March 15, 2017: CC rejects censure, issues warning for Cap & Bells

SPORTS P. 12

ARTS P. 8

Elle Movie Review

VOL. CXXXI, NO. 17

Men’s hoops advances to Final Four

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2017

CC rejects censure, issues warning for Cap & Bells

By FRANCESCA PARIS COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Last night, College Council (CC) voted 23–2 in favor of issuing a formal warning to Cap & Bells, the College’s only studentrun theatre group, for 18 months.

The warning will include an educational component, the nature of which CC has not yet clarified.

Prior to the CC meeting in Paresky Auditorium, the Office of Student Life (OSL) had sanctioned Cap & Bells by forbidding alcohol at its registered or unregistered events until July 2018.

The sanction also requires the organization to add a clause to its constitution encouraging alcohol and bystander training for its members.

Before approving the formal warning, CC voted 20–5 to reject a recommendation from CC’s Student Organization Sanctions Committee (SOSC) for a censure. The censure would have prevented Cap & Bells from receiving funding during the subgroup allocation process and required the group to request supplemental funding, delaying budget submission by at least two weeks. SOSC brought the recommendation to CC after hearing charges brought against Cap & Bells by OSL regarding an incident on the evening of March 4. Two students at a party registered to Cap & Bells required hospitalization, according to the charges, one of whom was in a serious state of alcohol intoxication and required resuscitation.

Madeline Seidman ’17, Cap & Bell’s artistic director, registered the party in question as a basic

event with no alcohol but was not in attendance due to medical reasons. According to the charges, 12 students attended the event, including one Cap & Bells board member, and hard alcohol was present. Attendees described the event as a cast party for a Cap & Bells performance.

According to CC bylaws, a formal warning serves as a mechanism by which CC can express disapproval of a student organization’s actions and “forestall future violations.” Though the administration has final say in disciplinary action, it does not appear likely to take such action.

“The Dean’s Office did not take disciplinary action against Cap & Bells and did not initiate any process that would result in suspension of the organization,” Rachel Bukanc, senior associate dean of the College, said in an email.

Maria Fernanda Heredia ’20, chair of SOSC and vice president for student organizations, opened the meeting by stating that SOSC’s recommendation was based solely on the alcohol infraction.

“The case will be looked [at] under the disciplinary implications of the events of March 4,” she said, “and not on the organization’s moral or community impact. SOSC does not base [its] decision on the number of infractions but on the severity of the events in question.”

In the time allotted for open comment, several members of Cap & Bells argued that the censure was not a fair punishment for an umbrella organization with 100 to 200 members, including all students who have

Faculty elects to eliminate high pass

By GIOVANNI DIRUSSO STAFF WRITER At the faculty meeting on March 8, the faculty voted overwhelmingly to eliminate the “high pass” grade for the Winter Study term, beginning with Winter Study 2018. This will change the possible grades for Winter Study to “pass,” “perfunctory pass,” and “fail.” The motion passed by a vote of 68-2.

The decision was made in response to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC)’s recent correction of a policy to convert three-pass grading systems into grade points.

This would make the “pass” grade worth 3.0 grade points, which would negatively affect the GPAs of many students applying to law schools. Although the rule had been on the LSAC’s books since 1970, it was only implemented this year, when it was discovered during an internal audit of the council, according to Barbara Casey, registrar of the College. A change back to a two-pass grading system will mean that future Winter Study grades are not included in students’ GPAs as calculated by LSAC. While the LSAC decision provided the impetus for the change, the faculty had a larger discussion about whether any benefit actually came from having that grading option, which guidelines suggested should be given to fewer than one in 10 students. “The Committee on Educational Affairs [CEA] had a general discussion on whether the High Pass was benefitting students in any way … the answer was no,” Casey said.

Faculty also had concerns about the way in which the high pass interacted with the intent to have Winter Study be a time focused on exploration rather than grades and performance. “There was tremendous inconsistency as to how the high pass was assigned, from year to year and from class to class … Having the high pass in some ways made Winter Study feel like a regular semester class, and what we wanted to do was to encourage students

to try something they might not otherwise try, including something that might be challenging,” David Edwards, professor of anthropology and chair of the CEA, said.

The CEA opted to propose cutting the high pass grade instead of the perfunctory pass grade because of the value the latter has for analyzing students’ academic standing.

“The Committee on Academic Standing [CAS], when it deals with students having academic difficulty, was finding that there were cases where [it] got a better understanding of the situation students were in, when they were getting in trouble during Winter Study,” Edwards said. Indeed, during the faculty meeting, Professor of Statistics Richard De Veaux cited recent cases in which the perfunctory pass option has helped the CAS to assess a student’s academic standing at the College.

The three-pass system was conceived of in the mid1990s, in an effort to make Winter Study more rigorous. This revision saw the addition of the high pass and perfunctory pass grades.

“Winter Study as a whole was being reviewed … there was general concern that students weren’t taking it as seriously as some faculty hoped,” Casey said.

The new Winter Study grading system will not apply retroactively, and student GPAs, for LSAC purposes, will still include grades that were earned under the three-pass system.

Retroactively changing grades would contravene both LSAC policy in calculating GPAs and College policy on allowing instructors independence in assigning student grades.

The College is continuing negotiations with LSAC, however, in hopes that it might reconsider its retroactive application of the conversion policy to students applying to law school from the College before the new policy takes effect in 2018.

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JUNE HAN/PHOTO EDITOR

College Council members listen to comments at their Tuesday hearing in Paresky auditorium regarding the sanctioning of Cap & Bells. participated in a performance.

Others argued that a censure would stifle Cap & Bells’ financial ability to put on plays, violate the spirit of medical amnesty rules and disproportionately harm a space for students of identities traditionally marginalized on campus.

Devyn Hebert ’17, general manager of Cap & Bells, said that a censure would significantly impact funding, as play rehearsals

cannot begin before the organizations has purchased the rights.

As a result, delaying funding by two weeks would cut significantly into Cap & Bells’ fall season.

Robert Hefferon ’18, technical director of Cap & Bells, pointed out that the College’s “Code of Conduct” extends medical amnesty to student organizations as well as individuals. Medical amnesty grants protection from disciplinary

action to an individual or group that seeks medical attention for themselves or another person.

“Disobeying the existing medical amnesty policy destroys students’ faith in the system,” Hefferon said, “and decreases the chance that students in other organizations will alert CSS of unsafe incidents involving alcohol in the future.”

CC co-President Web Farabow ’18 informed the audience that

CC is not bound by medical amnesty. Various council members, however, argued that CC should follow the spirit of the policy, so as not to discourage groups from registering parties and calling for help in the future.

Cap & Bells supporters, as well as members of CC, also argued that the issue was fundamentally an issue of diversity and equality.

SEE CC, PAGE 5

College announces commencement speakers, honorary degrees

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN NEWS EDITOR Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will be the speaker for the College’s commencement on June 4. A Nigerian-American writer, Adichie is best known for her works Americanah, We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Billy Collins, a former U.S. poet laureate and distinguished professor at the City University of New York, will speak the day prior at the Baccalaureate service.

Adichie and Collins will both receive honorary degrees from the College, as will Will Dudley ’89, Gina McCarthy and Gavin Schmidt.

Adichie is a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Grant,” recipient, and she has also garnered acclaim for her widely viewed TED talks, “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists,” upon which one of her books is based.

In 2013, Adichie received a U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for Americanah, which was a New York Times Top Ten Best Book of the Year. She received her B.A. from Eastern Connecti-

WHAT’S INSIDE

cut State, her M.F.A. from Johns Hopkins and her M.A. from Yale.

A member of the American Academy Arts and Letters, Collins has published works, including Aimless Love, The Trouble with Poetry and Questions About Angels.

Collins holds a B.A. from Holy Cross and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside.

Dudley, the current president of Washington and Lee University, served as the College’s provost from 2011 to 2016 and taught in the philosophy department from 1998 to 2011. He is also the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Dudley’s works include Understanding German Idealism and Hegel, Nietzsche and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom. He received his B.A. in mathematics and philosophy from the College and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Northwestern.

McCarthy served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2013 to 2017 and, prior to that, as the assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation from 2009

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will speak at commencement in June. to 2013. She has also served as the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and deputy secretary of the Massachusetts Office of Commonwealth Development.

She holds a B.A. from University of Massachusetts at Boston and a M.S. from Tufts.

Schmidt is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he oversees and conducts climate, oceanographic and atmospheric research. He

is well-known for his work in communicating scientific findings to the larger community, with works including Climate Change: Picturing the Science, and was the recipient of the inaugural American Geophysical Union Climate Communication Prize. He received a B.A from Oxford and a Ph.D. from University College London.

The College will award these honorary degrees at its 228th Commencement on June 4.

BILLY COLLINS, GINA MCCARTHY, GAVIN SCHMIDT AND WILL DUDLEY ’89 (CLOCKWISE) WILL RECIEVE HONORARY DEGREES

3 OPINIONS

Reflecting on queer culture on campus

5 NEWS

Student survey on the most and least rigorous majors

7 FEATURES

An Eph’s guide to off-campus housing

8 ARTS

Review of End Game: Afghanistan Photo Exhibition

11 SPORTS

Alison Swain ’01 and a tennis legacy built to last

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2 OPINIONS

The Williams Record

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Aligning the punishment with the offense

In considering the possible censure of Cap & Bells by CC, we believe that CC members should vote against censuring the group.

The nature of the incident was serious and should be addressed with fair consequences for both the individuals and organization leadership involved. Censuring the entire group, however, would fail to improve alcohol safety on campus and would needlessly punish a valuable artistic outlet for students. Cap & Bells is a crucial means of student artistic expression and serves as a community for students interested in theater. Cap & Bells has valid concerns about the outsized impact of a censure, as the timing of budget allocation can limit the group’s ability to plan productions far enough in advance.

This is particularly important in the purchase of rights to plays, which must occur significantly ahead of when they will be performed. Delaying Cap & Bells ability to get funding for student art would not address alcohol safety and would penalize all the students involved in the group, including those absent from the event and students who will join over the next 18 months, including members of the Class of 2021.

The discussion of Cap & Bells’ value as an organization prompted

Opposing a censure and calling for greater transparency by the possibility of censure, while valid, detracts from the problem this disciplinary action should try to solve: making students behave more safely. Censuring an entire group for the mistakes of a few is not a punishment that fits the offense, nor would it improve campus culture. The penalties already imposed by OSL – requiring alcohol and bystander training for all of Cap & Bells’ leadership, and forbidding alcohol at Cap & Bells parties until July 2018 – adequately sanction the organization for misleading Campus Safety and Security about the presence of alcohol at the party, having hard alcohol there, failing to monitor the event and creating a dangerous situation. The individuals involved should be held accountable, but this incident need not affect the whole organization. Furthermore, if CC censures Cap & Bells, this incident could discourage students from registering parties in the future to protect their organizations should anything go wrong, further detracting from alcohol safety.

This case raises important questions about the College’s treatment of student groups as the target of censures. It remains unclear what OSL determines to be a group event rather than simply a group

Word on the Quad Which department would win in a dodgeball match?

By JANETH RODRIGUEZ PHOTO EDITOR

March 15, 2017

of friends. In a small community, many students are part of overlapping groups. Hypothetically, if a group of a few students from the same Williams Outdoor Orientation for Living as First-years (WOOLF) group is caught drinking, the entire Williams Outing Club, which includes every student who has ever participated in WOOLF, could be sanctioned. On what grounds, then, is the decision made to sanction a whole organization?

The basic events guidelines on the College’s website state: “Sanctions for individuals and groups running unsafe events will be meaningful, significant, transparent and uniformly applied.” This incident is evidence to the contrary – in addition to confusion about the distinction between individual and group responsibility, there is no transparency about OSL’s decision to bring charges to SOSC, nor SOSC’s decision-making processes. There are no standards determining how SOSC recommends sanctions, detracting from its ability to apply them uniformly.

To increase transparency, safety and student wellbeing, OSL, with student input, should clearly state what constitutes a group event. Furthermore, SOSC should clarify the standards for the sanctions they rec-

ommend. Having mutually agreed upon expectations would make consequences more fair and conducive to the goal of preventing unsafe situations. Better communication and accountability between College authorities and students will help to create a safer community while still encouraging student creativity and passion.

The following commentary serves as an addendum to the above editorial, taking into account new developments.

In light of CC’s decision last night not to censure Cap & Bells but instead issue a formal warning, the Record stands by its original recommendation and commends CC for rendering a thoughtful, holistic judgment. In deciding against a censure, CC recognized the need to respond to the violations of Cap & Bells that dutifully considered what would most bolster safer drinking while not punishing those who were in no way responsible for the conduct that prompted OSL to bring charges to SOSC. The formal warning, we hope, will allow for Cap & Bells to reflect on how to maintain a safe internal culture while not interfering with its ability to produce theater for the community and provide a supportive environment for thespians on campus.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE MIDTERMS WEEK

A great speech awaits!

Raise your hand if you're actively avoiding work.

DAVID GORETSKY ’20

"Geosciences."

LETTER TO THE EDITOR To the editor:

KATHERINE BLAKE '19

"Math."

DG PARK ’18

"Econ."

DIANA SANCHEZ ’17

"Physics."

The Record’s two-part series on gender disparities (“Examining the gender disparity across academic fields at the College,” March 1, 2017, “Computer science addresses gender disparity,” March 8, 2017) was poorly reported at best. The article last week mentioned only one student organization working on these issues and, even then, did not substantively examine the group’s efforts or the complexities of their work. The Record pitched this series as a comprehensive “closer look” at the gender disparity in STEM, investigating student efforts on campus, yet this article did not include an interview with a single current Williams student. Where are the student voices the Record promised?

How does interviewing one professor and one former student (in only one of the five fields the Record initially mentioned) constitute a thorough look at student and administrative work in addressing the gender gap?

Underrepresented Identities in Computer Science (UnICS) is far from the only student group working on issue of minorities in STEM. The AWM (Association for Women in Mathematics), BSTEM (Black Students in STEM) and Women and

Gender Minorities in Physics and Astronomy are three active student organizations that have made considerable efforts within and across their respective departments. Failing to reach out to any of these organizations constitutes a major deficit in the Record’s reporting. Speaking as the board of the AWM, we have collaborated with all of these groups and can attest to the significant efforts made by all to promote underrepresented students in STEM. In focusing solely on UnICS without even mentioning these other groups, the Record failed to report the full scope of work done by student groups in STEM at the College. It perpetuates the marginalization of the very issues that such groups are trying to make visible and to combat.

Even the discussion of UnICS lacks crucial details and ignores current efforts. The article seems more concerned with recording an interview with one computer science professor than examining and discussing the efforts that UnICS has made. Most notably, the article excluded any discussion of the challenges the group has faced and the concrete steps it is taking. Combating gender disparity in STEM requires substantial structural changes beyond dinners and panels.

As officers of AWM, we know that pushing for change in departments is not a straightforward process, and the Record’s failure to report this gives a dangerously misleading impression of linear progress.

Part of our project with the AWM is to discredit forms of advocacy for

underrepresented students that rely on reductive progress narratives. For example, some forms point to the existence of student groups as a sign of improvement without acknowledging that structural disadvantages are what necessitate these groups. Their existence means that students are performing extra labor in an attempt to compensate for institutional failings.

Not only did the Record fail to reach out to any other student groups, but they did not reach out to any current students; only former students and professors are mentioned. Given that this article could have been published at any time (issues of gender disparities in STEM are not going away anytime soon), did the Record really not have the time to reach out to current leadership?

The only reasonable conclusion one can reach is that the Record failed to investigate the issue thoroughly. The Record should not claim to be writing a “series” on gender disparity without any serious effort to engage in the gravity and complexity of the issue. For the sake of the College and the students affected by these issues on a daily basis, we can only hope its reporting will be more thorough in the future.

The AWM Board Nina Pande ’17 Kiran Kumar ’18 Sarah Fleming ’17.5 Vidya Venkatesh ’17 Sumun Iyer ’18 Megumi Asada ’17

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

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

Submissions should be sent to amm16@williams. edu by Sunday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Op-eds range in length from 700900 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.

KEVIN SNYDER '09

Where the queers at?

The es imo

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

March 15, 2017

o a a , lac

R You probably know me as the loud, tall black boy who wears booty shorts and crop tops and is always, always ready to “throw that a** in the circle” at your Caucasian parties. Hi! My name is Quess, and, yes, you assumed correctly!

I indeed am shamelessly homosexual.

I’m an unapologetic and uncommon gay Afro-Puerto-Rican 18-year-old boy from New York.

From the moment I soared out of the closet at 13 years old, I knew my queer spirit could not be tamed. I wear my queerness loudly and proudly every single day because I’ve had to deal with the hardships of being queer all my life. I was severely bullied for being gay since the age of eight, before I even knew what “gay” meant. My “friends” and immediate family members jeered at me because, to them, the way I spoke and carried myself was overtly feminine and thus “gay.”

And gay is especially not okay in the hood.

As an out, gay, black boy at a predominately white high school, I faced constant rejection and erasure from white queers. When I tried creating my own group for queer students of color, a white queer faculty member actively tried to stop me. He, and many others, didn’t want me to have space for my queerness. Ultimately, all of the hatred I’d encountered against my queer identity only fueled the immense pride that I have for it. I became louder and more public about my queerness. I learned to love the skin I’m in and embrace my black queerness to the absolute fullest.

Naturally, when I came to college, I hoped for a stronger queer community.

I hoped for romantic prospects. I hoped for other queer students that I could befriend and have meaningful discussions with. I hoped for people who would affirm my black queerness and make me feel loved and welcome to Williams. I hoped to be seen, to be validated and to be appreciated for who I am.

Apparently, I was asking for too much.

What I got instead were racist messages on Grindr from 45-year-old Trumpsupporting white men that wanted to fetishize my black body: “Go back to Africa, but suck my cock first.” What I got instead were threatening and smug looks from white male athletes at Hoxsey Street parties. What I got instead were many matches with guys on Tinder

Finding home at the College

orric a

c i ism, disco rse a d e era i e s aces

who go to Williams, and yet when they pass me in Paresky act as if they’ve never seen me before. What I got instead were a bunch of quiet, queer white folks who passively disapprove and ridicule my black queer pride as “extra.”

When my friends from other colleges ask me, “What’s the queer community at Williams like?” I genuinely don’t how to respond. I question if there even is a “queer community” here. The word “community” for me implies a sense of unity, friendship and widespread love.

That just doesn’t exist for queer people here, at least not for me. For a liberal arts school that prides itself on LGBTQ inclusivity, queerness is neither visible nor celebrated at Williams. It is simply tolerated. Additionally, queerness here isn’t all that inclusive of queer students of color. There aren’t that many spaces or opportunities on campus for queer students of color to connect and celebrate one another.

I acknowledge that everyone embraces their queerness differently.

Not everyone is going to be as vocal about it as I often am. Even in college, it is still tough to come into and embrace one’s LGBTQ identity publicly. Everyone is figuring themselves out, and people do that in different ways. There’s no one way to “act” queer. But as a loud gay black man, I feel so acutely aware of being queer on this campus. It feels like a one-man pride parade for me here because there is no sense of pride between Williams’ queer students. Queer people simply exist here.

They don’t have a vibrant or even noticeable presence.

One night, after an awful party at 66 Hoxsey St., I came back to my room feeling miserable because I was afraid that I’ll never find a space for my queerness in this school. But I realized that I don’t need to ask for space for my identity; I can demand it. I won’t allow my negative experiences here to make me less prideful or happy. I will not let the queer scene here define me or make me feel undesirable and unworthy of attention. My queerness matters, regardless of whether the Williams community chooses to reject or stigmatize it. Williams will never make me any less proud to be a loud queer.

I feel so acutely aware of being queer on this campus. It feels like a one-man pride parade for me here.

R

R

It was a brisk Wednesday morning. I knew I would regret my fuzzy sweater, due to the fickle nature of North Carolinian weather. Soon, the drums and bells arrived; a thunderous activist beat leading community members as they marched into city offices. I had come home to a flurry of action around a coalition called Greensboro Operation Transparency, started by folks concerned with police brutality, accountability and transparency. Activism has deep roots in Greensboro, the place of the first historic sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement.

Greensboro, N.C., is home.

At the College, students have organized and rallied together under the Coalition for Transparency and Accountability (CTA). Last fall, over 40 student organizations signed a proposal that aimed to improve transparency and accountability from the Board of Trustees and our administration.

It states, “This proposal is left as a framework rather than a complete plan of action so that students, trustees, faculty, staff and alumni can together develop it into an actionable long-term agreement.” In an open letter, (“An open letter from the Board of Trustees,” Nov. 16, 2016) the Board and President Adam Falk rejected every single point.

The College is a hub for the economic and intellectual elite yet, despite our many resources and excellent quality of education, we often get stuck on – or simply don’t have – conversations that critically engage the institution or its history. Our history is the framework within which we understand the present moment. And when student activ-

ists point this out, our activism isn’t seen as a valid means of expression, of civic engagement.

The College, too, is home; or at least I would like it to be.

When CTA proposes the beginning of a dialogue and is promptly shut down by administrative bodies that sends a message to us.

When posters for the Rename Horn Hall event are torn down, when folks are told to take down pictures of students involved in protest, when students are told to stop tweeting criticisms of the administration, it sends a message to us.

It tells us that our struggles are not important. It tells us that we should be grateful just for receiving a response. It tells us that dialogue and discourse that is truly generative and aimed at building relationships and community is not as honored as the reputation of this institution.

Let me clarify: When I refer to generative dialogue and discourse, I am not talking about allowing space for homophobic, sexist white supremacists to spew refuted pseudo-facts. Generative dialogue is a place of building, of discussion, of imagining new alternatives.

It does not begin with assumptions that some of those at the table as less human. It is generative to interrogate how white supremacy is constructed, perceived and empowered by actions or institutions. It is traumatic and violent to question the humanity of any person.

That Wednesday in Greensboro, I saw seven community members stand peacefully as cops tied their wrists together and escorted them out of the City Manager’s office. They were charged with trespassing in City Hall, a public building.

Although I knew this risk in this “People’s Document Search” and symbolic action to release the files of a dismissed case of police brutality, it still stunned me. The City of Greensboro preferred to jail its citizens rather than hold an open conversation with the 70 concerned community members present that day demanding answers.

I am not the College, but I am at the College for the time being. Williams College is an institution of higher learning, and what we learn and do, we will take and apply it to our work back home and beyond. And vice versa.

The College was not made for me. But then again, neither was Greensboro.

The College has made some accommodations for me, but every day I am reminded that I am not the College.

But the activist and the optimist in me refuses to give up on the College, on Greensboro, on this country, even when I am utterly depressed and distressed by it.

There is much talk about resistance and protest, but as organizer Kali Akuno and journalist Debbie Bookchin pointed out in talks they gave on campus, there is no talk about building alternatives. What would society look like without the systems that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency? Our engagement, our critiques and our political education are more important today than ever.

Transparency and accountability are integral to the building of a community, a sense of home. Without it, the project remains incomplete.

Valeria Sosa Garnica ’19 is from Greensboro, N.C. She lives in Faye.

Quess Green ’20 is from Bronx, N.Y. He lives in Armstrong.

Philanthropy and naming res o se o calls or re ami M There has been considerable discussion recently about the principle of naming buildings at Williams.

Here is how I see the issue: we are the college we are because of the generosity and loyalty of alumni, parents and friends of the college. Current gifts and our endowment – the result of more than two centuries of philanthropy – together provide roughly two-thirds of the funds required to run the College every year.

Each of us gains from this support: through Williams’ broad range of academic and campus life programs; through access to great faculty; through research experiences, offcampus study options, service learning and career development opportunities; and through the exceptional buildings in which we learn, live, eat, study and play.

Every student who comes to Williams contributes significantly, in their own terms, to the cost of their education. And, thanks to donors, every single student receives, in return, a more extensive and expensive education than we charge for. In short, the Williams we experience is only possible because someone else helped pay for it.

As beneficiaries of such generosity, we want to show our gratitude.

We do so, in part, by publicly naming professorships, scholarships, spaces and buildings in donors’ honor. The namings also remind current and future generations that the opportunities we enjoy were given to us by others.

We name things for other reasons, too. Sawyer Library, Chandler Gymnasium, the Oakley Center, Schapiro, Griffin and Hopkins Halls all honor past presidents. Legendary faculty – Fred Rudolph, James MacGregor Burns ’39, Fred Schuman, to name a few – are recognized by professorships bearing their names. Still, there is a long tradition at Williams, as at most colleges, of naming build-

or

all

ings for the philanthropists who made them possible. Chapin, Stetson, Paresky, Hollander, Bronfman, Thompson, Lee – the names on these facilities, so central to our lives, honor their donors. So, of course, does the name of our college itself honor the gift of Ephraim Williams.

To acknowledge gifts in this manner is not to devalue other ways in which people contribute to the life of the College – we have many ways of saying thank you. Nor does it suggest that donors are free of fault. To thank someone is not to deify them.

It is simply to thank them.

And this brings me back to the recent discussion about the naming of Horn Hall, which was built with the aid of a generous gift from Joey Horn ’87 and Ragnar Horn ’85. Our first new residence hall in 40 years, Horn Hall is home to 60 students.

Next year it will host another 60. The year after that, another 60. Williams is much better because of what the Horns have given us.

Nor have their gifts been solely financial; Ragnar has been supporting Williams as a volunteer since he graduated more than 30 years ago.

Joey, too, has served with distinction as an alumni volunteer and then a trustee for eight years, during which she, and her fellow board members, helped the College flourish, becoming the place it is today. Over those same years, the Horns have also mentored numerous students and encouraged diverse faculty members to do their most ambitious teaching and research.

Each of us chose to come to Williams, a college built with the time and money and labor and love of thousands of alumni, faculty, staff and friends over more than two centuries. Namings at Williams serve as a reminder that every one of us, human as we are, is capable of great selflessness and generosity.

Adam Falk is the president of the College and professor of physics.

SARAH SCIRÉ ’20

Leaving behind the gender binary Tho h s o

he rece

R When I got to Williams, one of the first things I fell in love with was the entry system. I loved my roommate, was obsessed with my Junior Advisors (JAs) and felt like my entry was my family. But when I got to Williams, I also realized that the entry system was going to fall short for me in one very important way. I had recently begun questioning my sexual orientation, and while I knew my JAs and entrymates would be supportive while I tried to figure everything out, I didn’t feel like I knew anyone who would understand what I was going through.

I didn’t have a JA to turn to who had been through something similar, and even if I had known other first-years who may have understood, I was too new to be comfortable talking to them.

Two years later, as a JA, I faced a similar challenge. While I had come out privately to many of my closest friends, my sexual orientation was by no means a public thing. But as a JA, I felt like it was the right time to really come out. I wanted to be genuine with my first-years, but I didn’t want them to have to keep my secret. Once again, there were very few people in the entry system that I could turn to. I knew of only one or two JAs in my class or the class above me who identified as something other than straight, and their situations were not very applicable to mine. So once again I found myself facing a difficult situation largely on my own. For the second time, I felt let down in a small but important way by the entry system.

My experience as a questioning firstyear, and then a non-straight JA, has made me believe that the diversity of the JA class is paramount to the success of the entry system. Diversity is imperative in ensuring that as many first-years as possible feel comfortable

ra s orma io o he e r s s em

at Williams and feel that they have someone to turn to who can understand whatever it is that they may be facing in life. My first-year experience would have been very different if I had known of an LGBT JA I could talk to.

But a diverse JA class does not only benefit the first-years; it benefits every JA as well. I can’t help but think that my coming out experience as a JA would have been easier if I had been able to turn to other JAs who had come out to their first-years. And as a JA trying to support 14 to 30 first-years from many different backgrounds, it can only help to have other JAs to turn to who have had different life experiences than your own.

For this reason, I am generally in support of the recent change to the JA selection and co-pair process. I think that shifting away from the gender binary aspects of the JA system will generally help increase diversity and inclusivity in the JA class, which will then positively affect the first-year experience. If this change makes more first-years feel welcome and supported in their entries and allows for a more diverse and qualified JA class to assist each other and their first-years, then that certainly justifies the change.

And I think that for the most part, this added potential for diversity outweighs any potential negative consequences of the change. There is one concern, however, that I feel is important to consider. That concern centers around the very theme of this op-ed: diversity. While I was not shocked to hear that the JAs to the Class of 2021 were not evenly split 26-26, I was a little concerned to hear that accep-

tances were sent out to almost twice as many women as men. While I don’t think that a successful entry system needs opposite-gender JA co-pairs, I do think that a successful entry system needs diversity and that includes diversity of gender. Just as it is important that the JA class has diversity in race, sexual orientation, gender identity and socio-economic status, among other things, so too is it important that the JA class has diversity in gender.

The approximate two to one ratio in JA acceptances is too lopsided in my opinion and the Junior Advisor Advisory Board and the JA Selection Committee should be careful to not let it become even more lopsided in the years to come, a task that may prove difficult. Firstyears may come to see the JA position as a female position, leading fewer and fewer male candidates to apply. So, while I don’t think that we need an even number of male and female JAs, or male-female copairs, I think it would be a great disservice to the entry system if we ever reached a day where there were 40 or 50 female JAs, no matter how qualified they were.

Just as I was hurt by a lack of LGBT JAs, so too am I confident that there will be incoming first-years who we risk hurting through a lack of male JAs. Diversity is essential to a functioning and thriving entry system, and moving toward an increasingly female JA class — a likely result of this change — will limit rather than increase the diversity of the group.

My first-year experience would have been very different if I had known of an LGBT JA I could talk to.

Eva Fourakis ’16 was a mathematics and psychology major from Madison, Wis. She currently lives in Princeton, N.J.

4 NEWS

The Williams Record

March 15, 2017

Devadoss, White debate the role of God and religion in a liberal arts education

By WILLIAM NEWTON NEWS EDITOR Last Thursday, the Veritas Forum hosted a discussion on religion in Griffin Hall titled “Does God Belong in the Liberal Arts?” The conversation, moderated by Professor of Physics Frederick Strauch, featured former College math professor Satyan Devadoss, a Christian, and Professor of Philsoophy Alan White, who is non-religious.

Devadoss began the discussion with a presentation, arguing against the widely-held perception that math and science focus on truth and objectivity while humanities focus on subjectivity and emotion.

“The world is tilted to think math and science have a monopoly on truth,” Devadoss said.

He continued to argue that all disciplines have an equal claim to reason and truth, before explaining his reasoning for believing in God. A Christian God, he claimed, did not add another element to reality that severely complicated the world but rather made the world simpler in a way that is difficult to see. He then clarified that his Christian faith did not stem from a desire to be emotionally satisfied but rather only from his desire to better understand reality.

In addition, he argued that

JUNE HAN/PHOTO EDITOR

Alan White, Frederick Strauch and Satyan Devadoss spoke on the proper role of God and religion in a liberal arts education.

Christianity acknowledges the chaos of the world in a way that other religions do not. “I think the Christian faith captures the mess of reality,” Devadoss said.

White, who grew up in a Christian family but quickly became non-religious, first became fixated on the idea of God’s role in a philosophical context when he began searching for a systematic philosophy. In 2003, he began collaborating with Lorenz Puntel, a well-regarded German philosopher, in the hopes of finding

a singular philosophical framework that can explain reality.

Eventually, he came to the conclusion that the presence of God could actually make the explanation of reality simpler. This realization, he said, caught him offguard as someone who had been non-religious for most of his life.

Still, White said he does not believe that the Christian God fits within the framework of this philosophical god and has yet to find any type of god that would.

Specifically, he does not believe

that there can be an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent god at the same time that so much evil occurs on a regular basis.

“Many of the narratives of the Bible, I find immensely disturbing,” White said. “When I’m trying to find evidence of a God in the Bible, I’m tempted to say that the Old Testament is a different God.” Devadoss countered that God’s seemingly violent actions in the Bible are con-

sistent with him being a loving God. “The fact that God is trying to do these wrathful things is to me a sign of love,” Devadoss said.

Later in the event, Strauch contributed to the conversation by laying out a common counterargument to the necessity of God. “One of the traditional arguments against [the idea] that God is a creator is that the laws of physics could be used to describe creation,” Strauch said.

Devadoss responded that he believes that even within the framework of modern physics, the existence of a Christian God can better explain reality.

Following the moderated portion of the conversation, Strauch invited the audience to ask the speakers their own questions. In response to an audience question about the falsifiability of each of their beliefs, both speakers contended that sufficient evidence could lead them to change their outlook on religion. They both contended, however, that this advance would be very unlikely since any evidence would likely have to be historical.

Later in the question-andanswer session, White had the opportunity to address one of his fundamental arguments against the notion that God has to exist for there to be morality.

“We don’t have to think about God to get to moral truths,” White said. “It’s not just people that grew up in Judeo-Christian communities that are rational; it’s people all over the world.”

At the conclusion of the event, which lasted approximately 90 minutes, representatives of the Veritas Forum collected feedback from students and invited the audience to a reception, giving them an opportunity to interact with the speakers and ask them questions in a more informal setting.

Faculty approve motion changing EDI requirement to DPE starting in 2018

By NEENA PATEL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Last Wednesday, the faculty voted 52-15 to replace the Exploring Diversity Initiative (EDI) requirement in the College’s curriculum with the Difference, Power and Equity (DPE) requirement.

The DPE requirement aims to “provide students with the opportunity to analyze the shaping of social differences, dynamics of unequal power, and processes of change,” according to the motion presented at the faculty meeting.

It also serves to employ “a variety of pedagogical approaches and theoretical perspectives” and “examine themes including but not limited to race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion.”

The ad-hoc EDI committee hoped to revive the pedagogic focus that the EDI requirement originally promised and are seeking to “foster difficult but carefully framed conversations about how difference works and has worked, how identities and power relationships have been grounded in lived experience and how we might both critically and productively approach the question of difference and power.”

The EDI requirement was approved by the faculty in May 2006. The current committee started working in fall of 2015 after Dean of the Faculty Denise

Buell named Professor of History Roger Kittleson the director of EDI and gave him the responsibility of reviewing the requirement. “Based on that review, I was to recommend where we should go with EDI: Keep it as is, replace it with a new requirement or eliminate it altogether,” Kittleson said. The committee reached out to various parts of the College campus and took a closer look at similar requirements on other college institutions.

Last year, the EDI committee consisted of Professor of German and Comparative Literature Gail Newman, Chair and Associate Professor of Asian Studies Li Yu and Chair and Professor of Biology Joan Edwards. Allegra Simon ’18 and Jonathon Burne ’17 served as students on the committee, with Katy Dix ’18 joining in the spring after Burne left to study abroad.

“We held discussions with the Committee on Diversity and Community, the College Council, the co-chairs of the Minority Coalition and the Steering Committee, among other groups, and presented options at a chairs meeting, an associate deans’ forum, one of the open student forums that [Vice President] Leticia Haynes ’99 organized, [lunches for junior faculty] … and a faculty meeting,” Kittleson said.

They also brought in speakers as

part of the EDI speaker series who were experts in the teaching of diversity. Some of these speakers included Professor Jennifer Harvey, a scholar of religion at Drake University; Professor Evelynn Hammonds, scholar of the history of science at Harvard University; and Professor Ellen Berrey, a legal scholar of diversity at the University of Toronto.

This year, the committee has held two faculty forums and presented at two faculty meetings.

“The CEA [Committee on Educational Affairs], the committee I chair, got involved in the discussion starting last year,” Professor of Anthropology David Edwards said. “We served primarily as a sounding board, and we helped craft the language. The EDI committee that Professor Kittleson chaired did the majority of the leg work.”

The motion presented to the faculty read, “We believe that the College can better shape thoughtful citizens by embracing new approaches to ‘diversity’ that go beyond exposure to the variety of human experiences. The requirement we propose will instead foster critical engagement with the practice and experience of difference in our world, especially as it relates to the power dynamics that structure difference.”

“A class will be designated as a DPE class the same way that

W [writing intensive] and Q [quantitative reasoning] courses are presently designated.

There will no longer be a ‘diversity czar’ who vets each and every course,” Edwards said.

The academic departments will be in charge of designating DPE courses and the CEA will have the ultimate authority. “This is primarily a managerial service to make sure that course descriptions and requirements are clearly written and outlined,” Edwards said. “The vetting function will now be handed over to the departments, which is where the CEA felt this function properly belonged.”

Revision options the committee considered included some expansion of a “diversity” requirement, a specific required course such as a first-year seminar, an expansion of the requirement with more than one course, a student-designated requirement where students can petition to have courses meet the requirement, an extracurricular requirement and a complete removal of the requirement, according to the motion.

Professor of History Chris Waters, a former director of EDI, believes that the EDI requirement needs to be reevaluated, but he expressed concerns in faculty meetings as to whether the DPE requirement is the best

way to fix the problems with EDI. “It isn’t clear to me whether or not there are enough guidelines to make that category clear for people developing courses,” Waters said. “The second problem I have with this is that it now leaves it up to departments and individuals to discuss whether their courses will meet this requirement, so there isn’t the kind of oversight that I would have liked to see.”

Ultimately, Waters worries about where DPE will take the College. “I worry that in another few years from now we will have a hodge-podge of courses that may not do the work we want them to do. They may do the work that we want them to do, but I am skeptical,” Waters said.

Waters proposed an amendment that puts the DPE requirement up for review in its sixth year of implementation. This amendment passed at the faculty meeting in a close vote, 35 to 32. Some people expressed the concern that this requirement should be a permanent part of the curriculum, like the writing intensive requirement, but that putting it up for review makes it seem less permanent.

Others supported Waters’s amendment, saying that difference, equity and power are constantly changing and therefore this requirement should be reviewed. “I wanted this to be a

Departments, programs revise course catalog for next year

By FRANCESCA PARIS COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Last Wednesday, the faculty approved changes to the 2017-18 course catalog, including changes to major or concentration requirements for art history, Arabic, philosophy, theatre, computer science, women’s, gender and sexuality studies and global studies. The revised course catalog also includes a new label for linguistics courses.

The art department has altered the introductory-level courses for art history by delinking the ARTH 101 and ARTH 102 sequence and opening up the 100-level requirements. Majors will now need to complete any three of the four 100-level survey courses: ARTH 101 (European and American art, beginning to 1600 CE), 102 (European and American art, 1600 to present), 103 (Asian art) or 104 (African art).

The Arabic program is restructuring the Arabic studies major so that it is more similar to other language majors, by increasing the major from nine to 10 courses, and requiring ARAB 301: Advanced Arabic I and ARAB 302: Advanced Arabic II. The new major will require six language courses and four electives, including one 400-level ARAB course.

Students with advanced standing who enter the College at the 201 level will now gain credit for one course toward the major.

The requirement of additional language courses is a result of increased staffing, according to Professor of German and Comparative Literature Gail Newman, who sits on the Committee on Educational Affairs and serves as coordinator of the Arabic program.

Last year, the Committee on Appointments and Promotions approved a third full-time “line,” or tenure-track faculty member, for the program, which has had two lines since 2004. This allows the program to reliably offer 301 and 302 every year while giving professors flexibility to teach other content.

The program is also altering the requirement for the certificate: the number of required electives will drop from two to one, for a total of seven courses, and students will no longer be required to take a proficiency test.

Courses in any department with a strong linguistic component will now be listed together in the course catalog to guide students with interest in the subject. Linguistics will only be clustered and labeled; students will not be able to major or concentrate.

The impetus stemmed from a survey by the Curricular Planning Committee (CPC) to identify areas of study that were lacking in the curriculum. Many departments mentioned that their faculty were already involved in linguistic work that was not recognized more broadly, according to Newman. The hiring of Professor Lama Nassif, whose courses have expanded the existing linguistics offering within the languages, has also spurred clustering the courses.

“It happened organically,” said Newman. “There’s a critical mass of linguists now in the staff, and CPC’s analysis showed us that we have a cluster’s worth of courses.”

By labeling the courses, the College will be able to record enrollment levels. If interest is high enough, Newman said, “there might be an argument to push for a concentration.”

The philosophy department will loosen its major requirements by only requiring students to take either PHIL 201 (History of Ancient Philosophy) or PHIL 202 (History of Modern Philosophy), rather than both. As the courses are each taught by a faculty member who specializes in that time period, the department has had difficulty staffing the classes when those faculty go on a leave. This change will offer more flexibility for faculty in designing the courses, as well as for students. The department will continue to recommend that students take both courses if possible.

In addition, the theatre department will replace the required THEA 101 with a

new course, THEA 102, which will be cotaught with dance and cross-listed as art.

“We are excited to offer a gateway course that will focus less on dramatic text and a regional theater model, and more on introducing students to the fundamentals of ‘performance’ and ‘time-based art,’ more broadly speaking,” Chair and Associate Professor of Theatre Amy Holzapfel said, The department will also retitle their acting courses to eliminate the perception of a “sequence” through Acting I, II and III. Students will be able to choose from an array of acting courses with a range of focuses, from physical theatre to traditional scene study, according to Holzapfel. The new titles will reflect the content and methods of those classes.

The computer science department will replace MATH 200 with a discrete mathematics proficiency requirement, fulfilled by taking MATH 200 or passing a departmental test. Previously, the department had addressed variability in students’ background with discrete mathematics through ad-hoc advising. The department will also drop the project course elective requirement, giving majors greater flexibility in electives to support a diverse set of interests among students.

The women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) major will add a third required course: WGSS 202 (“Foundations in Sexuality Studies”) in addition to its introductory course and senior seminar.

The Global Studies Advisory Committee will drop the existing colloquium requirement for the global studies concentration.

According to the committee, the requirement did not effectively fulfill the goal of exposing concentrators to a wider array of international experiences and creating a sense of community. Since the colloquium took place during regular class hours, the requirement also placed an extra burden on student schedules.

formal amendment that would indeed be formally required if we voted to accept the new DPE requirement,” Waters said.

The transition from the EDI requirement to the DPE requirement will occur over the course of the next academic year. The EDI requirement will still be in effect for students in the classes of 2021 and earlier. “This year’s CEA will be recommending to next year’s committee that they initiate a discussion with relevant departments to encourage them to consider offering such courses and to monitor how many courses are being prepared for the following academic year in order to ensure that we have a sufficient number,” Edwards said.

“There will be a DPE Coordinator, a faculty member who will organize faculty workshops (perhaps with speakers brought in from other institutions) and other conversations to help faculty design courses that will fulfill the DPE requirement and thus help academic units in their discussions of DPE offerings,” Kittleson said.

Workshops and events for faculty members who want to teach DPE classes will start in next academic year. The new requirement will be in effect in fall of 2018 and therefore the class of 2022 will be the first class to have the DPE as a degree requirement.

JUNIOR ADVISORS TO THE CLASS OF 2021 Jason Adulley

Tucker Lemos

Carol Almonte

Matthew Lennon

Austin Anderson

Emily McDonald

Ari Ball-Burack

Sarah McLaughlin

Olivia Barnhill

Alison McNamara

Lucien Baumann

Jamal Meneide

Tom Benz

Rodsy Modhurima

Masen Boucher

Shahzad Mumtaz

Kai Cash

Kenechukwu Odenigbo

Grace Chamberlin

Zach Ottati

Dana Chung

Harmon Pardoe

Danielle D’Oliveira

Neena Patel

Robert Dulin

Andrea Quintanar

Jesse Facey

James Rasmussen

Grace Fan

Alia Richardson

Caleigh Forbes-Cockell

Morgan Richman

Julie Geng

Anna Ringuette

Ben Gips

Michael Rubel

Jonathan Hall

John Spence

Jad Hamdan

Chrisleine Temple

Morgan Harris

Isabel Torres

Daemyeong Hwang

Julia Vargas

Erin Kennedy

Kyle Walker

Alexandra Krstic

Rainer Wasinger

Kate Latimore

Christopher Zaro

Bryanna Lee

Tesnim Zekeria

March 15, 2017

The Williams Record

Shaggy to headline Spring Fling

Student perceptions of rigor of College majors

By WILLIAM NEWTON NEWS EDITOR Over the course of the last week, the Record conducted a survey asking students about their perception of the most and least rigorous College majors. Out of a randomized 500 students from

PHOTO COURTESY OF IRIEFM.NET

ACE announced that reggae singer Shaggy will headline Spring Fling in Towne Field House on April 7.

By RYAN KELLEY EXECUTIVE EDITOR Last Monday, All Campus Entertainment (ACE) announced via a banner in Paresky that reggae singer Shaggy will headline Spring Fling 2017.

Rapper Jerreau will perform as the opener for the concert, which will take place on April 7 in Towne Field House.

Shaggy is a reggae fusion singer, best known for hit singles “It Wasn't Me,” “Boombastic” and “Angel.” He has released 12 studio albums, with the most recent being Out of Many, One Music in 2013. In 1996, Shaggy won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album with Boombastic. He has also been nominated for five other Grammy awards.

Jerreau just released his debut album Never How You Plan on the streaming service SoundCloud in April 2016. He is best known for his hit single “Really Got It,” which he performed in Cleveland during Game Four of the 2016 NBA Finals.

As ACE co-concert chairs, Elizabeth Sullivan ’18 and Madison Feeney ’19 have the task of signing artists for Spring Fling. Like most years, Sullivan and Feeney began the entire process by asking for student input.

“In the fall, we sent an allcampus email with a focus on personal music choices to get a good sense of what people are listening too,” Sullivan said. “We wanted to give people the opportunity to share their opinion even if they are not on ACE. It’s important for us to collect these responses and analyze them so that we

know what the entire campus is listening to.”

One question asked students to list their ideal Spring Fling headliner. “People do not always understand who we are capable of booking,” Feeney said.

“We wish we could get their favorite artists or the artists they listen to most, like Beyoncé for example, but we don't have financial capacity among other factors,” Sullivan added.

For the last few years, Spring Fling has been free of charge for all students. “CC [College Council] is really generous in the way that [it] prioritizes Spring Fling and understands that a concert of this magnitude does require a big budget," Sullivan said.

Sullivan explained that most schools charge students anywhere from $30 to upwards of $100 to attend their version of Spring Fling.

After receiving results from the survey, ACE began the planning process. “We asked ourselves, what type of events do we think Williams students would want to go to, and we think about which kinds of events have been historically well attended,” Sullivan said.

Both Sullivan and Feeney explained that EDM concerts have been popular and well-attended in recent years.

“People really like EDM because of the atmosphere. We have seen the results. A lot of people will go,” Sullivan said.

“But the focus is less on the artist or the music, and some people think that EDM is just pressing computer buttons.”

This year, ACE received feedback that students were listening to more throwbacks. “The trend

is going back,” Feeney said. ACE reached out to Shaggy and Jerreau this past fall and recently received final signatures from both artists. “[Shaggy] is iconic and easy to listen to,” Sullivan said. “We wanted someone who would fit with a really fun time of year …

I think spring is the best time to be on campus.”

On the other hand, Sullivan encouraged students to come on time to also see Jerreau. “Students will get the opportunity to see someone who is really up and coming,” she said. “LeBron [James] also really likes him.”

Spring Fling, the largest concert on campus each year, will take place in the Field House, which has a capacity of 1200 people, for the second year. In previous years, the concert often took place in Lassell Gym, which only has a capacity of 800. Sullivan and Feeney are also excited that the concert will be on the first Friday after Spring Break. “It will be really nice to set the tone, and hopefully people will get excited,” Sullivan said.

Above all else, Sullivan emphasized that Spring Fling is intended to be different each year. “Every year it varies, but we always take into account as many people’s perspectives as possible. We know that it is impossible to please every student on this campus but we listen to all of the input we receive and we work as hard as we can to use this information to provide students with a concert they can feel happy with.

We also encourage people to come to ACE and be a part of the process if they would like to get more involved.”

CC decides on Cap & Bells sanctioning CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

ciplinary action against student organizations that violate the stipulations listed in the Wil“... [A censure] will further marginalize com- liams Student Handbook, CC policies or both. munities such as queer students and students SOSC is mandated to hear charges brought of color,” Shanti Hossain ’19 said. “This isn’t a against CC-affiliated organizations from stuquestion of how the College deals with alcohol dents, staff or faculty. abuse, but a question of how College Council is The charges against Cap & Bells were intendgoing to be complicit in an institutional culture ed to remain confidential, but members of the that decides who gets in trouble for what and organization publicized the potential censure how … this [censure] will work against the in- over Facebook to galvanize support. terests of marginalized students and for the inSeidman acknowledged that the leadership terests of those groups already prioritized by the of Cap & Bells, including herself, was taking reschool.” sponsibility for the incident.

During the time allotted for CC discussion, “Our organization doesn’t condone this members debated the enforcement role of Coun- kind of behavior,” she said, “and we’ll be strict cil and the extent about alcohol use to which the final in our community decision should in the future.”

“I think ‘protecting the interests of the take into account Following the Cap & Bells’ impact incident, she was community’ is really the key phrase there. on campus, as well called in to testify as its organizationin front of SOSC We can’t look at this in a vacuum.” al structure. along with a wit“This is not what ness from the parwe usually do,” acty. She referred to Michael Rubel '19 knowledged Ben the questioning Gips ’19, vice presias “aggressive.”

CC Vice President for Communications dent for student According to her, affairs. “It’s a very SOSC members different context … usually we’re dealing with made unverified claims, such as accusing Cap cultural changes and policies that will benefit & Bells of using admission money from shows students, not in an enforcement role. It’s not to purchase alcohol, and the report that she renatural to me, I don’t think it’s natural to many ceived from the committee included statements of us, but we have to do it.” to which she and the witness had not testified.

Michael Rubel ’19, vice president for com“The report … said, ‘given the precedent that munications, read from section D, “Disciplinary hard alcohol is acceptable in the organization’s Powers,” in CC’s bylaws. social spaces,’ which neither of us testified to,” “[The section] says that in protecting the in- said Seidman. “We both felt intimidated, misled terests of the community, the Council has the and ultimately misquoted.” right to initiate disciplinary action,” he said. “I She said the members of Cap & Bells tried think ‘protecting the interests of the community’ to convey in the CC meeting that the organizais really the key phrase there. We can’t look at tion’s social structure is grounded in its theatre this in a vacuum.” work, not in alcohol consumption. “[Our work] Former CC President Caitlin Buckley ’17 has created such an incredible community for so pointed out that CC traditionally used censures many people,” she said. “We’re really happy that in cases of offenses that were financial in nature. won’t be dampened in any way, and we’re going SOSC is an ad-hoc CC committee, the mem- to take the OSL probation and formal warning’s bers of which are anonymous, that pursues dis- educational component very seriously.”

NEWS 5

the entire undergraduate student body who received the survey, 109 responded with a confidence interval of 9.2 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. The data shown comes from the average of all students who responded, with the exception of the bottom graph, which was scaled based on class size to reflect averages of each grade.

6 FEATURES

The Williams Record

March 15, 2017

One in Two Thousand educational outreach for people in Guatemala City in this really impoverished area, so I applied for a fellowship. TBD whether I’ll get it.

you don’t have to worry about thinking about who you’re being, or whatever. You can just be yourself. Wow, I sound like such a cliché.

Okay, talk us through it.

How’s lacrosse season?

Do you know where you want to teach after college?

Lacrosse season is great. I just love everyone on the team so much. I feel like I’m in a unique position because obviously everyone on our team gets along.

I’m really lucky in that three of my best friends are on the lacrosse team, so I get to hang out with them all the time. Kate [Pattison ’18] and I actually are with each other for like 24 hours a day.

I was in Buffalo last summer. I worked for Teach for America (TFA) with Carmen Saab [’19].

We had ourselves a time. Yeah – it was great. Except for the fact that she thinks Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is better than Tim Hortons – I just really can’t. That’s disgusting. I love the Bills. I love Tim Hortons.

Let me talk you through it. Little known fact – I’m crazy, not in the way people probably think. You called me an enigma. It’s true.

Okay. Life plan. Graduate from Williams, hopefully. Go abroad and teach for a year or two, come back, possibly do Teach for America or some kind of teaching program. Okay, and this is where it starts to get a little wild.

No one steal this idea, okay? I’m trademarking it. Then I go to teach at a science school or to Germany and study the Kinderwoods Program, which is basically where you send children out to the woods to learn in school. It’s not that unsupervised. It sounds really unsupervised – it’s not. I want to study that, and then my big idea is to figure out a way to integrate the Kinderwoods idea and outdoor education into urban environments – how you give low-income students access to environmental education, stuff like that. Yeah. I’m going to do that probably forever.

What were you doing for Teach for America?

Can you talk about your study abroad experience?

We did a lot of staff work stuff.

It was so much. I mean, it was great. It was the best summer, but a lot of printing things, running around places, doing organizational stuff for them. It was really cool. We know how the organization functions and how it can be very helpful in a place like Buffalo where there’s a ton of poverty.

Yeah, Chile was the best time ever. Let me talk about why I went. I think that was kind of surprising for a lot of people.

By MADDY MCFARLAND EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jenny Roach ’18 styles herself as somwhat of an enigma.

From her love of Buffalo, N.Y., to her dreams of working in environmental education, Roach certainly breaks the mold. This week, the Record sat down with her to learn more about her life.

Okay. I hear you’re from Buffalo, N.Y.?

I am. I think Buffalo’s the best place in the whole world. Everyone should go there. People throw so much shade at Buffalo for no reason. It’s the best place ever. I have a lot of Buffalo pride, but so does everyone from Buffalo.

You worked there summer, right?

last

Would you do TFA after you graduate?

I’m definitely thinking about it.

I think after I graduate I want to teach abroad. That’s kind of my

plan for right now, and then to come back. I think I want to be a teacher when I’m older ... I don’t know. I’m a crazy person, so I actually have a 40-year plan.

That you were going to Chile and not Europe?

Yeah. I took Spanish in high school. I had already been to Spain, so I knew that my parents wouldn’t be totally sold on that idea of me going back to Spain even though it’s obviously a vast country, and I had not seen remotely all of it. My dad was especially resistant to me going abroad, even to going to Chile

JENNY ROACH ’18

How do you feel about our time left and everything?

JANETH RODRIGUEZ/PHOTO EDITOR

HOMETOWN BUFFALO, N.Y.

RESIDENCE POLITICAL IDEOLOGY MORGAN HALL COMMUNISM

because his thought process is basically, you go to the best college in the country, and you’re getting, theoretically, one of the best educations in the world, so why would you miss a semester of that? Part of me going abroad was I had to somehow prove that it was worth missing a semester of Williams, which I think it was.

It was awesome. It was very social justice-y, so basically now I’m a communist. I don’t think communism really works in the real world, but on paper, I’m like, “communism.” I had to look up if people were going to be like, “Oh, this dumb girl thinks that communism is like, the plan.”

But I do think it is! Okay, anyways. I don’t want to give you a whole history of Chile, but basically there’s dictatorship. The U.S. sponsored the dictatorship.

Thousands of people died. It was horrible. The U.S. ... ugh, okay.

Anyway, that was really cool. We spent one week with an indig-

enous group in the north of Chile and two weeks in the south with a different indigenous group, so we got to see how those marginalized communities are affected by the way Chile functions. The big project that we do at the end is an independent study. My independent study changed a lot.

I wanted to study environmental education in Chile, but there is none so you can’t really study that. Instead, I studied groups like Green Peace and how they function. The Chilean government’s pretty dysfunctional.

Basically, my thesis was that even though the government is really dysfunctional, temporarily at least, that benefits the organizations. That was cool. Now I’m pretty fluent in Spanish. I’m hoping to go to Guatemala this summer. A friend of my sister’s is from Guatemala, and she did this program with this group called Safe Passage that does community outreach stuff and

I don’t know. Part of me feels like we still have so much time left.

The fact that we still have half of this semester and a whole year next year – I’m like, that’s a lot of time. Also, it’s a little bit alarming that we’ve already gone through more than half of our college careers. I feel like the thing that makes me saddest is the idea of not being able to see all of my friends every day, slash whenever I want to. [However,] I always think that whenever you start to feel comfortable somewhere, you need to leave. Which is also part of the reason that I wanted to go abroad and also part of the reason I didn’t want to go Europe because I felt like even though I know that going abroad in general is very scary, I kind of wanted to avoid the safety net of being able to see my friends on the weekends and not being completely immersed in a culture. I was really, really, really scared before I went to Chile because I didn’t know anyone on the program, and I was like, “Oh, god.

Are they all going to be weird?”

But then I was kind of excited because I was like, “I’m kind of weird, so maybe this will be fine.”

I like to be around people where

I’d like to go back to South America, mostly because I love speaking Spanish even though it’s really hard for me. You know how there are certain people who are so good at languages, and it just comes naturally to them? I am certainly not one of those people.

Do you have secret talents?

Secret? I can juggle. I have a unicycle that I can kind of ride.

I had a dream of being in the circus someday. Sort of. Well, I still a little bit do. There was actually a girl in my WOOLF [Williams Outdoor Orientation for Living as First-Years] group who went to circus camp, and I was incredibly jealous, so Anna [Harleen, ’18], if you’re reading this...

What would you say is a typical Jenny outfit?

Oh, so my aesthetic is Buffalo leisure wear. That is not self-ascribed. My friends gave me that aesthetic title. I always wear this Bills hat a lot. It’s my favorite hat.

I also have a pair of bright teal Crocs. Also, I have these pants called Zubaz. They’re like zebrastriped pants, and they’re red, white and blue because those are the Bills colors. Sometimes my friends say I can’t go outside in them, but I do … And lacrosse gear. That’s the majority of things I wear – and sneaks. And the L.L.Bean backpack. Yeah. The L.L.Bean backpack, which I’ve had for like six years. L.L.Bean is probably one of my favorite brands, except for the fact that I have to give a little pushback to whatever Trump supports ... grappling with that.

Income tax volunteers provide Hopkins Maplefest is sweet success critical service to community

By WYLIE THORNQUIST STAFF WRITER

By RB SMITH FEATURES EDITOR When students think of Winter Study courses, a wide variety of ideas comes to mind. Some choose to delve into a challenging or unfamiliar academic subject, while others opt for more unorthodox courses like yoga or animal tracking. A select few, however, decide to do taxes.

Although at first glance it may seem like an unbearably tedious endeavor, those students who dare to take Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and decide to use their newfound skills to help the local community soon find an incredibly fulfilling, fascinating and effective mode of community service.

Emily Elder ’20 is one of these students. She initially signed up for the class on a whim – taxes “seemed interesting and practical and a skill I should acquire at some point in my life,” she said. After the course ended, she decided to try volunteering and came to realize the huge effect that volunteer tax assistance had on local residents. “I actually really enjoyed doing it and realized it was a really necessary service for members of the community.” Like many students, she has decided to continue to devote her time to tax work and continues to go into North Adams on Saturdays to provide this crucial service.

Elder is a member of the newest generation in what has become a long-standing tradition at the College. The program was started in 2005 by faculty in the economics department (specifically Professors Sara LaLumia and William Gentry, both of whom specialize in tax policy), the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) under the leadership of its director Paula Consolini and the Berkshire Community Action Council (BCAC), a Pittsfield-based community service organization that deals with countywide poverty issues. These groups got together to start Purple Valley VITA, a non-profit organization

dedicated to using the College’s teers themselves. “It’s material wealth of knowledge and exper- you may not see in textbooks,” tise to directly benefit members Consolini said, referencing the of the local community. Every practical financial knowledge Wednesday evening and Sat- that students acquire by working urday morning of tax season, with individuals on the ground.

Consolini and a small team of Students of economics and pubstudents head into North Adams lic policy are surprised to see that to provide what has become an the theoretical ramifications of invaluable service for members measures that they study in class of the local community. are often different from the ef“I’m particularly pleased this fects they see in the real world. year … In [the] last couple years “It’s a wonderful opportunity to we’ve seen a real increase in stu- learn an awful lot, to gain experdent participation in the course,” tise in an area that’s very valuable Consolini said. “These past few for you to have,” Consolini said. years it’s been right at the max, 13 Robbie Dulin ’19, who took or 14 students.” Of the students the Winter Study course last year who take the course, around six or and is now a student leader on seven will continue volunteering the project, echoed Consolini’s through spring sentiments. semester, with “It really helps four or five stuto pay attendents attendI think it’s important tion to what’s ing each sesgoing on in sion. Despite to get real insight into North Adams their small what people are deal- and our local workforce, communities every year the ing with, learn the because the students serve challenges they face. B e r k s h i r e s , more than 100 unfortunately, local residents. are a disMost of their tressed area,” clients would he said. Like either not seek Elder, Dulin tax assistance signed up for at all and miss the course out on potentially significant re- without many expectations but funds or hire a company like H&R soon realized how invaluable the Block, which will often charge service was. “People generally hundreds of dollars in fees. hear about things that are going “Being an advocate for these on, but I think it’s important to people, being in their corner, is get real insight into what people just a huge service,” Consolini are dealing with, learn the chalsaid. “These are people working lenges they face.” in the part of the economy that Working with Purple Valtends to be the most volatile … ley VITA has opened Dulin’s they experience that economic and other students’ eyes to the churning, and they fall through problems encountered by many the cracks.” Often, clients will members of the Berkshire combe missing out on significant re- munity and the unique ways in funds or making financial deci- which students at the College sions that end up hurting them in can substantially help. Although the long run because of the opac- the small team currently working ity of the tax system. Volunteers, on the project is able to do a lot although by no means tax experts of good on its own, Dulin added after a month-long course, have that it is always welcoming fresh unique access to the educational and interested minds. “I think resources to figure out each indi- this is a great program that peovidual’s unique problem. ple should look into if they’re inThe service, in addition, ends terested in doing this. We would up being a boon to the volun- love to have their help.”

Robbie Dulin ’19

This past Saturday, Hopkins Forest held its annual Maplefest, a celebration of the treats found right here in the New England forests. Open and free to the public, Maplefest has been a day looked forward to by students and families alike for many years. For generations, the late winter sugaring season has been a time for people to come together and cook maple syrup, and every year the Hopkins Memorial Forest does just that on this day of celebration.

Though this year’s festival was a particularly cold one, the usual festivities went on. Attendees enjoyed maple on ice, pancakes and maple syrup taste tests, honoring the old Yankee tradition of producing home-grown sweeteners and inviting other community members to take part in the process. Typically, the best time for syrup producers to tap has been in March; as the days grow longer and warmer, sap begins to flow upward from the sugar maple’s roots to begin to support the newly developing buds. In New England, syrup producers have tapped the same trees for generations, refining the process to arrive at the one used today.

In the sugar house, participants could learn to boil and bottle the syrup themselves,

try their hands at tapping for sap and learn about the historical processes of making maple syrup, overseen by Drew Jones, the manager of Hopkins Memorial Forest. The sugar house used to this day was built by students at the College interested in the process in the mid-1980s in a maple grove used for sugaring ever since. Visitors to the festival had the opportunity to watch and participate in the syrup-cooking process, reducing the sugar maple sap to sweet syrup.

Across from the sugar house, a station was set up by a nearby wooden building where pancakes were cooked by students, oil popping in the cold weather and plates continually filled by hungry visitors. Inside, College students Phacelia Cramer ’19, Max Harmon ’18.5 and Eliza Klein ’19 sat around the wood burning stove drinking hot drinks, eating pancakes and swapping stories about college and family. The three of them had run there together, and another friend of theirs had biked. All expressed their love for the festival, bemoaning the cold and wishing that more people had braved the weather to attend. Others soon took their seats by the fire – mothers with children, outdoor enthusiasts and students alike.

People wore knitted beanies, heavy jackets and thick boots, and children ran up and down

the stairs to the second floor, looking out at the stream and hemlock grove beyond. There was a kind of communal air to the place, as people took time to quietly eat hot food around the warmth or look out at the light flurries outside. Inside the nearby Rosenberg Center, a tree identification station was set up alongside a syrup taste-testing station, where people could learn about syrup making and take a break from the cold outdoors.

Ashok Rai, professor of economics at the College, brought his daughters along to enjoy some sweet treats in the cold at this year’s Maplefest. He said that they have come to Maplefest six or seven times over the past dozen years and that it has become one of his daughters’ favorite events. Yeshe Rai, who is 9, said that her favorite treat there, the maple syrup over ice, reminded her of caramel and made her “think of wanting more of it.” Maple syrup production has a strong tradition in the Northeast and has been a fixture of the College for decades. At this time of year, when spring can feel so far from our grasp, the annual movement of sugar maple sap from deep in the earth to the outermost branches in preparation for new growth is a reminder that we, like the trees, have a period of warmth and growth ahead of us to look forward to.

PHOTO COURTESY OF HOPKINS MEMORIAL FOREST

The pancake tasting station is one of the most popular attractions at Hopkins Forest’s Maplefest.

March 15, 2017

FEATURES 7

The Williams Record

A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO OFF-CAMPUS HOUSING

By MADDY MCFARLAND EXECUTIVE EDITOR The following guide has been constructed mostly with the input of the residents of each house. The final rankings were at the discretion of Maddy McFarland and the board of the Record.

Notes on ranking metrics: Price ranked on a scale of $-$$$$, where $$=the price of on-campus housing; historic party house level, location and overall condition 71 Hoxsey Street (“71”) Capacity: 9 people Price: $$$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore year Historic party house level: 9 Location: 9 Overall condition: 3 Pros: Location, big rooms Cons: Number of bathrooms, slanted floors, random people milling about Superlative: Classic Senior Spot Resident’s thoughts: “There’s no better place to live senior year than on Hoxsey Street, but in 71 that comes at the price of living in squalor and without any sense of personal space outside of your large room, which may cave in at any moment due to the structural unsoundness of the house.”

– Evan Wahl ’17 63 Hoxsey Street (“63”) Capacity: 1-4 people per apartment, 5 apartments = 12 people total Price: $$$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore year Historic party house level: 5 Location: 8 Overall condition: 7 Pros: Common spaces in each apartment, nice living areas, location Cons: Small kitchens and bathrooms Superlative: Up-and-coming Power House

definitely some negative aspects, such as the house being trashed after parties, or certain things breaking in the house, but overall, I love living off-campus with the guys!” – Rohan Shastri ’17 70 Hoxsey Street (“70”) Capacity: 7 (8 beginning next year) Price: $$$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore year Historic party house level: 5 Location: 8 Overall condition: 9 Pros: Big driveway, weekly cleaning service, good party potential, large basement Cons: Expensive oil heating, more expensive house Superlative: Rookie of The Year Resident’s thoughts: “This is the first year that 70 has been open and available to students as an off-campus housing option. It was renovated and redone in the past year. In terms of price, it’s definitely much more expensive than on-campus housing, understandably, but it has been an incredibly worthwhile investment and experience thus far.” – Luke Hinz ’17

Capacity: 3 Price: $$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore fall Historic party house level: 4 Location: 9 Overall condition: 8 Pros: A lot of space for three people, fully furnished, nice furniture, good location Cons: Too much furniture, basement is cramped and has a tendency to flood, animals spotted Superlative: Hidden Gem Resident’s thoughts: “Teal Haus is the place for anyone looking to fully embrace swugdom. A pretty good summary of it is that, to our knowledge, only one man has

JUNE HAN/PHOTO EDITOR

66 Hoxsey Street (“66”) Capacity: 7 Price: $$ Typical lease signing: Freshman year Historic party house level: 9 Location: 8 Overall condition: 3 Pros: Good social scene, feels especially homey Cons: House gets dirty because of parties, possibility of strikes, structural issues with the house, can be loud Superlative: Iconic Social House Resident’s thoughts: “I think living off-campus has been a unique experience.

I love the fact that I’m living with some of my closest friends under one roof. The social scene is awesome, and it’s really just a good time being with the guys. There are

Capacity: 11 Price: $$ Typical lease signing: Freshman spring / Sophomore fall Historic party house level: 7 Location: 4 Overall condition: 5 Pros: Solid living room space, great porch, lovely carpeting Cons: Furthest off-campus house, can be in poor condition from year before Superlative: Most Social Resident’s thoughts: "Living on Meadow Street was not much different from living amongst a large group of friends in the dorms. Although the street is typically associated with hosting larger social gatherings on the weekend, 99 percent of our time in the house was spent as a tight-knit group of guys creating lasting memories." Jonathan Westling '16

Typical lease signing: Freshman winter Historic party house level: 7 Location: 10 Overall condition: 9 Pros: Location, overall condition, size, delicious Asian aromas wafting from the floorboards, very convenient parking Cons: Most expensive option, smaller number of possible roommates Superlative: Reigning Queen Resident’s thoughts: “‘The Apartments Formerly Known as Sushi Thai’ have an ideal location for class, food, sports and more with a great setup and a large, comfortable spawce for both occupants and guests” – Tyler Duff ’17 Amy’s Cottage Apartments (“The Gallery”) Capacity: 2 person upstairs apartment, 3 person downstairs apartment Price: $$

23 Hoxsey Street (“Teal Haus”)

63 Hoxsey Street Resident’s thoughts: “The pros are that living with my best friends has been an incredibly powerful bonding experience that was not possible when our living situations were left to the vicissitudes of the lottery. I like the house itself well enough, but it’s really just been about the people I live with.” – Quentin Cohan ’17

11-13 Meadow Street (“Big Meadow”)

ever lived here in six years, because it’s just too cute for 20-something males. It’s the kind of house that needs pancakes every Sunday.” – Becca Dunwoody ’17 18-20 Meadow Street (“Little Meadow”) Capacity: 7 Price: $$$ Typical lease signing: Freshman spring / Sophomore fall Historic party house level: 8 Location: 4 Overall condition: 8 Pros: Perfect sized home, flipped every year so walls and carpets are redone Cons: Conflict with parties because quiet street, backyard frequently trespassed by other students Superlative: Most Spacious Resident’s thoughts: “I’m incredibly happy that I’m living off-campus. In comparison to living on Hoxsey or on Spring Street, I feel a nice separation from campus. It feels like a real home, and I’m away from school – like an escape sort of thing.

And it’s fun to have more college kids living near you" - Gabz Amos-Grosser '17

JANETH RODRIGUEZ/PHOTO EDITOR

Amy's Cottage 15 Latham Street (“Latham”) Capacity: 4 Price: $ Typical lease signing: Sophomore fall Historic party house level: 4 Location: 5 Overall condition: 6 Pros: Less of a well-known reputation, close proximity to Water Street and Spring Street, big backyard, lots of great parking space, nice veranda and deck, quiet place for hanging out Cons: Creepy basement, deteriorating condition, farther Superlative: Quirky Yet Comfortable Resident’s thoughts: “Latham is a quirky spot.

One has to be ‘in the know’ with some of the campus’s biggest weirdoes to find out about its existence.

Literally, the school’s official cartoon map doesn’t even include this section of our street. Big shout-out to John Umlauf, our dear nextdoor-neighbor, who inspires us with his generosity and virtue in every neighborly interaction. Please don’t call the cops on us again.” – Molly Bodurtha ’17 Blue Mango Apartments (“Sushi Thai”) Capacity: 12 apartments, doubles and singles Price: $$$$

Typical lease signing: Junior year Historic party house level: 7 downstairs, 0 upstairs Location: 10 Overall condition: 10 Pros: Clean, feels like a real apartment, utilities included in rent, free washer and dryer Cons: Small capacity Superlative: Best Value Residents Thoughts: "Gallery is a hidden gem, especially the two person apartment. A lot of people don’t even know it exists!” – Funmi Adejobi ’17

R.B. SMITH/FEATURES EDITOR

69 North Street Typical lease signing: Freshman year Historic party house level: 8 Location: 10 Overall condition: 3 Pros: Price, location (close to class, athletics facilities, food and the Red Herring), good party space Cons: Condition Superlative: Best Location Resident’s thoughts: “Can’t beat the location; we can almost get Purple Air from Morgan. The condition isn’t great – it depends on how much you feel like cleaning and how often you have people over, but some spaces are nicer than others. In my experience, off-campus housing conditions are gonna be a bit grimier than oncampus.” – Luke Stickel ’17

Capacity: 6 Price: $$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore fall Historic party house level: 7 Location: 4 Overall condition: 8 Pros: Close to Stewart's, good space for parties, pick group size Cons: Far from center of campus Superlative: Most Communal Atmosphere Residents’ Thoughts: "Now that President Trump inhabits the (other) White House, our White House is indisputably the best house not only on campus, but in the world." – Kit Rosen ’17

208 Water Street (“Water Street”)

69 Spring Street (“Tony's Sombrero”)

Capacity: 2 Price: $ Typical lease signing: Junior spring Historic party house level: 2 Location: 4 Overall condition: 9 Pros: Nice condition with a big central studio and living room Cons: Far, about a 15 minute walk to Paresky Superlative: Overlooked and Underrated

Capacity: 2 Price: $$$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore year Historic party house level: 3-4 Location: 8 Overall condition: 7 Pros: Really big living room, Spring Street location, generally spacious Cons: no dishwasher, no washer/dryer, low ceilings Superlative: Unfairly Forgotten Spring Street Option

63 North Street (“White House”)

Pera Apartments (“Pera”) Capacity: 6 apartments - 4 doubles, 2 singles Price: $$ Typical lease signing: Junior fall Historic party house level: 3 Location: 9 Overall condition: 6 Pros: Bigger rooms than on campus, great location Cons: Old appliances, cramped, across the street from bookstore construction Superlative: Solid Spring Street Option Resident’s thoughts: “Living in Pera is great if you want to be a short walk from campus and enjoy the hustle and bustle of Spring Street.” – Martin Keenan ’17 Goff's Apartments (“Goff's”) Capacity: 8 Price: $$

JUNE HAN/PHOTO EDITOR

Tony's Sombrero Resident’s thoughts: “It’s in really great condition inside, lots of open space outside for activities” – John Shuck ’17 13 Grundy Court (“Grundy”)

JUNE HAN/PHOTO EDITOR

Pera Apartments

Capacity: 4 Price: $-$$ Typical lease signing: Junior year Historic party house level: 1 Location: 3 Overall condition: 7 Pros: Very homey, fireplace, big kitchen, living room good for small gatherings, cheaper, lots of parking Cons: Far from campus, old house that gets cold in the winter, no washer or dryer in the house Superlative: Best Aesthetic Resident’s thoughts: “Escape the intensity of Williams by living in a charming boutique house filled with good vibes!” – Camila Magendzo ’17

Resident’s thoughts: “We’ve loved living above Tony’s this year: we’ve been so happy with the vibe and location of our space and really feel like it’s been a home for us!”

– Rachel Clemens ’17 39 Park Street (“The Rectory”) Capacity: 8 Price: $$ Typical lease signing: Sophomore year Historic party house level: 1 Location: 9 Overall condition: 7 Pros: Huge rooms, big yard, garden, location, porch, nice kitchen Cons: Sometimes freshmen come into the house looking for Greylock quad, interview process with Church to rent, Church-affiliated property Superlative: Most Wholesome Resident’s thoughts: “Best yard ever for spikeball!” – Katie Swoap ’17

8 ARTS

The Williams Record

March 15, 2017

‘Endgame: Afghanistan’ puts forth a catch-22

By ANNA SUN CONTRIBUTING WRITER In Endgame: Afghanistan, recently displayed in the ’62 Center, Ben Brody documents the daily lives of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. His work focuses not on the violence amidst the war itself but rather on quieter moments of both soldiers and citizens. The subjects of Brody’s photos are often candid and unassuming, but the images in context speak to greater truths of the war.

Brody uses smoke and dust to illustrate the consuming, destructive effects of wartime, not only on the battlefield, but also in the many other tasks of U.S. soldiers. He captures a grape field covered in smoke that “hangs like a morning mist” after explosives are detonated to clear mines in this area. In another photo, two soldiers in the foreground with their backs to the camera move into a dense dust cloud, disappearing from the viewer’s visibility. The accompanying caption explains that the dust that overtakes the scene has been caused by the detonation of an explosive device. A third photo shows dust clouds kicked up by a landing helicopter suspended midair, debris flying in all directions.

The description elaborates that the helicopters are delivering supplies to U.S. troops and must make multiple landing attempts because the dust gets too thick. Brody uses smoke to conceal his photos, but the presence of smoke reveals the general truth that, for soldiers in Afghanistan, destruction is the norm. This controlled violence against Afghanistan’s

PHOTO COURTESY OF RANDALL FLIPPINGER

An American sergeant and an Afghan boy sit and look at each other as the possibility of impending violence and destruction looms. landscape is a necessary component of completing responsibilities and ensuring safety, but the consuming effects of these actions are also evident.

Other photos are clear, crisp and matter of fact. Yet, the context provided is contradictory and sometimes undermines the visuals presented. One image portrays a sergeant and an Afghan boy sitting and looking at each other at the side of a road while a motorcycle approaches in the distance. The composi-

tion is simple – two main figures in the foreground, one in the background, clear sky, flat dirt road; however, “in Iraq, soldiers likely would have suspected an approaching motorcyclist to be a suicide bomber and reacted aggressively. In Afghanistan, soldiers take a more relaxed approach to keep civil relations with the villages they patrol.

Unfortunately, many have died for their lack of caution,” Brody explained. In context,

the photo is no longer a fond moment of an unlikely, unspoken connection between two people – rather, it is political, a catch-22 situation with the possibility of impending violence and destruction.

Another image captures five stacks of large metal shipping containers, one being moved by a shipping crane. The stacks are neat, and the shipping containers are colorful – reds, yellows and blues accompanied by a bright blue sky. Brody

uses the same method of a quiet, simple image to explain that jobs previously done by soldiers are now given to contractors so that it will seem as though fewer soldiers are being stationed in Afghanistan.

However, these contractors are more expensive to hire. While 9800 soldiers were ordered to stay in Afghanistan after 2014, 30,000 contractors also worked in conjunction with the military. So, the photo demonstrates this form of outsourc-

ing by the military that is intentionally deceiving.

Brody also captures an aerial shot of an abandoned U.S. military base in Kapisa. The buildings in the base are bright red and blue, and the location is also enclosed by clearly delineated walls. The base sticks out awkwardly from the villages nearby that blend in with one another and are shrouded by trees. The visual disruption of this work speaks to the disruption of Afghan life by these U.S. soldiers. Troops may seek to establish civil relationships with local people, but their presence by virtue is immediately obvious and perhaps intrusive in this environment.

Brody’s take on wartime photojournalism thoughtfully explores the unique perspective of U.S. soldiers. He explains complex situations and difficult conflict-related issues through deceivingly simple images. His works do not pick sides, and they do not immediately betray his opinions of the subjects at hand; rather, the viewer can follow his train of thought when considering the image in context. At the same time, viewers also question their own standing on such issues. Is it a problem that the military hires contractors to limit the amount of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan?

What is the true impact of the effort to withdraw troops from Afghanistan? To what degree is this successful, and how does this impact the daily lives of the soldiers still there?

Brody provides viewers with threads of information to follow to find these usually unacknowledged truths.

Performance, panel examine war

By EVEYLN MAHON CONTRIBUTING WRITER

PHOTO COURTESY OF THEWRITERINTHEWORLD.COM

‘Blue Moon Over Memphis’ incorporates American traditions and folklore into a Japanese art form.

Theatre group showcases ‘noh’ play with an American twist

By LI YU ARTS EDITOR Last Saturday, Theatre Nohgaku visited campus to perform “Blue Moon Over Memphis,” a noh play about Elvis. Noh, one of the oldest theatre arts still regularly performed and the oldest surviving form of Japanese theatre, combines chanting, music, masks and costume in a highly stylized art form. Noh requires highly-trained actors and conveys emotions through conventional gestures. Noh generally features known stories from Japanese mythology and folklore that the audience would normally be familiar with.

“Blue Moon Over Memphis” proved an interesting experience, for not only was it a noh performed entirely in English, but it also drew on American traditions and “mythology” for its subject matter as well. Written by Deborah Brevoort, the playwright and member of Theatre Nohgaku, “Blue Moon Over Memphis” follows the trip of a woman named Judy who goes to Graceland on the anniversary of Elvis’ death. Oscar, the groundskeeper who unsuccessfully tries to send her away, hinders her journey. Under the unearthly glow of the blue moon, Elvis’s ghost rises from the grave, appears to her in the meditation garden of Graceland and conveys his loneliness to the audience in a haunting chant, “And now in death/ I long for the loneliness of life.” When daylight rises, his apparition disappears into the mist again.

“Blue Moon Over Memphis” takes formal Japanese elements of the noh play and makes the art form accessible for a nonJapanese audience. The traditional noh play relies heavily on the audience’s knowledge of certain folk tales, as well as a familiarity with noh conventions. Instead of watching for the plot, audience members focus on the careful and virtuosic movements of the actors. All actors wear traditional shozoku, for example, but with interesting twists; denim patchwork makes up the fabric of Judy’s yukata, a touch of country that gives a nod to

the setting, and the intricate golden brocade on Elvis’s white robe recalls his iconic, gold lamé suit. Only his fingertips can be seen peering out of the edge of his sleeves; his face obscured by the mask, he looks almost like a life-sized animatronic figure. In addition, “Blue Moon Over Memphis” does away with many traditional noh conventions that a western audience may not be able to understand. Instead, Brevoort explained, the play takes many of Presley’s iconic movements – the rubber leg and the pelvis shaking – and slows them down to the point of abstraction, maintaining an uncanny inability to be placed. Similarly, Richard Emmert, composer and music director of Theatre Nohgaku, takes Presley’s music, removes the funky instrumentals and slows it down to a ghostly tempo. What is left is an eerie melody both familiar and alien.

At the center of a play like “Blue Moon Over Memphis” is the tension between the known and unknown: the brief, enigmatic presence of Presley’s ghost and his palpable anguish obscured behind a mask, an American story taking place at an iconic landmark that has somehow been strained through strict formal practices and a minimalist set design enough to once again become a foreign zone. It is almost ironic that Presley, whose immense popularity coincided with the rise of mass culture in the United States, has been translated into the minimalist, solipsistic world of noh.

On its website, Theatre Nohgaku explains that “our mission is to share noh’s beauty and power with English-speaking audiences and performers. We have found that this traditional form retains its dramatic effectiveness in languages other than Japanese.

We believe noh techniques hold a powerful means of expression in the context of contemporary English language theatre.” If “Blue Moon Over Memphis” demonstrates anything, it is that Theatre Nohgaku has succeeded in putting on a noh play palatable and resonant with American audiences.

On March 7, the production company Theater of War came to campus to present a short reading of Sophocles’ Ajax and facilitate a discussion on the costs of war, supplemented by a panel of veterans and family members of veterans from the Williamstown community.

Theater of War’s project is essentially a two-act piece, the first being the actual reading of scenes from a play (either Ajax or Philoctetes), and the second being the discussion.

Although the event was advertised as a play reading, the actual performance only lasted about 30 minutes. However, I did not wish it went any longer. Each of the actors had one emotional level, and it was pure agony and wailing. It felt as though the actors, or possibly the director, did not trust in their craft to play a story truthfully, which would have left space for the audience members to have their own reactions. Instead, it was very clear that I was supposed to feel grief, pain and loss. There was very little space for me to engage with the work myself, because it had already been engaged with for me. I only had to sit back and be told how I was supposed to feel.

The actress playing Tecmessa, in particular, had only one emotional level, and she dialed it up to an 11. The first words out of her mouth were

wailed and full of agony, and for the entire piece she did not deviate from that level.

There was no place for the emotion to go, so that the moment of pure grief – when Ajax commits suicide and his wife Tecmessa wails over his body – was at the same emotional level as where the readers started. There was nowhere, emotionally, the actors could aim for. The actor playing the chorus (who was also the artistic director/translator/facilitator) also had one level, but it was somehow devoid of all emotion. He delivered everything as though he thought of himself as the smartest person in the room, but he clearly did not connect with or register the emotional depth of what he was saying. Overall, I was not nearly as interested in the performance as I was in the discussion afterwards.

The panel featured Jake Bingaman ’19, a former Navy SEAL and special operations combat medic; Howard Carter, a retired master chief petty officer; Howard Garbarsky, a former Air Force photographer and veteran of both the Vietnam and First Gulf wars; Becca Filson, the spouse of a wounded Iraq War veteran; and Stephen Roy, the director of Veteran Services for North Berkshire County.

Each of the panelists gave a brief talk about what struck them about the play, and then the discussion was opened to the audience. Bryan Doer-

ries, the artistic director and translator of this particular version of Ajax, asked a few questions of the audience, the most important being why we thought Sophocles wrote the play. People gave various answers, ranging from “to raise awareness” to “to show that they [war heroes] are human” to “to show the true costs of war.” This is effectively what Theater of War aims to accomplish as well. According to its website, “By presenting these plays to military and civilian audiences, our hope is to de-stigmatize psychological injury, increase awareness of post-deployment psychological health issues, disseminate information regarding available resources and foster greater family, community and troop resilience.”

Although the reading itself was not by any means the best reading of a Greek play I have seen, it sparked not only a dialogue that was valuable and eye-opening to many students, myself included, who have had very little exposure to the armed forces but also became a space to talk for people who may feel that their voices on this subject are not always heard. One thing remained very clear at the end of this evening: we must make space on this campus and in the larger community for people who feel marginalized, feel lost or hopeless or may be struggling.

PHOTO COURTSEY OF RANDALL FLIPPINGER

The Theater of War project presented a two-act piece; a reading from a play and a discussion.

March 15, 2017

ARTS 9

The Williams Record

‘Hybrid Practice’ discusses social, economic contexts of art

By SARAH RITZMANN STAFF WRITER When New York-based sculptor, educator and organizer Caroline Woolard gave a talk in Lawrence Hall last Thursday afternoon, a large, industrial ladder was leaning against the wall in the front of the room. Its heavy, dull, gray metal frame contrasted sharply with Woolard’s slim figure, button-down shirt and blazer, making it seem as if the space were under construction.

While the ladder was not, in fact, one of her sculptures, as I had initially thought, it had been placed there intentionally and was to become part of her performative talk.

In her introduction for Woolard, Nina Palaez, the assistant curator of public programs at the Williams College Museum of Art, stressed the multiplicity of Woolard’s work. “Her work is not about alternative economies, or about sustainability, or about collaboration, or about economic justice … but it lives those ideas and brings them into being,” she said.

While Woolard does not characterize herself as a protest artist, her sculptures and the work she does outside of making art stress collaboration and work to dismantle oppressive systems such as capitalism, real estate and higher education.

In particular, Woolard’s work intersects with the idea of the “solidarity economy,” in which communities are organized by collaboration between its residents and not-for-profit systems, rather than capitalism. “This talk is about the way

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

Caroline Woolard's self-reflexive performance talk emphasized three main themes: mindfulness, transparency and collaboration. that the objects and projects that we make can be aligned with the systems that they move through,” she said.

Along with the actual content of her lecture, Woolard’s self-reflexive talk had three main emphases: mindfulness, transparency and collaboration. Shortly after introducing herself, Woolard stated outright that if anyone in the audience was feeling disengaged or was hoping to text throughout the lecture, they should leave the room. In return for the audience’s undivided attention, she responded with openness about intimate tidbits of her personal life, including how her experience

as a queer woman artist influenced her work.

She even took a vote from her audience as to whether she should emphasize the technical and artistic processes fuelling her work, the feelings behind her artistic process or the economic logistics of her life as an artist. After a two-way tie between the first two categories, Woolard jumped right into the story of how she conceived of and created “Capitoline Wolf,” a 2016 sculpture that was commissioned by Cornell.

“Capitoline Wolf,” based on the ancient legend of the founding of Rome, is a series of interconnected wooden tables with sculpted metal legs

and a round metal pendant hanging from the surface that abstractly echoes the shape of a wolf’s body. The sculpture drew equal inspiration from her own experience and overall student life at Cornell. It represents the conflict she had with her mother and brother, who went to Cornell and became a “brother” in a fraternity. The she-wolf is thus representative of an absent, fiercely loving mother figure of the often contentious brotherhood between Cornell men in fraternities, just as the wolf in the legend oversaw the conflicted relationship between Romulus and Remus. A wooden segment of a classical Doric column lays at

the foot of the table, representing both a seat and Romulus himself, the brother that survived to found Rome.

A series of water-filled cups that open on the top of the table and distend underneath it represent the she-wolf’s udders. They were designed based on a klepsydra, an ancient timekeeping device that measured time based on the amount of water that evaporated from the cups. “The fierce love that you see in the grimacing face of the she-wolf, with her distended udders, is something that I was repulsed by and seduced into … be aware of the history of the limits of the norms and laws of

institutions that govern your imagination,” Woolard said.

After discussing “Capitoline Wolf” in detail, Woolard went into deeper detail about her work as a community builder and lecturer. She drew attention to institutions such as the world of high art, in which works normally cannot be touched in museums, and the fact that art education is often sterilized through a lecture format. “There’s this idea that because I make art, I shouldn’t be able to teach it,” she said.

In the middle of the talk, when Woolard discussed her new obsession with ceiling tiles, she finally used the ladder.

Clambering effortlessly to the top, she pried a “tile” from the ceiling’s metal framework that was revealed to be a two-squarefoot book filled with schematics that she calmly flipped through while continuing to speak.

From displaying diagrams about the economic philosophy of the “solidarity economy” to listing and naming out loud every artist and craftsman that she collaborated with to fabricate all the sculptures that she designed, Woolard’s talk broke through the stiffness that professional artists and lecturers can sometimes cultivate when talking about art. Despite her desire to end the rigidness of the art world, her talk was neatly organized and ended precisely on time. Woolard is hopeful for the future of her artistic practice, even in today’s fragmented political landscape. “To make a future, we have to imagine it, draw it, debate it, refine it, try it and still desire it … These are the key rules that are necessary for these projects,” she said.

WRITE FOR THE RECORD! PHOTO COURTESY OF THEWRITERINTHEWORLD.COM

Paul Verhoeven’s latest project, ‘Elle,’ depicts a tense and thrilling cat-and-mouse conflict.

Verhoeven's ‘Elle’ unnerves

By CJ SALAPARE CONTRIBUTING WRITER There have been several moments in film that have disturbed me, but few have left me feeling completely shaken. In all honesty, I can count the latter on one hand.

Elle, Paul Verhoeven’s latest project, gives us generous doses of moments like these.

The film is unique in its ability to unsettle, which grows in intensity over its duration.

Its effective function hinges almost entirely upon the opening scene, which acts as the narrative’s nexus point.

Viewers are immediately thrown out of their comfort zones as they witness the rape of a woman in her own home — without warning, I should add. The attacker, masked and wearing all black, asserts his dominance over his victim, who is pinned down helplessly to the floor. Blood is shed, clothes are ripped and things are shattered; in sum, nothing is left to the imagination.

An uneasy stillness pervades the air as the horror unfolds, punctuated by the sounds of voices moaning and bodies pressing together.

Upon finishing, the assailant wipes himself off and flees the scene. In his wake, the woman remains frozen on the floor—but only momentarily. After a few seconds, she stands up and begins cleaning up the traces left by her attacker. She disposes her ripped, bloodstained clothing, sweeps the debris off the floor and finally unwinds by taking a bubble bath.

It is at this point when one's discomfort becomes more complicated, since the source of unease has shifted. Initially, this feeling stemmed from witnessing a rape transgressive in both nature and cinematic effect. Now, it lies within the sense of normalcy that characterizes this woman’s actions post-assault. She displays few, if any, signs of trauma, and seems to dismiss the incident as something of little importance.

Confusion inevitably arises, which is exactly the state of mind in which Verhoeven wants viewers. He wants us to be frustrated and confounded, for invoking these qualities is key in activating his film’s power.

This unnamed woman is revealed to be Michèle Leblanc, co-founder of a successful video game company. She is successful, ice-cold, brazen and ruthless. She is reviled and hated widely. However, she is elegance personified. Verhoeven paints a complex portrait of her life, one riddled with contradictions.

Within the confines of the director’s frame, actress Isabelle Huppert enlivens her character beautifully. With the help of these two figures, Michèle, an enigma whose actions cannot be predicted and whose mind cannot be entered, is made possible.

In this light, her actions in the opening scene are unsurprising by virtue of their unpredictable nature. Though manifold and exhaustive, these attempts to erase the physical traces of her rape are ultimately ineffective.

Her assailant, though physically absent, is very much

present in Michèle’s life, for he continues to harass her through text messages whenever the opportunity arises.

A tense cat-and-mouse game is at play here, but over the course of Elle, the identities of both players are up for question. As she seeks out and eventually discovers the identity of her attacker, Michèle shows us that, for her, playing this game is second nature; her life up to this point has consisted of this game in countless iterations. Establishing dominance in the most subtle and unexpected of ways is a skill she has honed through the years, and no one in her life is spared.

This disconnect between what viewers expect and what actually takes place continues throughout the film, reaching a point when the former ceases to exist. Such is the price that one pays, but the reward is perversely sweet: it makes for a viewing experience that is unsettling, darkly humorous and bewildering beyond measure.

By the time the credits roll, one fact is clear: Elle is not for the faint of heart. While similar films get under one’s skin, this film takes it a step further.

Once there, it proceeds to rip this skin off slowly but mercilessly, bringing a literal dimension to the phrase “chilling to the bone.” The act of doing so is precisely what makes this film so engrossing. In the process of harnessing rather than avoiding unease, Verhoeven turns it into an unavoidable and addictive sensation. The more he unnerves us, the more we become intrigued by the web he weaves so intricately.

MEETINGS: PARESKY 209 7 P.M. WEDNESDAYS OR EMAIL JBG3@WILLIAMS.EDU

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Dunbar Student Life Writing Prizes Deadline: April 4, 2017 Multiple Cash Awards up to $5000 The Dunbar Student Life Prizes will recognize students who are active in campus life in its social, political, educational, and/or religious aspects, and who have produced significant written work on any aspect of student life. The work may be published or unpublished, and can focus on any local, national or global issues affecting college or university students.

fellowships.williams.edu Application instructions are in the Fellowships GLOW

10 SPORTS

The Williams Record

March 15, 2017

‘Runner’s World’ editor-in-chief David Willey ’89 expands publication

By JANE PETERSEN FEATURES EDITOR When David Willey ’89 described his early experiences with running, one word in particular came to mind: punishment.

“I was not really a runner growing up,” he said. “When I was at Williams, I played football; running was always a means to another end.”

Now, he has eight marathons under his belt and is the editorin-chief of Runner’s World.

Willey first discovered his love for running during his junior spring abroad in London. “I just had this physical craving to get exercise, and I just went out for a run in the park near where we lived,” he said. “The lightbulb just kind of went off for me on that first run in London.”

He continued to run throughout his semester abroad and into his senior year at the College.

After graduation, Willey became a subscriber to the very magazine he now edits. “I wanted to continue to be an athlete, and I was living in New York City and working like crazy. All that time, I was also exposed to Runner’s World,” he said. “When I moved to New York, I became

PHOTO COURTESY OF RUNNER'S WORLD

David Willey ’89, who has run eight marathons, is the editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine.

a subscriber. I was training for marathons and reading Runner’s World cover-to-cover.”

While running became an instant passion of Willey’s, his path toward Runner’s World was more winding. Willey, a political science major, had initially considered becoming a lawyer during his first few years at the College. However, after graduating, Willey decided instead to begin a two-year analyst program on Wall Street.

“What interested me about that job was moving to New York and learning something about business,” he said. “I found out pretty quickly that it wasn’t for me. In fact, the only times I really excelled at all in that job was not when I was crunching numbers or doing corporate finance or accounting-related stuff, but when I was researching and writing.”

Willey relocated to Chicago for his second year of the program.

While he was there, he began to pursue a graduate degree in journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern.

“I realized that [journalism] was something that I was better at and enjoyed more.”

After graduating from Medill, Willey realized that he

wanted to work in magazines and moved back to New York.

After doing some freelance work, he eventually got a job at Men’s Journal. “I was there for eight and a half years or so, and it was a great apprenticeship in magazines and pretty much learning how to do everything there is to do as an editor,” Willey said. “I kind of worked my way up and was recruited to come to Runner’s World.”

At the time, Runner’s World was also going through a transition as it aimed to expand its readership to not just hard-core marathoners but to everyday people who wanted to get active. One person who could have benefitted from this rebranding was Willey.

“Somewhere along the line there when I was working at Men’s Journal, I stopped subscribing to Runner’s World,” he said. “As my career progressed and other things started taking precedence in my life, running sort of moved from out of the center and to the periphery of my life. I didn’t stop running, but it was just sort of less important.

“I was just running a couple days a week, and Runner’s World felt like it wasn’t speaking to me

as that kind of runner. So, when they called me and said that they were looking to broaden the audience, I felt like I had a really personal understanding of what they were trying to do.”

As the new editor-in-chief, it was Willey’s job to implement this strategy and broaden the appeal of Runner’s World. “Runner’s World is for all runners; it’s not just for serious competitive runners,” he said. Since then, throughout his 14 years as editor-in-chief, Willey has also been tasked with keeping up with the ever-expanding media age.

“When I took this job, my job pretty much just to make the best magazine we could make every 30 days, and that’s still a big part of what we do. But … there’s the web, events, podcasts and video.

It’s not just a magazine anymore; it’s a brand.”

Willey believes that his liberal arts background helped him prepare for his career. “Creative problem solving is the most beneficial and essential skill that an education can give someone,” he said. “It helped me take a sort of winding path towards what I ended up wanting to do as a career. I was hugely helpful to come with that as a foundation.”

Women’s tennis opens spring season Chorzepa ’17, Seyfried ’19 excel at NCAAs with wins over Hamilton, Skidmore

By C.J. LEVIN TEAM CORRESPONDENT

By SCOTT SHELTON STAFF WRITER Women’s tennis (3–0, 1–0 in the NESCAC) won two matches over the first weekend of its spring season. The women prevailed 9-0 at Hamilton on Saturday and 8-1 at Skidmore on Sunday.

Having beaten the Skidmore Thoroughbreds in each of the last six seasons, the Ephs traveled to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., looking to extend their streak.

The Ephs stormed out to an 8-1 win at No. 3 doubles, courtesy of the partnership of Julia Cancio ’18 and Emily Zheng ’20. The women were held back, however, at No. 2 doubles, as Skidmore’s Brianna Greene and Ada Wiggins staved off a late comeback from Sydney Myong ’20 and co-captain Linda Shin ’17 to win 8-6.

The Thoroughbreds found themselves up 6-3, but the Eph duo clawed back to bring the score to 7-6 Skidmore, before dropping the next game to fall 8-6.

At No. 1 doubles, Chloe Henderson ’20 and co-captain Hannah Atkinson ’17 came through on Court 1. After trading blows all the way to 5-all, the pair won the next three games to give the Ephs the 2-1 advantage going into singles.

Riding the high of their late doubles success, the Ephs trampled the Thoroughbreds in singles to secure the victory. Shin, Atkinson and Mia Gancayco ’18 all notched wins to decide the match for the Ephs.

At No. 1 singles, Leah Bush ’19 was given a three-set test for the

second day in a row. She dropped the first set 7-5 but wasted little time in the second, winning 6-1 to level the match. With the overall match outcome already determined, the players played a tiebreaker in lieu of a full third set. Bush triumphed by a 10-5 margin in the decider.

Cancio and Henderson polished off the victory, winning the remaining two singles matches 6-3, 6-1 and 6-2, 6-1, respectively.

“Playing Skidmore before spring break is always a good match for us,” Head Coach Alison Swain ’01 said. “When matches were close, we adapted and stayed calm and determined.

We are gaining confidence with each match we play.”

The women opened their spring campaign Saturday afternoon at NESCAC foe Hamilton.

Winless in all four of their meetings all-time against the Ephs, the Continentals were unable to reverse their fortunes, as the Ephs coasted to a 9-0 runout in their first match since October.

The Ephs jumped out to a 2-0 lead. Atkinson and Henderson beat their Continental counterparts at No. 1 without dropping a game, and Bush and Gancayco followed shortly thereafter at No. 3, conceding just one game.

The match at No. 2 was tighter, however, and Cancio and Zheng had to grind out a 9-7 win to solidify the 3-0 Eph advantage going into the singles portion.

The Continental duo of Claire Keyte and Samantha Weeks kept pace all the way to 7-7 but failed to win either of the following two games, as the Ephs celebrated a doubles sweep.

With their confidence building, the singles portion was more of the same from the Ephs, who claimed the necessary two points to assure themselves of an opening-day victory. Cancio finished her match flawless at No. 4, and Gancayco had only a one-game blemish at No. 3.

The Ephs were not done, however, as Myong followed suit with a win of her own at No. 2. Hamilton had its best chance at No. 1 singles, where Claire Keyte took the first set 6-1 on Bush. Bush responded masterfully, however, and returned the favor with a 6-2 second-set win. In the tiebreaker, Bush rode her momentum to a 10-3 win.

On the remaining two courts, Henderson and Carmen Saab ’19 beat their opponents to polish off the Ephs’ 9-0 sweep.

Swain said that early matches are important in helping players return to form.

“We were able to work through some early-season rust,” she said. “The team is more prepared now for the matches ahead."

Over spring break, the women, ranked No. 2 nationally in the March 2 ITA poll, travel to Virginia and California to play eight matches. Four of them will be against top 10 teams, and one will be against a Div. I opponent.

“It's a challenging schedule designed to push us,” Swain said.

“We want to gain experience, improve our match play and continue to come together as a team both on and off the court.”

The team’s next match – and the first of that trip – will be against Washington and Lee on Saturday at 4:30 p.m.

Last weekend, Brendon Seyfried ’19 and tri-captain Chris Chorzepa ’17 competed at the NCAA Div. III Wrestling Championships in La Crosse, Wis. Both earned All-American honors; Seyfried was seventh at 141, and Chorzepa placed eighth at 184.

In his five years at the College, Head Coach Scott Honecker has helped his wrestlers earn nine All-America honors, more than any coach in school history.

On Friday, Seyfried fell to Baldwin Wallace’s Joshua Decatur in his first match of the tournament. With 17 seconds left in the match, Decatur recorded a takedown to win 3-1.

The loss moved Seyfried into the wrestleback bracket, where he faced Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Devin Tortorice in a pivotal match. Seyfried won 7-6 with a late escape, keeping his tourna-

ment alive. Against WisconsinOshkosh’s Kody Azarian, he ended matters in the second period, recording a fall at 4:20.

Chorzepa, who entered the Championships seeded second, faced Alma’s Trent Hullett in the first round. Chorzepa had built a 9-5 lead by the third period but was pinned after getting up from the down position.

With the loss, Chorzepa moved to the wrestleback bracket.

He notched a 7-2 victory over Cortland State’s Deuly Espinal, setting up a bout against Patrick Rooney of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. The match went back-and-forth, but Chorzepa prevailed 8-7.

On Saturday, Seyfried opened against Joseph Ferinde of Johnson & Wales. After three scoreless periods, Ferinde won on his two minutes of riding time. In the seventh-place match, Seyfried bounced back to take a 2-1 win over York’s Gregory Warner.

Chorzepa withdrew on day two for medical reasons, ultimately finishing eighth.

He concludes his collegiate career with a 130-14 record and a winning percentage of .903.

Honecker praised the wrestlers for their performances.

“The weekend was not without adversity, but Chris and Brendon persevered,” he said.

“Brendon put the country on notice this weekend. He has made tremendous sacrifices this season, and he has not even approached his potential.”

Honecker lauded Chorzepa for his accomplishments.

“Chris has been the total package for four seasons,” he said.

“He has the work ethic, passion and competitive fire that champions are made of.

“The program will miss the fantastic example he consistently set for his peers. Chris’ impact will resonate throughout this team for years to come.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTT HONECKER

Tri-captain Chris Chorzepa ’17, a three-time All-American, is now the Ephs’ all-time wins leader.

CAPTAINS’ CORNER: JENNA CHODOS ’17 When did you start playing lacrosse?

I started playing in third grade. I played for fun, and a bunch of my friends did it. Lacrosse is pretty big in the mid-Atlantic region, so it was common to play at that young of an age.

How was your lacrosse experience before coming to the College?

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

By BROOKE HOROWITCH SPORTS EDITOR

Team: Women’s lacrosse Hometown: Wilmington, Del. Residence: Spring Street Snack bar order: Double cheese nachos from ’82 Grill

I also played basketball, field hockey and soccer growing up.

For some reason, girls’ soccer in Delaware is in the spring, so I had to pick between soccer and lacrosse. That was a really tough decision, but I had a lot of fun playing lacrosse, so I decided to stick with it. My high school team, Tower Hill, we went to the state championship twice. I also played for a summer league team in Pennsylvania. It was fun to meet a bunch of people from that area and travel with them to tournaments.

Did anyone in particular influence your lacrosse career when you were growing up?

No one in my family had played lacrosse before. A lot of my clos-

est friends played, so it was a big social thing for me at first, but I started really enjoying the sport and was passionate about lacrosse. That pushed me further.

Why did you decide to come to the College?

Honestly, I had always pictured going to a city school, but when I visited Williams, I realized that I wanted a smaller community and somewhere where I could really get close to my peers and still be able to focus on academics without being too distracted by big city things. I applied to a bunch of schools but really respected [Head] Coach [Chris] Mason and the program here.

We just got Coach Mason her 300th win last Monday, which was really exciting. Also, field hockey [Head] Coach Alix Barrale ’93 went to my high school, so I had a connection to her and learned about the College through her.

What are your favorite things about the team?

We have great team chemistry, so I love constantly hanging out with my teammates. I also love how during the spring season,

we get to have spring break with the team, so we get a lot of bonding time. We always go on a trip and play a lot of games together. We play Pictionary and charades with our coach, and we make skits. It’s a lot of fun – like summer camp.

Where are you going this year, and whom will you compete against?

We’re going to Colorado for the second week of spring break.

We’re playing against Colorado College and MIT. We have two games, and the rest of the week is practicing, so we have a lot of free time, but we get to fill it up with team activities.

I’m very excited.

What are your proudest individual and team accomplishments in lacrosse?

You mentioned Coach Mason. What do you like about playing for her?

I’ll start with team accomplishments. Freshman year, we went to the Sweet 16 of NCAAs, which was really fun. We didn’t even have a field, so we were traveling to practices constantly, and we still bonded as a team, and our team chemistry propelled us forward. We did the best that the team has done in a while.

Individually, my favorite thing is getting a turnover on defense then passing it up and having a smooth midfield transition into a player-up, fast-break goal. Those are definitely the most exciting moments. They’re not really due to one individual, but everyone on the team.

She has been a huge influence on a lot of people on the team, both athletically and personally. She is constantly looking out for everyone on the team. If something comes up, she is always checking in with us, which I think is very unique. Specifically, I think that she does differ from a lot of NESCAC coaches. When I tell my friends on other NESCAC teams stories about her, they’re always kind of jealous. I’m very lucky to have her. She is a naturally competitive person but is still so fun and caring. She makes it really easy for everyone to want to be at practice every day and want to win at the same time.

What position do you play, and how would you describe your playing style?

What is it like being a team captain?

I now play midfield, but freshman year I played attack, sophomore year I played defense, and last year I played every position.

I like midfield because I like offense and defense. There isn’t one thing that I would say I am better at than other things. I just love to be out there on both sides of the field.

It’s different, but at the same time, it still feels like I’m a part of the same awesome team chemistry. There is a lot of planning involved, but besides that, everyone holds her own share of the weight and is very motivated and pushes herself. It’s been a lot of fun being a leader.

What are your goals for the spring season?

Chris told us that if we win NESCACs, we can pour a huge thing of Gatorade on her, so my goals for the season are to win NESCACs, be as successful as we can and play to our maximum ability.

March 15, 2017

SPORTS 11

The Williams Record

Women’s tennis Head Coach Alison Swain ’01 prepares for 10th season and how they re-acclimated to the area after being imprisoned.

In addition to these academic pursuits, Swain enjoyed competing in both singles and doubles for women’s tennis. She credits her head coach, Julie Greenwood ’96, with fostering team camaraderie. “The day-to-day really builds bonds on and off the court,” she said. “Spending that much time with eight to 10 players – there are amazing bonds.” “[Swain] immediately found a home on the team and in the team’s values,” Greenwood recalled. “She made strong friendships, identified with leaders she respected and set her sights over time on helping us build our first national championship team. She also loved the game.”

In 2001, when Swain was a senior co-captain, the team won NCAAs. She said her most memorable moment on the team was her championship match, when she and her co-captain/doubles partner, Brooke Gibson (now Hasenhauer) ’01, secured their final victory. “It was against a team we had lost to the year before in the championships, so it was just a storybook ending,” she said.

“A team is as strong as its leadership, and I believe that the reason we won the 2001 championship was because [Swain] and [Gibson] were determined, committed and unwilling to settle for anything less than their best,” Greenwood added.

By BROOKE HOROWITCH SPORTS EDITOR 10 years ago, Alison Swain ’01 found her dream job. She became head coach of women’s tennis and has since led the team to seven NCAA titles during her tenure.

Swain began playing a juvenile form of tennis at age 5 when she rallied with her older sister over a cardboard box. Both of her parents played, and she always loved the sport. She joined a competitive team in her hometown, Bainbridge Island, Wash., when she was 12. In high school, she played water polo and swam while continuing to train at her tennis club. Eventually, the College recruited her to play tennis.

Swain explained why she decided to attend the College. “I knew I wanted to be at a small liberal arts school with great academics,” she said. “That was very important to me. I also wanted to make an impact on the team. Sitting in on a math class and talking to a recent alum really sold it for me.”

At the College, she majored in American studies and completed a thesis with Professor of History Scott Wong. She discovered that Bainbridge Island was the first Japanese-American internment camp during World War II and studied racism in the region, researching how Japanese-Americans protested the detention program

After graduating, Swain worked as an English and history teacher and girl’s varsity tennis coach at Woodward Academy in Atlanta, Ga. for three years. While in Georgia, she frequently spoke to Greenwood and told her former coach that she loved leading a team. Swain then completed a unique program at the University of Washington in which she taught outdoor education to middle school students from a variety of different backgrounds, as well as took classes of her own to earn her master’s degree. Afterwards, she spent a year teaching and coaching at an experiential learning-based school in Telluride, Colo.

In 2007, Swain received a life-changing telephone call from Greenwood.

“She called me and said, ‘I’m leaving Williams,’” Swain said. “‘You should apply for this job. I did, and I completely lucked out.

With no college coaching experience, Williams hired me, and it took me about one day on the tennis courts with the team to know that this was 100 percent my dream job.”

Swain does not merely love her work; she excels at it. She led the team to six consecutive NCAA National Championships during her first six years as head coach and has won seven out of nine NCAA titles overall. The New York Times published an article about her unprecedented

PHOTO COURTESY OF TOWNVIBE.COM

Alison Swain ’01 has won seven out of nine NCAA championships in her tenure as head coach. success, but Swain cannot even explain it herself.

“If I could answer the question of how, I could probably sell some books,” she joked. “I just know what’s important to me, and I try to know what’s important to the women that I coach and stay true to that. Creating a team, for me, is about the things that everyone knows – it’s about the recruiting and tennis – but we put as much focus on developing our team culture and developing people.”

Greenwood is not surprised

by Swains accomplishments. “[I am] not surprised that she has been successful, but [I am] im-

pressed with just how successful she has been,” she said.

Current co-captain Linda Shin ’17 appreciates how Swain fosters team chemistry and individual development. “Alison understands the importance of team dynamics while still emphasizing individual goals that contribute to the team’s success,” Shin said.

Swain’s influence extends beyond the College. Last summer, she began serving on the Board of Directors for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.

She is the only current female coach and non-Div. I coach on the board. “We think about the big picture of college tennis and

how to keep it relevant,” she said. “We fundraise, organize events and tackle interesting issues such as the professionalization of sports in Div. I. I am definitely learning a lot.”

Swain also learns from her players. “The team and the captains in particular really drive the goals,” she said. “I see my role as to help them with what they put out there.”

However, as Swain prepares for her 10th season as coach, she also hopes to “continue to help each player develop, help the team create great chemistry and celebrate and be excited for every opportunity to play a match.”

Men’s track earns 12th at Div. III NCAAs Skiing sends four to NCAA Championships, secures 12th place

By ZEKE COHEN TEAM CORRESPONDENT

Day two unfolded last Thursday at the Jackson Touring Center in Jackson, N.H., with the men’s Nordic 10k classic.

Co-captain Eli Hoenig ’17 finished in 11th place. He was followed by Braden Becker ’19. In his first trip to the Championships, Becker also had an impressive race, earning 16th. Jordan Fields ’17 finished in 33rd, as the the men landed in seventh place.

“Thursday’s waxing conditions were extremely challenging, and I am proud of the skiers for finding their rhythm,” Nordic Head Coach Jason Lemieux ’01 said. Overall, the Ephs were in 11th place in a field of 21 schools, predominantly from Div. I. On day three, Hunsaker returned to Canon Mountain for the women’s slalom, typically her strongest event. Unfortunately, Hunsaker skied out in her first run and did not finish.

Although disappointed with her result, she said she was honored to have had represented the College.

By HANNAH COLE AND JACK SCHRUPP TEAM CORRESPONDENTS Skiing sent four competitors to the 2017 NCAA Championships.

Co-captain Hannah Hunsaker ’19 earned All-American honors for the second straight year, and the Ephs placed 12th overall.

On day one, Hunsaker, the only Alpine skier representing the College, placed sixth in the women’s giant slalom at Canon Mountain in Grafton Country, N.H. After her first run, Hunsaker found herself in 12th.

Then, she put in a spectacular performance in her second run, notching the second-fastest time in the field to secure sixth overall.

“I couldn’t have hoped for a better result,” Alpine Head Coach Kelsey Levine ’10 said.

“Hannah proved that she is truly a two-event collegiate skier.”

Her strong showing earned the Ephs 27 points, enough for 12th place after the first day.

On the fourth and final day of the Championships, Nordic raced its way to fifth place in the 20k mass start freestyle.

Braving bitter temperatures and a technical course, Hoenig, Becker and Fields challenged the nation’s best teams. Fields led the way with a 12th-place finish. Hot on his heels was Hoenig, who finished in 15th.

Becker capped off his Championships with a 21st-place finish. Together, the three put the Ephs in fifth.

“It was an amazing couple of races with very challenging and mentally difficult conditions,” Lemieux said.

“The men skied very well and were able to hang for much of the race at a very aggressive and fast pace. I was so proud to see them come away from the championships with four top-15 finishes.”

At the conclusion of the Championships, the Ephs placed 12th overall, two spots ahead of last year’s finish.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Co-captain Hannah Hunsaker ’19 finished sixth in the giant slalom at the NCAA Championships.

The Office of Communications recommends ...

Annual Faculty Lecture Series:

with Frederick Strauch, associate professor of physics

Thursday, March 16 4:15 p.m.

Wege Auditorium Reception to follow in Schow Atrium

shoulder. He redoubled his efforts, gaining separation at the bell and then running clear by the final turn.

Hale crossed the finish line in 8:17.76, more than two seconds ahead of his nearest competitor. He ran the last 400 meters in 57 seconds, the last 800 in 2:02 and the last mile in 4:17 – the split in the final mile was a personal best for the talented distance runner. Hale is the fourth Eph to be an Indoor NCAA Champion and the first distance runner to win a race at the meet. He is the team’s first NCAA champion – indoor or outdoor – since 2010.

The 10 points that he scored raised the Ephs in the standings from 38th to a tie for 12th, where they remained until the end of the day.

“These past two weeks, this team has flipped a switch,” Head Coach Ethan Barron said. “This group was a focused, willful crew that went in with a purpose, and when they run with purpose and will, they can do some special things. I was impressed with this group’s ability to adapt and adjust to all the changes that accompany NCAAs.” He is pleased with the team’s improvement during the indoor season. “We stopped waiting for external situations or variables to set us up for success and started doing it for ourselves,” he said. “If we can continue to build on that evolution throughout the outdoor season then we should have a lot of fun and post some solid personal records.”

The Ephs will next compete outdoors at the Aztek Invite on March 24.

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK

"Testing Reality with Quantum Physics"

Winning the 3000m, cocaptain Peter Hale ’17 led men’s track and field to a 12th-place finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships last weekend in Naperville, Ill. On Friday, co-captain Tobias Muellers ’18 competed in the first four events of the heptathlon. In the 60m, he finished in 7.28, the third-best time in the field. He then earned second in the long jump with a mark of 6.64 meters. In the shot put and the long jump, he finished 11th and 15th, respectively, putting him in 12th with his strongest events to come.

On Thursday, Muellers won the NCAA Elite 90 award, which is given annually to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade point average at the meet.

Peter Kirgis ’20, Eliot Fong ’19, Tristan Colaizzi ’20 and cocaptain David Folsom ’17 competed in the distance medley relay. Kirgis ran a strong opening 1200 meter leg of 3:06. He handed off to Fong in seventh place, and Fong ran a 400 meter split of 50.5 and handing off to Colaizzi in eighth place.

Colaizzi moved up to fifth in his 800 meter leg, handing off to Folsom in fifth place after running a 1:54 split. In the final leg, the mile, Folsom hung with the chase pack until the final lap, when he kicked away and cruised to fifth overall, an All-American performance.

The Ephs were in 17th place at the end of the day. On Saturday, they competed in three events:

the heptathlon, the 3000m and the shot put.

In 12th place after day one, Muellers ran a time of 8.86 in the 60m hurdles, a personal best. Returning immediately for the pole vault, he surpassed the bar at four meters. With just the 1000m left, Muellers was still in 12th and needed an incredible finish to reach AllAmerican status.

Rising to the occasion, he ran a gritty 2:39.92 in the 1000 meter, breaking his personal record by eight seconds. The performance, which was second on the day, pushed Muellers to eighth place, garnering All-American status and scoring a point for the Ephs.

In the shot put, Magnus Herweyer ’20 showed promise. One of just two first-years in the field, he fouled on two of his three throws but managed an impressive mark of 15.65 meters, good for 13th place overall. Herweyer is poised to have an outstanding outdoor season, as he will have a chance to compete in the discus, which is not contested indoors.

The highlight of the meet for the Ephs was the 3000 meter.

Hale finished fourth in the race last year, despite having the best seed time. He was seeded first again this year and went into Saturday’s race looking to avenge last year’s defeat.

Hale took the early lead, pacing the field with a 4:34 in the first mile. He relinquished the lead to a Colby runner for 400 meters before making an extended push for the tape with 1000 meters left. One by one, Hale broke his competitors.

With 400 meters left to run, just one runner remained on his

KYLE SCADLOCK ’19 MEN’S BASKETBALL

“Ever since we started postseason play, Kyle has really stepped up his game and competed at a high level. It was a pleasure to watch him embrace the moment and compete with joy and confidence.”

– Head Coach Kevin App

TWINSBERG, OHIO Scadlock, a forward, recorded his fifth double-double of the year and his third of the playoffs with a teamhigh 22 points and 12 rebounds against Susquehanna on Friday. He also led the team with 14 points against Middlebury on Saturday.

EMMA EGAN ’20 WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD

“Emma has done a great job all season long. She brings a positive attitude to practice every day and kept that going throughout the weekend [at the NCAA Div. III Indoor Championships].”

– Head Coach Nate Hoey

YARMOUTH, MAINE Last Saturday, Egan finished second in the high jump at Nationals. She leaped 1.72 meters and had only one more miss than the winner, earning All-American honors. Her performance helped the Ephs move from 16th to fourth place on day two.

12 SPORTS

The Williams Record

March 15, 2017

Ephs hold off Panthers, River Hawks to advance to Final Four

By JACKSON MYERS STAFF WRITER Last weekend, men’s basketball (23–8, 8–8 in the NESCAC) defeated Susquehanna and Middlebury to reach the Final Four of the NCAA Div. III tournament.

On Friday, the men advanced to the Elite Eight with a 78-61 victory over the Susquehanna River Hawks.

Both teams opened the game with 8-0 runs. Susquehanna scored first, but the men struck back with a 3-point play fromMarcos Soto ’19, a pair of foul shots from Kyle Scadlock ’19 and a 3-pointer from tri-captain Mike Greenman ’18.

After trading buckets for a couple of minutes, the River Hawks established a five-point lead. The Ephs labored under this deficit for a few minutes until Greenman and Cole Teal ’18 nailed back-to-back treys.

Both teams then slowed down, but James Heskett ’19 and Bobby Casey ’19 reestablished the men’s momentum by sinking consecutive 3-pointers. Two foul shots from Michael Kempton ’19 put the score at 33-28 in the final minute and sent the Ephs into the locker room up five.

The men started the second half shakily but soon launched into a 15-3 run that put the game away.

Scadlock demonstrated his physicality with two hard drives for scores. On the next possession, he drew the defense’s attention, leaving Soto wide open on the block for a third straight bucket. Meanwhile, turnovers prevented Susquehanna from even getting a shot off.

River Hawk center Ryan Traub finally got a layup after eight unanswered points by the Ephs, but he was answered by a 3-pointer from tri-captain Dan Aronowitz

’17. Scadlock’s free throw shooting – he was a perfect 12-12 from the line on the night – and a dagger from long range by Teal helped the Ephs accumulate a 16-point lead with 11 minutes to play. The final buzzer sounded with Williams on top 78-61.

Scadlock recorded his fifth double-double of the year and his third of the postseason, leading Williams with 22 points and 12 rebounds. Greenman added 14 points, while Dan Aronowitz contributed 11, all in the second half, as well as eight rebounds.

Aronowitz's performance on the boards put him over 500 rebounds in his career.

“We have been learning throughout the season that it doesn’t matter when you make your run,” Head Coach Kevin App said. “We weathered the storm early and let ourselves calm down a little bit, and we just kept competing and got enough stops on the defensive end.”

On Saturday, the Ephs punched their ticket to the Final Four in a nailbiter, defeating the Panthers by a score of 79-75.

The men had lost to Middlebury by 22 points in the NESCAC Championship game on Feb. 26 but won by 24 in the previous meeting on Jan. 22.

The Panthers led early, as 3-pointers from Jack Daly and Matt St. Amour riled up the home crowd in Pepin Gym. Teal was able to answer, however, and the game settled into a slog, with Middlebury maintaining a small lead.

Midway through the half, St. Amour intercepted a Williams pass and fed Jake Brown for a fast-break layup to extend the lead to eight, but Teal answered with a 3-pointer once again. Matt Folger hit a trey of his own, but a tip-in by Matt Karpowicz ’20 and another long ball by Teal cut

the Ephs’ deficit to just three with eight minutes to go in the half.

The Panthers relinquished the lead when Casey sank a 3-pointer to tie the game at 33, and an Aronowitz layup put Williams up by two. A St. Amour fadeaway retook the lead for the Panthers, but a post bucket by Karpowicz and a pull-up jumper in the lane

by Greenman set the halftime score at 39-37 in the Ephs’ favor.

From there, Daly sank a long trey to open the second half.

Scadlock answered, but aggressive defense by the Panthers kept the Ephs scoreless for the next few minutes. Heskett snapped the drought with a trey to pull the men back within two, and a Greenman three tied the game at 49 with 14:11 to play.

Heskett then came up with two steals in quick succession, and Middlebury began to struggle offensively. Capitalizing on the Panthers’ shooting woes, Karpowicz converted a 3-point play, Teal sunk his fourth 3-pointer of the game and Aronowitz scored on a cut to the basket to put together an 8-0 run for the Ephs.

Back-to-back threes by Daly and Brown cut Williams’ lead to just one, but Casey nailed a 3-pointer, and Kempton scored on a second-chance layup and added a post bucket on the next trip. With six minutes left, Casey successfully stuffed Eric McCord in the post and then sank a three to extend the lead to nine, the Ephs’ largest of the game.

The teams traded baskets until Kyle Scadlock hit a 3-pointer in the final two minutes, seemingly locking up the game. The Panthers, however, were not done. Capitalizing on a series of missed shots by Williams and employing their trapping defense effectively, Middlebury drew several fouls and hit its

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

James Heskett ’19 had three steals and five rebounds in Saturday's 79-75 win over Middlebury. free throws, racking up seven unanswered points solely from the charity stripe.

Now leading by only two with 38 seconds left, Greenman miraculously escaped a trap in the backcourt and eventually got the ball to Scadlock, who was intentionally fouled with 21 seconds to play. Scadlock, who had only missed one free throw in his last 27 attempts, missed the front end of a one-and-one, giving Middlebury a chance to complete the improbable comeback. With 10 seconds left, Daly drove hard to the lane but was unable to finish, and Matt Folger could not get a secondchance attempt to fall.

Soto was fouled immediately upon grabbing the rebound and hit both his shots to make it a two-possession game. St. Amour missed a desperation attempt at the buzzer, and the Ephs hung on to the razor-tight victory.

The Final Four run is the program’s fourth in the last eight years and the first for App, who is in his third year as head coach.

Scadlock led the Ephs with 14 points, trailed closely by Teal and Casey, each with 12. Aronowitz registered his fifth double-double on the year.

“It was a hard-fought game between two really good teams in a phenomenal atmosphere,” App said. “Fortunately, we were able

to make some big shots to build the lead and hang on tight to it down the stretch.”

“It’s an amazing feeling,” Aronowitz added. “I just try to tell the guys every day not to take it for granted and to have fun. I’m happy to be going back to [the Final Four] because not everybody gets this opportunity, and we’re certainly going to take advantage of it.”

The men will travel to Salem, Va., to face off against Augustana (Ill.) on Friday at 7:30 p.m.

No. 1 Whitman and No. 3 Babson will compete in the other semifinal, and the two winners will face off in the championship game Saturday at 6 p.m.

Women’s track takes fourth at Indoor Championships Men’s tennis starts spring with 9-0 win at Hamilton

By CAITLIN UBL TEAM CORRESPONDENT

Women’s track and field finished fourth at the NCAA Div. III Championships last weekend. Nine of the 14 Ephs that made the trip to Naperville, Ill. earned All-American honors.

The meet, hosted by North Central, began Friday morning. The women participated in two individual events and two relays on day one.

Chloe Rogers ’17 started the meet off for the Ephs, leaping 5.48 meters in the long jump.

Rogers, who broke the school’s indoor long jump record last week, narrowly missed qualifying for the finals, finishing 10th.

In the 4x400 relay, co-captain Alyza Ngbokoli ’17, Sierra Loomis ’20, Kayley McGonagle ’18 and Denver Williams ’19 represented the Ephs. Though the team did not qualify for finals, it showed immense improvement from its past performances.

In the mile, Victoria Kingham ’18 looked for a spot in finals. Kingham went out strong, before settling into a steady pace. With 200 meters to go, she unleashed a fero-

cious kick, running her final lap in 34 seconds to cross the line in 5:02.01. Her performance was the ninth-fastest mile of the day and qualified her for the final.

The distance medley relay was the last event of the day.

Co-captain Laney Teaford ’17 led off with a solid 1200 meter leg. She handed off to Megan Powell ’20, who sprinted a stellar 400 meters to put the Ephs in a good position going into the 800 meter leg. Anna Passannante ’20 maintained the momentum, inching up to the main pack and putting Anna Harleen ’18 in contention for the win going into the milelong anchor leg.

Harleen ran a fearless mile, pushed by teams from Bates, Otterbein and St. Norbert. Going into the final 600 meters, the third- through 11th-place teams were within five seconds of one another. Yet Harleen, with her characteristic gutsy finish, held off the other surging anchors to cross the line in third place. The relay finished with a time of 11:51.39, achieving AllAmerican honors and scoring six points for the women.

Going into day two, the Ephs were tied for 16th place, with some of their strongest events still to come.

Saturday’s action started with the triple jump, in which Rogers and co-captain Candice Dyce ’17 both secured AllAmerican status. On her third jump, Dyce leaped 12.04 meters to earn fifth place and four points for the Ephs. Rogers had a big last jump, catapulting from ninth to third place with a huge mark of 12.08 meters. That leap added six points for the women.

Next, Kingham represented the Ephs in the mile finals. She finished in 5:12.34, earning 10th place.

The final event for the Ephs was the high jump, in which three of the 17 competitors wore the Williams jersey. The women scored 14.50 cumulative points in the competitive event.

Emma Egan ’20 jumped 1.72 meters. While her mark tied for the top spot, she had one more miss than the winner; total misses are used as a tiebreaker in high jump, so Egan was forced to settle for silver.

Summer-Solstice Thomas ’20 leaped 1.69 meters to tie for sixth, barely missing each of her attempts at 1.72 meters.

Helene Hall ’18 also jumped 1.69 meters to tie for fourth place on misses.

All three women attained All-American status, cementing Williams’ reputation as a jumping powerhouse.

The women finished fourth with 30.5 points, just half a point behind third-place George Fox. Washington University (Mo.) won the competition with 44 points, and Ithaca was second with 41.5 points.

Head Coach Nate Hoey said that the team’s success was a product of hard work. “I’m incredibly proud of this group,” he said. “I am happy with the high level of effort they put in, the positive vocal support they had for each other all weekend and the resilience they showed in the face of adversity. It was a great indoor season, and I can’t wait from the outdoor season to begin.”

The women will open their outdoor season on March 25 at Point Loma in San Diego, Calif.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Nine of the 14 Ephs competing were named All-Americans as women's track finished fourth at the NCAA Indoor Championships.

By KEVIN COAKLEY CONTRIBUTING WRITER Men’s tennis (3–0, 1–0 in the NESCAC) began its spring season by winning 9-0 at Hamilton on Saturday. This bout was the team’s only match before it embarks on a trip to California over spring break, where it will play seven times.

The Ephs are off to an undefeated start to their combined fall and spring seasons. The men defeated Vassar on Sept. 16 and Springfield on Sept. 21 in its only two matches of the fall.

In Clinton, N.Y., the Eph doubles teams were all challenged but overcame the Continentals in each match. Alex Taylor ’20 and Brian Grodecki ’18 opened the season with a 9-7 win at No. 1 doubles, regaining the momentum that helped them qualify for the championship match at the MIT Invitational Tournament on Oct. 16.

At No. 2 doubles, Jordan Sadowsky ’18 and Rohan Shastri ’17 secured an 8-6 victory over their opponents from Hamilton, while Benjamin Lebowitz ’20 and Sachin Raghavan ’18 completed the sweep by winning their match 8-5.

The men carried their strong momentum into the singles portion of the match. Shastri won 6-2, 6-1 at No. 1 singles. S. Raghavan triumphed at No. 2 singles with the same scoreline.

At No. 2 singles, Grodecki had the most competitive match; he defeated Hamilton’s Max McKee-Proctor 7-6 in the first set before finishing off the second set 6-1.

At No. 4 singles, Taylor, who made the quarterfinals of the MIT tournament last fall, won 6-3, 6-3 over his opponent. Sadowsky won 6-0, 6-2 at No. 5 singles.

At No. 6 singles, Ananth Raghavan ’20 dominated his match and earned a 6-0, 6-0 win to seal a 9-0 overall victory for the Ephs.

Head Coach Dan Greenberg ’08 commented on the impressive season opener.

“The guys have put a lot of work in this winter, and it showed on Saturday,” he said. “They’re fitter and more consistent, which has helped their confidence going into match play. As soon as they got through their first match rust, they played really solid

tennis throughout the rest of the match.”

He praised the team’s effort in the offseason.

“I feel really good about the work the guys did in the offseason,” Greenberg said. “They built a strong base fundamentally, which has allowed them to work on some new things in the last few weeks, and everyone’s excited to translate it into matches starting Saturday. We have a tough schedule, but as long as we stay healthy, I think we can compete with anyone at any spot in the lineup.”

Greenberg discussed Shastri’s impressive performance.

“Rohan looked great at the top spot,” he said. “He’s been injured for the past year and a half, so to finally see him healthy and playing again at such a high level is awesome.”

“Our main goal is to get better with every match,” Greenberg said. “Whether we win or lose on our spring trip, we should be able to figure out what each guy needs to sharpen or adjust going forward. If we can do that over the next six weeks, we’ll be right where we need to be for the postseason, where anything is possible.”

The men, who were ranked No. 2 nationally in the March 2 Intercollegiate Tennis Association poll, will travel to California to play seven matches over spring break. Its first match will be against Point Loma in San Diego, which will take place on Monday at 3 p.m. local time.

The men will also face Chapman, Pomona-Pitzer, Chicago, Redlands, Claremont-MuddScripps and DePauw. Chicago, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Pomona-Pitzer are all ranked in the top 10.

Greenberg said he hopes the spring break matches will prepare the team for its remaining matches in the spring. After the trip to California, nearly all the team’s matches will be against NESCAC teams.

“Across the board, the NESCAC has gotten so deep,” he said. “In no sport can you expect an easy NESCAC matchup, and in tennis especially, every weekend will have back-to-back battles with the best teams in the conference and in the country.”

The men will resume conference play with an away match against No. 3 Middlebury, which will take place April 8 at 10 a.m.