Feb. 27, 2019: “March for the Damned” honors on-leave professors Love, Green

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“March for the Damned” honors on-leave professors Love, Green

By SHREYAS RAJESH STAFF WRITER More than 200 students and faculty congregated last Thursday in Hollander Hall to participate in the “March for the Damned,” a rally in solidarity with Black and Brown faculty and staff at the College.

The march professed “radical love,” honoring Kai Green ’07, assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and Kimberly Love, assistant professor of English. Green and Love took leave from the College earlier this semester, citing the College’s “violent” institutional practices and environment for their departures.

“Dr. Green and Dr. Love have not died,” Isaiah Blake ’21 said at the march. “But we did want to recognize them as [martyrs]…

We are creating a memorial to bear witness to their lives. We are taking up space because they took the radical act to do the same. This is a memorial not for the dead but for the damned.”

The march’s organizers, Coalition Against Racist Education Now (CARE Now), described themselves as an “amorphous group of students who came together to hex all fascists.” A recently renewed student movement, CARE Now seeks to continue “in the legacy of Black-led organizing efforts on the Williams College campus.” CARE Now members gave speeches during the event, outlining their mission and goals.

The event was, as Blake described it, “a memorial for the memorial – a vigil for the vigil.”

Students had constructed a memorial in Hollander in honor of Green and Love before parts of the display were removed by Associate Professor of Philosophy

SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR

Marchers raised their fists in solidarity at the end of the “March for the Damned” last Thursday, circling Isaiah Blake ’21 in Baxter Hall.

Keith McPartland, chair of the Schapiro-Hollander users committee. McPartland cited fire code violations that had been communicated to him by Manager of Safety and Environmental Compliance Frank Pekarski.

After its removal, students responded by constructing a larger installation in its place. President of the College Maud Mandel later instructed the students to take down the installation, citing violations of both fire codes and the Americans with Disabilities Act. “We made this memorial to remind everyone to love your home. Your home is your body,” Blake said. “As we saw last week, Black love is a fire hazard. It’s passion, it’s painful, it scares people, it takes up space, it’s a lit-

College Council probes potential OSL influence in treasurer election

By ARRINGTON LUCK NEWS EDITOR College Council (CC) is currently looking into an email sent to all club sport athletes regarding the CC treasurer election and club sport funding by Kris Hoey, the assistant director for student organizations and clubs sport in the Office of Student Life (OSL), which some on CC believe may have influenced the outcome of the election.

Hoey’s email did not explicitly support either candidate. The email, however, was read by some on CC as an implicit endorsement for the

CC, and a lack of representation was one of the contributions to the current issue,” Vaccaro wrote. “Please vote, especially if you dislike College Council and its actions.

The only way to change the system is to vote.”

Vaccaro subsequently won his election against Sanket Patel ’22, garnering 223 votes to Patel’s 191.

CC is discussing this email from OSL as a potential inappropriate interference in the election. CC, however, has no plans to take action against Vaccaro. Speaking on behalf of CC’s Executive Board, Solly Kasab ’21, vice

“In terms of OSL, that is something that we are looking into.”

Solly Kasab ’21

Vice President for Communications then-sailing club treasurer Jamie Vaccaro ’21.

Hoey’s email cited the recent push by CC to cut back on funding some high-cost club sport teams. “I know that CC has not been kind to some of our teams this year, and for that reason I can see where you may not want anything to do with this,” Hoey wrote. “But, it is for that very reason that you should vote and get some folks in there that will make a change in how things operate.”

That night, Vaccaro replied all to Hoey’s email, sending to all club sport athletes an email about his candidacy for CC treasurer. “Historically, club sports haven’t been the most active voter base for

president for communications, said that Vaccaro “did not ask or in any way direct [Hoey] to send this email...

Jamie simply received an email, and he wanted to promote people voting... We see no grounds for impeachment or any disciplinary action.”

“The intent of my Feb. 7 email was to encourage the students I advise to vote in the CC elections,” Hoey wrote in an email to the Record. “I didn’t realize this could be cause for concern.”

Kasab reiterated that while CC was not taking any action against Vaccaro, it is still following up with OSL. “In terms of OSL, that is something that we are looking into,” he said.

Vaccaro declined to comment.

tle too salty, it’s a little too spicy… it’s too loud.”

“We honor these professors with this event in recognition of all they did for our community, in recognition of the violence our community did [to] them and in recognition of their willingness to stand witness to the troubles within our community.” Rodsy Modhurima ’19 said near the end of the march. “We thank them for their commitment for radical love in all its forms and wish to follow their example in spreading love, light and gratitude to all faculty and staff of color and trans and queer folk.”

Beginning at 12:40 p.m., students and faculty gathered inside the main floor of Hollander, where organizers handed out flowers and candles. Blake

opened with a breathing exercise, allowing everyone who had come to march to take a few moments to recollect. It was then that the students introduced the cheer: “I love you/ I love me/ I love us/ I love we.”

As students began marching around Sawyer Quad, they continued to chant the message of love. It took over 10 minutes for the entire crowd to reach Baxter Hall – the final destination of the march.

Once inside Baxter, students began chanting, “Take up space,” before proclaiming, “I love Black people/ You don’t love Black people/ What’s wrong with you?”

A memorial had been set up near the fireplace in Baxter, featuring pictures and messages for Green and Love. Under the signs

“March for the Damned” and “Black Love is Not a Fire Hazard” in Baxter, students hugged, chanted and expressed solidarity.

Addressing the crowd in Baxter, Blake discussed the motivations of the march and recognized both his ancestors and the people gathered at the march.

He read a poem titled “A Letter to the Commodity.” “Your home is in crisis… In the midst of your crisis do you hear the sirens?

They come to serve and protect, but when they come, they take your brother and your tears, and the hurricanes outside flood your home,” Blake read.

Blake referenced the removal of the memorial in Hollander.

“Black love is a fire hazard,” he said. “We’re flames; we’re heat.

We are a community, a body of

homes loving themselves radically. And that is hot.”

Blake then passed the microphone to other students, who expanded upon CARE Now’s purpose and the aims of the march.

Jesus Payan ’20 spoke further on why students march. “The current deprioritization of hiring ethnic … and affinity specialists relies on simply the logic of low enrollments, which are in fact a result of the lack of course offerings,” Payan said. “Dr. Green and Professor Love’s departure[s] highlight the structural devaluation of knowledge that resists the academic status quo.”

Participants expressed their dissatisfaction with the support systems the College has in place for faculty and students of color.

Modhurima spoke of the College’s “refusal to hold assaulters and abusers accountable, in the ways students are tokenized and in the failure to call out and condemn white supremacy on this very campus.” Modhurima then presented a list of demands for the College, which included support for queer and trans faculty and faculty of color and staff, increased development of ethnic studies units, and further administrative transparency beyond just verbal support and affinity housing.

“We will not be forced to make space with people who hate us,” Modhurima said.

Following Modhurima’s concluding remarks on radical love, students wrote small messages on heart-shaped cutouts, which were placed around the central memorial. “Let’s take a moment to breathe and actually feel the love in this room because I feel a lot of it,” Isabelle Zorich ’21 said.

Members of CARE Now did not respond to the Record’s request for comment.

High winds topple trees, damage Dodd chimney, cause power outage

By ROSE HOUGLET NEWS EDITOR High winds averaging 25 to 35 mph and gusts up to 65 mph caused damage around campus on Monday, including the collapse of and damages to the Dodd House chimney and two student rooms, respectively.

Other incidents included the falling of a tree on Mission Hill Drive and a brief power outage in Agard House and surrounding areas. The students whose rooms were damaged have been temporarily relocated until repairs are completed.

Declan Smith ’21, who was in Dodd when the damage occurred, described the scene. “I was sitting in my room around 11:30 [a.m.] when I heard a particularly strong gust of wind start up,” he said. “I felt the normal feeling of the building settling against the force of the wind, but then there was a shudder, and it felt as if the building gave way. A loud crashing noise accompanied the shudder, so I went over to my window to see if I could see what had just happened. I then saw a large number of bricks, some other debris (it looked like some ceramic stuff and wood) and soot all over the roof of the kitchen and pool room of Dodd.”

Allie Campbell ’21, who lives in Dodd, said, “I wasn’t at Dodd when it happened, but my friend was, and I saw him right afterward. He sent me lots of pictures

and videos. One of the chimneys above the kitchen was somehow knocked off the building. Bricks flew everywhere. They were scattered all across the roof and the yard. I know that some peoples’ rooms were damaged by bricks.”

Additionally, three vehicles sustained broken windshields and related damages from falling debris, bleachers were blown over on the visitors’ side of Weston Field and a protec-

Campus Safety and Security (CSS) blocked off areas of concern and removed obstructions where possible. “The duration and the force of the winds made [the clean-up] too dangerous and much of [it] had to be completed [on Tuesday],” Director of CSS Dave Boyer said. “Emergency messages were sent, roads were blocked off [and] warning messages were posted on doors. One area had overnight CSS presence

SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR

A tree blocked Mission Hill Drive after winds knocked it over on Monday. tive chimney cap blew off another building.

“The three vehicles that were damaged were all Facilities vehicles that were parked alongside the service building, where the wind blew some objects off the roof that was having some repair work done at the time,” Executive Director for Facilities Operations Bob Wright said.

to prevent injuries. OSL notified students whose rooms were affected and arranged alternate housing where needed.”

Campbell commended the campus response. “I received an email from [Director of the Office of Student Life] Doug Schiazza extending support if my room was damaged,” she said. “I also received a text message from the College with

a warning about the wind. One CSS officer was stationed in Dodd for the rest of the day. I am not sure what the support was like on site immediately following the incident. From my end, I did feel like there was an adequate response.

It was nice to know that the school was concerned and on top of the damage.”

Smith added, “As I was leaving for lunch (around 7-10 minutes [after the events]), I saw a CSS car pull up and an officer go around to the back.

So in terms of response, I think they were quite quick and seemed to be doing what they could given the conditions.

By the time I was back from lunch, they had already started to assess the damage.”

In addition to vacating students from the damaged rooms, CSS closed off Dodd kitchen and had people check on the damage throughout Monday afternoon.

Schiazza encouraged students to be cautious in such weather events. “In any weather event of this nature, I would say that the most important thing is for everyone to be safe and to be especially mindful of what’s going on around you,” he said.

Boyer also praised student responsiveness as the College worked to repair the damage. “I want to thank the students for their cooperation throughout the day and night,” he said.

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Tsay ’19 on instutional forgetting, negligence

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In its recent report on the status of Asian American studies (AAS) at the College, a Curricular Planning Committee (CPC) working group recommended that the College make two tenure-track appointments for faculty with specialized training in AAS and formalize an AAS program with a concentration.

In offering its students the finest possible liberal arts education, the College must include this critical field of study that both offers unique methodologies and perspectives and strengthens other disciplines. In this critical moment for AAS at the College, after past attempts have been met with dismissal and hesitation, we at the Record call upon the College to take action and to commit to implementing the working group report’s recommendations without delay.

Legitimizing AAS at the College is vital to the recognition of the

February 27, 2019

The Time is Now

Calling for the College to act upon recommendations and make Asian American studies a reality breadth of Asian American lived experiences, yet stakeholders are not limited to those of a particular identity. As noted on the website for the student-coordinated AAS movement, “Asian American studies provides an opportunity for not only Asian American students to learn about their identity and history, but also for all students to learn about the unique ways Asian American experiences have shaped and defined American culture and society.”

The College has an obligation to offer a robust curriculum with courses of intellectual significance, and developing AAS offerings is essential to that pursuit.

Interest in AAS is also high – the CPC report details consistently high enrollments in AAS courses when offered and an upward trend in total enrollments in the last five to six class years. Offering an increasingly robust and diversified AAS curriculum would only generate more student demand and enrollment.

We also recognize the legacies of student activism that brought AAS to this position. Two previous proposals for an AAS pro-

gram, in 2004 and 2012, were written, submitted and ultimately not accepted. It is crucial that, this time, the working group’s recommendations not be overlooked. When this proposal soon comes before the Committee on Appointments and Promotions and the full faculty, the process of formalizing AAS cannot afford to lose momentum. The College must fully commit itself and its resources to this endeavor.

Hiring tenure-track faculty in AAS is critical to developing a sustainable and supportive program. The CPC working group report stresses that the College’s reliance upon “contingent faculty, such as visitors, pre- and post-doctoral fellows, to teach Asian American studies” has proved inadequate in building “a concentration as a permanent and coherent component of the curriculum.” Laying the groundwork for a growing academic unit requires time and energy that only the stability of tenuretrack faculty can provide.

The sustainability of the program will depend upon the inclusion of these new faculty at the

College. The 2009 Faculty-Staff Initiative report drew attention to the unique but often unnamed burdens placed upon minority faculty, especially those of junior standing, including additional support of minority students and isolation within their own programs. While AAS faculty will undoubtedly be of varying identities, ethnic studies units are disproportionately affected by the departures of faculty of color. The College must make a concerted effort to provide these new faculty with the professional and personal mentorship and development they need to establish themselves as scholars, teachers and leaders here.

The College finds itself at the end of a long lineage of visible student efforts to rethink academic equity. The occupations of Hopkins Hall for an Afro-American studies department and the hunger strikes in 1991 and 1993 for a Latina/o studies program have not been forgotten. The College, rather than defer action once more, must take immediate steps to answer the needs voiced by its students.

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

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

Submissions should be sent to kc17@williams. edu and kzy1@williams.edu by Sunday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Opeds range in length from 650-800 words, and letters are 500 words or fewer. The Record will not publish pieces that have appeared in other publications. Pieces submitted to the Record are not guaranteed a spot in the upcoming issue.

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

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February 27, 2019

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The Williams Record

Institutional forgetting at Williams A call for “Testimonies of the Damned”

By TYLER TSAY In light of the recent March for the Damned, the members of CARE Now are calling for students, faculty, alums and staff to create a permanent, online archive – “Testimonies of the Damned” – of the College’s violent practices against people of color. These stories will be anonymized and shared with the school community in an online archive.

Please email any submissions to CARENow19@gmail.com. *** Last spring, I along with Amber Lee ’21, Serapia Kim ’19 and Audrey Koh ’21 collected interviews from numerous Asian American studies (AAS) movements around the nation. Nearly every interviewee reported multiple iterations of activism due to an “administrative relegation of students into ‘bureaucratic death.’”

“Relegation” takes many forms, including the establishment of committees, working groups, impermanent hiring, diversity initiatives and other years-long responses to the demands of activists.

This is the process of institutional forgetting – a cyclic immunization against tangible improvement. To the College, students are impermanent; they are destined to dissipate after receiving a diploma. Bureaucratic tactics, such as the ones mentioned above, provide administrators an infallible system under which they may stall student activists into limbo, straining desperately against our four-year clocks as “progress” trudges on with little result. Meanwhile, to trustees, donors and other stakeholders in the College’s financial future, administrators are able to claim relegatory tactics as “progress,” such that the College appears to the outside eye as a leader in progressivism. Once students graduate, the College regresses back to its previous state, ready to tame the next generation of students.

And it works: Students graduate and neglect to leave an archive, and the student body reverts to the status quo. That is, until the next (or imminent) violent and racist act. We have seen this with not just AAS but a broad range of issues: the disappearance of the Log contro-

versy of 2016; the now forgotten discussions on the Haystack memorial; the multiple cycles of student protest around lack of minority retention in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, 2005-2010 and the present day. Most heinous are the diffusion of annual hate crimes against marginalized members of our community, the campus-wide emails that never mention “race” and the workshops that spring forth for “sharing experiences” that disappear just as quickly, retraumatizing and humiliating people of color in the process. The community remains complacent even as vitriol spreads across our campus, year after year, because of the institution’s successful push for short-term memory.

As students, it feels real when we are in it. It feels as though the administration has no choice but to answer our minimal demands for support. We impress upon faculty a slew of documents, timelines and statistics that makes us believe there is no possibility of additional forgetting. We forget that the College must have a stake in listening to student demands; it has been only in moments of external,

unmitigated pressure that the College has truly listened. Compare the establishment of Africana studies and Latinx studies – after student occupations of Hopkins Hall and hunger strikes – with the decades-long Asian American studies movement, which has not taken such measures. Even the abolition of fraternities was undertaken only after widespread campus protest after the discriminatory exclusion of African American, Jewish and Korean students from membership into fraternities. It is only when campus climate negatively affects public image, and therefore economic output, that the College and its stakeholders resign themselves to swift and concrete response.

From students outside circles of activism, I hear many wonder what the campus talk is about. They believe it is just another outburst with too much misinformation to form one opinion or another (President Mandel’s conflicting accounts of the past week do not help much). I do not blame these students; perhaps, if they were steeped in the archival history of this College as we

are, they might feel differently.

Without exposure to such an archival record, students are forced to base their understanding of campus events on anecdotal evidence. They ask themselves, what have I experienced here, personally?

The College’s structures are in place to appease the majority, so it should come as no surprise that the majority on campus are happy, if not wondering what the fuss is all about.

Isn’t the College already working on it? If anything, the College is an expert in media relations; without an accurate history, the majority have no reason to distrust the College’s administrative processes. An overload of administrative rhetoric blurs the lines of fact and fiction. Through institutional forgetting, we lose the ability to remember the College’s historical negligence to our campus conversation except for a bare spread of documents collected in pieces. We are unable to demonstrate why the College’s talk of “progress” rings hollow; we are left to convince each other through whispered anecdotes and atrocities,

a secret and elusive network, which, though useful, does not hold anywhere near the power of a formalized archive.

Institutional forgetting prevents the formation of true community. It disappears fact in favor of the College’s biased narrative. It forces each of us to form incomplete opinions of the College that do nothing to illuminate the full history of what the College is and refuses to become.

We must do more to uncover the hidden archives of Williams. For those who have witnessed or experienced the College’s violent practices, either directly or in passing, share your stories at CARENow19@ gmail.com. En masse, we will be remembered. Students who wish to help, to know, to be equipped with the rhetoric, language and knowledges to best support campus action, can reach me at tst2@williams. edu. Now more than ever, we must strengthen our resolve, our community. We will be seen, and heard, and known.

Tyler Tsay ’19 is an American studies major from Pasadena, Calif.

On Amazon’s HQ2 Finding gray areas in the HQ2 debacle

By REBECCA KUO The fight over the new site for Amazon’s HQ2 had cities begging and pleading with Amazon, offering massive tax incentives to make themselves more appealing to the company. My own city, Buffalo, put forward $500 million in tax breaks and offered $700 million in local tax incentives, but those numbers seem inconsequential in the face of Amazon, which hit a market cap of $1 trillion six months ago. And still it continues to expand; acquisitions like Whole Foods have added new arms on the tech giant, reaching farther and farther into American households.

But the plan to build new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, sparked massive local resistance. Concerns voiced by residents highlighted a long-festering problem for New York: the exodus of tenants who, with the influx of economic growth, could no longer afford apartments in their neighborhoods. While Mayor Bill DeBlasio said that he would commit to affordable housing for low-income New Yorkers, that promise has yet to be realized. In addition, New York State unions voiced concerns about the fact that Amazon is not a unionized company, even though Amazon agreed to provide thousands of union positions in construction. Amazon, which frequently makes headlines for its abysmal working conditions, appeared to be a threat in a state with the most powerful unions in the country.

The third issue was the large amount of money that was of-

fered to Amazon by New York, a figure in the realm of $3 billion.

Many argued that cities should not have to sell themselves to Amazon in hopes of landing the HQ2 contract and that it was insulting to offer such a corporation money. Residents of Long Island City also rightfully feared gentrification due to rising housing prices that would have resulted from an increased demand for housing when Amazon moved in. New York has done poorly at addressing gentrification in the past, passing over an essential concern for families living in neighborhoods yet untouched

by Wall Street.

But – and hear me out – New York needs those jobs.

The city’s growing problem is diversification, or rather, the lack thereof. New York essentially has three industries: real estate, tourism and Wall Street. HQ2 would have brought another sector to the city, one sorely needed to diversify New York’s economic portfolio. 25,000-40,000 jobs would have been created. An Amazon training center, despite its own issues, would have provided opportunities to lift low-income New Yorkers into higher-paying positions.

It’s also important to consider that New York didn’t actually give Amazon anything moneywise. That $3 billion figure that’s been tossed around was made up of tax relief, not government subsidies. True, $3 billion is a lot – but New York would have made $27 billion in tax revenue in exchange. Does it feel like a slap in the face to all of the residents of Long Is-

land City, where the poverty rate is 16.8 percent, to offer such a company $3 billion in tax relief? Absolutely. But $27 billion is a lot of money that could have been used to enrich Long Island City and fund progressive policies throughout the state. If you want progressive policies, like New York’s Excelsior Scholarship program, to continue to evolve and be created, there has to be a solid tax base.

Would Amazon’s HQ2 have solved problems or created immediate fixes? Absolutely not.

The deal had flaws; I’m not denying that. In no way should people have to decide between the neighborhoods they love and making ends meet. But New York needs tech sector jobs because the city is becoming dangerously dependent on three industries. While concerns about rising housing prices should have been addressed, and the amount of money offered to Amazon in tax relief was a hard pill to swallow, the monetary reward for New York was nothing to be scoffed at. I’m not suggesting that the deal was perfect; it was anything but. It is, however, incredibly important to realize that this is not a one-sided issue. Chalking this up as a total victory for unions and the common man who stuck it to corporate America overlooks many of the practical ramifications of having HQ2. Long Island City just lost up to 40,000 jobs and $27 billion in tax revenue. This is not a win, nor is it a loss. It’s just complicated.

Rebecca Kuo ’22 is from Buffalo, N.Y.

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The Academy’s blunders On impactful firsts and repeated mistakes at the Oscars

By YASMINA CABRERA The 91st Academy Awards closed out the awards season with a night of honorable firsts as well as predictable blunders.

The ceremony began at a high point as the glowing Regina King earned her first Oscar for her supporting performance in Barry Jenkin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. Ruth E. Carter and Hannah Beachler received awards in Best Costume Design and Best Production Design, respectively, for Black Panther, making it the first time in Oscar history for multiple Black women to be awarded on the same night. “I give this straight to all of those who come next, to keep going, to never give up, and when you think it’s impossible just remember to say this: I did my best, and my best is good enough,” Beachler ended her emotional speech.

In what seemed like an ironic twist, Bohemian Rhapsody, which is widely believed to be the most laughably edited film this past year, managed to win Best Editing over Vice and BlacKkKlansman, it also inexplicably beat both First Man and A Quiet Place, for best sound editing.

Spiderman: Into the SpiderVerse unsurprisingly received the award for best animated feature as many critics have acclaimed its ushering of a new golden standard for both animated and superhero films, and whose achievements in cinematography and editing were outstanding enough for it to have contended in the Best Picture category.

Nominated for the fifth time, Spike Lee finally earned the first Oscar of his career for his screenplay adaptation

of BlackkKlansman. While it was gratifying to see Lee finally receive recognition for his contributions to filmmaking, it was disappointing that BlackkKlansman was the film to have done it. Lee’s heroic portrayal of a police officer as an ally to Black radical leaders in Colorado Springs has been left uncorroborated and contributes to revisionist history of the Black radical movements of the civil rights era and the lethal threat they faced in law enforcement agencies. Barry Jenkins was left empty-handed in this category even though he succeeded in the daunting task of being the only filmmaker to ever adapt James Baldwin’s work for the screen. Green Book won Best Original Screenplay over The Favourite even though there was almost nothing original about the film’s premise or the way it was written.

What may very well have been the best film of 2018, Roma, predictably won awards for Best Cinematography and Best Foreign Language Film. It also got Alfonso Cuarón his second Oscar for direction, making this the fifth time in six years that a Mexican director has won.

The last award of the night and the most controversial win by far, went to Green Book for Best Picture. In this moment the Academy’s enthusiastic reception for new voices and styles in filmmaking became undone.

In the audience, Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman shared an all-knowing look with his cast, and Spike Lee even left his seat, looking for a way out during the acceptance speech. It wasn’t hard to tell why.

An almost completely white ensemble stood up yet again

to receive its cookie for 2018’s designated white savior film.

Green Book, a story about Don Shirley, a Black pianist during the 1960s, and the white man who was brave enough to be his acquaintance, was almost exclusively crafted by and made for the consumption of a white audience looking to absolve itself from guilt while retaining the luxury of ignoring the real racial complexities of our time.

Writer and director Xavier Burgin put it best when he tweeted, “The tragedy about all of this is we’ll still be talking about Roma, Black Panther and BlackkKlansman decades from now. Damn near no one is going to remember Green Book by next year because it didn’t give a damn about the community it was supposed to be made for.”

A film that was self-dubbed as a shining example of “acceptance” displayed the Academy’s existing ignorance. Ignorance of Don Shirley’s real experiences and his family’s disappointment with this film, ignorance of the real stories that were exceptionally created by and for people of color this year, ignorance of the real love and pain that went into creating them and ignorance of the uncomfortable truths these films were created to reveal.

This year’s Oscars proved what they have proven every single year since that first ceremony in 1929. It’s a nice gesture to be recognized by one’s peers, but the honesty with which the audience perceives one’s work is what truly determines its real cultural and artistic significance and allows it to be remembered for years to come.

Yasmina Cabrera ’22 is from Bronx, N.Y.

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Students, dean attend 1vyG conference Attendees discuss empowering first-generation, low-income students

February 27, 2019

In Other Ivory Towers

By REBECCA TAUBER EXECUTIVE EDITOR

PHOTO COURTESY OF FACEBOOK OF FGLI ADMINISTRATORS CONSORTIUM.

Students and administrators gathered at Princeton to address opportunities and resources for the first-generation and low-income communities.

By CHARLES XU EXECUTIVE EDITOR Eight College students and Associate Dean April Ruiz joined more than 300 students and 150 administrators at the fifth annual 1vyG Conference at Princeton on Feb. 16 and 17, engaging in conversations to better support and empower the first-generation, low-income (FLI) communities at colleges and universities across the country. The 1vyG Conference featured peer discussions, workshops and networking opportunities for students representing 34 institutions. This year’s conference was the first attended by the College, and it centered around the theme “From Moment to Movement: Capitalizing on Our FLI Experiences to Become Agents of Change in Our Communities.”

“One of the primary purposes of this convening is to build community so that we might better share best practices and, ultimately, enhance the experience of the first-gen, lower-income students on our campuses,” Princeton’s Associate Dean Khristina Gonzalez said of the conference. “We want to promote not just access, but [student] success. This is not a one-off event.

This is not simply a moment, but indeed a movement.”

A combination of students and professionals spoke at the conference, including Anthony Abraham Jack, author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Poor Students, and Kameelah Mu’Min Rashad, founder and president of Muslim Wellness Foundation. Talks focused on pressing issues for the community, such as defying career norms to navigating the hidden inhibitors of FLI success.

While the conference featured students from varying geographies and backgrounds, ambassador and mobilizer Sara Hetherington ’19 was struck by “how quickly we could start talking about things … especially if conversations started about it’s like to go from where home is for you to a place that is kind of more elite or privileged.”

For some, the opportunity to interact with students from peer institutions introduced new perspectives and promoted unity.

“Going into this conference, I went in with a very Williamscentric perspective,” Kiersten Campbell ’21 said. “I wanted to go there and learn about strategies to make Williams better.

But I think in talking with people from other institutions and hearing about the differences in how first-gen communities are supported across institutions really shifted that perspective. And I

think I left instead — definitely wanting to improve the first gen community — but I left more interested in seeing how knowledge and strategic sharing could be implemented between Williams and other institutions to make a broader first-gen community feel supported.”

While administrators received updates and check-ins at the student-centered and studentled 1vyG Conference, a separate FGLI Consortium Conference was held for administrators to discuss ways not only to improve the accessibility of higher-education but also to work on providing resources and empowering students while they are at the institution. Faculty and staff discussed subjects ranging from supporting undocumented students to creating pathways for students toward graduate and professional schools.

“It’s very rare that I attend a conference where everyone is so warm, welcoming and on-message,” Ruiz said. “It’s cool to be in a space with other professionals who understand. We are all faced with the same challenges in different sorts of packages and we are all trying to move in the same direction, and we just have to do it in different sorts of ways.”

For Ruiz and the students who attended the 1vyG Conference, the next step is to share

what they have learned with the broader first-generation community at the College.

“We could only take eight delegates, but definitely the information we learned at [the 1vyG conference] is applicable to all first-gens,” Campbell said.

The conversation on inclusivity and opportunities for FLI students has been an ongoing effort at the College. Earlier in the month, President of the College Maud Mandel attended a summit, hosted by the American Talent Initiative – a program aiming to increase the accessibility of higher education for lowerincome students – with nearly 100 other college and university presidents and administrators.

“As I mentioned in my Claiming Williams remarks, we’re very much in the process of reimagining a school that, for most of its history, served a very specific constituency, and thinking about how it can now serve a more diverse student body,” Mandel said. “Williams isn’t alone: That’s true of most schools in our peer group. But I think we can help lead the continuing work of opening access, providing support and removing barriers to success, diversifying our faculty and staff, as well as our student body, and broadly transforming the face of our institutions for the good of society.”

Following recent discussion and coverage of the struggles of minority faculty and issues of retention at the College, the Record examined news surrounding this issue at other colleges and universities across the country.

“lack of clarity around these processes and expectations for pre-tenure faculty.” The Student also pointed to an intimidating culture surrounding faculty meetings and their procedures and a larger “institutional culture of whiteness” as contributing to the challenges facing faculty of color at Amherst.

Amherst College

Purdue University

In a four-part series titled “A Flawed System,” Amherst Student Editor-in-Chief Shawna Chen investigated issues facing faculty of color at Amherst. The first installment reported higher rates of tenure denial among professors of color. The article also described the larger workload of faculty of color, including the heightened burden of mentoring students, serving on committees to improve diversity, advocating for change and more. The Student reported that although most faculty participate in these obligations, the shortage of professors of color places a disproportionate work load on minority faculty, much of which does not count toward tenure.

The second installment recounted instances of racism in the Amherst community.

Furthermore, the article, “A Flawed System: Navigating Racist Encounters,” referenced the leaves of Assistant Professor of English Kimberly Love and Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Kai M. Green ’07 from the College, recognizing that “racially tinged encounters are not isolated to Williams.”

Most recently, the Student investigated the tenure process and the added challenges facing minority faculty at Amherst. The coverage raised the issue of Amherst’s non-standardized course evaluations across departments and their role in tenure evaluations.

Last Wednesday’s article, “A Flawed System: Professors of Color Face Hurdles in Obtaining Tenure,” also pointed to a

On Feb. 18, The New York Times published a profile of Edray Goins, an African American mathematician who decided to leave his position as full professor at Purdue for a full professorship at Pomona. The article, “For a Black Mathematician, What It’s Like to Be the ‘Only One,’” pointed to a buildup of incidents leading to Goins’ decision. “The hostilities he perceived were subtle, the signs of disrespect unspoken,” the Times’ Amy Harmon wrote. The article described the loneliness and isolation Goins felt as a black mathematician underrepresented in his field. The Times wrote about instances of microaggressions and tokenization experienced by Goins and his peers. “I just never really felt respected,” Goins said.

Harmon, a national correspondent for the Times, broadened the issue in an additional article, “What I Learned While Reporting on the Dearth of Black Mathematicians.” Harmon noted that many mathematicians interviewed “took pains to note that theirs is not the only field typified by what one called ‘the racism of educated people.’” The article also recognized economic issues that feed underrepresentation, such as the lack of equity in public schools. “The lack of African-American representation in math can end up feeding pernicious biases, which in turn add to the many obstacles mathematically talented minorities face,” Harmon wrote.

College awards first TIDE grants CLiA coordinates three paid professional development programs with local schools

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN MANAGING EDITOR

Eight projects have received funding from the College’s first Towards Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (TIDE) grants, a series of grants of up to $5000 to various College departments, offices, faculty, staff and students “to help facilitate the infusion of diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of our campus by leveraging the creativity and passion of the members of our community,” Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity Leticia Smith-Evans Haynes ’98 announced in a Feb. 11 email.

The eight projects funded in this first round of grants include conferences, educational workshops, speaker series and various campus gatherings and events.

Several of these events aim to center underrepresented perspectives in academic disciplines or spaces. As one example, “Alternative Art Histories: Future Directions in Latinx Art” will be a conference focusing on U.S. Latinx art to be held at the Clark, organized by Marco Antonio Flores MA ’19 and Professor of Art and Latina/o Studies C. Ondine Chavoya. Another project, “Decolonizing Your Pedagogy,” organized by Visiting Lecturer in Art Allana Clarke, will feature a series of workshops and events on developing “equitable, intersectional pedagogies within and outside of academia,” according to the project description.

“Reclaiming the Stacks,” a program organized by Head of Research Services Christine Ménard and Director of Libraries Jonathan Miller, aims to respond to white supremacist flyers found in Sawyer Library over the summer and highlight questions of representation and equity surrounding the libraries’ collections. According to Ménard, some potential events the libraries will consider pursuing include, “readings and book discussions strategically located in the stacks in the sections

targeted by the flyers,” “workshops investigating the power structure underlying the process of information creation and the organization of library collections, followed by actions (e.g. advocating for modification of Library of Congress Subject Headings, or organizing a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon)” and “commissioning student art to be installed in the library in answer to the program’s themes.”

Some of the other projects receiving funding focus on efforts that cross over into the local community. Berkshire Educator Summer Institute for Teaching Diversity and Social Justice, for example, is a professional development training on inclusive pedagogy for 40 local K-12 educators from throughout Berkshire County, organized by Director of the Davis Center Shawna Patterson-Stephens and Director of the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) Paula Consolini. “This institute is a professional development program open to K-12 educators in the Berkshire area interested in building more inclusive and affirming classrooms through exploration, and the development of strategies and skills to effectively navigate diversity issues in regional schools,” Patterson-Stephens said. “The institute is part of a larger partnership between Berkshire regional educators and Williams College aimed at providing area youth with a learning experience that espouses inclusive excellence. Finally, this project serves as an opportunity to build a cohort amongst faculty, who will identify ways to constructively resolve some of the issues observed within the Berkshire school system alongside our local educators.”

Other projects focus on faculty and staff development. One project, organized by Consolini, Marco Vallejos ’20, Assistant to the Director for Dining Services Sharon Marceau and CLiA Assistant Director Tracy Finnegan will coach dining services staff

to attain their ServSafe manager’s certification, leading to increased promotional opportunities. Another project, the Processing Whiteness group, aims to help staff and faculty interrogate whiteness and white privilege and to be more effective allies in seeking racial justice. This project is organized by Ruby Solomon, a fellow at Integrative Wellbeing Services (IWS), Rabbi Seth Wax, the College’s Jewish chaplain and Professor of German Gail Newman. “The ‘Processing Whiteness’ group was inspired by the idea that the next step in Williams’ efforts toward equity has to be an honest examination of our own role as white people in upholding structures of privilege and power,” Newman said.

Solomon added, “It is not, however, meant to replace deeply listening to the experiences of people of color, believing what they tell us and continuing to learn from the scholarship and activist efforts of people of color that form the foundation of antiracist movements.”

Others projects center around supporting students directly. One of these, the Men of Color Collective, will organize ongoing campus programming, “to help all men of color thrive at Williams.”

This project, organized by Chris Sewell ’05, associate dean of the College, and Michael Grinnell, Jr., a fellow at IWS, has so far included pre-semester programming to help students plan for the semester and a community reflection space in the wake of attacks on black queer men, amongst other programming. Another grant recipient project, “Radical Care: Practices in ‘Alternative’ Healing Towards Inclusion, Diversity & Equity,” organized by Maria Noya ’21, Elsa Björnlund ’20 and Kristina Hwang ’18.5, will bring outside educators and speakers to campus for three workshops on alternative healing practices.

A second round of grant funding will have applications due on March 15.

By LYDIA DUAN EXECUTIVE EDITOR The Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) is coordinating three paid professional development opportunities for the College’s CLiA Education Fellows over the regional school district’s February break period. These three programs are linked by the joining of interests by CLiA and Mount Greylock Regional School District (MGRSD) to increase trauma-informed training for their community partners.

CLiA Director Paula Consolini explained that these projects aim to increase the depth of student engagement with local communities. “There’s an awareness that the challenges are really substantial in these schools,” Consolini said. “The idea here is that we want to advance students’ learning around the work they’re doing in these schools.”

The first of the three was a brunch event on Feb. 17, titled “Get to know WES [Williamstown Elementary School].” At this event, Joelle Brookner, principal of WES, gave a presentation on the demographics of the three schools in the MGRSD – WES, Lanesborough Elementary School and Mount Greylock Regional School.

She referenced the recent 2018 official accountability report issued by the Massachusetts Department of Education, highlighting indicators for groups the department deems “high needs,” such as students with disabilities or students who are English language

learners. She then provided background context about WES and its current academic programs in place to meet state curricular standards. In addition, she noted that the school has incorporated more teaching about emotional regulation, mindfulness and empathy for its students. When reflecting upon a school’s role in devel-

“There’s an awareness that the challenges are really substantial in these schools.

The idea here is that we want to advance students’ learning around the work they’re doing in these schools.”

Paula Consolini

Center for Learning in Action Director oping interpersonal and social skillsets for its students, Brookner cited the school’s mission statement, which reads, “To inspire in all students a love of learning and challenge them to grow in heart and mind.”

Co-hosted by the campus chapter of No Lost Generation, a national group centered around refugee and immigration advocacy, last

Wednesday’s screening of Day One provided an additional professional development opportunity. The film features a “group of teens from war zones in the Middle East and Africa as they are resettled in St. Louis and enrolled at a unique public school for refugees-only,” as described by its studio synopsis. Day One examines themes of trauma and diaspora, and a brief student-led discussion event followed the viewing in Griffin Hall.

A “Mindfulness in Kids” dinner and workshop event at The Log last Thursday explored the application of mindfulness techniques in everyday interactions with schoolchildren. Monica Endres, mindfulness coordinator at the Pine Cobble School, shared her principles of meditative practice.

Consolini emphasized the reciprocity of expanded training among students, faculty and community members. She referenced ongoing programs such as the Justice League partnership with Reid Middle School that engages with models for restorative justice, the Learning Intervention For Teams collaboration between College students and teenagers involved with the juvenile court systems of Berkshire County and the recent Community Matters initiative at Mount Greylock Regional School that seeks to foster discussion around topics of identity. “Young lives are at stake,” Consolini said. “The challenge is to get the awareness and understanding to bring the necessary resources to bear.”

5 ARTS

The Williams Record

February 27, 2019

Box Office Hours: ‘Capernaum’ with Cheryl Shanks

By PHILLIP PYLE ARTS EDITOR It’s taking everything in my willpower to restrain from commenting on Sunday’s Academy Awards. After seeing Capernaum, a film by Lebanese actor, writer and director Nadine Labaki, I can discuss the Best Foreign Language Film category. The past year was dominated by foreign films like Roma, The Favourite, Cold War and Shoplifters, but Capernaum stood apart.

For this week’s Box Office Hours, I invited Professor of Political Science Cheryl Shanks to view and discuss Capernaum with me. Shanks conducts research that “focuses on fluidity in population and territory, the two central components of sovereignty,” topics that fed our conversation.

Capernaum chronicles the emotional journey of 12-yearold Zain, a Lebanese migrant.

After his 11-year-old sister is forcefully married, he flees his family and finds refuge in Beirut with Rahil, an Ethiopian refugee and migrant worker, and her infant son, Yonas. After Rahil is detained for working without a permit, Zain is left to take care of Yonas. Zain plans an escape to Sweden by boat; on a trip home to locate his citizenship papers, however, Zain learns his sister has died. He immediately goes to her husband’s home and stabs him.

Zain is subsequently arrested and attempts to sue his parents for “being born.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS.

Zain (right), a 12-year-old Lebanese migrant, is left to take care of Yonas (left) after Yonas’ mother Rahil is arrested in the film Capernaum.

My initial reaction was shock.

The film had been a raw, visceral experience, and would create a lasting imprint in my memory.

“I’ve seen a lot of movies about refugees, and this movie was much better than they are,” Shanks said.

Unlike Shanks, I had seen only a few movies about refugees, and the only one I can remember enjoying was Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men. Capernaum, however, offered a more authentic narrative than Cuarón’s dystopian thriller. Unlike Cuarón, Labaki didn’t need

to create a fictional, futuristic society to tell her story; she simply looked at her homeland. Labaki cast mainly nonprofessional actors, including 12-year-old Syrian refugee Zain al Rafeea, who plays the protagonist of the same name. By choosing to cast an actual refugee, Labaki centralizes the refugee crisis in not only the story but the cast as well. Like Roma, the film has faced criticism for being “poverty porn,” a term that critiques widely circulated, sensationalized depictions of individuals from developing countries. Labaki responded to

these criticisms in a New York Times interview, stating that “what [viewers] see in the film is nothing compared to reality.

We should wake up to how many children are suffering in the world. It’s unbearable suffering; I didn’t put rape scenes in the film, I didn’t put real abuse in the film – because I couldn’t.”

Zain’s journey shows the violence, hunger, oppression and poverty faced by migrants and refugees from multiple lenses, whether through following the experience of a young Ethiopian mother or chronicling the ob-

stacles faced by a Syrian refugee about to flee Lebanon for Sweden. Capernaum interweaves their stories, creating a tapestry of human experience. Labaki combines humanist storytelling while revealing the institutional structures that contribute to the characters’ plights, particularly Zain’s.

“Stories like Roma, and like this story, help us see the relationship between the choices individuals have and the big structures that channel and restrict them,” Shanks said. “What [Zain] chose made sense, given what his background was and his

character. That’s the way I see politics getting woven into movies like this. And ones about refugees that are autobiographical can do that if they’re good.”

Shanks went on to describe how she sees privilege manifest through international law, an issue she saw expressed in the film. She noticed how there are layers of different groups existing in the same location and time in the film, but the difference between them was defined by their ability to leave or lack thereof. Her observation is reflected in scenes showing 12-year-old Zain in a prison cell, imprisoned migrant workers and Maysoun, a Syrian refugee, preparing for her journey to Europe. Labaki highlights the institutional and structural roots of Zain’s parents’ negligence, Rahil’s inability to work in Lebanon and Zain’s decision to stab his late sister’s husband in an non-obvious but equally effective way.

Capernaum demonstrates the structural flaws in the Lebanese government, United Nations and international law regarding the refugee crisis, but it does not stop there; it also explores how institutional abuses manifest through public and private life – at all stages of the pyramid.

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

‘XENOS’ stuns at ’62 Center

By KAIRA MEDIRATTA EXECUTIVE EDITOR Entering the main stage of the ’62 Center Thursday evening, one might have initially been struck by the classical Indian music and lament filling the room, performed by vocalist Aditya Prakash and percussionist B C Manjunath. As audience members took their seats, they slowly took in the set design: a lavish living room with ornate cushions and a jhoola (an Indian swing). The set had some unsettling elements as well, such as a menacing ramp in the back with looped ropes hanging down its side, and those in the audience paying particular attention may have noticed the sporadic flickering of the lights and static disrupting the music.

So began Akram Khan’s solo work XENOS. Khan, an English dancer of Bangladeshi descent, is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary dancers and choreographers. XENOS is Khan’s depiction of a colonial soldier’s shell-shocked dream during World War I (WWI); it has been attracting high praise and fivestar reviews since premiering in Athens in 2017. “This [fictional] soldier was a hugely respected Kathak dancer [a 500-year-old Indian form, which uses elaborate hand gestures and footwork to tell stories],” Khan told The New York Times, “and suddenly his memories and his sense of home are pulled away by the call of the British empire.”

In Greek, “xenos” means stranger or foreigner; in giving the performance this name, Khan sought to honor the stories of the more than one million Indian soldiers enlisted by the British in WWI – mostly peasant-warriors from North and North-Western India – who fought and died in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Having grown up in London with Bangladeshi parents (where his father owned an Indian restaurant), Khan felt that

these narratives were absent in his education.

XENOS also finds inspiration in the Greek myth of Prometheus, who defied the gods to gift fire to humanity and, in doing so, provided the means to its own destruction. One particularly vivid moment from the opening performance includes the set going dark and Khan’s face being lit up by the light of a single match.

The production begins at a wedding celebration of sorts; Khan dances alongside Manjunath’s konnakol (the art of reciting Carnatic percussion syllables), his movements combining contemporary dance and classical kathak. Dressed in a white kurta pajama, with ghungroo (dancing bells) tied to his ankles, Khan intersperses his elegant spinning and stomping with moments of stumbling and falling, giving the audience a glimpse of the uncertainty and disarray to come.

It is perhaps playwright Jordan Tannahill’s sparing script – including the powerful line “this is not war, it is the ending of the world” – and set designer Mirella Weingarten’s dystopian landscapes that give this performance its staggering, unrelenting intensity. When Khan unwraps his ankle bells – holding a strand in each hand – one cannot help but feel unnerved, realizing that they resemble chains. One feels a similar shock when the living room furniture begins to be pulled up a slope at the back of the stage by ropes, leaving Khan alone on a barren stage. The beats of the music merge with gunshots, forming a cacophony which grows louder and louder. Only when it becomes almost unbearable do we realize that the five musicians are floating above the stage in an eerie ensemble of ghosts.

Throughout the performance, Khan remains in motion – the effort visible in the sweat beading on his body – although his costume does change from In-

dian dress, to military attire to ultimately his bare chest. Indeed, one may assume from the energy of the show that the 44-year-old decided to make this be his final solo show purely because of the physical demands on his body.

Yet his age in fact is not his only reason. “The physical shift is a hassle, but it’s the psychological shift that is much greater,” Khan said in an interview with The Economist. “Funnily enough, when I’m on stage I feel I’ve never been so confident, but offstage I feel terrified…It’s really the fear of messing up or disappointing myself.”

XENOS continues to unfold on this bleak landscape, save for one moment of humor: Khan, holding a rope, finds a gramophone attached to another rope – he is startled to find that tying the two ropes together elicits a recording from the record player. The scene takes a darker turn, however, when the gramophone begins listing out various Indian names, assumedly sepoys, declaring them all dead.

The audience watches in horror as Khan frantically struggles to untie the knot.

XENOS cycles through a series of potential endings, before finally concluding dramatically with Khan tumbling down the slanted stage, pinecones cascading around him. Although perhaps Khan was aiming for the melodramatic, I personally felt that a much more poignant ending would have been an earlier scene where the stage turns completely dark, save for the gramophoneturned-lighthouse, scanning the audience left and right.

“The aesthetic is shell-shock,” Khan said in conversation with the Times. “The dance is not just within the body. The body is what communicates, but the body is broken.” Overall, XENOS is a powerful, vehement and at times upsetting testament to those Indian soldiers who’ve gone so long unknown, a preservation of affect which goes beyond the corporeal.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ .

Akram Khan’s XENOS, which focuses on a colonial soldier after World War I, is his final solo show.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LA VOZ DE TRES.

The Ernest Brown World Music Series brought La Voz de Tres to Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall last Friday.

La Voz de Tres performs eclectic, international jazz

By GEORGIA MCCLAIN STAFF WRITER “We’re all friends, right?

So I can take off my shoes?”

Natalia Bernal asked, smiling. She pulled off a shoe and pointed to the heel. “Who came up with this stuff?”

Bernal’s casual and honest attitude was contagious during Friday’s performance by jazz trio La Voz de Tres, whose members include vocalist Bernal, pianist Michael Eckroth and guitarist Jason Ennis. The performance was part of the annual Ernest Brown World Music Series. Dedicated to former Professor of Music Ernest D. Brown Jr., who passed away in 2012, this performance series works to bring international music to the College community.

Eckroth and Ennis had previously performed as members of a group focused on Brazilian music. At one of their gigs, Bernal stood in for a flute player, and the trio discovered that playing together felt uniquely organic.

They decided to form a new group in 2008 dedicated to exploring their sound, and La Voz de Tres was born.

Part of their unique sound is owed to Ennis’ use of a seven-string guitar, which is associated with the Brazilian “Choro” style. Ennis believes that the extra string, which provides a lower range compared to a typical six-stringed guitar, gives the group as a whole more freedom to explore different harmonization and voice leading choices.

While La Voz de Tres is considered a jazz group, the group plays a wide variety of music, including their own original songs and classic songs from several areas of Latin America, including Chile, Bernal’s country of origin. The group has even recently incorporated tunes from the Great American Songbook into their varied repertoire.

Every piece of music that the group performed had a clear personal significance for the musicians. One song was written by Ennis and Bernal on a trip to Chile, in the foothills of the Andes Mountain; another, by Bernal, was in memory of her grandmother.

Before playing a piece from Argentina, Bernal told the audience that she and Ennis always sing it as a lullaby to their son.

The group strives to find balance between expressing personal creativity and respecting various historical musical styles. When describing the group’s essence, Bernal explained, “La Voz de Tres is a trio that has been working for the last 10 years in a mad chase for aesthetics. It’s aesthetics but it’s the sensibility of eras. Every genre, every decade, has its own sensibilities, and it’s been beautiful to see how we have brought new inspirations, managed to communicate them, and then find new amazing souls along the way that have that hunger for aesthetics.”

For this performance, the group invited one “new soul,” cellist Eugene Friesan, to play with them. Though classically trained, Friesan

now plays mostly jazz. While he had sheet music in front of him while he played, his contributions during the group’s performance were almost entirely improvisational.

La Voz de Tres rarely plays with Friesan but has known the cellist for many years.

The members emphasized throughout the performance how much they had been looking forward to playing with him. At the end of one song, Bernal gestured to Friesan and exclaimed, “My soul is being bathed with beauty here.

This is a beautiful man.”

In the middle of the performance, La Voz de Tres vacated the stage, giving Friesan the opportunity to play a solo. He first described his interest in the mbira, an African thumb piano, and the kora, a harp, and his desire to incorporate aspects of these instruments into cello music. Indeed, Friesan’s original piece, Shadowplay, demonstrated innovative left hand percussion and strumming techniques with precision and passion.

To conclude, the group performed a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Visions,” which the group played into Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Prelude No. 1.

Tendai Muparutsa, artist in residence in African musical performance and lecturer in music, who invited La Voz de Tres to campus, performed this final song with the group.

The eclecticism and multinationality of La Voz de Tres certainly was a worthy contribution to the College’s World Music series.

6 FEATURES

The Williams Record

February 27, 2019

One in Two Thousand

By IRENE LOEWENSON FEATURES EDITOR Megan, one my junior advisors (JAs) in Mills-Dennett 2, provides her frosh with countless funny anecdotes and snacks schedules organized by a secret mathematical code. We sat down to discuss gum, Kidz Bop and Lindsay Lohan’s secret twin.

You’ve mentioned that a former Kidz Bop star blocked you on Instagram. Could you tell me about that?

Yeah. I think it was in my junior year of high school that my sister and I took a Kidz Bop dance tutorial, and when you took it you had to take on the character of one of the people. So I was Kidz Bop Matt, and my sister was Kidz Bop Ashlynn. And so after that, anytime they posted on social media, we would comment under their posts, pretending we were them. So if they were in a picture together, we’d be like, “Yes! We’re the perfect couple. #Mashlynn.”

And we decided we really didn’t like this one guy, Kidz Bop Grant, so we would comment, “Great to see you, Ashlynn, but we really need to have a band meeting – we need to kick Grant out of the band,” or “So glad we kicked Grant out of the band.” This has been going on for literal years. It’s still going on now – we still make these comments to each other.

One day, I clicked on Ashlynn’s account, and it came up with the whole, “This ac-

count doesn’t exist,” but you can tell that it exists because it has the number of posts and everything. And so my sister confirmed that Ashlynn had blocked me but not her – and Matt hadn’t blocked either of us. What we thought was great was that we know for sure now that Matt and Ashlynn have had conversations about my sister and me. And we think that’s awesome. And also that Ashlynn was probably like, “I’ll block her, but Matt, don’t block her, because I still want to see what she says.” The fact that we know that that conversation existed has really validated my life. [Laughs.]

MEGAN SIEDMAN ’20

Is there anyone else notable who has blocked you on social media?

Yeah. My account very regularly gets blocked by a lot of people… I’m up to 17 Instagram accounts that have blocked me, and I don’t understand how that’s possible – my account is boring at best. My ex-boyfriend has also blocked me on literally every form of everything except for LinkedIn. He’s a very professionally minded young man. Even email – but not LinkedIn. Tell me about your phobia of gum.

Oh my god. [Laughs.] I think it started at my fourth-grade graduation. My sister spit her gum onto my knee when I was in my nice dress and we were heading out to Olive Garden

SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR MEGAN'S HOMETOWN REDDING, CONN.

MEGAN’S RESIDENCE MILLS-DENNETT

to celebrate. And I just was fixated on it and couldn’t breathe and was so upset.

Even when other people are chewing it, I hate it. The idea of chewing it horrifies me… I just am very uncomfortable with gum as a polymer.

It got worse my ninth-grade year. It was the first science project we did in biology. It wasn’t a bio project – it was just like, “Learn the scientific method!” And we had to see which gum brands would not only make the biggest bubbles but would stretch the longest.

When gum stretches all the way, it can go on for several

LEAST FAVORITE POLYMER CHEWING GUM

hallways because it’s just so durable, I guess. We did it in the science hall, and it got so thin that people were walking out of their classrooms and walking into it because it got so thin that you couldn’t see it. They were getting stuck in this gum, and I was just sitting in the corner, rocking, because I couldn’t handle it. And then when my mom came in for parents’ night, my teacher goes, “Oh yeah! Your kid’s the one who’s afraid of gum.”

On a completely different note, what made you decide to be a JA?

I became a JA for a number of very personal reasons. I didn’t always have the best home life, especially right before coming to Williams, and I had really lost this sense of home. I remember Sage A made me feel safe in a way that I hadn’t in a long time and made me feel that I was coming home to a space that actually was a home.

It was warm, there were people who cared about me and I felt good in that space. And that first made me want to become a house coordinator – this idea that homes really matter, especially at a place like Williams.

There’s a difference between a house and a home. There’s a difference between the dorm that you just live in and the place you feel comfortable thriving in. My house coordinator year was definitely very difficult but also very rewarding and, I think, confirmed for me that, No. 1, I was strong enough to be a JA and, No. 2, this was where my passions were. Providing people with a space where they feel comfortable was the biggest factor guiding it, among others.

You’ve mentioned to your frosh that you believe in several conspiracy theories. Could you talk about some of them?

I’m a huge fan of conspiracy theories. No. 1: I think Lindsay Lohan had a twin who died, and that’s why she became crazy. I definitely believe that one. I also think Avril Lavigne died and then they replaced her with her backup singer, so that’s why she sounds a little

different, and her music’s a little different. And also the backup singer’s dad straight up admitted to it. They have clips. You can look it up. I feel iffy about the moon landing because I think we’ve landed on the moon by now, but I really don’t think it happened then. If you look at the footage, there’s an immense amount of evidence that just shows that everything is really off. And I think it makes sense in the context of the space race. We wanted to say we were there, you know?... I also believe in the Illuminati. I’m kind of iffy about lizard people, but Justin Bieber could definitely be a lizard person.

The one I believe in the most – this is 100 percent true – is that Mattress Firm is laundering money. If you look up Mattress Firms in your area, you’ll see that there are always, like, three Mattress Firm locations within the same street or two of each other, which is just wild, because no one buys mattresses. People buy them very, very rarely. The parking lots are always super empty.

There’s no reason for them to have that many stores all within the same place. And the only reason why that makes sense is because they’re laundering money and trying to split it up between their stores to make it look like they didn’t get that money from someplace sketchy. It is 100 percent that they’re laundering money. It’s true. And also, it’s interesting and ironic because a mattress is a place you hide your money under. Boom.

Workshop explores Asian BFAIR Buddies serve community American identities

By MAE ERZINI VERNOIT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

VINCENT JIANG/STAFF WRITER

At a workshop run by the Sticky Rice Project, students made a word cloud for the “model minority” myth.

By VINCENT JIANG STAFF WRITER The Sticky Rice Project (SRP) held a series of workshops last Saturday on the “model minority” myth and the presence of anti-blackness in Asian American communities. A branch of the Boston-based Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW), the SRP is dedicated to educating the community about the political forces affecting the Asian American community while inspiring activism and conversation across campuses. This is its second series of workshops; the first was held at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Though the AARW was founded in 1979, this particular group of SRP facilitators – Alice Frederick, Shirley Li, Chris Lo and Andrew Yang – joined the team within the last few months. All four had been contemplating their own identities as Asian Americans and ways in which they could address the issues that they saw in their lives. One of their goals for the workshop was to give students the chance to talk about these topics early in their lives, an opportunity they felt they had lacked while they were students.

“For me, these were conversations I wished I had,” Lo said.

“It’s definitely starting conversations early, earlier than I ever had these conversations,” Li agreed.

The event opened with the Model Minority Myth workshop, which aimed to define and destroy the “model minority” myth, illuminate the role

that Asian Americans play in upholding white supremacy and highlight what has been done – and what can be done – to resist. The facilitators first had participants explore what defined their Asian American identities, from faith to social media to academics. Participants then collectively constructed a word cloud for how they thought the model minority and the stereotypical Asian American were perceived.

Words that stood out were “obedient” and “apolitical,” among others.

The subsequent exploration of racism and power dynamics affecting Asian Americans was revealing, and many expressed surprise that the phrase “model minority” was originally coined as a critique for the civil rights movement. At the end of the workshop, participants made a word cloud for the same question again, but this time there were some striking differences: “obedient” became “complacent,” and “apolitical” became “silent.”

“I think this workshop has been an illuminating experience,” Audrey Koh ’21 said. “I really appreciate being able to come together with Asian American friends and new faces in a setting to discuss our Asian American personal and collective identities.”

After a brief lunch break, the group dove into a workshop on anti-blackness. In perhaps the most sobering moment of the day, participants formed a circle with everyone facing inwards and stepped into the center if they identified with the race-related statements they read. Each person was made to

address their own relationship with anti-blackness as Lo went down the list.

The rest of the workshop focused on how Asian Americans interact with racism in the U.S. It explored the importance of unearthing the history behind anti-blackness in the fight against anti-black racism. The workshop ended with a conversation about the next steps that needed to be taken to combat anti-blackness.

Li expressed satisfaction with how the event turned out. “Everyone here is so passionate, and I can tell they’re invested in it in their own personal ways,” she said. “I think that’s incredible because everyone can start their own personal journey to figure out what this means to them. That’s pretty powerful in and of itself.”

Lo said he hoped that the conversations started at the workshops would spread throughout the campus. “This is a starting point of developing curiosity,” he said. “Having this space to talk about these things is a really powerful way to build that knowledge base and understand where each person is coming from, as well as a capacity to make lasting changes.”

This sentiment is shared not only by the other facilitators but by the participants of the event as well. “This is primarily a community-building exercise for the AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] folks here to be better at supporting other POC [people of color] on campus, but also coming together around political education, rather than just an appreciation of cultures,” Annalee Tai ’21 said.

When Regina Fink ’22 learned that a local nonprofit serving people with disabilities needed volunteers, she had an idea. Fink saw an opportunity to organize volunteering for the nonprofit through a student-run program.

Based in North Adams and Pittsfield, Berkshire Family and Individual Resources (BFAIR) has focused on meeting the needs of people with disabilities since 1994. Although BFAIR has welcomed student volunteers in the past, student participation has waned over the years.

Last semester, Fink, who has previously worked with people with special needs, saw an advertisement from BFAIR in the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) newsletter. Fink then contacted Sue Bushika of BFAIR, as well as Paula Consolini, director of CLiA. According to Fink, both were “beyond enthusiastic.” At the time, the College lacked a student-coordinated program to facilitate relationships between students and individuals with mental and physical disabilities.

Fink’s idea was to fill this void by setting up a new program, BFAIR Buddies. As of February, BFAIR Buddies has expanded to include half a dozen students and has conducted around five visits to BFAIR residences, including in North Adams. As part of its mission, BFAIR provides housing and 24-hour care to neurodiverse individuals.

Still in its infancy, BFAIR Buddies is small in comparison to some other student community engagement groups. But according to Sharif Rosen, the College’s Muslim chaplain and

the assistant director for community engagement of CLiA, BFAIR Buddies program has elicited “a really good response.”

Before BFAIR Buddies, a student group called Eph Buddies played a similar role on campus, working to facilitate relationships between students and people with mental and physical disabilities. Last active in the 2016–17 academic year, Eph Buddies left behind a gap, one that BFAIR Buddies now fills.

Rosen maintained that community engagement groups thrive when highly committed students possess a desire not only to launch initiatives but also to sustain them. Per Rosen, BFAIR Buddies was “blessed to find that in Regina,” who was adamant about creating a sustained connection with BFAIR and the College that will survive for her four years and beyond.

Starting small, the BFAIR Buddies program has set itself achievable goals in the short term while also weighing the potential for larger-scale endeavors in the future. The program has used the resources offered by CLiA sparingly, limiting its expenses to gas and supplies, including the arts and crafts materials for their recent Valentine’s Day card-making event at a BFAIR residence. Yet the student volunteers are already looking ahead: An idea for one of their next projects is to bring in therapy dogs.

Envisioning work for next year, Fink mentioned the possibility of a Winter-Blitz-like project, in which students from the College as well as neighboring undergraduate institutions could sign up to visit multiple BFAIR residences for a day.

“There is no single way to get involved,” Rosen said, noting the

variety of activities the students hope to organize. He praised the group for offering an opportunity for students to “extend beyond Route 2 [and] to view this entire region as a place to work and grow.”

At present, however, the BFAIR Buddies program faces some obstacles. Not yet registered as a student organization, it is seeking to expand its leadership. Fink admits that finding room for spare hours in an already tight schedule can be stressful, but she refuses to adjust her commitment. “There is really no other thing I should be doing with my time … [especially] when I am so privileged that I get to be stressed about my homework.”

The group’s work is rewarding for student volunteers, Fink emphasized. On the road, student volunteers enjoy being away from the confines of a small college campus and jamming to tunes queued by Eva Castagna ’22. Once at the BFAIR residences, the activities are enjoyable for the neurodiverse individuals and for volunteers, Fink says. Recounting an average Saturday morning, Fink began to smile. “We usually have a dance party in the middle – one of the women likes Electric Light Orchestra … and we sing along while we make crafts,” she said.

Fink said she was comfortable with the work from the beginning due to her experience working with people with disabilities. She knows that those without that experience can be nervous at first, but she says there is no need to be. “I think that the really wonderful thing is … that all judgements are out the window,” she said.

PHOTO COURTESY OF REGINA FINK.

BFAIR Buddies decorated duffel bags for foster children with the residents of Kemp House.

February 27, 2019

SPORTS 7

The Williams Record

Tweeting the team: Coaches use social media to recruit, connect

By SOFIE JONES SPORTS EDITOR Social media is a treasure trove for any Eph fan. Want a fancy new phone background of your favorite college football player sacking Amherst?

Check out @EphFB’s “Wallpaper Wednesdays” on Twitter. Need to cheer up with some heartwarming content from the coldest team on campus? Search Nordic skiing’s team-run blog at Ephnordic.blogspot.com, and get caught up on all the breadmaking, bowling and racing the team has been up to.

Many coaches and their athletes at the College run accounts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, as well as their own websites. While many use it as a way to show off the teams’ less competitive, more comical sides, social media is also a powerful tool coaches use to grow their programs, recruit prospective students and stay in-touch with alums.

“Our goal is to reach as many people as we can to inform them of Williams football,” football head coach Mark Raymond said. “It is a way of branding our program.”

Raymond and other coaches also use social networks to spread the word about the programs they’ve built and raise awareness regarding how their teams are performing.

“Recruiting is a part of every decision we make every day,” wrestling head coach Scott Honecker said. The

wrestling team has accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and even its own website, managed by the team’s assistant coach Tom Foote ’13. “Social media really helps us support the connection to potential recruits and helps us build momentum in the conversation [with them],” Honecker added.

As social media has grown in popularity and become a primary method of communication for many high school and college-aged students, athletic teams have adjusted their recruiting tactics. “It has become normalized,” women’s golf head coach Tomas Adalsteinsson said. Honecker estimated that “if, when I got here in 2011, it was 5 percent of my job [as a coach], now it’s 10 percent.”

Teams also use social media to show the behind-thescenes of what it is like to compete, something potential recruits are often eager to find out about. "As a team, we are a lot more than just playing golf,” Adalsteinsson said. “It’s showing prospective students what else we’re up to." Some examples of online posts from women’s golf include Instagram pictures of the team carving pumpkins together, sharing a meal while travelling to an away competition, as well as a Twitter video of Adalsteinsson joining in an offseason dance party.

For Nordic, which competes for recruits against larger programs, highlighting

PHOTO COURTESY OF EPHNORDIC.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Nordic skiing updates fans on its latest practice runs and team travels at Ephnordic.blogspot.com. The team also has a Facebook and Instagram. the team’s dynamic on social media is an important tool; the platform can often give viewers a more personal understanding of the team than statistics or standings can.

“We love our team culture and we want to recruit people who are attracted to that,” men’s Nordic captain Nick Gardner ’19 said. “It also helps us gain

visibility when we’re competing for recruits with huge schools like [University of] Vermont, [University of] New Hampshire and Dartmouth.”

Social media goes further than just recruiting for the athletic teams. It is a way for teams to keep their supporters in the loop, explained women’s Nordic captain So-

nya Jampel ’19. “I like being able to keep our larger support system, [such as] coaches, family, alumni [and] friends updated on our training and achievements because we couldn’t have made it to where we are without them,” she said.

The audience that social media provides also allows

coaches to spotlight unseen athletes and their dedication to Eph athletics. “Shedding light on the work and achievement of our athletes is very important to me,” Honecker said. “If I had to have one reason to have [social media], it’s to highlight those who would otherwise be anonymous.”

Men’s basketball falls to Amherst in NESCAC semifinal

PHOTO COURTESY OF AMHERST SPORTS INFORMATION.

James Heskett ’19, the 2017-18 NESCAC Player of the Year, hit two early 3-pointers and finished with 15 points in a team-high 36 minutes.

By ERIC HIRSCH SPORTS INFORMATION In a NESCAC semifinal matchup, No. 19 men’s basketball (20–6, 6–4 in the NESCAC), the fourth seed, fell to No. 7 Amherst, the third seed, 74-69. After blowing a double-digit lead in the second half, the Mammoths finished the game on a 10-0 run to advance to the title game, which Amherst won 62-56 over No. 10 Hamilton.

“I thought it was very similar to the first time we played them,” head coach Kevin App said. “I thought our guys did a great job of staying mentally tough and fighting when we were down. But obviously Amherst didn’t flinch either when they were down. When two good teams play for a third time, it’s likely to come down to one play or call. In the end, we came up short.”

Having lost both regular season matchups against Am-

herst, the men sought to build an early lead. Despite two early 3-pointers from James Heskett ’19, however, the Ephs could not create any separation.

Five minutes into the game, Amherst guard Devonn Allen drilled a 3 to give the Mammoths a 13-12 advantage, a lead they would not relinquish for most of the half.

Fighting from behind for the next portion of the game, the men struggled at the free throw line and missed several oppor-

tunities in the paint. While they trailed by as many as eight, the Ephs managed to cut their deficit to four at 28-24 following a jump shot by Heskett. A shooting foul committed by Bobby Casey ’19 on the next possession sent him to the bench with two fouls. In Casey’s absence, Amherst scored four straight points to go up 32-24 with under seven minutes remaining in the half.

As Casey rested on the bench, the Ephs rattled off a

9-0 run over the next five minutes to regain the lead at 3332. Mammoths then quelled the Ephs’ momentum by finishing the half on an 8-2 run.

Amherst guard Grant Robinson punctuated the run with a pull-up three pointer as the buzzer sounded to put Amherst up 40-35 at the half.

In theory, the difference could have been accounted for at the free throw line. The men shot 7-of-12 while Amherst converted a perfect 7-of-7 foul shots. Robinson led all scorers with 16 points.

Heskett paced the men with 11, while Matt Karpowicz ’20 added 7 points and 5 rebounds.

Amherst maintained its momentum from the end of the first half in the opening minute of the second. After Casey had a 3-point attempt blocked, the ball made its way to Amherst center Joseph Schneider for a breakaway two-handed jam.

Less than five minutes into the second half, Amherst built a 10-point lead at 48-38.

With 11 minutes remaining, the Ephs found themselves down 55-45 and in desperate need of offense. Over the next three minutes, four different Ephs scored as the men narrowed the deficit to one, forcing Amherst to call timeout.

Out of the timeout, Karpowicz scored off a nice post move to give the Ephs their first lead of the second half.

It would remain a one-possession game until Casey hit

a clutch 3 from the left side to put the Ephs up 69-64 with 3:27 left. Casey’s lone 3 of the game, capped a 5-0 run that swung momentum in favor of the men. But an 8-point scoring outburst by Robinson capped a timely 10-0 run to close out the playoff victory for Amherst.

Casey had a 3-point opportunity to tie the game with 14 seconds left, but his attempt rimmed out. Robinson hit two free throws on the other end to seal the win.

Robinson led all scorers with 32 points. Joseph Schneider added 10 points and 8 rebounds on perfect 3-for-3 shooting for the Mammoths.

“He’s had a phenomenal year and played really well the last few games," App said of Robinson. "Unfortunately, he had a heck of a game today.”

Casey led the Ephs with 17 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists. Kyle Scadlock ’19 added 11 points and 9 rebounds.

With its victory over Hamilton in Sunday’s NESCAC final, Amherst clinched an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament.

The Ephs received an at-large bid to the tournament and will host Husson in the first round.

Tip off is at 7:30 p.m. on Friday in Chandler Gymnasium. Plattsburgh State plays GwyneddMercy at 5:30 p.m. in the other final, and the winners of the two first-round games will meet on Saturday in the second round.

Sports Shorts: Late Winter Season Updates

By JACK McGOVERN SPORTS EDITOR

Men’s Squash

Men’s Track and Field

Men’s Ice Hockey

Women’s Squash

Wrestling

Alpine and Nordic Skiing

After placing second at NESCACs on Feb. 3, No. 20 men’s squash (15–12) concluded its regular season with victories over No. 18 Brown, a 5-4 come-from-behind win on Feb. 6, and No. 17 MIT, in a 7-2 triumph on senior day.

The men competed at Nationals on Feb. 15. They opened the day with a 9-0 sweep of Tufts but fell 7-2 to MIT in a rematch on Feb. 16.

A third meeting with No. 19 Middlebury in a consolation match ended in a 5-4 defeat for the men.

The Ephs graduate Anand Butler ’19, George Clark ’19, Neel Jain ’19, Oscar Merino ’19 and co-captains Ben Eisenberg ’19 and John Fitzgerald ’19.

Men’s track and field finished sixth out of 23 scored teams at the Div. III New England Championship in Brunswick, Maine, over the weekend.

The men, ranked fifth in the region, compiled 56 points.

MIT topped the podium with 164 points, followed by runner-up Tufts with 78 and WPI in third with 67.

Aidan Ryan ’21 won the 3000m, bursting into the lead with a 60-second final lap. Ryan ran the race in 8:20.91, the second-fastest time in Div. III. Ben Telicki ’22 recorded four personal bests in the heptathlon.

Members of the team will compete next at the Tufts final qualifier on Sunday in hopes of earning a bid to the NCAA Championship the following weekend in Boston.

Men’s ice hockey (14–9–2, 10– 6–2 in the NESCAC) lost 4-3 to Hamilton in overtime on Saturday in the NESCAC quarterfinals.

The men tied the contest late in the third period, but Hamilton scored first in sudden death to advance to the semifinals.

After winning six consecutive games, the Ephs fell in a series of one-goal games in February. The stretch included overtime losses to No. 10 Trinity on Feb. 1, Wesleyan on Feb. 2 and Amherst on Feb. 15. Marcus Mollica ’19, who was named to the All-NESCAC Second Team along with teammate Roberto Cellini ’19, finished second in the NESCAC in goals and points per game.

The team will graduate Mollica, Cellini, captain Keanu Hilaire ’19, Connor Meike ’19 and Michael Pinios ’19.

No. 13 women’s squash fell 9-0 to No. 12 Brown at Nationals over the weekend but bounced back to win two consolation matches against rival No. 16 Amherst and No. 14 Middlebury.

The women defeated Amherst on Saturday and knocked off Middlebury on Sunday, taking both matches by a score of 7-2.

The triumph over the Panthers ensured that the Ephs took the season series after dropping the regular season matchup on Jan. 5 and avenging the loss at NESCACs on Feb. 9.

The women will graduate captain Esther Baek ’19, who contributed points against Amherst and Middlebury in her final two matches.

Wrestling placed sixth at NCAA Regionals in Providence, R.I., last weekend. Eight Ephs advanced to the second day of the meet and Joey Rossetti ’21 finished third in the 141 lb. weight class, qualifying for the NCAA Championship in Roanoke, Va., from March 8–9.

The men also secured sixth place at the New England Wrestling Association Futures Tournament on Feb. 17 with runner-up finishes from Nick Anselmi ’20 and Ian Darling ’22.

The Ephs bid farewell to their seniors – Bennett Caplin ’19, Sebastian Dziadkiewicz ’19, Ben Morton ’19, Alex Pankhurst ’19 and Brendon Seyfried ’19 – at their only home dual meet of the season, a 34-16 loss to Castleton on Feb. 8.

Skiing secured sixth place at NCAA Regionals on Feb. 22–23, with top-five team finishes in the women’s slalom, the women’s 15k classic and the men’s 20k classic.

At the carnival, Isaac Freitas-Eagan ’22 and Braden Becker ’19 qualified for the NCAA Championship, from March 6–9 in Stowe, Vt. The women will graduate Nordic captain Sonya Jampel ’19 and Alpine captain Hannah Hunsaker ’19.

The men will graduate six members: Nordic skiers Braden Becker ’19, Evan Carr ’19 and captain Nick Gardner ’19 and Alpine skiers Bryan Bailey ’19, Gibson Donnan ’19, Charlie Harrison ’19 and captain Stockton Troyer ’19.

8 SPORTS

The Williams Record

February 27, 2019

Men’s swimming and diving wins 17th NESCAC title Ephs avenge 2018 loss to Jumbos as Steve Kuster wins Coach of the Year

By JACK MELNICK SPORTS INFORMATION No. 19 men’s swimming and diving reclaimed the NESCAC championship last weekend – its 17th title overall in the meet’s 19-year history– a year after falling to Tufts and missing out on a 16th consecutive conference title. Over the four-day meet in Middlebury, Vt., the Ephs finished with 1822 points, closely followed by the Jumbos with 1775.5 points.

“This meet was an absolute back-and-forth battle with a very good Tufts team,” head coach Steve Kuster said after the win. “The effort, resilience and resolve that this team showed was inspiring. [I’m] super proud of this group and the entire Williams swimming and diving team.”

Kuster was named NESCAC Swimming Coach of the Year for the seventh time. Additionally, co-captain Jack Melnick ’19 placed third for the Four-Year High Point Swimmer Award.

With a new four-day format, the NESCAC Championship kicked off on Thursday night with the 800 freestyle relay. The change benefitted the Ephs as the “B” and “A” relay teams both bested the previous pool and meet records. The “A” relay, which touched in 6:34.03, secured the NESCAC record and the fastest time in Div. III this year.

On Friday, the first full day of the meet, the men maintained momentum and extended their lead.

After Tufts won the 200 freestyle relay and Amherst’s Sean Mebust edged out Melnick in the 50 breaststroke, the distance trio of Jamie Lovette ’21, Jackson Karofsky ’21 and Andrew Trunsky ’20 swept the podium in the 500 freestyle. Lovette clocked in

first with a time of 4:27.49, almost 2 seconds faster than his winning time last year.

After the 500 freestyle, the meet went back to 50s as Nick Whitcomb ’22 cracked the top three in the 50 backstroke and recorded a personal best.

In the next race, the 200 individual medley (IM), Paul Leclerc ’22 finished third and secured a personal best of 1:51.35 thanks to his fast backstroke leg.

The last individual event of the night was the 50 freestyle. Curtis Maher ’19 placed fourth with a time of 20.93, but Tufts’ Roger Gu broke the 20-second mark, finishing in 19.89 for first place.

In the 400 medley relay, the final team event of Day Two, the Ephs secured third place and added to their point total heading into their third day of racing.

On Saturday, the Ephs continued their strong meet, but the Jumbos narrowed their deficit to 24 points.

After a third-place finish in the 200 medley relay, the Ephs won five out of six individual events.

Trunsky first brought the house down in the 1000 freestyle, coming in first with a time of 9:15.31. He was the second seed going into the meet and came out on top by 5 seconds. He set a personal best time by 7 seconds and was only 2 seconds off of the NESCAC record.

Next, Karofsky reached the top of the podium in the 400 IM, dropping 4 seconds off of his preliminary performance for a time of 3:53.64 in the finals.

In the 100 butterfly, David Pearcy ’21 beat his previous best time, swimming especially fast in the last 50 yards. Lovette then smashed his personal best, the pool record and the meet record with a time of 1:37.82 in the 200

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

The men scored 1822 points, narrowly knocking off defending champion Tufts by 46.5 points. Amherst finished third with 1506 points. freestyle. His last three 50s were almost the same time as his first, showing his strength in shorter events as well as distance ones.

In the 100 breaststroke, Melnick, the third seed going into finals, avenged his earlier loss to Mammoth Mebust with a first-place and personal best of 26.13.

After third- and fifth-place finishes in the 100 backstroke to conclude the night, Kuster called the meet “a crazy ride.”

“The men have competed incredibly well,” Kuster said. “[Satuday] was a tremendous night with some great swims for us. I love the grit and fire

the team is bringing to the pool every session."

Sunday, the fourth and final day of competition, started with the distance swimmers once again proving their dominance. Karofsky won the 1650 freestyle, smashing his best time as well as sneaking under the pool record at 15:31.01, and Trunsky clocked in at 15:37.71 for second place.

Lovette took third with his speedy front half. His time of 15:44.15 ensured that the Ephs swept the podium. All three currently sit in the top 15 in Div. III. Tufts retaliated in the 200 backstroke, however. Jumbo

Women’s track and field wins Div. III New Englands

By CAILIN STOLLAR SPORTS INFORMATION No. 2 women’s track and field secured its second consecutive win at the Div. III New England Championship this weekend. The women finished the meet with 140 points, while No. 6 MIT, their biggest rival, came in second place with 87.50 points. Tufts placed third with 67 points.

The first event of the weekend was the 5000m on Friday. With four Ephs

competing, the women had the most participants in the race. All four women raced well, with co-captain Emily Harris ’19 finishing with a personal best of 7:31 and securing fourth place, gaining the team 5 points.

The two relay teams that competed next claimed record-breaking performances.

The 4x200m team crossed the finish line in 1:44.31, placing second, earning 8 points for the team and breaking a seven-year-old school record. The distance

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFOMATION .

Anna Passannante ’20 won the mile with a personal best of 4:56.

Games this week

Men's basketball vs. Husson, NCAA tournament Home 3/1, 7:30 p.m.

medley relay team then earned first place and won 10 points for the team. The distance medley relay also secured the all-region title, set a meet and track record and moved into second place in the nation.

In the pentathlon, the Ephs once again had the highest number of athletes of any school entered. Izabelle Ith ’21 started off strong in the 60m hurdles, winning the event in 9.18 seconds.

Summer-Solstice Thomas ’20 closely followed in 9.48 and then finished in second place in the next event, the high jump. Ith and Thomas both recorded personal bests in the shot put, while Thomas added another personal best in the long jump.

In the final event, the 800m, Thomas notched a third personal best with a time of 2:22 to win the event. With a total of 3451 points, Thomas won the overall title for the second consecutive year.

Finally, Kelsie Hao ’21 had a strong performance in the pole vault. Jumping 3.71 meters, she placed second, earning 8 points for the team.

At the end of Day One, the women led with 48 points, followed by MIT in second with 36.5 points.

Saturday, the second day of competition, started off with the 60m. All four Ephs in the race ended up in the finals and scored points for the team.

Co-captain Kennedy Green ’19 led the group, finishing in 7.83 seconds. Green obtained 10 points for the team. Deja Cunningham ’22 also set a personal record, breaking 8 seconds for the first time.

Green continued her success in the 200m, running a time of 26.25 for third place

Women's diving, NCAA regionals Away 3/1–3/2

and 6 points. The 60m hurdles marked the first event back from injury for co-captain Caity Ubl ’19, who nevertheless clinched second with a time of 8.84.

The 4x400m relay team also had a great day, putting significant distance between itself and the other teams.

With a time of 4:53, Davis Collison ’21, Thomas, Ella Dunn ’21 and Megan Powell ’20 won the event and 10 points for the team. The time placed the relay team in second place nationwide.

The distance squad next racked up points for the Ephs.

In the mile, Anna Passannante ’20 separated herself from the pack, winning the event in a time of 4:56, a personal best that ranks fifth in the nation.

In the 3000m, Audrey Rustad ’20 placed seventh, running a 10:01 and claiming 2 points for the team.

The Ephs’ jumpers won points in all of the day’s jumping events. In the high jump, Emma Egan ’20 had a best jump of 1.73 meters, winning first place by two heights.

Thomas and co-captain Kene Odenigbo ’19 also came in fourth and fifth, respectively.

In the triple jump, Odenigbo finished second, with an indoor personal best of 11.32 meters. Next, in the long jump, Egan seized second place, jumping a personal record of 5.54 meters and scoring 8 points.

The women will head to Boston for the NCAA National Championship on March 8–9. Some members of the team will compete at the Tufts Last Chance Meet on Saturday in hopes of reaching some last-minute qualifying marks leading up to the national championships.

Men's track and field, Tufts Last Chance Away 3/2, 10 a.m.

Kingsley Bowen, who became the team’s first swimmer to earn the NESCAC Swimmer of the Year Award, concluded a sweep of all three backstroke events with a time of 1:46.48.

After three Ephs competed in both the 100 freestyle and 200 breaststroke and earned a combined 143 points, the men dominated the final individual event of the meet, the 200 butterfly. Going into the race, the men trailed Tufts by 6.5 points, but they swept the podium and recorded five of the six fastest times. Lucca Delcompare ’20 led the group in 1:48.4. With the team effort, the Ephs

surged into a 56.5-point lead over the Jumbos.

A fourth-place finish in the 400 freestyle relay was enough to clinch the NESCAC title for the Ephs.

Amherst placed third in the overall team standings.

Bowdoin’s Mitchell Ryan, who won the 1-meter and 3-meter diving and received NESCAC Diver of the Year honors, helped his team to fourth place with 1010 points. Host Middlebury ended the meet in eighth place with 589.5 points.

The men will continue on to the NCAA Championship in Greensboro, N.C., from March 20–23.

Women’s hockey defeats Wesleyan in NESCAC quarters

By MEHR SAWANT SPORTS INFORMATION No. 7 women’s ice hockey (18–4–3, 10–4–2 in the NESCAC) won the right to host the NESCAC semifinals and final next weekend following a 3-0 home win over Wesleyan in Saturday’s quarterfinal.

Four women were also named to All-NESCAC teams yesterday. Meghan Halloran ’21 received NESCAC Player of the Year honors, and head coach Meghan Gillis won NESCAC Coach of the Year. Halloran and Brynn Puppe ’21 made the First Team, and Chloe Heiting ’22 and assistant captain Annie Rush ’19 earned spots on the Second Team.

The first-seeded Ephs started strong and took the lead early in the game. Michaela O'Connor ’21 netted a goal at 8:55. Avery Dunn ’21 and Elizabeth Welch ’22 earned assists on the play. At 12:57, Wesleyan was penalized for having too many players on the ice, creating a power-play opportunity for the women.

Then at 14:38, the Cardinals received another penalty, giving the Ephs a two-skater advantage for 20 seconds. The Ephs immediately capitalized on this opportunity as Halloran received a pass and scored at 14:44. Halloran was assisted by Mia Carroll ’20 and Puppe.

In the second period, the Ephs were able to extend their lead when Halloran, after receiving a pass from goaltender Heiting, passed to Rush, who sealed the deal and scored

Women's track and field, Tufts Last Chance Away 3/2, 10 a.m.

with a clinical finish at 6:35 into the period.

In the third period, neither was able to find the net as Heiting denied the Cardinals a single goal, despite both teams having powerplay opportunities.

“I think our game [on Saturday] was inconsistent. We did what we needed to do to get the win but I think we have another gear we can hit,” Rush said.

By the end of the game, Heiting had saved all 19 of Cardinals’ shots.

Following the game, Gillis praised Heiting's performance.

“I think Chloe did a great job of making key saves when she needed to get the shutout,” she said. “I think that the team played really well in spurts.

They came out strong in the first period, and the forecheck looked really good.”

The Ephs will host fifth-seeded Amherst in a semifinal on Saturday at 1 p.m.

“The team is pumped to play Amherst and it’s great to get to play at home again,” Rush said.

The winner of the contest will play the winner of the other semifinal, a matchup between third-seeded Hamilton and second-seeded Middlebury, in Sunday’s NESCAC final at Lansing Chapman Rink. Middlebury, the tournament champion, will earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The women are seeking their second NESCAC title and their third NCAA tournament appearance. The Ephs previously made the NCAA tournament in 2003 and 2014.

Women's hockey vs.

Amherst, NESCACs Home 3/2, 1 p.m.