RECORD THE WILLIAMS
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2019 VOL. CXXXIII, NO. 18 Professor Auer studies metabolism in fish
Women’s track and field wins NCAAs
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THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE SINCE 1887
Mary-Claire King to deliver commencement address King, Ophelia Dahl, Roger H. Brown, Michael Eisenson ’77 and Kevin Roosevelt Moore to receive honorary degrees By ROSE HOUGLET and ARRINGTON LUCK NEWS EDITORS The College announced today that Mary-Claire King, who discovered the BRCA1 breast and ovarian cancer gene, will give the 2019 commencement address. The baccalaureate speaker will be Ophelia Dahl, a British-American social justice and health care advocate. In addition to both speakers, Berklee College of Music President Roger H. Brown, Charlesbank Capital Partners founder and Williams Board of Trustees Chair Michael Eisenson ’77 and Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist and songwriter Kevin Roosevelt Moore – known as Keb’ Mo’ – will receive honorary degrees from the College. An American Cancer Society research professor of genome sciences and medicine at University of Washington, King graduated from Carleton and earned her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley. King, who has studied human genetics and health for 40 years, discovered the BRCA1 gene, providing insight into vulnerability to and prevention of breast and ovarian cancer for women with an inherited predisposition. At Berkeley, she collaborated with her mentor, Professor of Biochemistry Allan Wilson, to find that chimpanzees and humans share 99 percent of their gene sequences. She also used her
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARY-CLAIRE KING AND OPHELIA DAHL.
This year’s commencement speaker, Mary-Claire King (left), discovered BRCA1, and baccalaureate speaker, Ophelia Dahl (right), co-founded Partners In Health. knowledge of genetics for social justice, promoting the use of DNA evidence to identify Argentine children who had been kidnapped during the country’s 1970s and 1980s military dictatorship, as well as victims of humans rights abuses in five continents. Among the awards King has received for her work are the Lasker Foundation Special Achievement Award for Medical Research and the United States National Medal of Science. Baccalaureate speaker Dahl co-founded the nonprofit healthcare organization Part-
Junior Advisors to the Class of 2023
ners In Health (PIH), which works with government and medical institutions to deliver healthcare to those who cannot afford services. Notably, Dahl’s work has been featured in the 2017 documentary film Bending the Arc. The daughter of author Roald Dahl, she also leads her father’s estate and serves as trustee of the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Buckinghamshire, England. Dahl was named Bostonian of the year in 2011 by The Boston Globe. As president of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, hon-
orary degree recipient Brown helped create the largest global online music education system; a new campus in Valencia, Spain; a merger with Boston Conservatory; a tripling of the endowment; and an over 500 percent increase in scholarship and financial aid. Prior to his presidency at Berklee, Brown, with his wife, Linda Mason, aided relief efforts for a humanitarian crisis on the Thailand-Cambodian border through the Land Bridge food distribution. The pair helped more than 400,000 people and saved over 200,000 lives as co-directors of
a Save the Children Federation initiative addressing famine in Sudan. They then co-founded the biggest global provider of worksite childcare, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, as well as Horizons for Homeless Children, a program that provides early education services to homeless youth. Brown was named the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and received the Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership and along with Mason was named a Visionary Social Entrepreneur by the Social Venture Network’s Hall of Fame.
Honorary degree recipient Eisenson is the founder and cochairman of Charlesbank Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm. Eisenson came to the College as a first-generation college student from New York and later earned an M.B.A. and a J.D. from Yale. He began his career at the Boston Consulting Group and went on to become president of Harvard Private Capital Group. Eisenson has been chair of the Williams Board of Trustees since 2014 and chaired the presidential search resulting in President Maud Mandel’s appointment. He also worked to establish the college’s investment office in 2006. Additionally, Eisenson is also a co-founder of Horizons for Homeless Children. A Nashville-based blues renaissance musician originally from Compton, Calif., honorary degree recipient Moore, better known as Keb’ Mo,’ is a fourtime Grammy Award winner. In the early 1970s, Keb’ Mo’ appeared on four of Papa John Creach’s albums and played with multiple bands up throughout the next two decades. His first release as a bandleader, “Rainmaker,” came out in 1980 under Chocolate City Records. He then took part in productions of the play Spunk and came out with a self-titled album in the early 1990s, later winning his first Grammy for his 1996 album Just Like You. He has also appeared on various television shows and films.
Asian American studies movement rekindles “Williams Doesn’t Teach Me” campaign By LYDIA DUAN EXECUTIVE EDITOR Student activists organized a photo campaign last Friday as part of the ongoing Asian American studies (AAS) movement on campus. Student participants had photographs taken of them holding signs that said, “Williams Doesn’t Teach Me _____ But ____ Does,” in which the blanks were filled in by the name of an AAS course offered at another institution and the name of that institution, respectively. This campaign was the third iteration of its kind, following the “We Need Asian American Studies Because” campaign of the 2015–2016 school year and last year’s “Williams Doesn’t Teach Me” photo campaign. While the “Williams Doesn’t Teach Me” campaign sought to raise awareness of the movement in general, this year’s event tailored its aims to be more curriculum-specific, in light of the recent Curricular Planning Committee working group report’s recommendations on tenure-track hires for the establishment of an AAS program at the College. With staffing requests being reviewed this month, the campaign organizers noted the timeliness of the event. “I would say the context that we’re in right now is very different from where we were last year,” said Amber Lee ’21, one of the students involved in the AAS movement and coordinating the event. “I think, for a while, it was about gaining more publicity – like outside attention – and putting more pressure externally. This year, I think it’s a more targeted aim to really
put pressure on the administration to not let this proposal fall through again.” Lee and Grace Fan ’19, a student activist and photographer for the campaign, also highlighted the College’s position among its peers and how the campaign aimed to draw attention to the College’s curricular deficits in comparison to other institutions.
more tangibly envision what a formalized AAS program could look like at the College. “I think from the students’ perspective, it’s hard to imagine a program that doesn’t exist [and] what that would feel like to have,” Lee said. “One thing we wanted to be cognizant of was that there are AAS courses offered at Williams even if [they’re] not listed under AAS, and there
paign’s list. Some of the titles included “Asian American Communities and Mental Health” at Hunter, “AsianBlack Historical Relations in the U.S.” at Northwestern, “Sex Work in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam and U.S.: Race, Gender, Nation” at Pitzer and “Zines in the Asian Diaspora” at Pitzer. The event organizers pulled from a variety of schools, including both state universities and private institutions. The campaign organizers also emphasized the importance of visibility to the campaign, one in which viewers can see the faces of the students holding the signs they made. Because the College has a smaller student body, students are more likely to be recognized. “I think there’s something about numbers that is important and powerful, but what is more powerful is being like, ‘Wow, that’s a student that I know,’ or from a faculty perspective, ‘That’s a student that I have a relationship with [and] this is something that’s important to them,’” Fan said. “The reason why I think the photo campaign is especially important is because Williams is a small community, so seeing faces that you know really impacts you.” AASiA (Asian American Students in Action) and students with the AAS movement said that they intend to share the photo campaign on Facebook and other social media platforms. There are also ongoing plans to put the previous year’s and this year’s photo campaigns in the College archives.
Ilana Albert
Jacob Lum
Mazie Alexander
Gwyneth Maloy
Petra Baldwin
Dayana Manrique
Austin Barr
Virginia Marr
Allie Campbell
Jason Mazique
Cody Carrier
Shadae McClean
Dominic Clarke
Gabriella Mercier
Davis Collison
Eli Miller
Nicholas Couch
Jamie Nichols
Will Cozadd
Sonia Nyarko
Molly Craig
Onyeka Obi
Toby Delgado
David Pearcy
Lydia Duan
John Petrucci
Abraham Eafa
Patrick Postec
Alejandro Flores Monge
Alex Quizon
Jaylan Fraser-Mines
Claudia Rodriguez
Papa Freduah Anderson
Halle Schweizer
Caroline Galo
Declan Smith
Kayla Gillman
Nicholas Sommer
Angel Ibarra
Jared Strauss
Jeremy Irzyk
Rebecca Tauber
Surabhi Iyer
Jessica Thompson
Tyler Johnson
Julia Tucher
Peter Le
Laura Wang
WHAT’S INSIDE
Lance Ledet
Laura Westphal
3 OPINIONS
5 ARTS
6 FEATURES
8 SPORTS
Omar comments spark campus discussion
Student input elevates Judas Iscariot show
CRUSH PARTY attendees give ratings, quotes
Men’s basketball ends NCAA run in Elite Eight
Delsa (DJ) Lopez
George Yacoub
Elida Lopez
Abigail Yu
SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR
The photo campaign referenced AAS courses offered by peer institutions. “It’s a push for the administration to see that these are the faces of the students who need this … and they want to take these classes, but Williams doesn’t offer them, and [how] maybe they should have gone to another institution because clearly their education is incomplete,” Fan said. While the campaign coordinators acknowledged the AAS courses already offered at the College, they agreed that looking at other institutions’ catalogue offerings could help students
is a lot of important work done by faculty members to make sure these courses are offered, and we really appreciate that. Something that I think we wanted to show, though, was that while certain courses might touch on topics like mental health, family issues, gender and sexuality, etc., there are few courses that explicitly name those in their titles and explicitly focus on those issues for a semester long.” Over 160 AAS courses were selected for the photo cam-
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2 OPINIONS
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March 13, 2019
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DARIN LI ’21
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE SINCE 1887 WILLIAMSRECORD.COM
Word on The Quad What would you do with the $225,000 excess CC money?
SPRING BREAK
Don’t worry, you’ll get your weekly fill of snarky comments when I’m back in April.
‘JUDAS ISCARIOT’
My love for Taylor Swift has been reignited.
EPH COMPLIMENTS
All this love almost warms my cold, dead heart.
HOMEMADE RECIPES
They were amazing, but for some reason it was only for one week.
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
One less hour to find my way back to Mission on Saturday night.
,
By SABRINE BRISMEUR and ANIAH PRICE PHOTO EDITORS
BRIAN CRANE ’22
More marble blocks.
MIN KYU PARK ’21
Better food. The opinions expressed in signed columns are not necessarily those of The Williams Record editorial board. JAZMIN BRAMBLE ’20
Air conditioning.
JOSEPH WILSON ’19
A Canada Goose for every student.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
March 11, 2019 From The College Council (CC) Executive Board Since the publishing of the March 6, 2019, Williams Record article “CC discovers accounting oversight, to reallocate $225,000 into budget,” conflicting narratives about the source and purpose of this surplus have spread. We, the College Council Executive Board, would like to both apologize for not conveying this information in a clearer manner and also to outline
the cause of this oversight and our plan to correct it. As many of you know, the Student Activities Tax (SAT) is a $121 charge collected every semester from each student. The revenue from this money (approximately $230,000 each semester) forms the base of our budget each year, to be distributed to student organizations, individuals and allcampus events. The second key component of our budget each year is rollover. Contrary to popular belief, rollover spending is not money that has not been allocated by CC. In fact, we spend our funds down to the last dime, trying to equitably and fairly distribute money. Thus, the name “rollover” is sort of a misnomer. Rollover originates when money is allocated to student groups and then some portion of that allocation is not spent. For example, a group may request $1000 for an
event that ends up only costing $800. The extra money, in this case $200, stays in that group’s account. We cannot take back allocated money from student accounts, so across the span of over 300 accounts, small amounts of money add up to large sums, typically $50,000 to $90,000. This money is collected from these accounts at the end of the spring and dumped back into our General Fund at the beginning of Fall. Thus, “rollover” consists of funds that we allocated to student groups who for whatever reason did not spend them. This is the vein of the $225,000 in excess funds that was reported on by the Record. At the end of the 2016 fiscal year, this money appeared in the SAT allocation fund. As the amount is roughly the size of a semesterly SAT allocation, past treasurers simply treated it as
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.
a semester’s worth of money that should not be touched. Upon further inspection, Treasurer Jamie Vaccaro ’21, along with the College Controller’s office, realized this was not the case, and thus this week’s events have been set in motion. There is no singular cause of this error. An explanation would begin with a lack of clear procedure and student oversight and financial negligence. As student representatives, we have failed in this manner. We cannot state for sure why exactly this problem arose, but we can state in clear terms our plan to both remedy the current situation and make sure it never happens again. The plan for the excess funds, currently approximately $225,000, is as follows: 1) We have already added $20,000 to this year’s General Fund, to be subsidized by this surplus. 2) We
will add $75,000 to our accounts for the academic year 2019–2020. 3) We will add $70,000 to our accounts for the academic year 2020– 2021. 4) We will add $60,000 to our accounts for the academic year 2021–2022. This plan spreads out the money over a period of three years, ensuring that no one year is particularly bloated with funds, which would destabilize future years as student groups would request more money than we are able to give. We understand that we cannot please everyone, but we hope that by sticking to this clear schedule we can both fulfill our mission of funding student groups in the most effective ways and balance the changing needs of the Williams student body. In terms of the future, Treasurer Jamie Vaccaro is establishing clear end-ofyear procedures that will prevent this sort of error
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from happening again. Such procedures include very clear accounting and labeling of funds, working closely with the Controller’s office to ensure a smooth transition between years and informing the student body of all important developments that necessitates their knowledge. Again, we would like to reassure the student body about our plan for the spending of this unexpected surplus and apologize for our lack of communication on this issue until now. It is our pleasure to serve as your College Council. If you have any questions, comments or concerns – about this statement, the surplus or any other issues – please contact either CoPresident, Ellie Sherman ’20 (eas6) or Olivia Tse ’19.5 (cot1), or VP for Communications Solly Kasab ’21 (sk17). And of course, best of luck to all on their midterms.
March 13, 2019
OPINIONS 3
The Williams Record
Recognizing anti-Semitism
Reframing Israel in U.S. politics
Ilhan Omar’s statements reflect bigotry, hate
The Ilhan Omar controversy has never been about anti-Semitism
By GAVIN SMALL Most Williams students would agree that it is important to be vigilant in condemning hate and bigotry. Yet, there are flyers throughout the campus saying, “We Stand with Ilhan – Palestine will be Free” and expressing “solidarity and militant love with Ilhan Omar,” a firstterm congresswoman from Minnesota who has made multiple comments that promote anti-Semitic ideas. Apparently – at least according to those who made the flyers – we should express militant love for those using anti-Semitic tropes that have served to promote hatred of Jewish people for thousands of years. For those who are unaware of Omar’s offensive statements, they include the tweets, “Israel has hypnotized the world,” as well as stating that U.S. support for Israel is, “all about the Benjamins baby,” and even saying, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is O.K. to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” The argument that the Jews are using money to control the government from behind the scenes is an argument that is classically anti-Semitic. Jewish people have often been typecast as working in secrecy and using money to undermine society. The concept of a Jewish conspiracy has sparked years of persecution including pogroms, massacres, expulsions and genocide. Additionally, Omar’s final statement implies that JewishAmericans have allegiance to Israel, and not America. This rests on an idea of dual loyalty among Jews, an idea that had been used to justify preventing the immigration of Jews to America. These views are dangerous, and it is alarming that people at the College agree.
Some might argue that Omar’s statements were merely critical of Israel and not anti-Semitic. However, it is evident that these statements go beyond simple criticism. For one, the rhetoric of “hypnosis” gives an almost supernatural power to Israel, dehumanizing the Jew as an evil-doer. Also, by focusing on the issue of money, the anti-Semitic concept of Jews as money guzzlers is promoted. The idea that supporting Omar is about Palestinian rights is being used as an excuse for supporting anti-Semitic remarks. Now, do not get me wrong. I strongly disagree with those in the country who have been attacking and threatening Omar using Islamophobic language. These attacks are harmful and should be countered, just as anti-Semitism should be. However, this does not excuse Omar’s comments, or the fliers around campus expressing solidarity with Omar’s statements. It is important that students realize the harm in Omar’s comments, since they promote bigotry and hate. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States and Europe. The AntiDefamation League found that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States rose by 57 percent in 2017 from 2016. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, in which 11 Jews were murdered, further goes to show the harm that bigotry can cause. It is important to be able to recognize and condemn all forms of hatred, including anti-Semitism. Although it is tempting to feel that it is the liberal position to support Ilhan Omar, her statements in fact endorse ideas that have led to the persecution and murder of Jews for centuries.
By JATIN DASGUPTA Last month, freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota’s 5th District, ignited widespread controversy for two tweets, one in which she insinuated Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s desire to take action against herself and colleague Rashida Tlaib for their critical positions on Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” and the second in which she said that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) money was behind Republicans such as McCarthy’s hawkish support for Israel. Condemnation across the board, including a call from the President of the United States to resign, followed immediately, and the controversy is still playing itself out now, a month later. Critics insist that Ilhan Omar’s classification of AIPAC as a lobbying organization that uses money to influence the course of politics plays into the anti-Semitic notion that the Jewish community engages in a shadowy plot to control the world through its prodigious wealth. This is very interesting, considering a lobbying organization is precisely what AIPAC is legally classified as, and to call this fact an anti-Semitic smear is to engage in a denial of reality that raises the question of why AIPAC exists in the first place, if not to lobby. Calling Omar’s claim an anti-Semitic lie also clashes with the words of some prominent AIPAC officials and al-
lies, such as David Ochs and Eric Gallagher, who have been recorded bragging about AIPAC’s use of lobbying money to influence congressional policy on Israel. Omar has indeed committed a grave sin in the world of Washington politics, and it is not the sin of anti-Semitism, which is hardly groundbreaking at all, with a White House that led a prayer for massacred Jews in Pittsburgh alongside an organization dedicated to the destruction of Judaism, a prominent presidential candidate of the 2016 cycle insinuating another was unfit to be the Republican nominee because of his Jewish cultural influences, a congressman with ties to neo-Nazis, another congressman with ties to neo-Nazis, a congressman who is an open neo-Nazi and a political establishment that insists criticism of Israel is the same thing as anti-Semitism, which many Jews find deeply offensive in and of itself. The actual sin Omar has committed is acknowledging the racial apartheid and oppression that is a constant of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, an untouchable topic in Washington D.C., where, in the exact words of Rep. Juan Vargas, “questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable.” The sanctity of Israel to the American foreign policy establishment, which is generated in part because of a cynical insistence that “the Middle East’s only democracy”
established as an essentially AngloAmerican settler colony to ensure a strategic outpost in the region, must be defended at all costs, and in part because of widespread belief in its important role in a divine apocalyptic prophecy, is one of the worst taboos to break in American politics – far worse, as we’ve seen, than actual racism – and Omar is paying the price for it. This price is all the more amplified by the sick and bigoted desire to see a Black Muslim woman put in her place for questioning the political status quo, as criticism of her has been peppered with subtle racism like using the language of “Americanness” (Ilhan is an American), to outright Islamophobic links to terrorism. It is evidence of an outrageous double standard that such vitriol has been targeted at Omar, including a presidential call to resign, when not even half the institutional outrage has been directed at nationally profiled figures like Paul LePage, Tom Cotton, Steve Scalise, Ron DeSantis and dozens upon dozens of others in this country almost explicitly run by white supremacists. The reason is clear: Ilhan Omar is an outspoken Black Muslim woman who has unapologetically stood up for the rights of the Palestinian people. In the world of the political elite, it is unclear which is worse. Jatin Dasgupta ’20 is an English major from McLean, Va.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Gavin Small ’22 is from Huntington, N.Y.
Trivializing allergies On harmful media depictions of a serious issue By ALIYA KLEIN Some of you have probably seen the Peter Rabbit movie, and some of you haven’t. In case you want to know what you’re missing: Tom McGregor, the “villain” of the movie, is deathly allergic to blackberries, and in an attempt to gain access to his garden, rabbits use a slingshot to send a blackberry directly into his mouth in an effort to incapacitate him. The worst part of it is, it works, and McGregor struggles desperately to inject himself with an EpiPen. Before collapsing from the anaphylaxis, the rabbits cheering gleefully as he struggles to breathe. As food allergies become more common, the topic is appearing more and more in media, continuing to be represented as something trivial, inconsequential, and ultimately, something for its viewers to laugh about. These reactions have been used as humor inducers in movies like Meet the Robinsons, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, and even on shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and That ’70s Show. Each time, they are portrayed incorrectly. On-screen allergic reactions are over-dramatized to the point of humor, with people blowing up like red balloons and anxiously gasping at their throat. In some cases, the infliction of the reaction is made deliberate in order to hurt the individual, pinpointed as their easy-to-tamper-with weak spot. So, what are these reactions really like? Most of it is invisible. If someone is having an allergic reaction, the chances you’ll figure it out before it becomes a serious emergency is pretty low. People often experience nasal congestion, trouble swallowing, itchy skin and mouth, muscle pain and weakness and an impending sense of doom. None of these symptoms are visible, or easy to notice, and most of them are not immediate. The reaction will start off as pretty minor, and it will be a judgement call on the reactor’s part to figure out the point at which they are in emergent condi-
tion and at what point they need to be injected with epinephrine and be rushed immediately to the hospital. In some rare cases, by the time the person has injected themselves, it’s already too late. This is a life threatening condition, not a plight with room for poking fun. To add to this, kids with allergies are often depicted with an identity of “uptight nerd that no one really likes”. The stereotypical nerd in pop culture wears glasses, has braces, has asthma, and has allergies. The nerdy little seahorse in Finding Nemo is H2O intolerant, Jimmy Neutron’s nerdy friend, Carl Wheezer, has allergies, and even John Mulaney yelled “get your EpiPen and GET OUT!” in reference to an annoying kid at the sleepover during one of his standup bits. Movies and television are such powerful mediums for addressing tough social concerns and issues, shaping conversations and bringing new ideas to light. So why can’t they do the same with food allergies? Kids with allergies are not inherently nerdy, rather, we are much more observant and wary about our surroundings because pretty much any public location or social gathering involves or has involved food somewhere at some point. We read labels for everything, because if we don’t, we’re stabbing our thighs with an adrenaline needle and calling the emergency room. We double check with waiters at restaurants and take extra time placing our order at the expense of others’ time, not to make our friends roll their eyes, but to keep ourselves safe. We constantly fear someone not taking us seriously and deliberately making us unknowingly consume a serious allergen, because it has happened to us before, has happened in front of audience on television screens, and could easily happen to any one of us again. It’s not a joke. As funny as we could make it, it is not fair to the 1 in 10 of us that wish it actually was. Aliya Klein ’22 is from Potomac, Md.
DARIN LI ’21
KEVIN SNYDER ’09
Reevaluating accessibility at Williams Calling for a transformation in the College’s practices By PHACELIA CRAMER and ELI CYTRYNBAUM On Feb. 19, President Mandel sent out a campus-wide email in response to the Hollander memorials. In the email, Maud claimed to support the aims of the students, but also expressed the need to disassemble the memorial due to violations of fire code and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This call for accessibility was a large part of why students were so willing to remove the memorial; they respected the right that every community member has to access a space, physical and otherwise. The email’s rhetoric of accessibility, while legally legitimate, was a selective tool to further the agenda of disassembling the memorials. As students who think deeply and often about issues of access here, we immediately noticed that this instance of naming “accessibility” as a College priority was an exception. Nowhere else does the College institutionally prioritize access: not in the overworked and understaffed office of accessible education (OAE), the lack of disability studies classes, nor the low numbers of neurodiverse and physically disabled students admitted to this college. But at a place like Williams, whose prestige depends on exclusivity, what does it mean to discuss accessibility? When a certain type of high-level, intellectual able-bodied performance is required for admittance into this community, what is the framework and historical context in which we are even having these conversations? Since Maud cited it in her email, let’s start with the ADA. Rather than invoking the ADA in response to only activism, how well does Williams ensure the rights the ADA guarantees? The ADA was signed into effect in 1990 with the goal of formulating a legal basis on which people with disabilities could seek protection from discrimination. The ADA further sought to force a broader conception of disability than was popularly held at the time. Conversations of accessibility generally focus on tangible things: elevators, ramps, automatic doors.
Material and physical accessibility is crucial, and even in this regard much of campus is highly inaccessible. However, when we actually read the ADA, disability is defined as any “physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities” where activities include, but are not limited to, “caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating and working.” This definition requires broader conceptualizations of access than Williams currently holds. By law, our College’s federal funding mandates compliance with the ADA, though Williams has long struggled to meet the necessary standards. What ADA compliance has looked like at the College has transformed drastically. Practices that are considered normal and vital were once nonexistent. For example, only in 2016, after the hiring of Director of Accessible Education G.L. Wallace, did the OAE start hiring student note-takers and considerably supporting students with temporary accommodations needs, like concussions. In recent years, the number of students the OAE supports has spiked: between the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018, G.L. met with over 460 different students in individual appointments. This is about 21 percent of the student body. While integrative wellbeing services (IWS) has increased staffing and capacity substantially to meet student demand in recent years, the OAE has stagnated at the same two staff since 2016: G.L. Wallace and Jean Grant, who coordinates administrative details. With this staff to student ratio, the office can barely keep up with federally mandated ADA compliance work, much less advance campus conversations of access. As a result, the office spends most of its energies fielding temporary accommodation requests at the expense of advancing dialogue around access and supporting students with chronic conditions here. Additionally, while support structures like the Davis Center can work alongside faculty to build
programming and awareness of student experiences, the absence of disability studies precludes that possibility with regard to topics of access. Instead of selectively name-dropping the ADA, our College must take seriously what decades of disability activism has pointed out: that it is in fact disabling environments that marginalize, exclude, and oppress people and communities with physical, cognitive, and other impairments. Williams is certainly one such environment. Disability activists demand that moves toward accessibility both remove tangible barriers and frame disability as a socially constructed condition. Similarly, the conversation about accessibility at Williams must look beyond the crucial steps of expanding funding and staffing in the OAE and bringing disability studies faculty to this campus. We must consider more broadly how this campus environment creates and exacerbates disability for targeted communities – especially, but my no means limited to low-income, queer and trans students, and students of color. We must recognize that creating an accessible learning environment is not just about installing handrails, making elevators available for use (cough cough, Horn Hall) and hiring more IWS therapists. All of these steps are urgent and vital. But creating an accessible learning environment means structurally and holistically supporting the students who come to this campus. It means transforming any and all disabling structures that cause and/or exacerbate impairment. In other words, if students experience barriers to access at the College, they should not be seen as an individual client with a problem that needs to be “fixed.” Rather the institution is the client in need of structural change that guarantees access for all. Issues of access cannot be addressed by an individual going to therapy, when really, it’s the institution that needs therapeutic intervention. Phacelia Cramer ’19 is a political science major from Eugene, Ore. Eli Cytrynbaum ’20 is a mathematics major from Eugene, Ore.
4 NEWS
The Williams Record
Stop & Shop workers vote to authorize strike
College unaffected as three schools find admission files breached By DANNY JIN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN/MANAGING EDITOR
United Food and Commercial Workers, which voted to authorize a strike, represents the North Adams Stop & Shop. By REBECCA TAUBER EXECUTIVE EDITOR Hundreds of members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1459, the union representing approximately 2000 Stop & Shop workers in western Massachusetts, voted on Sunday to authorize a strike against the grocery store chain. Although it has not yet begun, all five UFCW locals representing Stop & Shop workers, composed of unions 1459, 1455, 919, 371 and 328, have authorized a strike, allowing for the possibility of action if negotiations fail. The unions’ frustrations come from recent contract negotiations following the conclusion of the latest contract for workers. Some of the unions’ main concerns include wage decreases and negative effects on workers’ health care plans.
Before the vote, Tyrone Housey, president of UFCW Local 1459, released a video explaining the importance of the vote. “There’s not much progress that has been made,” he said. “The company continues to demand drastic cuts in wages and benefits, which we have soundly rejected… This vote is imperative because we need to send a message to the company that we mean business so far as maintaining our existing wages and benefits… The company is not moving in a direction that we feel is good for us and good for our customers.” An update on the UFCW Local 1459 website described an enthusiastic atmosphere at the meeting. “Housey’s displeasure with Stop & Shop was clearly shared by workers who shouted a cho-
Facilities staff addresses heating plant shutdown By HAEON YOON EXECUTIVE EDITOR The College’s central heating plant, which provides heat and hot water, experienced a temporary shutdown on Thursday afternoon, affecting many buildings across campus. By 8:26 p.m., Facilities staff had completed repairs, and the power plant had resumed its operation, Chief Communica-
resulted in the shutdown of the heating system. “The heating plant staff, along with the electrical and mechanical trades, were all involved with this process, which takes both time and clear communications for it to be done in a safe manner,” Wright said. There were some buildings on campus, however – such as Mission Hall, Tyler House
“The heating plant staff along with the electrical and mechanical trades were all involved with this process, which takes both time and clear communications for it to be done in a safe manner.” Bob Wright Executive Director for Facilities Operations tions Officer Jim Reische stated in an email to the student body. Students, faculty and staff were notified of the lack of heat and hot water and received periodic updates on the repair process through a series of allcampus emails from Reische and Douglas Schiazza, director of the office of student life. The unexpected failure of the boiler system was caused by an electrical short, which damaged the highly interconnected mechanical system unit known as APACS (Advanced Process Automation and Control System). According to Executive Director for Facilities Operations Bob Wright, the electrical short took place in the process of fixing the controls for a new piece of equipment. This damaged both APACS units, including the backup unit, and
and Tyler Annex, in addition to some co-ops – that were not affected by the outage because they had their own heating systems. Students living in those buildings were encouraged to let in other students to use their facilities for the time being. By the evening, facilities staff, as well as technicians from outside firms, were able to successfully restart the backup systems to provide heat. Wright spoke of the high caliber and skills of those involved in the repair process. “Every piece of equipment and valve in the heating plant is labeled and recorded in an operational manual which, along with the years of experience of the staff there, provided the knowledge base to run the equipment manually,” Wright said.
rus of ‘Take them down!’ as he spoke,” the website said. “There was no dissension or apprehension about the possibility of a strike, and workers were clearly willing and ready to strike if necessary.” Stop & Shop has been releasing statements on its website to provide updates to the negotiations. “A fair, new agreement also must reflect the rapid changes and increasing competition that are reshaping our industry,” the company said. “Any new contract must ensure that Stop & Shop can continue to offer customers the service, selection and value they expect.” Although the unions have not yet called a strike, the authorizations give the union leaders the ability to begin a strike in the coming weeks if negotiations continue to falter.
The College’s admission database remains secure, according to the office of admission and the office for information technology (OIT), after three liberal arts colleges saw their databases hacked last week. Some applicants to Grinnell, Hamilton and Oberlin received emails on Thursday morning offering them to purchase their admission files at the cost of one bitcoin, approximately $3890. Signed “Diane Evergreen, UDA International,” these emails identified applicants’ correct date of birth and claimed to present “a unique opportunity” to access “comments by admissions officers,” “assigned ratings,” “interview report (if present),” “teacher recommendations” and “tentative decision (if applying regular).” Discussions ensued on Reddit amongst students who had received the emails, and some wrote that they received a later email lowering the price to $60. A Reddit account with the username “devergreenuda” added comments revealing applicants’ name, sex, citizenship and race. A link to the bitcoin address showed no transactions as of press time. In a March 7 tweet from its official account, Grinnell urged students not to respond to the email, adding that the college had contacted “appropriate authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Although the email claimed that Slate, a popular admission management software system, had been breached, Slate’s manufacturer stated that the unauthorized party had gained
In Other Ivory Towers By SAMUEL WOLF EXECUTIVE EDITOR The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 50 parents, athletic coaches and college exam administrators yesterday in a nationwide fraud scheme that assisted students in gaining admission to elite universities. The College and its employees have not been publicly implicated in these criminal proceedings, which, according to The New York Times, constitute the DOJ’s largest-ever college admission
March 13, 2019
prosecution. The case involved implicated 200 individuals nationwide who participated in or facilitated the misconduct. Rick Singer, the CEO of Key Worldwide Foundation (KWF), pleaded guilty yesterday in a Boston federal court to charges including racketeering conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Investigators regard KWF as a shell organization to funnel bribes from parents to certain colleges and test administrators. The list of schools involved in the scam includes Georgetown, Yale, Stan-
access to the schools’ individual accounts rather than to Slate’s system. Grinnell, Hamilton and Oberlin – as well as the College and over 900 other colleges and universities – use Slate as their platform for admission data. “Slate was not hacked,” Technolutions CEO Alexander Clark told Inside Higher Education. “Rather, an unauthorized party used weaknesses in the password reset systems operated by three colleges to gain access to the campus resources – not just Slate – to which the user had access.” While confirming that the College’s systems had remained secure, Chief Information Officer Barron Koralesky emphasized the importance of two-step verification and other cybersecurity measures that the College has taken to prevent compromisation of accounts. “If those colleges had had twostep, even if the passwords got stolen, that person couldn’t have gotten into Slate to get the students’ information,” Koralesky said. “The important part of twostep is that even if their passwords were changed or compromised, a scammer could not have logged into the admission system without the second factor… Those people’s usernames and passwords were used to access admission information for those schools, so it really goes to show that passwords alone are not secure enough anymore.” Admission staff members are already required to use two-step, and all students at the College will be required to set up twostep for their Google accounts by April 10. Two-step requires an additional mode of verification so that a stolen password alone cannot provide unauthorized
access to an account. OIT has put several educational posts in daily messages, and Director of Client Services Seth Rogers has sent emails reminding students of effective security measures. “The biggest thing is education,” Koralesky said. “It’s really the people who are best going to protect our information – taking care of their passwords, signing up and using two-step, putting sensitive data only in places where it’s allowed and well protected.” OIT has instituted an incident response plan to work through potential breaches, as well as a data classification project to safeguard sensitive information. It has also encrypted campus computers to prevent data loss in case of theft. According to Koralesky, information security has been one of OIT’s key concerns in recent years, and technical controls such as firewalls have long been in place to restrict unauthorized access to information. Prior to the cyberattacks on the three liberal arts colleges, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese hackers were targeting U.S. research universities in an attempt to steal military secrets. Koralesky said that there is no cause for increased concern about a potential breach at the College, although OIT is continuing to bolster cybersecurity by taking preventative measures. “We’re doing everything we can to lower our risk, and we’ve been doing that for a long time,” Koralesky said. “It’s just that the information security world is getting more and more dangerous… I think Williams isn’t the biggest target, but we need to be careful about our security, too.”
ford, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles. The methods employed by parents varied from helping their children cheat on the SATs to falsely claiming that their children were athletic recruits, officials said. Other people implicated in the charges include college entrance exam administrators, who, in exchange for compensation, are alleged to have provided answers to students or corrected incorrect answers after the test. Parents were also charged with bribing sports coaches and administrators at colleges to claim that their children were athletic recruits, allowing them to gain easier admission. A former
head coach of Yale women’s soccer has pleaded guilty to these charges and is now working with investigators. The implicated parents, who include actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, are charged with paying quantities beween $500,000 to $6.5 million in exchange for these services. Huffman allegedly paid $500,000 in bribes for her daughters to be labeled as USC crew team members, although they were not on the team. Another parent allegedly gave $50,000 to KWF to have someone else take her child’s entrance exam. Individual institutions of higher learning are not being viewed as perpetrators of fraud at this time, according to the DOJ.
Student gamers respond to Jesup ban By REBECCA PARK STAFF WRITER After the office for information technology (OIT) placed a ban on gaming in Jesup last month, addressing concerns surrounding the interference of student gaming in computer labs with those spaces’ academic function, student gamers drafted a proposal for using the labs in a way that would not hinder academic work. Only a select number of computers on campus support Geographic Information System (GIS), which is used for courses in the geosciences department. The GIS labs had not allowed gaming in the past and were available to students only for coursework. As many of the GIS labs moved into Jesup due to the Unified Science Center’s construction, however, OIT sought for the labs to allow use comparable to that of others in the building. The conditions in which gamers left the rooms raised concerns throughout the semester. Personal belongings such as textbooks were continually left in labs, notably room 204, which is used by classes. In addition, after the studentorganized League of Legends tournament over Winter Study, several keyboards were moved from one room to another and
not returned. Students in GISbased classes have also stated that noise and non-course activity have been distractions to their learning. “Labs have been left in a condition that is not conducive to teaching or learning,” said Kris Hoey, the office of student life’s (OSL) assistant director for student organizations and club sports. After poor room conditions continued, despite a warning from OIT sent to student gaming groups, gaming was banned in room 204. A week later, the ban was extended to the entirety of Jesup. “We were pretty surprised by it,” said Abraham Park ’22, a regular gamer at Jesup. “After 204 got closed, people tried to be better about their stuff.” In recent years, OIT has worked with students to allow for gaming on school computers without infringing upon academics on campus, although gaming in Jesup had not been allowed in the past. Jonathan Leamon, director of informational technology at OIT, and Cory Campbell, institutional technology specialist at OIT, expressed optimism that gaming privileges could be restored. “It is our hope that students could use some of these resources as long as they don’t adversely impact the learning of other
students or the functioning of classes,” Leamon and Campbell told the Record. “Student learning must come first, of course, but it is great to have fun too. Many of us in OIT are gamers, so we are motivated to facilitate a good agreement.” Park and Vincent Lin ’19 acknowledged the concerns raised that led to the ban but said that the problem had been with a select few in the gaming community, which has over 50 students. “We thought [the ban] disproportionately punishes the whole entire community for the fault of the few,” Lin said. Students in the gaming community have reached out to offices across campus including OIT, OSL, the dean’s office and the provost’s office to express their disappointment with the ban on gaming in Jesup. OIT suggested that they work with OSL to find other spaces on campus better suited for gaming activity. OIT also asked that if students still wished to continue gaming in the Jesup computer labs, they submit a proposal detailing a plan using the computers in a way that would not hinder academic work. Students have responded with an initial draft proposal containing a tentative set of rules governing gaming in Jesup, including set times for
gaming and the creation of a new board to monitor and enforce rules. “What we really want these new rules to address is to lower the effects of these few individual bad actors and make the whole gaming community police the space that we are using,” Lin said. Lin, Park and other gamers are currently in conversation with OIT, OSL, geosciences faculty, the dean’s office, the provost and other stakeholders about the proposal. “They have thought critically and creatively about how to help manage a space designed for academic work to allow time for gaming and their hope is to achieve a place and parameters where both can happen harmoniously,” Hoey said. “If an agreement can be reached among all these areas, an exception to use these academic labs for gaming could be put back in place,” Leamon and Campbell added. Despite the current ban, student gamers remain hopeful about the community and administration response. “We definitely see this ban as a good wakeup call … a good opportunity for the community to improve themselves,” Lin said. “That’s why we are working toward a response that is more reasonable.”
ARTS 5
The Williams Record
March 13, 2019
Student input, new leadership help ‘Judas Iscariot’ impress By REBECCA TAUBER and SAMUEL WOLF EXECUTIVE EDITORS Last weekend’s theatre department performance of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, by Stephen Guirgis, was notable not only for its star cast, intelligent humor and philosophical weight, but more so for its unique inclusion of student input in the creative process. The show was led by director Shadi Ghaheri, visiting lecturer in theatre, and dramaturg Catherine María Rodríguez, both of whom emphasized the importance of actor participation in their process. The play, which imagines Judas Iscariot on trial in purgatory, was grounded by the exceptional Maya Jasinska ’21 as defense attorney Fabiana Aziza Cunningham, Samori Etienne ’21 as prosecuting attorney El-Fayoumy and Peter Matsumoto ’20.5 in the role of Judas himself. For many students, the inclusive rehearsal process had a strong impact on the quality and value of rehearsal time, offering a much-needed change in the wake of the theatre department’s cancellation of Beast Thing in the fall. Ghaheri and Rodriguez began their process with “table work,” in which the entire cast and crew read and analyzed the show. “Normally in shows, we do that once or twice for the first couple days, and then we stand up and get on our feet,” Matsumoto explained. “For this show, we did it for a week... It was so much, but at the same time it was super helpful because the play is so damn long, and it’s so dense.” This process led to collective decisions to revise some dialogue in the show, a common occur-
.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KEITH FOREMAN
In The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, witnesses ranging from Sigmund Freud to Pontius Pilate are called to testify on whether Judas Iscariot should go to heaven. rence during table work. “There’s a lot of really bad homophobic slurs, really bad misogynistic slurs that come from a lot of the characters, Judas included,” Matsumoto said. “None of us felt that [these were] necessary to the show, [they] didn’t add anything and really it detracted from the character of Judas that we were trying to portray.” Actors also had input in aesthetic elements of Judas; actors were asked to brainstorm what their characters looked like and bring their ideas to the costume designers. These ideas were then incorporated into each character’s ultimate costume design. Ben Weber ’21, for instance, thought that his character likely biked to work and even determined that he died when he was hit by a truck while biking to Montreal. Weber’s ultimate costume design included cycling tights and a helmet. Character movement was also consciously led by the actors themselves, beginning from the first reading. Whenever any
scene was first discussed, Weber explained, a group of actors would sit in a circle, read it through, discuss it and then perform it in the way that was most natural to them. “[Ghaheri] would have little tweaks, but it was really a ‘follow your instincts’ sort of thing,” he said. Actors’ blocking decisions were sometimes even spontaneous, with the two attorneys, Etienne and Jasinska, receiving free rein to walk around the courtroom throughout much of the show. Rehearsals also pulled from student talent in non-acting capacities. The show contained several dance routines choreographed by Kester Messan-Hilla ’21 (Simon the Zealot/Pontius Pilate), including a dance to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” to introduce Satan, played by Mira Sneirson ’22. According to Weber, these dances were constructed organically, using student innovation as their bulwarks. The erosion of directorial hierarchies was paramount in
Ghaheri and María Rodríguez’s vision. On the first day of rehearsal, actors received community agreements that included standard guidelines for arriving on time and being off-book, but also emphasized the right of actors to say ‘no’ at any time and push back against a director’s idea of how a character should be played. Jasinska found this collaborative environment extremely useful for her character. “For my character, because there was a lot of heavy material, I would meet one-on-one with the director,” she said. “We would have separate meetings, essentially.” Weber also worked to add a level of levity to his character that, while not scripted, was soundly encouraged. This collaborative mindset was honored for concerns outside of the production as well. After several actors felt stressed out about managing schoolwork and the production, the group discussed “the things that were burdening us that we thought we weren’t allowed to say,” according to We-
ber. “We took a break to be with each other,” Jasinska added. Rehearsal ended an hour earlier that day with actors feeling acknowledged and heard. “When parts of the process became difficult for members of the cast, being able to discuss and share what we were experiencing significantly built trust and community in the space,” added associate director Nadiya Atkinson. The cast said that Beast Thing, which included many of the same cast members, had a decidedly different atmosphere. After the theatre department cancelled Beast Thing, actors cited factors ranging from a lack of a student voice to a dehumanizing rehearsal process. “We were not listened to in Beast Thing; we were forced to just plow through,” Jasinska, who was in both shows, said. “When we raised concerns, it was just sort of thrust aside.” Concerns about graphic images, for instance, were ignored. In this show, by contrast, when actors raised concerns about the images associated with Pontius
Pilate, played by Messan-Hilla, a Black man, threatening sexual assault against Fabiana Cunningham, played by Jasinska, a white woman, the cast collaboratively rethought elements of the scene. The openness of the show’s creative process was epitomized by open rehearsals, meaning any member of the College community could sit in on rehearsals. This gesture was meant to allow the community a way into the show’s process and create a less secretive environment, and theatre faculty would sometimes stop by, though students rarely did so. Chair and Associate Professor of Theatre David GürçayMorris ’96 said he does not believe that the Judas process was necessarily more quantitatively collaborative that others, yet he commended the unique quality of the show’s teamwork. “I couldn’t be happier that we have all been able to learn from Shari [Ghaheri] and Cat [María Rodríguez] over these past few months, both in their approach to making theater and to forging a community through that artistic work,” he said. In the end, according to actors, the open process paid off in the final product. “When you have such a big cast where everyone gets to make their own decisions, sometimes it feels a bit chaotic, but in this world it made it feel a bit textured,” Weber said. “Every single character that you saw on stage was their own person, with their own background.” For Jasinska, the process enhanced not only the show’s ultimate quality but her experience in performing in it. “The final product lent itself to us feeling like we had so much ownership over the show,” she said. “It made me really proud to to be a part of it.”
Step: a rhythmic history By LILY GOLDBERG ARTS EDITOR A rhythm swells in the ‘62 Center. Stomp. Clap. Tap. The rhythm spreads from one body to the next, a contagion that built until it exploded into synchronicity. This is the art of Sankofa, the College’s step team, which hosted four step teams from the tri-state area – Blackout and ENVY from Tufts, Cadence from Stony Brook and Nexxus from MCLA – for its 13th annual Steady Steppin’ Forward competition on March 2. Step is a percussive dance form that uses a performer’s whole body to generate complex rhythmic patterns. Sankofa, established in 1996, has become one of the College’s most prominent student performing arts organizations. Sankofa takes its name from a word from Akan vernacular – which is spoken in Ghana – that roughly translates to “reach back and get it.” The group honors this name; through exuberance and artistry, Sankofa has made step a fixture of the College’s arts community and has ensured that the history and practice of step is not lost. Step is extremely expressive, using the body as a means of emoting. The expressive nature of step is no coincidence; one of step’s many early influences is gumboot dance – isicathulo, in Zulu – a dance form created by South African gold miners during the South African apartheid. To circumvent both the harsh conditions in the mines and managerial censure for conversing on the job, gold miners developed the characteristic stomps and claps
of gumboot dance as unspoken codes of communication. Step found its American roots, however, not in gold mines but on college campuses. In the early 20th century, Step was a feature of initiations in the National PanHellenic Council (or the “Divine Nine”), a collective of nine Greek organizations at historically Black colleges and universities. Along with songs and cheers, many fraternities and sororities generated unique stepping patterns to display collective spirit. The militant aesthetic of step may also have arisen from its Greek roots, as some of the universities parent to these Greek organizations – including Howard and Cornell – had an ROTC requirement at the time for male students. Though certainly now coed, step reflects its military roots in the synchronicity of its drills. The military influence is reflected in step’s honorific titles as well; practice leaders Ahmed Al Khalayla ‘19 and Melanie Graciani ‘19 are known as “Drill Sergeants.” Minh Tran ’19 and Olaide Adejobi ’19 serve as presidents of Sankofa, managing the administrative side of the team. “Being a stepper is such unique experience that can be hard to understand if you don’t do it – it requires a lot of discipline, practice and drilling,” Adejobi said. “The thing I really loved about being able to host the competition this year was how tapped in it made me feel to the form.” While step has moved beyond Greek life, its relationship to fraternity and sorority culture may explain why step teams are often more recently established in liberal arts colleges, since many
have either dissolved their Greek organizations or had none to begin with. “Step teams at other schools are a lot different than ours,” Tran acknowledged. “Other schools tend to remain very tied to stepping’s roots in fraternities and sororities, so it’s more about getting crowds hype and being loud. We tend to incorporate different forms of dance in what we do, in large part because of the various dance backgrounds of our members. So what we do tends to look a lot differently than what we see in other schools.” Adejobi agreed, and spoke to the impact of engaging with a larger step community. “Even though we don’t really have a ton of interaction outside of those few competitions we compete in, I’ve found that there’s a lot of camaraderie in the intercollegiate community,” Adejobi said. “I was hanging out a lot with one of the teams and got to talking... Some of the challenges [they] have are ones Sankofa has as well.” Tran and Adejobi acknowledged that the diversity of the step community contributes to the fluidity of step as an art form. “People bring a plethora of experience with them, dance or otherwise, to the table,” Tran said. “People bring their own tastes in music as well, so we’ll have choreography to a bunch of different types of music, from hip hop to dancehall to straight up Rage Against the Machine.” “Sankofa is composed of folks from so many radically different backgrounds who are all really amazing,” Adejobi said. “I’m happy that we were able to bring different styles of step to the campus.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF SANKOFA TEAM FACEBOOK.
Sankofa’s final performance last spring, “Kofa High.” Sankofa was established in 1996 by two female steppers.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SENECA MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS CENTER.
Denying Access director Jason Corwin discussed his environmental documentary on Sunday at Images.
‘Denying Access’ filmmaker discusses Indigenous activism By LUKE VALADIE STAFF WRITER Students, faculty and Williamstown residents gathered at Images Cinema last Wednesday night for a special screening of the documentary Denying Access: NoDAPL to NoNAPL, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker, Jason Corwin. Denying Access chronicles the campaign among various Native American groups to halt the construction of oil pipelines through sensitive and sacred lands. Sponsored by the Class of 1963 Sustainability Fund, which works to create learning opportunities connected to environmental issues, the screening and Q&A with Corwin provided an opportunity for community members to engage with a passionate showcase of Indigenous environmental activism. “The important nature of stories in our culture and in our ways of teaching makes literature and film very viable formats for not only conveying old stories but our stories of now that are as varied as our people are diverse,” Corwin, a member of the Seneca Tribe, told the Ithacan. The events began with Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Laura Martin introducing Corwin, the executive director of the Seneca Media and Communications Center. A 25-year veteran in documentary filmmaking, Corwin is an outspoken advocate for the environment and indigenous
rights. He’s also an educator, teaching classes on film production and storytelling. The film begins with the interview of an elderly Native American woman while a chaotic protest occurs in the background. As she speaks, a police officer is heard speaking through a PA system, warning the protestors that they will be arrested if they do not disperse. This provocative sequence sets the tone for the rest of the film. While many of the documentary’s earlier scenes are marked by simmering tension between protestors and law enforcement, it does not take long for this tension to explode. Officers are shown raiding tents and trailers armed with rifles. Protestors face sound cannons, rubber bullets and pepper spray. At one point, a pipeline worker with a rifle walks into a crowd of protesters, leading to a standoff before the man is arrested by an officer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. While the film does not shy away from showing the trying circumstances faced by protestors in the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, it is not just a sequence of violent acts. Much of its runtime is spent on interviews with those involved, highlighting the motivations behind the grassroots movement. The sentiment that water ought to be treated as a sacred resource was echoed in many of these interviews. Many interviewees also invoked the image of the pipeline as a “black
snake” threatening to desecrate their lands. Denying Access emphasizes the outpour of support these movements received from people throughout the world. One scene shows actor Mark Ruffalo speaking passionately in support of the movement at a press conference. Other scenes highlight musicians such as Kiera Dawn and Savage Family performing songs in solidarity with the DAPL protest. Despite the violence that characterizes much of the film, these scenes of support work to create a tone of hope. During the Q&A session, Corwin displayed the same passion and enthusiasm that represent the movement. He provided urgent and sweeping answers to the questions that were posed. In response to a question about the status of the battle against the Northern Access Pipeline, he gave a detailed rundown of court cases and legal issues surrounding the project. He also criticized the policies of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and discussed how he believes contemporary forms of media, with their emphasis on fastpaced coverage, are shortening attention spans and negatively impacting social movements. “I hope people will be just inspired to see that everyday people have power to affect change in the world for the good and that people see that the environment and indigenous rights issues are [of] paramount importance,” Corwin said.
6 FEATURES
The Williams Record
March 13, 2019
One in Two Thousand By NIGEL JAFFE FEATURES EDITOR I first met Victoria when I was sitting with a friend on the swing set behind Mission. She said the two of us looked like Romeo and Juliet, and even though it was weeks before Victoria and I crossed paths again, she remembered my name. We sat down to talk about summers in Poland, enlightenment in the Big Apple and her taste for modern art. I know you used to live in Eastern Europe. What was that like? Right. I’ve spent quite a number of summers in Poland. We’re talking the rural countryside here – it’s a tiny town, and during summers there’s nothing to do there, honestly. All of the youth that typically live in this town tend to flee, so during the summer it ends up being just me and a bunch of old people. The youth who end up staying there are generally the more … unambitious kind. Since I was alone for a month with just my parents and these old people, I would take a lot of walks, and I’d run into people. I remember at one point I saw a couple of young people sitting on a bench in a park in my neighborhood. I went over to them and was like, “What’s up, team?” – well, I didn’t actually say it in those words – but I was like, “Yo, what’s up, I’m new around here.”
of an accent. I’m interested in linguistics, and my Polish is kind of weird because I speak so much English. Anyway, I walk over to the guys and introduce myself. And they’re like, “Oh, this hot chick from New York City – cool, cool!” And they’re nice to me, they offer me a sip of their beer and it’s just great. So I’m bonding, I’m making friends. I think to myself, “Maybe I’ll get a number, maybe we’ll get to hang out, maybe I won’t be alone for the entirety of this godforsaken month!” But then they start smoking weed. That was fine, I guess, and I thought that was it. But nope – eventually, one of them looks at me and goes, “You wanna do some meth?” And I was like, “No, I don’t,” but I was interested to see how the situation would go, so I just kind of stuck around. They brought everything out, and I found it so funny – they ended up crushing the crystals between two Polish history textbooks. You mean history textbooks that are in Polish, or textbooks that are about the history of Poland? About Poland, in Polish. So you might say that they’re Polish, Polish history textbooks.
But in Poland, there is no Polish. Everything is Polish, Polish. Their world revolves around Poland. In high school, my friends used to make fun of me because I would casually wear Polish sports attire. They In English? were like, “Why do you do this? No, no, in Polish. I speak Pol- It’s not a Polish holiday,” but ish fluently, but I have a bit you see, I was raised to have
VICTORIA MICHALSKA ’22
There’s no pleasure in hate. I see the appeal of nationalism, though. It’s so great to fit in. It’s so appealing. There’s an annual parade where people celebrate their Polish nationality, walking down the middle of one of the major avenues in Manhattan, shouting about national identity. That feels great, but it comes at a cost, it really does. At the College, you’re known for your tendency to float around, exploring different parts of campus. What contributes to that social presence?
SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR VICTORIA’S HOMETOWN MASPETH, N.Y.
VICTORIA’S RESIDENCE ARMSTRONG-PRATT
that Polish nationalism. It now really contradicts my more New York City-style liberalism. Right. What was your time in the city like? Oh my goodness. Up until middle school or so, I was very, very sheltered. My parents barely let me leave the house. They were always afraid that somebody was going to snatch me off the street. I didn’t go anywhere without my parents, but my mother understood that a little girl needs to socialize, so she would take me to a lot of museums. In high school, once they couldn’t monitor me as much, I started exploring different neighbor-
FAVORITE ARTIST ANDY WARHOL
hoods and boroughs, but I still went to museums on my own. There’s so much to be learned at museums – such a convenient way of organizing information. I mean, why not enlighten yourself? That’s what I always say. On the other hand, I was raised to have very traditional Polish Catholic beliefs. But that all kind of deteriorated, to tell you the truth. The Big Apple is so dynamic, just filled with diversity. How could you be racist? What’s the fun in walking around and just hating everybody you see that doesn’t look like you or come from the same background as you? What’s the fun in that?
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I mean, I’ve always been that type of person. I used to compare myself to a thread, weaving in and out of different fabrics. If I wanted to, I could just put myself into a single social circle, surround myself with a single set of beliefs and ideas. But if you hang around with the same people all the time, you’ll end up talking about the same things all the time, too. I like the variety. Life is so short, and there’s so much to be experienced. Why limit yourself? That’s a fun philosophy. Do you have any favorite spots to linger? [Laughs.] I don’t know, Nigel. You tell me. Where do you always find me?
one I know comes by and we chat for a little bit. I learn about their day, I tell them about mine, and they give me some advice, because I’m always in need of advice. Yeah, Mission lobby is definitely one of my favorites. You mentioned museums earlier – I feel like this wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t ask you about art. [Laughs.] Well, here’s what I’ve got. These days, art is very conceptual. For example, take Dada. Super abstract, super subjective. It’s the kind of stuff where you put a random object down, and you just say, “Art.” Isn’t it, though? Well, that’s another question. What I’m saying here is that we need to move away from the conceptual stuff. We need a return of artisanship, you know? We need to care more about the details. That’s what I tell my art history professors. Are you heralding that return yourself? Are you the return of artisanship? No, no, I’m not on that level yet. But you know who I love? Andy Warhol. I really admire him. I think he’s the goal here.
Well, everywhere! Usually in Mission, I guess.
Your name doesn’t quite have the same punch, does it? An-dy War-hol. It’s a syllable thing.
Mission lobby, right where we are now. I love it here – I’ve got the television, and I’ve got the people around me. I just sit here and do work, some-
That’s why my friends call me “Wiki.” It’s got flavor – and a much better ring. In the end, stardom is really all about your image, you know?
Tales from CRUSH PARTY Last Friday, two Record reporters attended CRUSH PARTY, an event with an unconventional premise: Invite your crushes anonymously, and have them invite theirs. Attendees volunteered their ratings below.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SONYA AUER.
Sonya Auer was recently awarded the President’s Medal from the Society for Experimental Biology.
Spotlight on Research: Sonya Auer studies how diet affects fish metabolism By VINCENT JIANG STAFF WRITER Rows and rows of fish tanks line the walls of the laboratory, making the most of the limited space. In each tank swim Trinidadian guppies – some shy, others curious and none of them bigger than a thumb. Devoid of any noise except for the humming of the machinery and the sound of trickling water, the scene is a welcome break from the constant construction just outside of Thompson Biology Labs. For the past decade or so, Sonya Auer, visiting assistant professor of biology, has studied energetics: how an organism’s use of energy affects how it fares in different environments. A recent recipient of the 2019 Society for Experimental Biology President’s Medal, Auer is currently looking at the effect of food quality on metabolic rate. Her experiment consists of feeding one group of guppies a protein-rich diet – liver pâté in the morning and brine shrimp in the evening – and another group a low-quality diet consisting of liver pâté mixed with spinach, which is harder for the
fish to digest. The guppies are then placed in a specially designed chamber attached to an oxygen sensor to track the rate of oxygen depletion in the water, allowing researchers to determine the metabolic rate. Auer plans on tracking the fish for only about a month, but she hopes to expand this experiment to examine whether any populations of guppies are better able to function with low-quality diets. Regardless of future plans, Auer said she was content with the experiment’s progress. “I have a really great space in which to work, and a lot of students that are really interested in working on these types of subjects,” she said. In the years following her doctorate research, Auer investigated primarily how changes in metabolic rate allow organisms to cope with changes in their environment in both short-term and longterm situations. Working in Glasgow, Scotland, she found that the fish could alter their metabolic rates in response to changing food levels, increasing it in plentiful times and decreasing it in times of scarcity. In Trinidad, she contrib-
uted to a 35-year-old study on guppies that were transplanted from a nutrient-rich environment to more barren pools. “They will actually, over a rather short period of time, evolve these metabolic adaptations to environments that differ in their resource availability,” she said. In addition to continuing to study how food quality affects metabolic rates, Auer plans to explore the multitasking ability of fish – specifically digesting food while swimming – and the ways that temperature comes into play. She already has three research assistants, all of whom are current first-years, for the summer. Auer said she hopes that her findings will help aid conservation in an increasingly warming world by making predictions about the longevity of species more accurate. “Energetics really determines an organism’s performance, how well they do in a specific environment,” she said. “But if that environment is changing, then it’s really valuable to know, from a conservation perspective, whether or not they’ll be able to deal with those changes.”
MANO SUNDARESAN ’19
MELVIN LEWIS ’22
“I was very nervous going to this event, and I wouldn’t have gone unless I knew my friends were going, too. It was an absolutely absurd social experiment, but I appreciated the spectrum of personalities there. I think the music could’ve been louder.”
“The choice of cranberry juice as a beverage was bold but ultimately effective. A fun place to be, except for the fact that I couldn’t stop hiccuping.”
MARK BISSELL ’22
SAM THORPE ’22
“There was a funny vibe surrounding the whole event, where everyone seemed to be looking around the room, and when you made eye contact with someone you recognized, there was a sort of unspoken question of ‘was it you?’ that passed between you.”
“Like a middle school dance but with more [redacted beverage].”
REGINA FINK ’22
ALEXA WALKOVITZ ’21 20 x
“Loved the lightheartedness of the concept. Gabe [Wexler ’19] has quite the vision for a Friday night.”
“CRUSH PARTY was genius – it was art... A perfect social experiment that I wish I had the data on. It left me bare, and scared, but sad that it ended. Rating: 120/10, for my blood pressure.”
March 13, 2019
SPORTS 7
The Williams Record
Spring sports in the snow: Teams begin seasons, travel for break By JACK McGOVERN SPORTS EDITOR As the snow starts to melt and temperatures inch above freezing in Williamstown, spring is approaching at the College, and with it, the beginning of the spring sports season. Some spring sports, in fact, have already begun competing. Men’s lacrosse (1–1, 1–1 in the NESCAC) faced the nation’s top-ranked team and defending champion Wesleyan, on the road in its season opener on March 3. The Ephs fell narrowly, 14-12, in frigid conditions. On Friday at FarleyLamb Field, the men secured their first win with a resounding 18-12 victory over Trinity. “Everyone in the program is excited to finally start our season regardless of the weather we’ve had recently,” head coach George McCormack said. “It’s a long wait since our last game compared to other conferences in Div. III, so [the] guys are always raring to go.” Although other conferences in the southern and western United States began their seasons earlier, few teams have the opportunity to open their schedule against the best team in the division. McCormack said the game against Wesleyan, a closely contested match into the fourth quarter, was a chance to “see how we measure up and expose what things we need to work on.” The men finished fourth in the NESCAC last season and are returning Second Team AllNESCAC selection Rock Stewart ’20, a long-stick midfielder, and Kevin Stump ’20, last year’s leading scorer. Women’s lacrosse (1–2, 0–2 in the NESCAC) looks to bounce back from a ninth-place finish in the NESCAC last season, kicked off its season on March 2. In their second season under head coach Alice Lee, the women have dropped contests to No. 12 Wesleyan and No. 9 Trinity and defeated non-conference competitor Endicott.
The women return Claire Fitzpatrick ’21, who was named to the All-NESCAC second team as a first-year, and leading scorer Kara Wollmers ’20. After an almost five-month break from competition, No. 4 women’s tennis (1–1, 0–1 in the NESCAC) resumed its season on March 9 with a 5-4 victory over non-conference opponent Skidmore. Tennis, like golf and crew, starts in the fall but plays the majority of its season in the spring. Women’s tennis head coach Anik Cepeda described the shorter fall season as an “orientation.” The fall is a chance to “experiment with doubles pairings and get to know one another on a deeper level,” she said. The team’s longer spring season, which concludes with NESCACs on May 3 and NCAAs from May 20–25 for the women, is the more competitive time of year. With the most important stretch of their season on the horizon, Cepeda said that the women are focusing on what is “completely within their control.” “Winning NESCACs is always a team goal,” she said. “Competing for a national championship is also on our minds at the start and end of a season, but we’re actually not talking about it at all. Our focus is currently on the details of day-to-day improvement and recovery.” After the departures of NCAA doubles champions Juli Raventos ’18 and Julia Cancio ’18, co-captains Korina Neveux ’19, Leah Bush ’19 and Chloe Henderson ’20, an All-NESCAC second team selection last season, will lead the Ephs. The women have won a record 10 national titles, including six straight championships from 2008–2013 and their most recent triumph in 2017. The Ephs are also the four-time defending NESCAC champions. Yet before NESCACs or NCAAs, the women will have a six-match California road trip during spring break. Cepeda said the trip, which includes contests against No. 1 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
Men’s lacrosse attacker Kevin Stump ’20, the team’s leading scorer last year, scored 6 goals in the first two games this spring. Div. I opponent UC San Diego, is a chance “to pause and look up the mountain briefly.” “California will afford us consistency on the court and most importantly, matches,” she said. Women’s tennis is not alone among teams traveling to warmer climates in search of games for spring break. Men’s tennis will also head to California for eight matches. The men are hoping to best their 2017– 18 overall record of 15–5 and second-seed NESCAC ranking to get back to the NCAA tournament after narrowly missing out in 2018. Returning member Austin Barr ’21 won All-NESCAC First Team recognition as a first-year. Coming straight off an NCAA title-winning indoor season, women’s track and field will likewise jet to California for its first three meets of the outdoor season. Men’s track and field will open its season with the same three competitions. The women boasted eight All-Americans during the indoor season. Aidan Ryan ’21 was
awarded All-America honors for the men. Staying on the East Coast are men’s and women’s crew, which will train in South Carolina. Men’s crew is looking for its first New England title since 2014, and women’s crew is hoping to match its most recent NCAA championship in 2013. Baseball, which battled through a difficult 11-game California road trip en route to a 9-21 record last season, will fly to Florida for 10 games. The team will compete in Fort Myers, Fla., the spring training home of the Boston Red Sox, as well as in other sites throughout the state. All-NESCAC second team selection Mike Stamas ’20 returns for the men. No team, however, will play more games during break than No. 10 softball, which is scheduled for 16 games over the course of nine days in California. “Going to California is a great part of our program’s history and future,” softball head coach Kris Herman. “We have a significant percentage of our players who
are from the West Coast, and it’s special for them to get to play in front of their families.” Although the trip is a rewarding experience for players, Herman acknowledged that “it’s challenging because the home teams have been playing outside for months.” According to members of the team, the challenge has only increased this season with the unexpected construction delays in the reopening of Towne Field House. The team, which usually prepares in the field house during the winter, has resorted to practicing in the hallways of Lasell and Chandler Gymnasiums. “We can’t play softball in anywhere near a full capacity in the other indoor athletic spaces,” captain Casey Pelz ’19 told the Record in January. “None of us have been able to hit a moving ball in months.” Despite the adversity, Herman said that the team is ready for the season. “There’s nothing we can do about the field house, so we’re not concerned about
it,” she said. “We’ve been working hard in the gym, the weight room and on the road.” Like her colleague Cepeda in women’s tennis, Herman stressed a distinction between “controllables” and “uncontrollables” in softball, and noted that the team has high hopes. “We’d like to be competing in the national championship tournament in late May.” The women have won three NESCAC titles in a row and have earned five consecutive NCAA tournament berths. Last season, the Ephs set a school record with 39 wins. First Team All-American Mackenzie Murphy ’19 and NESCAC Pitcher of the Year Rebecca Duncan ’20 return to the team. Spring teams will work to clinch a 22nd Director’s Cup out in 24 years. The Ephs placed seventh in the Director’s Cup standings after the fall and will likely climb in the rankings when the women’s track and field championship and quarterfinal finishes of men’s basketball and women’s ice hockey are incorporated.
Individual wrestler, Nordic Men’s indoor track and field sends four competitors to skiers take on Nationals NCAA championship meet
By EZEKIEL COHEN SPORTS INFORMATION
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
Isaac Freitas-Eagan ’22 was one of only three first-year skiers in the region to qualify for NCAAs. By SOFIE JONES SPORTS EDITOR The end of the winter sports season brought a slew of NCAA tournament appearances for the Ephs. While many teams participated in their respective meets and tournaments, qualifying athletes in select sports competed without the rest of their teams. Wrestler Joey Rossetti ’21 and Nordic skiers Braden Becker ’19 and Isaac Freitas-Eagan ’22 represented the College at Nationals individually. Rossetti competed at the NCAA Div. III wrestling championships in Roanoke, Va., on Friday after earning third place in February’s regional tournament. Rossetti, who wrestles in the 141 lb. weight class, defeated Jarrod Brezovec of John Carroll University, who boasted a season record of 28–10, in an 11-7 decision in his first preliminary match. In his next match, Rosetti fell to Alma College’s Brendan Ladd in a 7-5 result. A 6-3 loss to Evan Drill of NYU in the following match eliminated Rossetti from title contention. “I’m so proud of Joey,” wrestling head coach Scott Honecker
told Sports Information. “Last year he didn’t place in the region, and this year he won a match at the national tournament. That’s incredible progress. Failing to medal shouldn’t be an indication he needs to make changes; his performance this weekend shows that he is on the path.” Rossetti’s loss ends the wrestling program’s 2018-2019 season. The team will graduate Bennett Caplin ’19, Ben Morton ’19 and tri-captains Sebastian Dziadkiewicz ’19, Alex Pankhurst ’19 and Brendon Seyfried ’19. Becker and Freitas-Eagan, two members of men’s Nordic, also competed in the NCAA Championship on Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday, both men competed in the 10k individual skate start race. Freitas-Eagan finished 28th out of the 40 skiers competing. Becker took 29th a mere three seconds later. In their last race of the Championship on Friday, Becker and Freitas-Eagan competed in the 20k mass start classic. Becker crossed the finish line just over two minutes after the first-place finisher, placing 18th with a time of
57:54. Freitas-Eagan finished 29th in 59:05. “Both Braden and Isaac had strong seasons and raced very competitively at NCAAs,” said Nordic head coach Jason Lemieux ’01. “About half of the NCAA field is made up of foreign skiers, so it’s a different level of competition, but Isaac and Braden rose to the occasion and raced their hearts out on the course both days.” Although competing without the rest of the Nordic team was atypical, Freitas-Eagan still felt the team’s enthusiasm. “Competing at NCAAs without my other teammates was definitely different,” he said. “A good portion of them came up and watched the races, though, and there were plenty of congratulatory hugs at the line, and without a doubt, I felt the team love and support from those who couldn’t make it.” The NCAA Championship marks the end of the Nordic season, as well as Becker’s collegiate skiing career. The team also graduates Evan Carr ’19, men’s captain Nick Gardner ’19 and women’s captain Sonya Jampel ’19.
Four members of men’s track and field competed at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship last weekend. The Ephs scored 6 points, finishing tied for 38th overall. “As a team, I couldn’t be more excited about the direction of the program,” head coach Ethan Barron said. “The passion and persistence has been infectious. And now I see a hunger in each person that will continue to lead to new PRs and growth each season.” Aidan Ryan ’21 got the meet started for the Ephs in the prelims of the 3000m. He finished second in his heat in 8:24.53 – running his last mile in 4:19 – and qualified for the following day’s event final. Next up for the Ephs was co-captain Lucas Estrada ’20, racing in the event’s preliminary round. Estrada placed sixth out of 10 in his heat in a season best of 4:15.10, but his 14th-overall finish did not secure him a spot in the event final. Finishing off the day were Tristan Colaizzi ’20 and Kevin LaFleche ’20 in the preliminary of the 800m. Colaizzi ran a gutsy race, finishing fifth in his heat and 15th overall, in 1:54.46. LaFleche placed fifth in his heat and 12th overall in 1:53.87, a season best. Ryan was the only Eph who advanced to Day Two of competition, securing a spot in the 3000m finals with the thirdfastest time in the nation. In the early going of the final race, Ryan was well positioned in the pack just behind the leader. With 1000 meters to go, the pace started to pick up significantly
as numerous competitors shouldered their way to the front of the race. Ryan ran the last 400 meters in 59 seconds, faster than all but the winner, moving from eighth to third overall in a personal best and a school sophomore record of 8:16.71. “Aidan ran an amazing race,” Barron said following the meet. “He showed the composure of a veteran
[when] it was his first trip to nationals. Aidan put himself on a lot of people’s radar this season. We always knew what he was capable of. Now the nation knows.” This concludes the indoor season for the Ephs. They will return to competition in two weeks, on March 23, at the Point Loma Invitational in San Diego during the team’s spring break trip to the West Coast.
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8 SPORTS
The Williams Record
March 13, 2019
Women’s track and field claims NCAA indoor title By CAILIN STOLLAR SPORTS INFORMATION No. 1 women’s track and field won its second NCAA title in program history last weekend. The women earned 42 points at the meet, held at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston. Washington University finished second with 40 points, and George Fox came in third with 29 points. “It’s a great day to be an Eph,” head coach Nate Hoey said. “This team has faced so much adversity all season and never once have they held their heads down. They consistently look forward and to what’s in front [of them] and what they can do to maximize where they are. I’m so proud of this entire team and what they have done.” Starting Day One of the competition was Caitlin Ubl ’19 in the 60m hurdles prelims. Ubl came into Friday’s race seeded seventh but finished second in her heat with a personal and school record of 8.66 seconds. Kiara Tan ’22 raced next in the 60m prelims, where she finished 19th overall. In the pole vault, Kelsie Hao ’21 missed only one bar until her final height. Hao finished with a height of 3.80 meters, just 2 centimeters shy of her personal best. The jump placed Hao in fifth place, which earned 4 points for the team. Maggie Murphy ’19 placed 13th in the event with a final jump of 3.60 meters.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KELVIN HAO.
The women won their first NCAA championship since 2007 last weekend, with eight competitors earning All-America honors. Anna Passannante ’20 competed in both the mile and 800m. In the mile, Passannante won her heat with a time of 5:03, putting her in fourth place going into the next day’s finals. Just an hour later, she took fifth place overall in the 800m prelims. In the 5000m, Emily Harris ’19 crossed the finish line in 17:29 to clinch 14th place. The 4x400m relay team, made up of Davis Collison ’21,
Ella Dunn ’21, Ubl and Megan Powell ’21, finished first in their heat with a time of 3:51, which placed the team in the fourth seed for Sunday’s finals. The distance medley relay team, comprised of Brianna Bourne ’21, SummerSolstice Thomas ’20, Abby Scott ’22 and Audrey Rustad ’20 finished in 12:09, placing them 12th. Thomas also competed in the pentathlon, finishing in
Ephs win one of two at NCAAs
fifth place with 3507 points and securing four points for the team. Day Two of competition began with the high jump, in which the Ephs were represented by Emma Egan ’20 and Kene Odenigbo ’19. Odenigbo jumped the second-best height she has cleared all season, breaking her seed to finish in 14th. Egan achieved a perfect jump performance, miss-
Men’s basketball falls in Elite Eight, finishes season By ERIC HIRSCH SPORTS INFORMATION
PHOTO COURTESY OF GABE DICKENS.
Goaltender Chloe Heiting ’22 saved 32 of 33 shots against Norwich in last Wednesday’s first-round victory. By MEHR SAWANT SPORTS INFORMATION No. 7 women’s ice hockey (21–5–3, 10–4–2 in the NESCAC) hosted and won its first NCAA tournament game in program history, a 3-1 victory over No. 8 Norwich on Wednesday night. The women advanced to the quarterfinals, where they fell 5-3 to No. 2 SUNY Plattsburgh on Saturday. The loss marked the end of a record-breaking season for the Ephs. The women won a program-best 21 games en route to their NESCAC championship and first-round NCAA tournament victory. “It was really hard to see a historic season come to an end,” head coach Meghan Gillis said after the game. “I want to thank our six seniors for everything they did over the last four years that built to this season." The week began on Wednesday night, when the women opened the NCAA tournament at home against Norwich, the defending national champion. The contest marked the firstever NCAA tournament game at Lansing Chapman Rink. After first-round exits in their previous two tournament appearances in 2003 and 2014, the women entered the matchup looking for their first victory in the tournament. The Ephs started off slowly in the first period as Norwich outshot the women 9-6. Goaltender Chloe Heiting ’22, however, denied the Cadets a goal during the opening frame. The women scored the first goal of the game at 3:27 into the second period when assistant captain Abby Brustad ’19 buried the puck off a rebound from NESCAC Player of the Year Meghan Halloran ’21. The one-
goal lead did not last long, however, as Norwich responded with its own goal a few minutes later. Cadets forward Amanda Conway netted her Div. IIIleading 30th goal of the year on a power play to tie the game. Heiting then made one phenomenal save after another, the most important being a sprawling kick on a Norwich two-onone opportunity in the second period. The Cadets outshot the Ephs 18-8 during the frame. “I think we had a little bit of nerves starting out for the NCAA game for everyone,” said Gillis, “Chloe made some huge saves and let us settle in.” “I really trusted my forwards and defense to help me,” Heiting said. “I knew they could depend on me, and I could depend on them, so it’s a two-way street.” At 5:39 into the third period, a slap shot from All-NESCAC defender Brynn Puppe ’21 deflected past Norwich goalie Emily Lambert to give the women a 2-1 lead. Soon after, Avery Dunn ’21 extended the lead to 3-1 to eliminate the defending champions. “We had just been told to throw pucks at the net,” Puppe said postgame. “We hadn’t been testing the goalie enough, so it was just important to get pucks to the net quickly.” Brustad and co-captain Annie Rush ’19 assisted on the winning goal by Puppe, while Amanda Reisman ’20 and assistant captain Eliza Quigley ’19 earned assists on the Dunn tally. “We were really motivated by Chloe’s amazing save, since she was doing her job, and so it was time for us to step up and do our job,” Puppe said. The women then advanced to a quarterfinal matchup with second-ranked Plattsburgh on Saturday. After going back and forth in the third period, the
Ephs fell 5-3 to the Cardinals following two successive Plattsburgh goals – separated by only 8 seconds – in the 12th minute of the final frame. The women started perfectly with a goal 19 seconds into the contest off the opening faceoff. After receiving the puck from Mia Carroll ’20 and Brustad, Halloran skated around Cardinals goalie Kassi Abbott and tallied the first goal of the game. For the remainder of the period, Heiting kept the Cardinals from equalizing. Plattsburgh began the second period with a series of shots on Heiting until Madison Walker eventually found the net 3:08 into the period. The Cardinals then pulled ahead 2-1 with another goal from Holly Schmelzer with 15:32 left. Although the Ephs capitalized on a one-man advantage from a Cardinals interference penalty and evened the score at 2, Plattsburgh responded a minute later with a goal from Mackenzie Millen with 3 minutes left in the period to retake the lead. The Ephs tied the game again at 8:19 into the third period off a zone-entry rush. Halloran drove wide, and Brustad drove to the net hard. Halloran then passed to Brustad, who deflected the puck over Abbott’s glove. The women could not capitalize on the momentum, though, as Plattsburgh retook the lead for good with two goals 8 seconds apart in the final 10 minutes. “We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the game,” Gillis said. “I loved the resiliency our team showed coming back to tie it at the start of the third.” The women graduate Olivia Stokes ’19, Anna Fucillo ’19, assistant captains Brustad and Quigley and co-captains Rush and Claire Mancheski ’19.
ing no marks until the final height. The highest jump she cleared, 1.77 meters, secured a national title for Egan, who also set a personal best and school record. Ubl was next on the track in the 60m hurdles finals. Coming into the race seeded seventh, Ubl finished in 8.84 seconds. The time was good enough for Ubl to break her seed and place sixth, winning the team 3 points.
Passannante secured 16 points for the Ephs in her two races of the day. Starting with a second-place finish in the mile, Passannante broke seed and finished the mile in 4:46, a personal best and school record. Next, Passannante finished the 800m in 2:11, clinching second place again. Passannante set another personal and school record, winning 8 more points for the team. Going into the team’s final event, the 4x400m relay team, the women were behind by only 3 points. In order to win the national championship, the team needed to come in fifth place or better. Collison, Dunn, Ubl and Powell secured fourth place, scoring 4 points for the Ephs and clinching the title. With Collison coming out quickly in the first leg and taking the lead, the rest of the team held it. With each leg of the relay, the women created more and more distance between the majority of the heat to finish in a time of 3:50. “This was a total team effort,” Hoey said. “The energy and support for and from everyone was awesome.” The national championship wrapped up a highly successful indoor season for the Ephs. The women finished as national champions, New England champions and Little Three champions. In two weeks, the Ephs will return to competition with their first meet of the outdoor season at University of California, Riverside.
In a thrilling weekend of NCAA tournament games in Clinton, N.Y., No. 19 men’s basketball (23–7, 6–4 in the NESCAC) knocked off No. 2 Whitman in the Sweet 16 on Friday night before falling in the Elite Eight to No. 9 Christopher Newport the next day. The men advanced to the Elite Eight for the sixth time in 10 years but came up just short of a third straight Final Four appearance. The loss marked the end of the college careers of the six Eph seniors: Bobby Casey ’19, James Heskett ’19, Kyle Scadlock ’19, Michael Kempton ’19, Marcos Soto ’19 and Jake Porath ’19. Casey, Heskett and Scadlock were the first trio of 1000-point scorers to take the floor at the same time for the Ephs. “This senior class means the world to me,” said head coach Kevin App. “They were the first group that said they wanted me to be their head coach. They made it their goal to leave a mark on a program that already had a lot of history. Even though three of them were 1000-point scorers, the entire class was always all about [the] team and each other. They were a joy to be around for four years.” After double-digit victories over Husson and Gwynedd Mercy in the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament, the men met second-ranked Whitman on the home court of NESCAC rival No. 10 Hamilton. Despite committing 29 turnovers, the Ephs shot 29 of 43 from the field, including 7-of-11 shooting from 3, and overcame a late charge by the Blues to win 84-81. As a result of Whitman’s fast-paced full-court press, the game was unlike almost any other the men played this year. While the Blues’ press afforded the Ephs plenty of fast-break opportunities, Whitman also forced several turnovers but struggled to finish on the other end. Despite the game’s frantic pace, neither team could build a large lead during the first half. The men finally found the spark they needed off the bench from Mickey Babek ’20. Babek nailed three 3-pointers in a five-
minute span to help the men to a 40-33 lead with 3:26 remaining in the half. The men finished the first half 17 of 27 from the field, including 5 of 7 from 3. Whitman, meanwhile, shot only 13 of 36 in the half despite converting 7 of 16 3-point attempts. In the second half, Whitman started finding more success in their half-court offense, but the men held onto a high single-digit lead. The Ephs would take their largest lead of the game at 69-55 after two free throws by Scadlock. Although the men maintained a comfortable margin, a combination of foul trouble and the relentless Whitman press continued to provide cause for concern. After Matt Karpowicz ’20 made a layup to put the Ephs up 77-65, the Blues rattled off a quick 9-0 run in the following two minutes. It looked like the game might have been slipping away when Trevor Osborne’s 3 pulled Whitman to within one at 80-79 with 49 seconds left. Then Casey committed a turnover on the next possession to give the Blues one final shot. Out of a timeout, however, Osborne was called for a traveling violation, handing the ball back to the Ephs with the shot clock turned off. After the Ephs successfully inbounded the ball to Heskett, the senior hit both free throws to put the men up 82-79 with just 21 seconds on the clock. Whitman’s Jack Steward missed a potential game-tying three on the next possession and Kempton won a jump ball to seal the game. Scadlock led the Ephs with 15 points and 7 rebounds. Babek turned in perhaps the most clutch performance of his career with 12 points off the bench. With the win, the men advanced to an Elite Eight matchup with Christopher Newport, who edged out host Hamilton 75-67 in its Sweet 16 contest. Both coming off hardfought victories, the Ephs and the Captains struggled to find any rhythm on the offensive end at the beginning of the game. After Karpowicz finished a layup inside to col-
lect the game’s first points, the Captains reeled off an 8-2 run to build a lead they would not relinquish for the remainder of the game. Though the men struggled to take care of the ball, solid shooting, together with a strong individual effort from Scadlock, helped the Ephs stay within 7 points throughout the half. With 2:33 remaining, Casey had two free throw attempts to tie the game at 28 but missed the second. The Captains took a 32-30 lead into the break. After both teams missed on their first attempts of the second half, Christopher Newport guard Tyler Femi drilled a 3 to put the Captains up 35-30. That basket set the tone for the rest of the half as the Ephs suddenly found themselves facing a growing deficit. The men almost clawed their way back into the game when Soto drilled a 3 from the top of the key to bring the score to 46-43, but Captains guard Jason Aigner responded with a 3 of his own to push their lead back to six. A layup by Carter, who finished with a game-high 27 points, extended Christopher Newport’s lead to 13 at 67-54. By the time Casey hit his first 3 of the game to narrow the deficit to six at 76-70, there were only 18 seconds remaining, and it was too late. “I thought we gutted it out and found ways to make some runs,” App said after the game. “But they answered every time, and they did a great job of handling our runs.” Casey finished out his college career with 18 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists. Scadlock added 13 points and 9 rebounds. “We knew it was going to be a complete contrast from yesterday,” said App. “But that’s what makes this tournament so fun.” The six seniors concluded their college careers with a record of 84-32 (.724), which included two trips to the Elite Eight (2017 and 2019), a trip to the Final Four (2017) and a NESCAC title (2018). Casey and Heskett were named to 2018-2019 All-NESCAC first and second teams, respectively, for the second consecutive season.