 p.m.

3:19 p.m. Hopkins Hall: A student reported that a gray Yogibo plush couch valued at $239 was stolen from the Mills third floor common room. Officers took his statement and a SAR. Friday 1-20-17 10:25 a.m. Armstrong House: Officers responded to a complaint of remnants of an unregistered party in the lounge area that was not cleaned up. They took photos and a report.

1:37 p.m. Towne Field House: Officers responded to a complaint from a staff member of young people causing trouble.

Saturday 1-21-17 8:45 p.m. Lansing Chapman Hockey Rink: An officer responded to a door ajar alarm from the southeast door. Upon arrival, the officer found the women’s hockey team returning from an away game. They had propped the door so they could return their equipment to the locker room.

Sunday 1-22-17 1:11 a.m. ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance: Officers responded to a triggering of the roof access hatch alarm. They observed three people running from the building as officers arrived and identified them as students. They were fined $250 each.

11:19 a.m. Hopkins Hall: An officer took a statement from a student about an attempt to bring hard alcohol into Frosh Formal the prior evening at Goodrich Hall.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

NEWS 5

The Williams Record

‘He was such a huge part of all of our lives’: Community mourns passing of Torres FROM TORRES, PAGE 1 City Catholic Schoolgirls dealt with “white supremacy, the patriarchy, capitalism, the prison-industrial complex and Satan,” according to Torres, the combined forces of which killed the characters he had created.

When an actor failed to show up for the second performance of Revenge, Torres grabbed a microphone and announced loudly to the audience: “We don’t know what we’re doing!” He brought up an audience member to play his role and took the missing actor’s part himself.

Disappointment, resilience and insomnia Torres was fundamentally disappointed in the College. He thought the culture prioritized the voices of white upper-class men and women. He believed that the administration was more interested in preserving its image than supporting its students. He never attended Claiming Williams Day because he saw the event as

skimming the surface of the real problems. He wanted to have conversations about the issues of diversity and apathy that he saw everywhere, but he thought they would go nowhere without support from the administration, which deeply frustrated him.

He did participate in a video for Claiming Williams, in which he was asked to sum up his time at the College in three words. “Disappointment, resilience, insomnia,” he responded.

After graduating, Torres continued to follow his passions down Route 2. He was writing a book, says his friend, North Adams resident Alex Martinez, a horror story called The Peacock Room. He played in his own band, Mothership Soul Brotha, and sang back-up vocals for Rebel Alliance, which performed Thursdays at the Red Herring. He collected his work online under the umbrella of the Bad Drama Club.

He was also writing, producing and acting in plays and musicals, like a version of Anne Boleyn, which stemmed out of

his fascination for tragic historical female figures.

Derek Lonergan, Torres’s significant other, noted how Josh would delve into his art as soon as he finished his work. “He could turn anything into an intellectual adventure, raising haunted journeys of history into plays and songs,” Lonergan said.

“You’re here with me, and I’m here with you.”

Too many who saw him perform around campus, Torres was the epitome of fearlessness. Still, he struggled with his own sensitivities.

“He was always thinking about what others thought of him,” Chris Janson ’15 said, who was a close friend of Torres’s and played in a band with him called Barefoot Boys. “Even though he was acting like he wasn’t. He definitely did care about that.”

The difference between Torres and most people, Janson said, is that Torres confronted fear head on. He let himself feel afraid and pursued his passions regard-

WPD releases letter on immigration law FROM IMMIGRATION, PAGE 1 Johnson later clarified that while the police department would not ignore federal laws, it would not be taking immigration information about members of the community that the federal government could use. “[The WPD] would always assist another law enforcement agency to the best of our ability, but on this specific topic, we would not have information to give as we do not ask, track or record immigration status,” Johnson said. He further specified that the WPD has not consulted with Falk or any other College administrators surrounding the topic of immigration or “sanctuary campuses.” “We work every day to maintain positive community relationships through Community Policing, but nothing specific regarding immigration at this time,” Johnson said.

Still, many students at the College and Williamstown community members are concerned about the protection of immigrants and undocumented students. Jaquelíne Serrano ’17, one of many organizers of the Occupy Baxter protest, feels that immigration structures directly impact them as a DACA student. Serrano explained that they communicated with Movimiento Cosecha, “an immigrant youth, decentralized organization spearheading the #SanctuaryCampus walk-outs/sit-ins” nationally. Mov-

imiento Cosecha’s “sanctuary campaigns aim to defend our communities, expose the repression, build rapid response teams and establish places of protection and resistance for the immigrant community.”

By bringing this movement to the College’s campus, Serrano aimed to “generate student power among young people” and “bring highlight to the awareness that exists among students and to say ‘we are watching’ as power-yielding institutions like Williams remain quiet in times like these and continue to stand for legality, a construct that is built to benefit those in power.”

“Honestly, neither Chief Johnson’s statement nor his answers to [the] questions are at all surprising,” Serrano said. “It just confirms what black and brown folks have always known: oppressive institutions, including the police, are not meant to protect us.”

Serrano explained that the Chief’s “belief [in] and reliance [on] ‘community policing’ demonstrate a reformist approach, one that is shared among many that find that stance comfortable “When these institutions that purport to protect you and your community are actually oppressive, it leads us to commit to more radical actions and futures,” Serrano said. “In the end, that’s all most black and brown folks have, especially those that are undocumented.”

Campus sees surge in thefts this term

By ERICA GIBBLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER Since the beginning of Winter Study, there have been 14 reported thefts on campus in public places, residence halls and academic buildings by the time the Record went to press.

The first thefts occurred on Jan. 3, when a bag was taken from Sawyer Library and an iPhone was taken in front of the hockey rink. Since then, there have been three more thefts in Sawyer and another four in Paresky Student Center, with the remaining cases taking place in Mark Hopkins House, Agard House, Sage Hall and Schapiro Hall. Among the items stolen include backpacks, wallets and laptops. “[Campus Safety and Security] (CSS) is currently making extra patrols in all buildings where the public has access,” Director David Boyer said. According to Boyer, CSS has been using both uniform and non-uniform officers to conduct these patrols. Many of these investigations are ongoing and CSS is still accumulating information about the incidents.

“Officers spoke with many people, took several statements and reviewed all relevant video.”

Boyer said.

Since the incidents took place largely in public places on campus, the perpetrator or perpetrators could be anyone in the College community or outside of it.

“Periodically, we see a cluster of opportunistic thefts like this on campus,” Dean of the College Marlene Sandstrom said. “When these situations arise, the person or people who are stealing items are clearly looking for moments when we are too relaxed about the whereabouts of our belongings – like when we leave our bag on a table for a few minutes, or walk away from our laptop.”

In an email sent on Jan. 13 to students, Sandstrom urged students to secure their belongings and never leave valuable items unattended. Since Sandstrom’s notice, the rate of thefts has gone down but there were still four additional reported thefts.

“The recent thefts should remind all of us to be more attentive,” Sandstrom said. “While it is easy to get overly comfortable and lax about security, it’s always better to play it safe.”

Given the rural, low-populated nature of Williamstown and the general sense of security students feel on campus, many students commonly leave their belongings out in public spaces for extended preriods of time and recent events have led the administration to urge students to change their habits.

FreshGrass favorites perform their indie-folk score to the iconic documentary Nanook of the North.

Film with Live Music

FRESHGRASS PRESENTS

PARSONSFIELD NANOOK OF THE NORTH Saturday, January 28, 8pm HUNTER CENTER | $12 STUDENTS | $18 ADVANCE | $24 DAY OF | $30 PREFERRED

less, especially when it came to theater and music. Art was an outlet for the heartbreak he’d experienced and a way to open a conversation around topics he felt were important, like mental health and systemic racism.

“He was fearless when it came to defending other people,” said his sister, “but when it came to himself, he was real sensitive.”

Torres felt insecure particularly within the College community.

He thought a large part of the student body did not understand him or want him on campus.

Much of that had to do with his disregard for public norms. In the spring of his senior year, Torres walked into Paresky to find a pro-life presentation. He stood up on the tables and launched into protest, opposing human life and calling for support of Satan.

“A lot of people just don’t understand how somebody like him could exist,” Baca said. “But the people that did get to know him, he was such a huge part of all our lives.”

Torres would tell the people he loved the truth that he believed

speech. He would ask everyone to close their eyes and imagine they had roots growing from the soles of their shoes into the earth.

“You’re here with me,” he would say. “And I’m here with you.”

For those who loved him, Torres is not gone; he’s still there when they gather together, when they listen to the multitude of work he published online, when they experience moments of fear and reach out for his voice.

“He meant the world to me,” Sage said. “And I wish he understood how loved he truly was.”

Friends and members of the family have requested that those who remember Torres donate at www.gofundme.com/theglitterkitty. Most of the funds will go to Torres’s family, and $2000 will go towards starting The Glitter Kitty, a fund for artists. In the past month, about two-thirds of the goal has been met.

If you or someone around you is suffering from emotional distress or in a suicidal crisis, you can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Faculty members Stroud, Howe, Lebestky and Braggs granted tenure

By WILLIAM NEWTON NEWS EDITOR Last month, the Board of Trustees Executive Committee approved the recommendations submitted by the College’s Committee on Appointments and Promotions (CAP) to grant tenure to four assistant professors.

The four professors who received tenure and a promotion to the rank of associate professor were Nicolas Howe, assistant professor of environmental studies; Catherine Stroud, assistant professor of psychology; Rashida Braggs, assistant professor of Africana studies and Tim Lebestky, assistant professor of biology.

Faculty are typically evaluated for tenure decisions during the fall of their sixth year at the College, according to Dean of the Faculty Denise Buell. “The CAP makes its decisions concerning tenure based on a combination of a report from the senior members of the department or evaluation committee, a self-evaluation and portfolio from the tenure candidate and external letters of evaluation by experts in the fields of the tenure candidates.”

The promotions will take effect on July 1, 2017, giving the faculty members the freedom to attempt new types of teaching and more challenging research with the knowledge that they have extensive long-term job security. With tenure, professors are permanently employed unless they are mentally or physically incapable of performing their job, their program is discontinued, they commit serious misconduct or the College experiences a legitimate financial emergency.

Howe researches the many ways that geography, religious studies, legal studies and climate change interact with the environment and has written one book, Landscapes of the Secular: Law, Religion, and American Sacred Space, and co-written another, Climate Change as Social Drama: Global Warming in the Public Sphere, within the past

PHOTOS COURTESY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE

From top left clockwise: Stroud, Howe, Lebestky and Braggs. several years. The cultural geographer is looking forward to his new promotion.

“To be honest, it’s hard to describe how it felt to get tenure. Overjoyed, exhausted, grateful, lucky and extremely relieved, all at the same time,” Howe said.

Stroud researches clinical psychology on adolescent stress. “I am honored to have the opportunity to be a tenured professor at Williams College. In fact, it is a dream come true,” Stroud said. “I’m most excited that I will be able to continue to teach and to conduct research alongside Williams students.” Stroud’s three research projects at the College have focused on the connection between depression, stress, relationships and the social environment.

“My primary research project was a three-year longitudinal study of adolescent girls and their primary female caregivers,” Stroud said. “The main goal of the project was to identify biological, psychological, interpersonal and environmental factors that affect adolescents’ response to stressful life events and ultimately confer increased risk for the development of depres-

sive symptoms as well as other forms of psychopathology.”

Braggs researches jazz, race and gender in post-WWII Paris. Her first book, Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II Paris, was published this past year by the University of California Press. “Jazz Diasporas challenges the notion that Paris was a color-blind paradise for African Americans,” according to Amazon.

Lebestky studies neuroscience and developmental biology by employing fruit flies as a genetic model and zeroes in on the impact of dopamine across human attention disorders. He is the recent recipient of a Hellman Family Foundation grant and his work has been published in multiple well-regarded research journals.

“The College aims to hire faculty members with the expectation that they can succeed and aims to offer the mentoring, regular communication and professional development resources to make that possible,” Buell said.

There is no quota for how many professors can receive tenure in any given year. Instead, the College elects to hire faculty solely based on their performance and potential for future success.

Trustees, students, administrators engage at open reception in Faculty House FROM TRUSTEES, PAGE 1

TICKETS: massmoca.org or 413.662.2111 87 Marshall Street, North Adams, Mass.

they needed to hear, even when it was hard. He greeted friends by tossing his arms around them in a big hug. He gave generously with his time and energy in everyday interactions, whether backstage in the theater or dancing on the steps of Paresky on a sunny afternoon.

“If you were wrong he would try to show you why,” his mother said, “but if you were right, he was your fiercest supporter.”

He tried to push others to be as fully themselves as they could be. Friends talked about the confidence that he inspired within them to pursue their passions.

Martinez said she had never sang seriously before Torres’s encouragement, and Janson said singing with Torres gave him confidence in his own voice.

“Whenever I play his songs, or other songs, I try to sing loud enough so he can hear them,” Janson said. Torres was also the first person to ever put eyeliner on Janson, just as Torres loved to wear it himself.

Before singing certain songs, Torres would give the same

bring up issues including psychological services, financial aid and the Board’s lack of transparency concerning its operations. No such action occurred at this year’s event.

In addition, the event especially allowed student leaders such as members of the College Council (CC) executive board to discuss important issues with the trust-

ees, according to CC Vice President for Communications Michael Rubel ’19.

“We haven’t had a College Council meeting since the event to debrief yet,” Rubel said. “But speaking personally, I was really happy to see CC members and other students there, just in terms of really creating connections in the community and between the Board of Trustees, the administrators such as President Falk and [Vice

President of Campus Life] Steve Klass and students. We can always talk about connections, but it’s events like this that really make it happen. It was great to see people talking casually and also constructively about how we can make the College a better place.”

The Board held the reception as part of its on-campus meetings from Jan. 20-22 and will next be on campus when it convenes for its quarterly meetings on April 7.

6 FEATURES

The Williams Record

January 25, 2017

One in Two Thousand

By JACK BRENT GREENBERG EDITOR-IN-CHIEF I first met Charlie while I was getting settled into the suite we shared freshman year, beginning an unlikely friendship replete with deep conversations, clever nicknames and no paucity of laughs. I sat down with Charlie to chat about his adventure getting to the College, his past journeys and his passion for philosophy.

I’ll ask you my most important question first. What does it mean for you to be a “binger jerry chinchilla?”

Oh man. You know, I’ve been trying to figure out what I mean by that. So that’s the name of my Instagram account. I think it’s a mixture of trying to be on the fringe, trying to obscure my identity a bit and add a little humor.

But people tend to find out I’m a binger jerry chinchilla … and I don’t know how I feel about it.

And yet, you’re the one running around calling everyone a goon.

I mean, that’s only if I know them super well. If they’re a living, breathing thing. A little down to earth, you know?

Am I a goon?

Perhaps. We’ve spent some time in the hallway throughout freshman year. We had some good convos.

That’s a good segue into our freshman year and how I was first introduced to you. You had an interesting means for arriving at the College. Can you explain?

I almost forgot that! How was that from your perspective?

My perspective was that I was in the suite and your

family is moving your stuff into your room and you are noticeably absent. I see your father, we shake hands, have a lovely conversation and he tells me, “Oh, yeah, you’ll see Charlie soon; he’s just going to be really dirty and sweaty.” I presumed you were coming from the gym or something. Then he tells me no, you were hiking to the College from home and were probably in North Adams by that point.

We’ll see him soon. Then, I returned a couple hours later and there you were. A beautiful friendship formed from there.

See, my dad left out the detail that I had not had any contact with them for about four or five days so they had just hoped that I would show up on the right day for orientation. But no … I just decided that I would walk to school.

I don’t live super far away; like I said, I live in Lyme, N.H. and it’s only 170 miles [away] more or less as the crow flies. The Appalachian Trail [A.T.] actually goes pretty close to my house and it also goes pretty close to here. So I just kinda walked out the door, hopped on the A.T. and it took about a week and I got here. I had plenty of sores on the body when I got here. I was definitely not super ready for my WOOLF [Williams Outdoor Orientation for Living as First-years] trip.

Now, given the length of the trail, it should have taken you 10 days, so for you to get here in time …

I had to speed things up a little bit. Yeah, I was being really, really lazy about getting out that front door. So once it came down to seven days until school, I was like, “Well, I really got to get this thing going.” I thought I would have no problem doing 25, maybe 27 miles a day. And I did one day

CHARLIE HARRISON ’18.5

Philosophy was pretty challenging for you at first. How has it been having such a big interest in a topic in which you do not feel as naturally skilled?

JASON LIU/PHOTO EDITOR

HOMETOWN LYME, N.H.

NICKNAME ADVENTURE CHARLIE

Blue Mango’s swift grand opening as a replacement for Sushi Thai Garden brought some curious minds to the “new” restaurant. Did the menus change? Did the selection of food expand? What happened to the interior decor? And more importantly, does a more innovative name signify better food?

When Sushi Thai surprised many students with its abrupt shutdown for renovations and change of management at the end of last semester, some students expressed concern at the lack of available Asian cuisine in Williamstown, an anti-cosmopolitan foodie central. These concerns were furthered by the temporary closure of local restaurant Chopsticks for renovations.

So when Blue Mango speedily opened its doors on Spring Street while still giving customers the old Sushi Thai menus, I was relieved at the return of Pad Thai to Williamstown.

Simultaneously, I was confused by the mismatched logos, menus and decor that were a hybrid between old and new. What changed, exactly?

I investigated the recovered multiregional yet myopic Asian food scene on Spring Street these days.

After several trips ordering a variety of both classic and new dishes, I determined the two most dramatic changes from Sushi Thai to Blue Mango: the addition of soup entrees, such as dumpling soup and pho, and the condensation of the previous Sushi Thai booklet menu into a double-sided piece of laminated paper. Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a better, more diversified selection of food. At least the blue placemats add a new aesthetic to your dining compared to Sushi Thai’s previous off-maroon tablecloths.

What’s different? Dumpling soup is a lovely new ad-

dition. It is now a winter favorite of mine to order. The dumplings have a soft skin and a lot of meat; the clear broth is not too strong and very comforting. There are two types of pho on the menu now, one with a beefy broth and the other with chicken.

Both the experience of eating and the actual taste of the pho did not work for me.

The sprouts and basil are both fairly soggy, while the noodles themselves are not as chewy as I would like pho rice noodles to be. The broth does not contain the refreshing savory umami I associate with pho, but instead is more salt-laden and heavier than typical pho broth. There is also a sweetness to the broth that is out of place.

One negative change, though, is the menu aesthetic. The blue laminated sheet of paper with words crowded on both sides has a very take-out feel. Blue Mango’s lighting is still just as dark and trying to read the jampacked list of dishes is not very pleasant. In addition, when all the different East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines are crowded together onto a single piece of paper, the menu epitomizes “jack of all trades, master of none.” Yet for now, I’m just relieved that familiar Asian food is still available to satisfy my stress-eating habits through senior spring.

Blue Mango’s Pad Thai is sweeter and less dry than Sushi Thai’s previous version. The new Pad Thai has an almost sauce-like consistency coating the noodles.

If you are used to splurging on crispy chicken on your entrees, the crispy chicken’s taste and price did not change. The General Tso’s chicken tastes identical to that of Sushi Thai: big chunks of chicken with a soft breading and a lot of sweet sauce. Pad see ew is still as soy-sauce inspired as always. Drunken noodles are now cooked using flat noodles instead of lo mein.

RESIDENCE WOOD HOUSE

of that and I woke up and felt like a truck ran over me.

lot of ongoing work down there stemming from the project.

Before getting here, you were up to some interesting activities on your gap year.

So the project involved pairing up experienced climbers with field researchers.

Yeah, I filled my gap year with a lot of ski racing …. Pretty typical for me. Then I also got this chance to go do ecology in Mozambique on this [small] mountain where there is a crazy mixture of biomes and different forest strata and a lot of cool species and critters …. oh, and a lot of cool rock climbing.

I spent about three weeks in that location with about a week or so [spent getting there] because, like I said, it was an inselberg mountain in Mozambique. It was pretty hard to get out there but, once we did, it was a pretty cool time. We discovered a new species of snake and did a lot for the etymological records in Africa involving ants and other cool things like that. There is a

Yeah exactly. The scientists we worked with, two of them were from Africa and one was Brazilian who lived in California, and I don’t think any of them had done anything even close to rock climbing before, so we had to set up a rope system that would allow them to get up there safely.

And some of the looks of terror they had on their faces were definitely justified, but they quickly figured out that it was totally safe and fun and really beautiful.

Blue Mango offers little change

By MINWEI CAO STAFF WRITER

having trouble thinking of the biggest adventure I experienced …. Probably something that was an adventure [in retrospect] was the philosophy major and the adventures in that world. [The major] really revolutionized my life, I think, delving into that topic in the spring of my freshman year and realizing that the classroom environment was for me and also that there were just so many people who dealt with some of the most general questions of consciousness. And I am still on that adventure.

Given these considerations, Blue Mango roughly equals Sushi Thai.

I highly recommend the kao soi kai and gra prow.

Kao soi kai is one of my all-time favorite Thai noodle soups. The noodles are chewy and have a lot of pull, and the curry soup is rich and hearty. The red onions and crispy noodles on top balance out the richness and the chicken takes the dish to the next level.

My most recent visit to Blue Mango resulted in my trying gra prow for the first time. I would place gra prow way above sesame chicken and General Tso’s chicken if these battered, fried and sauced chicken entrees are your go-to. The gra prow is crispier than both of the other fried chicken entrees, and the brown sauce has a spicy kick to it. The finishing touch that won me over is the fried basil on top. Unfortunately, Blue Mango still kept the unreasonable Sushi Thai tradition of charging $2 for rice during dinner.

Regarding the dining experience and ambience of the new restuarant, I would rate Blue Mango as more pleasant than Sushi Thai. The cloyingly maroon tablecloths of Sushi Thai are gone, and the new management removed a few tables to make for a more open, refreshing space for its dining experience.

The servers are still attentive towards filling your water, but do so in moderation.

Perhaps winning the “Sushi Thai challenge” of having to eat your meal only when your water cup is empty is actually attainable now.

Finally, if you want dessert, stick with the mango sticky rice. It always delivers.

Happy eating!

Those with suggestions as to what restaurants the Record should review next may reach out to mc11@williams. edu with tips and commentary and can follow more of Minwei’s foodie adventures on Instagram @minnieats.

What have been your biggest adventures at the College? How did you become Adventure Charlie?

Oh, don’t go there. Don’t bring it back. [Laughs.] Goodness. I’m

It’s been hard to justify to myself.

I’ve struggled to pass classes here before and I’ve had bad relationships with professors with these issues like my writing and whatnot. It’s really just being in the classroom that keeps me going in those fields of inquiry and academia. It’s those small, intimate discussions that I really seek.

And I’ve also learned to really love reading some of the most turgid literature out there, which is stuff like continental philosophy. It’s this big puzzle that we are trying to figure out.

How did you start skiing?

I probably strapped on the skis first when I was 3 and then started racing when I was around 8.

Then I did development programs for a few years, but then once I was in middle school ... I was like, this skiing thing is really hard to figure out with school as well. You have to travel for all of these races, you have endless amounts of equipment you need to deal with on a regular basis and school just didn’t really jive with that …. And then I discovered ski academies and I found this one ski academy – Burke

Mountain Academy – that a couple of family friends recommended to me. I went there and I instantly fell in love with it.

It’s out in the hillsides and the training hill was within walking distance of the campus and they basically manipulated their academic program to maximize ski opportunities. I don’t really know how I graduated high school legally, but I did it. We didn’t have grades there so I totally am not sure how I got into Williams.

What is it like being back on the mountain?

I am literally the oldest person on the team. [Laughs.] It’s quite funny …. it’s a pretty big thrill. If nothing else, it’s a big thrill to be out and be working out and getting out in the wild, pushing the boundaries. I broke my wrist the summer before college and I didn’t do the most fantastic job ever of trying to heal it. Things felt pretty good in there but they weren’t exactly better, and I sort of just neglected the whole thing for my entire freshman year so I could ski and experience college without a cast on my arm. By the time spring rolled around, I went to see orthopedists and they basically told me I had a pretty bad situation in there that would probably need surgery. Once I finally found [the right] doctor a couple months later, I had the surgery right away and I was expected to have a 12 to 15 week recovery that turned into more like a 30 to 40 week recovery and another surgery. It was a crazy year to be at Williams, to have a cast on the entire time and not really be able to do any physical activities. I think I saw the best and worst of my Williams career that year, but it was so great to finally get [the cast] off and feel like I could use my wrist again and engage in all of the ridiculous things I like to fill my day doing.

A week away: Tbilisi, Georgia

By RYAN KELLEY EXECUTIVE EDITOR On one of my first mornings in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia, I wandered into what I thought was an operating coffee establishment in the Old Town.

Reviewers on Trip Advisor had praised Newsroom Cafe, my intended destination, as one of the best (and cheapest) options for good coffee and friendly company in Tbilisi. But after circling the same block on Lado Asatiani Street two times and getting lost in the hallways of an abandoned hostel, I could only find a Wi-Fi signal named “Newsroom.” Prepared to go somewhere else for the morning closer to the Bridge of Peace, I suddenly heard voices behind an ajar door marked with what appeared to be a small coffee sticker. Opening the door, I found two men hunched over a laptop arguing in Georgian. Not seeing the normal signs of a cafe, I foolishly asked the men if they sold coffee. Michael, who would later introduce himself as the President of the Association for Sports Journalists in Georgia, explained that he had converted the old cafe into an office for his journalists, but that he would be happy to make me some coffee. I thanked Michael for his kindness and quickly moved towards the door, but Michael insisted that I sit and enjoy a cup of coffee while I worked.

My three weeks interning as a journalist in Georgia have been

filled with similar spontaneous adventures in both Tbilisi and the Georgian countryside. Exploring the streets of the city, I have been chwwased by dogs and attacked by an elderly woman with a broom. I also examined the night sky with Greggory, an older man who happens to own a planetary telescope and knows the Bee Gees song “Massachusetts.” On one of the last mornings of the trip, I managed to hike up Mount Mtatsminda in time to watch the sunrise.

Given the language barrier (most people in Georgia speak Georgian and Russian, but English is less common), working for Georgia Today was more difficult than expected. Although the biweekly newspaper is published in English, working on the ground as a beat reporter was challenging. Nonetheless, interviewing representatives from the Council of Europe and Ministry of Health proved an exciting and traditional experience in an industry undergoing significant technological changes in the post-industrial world.

One of my primary interests before arriving in Georgia was the state of the free press in the post-Soviet state. According to the Press Freedom Index compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders, Georgia ranked No. 64 worldwide in 2016 (the U.S. ranked No. 41) compared to its neighbors of Armenia at 74, Azerbaijan at 163, Russia at 148 and Turkey at 151.

One of the reporters I shadowed from Georgia Today shared that she had never felt suppressed or pressured to write pro-government stories. She said that journalists are free to uncover the facts and to express their full opinions when appropriate.

This freedom has helped keep the government accountable and the least corrupt of the neighbor countries listed above, based on the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International.

Last semester in a tutorial on post-Soviet life taught by Professor of Sociology Olga Shevchenko, I spent most of my time trying to understand how Soviet rule has impacted life in modern states such as Georgia. Some of my expectations formed in the course have been realized. For example, most streets are indeed dominated by drab Soviet-era apartment buildings covered in capitalist advertisements and a vocal middle class has yet to emerge. But eating khachapuri on the street and spending time with actual Georgians has transformed Georgia from a foreign object for analytical interpretation into a comfortable and recognizable place.

As I left the Newsroom after an hour of conversation with Michael and Zura, both men wished me success in the future. Three weeks later, I extend my own wish of success to everyone in Georgia who opened their doors and let me come inside.

RYAN KELLEY/EXECUTIVE EDITOR

This Winter Study, Ryan Kelley ’19 and other students have explored the diverse landscapes of Georgia.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

FEATURES 7

The Williams Record

Boston Women’s March draws College activists in the new Trump era

By JANE PETERSEN FEATURES EDITOR It takes a special cause to get dozens of college students up before the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. The Boston Women’s March for America proved just that rallying cause. About 60 Ephs met at the Davis Center (D.C.)at 6:30 a.m. to board vans driven by professors and staff to make the three-hour trek to the Massachusetts capital on Saturday in protest of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Tania Calle ’20 mobilized student unions to march and organized transportation in collaboration with the Davis Center. She described her efforts in making this transportation possible.

“Mobilizing students to attend the march was actually very feasible. Through many different outlets … many students reached out and committed to attending. We even had a waiting list [for transportation],” Calle said.

Calle also commended the role that the College administration played in making student mobilization a reality. “The [D.C.] office, [administrator] Amy Merselis to be specific, provided unrelenting words of assurance, shout-outs and resources to ensure that things went smoothly,” Calle said. “I could not have organized Williams students to the march without the [D.C.] and the students who attended.”

We entered a crowded subway (which, courtesy of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, was free for the day) at the Alewife station and made our way down the Red Line to Park Street. We exited the station into a swarm of people, signs and pink knit hats.

Going into the march, I was a little anxious in light of reports of arrests made for rioting in

JASON LIU/PHOTO EDITOR

Eli Cytrynbaum ’20, sign in hand, traveled to Boston for the Women’s March Saturday with many other students from the College.

D.C. after the inauguration.

While the crowds were a little intimidating at first, I never felt unsafe. I did not witness any incidents of violent protests and, out of hundreds of thousands of protesters, no arrests were made by the day’s end.

Walking closer to the center of the Boston Common, I noticed a few counter-protesters on the way. Students from the College had been instructed not to engage with any counter-protesters for the sake of our own safety. However, out of the few counter-protesters I encountered, most just stood silently with their signs as people walked past.

The crowd carried a variety of creative signs. I found a few particularly clever, including “Women’s Rights, Not Twitter Fights” and “Alt + Right + Delete.” Protesters chanted uplift-

ing messages such as, “Love, not hate, makes America great.”

These acts of demonstration were a form of activism that was powerful yet peaceful.

We made our way towards the main stage, where Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), among other politicians, activists and performers, addressed the crowd before marching began. Their remarks covered a range of issues, including Black Lives Matter, climate change, LGBT rights and immigration.

“We can whimper, we can whine or we can fight back,” Warren said. “Me, I’m here to fight back.”

Going into the march, organizers had estimated about 80,000 people to be in attendance. The Boston Globe later reported that the crowd in the Boston Common had reached

an estimated 175,000 people.

However, trying to exit the Common was not the mayhem that I expected. Thousands of people near the gate that let out onto Beacon Street patiently waited to pass through without any pushing or shoving.

“I definitely did not expect so many people to be there! It was the most people I have ever been around, and it was such a positive, passionate crowd,” Haley Bosse ’20 said. “I thought it was organized as well as it could have been ... It was slow moving due to the huge crowd but they did a good job keeping people excited to march.”

The sense of camaraderie that the protesters expressed amazed me. Men, women, children and even a few pets were all in attendance to support women’s rights. Here I was, in a crowd of hundreds of thousands

of people who were unashamedly fed up, yet everyone I interacted with treated me like we had known each other our whole lives. I saw men and women go up to one another offering unsolicited help, be it taking a picture for someone or giving out directions. While trying to exit the Common, I mentioned that I was hungry, and the woman standing next to me reached into her bag and handed me an apple, no questions asked.

Allycia Jones ’07 approached me on the street, asking where I had gotten my “Williams Feminists” shirt, which was provided by the D.C. We began to chat and I asked her how she thought Saturday’s demonstrations would go over with the American public. “What I’m hoping is that people who couldn’t get out and rally don’t feel like they’re alone,” she said,

“and that people who feel like they won and their side is in charge will realize how many of us there are who are going to keep working against them.”

Trump’s presidency, only one day old, met a fervent wave of opposition. Saturday’s marches, which occurred in over 500 cities across the United States, have collectively been the largest demonstration in U.S. history, with an estimated 3.7 million attendees.

This movement’s potential to effect change will depend on its ability to stay relevant, a responsibility that lies on the shoulders of millennial-aged citizens like the College’s students and recent alumni who fervently participated in counter-inaugural activities.

Some students have expressed frustration with some reactions to these activities. “From what I’ve seen, Trump supporters were reacting as expected to the marches across the world. They find them unnecessary and view those who are anti-Trump as ‘sore losers,’” Ashley Villarreal ’20 said. “It’s an immature and uninformed view seeing as protests and marches have such a long history of enacting change in our nation.”

Former President Barack Obama expressed his faith in the millennial generation in his Jan. 10 farewell address.

“This generation coming up – unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic – I’ve seen you in every corner of the country …

You’ll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result that the future is in good hands.”

The acts of peaceful protest I witnessed on Saturday, not just by students at the College, but by people of all backgrounds, was a strong indicator that this generation will embrace those virtues and remain engaged in the causes it holds dear.

Ephs gather for first campus hackathon

By ALYSSA WANG CONTRIBUTING WRITER Sunday mornings at the College are usually slow to start.

This past weekend, however, student programmers were busy hacking.

The term “hack” evokes movie stills of dingy basements, dim lighting and green text on black backgrounds. In the computer science world, the phrase refers to the process of developing programs to solve problems. In recent years, coding, software engineering and app development have been exponentially rising in popularity, allowing for the birth of a “hacker culture” along with multi-day events called “hackathons.”

Generally speaking, hackathons span across schools, states and even continents. The biggest ones, such as Hack the North at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and HackGT at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, draw thousands of participants from dozens of countries across the globe.

Teams of up to four people compete for awards ranging from “Most Innovative” to “Funniest Hack,” sometimes accompanied by thousands of dollars in prizes.

Sponsors for such events will often occupy the space, offering mentorship, energy drinks and free goodies.

On Sunday, the College held its first annual hackathon, EphHacks. The day began early at 10 a.m. in the Thompson Chemistry Lab, with the revelation of the theme: “Projects that will help the Williams community.” Teams immediately began to form, with some students having grouped up beforehand and others finding groups in the spur of the moment. Hungry hackers quickly emptied a table

of breakfast foods at the front of the room on their way to stake out their own quiet corners of science quad.

Hacking officially began at 11 a.m., affording participants a solid hour to brainstorm projects. A sense of collaboration and friendly competition was ever-present as programmers threw out potential ideas for web and mobile apps. Solutions to every observable problem at the College were suggested, from the environmentally-conscious to the academically useful. Eventually, a few gems rose to the top of the batch and coding finally began in earnest.

Each student came to EphHacks with a different set of talents. Some hackers are proficient in web and user interface design, while others may have experience in mobile app development. Some may be hardware hackers with their own arsenal of tools. Even more impressive is the spread of programming languages, including Python, Java and HTML/CSS, used throughout the day. With so many varied abilities and skill levels joining forces on projects, it comes as no surprise that the 24-hour coding period (with breaks for pizza) was just enough time to develop a mostly functional prototype and presentation.

Throughout the day and night, each project went through a number of key phases of development. Teams usually started with the bare minimum of code, creating skeletons of the final project to build on. Next came the functions that allowed the target audience, the College community, to use the program, which was soon followed by hours of frustrating debugging. Finally, designers laid their work on the body of the team’s code, giving

the project a sleeker finish and more satisfying user interface.

This final product is what was eventually presented to a panel of judges.

This year, the judges consisted of Andrea Danyluk, professor of computer science, Jeannie Albrecht, associate professor of computer science, Chris Warren ’96, founder of Dandelion Technologies and Joe Bergeron ’01, co-founder of FoodLove. Each judge scored projects for three prizes: Most Creative/Innovative, Best Execution and Best Design/User Interface, as well as a fourth People’s Choice prize, based on audience votes.

At 11 a.m. on Monday, each of the teams with a working project drew numbers to present. Some hacks were built for a mobile platform, such as EphPlaces.

This app allowed the user to view the hours during which buildings on campus were open (and see what events were happening with free food). Other hacks aimed to showcase the College community, like EphCreate. This website gave students a platform to share their projects and view others’ work. Others were entertaining, such as Eph’d Up. This Google Chrome extension changed all “eef” syllables in Chrome to “eph” and made every search for “cow” on Google Images yield purple cows instead.

The weekend was a first in the College’s history, and it was particularly special for some of this campus’s hackers. Yoon Hong ’20 was a member of the team that won the Best Execution prize with its project ReqTrak, a website to track all of a student’s major requirements. “[A lot of us] are freshmen … so we were a little intimidated going into this, but we pulled through and made a very cool app that we are proud of,” she said.

JANETH RODRIGUEZ/PHOTO EDITOR

On Sunday, students at the College participated in the first ever campus hackathon, dubbed EphHacks.

JANETH RODRIGUEZ/PHOTO EDITOR

College Council has experienced some challenges with installing its new ice rink in Dodd Circle.

CC seeks to perfect new ice rink

By R.B. SMITH FEATURES EDITOR As Winter Study dawned, many Ephs looked forward to the College’s newest recreational asset – the “Adam Falk Rink for Kids Who Can’t Skate Good and Want to Do Other Stuff Good Too,” perhaps better known as the Dodd Circle ice rink. The brainchild of Ben Gips ’19, College Council (CC) vice president for student affairs, the rink was meant to be a central gathering place on campus for students to enjoy the winter weather. However, Mother Nature had other plans in store. The recent unseasonable warmth combined with a number of other roadblocks has prevented the rink from opening. In spite of this, however, Gips and the rest of CC remain optimistic, seeing this past month as a valuable learning experience. They are hopeful that the rink will eventually fulfill its intended role as an enduring Winter Study tradition.

Before the weather was even a factor, Gips and his ice committee faced a number of construction snags. The team’s first hurdle was a Dig Safe check.

Massachusetts law requires that, before starting any digging project (such as staking the rink’s boards into the ground), the site and plan must be approved by a Dig Safe check, which ensures the safety of buried utility lines. “There are gas and electrical lines that run right though that area, and they tend to be buried pretty shallowly near buildings,” Gips said.

The ice rink committee was particularly determined to avoid any potentially devastating accidents, resulting in more than a week-long delay for the project to handle the matter prudently.

Once the stakes were in the ground, the committee ran into another problem: the slope of Dodd Circle. Although Gips and his team knew the area was slightly graded, they were unaware that it would pose a significant problem. “We … didn’t really see the extent of the slope until [the rink] was in the ground, so that caused another day or so of delays,” Gips said.

The following weekend, the committee decided to remove a portion of the rink to help avoid the section of the circle with the greatest incline. “That was a very difficult task,” Gips said, who spent an entire Saturday with the committee removing and replacing stakes and boards.

Once the committee reduced the size of the rink and mitigated the effect of the slope as much as possible, the team filled the rink with water. After another minor incident involving spillage and some structural damage that delayed the project another few days, the rink was all ready to use as soon as the water turned into ice. “It’s been filled … and ready to go for about a week now,” Gips said. Yet with nighttime low temperatures barely getting below freezing, the actual ice of the ice rink has yet to manifest.

“We’re definitely disappointed in the weather,” Gips said. “But [we’re] still believing that we have a lot of winter in front of us, so if it’s not during Winter Study, hopefully [the ice] will freeze, we’ll get a nice cold spell, and it’ll be ready for people to use come early [spring] semester.”

The rest of CC shares in Gips’ optimism. “It has been obviously disappointing that what was supposed to be a really cold winter . . . didn’t end up happening,” Michael Rubel ’19, vice president

for communications, said. “But we’re still confident that there’s no definitive end date.” The hope now is that February and March see colder temperatures, and that the rink can open on weekends later in the winter.

The ordeal of the past few weeks, though, was not in vain.

“We’ve learned a lot from trying to do this,” Gips said. For one, the team realized that beginning the whole installation process before winter break would have allowed the rink to be filled during the first week of Winter Study, perhaps even resulting in its operation for a few of the colder days earlier in the month.

This Winter Study has also made apparent some of the fundamental issues with Dodd Circle as a location. “We’re going to have to do some real grading of that area, or we’re going to have to try to find a new area,” Gips said. The committee will be working closely with Facilities – which has also generously offered to store the disassembled rink in the off-season – to either find or create a suitable location.

With these lessons in mind, everyone involved is confident that the rink is here to stay. “This year we hit some difficulties, but this will be hopefully the hardest year that we ever have, and … in future years, this will be a snap to get going,” Rubel said.

And with such a dedicated and enthusiastic committee, the rink’s future indeed looks bright. “Our team [that] has been working on it so far has just been incredible,” Gips said.

“They’ve really stepped up, a lot of them, well beyond what we’ve asked of them, going out there at all hours of the night, layering water on … really pretty great stuff.”

8 ARTS

The Williams Record

January 25, 2017

Clark debuts stunning Japanese woodprint exhibition

By WYLIE THORNQUIST CONTRIBUTING WRITER There are few art pieces more instantly recognizable than Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, sometimes just called The Great Wave. It is a piece that appears everywhere, from t-shirts and album covers to Sapporo beer ads, and it is no surprise that many college students often choose to hang it upon their dorm room walls.

There is something undeniably compelling about its sharp and dynamic curves that display the power in the suspenseful scene for the viewer. For centuries, Japanese printmaking has been an art form with rich graphic symbolism and unique depictions of both natural phenomena and human subjects.

The Clark Art Institute’s new exhibit, “Japanese Impressions,” brings the Sterling and Francine Clark’s permanent collection of Japanese prints to the forefront, with art created by three different generations of printmakers whose works span over a century, from the 1830s to the 1970s.

First introduced to Japan PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CLARK

by Chinese Buddhist temples ‘Kaminohashi Bridge’ by Kawase Hasui employs both colored lines and naturalistic light, characteristics of the shin-hanga movement. around the eighth century, woodblock printing became a defining art form of Japanese tures scenes of Japanese life, beautiful lines, Hokusai con- a round window, both mingling emphasis upon the traditional history.

Woodblock-printed including beautiful actors, sumo structs moments of incredible with the outside world and con- ukiyo-e collaborative system, scrolls were disseminated wrestlers and sweeping land- beauty, crafting idyllic moun- strained by the structure they wherein the art was the final throughout Japan over time, scapes. Two artists in particu- tains, islands and waterfalls look out from. This first wave product of a collaboration beparticularly in the form of Bud- lar rose to prominence for their with creamy yellows, rich blues of art has reverberations in the tween the artist, carver, printdhist texts in temples all over Ja- ukiyo-e printmaking in the 19th and greens. Another famous pieces that follow it, and it is er and publisher. However, pan commissioned by Empress century: Katsushika Hokusai ukiyo-e artist featured is Hiro- not hard to see why. shin-hanga was almost directKōken in 764. Over time, Japa- and Utagawa Hiroshige. shige, who presents landscapes The second wave following ly in contrast to earlier ukiyonese artists developed the art of Hokusai, creator of The Great that are both sweeping and in- the ukiyo-e tradition was the e art in that its consumption woodblock printing into a form Wave off Kanagawa, has sev- timate. In View from Massaki shin-hanga movement of the was mainly in foreign markets, distinctly their own, known as eral pieces in the “Japanese Im- of Suijin Shrine, Uchigawa In- early 20th century. Attempt- and its influences were clearly the ukiyo-e tradition. Ukiyo- pressions” exhibit that depict let, and Sekiya, from 1857, the ing to revitalize ukiyo-e as an westernized, incorporating e, which translates to “images scenes from the natural world. viewer peers out at a sparkling art form, the shin-hanga gen- different painting techniques from the floating world,” cap- With his classic sharp and bay and mountain range from eration of artists placed similar and elements of realism. Some

incredible shin-hanga artists are included in the “Japanese Impressions” exhibit, including Yoshida Hiroshi and Kawase Hasui.

The setup of the exhibition illustrates the transitions between the various artistic waves and influences that have shifted the art of Japanese woodblock printing over time. The exhibit reveals common themes of isolation and westernization central to many analyses of Japanese history and culture. It is fitting, then, that it closes with the works of Kiyoshi Saitō and Hamada Shōji, whose modern influences put them in a category all their own, marked by an increased emphasis upon individualism and handmade works as opposed to factory-made ones. This final wave is the sōsaku-hanga, or “creative print,” movement, which rose to prominence in the early 1950s. In the face of industrialization, artists of the sōsaku-hanga and Mingei movements sought to champion individualism and individual creations, with handmade ceramic pieces and elegant prints of Buddhist architecture.

From Hashimoto Okiie’s stark Young Girl and Iris to the murky browns and honeyed yellows of Yoshida Hiroshi’s cityscapes, the “Japanese Impressions” exhibition presents a wealth of interpretations of Japanese art, architecture, nature and people. “Japanese Impressions” will stay up until April 2, and I would encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it yet to do so.

THE ARTIST OTHERWISE KNOWN AS...

Quess Green ’20

By LI YU ARTS EDITOR

PHOTO COURTESY OF WEINSTEIN COMPANY

‘Lion,’ starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, will be showing at Images Cinema until Jan. 26.

‘Lion’ poses questions around identity

By GREG ZAFFINO STAFF WRITER Lion is the true story of Saroo, a five-year-old Indian boy who gets lost on a train, accidentally traveling over a thousand kilometers away from his small hometown.

The train takes him to Calcutta where, unable to speak the local language and uncertain of the name of his own hometown, Saroo cannot return home to his family. The film essentially operates as two different movies. The first half follows young Saroo’s journey, while the second half shows him 20 years later, still attempting to reconnect with his family. It is perhaps surprising that Lion dedicates such a long opening section to young Saroo, especially since Lion is billed as starring Dev Patel, who does not appear until nearly an hour into the film.

The first half of the film is in Hindi and follows Saroo from his hometown to the streets of Calcutta and finally to an orphanage, where he is adopted by an Australian couple. Lion treats this part of the film as backstory and, although it

drags on longer than expected, it was the right decision to bolster the storytelling.

The fact that Lion is based on a true story makes the movie successful. The plot might feel like something that was whipped up in a Hollywood laboratory and, if it were not a true story, might come across as cliché. Spending so much time on young Saroo and offering such realistic and gritty shots of Calcutta’s streets gives the film a more human aspect and keeps it from feeling formulaic.

The end of Lion shows footage of the actual characters and settings in which certain events in the film took place. The film takes few liberties, as the characters and settings in the reallife footage look nearly identical to those portrayed in the film. The director successfully emphasizes the truth within the film to capture the full emotional potential of Lion.

Once Lion jumps forward 20 years to an adult Saroo, living in Australia after having been adopted, the film becomes more predictable. And while the emotional payoff at the end is as strong as one might hope, it was not the part of the

film that stuck with me most.

Lion raises some intriguing questions about the meaning of identity. Many people balance multiple identities, and adult Saroo embodies this to an extreme.

His search to reclaim his lost identity completely consumes him, to the point where one questions if it is even in his best interest for him to do so. Though he can no longer speak Hindi or remember anything about from where he was, Saroo remains chained to his murky past, preventing him from living in the moment. The loss and uncertainty regarding identity that haunt Saroo are more powerful than the film’s ending.

The whole cast delivers strong performances, and the cinematography is solid. Creative decisions, such as showing people from Saroo’s past in his present setting, like a vision, do pay off. Lion cannot help but feel slightly familiar and predictable at times, simply because of its somewhat cliché nature. Nevertheless, this is a film worth seeing, particularly for those intrigued by questions regarding identity.

Quess Green ’20 has the look of someone brimming with personality – he met me attired fashionably in a choker, crop top and hornrimmed glasses – a fact to which his Youtube channel, “Queso Boi,” is a testament. Green has kept himself busy as an active content creator on this channel since the beginning of this year.

“I felt like it was time for me to share my story and my voice with the rest of the world,” Green said. “And I feel like Youtube is such a compelling way to do that ... I’ve done film things in the past before, and I thought this would be a fun medium of sharing myself with other people and introducing myself to the Internet formally.”

Although Green’s channel is fairly new, he has already released multiple videos, ranging from dance videos to those covering more personal topics, dubbed “Queso’s Corner,” but all of them have the common theme of empowerment. In his video titled “ITS MEEEEE!!!!,” Green talks about his identity as an 18-year-old “gay Black Boricua” and his experience dealing with microaggressions at his predominantly white high school. We also briefly talked about his first tea time video, a feature in which he discusses issues surrounding race and social justice, specifically the whiteness of the party scene and hookup culture here at the College.

The video has since been taken down.

“I think it was controversial because people thought I was coming for white people as a whole,” Green said, “but I was more commenting on the party culture at the school and how it’s very white-centered, but also just the ignorant things that a lot of white people at this school have said to me. There are some great allies at this school that I really mess with.”

In “FREAKUM,” a dance video set to Beyoncé’s “Freakum Dress” that he filmed, choreographed and edited himself, Green also explores themes of identity and race. Featuring students Arianna Ruiz ’20, Kristen Johnson ’17, Kene Odenigbo ’19 and Evette Eweka ’20, the dance video showcases Green’s talents in dance and film. Alternating close-ups, zooms and wide shots capture the energy of Green’s choreography, which has its roots in the Caribbean and Black dance cultures with which he grew up. “[It] is the most human thing you can do,” Green said when I asked what drew him to dancing. “FREAKUM” echoes those sentiments; the heart of the video is the people and

Quess Green ’20, a potential American studies major, makes YouTube videos for his original channel. Photo courtesy of Quess Green.

their identities, with dance as a mode of their expression. The filming process itself was one of self-love. “I had to work as a director to push them in a direction where they would feel most comfortable and confident,” Green said.

“FLAWLESS VOGUING,” filmed by Amalie Dougish ’17 but hosted on Green’s channel, similarly features black femme dancers but understands and explores identity through a different dance form known as vogue. A highly stylized and technically challenging dance, vogue originates from the Harlem ballroom scene in the ’80s. “It’s still there today, but it’s obviously more out in the open,” Green said. “Voguing is a big part of queer culture overall ... It’s a cool way of expressing one’s queerness.”

The dance incorporates aspects of modeling and features precise and angular posing; the term voguing comes from the eponymous fashion magazine, but has simultaneously subverted its Eurocentric vision to empower the queer Black communities overlooked by such institutions. “FLAWLESS VOGUING” features Mia Herring Sampong ’20, Malia Hamilton ’20 and Berline Osirus ’20 as models and dancers, but Green takes the spotlight with a mesmerizing interposition of two vogue scenes. Switching between what appears to be the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance and Spencer House, Green combines the two into a continuous choreography. Dougish’s lighting contributes a dazzling effect, as the background swims with saturated tones. Both dance videos were filmed on campus at recognizable landmarks like Schow Library and Mission Park, thus making statements about the identities at the College as well as those connected with the vogue dance itself.

I asked Green what plans he had for his channel, and he told me to expect more rants and more tea time videos. In the meantime, you can subscribe to his Youtube channel at “Queso Boi.”

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

ARTS 9

The Williams Record

On realness, ‘The Yeezus Effect’ and hip-hop in academia

By MANO SUNDARESAN STAFF WRITER Kanye West is America’s most beloved asshole. The critics love him, the media hates him and his fans are somewhere in the middle.

One of my favorite recent West moments was his interview last year with Ellen DeGeneres on her daytime talk show. It was a typical post-Yeezus interview, with him stumbling in a streamof-consciousness manner, one moment talking about ending bullying with his ridiculously priced clothing line, another moment claiming to be in the same tier of greatness as Pablo Picasso and Walt Disney. What made it especially absurd was the fact that he was preaching this high-level philosophy to a sea of soccer moms. But what stuck with me was his closing remark: “I’m sorry for the realness.” I think it hit me then why I have admired hime and been fascinated by him for so much of my life: Artists have brands, and West’s is realness.

Hip-hop is a recent phenomenon, but it has already become a subject of academic inquiry. Hip-hop scholars, however, have this weird, purist tendency to shun post-2000s rap and embrace the old-school. They tend to focus on what they deem “golden age hip hop,” an admittedly flourishing, but overly-glorified, style of hiphop from the late ’80s to the

PHOTO COURTESY OF PUBLISHEDLIVE.COM

West’s polarizing authenticity often brings him as much criticism as it does praise, making him America’s most beloved asshole. early ’90s. They love to talk about Public Enemy and how their music was reflective of the crack epidemic and institutional racism at the time. Hip-hop scholars also love Compton rap collective N.W.A. for being one of the first groups to describe the harsh realities of inner-city life and for blatantly saying “fuck the police” on its record.

I am not saying these artists do not deserve respect, but if they have been so venerated in academia, then why hasn’t West? I think a lot of

what West represents as an artist is exactly what acts like N.W.A, Public Enemy and 2Pac represented in their heyday – reality. In the same way Ice Cube waxed poetic about his reality – gang violence and police brutality in Compton – West raps about his reality: his broken family, his minimum wage job at Gap, his loneliness after the death of his mom and breakup with his fiancé. And with this honesty, this realness, West dropped his debut album The College Dropout

and laid a saturated, exaggerated gangsta rap trend to rest.

This is just a small part of what I call “The Yeezus Effect,” a trend I’ve noticed in which, with every album that West has released, he has pushed the entire hip-hop landscape in a new direction. I have not even mentioned his sonic creativity and influence, from his highpitched sampling techniques early on to his later use of Auto-Tune and string orchestration, but the bottom line is that West truly has a god-like control of hip-hop and pop culture.

This Winter Study, I decided to teach a Free University class on West, but specifically focusing on this “Yeezus Effect.” The four-part course was attended by a small but committed group who came to each class having listened to one or two assigned West albums. After I provided some background at the start of class on the subject material – say, West’s fourth studio album 808s & Heartbreak – I would open up the class to discussion and debate. A lot of our discussion

on 808s was about West’s use of lengthy but sparse instrumental outros, as well as his artistic choice to employ the cold, synthetic device of Auto-Tune to sing some of his most emotional and vulnerable lyrics. We also talked about how the Yeezus Effect relates to 808s & Heartbreak by spawning an entire breed of new rappers willing to rap about sensitive topics of love and loss, like Drake, Kid Cudi and Childish Gambino.

As West’s career begins to wane (if we can assume that – it may have just reached another temporary lull), his name slowly begins to enter the academic canon. Notably, Washington University in St Louis now offers a semester-long course titled “Politics of Kanye West: Black Genius and Sonic Aesthetics.” But of course, the College did it first.

More than anything, my Free University course proved to me that I can actively stimulate interest in not only some dope music, but also in one artist’s cultural influence on an entire decade of entertainment. When we study history, we often ask, “How did this person or event make a lasting impact on society?” Well, why can’t West be added to the conversation?

Why can’t one of the 21st century’s cultural architects be a part of hip-hop and American history? Why can’t I be granted an excuse to say “let’s have a toast for the douchebags” in a classroom setting?

Fourth season humanizes ‘Sherlock’

By OLIVER YANG CONTRIBUTING WRITER

SHAHEEN CURRIMJEE/ARTS EDITOR

This year’s Williams Reads book inspired 'Timeless,' a new play written by Jack Romans ’20.

‘Timeless’ imagines a future in which humans choose not to age

By SHAHEEN CURRIMJEE ARTS EDITOR Within the first hour of meeting Jack Romans ’20, I learned that he was an actor, a singer and a tap dancer. Having grown up with an obsession for magic and the spectacle of the stage, Romans decided to audition for school shows, which led him to audition for the local theater productions in his hometown. He loves theater because of the energy involved in being a performer and collaborator.

The College has allowed him to express his passion for the arts through various outlets, such as a Winter Study course focused on the Suzuki method of actor training and, of course, Cap & Bells. Now, Romans has channeled that artistic drive into directing his own original play, Timeless.

Romans spent a month working on the first rough draft of his play. Inspired by a conversation with entrymates

about Environmental Fellowin-Residence Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, Timeless is peppered with scifi concepts, such as multi-planetary beings and time-stopping medicine. The play prompts consideration of what it means to feel “complete” and how one should live life to the fullest.

Set in the near future, Timeless explores a world in which technology and medicine can halt the aging process entirely, allowing people to live youthful lives for as long as they please. The main character, Frank Byers, appears to be a man in his 30s but has been alive for just over a century. After seeing all there is to see, he finally decides to “depart.” Through the interactions between Byers and his family members, Timeless normalizes the conditions of its strange world.

“Timeless raises questions of choice, urgency and power as it exposes the new tragedies of a world where life continues to have no limits,” Romans said. In this world,

one can travel as much as one likes or go to college as many times as one wants.Through the different characters, we get a sense of the pros and cons of this type of life and whether it is even “life” as we know it. The harrowing final scene of the play existentially intimates at the idea that the cons may outweigh the pros.

The 70-minute play was performed through Cap & Bells last weekend. Romans recounts that one of the best parts of directing his own play was seeing the cast bring the characters to life. “It’s one thing to be happy with the story you made. It’s another thing entirely to see it gain depth and nuance once you hand it off,” Romans said.

So what are we to expect of Romans in the future? He would love to direct a comedy. “The College theater scene needs to see that again,” he said.

In the meantime, Romans will be on stage yet again in August: Osage County, taking place in late April.

BBC recently released a new season of Sherlock that has broken ground in developing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

While previous seasons have focused on showcasing the deductive prowess of Sherlock Holmes against increasingly cunning foes, this new season focuses on humanizing Holmes and has proven successful in doing so.

Season four started off with the Christmas special, released on Jan. 1, 2016, and then continued with episode one on Jan. 1, 2017. BBC aired a total of three episodes, releasing one each week.

BBC’s Sherlock is full of twists, often leaving viewers wondering whether events of the show are hallucination or reality. Fortunately, the Christmas special more concretely establishes as real the facts that were ambiguous in the third season. Episode one lays the groundwork for developing Holmes’ character by introducing a wedge between his relationship with Dr. John Watson. Episode two then chronicles the actions that Holmes takes to rebuild his relationship with Watson, demonstrating his faith in his friends. Finally, episode three culminates in Holmes showing that a combination of brilliant deductive skill, along with a strong moral foundation, can be incredibly powerful.

Every episode contains an overarching theme that frames each action or character. The plot arc of episode one is analogous to the story of the “Appointment in Samarra.” In the story, a man tries to escape from Death by fleeing to a faraway city called Samarra, only to find that Death had been waiting for

him there all along. Throughout the episode, the characters reference this story multiple times, essentially framing the episode as the consequences of actions coming to fruition. The past of many characters also come back to haunt them. In episode two, the theme is contradictory faults in each character; viewers see each character’s “dark side,” villains and heroes alike. In episode three, the theme is whether emotional context is a weakness or a strength; Holmes must grapple with this question consistently.

Overall, the show delves deeper into the moral and psychological mindsets of its characters in the new season than in the past.

Moreover, the tone in season four is much darker psychologically than in previous seasons. Just as in the previous three seasons, the action scenes are fluid and to the point. The show wastes no moment in any episode, as the action sequences and well-timed cuts create a smooth flow from scene to scene, leaving the viewers constantly tuned in to what could happen next.

Holmes’ wry humor offsets the heavy action of the show. In one instance, he references a talented young hacker, but in reality was seeking the amazing sense of smell of the hacker’s dog.

This season’s cinematography is outstanding; there are many times when the cutting and editing creates a connection between the character’s experience on screen and the viewer’s experience of watching. For example, when Holmes takes drugs, there are cuts in between scenes that give the audience a sense of confusion, which Holmes faces when under the influence. The text on screen, a staple of Sherlock, is back, conveying both

the thoughts and deductive skill of Holmes. A particularly memorable moment is when Holmes tries to visualize the size of someone’s home by measuring the angle of the light coming through the window and hitting a piece of paper. Slow motion, blurring and other effects imbue the situation with different feelings, varying between inducing awe during a slow motion explosion or inspiring terror during a dark hallway chase scene.

In addition to its cinematography, the acting in season four is superb. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have established themselves as an incredible acting duo, and this season did not disappoint. With a heavy focus on the relationship between Holmes and Watson, this season captures many unforgettably poignant scenes.

It is refreshing to see Cumberbatch get visibly emotional in some of those moments.

One of the deeper philosophical questions the new season explores is whether Holmes needs emotional intelligence or solely deductive wits; ultimately, it emphasizes the importance of both.

Holmes outwits a foe with almost deity-like psychological manipulative powers through demonstrating his belief in man’s essential equality.

For potential viewers, the fourth season will require you to watch the previous three seasons. This show relies heavily on cliffhangers and a few past characters make appearances in this season, so having just read the books will not be enough.

All in all, if you want to see Holmes transform from a cold, calculating sociopath to a warmer and more humane character, I strongly recommend you watch the new season of BBC’s Sherlock.

PHOTO COURTESY OF PBS

Season four of series ‘Sherlock,’ which debuted Jan. 1, humanizes the character of Sherlock Holmes.

10 SPORTS

The Williams Record

January 25, 2017

Women’s swimming and diving conquers Middlebury and MIT

By KATIE PRIEST TEAM CORRESPONDENT

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Alpine Head Coach Kelsey Levine ’10 skis at a 2007 winter carnival. She skied as an Eph for four years.

Alpine coach inspires confidence

By JOELLE TROIANO CONTRIBUTING WRITER Up until the current season, alpine Head Coach Kelsey Levine ’10 stood out not just because of her excellent coaching, but also because she was the only female head alpine coach in the NCAA. Before Levine secured this title, she was a student-athlete at the College. She majored in computer science and graduated after four years with the alpine team.

Right after earning her degree, she moved into coaching. This year marks Levine’s seventh year of coaching and third year as the alpine ski team’s head coach.

As a graduate of the College, Levine relates to her team in a way that goes far beyond their shared sport.

Not only does this bring her closer to her athletes emotionally, but it also allows for important coaching insights, such as an in-depth knowledge of when the students can and cannot be pushed based on other aspects of life at the College.

“Kelsey understands the physical and mental toll taken by the academic experience,” Alpine Assistant Coach Dan Gura explained.

“She’s able to use her experience as a former student here to balance the athletes’ training schedules depending on their needs as students.”

Having skied for the College, Levine has learned much of what she knows in this particular environment.

She acknowledged that this is, in some ways, a dangerous position.

“It can be easier to do things the way they have been done rather than to think them through anew,” Levine said. She must make

a conscious effort to study other programs and coaches to widen her perspective on collegiate alpine skiing.

At the same time, however, she has continuously learned from the College’s team.

Levine explains that, because ski racers often take an extra year after high school to improve their skiing before college, it was not until three years after she started coaching that she was older than all of her athletes.

This encouraged a collaborative rather than authoritarian approach to working with the skiers during her years as an assistant coach, which has carried over into her philosophy as head coach.

“While I now direct the athletes with a bit of a harder line, I still think it is important for each of them to own their skiing, process and fitness,” Levine said.

Gura cited the idea of ownership, which Levine also highlighted, as one of the central tenets of her coaching. “In order to be accountable as an athlete or as a coach, you have to be honest with yourself or the athletes,” Gura said. “Kelsey puts a lot of thought into her decisions and actions as a coach, and the motive behind many of them is the question, ‘How can we use this to empower the athlete?’”

These coaches believe that their athletes, at the collegiate level, should be treated as adults, and this cannot happen unless the students are given responsibility, ownership and accountability in an environment that rewards success.

Levine also works hard to maintain a high level of honesty with her athletes, which allows them this level of ownership in their skiing and

encourages them to stay honest with her and themselves.

Gura observes that this coaching philosophy leads to a great confidence in the skiers. “Confidence goes a long way in ski racing,” he said, “And it sure as heck goes a long way in life.” This thinking beyond athletes’ four years at Williams, beyond their set of races with the team, is yet another aspect of Levine’s coaching that sets her apart.

She explained her outlook: “I believe that doing my best to instill open and honest communication along with ownership in the studentathletes on my team unlocks potential while ski racing and pushes the athletes to grow as people over their four years.”

Each athlete is so much more than just a time score on the board, and although Levine does all she can to get the fastest skiing out of her team, she ensures this is done in a way that will hold value beyond the college years.

She is now excited that Bates has hired a female head coach for the 2016-2017 season. “NCAA skiing is a small world,” Levine said, “And we know all the head coaches by first name, so I knew the other programs were all run by men.”

Levine did not let this affect her coaching, however.

“I feel I can give valuable perspective on female college athletes — and my coaching colleagues are open and receptive,” she said.

This receptiveness, and the exciting entry of another woman into the “small world” of NCAA skiing, holds great promise for the future of talented women such as Levine in alpine ski coaching across the country.

Women’s swimming and diving (9—0, 6—0 in the NESCAC) completed its undefeated dualmeet season over the weekend, winning 205-95 at MIT and 183111 at Middlebury.

The Ephs have now won their last 56 NCAA Div. III meets.

Their last defeat came on Jan. 12, 2008 to Amherst, a home meet that they lost 152.5-147.5.

In addition, the Ephs have won their last five meets against NCAA Div. I teams. They last lost to a Div. I team on Dec. 1, 2012, when Fordham defeated Williams 166-128.

The event lineup consisted of more sprint races than the typical dual-meet, which gave the Ephs the opportunity to try out some 50s before the championship season begins.

The women began the afternoon with a relay victory in the 400 medley. The A-team of Caroline Conforti ’20, Megan Pierce ’17, Emma Waddell ’18 and tri-captain Lauren Jones ’17 led the medley with a time of 3:56.29, finishing three seconds faster than the Middlebury team in second.

The individual races began with the 1000 freestyle, in which Caroline White ’20 took first with a time of 10:28.59, proving herself a competent performer in more than just the breastroke events. Olivia Jackson ’17 followed her in second at 10:49.73.

The distance success carried into the 500 freestyle, with the Ephs grabbing 1-2-4-5. Jones led the pack at 5:05.70, followed

by White at 5:09.28, Emma Sawkins ’18 at 5:18.48 and Kristina Barry ’19 at 5:20.49.

While the Ephs are talented in mid-distance stroke races, Saturday’s meet provided the women the chance to prove their sprint abilities. Waddell claimed another victory in the 100 IM at 59.17, coming close to breaking the pool record.

The 200 freestyle concluded the swimming races for the meet. The Williams A-team of Dana Chung ’19, Delaney Smith ’18, Madeline Wessell ’20 and Jackson out-touched the Panthers

by .08 seconds to win with a time of 1:39.08.

Tri-captain Ariana Ross ’17 once again dominated in the diving well, winning both the 1-meter and 3-meter boards.

Most notable was her 1-meter score of 300.75 points, almost 45 points higher than the second place diver.

Since Middlebury was the final dual meet of the season, swimmers had a chance to try new events.

“Swimming different events at Middlebury gave people an opportunity to just have fun and to give their best effort,” Assistant Coach Brogan Barr said.

“The coaching staff was generally pleased to see team members embracing races in different events.”

“When we move people into secondary events we can still field a very strong lineup,” Head Coach Steve Kuster added.

On Friday afternoon, women’s swimming topped MIT 205-95 at the Engineers’ home pool.

The Ephs arrived ready to race with plenty of energy. They began the afternoon with a 1-2 finish in the 400 medley relay.

Their dominating performance set the tone for the rest of the afternoon and energized the swimmers as they headed into the individual events.

In the 1650 freestyle, the longest individual event on the agenda, Pierce stole the show.

She touched first at 17:15.91, her fastest time this season. Alison McNamara ’19 followed her at 17:33.47, almost 17 seconds before the first Engineer finished.

The women proved just as impressive in the mid-distance events. The Ephs took 1-2 in the 200 freestyle, with a photo finish between Waddell and Jones, who finished at 1:53.36 and 1:53.56, respectively. The 500 freestyle ended with Pierce victorious again at 5:07.85, followed closely by Wessell in second at 5:08.00 and Maddie Downs ’18 in fourth at 5:14.81.

After the Ephs dominated the longer events, the sprinters took their turn. The women took first through fourth in the 100 freestyle, with Waddell leading the way at 52.27. Behind her were Jones at 53.08,

Smith at 53.84 and Erin Kennedy ’19 at 54.44.

To no one’s surprise, the women provided many notable performances in individual medley and stroke events. White touched first in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke, besting her in-season time in the 200 at 2:19.86. In the 100 butterfly, the Ephs took first and second, led

by Hare at 57.79 and Veronica Wolff ’20 at 58.57.

Continuing her incredible performance at the meet, Pierce grabbed her third individual victory on the day in the 400 IM, which she won at 4:29.86 with a seven second lead. The Ephs also took second and third in the event, with Wolff coming next at 4:36.81 and Waddell immediately after at 4:38.26.

Ross completed another notable performance on the 3-meter board, winning with a total of 299.93 points. With this score, Ross proved that her routine was competitive not only in the NESCAC, but also on the regional and national level.

“MIT is often one of the teams that is our biggest competition, so it was awesome to have such a strong showing against them,” tri-captain Olivia Clark ’17 said. “The energy was great this weekend, and it’s really exciting to have another undefeated regular season under our belt. It definitely gives us a lot of confidence.”

The Middlebury meet marked the 26th consecutive win for the senior class. They have won four straight Little Three titles and three straight NESCAC Championships and have posted three consecutive top five finishes at the NCAA Championships.

“Obviously going undefeated in the regular season is great, but there is a lot more they are looking to accomplish,” Kuster said.

“We’re planning on going back to work on next week, finetuning some technical details and finishing out Winter Study training,” Barr said.

The first championship meet for the women is the Middlebury Invitational, which will take place at the Middlebury Natatorium Friday, Jan. 27 at 5 p.m. and will continue throughout the day on Saturday.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Caroline White ’20 won the 1000 freestyle with a time of 10:28.59 against Middlebury on Saturday.

CAPTAINS’ CORNER: LAUREN JONES ’17 How old were you when you started swimming?

I learned how to swim when I was two years old and started competitive swimming in fourth grade.

Why did you decide to swim competitively?

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

By BROOKE HOROWITCH SPORTS EDITOR

Team: Women’s swimming and diving Hometown: Frisco, Texas Residence: Woodbridge House

My mom talked me into swimming. My parents really encouraged me to try all sports, and I just fell in love with swimming.

What did you like most about swimming?

Mostly, I liked the team and how the team dynamics were. When you’re young, it’s just pure fun, and you’re doing it for a great time. I’ve always loved being in the pool since I learned how to swim when I was two, so it came naturally to me.

What was your experience swimming in high school like?

My high school experience was a lot of fun. I was on a pretty competitive high school team in Texas. My sophomore year, we won states, which was really cool. It was very teamoriented. The guys and girls practiced together, which was fun. A lot of the people on my high school team were on my club team, so we were all close friends, and it felt like home.

a trip here, and my mom said I couldn’t back out, because Williams is such a good school. So I came here, and my host was Sarah Thompson ’15, a phenomenal swimmer. I fell in love with the team and the campus, and Coach [Steve] Kuster is a really great guy.

Which events do you normally swim?

I swim the 100, 200 and 500 free; the 200, 400 and 800 free relay; and the 400 medley relay.

Why did you ultimately choose to attend and swim at the College?

And why do those events?

I was a recruit, and I actually cried before my recruit trip here, because I didn’t want to come. I was dead set on going to William & Mary, but I’d already committed to coming on

I really like the 200 and 500, because they are strategic, and you have to think about when to kick it into gear 100 percent. If you start going too fast too early on, you

you

like

won’t be able to finish the race strong.

Who is your favorite famous swimmer?

What is the swim team culture like?

Katie Ledecky!

In the past, the men’s and women’s teams have had a lot of issues, but more recently, especially this year, we’ve become really united, and it’s really good and very supportive. It’s fun, because it’s not just the women’s team that is supporting each other. You also have 30 other people behind you. On the women’s side, it’s pretty awesome. It’s a great group of people. When we compete together, there is team energy and we become unstoppable. We’ve gotten to the point where we can go into a tough race and have one goal as a team, rather than just a bunch of individual goals.

What is it like being team captain? How has this season been different from other years?

It comes with its challenges, but I feel so fortunate to be working with my co-captains. They are such wonderful people who genuinely care about the team and make sure we are successful in and out of the pool. I have learned so much from them this year. It’s not a very rewarding job to have but, at the same time, our senior class kind of leads together. It’s not the three of us calling the shots. We try very hard to make it so that the leadership comes not just from ourselves but from all of the upperclassmen on the team.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

SPORTS 11

The Williams Record

Kuntz ’06 and Kain ’05 reunite at Los Angeles FC

By DANNY JIN SPORTS EDITOR

“That turned into an internship, which turned into two more internships, and [Yankees general manager] Brian Cashman hired me right when I graduated,” Kuntz said.

Kuntz became Manager of Pro Scouting and one of Cashman’s closest advisers, and he was with the organization when it won the World Series in 2009. Some New York media periodicals called him the “Yankees whiz-kid” before he left for the MLS in 2014.

Kain’s path to the sports world, on the other hand, has not been as direct.

“It’s kind of interesting how we all end up where we do, even if it’s not planned 100 percent of the way,” he said.

After graduating from the College, Kain played a year of basketball in Europe. He then began working at the New York headquarters of Guggenheim Partners, an investment firm.

In 2011, when the Dodgers filed for bankruptcy, Guggenheim became interested in buying the franchise. Kain helped evaluate the opportunities in the Dodger brand and, in 2012, Guggenheim completed the $2 billion acquisition of the Dodgers, the largest purchase of a professional sports team in history.

For three seasons, Will Kuntz ’06 and Tucker Kain ’05 were teammates on the men’s basketball team at the College. In the years they played together, the Ephs went 77-12 and set a Div. III record of 64 consecutive home victories.

They also won the Div. III national championship in 2003 and NESCAC championships in 2003 and 2004.

A decade later, the former teammates will be reuniting on the West Coast at Los Angeles FC (LAFC), a new Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise set to begin playing in 2018. Kain is part of the club’s ownership group, and Kuntz will serve as vice president of soccer operations and assistant general manager.

Kuntz was previously director of player relations for the MLS. However, he began his career in the front office of the New York Yankees. As a first-year at the College, he wrote a letter to late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner ’52 upon learning that Steinbrenner was a Williams alum. With some help from then-President of the College Morton Schapiro, Kuntz got the letter to Steinbrenner.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS BUSINESS DAILY

Dodgers COO Tucker Kain ’05 is part of the LAFC ownership group.

“They asked me to move out to L.A. and manage the assets for the Dodgers, and that launched me into the sports world,” Kain said.

“And now it’s brought me the opportunity to help bring a new MLS team to Los Angeles [with] LAFC.” Kain currently serves as chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Dodgers and managing director of Guggenheim Baseball Management.

He will continue to work with the Dodgers as he lends a hand to LAFC’s management.

Having grown up around sports — his father, Bob Kain, was CEO of sports management firm IMG — Kain said the transition from finance to the sports world was a welcome challenge.

“I saw it as an opportunity to learn, to ask questions, to explore existing practices and to try to think around how these types of businesses operate,” he said.

Kuntz and Kain played during some of the men’s basketball program’s most successful years. The 2003 national championship made Williams the first NESCAC school to win a Div. III national basketball championship, and it remains one of the greatest athletic accomplishments in the history of the College.

They both fondly remember their time on the team.

“You could feel the brotherhood,” Kuntz said. “We had a group of guys who were really close friends and hyper-competitive athletes. They were guys that I loved playing with and competing with.”

The 2003 national championship run exemplifies the excellence of that group, which included All-Americans Michael Crotty ’04 and Ben Coffin ’04.

“We just said, ‘We’ve got a really special thing. Let’s compete and let’s make each other better. Let’s become

one and accentuate our strengths and mitigate our weaknesses,’” Kuntz said.

“To have success the way we did brought us all even closer,” Kain added.

The players were also able to witness the tradition of men’s basketball at the College. Kuntz said part of his decision to attend the College was due to the familial nature of the program.

“It was amazing to see the guys who had played years before who had traveled down to Virginia to watch us play,” he said. “They were so happy for us.”

Kain, who scored 1040 points during his time at the College, will forever be remembered for his heroics in a 2004 game against Amherst. Sports Information Director Dick Quinn called the game “one of the greatest moments in the history of Chandler Gymnasium.”

“He went all Larry Bird that game,” Quinn said.

With the Ephs down 68-65 and the clock running down, Kain hit a three-pointer from the point to send the game to overtime. He then scored 13 of his 29 points in the extra period, igniting a packed crowd en route to an 84-80 victory.

“He basically became The Human Torch,” Kuntz said, “and the crowd at Chandler was unlike anything you’d ever seen.”

“You can’t really explain how it happened or why it happened,” Kain said. “You prepare yourself to be successful in the biggest of games, and that day I was able to do that ... There’s nothing quite like the Williams-Amherst rivalry. We were both really good basketball teams, so each team could have beaten the other on any given day. That [2004 game] was definitely a fun one.”

Kain credits former Ephs Head Coach Dave Paulsen ’87 with cultivating an en-

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAREER CENTER

Will Kuntz ’06 will be LAFC’s vice president of soccer operations. vironment that allowed the team to flourish.

“Coach Paulsen above everything required accountability, which is an important thing for all young people and something I carry with me to this day. He had high expectations, and he held you accountable,” Kain said. “He’s a great teacher, a great mentor and a great coach – someone I was really proud and excited to play for. Over my four years with him, I learned, changed and matured a ton, and I take a lot of the teachings from him and apply them to my day-today life.”

Many of their basketball teammates have kept in touch since their playing days, the pair said.

“That’s a testament to the people,” Kain said. “We’ve stayed very close over the years, and we try to find time to see each other as frequently as we can. I’ll always have great relationships with people like Will and people from that team.”

“Last Friday, we were congratulating a teammate who had just had a kid,” Kuntz said, “and we talked about the

unfortunate loss to Hamilton.

We still care ... You learn to appreciate the little things you might have taken for granted– the long bus rides, the dreaded double road trip to Bowdoin and Colby and the stupid things you say to each other on those rides. The big moments were the game moments, but the special things were the little things off the court.”

Kuntz and Kain, having both lived in New York for most of their careers, are especially close. After Kain began working with the Dodgers, the two often chatted about baseball. They will now combine forces at the MLS’ newest franchise.

“Will’s a great friend of mine, somebody I really respect, and I’m excited to do something great together here at LAFC,” Kain said.

“We’re looking to be not only the best team in Major League Soccer, but the best team around,” Kuntz said.

“I’d rather have lofty expectations and a lot of accountability than low expectations and low accountability ...

We’re not in this for anything but excellence.”

Despite difficult approval process, new running club joins campus

By EMMIE HINE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

be training together everyday,” club president John Spence ’19 said.

However, the club’s mission has been refined as the group has developed. Spence realized that many cross country runners have extensive knowledge of local trails and that this knowledge could be useful to other students who want to run but do not know of places to go near campus.

“No one on campus knows more about running or about where to run in Williamstown than the cross country team,” he said. “We thought we’d make ourselves an official group and open ourselves up to the rest of the school.”

The club is now open to all runners regardless of prior experience. Around half of its 65 members are cross country runners. Spence plans to compete in several club meets and road races this year.

Despite the club’s inclusive mission, the approval process was far from simple.

CC was concerned at first that participation would

At its meeting last Wednesday, College Council (CC) approved a new running club, the Purple Valley Track Club.

The group was formed partly in response to cuts made this year to the men’s and women’s indoor track and field teams.

Though track has not made cuts in the past few years, many runners who ran cross country were cut this year.

According to women’s track and field Head Coach Nate Hoey, roster limits forced the team to cut runners.

“We can’t fund a team larger than 55 girls, and only 40 can travel to each meet,” cocaptain Laura Lee ’17 said.

Many runners resolved to continue to train together, despite being cut from the varsity team. The group began informally as a way for cross country runners not on the track team to train in the offseason.

“Even without track, the folks who got cut knew we’d

The Office of Communications recommends ...

Claiming Williams 2017 Moral Courage Thursday, February 2 Each year on Claiming Williams Day, classes are suspended and the campus engages in events and discussions about building and sustaining a more inclusive community. Claiming Williams Day takes shape around proposals generated by students, staff, and faculty.

For a schedule of events, go to claiming.williams.edu

drop during the cross country season, since most of the early members were on the cross country teams. As a result, CC tabled the club and urged Spence to consult

Associate Director for Student Athlete Services Carolyn Miles. In addition, CC required that the club make an effort to recruit members not on the team.

“We didn’t feel comfortable about funding the cross country team in its offseason,” CC representative Maria Heredia ’20 commented on Council’s review process.

JANETH RODRIGUEZ/PHOTO EDITOR

John Spence ’19 tabled in Paresky to attract new runners to his developing club at the College.

Once the club started advertising across campus, however, concerns emerged about NCAA policies that regulate varsity and non-varsity athletic groups.

Since many of the club’s members are out of season varsity athletes, CC had to ensure that racing in the offseason would not hinder athletes’ eligibility or “land cross country in hot water,” Spence said.

He added that Miles, cross country Head Coach Peter Farwell ’73, Assistant Coach Dusty Lopez ’01, Assistant Coach Nick Lehman and Athletic Director Lisa Melendy helped the club modify its vision and win approval: “They all helped us come up with the vision of the club and turn it into a reality.”

After much consideration, CC voted 21-0-1 to approve the club without funding it. The club is still seeking funding to cover entry fees for meets and races, Spence said. Seven club members attended the Greater Boston Track Club Invitational at Harvard on Sunday, paying their own entry fees.

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK “Ben has always been an outstanding racer for us. This weekend was no different.

He looked great in the 100 IM en route to a conference record. I am glad he’s been racing for us the last three years and look forward to another good two months.”

- Head Coach Steve Kuster

“Nicole has had a fantastic season thus far, winning most of her matches. She has improved so much over the past few years. We will need her in top form this week against Columbia, Amherst and Wesleyan.”

–Head Coach Zafi Levy ’01

BEN LIN ’17 | MEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING SHORT HILLS, N.J.

NICOLE FRIEDMAN ’18 | WOMEN’S SQUASH GREAT NECK, N.Y.

Lin won three individual races in both the men’s win over Middlebury on Saturday and their loss to MIT on Friday. At Middlebury, he set a NESCAC record in the 100 IM, clocking in at 51.25. Lin now holds four individual NESCAC records as well as two medley relay records.

Friedman defeated a high-ranked Middlebury opponent in five games on Friday, Jan. 20. She made an impressive recovery after dropping the third and fourth games 5-11 and won the decisive final game 11-9 to contribute to the Ephs’ 6-3 victory over the Panthers.

12 SPORTS

The Williams Record

January 25, 2017

Ephs upset Panthers, fall to Continentals Skiing earns sixth place

By JACKSON MYERS STAFF WRITER On Sunday, men’s basketball (13—5, 2—4 in the NESCAC) made a statement at home with an 89-65 victory over the No. 15 Middlebury Panthers. The Panthers brought an aggressive and quick offense to Chandler Gym, but the Ephs immediately dialed it up to match them. The first half was a frenzy of activity on both sides of the floor, and the Ephs hit 55.6 percent of their shots in the first half and nearly half of their shots from three-point range.

Tri-captain Dan Aronowitz ’17 scored the Ephs’ first seven points with two drives and a three-pointer. The teams traded buckets in quick succession for the next several minutes before Bobby Casey ’19 dribbled out of trouble in the corner and sank a three-pointer from the right side to put Williams up 24-23.

After a travel call against Middlebury, Kyle Scadlock ’19 got a second-chance post bucket to fall and Marcos Soto ’19 then converted a putback to give Williams a five-point lead, its largest of the game at that point. Middlebury pulled back to within two, but the 6-foot-8 Soto sank back-to-back threes, extending the Eph lead to eight and forcing a Panther timeout.

Both teams stalled for the next couple minutes, and the Eph lead stayed in the single digits. In the final two minutes, Middlebury retook a 37-36 lead, but James Heskett ’19 knocked down a three from the corner with five seconds to play, giving Williams a two-point lead at the half.

The teams remained knotted for the first few minutes of the second half, but with Williams up 42-40 and 16:40 left in the game, Aronowitz hit a three ball off a screen from Soto, kicking off a 17-5 run for the Ephs that lasted for the next four-and-ahalf minutes. Soto contributed a three-point play on a drive, and Matt Karpowicz ’20 posted up Middlebury’s Nick Tarantino to give Williams a double-digit lead, 59-45.

Williams slowly extended their lead with more strong play

by Aronowitz, Soto and Heskett, the latter two of whom were in double digits in the second half and finished with career-high scoring totals. With six minutes remaining, Scadlock came down with a huge rebound and kicked

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

James Heskett ’19 scored 18 in Saturday’s win over Middlebury. it out to Mike Greenman ’18, who swished a trey to give the Ephs a 19-point lead, 77-58.

At this point, Williams slowed down the pace of the game, and the Eph reserves got some playing time in the final 90 seconds.

Having outscored the Panthers 50-28 in the second half, the Ephs led 89-65 at the final buzzer.

Middlebury guard Matt St. Amour led all scorers with 24 points. Soto led the Ephs with 20 points, and Heskett and Aronowitz each had 18. Scadlock led the team with seven rebounds and contributed three blocks.

Williams’ successful shooting in the first half held in the second, while Middlebury’s woes from the field intensified as the game progressed. The Ephs made 61.5 percent of their second-half attempts and half of their treys, finishing the game with seasonhighs in both categories: 58.5 percent from the field and 48.1 percent from three-point range.

Middlebury shot 40 percent from the field on the game and just 28 percent from long distance.

Head Coach Kevin App was pleased by the impressive win.

“This was the best we have played collectively since the fall.

Everyone from the starters to the bench went in, played hard, and played with confidence,” he said. “We played like we didn’t care what happened, and that’s what we’ve been missing. When we play as hard as we can and as fun as we can, we’re a really good basketball team.”

The victory followed a 94-76 loss to Hamilton (13—5, 3—2 in the NESCAC) on Friday. Williams struggled throughout the first half in Clinton, N.Y. Although the men played much better in the second half, the Ephs were unable to complete the comeback and finished the game down by 18 points.

The Ephs shot very poorly, finishing the first half shooting

shy of 30 percent from the field and having only hit three of 14 three-point attempts.

Down 20-8 halfway through the half, the Ephs took a timeout to halt the Continentals’ momentum. Out of the timeout, Williams gained back a bit of ground and cut their deficit back to single digits with eight minutes to play but, once again, Hamilton came roaring back, this time with a remarkable run from behind the arc. Five of the Continentals’ next six buckets were three-pointers, allowing them to rack up a massive amount of points in a short time.

Williams, meanwhile, continued their shooting woes and also struggled to hold onto the ball. Hamilton came up with six steals in the first half and finished the game with 21 points off of turnovers.

The Ephs narrowed the lead slightly in the final minutes as the Continentals cooled off a bit from the field, and Greenman swished a wild buzzer-beating three-pointer to set the score at 45-25 at the half.

Clawing their way back into the game over the course of the second half behind dominant play by Scadlock and Greenman, Williams cut its deficit from 20 at the half to just seven with 7:45 to play. Scadlock and Greenman were both in double figures in the second half alone, and the duo combined for more than 50 percent of the team’s second-half.

However, three consecutive Continental three-pointers immediately halted the Ephs’ advance, reinvigorated the home crowd and put the Continentals back up by sixteen. A pair of foul shots by Soto and a trey by Casey pulled Williams to within 11, but Hamilton pulled away once and for all with an 8-1 run. Hamilton’s 18-point margin with two-and-a-half minutes to play remained virtually unchanged to the final buzzer, and the final tally was 94-76 in Hamilton’s favor. Scadlock led Williams in both scoring and rebounds, notching 20 points and securing nine rebounds.

Williams had gone 2-4 in January before the Hamilton loss.

They defeated Oneonta State and Colby but lost to Amherst, Trinity, Bowdoin and Hamilton.

Today, the men have a rematch away against archrival Amherst at 7 p.m.

at St. Lawrence Carnival

By HANNAH COLE AND JACK SCHRUPP TEAM CORRESPONDENTS

Skiing opened its 2017 season at the St. Lawrence Carnival. After two days of competition, the Ephs finished sixth overall with 500 points.

On Friday, the alpine skiers took to the slopes at Whiteface Mountain for the giant slalom.

The men’s team, led by Charlie Harrison ’18, posted some solid results. Harrison finished in 21st and was followed by Will Kannegieser ’20 in 30th and Ryan Schmidt ’20 in 33rd. On the women’s side, co-captain Hannah Hunsaker ’19 led the way by skiing into eigth. Gibson Donnan ’19, in addition, had some fast runs and finished 37th.

The Nordic cross country races unfolded at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. Luke Costley ’17 charged his way to a 13th place finish in the 1.5k classic sprint, leading the way for the men in the best race of his college career.

Co-captain Eli Hoenig ’17, Hans Halvorsen ’17 and Dylan Syben ’20 followed him closely and all finished in the top 30.

The women’s race was highlighted by performances from Ingrid Thyr ’20 and Heidi Halvorsen ’18, who finished 17th and 25th respectively.

Day two of the carnival was on Jan. 21 and included slalom at Whiteface and 5/10k freestyle at Mt. Van Hoevenberg.

In the alpine competition, Hunsaker once again led the Williams team with an impressive slalom performance. She skied the third fastest time for the first run and ended the day in ninth place overall. Donnan and Lara Lathrop ’18 finished in 46th and 50th, respectively, to round out the Eph women’s alpine scoring.

On the men’s side, Harrison broke into the top 20 with a 19th place performance. Bryan Bailey ’19 took 32nd and Schmidt again earned 33rd place. Finally, Paul Sheils ’20 and cocaptain Marc Talbott ’18 raced to 43rd and 50th, respectively.

In the Nordic competition, a 5k skate race, Thyr and Sonya Jampel ’19 led the women. Thyr and Jampel finished 18th and 19th, just ahead of teammates Sarah Becker ’18 and Carmen

Bango ’20, who earned 30th and 33rd. Co-captain Hannah Benson ’17 and Tsaina Mahlen ’17 rounded out the Ephs’ top six finishers in 38th and 39th.

In the 10k skate competition, the three scoring Ephs — Braden Becker ’19, Jordan Fields ’17 and Hoenig — finished almost successively in 10th, 12th and 13th, respectively. The trio of low scores contributed to the mens’ fourth-place finish in the second day of Nordic competition. Nick Gardner ’19, Costley and Jack Schrupp ’18 rounded out the Ephs’ top six in 21st, 40th and 48th.

Dartmouth won the overall competition in dominant fashion with 961 points. The University of Vermont followed in second place with 830 points, and the University of New Hampshire took third with 647 points. Williams earned sixth place with 500 points.

“It was great to finally kick off the race season and to put on some bibs for the first time against the rest of the [Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA)] league,” Nordic Head Coach Jason Lemieux '01 said.

“I believe we’ll see some of the best results we’ve ever seen from this team as we sharpen up and the season moves forward.”

Alpine Head Coach Kelsey Levine ’10 also commented on the results. “It was great to have different athletes scoring points each day,” she said. “I am excited to watch the team continue to push its limits.”

“I was very excited about the team’s performance,” Hunsaker added. “We brought three freshman boys and one freshman girl to this first carnival, and I thought all four of them did an outstanding job representing Williams for the first time.”

“We have a lot of depth and speed on the men’s side, and I know they did not quite reach their full potential this weekend; I am excited to see what they can do in the coming weeks,” she said. “Now that we have one carnival under our belts, I feel like we have the talent to move even further up the ranks.”

On Friday, the team will travel to the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H. for its second carnival.

Women’s squash takes Men’s swim and dive loses to MIT, beats Middlebury down Middlebury, 6-3

By COLIN HOGAN TEAM CORRESPONDENT

By ANANYA MAHALINGAMDHINGRA TEAM CORRESPONDENT Women’s squash (13—2, 4—0 in the NESCAC) defeated NESCAC rival Middlebury 6-3 on Friday. The win was the team’s ninth consecutive victory and brought positive momentum for a week of important contests.

Playing the three-court system, No. 9 Charlotte Walsh ’17, captain and No. 6 Alyssa Ritchie ’17 and No. 3 Hayley Parsons ’18 were up first. Walsh was first off court, defeating her opponent in three quick games. Ritchie played a tough opponent and managed to get a game when down 2-0, but ended up falling in the fourth. Parsons played an extremely close match, coming back from a 2-1 deficit to win in five tight games, making the overall match score 2-1 in the Ephs’ favor.

Next on court were No. 8 Anna Nicholson ’20, No. 5 Melissa Swann ’20 and No. 2 Esther Baek ’19. Nicholson defeated her opponent in a dominant three games. Swann also stayed strong throughout her match, winning 3-0. Baek, in similar fashion, finished her match 3-0, remaining tough even in a tie-breaking second game, and gaining the winning fifth and deciding point for the women.

Last up were No. 7 Ellen Coombe ’17, No. 4 Ananya Mahalingam-Dhingra ’18 and No. 1 Nicole Friedman ’18. Coombe and Mahalingam-Dhingra both faced difficult opponents and, despite taking their matches to a tie-breaking fifth game, fell 3-2. Friedman won her first two games and then lost the next two, but she remained strong in the fifth and won, making the overall match score 6-3.

The victory extended the Ephs’ winning streak to nine

matches. The team has not lost a match throughout Winter Study. The last defeat for the women was on Dec. 4, when they fell to Princeton 8-1.

The women won their match against the University of Virginia on Jan. 15. Friedman, Baek and Parsons, the top three Ephs, all won their matches.

On Jan. 14, the team narrowly edged a talented George Washington squad. All of the matches were hard-fought and Nicholson, demonstrating both skill and drive, sealed the 5-4 victory with a 3-2 win.

The women also routed Franklin and Marshall 8-1 on Jan. 13 and beat a strong Bates team 7-2 on Jan. 8. Before that, they had four straight 9-0 wins over Wellesley, Mount Holyoke and NESCAC foes Bowdoin and Colby.

“I’ve been so impressed with the team and each girl’s motivation this Winter Study,” Ritchie said. “It can be hard to stay motivated during this stretch, but the team has really come together and united behind a common goal each week. For example, when we went to D.C. and played G.W. and U.V.A, we each knew that those were really important matches to establish our ranking. So we worked hard each day with those matches in mind.”

She added, “Each win gets us more excited about the next match, and I think this year could definitely be the year we accomplish our goal of beating Dartmouth.”

The results from the women’s match against Brown on Tuesday came in too late to report.

The team will face Columbia on Friday at 4 p.m. in the Simon Squash Center and compete against Little Three rivals Wesleyan and Amherst on Saturday in the Pioneer Valley.

Men’s swimming (8—2 , 4—0 in the NESCAC) competed Friday at MIT and Saturday at Middlebury. The Ephs fell 188-110 to the Engineers but came back to defeat the Panthers 213-80.

At the Middlebury Natatorium, Ben Lin ’17 led the way for the Ephs, breaking pool records in the 50 butterfly and the 100 IM with times of 22.13 and 51.25, respectively. The 100 IM performance was also a NESCAC record, which broke Wright Frank’s 1995 mark of 52.13. This is Lin’s fourth individual NESCAC record. In addition, he is part of both NESCAC-record medley relays.

Timothy Kostolansky ’18, Colin Hogan ’17, Kenny Liu ’19 and Lucca Delcompare ’20 followed Lin in the 100 IM to give the Ephs the top five spots in that race.

Not to be overshadowed, Matt Zappe ’20 won the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:13.53. His split in the last 50 meters, 34.12, was the fastest in the field and secured him the victory.

In a close race, Andrew Trunsky ’20 out-touched a Middlebury swimmer by twotenths of a second to win the 1000 freestyle.

John Freeman ’17, Jamie Finnegan ’19, Jack Melnick ’19, co-captain Grant Johnson ’17 and Curtis Maher ’19 all contributed individual wins.

Steven Kreuch ’20 continued his dominance with wins in both the 1-meter and 3-meter boards.

“We were happy to close off the regular season some fast swimming and a win,” Johnson said.

On Friday, the Ephs visited the Engineers. In a matchup of two NCAA Div. III top 10 teams, MIT came out ahead with a score of 188-110.

At last year’s NCAA Championships, the Engineers finished in fifth, just one spot ahead of the Ephs.

“We were excited to race against some good competition Friday. We weren’t able to get the win, but there’s a lot we’ll be able to learn from this meet moving forward,” Assistant Coach Brogan Barr said.

The Engineers set the tone early by finishing first and second in the 400 medley relay.

The Ephs have enjoyed success in recent national medley relay events, finishing first in the 400 medley relay at the 2015 NCAA Championships and first in the 200 medley relay at the 2016 NCAA Championships.

MIT’s impressive showing in the medley relay was only the second time the Williams medley team has lost this season. It was the first time that they lost to a Div. III opponent.

Eph veteran Lin squared off with the Engineers’ Bouke Edskes in the 100 butterfly. Lin won that race, and his time of 49.55 was just fast enough to reach the NCAA ‘B’ Standard.

The 100 butterfly was Lin’s third individual win of the day,

as he also took home first place in both the 100 and 200 backstroke events.

In the 200 freestyle, Maher dueled MIT’s David Morejon.

Maher turned in the fastest 200 freestyle time from any Eph so far this year with a 1:43.18, but Morejon was able to hit the wall first in 1:42.56.

Morejon then went down to the wire with Trunsky in the 500 freestyle. Morejon again took first, but the Ephs showed their depth by taking the second through fifth places behind him.

Trunsky earlier had reached an NCAA ‘B’ Standard in the 1650 freestyle by finishing in 16:15.27. He won that event and led a Williams 1-2 sweep with Dan Needham ’18.

The tandem of Kreuch and Andrew Lyness ’17 put in another strong diving performance.

Kreuch finished second on both boards and continued to dive well. Lyness finished fourth on both boards and proved his value as a point-scorer.

Despite the loss, the team performed well according to Johnson. “MIT was a challenging meet, but we rose to

the challenge and got up and raced them," he said. “It is always great to gain some experience racing one of the fastest Div. III teams outside of the NESCAC.” With the close of the regular season, the championship season begins next weekend back at the Middlebury Natatorium, where six Ephs will compete at the Middlebury Invitational.

The remainder of the team will make up the 24-person roster that competes at the NESCAC Championships at Wesleyan from Feb. 17-19.

“The men have done a good job handling a tough three weeks of racing,” Head Coach Steve Kuster said. “We will certainly be tested at NESCACs, so hopefully we’ll show up 24 strong, ready to rise to the challenge.”

The Ephs will look for their 15th straight NESCAC title but will face strong competition from Tufts, Conn. College and archrival Amherst.

The Ephs were unbeaten in NESCAC competition, recording important victories against Tufts and Conn. College but lost to Boston College and MIT.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Lucca Delcompare ’20 swam in four events for Williams at the 213-80 win over Middlebury.