RECORD THE WILLIAMS
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2019 VOL. CXXXIII, NO. 23 Editorial: Accountability, safety at CC
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Using Tinder in the Purple Valley
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CC rejects Williams Initiative For Israel By WILLIAM NEWTON PRODUCTIONS MANAGER At its April 23 meeting, College Council (CC) voted 13–8 with one abstention against recognizing Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI) as an official registered student organization (RSO). During a CC meeting one week earlier, Council members had voted to table WIFI’s initial request to gain RSO status. WIFI was the first club in over a decade that complied with all CC bylaws for recognition but failed to gain RSO status, according to archived CC minutes. In both meetings, there was heated debate among a number of guests, including representatives of WIFI and students advocating against the club. Last week’s meeting had nearly 20 guests, most of whom advocated against WIFI, and included Palestinian students who shared personal stories of trauma that they experienced while growing up in Palestine. Most debate centered around WIFI’s stated mission and purpose, which, according to the group’s constitution, “is to support Israel and the pro-Israel campus community, as well as to educate the College on issues concerning Israel and the Middle East.” The club also plans to hold events, including Jewish cultural events and celebrations of Jewish and Israeli holidays. “What we’re looking to do is to engage in educational initiatives, hold events, bring speakers to campus from a wide variety of political backgrounds with this issue and just put out more information so that students can look at all the available info and make
a decision for themselves,” said Molly Berenbaum ’21, a leader of WIFI. “We’re really not interested in dictating a political position to students or faculty here.” Students advocating against WIFI took issue with the lack of specificity they saw in WIFI’s stated mission. “From our perspective, there are ways of supporting Israeli statehood that don’t support the occupation or human rights abuses against Palestinians, but there are ways of doing that that definitely do,” said Joseph Moore ’20, who attended and spoke at both meetings as a guest. “[WIFI’s] inability to take a political stance with reference to those issues was incredibly problematic, and I think it came out during several parts of the conversation.” Mohazzab Abdullah ’21, who attended and spoke at the second meeting, shared similar sentiments. “Generally speaking, [Israel is] a state involved in an active conflict that is one of the really vile and problematic conflicts on the planet right now,” Abdullah said. “Regardless of what angle you approach it from, I think almost everyone will agree that massive abuses are happening, and I think that you need sort of a special consideration and debate when it comes to voting for RSOs that affiliate themselves with a state involved in such a conflict.” Several members of WIFI said that, during the meeting, they felt that the guests opposing their club were trivializing past Jewish oppression and concerns about anti-Semitism in their statements, including when one guest said: “I have Jewish friends, I have Jewish professors, my advi-
A closer look: Williams Inn approval By SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITOR The construction of the new Williams Inn, which Senior Project Manager Michael Wood says will be complete this summer, has involved an unprecedented level of cooperation and dialogue between College officials and Williamstown representatives. The proposed inn will have 64 rooms, as opposed to 133 in the original, and it is fully financed and managed by the College at the cost of $35.6 million from the endowment. According to Jim Kolesar ’72, the College’s assistant to the president for community and government affairs, the project is the result of a lengthy bureaucratic approval process that has ultimately garnered positive reactions from most townspeople. “For being in the community, as opposed to on campus, it is the biggest [College construction effort],” Kolesar said. Located at Denison Park on a legally protected wetlands area and at the intersection of numerous business interests, the new inn has generated controversy and has produced a compromise. The proposal of the inn came at the heels of a consistent demand from townspeople for more business in Williamstown, Kolesar said. In January 2013, the College made public its consideration of building a highend hotel in town. At the time, the preexisting Williams Inn, which sits on College property that had been leased to the inn’s owners, had become increasingly unprofitable. Director of the Environmental Studies Program Henry Art, who also serves on and formerly chaired the Williamstown Conservation Commission, which was involved in deliberations over the new inn, added that the original Williams Inn is unnecessarily large. “It is just too big for the demand,” he said. “Three weekends a year, it’s going to be full, and those are graduation, reunion and Columbus Day weekend.”
Ultimately, as the inn’s profitability declined, the College decided to purchase its sizeable debt, giving the College increased leverage to reshape the inn in its interests, paving the way for the construction of a new hotel. One of the earliest concerns in constructing a new inn was its location. Proposals ranged from the end of Spring Street, along Route 2, to Denison Park, which was ultimately selected by a committee that was formed to evaluate potential locations. This committee included neighbors, “merchants on Spring Street and people in the hospitality industry,” said Art, who added that the committee met “fairly regularly.” Kolesar, in his role as liaison between College and town, chaired this committee. From the College’s perspective, putting the inn near Denison Park was always preferable for both environmental and aesthetic reasons. For Williamstown Director of Community Development Andrew Groff, the necessary permitting was much more straightforward at the Denison Park location, which also had clearer environmental advantages. Art concurred, adding that stormwater management issues would make it exceptionally difficult to have the inn near the intersection of Spring Street and Route 2. “That’s a location that’s receiving a disproportionate amount of water because all of the roof drainage from the Morley Science Center,” he said. “Putting a hotel on top of that really didn’t make a lot of ecological sense.” According to Kolesar, the majority of interested parties favored this reasoning, but a minority continued to believe that the top of Spring Street would be preferable, primarily for reasons relating to prominence. One concern, according to Groff, was based on distance. “There was a concern that if it was set too far back, where it was now, it wouldn’t have the benefit of walkability,” he said. continued on Page 5
Timeline of recent Israel-Palestine debate on campus April 2017
April 16, 2019
Ephs for Israel hosts Israeli Independence day barbeque; other students protest with "Occupation is not kosher" signs
WIFI requests formal status as an RSO; CC tables discussion; CC livestream turned off midway through meeting due to concerns about student safety
April 2018
April 23, 2019
Students for Justice in Palestine and Coalition for Immigrant Student Advancement hold binational solidarity protest with mock wall on Paresky lawn; Students for Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue forms
CC votes against WIFI's formation as an RSO after conentious debate; no CC livestream recorded, and meeting minutes kept anonymous INFOGRAPHIC BY WILLIAM NEWTON/PRODUCTIONS MANAGER
sor is Jewish … I attended Shabbat dinners because I am not anti-Semitic, and I have a lot of Jewish friends.” Later in the meeting, a member of WIFI argued that Israel was not colonialist and was not committing genocide against the Palestinian people because the Palestinian population has risen in recent years. “Even when you consider the fact that the Palestinian population is rising, it’s because they have a high fertility rate,” Moore said after the meeting. “Generally, populations in war zones have higher fertility rates because they don’t know if all of their children will make adulthood.”
Abdullah shared additional concerns about the way that members of WIFI, in his opinion, were invoking the Holocaust to dismiss the experiences of Palestinian students who shared personal stories about their childhoods. One student shared that a gun was pointed to their face by an Israeli soldier when they were a child. “I don’t think that when you’re talking about your oppression at the hands of another state, I don’t think when a child is talking about having a gun shoved in their face by a soldier at the age of five, they should have the Holocaust thrown in their face,” Abdullah said. “No one in that room doubts that the Holocaust
was everything that it was absolutely horrible and nightmarish and that the Jewish community genuinely has reason to need a strong state in the region, and no one doubts the fact that the Jewish state does face hostility from other Arab states in the region. But the way that should be interpreted is not to block legitimate and genuine criticisms of the state. That’s like saying that just because Pakistan was once colonized, the genocide we committed in Bangladesh should not be talked about because ... our army need[s] to be strong to protect us from future neocolonialism. I come from a place that has also suffered, I have a heritage that is
mutilated, but I don’t throw it in the faces of Bangladeshis if they were to ever bring up or organize something to the effect of raising awareness of Pakistan’s abuses in the 1971 war.” Prior to the actual debate in last week’s meeting, there was a discussion among Council members and guests concerning how the meeting would be recorded and archived given a flurry of recent national media coverage of College events. In particular, a livestream from a Council meeting earlier this month has been featured on a number of alt-right and white nationalist blogs and continued on Page 4
College Council looks for balance between transparency, safety in public records of weekly meetings By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN MANAGING EDITOR After students received threats following the widespread digital dissemination of a previous College Council (CC) meeting livestream, CC chose to make its meeting minutes anonymous and not provide live video for its April 23 meeting in an effort to balance transparency with student safety concerns. During the CC meeting last night, a public Facebook livestream was up for all of the meeting, with the exception of during anti-bias training, and full minutes, including the names of CC members and consenting guests, will be available to all students who sign in through their Google accounts. These concerns mounted at the April 23 council meeting when CC discussed the potential recognition of the Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI) as a registered student organization, a proposal that was ultimately rejected by a vote of 8–13–1. CC decided at the beginning of that meeting to anonymize its minutes. No livestream was set up for that meeting, and the April 16 meeting’s livestream was turned off halfway through the meeting. At the beginning of the April 23 meeting, CC members cited previous concerns about stu-
dent safety as the reason for the new anonymity measures. This decision came two weeks after a live video of the April 9 meeting quickly propagated across many outlets. One YouTube video by a white nationalist commentator featuring the livestream gained over 100,000 views as of yesterday. Concerns over the potential “doxxing” of students, meaning the release of personal information online, led to the discussion of ano-
dent safety. “It’s important to us that we maintain credibility and that people stand behind the things that we say, but obviously student safety is the most important to us,” said CC CoPresident Ellie Sherman ’20. One potential solution that CC is exploring is the possibility of using different levels of transparency for guests and CC members. “We’ve talked about making the default be that guests are anonymized or more visibly pro-
“It’s important to us that we maintain credibility and that people stand behind the things that we say, but obviously student safety is the most important to us.” Ellie Sherman ’20 CC Co-President nymity for the April 23 meeting. The minutes for the April 23 meeting ended up being completely anonymized for the discussion of the WIFI club proposal. Guests were referenced by number – for example, “Guest One” – and CC members’ comments were also anonymous. The final vote was taken by secret ballot. This lack of transparency for CC members’ positions is a countervailing concern to those over stu-
viding that option when guests come into the room,” Sherman said. “We’ve also talked a lot about how College Council is a public space, and if you’re coming into that space, you should be able to stand behind what you’re saying if you’ve been elected as a representative.” Some members of the CC executive board expressed concern that anonymizing the views of CC members for such a contentious vote would be especial-
ly harmful. “My stance during the meeting was: I understand if guests do not want to be on the record, but if you run for College Council, in an elected position, you’re making these decisions … and so I think your opinions are very important to be accurately recorded and associated with you,” Parliamentarian Lance Ledet ’21 said. “Basically, what we’ve said last Tuesday is that whenever we’re making a hard choice, we won’t associate opinions with people, and when we’re making easy ones, then we can know who said what.” The future of the CC livestream program is also unclear. According to Sherman, CC is currently exploring, in collaboration with Williams Students Online (WSO), the possibility of making a live video accessible only to members of the College community. However, WSO has indicated that the technical planning for this would be somewhat extensive. While the livestream program has been a recent addition to CC communications, it was viewed at the time of its establishment as essential. “As soon as I was elected, establishing the live minutes and livestream program was a clear and necessary step toward transparency and accountability,” said Michael Rubel ’19, former CC vice president for communications.
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May 1, 2019
Last Tuesday, College Council (CC) denied Williams Initiative for Israel’s (WIFI) request to become a registered student organization. CC members voted anonymously, and only three council members participated in the contentious debate, with none stating the reason for their decision. The minutes document did not include names of the guests and councilmembers who spoke, and the meeting was not livestreamed. We at the Record believe that elected officials should have to stand by their votes and that College constituents should be able to clearly understand the reasons why CC votes for or against a request or proposal. We understand that there are exceptional circumstances for withholding guest identities, such as from the April 23 meeting, where there were legitimate safety concerns, but we believe that councilmembers should be named and that their votes should be specified
How CC can adapt to better represent and serve students
in the minutes document, which may be accessed by anyone with a Williams email account. We also encourage CC to develop a policy on granting anonymity to and omitting information about guests. We believe that such a step would make community members feel more comfortable attending meetings and sharing their thoughts with CC. Additionally, we believe there is a pressing need for CC to reevaluate its bylaws, whose complexity and discretionary nature allow for them to be selectively applied. The reasons for CC’s decisionmaking must also become more transparent. During the April 9 meeting, CC members questioned a Black Previews organizer at length as she requested $795 to fund programming for Black admitted students. They repeatedly asked whether the events would be exclusive, claiming that events not open to all would violate CC bylaws. CC initially rejected the request but funded it in full after additional questioning and reassurance that Black Previews would be open to all. The organizer later returned to the meeting, and she and an-
other student expressed frustration that hers and other funding requests from Black student groups were subject to additional scrutiny compared to requests from other organizations. Data compiled by the Record affirm that, since 2016, “CC has debated 60.7 percent of requests from Black students, majority-Black groups or programming events focused on Black students; it has adopted 39.3 percent of requests without debate. For all other requests, only 26.7 percent were debated; 73.3 percent were adopted without any debate” (“CC pressed on racial bias in funding,” April 24, 2019). CC bylaws allow councilmembers to cite or enforce them unsystematically. Due to the sheer number of bylaws, many student groups violate minor bylaws by requesting retroactive funding, giving CC further discretionary power. One rule reads, “Organizations must be open to the campus, and events must be free, unless granted special permission by the council,” allowing CC to authorize subjective exceptions to its bylaws. At the April 9 meeting, one council member
said, “We should be cognizant of how what has been written into our bylaws and procedures has perpetuated marginalizing groups that have been historically marginalized.” Yet several CC members cited the above bylaw, which they have the power to selectively ignore, when discussing the Black Previews funding request. The nature of the bylaws permit members to apply them inconsistently, allowing biases to influence procedural decisions. We call for simpler and clearer CC bylaws and more systematic standards for bylaw application. Indeed, MinCo representatives have cited the complexity of CC’s bylaws as an impediment to MinCo groups’ fund acquisition. This council has committed to attending anti-bias training, but changing the bylaws to reduce biased application will benefit future students. Clarifying requirements for clubs and funding, as well as establishing when requests will be subject to further deliberation, will make bylaw application more consistent and just. Making these changes would allow CC to better serve the students it claims to represent.
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To the editor:
Op-Ed and Letter Submission The Record welcomes op-eds and letters from all members of the College community. The Opinions section is designed to reflect the varied views and ideas of the College community, and the publication of any letter or op-ed does not indicate an endorsement of the views contained therein. Submissions should be sent to kc17@williams. edu and kzy1@williams.edu by Sunday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Opeds range in length from 650-800 words, and letters are 500 words or fewer. The Record will not publish pieces that have appeared in other publications. Pieces submitted to the Record are not guaranteed a spot in the upcoming issue. For Record policy information, please see our website, williamsrecord.com.
We care. We care about our students, including the brainiacs, artists, fierce advocates for equity and dignity, who care for (disenfranchised) communities and the environment— often while being denied reciprocal care. Passionate about justice — social and restorative — we note that repressive rhetoric leverages predation. Prizing intelligence in varied forms — especially emotional intelligence — we are not always happy to but will publicly clash with willful ignorance and mendaciousness displaying brain rot and ethical decay. Grateful that we have been spared from attending funerals for friends who worship
in mosques, synagogues and black churches, we understand that some of our students are stressed because they or kin seek solace and spirituality under threats by white supremacists, misogynists, trans/queer/ biphobes and their enablers. We worry about student health and well-being, especially for those whose vulnerabilities exponentially increase through social and state persecutions. Openly claiming our biases for justice as part of our humanity, we are troubled that we have to continuously re-state facts that should be self-evident. First, while crime in the US is at an all-time low (https:// www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2019/01/03/5-factsabout-crime-in-the-u-s/), sexual assault reporting increases (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem) and white supremacist violence is at an all-time high (https://www. nytimes.com/2019/02/20/us/ hate-groups-rise.html). Second, in an asymmetrical fight, those backed by structure, police and wealth destabilize
any balance in power for social justice advocacy. Third, increasingly narcissistic bashing of progressive students, through white nationalist and alt-right platforms, blogs, and bots, erodes the college’s ability to provide quality security and education. Interrogating activists likely creates more stress than actionable intel for the greater community. Intimidating anti-racist organizers also evokes DOJ fabricating “black identity extremism” while failing to competently monitor white supremacist terror (https:// theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/). Pugilists popular enough to become president become role models for some. Just because something is legal does not give it virtue. At our best, intellectuals and scholars will continue to support civil and human rights as well as student advocacy as it evolves with compassion and courage. Joy James, F.C. Oakley Professor of Humanities
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OPINIONS 3
The Williams Record
Why WIFI deserved recognition from CC
Why we opposed WIFI
Standing against CC’s silencing of WIFI
Challenging WIFI's complicity in state violence
By MOLLY BERENBAUM, GAVIN SMALL and MAXWELL PLONSKER On April 23, 2019, College Council (CC) rejected Williams Initiative For Israel’s (WIFI) application to become a Registered Student Organization (RSO), by a vote of 13–8. Though WIFI complied with all CC bylaws and regulations for student organizations, the club was still denied RSO status. During the CC meeting, no Council member present contested WIFI’s compliance with school rules and regulations. Therefore, it is apparent that WIFI was denied official status on purely political grounds, as CC members and guests fought to silence us and effectively turned the meeting into a referendum on IsraeliPalestinian politics. From the outset of the meeting, WIFI was vilified by multiple speakers, who conflated the club’s mission with what they called the “genocidal” and “apartheid” policies of the Israeli government. The speaking order mechanism of the CC meeting, which dictates that people be called upon to speak in the order in which they raise their hands, coupled with the fact that there were significantly more people speaking against the club than for it, made it virtually impossible for supporters of the club to contest these accusations, or to properly clarify the mission of the club. WIFI aims simply to promote education about Israel, celebrate Israeli cultural events, advocate for campus recognition of Israel’s right to exist and allow Williams students the opportunity to form their position regarding Israel for themselves. The situation between Israel and Palestine is undeniably complex, and our purpose in proposing this club is not to claim that all Israeli actions are justified, nor is it our intention to make any students on campus feel uncomfortable. Rather, our goal is simply to bring an additional perspective into the ongoing campus discourse on
this issue for students who support or who want to learn more about Israel. To be clear, we celebrate the fact that groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine have been granted RSO status, and that students who believe in that group’s mission have been given a platform to support their cause. WIFI is requesting only that students with a different perspective be given that same platform and opportunity to be heard. Multiple peer institutions, including Wesleyan and all eight Ivy League schools, as well as hundreds of other colleges, have Israel clubs. Despite WIFI’s moderate mission, many CC members and guests fought to silence WIFI, and in doing so, they successfully prevented the club from becoming officially recognized. These individuals used instances of Palestinian suffering as justification for dismissing WIFI as a legitimate organization. It is true that many Palestinians have endured terrible hardships, and we empathize with those who have been affected and hope to see a future where Israelis and Palestinians can both enjoy peace and prosperity. But to describe the situation between Israel and Palestine in such black and white terms is disingenuous and does not tell the whole story. Placing sole responsibility for the entirety of the conflict on Israel is both factually unfounded and rhetorically dangerous. The only thing that is black and white about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it is not clear-cut. This is an extremely complex issue with multiple perspectives and interests at play. Indeed, it is so complex that the conflict has defied resolution despite years of repeated and earnest efforts by many people and nations. There are multiple valid perspectives on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, yet CC has made it clear that only students holding one opinion are allowed to organize and be recognized by the College. CC is tasked with determining whether a proposed organi-
zation meets the required criteria to become an RSO; its role is not to evaluate the substance of what it perceives to be the organization's ideas or positions. If any member of CC had such strong opinions about what they perceived to be WIFI’s political positions that they were unable to be impartial on the matter of the club’s approval, they should have recused themselves from the vote rather than vote the club down based on their own personal views. Last week, President Mandel sent out an email to all Williams students and faculty in which she spoke about ways to create a healthier culture and discourse at the College. She posited that “a school like Williams absolutely should discuss these complex and important issues. When we do, conflicts will necessarily and even productively arise. Our goal shouldn’t be to avoid disagreement or dissent, but to develop ways of engaging in it without losing respect for each other as people." President Mandel’s point is well taken and wholly applicable to the present situation. Indeed, it inexorably leads to the conclusion that a group such as WIFI, which presents another perspective on a difficult and complicated issue, should be recognized and heard. President Mandel acknowledged that doing so may bring conflicting perspectives headto-head, but she recognized that such conflict is productive and healthy and should be encouraged, not stifled. The IsraeliPalestinian conflict is certainly one of the most complex and important political issues of the current era, and as President Mandel stated, we as a college community must commit to ensuring that all perspectives on this issue are respected and given a voice on campus. Molly Berenbaum ’21 is an Arabic studies and religion major from Denver, Col. Gavin Small ’22 is from Fitchburg, Mass. Maxwell Plonsker ’21 is a political science major from Larchmont, N.Y.
Refuting claims of institutional violence Analyzing evidence of racism at the College By LUANA MAROJA As President Mandel wrote in a recent letter, “ … we have a problem at Williams.” What I see is indeed problematic, for some groups have been claiming that violent practices of racism occur daily at our school. Two lines of evidence are given to support this claim: an article published on The Feminist Wire and a 2009 faculty report on retention of faculty of color. These are strong claims, and it’s incumbent on us to scrutinize the evidence for them. For if such violence exists, we must eliminate it, but if it doesn’t, then we needn’t address a nonexistent problem. The idea that violent institutionalized racism abounds in the College seems to have been taken for granted, and claims of oppression and victimhood are coming from groups ranging from CARE Now to the committee on the American Asian Studies concentration. But when one asks for the evidence of “violence,” one is told that even asking, “where is the violence?” is itself “violence.” This is a form of intimidation meant to shut down debate. Further, we are told to “accept grievances from professors of color without question.” As a scientist, I have learned not to accept assertions without evidence. But this intimidation method seems to have worked: Few dissenters want to risk opprobrium from aggrieved students. As evidence for “violent racism,” some professors have given examples of microaggressions such as “someone forgot my name,” “someone confused me with a student,” “someone wrote/said something rude,” “someone asked a culturally insensitive question,” “a car mechanic was rude.” Indeed, such events are commonplace, and I have encountered them often. However, I do not interpret them as racism against Latinas (after all, I have white male colleagues who encountered similar situations), much less construe them
as “violence” or blaming the College for them. We are living in an era when people are taught to interpret everything as a microaggression instead of giving the benefit of the doubt. (see Lukianoff and Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure). The result is that one becomes conditioned to detect microaggressions everywhere. The question thus changes from “did racism take place?” to “how did racism manifest itself in this situation?” The problem is that unwarranted claims of oppression and victimization actually create new racial tensions, and are painting one of the most liberal, diverse and well-intentioned institutions as a cesspool of racism. Further evidence used to support claims of widespread racism — which supposedly led to an exodus of faculty of color — is the resurfaced 2009 report investigating the retention of professors of color. But if you read the report and its 2014 supplement, you find no evidence of a “mass exodus” of faculty of color. Rather, the 2009 report actually shows no evidence for different rates of retention or tenure between white faculty and faculty of color. In fact, although there’s no statistically significant difference, faculty of color were retained and tenured at a slightly higher rate. The current exodus of faculty is also nonexistent: Few professors of color have left, and not because of racism but because they received better offers, retired or did not receive tenure. Therefore, the data cited to support the ubiquity of violent racism fail to buttress that claim. In reality, the College has the increase in diversity of faculty and students as a top priority (we currently have high ethnic diversity with 39 percent of the students as minorities). Professors are required to attend workshops on bias avoidance, and pay special attention in recruiting and evaluating candidates of color.
The College has been successful in increasing diversity in faculty of color despite their underrepresentation in PhDs (19 percent of professors are minorities). In the end, one can find evidence of violence only when the meaning of the word “violence” is changed. Violence (“cold”) is now taken to characterize words/acts that might offend someone, even if unintentionally. But, whose offense counts? Students upset with the destruction of their shrine to professors on leave, or the professor who, relocating materials after communicating with Campus Safety, has been cast as a racist villain? Or both? What is the threshold for deeming something “offensive”? This is another form of intimidation: Change the meaning of words to stifle speech you don’t like. But American courts have ruled that offensive words/actions, so long as they don’t inspire imminent harm, are not violations of the First Amendment’s “free speech.” There is a huge difference between offending somebody’s sentiments and punching them in the face. You can control how you react to speech, but you can’t will your face to not be hurt. I ask that we bring reason, deliberation and debate back to campus. After all, a main goal of higher education is to use reason, evidence and deliberation to justify (or alter) one’s beliefs. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and, of course, diligent investigation. Crimes, including hate crimes or bias, need to be investigated and the results reported back to the community, never hidden from view. We need to start a dialogue and move beyond name-calling and unreasonable demands. One way to begin discourse is to endorse free expression, so that no speech is off limits, no matter how offensive some may consider it. For how can we have this discussion without free speech? Luana Maroja, an associate professor of biology, has been at the College since 2010.
By JOSEPH MOORE and JESUS PAYAN Given the especially contentious circumstances surrounding the Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI), those of us who organized in opposition to WIFI felt it necessary to explain why we opposed its recognition as a registered student organization. All students who organized in opposition of WIFI fully support a Jewish home in the region, and we recognize the necessity of Jewish and Israeli voices in the process for peace. However, we could not approve of WIFI’s mission statement, which explicitly supports the currently existing Israeli state. Given that the Israeli state is engaging in ongoing violent practices and is built on stolen Palestinian land, one cannot “support” the existence of an Israeli state as an abstract concept without ignoring and indirectly endorsing the state’s violent practices. When confronted by a broad coalition of Palestinian students and their allies, members of WIFI repeatedly avoided questions and concerns about Palestinian human rights and refused to outline what political stance they would take with respect to the occupation of Palestinian land. In addition, WIFI’s prospective leadership failed to give clear answers on whether or not they would refuse outside sources of funding from organizations known to associate themselves with the Israeli government. Moreover, near the end of the discussion at the second Council meeting, one member of WIFI leadership asserted the Israeli state routinely killing Palestinians in order to displace them from their land did not constitute genocide because the Palestinian population as a whole had not declined, due to a high fertility rate. This is totally inconsistent with any definition of the word "genocide", either provided by a dictionary or defined by international law and deeply offensive to Palestinians who have suffered repeated attempts at ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. Additionally, WIFI tried to make the argument that illegal Israeli settlements (illegal under Israeli and international law) do not constitute a textbook
example of settler colonialism. If the conversations that were had in the two College Council (CC) meetings are any indication of the positions that WIFI intended to promote on campus, then we ought to celebrate their proposal being denied. Williams ought not to provide a platform to groups that, when provided with firsthand testimony from Palestinian students about the violence of the occupation, attempt to redefine terms like genocide and colonialism to suit their own ends. The response to these concerns repeatedly brought up by WIFI’s leadership throughout both CC meetings was that WIFI would simply serve as a space for students who believed that the state of Israel had a right to exist in whatever capacity that means to each individual member of the group. In geopolitical terms, however, Israel’s “right to exist” is uncontestable: The state of Israel receives more than 3.5 billion dollars of military aid every year from the United States, and would likely receive even more financial support in the event of any military conflict threatening its borders. Furthermore, the pro-Israel lobby in the United States is both extremely well funded and politically influential. Thus, both practically and discursively, the state of Israel does not need a student group defending its “right to exist” on this campus any more than we need to “defend” the rights of wealthy, straight white men. Instead, the intention of WIFI’s very existence is to create a space in which assertions of Israeli rights – to land, to financial support, to discursive legitimacy – could be made without any reference to the millions of Palestinians who have died and are currently suffering because of the occupation. As per the constitution, interest meeting notes and CC minutes, WIFI’s implicit and explicit purpose is to challenge the “one-sided” information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to create a space where people can feel comfortable making claims that erase Israeli campaigns for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians. Those of us advocating against the recognition of WIFI, including CC members and guests, repeatedly affirmed both our
support for a Jewish home in the region, as well as the need for justice for minoritized communities within Israel. We cannot, however, bring ourselves to support the existence of such a student group with the aforementioned intentions. To those who contend that WIFI’s charter did not violate any specific CC bylaws, we respond with the understanding that CC is a democratically elected body and its representatives are empowered to make decisions they feel best serve the campus community; if approving student groups was simply a question of procedure, then approving and denying new groups would be handled by administration and not student government. We in the opposition wholeheartedly welcome more discussions surrounding these issues, but we stand by our position that CC made the correct decision not to recognize a group whose only contribution to the campus discourse would have been obscurantist, misinformed and discursively supportive of human rights abuses. There are already existing platforms on campus, namely the Students for Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, that mediate healthy debate examining both sides of the conflict. Free speech on campus requires some level of basic respect for our interlocutors. We can disagree, argue passionately, even yell; but we cannot, in good conscience, fund student groups that refuse to acknowledge the basic humanity of those on the opposing side of the issue. We cannot support groups that, in response to Palestinian students sharing deeply personal accounts of the pain they have suffered during the occupation, trivialize the violence that this campus was supposed to provide them an escape from. We can have a healthy debate around Israel-Palestine on this campus without erasing the voices of Palestinian students, erroneously redefining colonialism or concealing acts of genocide. Joseph Moore ’20 is a comparative literature major from Stroudsburg, Penn. Jesus Payan ’20 is an evironmental studies major from Temple City, Calif.
A case for summer wellness On the lack of adequate healthcare at the College By SAM JOCAS Last summer, my mental health took a turn for the worse. It began with dissociative episodes, but eventually got to the point where I was afraid of being by myself for fear of what might happen. I knew that I should have been put on SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) for several months, but it wasn’t until I arrived on campus for the summer, free from academic distraction, that I realized some form of medication would be imperative for basic functioning. I fi-
unacceptable. Campus administration is aware that the vast majority of summer workers are low-income and/ or people of color, many of whom regularly rely upon the Health Center for wellness during the school year. The refusal to provide some sort of proximate health facility for students is not only a grave injustice, but also sends a signal to students that their presence on campus is not valued. If the administration wants us to work in their libraries, research laboratories and local businesses over the summer,
to receive medical care at the nearest health facility. Some students are not signed up for Zipcar. Some do not have a license. Some may feel uncomfortable asking their summer housing coordinator to drive them to the hospital. To put this burden of responsibility on the shoulders of students is a direct violation of the College’s mission to “be a responsible citizen and employer.” Few students on campus last summer had the unique privilege I had to fly home to receive medical care. Many had to endure the summer without access to mental and/
That students working on campus over the summer have no direct access to a health center for mental and physical care is completely unacceptable.
nally gathered the courage to call Student Health and Wellness Services for an appointment, only to find that the Health Center is closed over the summer. Not “partially closed,” not “limited hours,” but entirely non-operational. I deemed my situation severe enough that I flew home that weekend to meet with a doctor back home in Canton to immediately begin medication, only to fly back 24 hours later to be back on campus in time for work on Monday. That students working on campus over the summer have no direct access to a health center for mental and physical care is completely
it is their duty to provide services that ensure the safety and care of their summer student employees. If the reason for closing the Health Center over the summer is that there is not enough demand for it, that’s simply a fallacy. I was but one of many students who were unable to receive adequate wellness over the summer. If the reason is that keeping the health center open over the summer is not “financially viable,” I should hope that the wellbeing of students is not being weighed in a sterile cost-benefit analysis. There are a myriad of reasons why a student may not be able to drive to North Adams
or physical care, neither of which should ever be the case. For many students who cannot afford to go home, need to stay on campus to pay for their tuition or cannot return home due to family complications, summer employment is the only option. As an institution, it is the College’s responsibility to keep the Health Center open over the summer in order to meet the basic needs of the summer workers who keep the College functioning throughout the summer months. Sam Jocas ’21 is an economics and statistics major from Canton, Ohio.
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The Williams Record
May 1, 2019
College Council votes to reject WIFI CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 websites, and some College students have received explicit threats, according to both guests and CC members who spoke at the meeting. CC ultimately decided not to publish a livestream for the April 23 meeting and published meeting minutes without any speaker names in a document accessible only to students and faculty with Williams emails. “Given all the stuff that happened with CC with Black Previews and the livestreaming … there were a lot of people concerned that, if this became a national news story, they would be put on blast and harassed,” Moore said. “So the anonymization of guests and the blind voting was an attempt to create a space where people could argue and debate the issue. In the case of the Palestinian students that we had in the meeting with us, they could very possibly face reprisal against their family or them specifically [if their names became public].” To Abdullah, given this recent coverage, a public ballot and public minutes would be a form of voter suppression because some members would be afraid to vote a certain way and speak freely during the meeting. “A few [guests] are literally afraid of their families being targeted by rifles and grenades, and the rest of them are afraid of their faces and privacy being invaded on these blogs,” he said. “I want it to be known that at this point, that this issue has gotten so bad that students on this campus aren’t sleeping on their own beds because they feel really paranoid.” Berenbaum shared these concerns for student safety but added that it was still necessary for CC members to maintain a level of transparency regarding their stances. “I don’t want to in any way delegitimize student concerns for their safety because obviously that has to come first,” she said. “I do think that when
a number of members did try to bring up transparency as an additional concern, those concerns were sometimes dismissed too quickly. I wonder if there might’ve been a different balance that could have been struck between, what obviously has to come first in student safety, and also allowing students to know... in CC elections, what different representatives have said and what the positions are.” Berenbaum also emphasized that WIFI has no intention of inflicting harm and that diverse viewpoints are important in any intellectual environment. “The intention of our club is never at any point to make anyone feel unsafe, emotionally or physically,” she said. “I do think that some of being a student is encountering intellectual ideas that make one very uncomfortable. And I think that the answer to encountering those ideas is to engage with them and to respond with your own perspective rather than try to shut down and silence that information.” During the April 16 CC meeting, when discussions about WIFI were ultimately tabled, students advocating against WIFI handed out a number of informational pamphlets about the Israel-Palestine conflict that focused on the military funding Israel receives from the U.S. and the disproportionately high number of Palestinian deaths relative to Israeli deaths in the conflict. “The goal throughout both of the meetings was to make, on evidentiary grounds, cases as to why the Israeli government is engaging in colonialism and why that should preclude certain discursive support for them,” Moore said. Still, Berenbaum said she believes that WIFI fills a void in campus discourse that she has noticed throughout her time at the College. “I’ve noticed over my last two years here that while there is relatively a lot of campus discussion about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and related issues, it’s almost entirely from a certain perspective,” Berenbaum
said. “And I felt, as did a number of people, that it would be useful to be able to have an organized group which could hold events, invite speakers, generally just put more information out there about other perspectives.” Last spring, Berenbaum was involved in creating Students for Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue (SIPD), a nonpartisan dialogue club that became an RSO. The club was active over the fall, hosting a number of workshops focused on fostering difficult conversations, but Berenbaum felt that the campus discourse on this topic was, at large, “an imbalanced conversation.” “I fully support Students for Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue club and its great mission, but as the year progressed, I just felt more and more that there was also a need for a group which specifically put out information from other perspectives that weren’t really being heard,” she said. “It’s wonderful to have a dialogue group, but if you don’t really have multiple dialogue partners, then it can be hard to hold meaningful conversation.” The guests advocating against WIFI were, for the most part, unaffiliated with any specific student group. “This was more or less a spontaneous movement of people who just heard this was happening and came together from all sorts of backgrounds,” Abdullah said. “It wasn’t something organized by an existing activist group on campus; it wasn’t something that took place under the auspices of SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine]. I know for a fact that several people of Jewish backgrounds, and several of them even being of Israeli descent or citizenship, were really, really helpful and useful allies in this… I really hope that this doesn’t get spun as an Israeli versus Palestinian, or an Arab and a Jewish issue, because this is really not that at all. The demographics in our movement and the ideologies in our movement were quite diverse.”
Trustees Rugby, OSL, CC reach approve agreement on spring break OIDE budget goal post repair costs increase By CHARLES XU paired the goal post and reported EXECUTIVE EDITOR
By ROSE HOUGLET NEWS EDITOR The Board of Trustees has approved a request to add $34,000 to next year’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity (OIDE) budget to be allocated to the Minority Coalition (MinCo), according to Vice President for Finance and Administration Fred Puddester. This funding request had been a part of the demands published in an open letter to the Board of Trustees by the Coalition Against Racist Education Now (CARE Now) on April 12. This letter asked the Board of Trustees to “approve the request for $34,000 additional funding to the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity in full for the purpose of supporting student-led Heritage Month events, as well as the increase of $15,000 additional funding for incoming Minority Coalition groups.” Tyler Tsay ’19, MinCo cochair, said he supported the Board’s decision to grant the funding but emphasized his hope for continued increases in OIDE’s budget. “We’re relieved that the Board of Trustees voted to grant the $34,000 to the Minority Coalition Supplemental Fund for next year,” he said. “My hope is that this will correspond to a reoccurring increase in the budget for the OIDE, and therefore the Davis Center and Minority Coalition, rather than a one-off budget expansion. Heritage months and weeks are growing each year in scale and in the number of clubs that want to host Heritage events. The continuation of this institutional funding after next year and for years to come will be critical for the annual support of an enriched campus environment.”
Last Wednesday, Director of the Office of Student Life (OSL) Doug Schiazza and Associate Director of OSL Mike Bodnarik reached an agreement with College Council (CC) for OSL to pay the repair costs of rugby’s goal post after OSL approved the repair costs in advance of CC’s approval. According to OSL, the goal post was damaged by a windstorm, and repairs were immediately approved over spring break “to help ensure the repairs were done in time for rugby to have their season.” Schiazza cited the precedent set by a previous damaged goal post in the summer of 2018, during which Facilities fixed the post prior to CC’s approval and OSL’s knowledge. “We approved the immediate repairs [this spring] based on what CC had just done in the previous (and nearly identical) situation,” he said. “ Mike had advised the men's rugby team president and vice president to contact CC to request funding; he did not speak directly with the CC treasurer about it.” Rugby Co-President Seth Goldstein ’19 said the team was notified by Bodnarik that the repair was already set in motion and that rugby should request funding from CC. Rugby Treasurer Alexander Szrol ’21 added, “As the treasurer, I was not looped in until after the repair was set in place, so no student on Rugby had any impact on how this was dealt with.” Because the repair noticeably lacked any input and involvement from rugby or CC, Schiazza stated, “Although OSL’s intent was good (supporting a CC-recognized RSO), as I shared during the [April 23 CC] meeting, we should not have allowed the spring 2019 repairs to occur in advance of CC's approval, regardless, and I own the responsibility for it as the director of OSL.” CC treasurer Jamie Vaccaro ’21 clarified that, while facilities re-
to their administrative contact in OSL, the costs are supposed to be funded by CC, which is “implicitly the underwriter on these kinds of damages.” CC Co-President Ellie Sherman ’20 added, “[CC’s] policy is that we will fund things that are integral to the functioning of a club. It seems to us that if rugby needs goal posts to play and one of their goal posts are down, we should fix it and put it back up.” Sherman said that, because CC’s budget comes from the student activities tax and members are elected to represent students in how the budget is allocated, the issue lies not in who funds the repair but how the cost is processed and approved. “The problem [with OSL approving the repair] is that this is exactly what the [treasurer’s] discretionary fund is for, for when council can’t meet and we need to make a decision or we need to approve something or allocate money and there’s not [enough] time to run it through the regular budgetary process… It shouldn’t have gone to OSL, is the bottom line,” she said. Sherman also noted that OSL’s immediate approval of the goal post repairs highlights the relative advantages some student organizations enjoy when requesting funds. “A great example is the Black Previews event, which had a lot of trouble getting their P-card and getting their funding from OSL,” Sherman said. “They were redirected to the Davis Center, and they were redirected multiple other times.” While CC confirmed that the repair costs typically should have come from the CC budget, OSL will cover the roughly $3300 cost in this particular case, an agreement reached by both parties during the meeting last Wednesday. “We were also in agreement that, moving forward, OSL will pay very close attention to defer to CC on these things, regardless of timing or any intention of ‘just trying to help,” Schiazza said. “It’s CC’s place to make these decisions, not OSL’s.”
Given the current campus and national political environments, Berenbaum said she expected there to be pushback during the initial meeting. “We knew going into it that it was likely going to be contentious given the political realities of the situation, of the campus, of everything that’s been going on recently with CC,” she said. “I think that the first meeting was really an initial meeting in a lot of ways in that I was not surprised in the end when they did table it.” Her group met amongst itself and with multiple faculty members in the week in between the two meetings with the goal of formulating a plan for gaining approval in the following meeting. Moore and Abdullah, however, said they believed that many of the principal concerns with WIFI they brought up during the first meeting were never adequately addressed going into the second one. “It’s especially concerning that they wouldn’t give any thought to human rights abuses against Palestinians and minoritized communities in Israel when we brought it up in the first meeting, we had a second meeting and they had that entire interval to respond, and they didn’t even have anything either time,” Moore said. “You can look at their constitution: there’s no reference to Palestine, no reference to human rights abuses, no elaboration of how their support for Israel would not be support for many problematic actions that the Israeli government is involved in right now.” In the time since WIFI was voted down as an RSO, Berenbaum and members of the organization have had a number of meetings with faculty, staff, faculty advisors and administrators, looking ahead to strategize on how the club can exist on campus without being an RSO. “There are two holidays coming up ... which are Israeli Memorial Day and Independence Day, so we're also planning an event to mark those days,” Berenbaum said. “We’re definitely not going to just dissolve away and disappear.”
Mandel commits to responding to CARE Now demands by Friday By KEVIN ZHANG YANG OPINIONS EDITOR The Coalition Against Racist Education Now (CARE Now) has extended its deadline for President Maud Mandel’s response to its list of demands from the original date of April 26 to Friday, May 3. According to CARE Now, Mandel confirmed that she would respond to its concerns in an all-campus email by Friday. CARE Now’s letter to Mandel outlines 12 objectives that its members believe would resolve what they perceive to be contradictions between the
administration been working on these issues and how can administration make these efforts known to the student body at large?” On its Instagram page, CARE Now summarized what it is looking for from the impending administrative response to its demands: “We want contact people and timelines. We want transparency and accountability.” Specifically, CARE Now requested that Mandel’s response include annotations on its list of demands and that these annotations detail a clear timeline for addressing feasible demands, and justi-
“We want contact people and timelines. We want transparency and accountability.” CARE Now Instagram post
College’s practices and stated mission. The letter to Mandel follows a prior letter with demands sent to the Board of Trustees. The Board did not respond publicly to the demands as requested by an April 17 deadline. In announcing the extension in a Thursday post on its Instagram page, CARE Now posted an email it sent to Mandel that outlines what it expects from the administrative response, citing specific terms its members discussed in their meeting with Mandel last Wednesday. In this email, CARE Now requested “transparency on administration’s current efforts on issues listed in the demands prior to their release” and asked, “How has
fication for why the administration is unable to address demands deemed unfeasible. Finally, CARE Now requested that for each demand, a contact person be provided whose responsibility is to either implement plans to address feasible demands. That person, CARE Now detailed, would also find alternatives for demands deemed unfeasible. Mandel confirmed that she would write a response to CARE Now’s concerns by Friday and also told the Record, “I was glad to meet with members of CARE Now to discuss issues of mutual concern, and I look forward to continuing discussions with them and the whole community on how we can work to make Williams more inclusive.”
SPRING STREET BLUES From the files of Campus Safety and Security
Monday 4-22-19 9:10 p.m. Facilities: Campus Safety and Security (CSS) took a report from the facilities parking lot of a minor motor vehicle accident involving two college vans. 10:16 p.m. Driscoll Dining Hall: The fire alarm was triggered. Officers found that a toaster was left on in the main dining area with burned crumbs. The oficers ventilated the dining hall was ventilated and reset the fire system.
could not identify the origin of the smoke. They activated 911 for the Williamstown Fire Department (WFD) to respond. WFD arrived on scene and, after a search of the building, they determined that the cause of the fire was a new part on the air handler. CSS notified multiple administrative and safety staff members of the incident and the dining hall was to remain closed per the Williamstown Fire Chief until the town Health Inspector could inspect and okay for re-occupancy.
10:47 p.m. South Science Building: CSS received a report of a noise complaint. The source of the complaint was three students playing video games on a large television in a common area. Officers advised the students of the complaint; the students turned the sound on the game off.
2:40 p.m. Spencer Art: Officers responded to a 911 activation. There was no campus emergency. The call came from a faculty member who had called 911 concerning smoke on the top of a mountain range to the north of campus.
Tuesday 4-23-19
8:30 p.m. Goodrich Hall: An officer was dispatched to assist a student who had sprained their ankle. The officer recommended a trip to the emergency room and contacted Northern Berkshire Emergency Medical Services to respond and transport.
3:43 p.m. Kellogg House: The fire alarm was triggered. Officers checked the indicated detector and areas and found no reason for the alarm. They silenced the alarm and then attempted to reset the fire system, but the alarm sounded again. An electrical tradesperson was asked to respond to check or change out the activated alarm. Thursday 4-25-19 5:45 a.m. Driscoll Dining Hall: Officers responded for a fire alarm. On arrival, they found smoke in the east dining area. Officers searched extensively but
Friday 4-26-19
11:22 p.m. Spring Street: A fire alarm was activated from the Adams Block. Officers checked all the areas they had access to and found nothing. Saturday 4-27-19 6:10 p.m. Weston Field: Officers responded for a report of someone having an asthma attack. Mt. Grey-
lock High School was hosting a track meet at this time. Northern Berkshire Emergency Medical Services was already on scene and had a competitor for Lenox High School on their stretcher, heading towards the ambulance. The athlete was transported to Berkshire Health North in North Adams. Sunday 4-28-19 2:17 a.m. Perry House: CSS received a report of a burning odor on the third floor. Upon arrival, officers found a strong odor of something burning. Williamstown Fire Department was asked to respond to help locate the source. The Safety and Environmental Compliance on-call staff person was contacted and advised. The fire department arrived and completed another walk through of the building. Two fresh burn holes in the carpet on the second floor stair case were still smoldering. 12:12 p.m. Squash Courts: A coach called dispatch regarding a damaged window pane at the squash courts. The on-call architectural tradesperson was called by CSS and responded to secure the damage. 7:50 p.m. Sage Hall: CSS received a report of a student who was experiencing symptoms of a possible concussion. The student asked to be transported to the emergency room. Northern Berkshire Emergency Medical Services was contacted and responded to transport the student to Berkshire Health North in North Adams.
May 1, 2019
NEWS 5
The Williams Record
College, Williamstown representatives collaborate on Williams Inn construction CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The College countered this, however, with a concerted pitch to community members. For instance, in a March 15, 2016, Williams Planning Board meeting, Rita-Coppola Wallace, the College’s executive director of design and construction, stated that the College ultimately selected its location based on five criteria: “traffic, environment, program, geotechnical and engineering,” all of which were found suitable at a Denwison Park location. The location at the bottom of Spring Street presented problems, however, since that area had been previously designated as residential and had to be rezoned as commercial. This required the approval of the Town’s Planning Board, which began deliberations in October 2014. In an Oct. 14 meeting before the Planning Board, the College centered its pitch around community benefits. The College brought in Stefanie Greenfield of Cambridge Seven Architects, who – according to Town Minutes – said that the Inn would “encourage activity on Spring Street,” “create an arrival experience,” “preserve municipal parking,” “improve the stewardship of the landscape” and “foster a welcoming community for both the Town and College.” During that meeting, one community member raised the concern of the parking lot being over-exhausted; another brought up potential encroachment upon the nearby Christmas Brook, to which Kolesar referenced other ongoing restoration and construction efforts. With these assurances, the proposal garnered a unanimous Planning Board approval, followed by the Zoning Board of Appeals’ unanimous approval. Several local businesses, however, were not persuaded by the College’s initial pitch, citing concerns with regards to traffic flow, though no businesses or townspeople offered comment to the Record. “Most people saw the sense of it, that we would bring life to the street,” Kolesar said. More concretely, however, Kolesar found that owners of smaller local inns and hostels worried that the new Williams Inn would diminish their potential for business – a concern that he found baseless because of the new inn’s relatively smaller size. These concerns prompted Kolesar to begin holding frequent meetings with and engage in outreach toward local business groups in an attempt to win them over. Outreach included an event on WilliNet with Coppola-Wallace and numerous forums that used College resources and gradually won over business interests, according to Groff. “The big
SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR
The Williams Inn will be completed this summer after lengthy collaboration between College officials and town representatives. concerns regarding preventing encroachment of the business district from moving up the hill, protecting the top of the Denison Park area, and preventing any encroachment toward the knolls, were adequately addressed during that process,” he said. Fred Puddester, the College’s treasurer and vice president for finance and administration, emphasized current business support for the project. “Based on conversations we had with all the merchants on Spring Street, they are supportive of the inn,” he said. From an environmental perspective as well, the buy-in process was protracted. In addition to citing noise, reduction of property value and traffic as relevant community concerns, Art brought up storm-water management issues and the Inn’s unideal placement near wetlands protected by state law as cause for concern among the Williamstown Conservation Commission. Indeed, throughout proposal, planning and construction, the building of a new culvert and the renovation of a parking lot proved pivotal in ushering in community and environmental support. “There’s multiple separate projects going on here,” Groff said. “The parking lot is a separate project from the culvert [and] from the inn, but they are all interconnected. None of them are really possible without the other one.” For decades, Williamstown has suffered frequent flooding as a result of Christmas Brook being passed through a small pipe, which Art estimated as three feet in diameter, often overflowing onto Latham Street. This changed when the College constructed a new culvert last
year. This six-foot-high culvert, buried 15 feet below the ground, was completed in fall 2018. That construction was partially spurred by the proposed Williams Inn. “It was part of the grand bargain to minimize the flooding in that part of town,” Art said, adding that previous College construction projects had exacerbated water needs in the area. “The College was creating this issue, and it was their responsibility to fix it.” “The culvert had to be fixed,” Groff said. “To continue to put more development in the area when it had a flooding problem would have been detrimental to the members of the community that are impacted by the flooding… That’s a Williams project. The town did not have the resources to fix that, nor did we have the ability to, because we had shared ownership of that culvert.” A new water detention center under the new parking lot, which cost the College 21 million dollars, will also assist in avoiding large amounts of runoff. “There’s a large tank in the new parking lot, and that’s connected to the new pipes, and all of that goes into the Green River,” said Lauren Stevens, the current chair of the Williamstown Conservation Commission, which required extensive environmental assurances before approving the Williams Inn project. For the town, as well, the College’s ability to improve local infrastructure significantly helped it move the construction project forward. “I wouldn’t say that a private developer couldn’t have built the inn as it is today,” Groff said. “But the fact that all these things are interconnected be-
cause it’s part of the campus made it much more complex.” The Wetlands and Rivers Protection Act in Massachusetts also proved to be a hurdle. According to the act, any project must be at least 100 feet away from any bordering vegetative wetlands, and 200 feet away from a river. “Part of that site had a stream that comes along in the back of Doughty house empties into Christmas Brook,” Art said. The College had previously had to deal with these regulations and appear before the Conservation Commission seeking approval, according to Art. “The question is, can you construct that building on that site and have minimal impacts in terms of drainage?” he asked. “That site and that project have gotten as close to environmental scrutiny as any project, ever, in Williamstown,” Stevens added. To oversee the project, the Conservation Commission hired engineer David Nynan to supervise construction at the College’s expense. In addition, the commission examined the pre-construction landscape. “We did multiple site visits to look at where the wetlands are marked out, where the research area is where we have responsibility as a conservation commission,” Stevens said. “We came back and then the engineers made a presentation.” Ultimately, over the course of two meetings on August 10, 2017, and Sept. 21, 2017, the committee approved the project unanimously, citing the improved drainage systems that it would bring and the previously degraded state of the building site. “For the bulk of the site, it was an area where Williams
College had stored equipment, leaving some residue of petroleum products,” Stevens said. “The site is now being put to a more positive and beneficial use.” “To say that it sailed through the Conservation Commission is probably an overstatement because it was a very long process, very carefully negotiated back and forth,” Art noted, “but it was very amicable.” This approval, however, was predicated on the commission’s ability to visit the site at any point they wished, and it can be withdrawn. The Conservation Commission’s decision was made easier by a separate wetlands restoration project that the College concurrently engaged in to make the Inn’s approval more appealing. “I have, for the last 40 years, thought Christmas Brook would be the wonderful amenity for the town and the College to have restored back to a functioning native wetland system,” Art said. For decades, the College has shown reluctance to put resources into such a non-emergency task, but over the past few years, the College invested significant resources into doing exactly that. “The delightful part of this inn project was the quid pro quo: [Through] building the inn, there could be the restoration of those wetlands, the removal of all of those invasive exotics,” he added. “They had done a fantastic job, two summers ago, of going in and removing all of those [invasive species].” The College also remedied some of its own prior degradation in the area, including gasoline, fertilizers and old vehicles that had been left by the brook in violation of the Rivers and Wetlands Act. “From an environmental point of view, it’s a plus,” Stevens added of the various projects surrounding the inn. “Any area that’s going to be developed, there’s going to be losses, but this seems to be on balance a positive.” As of April, this long process seems to be approaching a culmination. Kolesar acknowledged that recent construction has weighed on the community. “Construction weariness certainly exists,” he said. For the College, the Inn’s completion represents a sizeable monetary, infrastructure and communications victory, through a successful navigation of countless residential, commercial and environmental interests, according to Kolesar. Indeed, notable town figures are nearly unanimously grateful for the College’s efforts, many of which simply remedied past wrongs on the College’s part. “Thank goodness we have such an institution that can make these investments in our downtown,” Groff said. “I think the downtown is set to thrive now because of that infrastructure.”
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6 FEATURES
The Williams Record
May 1, 2019
One in Two Thousand JUSTIN GUNN ’22
By KENIA CRUZ and SOFIE JONES RECORD STAFF
SJ: I know that you are considering moving into the “sad boi” meme territory, with a new account. Sofie and Justin are entry- Can you tell us about that? mates in Willy AB, but they truly bonded when they got JG: Well, obviously, you attacked by wasps during can’t always be a happy boi. their WOOLF trip. Kenia and Sometimes, you need to be a Justin met when they were sad boi. paired as tutorial partners in PSCI 291T: “American KC: What would you Political Events” this spring. name it? We caught up with Justin at Tunnel City Coffee to talk JG: Right now, my account about wholesome memes, is “JFinesse,” so it would be his love of Waffle House and “GFinesse,” because my last name is Gunn. his favorite dog hat. KC: Why did you decide to make a wholesome meme page? How do you choose your memes?
JG: I was at Previews – it was Doddrich. I got a cinnamon raisin [bagel] with honey walnut [cream cheese], which is my go-to. I teared up a little bit while eating my bagel; it was really good. I was like, “This is the best thing ever. It tastes amazing!” Now I go to Goodrich every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
JG: I feel like a lot of people here know me, but I don’t know them.
JG: I don’t remember. SJ: You two met like three months ago.
JG: I just started it, and it’s kind of fun. People were like, JG: Why are you stalking me? “I like them,” so I kept doing it. I get all of my memes online. KC: Damn.
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you have found out about the College?
KC: What were your first impressions of me during tutorial?
SJ: One of your Instagram posts says that photos of yourself are typically the most liked. Why do you think this is?
KC: Why do you think SJ: Would you say that you people like wholesome prefer memes over Vines? memes? JG: Vines are disgusting. JG: Because it makes them SJ: So Kenia and I are feel good. both from New EngKC: What is your favorite land, where we don’t have Waffle House. Can wholesome meme? you explain the allure of JG: I don’t really have one. Waffle House? Though, in terms of regular memes, the Kermit the Frog JG: Well, it’s not just a house. It’s a home. It’s so nice. Their memes are my favorite. food is so good, and everyone there is nice. You go in and SJ: [Laughs.] Why? say, “I want a waffle.” And JG: Imagine Kermit the Frog they go, “What kind of wafsaying some, like, messed up fle, sugah?” And you’re like stuff. There was one where “Aw.” [Swoons.] Kermit had a gun and was trying to break into this guy’s SJ: Is Waffle House one room… That was pretty funny. of the things you miss
cision to come to the College. Tell us about that.
JG: It’s been a long three months. SOFIE JONES/SPORTS EDITOR JUSTIN’S HOMETOWN DURHAM, N.C.
JUSTIN’S RESIDENCE WILLIAMS HALL
most about home while at Williams? JG: Probably. I mean, I miss everything because there is nothing here. SJ: That’s a good point. KC: I’m not going to argue with that. So, I hear you like to go on walks. JG: [Looks confused.] What? SJ: Yeah, one of my favorite things about you is that you are always down to walk a friend anywhere they need to go on
JUSTIN’S FAVORITE MEME KERMIT THE FROG
SJ: I know you’re on the Williams Fencing Club. Tell us about it.
SJ: Your Facebook profile photo is pretty revolutionary, in that it is just a photo of your Williams ID card. What inspired that? JG: I don’t really take pictures of myself, and I needed a photo for Facebook. So I just put a photo of my ID. KC: I saw from your laptop case that you play Super Smash Bros. Melee. What are your thoughts on that game? JG: I despise Melee with a passion. KC: Why? JG: Because I suck at it.
campus. Some would say that you actually created the “Walk and Talk,” not Aaron Sorkin.
KC: Oh damn, you fence. What’s your weapon? [For those who don’t know, there are three weapons – epee, foil, sabre – and foil is the best.]
SJ: The introduction of your dog hat was one of the most iconic fashion moments of the 2018–19 school year.
KC: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve seen on a walk?
JG: Yeah, I do epee.
JG: Is it really?
KC: We can’t be friends anymore.
SJ: Yeah. Tell us about where you got that hat.
JG: Oh, are you one of those people?
JG: At the [First Congregational Church] Tag Sale in the fall.
JG: I ran into my econ professor’s dog. The dog was messing with a kid, and then the kid ran away. The dog ran after him, and he knocked over the kid. Then, the kid fell over, and the dog sniffed him. It was sweet. SJ: You’ve said before that tasting a Goodrich bagel influenced your de-
KC: If you mean a foilist, then yes.
KC: Was it love at first sight?
SJ: As your first year winds to a close, what is the most surprising thing
JG: Basically. I saw it and was like, “Woah, that’s a dog hat. I don’t have one of those.”
Great Ideas Committee launches Best Sawyer research carrels “Novels & Noms” book swap As the spring semester comes to a close, dozens of seniors can be found hard at work in library carrels putting the finishing touches on their theses. We took a look at some of the coziest carrels in Sawyer.
Lexi Gudaitis ’19
SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR
Jad Hamdan ’19
SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR
By NIGEL JAFFE FEATURES EDITOR It is a truth universally acknowledged that students at the College don’t have time to read for fun. Most people here suffer from a chronic shortage of free time, and even when an odd leisure hour does appear, reading tends to sit low on the list of priorities. This was the challenge facing College Council’s Great Ideas Committee as it organized the inaugural “Novels & Noms” book exchange, an event designed to bring people together over a shared love for books. “Do you feel like you haven’t read for pleasure since First Days?” reads the initial message sent to the entire student body introducing the idea. “Do you find yourself eating lunch with the same faces in the same places? Have we got the event for you!” That email invited students to submit the name and genre of a favorite book, along with an optional blurb introducing themselves and describing their selection. The Great Ideas Committee purchased copies of all of them, inserted the name and blurb provided by the recommender inside the cover and made each option anonymous by wrapping them in brown butcher paper, distinguishing one book from another only by writing the genre on the paper. After several weeks of anticipation, dozens of students streamed through Dodd Living Room last Thursday to make their choices. Reception was universally positive, with the
only source of disappointment being the cap of one book per participant. “I think it’s a really good idea,” Nick Servedio ’22 said. “I wish I could get more than one book, though.” Abbey Minondo ’19, who chairs the Great Ideas Committee and played a large role in handling the logistics of the event, said that one of the group’s main goals was for participants to get to know the people who recommended their books. “I really hope people reach out to others,” she said. “It’s a very self-selecting event, which I think is great, because it makes the reaching out rate higher. I mean, you wouldn’t submit a book if you didn’t want an email back, right?” Given the small size of the College, it comes as no surprise that some participants, such as Grace Chamberlin ’19, formed those connections almost right away. “I came in the door, and someone saw me and said, ‘Oh, I got your book,’” she said. “It was about baking and the history of food, and now we’re going to go on a little bakery date!” All told, 136 books – mysteries, thrillers, cookbooks, short story collections and more – found new owners through the exchange. Many of the titles were purchased through Chapter Two Books on Spring Street, a used book store that donates its revenue to Williamstown’s David and Joyce Milne Public Library. “Before we bought anything on Amazon, I talked to the people at Chapter Two Books,” Minondo said. “We cleared their stores – they
ended up supplying us with 55 of the total 136.” Marisa Daley, Chapter Two’s stock manager, gave some insight into their side of the process. “Some [books] came directly from our store, and others came from our distribution center at the library,” she said. “We were able to offer them at a fraction of their cost thanks to the thousands of book donations we have received from our generous community since opening our store in November.” Minondo said she believes that used book stores offer advantages over online options beyond just lower prices. “There’s something magical about getting a used book, even if it’s not as crisp as a new one,” she said. Daley spoke highly of the Novels & Noms project. “All of these books, donated by our generous community, were then given a new life by Abbey and the students at Williams,” she said. Ginny Sheldon, donation center coordinator at the Milne Public Library, agreed that the partnership was rewarding for all involved. “We had so much fun working with Abbey and look forward to more such collaborations,” she said. Minondo said she hopes that students will take full advantage of the opportunity afforded by the exchange to step outside their usual routines. “Finding time to read for fun is really hard at Williams,” she said. “I think part of the message here is, ‘Don’t squander your youth – just go out there, meet someone, take a risk, do something you like, for yourself.’”
Anna Goldelman ’19
SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR SABRINE BRISMEUR/PHOTO EDITOR
The Great Ideas Committee “Novels & Noms” book swap kicked off in Dodd Living Room last Thursday.
May 1, 2019
FEATURES 7
The Williams Record
Ephs on Tinder Students swipe right on the ubiquitous dating app By IRENE LOEWENSON FEATURES EDITOR
mous, you have to be clear about that because it’s too easy for rumors to spread,” Lewis said. “I will not name names – but I have definitely had at least one circumstance where I have seen someone on Tinder who I was almost certain was in a committed relationship,” Kitchen said. “It was very much like, ‘I don’t want to confront the person about this, but, uh, OK. This is surprising.’”
Although I am a proud New Yorker, I will admit that Williamstown has the edge over my home city in mountain vistas, air quality and lack of pigeons. But according to Gabo Lewis ’22, who went to high school in New York City, Williamstown outshines the big city in yet another respect: Tinder bios. “I love Williams students’ bios on Tinder,” Lewis said. “When I was in New York City, I’d run into blank bios or just a little blurb. A common example would be, ‘Five foot seven, sophomore at Columbia, enjoys whatever.’ Just very standard bios. But here, you see some really wild bios. I remember one person had a quote from John Locke or something like that. It’s refreshing to see intelligent humor injected into the online dating scene.” Tinder, the dominant dating app at the College and beyond, presents users with nearby users’ profiles, comprising photos and short, self-written bios. Users swipe right on those they are interested in and left on those they are not. If two users swipe right on each other, the app notifies them that they have “matched” and allows them to message each other directly.
“There’s no one around you” Not satisfied with merely hearing about what Tinder is like at Williams, I decided to check it out for myself and make a Tinder of my own. Thus Ephelia, age 19, a “bovine babe who likes long walks on the beach, romcoms and chewing grass,” was born. At first, I limited Ephelia’s feed to all people – regardless of gender – in a 50-mile radius. I saw people from MCLA, Smith, Amherst, SUNY Albany, The College of Saint Rose and other colleges, as well a roughly equal number of people who listed no college. And, of course, several Williams students, from various class years. When I set the radius to one mile, the majority of the profiles I saw belonged to students at the College. In one set of 20 profiles, I counted 16 Williams students, of which I knew or recognized 10. Ephelia was new to the app, so there may have been a larger pool of Williams students left for her to swipe on. As I swiped through profiles, my feed contained fewer students at the College, and I began to exhaust the pool of people in the one-mile radius. Those seeking only those of the same gender face an even smaller selection. When I set the pool for Ephelia – a woman for the purposes of the app – to include only women, Tinder quickly exhausted the profiles in the area. Even when I widened my radius 20 miles, I soon out of people Before alarms were installed in the College’s steam tunnels, students would use the tunnels to sneak to around campus late atran night. to swipe on. “There’s no one around you,” the screen read. LGBTQ+ people are not the only group who can find Tinder particularly frustrating. Fan noted that for many women of color, using the app can be disheartening. “I have a particular participant who identifies as a Black queer woman, and in her interview for my thesis [about hookup culture and race at the College], she talked about how it feels really shitty when you’re a Black woman trying to swipe on Tinder and your white suitemates are getting all these matches, but you’re not,” she said. “And on the other hand, women of color and people of color in general get messages that are horrifically racialized. I think this might be general knowledge, but also might come as a surprise to some folks who don't fall under those categories. Personally, it doesn’t surprise me because I’ve been on the receiving end of messages like that as well.”
“I was single and lonely” There are plenty of reasons that students at the College create Tinder accounts. For Ben Kitchen ’21, it was the prospect of avoiding the awkwardness of in-person interaction that made the app appealing. “I had absolutely no luck trying to meet people at college parties,” he said. “I have a very hard time introducing myself to people I think I would like to pursue a relationship with in any way, so if I were put in a situation like that person-to-person, I would be trembling and just generally terrified… I thought that doing it not in person would be beneficial in some way.” Lucia Wiggers ’22 got a Tinder account in college after breaking up with a long-term boyfriend. “I was interested in new experiences and meeting new people and new relationships, in whatever form that took,” Wiggers said. Lewis downloaded the app as a junior in high school. “I was single and lonely, and I didn’t know how to talk to girls,” he said. “For me, Tinder was never really about the hookups or about dating. It was definitely just more about the conversation and – as terrible as it sounds – in a sense, being able to practice flirting.” Some students created their accounts partially as a joke. Eva Castagna ’22 had several friends with accounts, and one of them decided to make an account for her. “I think she was bored,” Castagna said. “My friend [from home] and I thought it would be funny,” Allyse Pratt ’22 said. “We just both spent so much time moping about like, ‘Ugh, I want someone to cuddle with,’ and so we were like, ‘Let’s make a Tinder for kicks and giggles!’ But then it was also a good way for me to put myself out there, meet people a little bit and figure out who else was single on campus.” Vanessa Quinland ’22 also started her account as a joke, with urging from her friends. But then, while swiping through Tinder, she saw someone she had already developed an interest in. “I was like, ‘Oh. I actually like this person,’ so then I started using it for real,” she said. Grace Fan ’19, who is conducting research about Tinder at the College for her senior seminar in sociology, has interviewed several students about their experiences with Tinder. She found that one common reason students use Tinder is that matching with people can provide a confidence boost. “If you’re feeling kind of down in the dumps about yourself, Tinder is an easy way to swipe on people and feel good about yourself, given the fact that people will swipe right on you,” she said. “A lot of this is tied to identity and the way that race, sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity, your body size and ablebodiedness all factor into what is attractive … which means that [Tinder] also has the opposite effect. If you
IRENE LOEWENSON/FEATURES EDITOR.
To understand what Tinder is like in the Purple Valley, I created an account, using the persona of Ephelia, 19. don’t match with someone, then it’s like a personal hit, and it hurts.” According to Fan, other common reasons for using the app include a desire to branch out from one’s social circle and a sense that the app is fun. “They’re like, ‘Ha, I’m going to swipe on people and see what happens,’” she said. “And there’s this game aspect of it. Because Tinder is programmed to be like a game – that’s the format. Matching with people feels like winning, and so you want to keep doing it.” Fan also noted that Tinder can make it easier for LGBTQ+ students to interact with each other. “I talked to a couple of queer folks, and I think they used it because the pool is so small that it acts as another way to access potentials for hookups or relationships,” she said. “Also, some people aren’t out [of the closet], but they might be on the app, and so that is another way to engage.” “You just don’t talk about it” Many of the people I contacted for this article declined to speak on the record about being on Tinder. “Who would want to do that Irene lol,” one of my friends texted me in response to my request to interview him on the
record about his Tinder use. Many of those who did speak publicly about Tinder said that the app has a stigma associated with it. “I can’t speak for women and identifying females, but for guys and identifying men, there is a stigma around men who use Tinder as part of being – pardon the French – fuckboys or players, in the sense that they’re just trying to rack up as many hookups as possible,” Lewis said. “I certainly think, as with any case, there is a population that does do that – I like to think I’m not that population – but it is stigmatized.” Such a reputation for the app could explain many people’s reluctance to speak publicly about being on Tinder. Castagna said there is a stigma surrounding online dating in general. “[The reason is] that it’s less of a real connection, maybe, because you’re judging people based off their looks right away, without getting to know them first … But then, my parents met through a dating service. But there were no phones back then, so it was through a newspaper.” Not everyone felt that Tinder carries a stigma. If there is one, Wiggers said, “I’m not aware of it, and I don’t really care.” Although Kitchen said he does not believe that there is a stigma associated with being on Tinder,
he acknowledged that the social convention is to avoid mentioning having seen people on the app. “Every once in a while, I’ll see someone I swiped right on and encounter them in public, and, I mean, you can’t address it,” he said. “You just don’t talk about it.” Sometimes such avoidance of interactions with matches can be unintentional. The day after matching with someone, Wiggers, who said they are “terrible at recognizing people out of context,” did not see their recent match sitting across from them in Schow. Later that day, Wiggers received a message from their match, saying, “Wow. That was an interesting move today.” “I was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’” they recalled. “And he was like, ‘Oh, you sat literally directly across from me,’ and I was like, ‘Oh. That is hilarious.’” As Wiggers’ experience illustrates, using Tinder in a community as small as the College can lead to awkward moments. Tinder may afford semi-anonymity, since the app requires only a first name, but at the College, it is difficult to stay anonymous. “If you are going to use Tinder for hookups at such a small school, and you want to remain anonymous, or at least partially anony-
“I would have never guessed that I would find a girlfriend on Tinder” Still, some have found the app to be effective: Last semester, Lewis met his girlfriend on Tinder. “She’s not a Williams student, so I doubt that I would have met her had it not been for Tinder,” said Lewis, who deleted the app in December. “I would have never guessed that I would find a girlfriend on Tinder because Tinder is so often labeled as a source purely for hookups.” Yet Lewis is something of an exception. Many of the people I spoke to said that when they match with people on Tinder, they either do nothing or “talk” – meaning messaging through the app. Matching with people sometimes progresses slightly beyond talking, to “Snapchat or meeting once or twice, but usually nothing further than that,” Quinland said. The same thing occurred with Quinland’s person of interest, the one who first made her take Tinder seriously. “I did match with the person, and we wound up talking for a while,” she said. “It never went anywhere, but it was really nice.” “I haven’t had that many experiences with hanging out or meeting people from Tinder explicitly from Williams,” Wiggers said. “I would say, like, three, maybe, and I’ve had the app since January. And I suppose they were positive… I met nice people and had a nice time.”
8 ARTS
The Williams Record
May 1, 2019
Frank Doelger ’75: from Williamstown to Westeros By SAMUEL WOLF EXECUTIVE EDITOR Frank Doelger ’75, executive producer of Game of Thrones, John Adams and Rome, visited the College on Thursday to discuss his path to film and television. Beforehand, I met with him at the Clark, eager to talk with him about the role of an executive producer, his time at the College and, of course, his prolonged involvement with the ultra-popular and soonto-conclude television show Game of Thrones. Doelger’s path to becoming executive producer of the series was an unconventional one. Before starting on Game of Thrones, he never had much of a taste for fantasy. “It was not a genre that I ever read, and it was not a genre that ever attracted me,” he said. As Doelger began to examine the source material more closely, however, he saw an opportunity to bridge the gaps between the show’s fantastical elements and its political intrigue. “I felt in most shows based on fantasy, there’s a big divide between how the fantasy sections were handled and the non-fantasy sections,” he said. “The question was: Could you find a way to treat them the same?” This, along with rooting the show as much as possible in reality, was what Doelger saw as the show’s central puzzle. Doelger saw many of the same potential challenges for Game of Thrones that he had experienced in other shows that he had worked on. “There are certain genres that suffer from the expectations of what the genre means they have to be,” he said. “The problem with Rome was that everyone went into Rome thinking that it had to be a stiff historical pageant because it was set in a particular period.” In the same way, Doelger became convinced that Game of Thrones could be a success if the audience could see it as about more than merely dragons and the undead. Doelger read A Song of Ice and Fire, the first book of George R.R. Martin’s sprawling series that served as the inspiration for
PHOTO COURTESY OF HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.
Frank Doelger ’75, the executive producer of Game of Thrones, studied English at the College and participated in theatre at Oxford. Game of Thrones, and founding himself impressed by the author’s storytelling ability. He found, however, that he would be better served by limiting his reading of the books. After reading the first book, he decided to stop so as to not rely on it as a crutch. “I would occasionally have creative meetings early on. I would ask questions, and quite often I would get answers that reference the books. … I would ask ‘Why does this happen?’ and they would say, ‘Well, this happens because in the books,’” he said. “I would be curious, now that the show is over, to go back and actually read the novels,” he added. “I do understand there have been a lot of changes.” Doelger joined the show first as a producer and, by Season 2, became the executive producer. In a show like Game of Thrones , that role includes a plethora of responsibilities that would otherwise fall to directors, since Game of Thrones has different directors for each episode. “Casting, finding locations, key decisions about the look of the show, how it’s going to be shot – these all have to be made by the executive producers,” Doel-
ger said. In addition to these responsibilities, Doelger saw his most pertinent goal as defining the central ambition of the show and determining a path by which to pursue that ambition. One key feature of the show, to Doelger, was ensuring that each of the show’s many “worlds” (as epitomized by its title sequence, an episode may take place in as many as eight locations) was represented faithfully. He suggested imagining that everything within each fantastical location had to come from within a 50-mile radius, and insisted that the design and construction choices for each region reflect that reality. To do so successfully would allow the audience to implicitly distinguish between every world. “If we get this right, we should be able to take a character that no one’s ever seen, and we should put them in a backdrop that no one’s ever seen, and based on how the shot is lit, the palette, the backdrop, the material of the clothing, the haircut and the makeup, we should know instantly which of our worlds our character was situated in,” Doelger said. Stepping into an unfamiliar genre, Doelger became confident
“Dragonchild” installation explores musical reparations By KAIRA MEDIRATTA EXECUTIVE EDITOR Walking into the Spencer Studio Art Building on Sunday afternoon, I initially looked around, puzzled, not sure where to find the cryptic sound installation I was searching for. My confusion did not last for long, however, as I began to notice a low rumbling noise emanating from down the hallway. Following signs printed with arrows on the walls and noticing the sound growing louder, I found my way to Spencer 112, where the artist – D. A. Mekonnen – was stationed outside. He briefed me quickly: Once inside the room, I was welcomed to take a seat on a meditation cushion or one of the chairs alongside the walls. The installation would last for three hours, from 3–6 p.m., and I was permitted to drop in and out of the room as I pleased. Entering into Mekonnen’s project, titled “Dragonchild,” I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect – a live performance, perhaps? What I was confronted with, however, was completely unlike anything I’d experienced before. The room was pitch black, save for a few dimly lit colored lights illuminating a corner of the room. In the center of the room was a sort of pedestal, surrounded by glowing orbs. Around this centerpiece were meditation cushions, with many participants already seated. Scattered around the room were a few other seats. In the illuminated corner was a collection of various gadgets, among those a record player from which the music seemed to be coming. Taking a seat along the edge of the room, I sat cross-legged and attempted to meditate as it seemed everyone else was doing. The sounds being played struck me as a layering of many conflicting noises. Although not quite melodious to listen to, the resulting din this created had an underlying repetitive nature which became more calming as
one grew acclimated to the volume; the only experience I could compare this to would be a mass meditation or chant. After what felt like 20 minutes went by, I assumed that I’d experienced all that there would be, as the music didn’t seem to be changing. At that moment, however, the noise began to slowly fade into something new. And as the minutes went by, I’d find myself growing accustomed to whatever amalgamation of noises was being played – from the jazzy to the more crude – just for it to slowly but surely change into something new again. At one point, the light began to shift between colors as Mekonnen pulled out various vinyls by Black artists – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill, A Seat at the Table by Solange – and arranged them for participants to see. Indeed, centering Black music is ultimately what “Dragonchild” means to Mekonnen, who is a first-generation EthiopianAmerican and has an M.A. in ethnomusicology from Harvard. “‘Dragonchild’ collects and represents Black free music, free of charge, to people with ears,” his online description states. “‘Dragonchild’ asserts the invention of the saxophone in the previous Millennium in Afar, by dragons, forged in dragonfire … ‘Dragonchild’ questions the value of presenting art for free, when the ‘White’ people pervert its meaning, using it to falsely prove and justify physical and mental torture and enslavement. ‘Dragonchild’ asserts the immanence of Native, queer, Black, anti-hegemonic humanity. ‘Dragonchild’ seeks to build consent culture, the opposite of rape culture. ‘Dragonchild’ embodies the nonbinary future. ‘Dragonchild’ sees you.” I admit, reading this description prior to visiting the installation itself, I was skeptical as to how all this could be manifested in a single art piece. And after seeing and experiencing
it physically, I still am having trouble grasping the ways in which this piece accomplishes Mekonnen’s agenda. Regarding the “theft” of saxophone and the perversion of art, I could see hints of this in the almost corruption of classic jazz that was presented at moments. Nevertheless, how other parts of Mekonnen’s mission were fulfilled – such as “bill[ing] white supremacy for damages” – remained unclear to me. Hearing from Assistant Professor of Music Corinna Campbell, however – a friend of Mekonnen’s and the one who brought him to campus – shed some light on the matter. “I’m teaching a survey course this semester on African music, and I knew I wanted to be able to offer students direct interaction with a musician or group,” Campbell said. “We discussed a few different possibilities, but the more he talked about ‘Dragonchild,’ the more it became clear that this was the option he was most excited about pursuing, and that it had a particular resonance with issues that we as a campus community have been struggling to address.” She also stressed that this was a collaborative, interdepartmental effort, naming Douglas Paisley, Daniel Goudrouffe, Jonathan Myers, Don Harris and the sound engineers as having all worked together to make it a reality. Perhaps if I’d been present for all three hours or had a deeper understanding of the history of Black music, the fulfillment of these intentions would have become more apparent to me. But regardless, what I did find in ‘Dragonchild’ was an unorthodox use of meaningful sound to create a shared mental and physical space, or, as Campbell articulated, a “really special and valuable space for reflection and affirmation of Black expressions and experiences. ‘Dragonchild’s’ presence on campus feels timely and important.”
in the show’s success only after filming the execution of Ned Stark, lord of Winterfell. “When I look at how that was staged, the performances, the way it was cut, everything about that sequence to me really became clear to me that if we could continue that level of work, … that would ensure our success as we went forward.” Indeed, other shocking and iconic moments throughout the show, such as the Red Wedding [in Season 3], are based in a model established by that scene. This model was, in broad terms, “to try to play out the shock of the unexpected,” Doelger said. “To set [the audience] up by spending time with the characters involved and to let the audience experience it how the characters were experiencing it.” Although Doelger insisted that he had no favorite character, the Red Wedding was upsetting to him for another reason: It brought about the departure of Catelyn Stark. “I thought that character as conceived by Michelle [Fairley, the actress] was wonderfully complex, wonderfully real, and there was a force and a power that I really liked the she brought to it,” he said. “I was very
sorry when her end came, because I missed watching her and seeing how she did her scenes.” Doelger said he hopes that the current and final season will live up to the high expectations set by the first seven seasons. “I’m very pleased with the last season,” he said. “I think that it’s very surprising, very shocking but very satisfying, and I think the story played out brilliantly.” Looking forward, Doelger said he could imagine a prequel show taking form in the future but doesn’t believe he will play a part in it. “My time with Game of Thrones is done,” he stated. It was through studying literature at the College that Doelger, an English major, discovered his love of characters and storytelling. “I realized through the courses I was taking that there was something that touched me about the portrayal of characters in fiction, something that I found very compelling about the exploration of creative fiction,” he said. He was further influenced by two professors that he had as a student, Larry Grager and Robert Bell. “I signed up for their classes my second year, and it was the
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first time that I had spent time in a class of literature where the passion, the excitement, combined with the analytical expertise in the section of the text, really hit me,” he said. “My conversations [with] them outside the classroom indicated to me that they were touching some sort of chord, and both of them very much encouraged me to think about those interests and those instincts as a possible career, rather than something that would end after I finished my academic studies.” He was also impressed by how the professors pulled together so many subjects into their literature, including history, politics and art. In his career, he embodied those practices as he worked to flesh out the world behind Game of Thrones. Even so, Doelger did not immediately believe that he would find his career in theatre or television, even after involving himself in theatre while at Oxford. Only upon arriving back in New York after Oxford, accepting gig after gig, did he find himself “graduating into the business without even knowing how it happened.” He credits the College, in part, for inspiring him to pursue this field. “I think the one thing that I took away from my experience at Williams was that even though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I had identified an interest,” he said. “Even though the path that I was setting off on was very difficult, very competitive, with an enormously high failure rate, I was encouraged and I had the courage to at least give it a try.” The advice that he would give to current students echoes his own experiences. “I think if people are passionate about something, it would really be a mistake not to at least give it a try,” he said. “In any career, certainly in a creative field, you will fail… While that’s incredibly upsetting, you can usually find in those failures some benefits in terms of analyzing your own work, looking to your own work and then hopefully continuing on.”
May 1, 2019
ARTS 9
The Williams Record
“Alternative Art Histories” imagines future of Latinx art By MAE BURRIS-WELLS STAFF WRITER A symposium at the Clark Art Institute this weekend will honor U.S. Latinx arts and consider American art history’s potential for expanding its social, cultural and aesthetic capacities. The event, “Alternative Art Histories: Future Directions in US Latinx Art,” is free and open to the public and will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. Laura Elisa Pérez, professor in the department of Ethnic Studies and Chair of the new interdisciplinary and transAmericas Latinx Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver the keynote lecture at 4 p.m. on Friday to kick off this weekend’s programming. The weekend’s events are part of a larger celebration for the 15th anniversary of the Latina/o studies program at the College. “Alternative Art Histories” was organized by Professor of Art and Latina/o Studies C. Ondine Chavoya and Marco Antonio Flores, MA ’19, a student in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. The idea for the symposium arose from conversations between Chavoya and Flores about the discipline of art history in the U.S. and the changes they believed needed to occur. “[The symposium] really comes from conversations that [Marco Antonio Flores and I have] had both in class and outside of class,” Chavoya said. One prong of these discussions was, as Chavoya puts it, “the state of the field, and how things have moved forward and changed in the field of art history.” But Chavoya also said he and Flores talked a lot about how “changes need to be made to make art history and art-related professions more inclusive and representative of complex dynamic American experiences, specifically thinking about Latinx art.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CLARK.
Image: Delilah Montoya (American, b. 1955), La Guadalupana, 1998. Williams College Museum of Art. Museum purchase, Kathryn Hurd Fund. To Flores, these conversations with Chavoya and the courses that gave rise to them were crucial to the symposium’s formation. Flores took three seminars with Chavoya, who influenced his thinking about this event. “Those three graduate seminars focused on Latinx and Latin American art and gave the impetus and foundation for the symposium,” Flores said. “[Chavoya’s] classes were not only rigorous in terms of research and archival work but also in terms of thinking about what kind of work I was doing…on the ground,” Flores said. “For me, [planning the symposium] was a way to put theory into practice.”
Flores, whose recent work includes curating Rafa Esparza: staring at the sun at Mass MoCA, is dedicated to representating a wide variety of intellectual topics and communities. “One of the biggest philosophies that I feel like I’ve learned through Ondine’s teaching is that no matter whether you want to be a curator or an art practitioner or a museum person, you have to know how to be a good art historian and a good researcher,” Flores said. “I think that the symposium for me spoke to that—that there’s a responsibility we have as art slash cultural workers to be able to plan events that are for the community and available to dif-
ferent people interested in these specific topics.” Interest in Latinx art is growing – partly, Chavoya suspects, because of the nature of the Latin American and Latinx art itself. “What I think is so exciting and dynamic about this field in general — and it’s something I try to convey in my courses at Williams, both the undergraduate courses and the graduate courses,” Chavoya said, “that is [Latin American and Latinx art] is a field that is growing quickly and where there is still a tremendous amount of need for new research and new scholarship. So it’s also a field that is, I find, more welcoming to younger scholars.”
Chavoya also cited the College’s investment in the field — as seen in, for example, WCMA’s collection of Latinx art and in its recent hires of faculty who study Latinx art like Assistant Professor of Art Mari Rodríguez Binnie — as a significant factor in its increasing popularity. And, indeed, the timing of the symposium is no coincidence when it comes to the development of Latin American and Latinx art studies. “One thing that will be signaled with this symposium is what a critical time we’re in, and how things have been expanding and developing quite quickly,” Chavoya said.
Both Chavoya and Flores hope the symposium will convey the depth of commitment that exists in this area for promoting inclusivity and representation in the art world. “There is a surprisingly robust history of exhibiting Chicanx, Latinx, and Latin American artists at MASS MoCA and WCMA over the years,” Chavoya said. Speaking of the same phenomenon, Flores said, “The Berkshires has been involved in this kind of work. It’s not really new, but it’s wonderful to see the growth that is happening at this moment.” Flores mentioned, regarding the work he hopes the symposium will be able to do for the campus and the wider community, a crucial consideration is “How are we as art and cultural workers responsible for discordant art histories…that are still in the process of being included and taken as seriously” in the aesthetic, scholarly and tutorial realms of the discipline? The symposium will be followed up by the arrival of “Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.” to WCMA in the fall. This critically-acclaimed exhibition was co-curated by Chavoya and incorporates groundbreaking research to deepen and expand, according to a press release from Hunter College Art Galleries, “narratives about the development of the Chicano Art Movement, performance art, and queer aesthetics and practices.” For Flores, organizing “Alternative Art Histories” was not only meaningful as a cultural and intellectual project, but also as a personal achievement. “There was this moment last year after Ondine’s class that it just kind of hit me how difficult it felt for me to identify as an art historian or tell people I was an art historian,” he said. “And that moment of recognition was so pivotal for me to realize that there’s so much work ahead of us.”
Lynn Melchiori of OIT gets creative with Crayola By VINCENT JIANG STAFF WRITER The atmosphere of the dimlylit office of Lynn Melchiori, staff member at the Faculty/Staff Support Desk for OIT, does not do its occupant any justice; while the room is dark, she is bright, and while the room is still, she is burning with passion. A “do-it-yourself-er,” Melchiori is the self-published author and illustrator of The Adventures of Mimi the Artist, a book series aimed at children ages 3 to 9 that follows the adventures of Mimi and her friends, whose paper cutouts lie scattered on the desk: Butters the cat, Flutters the butterfly, Clover the dog, Little Brown Bear the bear, Rollie the rabbit and Indie the magical paintbrush. Each book offers a lesson about art. The first story — which spans three books, each 32 pages long — introduces the group and talks about primary and secondary colors. The second story is about beekeeping, which it uses to teach children about shapes. The book series often reflects Melchiori’s own life. For example, Mimi is supposed to be based off of Melchiori; both Melchiori and Mimi are left-handed, and Mimi is the nickname her grandchildren gave her. She is also an avid beekeeper in real life and even sells honey with Berkshire Honey under the alias Mimi the Artist. It takes a while for the eyes to get used to the darkness of her office, especially coming from the brightly lit lobby of Jesup Hall, but once they do, small details stand out. The wall next to the door is covered in photos of her
adult children and grandchildren, who were the ones who inspired her to create Mimi the Artist in the first place. Her children encouraged her to create her own book due to her skills of writing stories and drawing. Her grandchildren were also the ones that came up with the names of all the characters and had a say in their final designs. Melchiori was also driven to create this series because of her time as an art teacher. As a public school educator in North Adams and Dalton, Mass., she saw the profound effect that art had in boosting children’s ability to focus and their creativity. At the same time, however, she found that, aside from a few basic ones about shapes, there were not many art education books for children, so she decided to fill this niche. Since 2013, Melchiori has been getting up at 4 a.m. every day so that she could work on her project for two hours before she had to be on campus. Even though this was no easy task, she enjoyed it. “I knew how to draw cartoony figures,” she said. “I can weave a phenomenal, gentle story that is full of surprises to little kids. I’m just good at it, and I’m not modest about it.” Though she tried to color her first book in Photoshop, at the urging of her children, she returned to using colored pencils, specifically Crayola, for their gentle shading effect. She consciously chose Crayola instead of higher-end colored pencils for two reasons: to make sure that her art was available to most children, who were more likely than not to have Crayola, and just in
case Crayola wanted to sponsor her if she got famous. “You have to think of the big picture, even if it never occurs,” she said. Things started to get more difficult once she started printing books and marketing. Unable to afford a lawyer to go through the process of trademarking her brand or a dedicated marketing team, Melchiori had to rely on herself to get things done. This often meant extensively researching guides to learn a variety of things, like how to use Photoshop, how to trademark her brand, what dimensions the pages need to be and how to purchase ISBN numbers. But for each difficult task completed, an even sweeter success awaited. “Each time I’ll get something, I’ll dance around the dining room table in happiness,” she said. In addition to the main book series, Melchiori has also published eight coloring books. Four of them are for children, and go along with Mimi’s story, with the hopes that “each child can be their own artist,” she said. The other four are for adults. She has also found that her actions have inspired other staff members to create their own books. Melchiori is done with publishing for now and is now focused on marketing and garnering interest for Mimi the Artist. Though she has some experience with social media accounts, she is aware she still has a lot to learn. She is also looking into getting her books into the stores of Mass MoCA and WCMA, among other places. All her books are currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as on her website at mimitheartist.com.
PHOTO COURTESY OF LYNN MELCHIORI
Lynn Melchiori has authored and illustrated multiple children’s books, including The Adventures of Mimi the Artist.
PHOTO COURTESY OF EVA HENDERSON
eva henderson ’19, whose hand tattoo art is shown above, works in a variety of art mediums at the College.
eva henderson talks tattoo art By LILY GOLDBERG ARTS EDITOR Even if you’ve never spoken to eva henderson ’19, you’d likely recognize her dots. “I’ve definitely thought about tattooing [my face] and seeing if anyone notices, particularly my parents,” henderson says wryly of the dots on her face. If you didn’t know henderson was a studio art major, her sartorial choices – including her signature dots as well as hand-embroidered clothing – might tip you off. I first met henderson in BIOL 222 “Field Botany and Plant Natural History,” a course where we’ve ventured into the woods together once a week since February. While other students – myself included – clumsily handle the plethora of sample twigs distributed during labs, unsure whether to take them home or toss them into the surrounding brush, henderson regards her plants with the wonder and care characteristic of an artist. Many plant samples have ended up adorning Henderson’s walls alongside her own art, which draws upon the natural world extensively. In Summer 2017, henderson served as the Artist-in-Residence at the Zilkha Center, where she created the installation wooden planets from found driftwood and glass. A Class of 1960 Scholar in Studio Art, henderson has been shown twice in the Berkshire Arts Association Fellowship Show, which celebrates the work of Berkshire County based artists. She has also received grants from the Center for Environmental Studies for her work, which explores environmental and ethical themes. In henderson’s paintings and assemblages, there is an under-
lying tension between the transience of the natural materials henderson works with and the eternal aspects of these natural materials. Water, for instance, a substance henderson explores in her paintings, can be fleeting in discrete physical forms – such as rain or cloud – while enduring as part of a larger cycle. Though henderson works in traditional formats such as painting, sculpture, and video art, she also uses her own body as a canvas, covering her skin with elaborate tattoos. “I had a friend who graduated last semester, Olivia Goodheart [’18.5] – she did a lot of hand poking tattoos and gave me my first tattoos so I asked her how to do it,” henderson said. “I got a lot of practice on myself and on others when I was living in Brooklyn last summer – there’s a much bigger client base [in Brooklyn] than there is at Williams College.” In the past few years, hand poked tattoos – or “stick n’ pokes,” as they are sometimes called – have surged in popularity as an affordable and more intimate alternative to traditional machine tattoos. “You basically use the needle you’d put into a tattoo machine, except having the machine do the repetitive motion, you do it with your hands,” henderson explains. “I’ve had people who couldn’t tell the difference between drawing on their skin with a sharpie and the poking, and people who have needed a break every two minutes because it hurt so badly.” Tattoo art, which henderson dabbles in, is a fitting extension of the dichotomy between the eternal and the ephemeral explored in her more traditional formats. Though many think of tattoos as the epitome of permanence, their very permanence is
undermined by the transitory human bodies on which they exist; bodies shift and change, shifting tattoos along with them. henderson recognizes the relationship between the body and the artwork, but does not view the permanence of tattoos as a negative quality. “My parents are always telling me, ‘what if you decide you don’t like it, and you can’t get rid of it?’ Well, my whole body – I can’t get rid of that, I’m just stuck with it,” henderson said. “If I decide I’m not super into a tattoo I gave myself, it’s just like any part of my body. People are dissatisfied with their bodies for all sorts of different reasons.” The permanence of henderson’s tattoos have led her to add more. “Having imperfections drives having more on because you can’t erase anything,” said henderson. “If something doesn’t look quite right, the only way to make it look better is to balance it out with something else.” Looking at henderson’s hands, it is interesting to see how henderson has approached this visual balance. “The first one I did on myself was the one on my thumb, a little face. It’s a face that the spirits that show up in my paintings have,” she said. “The rest followed pretty quickly. They were all done over the course of a couple months.” henderson acknowledges that her practice has been “dormant” in Williamstown, where fewer students have sought her out. “I would love to get more serious about it once I graduate,” henderson said. “I’ll tattoo anyone who can pay.” With her whimsical designs and safe practice, henderson’s hand-pokes may be a unique alternative to consider for your next ink.
10 SPORTS
The Williams Record
May 1, 2019
Print Shop’s “Window of Fame” congratulates teams, student-athletes
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
The Print Shop celebrated softball pitcher Mackenzie Murphy ’19 and men’s lacrosse in early April. By JACK McGOVERN SPORTS EDITOR Walk down Spring Street during NESCAC championship season, and you will see a collage of purple and gold banners across the front window of the Print Shop Williamstown celebrating the athletic achievements of Ephs. Located on the east side of the street next to Pappa Charlie’s, the Print Shop, a full-service printing service and marketing agency, is one of the newer small businesses on Spring Street. Yet with its eye-popping posters com-
memorating the milestones of student-athletes, the Print Shop and its so-called “Window of Fame” have quickly become a favorite stop for the campus community. “I know the students who compete for Williams athletic teams get a kick out of seeing their accomplishments being noted in such a public manner,” said Director of Sports Information Dick Quinn, who coined the term “Window of Fame” on Twitter. “I’ve heard there have been some selfies.” “I’ll be at my desk working, and I’ll hear all kinds of giggling or laughter, and I’ll turn
the corner and see people taking pictures,” said Print Shop owner Elinor Goodwin. Goodwin, who bought out the print side of the graphic design company where she worked in 2010, hung her first posters to recognize Final Four appearances by women’s soccer and men’s basketball after the store moved to its current location in January 2017. Since then, she has expanded her operation to recognize personal bests in track and field and swimming, as well as All-NESCAC awards in squash and other sports. “Our athletes just are very accomplished,” Goodwin said.
“If somebody breaks a school record or a Div. III record, it [seems] worthy of putting a poster up and celebrating that.” Goodwin said she originally limited signs to Little Three titles, NESCAC championships and NCAA tournament appearances, but the business owner said she has recently broken her own rule. Men’s lacrosse, for example, earned a sign after knocking off then-undefeated Amherst on April 6 for the first time in a regular season game since 2009. The poster, which proclaimed “It’s a great day to be an Eph!” and congratulated the team on the victory, was born out of a friendly bet between Goodwin and a few members of the team. “A couple of players had come in at the beginning of the season and had seen that I also do some [graphic design] work for Wesleyan and they weren’t really happy with me,” Goodwin said. “So we made a deal and I said, ‘If you beat Wesleyan or you beat Amherst, then we’ll put a poster up.’” While the men narrowly fell to defending national champion Wesleyan in the first game of the season on March 3, they got the job done against Amherst a month later. Goodwin also created a special banner for softball pitcher Mackenzie Murphy ’19. The right-handed hurler became the all-time program wins leader with a complete game five-hitter against Middlebury on April 7. “I first heard about the banner from a friend outside of the team who took a photo and sent it to me,” Murphy said. “From then on, many friends and fac-
ulty members congratulated me on the record. It was so nice to be recognized by the community for my athletic achievement.” After hanging the banner in the store’s window for a week, Goodwin gave the memento to softball head coach Kris Herman. The team later presented it to Murphy at Towne Field House and posted a picture of Murphy with the banner on its Twitter account. “I gave the banner to my family to take home and think it will serve as a happy reminder of my time on the Williams softball team,” Murphy said. Goodwin said choosing which student-athletes to include on her banners is never easy. “It’s sort of a double-edged sword because I’ve had coaches call me and say ‘Well, actually there are a few more people that got points.’ So I’ve added some things,” she said. While she works closely with the College’s Office of Sports Information, Goodwin said she has also started reaching out to coaches directly, especially for sports like swimming or track and field where there are many events over multiple-day competitions. A native of Foxborough, Mass., and an avid Boston sports fan, Goodwin described her work in sports marketing and graphic design as “natural” for someone like her. “I always joke I should have been born in Texas,” she said. “I’m a huge football fan. So putting a note on the door that says ‘Business closed, I’m at the game’ is sort of who I am.” Goodwin moved to Williamstown — not quite Austin or College Station — in 1997. She worked in the Dean of Faculty’s
office at the College and, in her first year, she made the football programs as a freelancer for then-offensive coordinator Mike Whalen, who is now the head coach at Wesleyan. Goodwin’s relationship with Whalen is the reason for the graphic design materials in Cardinals red on the top shelf that inspired her friendly bet with the members of men’s lacrosse. While, in terms of sports marketing, she has been involved with football the longest, Goodwin previously worked as a student activities director at Framingham State before coming to the College. She said she is excited that her new location has brought her back to working with student clubs and organizations. “For Previews, we printed a lot of stickers for different clubs,” she said. Since moving to Spring Street from a mile off campus two years ago, Goodwin’s efforts to expand her profile — from football game programs to banners for personal milestones like Murphy’s to stickers for a cappella groups — have turned the Print Shop into more than a local alternative to large printing companies. With its enthusiastic support for student-athletes, the Print Shop and its “Window of Fame” have become a trademark site of Eph spirit in the Purple Valley. “It’s a pretty big undertaking by Elinor Goodwin when you consider all the success Eph teams have each year,” Quinn said. “It’s a Williamstown [and] Williams thing that I don’t think has been replicated at other colleges.”
Men’s track and field places fourth at outdoor NESCACs By ZEKE COHEN SPORTS INFORMATION Men’s track and field placed fourth at the NESCAC Championship Tournament this weekend, finishing with 102.5 points. Middlebury won the meet with 201 points, followed by Tufts with 143 and Amherst with 130. The meet started with field events. In the hammer throw, Scott Fineberg ’22 finished 14th with a mark of 39.58 meters, while co-captain Mykel Miller ’20 came in 18th and was followed by Frank Scheck ’20. In the shotput, Miller placed fifth overall with a mark of 12.99 meters. In the day’s next event, the discus, Miller finished ninth. In the javelin throw, Paul Sheils ’22 threw 46.51 meters, taking tenth place. The Ephs continued to rack up points in the day’s jumping events. In the long jump, Will Kingham ’22 leapt 6.57 meters, securing seventh place. A trio of Eph athletes competed in the triple jump, with John Zhou ’22 executing a personal best of 13.68 meters for fourth, Bariki Innis ’21 finishing sixth and Kingham claiming ninth. In the high jump, co-captain Ian Kagame ’19 closed out his NESCAC career with a bang, winning the
event with a leap of 2.00 meters. Danny Renwick ’21, who used an eight-step approach rather than a curtailed four-step for the first time this year, finished third. In the pole vault, Carson Kurtz ’22 clinched sixth, clearing the bar at 4.25 meters. On the outdoor track, the Ephs’ runners braved wind and rain to contribute to the team’s fourth place finish. In the 110m hurdles, Ben Telicki ’22 qualified for the event’s finals after placing eighth in the preliminary race and then finished fifth in the finals with a time of 15.87. In the 3000m steeplechase, Jacob Kahrs ’19 ran for the win and came up just short, finishing second in 9:26.48. Kahrs was followed by Jake Lange ’21 in seventh place and Ryan Watson ’22 in tenth. In the 1500m, Aidan Ryan ’21 took first place, bursting into the lead with 700 meters to go and winning by over 2 seconds in 3:55.61. In the 400m, Cole O’Flaherty ’21 finished fourth in 51.10. In the 400 hurdles, Telicki finished eighth, in 59.27, followed immediately by Isaki Wada-Law ’21 in ninth. In the 800m, Tristan Colaizzi ’20 ran tough, finishing fourth overall in 1:55.78. Jett Ballantyne ’22
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
Jake Lange ’21 finished seventh in the 3000m steeplechase, while teammates Jacob Kahrs ’19 and Ryan Watson ’22 placed second and tenth. won his heat in 1:59.08, coming in seventh overall. In the 5000m, Ryan returned, joined by Nick Gannon ’20 and co-captain Zeke Cohen ’19. Ryan ran patiently, waiting to strike until the last two laps. He pulled away to win the race in a time of 15:06.25. Cohen finished fifth in
15:14.19, while Gannon was just behind in sixth, in 15:16.13. The Ephs closed out the meet with the relays. In the 4x400m, the team of Chris Bassett ’22, Colaizzi, Elliott Fong ’19 and O’Flaherty clinched third place, with O’Flaherty beating the Tufts anchor in 3:27.68. In the
4x800m, Estrada, Ballantyne, Lindgren and Peter Kirgis ’20 took second in 8:00.82. “Personally, I'm incredibly proud of how we scrapped today,” Eph head coach Ethan Barron said after the meet. “I believe this team's future is incredibly bright. And if we continue to
work and prioritize one another like this, we'll be on a whole other level come 2020. And we’re not close to done with 2019 yet.” The Ephs will return to competition next Friday, May 3, at the Div. III New England Championship, which will be hosted at the College.
CAPTAIN’S CORNER: KORINA NEVEUX ’19 Given that tennis is a sport where players compete individually, how do you foster a team mentality?
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
By SOFIE JONES SPORTS EDITOR Team: Women’s tennis Hometown: Palm Beach, Fla. Major: English and political science Snack bar order: Pasta bowl with chicken and broccoli
We emphasize that every match is one point for the team and that, to win the match, [the team needs] five points. We emphasize that every match is important, regardless of whether you are playing [at] No. 1 or No. 6 [on the ladder]. Whether you are playing doubles or singles, every match is really important. Also, tennis teams in college are about eight to 12 girls on a team, so it’s a smaller team. We’re really close friends, almost like a family. So that helps in fostering a team environment. Do you have any favorite team traditions? This tradition goes way back in the program. Before every match, we open a pack of gummies. We pass them around and every person takes a gum-
my, then we go “Grrrrrrr” in the middle of the circle and we all bite the heads off. It’s really weird. It started in the ’90s, I think. One girl bit the head off [a gummy] and then they all did it, and they won their match. They kept on winning and won nationals that year. So, I guess it just stuck with the team.
between points. But the people who are off-court are always cheering and are really loud and energetic. It really helps the people who are still on-court to have that energy and support.
Does the team have a favorite kind of gummies?
Probably [Professor of English] Gage McWeeney. He’s also our [faculty affiliate] and he loves tennis. He is always out on the courts playing with other professors. So I would challenge him.
When we are in California for spring break, we get Trader Joe’s gummies and those are always really good. They are the peach rings or sharks. I really like those but they are rare — only once a year.
If you could play a match against any professor at the College, who would it be?
Which of you do you think would win?
During long matches, what do you do when you’re not on the court?
I don’t want to make any enemies so I’m not going to answer that one.
Cheering. Cheering is really big on our team. Everyone’s cheering, even if they are on the court they will cheer in
What do you miss most about your home state, Florida, when you are in Williamstown?
The food. Having fresh fruit I definitely miss. I miss the beach, though I always say that and when I go home, I go to the beach once and I’m done for the summer. Now that you are a senior, what is one thing about the experience of being on women’s tennis, or being an athlete at the College more broadly, that you didn’t expect when you came here? Balancing different things [is something] I knew going into it would be difficult. I think something that I have learned is how to balance relationships with people, especially my freshmen year when I had the team, my entry and a group of friends outside of those things. Learning how to give my time to all of those different groups was really helpful. What will you miss about the team after you graduate?
Having that close-knit group. I can be lazy sometimes and don’t want to socialize with people, but when you have to go to practices and matches, you are forced to always refresh those relationships. I will definitely miss having that close family that is always there to support you in that environment. Is it odd to think about not being on the team next year? Yeah, it’s definitely strange because I’ve played tennis my whole life, junior tennis growing up and competitive tennis every weekend before college. The team has been a big part of my college experience and tennis is a big part of my identity, so it’s obviously a little weird. The good thing about tennis is that you can play your whole life. You don’t really need a team to play, so that’s comforting. It’s definitely going to be weird though, for sure.
May 1, 2019
SPORTS 11
The Williams Record
Anything but Straight in Athletics marks 10th anniversary By SOFIE JONES SPORTS EDITOR This spring marks the 10th anniversary of Anything but Straight in Athletics (ABS), a group for LGBTQIA+ studentathletes on campus. The mission of ABS, as described by the group, is to provide a confidential space for queer athletic students to discuss their experiences, through weekly meetings and organized events. All those identified below gave the Record explicit permission to do so. ABS’ membership is confidential, and no members who did not grant this permission are mentioned by name. ABS was founded in 2009 by former Assistant Director of the Davis Center and Queer Life Coordinator Justin Adkins and Jack Wadden ’11, a member of the men’s crew team. According to a 2009 Record article, the two started the group after finding that “LGBTQ athletes felt as though they did not have a place to discuss their sexuality” (“Outside of the locker room, students discuss queer identity,” Nov. 4, 2009). Adkins and Wadden cited the low percentage of openly gay varsity athletes as one reason why the group was necessary. “I have discovered that many [athletes] do not feel safe or comfortable coming out to their teams or coaches,” Adkins said at the time. Adkins continued to facilitate ABS through the Davis Center for several years, but the group’s attendance dwindled. Andrew Bloniarz ’18 first joined when attendance was at its lowest. Although the cross country runner had heard of ABS when he arrived on campus, it “was kind of in the back of my mind and never really moved out of that back spot.” Bloniarz first sought out the group during his sophomore year, after coming out as queer to many in his life.
When Bloniarz arrived at the Davis Center to attend his first meeting in October of 2015, he found the room empty. “I pushed open the door, and no one was there at all,” he said. Adkins later showed up at the meeting and recruited another student to join them. After the three discussed what it was like to be a queer athlete at the College, Bloniarz decided that he would show up to every subsequent meeting in order to ensure that no other students arrived to find an empty room. “I was ready to make a firm commitment at that point,” he said. From then on, Bloniarz worked with Adkins and the other student in attendance to recruit more athletes to join, starting a group chat to coordinate attendance so that someone was always there to welcome new members. Soon, others started dropping in. “I felt really proud to know that people were comfortable enough coming to the group and seeking out that resource,” Bloniarz said. Although the Queer Student Union already existed on campus, Bloniarz thought, “creating new avenues for different expressions of queerness was really important.” After Adkins, who Bloniarz said played an “integral role,” left the Davis Center in 2016, the group disbanded. “We had [all] just stepped back from it collectively,” Bloniarz said. This hiatus lasted until December of 2017, when current ABS copresident Ariel Koltun-Fromm ’20 approached Bloniarz about restarting the group. “We met and started thinking about bringing ABS back for real,” Koltun-Fromm said. Koltun-Fromm, a co-captain of the cycling team, did not consider himself an athlete when he first came to the College. By his sophomore year, however, he found himself more involved on the team and with athletics in general. “It was only then when I started thinking about how my
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANG VECCHIARELLI.
Students tabled for ABS at the Purple Key Fair this year, handing out Oreos and welcoming new students to join the group. newfound athleticism and my sexuality intersected,” he said. Bloniarz and Koltun-Fromm reached out to Associate Director for Student-Athlete Services Carolyn Miles, who had previously attended an ABS event, to talk about reviving the group as part of the Athletics Department. “We got a new and powerful supporter in the form of Carolyn,” Koltun-Fromm said. The group started holding weekly meetings at Lasell, in the lounge outside of the Athletic Director’s office. Every Wednesday, Miles brings Oreos, and students gather to debrief from their weeks, discuss sports and share their experiences as queer athletes at the College. “It’s a place for students to come together and feel that they can be authentically themselves,” Miles said. Social Coordinator Ang Vecchiarelli ’20, who plays on the women’s basketball team, was brought to her first ABS meeting by a teammate to whom she had recently come out. “I went
with her to one [meeting] and I haven’t missed many ABS meetings since,” she said. “It made me want to stay there and be welcoming to the new people who came after me.” For Vecchiarelli, ABS has offered a place where her identity as a queer person and her experience as an athlete can intersect. “I know, personally, that an identity as an athlete and an identity as a queer person can be a really difficult thing to juggle, especially if you’re the only queer person on a team of 30 people,” she said. “I think it is really important to have a resource like ABS to be able to mix those two identities together.” Like Vecchiarelli, co-president Eliza Quigley ’19 has found ABS to be a valuable resource in understanding the relationship between these different experiences. “In terms of identity, you have being gay and being an athlete,” she said. “It’s like: I’m not just gay, and I’m not just an athlete. Those things are one [and] the
same. Being able to bring those together is really important.” In its most recent incarnation, ABS serves a place for student-athletes of all kinds to gather. “We try to make it really clear that you don’t have to be a varsity athlete,” Vecchiarelli said. “If you consider yourself athletic, then ABS is open to you. It’s for anyone that feels like they relate to both the athlete identity and some sort of queer or questioning identity.” This effort to be inclusive extends to those with different gender identities. “We are an LGBTQI+ group,” Vecchiarelli said. “Along with the gay and bisexual community, I think the transgender community can also find a space in ABS. Queer and questioning does not only apply to gay people, it applies to anyone who is questioning any part of their identity.” Looking toward the future, ABS leadership expressed hopes to continue to grow the group
and its impact on campus. “We want to have a presence,” Quigley said. “Making it known that we are here is a big part of what we are trying to do.” Earlier this year, ABS created an Instagram account to help spread the word and tabled at the Purple Key Fair. “[We are] making sure that people know we are here and making sure that people can come to us and talk to us,” Vecchiarelli said. The group said it hopes that, through these outreach efforts, more students will feel comfortable coming to ABS meetings and joining in the conversation, whether it is because they themselves are grappling with issues of sexual and gender identity or because they want to support others. “It’s a very useful space to come together and feel like you really, really, really belong,” Vecchiarelli said. “I think it’s really important to have a space where you feel that.”
Deford, Pinsky Awards honor student Sports Info contributors
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
Honorees Ryan Rilinger ’20, Cordelia Chan ’19 and Zeke Cohen ’19 are pictured with Charlie Pierce. By CHARLES XU EXECUTIVE EDITOR “There’s always a Williams connection,” Director of Sports Information Dick Quinn said at the podium as he introduced the winners of the 30th Frank Deford and 10th Aaron Pinsky ’06 Awards on Thursday night. Guest speaker Charlie Pierce, a writer for Sports Illustrated and Esquire as well as a regular contributor for NPR’s “Only a Game,” headlined this year’s event.
The annual ceremony held in Griffin Hall recognizes outstanding student contributors to Sports Information. This year, Cordelia Chan ’19, Zeke Cohen ’19 and Ryan Rilinger ’20 received the Deford Award, and Cory Lund ’21 and Rock Stewart ’20 were honored with the Pinsky Award. “When I started at Williams in August of 1989, the job was 20 hours a week covering 30 sports,” Quinn recalled. “I was deathly afraid of having to rely on students, but within a month, I really saw how truly talented
the Eph students were and are.” In 1990, Quinn decided to honor the efforts of student workers with an annual award, hoping to name it after the late Frank Deford, a journalist for Sports Illustrated for five decades. Quinn found his Eph link in Beth Schmidt ’86, who was a writer for Sports Illustrated at the time. With Schmidt’s help, Quinn called Deford’s home phone to ask for permission in using his name. Deford’s love of the color purple and respect for the College would keep him on the phone with Quinn, but it
was their shared experience of having a daughter with cystic fibrosis that would create a bond between the two men and lead them to establish the Deford Award together. From then on, the Deford Award would be hosted by Quinn, Deford or notable figures connected to the College, including former MLB commissioner Fay Vincent ’60 and NFL offensive tackle Ethan Brooks ’96. All five Deford and Pinsky awardees this year were varsity athletes. Chan, a member of the women’s golf team, covered women’s golf, as well as both ice hockey teams. She said she became emotionally attached to some of the teams she covered. “I really like having the opportunity to follow a team from start to finish and to interact with the coaches,” she said in an email. “I had followed the women's hockey team for three seasons, and they never made it very far in the postseason tournament. I wasn’t writing for them this winter, but I still felt attached to their team. It was so great watching them win the NESCAC championship because I knew how frustrating their past seasons had been and
how much work they’ve put in to make it that far.” Cohen, a cross country and track runner, commented on his interest in sports recaps. “I’ve gotten the chance to do something I love as a job,” he noted. “Anyone who knows me knows that if I wasn’t scouring the internet for meet results to use in my recaps, I would probably be scouring the internet for meet results for my own enjoyment.” For Rilinger, a lacrosse player, stat-keeping allowed him to take part in Ephs history. “My favorite moments are when I get to record the statistics that set a milestone for our players and teams, like recording the shot that marks a basketball player’s 1000th point or inputting the game-winning goal in women’s soccer’s last home game [against Stevens] that sent them to the third round of NCAA tournament.” Lund and Stewart, members of the lacrosse team and color commentators for soccer and ice hockey, were also honored. They received the Pinsky Award, named after Aaron Pinksy ’06, a Sports Information contributor who contracted incurable brain cancer and passed away in 2010.
“Everything Aaron did he did with great joy and passion – and he did a lot,” Quinn said, noting that Pinsky was also a French horn player and a junior advisor. “Aaron’s basketball broadcasts were so fact-filled and entertaining that former Williamstown Town Manager Peter Fohlin would come to the games in Chandler Gym with a transistor radio.” Reflecting on Pinsky’s legacy, Lund said, “To be given an award by the family of such an outstanding person who was so tragically lost is such a huge honor.” Pierce, who worked under Deford at The National Sports Daily in the early 1990s, concluded the night, emphasizing the importance of storytelling even in the age of instant updates. “No matter how advanced our technology, we will always find a way to tell each other stories because there’s such an essential and visceral [quality] in the telling,” he remarked. “We need to tell each other stories. It’s a long, proud tradition that we followed from whoever it was that scratched the Epic of Gilgamesh into clay tablets to every pixel zips into the content of computers we can now hold in our hand.”
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ATHLETES OF THE WEEK “Cori had a strong weekend, like the rest of the team. The first few holes of the tournament didn’t go so well for her but she was able to turn it around and then really shine on the second day.”
“Sam stepped up in a big moment. We needed a win to take the series, and he delivered. He is mature, and composed on the mound and has great stuff to go with his makeup.”
-Head coach Tomas Adalsteinsson
-Head coach Bill Barrale
CORDELIA CHAN ’19
SAM ROHRER ’22
WOMEN’S GOLF, WINDSOR, ONTARIO
BASEBALL, NEWTON CENTER, MASS.
Chan earned medalist honors with a two-day total of 147 at Amherst's Jack Leaman Invitational last weekend, contributing to the team's first-place finish.
Rohrer was named NESCAC pitcher of the week, after giving up no runs and only three hits in eight innings pitched in Sunday's 10-3 win over Hamilton.
12 SPORTS
The Williams Record
May 1, 2019
Women’s track claims sixth consecutive outdoor NESCAC title By CAILIN STOLLAR SPORTS INFORMATION The weather was less than ideal, with a lot of rain in the morning and even more wind in the evening. These conditions, however, did not phase the Ephs as they brought home their sixth consecutive and 26th all-time NESCAC title. The women finished on top with 165 points, Middlebury followed in second with 145.5 points and Bowdoin rounded out the podium with 109 points. Each event was scored the same, with the top eight places earning points for their team with a breakdown of 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. The day began with the 10000m. The Ephs started off strong with Emma Herrmann ’20 coming in second place with a time of 36:18. Emily Harris ’19 followed closely behind her teammate, finishing in third with a time of 36:56. The distance women continued their success in the 3000m steeplechase. Jaylan Fraser-Mines ’21 finished with a time of 11:50, securing third place. Teammate Brianna Bourne ’21 suffered a fall early in the race, but she recovered to finish in fifth place with a time of 12:13. Anna Passannante ’20 cruised to the finish line in the 1500m, winning comfortably with a time of 4:36. Passannante did not stop there, clinching second place in the 800m with a time of 2:14.
On the sprints side, Izabelle Ith ’21 started the women off well. Racing a season best in the 100m hurdles, she crossed the finish line in a time of 14.70 seconds for second place. In the 100m, Kennedy Green ’19 also came away with second place. She ran a season-best of 12.12 seconds. Green continued her success in the 200m, finishing in eighth place with a time of 26.52 seconds. She was joined by teammate Davis Collison ’21 who finished in seventh place with a time of 26.43. In the 400m, Megan Powell ’20 ran a quick time of 59.03 seconds. The performance won her a second place finish. Ella Dunn ’21 joined her teammate in the 400m, running a time of 60 seconds for sixth place. The three Eph relay teams added to the scoreboard next. The 4x100m relay team, made up of Kiara Tan ’22, Green, Collison and Powell, ran a time of 49.70. This was enough to win them third place. The 4x400 relay team of Liz Girvan ’22, Dunn, Summer-Solstice Thomas ’20 and Powell, edged out the competition in the final ten meters. They finished in first place with a time of 4:00. The 4x800 relay team was composed of Lilly Wells ’22, Erica Barrett ’21, Abby Scott ’22 and Grace Dailey ’22. They ran a time of 9:42 to come in fourth place. The jump squad won all four of the jumping events.
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMS TRACK AND FIELD.
The women secured their 26th conference title in program history on Saturday after finishing 19.5 points ahead of runner-up Middlebury. Starting in the vertical jumps, Emma Egan ’20 secured the high jump title with a jump of 1.65 meters. Thomas and Kene Odenigbo ’19 did well, both jumping 1.60 meters. In pole vault, Kelsie Hao ’21 blew away the competition. Her best jump was 3.81 meters, which beat the second place jump by almost 30 centimeters. Her 3.81-meter jump also broke the meet record. Cristina Young ’22 had a good day, jumping a personal best of
3.40 meters and winning third place. Egan continued her success in the long jump, winning that event as well. Her furthest jump was 5.23 meters. Ith followed her teammate, jumping 5.22 meters and winning second place. In the triple jump, Cailin Stollar ’21 improved her lifetime best jumping 11.43 meters. The jump put her in first place, winning the event by almost 30 centimeters. In the throwing circle, Mazie Alexander ’21 did well
in the shot put. She had a best throw of 10.46 meters, enough to win her eighth place. In the discus throw, Morgan Dauk ’21 had a fantastic day. She threw 34.48 meters, a new lifetime best by about two meters. The throw lifted her into seventh place. Alexander continued her day in the hammer throw. Throwing the implement 40.03 meters, she was able to place seventh. Dauk also did well in the javelin throw, launching the jav-
elin 36.17 meters to come in fourth place. “We faced a lot of adversity today in many different forms,” head coach Nate Hoey said. “I’m proud of how the team got right back up and competed with pride and passion event after event and never gave up. We learned a lot about ourselves today, and I’m excited for what’s ahead. Go Ephs!” The women will host the Div. III New England Championships next weekend.
Men's lacrosse advances to NESCAC Softball tops Wesleyan in no-hitter semifinals after win against Colby By KRIS DUFOUR SPORTS INFORMATION
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.
Cory Lund ’21 has recorded 50 goals and 20 assists on a 42.0 shooting percentage this season. By WILL GENTILELLO SPORTS INFORMATION No. 8 men’s lacrosse (14– 2/8–2 NESCAC) defeated Colby (8–7/4–7 NESCAC) 12-9 in a NESCAC tournament quarterfinal match-up on Saturday. The third-seeded men will take on fifth-seeded Amherst in the tournament’s semifinals next weekend. Saturday’s triumph makes the men the winningest team in the program’s 91-year history, with 14 victories over the course of the 2019 season. The Ephs took control of the game with 10:30 left in the first quarter when Brendan Hoffman ’20 sniped top right after an assist from Cory Lund ’21. Four minutes later, Hoffman netted a second-straight goal from a feed by John Hincks ’20. The Mules scored their first goal of the game with 5:40 left in the quarter, after dodging from the restraining line. With 50 seconds left in the quarter, Kevin Stump ’20 passed the ball to Jake Haase ’22, who slam-dunked it into the net to give the Ephs a widened lead of 3-1 at the end of the first quarter. With 14:07 left in the second quarter, the Ephs tacked a goal onto their lead after Jared Strauss ’21 shot into the top left
corner of the net. The Mules countered a minute later, making it a 4-2 game. With 8:35 remining in the half, Stump gave the Ephs back their threescore lead after burying one into the net on a feed from Lund. Only 30 seconds later, Lund scored a goal off an assist from Hincks after a clear from Rock Stewart ’20. After a Colby timeout, the Mules scored again, decreasing their deficit to three scores. With 2:38 remaining, Stump scored his second goal of the game, which was then countered by the Mules. At the end of the first half, the Ephs led 7-4. The Ephs took the field in the second half with the same pace of play and offensive poise they had displayed in the first 30 minutes. With 13:29 left in the quarter, Stump scored his third goal of the day after a feed from Lund to bring the game to 8-4. Two minutes later, Stump netted a second-straight goal, increasing the Eph lead. With 9:15 remaining, Strauss ’21 slam-dunked the ball and drew a penalty to give the Ephs a man-up opportunity. The men were unable to capitalize on the advantage, and Colby scored with 2:19 left. The Mules were down 10-5 going into the final quarter of play.
Thursday
Friday
May 2
May 3
Track, Div. III New Englands Home, 1 p.m.
Colby netted the first two goals of the fourth quarter at 10:05 and 8:24 remaining, respectively. With 5:14 left in the game, the Ephs broke the Mules’ scoring streak after Hoffman ripped one unassisted with a successful dodge from the restraining line. The Mules then netted two consecutive goals to reduce the Eph lead to 11-9. This was countered 25 seconds later, by a dunk from Haase which secured the Ephs’ 12-9 victory. The Ephs were led by Stump with four goals and one assist. He was followed by Hoffman with three goals and two assists, as well as Haase and Strauss who both had two scores. Lund also had one goal and four assists. Eph goalie Harry Gahagan ’21 had 14 saves over the course of the game. “Colby was a tough team, and I am happy with our effort and execution to secure a first-round win,” Eph head coach George McCormack said after the game. “We’re looking forward to an awesome play-off run.” With the win, the men advance to the semifinals of the NESCAC Tournament and will play fifth-seeded Amherst, who topped fourth-seeded Bates 23-9, next Saturday at 3:00 p.m. at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Rebecca Duncan ’20 tossed her first career no-hitter for the Ephs on Saturday as softball claimed the 2019 Little Three title with a 3-0 win over Wesleyan. The Ephs then took the nightcap of the doubleheader, 7-1, behind a two-hitter from senior co-captain Mackenzie Murphy ’19 and completed a three-game sweep of the Cardinals the next day with a five-hit shutout from Kirstin Mapes ’20. The women improved to 31-4 and 12-0 in the NESCAC West with the sweep. The Ephs reached the 30-win mark in a single season for the seventh time in program history and the fifth consecutive season. The team also completed divisional play unbeaten for the third time in program history and the first time since the NESCAC expanded from eight divisional games to 12 games in 2007. In the opening game of the series, Duncan was on point from the get-go, striking out the side in the first and recording two more punch-outs in the second. She finished with a career-best 12 strikeouts, reaching double-figure strikeouts in a single game for the seventh time in her career. Wesleyan hurler Brenna Monroe matched Duncan for the first 3 2/3 innings — not allowing an Ephs hit – but with two outs in the top of the fourth, the Ephs strung together three of their five hits in the game to produce three runs. Mapes got the ball rolling — literally — singling down the third-base line with two outs and nobody on in the fourth. Duncan kept the inning going by singling sharply through the hole. Gabi Medvene-Cirigliano ’21 provided the game's biggest at-bat next. Working the count to 3-2, she fouled off a tough pitch to stay alive before drilling the following pitch over the fence in left-center field for a three-run homer. The three-run shot from Medvene-Cirigliano was all Duncan needed. The Ephs right-hander allowed only three baserunners the entire game, hitting one batter and walking two. Ironically, all three were the same player,
Wesleyan catcher Sophia Sciarappa. Sciarappa, however, advanced past first only once, in the bottom of the seventh after drawing a walk with one out. A groundout to Jessica Kim ’19 at shortstop moved Sciarappa to second, before Duncan retired the final batter on a soft liner to second baseman Jenny Hickey ’21 to finish off the no-no. Five different Ephs recorded a hit in the win. Medevne-Cirigliano had the only extra-base hit. Duncan improved to 12-2 with her gem. The nightcap of the doubleheader was a different animal as the Ephs scored all seven of their runs over the first three innings and finished with nine hits. They took a 1-0 lead in the first as Murphy lined a two-out single to right before Mapes dropped a single down the right-field line. That broughtup Medvene-Cirigliano, who lined an RBI-single to score Murphy for the lead. In the top of the second, Hickey walked and stole second. Dacia Green ’21 then drew a walk. Kristina Alvarado ’19 moved both runners over with a well-executed sacrifice bunt. Kim then laid down a squeeze bunt and Hickey beat the throw home for a 2-0 lead. Duncan then hit the next pitch over the left-field fence for a threerun homer and a 5-0 Williams lead. The Ephs added two more runs in the third when Medvene-Cirigliano led off with a double and Hickey singled and took second on an error as Medvene-Cirigliano took third. Green scored both with a well-placed single through the shortstop hole. Murphy allowed the Cardinals a run in the second on two hits, including Kendall Carr’s RBI-single to right, but struck out the final batter of the frame – the first of 16 consecutive outs she would record. Carr’s hit was the final baserunner of the day for the home team. Murphy finished with a flourish, fanning the final Cardinals batter of the game. She struck out three over her seven innings and improved to 11-2. Medvene-Cirigliano was 2 for 2 with an RBI and a run scored. Duncan was 2 for 4 with three
Games of the Week
Women’s tennis vs. Bowdoin At Midd., 4:30 p.m.
Track, Div. III New Englands Home, 12 p.m.
Saturday May 4
Crew, New Eng. Championships Home, 8 a.m.
RBI and a run scored. Green was 1 for 1 with two walks, two RBIs and a run scored. The next morning Mapes fired a five-hit shutout as the Ephs posted their 20th straight victory — tying a program record at the school set by the 2006 team — with a 5-0 decision over Wesleyan. Looking for the three-game sweep of their NESCAC West Division rivals, the women got on the board in the top of the second when, with one out, Riley Salvo ’20 rifled a single to right and Alvarado walked. After a fielder’s choice grounder put out Salvo at third, Duncan came through with a double up the middle to score Alvarado from second for a 1-0 lead. The Ephs next rallied in the fourth when Alvarado bunted to score Hickey, before reaching home herself on a double down the left field line by Kim. Later, with runners on second and third, Wesleyan looked to end the inning on a double play at home after striking the batter out, but Kim evaded the tag for a 4-0 lead. The Cardinals threatened to score in the fifth when shortstop Alyssa DaSilva singled, before advancing to second on a sacrifice bunt and later stealing third. But Wesleyan was unable to get on the scoreboard, stranding runners on first and third. The Ephs extended their lead in the seventh when pinch hitter Emma Corbett ’20 doubled to right center, driving in Duncan for the 5-0 advantage. For Mapes, who threw her second consecutive shutout to improve to 7–0 on the season, the biggest troubles came in the first when Wesleyan loaded the bases with one out on an infield single, a single to right and a walk. But Mapes bore down and fanned the next two batters to squash the threat. She allowed five hits over seven innings, walking two and striking out seven. The Ephs recorded 10 hits in the victory. Duncan was 3 for 3 with an RBI and a run scored. Alvarado was 1 for 2 with a walk, an RBI and two runs scored. The Ephs will play next in the quarterfinals of the 2019 NESCAC Tournament hosted by Tufts beginning on May 3.
Sunday May 5
Baseball vs. Wesleyan
Men’s lacrosse vs. Amherst, NESCAC semis
Track, Div. III New Englands
Men’s tennis at NESCACs
Home, 4 p.m.
At Tufts, 1 p.m.
Home, 10 a.m.
At Midd., TBA