Feb. 13, 2019: Resurfaced 2009 report sheds light on struggles of minority faculty, staff

RECORD THE WILLIAMS

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2019 VOL. CXXXIII, NO. 14 Haynes reflects on diversity, inclusion

Page 3

Ephs crowdsource search for love

Page 6

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE SINCE 1887

Resurfaced 2009 report sheds light on struggles of minority faculty, staff

By REBECCA TAUBER EXEXCUTIVE EDITOR Departures of faculty of color in 2007 prompted the formation of the Faculty Staff Initiative (FSI), a grassroots group that examined the experiences of minority faculty and staff at the College. Led by Professor of Latina/o studies Maria Elena Cepeda, then-Professor of Africana Studies at the College and current Associate Professor of English at Rutgers Stéphane Robolin and Professor of American Studies Dorothy Wang, FSI published a report in 2009 that outlined many problems faculty and staff of color faced and provided suggestions for concrete future steps.

The recent cancellation of couses by Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Kai Green ’07 and Assistant Professor of English Kim-

berly Love has compelled a closer examination of the College’s history regarding its retention and well-being of faculty of color.

Contributors to the FSI Report said that the problems presented by the report are still relevant, and administrators said that they recognize those problems and are committed to working to address them.

Professor of Art Laylah Ali ’91, who signed the report, maintained the continued significance of the report’s findings. “The College’s optimistic POC rhetoric and statistics do not always match what is happening on the ground, with colleagues, in meetings, in our town, etc. for many faculty of color, both untenured and tenured,” she said.

“We need to really address both recruitment and retention of staff and faculty of color not simply through words and reports and

committees — there have been quite a few of these in my almost 18 years as faculty here — but through actions that will profoundly and rapidly change the conditions under which we are operating, not just put out fires or nibble at the edges. And the College has historically treated faculty of color who challenge the College’s mainstream, outdated approaches as troublemakers or as difficult individuals instead of hearing the truth in what they are raising, often at great cost to themselves.”

Dean of the Faculty Denise Buell recognized the struggles of minority faculty as a problem that requires collaborative effort to resolve. “This is work that’s on our minds all the time, that we’re collaborating around, she said. “This is work that can’t just continued on p. 5

Student tributes honor Kai Green ’07 and Kimberly Love, who cited institutional violence in their decisions to take leave from the College

ANIAH PRICE/PHOTO EDITOR

An installation in solidarity with Green and Love in Hollander Hall. Full coverage on Page 4 by Haeon Yoon.

College Council elects new presidents, vice presidents, class representatives

By ARRINGTON LUCK NEWS EDITOR College Council (CC) held its elections this past week, voting in a new slate of presidents, vice presidents and representatives. 478 students voted in this year’s election, which featured only one presidential ticket, bringing turnout to 21.73 percent. To compare, the turnouts of the 2018 and 2017 College Council presidential elections were 50.02 percent and 46.79 percent, respectively. This election’s turnout by class year was 14 percent for seniors, 17 percent for juniors, 20.17 percent among sophomores and 31.75 percent among freshman. Last semester, the turnouts were 16.24, 16.37, 19.75 and 45.91, respectively.

On Sunday, CC announced vice presidential results. Chris Mykrantz ’20 and Solly Kasab ’21 will serve as vice presidents of communications, Haoyu Sheng ’20 and Ruairi O’Cearuil ’20 will serve as vice presidents for academic affairs, Will Howie ’20 will serve as vice president for student organizations, Tristan Whalen ’22 will serve as vice president for student affairs and Kai Soto-Dessen ’22 will serve as vice president for community and diversity.

Additionally, Jamie Vaccaro ’21, treasurer of the sailing team, was selected as CC’s new treasurer. In 2016-2017, the latest year for which statistics were available, sailing requested $17,873.91. Vaccaro’s election comes at a time when CC is grappling with spending on high cost club sports, including sailing.

Lance Ledet ’21 was selected as parliamentarian and Long Le ’21 was selected as assistant treasurer.

There were no self-nominations for the position of the class of 2021 representative, with write-ins electing Tyler Johnson, Alex Szrol, Onyeka Obi and Porter Johnson to the position of class of 2021 Representative.

Notably, “Papa Smurf” amassed nine votes in the first round, more votes than Szrol, Obi or Johnson.

In an email to the Record, Szrol remarked on his narrow victory over the popular children’s cartoon character. “The fact that I nearly lost to ‘Papa Smurf’ really speaks to the general attitude students have towards what College Council does,” Szrol said. “Nonetheless, I’ll try my best to represent both the students that care and don’t care about Council.”

Obi does not believe that the lack of self-nominations demonstrates a lack of belief in the college by members of the class of 2021. “We are invested in fixing the parts of the College that are unsustainable in ways that are actually tangible,” she said.

Obi plans to give her role to Brendan Hall.

For Tyler Johnson, who cited the low turnout in all class representative elections, “The lack of self noms for 2021 rep seems to be an exaggeration of the broader trend.”

Linda Worden, Serapia Kim, William Chen and Jake Bingaman were elected to represent the class of 2019.

Shane Beard, Alex Zilkha, Jesus Payan and Kevin Silverman were elected to represent the class of 2020. Silverman resigned his seat following the election.

Alice Qu, Lilianne Au, Margot Berman and Max Chayet will be representing the class of 2022.

During this election, three copresidents were elected to CC. For the next calendar year, Ellie Sherman ’20, Carlos CabreraLomelí ’20 and Olivia Tse ’20 will serve as CC co-presidents.

As co-president, Sherman said that she seeks to engage in “compassionate leadership.”

Cabrera-Lomeli affirmed this commitment, stating “Our resources, networks and institutional knowledge are not here for the exclusive benefit of CC, but for the whole campus.

CC is yours.”

CPC working group declares immediate need for two hires for Asian American studies program

By SAMUEL WOLF

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

A decades-long push for an Asian American studies (AAS) program made significant inroads on Thursday, when a working group formed by the Curricular Planning Committee (CPC) announced its recommendation that at least two new faculty be hired for the expansion of AAS at the College, concluding that “a program cannot be formed with current faculty resources.”

In its report, the working group, composed of both students and faculty, announced strong support for an AAS program, laying out arguments for its merits and a framework for its implementation at the College.

The working group, which was assembled in October 2018 and has been meeting weekly since, was charged by the CPC with “respond[ing] to questions about future possibilities for Asian American studies: curricular development, structures for a possible program, staffing implications, and so on,” according to the report. To this end, the report emphatically expressed that the creation of an AAS program would be impossible without additional faculty hires. In addition to maintaining current AASrelated courses in units such as history, American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS), the report recommended hiring two tenure-

track faculty who would devote at least half of their teaching to an AAS curriculum. The report suggested the formation of an AAS concentration composed of at least five courses, including one introductory course and one capstone seminar. A third faculty hire was recommended following the formalization of the program and concentration.

The working group was chaired by Associate Professor of Geosciences Mea Cook and Associate Professor of Religion Jeff Israel, both of whom are members of the CPC. Working group members included Assistant Professor of WGSS Vivian Huang, Associate Professor of English Bernie Rhie, Professor of History Carmen Whalen, Professor of American Studies Dorothy Wang, Professor of History Scott Wong and Professor of Chinese Li Yu, as well as students Grace Fan ’19 and Tyler Tsay ’19.

When faculty members were asked why they chose to join the working group, many cited a history of activism in the AAS movement. “I have been teaching Asian American history here for 27 years, so it seems natural for me to have been part of the working group in order to provide some historical context for the proposal,” Wong said.

Wang also referenced her advocacy. “Since I was an undergraduate in the 1980s, I’ve been committed to the field of Asian American studies,” she

said. “I came to Williams in 2006 as an assistant professor in the American studies program; since my arrival, I have been actively supporting and mentoring those student activists – mostly Asian American but not exclusively – who have been fighting for the creation of a program at the College.”

Student and faculty activism around AAS far predates the creation of the working group.

As the recommendation lays out prominently, students first proposed an AAS program in the early 1990s through the group Asian American Studies in Action (AASiA). In the past year, AAS student activism has increased significantly; the report details that “students have held a workshop during Claiming Williams and three separate teachins with attendance at 100+, as well as organizing a photo campaign, a poster campaign and a ribbon action at the 2018 graduation that showed overwhelming support for AAS.” Faculty, too, have engaged in large-scale efforts for AAS in the past several years. In September 2016, Professor of German Gail Newman, who was the chair of the CPC at the time, reached out to several faculty members from the Asian studies department for assistance with the Asian American studies initiative.

“The majority of Asian studies continued on p. 4

College named top Fulbright producer among bachelor’s institutions for the first time

By KAIRA MEDIRATTA EXECUTIVE EDITOR With 23 offers in the 201819 cycle, the College is the top producer of Fulbright recipients among bachelor’s institutions. While the College has made the list every year since it was published and frequently ranks among the top five, this cycle marks the first time the College has secured the No. 1 position.

This past year was notable in multiple ways. The College had a record 65 applicants, with 32 making it to the next round of the competition and 22 finally accepting the offer of an award (two of whom were chosen from alternates). Members of the senior class made up most of the awardees, although two alums – namely Sarah Weiser ’17 and Matthew Goss ’17 – were also among the winners.

The Fulbright Program is one of several United States cultural exchange programs whose goal is to improve intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy and intercultural competence between the people of the U.S. and other countries via the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills. “The Fulbright Program awards approximately 8000 grants annually,” its website states. “Roughly 1600 U.S. students, 4000 foreign students, 1200 U.S. scholars and 900 visiting scholars receive awards, in

addition to several hundred teachers and professionals.”

The Fulbright is one of the most competitive fellowship programs in the world, making this year’s yield all the more significant. Looking beyond bachelor’s-only

for a study/research grant or an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA), both of which are awarded for one academic year. Recipients of the former plan their own projects, which may include coursework, lab research or

PHOTO COURTESY OF JACOB SPERBER.

Two of last year’s Fulbright recipients, Nohemi Sepulveda ’18 (right) and Jacob Sperber ’18, met up in Valencia, Spain, for a mid-year conference. institutions, the College in fact produced more winners than Columbia, Stanford and Yale, which produced 16, 16 and 13, respectively.

Generally speaking, U.S. applicants will apply either

work in the creative or performing arts. The primary focus of the latter is to engage students in the classroom; it does not require a significant research component.

ETA participants typically

work in schools where they can strengthen the students’ language abilities and knowledge of the U. S. From the 2018-19 cycle, approximately two-thirds of the winners received ETAs for teaching abroad, with the other third receiving one-year grants to study or conduct research in their academic fields – a trend which has been consistent in past years.

Simply looking at the number of winners, however, glosses over other nuances, such as the recipients’ destinations – as some are more competitive than others – and the number of students who turned down their Fulbright offers in favor of other opportunities.

Certain locations, such as Poland, Spain and Germany for example, garnered multiple winners. There also existed a correlation between major and country, with many winners having majored in a language native to their country of destination.

Director of Fellowships Katya King attributed much of the favorable outcomes to the sheer number of applicants, the caliber of these applicants and the support and guidance from both faculty and the Fellowships Office itself. From setting up mock deadlines to the nomination and selection stages of national competitions, the Fellowships Office served as a resource to both current students and alums in their application processes.

WHAT’S INSIDE 3 OPINIONS

6 FEATURES

7 ARTS

8 SPORTS

The problem with supportive snapping

Students facilitate dining services program

Professor Kim discusses ‘Beale Street’

Women's ice hockey prepares for Midd

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

2 OPINIONS

The Williams Record

Opinions Editors Kenia Cruz Guardado Kevin Zhang Yang

Editor-in-Chief Danny Jin Managing Editors Nicholas Goldrosen Jane Petersen

Features Editors Nigel Jaffe Irene Loewenson

Productions Manager William Newton Director of Communications RB Smith

Arts Editors Lily Goldberg Phillip Pyle Sports Editors Sofie Jones Jack McGovern

Technology Manager Aki Takigawa Executive Editors Cassie Deshong, Lydia Duan, Jeongyoon Han, Brooke Horowitch, Kaira Mediratta, Rebecca Tauber, Samuel Wolf, Charles Xu and Haeon Yoon News Editors Rose Houglet Arrington Luck

THE WILLIAMS RECORD BOARD

Photo Editors Sabrine Brismeur Aniah Price Sophia Shin Business Staff Rishad Karim, Ali Ladha, Mehr Sawant, Nelson Walsh and Isabella Wang

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE SINCE 1887

With the recent leaves of Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Kai Green ’07 and Assistant Professor of English Kimberly Love, the College’s need to foster an inclusive environment to support faculty and staff from all backgrounds and of all identities has become ever more apparent. This concern has been long-standing; the Faculty-Staff Initiative (FSI) Report in 2009 centered the retention of faculty and staff of color as a pressing issue. In the College’s mission statement, the Board of Trustees writes, “Diversity is not an end in itself, but a principle flowing from the conviction that encountering differences is at the heart of the educational enterprise.”

Diversity and inclusion are not peripheral but central concerns to the College – the departure of members from our community because they feel unwelcome and unsafe should be of grave concern.

The issue of retaining faculty of color, in particular, is all the more pressing with the expansions taking place in several academic units. As one example, the Curricular Plan-

Word on the Quad

February 13, 2019

Centering inclusiveness in the College’s educational mission A call for renewed attention to issues of minority faculty and staff well-being ning Committee Working Group on Asian American Studies’ recent recommendation to create three faculty positions in Asian American studies and eventually a program in the discipline will necessitate an equitable environment at the College that can sustain the long-term retention of faculty. The recent expansion of Native and Indigenous studies in the American studies program is another. Formalizing these disciplines is crucial to satisfying student demand and upholding the liberal arts mission of the College. An equally important element of this mission is affirming and supporting all scholars. Therefore, supporting the faculty who will build these programs with their scholarship and teaching is imperative.

While the retention of faculty of color will prove crucial to the College’s academic success, so too is the retention of staff of color.

Administrative and support staff are central to the College’s educational mission, and it is urgent that the College creates an environment in which staff of color can thrive and belong as well. Staff of color,

as well as junior and visiting faculty, lack the crucial protection of tenure; recognizing this double burden, and how it might also undercut the ability of staff of color to advocate for themselves, is also crucial to the College’s work on inclusivity. We acknowledge and recognize the risks that junior faculty and staff take on in their advocacy for inclusion at the College – such as in the FSI report.

Faculty and staff of color often bear an increased service burden with regards to mentoring and supporting students of color, low-income students and first-generation college students. The need for various College committees and groups to have diverse membership also disproportionately burdens faculty and staff of color with additional service work. Recognizing the worth of this informal mentoring work that occurs in addition to more formal service expectations is crucial to retaining faculty and staff of color who are vital mentors to students.

The College must also recognize the unique burdens that relocating to Williamstown – which is in a

county that is over 90 percent white – can impose on faculty and staff of color. These challenges are numerous: a lack of culturally important foods or shops in the area, bullying or ostracism of one’s children in local schools, as Professor of Chinese Li Yu detailed in an op-ed for the Record (“A minority kid’s experience in a dominantly white small town,” Sept. 11, 2018) or discriminatory treatment at local businesses, as Love and Green recounted in their article for The Feminist Wire.

As the FSI Report identified, the College must foster and grow support networks for mentorship of faculty and staff of color that extend to helping them make a home in the local community as well.

In every hiring announcement it posts, the College pledges that “Williams College is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive community in which members of all backgrounds can live, learn and thrive.” In light of recent events, it is clear there is still work to be done to ensure that this is a community where faculty and staff of color can live, learn and thrive.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

What’s your favorite podcast?

By SABRINE BRISMEUR and ANIAH PRICE PHOTO EDITORS

BOOTS RILEY

I guess we’ll never find out Mr. ____’s name.

WALLS

Just like Night at the Muesem, am I right?

VALENTINE’S DAY

Just another overly-commercialized product of capitalism. But I wouldn’t say no to chocolate.

MACKENZIE GRACE ’22

“Notes in Spanish” by Ben and Marina.

DROP/ADD OVER

DELSA LOPEZ ’21

“Welcome to Nightvale.”

LETTER TO THE EDITOR To the Editor,

MELINDA KAN-DAPAAH ’20

“Jesus and Jollof” with Yvonne Orji and Luvvie Ajayi.

MINH TRAN ’19

“The Bodega Boys.”

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 College community. The Opinions section is designed to reflect the varied views and ideas of the College 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 kc17@williams. edu and kzy1@williams.edu by Sunday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Opeds range in length from 650-800 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.

Does Williams have a speech problem, as some of my faculty colleagues have asserted? While there is no question that the notion of freedom of speech put forth in the First Amendment has been complicated in interesting but challenging ways in recent years, I would submit that what Williams has – mirroring the rest of our culture – is more of a listening problem. As more and more different voices ask, demand and expect to be heard on campus, those of us who have considered our perspectives and habits to be the norm expend our energy scurrying around trying to find solutions to the “problem” that we define

No way to escape reading 200 pages of mid-18th century literature now.

those voices to be, rather than listening carefully and curiously to what they are saying. It is much more difficult to hear others when you’re focused on trying to convince them of what you are certain is right.

It is also more difficult to hear others’ voices when they are speaking in a language that is foreign to you. The world our students have grown up in – a world marked by climate change, political extremism and economic inequality – makes for an entirely different experience of and approach to the past, present and future than previous generations’. As a consequence, the language used to express expectations, fears and protest has changed, and continues to change at a rapid pace. Rather than slowing down, focusing our minds and straining our ears to learn this new language, we have tended to speak more loudly and act more

frantically to make our own language understood.

In a way then, I could say we have a translation problem, too.

People from marginalized groups have been asked to do all the translating: they are required to “read” the dominant culture accurately and speak its language fluently enough not to stand out. Perhaps it is time for us to do a bit of the hard work of reading and speaking another language. Every day, I’m humbled by my language students’ willingness to make themselves vulnerable, to listen closely to each other and themselves and to take the risk of speaking provisionally, without knowing if what they are saying is “correct.” I wish the same for our community.

Gail M. Newman Harold J. Henry Professor of German and Comparative Literature

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Last week, we reported that Kimberly Love, assistant professor of English, and Kai Green ’07, assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, had canceled their spring semester courses.

Love had cited “the College’s violent practices” as the reason for her departure in an email to students enrolled in her courses; Green had written in an email to a reporter that the College was “not a safe place” for them.

In the time since the article’s publication, the Record has received criticism that our coverage did not extensively address the antiblackness and transphobia that Love and Green experienced. Another criticism was that the piece did not explore broader issues of equity and inclusion that manifest them-

selves in the College’s historic struggles to support and retain its minority faculty.

Our foundational duty is to provide our readers with relevant information that we are able to gather and verify using direct sources. The articles that we publish include the details that we feel we can responsibly communicate with respect to journalistic ethics and standards. Thus, in order to uphold our commitment to credible reporting, we publish only information that can be either backed by facts or attributed to direct accounts. Either failing to report a relevant story or reporting information we are unable to source would be negligent.

While no one story can claim to give a comprehensive account of an issue, each is part of a continuous effort to

shed light on the events and problems that affect the College community. Our inquiry into a pertinent issue does not end with one article.

On Thursday, we were sent a copy of the 2009 Faculty and Staff Initiative report, a document detailing the difficulties faced by minority faculty at the College and recommendations for the College to better support its minority faculty and staff. Since we became aware of this document, we have interviewed key participants in the report’s publication and ensuing discussion in an effort to examine how these issues persist in and affect our community today. We hope that our coverage this week further advances and informs campus conversation regarding these problems. We will work to do the same in

the future as we pursue additional information.

We serve to seek answers to questions that our community raises. We encourage readers to contact us with tips, concerns and criticisms that can enhance or accelerate our coverage.

We will continue to investigate issues that affect members of our community – particularly issues that have previously received insufficient attention and those that affect vulnerable groups. In doing so, we hope to contribute toward a more equitable environment while adhering to our obligation to avoid conjecture and misinformation.

We owe the College, the community and our readers nothing less.

Danny Jin Editor-in-Chief

February 13, 2019

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

The problem with snapping

Diversity and inclusion at Williams

How a sign of support devalues lived experiences

Reflecting on the College’s steps to ensure a representative faculty

By RUTH KRAMER

Snapping, when used to show agreement, is arguably a very easy form of We’ve all heard it. The quick snap solidarity. Yet, there are so many altersnap snap coming from an audience natives to snapping to show support for during a speech or a dialogue. This is a speaker you agree with. One way, if not an uncommon occurrence, espe- possible, is to seek the speaker out later cially at the College. Before coming to and ask them questions, express your college, I had never seen people snap interest or even relate your own experifor ideas they believed in or statements ences to show the speaker that they are they stood behind. But upon hear- not alone. Rather than sitting and making it over and over again, especially ing meaningless noise during their diawhen these statements had nothing to logue, ask if there’s anything you can do do with the people supporting them, I to initiate change or do research to find grew irritated. Snapping during dia- out for yourself. If a particular sentence logue was originally supposed to be a or idea truly moves you during the diasign of support and solidarity, a way of logue or presentation and you feel you saying “thank you for putting my expe- must somehow show the speaker your rience into words.” However, “support- solidarity, you can make a forward-facive snaps” have quickly become snaps ing fist and move it forwards and backof attention – they say, “Look at me. wards. This small movement is “yes” in I’m aware that experiences other than sign language, and this silent affirmamy own exist.” Boots tion alerts the speaker Riley’s visit earlier of your support and this month is a perfect understanding with“‘Supportive snaps’ example of this: His out taking any attenwords specifically retion away from them have quickly become garding the black expethrough sound. rience in America were Since coming to Wilsnaps of attention moving, but the snaps liams, I have been trufrom many white peo- they say, ‘Look at me.’” ly struck at how much ple dying to show their people want to learn “wokeness” often took from one another. And attention from his wisagain, by how much dom. A minority’s vulwe all benefit from nerability is not an opportunity for oth- sharing our stories and experiences. ers to passively proclaim that they are Yet, when we put our peers on a stage thinkers free of prejudice. This practice and ask them to share their lives with is harmful not only to the speaker, but us, we steal away a piece of their voice also to the rest of the audience. Mak- by inserting ourselves into a personal ing noise for an experience you haven’t narrative we often don’t understand. lived and can’t ever completely compre- It’s important for us all to remember hend isn’t supportive or understanding that the validity of another’s experi– it’s disrespectful. It takes attention ences does not rest on our fingertips. and focus off of a speaker who is placing It doesn’t make us better people, and themselves in a vulnerable position by it doesn’t help the speaker we claim sharing their experience. And it disal- to stand with. So, next time you go to lows others in the audience from hear- snap, ask yourself: Am I snapping to ing the full meaning of the words being serve the interests of the speaker or to spoken to them. With the distractions appeal to the interests of myself? of our peers, how can we, as a community, ever actually learn from experiRuth Kramer ’22 is from Maineville, Ohio. ences that don’t belong to us?

By LETICIA SMITH-EVANS HAYNES Recent events have sharpened many people’s focus on issues of climate, inclusion and retention at Williams, and sparked that awareness for others. The Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity (OIDE) works to foster and improve inclusion on campus, with efforts that also reach out into Williamstown and surrounding communities.

While some of our efforts are well known – for example, the programming done by the Davis Center and the Office of Special Academic Programs – I’d like to lift up to view other important projects that we have been conducting with the faculty and in other less-visible settings.

The links between recruiting, climate and retention are one such area of major concern. In a presentation at a Fall 2018 faculty meeting, Dean of the Faculty Denise Buell, Associate Dean of OIDE Ngoni Munemo and I shared information on our ongoing analysis of faculty retention. The data looked at issues like departure rates by race, ethnicity and gender as well as rank, division, etc. Our intent was to educate faculty about patterns and trends in retention and departures so the college could target efforts, resources and support.

Presentations of this sort occur annually and are a regular part of a decades-long effort by the college to recruit and retain a diverse faculty. We know that Williams faculty experience the institution in different ways, and we aim to ensure that all faculty have an optimal experience while here. In particular, we strive to ensure that no one has a negative experience because of their race, gender, sexual orientation or any other identity factor.

With regards to recruitment, in recent years we’ve increased the range and scope of that work through more robust and involved efforts to build diverse candidate pools; visits to research institutions, including minority-serving institutions such as HBCUs; and support for pathways to the professoriate for students and doctoral candidates from historically underrepresented groups in academia through programs like the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Allison

Davis Research Fellowship, the Creating Connections Consortium (C3) Undergraduate Fellowship and the Gaius Charles Bolin dissertation and postMFA fellowships. Williams students and faculty have taken advantage of or benefited from all of these programs.

We have also hosted campus symposia for doctoral scholars from underrepresented groups, where these scholars can share their research with senior colleagues and get a better understanding of opportunities to teach and research at a liberal arts college. The College is also a founding institution of the aforementioned C3 and the Liberal Arts Diversity Officers consortium (LADO), both of which lead national efforts to diversify the professoriate.

We are keenly aware that, despite such efforts to recruit a diverse faculty and support promising pathways to the professoriate, not all faculty from underrepresented groups find this community to be as inclusive as it ought to be. To further understand the experiences of underrepresented faculty and aid retention, we’ve gathered data on the experiences of faculty of color and women faculty through UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), as well as Williams’ own Committee on Diversity and Community (CDC) and associate deans’ lunches.

As a result, we know that faculty of color and women faculty both at Williams and our peer institutions experience higher rates of stress due to discrimination as a result of prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, among other factors. Subsequently, we’ve used these data to guide our initiatives and programs. For example, we now have an institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) and have held all-faculty retreats and workshops on inclusion in and out of the classroom. We also attempt to improve life in the local community by holding workshops on diversity and inclusion topics for area school systems and educators, law enforcement agencies and others.

In our continuing campus efforts, Dean Buell and I have scheduled upcoming fora and meetings where faculty of color and individuals of underrepresented or minoritized groups can

share their experiences and talk about both how they navigate Williams and what changes would make them feel at home here. We’ve held similar fora for students and faculty over the years.

Those who prefer a smaller setting may choose to meet with me, Associate Dean Munemo, Dean Buell and/or Associate Dean of Faculty Katarzyna Pieprzak. We will offer similar opportunities for staff from the same groups, and after those conversations will hold forums where anyone interested can hear about what we’re learning and what initiatives we might develop or refine. As we (re)think and (re)envision, we also look forward to engaging the entire community during the strategic planning process, where Presidnet Mandel has made diversity, inclusion and equity one of the working groups.

There is more work to be done, and we look forward to doing it. We will continue to listen, learn and adapt our approaches to ensuring a more inclusive campus, and we are committed to supporting all campus stakeholders and partners as they do the same. OIDE will continue to promote faculty diversity and retention along many lines as we: ● partner with the dean of the faculty’s office, departments and programs to attract and recruit candidates; ● hold workshops about minimizing bias in the recruiting process; ● carry out the work of the Diversity Action Research Team (DART), a think-tank for OIDE, where we analyze institutional data that help us identify where troubling disparities may exist; ● conduct exit interviews with departing faculty to understand the factors in their decisions; and ● implement the College’s non-discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct policy and support the College’s bias incident reporting system.

We are working diligently to move towards a campus where differences based on identity are celebrated, and we invite the community’s involvement and partnership in those efforts.

Leticia Smith-Evans Haynes ’99, vice president for institutional diversity and equity, has been at the College since 2015.

Being a student-athlete during Winter Study On the importance of fostering a balance between academics and athletics

By ALEXANDRA PEAR

DARIN LI ’21

Valentine’s Day

How it hurts consumers and the environment

By ALIYA KLEIN It’s that time of year again! Upon entering the grocery store, you are greeted with an onslaught of boxed Godiva, bundled red roses and an astonishing amount of pink and red.

Many of us, even some hopeless romantics, find themselves hating the upcoming day – be it a recent breakup, a mood of forever alone-ness, a dreading feeling that your significant other is only doing something out of obligation or something else entirely, there are always endless cliched reasons to hate Valentine’s Day. Considering this, I did a little more digging and learned that even absent of all these qualms, Valentine’s Day is actually bad for the environment and for the economy.

Around this time of year, red roses become extremely popular and commonly purchased. Because these roses are generally grown in warmer climates, many of them are transported to the United States from South Africa. We fly millions upon millions of red roses and use fossil fuel for refrigeration tanks to preserve them. Sound like a waste yet?

It gets worse. Red roses themselves emit carbon dioxide, and around Valentine’s Day, the high quantity of them causes 9000 metric tons of this carbon dioxide to be emitted. That’s 19,842,000 pounds, or the equivalent of 8,928,900 liters of water. As if this weren’t enough, the cultivation of these flowers requires agrochemicals such as pesticide and fertilizer, causing human health hazards and contributing to water pollution.

Additionally, consumers that buy into Valentine’s Day actually spend an astronomical amount on semiabsurd things. Last year, the average consumer spent $143.56 on the

holiday. This year, the National Retail Federation expects Valentine’s Day to rake in $20.7 billion. The more that people buy into the commercialism of the holiday, the more producers can get away with racking up prices, causing average prices to skyrocket and making simple gifts (i.e. a dozen roses) cost around $75.

This can be seen by looking at the trend of spending in the last five years alone – each year, the amount of total money spent increases by hundreds of millions. People actually spend money on buying Valentine’s Day gifts for their pets, giving even the pet store industry a boost in demand for the short period of time leading up to the day. In general, we could look at this as great for the economy and for industries, but not so great for consumers when all those prices get racked up… So make of that what you will.

In general, wouldn’t we just be better off without Valentine’s Day? Why not just celebrate your friends, family and significant others whenever you want, when the chocolate is cheaper and you’re less likely to have to drop one hundred dollars on the whole ordeal? You could celebrate the love, happiness and observances of Valentine’s Day on literally any other day of the year, and to make this prospect even better, you don’t have to share whatever day you choose with anyone else because it’s not a national holiday. It can be as potentially cliche as you want because if it was done on any day that wasn’t Valentine’s Day, it wouldn’t be cliche. If anything, don’t buy chocolates until the day after, when they’re about 75 percent cheaper.

Aliya Klein ’22 is from Potomac, Md.

At the College, it is common to have to balance your time between academics and athletics. In fact, studentathletes comprise nearly 40 percent of the student body. Being in season during Winter Study complicates this *notion* of a student-athlete. During Winter Study, students are required only to take a single class pass/fail.

Thus, instead of the normal dynamic where coaches are sympathetic to prioritizing school and sports equally, coaches see no reason why athletes shouldn’t immerse themselves fully in their sport during Winter Study. It is common for athletes who are in season during Winter Study to have many consecutive days with morning and evening practices, often totaling over four hours a day. On top of this significant commitment to practice, athletes are competing either home or away nearly every weekend of Winter Study, so their weekends are entirely devoted to their sport as well. With all of this time being invested into a single sport, the emphasis on being a student at the College seems to take a back seat for the entire month of January.

For me, this isn’t just an observation. I experienced firsthand what it was like to be in season during Winter Study as a first-year on the squash team. During all of my first semester, my coach absolutely understood that I needed a work-life balance and that it was unreasonable for him to expect us to devote more than two hours a day to squash. However, when it came time to choosing Winter Study courses, multiple members of my team warned me

not to sign up for classes that were too early or too demanding because I was going to be tired from all of our practicing. That seemed like such a paradoxical objective: I chose Williams because I value challenging myself in the classroom. Thus, to take a lighter Winter Study load because of our demanding squash schedule was at odds with my values. It wasn’t just on the squash team where I heard of instances in which coaches expected the Winter Study period to be about athletics and not academics. My friends on other teams asked their coaches if they could do a slightly lighter practice some days so that they could work on their research paper. One coach was not impressed with the student-athlete’s priorities. Instead of being sympathetic, the coach reminded them that their classes were only pass/fail and that their priority should be to compete well. It was clear that the emphasis was on athletics, not academics, during the month of January.

The heavy emphasis on athletics for in-season athletes was not just academically hindering but socially hindering as well. Many of my friends were having a lot of fun during Winter Study. They constantly had free time and were able to ski, have picnics and go out pretty much every night. This created yet another problem with the notion of being a student-athlete for me. Just because you’re in season doesn’t mean that your sport should occupy all of your time. A huge part of being an athlete is befriending teammates, but there were multiple days, and even weeks, when the only people I was with were my teammates. I felt

stunted socially, I felt limited academically and I felt constantly exhausted because of all our hard training. But it was an impossible problem to try and explain to my other friends who weren’t in season. The time commitment was hard to describe because no other student-athlete, other than those who are in season during Winter Study, is expected to prioritize their sport over every other aspect of their Williams career.

When Winter Study ended, I was a bit sad because I wasn’t sure I was mentally prepared for real classes to start, but I also took a deep sigh of relief. No longer would squash be my sole identity on campus. No longer would my entire day consist of squash and squash-related activities. For the first time in a month, my schedule could regain some semblance of balance and I could work hard in something that wasn’t just squash. It felt good to know that I was more than just an athlete. Being an in-season athlete during Winter Study felt like a very limiting period where my coaches and my school had decided that my biggest role on campus was to be an athlete. I think the term “student-athlete” is a very important one and that studies and athletics should always be prioritized equally, or athletics should take the back seat. Coaches should continue to be cognizant throughout Winter Study that even though their students are only taking one pass/fail class, they are still students with academic and social lives and that their life is far more than just the sport that they play.

Alexandra Pear ’22 is from Philadelphia, Pa.

DARIN LI ’21

4 NEWS

The Williams Record

February 13, 2019

Boots Riley delivers Black History Month keynote Award-winning director speaks on film career, racism, political education and activism

By YASMINA CABRERA STAFF WRITER The Black Student Union hosted a panel discussion with Boots Riley last Wednesday in Paresky Auditorium.

The conversation with Riley, an activist, director, rapper and screenwriter, centered around the theme for this year’s Black History Month, which Isaiah Blake ’21 encapsulated in the following statement: “We belong where we are, not only that but we deserve to be there.”

Shanti Singham, professor of history and Africana studies, facilitated the conversation with Riley and asked the questions collected from the student body.

Singham started by praising Riley’s debut film Sorry to Bother You, an Afrofuturistic satire that critiques our current economic system and its social implications. It follows Cassius “Cash” Green as he climbs the corporate ladder of telemarketing in an attempt to survive in gentrified Oakland. “It is a brilliant, witty, clever, funny, insightful, maddening, energizing, right-on critique of the irrational, dehumanizing, racist, capitalist, sexist system that we are living under today,” she said. She introduced Riley by highlighting some of the key influences that have led to his work as an artist and activist, such as his roots in Oakland, home to the Black Panther Party, and the 1968 San Francisco State strike that brought Black studies, Latinx studies, and Asian American studies into American universities.

Singham emphasized the importance of Sorry to Bother You at this specific moment. “Thank you for being in the right place and at the right time, for bringing this movie out in this moment,” she said. “It’s a moment of a new, important strike wave

SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR

Activist, director, rapper, screenwriter, musician and filmmaker Boots Riley spoke in Paresky Auditorium as this year's Black History Month keynote. across the United States, especially with teachers but also all over the world, a movement that your movie helps inspire and educate.”

She moved on to the questions collected from students, asking Riley for his thoughts on electoralism. “To explain my thoughts on that, I have to explain where I think actual power is in this system,” Riley said. “I think that everyone agrees on the right and on the left, that those with the money have the power.”

He explained that those with power have come to it due to the labor provided by the work-

ing class. “That’s our direct connection to power, our ability to halt it, if we’re organized,” Riley stated, critiquing electoralism for misdirecting political energies. “It confuses where the seat of power is, and it stops us from building a movement that actually has the chance to demand whatever we want from power.”

Riley referred to the New Deal, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and affirmative action as the three biggest moments for social justice reform in U.S. history and pointed out, especially in the case of Richard Nixon and the success of affirmative action, that these moments of reform were not

products of presidential progressivism but were instead fueled by large social movements. “You can make any politician do what you want if you can shut down industry,” he said.

Riley’s journey in political education and activism began at 14 years old, when he met a youth organizer for the International Committee Against Racism. As Riley recounted, the organizer invited him on a trip to the beach with other 14-year-olds, on the condition that he would first join them in support for the Watsonville Cannery Worker strike.

“One thing that I do remember, even just about that van ride, is,

it was a van full of 14-year-old girls, and they knew about everything going on in the world,” he said. “Not only were they talking about these things that were happening, they were talking about them from the context of the possibility of changing these things.” Riley would then go on to join the “summer project” for the Committee.

“Any great texts you remember that changed your life that you think these young people should read?” Singham asked.

Riley cautioned against reading too many theoretical works, stating, “The things that really connected me more … were

CPC working group presents plan for AAS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 faculty (including both core and affiliated faculty) didn’t think that putting Asian American studies under the umbrella of Asian studies would make sense,” Yu said. “Placing Asian American studies under Asian studies would only perpetuate the widespread prejudice and bias against Asian-looking people who live and work in this country: that they are the ‘perpetual foreigners,’ thus always being outsiders of American culture.”

Wang said that she witnessed similar prejudices and misconceptions during her professorship. “When I first arrived at Williams, a named-chair faculty person (who is no longer at the College) asked me what I taught,” she recounted. “I told him I taught Asian American literature in the American studies program, and he said, ‘That makes no sense.

You teach Asian literature in an American studies program?’”

This response led Yu and Wang to pursue an AAS program separate from Asian studies and at the intersection of several disciplines. Wang and Yu co-founded a predecessor working group, the Asian American Studies Working Group, in 2016. According to the report, this group contained “twenty-five faculty members who hail from sixteen different academic units” and submitted a new faculty request to the Committee on Appointments and Promotions (CAP) and CPC in March 2018, setting the groundwork for the more recent working group.

The report highlights the levels of communication that have been necessary in forming its recommendation, starting with outreach toward other institutions of higher learning. In addition, members of the working group participated in community outreach, with Cook and Israel leading a faculty forum in November. “There was interesting discussion about the scope of the field of Asian American studies and recent successful models at the College for the creation of new programs,” Cook said. “These discussions

informed the committee’s think- 61 out of 319 students said that ist – me – and one junior person ing on these topics.” they would concentrate in AAS – Vivian Huang,” she said. “GivFan and Tsay also led a stu- if it were offered; 96 more said en Williams’ dismal record with dent forum to solicit feedback that they maybe would. In the minority faculty retention, even and perspectives. “The com- past five years, three theses and if we succeed in hiring new facmittee was pleased with the 16 independent research study ulty, it is not clear how long it will turnout, the comments and projects have concerned AAS. be before we can form a program the overall positive sentiment Furthermore, over the past five with a stable roster of faculty.” from students,” Tsay said of the years, “an average of 39 students Fan also warned that any failure student forum. “That said, we took one course, and an average to follow the recommendations were also not surprised at the of 7 students took at least two in full could stunt the developamount of interest in the pro- courses in Asian American Stud- ment of an AAS program. “If the gram; students have continually ies.” The report emphasized, College chooses to hire any less demonstrated their passion for however, that these numbers than what we suggested, it’ll be AAS throughout the past few may underestimate the potential a struggle to have enough faculty decades, even with few results.” demand for AAS. “Enrollments to properly establish and support Fan felt bittersweet with the are strongly related to critical a program,” she said. overwhelming display of enthu- mass of courses and faculty contiThe working group’s report, siasm for AAS at the meeting. nuity, so past enrollments do not though a significant step toward “One of our questions asked the likely predict future enrollments an AAS program, does not guarroom to brainstorm AAS classes once the number of faculty and antee its implementation. In they would like to take, and I courses grows,” the report says. the coming months, the report remember just being simultaneThe final major focus of the will be reviewed by the CAP, a ously blown away by everyone’s recommendation was on how to six-member committee that is ideas and upset by the fact that attract and select potential facul- chaired by Dean of the Faculty people were unDenise Buell. “The CAP able to take those has been eagerly awaitclasses here being this report from the cause the curricCPC’s Asian American ulum just doesn’t studies working group exist,” she said. and looks forward to The report itself discussing it,” Buell said. emphasizes the “An important next step Tyler Tsay ’19 interdisciplinary in the CAP's response to benefits of AAS. Co-President of MinCo, Member of the CPC the report is to consider “Institutionalizit in the context of the Working Group on AAS ing Asian Amerispring process of concan studies at sidering tenure-track reWilliams College would elevate ty. In addition to renewing Visit- quests.” She elaborated that the the intellectual life on campus ing Professor of American Stud- CAP will start discussing staffing for everyone, as well as provide ies Anthony Kim’s appointment requests alongside the CPC in a crucial symbolic and material for 2019-2020, the committee early March. Final decisions as to community space for a minority recommended hiring two new tenure-track faculty requests will population whose experience, ex- professors with “Ph.D.’s in inter- be made by May. pertise, and labor are often over- disciplinary fields such as comThe support of department looked,” it says. parative racial and ethnic studies; chairs in fields that intersect with Tsay’s role as co-president of American studies; women’s, gen- AAS will be crucial in upcoming the Minority Coalition (MinCo) der, and sexuality studies; envi- months. Chair of American studalso assisted in connecting AAS ronmental studies; performance ies Cassandra Cleghorn signaled to broader campus discussions. studies; urban studies; or similar strong approval of an AAS pro“What my MinCo role offered interdisciplinary fields.” Wang gram and a willingness to lead most throughout the commit- has offered to chair the necessary in future faculty hiring. “I’m very tee process is a more campus- search committee, which would happy to read this comprehenwide perspective,” Tsay said. emphasize intra-departmental sive report, which moves us into “I was invested in campus de- collaboration in its search. the future of making Asian Amerbates on ‘free speech’ and on All members of the original ican studies a reality at Williams the lack of retention of minor- working group have offered at long last,” Cleghorn said. “The ity faculty; both informed my support for its final recommen- prospect of two new tenure-track role on the committee.” dations. Wang, in particular, positions in the interdisciplinary The report used student course emphasized the importance of social sciences is really exciting history and student opinion in new hires in light of faculty de- and seems to me to be the bare gauging the potential popularity partures. “With Scott Wong’s minimum for getting a program of an AAS program. In a survey imminent retirement, we are left up and running with the faculty that the working group released, with one senior Asian American- who currently teach Asian Amer-

“Even if the institution has forgotten the history of the movment, we as students cannot ever forget.”

ican topics. American studies is enthusiastic and ready to take a leadership role, if necessary, in this process.” Other departments that are listed in the report as intersecting with AAS include “anthropology/sociology, economics, English, history, philosophy, political science and psychology.”

Some department chairs, such as Chair of Political Science James McAllister, have not yet read the report but are openminded toward hiring faculty in coordination with an AAS program. “We are always willing, in principle, to consider participating in such a search if it would add an outstanding political scientist to the department,” McAllister said. Other department chairs, like Chair of History Anne Reinhardt, offered a more direct endorsement of an Asian American studies program and the hiring of new faculty to that end.

While optimistic, Yu provided some caution for those who see the formation of an AAS program as nearly complete. “We are still at a very early stage regarding the ultimate goal of establishing an Asian American studies program,” she said. “The road is still long.” Tsay, additionally, provided historical context. “We’ve reached this point in 2004-05 and in 2012-13; the school, namely the CAP, denied both proposals for additional hires,” he said. For students who want to further the AAS movement, Yu suggested taking currently-offered AAS courses and participating in future faculty searches. Tsay also announced that AASiA will be hosting a series of events to educate the student body on the recommendations and next steps to be taken in addressing the CPC and CAP. In addition, members of the working group will hold a meeting with the faculty in March to answer questions and discuss the potential timeline for the institution of an AAS program. Fan added that there would be tabling at Paresky to answer student questions. “We cannot be complacent; we really have reached this point before,” Tsay said. “Even if the institution has forgotten the history of the movement, we as students cannot ever forget.”

stories of organizers, stories of people who were trying to do things. It became clear to me that when you’re in struggle learning is much different.”

The conversation then moved to Sorry to Bother You and Riley’s goals in creating the film.

“One, I want to make art,” Riley said. “Two, if I’m making art I want to be honest, because otherwise it’s not going to feel good. My goal is to get everyone that watches it to have a feeling that they can be part of changing the world... I’m not only interested in engaging people that already agree with me, I also want to engage people that don’t already agree with me.”

Riley also shared his views on the intersection between race and class, a focal point of his work.

“Race and class are inextricably connected,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to get rid of racism without getting rid of capitalism. You’re not going to be able to create a movement that gets rid of capitalism without dealing with racism.”

Riley explained that he sees racism as a function of capitalism, an arrangement that keeps the working class from seeing poverty as a result of this economic system but rather as something that can be prevented by rejecting customs attributed to black communities and communities of color. In the film, he addresses this idea through Cassius’ “white voice” which he learns to use as he becomes more successful in telemarketing. “The opposite of that idea of blackness is the white voice, which says, ‘I have no problems; everything is taken care of,’” Riley said. “It’s not a real sense of what whiteness is, but the idea that black and white people perform in a way that says, ‘I’m safe, I’m not like them.’”

Commitment to/with/for The Damned

By HAEON YOON EXECUTIVE EDITOR Following the green string that wraps around the first floor of Hollander is a student-organized visual remembrance outside the offices of Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies Kai Green ’07 and Assistant Professor of English Kimberly Love, showing support for the professors and extending their commitment to, with and for The Damned, a black feminist collective.

Students said that their ongoing commemorative effort seeks to convey respect, gratitude and appreciation for Green and Love, who have taken leave for what they characterized as the College’s institutional violence toward black and trans individuals.

The hallways are decorated with notes, flowers, poems, artworks and bouquets made of Record copies – some partially torn – and Feminist Wire articles written by The Damned Collective as well as Green and Love.

As cited in Green and Love’s Feminist Wire article, the installation in solidarity drew on the works and writings of The Damned and The Damned Collective, which works to “combat the isolationists tactics of the University structure that prevents people who believe in transformation and freedom from getting to know themselves and each other differently, al(l)ways.”

Additionally, students have also used Facebook and other platforms on social media to draw attention to a petition where individuals can pledge their commitment to, with and for The Damned, under the hashtags #doitfortheDAMNED and #doitfortheDAMMM. There are cards, pens and other art supplies available in Hollander for more members of the College community to continue to show their support and solidarity for Green and Love.

Students characterized the effort as a collective one, declining to give specific names or quotes attributed to individual participants.

February 13, 2019

NEWS 5

The Williams Record

Faculty to vote on online student course survey

By DAVEY MORSE STAFF WRITER

the system by which PeopleSoft manages grades, if gradewithholding were implemented, students’ failure to complete a SCS for one of their courses would result in an inability to see grades for their other courses.

The Implementation Committee observes that this consequence might have been unclear to the faculty who voted in the May 2017 meeting. The committee argues that the punitive nature of grade-withholding would oppose the collaborative spirit between students and faculty that the form should be reinforcing.

Over the spring of 2017 and the fall of 2018, the Implementation Committee, consisting of Professor of Chemistry Lee Park – its chair – Professor of Psychology Kris Kirby, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Julie Blackwood and Professor of History Karen Merrill, conducted two pilots to test the new system. The recent pilot involved roughly 10 percent of College students, faculty and courses; the results, as interpreted by the committee, support the project. “Overall, the pilot run went pretty smoothly, and as a result, our committee feels comfortable with the new forms,” Park said. The Implementation Committee reported, “We achieved a 72 percent response rate for the online forms, which we feel is promising given that this was a limited roll out, and students didn’t have any warning about what would be happening.”

Looking forward, the Implementation Committee hopes to address “what the reporting will look like,” “how the unit-specific questions will be handled,” and how to accommodate with the courses that traditionally administer the SCS in a unique manner. The Implementation Committee also expects, pending the reception of the motions it will introduce tonight, it may ask the faculty to extend the Fall 2019 deadline for the online system’s full implementation.

In tonight’s faculty-wide meeting, the Student Course Survey Implementation Committee will introduce the findings of the most recent pilot for a new, online Student Course Survey (SCS). The faculty will decide tonight whether to withhold students’ grades in order to incentivize SCS participation.

The online SCS was first recommended by the Committee on the Evaluation of Teaching in April and May of 2017. The committee, which in May 2017 passed the motion to schedule the SCS to go fully online by fall of next year, stipulated that students’ grades would be withheld to encourage their completion of the forms and tasked the Implementation Committee with revising the form.

There are several revisions to the SCS’s format. First, there will be fewer questions on the online form than there had been on the paper form. Second, more general questions are now at the beginning. The first question on the current paper form (after asking for the student’s course information and class year) asks for your “expected grade,” which is deleted from the new SCS. Third, space for brief qualitative comments has been added. The SCS now includes a statement clarifying its purpose, asking students to consider “whether you developed new ways of thinking and gained understanding of ideas and information; and if you were challenged intellectually.” These changes do not depend on another faculty vote.

On the other hand, the faculty will discuss and vote on questions about the form’s administration.

Notably, though the faculty voted in May 2017 to withhold student grades as a means of encouraging participation, the Implementation Committee will motion to eliminate that clause. Given

Driscoll debuts Training Wise program

By SOFIE JONES SPORTS EDITOR A new initiative at Driscoll, “Training Wise,” is designed to help active students eat nutritionally-balanced and wellportioned meals. Launched on Feb. 5, Training Wise meals will be available at Driscoll dinners Monday through Friday and at lunches on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The program is geared toward students who want to be healthy but do not want to fret about it, said the College’s dietetic intern, Michelle Juneau. Juneau, who worked with Driscoll’s unit manager, Molly O’Brien, to curate the program’s menu.

Each meal is 60 percent carbohydrates, no more than 20 percent fat and about 25 percent protein, Juneau said.

Unlike typical dining hall options, Training Wise meals will be pre-plated to ensure optimal portions. The program

brings 40-50 new meals to the Driscoll menu, which will be served on the side serving area at lunch and on the main serving line at dinner. Options that are part of the program will have the Training Wise seal on their label to alert students.

Juneau stressed that this is not meant to delineate between “good” and “bad” foods but rather to mark meal options that have a variety of nutritious benefits. “There really are no good or bad foods,” she said. “Good nutrition relies on variety. We’ve kind of taken the thinking out of that for people.”

The idea for the program came to Associate Director for Student Athlete Services Carolyn Miles and Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Rob Livingstone as a way to help busy students access the healthy options that the dining hall already had in an easier way. “The components were there,” Miles said. “This just simplifies it.”

The usual dining options at Driscoll will not change, and Training Wise meals will be tailored to fit into pre-established traditions, such as Meatless Mondays, O’Brien said.

While Driscoll is the dining hall closest to the College’s athletic facilities and is known to be a popular spot for student-athletes, Miles emphasized that the program is designed to cater to a wide range of students. “It’s not just for athletes,” she said. “It’s for anyone involved with some sort of activity.”

For Morgan Dauk ’21, who competes on the women’s basketball and track and field teams, the new program has taken some of the work out of finding meals that meet her inseason needs. “I have been trying all year to go to meals in the dining halls that would help me in my training,” Dauk said.

“Now I know that Driscoll will almost always have a healthy option, so it makes it super

convenient. I can just grab a plate and know that it was already portioned out for me.”

Juneau noted that this program is especially important in an environment like that of the College. Factors such as a lack of sleep, living in close quarters and stress can weaken the immune system, making nutrition especially crucial, according to Juneau. “It is the first time, for some people, that they get to make their own choices,” she explained.

“It is an opportunity to establish healthy habits, or for unhealthy habits to start.”

Livingstone expressed similar sentiments. “Nutritional habits are long-term actions that play a valuable role in our students’ lives on campus as well as when they leave for the next phase of their lives,” he said. “If we can provide them tools to navigate and understand healthy choices as they move in to adulthood then that is a win for me.”

SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR

Driscoll newly offers nutritionally-balanced meals, available at dinners Monday through Friday and at lunches on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Faculty, administrators discuss lasting implications of FSI report, efforts to resolve issues CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

as those of us on the ground felt it to be. Therefore, we decided to move on our own.”

The College viewed these departures as isolated incidents.

Then-Dean of the Faculty William Wagner, recalled his impressions from 2007. “I can only go by what the faculty of color who left told me in my conversations with them,” he said. “In all the cases that I personally dealt with save one, the reasons given concerned professional opportunities and aspirations and personal and family circumstances, and the move made good sense from those perspectives.” However, Wagner said that he recognized the common difficulties that faculty of color faced. “This is not to say that the particular challenges of being a faculty member of color working at Williams and living in the northern Berkshires did not factor into individuals’ equations,” he said.

FSI members believed there were alternative reasons for the faculty members’ departures.

“There’s always a narrative that it’s an individual reason, and that it’s not actually a problem with the College or the culture around

be done in or from Hopkins Hall.

It’s really important to have college leadership committed to improving the institutional climate, to make it one that is truly equitable for all. But it’s not sufficient just for leadership to say these are our core values. The entire campus community needs to own and participate in the work if we are going to live into these values.”

While the College often creates committees and issues reports, Wang emphasized the unique nature of the FSI report. “It’s almost unprecedented to see a grassroots working group that just appears, especially among untenured junior people,” she explained.

According to Robolin, the unconventional nature of the report stemmed from what he characterized as the administration’s unwillingness to work on the problems raised by minority faculty around the time of the departure of many professors of color in 2007. “There was very explicit discussion between us and the dean of the faculty,” he said. “We didn’t feel as though that sense of crisis was taken as seriously

The Office of Communications recommends ...

Annual Faculty Lecture Series: "The Evolution of Life before Animals: Building Shields, Dodging Snowballs, and Gasping for Breath" with Phoebe Cohen, associate professor of geosciences

Thursday, Feb. 14 4:15 p.m.

Wege Auditorium Reception to follow in Schow Atrium

race, a refusal to connect the dots,” Wang said.

Although 47 faculty and staff attended at least one FSI meeting, and 39 faculty and staff signed the report, the group was not positively received by all. “FSI was never warmly received by the administration,” Wang said. “We were putting in so much unacknowledged uncompensated labor that was actually super helpful for the college, to know what the issues were for minority faculty and staff. Because it was not officially condoned by them, they were not only not receptive, they were pretty hostile to it. We were made to feel that we were these rogue disobedient faculty.”

Last October, at a faculty meeting, Buell and Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity Leticia Haynes ’99 gave a presentation titled “Faculty hiring, retention and climate,” providing data on this issue.

The presentation included retention rates of faculty by race/ ethnicity and gender from 19902017. Although this data did not reveal staggering disparities in faculty retention among the different groups, Buell stressed that these numbers could be misleading. “If you’re just looking at the percentages, the retention rates actually look good, but that doesn’t tell the whole story,” she said. “Every faculty departure makes a difference. Proportionally, the impact of the departure of a faculty member from an underrepresented group is large.”

The impact of the absence of faculty of color has been a persistent problem beyond the past 10 years. An interview published in the Record with Jacques Payne ’90, an original member of the Coalition Against Racist Education (CARE), recalled the reasons for a takeover of the dean’s office in 1988. “The issue was basically over minority faculty on campus, and recruiting minority faculty,” Payne said (“Former CARE member discusses ethnic protests,” Mar. 6, 1990).

Years later, the 21-page FSI report focused on the problems that come from the small size of minority groups at the College.

The document detailed many issues faculty and staff of color experienced, from administrative

challenges to added responsibilities to general quality of life to the difficulties many professors faced by being hired into programs as opposed to departments.

In addition to structural issues, the report explained the extra workload placed on minority faculty, who are often the only scholars at the College in their particular fields and the only faculty of color in their respective departments. “Thus, faculty of color, while staying immersed in the research and pedagogical concerns of their field, must also take on extra-classroom and extra-research obligations,” it stated. The report also raised the concern that faculty of color lacked mentoring for their careers.

As the FSI research progressed, its members soon realized the problem extended beyond faculty and to staff. “Finally, what it ended up being was actually an organ for staff members in general to have a voice because staff had very little voice at Williams with their senior people,” Wang said.

The second half of the FSI report outlined problems facing staff of color, including lack of mentoring and support as well as exclusion from the community. “Support staff in particular feel they are at the very bottom of our institutional hierarchy, and thereby, less valued by others,” the report said. The report also raised issues regarding the absence of management training and participation in administrative policy-making.

In light of the issues raised, the FSI report gave suggestions to improve the experiences of faculty and staff of color. For faculty, report suggestions included, “Formalize the relationship between departments and programs ... offer regular professional development around diversity and inclusion,” and more.

For staff, the report proposed that the College “establish a systematic method of tracking staff experience … [and] infuse the campus climate with a sense of community that includes staff,” among other recommendations.

Despite these recommendations and the report’s presentation to the administration, FSI members felt that the College did not take action following the

release of the report in 2009.

“I think there’s a surface way in which diversity is trotted out, but the deep structural work and the work of thinking deeply and hard about the culture at Williams was not done,” Wang said.

Robolin extended the issues raised in the FSI report to problems in the country at large. “The fact of the matter is that this is still America, and colleges and universities regardless of their sizes reflect America’s problems in their own particular ways,” he said. “It is the duty of each of the colleges and universities that express America's problems to confront, reckon with and find resolutions to them. And FSI was born precisely because Williams was not adequately or appropriately responding to them.”

Wang believes that this lack of recognition and work regarding minority faculty experiences and retention rates connects the 2009 report to Green’s and Love’s decisions to cancel their classes this semester. “I think the concrete evidence of people still leaving, as we know with Green and Love experiencing violence and feeling so traumatized by this place … shows that many of the issues raised in 2009 are actually still here, sadly.”

The data presented by Buell and Haynes last fall quantified the persistence of struggles by minority faculty. A survey conducted by the Higher Ed Research Institute in 2016-2017, asked faculty, “Please indicate the extent to which discrimination (in forms such as prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia) has been a source of stress for you during the past year,” and compared the College’s results by gender and race with other institutions. Female faculty reported experiencing higher rates of stress due to discrimination compared to male faculty, and faculty of color reported higher rates compared to white faculty, both at the College and within the comparison group.

The presentation also detailed the ways in which the College is seeking to solve these problems, including through research and residency fellowships promoting diversity, hiring workshops to educate on implicit bias before

conducing searches, surveys and listening sessions and more.

Buell and Haynes stressed the importance of listening to all faculty regarding these issues.

“We want to make sure that we have a climate where people can lift up any kind of concerns that they have so that we can address them, and we are diligently supporting grassroots efforts to further equity, inclusion and diversity on campus,” Haynes said.

Some of these efforts have further raised the issues facing minority faculty and staff. The FSI report is cited in the Curricular Planning Committee (CPC) Report on Asian American studies (AAS) released last Thursday regarding the creation of an Asian American Studies program.

While working on the report, Grace Fan ’19 and Tyler Tsay ’19 brought the FSI report back into current conversation by connecting it to the working group and insisting on its reference in the CPC report. “Over a decade later, many of the concerns raised in the FSI final report continue to persist and remain unaddressed– for example, institutional and cultural practices and norms of behavior that disproportionately harm faculty and staff of color,” the CPC report said. “Recent public statements from Professors Kai Green and Kimberly Love have decried the ‘college’s violent practices’ against people of color at Williams.” The suggestions made in the FSI report helped inform the recommendations made in the CPC report, such as with the CPC document stressing the importance of mentoring and hiring multiple faculty members together.

Both the CPC and FSI reports stress the importance of diverse faculty to the College as a whole.

“Asian American studies is an intellectually important and vibrant interdisciplinary field of study that is indispensable to a liberal arts education,” the CPC report wrote. The FSI report also connected its goals to the College’s by quoting the institution’s mission statement, writing, “The presence of minority faculty, administrative staff and support staff … are essential prerequisites to ‘the finest possible liberal arts education.’”

6 FEATURES

The Williams Record

February 13, 2019

Two in Two Thousand

By HAEON YOON EXECUTIVE EDITOR In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Record brings you its annual profile of a campus couple. This year, that couple is Phoebe Huang ’20 and Will Huang ’21, who have been dating since the sixth problem set in their econometrics class last spring. I caught up with them to discuss making lavender-stuffed cows, spending summer on campus and being asked if they are related.

How did you two meet?

WH: We met in Professor David Zimmerman’s econometrics class. Great class. I would advise you all to take it for economics and for [Laughs.]... We both happened to be at the TA session for this class. It was my birthday of last year, and I remember just sitting instantly next to Phoebe. She was kind of a nervous wreck, asking so many questions to the TA. PH: I’m really bad at statistics.

WH: [Laughs.] Well, she is self-admittedly not that good with numbers, so I turned to her and said, “Hey, do you need help?”

She nervously laughed and, thankfully, said yes. So we exchanged phone numbers and started talking and doing homework together.

Super smooth. So, Phoebe, I guess when Will asked you for the home-

work, it clicked for the both of you in more ways than one.

PH: Yeah, pretty much. Although I would feel bad sometimes because I kind of felt like I was dragging the team down because I was slower with the p-set, but it got better as the semester went on.

WH: She helped a lot of the time, too.

How long have you two been dating?

PH: It was right after the second midterm – so I guess that we met at problem set one and started dating at problem set six.

WH: The week of the second midterm, Phoebe had a bunch of performances and other things going on. So I decided to wait until after the second midterm – PH: Which was very considerate.

WH: – until I asked her out.

Actually I asked her one time when we were doing work together, “Hey, do you want to go out?”

PH: [Laughs.] I thought he meant outside at first, because I’d never been asked out in person before.

Were you both on campus over break? I heard it’s beautiful here during the summer, unlike how it is right now.

PH: I did CS [computer science] research and Will did econ research. But we actually had a bucket list of activi-

Dining revamps certification program

By ROSE HOUGLET NEWS EDITOR In preparation for the National Restaurant Association’s annual sanitation certification test, three students used Winter Study to create and teach a food safety curriculum for dining services staff, increasing the pass rate at the College from 42 percent to 100 percent. The curriculum was implemented

by Katrina Wheelan ’21, Josh Reynolds ’21 and Sam Jocas ’21 in conjunction with ServSafe, a food and beverage safety training and certificate program administered by the National Restaurant Association.

The goals of the program include covering basic food safety concepts, protecting against foodborne illness outbreaks, minimizing liability risks and meeting state and local regulatory requirements. The College has taken part in the American National Standards Institute and Conference for Food Protection’s accredited program since 2002, but the certification process has become more difficult in recent years.

Sharon Marceau, assistant to the director and systems coordinator of dining services, gave insight into some of the problems dining services staff face.

“Those who had difficulty with the test expressed a need for help improving both their comprehension and retention of the certification information,” she said. “One of the critical areas in which this program has become more challenging in recent years has to do with the rise of student food allergies and sensitivities to which we must respond... The test also covers a broader range of general kitchen knowledge, expanding well past the experience and responsibilities of many staff.”

In response to the increased difficulty, dining services management collaborated with students involved in Williams Recovery of All Perishable Surplus (WRAPS) and the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) to develop new guides for the material. “Drawing on general curriculum development resources from CLiA and specific ones from Campus Kitchen, they developed some learning tools and handouts for use in the workshops,” Marceau added. “This supplementary training led up to a re-

PHOEBE HUANG ’20 AND WILL HUANG ’21

take of the test on Jan. 24. Results of this retake session [saw] a 100 percent success rate!”

Wheelan described the various ways in which the students’ efforts addressed specific obstacles standing in the way of dining service staff’s success. “The exam was offered previously in the beginning of the fall, after a summer break and without paid time to review the material.

I think that [paid] review sessions and access to study guides helped with pass rates,” she said.

“Another barrier was language.

For this exam, a Spanish version of the test was also available.”

Meanwhile, some problems stemmed from inconsistencies between national standards and those adopted at the College.

“The exam is also difficult because it is a national exam that captures the broadest food safety regulations,” Wheelan said.

“Many of these regulations are superseded by more rigorous local and Williams-specific food safety rules, so parts of the exam required memorizing numbers ... that differ from what Williams does in practice.”

Wheelan attributed the impressive results to contributions from all sides. “The program success was a shared effort; the high pass rate came from hard work on the part of dining staff, effective collaboration and the test administrator who reviewed the material before the exam,” she said. “I also think that a big factor was having paid time for dining staff to study the content of the exam. This was possible because of a grant co-written by CLiA and dining services.”

Wheelan and Reynolds also took the test alongside dining services staff. “Being certified not only promotes healthy thinking in the kitchen, but it can also lead to career benefits including raises or management positions for food service workers,” she said. “Josh and I were interested in working with dining staff in part because we are leaders for WRAPS, so we often work with food in the kitchens.”

Looking ahead, dining services aims to incorporate the training into the curriculum alongside ServSafe. In the future, the goal is to “give employees the opportunity to come together in a group setting, and to be taught by those who successfully completed the program, paying it forward,” Marceau said.

WH: Something with wheels.

PH: So I had this stuffed cow from one of the events from ACE [All Campus Entertainment] – WH: By the way, she missed a portion of our econometrics group meeting for this – PH: [Laughs.] I did have to excuse myself from our final group project for this... But I had a sleep kit from the Health Center that came with lavender, tea and honey, so I stuffed the cow with some lavender, which is supposed to help you sleep, and I gave it to Will during one of our 3 a.m. walks to help him sleep.

WH: His name is Angus. The cow family has since grown to four, though I gave one of them to my sister.

Do they all have names?

SOPHIA SHIN/PHOTO EDITOR HOW THE TWO MET ECONOMETRICS

NO. OF PLUSH COWS OWNED FOUR

ties that we wanted to do for the summer.

WH: We watched a lot of good movies. Interstellar was one of our favorite ones.

We also got to travel quite a bit; one weekend, we went to visit Middlebury, Vt., and my hometown in Princeton, N.J. PH: We also played a lot of Pokémon Go. [Laughs.]

Will, I remember you lived in the first floor of Frosh Quad last year and had to deal with a lot of noise, especially on the weekends.

Are you two big partygoers?

GIFT BROUGHT FROM TAIWAN BUBBLE TEA CUP

WH: No, but there was this one night when a lot of the people outside were being really loud, and I couldn’t sleep.

PH: And I lived in Mission during my first year, which is far superior, for the record – pun intended – and I never had this problem. But since Will lived in Frosh Quad, he often had to deal with some weird things that I don’t understand that happen on this campus way too often. Like, this one night, he couldn’t sleep because there was something like a wheelbarrow being pushed outside his window.

PH: We have Angus – Angie for short. We also have Wagyu, Kobe and Kalbi.

It’s the Huang cow family.

WH: [Laughs.] Basically, yeah.

We have the same last name.

Have there been any funny moments about that?

WH: People have told me that they thought we were related or were siblings. One person actually came up to us and asked, “Are you two related?”

PH: And I was like, “I hope not.”

That would be pretty unfortunate.

WH: Well, we are as likely to be related as two white people by the name of Jones.

So this Winter Study, Will, you were in Taiwan,

and Phoebe, you were in Boston. What was long distance like?

PH: It was a little rough, especially with the time zone difference, because he would have activities during the day, and I would have work during the day. This meant that if one of us stayed up late to talk, we would end up tired the next day, so there was never a good time, except for the weekends.

WH: I brought back a bunch of snacks for Phoebe.

There’s also this one sticker that we like to use that’s called “BugCat-Capoo.” It’s this blue cat that has six legs that’s called a “caterpillar.” I found that this bubble tea chain in Taiwan was doing a collaboration with BugCat-Capoo, so I thought, “Hey! Phoebe likes this a lot.” So I bought a cup. I made sure to peel off the seal so I wouldn’t break it with a straw. I chugged it down, cut it up, preserved it between the pages of a book and brought it back.

This is the sweetest bubble tea story I’ve heard in my life. Now I’m craving bubble tea! And a mans. For all the lonely hearts still out there, are there any words of wisdom you would like to share?

WH: Professor Zimmerman is the best matchmaker out there.

PH: Go to your TA sessions.

Ephs self-advertise for romance

By IRENE LOEWENSON FEATURES EDITOR Roughly one in five alums from the class of 1972 is married or partnered to another alum, according to an article in the Summer 2018 edition of Williams Magazine. And yet the dating scene at the College can often feel limited to Tinder, sweaty parties on Hoxsey Street and empty promises to “grab a meal sometime.”

A new Instagram account, @romanteph, offers a different path to finding love. “Tired of swiping on people’s shallow profiles?” its first post, from Jan. 9, reads. “Feeling like the pool at Williams is exponentially shrinking each day?

Romant-EPH is here to switch up romance on campus.”

Students submit facts about themselves – gender preference, interest and type of relationship sought – and the account posts the information as an anonymous personal ad. Those hoping to follow up on a post can direct message or email the account, which would then put the two singles in touch. As of press, the account has posted three ads.

According to the two students running the account, several users have asked them for the advertisers’ contact information, but the pair declined to give specifics. The

two running the account asked to remain anonymous to avoid making the account about themselves and allow those submitting ads to feel comfortable being vulnerable.

One woman looking for a man “to make cookies with” wrote in an ad posted on Jan. 9, “My dad won a Grammy and I’ve [been] fighting him for affection ever since.” In an ad from the same day, a “Frosh Quad babe” sought “anything under the sun as long as you’re respectful.”

The ads contain no photos, just short, quirky blurbs on a purple background. “The idea is to be the opposite of Tinder,” one of the students running the account explained. “Rather than focusing on someone’s face and your immediate gut reaction to someone, it’s focusing on how people describe themselves and what they put forward as some of the things they’re interested in doing, some of the things they’re passionate about.”

The two students behind the account emphasized that Romant-EPH is not just for finding romantic or sexual partners; people can also use it to find new friends. “We are a small campus, but we all have that phantom 500 – the people that we don’t really interact with and don’t really

know but maybe would like to know better,” one of the account runners said.

“We have the most wholesome intentions,” the other said. “We just want people to meet, you know?”

While some students advertise themselves on social media, others self-promote in a more old-fashioned way: on paper. Last semester, fliers with the header “Williams College Dating Opportunity” appeared on bulletin boards around campus.

“Do you like to go on adventures?” they began. “Find yourself wanting someone to cuddle with? Enjoy watching a good movie? Like to eat food and drink beverages?

Ever considered going on a blind date? If so… email: Th3o.Hans3n@gmail.com.”

Per Williams Students Online, there is no Theo or Theodore Hansen at the College.

In a section entitled “What do I have to offer?” the mysterious advertiser lists 13 adjectives, in alphabetical order, including “Cleanly,” “Economic,” “Functional” and “Zesty.” The advertiser did not respond to a request for comment.

Hipolito Vazquez ’22 also created fliers, which he headed “BF resume” and posted in every Mission entry during Winter Study. The fliers, decorated with hearts, display a

bulleted list with facts about Vazquez.

These include “Took a girl to Home Depot on my first-ever date,” “Social Security #: 6” and “Can drink water really fast, like really REALLY FAST.” Vazquez made clear that the resume was “just a joke.”

Links to Vazquez’s Instagram and Twitter accounts are on the fliers, and his bios note that the resume was not serious. “Everything on it is true, though,” he said.

This included the item about water, as Vazquez offered to demonstrate. Lifting a bottle of water to his lips and pouring the water directly down his throat, he consumed a half-liter of water in 3.33 seconds. “I have to establish dominance subtly,” he joked.

Over the last few weeks, Vazquez’s friends posted the fliers on social media, and Vazquez soon received messages from friends of friends.

One woman from Boston jokingly asked him to follow up on his application by sending an actual resume and a cover letter. All told, he received five or six responses.

“My info is still there on the paper,” he said. “I’m still open to talking with people.

And, you know, I say it’s just a joke, but –” he paused – “it be like that.”

ANIAH PRICE/PHOTO EDITOR

Hipolito Vazquez ’22 put together a humorous boyfriend resume for potential suitors, posting copies in public spaces around campus.

ARTS 7

The Williams Record

February 13, 2019

Box Office Hours: ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ with Anthony Y. Kim

By PHILLIP PYLE ARTS EDITOR My first experience with a Barry Jenkins film was two years ago on an airplane. Shortly after Moonlight won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, I rented the film to see what all the buzz was about. I ended up watching it twice in one flight – crying hysterically at the ending both times.

I felt bad for the passengers beside me, but aren’t you more likely to cry on an airplane anyways?

Moonlight was the first movie I had seen where every music choice, visual, location and scene seemed so beautifully orchestrated. It was almost like a Bruegel painting, with every individual aspect coming together in perfect harmony. These stylistic choices, of course, serviced the heart of the film – its raw portrayal of black love, queerness, masculinity, performativity and familial drug abuse.

So, when I learned Jenkins was adapting the 1974 James Baldwin novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, I wasn’t the least bit skeptical. If any filmmaker could successfully adapt Baldwin’s work for the screen, it would be Jenkins. Beale Street focuses on Tish and Fonny, a young black couple facing police racial profiling and housing segregation in New York City while exploring their love for one another. Fonny is falsely accused of sexual assault and sent to jail. During his ordeal, Tish finds out she is pregnant. As with any Baldwin novel, Beale Street is chock full of alluring imagery, intricate dialogue and authentic emotion, meditating on themes of black love, police brutality and the prison system. I knew Jenkins would do it justice in the cinematic version.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TATUM MANGUS/ANNAPURNA PICTURES

Stephan James and Kiki Layne help bring James Baldwin’s novel to visual life in Barry Jenkins’ screen adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk.

If Beale Street Could Talk is playing at Images Cinema through tomorrow, Feb. 14. I saw it last Friday because I couldn’t wait one more second. I knew for a movie as intentionally written and directed as Beale Street, however, I needed to talk with a scholar who focuses in film studies and admires the work of Baldwin. I reached out to Anthony Y. Kim, visiting assistant professor of American studies, who is teaching a course this spring called “Spirits of Rebellion: The L.A. Rebellion Filmmakers.” In this course, Kim explores the works of the L.A. Rebellion, a collective of black filmmakers at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television from the 1960s to 1990s. In addition to analyzing the works of filmmakers like Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, students in the course will watch

Moonlight at the end of the semester. On Sunday, I watched Beale Street with Kim at Images and discussed the film at length with him afterward. It was his third time seeing it and my second; it is safe to say we both love Barry Jenkins.

Jenkins’ works draw from the L.A. Rebellion, which is why Kim teaches Moonlight in his course.

Kim had already seen Beale Street in L.A., but that didn’t stop him from organizing a free class screening on Friday and seeing it again on Sunday.

One aspect that stands out to Kim is the prevalence of intentional lengthy, medium closeup shots.

“At parts, the camera stayed for an instant longer, forcing us to look at them,” Kim said.

This small stylistic choice on Jenkins’ and cinematographer

James Laxton’s parts made all the difference in conveying emotion. The extra moments where the camera lingers and the actor or actress stares into the lens makes us reckon with their humanity. Author Angela Flournoy addressed these shots in a 2018 New York Times profile of Jenkins. “For nonblack audience members, it might be the first time they’ve had a black person direct such a gaze their way,” Flournoy wrote. “Jenkins offers a glimpse at a world previously hidden to them. For a black viewer, there’s more likely a kind of recognition: I know that face, although I have never seen this actor before.”

It’s not just the closeups that convey a vulnerability within the cinematography, however.

The colorization and accent colors also contribute to the aura

of particular scenes. As with Moonlight, the color blue plays a substantial role in Beale Street.

The film highlights the scenes through blue clothing and the blue tiling of the bathtub where protagonists Tish and Fonny play as children, but unlike Moonlight, blue is not a melancholy, foreboding hue; in fact, it serves as an accessory for joyous moments in the film. Yellow, on the other hand, plays a more nuanced role in conveying emotion.

The yellow motif is seen in the first scene when Tish and Fonny wear a yellow jacket and sweater, respectively, and throughout the narrative, peaks during the prison scenes where Fonny is in the foreground of a bright, piercing yellow. In scenes of anguish, the yellow feels cold; in scenes of love, it takes on warmer, almost orange hues.

These cinematic and colorization choices were not incidental.

Kim described to me that one of Jenkins’ major influences was Wong Kar-wai, a filmmaker from Hong Kong, “who is known for making visually lush, emotionally complex and narratively elliptical films about desire, heartbreak, longing and nostalgia.”

Seeing the film again, we both began to notice more technical elements. For Kim, the delicate sound engineering, including the ducking of audio and ambient noises, was more noticeable in the third screening. For me, the score came to life. I had already established an appreciation for composer Nicholas Britell’s brilliant arrangement (who also penned the score for Moonlight), but I had not noticed the significance of musical repetition, such as the recurrence of the opening track, “Eden (Harlem).” Kim pointed out to me that “Eden” repeated three times throughout the movie, serving as a musical motif in important scenes.

In discussing Beale Street with Kim, I gained a new level of appreciation for Baldwin and Jenkins – a love for their work that will never die.

As Regina King’s character Sharon Rivers, mother of Tish, says in the film, “Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, trust it all the way.”

This conversation with Professor Kim is the first in a new Record film discussion series with faculty, staff or community members who specialize in particular aspects of films showing at Images. For those interested in taking part in this new series, please contact pjp1@williams.edu

OSHUN to play during Winter Carnival Formed at NYU in 2013, OSHUN is a hip hop and soul duo consisting of Niambi Sala and Thandiwe. OSHUN’s music pays tribute to their cultural ancestry, while merging social commentary and Afrofuturism.

Co-presented by:

ACE BSU WCFM 91.9 MinCO WOC

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROGER STEPHENSON.

Gina Coleman ’90 strums her cigar box guitar at the International Blues Challenge final.

Gina Coleman ’90 brings blues to the folk-saturated Berkshires

By LILY GOLDBERG ARTS EDITOR

Goodrich Hall Saturday, Feb. 16 9 P.M. – Doors open 9:15 P.M. – Homebrew 10:00 P.M. – OSHUN

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE MUSIC

CAR SEAT HEADREST with NAKED GIANTS

Friday, February 15, 8pm HUNTER CENTER | $25 ADVANCE | $35 DAY OF | $50 PREFERRED

TICKETS: massmoca.org or 413.622.2111 | North Adams, Mass.

“The last time I was here was for my grandmother’s funeral service,” remarks Gina Coleman ’90, looking up dazedly into the rafters. We are in a quaint New England roadside chapel, just across the street from Aubuchon Hardware. Along with the grey light outside, I feel as if I’ve stepped off Route 2 into rural Ireland. Coleman turns the volume knob on the chapel’s speakers, and the chapel is filled with the rumbling of Coleman’s low, mournful voice. Then, saxophones, pipe organ and drums – the stuff of the blues.

Coleman is a rugby coach, an alum, an educator and a mother.

But today, she is here to film a music video – her first. “I’ve been wanting to do one forever,” Coleman confesses. Coleman fronts the band Misty Blues, which she founded in 1999 to remedy the deficit of blues music in the Berkshires. Misty Blues, which intersperses traditional blues music with hints of funk, gospel and classic rock, is a breath of soulful air in the folksinger scene of the Berkshires, which tends to promote James Taylor over James Brown.

Though Coleman grew up surrounded by music (hailing from the South Bronx, she cites salsa and ’80s rap as early soundscapes), she did not herself perform until after she graduated from the College.

“I was living in Williamstown at the time, and my friends wanted to show me ‘real Berkshire culture.’ They took me to Wednesday open mic night at a bar in Pittsfield,” Coleman said. “I thought, ‘If I stink up the place, I’ll never have to see anyone here again.’ So I sang ‘Mercedes Benz’ by Janis Jop-

lin, a cappella. And I ended up winning that night.”

Coleman found her way to the blues in particular after she performed as a gospel singer in the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 1999 production of A Raisin in the Sun. “Towards the end of the run, the lead actor in that production, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, pulled me aside and said, ‘You have got to quit this folk nonsense. You’ve got a voice for the blues,’” Coleman said. “He gave me a CD collection called ‘Men Are Like Street Cars,’ which compiled blues singers from Bessie Smith all the way to Tracy Chapman. I had appreciated them individually before, but now I saw how they were connected.”

The church becomes saturated with a brilliant, strong light.

Dave Simonds, a documentary filmmaker from Williamstown who is directing the music video, is testing out studio lighting.

The music video is for the song “Hear My Call,” which Coleman describes as a “prayer.” Coleman wrote “Hear My Call,” the first track on Misty Blues’ latest album, Call and Response, after a friend gifted her a threestringed cigar box guitar.

“It’s just a simple progression,” says Coleman, “but now I rarely play a set without that cigar box nearby.” It appears the prayer has worked: Just three weeks ago, Misty Blues made it to the finals of the International Blues Challenge, a competition that brings more than 250 blues bands from around the world to Memphis, Tenn.; “Hear My Call” opened their set.

“The semifinals were like the pie in the sky,” Coleman laughs.

“We had a killer performance Friday night, but we hadn’t heard anything by midnight, so we assumed it was over. We were driving back to our rental

home when the president of the Blues Foundation made the announcement, but the video kept skipping, and we just didn’t think anything of it. When we got back, I had a Facebook message from a musician I’m friendly with that said, ‘Congratulations!’ I replied, ‘Thank you, the semi-finals were a blast!’ She typed back, ‘Am I the first person to tell you? Misty Blues is in the finals!’ And that’s how we found out.”

A special part of the trip was that Coleman got to take it with her son, whose band, Born IV Blues, performed in the youth division. “You’re not supposed to say this about kids,” Coleman says mischievously, “but they smoked the other bands.” Family is important to Coleman, who was raised by her grandmother.

“My proudest accomplishment,” Coleman said, “is moving my grandmother to the Berkshires so she could spend her last few years in this special place.” Coleman’s extended “family” includes the women’s rugby team, which she’s coached since 1996.

When I asked whether the rugby team knew about her secret identity as a blues superstar, Coleman laughed, “They know. They come to my CD release parties, which is always great.”

Coleman expressed her interest in showcasing her work on campus. “Doing a Winter Study course would be really fun,” she said. “Misty Blues has also developed a show called ‘Queens of the Blues,’ which honors four blues pioneers – Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Coco Taylor and Ruth Brown. Doing that show at Williams would be great.”

In the meantime, fans of the blues can catch them in Pittsfield on March 2 at Mission Bar + Tapas or at the Dream Away Lodge in Becket on March 17.

8 SPORTS

The Williams Record

February 13, 2019

Women’s hockey dishes on historic upsets, team camaraderie

By JEONGYOON HAN EXECUTIVE EDITOR No. 10 women’s ice hockey (15–4–3, 8–4–2 in the NESCAC) swept Oswego State this weekend, edging out the Lakers by a score of 3-2 on Saturday and maintaining momentum with a 4-1 victory on Sunday.

But the sweep was just one weekend in what has been a consistently strong season filled with landmark victories for the team. The women pulled off the highest-ranked upset in program history against No. 2 Elmira on Dec. 8, securing two goals in the last two minutes of the third period for a dramatic 4-2 win.

Then, for the first time in 14 years, the women beat Amherst on Jan. 25 in a 4-0 shutout and topped it off by sweeping the Mammoths with a 5-2 win the next day.

Head coach Meghan Gillis kept the pucks from the Amherst games as mementos. “[The wins] showed us what we were capable of,” she said.

“They serve as a reminder for what’s possible.”

Indeed, the Ephs have earned their place, rising to tenth in national rankings and second in the NESCAC standings. To finish the regular season, the women are poised for two exciting matchups against No. 8 Middlebury, which places first in the conference, on Friday and Saturday.

The games will determine the regular season NESCAC title, as well as which school will host the NESCAC tournament. The winner of the conference tournament earns an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

“I think most of the other seniors agree with me that this is the best team we’ve been a part of, in terms of ability and potential and fostering a sense of camaraderie,” said Claire Mancheski ’19, one of the Ephs’ four co-captains.

Strong leadership has contributed to the team’s success, with a veteran group of seniors including Mancheski and cocaptains Abby Brustad ’19, Annie Rush ’19 and Eliza Quigley ’19. Underclassmen have also made major contributions.

Goalie Chloe Heiting ’22 was named NESCAC Player of the Week on Jan. 21, and three-time NESCAC Player of the Week Meghan Halloran ’21 leads in the conference in points, goals, assists, power play goals and power play points.

But for many team members, including Mancheski, the success does not come primarily from individual achievements but from a team bond that is stronger compared to previous years.

“I feel like this year, the team is so close and there isn’t any of [those] older-younger situations,” said Mancheski, who has played on the team for four years. “The team hangs out with the team, not the seniors hang out with the seniors and the freshmen hang out with the freshmen.”

For Halloran, having a group of supportive teammates in all parts of her life at Williams – whether playing pick-up soccer for fun or getting meals together – has translated further into a team that is deeply committed to maximize its potential.

“Last year, we knew we could have been really good, but we never got to the point where we were consistent,”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Goaltender Chloe Heiting ’22 has recorded a save percentage of .938 and notched four shutouts for the Ephs, who currently rank 10th nationally.

Halloran said. “I think this year, everyone’s super committed to our goals of winning a NESCAC championship and then going on and competing in the NCAA tournament, whereas last year, I don’t think everyone was on the same page with the goals.”

Mancheski said one of the biggest steps the team has taken is holding all members more accountable to ensure everyone works to the best of their ability.

“Everyone has elevated their game,” she said. “I think it was a collective effort between the

coaches and players in the beginning of the year, thinking, ‘We have a really good thing going here, and we could have a lot of success, so let’s just rise to the occasion and play some good hockey and have fun.’”

As a first-year, Heiting said she was inspired by seeing a “good group of girls who want to be here” and want to improve their playing in every way possible.

And, according to Halloran, the women have taken more concrete steps to improve their skills. They reviewed penalty kill set-ups, a weak-

Men’s basketball falls to Amherst, 84-79

By JACK McGOVERN SPORTS EDITOR When Amherst point guard Garrett Day airballed a 3-point attempt midway through the first quarter in Chandler Gymnasium on Friday night, the student section – not missing the chance to get involved in a high-stakes rivalry game – erupted into a raucous, frenzied chant.

“Air ball! Air ball! Air ball!”

The refrain followed Day for the rest of the night as the student section roared back to life every time he touched the ball.

Yet in the second half, when the No. 19 Mammoths pulled off a 20-2 run and took a commanding 14-point lead over the No. 10 Ephs (19–5, 6–4 in the NESCAC), the cheers began to ring hollow, more wishful thinking than effective gamesmanship from the home crowd.

Although the men climbed back into the game and narrowed the deficit to three points twice in the final minute, none other than Day stepped calmly to the foul line and buried two free throws with nine seconds left to sink the Ephs.

Amherst prevailed by a score of 84-79.

“I think [the Mammoths] ramped up their physicality,” Eph head coach Kevin App said postgame. “They played a lot harder in the second half [than in the first half].”

The 20-2 stretch for the Mammoths midway through the second half was all the more unnerving for the home fans because of how the contest started. The Ephs raced out to a 13-6 lead in the first six minutes, powered by a key steal and two driving layups from Kyle Scadlock ’19.

While Amherst steadily clawed back into the game, the men maintained a lead throughout the first half.

James Heskett ’19 connected on his first two 3-point attempts and, after going scoreless in the first 15 minutes, Bobby Casey ’19 came alive at the end of the period.

Casey scored 10 of the last 12 Eph points of the first half, ensuring that the men took a 40-35 lead into the locker room.

Coming out of the halftime break, Casey continued his scoring outburst, banking a layup high off the glass to extend the advantage to

seven points. That lead, however, marked the beginning of the end for the Ephs.

Amherst dominated the next 15 minutes of the game.

As part of their 20-2 run, forward Eric Sewell scored three sraight baskets for the Mammoths to take the lead.

Yet Casey brought the team back to life when he completed a 3-point play with 3:32 remaining in the game. Casey’s foul shot narrowed the score to 69-61.

The home team did not take advantage of the opportunity, however. Missed 3-point attempts from Casey and Heskett, followed by a wide-open corner 3 from forward Grant Robinson on the other end, likely ended the best chance at a comeback for the Ephs.

Shortly thereafter, Heskett left the game after suffering an apparent injury and did not return to play.

Down 12 points with only 1:20 left in the game, the men miraculously gave themselves one final chance.

Henry Feinberg ’20 netted two corner 3s, Scadlock converted a 3-point play and Casey knocked down a 3-pointer from the wing.

The men had narrowed the score to 79-76, a one-possession game, with 21 seconds to go.

As the student section jumped and screamed, Amherst struggled to inbound the ball, eventually sending a long pass over the top to Robinson.

Immediately fouled, Robinson split a pair of free throws.

Although Casey missed a contested 3 and Robinson responded with two more free throws, the Ephs again reduced the Mammoth advantage to three points with nine seconds left. A dribble handoff from Scadlock gave Casey the space to drain his fifth 3-pointer of the night.

With the scoreboard reading 82-79, Day, the object of the unrelenting “air ball” chants, collected the final two points of the night from the foul line.

With regard to potential takeaways from the loss, App reflected, “We’ll find out. In the heat of it, [I’m] proud of how hard the guys competed and I’m sure we’ll look at the film and have to do some things, tighten some things up, like always.”

“It’s a great atmosphere, great environment,” he said.

“So you take that as a fun Williams-Amherst game and then you let it go and come out tomorrow and compete.”

SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR.

Bobby Casey ’19 scored 29 points, including five 3-pointers, on Friday night. Casey is one of three career 1000-point scorers on the team.

Games this week

Women’s swimming and diving, NESCACs Away 2/14–2/17

Skiing, Middlebury carnival

Women's hockey vs. Middlebury

Away 2/14– 2/17

Away 2/15, 7 p.m.

ness last year, and worked on new offensive tactics and defensive-zone coverages.

The skills-based approach, compounded with stronger team chemistry, has allowed for the women to enter each game with high spirits.

“We have been a lot more confident than we have in the past, so we’ve been more successful this season,” Halloran said.

The dedication that the team has put into their play has also been a rewarding experience for Gillis.

“Each season has its own personality and style, and this

season has been the most fun I’ve had in my eight years at Williams with this group,” Gillis said. “They’re willing to sacrifice the ‘me’ for the ‘we,’ and they come excited to work every day and compete on the weekends.”

As the team has seen its efforts pay off on the ice, Mancheski said the team is entering the end of the season with a heightened sense of optimism and energy.

“I think the past wins have just proved that we could be a part of an elite group,” Mancheski said.

Women’s squash takes second at NESCACs

By ALEX PEAR TEAM CORRESPONDENT No. 13 women’s squash (14–10) finished runnerup at the NESCAC tournament this weekend, falling to Trinity 8-1 in the final after sweeping Hamilton and beating Middlebury 6-3.

“Getting to the final of NESCAC is one of our main goals each season, and I am very happy we achieved our goal,” head coach Zafi Levy ’01 said.

“I thought the entire team played really well.”

In their first match on Saturday, the women faced off against Hamilton. Sarah Willwerth ’21, Anna Nicholson ’20 and Adrienne Conza ’21 led the charge for the Ephs in the first wave of play, all winning in three games.

Captain Esther Baek ’19, Abby LeBlanc ’21 and Alex Pear ’22 took the court next for the Ephs. Baek and LeBlanc toppled their opponents in three games, while Pear, who lost her second game, won in four.

Julia Ward ’21, Melissa Swann ’20 and Kathryn Wright ’22 closed the match out for the Ephs. Their opponents were unable to keep up with their shot choices and quick “T” movements and each was defeated in a clean three games. The final match score was 9-0 to the Ephs.

After a short break, the women were back on the court to face off against Middlebury, finally getting the opportunity to play the Panthers again after losing 6-3 in a heartbreaking upset on Jan. 5.

Willwerth, Nicholson and Conza led the Ephs into competition. Willwerth successfully moved her opponent around the court until her opponent folded in a convincing 3-0 victory.

Nicholson lost the first game 11-5 but swept the next three games. Conza also had a tight four-game match and

Men's hockey vs. Amherst Away 2/15, 7 p.m.

ultimately lost to her opponent with a score of 11-9 in the fourth. After the first round of matches, the match score was 2-1 to the Ephs.

Baek was up next, defeating her opponent in three games that all ended in extended points. LeBlanc played her Panther opponent in a neckand-neck five-gamer and ultimately won 11-7 in the fifth game. Pear also played a hardfought five games with her opponent but was eventually edged out 11-4 in the fifth. After two rounds of matches, the Ephs were leading the match 4-2 and needed only one more win to beat the Panthers.

Ward secured the match win for the Ephs, beating her opponent 11-8 in the fifth game. Swann then had a nailbiting five-game match and won 11-4 in the fifth. Wright also played a close five games with her opponent but lost 11-2 in the fifth game. The final match score was 6-3 to the Ephs.

“I’m so proud of how every single member of the team stepped up and improved this season,” Baek said.

“Beating Middlebury after losing to them earlier in the season is a testament to all our hard work.”

On Sunday, the women played in the championship match against No. 1 Trinity.

Willwerth and Nicholson were both defeated in three games by their opponents, while Conza secured the Ephs’ only win of the day in a convincing three games. The Bantams then won the final six matches in three games each, defeating Baek, LeBlanc, Pear, Ward, Swann and Wright. The final match score was 8-1 to the Bantams.

The second-place finish at NESCACs marks the end of the regular season for the women, who will now start preparing for the national championships with hopes of beating No. 12 Brown in their first-round match.

Women's hockey vs. Middlebury Home 2/16, 7 p.m.