Feb. 21, 2018: Students elect new College Council representatives

ARTS P. 8 WCMA exhibit explores race and representation

SPORTS P. 11 The Independent Student Newspaper at Williams College Since 1887 VOL. CXXXII, NO. 15

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018

Greg Zaff brings squash down from its ivory tower

Students elect new College Council representatives

By SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITOR Between Thursday and Saturday, 1104 students voted in the biannual College Council (CC) elections, in which all offices were up for election.

Annual positions included CC co-presidents, treasurer, parliamentarian and vice presidents for academic affairs, community and diversity, student affairs, student organizations and communications. Students also selected four representatives from each class year and the Assistant Treasurer for semesterlong positions.

Outgoing Co-President Web Farabow ’18 praised voters for “ their involvement and wished the incoming representatives well. “Thanks so much for your participation! We’ve been honored to serve you on CC this year,” he said in an email.

A record 50 percent of students voted in the presidential race, besting last year’s 46 percent. Turnout was high across the board, ranging from a low of 32 percent for Class of 2018 representatives to a high of just under 60 percent for Class of 2021 representatives.

Incoming Vice President for Communications Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí ’20 commended this rise in participation. “This election obviously enjoyed the bump in turnout due to the visible presidential race,” he said. “However, we saw sectors of the student body much more invested in the presidential and vice presidential races than in past years.”

Lizzy Hibbard ’19 and Moises Roman Mendoza ’19 were elected co-presidents with 563 votes, defeating Ben Gips ’19 and Michael Rubel ’19, who accumulated 395 votes, and Jaelon Moaney ’19 and Jeremy

PHOTO COURTESY OF GRACE FAN.

Lizzy Hibbard ’19 and Moises Roman Mendoza ’19 won the race for co-presidents with 563 votes. The race saw a record 50 percent participation.

Subjinski ’20, who earned 104 votes. “While Ben and I are disappointed we won't have the opportunity to make our platform a reality, we're confident that Hibbard and Roman Mendoza will make great strides on many fronts and bring a lot of energy to CC,” Rubel said.

“I care deeply about student government on this campus, and CC has so much potential to empower and bring together our community.”

The incoming presidents, who campaigned on a plat-

form of encouraging student activism and supporting marginalized groups, expressed a desire to use their new positions to effect change on campus. To this end, Hibbard and Roman Mendoza emphasized a dual strategy of collaborating intensely with specific student groups and reaching out to the larger student body. “I see this as a two-fold process,” Hibbard said. “We want to press MinCo [Minority Coalition] groups to take positions with regard to individual, spe-

cific topics, and we want to alter CC in how we represent the student body as a whole.”

Hibbard and Roman Mendoza are hoping to restructure CC meetings in order to promote greater student conversation. “Right now, CC meetings are often unstructured in that they don’t have a central conversation,” Roman Mendoza said. “What we propose is a thematic agenda every meeting.” When meetings are consistently organized around a central topic, he believes, the

student body will be encouraged to attend and participate.

In addition, the two have a long list of topics they would like to see discussed in the upcoming year. For students on financial aid, they would like to lift summer earnings requirements and eliminate personal Winter Study costs associated with courses. They also want the College to place greater emphasis on mental health, create a more open and transparent admissions policy and reform the Wil-

liams ID system to make it more streamlined for people who change their names.

In taking up these tasks, Hibbard and Roman Mendoza believe that CC needs to be more politically engaged. “CC is overly apolitical to its own detriment,” Hibbard said. “In terms of issues that affect students on campus, we are willing to take sociopolitical positions.”

She added that, although she doesn’t want CC to be partisan, “when CC is so apolitical in every sense, then it’s irrelevant to the student body.”

They also want to have a voice in the ongoing College presidential search process.

“That’s something the CC president[s] should be more involved in. I wasn’t thrilled with the representation of the student body,” Hibbard said, referencing the selection of just a few non-elected students for the search committee. “We want to see if we can get our foot in the door and have that conversation,” Roman Mendoza added.

Hibbard and Roman Mendoza have never actually served on CC at the same time, but they are confident that they will have a productive and fulfilling partnership. The two have worked together repeatedly within various MinCo groups.

Students elected to other CC positions also expressed excitement for the year to come. Benton Leary ’20 was elected vice president for academic affairs, defeating Amy Qiu ’19, Victoria Liu ’21 and John Vélez ’20. “I look forward to acting as a liaison between the student body and faculty to ensure that Williams’ academics reflect our values and goals,” Leary said.

SEE ELECTIONS, PAGE 4

WOC repurposes Winter Carnival JA panel provides forum to address money toward financial aid

By REBECCA TAUBER NEWS EDITOR The Williams Outing Club (WOC) hosted an Alice in Wonderland-themed Winter Carnival last weekend. While the weekend included many traditional Winter Carnival events, such as a themed dinner and the Nordic and Alpine ski races, one standard aspect of the carnival was missing: the traditional fireworks display. This year, WOC elected to spend the money usually allocated for fireworks to provide winter sports scholarships to students on financial aid.

The fireworks first became a Winter Carnival tradition in 1998. “We brought fireworks to add a little spirit to the carnival, just to add something

new,” WOC Director Scott Lewis said. Since the public enjoyed the addition of fireworks to Winter Carnival, WOC continued to fund them until 2012, when there was no longer enough money in the WOC budget.

That year, College Council (CC) stepped in with the funds. “[CC] loved the event, and they were going to sponsor it completely. It was never a hassle,” Lewis said. The fireworks remained a beloved part of the Winter Carnival agenda until this past year, when the WOC board sat down to make its budget.

While crafting the budget, the WOC board noticed that $4500 had been spent on Winter Carnival fireworks in previous years. Meanwhile, the board began to consider

the cost of its Winter Study ski program. “We run a big ski program during Winter Study,” Lewis said. “And even though it’s all discounted, a lot of people can’t afford it.”

The price of skiing is not cheap. Even though the College offers much cheaper rental and lift ticket options than what non-students pay at Jiminy Peak, costs still range from $70 to $300. A three-time pass with rentals, required for a gym class, costs $109.

Upon realizing this, the WOC board decided to petition CC for permission to spend the $4500 normally allotted for fireworks on ski and snowboard scholarships for students on financial aid.

“We wanted to get more Williams students out enjoying

PHOTO COURTESY OF EMILY SAULNIER.

WOC used its usual firework funds to provide 60 scholarships for students to take ski classes over Winter Study.

the snow and the mountain,” WOC board member Emily Saulnier ’18 said.

CC responded positively. “[CC] said, ‘That’s a great idea,’” Lewis explained. “So anybody who needed financial aid contacted me directly.

I contacted [the Office of] Financial Aid, I would find out their percentage the College gave and we would match that. The only stipulation was they had to take a PE class.”

By repurposing the fireworks money, WOC was able to provide 60 students with scholarships to participate in winter sports, many of who participated for the first time. This is the first year that WOC has provided financial assistance for students to ski or snowboard.

Saulnier helped run the ski program during Winter Study.

“It ended up being really effective, and we had a lot of people participate in ski lessons over Winter Study, which was really great,” she said. “We got a lot of people out on the mountain, a lot of first-timers, and I think that we’ll keep this change going forward.”

Lewis did admit that the fireworks had their benefits. “The downside is that [fireworks were] a really nice community thing,” he said. “The fireworks were something everyone in the community really rallied behind. I’ve had lots of people say, ‘Where are the fireworks this year?’ Maybe we’ll bring it back next year, but it will be different funding.”

This change resulted from the work of many individuals who all came together to prioritize financial assistance over fireworks. “It’s the [WOC] board that decided to appeal to [CC], and [CC] agreed that it was a good thing,” Lewis said. “So it’s not just [WOC], it’s not just me – it’s a lot of students who invested in this.”

student concerns

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR On Tuesday, Feb. 13, the Junior Advisor Advisory Board (JAAB) hosted a panel discussion and open forum on the junior advisor (JA) system. Held in Dodd Living Room, the event featured four panelists who spoke to roughly 20 to 30 students and staff about their experiences with the JA system. This was followed by small group discussions led by JAAB members.

The panel was comprised of two staff members and two current students. The staff members, Meg Bossong ’05, director of sexual assault prevention and response, and Carolina Echenique ’15, assistant director of admission, served as JAs to the classes of 2007 and 2017, respectively, and also both served on JAAB. The two student panelists were Grace McCabe ’18, who served as a JA to the class of 2020, and Eleanor Johnston ’18, who was selected as a JA but chose to decline the position.

The forum’s intent was to engage the campus community in in a broader discussion of the JA role and system. “The first goal of the panel was to get the ball rolling ahead of the start of the JA process coming up in the spring semester and get a conversation going,” JA Co-President Jad Hamdan ’19 said. “Another goal was to start thinking about, as JAAB, ways we could reframe and reevaluate the responsibilities, role and perception of the JA. “Third, we wanted to hold this forum because of how much, over the past two years, the role has changed, especially with more emphasis on diversity, inclusion and creating a more change-oriented class of JAs – we wanted to know what people were think-

ing to continue this direction of change within the JA class.”

Bossong spoke first on the panel, recalling the importance of her entry and JAs to her own first-year experience. “When I got to Williams, I really depended on the entry system,” Bossong said. “I’m grateful it was there for me until I got my feet under me.” She also SEE JA SYSTEM, PAGE 5

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This year, the Williams Outing Club (WOC) board and WOC director Scott Lewis reallocated their funding for Winter Carnival fireworks to sponsor winter sports scholarships for students on financial aid. The $4500 fund allowed 60 students to ski and snowboard at reduced rates or no cost, as long as they signed up for a WOC gym class. WOC received approval from College Council (CC) for the reallocation and collaborated with the office of financial aid to determine what portion of the mountain and rental fees each student would pay based on their existing financial aid package. Jiminy Peak charges $109 for a threetime pass with equipment rentals, which is required for winter sport gym classes offered there.

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Febrary 21, 2018

Sparking something new Commending WOC for using firework funds to increase winter sport accessibility This price can be prohibitive, so the funding allowed many students to ski for the first time and made winter sports more accessible for the College community.

We commend WOC for this initiative, especially since the College has not offered financial assistance for winter sports in the past. Skiing and snowboarding are exciting activities that represent unique opportunities to try something new for many students – particularly with the lightened workload of Winter Study. Consequently, we believe that giving every student a chance to participate in these winter sports is much more valuable than a brief fireworks display. Although fireworks have been a Winter Carnival tradition dating back to 1998, this reallocation of funds is an

BLACK PANTHER

If you could add any new sport to the Winter Olympics, what would it be?

By KATIE BRULE and SOPHIA SHIN PHOTO EDITORS

GURSAJAN GILL ’21

Competitive snowball fight.

just to making the College itself financially accessible, but also to ensuring access to the myriad of opportunities that student life here offers. It is incumbent upon the leaders of student organizations and funding bodies, such as CC and Finance Committee, to think about the financial accessibility of club activities when allocating funds. This imperative becomes even more crucial when financial accessibility intersects with legacies of exclusion along lines of race, gender or ability; in the context of outdoor activities, WOC’s efforts represent an example of this intersectional commitment to inclusion. We commend WOC for its decision and hope that other student organizations here at the College will follow its example.

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Word on The Quad

important example of reevaluating traditions in favor of making the full breadth of what the College offers open to more students.

WOC has also made an admirable effort over the past few years to make its programs and activities more accessible. WOC’s robust gear lending program, conscious measures to recruit a board that reflects the full diversity of the College’s students, and emphasis on equity and inclusion in Williams Outdoor Orientation for Living as First-Years and other programming are all indicative of these efforts.

We intend to imply neither that the work of inclusion in student organizations is finished nor that it is by any means limited to WOC. The College’s work in diversity, equity and inclusion extends not

When the College pulls through and gets free tickets to see our new favorite superhero!

LYCEUM DINNERS Enjoy a deliciously awkward three-course meal with your favorite faculty member ... if you're brave enough!

TOUR GROUPS EVERYWHERE

Cool to see potential students or a nuisance when you're trying to run between classes?

PYEONGCHANG 2018

No more beautiful ice-skating performances until 2022, but a huge well-done to all the Olympians!

MISSION SNACK BAR

The abundance of menu options were definitely worth the walk!

TERESA YU ’20

Who can eat the most ice cream without getting a brain freeze.

JAMES RASMUSSEN ’19

Competitive eating, and something to do with a watermelon.

NATASHA BARANOW ’18

Competitive wiping out on West Hill in Science Quad.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR To the editor, Your article on the history of women’s ice hockey (“Exploring how women’s ice hockey broke the ice to achieve varsity status,” Feb. 7, 2018) is fine as far as it goes, but there is good deal more to the story. First, I personally believe that the pivotal ingredient in the upgrade to varsity status was the Colgate club team’s Title IX legal victory over that university, which occurred in 1992 or 1993 – the latter my hockey-playing daughter Dana Critchell Beausang ’97, M.D.,’s first year at Williams.

Indeed, when I endowed the Williams Women’s Ice Hockey MVP Award, I thought of calling it the Colgate Award.

The upgrade to varsity status for the women was far from complete, however. Appearances were deceiving. The women’s ice hockey coach was paid somewhere

between one-fifth and one-eighth of the men’s team counterpart’s salary for an essentially identical job. The players knew nothing about this. As can be imagined, this was not a happy situation for the women’s coach and only got worse over time. Dana liked her coach so I was concerned about keeping him. I did some things financially on my own to keep him in place, but the athletic director would do nothing.

Incidentally, my experience with Athletic Director Bob Peck was extremely similar to that of Stacey Dufor ’93. Putting it gently, Peck was duplicitous and a liar to me, as he clearly had been to Stacey. His hand had been forced into giving the women varsity status, and he wanted to spend as little as possible on the sport itself.

I even appealed the pay disparity situation to the president of the College at the time, the late Hank

Payne, and the chair of the Board of Trustees, but they had less than no interest.

Cutting to the chase, in 1997, after Dana and her fellow co-captain, Kim Whiteman ’97, stepped off the ice in their final game, I gave each of them the outline I had given Hank Payne spelling out the gross pay disparity between the two coaches. The rest, as they say, was history. Importantly assisted

by Cara Shortsleeve ’00, they rounded up 700 student signatures on a petition calling for equal pay (for equal work). The College had no choice but to give in or face a serious public relations, and possibly legal, problem. The resulting pay increase for the coach finally moved the women’s program to full varsity status comparable to that of the men’s program.

Robert S. Critchell ’63, parent of Dana Critchell Beausang ’97, M.D.

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 hy3@williams. edu by Sunday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Op-eds 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.

JESSICA CHEN ’18.5

Moving beyond dinner conversations

On college football The or o e

oys o bei

By TIMOTHY PETERSEN Over the past two decades living in Ann Arbor, Mich., with our busy lives and growing kids, we have not had a chance to attend many Williams sporting events. But this past summer, my wife Sally Petersen ’86 and I finished a second home in Williamstown and had the pleasure of spending some weekends in the Purple Valley, seeing all the things that attract alumni back to Williamstown – the College, the golf course, the hiking, the fresh air and the Clark. In early October, I decided to walk down to a Williams football game late in the second quarter, interested to see how the team was progressing with the new coach. Then, two weeks later, I went to another, this time arriving before kickoff. And a couple of weeks later, I did the previously unimaginable: I left our Michigan home the day before a University of Michigan home game and headed to Williamstown, in large part to attend another Williams game.

Unimaginable? Really?

Let me try to explain. I have a long and rich connection with Michigan football – my parents are both graduates, and I have a graduate degree from there. I grew up here. Michigan’s great fight song, “The Victors”? I’ve been singing that since pre-school.

I could bore you to tears recounting some of the 1970s battles between Michigan and Ohio State. So while the sport has tested my conscience (I have believed for decades that the players deserve some additional compensation beyond their scholarships), I’ve remained a fan of the big-time Michigan program. And yes, for those of you who follow these things closely, I’m solidly pro-Harbaugh.

But my interest has begun to wane for a litany of reasons that have nothing to do with wins and losses. We now pay a considerable sum to sit in goal line seats up high in the Big House. We routinely wait until six days before the game to have one TV network or another announce the game time, which literally might be noon, 3:30 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. The games themselves often last close to four hours because of endless TV commercials. If you are not a big college football fan, you might find this amusing: We actually spend a good portion of our time staring at the field with nothing going on while TV runs commercials! I read last week that game attendance is at a 20-year

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

February 21, 2018

a oo ball a

low for big-time (Football Bowl Subdivision) football. No surprise to me.

This fall, however, I was re-awakened – reminded that college football doesn’t need to be so frustrating. A short walk to Farley-Lamb field, arriving with the hope of saying hello to Dick Farley or Renzi Lamb. Standing under the north end score board, easily connecting with old friends and acquaintances, trying to stay warm while sipping a beer, sun in our eyes.

Watching that elusive, athletic freshman quarterback make many great plays and a few not-so-great plays.

Relaxed, entertained and shouting support to players that might actually hear us. Let’s be honest, it helps that the team is competitive again. But it’s also reminded me that being a fan of a college team is supposed to be an enjoyable personal experience, rather than feeling like an extra in a TV show.

Big-time programs have snarky fans with social media aliases. The College has a Sideline Quarterback club with a prayer book – the prayer book put together by my late, great father-inlaw Sinclair Hart ’44. The so-called “big-time” has nothing on Williams in terms of an experience, I was reminded. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

I suspect (and hope) there are still active debates at Williams about the role of athletics. Is athletics over-emphasized in society at large and at Williams in particular, especially given we are America’s finest college? I’ll resist weighing in, other than a brief comment based on my experience playing tennis at the College: athletics taught me about dedication and overcoming adversity to a degree that I may not have received in another setting, and I made some life-long friends. I suspect Williams continues to provide its student-athletes a more positive experience than what occurs at the “bigtime” schools. In truth, that’s hardly a revelation. What did surprise me this fall is that the fan experience is now more special as well. And that positive experience creates a tighter bond between the fan and their school.

So, you’ll see me around, cheering on football, tennis and all the great Williams sports teams. Oh, and did I renew our Michigan football tickets for next fall? Well, yes — old habits die hard. But, if you happen to be in Ann Arbor, I may have a couple of tickets for you.

ac i

orea a d orea

merica

main category. This can mean being a 1.5-generation immigrant (like myself and numerous members of KoW), a term coined by University of California, Los Angeles anthroSerapia Hyunmin Kim: When I was on the board of Kore- pologist Kyeyoung Park to refer to ans of Williams (KoW) last year, most Korean-Americans who immigrated of our efforts were based around bi- to the U.S. as adolescents. We retain weekly Korean meals we cooked in many aspects of the Korean culture, Morgan Kitchen. The basement was like language, food and social norms, while also adopting brimming with club many American ones. members and nonmembers alike, with For many immigrants, Being caught in the middle can also refer number of attendees the transition and to the unique experiranging from 50 to 80. of being a mulBuilding off this enbalance between two ence tiracial Korean, which ergy, the current board names almost make it adds another layer of and I wanted to address and perthe otherwise quiet presfeel as if they possess complexity haps even dissonance ence we have on camin not feeling “Korean pus. Korean-American two identities. enough,” as some stustories, let alone the dents have admitted. broader Asian-American ones, are still seldom discussed on social media platforms, despite the fact Julia Yeojin Choi: One of the most interesting discusthat the Korean and Korean-American population is approaching two million, sions we had as KoW members was the topic of names. This was relatable according to the Pew Research Center.

More interestingly, while the Korean- to many Korean-Americans who posAmerican population grew by 32 per- sessed both Korean and English names. cent from 2000 to 2010, multiracial Ko- For some, western names are officially rean-American populations grew at an written in legal documents such as birth astonishing rate of 87 percent during the certificates or citizenship documents. same time period. I have also noticed Others choose to be called by their this trend at the College through the western names which, because they are growing number of multiracial Korean- not written in legal documents, are esAmericans, although many of them do sentially just nicknames. However, for not attend KoW events. This led me to many of these people, their western question whom the target audience for names are more than just nicknames.

KoW is. Is it Korean-Americans? What Their names have become integral parts about Korean nationals? Non-ethnic of their identities – often more so than Koreans? Or any of us who feel caught their official native names. For many in the middle of multiple identities and immigrants, this transition and balance between the two names almost make it defy simplified categorizations?

“Caught in the Middle” was the theme feel as if they possess two identities.

I always tell others, “It was Yeojin of our third “KoW KoW Talk” (a reference to a popular messaging app in (my legal Korean name) who came Korea called KakaoTalk). These talks from Korea and struggled to adapt to are an initiative to foster conversations the American environment due to the language barrier, but it was Julia who about identity.

Being caught in the middle is about became fluent in English and made relating to two or more different cul- new friends.” Personally, I identify so tures, beliefs or other facets of iden- differently to these two names that if tity, but not fully belonging in any someone were to tell me to write an

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,

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essay about each one, I would write totally different things.

Because this experience is quite common and influential to many KoreanAmericans, I feel the importance and necessity of discussion in our community. By doing so, we hope to foster an appreciation for and knowledge about our own Korean-American identities.

Anna Jaeun Kim: KoW KoW Talks are, in the end, akin to storytime tradwitions at the College.

But what makes KoW KoW Talks so special, particularly to the KoW community, is that they provide the space not only to share and listen to diverse voices in KoW, but also to spearhead a new, hopefully lasting, project. Social gatherings like these have not been done before in KoW’s history, so we think this will be an exciting endeavor for the members of the community.

And while the setting for these storytime sessions is meant to be casual and informal, there is an important gravity to these discussions that highlight the diversity of identities even within the KoW community.

I, for one, continue to learn even from fellow Korean-Americans. As homogeneous as the KoW community may appear, in reality, there are crucial differences in lifestyle, language, customs and perspectives among its members that continue to nuance the kinds of identit(ies) KoW projects on the College community. My only hope is that more students take advantage of spaces like KoW KoW Talks to explore the fluid boundaries of KoW. It’s a space that has taught me so much about individual people as well as connected me with others whose stories overlap with mine, and I hope this space can serve others similarly.

Serapia Hyunmin Kim ’19 is a political economy major from Los Angeles, Calif. Julia Yeojin Choi ’20 intends to double major in psychology and music and is from Los Angeles, Calif. Anna Kim ’19 is an English and philosophy double major from Queens, N.Y.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Timothy Petersen ’86, an economics major, lives in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Searching for ‘home’

Traversing the U.S. in pursuit of an epiphany y

R

America. To me, Miami is like a chocolate bar. A few bites might taste good, but after eating the whole thing, I just As an international student, com- feel a little sick. My friend and I went ing to Williams is step one of fulfilling to have fun — and we did — but still, my very own American Dream. Hav- a lingering feeling of displacement ining said this, Williamstown, for all its vaded my substance-less partying. In qualities, isn’t exactly what one would terms of the painting metaphor, as opclassify as the typical experience of posed to brushstrokes, we had a bucket America. As such, I’ve taken it upon full of paint’s worth of experiences. myself to try to explore other parts of Near death, fame and disgrace – we America whenever I can. had the makings of a Greek tragedy in The first place I want to talk about Miami. As opposed to me painting my isn’t the bustling metropolis that is New own picture, it felt as though Miami York, nor the college student haven of was painting me. I know I went there to Boston; it’s Providence, R.I. After be- have fun, but still, I think I went a little ing told that it was like a big city by my overboard. Partly my fault, but I like to roommate, I later found out that it had think it’s also partly Miami’s, too. a population of 170,000. Thus, leading Finally, there is New York. I stayed up to the trip, I looked down on Provi- there for about a week, at a friend’s dence as a middle-of-nowhere town. Afdorm. Weirdly enough, ter eating at Providence’s it felt like home for me. best Korean restaurant I reconnected with old My friends and fam- friends, ate like a king the day after arriving, an epiphany struck me: and just generally had ily who helped me maybe Providence isn’t a good time. I had such paint my London are an affinity for the city so bad after all? Walking around the Founding FaI boldly declared changing too. Every that thers-esque streets, with that I was going to live my roommate giving me second, it feels like there at some point a detailed report of all my life. Thinking the paint is splinter- in the shenanigans that had through it now, what happened in every nook ing off a little more. does it mean for it to and cranny of Provihave felt like home? dence, I admired AmeriI guess it was just the can town life. Having grown up in Lon- feel of the big city – the anonymity, don, right in the heart of the “big city,” but also the feeling of ownership. But I had become a snob towards town life. does a feeling make it a home? My supAs my roommate toured me through his posed home is across an ocean, and it is high school and baseball fields, visions of changing every second while I’m here. my life as a Providence teenager played My friends and family who helped me in my mind like a heartwarming com- paint my London are changing too. ing-of-age movie. Despite all of these Every second, it feels like the paint is positives, at the end of it all, I knew that splintering off a little more.

Providence wasn’t me. This might be a Reading back through it now, my pretty obvious statement, but it was still American Dream sounds awful. To a poignant realization. It appeared to me be honest, it’s not even an American that my friend looked at the streets of Dream. The dream – the realizations Providence as paintings, each memory a and experiences – could really have brushstroke, layers of paint equating to happened anywhere. They just colayers of memories. What struck me was incidentally happened in America. that the Providence I saw wasn’t even a Through everything, though, I’ve deblank canvas, just a collection of, albeit cided to follow the old saying “home is very pretty, bricks and roads. where the heart is.” Just ride the river, Up next is Miami. This trip was ex- and everything will be OK! clusively for entertainment. Aside from the obvious attractions Miami offers, I Ahad Qureshi ’21 is from London, again was interested in another taste of United Kingdom.

JOHN MAYHALL ’00

Diversifying our dessert palate Calling for non-dairy options in dining halls yF R As I get up to get a drink, something catches my eye: creamy, delicious-looking ice cream at the Mission Park Dining Hall ice cream bar. I am immediately tempted to eat some, yet I know I shouldn’t because I am lactose intolerant. I stop and ponder, “Maybe this one time will be different; I mean, a little can’t hurt me too much.” I convince myself that I’ll be okay, fall for temptation and eat the delicious ice cream. Later that night, I am filled with regret as the symptoms storm in: nausea, diarrhea, cramping.

I wish the College offered dairyfree ice cream.

Stroll through any Williams dining hall, and you will see that it isn’t just ice cream that contains dairy – most desserts do. The College prides itself on diversity and equal opportunity, yet its desserts only cater to a certain sector of the population: those of Northern European descent. How so? Well, these people are the largest group that can digest lactose – the main sugar found in milk. As a person with a lot of Native American and Southern European ancestry, I am very much lactose intolerant. My dessert options are consequently limited here. With Lickety Split closed half of the year and Stop and Shop located miles away, dairy-free ice cream is not an option. This issue, however, is not only found at Williams. Bean, a friend of mine from Emerson College, once said to me, “As someone who is lactose

intolerant, I am noticing the lack of diverse options of dairy-free products in your school and mine, and I think this is an issue within these institutions.” Williams student Elida Lopez ’21 said that the lack of dairy-free options is very inconvenient. “It is just hard to eat sometimes; like, yes, I can eat cereal and coffee, but the effects afterward make it not worth it. I just can’t not eat cereal. People are going to be like, ‘Drink soy milk or almond milk,’ but I don’t want to. Paresky and Driscoll are the only dining halls that have Lactaid, and I don’t want to walk there all the way from Mission,” she said.

The fact that most desserts at Williams contain dairy is ableist, for lack of a better word. The College enables those of Northern European ancestry and leaves others in the dark when it comes to desserts. The issue with the term ableist, however, is that it implies that lactose intolerance is a disability, when in fact it is the norm. Research estimates indicate that 70 percent of the world’s population has some form of lactose intolerance. Close to 100 percent of Native Americans, 95 percent of Asians, 75 percent of African/Caribbean people and 50 percent of Southern Europeans have some form of lactose intolerance. Contrastingly, only 10 percent of Northern Europeans have some form of lactose intolerance.

In most humans, the LCT gene — the gene that instructs the making of lactase – begins to lose expression after infancy. Some individuals, however, have a mutation in

the regulatory region of the DNA sequence that controls LCT gene expression. These individuals have lactose persistence – that is, they can digest lactose. People without this mutation have a limited ability to digest lactose – this includes 60 percent of the human population. When these people consume dairy, the undigested lactose begins to ferment in the colon, causing cramping, nausea and diarrhea.

Not fun.

The reason for this disparity has historical backings. Many Northern Europeans relied on reindeer, cow and sheep milk as important sources of food. The Netherlands, Ireland and Scandinavia have the highest percentages of people who can digest lactose. Interestingly enough, a similar mutation arose in a few pastoral African communities.

According to the 2017-2018 College student profile “We Are Williams,” 38 percent of Williams students are people of color (by the way, lumping many diverse cultures into one whole category is another issue in and of itself).

If the College really cared about its diverse population, and if it really strived for equality, it would cater more to the dietary needs of its students – especially if such needs are shared by most of the world population. Williams College, please give us dairy-free options! We, too, have a sweet tooth, and we, too, love ice cream.

Also, who doesn’t like sorbet?

Fernando Villegas ’21 is from Palestine, Texas.

February 21, 2018

NEWS 4

The Williams Record

New cup compost bins installed in effort to expand eco-friendly practices across campus

By CRYSTAL MA STAFF WRITER The new cup compost bins in front of Sawyer, Schow and Eco Café are part of an initiative by the Williams Environmental Council (WEC) to expand composting and increase diversion rates, or the amounts of waste diverted from landfills. These changes are part of an effort the College has been making to improve its composting system.

The first iteration of the cup compost bins, a reaction to unsustainable party culture, was part of a Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) and Ghana ThinkTank project last spring.

The Ghana ThinkTank is an international collective that seeks to solve problems in the U.S. with the help of think tanks in developing countries.

Eleanor Lustig ’18, a member of WCMA’s Ghana ThinkTank action team, elaborated on this project in an interview with the Zilkha Center last year. “You can recycle bottles and cans, but it’s still waste.

We need to minimize waste,” Lustig said. “The analog for Solo cups and beer cans is a keg, and kegs aren’t allowed.

Some people want to bring them back for those reasons.

Or you can wash Solo cups out and reuse them, but most people don’t want to do that.”

The Ghana ThinkTank had to wrestle with this problem itself for its gallery opening last year.

Since a keg wasn’t an option,

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR

The cup compost bins were first introduced by WCMA and the Ghana ThinkTank last spring and were expanded by the Wiliams Environmental Council. the action team threw a BYOC [Bring Your Own Cup] party.

Over the summer, the Ghana ThinkTank’s original cup composting program was discontinued, and the bins were subsequently removed.

This year, WEC has reinstituted the program.

Marshall Borrus ’20, a member of WEC, played a role in bringing back the cup composting program. “One idea that gets brought up a lot at WEC meetings

and is talked about on campus often is the idea of composting in libraries and dorms,” Borrus said. “This is a great idea, but [it is] incredibly hard to implement for a number of reasons – and [that] is why attempts have failed

in the past. It's not that composting in these places has never been brought up to Facilities or Dining Services, it's that designating repositories of food waste comes with a lot of 'regulations,' i.e. you can't leave compost containers

out for more than a day, and you need to make sure what's going in is really compostable.”

Due to these various difficulties and complications that accompany food composting, WEC has decided to try to decrease the College’s ecological footprint by collecting cup compost, which is less labor-intensive and timesensitive than collecting food waste compost.

“Drinking culture also includes coffee,” Lustig said. Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day and 146 billion cups of coffee per year, making the United States the world's leading consumer of coffee. Additionally, according to a study conducted

by Starbucks and the Alliance for Environmental Innovation, every paper cup manufactured is responsible for 0.24 pounds of CO2 emissions.

The program is currently completely student run, with students building, emptying and sorting every bin. “The only things that should be composted in these bins are cups, cup holders and lids,” Borrus said. “These are all on the signs above each bin. As expected, we find a lot more than just these in the bins... I have had the lucky job of removing these extra items.”

WEC hopes that, through their efforts this year, they will be able to prove the feasibility and impact of cup composting on campus and eventually make collecting compost a paid position through the Zilkha Center or Facilities.

College Council censures club sailing

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Monday 2-12-18 5:31 p.m. Lasell: Campus Safety and Security (CSS) received a call from the Fitness Center Monitor reporting blood spots in the men’s locker room. The source of the blood was unknown. An officer responded and posted a warning sign until custodians could clean it up.

5:51 p.m. East: Officers responded to a report of someone yelling. They checked all three floors and could not hear anyone yelling, so no further action was taken.

7:33 p.m. Officers responded to the physics building for a report called into dispatch by a faculty member of a student there in distress. Officers assisted with connecting the student to a College counselor.

11:26 p.m. Sage: Dispatch received a call from Williamstown Police Department requiring assistance with a student due to concern for their wellbeing.

Tuesday 2-13-18 9:20 p.m. A College counselor asked CSS to locate a student whom he believed needed to go to the hospital for an evaluation.

The student was located and services were offered.

Wednesday 2-14-18 4:53 p.m. Carter: Officers responded to a student concerned about a peer in crisis and provided counseling and transport services.

11:58 a.m. Lansing Chapman Rink: An officer responded to provide transport to Health Services for a student who twisted their knee during a skating class.

4:09 p.m. Chandler Gym: An officer responded to a report by the Fitness Center Monitor of a potentially unauthorized person swiping into the entrance to Lasell.

Thursday 2-15-18 9:13 a.m. Spring Street: Officers responded to the bench near the Williams Shop and Goff’s Sports on a call from an employ-

ee reporting another injured employee. The employee had injured their ankle, was struggling to walk and was assisted to a bench between Morgan Hall and Goff’s.

Thursday 2-15-18 3:34 p.m. The Health Center called asking for an officer to locate a student who missed a medical appointment and could not be reached by phone or email.

11:23 p.m. Fitch House: While driving past the building, an officer noticed a large group of people in the basement window. Officers went inside and found an unregistered party with about 40 students playing beer pong.

Friday 2-16-18 11:46 p.m. Officers responded to a report of people skateboarding in the parking garage.

Four non-students were found skateboarding on the second floor. They were identified and advised of the campus rules concerning skateboarding. They understood and left the area.

Saturday 2-17-18 9:37 a.m. Chandler Pool: A custodian called dispatch requesting a mechanical tradesperson to address floor drains backing up in the showers of the men’s general locker room.

An officer confirmed the issue.

The locker rooms were being used by 10 schools visiting for the NESCAC swim tournament. The on-call mechanical tradesperson responded.

1:44 p.m. Rogers House: An officer responded to a tenant issue concerning a mouse infestation and a washing machine problem. Officers contacted appropriate personnel.

5:06 p.m. Lasell Gym: Officers responded to a report of unwanted guests. Three individuals were identified, and they departed the building without incident.

6:16 p.m. Thompson Parking Lot: An officer responding to a tip line could hear a car alarm when he first entered the lot, but the alarm stopped before

it could be identified. The officer waited in the lot for a few minutes, and the alarm did not sound again. Another officer was in Tyler Annex for a call a short while later and could once again hear the alarm going off. The officer then identified the vehicle and contacted the owner.

10:00 p.m. Lehman Hall: Officers responded to a student slipand-fall accident resulting in an injury. Upon arrival and assessment, 9-1-1 was activated for a head injury. The on-campus custodians were asked to clean up blood.

Sunday 2-18-18 12:23 a.m. An officer was asked to rendezvous near the state line with a Vermont State Trooper who was transporting three College students. They had been involved in a motor vehicle accident in Pownal in which the occupants were all fine, but their car had been rendered inoperable and had to be towed. The State Trooper drove the students as far as the Stewart’s Gas Station, but they could not cross state lines. CSS received authorization to leave campus and met them there to transport the three students back to campus.

12:37 a.m. Mills: Officers filed a report upon finding the fourthfloor common room trashed.

1:10 a.m. Carter: Officers responded to the Carter C common room for a medical emergency. Dispatch had already activated 9-1-1 due to the information given, and a student was transported to Berkshire Medical Center North.

2:06 a.m. Dodd: An officer was dispatched to evaluate a student who had vomited several times but was feeling better.

The student was coherent and able to carry on a conversation clearly. The student’s friends decided to keep watch for the time being and call back if there was any need.

6:07 a.m. Sloan House: An officer responded to a burglary alarm in the first-floor north hallway. Upon arrival, there were no exterior or interior signs of anyone present.

At its Feb. 6 meeting, College Council (CC) voted to censure the club sailing team for several financial and other violations of CC by-laws. In the wake of this decision, CC has implemented several changes to strengthen its financial procedures regarding club sports.

The sailing team was referred to CC for censure by the Student Organizations Sanction Committee (SOSC) in early February for several violations of CC by-laws over the past three years. According to the publicly available sanctioning letter, the team had submitted a retroactive funding request for $4150, which included several years’ worth of overdue league fees as well as a portion of their coach’s salary that had not been requested properly in earlier years. Additionally, the team had not submitted a required audit at the end of the past academic year.

In its recommendation, adopted by CC, SOSC suggested censure for four semesters, meaning that the team will only be eligible for supplemental funding and will have to meet several educational requirements. The team will, however, be able to request supplemental funding early

enough in the year to begin its season on time.

Club sports funding occupies a unique niche at the College in that several club sports receive funding jointly from CC and the athletics department.

In particular, club teams like sailing, which are required to have coaches due to their highimpact nature, receive 55 percent of their coaches' funding from the athletics department.

CC funds the other 45 percent; in contrast, club sports that are not required to have coaches must request CC funding for the entirety of any coach’s salary. Since sailing had not previously requested the CC portion of its coach’s salary until its retroactive request, the coach’s salary ended up being paid entirely by athletics, according to outgoing CC treasurer Haley Lescinsky ’18.

This arrangement and the issues that it has brought about led to an examination of and changes to CC’s bylaws. “It used to work that as part of each team’s subgroup budget, they’d request the salary,” Lescinsky said. “[This] made us take a step back and say that it doesn’t make sense for students to be allocating this funding to coaches.”

As such, at its Feb. 13 meeting, CC adopted a by-law amendment

that would allocate all portions of coaches’ salaries for high-impact sports that CC is responsible for as a lump sum, paid to athletics at the beginning of the year and to be disbursed by the department. “Over the summer, the CC treasurer will contact [Associate Athletic Director] Carolyn Miles to get the total portion of salaries CC is responsible for [and] then the CC treasurer will make that transfer for the whole year,” Lescinsky said. “It means that club treasurers no longer need to request the salaries in their subgroup budgets.”

CC is pursuing both additional educational sanctions for the sailing team as well as more proactive financial oversight of all club sports. The sailing team will have to have three members undergo CC treasurer training instead of the normally required one; it will also have additional trainings with CC and OSL representatives during the censure period. Future treasurer trainings will include specific information for all club sports, including emphasis on a requirement that club sport treasurers review their budgets with the athletics department prior to submitting them to CC. The club sailing team did not respond to the Record's request for comment.

Elections held for College Council CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Abel Romero ’19 was elected vice president for student affairs, defeating Stephen Ankoue ’21. Romero previously served as a class of 2019 representative for three terms. He emphasized “facilitating spaces for students to come together over mutual interests, shared experiences and things important to their individual lives.”

Maria Fernanda Heredia ’20 and Vijay Kadiyala ’20 were elected vice presidents for student organizations, running unopposed. Heredia is the incumbent vice president for student organizations, and Kadiyala previously served as a class of 2020 representative.

Because of study abroad plans, Kadiyala will serve this spring, and Heredia will serve next fall. “The 159 amazing clubs on campus represent the incredible diversity of identities, interests and hobbies that define the Williams College community,” Kadiyala said. “Maria and I and the rest of CC are

committed to supporting our clubs to the best of our ability.”

Cabrera-Lomelí was also elected unopposed as the new vice president for communications. He previously served as a class of 2020 representative and is excited to embark on this new role. “One of my campaign platforms was to address the image of Council as that of an elitist organization that is apathetic to student concerns,” he said. “Communicating is a two-way street, and brainstorming new ways to collect student dissatisfaction is a must… I'm a very energetic and extroverted person, and I plan to invest these characteristics into the office through more public events, open mic sessions in Baxter and, of course, Pub Night.”

Tania Calle ’20 and Shane Beard ’20 were jointly elected vice presidents for community and diversity, defeating Tyler Tsai ’19 and Soha Sanchorawala ’18. “This Spring semester, we are very concerned with addressing mental health on campus as well

as financial accessibility,” Calle said.

Spence Carrillo ’20, who previously served as parliamentarian, was elected treasurer, defeating Jad Hamdan ’19. Haoyu Sheng ’20 was elected assistant treasurer, defeating incumbent Tyler Stebulis ’21, and Ellie Sherman ’20 was elected parliamentarian unopposed after serving as a class of 2020 representative last semester.

Four individuals were also elected to represent each class year in CC. Stephanie Cedillo ’18, Michael Green ’18, Carl Rustad ’18 and Julia Yarak ’18 were elected for the class of 2018. Sara Hetherington ’19, Chanel Palmer ’19, Harmon Pardoe ’19 and Joseph Wilson ’19 were chosen for the class of 2019. Nevin Bernet ’20, Ashwin Dasgupta ’20, William Howie ’20 and Chris Mykrantz ’20 were selected for the class of 2020 and Papa Freduah Anderson ’21, Hayden Gillooly ’21, Sameer Khanbhai ’21 and Lance Ledet ’21 were elected for the class of 2021.

February 21, 2018

NEWS 5

The Williams Record

Students respond to survey on participation in activism involving race, gender, class, religion How do you feel about the frequency with which you attend campus programming?

Percentage of respondents who have attended various campus events

SAMUEL WOLF/NEWS EDITOR

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN, REBECCA TAUBER and SAMUEL WOLF EXECUTIVE EDITOR and NEWS EDITORS

As part of a closer look at student activism on campus, the Record conducted a survey last week that measured levels of student participation in various forms of activism. 500 randomly

selected students received the survey, and 107 of those students responded.

Among respondents, 58 percent reported attending at least one campus event pertaining to race, with a 95

History professor Alexander Bevilacqua presents new book on Islamic history

By SOLLY KASAB CONTRIBUTING WRITER Last Thursday, Assistant Professor of History Alexander Bevilacqua gave a presentation on his new book, The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment, at the Williams Bookstore.

This year was Bevilacqua’s first in the Purple Valley; he came from Cambridge, where he was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.

He conducted research for the book by utilizing six languages while traveling across eight countries.

To start the lecture, Chair of the History Department Thomas Kohut introduced Bevilacqua to the audience.

“What we write as historians is connected with who we are and where we come from,” he said, directly tying Bevilacqua’s upbringing in Milan to his continued interest in cross-cultural pursuits. His pursuits have culminated in this book, which celebrates the transfer of knowledge from the Arab world to the European world.

“The Republic of Arabic Letters is the story of how the western understanding of Islam came to be rewritten in

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR

Assistant Professor of History Alexander Bevilacqua spoke on his new book.

the 17th and 18th centuries,” Bevilacuqa began. “10 years ago, I became interested in the fact that we had artifacts as important as the first English translation of the Quran, but it seemed we lacked a context of why these translations were done in this particular moment in time.”

According to Bevilacqua, it was the deeply religious Christian scholars of the early modern period that took a renewed interest in Arabic and Islamic texts, influencing secular Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon. He posited that this idea challenges the understanding that the Enlightenment was a “package” of ideas to be accepted or rejected in block.

“To intellectual historians, it has seemed that only people such as [traditional, secular Enlightenment thinkers] could have had these new thoughts about a foreign religious tradition,” Bevilacqua explained. “Instead, what I found is that the religious Christian scholars of the late 17th century had a wide understanding of what they could learn without ever feeling that they were undermining their own beliefs.”

These Christian scholars had different goals in their work, with some seeking to refute Islam and others simply trying to learn. However, all the scholars agreed that in order to understand Islam, they needed to represent it accurately. This realization led to the beginning of their quests for both translation and understanding.

“The West did not rush from crusades to colonialism in regards to Muslims and their culture, but there was a window in between with a very different set of dispositions and a different set of outcomes,” Bevilacqua said.

Bevilacqua is currently teaching “European Intellectual History from Aquinas to Kant” and “Lives Across Cultures in the Early Modern World.” He expects to continue teaching and writing in the years to come.

percent confidence interval of approximately plus or minus nine percent. 51 percent reported attending at least one event on gender or sexuality, 46 percent on class or socioeconomic status and

35 percent on religion, with similar confidence intervals for each category. 20 percent of respondents reported attending none of these events.

Approximately 68 percent of all respondents reported

that they wished they attended more events, whereas 32 percent were satisfied with the number of events that they currently attend.

This finding was a statistically significant difference.

Bursar's Office changes name to Office of Student Accounts

By DANNY JIN EXECUTIVE EDITOR On Feb. 12, the Bursar’s Office renamed itself the Office of Student Accounts. Controller Susan Hogan said the name change was motivated by a desire for clarity, as the term “bursar” has become outdated.

The Office aids students and families in navigating expenses and payments during their time at the College.

Working closely with the Office of Financial Aid, it facilitates refunds and manages student loans, payment plans and electronic billing. Manager of Student Accounts Paula Langer said that although the name change provides clarity, it does not reflect a change in institutional philosophy.

“We want to keep doing what we’ve been doing for many years and continue to communicate with students and parents in regard to their bills, financial aid and all aspects of the billing process,” Langer said.

Hogan began to explore a new name for the Office after Bursar Mary Kate Shea ’81 passed away on Oct. 26 of last year. “Until Mary Kate passed away, there was no impetus to change anything because everything was moving along quite well,” Hogan said. “With that change, it was a good time to take a look.”

Hogan reached out to members of similar offices at the College’s peer institutions for advice. After soliciting various perspectives, Hogan concluded that the term “bursar” was no longer standard practice. She spoke to senior staff, as well as colleagues in financial aid and human resources, before gaining approval to change the name.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about what the right words would be,” Hogan said. “‘Student accounts’ is wellknown, so we moved to the Office of Student Accounts.”

After Shea’s passing, Langer assumed managerial duties of the Office on Nov. 1, 2017,

while Hogan and Accounting Assistant Jill Mendel also took on some new responsibilities.

The Office posted an application for Assistant Manager of Student Accounts on Friday and is seeking to fill the position in the coming months.

One of the Office’s current goals is to digitize the refund process, Langer said. Currently, students must apply for refunds by submitting a written form to the Office’s headquarters in Hopkins Hall.

Langer has spoken with other departments about potentially incorporating the form into PeopleSoft. She added that she plans to seek student input on further ways in which the Office can provide assistance.

Hogan said that strong communication with students and families would remain the Office’s top priority. “The best thing students and families can do is stay in touch with our office,” she said.

“The more they communicate with us, the more we can do to help.”

JAAB hosts discussion on JA system CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 spoke about the changes in the JA role since her time as a student, such as the ways in which the social capital of the role has been altered. The responsibilities of the role, however, she saw as fairly constant. “I don’t actually think the responsibilities were that different,” Bossong said. “I think we’re much more honest about what those responsibilities are today.”

Echenique spoke next on the panel, framing her remarks within the importance of the entry system as a support network and safety net. “It’s important not just as a space for freshmen to get to know and live with each other, but also as a tremendous resource in times of crisis,” Echenique said. She noted that she saw the system change a fair amount between her own first-year experience and her junior year; the JAs to the class of 2016 made significant efforts to improve and define relationships between JAs and campus staff, especially

Campus Safety and Security, she recounted.

McCabe talked about her decision to accept the JA role.

“I was expecting this awesome moment of clarity,” she said.

“I was really lucky to get the JA position, but I did not get that moment of clarity.” She described the expectations one might place on their own performance as a JA as a potential mental roadblock when considering whether or not to accept the position. “There’s a hesitance to do something if you’re not sure you can do it perfectly, or at least very, very well,” McCabe said.

Finally, Johnston spoke about her decision to decline the JA position. She recounted that, even after she declined the position, she emailed the next morning expressing that she was actually unsure about having declined it. In hindsight, though, she expressed satisfaction with the choice and the ability to “put energy into myself,” as she phrased it.

After the panel, attendees broke into small groups of roughly five to eight people, with students and staff in each group.

JAAB members moderated discussions on questions regarding the roles of JAs, perceived changes in the JA system and potential areas for further change. The goal of these discussions was in part to record many of the sentiments and ideas surrounding the JA system. “A lot of what we’ve been doing are really tangible steps we can take to take things that operate on institutional memory and formalize them,” Hamdan said.

“This is an additional springboard to gauge how the campus is really feeling about what steps and motions can be taken next.”

Despite the somewhat low attendance at the event, Hamdan still thought the event went well and expressed hope for future opportunities like it. “There’s a lot more energy to start thinking about the JA role in a very conscious way,” he said. “The JA role and the responsibilities it brings need to face a campuswide conversation.”

FEATURES 6

The Williams Record

February 21, 2018

One in Two Thousand

By SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITOR

was the mayor of Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz, and let’s just say … what a meaty roll. And I’ve been involved in theater ever since. But math was definitely a much later thing for me. It really started when I was introduced to proofs in high school. I just thought that there was something so interesting about getting to a conclusion that’s totally wild based on everything that you’ve learned beforehand. It’s sort of like mixing everything together, and it’s very soothing.

It’s very calming but also very annoying. But that’s sort of what drew me to mathematics – that logical mishmash-ing of ideas to create a new idea.

BEN WEBER ’21

I first met Ben along with all my other entrymates, but I truly got to know him when we performed together in Frosh Revue last fall. He is widely renowned for his skills in sign language, unicycling and all manners of bizarre humor.

You made quite a splash in Humor Writing this Winter Study. Can you tell me about that?

Well, I had Professor Adams for Multivariable Calculus, and he was just a great guy, so I thought that it would be a great Winter Study to take. So I took it, and I did it, and I won it. Well, I don’t know if I won it. You can’t win Winter Study.

But I wrote some fake Black Mirror episodes with titles like “My Blender is Sentient?” and “My Amazon Echo Buys Me Things Before I Know I Need Them?” They were all questions. I also wrote a piece about my fear of balloons, but I’m not actually scared of balloons. It’s tied into my fear of the womb, but I’m also not scared of the womb. I guess that’s what made it funny. I also wrote a piece on how the FitnessGram™ Pacer Test determines your whole life, but I never got to read that one in front of class.

When was the first time you got into humor?

Wait, this is a really good story!

I was in preschool, and I was bored one day, so I sat down on one of the tiny little red couches made for children, and I was like, what if I was funny? My sense of humor back then was literally just making weird noises, which is really the same sense of humor I have now. I just would walk around to all the kids and go, “OAWAWAWAWAW.” Dino-

With regards to theater, I know you’ve already been involved in a production or two on campus. How has that been for you?

SOPHIA SHIN/PHOTO EDITOR BEN'S HOMETOWN GREAT NECK, N.Y.

BEN'S RESIDENCE MILLS-DENNETT

FAVORITE GO-TO WORD "OAWAWAWA"

MOST RECENT PLAY PYGMALION

saur noises – they were dinosaur noises. They laughed, and I’ve sort of just been screaming ever since.

just my unicycle. I am a threedimensional person. I can’t see in 3-D though.

character, with flaws and personality. I’m more than just my unicycle, but if that’s the only thing you know about me, you know quite a bit.

that is different from anything else. English and every other spoken language are linear, while sign language is nonlinear, so word order isn’t as important as placing signs in different areas in space and then manipulating them to interact with each other. It’s sort of like painting a picture.

How about your unicycling?

Do tell. What’s it like to not see in 3-D?

Basically, one summer, on a whim, I signed up for a unicycling class at a summer camp that I was going to. It took me three summers to learn, but once I finally did it, I was the coolest kid on the block. That’s not true. There were, like, three other kids that could unicycle.

But I kept riding it because it’s easier to carry around than a bike. You can actually bring it into places, and it’s also a really great form of self-expression.

For example, you don’t need to know anything about me besides the fact that I ride a unicycle, and you’ll know what kind of guy I am. But I’m more than

It’s kind of sad. All the other kids could see 3-D, but I couldn’t. I would cross my eyes a lot. I just had an imbalance of muscles in my eyeballs that made me do this thing called alternate fixation. If there were something on the left side of me, instead of looking at the object with both of my eyes, I would look at it with my left eye, and my right eye would become peripheral. I’m not blind, but I pretty much see things as if they’re out of one eye, but a little bit more, if that makes sense. I can’t see 3-D movies, so don’t invite me. The point is, yeah, I’m a three-dimensional

I’d say sign language is also a pretty big deal for you.

Yeah, I know sign language.

People always assume I’m fluent in sign language, though.

I’m not. I’m not even close to fluent. I took it for three years in high school. Imagine taking three years of Spanish in high school. You’re not fluent. You might be able to order a coffee in Mexico, but there isn’t really a deaf equivalent to that. Sign language is also a very misunderstood language. One of the misconceptions about sign language is that it’s another form of English, but it’s really its own language with its own grammar

You’re known for great portmanteaus. Hit me with your best ones.

Spice Root is “Spoot.” Black Panther is “Blanther.” Small college is “smallege.” I’ve got others.

You’re also a prospective math and theater double major. What made you interested in those subjects?

Well, I’ve been involved in theater ever since middle school. I

It’s been pretty great. I’ve been involved in two Cap and Bells productions, including Frosh Revue’s The Frosh and the Furious: Williamstown Drift. I was Red Shirt. And I was also in Pygmalion as Alfred Doolittle. I had to learn a Cockney accent for that. Accents are not my forte, but it was a great experience. I feel like theater at Williams is really a great community. I still get together pretty frequently with my Pygmalion cast.

Is there anything else that our readers absolutely have to know about you?

Yes. If you’re reading this because you’re doing a background check on me, I just want to say you’re doing a great job.

I believe in you, I hope you’ve been having a wonderful day and I applaud you. Background checks are difficult. I mean, I don’t think you’ll find anything too wild about me. I hope everything’s going well with you and your family, if you have a family. Thumbs up all around!

Students tackle toxicity and improve This Week in Williams History: play in video game community Articles from the Archives: 1999

By SERAPIA KIM CONTRIBUTING WRITER

one cannot win because their teammates are bad. Experienced players like Drews and It is 9 p.m. on a Friday, prime Lu think that these sentiments time for the unofficial hub of are inherent to the competitive online video games: Jesup Hall, nature of the games. room 204. The steady clicking of “I get why it happens – becomputer mice and keyboards is cause people play competitive the backdrop to this gathering. games to win and get better,” This rhythm is frequently bro- Drews said. “But some people ken by bursts of excited screams, have trouble remembering that yells and high-fives. Many type other players are people, too.” in “GG” – an abbreviation for The old technique of address“good game” – in the chat re- ing toxicity used to be remindgardless of the match’s outcome ing the toxic player that it is just as a sign of good sportsmanship. a game and rhetorically asking, “League of Legends means “Why do you care so much?” [an] instant friend group. It’s an However, such simplified reall-encompassing hobby,” Ben- sponses brush over the fact jamin Drews ’18, president of that games can be a lifestyle the College’s League of Legends and form the bedrock of many club, said. League of Legends is people’s identities. a massively popular multiplayer A 2016 Polygon interview video game where players battle with the co-founders of Riot each other via virtual fantasy Games, the company behind characters. Drews has led count- League, revealed that they less Friday night League sessions have over 100 million players and organized two successful worldwide. Overwatch, anothintercollegiate er game popular League tournaamong students ments at the the College, “Some people have at College thus celebrated its 30 far. “It shapes a player trouble remembering millionth lot of my social last year. Among life because I’m that other players are them are over such a hardcore two million playgamer,” he said. ers who use livepeople, too.”

But more streaming platdifficult than forms like Twitch running the to broadcast their Benjamin Drews ’18 club or winplays and engage ning games is with their audian unwelcome visitor that has ences as full-time jobs. The plagued the global multiplayer global electronic sports econoonline-gaming community my is projected to grow into a since its inception – toxicity. $1.5 billion industry by 2020 as Toxicity is synonymous with investments double, consumer blaming teammates for their spending increases and partmistakes. Jian Lu ’19, an avid nerships expand.

League player, defined it as criThe enormous size of their tiquing a teammate’s play in a player bases and the publicity way that does not add any value that comes with it has pressured to the game. It is an escalation companies like Riot Games and from saying, “You could have Blizzard Entertainment, the done this,” to saying, “Why company behind Overwatch, didn’t you do this?” This can to take toxicity more seriously. often be followed by profanity League employs a machineand insults directly targeting a learning approach for detecting specific player. racial slurs, passive aggressiveSuch accusatory sentiments ness and toxicity in text chat. are born out of the mindset that Chat restrictions and outright

bans have become more common, with offending chat logs being used as evidence.

“A lot of people don’t get punished again, indicating that just pointing out the behavior is enough [to stop the toxicity],” Drews said.

In contrast, Blizzard’s go-to response to toxicity has been to mute the offending player’s voice-chat function. Antony Kim ’20, co-founder of the College’s Overwatch club, finds this method to be inadequate because the toxic player may escalate the tense situation in other ways.

“When the toxic players feel like they don’t have an outlet, they’ll throw [lose on purpose] and ruin the game for everyone,” Kim said.

Complicating the issue, toxicity is not a problem unique to the losing team. Even winning players can be targets of problematic remarks that diminish achievements, such as, “You’re only good because you’re Korean or Chinese.” There is also a prevalent stereotype that women only play support roles, which are often perceived as less mechanically demanding, and are thus “boosted” by their boyfriends, implying that they do not deserve to have their high ranks.

As leaders of two of the most popular gaming communities at the College, Drews and Kim have been cognizant of the toxic mindset that plagues students.

“These behaviors don’t go away," Kim said. "We still have to engage with people in-game and face a status quo filled with toxicity. Because of that, I felt compelled to create the Overwatch club. I wanted to learn about and address these behaviors in a more local setting before thinking about what I can do on the big screen. I especially want to change the fact that the community can seem toxic and unwelcoming to newcomers, younger people, female gamers, etc.”

February 21, 2018

7 FEATURES

The Williams Record

Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company celebrates 25 years

By JEONGYOON HAN FEATURES EDITOR In addition to being delicious, the NoCO2 Peruvian and Nicaraguan coffee blends that give caffeine enthusiasts at the College their morning boosts are, as their names would suggest, free of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These environmentally-savvy, carbonneutral blends were created by Dean Cycon ’75 and his company, Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company.

Cycon did not initially intend to use his political science degree from the College to run a socially responsible coffee company. Cycon has used Dean’s Beans as a way to address the same social and environmental issues he originally hoped his initial career in law would. Now celebrating its 25th year, Dean’s Beans has proved that, in contrast to multi-national coffee brewing companies like Seattle’s Best or Starbucks, the coffee industry can simultaneously engage with social, political and economic issues and produce high-quality, specialty coffee for customers.

Prior to this endeavor, Cycon was a lawyer who advocated for indigenous people’s land rights and the anti-nuclear proliferation movement.

Frustrated by the legal system’s limitations as a vehicle for change, however, Cycon quit his job as a lawyer and began teaching law at universities across the country in the 1980s. When a colleague introduced him to a group of Brazilian indigenous coffee farmers seeking help regarding deforestation issues, Cycon was inspired to create Coffee Kids, Inc. in 1988. The non-profit organization advocated for coffee cooperatives, or co-ops, in issues including income rights, climate change

SOPHIA SHIN / PHOTO EDITOR

Dean Cycon ’75, founder of Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company, spoke at Friday’s Log Lunch about his work with indigenous farmers. and social reform in Indonesia. Its success made him realize the power of addressing societal issues through a business model that promotes community development.

“When I let go of that screen I had built around me by being a lawyer and then opened myself up to the universe of possibilities, wham! This thing came screaming through the door, and I was open to it,” Cycon said.

In 1991, Cycon took a big gamble in starting Dean’s Beans.

Though he had no background in running a business, let alone a coffee company, Cycon nevertheless invested $7000 in a coffee roaster, his own cafe and a small bag of coffee beans.

“I had my own experimental playground,” he said. “I remember starting Dean’s Beans and thinking, ‘This is an experi-

ment. No one has done this, and I want to try this, and if it doesn’t work, then I’ll go back to teaching law.’”

With the desire to give voiceless coffee farmers a platform to tackle issues pertinent to their communities, Cycon established his business so that Dean’s Beans could “pay more to farmers, charge less to consumers and fund development programs, ranging from as little as $5000 to as large as $20,000,” he said. In fact, the Dean’s Beans model allows farmers and coops to increase their incomes by as much as 50 percent.

He believes the coffee industry is the perfect place in which to promote corporate social responsibility in this way. “Coffee is disgustingly profitable,” Cycon said.

With coffee’s promising market, Dean’s Beans can partner

SIX HOURS IN

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN, DANNY JIN and WILLIAM NEWTON EXECUTIVE EDITORS Taking inspiration from the New York Times’ “36 Hours in…” travel series, the Record set out to craft some fun itineraries for half-days spent off -campus. As such, we’re starting off with “Six Hours in Bennington” for students who might want to venture off to southwestern Vermont. During this past Winter Carnival, we made use of a friend’s trusty 2012 Honda Accord, but for those who don’t have access to a car, Green Mountain Express’ Purple Line offers bus service from the Williams Inn. 1:00 p.m. | Blue Benn Diner (314 North St.) To start the afternoon, we ate at the Blue Benn Diner, a cozy local venue in a converted railcar.

Though it only accepts cash, al-

most every meal costs less than $10. There can be a bit of a wait for a booth at times, but the counter is always an option. After leading us to our booth, our waitress provided us with quarters to play songs on the jukebox.

With Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” filling the air, we enjoyed a delightful meal; our personal brunch favorite was the turkey hash, served with eggs over easy on top.

2:00 p.m. | Bennington Museum (75 Main St.) A short drive up the hillside from downtown, the Bennington Museum is chiefly known for its collection of works by Grandma Moses, a famed 20th century American folk artist who began her painting career at age 78.

Moses often made use of collaged images pasted onto pastoral scenes. Through an interactive exhibit that invites visitors to try out collaging for themselves, we crafted a delightful mountain scene of Sofia Vergara and

with co-ops from 13 countries – mostly in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia – to not only produce coffee beans, but also develop a plan of action to address a social, environmental or political issue that the community wants to prioritize.

Upon meeting an interested co-op, usually at an international coffee or business conference, Cycon will visit the co-op community. Then, over the span of one year, Cycon and the community will develop a “PeopleCentered Development” (PCD) approach to fund a project based on the farmers’ priorities.

The specific goals of PCD projects may range anywhere from water well installation in Sumatra to gender equality in Papua New Guinea. Other projects have included establishing land rights training for indigenous

farmers, kickstarting a women’s health training program and developing a microloan-based small-business initiative in Guatemala. PCD is meant to establish respect for farmers and allow them to see positive change in their communities.

“The underlying theme is about empowerment,” Cycon said. “Coffee farmers, like producers of any product, are marginalized and disempowered not only in the international market, but also from their own governments. They’re often far away from centers of power… These are really vulnerable people, so the ability to help empower people at that level is wonderful,” he said. According to Cycon, Dean’s Beans also stands out among its competitors for its methods of production, particularly its practice of shade-growing. Al-

lowing the coffee bean to grow in shady areas of surrounding forests makes the beans taste less bitter and more full, Cycon said. Shade-growing also reduces erosion and promotes a more balanced ecosystem that is crucial to other plants and wildlife in South American regions.

Additionally, Dean’s Beans is unique for its NoCO2 Peruvian coffee initiative. Given that one hardwood coffee produces 50 pounds of CO2, Dean’s Beans “plant[s] one tree in Pangoa Cooperative for every 17 pounds of NoCO2 Peruvian coffee consumed by you,” according to its website.

Though Dean’s Beans has had a successful 25 years, Cycon still has much to accomplish in the next five years, when he plans to retire. Whether it is by following up on co-ops with which Dean’s Beans has partnered for 20 years or by starting a new land-reforestation effort in Sumatra as a response to the invasive palm oil industry, Cycon is thankful for Dean’s Beans’ role in showing him the power of cooperative business to address universal goals of economic and social stability.

“I’ve learned not to romanticize people, but rather [to] realize that people want the same thing,” Cycon said.

“They want food security, good housing and great opportunities for their children.

But they all go about pursuing these goals differently.”

Understanding these various communities and helping them implement their innovative ideas makes Dean’s Beans all the more valuable to Cycon. “We are not trying to be the biggest coffee company,” he said. “[Dean’s Beans] is about facilitating these communities and allowing them to empower themselves.”

BENNINGTON

a golden retriever chasing a leprechaun riding atop a sledding toddler. Free for students from the College with ID, the museum also has an exhibition of works

by Jessica Park, a nationally acclaimed painter who is also an employee at and the namesake of the College’s mailroom. We also visited the museum’s recreated one-room schoolhouse from the late 19th century. The museum’s second floor has more works on display, including a small modern section and works depicting the local southern Vermont area.

The collection certainly offers a different vibe than the Clark or Mass MoCA and, at the great price of $0, made for a nice visit.

3:00 p.m. | Bennington Battle Monument (15 Monument Cir.) A few minutes from what was once the Corkscrew Railroad, the Bennington Battle Monument commemorates a 1777 Revolutionary War engagement with a stone obelisk that sits 10 miles from Walloomsac, N.Y. — the

actual site of the Battle of Bennington. Continental General John Stark is memorialized in a statue, in which he is depicted bravely commanding his men: “There they are, boys! We beat them today, or Molly Stark sleeps a widow tonight!” Another statue portrays Seth Warner, a captain of the renowned Green Mountain Boys. Between mid-April and October, visitors are able to enter the monument, which is open daily.

3:30 p.m. | Bennington Potters (324 County St.) We next headed east from Old Bennington to Bennington Potters, which has been locally producing handmade stone pottery, affordable crafts and home decor since 1948. The factory behind the store offers a glimpse into the pottery-making process; through free, self-guided tours, visitors can come within feet of the crafts as they are being made. Bennington Potters is one of the few remaining small-scale artisan

potters in what was once a widespread New England industry, and it was certainly an intriguing peek into the craftsmanship behind the pottery.

4:00 p.m. | Covered Bridges A Vermont icon, covered bridges are one-lane testaments to a certain New England nostalgia. Traditionally used to cross over creeks and streams amidst rolling farmland, there are three of these quaint bridges just north of Bennington: Silk Road, Burt Henry and Paper Mill, the former two of which we visited.

The Silk Road Covered Bridge, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, made an excellent backdrop for photographs. After some brief sightseeing and a drive through one of these onelane wonders, we headed back to downtown Bennington.

4:30 p.m. | Coffee Break (105 South St.) Needing a slight pick-me-up, we stopped at South Street Cafe and Bakery, where a weekly open mic event was in progress. The shop offered a quirkier vibe than one might find at Tunnel City Coffee and had welcoming service and good beverages. After some spoken-word poetry, we were treated to excellent guitar music while we sipped our beverages. This cafe could easily make a nice study spot if one wanted to spend an afternoon off-campus and still get some work done.

5:00 p.m. | Walk Through Downtown Bennington

NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN / EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Bennington’s attractions include the Bennington Museum, a battle monument, a chocolate shop and pottery factory (clockwise from top).

Refreshed by our stop at the cafe, we took a stroll through downtown Bennington, stopping at various local shops that caught our eyes. Fiddlehead at Four Corners (338 Main St.), a converted bank, is an offbeat art gallery and shop with intriguing architecture and a rich history. A highlight was the “banned books exhibit,” a wall adorned with various books that have been banned at some point in history.

A kind employee recounted stories of the eccentric security techniques used when the building was occupied by the bank. When stepped on, a pedal behind the

clerk’s desk would shoot tear gas at an intruder. However, after the bank realized that tear gas was too difficult to remove from the building, it constructed a balcony above the front door, positioning a shotgun-carrying guard there at all times to blast away potential crooks.

Another highlight was Knapp’s (417 Main St.), an eclectic store that is sure to bring back fond childhood memories. Once a pet store, Knapp’s began to focus on selling musical instruments, hobby supplies and children’s toys after a Petco store arrived in Bennington. It currently offers a wide range of knick-knacks for all ages. If you are looking for anything from a nose flute to a Fender stratocaster, Knapp’s is the place to go.

The Village Chocolate Shoppe (471 Main St.) provides a homey atmosphere as well as a staggeringly diverse array of delectable chocolates, fudges and truffles.

We were greeted by the store’s two 100-pound chocolate moose, Benny and Molly, inanimate yet eternal lovers who stand side-byside at the center of the store. The shop also holds the record for the world’s largest peanut butter cup ever made, a concoction of 230 pounds of chocolate and peanut butter. We purchased some less weighty pieces of chocolate and snacked on them as we headed off to dinner.

6:00 p.m. | Cilantro (201 South St.) Per a professor’s recommendation, we capped off our visit with a meal at Cilantro. Serving burritos, tacos and salads, one might be inclined to call this restaurant a Chipotle with local flair. The food, though, is definitely a step up, offering excellent fillings — delightful chorizo sausage or flavorfully succulent roasted mushrooms — along with an array of tasty salsas, other sauces and great housemade limeade. Prices are reasonable ($8 for most meals), the atmosphere is casual and welcoming and much of the food is locally sourced, to boot. After inhaling our toothsome burritos, we hopped into our trusty steed for the winding drive back to good old Willytown, coasting into Billsville with under a 16th of a tank of gas left.

8 ARTS

The Williams Record

February 21, 2018

‘Gilliam’ deconstructs notions of figural representation

By ANGELA TANG STAFF WRITER What does talking about something without the actual presence of the subject look like? What does it mean to represent race without representation? Can space be talked about by the precise lack of it?

These are some of the questions that I had while looking at Sam Gilliam’s 1972 work Situation VI-Pisces 4 in the Williams College Museum of Art [WCMA]’s latest exhibition, Sam Gilliam In Dialogue.

Born in 1933, Sam Gilliam is an American artist whose works have been described as belonging to Abstract Expressionism and Lyrical Abstraction. He is known as the first artist to introduce the concept of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars. He works with stretched, draped and wrapped canvases as well as sculptural, 3-D elements.

Now 84 years-old, Sam Gilliam lives in Washington, D.C., where he has resided for more than 50 years. Although he has been practicing as an artist for more than half a century, Gilliam has recently been repopularized and rediscovered in the art world.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he was first known as part of the Washington Color School, a group of D.C.-based artists who developed a form of abstract art known as Color Field painting, which involves pouring layers of acrylic paint onto

PHOTO COURTESY OF JIM GIPE PHOTO/PIVOT MEDIA.

Sam Gilliam’s draped and suspended masterpieces colorfully defy conventional interpretations of sculptural and painted media. unprimed canvases and letting it soak in. The result is an unruffled surface of both flatness and depth. Today, Gilliam still works with color, although in a much different way.

Hanging in the WCMA exhibition, Gilliam’s piece Situation VI-Pisces 4 is a signature drape work of gigantic scale. According to the exhibition’s gallery description, the piece was acquired with “no specific instructions for installation … the work can be suspended in multiple ways, generating innovative, sitespecific dialogues with the people and works of art surrounding it.” In the spirit of

Gilliam’s experimental practice, this exhibition will be reinstalled in the gallery space three separate times to reflect different interpretations.

At first, this experimental and abstract work caught me off guard. I could not understand how Gilliam’s conceptual, geometric and lyrical work was also a way to address systemic racism and bigotry. I was used to seeing social realist works of art done by artists such as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, who depict the black figure directly in their works. However, Gilliam gained the success that he did in the 1970s precisely because

his work stepped away from the direct representations of black figures in art; Gilliam became a mentor and a trailblazer who challenged the canonical narrative that black American artists can only exist in terms of figural representation. In fact, Gilliam’s more abstract works allowed for a more fluid understanding and deconstruction of the confining characteristics of gender and race.

In context with Gilliam’s piece, a few other artists’ works are also included in the exhibition as a way to introduce more conversations about the categories of race, representation,

gender and artistic practice. A few of these artists include David Hammons, Barkely L. Hendricks and Kara Walker. Seeing these pieces and the ways that these artists have approached the impact of race and identity in their works allowed for an even more layered understanding of Gilliam’s piece. Perhaps the reason why my eyes kept gravitating towards his piece in the gallery was because the non-figural and abstract drape piece was charged with such a heavy and difficult history.

With so many colors and ideas seeming to burst out of the canvas, there was no easy or simple way to look at the piece.

Gilliam is seen as a pioneer of sorts for his concept of the Color Field and for his politically-charged, non-figurative works. Nevertheless, there are still many parallels to be made between Gilliam and other artists. For example, like many other artists, process is important to Gilliam.

He once said in an interview with W Magazine that his favorite color to use in his pieces is purple. He elaborated: “the purples, the blues. Purple colors have a depth. It’s just a romantic color. It’s royal. I used to never use greens; I used to be a great yellow person.”

These small explanations for how and why an artist chooses to execute a piece the way they do become part of the bigger picture and allow for a more nuanced understanding of the artist’s role in the piece.

It seems right to end this piece on Sam Gilliam not by stating a moment of clarity, but by instigating a conversation. As Gilliam himself is quoted to have said in 1969, “What we should be talking about is the quality of aesthetic experiences available to persons within the black community and raising the level of this quality,” he said.

“But let’s not forget about what has gone before; let’s not forget about black history – it’s erroneous to presuppose that a person who doesn’t follow a certain philosophy [of representation] all the way doesn’t care about [their] race or [their] kids.”

Violin and fortepiano performance brings 18th century music to life

By FARIS GULAMALI ARTS EDITOR

PHOTO COURTESY OF DISNEY.COM.

The first Marvel superhero film directed by an African-American earned $192 million its opening weekend.

‘Black Panther’ revolutionizes the superhero genre

By SHANE BEARD CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Friday, over 250 students from the College traveled to The Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield to see a showing of Black Panther on its opening day. The event – a collaboration between Sisterhood, Black Student Union, Williams African Students Organization, Minority Coalition, Africana Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Davis Center – demonstrated a high level of student interest in a historically important and socially relevant film.

Much has been said about Marvel Studios’ Black Panther and its immediate and provocative entrance into today's important cultural conversations. The 18th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the first in the franchise to be led by a black director (Creed director Ryan Coogler) and feature a primarily black cast. The premise itself feels especially prescient today: an African nation, Wakanda, is blessed with a mound of the magical metal known as vibranium and has secretly developed into the most advanced nation on the planet. This is what makes the film interesting, but what makes it revelatory is how it deals with the complexities of a post-colonial, global African diaspora.

The film’s driving conflict is all about how to utilize Wakanda’s advanced tech-

nology and magical resources. Up until the events of the film, Wakanda has operated as an incredibly insular nation, shielded from the ravages of colonialism through high-tech subterfuge.

But in the wake of his father’s death, incoming king T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) faces a crossroads. He wants to protect his people at all costs, but his ex-lover Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) sees it as Wakanda’s responsibility to help the rest of the continent with their bounty. The sharply written Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), an Oakland-born mercenary with a shadowy connection to Wakanda, wants to use Wakanda’s technology, specifically its weapons, to create a black-led empire, while fellow villain Ulysses Klaue just wants to steal vibranium for the sake of it. It’s fitting, then, that the properties of vibranium are described in terms of potential and kinetic energy; the fictional metal represents black excellence and power given form.

Its potential for healing, hurt and profit is demonstrated by how the metal itself, and those who seek to use it, act.

With Killmonger, the film immediately addresses the uncomfortable truth about its premise: if Wakanda exists, what about the rest of Africa?

What about the world? As he ascends to the throne, T’Challa quickly realizes that sitting on a mountain of power can’t last forever, and he must come to

terms with the mistakes of his forebears. The film tastefully reckons with how the desire for safety above all else can dehumanize and isolate those that it should be protecting.

One quote from the film’s finale — “in times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers” — says it all.

These are heady, unexpected themes for a tent-pole superhero blockbuster to tackle, but the script balances all of them with the action and thrills one has come to expect from the genre. Black Panther, like Jordan Peele’s Get Out from last year, is further evidence that genre film is an excellent vehicle for black storytelling. Science fiction, fantasy and horror are windows into new, imagined worlds, and placing blackness in the center of those genres offers a perspective that is otherwise untapped.

By embracing the inherent ridiculousness of Black Panther – a king of a fantasy country who dresses up in a black cat suit – as a superhero, one can see what makes the character and his stories so significant to black popular culture. An African nation untouched by colonialism becomes the most powerful country on Earth; Wakanda is the fulfillment of what blackness is, could have been and can be, and the nation’s stealthy, formidable king is perhaps the embodiment of blackness itself: subversive, regal and proud.

Considering it was 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon when I entered Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, I was not expecting to see an auditorium filled with students, faculty and community members.

Yet I was met, surprisingly, with a busy concert hall and a crowd excited for the violin and fortepiano performance to begin.

Lucy Russell, a distinguished international violinist, has achieved prominence in her mastery of historical instruments and their modern counterparts. A legendary part of the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, a musical group that has played in South Africa, Europe and Israel, Russell studies ancient versions of her instrument. As a professor of baroque violin at the Royal College of Music in London, England and a visiting professor of violin at St. Andrews University in Scotland, it was extraordinary to hear her play.

Sezi Seskir, a native of Ankara, Turkey, has guest lectured at universities across the country. She plays the fortepiano, an older version of the modern piano. While it only has five octaves, the fortepiano can be used to play

anything through the 18thcentury repertoire.

Both Russel and Seskir, although working on different instruments, agreed that they chose such old instruments because of their intimacy.

While more recent instruments resonate through an auditorium, these older instruments draw the audience into the music instead of projecting it upon the audience.

The performance included four pieces: Violin Sonata in A-minor, op. 23, No. 4, Violin Sonata in B-flat-major, K. 454, Violin Sonata in E-minor, K. 304 and Violin Sonata in A-major, op. 12, No. 2.

Each song was precisely executed with passion and intimacy. With her eyes closed, Russell appeared to be drawing her music purely from muscle memory. The music varied, sometimes flowing like a river, often stopped like Route 2 traffic and at other times incremented, like walking up a staircase.

We in the crowd remained glued to our seats, our eyes focused on the instruments.

Mesmerized, we were drawn into the music emanating from the instruments.

We were distracted only by brief pauses between songs; the two musicians communicated solely through sight and played continuously.

During the intermission, Russell and Seskir related to us their intimate relationships with their instruments.

Russell noted that her violin, based on an older edition from the 1600s, was beautiful because of its gut strings — literally strings made from animal guts. With a differing slope to the bridge, the instrument is about synchronizing and collaborating – bringing people together rather than pushing them apart. She jokingly noted that the weather in Williamstown was a nuisance because of the change in temperature (roughly 20 degrees Celsius) between rooms which, she said, was “gonna be fun for the instrument.” Russell also humorously mentioned that the tactile feeling of the gut string was not for the faint of heart, especially vegetarians.

They concluded with the Violin Sonata in A-major, op.

12, No. 2, a lively musical piece that penetrated the soul. This particular piece was very special in terms of its rhythm and pace; it changed rapidly, alternating between long rests and very sharp staccatos, ascending crescendos and gloomy, slow tunes. When Russell and Seskir stood up and bowed, the audience remained mesmerized. After a brief pause, we erupted in applause.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SEZISESKIR.COM.

Seskir and Russell’s concert offered classical music fans a rare chance to hear a fortepiano and period violin.

9 ARTS

The Williams Record

February 21, 2018

Margot Robbie gives gripping performance in ‘I, Tonya’

By CECELIA MESSBAUER STAFF WRITER I, Tonya, showing at Images Cinema through tomorrow, is not your typical sports film. It focuses on both a singular incident and a broader story that are so much bigger, crueler and more bizarre than sports tend to be. The titular Tonya Harding was one of the most talented and significant U.S. figure skaters of her generation. Her on-ice accomplishments, however, have since been subsumed in cultural memory by her connection to one of the most darkly absurd moments of the 1990s: an assault on Harding’s teammate Nancy Kerrigan carried out at the behests of Harding's selfappointed bodyguard and abusive ex-husband.

The film, directed by Craig Gillespie, starts from that moment and works backward to weave a vibrant biopic that contextualizes the oft-sensationalized and misremembered attack by bringing Harding to life. Utilizing a documentarystyle framing device in which major players in Harding’s life tell their sides of the story to the camera, the film uses their collective flashbacks and occasional breaking of the fourth wall to create a narrative in which a certain amount of doubt surrounds everyone’s individual perspective.

The film doesn’t completely exonerate Harding, who was convicted of hindering prosecution of the assault and was subsequently banned for life from competitive skating. It does, however, place blame for the genesis of the attack solely on the abusive men in her life, and it portrays her potential complicity in the crime as a re-

PHOTO COURTESY OF IMDB.COM.

I, Tonya sympathizes with figure skating icon Tonya Harding in a documentary-style film that reveals the impact of her personal relationships sult of being trapped by that abuse – abuse that extends back through her entire life to her physically violent and emotionally manipulative mother.

Ascendant superstar Margot Robbie is the superbly charismatic center of the film as Harding. She exudes an in-themoment intensity that makes every beat of the flashback scenes reverberate alongside a tired defiance in the present that challenges the audience to reckon with its own reaction to her. Harding’s skating career was characterized by historic

athleticism – she was the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition – and a working-class background that prevented her from embodying the aesthetic conventions of more privileged skaters favored as “artistic” by judges. Robbie sells both of these dynamics with the hard-edged anger of someone who is at once desperate to succeed and furious at being asked to be someone that she isn’t in order to do so.

As propulsive and kinetic as the skating scenes are, Robbie earns her Best Actress nomina-

tion off the ice in scenes where Harding’s emotional needs are viciously neglected by those who are supposed to love her.

She has to fight constantly to keep autonomy over the career that was built on her own incredible accomplishments.

While certainly not without comedic elements, the film is serious and sincere about illuminating the tragedies of Harding’s life and condemning those who abused her. Sebastian Stan is darkly brilliant as Harding’s partmer Jeff Gillooly, who goes, without pause

or explanation, from the conventional teenage romantic lead he might have been in a fictional story to the physically abusive and controlling monster he was in real life.

The subtext of that shift is self-evident: Gillooly is the embodiment of entitled masculinity and its horrific consequences. Watching him slowly devastate Harding’s wellbeing is haunting and sickening.

Enabling and exacerbating Gilooly’s violent instincts is Shawn Eckhardt – the bodyguard, played by Paul Walter

Hauser, who ultimately orders the hit. Eckhardt’s initiative in executing the crime is driven entirely by a toxic projection of inadequacy and misogyny onto a desperate gambit to make himself the center of a competition between two talented and driven women. Together, the two men convince themselves that they have an integral role to play in elevating a woman they clearly view as an object over a supposed rival. In reality, Kerrigan was Harding’s friend and teammate, driven apart from her mainly by the men and media who wanted them to fight.

Most chilling of all, however, is Allison Janney’s performance as Harding’s mother, for which she could very easily win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. From a young Harding’s first steps onto the ice, her mother conditions her to expect physical violence from those who purport to care about her while simultaneously insinuating that she is a burden whose extraordinary success can never be good enough. Her portrayal is gut-wrenching from the start and never lets up; every time there seems to be hope for reconciliation, the situation plummets again.

Despite its comedic packaging and the absurd reality of its premise, I, Tonya ultimately shines as a characterdriven tragedy, where the rise and fall of a brilliant athlete is remembered by reckoning with the insidious culture of abuse that destroyed her career. If members of the audience leave feeling uncomfortable about how they reacted to the scandal at the time, then the film has served its purpose.

‘Seeds’ explores the divine, corporeal

By KAIRA MEDIRATTA ARTS EDITOR “They see the whole world connected through a life force,” Chair and Professor of Anthropology Antonia Foias explained, in reference to pre-Columbian civilizations. “Everything in the world is animate; very few things are inanimate. Clouds are animate. Mountains are animate.

Water is animate. Plants are animate … and what animates and connects all these things – humans, animals, plants, clouds, the gods – is a life force.”

This life force is the driving concept behind The Seeds of Divinity, a new exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). Curated by Foias, the exhibition will run through August. This past fall, students in her course “The Seeds of Divinity: Exploring Pre-Columbian Art and Civilization in a Museum Exhibit” collaborated on the exhibition. It displays 33 artifacts from five different civilizations – the Maya, Teotihuacán, Nayarit, Zapotec and Aztec – provided by WCMA’s own collection as well as on loan from the Yale University Art Gallery and the Worcester Art Museum.

Foias is an archaeologist who has worked in Guatemala for over 20 years. She describes herself as a “dirt archaeologist” who doesn’t do a lot of work with religion. The Seeds of Divinity, therefore, is a unique opportunity for Foias to expose her students to physical, tangible artifacts and to explore the intersections between archaeology and art – two fields that may seem dichotomous but have more overlap than one may think. With archaeology, one can infer a lot about human behavior from where they lived,

how they lived and what they left behind. “But without writing,” Foias said, “Its very hard to get at concepts of divinity, religious beliefs, the gods that they worshipped. So art, then, becomes an entryway into religious belief systems … because in the end, the way you conceive of the world and your place in it determines how you behave.”

Seeds is also unique in its student curation. This process began with each student choosing five top pieces and focusing on a single civilization. These choices were often personal. For example, Wilson Lam ’21 explained that he was interested in mortuary themes due to their appearance in his own Chinese heritage.

He eventually settled on a trio of urns used for bloodletting, incense and other purposes.

The exhibition design by Associate Professor of Theater David Gürçay-Morris ’96 is also critical to the experience as a whole.

Upon entering the room, there is a sense of perfect stillness, of being enveloped in the deep turquoise of the walls. One almost feels as if they are in a tomb themselves, which is fitting, seeing that many of these artifacts originally come from mortuary settings. In the center of the exhibit is a sort of enclosure – a room within a room.

Within this sequestered space is a pyramidal structure, an homage to the iconic Mesoamerican pyramid. Pedestals of varying heights are arranged to create an architectural pretense. At the very top of the “pyramid” stands a sparkling red Aztec statue of a maize fertility goddess, perhaps the most striking piece in the exhibit. At the back of the structure sits a dog from West Mexico. A common belief across the Mesoamerican region was that a

dog carried the newly deceased across a body of water into the afterlife – thus, we can see the dog as representative of the tomb.

Surrounding the pyramid are four large effigies of differing colors and media, which would’ve traditionally been found inside a temple. Outside the enclosed space we find various artifacts used for rituals within the household, retellings of myths and stories and teaching children about their roles in the world.

What may be most unique about The Seeds of Divinity, though, is the use of audio stops; these allow the pieces to almost come alive, speaking to the way in which they would’ve been viewed at the time of their creation. “We often think of these as just objects,” Foias explained. “But through ritual, they were animated with the soul of the person who was depicted in that effigy.” To these Mesoamerican peoples, an object was more than a household good. We think of all the actions suggested by these objects to be secular, daily activities. But for them, these activities were all connected, in some way, to divinity. This divinity, in turn, imbued their lives with much more meaning than we can fully grasp.

Perhaps most important to realize is that all of these traditions continue through to today.

According to Foias, there are over five million Maya speakers and millions of Zapotec and Nawa speakers in the world today. Furthermore, while some may assume that Mesoamerican principles died with Spanish colonialism, these ideas continue to animate these cultures and societies. One must only step into The Seeds of Divinity to feel that they are very much alive.

LIVE MUSIC

SINKANE Saturday, February 24, 8pm

CLUB B10 | $10 STUDENTS | $14 ADVANCE | $20 DAY OF | $26 PREFERRED

TICKETS: massmoca.org or 413.MoCA.111 | North Adams, Mass.

WRITE FOR THE RECORD! Come to weekly writers' meetings on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. in Paresky 209 OR Email ras3@williams.edu

PHOTO COURTESY OF WCMA

Foias connects ancient, secular objects to the divine through the lens of Mesoamerican culture.

10 SPORTS

The Williams Record

February 21, 2018

Skiing hosts Winter Carnival, finishes in fifth place

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Alpine captain Marc Talbott ’18 took home seventh in the giant slalom, setting a personal record of 1:42.24.

By JACK SCHRUPP TEAM CORRESPONDENT Skiing placed fifth at the Winter Carnival last weekend with strong performances from both the Alpine and Nordic teams.

Friday’s rainy conditions did not dampen the Ephs’ perfor-

mance at their home hill as the Alpine team posted solid results on the first day of the Williams Carnival. The highlight of the day came from captain Marc Talbott ’18, who had a career-best result and finished seventh in the giant slalom. He put down two fast runs with a combined time of 1:42.24, just

1.71 seconds behind winner Brian McLaughlin of Dartmouth.

Head coach Kelsey Levine ’10 commented on his performance. “I am so proud of Marc and the way he skied his home hill,” she said. “What a way to celebrate being a senior Eph.” Backing up Talbott’s performance on the men’s side were

teammates Bryan Bailey ’19, who cracked the top 30 to finish 25th, Paul Sheils ’20, who tied for 37th, and Ryan Schmidt ’20, who was 41st.

The women were led by Isabel Torres ’19, followed closely

by Anna Bruce ’21 and Gibson Donnan ’19. The three were 38th, 39th and 40th, respectively. Makena Jones ’18, Payton Spencer ’18 and Madeleine Dekko ’21 rounded out the women’s team in 46th, 48th and 52nd, respectively.

After the first day of the carnival, the men stood in seventh, and the women were in eighth place.

At Prospect Mountain, the Nordic teams were challenged by the weather in the 5k and 10k classics. Sonya Jampel ’19 led the women’s team in 11th place. She was followed by Ingrid Thyr ’20 in 18th and Carmen Bango ’20 in 31st. Lucy Alexander ’20 had a great race, placing 33rd. Ivy Spiegel-Ostrom ’20 and Elowyn Pfeiffer ’18 both finished strong for the Ephs as well in 37th and

44th, respectively. The women’s team finished the day in fifth after a strong performance on their home course.

On the men’s side, Nick Gardner ’19 led the way in 11th place.

Jack Consenstein ’20 cracked the top 20 in 18th. Henry McGrew ’21 was close behind in 25th. Jack Schrupp ’18, the only other Eph to start the day, finished in 33rd. The men’s team ended the day in fifth as well.

Head coach Jason Lemieux ’01 commented on the weather conditions. “We were happy to have scrapped together a course,” he said. “Big thanks to all of the volunteers for shoveling and raking snow.”

On the second day of the carnival, the Ephs looked forward to the slalom races at Berkshire East Mountain Resort and the 3k skate prologue at Prospect Mountain.

The Alpine team built on their success to help the whole team take fifth place overall.

The Ephs were once again led on the men’s side by Talbott, who

cracked the top-10 standings for the second day in a row, finishing just 2.18 seconds behind the first-place racer. Bailey had the fourth-fastest second run to end up 16th for the day.

The women had three skiers in the top 30. Torres came in 18th and was followed by Dekko and Bruce, who were 21st and 25th, respectively.

At Prospect Mountain, clear skies and fast conditions made for an exciting 3k skate prologue.

On the women’s side, Bango led the way in 20th. She was followed by Jampel and Alexander, who finished neck and neck in 39th and 40th, respectively. Thyr was close behind in 41st. Also finishing strong for the Ephs were Spiegel-Ostrom and Pfeiffer, who earned 46th and 48th, respectively. The women’s team secured 10th place on the day.

Overall, the Ephs ended the carnival in fifth place. Williams now looks forward to its final carnival on the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association circuit at Middlebury next weekend.

Women's basketball falls to Men’s ice hockey tops Amherst, ties Hamilton Bowdoin in quarterfinals

By MADELINE ABRAHAMS STAFF WRITER

By BEN WIPPER STAFF WRITER Women’s basketball (12–13, 4–6 in the NESCAC) saw its season come to an end on Saturday when No. 3 Bowdoin defeated the women in the quarterfinals of the NESCAC tournament. The Ephs fell 77-35 to the Polar Bears in Brunswick, Maine.

After the teams traded early baskets, Bowdoin closed out the first quarter on an 18-0 run, leading Williams 22-4 at the first break. Bowdoin’s 22 points tied the NESCAC tournament record for points in a single quarter.

Williams went scoreless for almost eight minutes and had 16 first-half turnovers. However, a 7-0 surge by the Ephs brought the women back to within 20 midway through the second quarter. Emily Chang ’20 started the run when she was fouled and hit one of two free-throw chances. Tri-captain Lydia Zaleski ’18 followed a defensive stop with

a layup. After Chang caught a defensive rebound, tri-captain Kristin Fechtelkotter ’18 knocked down a jumper. Fechtelkotter then came up with a steal that led to another Zaleski basket. Kate Kerrigan, who led Bowdoin with 16 points, hit a jump shot late in the first half to give the Polar Bears a 41-18 lead at the break.

The Polar Bears added 36 points from their bench, including nine from Hannah Graham and eight apiece from Maddie Hasson and Annie Maher. Bowdoin forced 29 turnovers in the game and converted those takeaways into 31 points. Fechtelkotter and Zaleski led the way for the Ephs with six points and six rebounds and six points and four rebounds, respectively.

“They’re a very good team that has a lot of weapons,” head coach Pat Manning said of the Ephs’ opponent.

The women graduate Fechtelkotter, Zaleski and tri-captain Amanni Fernandez ’18.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Tri-captain Amanni Fernandez ’18 ranks 14th in school history with 1070 points.

Men’s ice hockey (13–10–1, 9–8–1 in the NESCAC) tied Hamilton 0-0 on Sunday and defeated Amherst 6-5 on Saturday.

The Ephs came into Sunday’s contest riding a threegame winning streak, while the Continentals had not lost a game since late January.

The first period was scoreless, but the Ephs led 9-4 in shots. At 19:59, however, Roberto Cellini ’19 was sent to the box for slashing, and the Continentals started the second period with a power-play.

But just 36 seconds into the second period, Hamilton’s Brandon Willett took his second penalty of the game, a minor for hooking, leading the teams to play four-on-four. At 2:35, Continental Blayne Oliver was called to the box for tripping, giving the Ephs a oneman advantage. The Ephs had one more power-play chance in the period when at 16:07 Continental Ian Nichols was called to the box for charging, but they could not capitalize, and the score remained tied at 0.

The Continentals threatened on offense for much of the third period, but the Eph defensive unit stayed stalwart, so the game continued into extra time.

Hamilton took a timeout with 2:25 remaining in overtime play.

Then, with just 22 seconds remaining in the match, the Ephs were given a power-play opportunity as Willett was called to the box for hooking. The Ephs called a timeout to try to engineer a game-winning play, but they were unable to score, and the game ended in a 0-0 tie.

“Short of scoring today, we played a complete game, which

the staff was really happy with,” interim head coach Mike Monti said. “Hamilton was a great test heading into playoffs.”

During his last regular-season home game, Eph goaltender Stephen Morrissey ’18 stopped all 23 shots from the Continentals.

“We competed in all three zones,” Monti said. “It was especially great to see Morrissey get a shutout today.”

On Saturday, the men defeated Amherst 6-5 on home ice. Goaltender Michael Pinios ’19 made 24 saves during the offensive battle.

The Ephs took a 3-1 lead in the first period. The first goal came from Daniel Woolfenden ’21 on a play assisted by David Italiano ’18 and Cellini. Amherst equalized quickly, however, as Mammoth forward Jack Fitzgerald was able to get a shot past Pinios at 7:28.

Williams recaptured the lead near the midway point of the period. At 10:29, assistant captain C.J. Shugart ’18 was able to fire one past Amherst goalie Giancarlo Ventre on a play assisted by captain Colby Cretella ’18 and Myles Cunningham ’21.

Less than two minutes later, the Ephs padded their lead to two goals. At 12:02, Woolfenden scored his second goal of the period and game, assisted by Max Fuld ’20 and Tyler Scott ’21.

Just 1:07 into the second period, Nick VanBelle ’21 scored with assists from Shugart and Jack McCool ’21. The score was now 4-1.The second Williams goal of the period came at 5:56. Max Fuld ’20 was able to convert on the play, assisted by Scott and Marcus Mollica ’19.

Less than three minutes later, the same line was able to produce another goal to bring the score to 6-1. Fuld cashed in

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Max Fuld ’20 scored two goals in Saturday’s 6-5 win over Amherst. on his second consecutive goal, with Scott and Mollica earning assists on this play as well. “[In] the first and second period[s], we were able to capitalize offensively,” Monti said.

“It was nice to score six even strength goals. Our five-on-five play was good.”

The Mammoths put substantial pressure on the Ephs in the final 20 minutes of play, scoring four unanswered goals and ultimately reducing the Eph lead to one.

47 seconds into the third period, Mammoth Joey Lupo fired off an unassisted goal to bring the game to 6-2. At 4:51, Connor Meike ’19 received a five-minute major for deliberate injury as well as a game misconduct penalty. Amherst was able to score twice on this one-man advantage. At 8:40, Lupo scored his second goal of the night, assisted by Jack Fitzgerald and P.J Conlon. The second goal on this power play came at 9:35, when Thomas Lindstrom fired a shot through

the Eph defensive unit. Patrick Daly and Noah Gilreath earned assists on the goal, which cut the deficit to two.

The final goal of the game also came on a power-play for the Mammoths. At 15:22, Bobby Beniers ’21 was called to the box for high-sticking. At 16:56, Daly was able to fire off his 10th goal of the season. The score was assisted by Lindstrom and David White.

The Ephs maintained their slim lead throughout the remainder of the contest and ultimately avenged an earlier loss to the Mammoths.

“Pinios had to make some really big saves,” Monti said. “In the third period, we took a major penalty, and another minor after that, which gave Amherst some momentum and ultimately three goals.”

On Saturday, the seventhseeded Ephs will travel to New London, Conn., to face secondseeded Connecticut College in the NESCAC quarterfinals. The game will begin at 4:30 p.m.

CAPTAINS’ CORNER: SARAH BECKER ’18 Why did you choose to attend the College?

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

By CHARLES XU SPORTS EDITOR

Team: Nordic Ski Hometown: Yarmouth, Maine Residence: Currier Major: Biology and art history Snack bar order: Pancakes

Looking back, it’s so funny.

The image that we have of Williams is so different than reality. I was really drawn, like so many people are, to the tutorial system. I said I was going to take one every semester, but I only took one [Laughs]. It seemed like Williams struck a good balance between being very academically intense, but also that kids were able to have fun and have lives outside of the classroom. That balance is important to me. And also, the feeling that you get on campus goes a long way. I really vibed with the people that I met when I visited.

What sports did you play as a child?

I grew up playing lots of different sports. I would say soccer was my first love. I got into skiing because my parents made us ski, but it was very much a hated activity, and they would bribe us with candy. Occasionally, they would bring us a sled, tow us to the sledding hill, and

leave us on the hill while they would go and ski around, and my brothers and I would go sledding. I tried everything: basketball, swimming, tennis, cross-country running.

Why did you choose to ski?

I moved in sixth grade, and skiing was really big, unlike basketball, which was not a thing at the high school I went to. Every year, we struggled to form a basketball team, and everyone was on the ski team, so I [thought], ‘Okay, cool, I want to make some friends.’ So, I joined the team, and I made a bunch of friends, and it became a huge part of my life.

What’s your relationship with head coach Jason Lemieux ’01 like?

Jason’s awesome. He’s honestly like a father figure. The number of times I’ve cried in his office is probably embarrassing, but he’s just so steadfast, so positive and really approachable and accessible. I feel very fortunate to have had him as a coach. He sees us as people first, and then athletes.

How would you describe the culture and environment of the Nordic team?

I think our team is a little bit unique in that, similar to cross country or swimming, it’s a co-ed team. But then unlike those teams, we are very small – there are only 10 women and 10 men, so it’s really like a family. We spend an exorbitant amount of time together.

We are driving all over the place to these races or going to practice. It just ends up being a lot of time in the van, out to dinner or wherever we are.

You just form very deep, strong bonds with the people. It’s a very supportive environment.

What’s it like having your younger brother Braden Becker ’19 on the Nordic team with you?

It’s been awesome. We went to high school together and did basically all the same sports in high school, so I was used to spending a lot of time with him. It’s been such a blessing to have him here, and I feel really lucky to have gotten to spend so much time with him.

Thoughts on the cow suits?

Love the cow suits. Funny story: I raced in a cow suit in high school. I don’t know why because our mascot wasn’t a cow, but it just felt very natural for me. They are very distinctive. It’s really easy to pick out a Williams skier when they are coming around on the course.

You’re doing a thesis on the human microbiome. What influenced your interest in this topic?

It’s sort of been a long-running passion of mine. I got sick after traveling abroad, and I did a lot of research on my own to investigate what was going on, and that led to this interest in the microbiome. Increasingly, we are understanding the microbiome to be implicated in glucose regulation, so that has consequences for different kinds of metabolic diseases like obesity and Type II diabetes. The research that I am doing is investigating the effect of different kinds of artificial sweeteners on the population of bacteria. [I am

investigating] how changes in that group of bacteria can then lead to changes in glucose and insulin regulation.

As as senior, how have you progressed in your four years as a skier?

Results-wise, I’ve definitely improved, but more broadly speaking, one thing that Jason really emphasizes is giving to the team, and that you get what you give. I think my focus has really shifted. As a younger skier, I was much more self-invested. To a certain extent, as an endurance athlete, you kind of have to be selfish and focus on taking care of yourself. But at the end of the day, what you give to the team is so much more important, and I think I really shifted into [this mentality] over the course of my skiing career.

What is your favorite place to ski?

We have a training camp up at Mont Saint-Anne [near Quebec, Canada]. Their training facilities are just so beautiful.

That’s probably my favorite.

February 21, 2018

SPORTS 11

The Williams Record

Greg Zaff ’84 brings squash down from its ivory tower

By CASSIE DESHONG SPORTS EDITOR

School was a great place for him to transition into becoming a public servant.

Even though Zaff knew he wanted to help others achieve more opportunities, he did not know how he was going to accomplish that. In his last semester at the Kennedy School, Zaff had to write a paper about starting his own organization from scratch for a social entrepreneurship class. He titled the paper “Bringing Squash Down from its Ivory Tower: an Urban Squash Youth Development Program.” That paper contained the foundation for SquashBusters, a squash program that helps urban youth recognize and reach their true potential. For 33 weeks of every school year, students receive three hours of academic support and four hours of squash practice and fitness training per week. In addition, students participate in numerous community service projects, visits to various colleges and squash tournaments.

Zaff did not start Squashbusters directly after graduating from the Kennedy School.

Rather, he initially was involved in affordable housing projects in state government and worked with the Massachusetts Finance Agency. However, he didn’t love what he was doing.

While working for the Massachusetts Finance Agency, Zaff’s friend encouraged him to start SquashBusters. So, in April of 1995, Zaff turned his idea into a reality, and in September of 1996, he had 24 students.

Now, SquashBusters operates in three different cities: Boston, Mass., Lawrence, Mass. and Providence, R.I. The Boston location serves 150 middle and high school students. 60 of its former students are now in college. The second site in Lawrence serves 100 sixth through 12th graders. While Providence is the newest site, it already has 28 students in the sixth grade.

Zaff chose to expand to Lawrence and Providence not only because SquashBusters had the organizational and financial strength to grow, but

Greg Zaff ’84 majored in history and was a two-sport athlete at the College. He lettered in squash for four years and joined the tennis team in his sophomore year but quit after his junior year because he wanted to focus on becoming a better squash player. “I really loved tennis, and I was good at it,” he said. “I liked the guys on the team. I loved both sports, but I was more in love with squash. I was really excited at getting better at squash, and I wanted to play all the time.”

Zaff was a three-time AllAmerica squash player and the No. 1 player for the men’s squash team for all four of his years at the College, but he did not reach the peak of his squash career until after graduation. For seven years, Zaff played professionally, reaching a ranking as high as No. 2 in all of North America.

As a professional player, Zaff learned more about fitness and what makes a squash player great. “When I got out of Williams, I really learned about hard work on the court,” he said. “I was not the fittest squash player at Williams… I was a crappy No. 1 player my freshman year.

“The biggest reason was because I was totally unfit. I thought all you had to do was hit the ball around the court.

When I turned pro, I made myself an extremely fit squash player. I wouldn’t be able to become a top-five player without [being fit]. I had to be able to run with those guys.”

Zaff completed a handful of internships in the government of Massachusetts while he was playing professionally. “I was trying to figure out where I fit in,” he said. After playing professionally for most of his 20s, Zaff was ready to enter the next phase of his life. At age 29, he went to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Zaff always had a passion for public service, specifically issues surrounding poverty and inequality, and the Kennedy

also because of these cities’ backgrounds and proximity to Boston. Lawrence was chosen because it is the poorest city in Massachusetts and because Phillips Academy Andover and the Brooks School offered their squash courts, classrooms and student bodies to help with the program. Providence was chosen because it has a high rate of poverty, the school system is not particularly strong and the city has a strong squash history and community. Zaff’s current goals for SquashBusters are to develop the site in Providence successfully and to build the Lawrence program a home; currently, the site in Lawrence operates on borrowed facilities at Brooks and Andover, whereas the programs in Boston and Providence have established youth centers.

Zaff said that the three hardest things about running SquashBusters are getting great staff members, obtaining money to fund the program and not becoming stagnant.

“You have to have a terrific team of staff that embody the right values and are willing to work to change kids’ lives,” he said. “Getting those people, assembling them into a team and getting them to stay and help build your organizational and team culture is a challenge – a constant challenge. It doesn’t just happen... SquashBusters is now a $2.5 million operation. I have to raise that money every single year. There is nobody writing a $500,000 check; the money comes in relatively small increments. That is an immense amount of effort every year that never goes away. The other challenge is continuing to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and staying responsive to change so that you don’t get stuck and stale. You always need to stay on your toes and be reflective.

No organization is a static thing; they are living, breathing organisms comprised of people, impacts, outcomes and inputs. You don’t just do the same thing every time.”

Zaff believes that he separates himself from other pro-

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Greg Zaff ’84 started SquashBusters in 1995 and has expanded the organization’s reach to three cities. grams, specifically non-urban youth squash programs, with the amount of attention spent on every student. “One of our slogans is ‘an inch wide and a mile deep,’” Zaff said. “That means that we are about depth of involvement rather than serving hundreds and hundreds [or] thousands of kids.

We are not a drop-in program where you dabble around. You spend 100-plus days every school year in the program. It is a life immersion. It is a fullon commitment by everybody involved because that is what changes lives; that is the only way to change lives. That’s how we differentiate ourselves.”

Despite squash’s huge role in the program, learning and playing squash is not the point of SquashBusters; it is about the way that squash is used.

“Squash is simply an ingredient that helps expose students to a larger world than they would see and build up their social confidence, academic capabilities and build bridges for them to bigger opportunities than they could access on their own,” Zaff said. “The learning that happens on the court

about things like competing, winning, staying focused, showing up on time, being disciplined [and] setting goals are all things that people need to be successful in life.”

Zaff does not judge his success based on how many people know about his program.

SquashBusters is for the students, and Zaff evaluates the program’s success based on the development of those students. “We look at attendance across all programs, which is currently at 91 percent retention,” he said. “We have an acronym called I CARE. It stands for: integrity, concern for others, appreciation, respect and effort. We take those things very seriously. The other things that we look at are where kids go to high school. We are very hands-on in helping them go to the best high schools, specifically high schools that send lots of their students to college.

We pay great attention to sending students to college without excessive debt burden and ensuring that as many as possible graduate. We have a 75 percent college graduation rate within six years of enrollment.”

According to its 2016 -2017 impact report, SquashBusters has served over 300 students.

Last year, the average jump in SAT score for 11th graders in the program was 100 points, 100 percent of its seniors were accepted to college and 80 percent of its students’ financial needs were covered through grants and scholarships.

SquashBusters was the first program to reach out to underrepresented people through squash. It spawned the National Urban Squash and Education Association (NUSEA), a movement to combine squash, academics and mentoring.

NUSEA includes 23 different programs across 23 different cities. NUSEA hosts two national tournaments annually.

One of those tournaments, the Urban Squash Individuals, is sponsored and sanctioned by U.S. Squash and takes place at the College and Amherst.

Zaff has helped others see the impact that squash, a sport often considered to be elitist, can have on disadvantaged youth. He truly has brought squash down from its ivory tower, and he is not done yet.

Men’s basketball edges Trinity in NESCAC quarterfinals, prepares to face Hamilton

By DANNY JIN EXECUTIVE EDITOR

24 points in the last eight minutes to keep the visitors within striking distance.

A 3-pointer from co-captain Cole Teal ’18 extended the Williams lead to 68-60 with 3:29 to go, but Trinity scored six straight points to pull within two at 1:48. Co-captain Chris Galvin ’18 made a crucial driving layup to make the score 72-68 with 22 seconds left, forcing the Bantams to play with urgency.

Gendron then made a remarkable 3-pointer to trim the lead to one. With seven seconds left, he launched an improbable one-handed shot from behind the arc and connected, bringing the score to 72-71.

Heskett was fouled and made the first of two free throws. With the visitors down by two, Bantam sophomore Christian Porydzy missed a deep 3-point attempt, and Teal was fouled after securing the rebound with just 0.3 seconds on the clock. After rebounding a missed free throw,

James Heskett ’19 led the way with 25 points as No. 9 men’s basketball (20–5, 7–3 in the NESCAC) outlasted Trinity 73-71 in the first round of the NESCAC tournament.

Second-seeded Williams won handily in its Jan. 26 meeting with seventh-seeded Trinity, but the teams met in Chandler Gymnasium on Saturday with heightened stakes. The Ephs built a lead in the second half and withstood a late offensive surge from the Bantams to secure the win.

Neither team led by more than six until midway through the second half, when the Ephs began to pull away. With 13:18 remaining and the game tied at 48, Heskett’s and-one layup ignited a 12-4 run that permanently gave the Ephs the lead.

Bantam senior guard Eric Gendron, however, scored 13 of his

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Trinity junior Jeremy Arthur launched a full-court desperation heave that fell short, giving the Ephs a slim 73-71 victory.

“This win was a bit emotional because everybody’s playing their hearts out,” Teal said. “This is such a fun time of the year. It’s win or go home.”

“Our seniors made big plays down the stretch,” head coach Kevin App said. “[Teal] had some great plays when we needed them, and Galvin finished it off with that layup. We made one more play than the other team.”

In the first half, Gendron scored the Bantams’ first seven points. He gave the visitors an early 5-0 lead with a jump shot and an and-one layup in transition, but Williams soon bounced back with fluid ball movement and a strong inside presence. Down 14-13 with 12:28 left in the half, the Ephs went on a 9-2 run. A Bobby Casey ’19 3-pointer gave the men a 22-16 edge at 9:54.

Late in the first half, Arthur caught fire from beyond the arc, helping Trinity briefly regain the lead at 6:16. The Ephs began to inch ahead once more before Bantam sophomore Joseph Bell beat the halftime buzzer with a step-back 3, bringing the score to 39-38 at the break.

“We thought we had a couple of mental lapses in the first half where we gave guys like Arthur the shots that they’re comfortable shooting,” App said. “We talked about scouting reports, and I thought the guys tightened up in the second half.”

A Matt Karpowicz ’20 dunk extended the lead to six early in the second half, but Porydzy made back-to-back 3s to tie the game at 44.

The Ephs established their second-half lead through unselfish passing and stellar defense in the paint. Karpowicz, who finished with four blocks, and Michael Kempton ’19 helped hold the Bantams

to just 40 percent shooting in the second half.

“Kempton does a lot to help us win that doesn’t show up in the box score,” App said.

“He brings the defense and the rebounding.”

In addition, Karpowicz and Kempton used their size and skill to create shot opportunities from the post. The two centers finished with the highest assist totals in the game. Karpowicz assisted on four baskets, and Kempton assisted on three, including Teal’s late 3-pointer that gave the Ephs their largest lead of the night.

“I’ve never seen Mike Kempton more hyped up than he was after that play,” Teal said. “[Kempton] and [Karpowicz] are two of the best big man passers I’ve ever been around, and that’s been a huge part of our success,” Casey added.

Casey finished with 18 points on four 3-pointers. In his last three games, he has converted 14 of his 25 (56 percent) attempts

from deep. His 82 3s on the year lead the NESCAC. “Our offense is based off movement and extra passes,” Casey said. “Personally, I’ve just been finding myself in the right spots. My teammates are doing a great job of setting me up with the shots that I practice every day.”

Overall, the men shot 26 of 54 (48.1 percent) from the field and seven of 16 (43.8 percent) from 3, and Trinity shot 29 of 66 (43.9 percent) and eight of 19 from long range. The visitors had a 37-32 advantage in rebounds.

The Bantams scored 11 second-chance points, while the Ephs had only three. Trinity first-year Donald Jorden recorded a game-high 10 boards.

The men will face No. 15 Hamilton at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday in the NESCAC semifinals, hosted at Amherst. The semifinal winners will contend for the NESCAC title at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK “James' production this season and this past weekend is a testament to his hard work. He's worked to be consistent and productive no matter the opponent, and it's been a pleasure to watch him grow into a leader on and off the court.”

–Head coach Kevin App

“Max has natural athletic talent. Last year, he played the entire season as a defenseman. This year, he made the switch to forward and has shown that he can be effective at both positions. He is coming off of an excellent weekend, where he had back-to-back goals against Amherst.”

-Interim head coach Mike Monti

JAMES HESKETT ’19

MAX FULD ’20

MEN'S BASKETBALL CINCINNATI, OHIO

MEN'S ICE HOCKEY WESTPORT, CONN.

Heskett scored a team-high 25 points against Trinity as men's basketball advanced to the second round of the NESCAC playoffs.

Fuld helped men's hockey defeat the Mammoths in their game last Saturday with an assist and two of the Ephs' six goals.

12 SPORTS

The Williams Record

February 21, 2018

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

The women scored a total of 1971 points over three days and set multiple pool and conference records at Samuelson-Muir Pool, winning their 17th NESCAC Championship in the last 18 years.

Women’s swimming and diving wins fifth consecutive NESCAC title

By KATIE PRIEST TEAM CORRESPONDENT Women’s swimming and diving captured its fifth consecutive NESCAC Championship and set multiple pool and New England records at SamuelsonMuir Pool last weekend.

On Friday, the session began with the 200 freestyle relay, in which the Ephs’ A-squad of Delaney Smith ’18, Rollie Grinder ’21, Laura Westphal ’21 and co-captain Emma Waddell ’18 touched first in a time of 1:33.09, breaking NESCAC meet and pool records.

The 50 butterfly was another splash-and-dash. Grinder took home a third-place finish in her first individual collegiate race, finishing in 25.46. Co-captain Maddie Downs ’18 touched the wall with a time of 25.96, good for eighth.

The Ephs demonstrated their depth in the longest event of the night, the 500 freestyle.

In the championship heat, Williams’ four swimmers swept the top four spots. Westphal came in first with a time of 4:52.09, the third fastest time in the nation this year. Ali Mc-

Namara ’19 placed second in 4:55.98, and Casey Delano ’21 secured third with a time of 4:59.84. Gwyneth Maloy ’21 completed the sweep with a time of 5:01.41.

Next, the Ephs demonstrated their versatility and packed a strong one-two punch in the 200 individual medley. Molly Craig ’21 took home a win in her first-ever NESCAC individual final, breaking the pool record with a time of 2:03.71.

The final sprint event of the evening was the 50 freestyle.

Maddie Wessell ’20 touched fourth in a time of 24.44, and Dana Chung ’19 followed her closely to earn fifth with a time of 24.47. In the championship heat, Waddell took down the pool and NESCAC meet records, touching first in a time of 22.98.

The final event of the night was the 400 medley relay. The Williams A-team of Caroline Conforti ’20, Caroline White ’20, Waddell and Westphal closed out the session with a final time of 3:45.02, smashing the pool record.

Head coach Steve Kuster commented on the first day

of the championship meet. “I liked the fact that most everybody improved on either a seed time or placing,” he said.

On Saturday, the women won all but one event to extend their lead over the rest of the NESCAC teams.

The day kicked off with the 200 medley relay. The Williams A-squad of Conforti, White, Maia Hare ’19 and Waddell rocketed to a pool-record time of 1:42.80, finishing with a solid lead over Connecticut College and Bates.

McNamara, Kristina Barry ’19 and Courtney Brown ’21 represented the Ephs in the 1000 freestyle. McNamara won the event in 10:07.48, clearing the field by 17 seconds. Barry, after winning her heat earlier, ended up with a third-place finish in 10:24.69. Brown’s time of 10:35.31 was good for eighth.

In the 100 butterfly, Williams was well represented in the championship final, with three upperclassman leading the way for the Ephs. Waddell broke her own pool record to win the event in a time of 53.74. Downs, who finished third in 56.24, and Hare, who

Men's track and field takes third

By EZEKIEL COHEN TEAM CORRESPONDENT No. 24 men’s track and field finished third in the Div. III New England Championship with 92.5 points, just behind Tufts and host Middlebury.

The men jumped out ahead of the competition in the heptathlon. On Friday, co-captain Tom Riley ’18 started the day with a 7.32 60m, fourth among competitors. He followed in fourth place with a 6.28-meter long jump and began to climb the standings with a third-place 11.45 meters in the shot put.

Riley finished the day in third after high jumping 1.80 meters for third in the event. On Saturday, he continued to impress

and won the 60m hurdles in 8.84 then tied for second in the pole vault, clearing 3.65 meters.

In the final event, the 1000m, he ran a personal-best 2:49.72 to finish fifth in the event. Riley took first overall with a score of 4691, a personal best by nearly 200 points.

The Ephs showed their depth in the mid-distance and distance events, scoring points in every event from the 800m to the 5000m. In the 800m, Kevin LaFleche ’20 used his finishing kick to earn fifth in 1:55.68. In the 1000m, Peter Kirgis ’20 ran a measured race, finishing second in 2:30.56. In the mile, Lucas Estrada ’20 put an exclamation point on a fantastic season, pushing hard to finish fourth

PHOTO COURTESY OF TRACKYACK.COM

Co-captain Tobias Muellers ’18 anchored the 4x400 relay to seventh place.

in a personal-best 4:16.06. In the 3000m, Liam Simpson ’18 ran a gutsy race, running the first mile with the leaders, who were gunning for NCAA qualifications. Simpson’s grittiness was rewarded with a fifth-place finish in 8:35.51. In the 5000m, co-captain Ben Decker ’18 ran a calm, steady race and surged to a 15:01.26 win.

In the field events, Magnus Herweyer ’20 won the shot put with a throw of 16.52 meters.

This mark was a season-best by 1.21 meters and was nearly a full meter ahead of the nextbest throw. In the pole vault, Pierceson Brown ’18 had by far the best vault of the season, clearing 4.61 meters.

In the distance medley relay, the team of Nick Gannon ’20, Karol Regula ’21, Jackson Ennis ’20 and Ben Hearon ’20 finished in 10:24.37 for fourth. In the 4x400, the team of LaFleche, Renwick, Ian Mook ’20 and cocaptain Tobias Muellers ’18 finished seventh in 3:26.38. In the 4x800m relay, the team of Kirgis, Tristan Colaizzi ’20, Estrada and co-captain Alex Cowen ’18 finished fourth in 7:55.74.

Muellers commented on the team's performance. “We went into this meet heavily under-seeded, with few athletes projected to score and a wide margin between us and the top-seeded teams,” he said. “Despite that, across all events, our guys stepped up and outperformed their seeds, putting together a very strong team performance.”

The Ephs will compete in the NCAA Championship from March 9-10 in Birmingham, Ala. Individuals will continue to chase qualifying marks at lastchance meets. The men will travel to Boston University for a meet at 12 p.m. on Sunday.

touched fourth in 56.67, followed her closely.

The fourth individual event was the 200 freestyle, where the women boasted five of the top eight in the championship final. Westphal added a second individual win to her resume, taking the victory in 1:49.16.

Following her closely in second was Maloy in 1:51.55. Rounding out the heat for the Ephs were Delano in fourth, Smith in fifth and Wessell in seventh.

White executed an excellent back-half race strategy in the 100 breaststroke. Despite being slightly behind Middlebury's Maya Gomez at the halfway mark, White posted the fastest second 50 yards in the field to get her hand on the wall first in 1:03.46.

Later on, in the 4x200 freestyle relay, the Eph A-team of Westphal, McNamara, Maloy and Delano hit the wall first, setting a pool record of 7:28.09 to cap off a dominant second night of NESCAC competition.

Assistant coach Dave Dow was thrilled with the team’s performance Saturday evening.

“Great job by the women,” he said. “Almost everyone moved

up, and we earned wins in a lot of close races.”

On Sunday, the Ephs secured the NESCAC championship with a total of 1971 points.

The session got underway with the 1650 freestyle. The timed-finals event featured four Williams swimmers in the evening heat and one in the morning heat. Westphal narrowly out-touched McNamara in an amazing race to the finish. Westphal won with a pool-record time of 16:53.92, and McNamara finished in 16:54.41, a new personal best.

The final sprint event of the championship was the 100 freestyle. In the championship final, two seniors concluded their individual event NESCAC careers.

Waddell powered past her competition to touch first in 50.45, just missing the pool record.

In the 200 breaststroke, yet another pool record was taken down. White swam a beautifullyexecuted race, using her closing speed to touch first in 2:16.44.

The women put together a sweep in the 200 butterfly.

Leading the charge into the wall was Veronica Wolff ’20 in 2:03.98. Maddie Deardorff

’20 was second in 2:04.48, and Craig was third in 2:04.75.

The Ephs finished the meet emphatically with the 4x100 freestyle relay, in which Smith, Downs, Westphal and Waddell combined to touch first in another pool-record time of 3:25.26.

Gabby Mercier ’21 helped her team capture the win by placing third in the one-meter and second in the three-meter diving portions of the Championship that evening.

The women earned 1971 points over the three-day meet. Amherst came in second with 1615, and Connecticut College finished third with 1060.5.

Waddell, in her senior season, earned NESCAC Swimmer of the Year. She was also recognized for her stellar career at the College with the NESCAC Four-Year High Point Swimmer award.

Westphal took home the NESCAC Rookie of the Year award.

The women's team will compete at Middlebury from March 2-3. The Ephs also look forward to the NCAA Championship from March 21-24 in Indianapolis, Ind.

Women’s track and field takes gold at Div. III New England Championship

By CAITLIN UBL TEAM CORRESPONDENT No. 5 women's track and field won the Div. III New England Championship last weekend, scoring 149 points at Springfield College.

On Friday afternoon, the women amassed 22 points in the pentathlon. In the first event of the day, Caitlin Ubl ’19 took the early lead with a personal best of 9.08 seconds in the 60m hurdles.

Emma Egan ’20 followed closely behind in third with a personal record of 9.43. Summer-Solstice Thomas ’20 ran a speedy 9.79 for ninth. The trio had a strong all-around high jump day, with Thomas and Egan tying for first place, both soaring over 1.72 meters with ease.

Egan continued her stellar day with a personal-best throw by almost a meter in the shot put. She placed fifth in the event, heaving the shot 9.50 meters. Ubl placed 10th in the event with a throw of 8.67 meters, and Thomas followed in 13th with a heave of 8.55 meters.

Thomas and Egan finished first and second again in the long jump. They leapt 5.47 meters and 5.30 meters, respectively.

Ubl finished in 11th with a jump of 4.67 meters. In the 800m, Thomas led for the first half of the race, but Ubl took control at the 400-meter mark and won with a time of 2:24.24. Thomas crossed the line in a close second with a fast time of 2:25.41. Egan had a personal best in the event, finishing eighth in 2:37.74.

Thomas won the competition with a score of 3509, close to her season best, and Egan finished in second with a personal record of 3440 points. Ubl placed fifth and nearly beat her own lifetime best.

On Saturday, Stella Worters ’18 ran a fast 1200-meter leg, handing off to Ella Dunn ’21, who sprinted her fastest 400 meters of the season before handing off to Anna Passannate ’20. Passannante ran a solid 800 meters and passed the baton to co-captain Anna Harleen ’18, who ran 1600 meters to cross the line in 12:09.99, yielding a second-place finish.

In the 60m, Kennedy Green ’19 continued her breakout season with a blazing fast final, leaning across the line at 7.74 seconds. She broke her own school record, placing second behind sprinter Wadeline Jonathas of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Green is currently the fifth-fastest 60m sprinter in Div. III. Astia Innis ’19 placed fifth in the event with a personal-best time of 7.93.

Megan Powell ’20 placed fourth in the 200m with a time of 26.11. Green doubled back as well, crossing the line in a season-best time of 26.15 for fifth place. Powell won the 400m in an exciting race against a Middlebury athlete, leaning over the line to clinch the win in 57.37.

Representing the Ephs well in the distance events, Eliza Matt ’18 ran a smart 1000m, finishing fifth in a time of 3:01.36.

Audrey Rustad ’20 continued her stellar sophomore season with a fourth-place mile finish against a stacked field. Emma Herrmann ’20 and co-captain Emily Sundquist ’18 worked together to run a tactical 5000m, slowly picking off their competitors to cross the line in third and fourth, respectively. Herrmann pulled slightly ahead to finish in 17:59.68, while Sundquist, despite having to stop to put her shoe back on 150 meters into

the race, finished in a seasonbest 18:00.05.

After her pentathlon win, Thomas showed grit and levelheadedness competing against the best athletes in New England on tired legs. She proceeded to win the high jump, soaring over the bar at 1.70 meters. Co-captain Helene Hall ’18 and Egan both cleared 1.65 meters to clinch second and third, respectively.

Thomas and Egan were not done. They placed fifth and seventh in the long jump, leaping 5.40 and 5.32 meters, respectively. Four of the eight scorers in the event were Williams athletes, showcasing the Ephs’ considerable depth.

The Ephs had a stellar day in the relays, winning or finishing as runners-up in every event.

In the 4x200, Innis, Davis Collison ’21, Sierra Loomis ’20 and co-captain Kayley McGonagle ’18 crossed the finish in 1:46.45.

McGonagle, Kate Kennedy ’18, Dunn and Powell collaborated to dip under four minutes in the 4x400, as Powell leant across the line at 3:59.58. In the 4x800, the last event of the day, Leah Rosenfeld ’20, Harleen, Passannate and Rustad ran a strong 9:31.40 to clinch the Div. III New England title for the Ephs.

Head coach Nate Hoey commented on the win. “I'm proud of the effort the [women] put into their events, the positive vocal support they had for each other and the resiliency they showed in the face of adversity,” he said.

“It was a good step forward as we continue to progress.”

The women look to build off this strong performance as they head to the NCAA Championship. Before then, the Ephs will compete at Boston University on Sunday.