Oct. 3, 2018: Storyboard halts Storytime as it reevaluates its mission

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018

Football team beats Trinity, remains undefeated

Storyboard halts Storytime as it reevaluates its mission

By IRENE LOEWENSON CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Sep. 26, Storyboard, the group behind Storytime, announced the decision to put a temporary hold on Storytime, citing the need to reflect on its mission and make changes to the event.

The sabbatical has no firm end date, but Storyboard hopes to “revive a storytelling space, in a form that is to be determined by the community, by the end of the semester,” the board wrote in an email to the Record.

“In the past year, Storyboard has been grappling with its mission and questions such as: how does one's identity inform one's experience as a speaker and a listener?” the six students who make up Storyboard wrote last Wednesday evening in an email to the student body. “Thus, we have decided to put Storytime as usual on hold, as we open up this conversation to the entire Williams community.”

Storytime, the weekly gathering in which a member of the community shares a personal story to a crowd on the second floor of Paresky, is a College hallmark. The optional writing supplement for applicants to the College mentions Storytime; one of the three prompts reads, “Each Sunday night, in a tradition called Storytime, students, faculty and staff gather to hear a fellow community member relate a brief story from their life (and to munch on the storyteller’s favorite homemade cookies). What story would you share?”

According to Bilal Ansari, Assistant Director of The Davis Center and advisor to Storyboard, the board’s decision to pause Storytime fits into a broader campus movement

about “the consumption of black stories, black lives and black narratives.”

This movement took hold following the performance of Ars Nova’s Underground Railroad Game last spring, according to Ansari. The show, created and performed by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard and directed by Taibi Magar, is a provocative comedy about confronting America’s history of slavery, according to The Berkshire Eagle.

The performance at the College sparked controversy, Ansari said. “It had to do with the depiction of African-Americans as slaves, scenes of painful episodes of our enslavement for comedic consumption on the stage and dolls in blackface on the flyers of advertisement,” he added. “Black people were in the audience, and we were experiencing it in tears while our white friends were experiencing it laughing.”

The aftermath of the show led to the creation of a movement, organized by a former Minority Coalition (MinCo) co-chair, called ‘At What Cost?’

“It sparked some powerful and introspective conversations,” Ansari said. “Students began to say, ‘Let’s call a pause on anything to do with painful stories where people are just sitting there laughing or consuming others’ pain without a deeper effort at community building.’ And so because of that kind of confluence between different things that were going on around campus, Storytime did some self-reflection, asking questions like, ‘What is our mission? What is our purpose? What are we really meaning to do with this space and this time?’”

In the last week of the spring semester, Storyboard went on a retreat “organized to

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANGELA YU '20.

Storytime is taking a break this semester as it reconsiders its structure and purpose, reaching out to the College community for feedback. consider and address recent conversations on campus surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion with regards to the space we create,” the members of Storyboard wrote. It was then that Storyboard decided to put Storytime on hold.

“Upon realizing how unclear our mission was and the potential need for dramatic change to the preparation and execution of Storytime, we thought it would be most responsible for Storytime to take a sabbatical,” Storyboard wrote.

Storyboard will use this break to clarify its mission and make changes to Storytime based on student input. “As Storytime is for the community and not for the Board, we

do not feel that we can dictate how Storytime should change,” Storyboard wrote.

As such, Storyboard sent an open-ended survey to all students in the email that announced the sabbatical.

“We want to hear any and all thoughts you have – what you love about Storytime, how we can do better, or anything you want to say,” the board wrote in the survey. Many of the responses have been pleas to bring back Storytime, according to Ansari. The board will also hold a town hall in the Henze Lounge at 9 p.m. on Oct. 14.

“One of the main reasons we decided to put Storytime on hold is we wanted to de-

Marijuana dispensary to open in Williamstown

By RACHEL SCHARF MANAGING EDITOR In the coming months, Williamstown’s first marijuana dispensary will open in the Colonial Plaza shopping center. The 238 Main St. location will be the first storefront for Silver Therapeutics Inc., which is also in development stages for a dispensary and cultivation facility in Orange, Mass.

According to Joshua Silver, CEO of Silver Therapeutics Inc., the development of the Colonial Plaza location began about 18 months ago.

After completing the municipal permitting process and receiving a medical license, Silver is now focusing on finishing construction on the store and obtaining a Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) adult use license. He hopes to be ready to open in November, but the exact timing will depend on the CCC licensing process.

Silver chose Williamstown as a location for a variety of reasons. The first was the town’s zoning laws; after the Nov. 2016 ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana in Massachusetts, Williamstown was one of the first towns in the state to adopt zoning ordinances establishing specific areas where sales would be permitted. “Having the process in place gave me a sense that this was something the town had thought about and was willing to consider,” Silver said of his initial interest in Williamstown. “Not everybody was for it, [but] many people were... People came out from the town, and they had different opinions on it. It’s new; there [are] a lot of questions about it. So we had a few public hearings, and we did our best to answer them, and ultimately they approved us.”

Upon visiting Williamstown, Silver also found that the area and its culture fit his vision for the business. “I have this idea about who my customers will be – involved with

the arts scene, interested in the outdoors,” he said. “Williamstown’s got the Clark, North Adams has MASS MoCA, and they draw a lot of people, so I was kind of seeing a Venn diagram, a lot of overlap between who our customers are and who the people are that are already traveling to and live in those areas.”

Despite recreational legalization in the Commonwealth for those aged 21 or older, the College announced soon after the 2016 ballot initiative that marijuana would remain prohibited on campus due to the nature of federal funding, which requires the College to adhere to federal laws in the case of disparities with state laws. In this case, that requires complying with the Drug-Free Workplace Act and the DrugFree Schools and Communities Act in order to remain eligible for federal funding, including certain financial aid programs (“CSS revises handling of marijuana usage following commonwealth

referendum,” Feb. 8, 2017).

Silver is aware of such local and federal disparities and the confusion they can cause among all parties. “This is a brand new industry that simply did not exist a few years ago, and the legal framework under which it’s permitted is just not up to speed with what’s actually occurring,” he said. “There [are] gray areas with respect to the College, with respect to banking, with respect to insurance, you name it – anywhere where there’s overlap in jurisdiction between state and federal law enforcement, there [are] questions.”

Despite the anticipated opening of the dispensary near campus, administrators emphasized that the policy laid out in 2016 will remain in place.

“Although stores in the area may begin to sell marijuana, Williams must abide by federal laws,” Senior Associate Dean of the College Rachel Bukanc said.

“That marijuana is still considered an illegal drug federally means it is prohibited for students by our code of conduct.

It is also important to note that smoking of any kind indoors is prohibited and will lead to action from the dean's office.”

Director of Campus Safety and Security David Boyer expressed similar sentiments, noting that the College is not likely to come into much contact with the store. “We have spoken about the situation and have no plans to interact directly with the business,” Boyer said. “It will be a legally-sanctioned business that is off-campus and out of our jurisdiction.

The College will be sending out educational material, mostly likely by several means, to remind students that all forms of marijuana are banned from campus and subject to the deans’ sanction process.”

For his part, Silver is open to conversation and respectful of whatever decisions the College administration makes.

“We want to be good neighbors to the town and to the College,” he said. “If being a good neighbor means keeping our head down, then that’s what we’ll do.”

RACHEL SCHARF/MANAGING EDITOR The marijuana dispensary will open at the Colonial Plaza shopping center after an 18-month planning process.

vote all of our energy to these conversations and changes,” Storyboard wrote. “We believe that addressing these important topics and running Storytime at the same time would be compromising.”

Although the steps Storyboard will take will depend on ideas from the student body, the board has already discussed potential changes. These include recruiting a more diverse board, changing the location of Storytime, inviting half of the speakers randomly by SU box and asking speakers to frame their stories as a call to action rather than an expression of personal pain, according to Ansari, the board and notes from the board’s meetings.

“One change that we have already made is having a new advisor, Bilal [Ansari], so that we can be directly connected to the Davis Center,” the board wrote. Ansari, who became the advisor this month, described Storyboard as “thoughtful and caring and genuinely concerned about doing things the right way.”

“I love Storyboard,” he said. “I love Storytime. I love what it means. I love what it could mean. It is a place for meaning – it is a meaningful place – that should not stop here. It is really an identifying, unique space that captures in a small time and space the essence of what this place is all about.”

JAs react to new system, larger entries

By REBECCA TAUBER and SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITORS

Last year, the Junior Advisor (JA) system underwent significant changes. Due to gradual decreases in both applications and in students accepting the position, the Junior Advisor Advisory Board (JAAB) changed the standard entry format from having two JAs responsible for approximately 20 to 25 first-years to having three or four JAs responsible for approximately 30 to 50 first-years. Now, over a month since JAs and first years arrived on campus, the Record sent a survey to this year’s JA class asking for comments about the new system. Of the 45 JAs to the class of 2022, the Record received 13 responses.

Many current JAs’ initial reactions to the new system were negative or ambivalent when it was first announced last year. For example, Paul Shiels ’20 had concerns about co-JA dynamics. “I thought communication could be a problem with three or four JAs more than with two, and I thought entries would be more divided,” he said.

Conrad Wahl ’20 described himself as “profoundly disappointed,” and Nate Jones ’20 was unsure about the large amount of first-years in each entry. “I was primarily worried about getting to know all my frosh personally with larger entries,” Jones said.

However, some JAs were determined to not let the changing system affect their commitment to being a JA. Alex Zilkha ’20 kept his focus on the unaltered foundation of the job itself. “I wanted to be a JA; I didn't care much what the system changes would be,” he said. “I was astounded that the system had reached the point that it had, but I had signed up to do a

job, and I intended to do it to the fullest.”

JAAB Co-Presidents Jad Hamdan ’19 and Jesse Facey ’19 were more hopeful about the introduction of the new system last year. “We were and are optimistic about the changes,” Hamdan and Facey said. “Though the system underwent a change compared to the previous year, the JA system has historically seen various configurations that don’t fit the two-JA per entry of 20-25 frosh model. The SEE JA SYSTEM, PAGE 4

WHAT’S INSIDE 3

OPINIONS Meg Bossong ’05 responds to Kavanaugh hearing

5

NEWS A closer look at e-cigarette use on campus

7

FEATURES Indigenous speakers on the power of wisdom

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ARTS ’62 Center puts on theatre showcase

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2 OPINIONS

The Williams Record

Arts Editors Kaira Mediratta and Ksoosha Ramras

Editor-in-Chief Tesnim Zekeria Managing Editors Reed Jenkins and Rachel Scharf

Sports Editors Cassie Deshong and Charles Xu

Communications Director Brooke Horowitch Executive Editors Shaheen Currimjee, Nicholas Goldrosen, Rachel Levin and Jane Petersen News Editors Rebecca Tauber and Samuel Wolf Opinions Editor Haeon Yoon Features Editors Lydia Duan and Jeongyoon Han

Photo Editors Katie Brule and Sophia Shin Technology Manager Aki Takigawa Business Manager Isabella Wang Financial Manager Teo Pollini Head of Advertising Esther Baek Subscriptions Manager Chris Fleischer

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Reframing the story

THE WILLIAMS RECORD BOARD Last week, Storyboard, the student-run group that puts on Storytime, announced that it will be suspending Storytime in order to consider the purpose it serves in the College community and how Storytime can better itself as an organization. We at the Record commend Storyboard for taking the initiative to reflect and reorient itself so that members of the College community may get the most out of it. We also wish to emphasize the importance of having Storytime as a space for students and members of the College community to congregate, simply for the purpose of learning about one another’s life experiences. While other affinity clubs on campus also serve this purpose, Storytime is the only organization at the College that does not target any singular identity or interest.

Participating in Storytime has immense value to the community members in the audience, who are able to learn more about their peers and view the College from a new perspec-

October 3, 2018

On the chance for Storyboard to self-reflect and the dangers of tokenization tive; however, we at the Record have concerns about the experiences of speakers. While being able to tell one’s story can be a tool of empowerment, storytellers may also unwillingly become representatives of a marginalized group or identity, which can be tokenizing and ultimately detrimental to the mission of Storytime. One way that Storytime can improve so that speakers may feel more in control of their narratives is through changing the question-and-answer session after the speaker is finished with their story. By having attendees write down their questions for the speaker and the storyteller choose which questions to answer, the person who asks a question is able to remain anonymous, and the speaker is able to control which questions they choose to address, giving them the opportunity to easily dismiss any questions they may be uncomfortable with without making the person who asked the question feel guilty.

We also recommend that a member of Storyboard speaks

Word on The Quad

briefly on the issue of tokenization at the beginning of each Storytime, so that listeners may be cognizant of how they interpret people’s stories. By reminding those in the audience that one story does not represent all people of the identities that the speaker possesses, Storyboard can encourage audience members to refocus their attention on simply getting to know their peers.

Another way Storytime can be improved is through additional events that serve as times for self-reflection. By inviting back past speakers to talk about their experiences as Storytime participants, listeners can get a better understanding of how their own reactions affect the storytelling experience.

Finally, we hope that moving forward, Storytime becomes more transparent in both its overall mission and in its selection process of individual speakers. One concern we have is that those most familiar with the nominations process are perhaps too insular and self-se-

lecting, when Storytime should be accessible to all students interested in sharing their personal experiences. Additionally, by demystifying how the final choices for speakers are made, members of the College community can better understand how Storyboard is working toward achieving an overall mission of encouraging a variety of lived experiences to be heard.

As Storytime enters this new chapter, we would like to remind the College community that Storyboard does not bear the ultimate responsibility for the viewpoints or interpretations of its audience members.

It is on the listeners to keep an open mind and acknowledge any role they may have in the tokenization of a speaker. Furthermore, we at the Record hope that other organizations across campus respond to the leadership shown by Storyboard in order to create more spaces where open thought is encouraged without pressuring individuals to be defined by single identities or experiences.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

What does Mountain Day roulette mean to you?

By KATIE BRULE AND SOPHIA SHIN PHOTO EDITORS

ABC TAG SALE

FERNANDA GONZALEZ ’22

A Thursday where I risk it all and don't do my work (except I do that everyday).

Who doesn't love a good bargain?

, MOUNTAIN DAY LICKETY SPLIT CLOSES

To roulette or not to roulette?

Get your ice cream fix before it closes for the season on Saturday!

JUAN PETICCO ’21

Dangling the possibility in front of our faces, then cruelly snatching it away.

SPENCE CARRILLO ’20

Finishing my homework early so I can act like I'm rouletting.

ANNA KIM ’19

Rouletting doesn't exist if you’ve got friends in dining services.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR On the op-ed by Christopher Weihs ’15 (“Can conservatism save the liberal arts? Holding onto traditional liberal arts values,” Sept. 26, 2018) To the Editor: At a dinner lecture on Sept.

26, your delightful Opinions Editor, Haeon Yoon ’21, asked if I had read a letter by Weihs urging the College to make the curriculum more “conservative.” I now have read it and have two main criticisms.

First, while it is no doubt true that most college professors (including myself) would identify ourselves as politically progressive or democratic, it is also true that most military officers would identify themselves as conservative or republican.

So what? Our personal beliefs are surely not the issue.

Rather, the question is: How do we teach or lead in our public life? Are we faculty fair to conservative students and ideas? We were when I

was teaching. I am sure my successors still are.

More importantly, Weihs seems to me to have a very odd definition of “conservatism.”

Apparently it is a rejection of pragmatic problem solving in favor of “universal human principles, inherited wisdom, spirited debate and inherited wisdom.” What's not to like?

Do we faculty not do this?

Or, more sinisterly, can we not question some of these once accepted “universal principles,” such as a compromise in this country on slavery or traditional notions of gender roles?

However imperfectly, I tried as best I could to have my students read critically, test scientifically, understand arguments pro and con and express themselves eloquently. While I hoped these skills would help students in their life courses, I was not teaching “pragmatism.” Judging by Yoon and other students I met on Sept. 26, this ancient codger feels mighty good about the College curriculum.

Peter K. Frost Professor of International Relations, Emeritus

LETTER TO THE EDITOR On the comment by E.J. Johnson ’59 on the “ironic columns” behind the Williams College Museum of Art ("Ironic columns stem from architectural innovations and quirks,” Sept. 26, 2018) To the Editor: Having always enjoyed the humor in these structures, I don’t think, as [E. J. Johnson ’59] snarkily suggests in this article, that taking art history 101 is necessary to appreciate them. However, I do wonder what course he would recommend to enhance one’s perception of the eyesore that houses the Williams Bookstore, a design that, if memory serves, Johnson defended. Like so many recent constructions on campus, no amount of academic apologia can make me believe it is aesthetically pleasing.

Ralph Hammann Town Resident

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

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

Submissions should be sent to hy3@williams. edu by Sunday at 5 p.m. for inclusion in the next Wednesday issue. Op-eds range in length from 650-800 words, and letters are 500 words or fewer. The Record will not publish pieces that have appeared in other publications. Pieces submitted to the Record are not guaranteed a spot in the upcoming issue.

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

AMELIA CHEN ’22

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

October 3, 2018

Reconstructing Storytime

What did we just watch?

On Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s hearing

By MEG BOSSONG

had to labor quietly and repeatedly on important questions: how do we Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and form genuine bonds – as teammates, Judge Brett Kavanaugh each testified as friends, as partners – based on rebefore the Senate Judiciary Commit- spect and care for one another, not the tee last Thursday, in a testimony that cheap currency of sexual conquest or was hours long. Along with a rotating degradation of others?

One thing we watched is what rushes group of staff, faculty, students and more distantly, alumni, we consumed into the vacuum when we lack space for it. In my case, I watched it nearly in authentic healing and repair for those its entirety from start to finish, a de- who have been harmed, and space for liberate act of witnessing in the spiri- accountability and transformation for tual sense. Others of us could take it in those who have done harm. More ofonly like an eclipse, through a pinhole ten, we are presented with singular projector of short clips or recaptured moments of individual trajectory shift: narratives. But the question remains: whether someone will be promoted from one lifetime judicial appointment what did we just watch?

One thing we watched was a per- to a more-powerful one; suspension or formance. What took place before expulsion from a school. And as with the Senate Judiciary Committee was Kavanaugh, we watch people grieve the possibility of this shift not an investigative in real time. But there practice. Indeed, as even Rachel Mitchell We don’t yet have those is no scale that balances pain, no punishacknowledged, it deauthentic spaces for ment that winds back parted significantly hands. If that from the established deep healing and deep clock is the only moment best practices of investigators. No legitiaccountability, at least when we declare our collective values, those mate professional in not consistently, but moments come too irthe realm of sexual recoverably late. We violence work fully they are possible. don’t yet have those and properly investiauthentic spaces for gates by saying, “This deep healing and deep is what is alleged. Did you do it?” and asks no further ques- accountability, at least not consistently, tions. What we watched was, by design, but they are possible.

There are and will be 10,000 mobeing structured as a “he said, she said” case, with facts and credible narratives ments in our lives as Ephs, on this unknown and un-gatherable. It is not campus and long after we leave it, when we get to choose what we ask that kind of case, and few cases are.

One thing we watched was tightly- of our friends and fellow community held stories unspool, about how a members, and to ask more of them group of young men at Georgetown and our relationships. Some of them Prep, and subsequently Yale, bonded will require real moral courage, the itself together. As Lili Loofbourow kind where calling people back to wrote in a piece for Slate, “the awful what we expect of them as a member things Kavanaugh allegedly did only of this community may mean the end imperfectly correlate to the familiar of our relationship if they choose not frame of sexual desire run amok; they to listen. More often, it will be tiny, appear to more easily fit into a differ- decent things that keep, in the words ent category – a toxic homosociality of Rabbi Tamara Cohen, “our futures’ – that involves males wooing other possibilities intact.” males over the comedy of being cruel Meg Bossong ’05 is the College’s to women.” For the last four years, the young people who comprise this com- director of sexual assault prevention munity, the Williams of today, have and response.

a i

time o to re ect o a Williams traditio

By CHRIS AVILA, HANNAH O , , EMMA REICHHELD AND ANGELA YU We are Storyboard, the group that organizes and runs Storytime every week. We are non-hierarchical, which means that we do not have a leader and that we make decisions together as a board. In the past, the board has chosen storytellers based on nominations and self-nominations; the choice of the story or stories is completely up to the storyteller.

This semester, we have decided to put Storytime on hold in order to provide space and time for deeper, more public conversations about our mission and implement changes in an intentional way. The abundance of campus conversations surrounding identity and privilege, inclusion and equity, along with individuals expressing their discomfort with Storytime instilled our conversations with greater urgency. This prompted us to think more critically about the ways in which Storytime might feel like a space for consuming other people’s pain rather than a space to affirm people’s cypher, narrative or spoken word. As we examined how Storytime further perpetuates these issues, our conversations generated many more questions than answers, and we reached a point at which we were so unclear about our mission that we felt to continue to organize weekly Storytimes would be irresponsible.

At this point, we feel that this dialogue has been too insular. We want to be transparent and collaborative with the rest of the College community. To begin we reached out to

Bilal Ansari, assistant director of the Davis Center to help, and we are grateful that he agreed to advise our board. Fundamentally, Storytime is a community-building event, and therefore the community must have a greater say in its mission, form and actualization. At this critical juncture, Storyboard realizes the importance of decentralizing its decisionmaking to our community at large, especially given the fact that our board is currently predominantly white. In an effort to begin the process of opening up the conversation, here are some of the questions of diversity, equity and inclusion with which we have been grappling: ● How do one’s identities inform one’s experience as a speaker, as a listener and as a board member? ● How can Storytime best reflect the needs and diversity of our community? ● Whom does Storytime currently serve, and whom should it serve?

To what extent is it possible for Storytime to be a space for the whole campus community? ● How should our current political context inform Storytime’s purpose and format? ● How should the board choose who gives a Storytime? Should priority be given to particular types of stories or to people with underrepresented experiences and/or marginalized identities? How can we do this without tokenizing speakers and perpetuating problematic power structures? ● Given the extent to which Storytime has become institutionalized and fixed by the weight of tradition, can it change in the ways it might need to? Is the institutionalization of Storytime (i.e. as a question on the Williams application and advertised as an event for Previews) a concern?

How might this be addressed?

● Is Storytime a necessary space on this campus and how might it need to be restructured to serve its purpose given the campus culture?

In the upcoming weeks, Storyboard will be receiving feedback and taking action regarding these questions in a number of ways. We are requesting feedback from an anonymous form (bit.ly/storytimefeedback) and holding a town hall meeting on Sunday, Oct. 14 at 9 p.m. in the Henze Lounge. We are also reopening applications to be on Storyboard.

We invite you to participate in one or more of these opportunities, and we welcome all and any thoughts and reactions, even if you have never been to a Storytime before and regardless of whether your feedback is positive or negative. If this whole article can be summarized briefly: Storyboard is questioning Storytime’s execution of its mission, and we want input from the entire Williams community to help shape its future.

Ultimately, storytelling at the College can and does exist beyond the event of Storytime; we hope that despite Storytime’s break, and regardless of how Storytime may change in the future, we can all continue to celebrate each other’s stories and to embrace the openness, vulnerability, love and deep listening that lie at the heart of storytelling.

Chris Avila ’21 is from Wilmington, Del., intending to double major in political economy and chemistry; Hannah Goldstein ’20 is an environmental studies major from Brookline, Mass.; Maya Jasinska ’21 is from New York N.Y. and her major is undecided; Emma Reichheld ’19 is a psychology and Spanish double major from Concord, Mass. and Angela Yu ’20 is an art history and math double major from Westport, Conn.

The Venezuelan needle Popping the purple bubble

By ETHAN LOPES News travels fast around the College.

Allow me to qualify this statement: food-related news travels fast around Williams. However, the purple bubble that encloses this campus is a powerful, almost fantastical force. Within the bubble, the day-to-day academic life supersedes “real-world” influences. Although comforting at times, the bubble has limited our scope as politically active citizens. Many of us are unaware of the extent of tragedies occurring all around the world, since the campus selectively chooses the topics of discourse. Particularly, students are unaware as to the extent of the Venezuelan crisis.

The country of Venezuela was once regarded as a world model for democracy. This might be a bit shocking now, considering how the current Nicolás Maduro-led Venezuela is teetering near a failing state threshold. Last year alone, the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds, an effect known as the “Maduro diet.” By the end of the year, the Venezuelan currency will have faced severe devaluation, as the economy suffers from hyperinflation. The harsh conditions have consequently forced approximately 58 percent of Venezuelans to neighboring countries. This means that the Venezuelan crisis is burdening countries who themselves are struggling economically. This situation is somewhat ironic, considering Venezuela’s past.

In the ’70s, people throughout Latin America immigrated to Venezuela in search of opportunity, which unfortunately did not last very long due to the socialist uprising of Hugo Chavez. His populist ideology appealed to a strong, largely uneducated base angered by the nation’s economic inequality. This was sufficient for keeping Chavez in power. Over time, the Chavista government began to reward apathy over hard work and critical thinking.

Despite occurring approximately 20 years ago on a different continent, the Venezuelan political situation is eerily similar to our own.

Last week, I had the privilege of conversing with climate physicist Marcos A. Peñazola-Murillo, a proud Venezuelan and researcher in the College’s astronomy department. Marcos is in every respect an extremely accomplished man. A Fulbright scholar, tenured in Venezuela since his 20s, Peñazola-Murillo has studied most major solar eclipse effects. This Friday, he will be the featured speaker at an MIT colloquium.

Talking to Marcos has confirmed and expanded my perception of the Venezuelan crisis. Through kind words and expressive gestures, he recalled the change in his university education, claiming it to be a microscale representation of his country’s deterioration. Since educated individuals threaten the power of autocratic governments, funding for their universities had continually decreased.

Incoming students increasingly became more unprepared throughout the years. Eventually, as he put it, “it got to the point where a degree from a Venezuelan university didn’t mean anything.”

Students coming out of the universities are comparable to the Arrested Development character Buster, where their “scholarly pursuits” are nothing more than a joke. Unfortunately, their elections are no better. Modern-day Venezuelan education is merely a form of distraction from governmental oppression.

I also got around to asking Marcos how much he makes as a professor in Venezuela at an institution that finds printer ink to be a luxury. He immediately face-palmed. Marcos, the tenured professor, Fulbright scholar and climate physicist, makes the equivalent of $35 a month. He lamented the fact that he will soon have to go back to his home country. Almost in resigned exasperation, he reflected on the incredible fact that just an airplane flight will drastically change his economic situation. When one of Venezuela’s hardest-working intellectuals struggles to survive, it shows how Venezuelans are more than just immigrants; they are refugees.

After learning about Venezuela, I feel emboldened to speak up. We the students need positive, all-encompassing dialogue throughout campus, such that everyone is educated and understanding of worldly issues. I fear that through passivity, we enable the formation of autocracies and the disregard of human rights. I challenge students to pop the purple bubble, to wake up and remember that there are issues other than finishing papers and problem sets.

Tonight, Mission Dining Hall will be holding a Latinx dinner, with an emphasis on Venezuelan culture. Come celebrate Venezuelan culture by eating delicious traditional foods. There will be a live music performance by the student group ¡Vive!. Swipe donations for the event will go towards Venezuelan immigration efforts and medication.

Ethan Lopes ’20 is an astrophysics and geosciences double major from Carson City, Nev.

DARIN LI ’21

Stony Ledge is not Mountain Day On changing campus dialogue and perceptions of Mountain Day O

elia Cramer ’19 (pjc2) with questions or to make arrangements for accessibility Leaves are changing, temperatures transport. We will do everything posare dropping and professors across cam- sible to make it work. pus are announcing that “the exam will This 30,000 foot overview of Mounbe next Friday… maybe.” Mountain Day tain Day hopefully reflects that for must be coming. This piece will primar- many, Mountain Day is a great way to ily reflect on how Mountain Day leaves spend time outside with people they many excluded and how we can begin care about, watch performances and to remedy this. Details about program- leave Sawyer physically and mentally ming are in our “Mountain Day Cheat behind. However, this attitude belies Sheet” and the main schedule, which serious problems about Mountain Day, will both be posted around campus and some inherent in its very idea and othin the daily messages. ers stemming from campus dialogue.

Briefly, Mountain Day is when the We need to accept that Mountain Day president cancels class on a Friday can be amazing for many and isolatin October to let stuing for others – these dents go outside. The aren’t mutually excluWilliams Outing Club sive, and inequality is We need to accept (WOC) – with a hercuinherent in the concept that Mountain Day and history of Mounlean amount of support from dining services, tain Day. Mountain can be amazing facilities and many othDay originated as Chip ers – organizes activities Day in the early 1800s, for many and on and off-campus in when students – excluisolating for others. sively wealthy, white, order to make the process of getting outside male ministers-to-be – as simple as possible got a day off to clear the for students. WOC programming typi- campus of newly-visible woodchips afcally includes hikes of various difficul- ter the snowmelt finally came. The Colties, performances by student groups lege soon hired laborers to do the work, and copious amounts of apple cider but the day off stuck, and the students and donuts. One gathering is on Stony used it to go hiking. To this day, the Ledge, a mountain with a great view of outing community (at Williams and beMt. Greylock, the tallest mountain in yond) is dominated by those who have the state. Another gathering is on Stone the time, money, ability and inclination Hill, behind the Clark’s reflecting pool, to partake, and is predominantly white, where cows mill around. There are also well-to-do and masculine. Exceptions events and performances on Paresky exist, of course, and many fantastic Lawn for those wanting to stay on cam- organizations use the outdoors to empus. A lot of people walk (or for Stony power people and combat oppression.

Ledge, hike) to these events, but there’s But again, on the average, underlying accessibility transport available, and a historical racial, sexual, ability, socionew hike leaving earlier to Stony Ledge economic and various inequalities still for those preferring a more relaxed very much remain. pace. Contact Rosa Kirk-Davidoff ’21 Mountain Day as it is does a lot of (rlk2) to reserve one of the fifty spots good for a lot of people, but we still available. If there is extra space, it will have a responsibility to improve it be first come first serve. Contact Phac- and engage critically with it. Beyond

the ongoing work of making concrete changes – e.g. more accessibility vans, better on- and near-campus programming – we need to change how we talk about it. The title of this piece is “Stony ledge is not Mountain Day.” In theory, this should be true, but in our campus dialogue, going to Stony Ledge with friends is seen as the only “real” way to enjoy Mountain Day. This is patently false, and harmful. This is why every year we have people pressured into hikes they don’t want to do. They have a justifiably miserable time and, in some cases, get injured. The point of Mountain Day is not to go to Stony Ledge, or even to any of the scheduled programming. Those are just ways of getting outside that WOC has organized to make the process simpler, if you want to do it.

I would argue that the official purpose of Mountain Day – to get outside – is the only way of fulfilling the day’s deeper goal: to take a break. To relax. To slow down for a minute. We are constantly bouncing from this problem set to the next, between this interview and that. If you think hiking to Stony Ledge sounds like the best way to do this, please, go for it!

Try talking to somebody you’ve never met before; it will go faster that way.

If it’s any of the other events, equally cool. Or if you want to hike elsewhere, or go swimming, or to the Alpaca farm, or sit outside and feel the sun for a few minutes, or any other thing that you want – please do! Whatever you do, we hope you get a chance to slow down and breathe.

PS: Professors, please stop making work due even if it’s Mountain Day. Not cool.

Jonathan Hall ’19 is a chemistry and math double major from Adams, Mass. He wrote this piece on behalf of the Williams Outing Club.

NEWS 4

October 3, 2018

The Williams Record

Students, faculty remember Professor Desrosiers

By SHAHEEN CURRIMJEE EXECUTIVE EDITOR On Aug. 31, French Professor Nicole Schott Desrosiers passed away. Her commemoration was held on Sept. 23 at Cranwell Resort & Spa in Lenox, Mass. Desrosiers played many roles in her life – professor, mentor, wife, mother and grandmother – but above all, she was a visionary.

Desrosiers was born into a German-Jewish family, the daughter of Harry and Ruth (Katzenstein) Schott. Because of their faith and fear of persecution, her parents fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to Le Puy, France in the early 1940s. Despite the horrors and struggle of World War II and the Holocaust, Desrosiers completed her secondary and tertiary studies in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Then, in 1966, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the U.S., on which she completed a master’s degree in American literature at Mount Holyoke. Dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, Desrosiers pursued both a master’s degree and Ph.D. in French literature at the University of Massachusetts.

It is safe to say that Desrosiers was fully prepared to embark on her career as a French scholar, writer and professor. During the early stages of her career, she chaired the world language department at Lenox Memorial Middle and High School for 22 years and taught at both Trinity and Bennington.

Upon returning to the Berkshires, Desrosiers became a lecturer in the romance languages department at the College for 44 years, teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses in French literature, translation and art history. Her passion for education has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the French government,

which awarded her with Les Palmes Académiques.

“Having survived the Holocaust, she [became] a scholar of Albert Camus – the great existentialist philosopher who based many of his philosophies on the idea of resistance in the face of hopelessness, violence, exploitation and danger,” Brian Martin, professor of French, said. Desrosiers was extremely excited for her brand new course on Camus, “Albert Camus and the Philosophy of Living,” which she would have taught in the fall of 2018. This course emulates much of Desrosiers’ life, “whether [it was] her family facing mass murder in Europe by the Nazis or little struggles that [she went] through everyday, there is pleasure: friendship, family, art and beauty. That was Nicole. She was so full of positive energy,” Martin said.

Desrosiers was an extraordinary mentor to many of the professors in the romance languages department as well as the graduate art history program at the College.

“I knew Nicole for about 15 years, and from the beginning, she was extremely warm and eager to talk about anything to do with language, France and art,” Katarzyna Pieprzak, Associate Dean of the College and professor of French, said.

While she had a genuine passion for ideas, books and cuisine, Desrosiers’ love for people and teaching was at the forefront of her life. “She was always interested in mentoring [us]. That’s when I realized how sincere and generous she was and from then on we developed a deeper friendship,” Pieprzak said.

“Naturally, she loved her native language, but most important to her was cultivating her own battery of useful ways to teach French to others,” Karen Kowitz, program administrator for the gradu-

ate program in art history, said. “She taught French to students with no prior knowledge of the language, and she would continue to work with anyone who requested additional study during the summer… She was their teacher for as long as they needed her,” Kowitz said.

It was in Desrosiers’ character to go above and beyond with both her undergraduate and graduate students at the College. “[She] had a kind of ‘tough love’ approach to teaching – lots of playful ribbing mixed with sincere and personalized encouragement – and I’m grateful to have studied with her,” Jake Gagne ’19, graduate student of art history, said.

Her generosity and enthusiasm never went unnoticed, and “she possessed an infectious zeal for life, which she shared with everyone around her,” Nora Rosengarten ’19, graduate student of art history, said. “[Desrosiers] had seemingly limitless energy, always making herself available when we needed to speak with her… It was obvious to all of us that she cared deeply about our progress and that she took joy in our success,” Jenna Marvin ’19, graduate student of art history, said.

For many language students, Desrosiers’ “Intermediate French II” was their first introduction to learning about 19th century art; however, she found a way to make everyone feel comfortable and at ease with the coursework. “Her pedagogy centered on applying the messages of the paintings of yesterday to our lives today, and I am forever grateful to her for these literary lenses she provided me,” Theophyl Kwapong ’20 said. “Going to class was always a joy because she allowed us to bring our full selves to the classroom.”

As much as she was a distinguished professor, Desrosiers was also a devoted wife, loving mother and cherished grand-

mother. She was predeceased by her loving husband, Paul Desrosiers, but is survived by her close-knit family: “her son David, his wife Wheatly and their daughter Lulzime; her son Daniel, his wife Bridget and their daughters Camille and Patrice; her brothers Henri, Gaston and Marcel, and their fami-

lies, all in France,” according to her family’s obituary.

Outside of the classroom, Desrosiers was also the cofounder of the Berkshire Organization of Language Teachers and a member of both the American Association of Teachers of French and the Berkshire International Club.

Famous for her infectious optimism, elegance and the pleasure she took in sharing meals, advice and surprise gifts, Desrosiers will be remembered fondly by students, faculty, family and friends. “She was the model of a strong woman,” Pieprzak said. All who knew her elle nous manque beaucoup.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIAN MARTIN.

Desrosiers, a professor of French at the College, was beloved by students, faculty and family. She passed away on Aug. 31.

JAs reflect on changes to system CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Monday 9-17-18 6:25 p.m. Paresky: Officers responded to a fire alarm, but no cause was found. The system was reset.

Tuesday 9-18-18 9:23 a.m. CDE: Officers responded to a fire alarm. Due to construction, CSS Officers were unable to gain access to the basement. Electrical trades were contacted.

mentation was taken. Several college administrators and the college chaplain were advised of the incident.

Monday 9-24-18

11:57 p.m. Currier Hall: A fire alarm was sounded.

5:09 p.m. Hewatt House: A panic alarm was activated.

9:48 p.m. Fayerweather Hall: Officers responded to a tip line submission regarding loud music in the basement.

9:12 p.m. Sage Hall: Officers received a report of a suspicious person dressed all in black taking photos of Sage Hall. The officers spoke with the student who said they were taking photos of the exterior of Sage Hall for an art project.

Friday 9-21-18

Wednesday 9-26-18

9:41 a.m. Towne Field House: A report was made of an equipment accident on the exterior of the hockey rink.

The damage was documented, and the contractor was identified. WPD also responded for a police report.

3:48 a.m. Officers responded to a report of a student suffering from severe abdominal pain. 911 was activated and the student was transported to Berkshire Medical Center North.

Sunday 9-23-18 12:12 a.m. Brooks Lot: Officers responded to a report of an intoxicated student needing assistance. The officers activated 911. The student was transported to Berkshire Medical Center North.

3:57 p.m. Officers received a report of a stolen bike. A stolen article report was taken and the report was faxed to the Williamstown Police Department (WPD).

Thursday 9-27-18 7:23 a.m. Sage Hall: Officers received a report of graffiti on a marble bench.

3:56 p.m. ’62 Center for Theater and Dance: An injured guest was reported from the upper dance studio.

Friday 9-28-18

12:36 p.m. Haystack Monument: A possible vandalism was reported by a small group of visiting clergy. They thought the vandalism could possibly be a prank or an act of desecration. Photo docu-

11:18 p.m. Morgan Hall: Officers responded to a report of a noise complaint.

2:37 p.m. A student reported a stolen backpack, textbooks, laptop, science calculator and notebooks.

9:28 p.m. Mission Park Drive and Chapin Hall Parking Lot: A suspicious vehicle was reported. Officers located the vehicle just as it was leaving the Chapin lot. The vehicle owner was identified.

4:59 p.m. Weston Field: A trainer with the football team requested an ambulance for a student having an allergic reaction. The student was transported to Berkshire Medical Center North.

8:35 p.m. Chandler Pool: An intrusion alarm was sounded.

6:14 a.m. Goodrich House: A fire alarm was sounded.

9:44 a.m. Oakley Center: A report was made of animal feces on the carpet.

Saturday 9-29-18

10:25 p.m. Mission Hall: Officers responded to a report of a noise complaint.

Sunday 9-30-18 12:54 a.m. Jenness: Officers received a call to check on a student. Dispatch contacted 911, and Northern Berkshire EMS arrived. They evaluated and transported the student to Berkshire Medical Center North.

1:39 a.m. Paresky: Officers responded to check on a student who was vomiting in the restroom. The student was evaluated and was allowed to return to the dorm with their friends.

2:57 a.m. Horn Hall: Officers responded to a report of an injured student who was bleeding and vomiting. Upon the officer’s arrival, 911 was activated. The student was transported to Berkshire Medical Center North.

3:57 a.m. West College: Officers responded to a report of people yelling at each other.

8:13 a.m. Lab Campus Drive: Graffiti was found on the large campus map between Morgan Hall and Jesup Hall.

The same graffiti was also done in the same paint on the exterior of Morgan Hall and additionally on the east wall of Prospect Hall.

ment of friend groups. “There are so many of them in one entry that they form big enough sub-groups to take care of each other, rather than before where one sub-group would take over the entire entry,” he said. From the administrative perspective, Johnson agreed that “having a larger net of connections available seems great.”

With larger groups of firstyears, Eli Cytrynbaum ’20 believes that larger entries have had a beneficial effect for minority students. “There seems to be less tokenization than in past years and less pressure to be a part of the entry and treat it as the be all end all,” he said.

Other benefits have come from the switch to JA groups.

sized entries. It is harder to have an entry atmosphere or to comchanges were not as revolutionmunicate messages,” she said. “I ary as many might have viewed also feel that some of the frosh in them, as the entry system has the entry don’t really feel as part evolved numerous times.” of an ‘entry’ because there are so Associate Dean of the College many people in it that they don’t and Dean of First Year Students really know.”

David Johnson ’71 withheld Wahl believes that the larger judgment when the JA system entry size disrupts the unique was reconfigured. “I went into social dynamics created by the it with an open mind, fully supprior entry system. “No single portive, especially since the JAs social unit functions as a group really own their own system. of 40 – or 50 for that matter,” Our role in the dean’s office is he explained. “Naturally, any more advisory,” he said. Havgroup of 40 is going to fraging worked at the College for 29 ment into more tangible and years, Johnson echoed Hamdan functional social units. And and Facey’s perspective on the naturally, these sub-groups JA system as an evolving entity. are going to be more homoge“It’s part of the path of students neous – like will find like. But trying to figure out what the the formation of these homogebest way to selfneous subgroups govern is,” he undermines what said. “It seems to it means to be an me a good way entry: friendship to take stock… among people Change seems so who, traditionally dramatic and so speaking, would immediate and not otherwise then we sit back have reason to Jesse Facey ’19 and Jad Hamdan ’19 and look at it as become friends.” part of a gradual Megan SiedJAAB Co-Presidents ebb and flow.” man ’20 recogAfter the annized the neganouncement of tives but focused the changes, JA more on what training shifted to fit the new Kevin Zhou ’20 explained she sees as a positive bigger system. Hamdan and Facey ex- his appreciation of JA teams. picture. “Our JAs in both Misplained how training was refo- “Having co-JA groups of four sion and Frosh Quad are doing cused on working in JA teams seems to be working out well,” their absolute best and have a instead of pairs. “Working in he said. “It's easier to spread lot of love for their freshmen, groups of three and four has out entry-related problems, and a lot of their freshmen are made JAAB and the current JA and it's nice to have a larger having great freshmen years,” Co-Presidents think more deep- team to bounce ideas off of.” she said. “I think we could have ly about how to manage conflict Shiels agreed that “having done better, but we are not doand disagreement in large co- multiple co-JAs takes burdens ing badly in any sense.” off of the JAs.” groups,” they said.

Despite the challenges, Despite these positives, many Hamdan and Facey also beNow, over half a year since the introduction of the new JAs have also experienced chal- lieve that the overarching atsystem, many current JA re- lenges and had some of their titude towards the new strucsponses appear more positive worries realized. Some JAs not- ture is favorable. “From what than their initial thoughts, ed that while having multiple co- we have personally heard in recognizing the benefits to the JAs shares responsibility more speaking to a number of JAs, current structure. Jones has evenly, it can also make com- the response has been largely found that the larger size im- munication more difficult, both positive,” they said. “We’ve proves social dynamics. “I love within JA teams and between the heard positive things from the size of my entry,” he said. JAs and their first-years. frosh too who are excited that Susana Cacho Lopez ’20 ex- they get to know more people “I think the size has made it easier for people in the entry plained the logistical difficulty and have remarked that they to find groups they like hang- of fitting so many people into can imagine that having more ing out with, at least early on.” common rooms. “A weakness co-JAs is easier on their JAs. Ben Leary ’20 also noted a is that it is hard to have entry That kind of feedback makes positive change in the develop- meetings because of the bigger us very optimistic.”

“From what we have personally heard in speaking to a number of JAs, the response has largely been positive.”

October 3, 2018

NEWS 5

The Williams Record

Survey examines prevalence of e-cigarettes on campus

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR The Record conducted a survey on student electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) and vape use, receiving 159 responses.

From this data, 42.8 percent of students responded that they had used a vape or e-cigarette at least once in their lives. The rate reported in the 2017 College Health Survey was significantly lower, with only 21.1 percent having reported using a vape at least once.

In the Record survey, 25.8 percent of students reported use in the past 30 days, while 13.5 percent reported doing so in the College Health Survey last year.

Student perceptions of vapes overestimate their prevalence – in the College Health Survey, the average student estimate of how many of their peers used vapes was 70 percent.

Students also generally see vapes as no more dangerous than cigarettes. 92.4 percent of respondents to the Record survey said that they believe vapes to be much safer, a little safer or about the same as traditional tobacco products.

According to Laini Sporbert, the College’s health educator, this perception is generally true but should not belie the amount that remains unknown about the effects of vaping. “It’s

certainly safer than rolling something up, putting it in your mouth, lighting it up and inhaling,” Sporbert said.

“It’s safer in terms of the number of chemicals you’re putting into your body, but it remains to be seen if those chemicals are safe.”

The percentage of students who had ever used a vape was roughly 48 percent in the Record survey for current seniors, juniors and sophomores. For first-year students, however, it was lower, at 28 percent. For students who had used a vape, 58 percent had inhaled nicotine at the time of their last use, 33 percent had inhaled marijuana or hash oil and

nine percent had inhaled just flavoring. There was no significant difference found in usage rates between athletes and non-athletes.

The Record’s survey did not assess usage based on gender, but the College Health Survey showed slightly higher rates of usage amongst men than women.

The proportion of respondents in the Record survey who said they had used a tobacco product at least once, 37.7 percent, is not significantly different than the proportion who said they had ever used a vape or ecigarette. However, the proportion who said they had used a tobacco product in the

past 30 days, 12.9 percent, was significantly lower than those who had used a vape in the past 30 days.

Vaping poses a concern due to nicotine’s addictiveness, though it is not necessarily the most pressing substance use issue that is present at the College. “Certainly we’re more concerned about substance use that causes immediate harm to the individual and the community,” Sporbert said. “But the thing that concerns me is the risk of addiction, because nicotine is highly addictive; if we talk about chemicals and addiction hijacking the brain from an early age, any use before age 25 is setting

the brain’s pathways up to get hooked on something.”

When it comes to the College’s fire safety policy, ecigarettes are treated similarly to tobacco products.

The College’s smoking policy, which prohibits smoking in College buildings or within 25 feet of them, states, “This policy includes the smoking of tobacco products and the use of electronic smoking devices. Electronic smoking device means an electronic device that can be used to deliver nicotine or other substances to the person inhaling from the device, including, but not limited to, an electronic cigarette, cigar, cigarillo or pipe.”

Prevalence of vape and e-cigarette use as a whole and by class year:

NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN/EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Visitors debate free speech at roundtable

By SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITOR On Sept. 27, the College invited several prominent speakers to campus for a roundtable discussion on free speech and intolerance in the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance. The guests included religious scholar Reza Aslan, who wrote the New York Times #1 bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth; Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter; and moderator Jamelle Bouie, the Chief Political Correspondent at Slate Magazine. Social justice comedian Negin Farsad was also invited but cancelled.

Professor of Africana Studies Neil Roberts introduced the event, which was sponsored by the ’71 Public Affairs Forum and the Lecture Committee. “We asked ourselves what the most pressing public opinion issues were in our community,” Roberts said, describing the process for determining the event’s theme. Ultimately, the committee settled on the topic of free speech, which Roberts described as relevant to campus discourse, both currently and historically.

Bouie began the roundtable by asking the panelists to define free speech. “I find it useful in conversations about free speech to see where people are coming from when they talk about it, what they mean by it,” he said.

Garza’s initial answer recognized the controversy of this question.

“I think that this terrain of free speech is a contested one,” she said. “It is also somewhat of a red herring… It also struck me as one of those conversations that was incredibly deceptive.” To Garza, discourse around free speech frequently ignores that offensive belief systems and individuals already have a disproportionate platform in modern society. She gave the example that groups affiliated with Black Lives Matter have been categorized by the FBI as “black identity extremist” groups – in her mind, a grossly unfair characterization. She also argued that marginalized individuals are more threatened and endangered by certain speech

than others. As a black woman, she described the danger that racist speech poses to her personhood. “[The free speech debate is] a question about whether or not I have the right to move through the world in a way that I’m not threatened,” she said.

Aslan concurred, adding that he does not believe that free speech is truly threatened on campuses. He pointed out that, on approximately 4600 college campuses, only 20 to 40 speakers are disinvited annually.

Regarding those speakers who are disinvited, he claimed that many of them come to campus merely to seek legitimacy, not to engage in earnest debate. He said that students should ask of prospective speakers, “How does this conversation actually add to the free flow of ideas? Is [this speech] specifically designed to inflame and to generate the legitimacy that the college campus might provide?”

The panel also discussed proper ways to address inflammatory speech on campus. Bouie argued that, given the prevalence of racist, sexist and xenophobic views in society, it is impossible to simply ignore such viewpoints. “They do have real purchase in society.

Why don’t they have a place on a debate stage?” he asked. Garza responded that, given the prominence of those views, not giving them additional outlets is merely leveling the playing field. “Lan-

guage has power. Ideas backed by action have consequence,” she said. In other words, giving further platforms to such views could only assist them in working toward a dangerous agenda.

Aslan held a similar view. “When we invite [far-right figures] to speak on campus, what we are saying is that your ideas, noxious as they are, are worthy to be heard,” he said.

Bouie then raised the question of where the line should be drawn between disagreeable views and truly hateful ones. “What about people whose deeply held religious views say that LGBT people are an abomination?” he asked. “How do those people fit in the public conversation?”

Aslan responded that, when colleges and universities preemptively affirm in written form the values that they hold, such issues will not need to be handled on a case-by-case basis; if the campus’ stated values do not align with a speaker’s, they should not be invited. With regard to religious values, Garza sought to distinguish scripture and interpretation. “The teachings are the teachings,” she said. “But then there’s the question of how people interpret those teachings.”

Speaking on potentially dangerous religious interpretations, she added, “We should not be so wishy-washy about letting all flowers bloom when all of these things are not flowers.”

After the discussion, students were invited to ask the panelists questions. One asked about the dangers of being unwilling to “talk out” differences with ideological opponents. “I think we’ve already done that,” Garza responded. “We have been not only giving them platforms, but giving them a pass, and giving individuals associated with them power. That’s where we are.”

Another student asked about how to respond when offensive ideas are coming from students.

“Obviously, there is going to be a wide range of sociopolitical views on campus,” Aslan responded.

“We just need to make sure that there is a very clear line being drawn.” To Aslan, that line exists for students as well as visitors. Regarding certain forms of noxious speech, he said, “Those are not topics of debate. Those are not topics that have two sides to them.” Bouie took a somewhat different view, arguing that students should feel free to say whatever they please but should expect social consequences for their words. “For incendiary language, anyone can say what they want, but there’s no guarantee that you won’t feel social sanction for it,” he said. Garza distilled this debate into a central question: “Can we create campus communities that hold a range of expressions and viewpoints without exposing views that endanger humanity?”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

Alicia Garza (left), Reza Aslan (right) and moderator Jamelle Bouie (center) discussed free speech and intolerance.

BEYOND THE BUBBLE NEWS ACROSS BERKSHIRE COUNTY

By REBECCA TAUBER and SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITORS Job action in local School District ends On Sept. 26, Mount Greylock Regional School District Superintendent Kimberly Grady announced the end of the job action by teachers against the newly merged school district. “We are pleased to report that the Regional School Committee and teachers’ union have reached an agreement to halt the job action,” she wrote in an email to the faculty, staff, students and community. “We understand that the negotiation continues to reach a final contractual agreement, but we are thankful that the parties were able to find common ground to end the job action at this point.”

The teachers were protesting against the freeze of their wages while they were negotiating new contracts with the Transitional School Committee as a result of the school district merger involving Williamstown Elementary, Lanesborough Elementary and Mount Greylock Regional schools. The teachers refused to run any extra programming beyond classroom instruction, including clubs and tutoring. As a result, students from the College were unable to start jobs and volunteer positions through the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) at the Greylock schools.

Now that the job action has ended, CLiA is reconnecting with the schools in the district. CLiA Associate Director and Director of Elementary Outreach Jennifer Swoap expressed excitement regarding this development.

“We are happy the job action is over and we can resume Williams’ partnership activities with Mount Greylock Regional School District,” she said. Opportunities such as tutoring and classroom help are now available at Williamstown Elementary and Mount Greylock Middle and High School.

Williamstown Select Board considers granting funds to nonprofit For the first time in several years, the Williamstown Select Board considered an application from a nonprofit hoping to receive taxpayer funds from the town. The request, which originally arose last year, is from the Sand Springs Recreation Center (SSRC), which operates a public swimming pool in the town.

The Select Board is eligible to disburse funds to nonprofits under the Community Preservation Act, which generally applies to groups that use the money for a specific, one-time purpose.

The SSRC’s request, however, is for general support with operation expenses, leading some on the Select Board to worry that it would encourage additional nonprofits to apply for similar grants, thereby flooding the system.

However, in a May town hall meeting, community members expressed strong support for the SSRC’s request. In response, Williamstown residents Susan Stetson Clarke and Michael Sussman, as well as Professor of Economics Stephen Sheppard, have worked together to create a tightened application form for the fiscal year 2020, creating a strengthened standard for future nonprofits. On Sep. 24, the Select Board examined the proposal; later in the fall, the Finance Committee is expected to provide additional feedback.

The new application will ask about current assets, a list of officers and the ways the proposed funds would concretely benefit residents of the town. This is an attempt to distance these nonprofit applicants from those who apply under the distinct Community Preservation Act. Future applications will be due on Jan. 15, 2019, pending Select Board and Finance Committee approval.

FEATURES 6

The Williams Record

October 3, 2018

One in Two Thousand

By SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITOR When I first met Aidan during his audition for Frosh Revue, I was instantly struck by his zaniness and his relentlessly positive energy. Last week, I caught up with him about his life in Mississippi, his violin and mandolin skills and his interest in nude modeling.

So what was it like growing up in Mississippi?

I lived in Mississippi for 17 years, and I haven’t yet really figured out what I think of Mississippi.

I wanted to get away because I wanted to experience what I think of my state through the eyes of people who don’t know about it. I lived there my whole life, but I never really felt like I was from Mississippi because my parents weren’t, and also because my parents didn’t go to church, and they were in the university community, which consisted of a group of people who acted differently from others.

I grew up internalizing a lot of stereotypes about people around me that people up here don’t really have. For instance, the stereotype of uptight, rigid, moral churchgoing people.

You also played the violin throughout your childhood.

How did that impact you growing up?

Well, for a long time it didn’t.

That’s one of the things about Mississippi that I kind of regret: there is just not that much musically. I was lucky to have a place near me where I could take lessons, but there just weren’t camps or activities or all the other things that people from more urban areas could have access to.

But I decided that I wanted to try to become a professional violinist – teaching, probably, because that would be the easiest for me to do. Starting junior year, I shifted gears and I really started trying things that were beyond the level that I’d gone before.

AIDAN DUNKELBERG ’22

I heard you’re also an aspiring poet. What do you write about?

Have you ever done any performances in the local area?

I did a few. The first gig I had was at a farmer’s market. I was probably 12 or 13 the first time I did it, and it was a three-hour set, which is pretty long. Of course, no one’s paying attention to you because they’re all just buying their vegetables.

But it was actually a lot of work.

I’ve never played classical music for a bluegrass style or western country event. Then, I decided in my sophomore year to do an actual concert, which I still have the posters for. It was really fun, but it was also more of the same – me playing fiddle music. The coolest part about it was that I was brave enough to ask the director of the arts council if she would let me do it. This past summer, I got asked by her if I would do a show, and I said, “Okay, but I’m not going to do the same thing.” I decided that I was going to try to start writing songs. I had about a month between when I accepted the concert and when I was going to do it. In the intervening time, I went and wrote five new songs.

That process was pretty nervewracking, because it was the first time that I’d written new material that I actually cared about, and also the first time that I was performing it to people whom I didn’t know or trust.

You were also called out by President Maud Mandel for your mandolin skills, right?

have any idea what the heck was going on.

LESLIE GARCIA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER AIDAN'S HOMETOWN COLUMBUS, MISS.

AIDAN'S RESIDENCE WILLIAMS HALL

Yeah, that was unexpected. I was hoping that I would become known around campus as the “mandolin guy.” Sometimes I take my mandolin outside at night on campus. I think last Friday I just went over to the marble blocks outside of Paresky and just played for half an hour. Mostly because it gets me in a better place, and there’s also this added benefit that people will come up to me and say, “Hey, is that a ukulele?” and I’ll be like, “No! It’s a mandolin, thank you very much.”

The reason I was called out was that I wrote about mandolins in my college essay, which means that some advisor to Maud read over my Common App, which is not surprising, but also, I

This week in Williams history WRITEfrom FORthe THE RECORD! Articles archives: 2003 Come to weekly writers' meetings on Wednesdays at 8:15 p.m. in Paresky 209 OR Email tz4@williams.edu

LIVE MUSIC

HAROLD LÓPEZ-NUSSA

AIDAN'S POETIC INSPIRATION IOWA

assume that means that somebody in the admissions office knows what a mandolin is.

I would hope so – it’s not that obscure!

You would be surprised. Back home in Mississippi, nobody would know what it was. I don’t think I ever had a single person come up to me and say, “Hey, is that a mandolin?”

They would come up to me and say “Hey, is that a ukulele?” or they would come up to me and say, “Hey, what the [expletive] is that thing?” And I would say, “It’s a mandolin,” and I would explain that it’s tuned like a violin, but it’s played like a guitar. And they still wouldn’t

My friends back home always made fun of me for writing a lot about Iowa. That’s where my grandmother’s from, so I would spend a week or so every summer and every winter there. I kept, basically, this image of a whole ton of cornfields, which is most of Iowa. In a way, it’s kind of nice and symmetrical and very poetic. It gets into a lot of my poems, whether intentionally or accidentally. If you read some of my poems, you would probably think that I was from Iowa. It’s the one place that I really know and that I have clear and distinct feelings about. In Mississippi, there are so many things, and there are so many feelings that I have about it that are mixed. It’s a huge effort to parse through that and actually write something that’s kind of meaningful.

Iowa’s easy. It’s just a ton of corn.

Speaking of corn, you’ve been a vegetarian since you were born. What was that like?

I’m actually fudging that a little.

From when I was born to when I was about five, I was pescatarian, so I ate fish. The family story is that apparently I said, “But mom, isn’t fish meat?” because we’d basically been calling ourselves vegetarians, so then we just stopped eating fish too. I don’t remember that. It’s weird because if I say to people that I’m vegetarian, people ask, “Why? Why are you a vegetarian?” That question’s always a little bit of a shock to me, because I’ve never really conceptualized the alternative. I’m just

very used to vegetarianism, and it’s not even about anything. It would just be too much of an effort to try to change. If I started eating meat, it would take probably two or three years before I would get to the point that I would look at a restaurant menu and not be scanning for things that don’t have meat in them.

It would be too hard to stop to make it worth it, even if meat was the greatest thing in the world – which it may be! I would not be surprised if it were far greater than I could ever imagine. But I’m still okay living in this world without it.

I’ve been told that you’re also interested in nude modeling. Why does that appeal to you?

Well, it pays $14 an hour, which is three bucks above minimum wage, so I feel like I’m selling myself a little bit short. I feel like my talents are worth more, but I gotta take what they’ll give me.

But seriously, it’s a job in which I don’t have to do anything, and it’s somewhat frightening, and I want to push myself to do things that I wouldn’t think I’d be comfortable with. Hopefully I’ll become comfortable with it by the time I actually have to do a session. I had one scheduled for Thursday, and then they cancelled on me. Or actually, I cancelled on myself because I had a midterm at that point. So it’ll probably be a while, which is sad, but oh well.

Any parting thoughts?

I have this strange desire to not finish this interview without saying something incriminating, just because I want to distinguish myself, but that’s probably not a good idea.

Faculty offices display personal quirks

By VINCENT JIANG CONTRIBUTING WRITER Unlike students who may spend little time in their dorms, professors often spend hours doing work in their offices. But students and professors share one thing in common: both like to make their rooms feel like home.

Coming from the bright halls of Thompson Physical Labs, it takes a few seconds to get used to the dimness of Professor of Computer Science Duane Bailey’s office. “I never turn these lights on,” he said, “So these light bulbs will never get changed.”

Bailey sees his office as a meeting place for students; he has six chairs around his desk, some of which are from his father’s office at Amherst. Old technology – including a rare magnetic memory board – lines the tops of the chalkboard to the right and bookshelves to the left. Puzzles, many of them his own, clutter the table.

His desk is a blackboard as well.

“In the Williams [way of] thinking, this is the log,” he said, referencing the often-touted James Garfield quote, “The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”

There are photos of Bailey’s ancestors and photos of influential thinkers, like mathematician John von Neumann. But there are also projects from former students, all signed, and children’s drawings as well. There’s a clock – analog – in the corner because “not everything in a computer science department has to be a computer.”

“It’s not a sterile thing. It’s grimy, it’s cluttered, but it’s fun,” Bailey said of his office.

Across Route 2, on the quiet sixth floor of Stetson Hall, you can find Professor of Latina/o and American Studies Mérida Rúa’s office.

There are two windows here; one is glazed, but the other offers a perfect view of Paresky Student Center, allowing the soft glow of the sun to shine in. On most days, this is the only light source, as Rúa likes to leave the lights off.

There’s a rug, on loan from Lecturer of English Paul Park, that offers a splash of color to the room with its vibrant red, orange and white patterns. There’s also a soft pink couch, Rúa’s favorite part of the office. It makes the students taking her tutorial feel more comfortable, and it also comforts her, as she can sit back with a cup of coffee and immerse herself in a book. “That is the best couch to read on,” she said.

By the couch is a bookcase with Rúa’s “intellectual formation,” or books from when she was an undergraduate. On the walls around her computer, there are pictures that remind Rúa of home: a photo of the skyline of Chicago with signatures from family and friends, a signed poster of Piri Thomas, an advertisement for a play produced in Chicago and a painting of three kings. “I’m marked by my own influences, cultural and locationwise,” she said, smiling.

Nearby in Hollander Hall, Associate Professor of Religion Jason Josephson Storm has an office that is a lot to take in at first glance. There are stacks of books (his “to read” pile), jam-packed bookshelves, a view of Sawyer Quad and Storm himself, working away on his computer.

Large windows allow natural light to flood the room, though he does wish there were more of it. “If anyone ever wanted to knock this wall out and put in a window for me, I would love that,” he laughed.

The bookshelves are crammed with dictionaries, books for his classes, texts for his research and his own published works. “I read in 10 languages, so I have stuff from a range of languages in the office,” Storm said. “So all of that amplifies the space.” Other things he has collected include a tube clock, figurines, Japanese artwork from his grandmother and, his proudest possession, the 2013 Distinguished Book Award.

The centerpiece of the room is a beautiful 19th century copy of Dante’s Inferno. Surrounding it are various cult symbols, some serious, others more playful: a khatvanga, a statue of Cthulhu, a Chinese medicinal figure and a model ray gun. There’s a dedicated space for Storm’s musical interests as well. This includes a poster of Joe Strummer, the guitarist for The Clash, a “pretty righteous, politically punk rock group,” and a sleek black guitar, though Storm can’t play the latter in his office.

The wide mix of things in Storm’s office reflects the varied interests in his life. “I’ve accumulated a bunch of things based on different areas that I’ve studied,” he said. “I’m pretty eclectic.”

As each professor’s office shows, it may be worth students’ time to get to know them beyond their teaching – you never know what you might find out about a professor simply from sitting in their office.

Saturday, October 6, 8pm CLUB B10 | $16 STUDENT + ADVANCE | $26 DAY OF | $40 PREFERRED

TICKETS: massmoca.org or 413.622.2111 | North Adams, Mass.

VINCENT JIANG/CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Jason Josephson Storm has an office with items that reflect his musical, linguistic and academic interests.

October 3, 2018

7 FEATURES

The Williams Record

Indigenous groups’ elders discuss power of wisdom, community

By JEONGYOON HAN FEATURES EDITOR Living testimonies of the restorative and inspiring potential of indigenous wisdom graced the three-part Africana Studies symposium, “Nkisis, Orixás and Ancestors: The Role of Religion, Creativity and Environmental Ethics in the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora” from Sep. 18 to 20. Coordinated by Sterling Brown ’22 Visiting Professor of Africana Studies Rachel Harding, these talks gave members of the College community an opportunity to learn about indigenous wisdom and the long-standing resilience of indigenous people.

“The wisdom of indigenous people is not folkloric, not abstract,” Harding said, “but [it provides an] understanding of how to be human beings in the contemporary world.”

The two main speakers were Louise Wakerakatse Herne – or Mama Bear – the Clan Mother of the Mohawk Longhouse of the Akwesasne people, and Makota Valdina Pinto – or Makota – an elder in the Congo-Angola tradition of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. Harding and Professor of Humanities Joy James moderated the discussion.

Though they come from different geographical regions, Mama Bear and Makota together had a simple yet powerful message to offer: in our broken, contemporary society, indigenous wisdom can bring regeneration and harmony to communities of all sizes and individuals of all cultures.

With this aim in mind, Mama Bear and Makota sat with 50 people in Weston Hall for a candid sharing of their traditions’ core values, of the suffering their communities have endured through colonial oppression and how indigenous wisdom sustained their people’s sense of freedom, self and understanding of human relationships to others and to nature.

SOPHIA SHIN/PHOTO EDITOR

Louise Wakerakatse Herne and Makota Valdina Pinto came to speak at the College as part of an Africana Studies symposium.

Makota said that at the most foundational level, indigenous wisdom emphasizes having respect for others’ differences and commonalities as human beings.

“The central and principal lessons for me come from a life of thinking and experiencing together with other people and from collective action – that is to say, respecting and interacting with others, with the diversity of life and with all that exists around us,” Makota said in a statement translated from Portuguese by Harding.

Another core component to intergenerational and interpersonal wisdom, Mama Bear explained, is recognizing the implications of current actions on future generations.

“We always have to think about how our actions will affect people seven generations ahead of us,” she said.

Equally important, they both noted, is humanity’s relationship to the natural environment.

“There is a beauty in the time and space that we live in and that our ancestors lived

in,” Mama Bear said. “I can see my ancestors – through these mountains, through the trees, through these rivers. I can feel their presence.”

This, Harding said, highlights the Mohawk and Candomblé people’s belief that from recognizing humans’ relationship to the natural world, people can create more whole societies. “These [traditions] are examples of how to be a deeply humanistic society that lives not in domination of the natural world but recognizes that we are essentially and absolutely a part of this natural universe,” she said.

For Mama Bear and Makota, these forms of understanding are also crucial for instilling a sense of empowerment, transformation, sovereignty and healing in indigenous people.

“I consider myself free because I am not submissive,” Mama Bear said. “I feel freedom in my heart, mind, body.

I claim my freedom.”

Makota echoed these thoughts. “The way our elders lived their lives made us

proud as to why we live the way we do,” she said. “We are a culture of accepting the self.”

Holding firm to such beliefs has helped both indigenous groups remain resilient despite the presence of external forces – what Mama Bear calls the “cloak of oppression” – that seeks to eliminate their people and alter their histories through colonial violence, genocide and land-stripping.

“I’m not what [government bodies] want me to be. I’m who I am,” Makota said defiantly.

“Both of these aggregations of these people are folks who have held onto their profoundly compassionate understanding of what it is to be human through many generations of assault,” Harding said.

But through their commitment to their communities and faithfulness to nature, spirituality and intergenerational wisdom, the Mohawk and Candomblé are not bygone traditions. “I am here to let everybody know that we’re not ghosts of the past,” Mama Bear said.

Rather, both Mama Bear and Makota said that indigenous groups around the world who are prosperous and whole could serve as sources of wisdom for modern-day societies.

“We are in a prophetic time,” Mama Bear said.

“With racism, gender inequality and the degradation of the environment, the community is in a period of degeneration, pain and even a celebration of death. That’s why people are dying, and shootings are happening…

[The U.S.] must be shifted to a culture of celebration, a culture of life.”

To address this need, Mama Bear and Makota suggested the incorporation of indigenous studies into the curricula of higher education institutions. Mama Bear asked students to imagine the possibilities that could come from “the real owners of this land” teaching at the College. “Indigenous wisdom must be brought to the forefront of our thoughts,” she said. “There exists a land-

scape of wisdom out there...

Education isn’t something you spend the rest of your life recovering from.”

With the hopes that students would reconsider the purpose of a college education at the cost of stripping native people of their land, Makota suggested that students constantly ask themselves, “What do I want knowledge for? What am I going to learn? Do you want to have things, or do you want to be in the world?”

James said that in light of such considerations, indigenous studies would deepen the College’s curriculum.

“The collaborations between indigenous studies and other branches of learning would be beneficial for more sophisticated knowledge about historical, contemporary and potential future learning in ethics, environmental justice, religion and spiritual and democratic practices,” James said.

“If one of the priorities that [the College] might set for itself is to help prepare leadership for a democratic America, what we need at this moment is understanding the wisdom from a history of people who have held onto a meaningful approach of human identity and that connection in the natural world under great duress,” Harding said.

Regardless, the importance of providing more spaces for sharing indigenous perspectives was clear to all speakers.

In the end, Makota said, such spaces should serve as opportunities for communal healing. With such an emphasis on communal experiences of growth, it was only fitting for Makota to close the symposium with a traditional Candomblé song and parting gifts of grains and seeds to those who remained until the end to hear the narratives of two deeply reflective and hopeful indigenous leaders.

Sustained garden care brings fall harvest Recording Recipes: Chicken Alfredo

By JAMES FITZGERALD STAFF WRITER With the arrival of fall weather in Williamstown comes a familiar sight: members of the Williams Sustainable Growers (WSG) harvesting autumn produce from the three gardens on campus. Parsons Garden, adjacent to Dodd Circle, accommodates blackberries, asparagus, annual vegetables and an array of compost bins. The Kellogg Garden at the Class of 1966 Environmental Center is home to rhubarb, strawberries, annual beds, berry bushes, herb beds and an orchard. This cultivation is part of the Living Building Challenge, which requires 35 percent of the site to be used in food production. In total, the gardens are estimated to contain around 80 types of vegetables and herbs, including heirloom species donated by Hancock Shaker Village and the Heritage Wheat Conservancy Project.

WSG maintains Parsons Garden, the Presidential Garden and the beds north of the Environmental Center during the school year. An Environmental Center garden intern manages the other areas, including the orchard and blueberry patches. Interns oversee all three gardens on campus during the summer. In past years, summer garden interns have tended both the College gardens and the garden at Mount Greylock Regional School. For the last few summers, however, interns have worked in conjunc-

tion with Williamstown Elementary School (WES) and the Williams College Children's Center (WCCC). Mike Evans, assistant director of the Zilkha Center for Sustainability Initiatives, highlighted the importance of such collaborative efforts.

“The garden provides opportunities to connect and build community between college students and young kids attending the WCCC summer camps, as well as with community members who tend to the WES gardens in the summer,” he said.

WSG and the Sustainable Garden Project were founded in the spring of 2010. Work on the gardens began in front of Parsons House, where 12 raised beds were constructed in early April of 2010. In May, the group expanded to Kellogg and in September, work on the Presidential Garden began. There are no current plans to alter or expand the existing gardens dramatically, but the Environmental Center is seeking to establish a separate community garden on campus. This garden would be accessible to both College students and local residents, but the project is still in the works.

Though WSG is a student-run organization, its members often work alongside other groups. For instance, they collaborate with dining services on the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program. One of their joint projects is with Williams Recovery of All Perishable Surplus, a group that packages and delivers unused

dining hall food to local communities facing food insecurity.

WSG hopes to give a portion of the vegetables they grow to Mohawk Forest, the Roots Rising initiative in Pittsfield, YMCA and other charitable organizations.

Total membership in WSG fluctuates, but there are typically 10 to 20 participants at the work parties. Last spring, the structure of work parties changed: members now devote an hour to discussing topics such as farm workers’ rights, sustainable food systems and the relationship of marginalized communities to food. The group has recently been seeking to encourage the participation of community members, staff and students who do not have experience in gardening.

The educational value of WSG's garden maintenance makes it worth it for its members. Jessica Muñoz ’19, president of WSG, believes that these gardens prove an opportunity for students to learn about how food travels from the soil to the dinner table.

“Gardens are incredible places to introduce the idea that we can make more informed choices around food, whether it's in the dining halls, around our kitchen table, with the seeds we plant or the sprays we choose whether or not to use,” she said. “Regardless of whether or not we spent much time in gardens or with plants as kids, there's something special, and perhaps even important, to witness food growing on a plant.”

By HIPOLITO VAZQUEZ AND SHREYAS RAJESH CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

-

Chicken alfredo is a delicious and creamy pasta, perfect for a wholesome and scrumptious dinner. We cooked some for our entry to celebrate a birthday, and as one of our entrymates put it, she would “definitely recommend.” Get ready to enjoy a great meal!

Ingredients 1 lb. fettuccini pasta ½ lb. chicken 1 cup heavy cream 1 cup grated parmesan cheese ¼ cup butter 1 tablespoon corn starch Seasoned salt to taste 5 tsp. olive oil

Recipe This recipe serves four to five.

1. Cut the chicken into small chunks.

2. Boil water and cook the pasta, per instructions on the box. Add a dash of salt and a sprinkle of oil to the pasta.

3. As the pasta is cooking, add three to four teaspoons of olive oil to a pan at medium-high heat.

4. Remove the pasta from the pot once it has boiled.

5. Once the pan has heated up (after around four minutes), add chick en to the pan.

6. Stir the chicken in the pan as it cooks for 10 minutes, and add seasoned salt.

7. Once the chicken is cooked, remove it from the pan and set aside.

8. In a sauce pan, heat the heavy cream until warm; do not boil.

9. Add the corn starch to the cream and stir thoroughly.

10. Melt the butter in the heavy cream mixture. Add the parmesan cheese and stir for about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat.

11. Mix the pasta, chicken and sauce, and add salt to taste.

SOPHIA SHIN/PHOTO EDITOR

The Williams Sustainable Growers (WSG) group maintains multiple gardens across campus.

12. Plate, serve and enjoy!

8 ARTS

The Williams Record

October 3, 2018

Conversation with Brad Wells, founder of Roomful of Teeth

By LILY GOLDBERG CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Method actors – I like that. Have you considered doing theatrical pieces with Teeth?

Roomful of Teeth, the contemporary vocal ensemble founded by lecturer in music Brad Wells, performed in Chapin Hall last Friday before an enraptured crowd. I got the chance to sit down with Wells and ask him some questions about Teeth before the concert.

We’re starting a kind of theatrical project in January with Bryce Dessner from The National. Here’s the crazy thing – Teeth is pretty gig-focused.

We normally do one or two days of rehearsal, and now we’re locked into four weeks of rehearsal at Mass MoCA and BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). It’s a whole new ballgame when it’s staged.

How did you first get started with music?

I went through a ton of instruments; violin, trumpet, piano, guitar and clarinet. I still play guitar and piano, but I got serious about singing in high school and college.

Do you think Teeth attracts people who might not otherwise listen to more traditional vocal music?

PHOTO COURTESY OF WFMU.ORG.

Did you know that Roomful of Teeth was a project you wanted to do for a while?

In college, I started getting interested in out-of-the-ordinary uses of the voice. I didn’t know quite what form or shape it would take. It took a number of years of both getting to know vocal traditions from around the world and meeting practitioners in those traditions and having the confidence that they could teach those traditions to classically-trained singers.

How has Teeth changed musically in the ten years since its founding?

In the first few years, there was a kind of signature sound, both based on the voices I compiled and the techniques we studied, like belting and

Founded in 2009, Roomful of Teeth is an eight-part vocal ensemble dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. yodeling. Several of the singers got really good at that, and the composers got interested in how those things sounded, so it became a self-fulfilling thing. People will now say “Oh yeah, that sounds ‘Teethy’” if someone writes a belt-y or yodel-y passage. It’s also spreading in different directions though: we’re doing a Berio sinfonia [a 1968 piece

by Italian composer Luciano Berio] that we’ve done with orchestras around the world, and I feel [that] it fits the group really well. It asks for this Protean ensemble that can talk and scream and sing and do any matter of things.

And I’m interested in aspects of the voice that appear in, say, death metal – what happens within the voice when it

goes in and out of pitch in a Screamo way? Composers are exploring that.

Wow. Would you consider composing anything in the Screamo tradition?

Yeah... [It’s] probably not in the tradition [laughs]. Bill Brittelle’s Psychedelics, which is a great example of a second-generation Teeth piece. The raw vocal techniques are so organically incorporated. We want things to be far from the original traditions, not cookie cutter So just how many composers have written for Teeth over the years?

Not counting student composers, probably 20 or 25. It

is always nice when earlier composers loop back though.

Brittelle almost feels like a house composer now, since we’ve worked with him since 2010. We’re thinking of doing an even bigger piece of his.

With lasers.

Do you have a dream composer you’d like to collaborate with?

A few come to mind – one is the original inspiration, Meredith Monk. She’s a performer who’s been down in [Greenwich Village] since the ’60s. The way she uses her voice was really an inspiration to me for finding new musical vocabularies and leaving the tradition of the classical, operatic sound. The

contemporary voice can be all sorts of things.

I was struck by the rawness of Teeth’s music.

How do you work emotion into your performances?

For me, it’s so much about the music connecting with both the performer and the audience. As with a lot of things, the more you live with it, the more you get out of it. We do keep a certain distance in rehearsal, I think, and turn the emotional stuff on for performance. We just started performing David Lang’s piece The Little Match Girl Passion? this summer, and it’s devastating. The group definitely knows how to bring theatricality that generates emotion. They’re like method actors.

Caroline Shaw [a composer for Roomful of Teeth who won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013] and her sort of visible crossgenre work as well as appealing music has maybe helped people outside of the new music world listen and appreciate new music. I’m not sure Teeth has done that kind of thing yet. What I do notice at a lot of Teeth concerts around the country is that a lot of people who aren’t necessarily interested in new music get super excited about what they’re hearing because it’s accessible and energizing in a way that more serious, densely composed music might not hit. The more people who can find meaning in what you do, the better. On the other hand, that’s a fool’s errand. Better to just keep making music you think is awesome and if people dig it, that’s great.

The Good Place considers the afterlife

By MANDELA NAMASTE STAFF WRITER

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR.

Diana Al-Hadid: Delirious Matter was originally commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Al-Hadid animates campus with provocative sculptures

By KSOOSHA RAMRAS ARTS EDITOR In the same elegant manner as autumn’s falling leaves, obscure feminine figures in cascading form have fallen onto the College’s landscape. Delirious Matter, an art installation created by artist Diana Al-Hadid – who was born in Aleppo, Syria and currently lives in Brooklyn – now can be found on campus after being displayed for four months across Madison Square Park’s central Oval Lawn, peripheral lawns and northern reflecting pool. It will now be on temporary display at the College for about a year.

Lisa Dorin, deputy director for curatorial affairs at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), explained that “WCMA [is] interested in partnering with students and colleagues across campus to expand the possibilities of public art in the future, and bringing Diana’s work this year was an initial step.” AlHadid’s work is inspired by literature, art history, architecture, Old Master paintings, frescoes, caves, Northern Renaissance art, Islamic miniatures, ancient time-telling devices and the modern sculpture of Italian Medardo Rosso. The hope is that the exhibit will spark conversations in our academic community. For this reason, the work is strategically located in highly trafficked locations on campus: The Grotto and Gradiva are located in Sawyer Quad, Citadel is located in Berkshire Quad and Synonym is located in front of Hopkins Hall.

The Grotto and Gradiva are made of aluminum, steel, polymer gypsum, fiberglass and pigment. Gradiva was inspired by the 20th-century mythological female character named Gradiva from Wilhelm Jensen’s 1903 novella of the same name, which Al-Hadid described as a “weird little surrealist story.” The protagonist of the novella, Norbert Hanold, is an archaeologist who becomes obsessed with a woman depicted in a bas-relief sculpture that he sees in a Roman museum. After returning to Germany, Norbert manages to get a plaster-cast of the relief, which he hangs on a wall in his work-room and contemplates daily. Norbert obsessively chases his imaginary apparition on a journey to Rome, Naples and through the ruins of Pompeii, which ultimately leaves him wondering whether this woman that he believes he has seen is real or a delusion.

Viewers of Gradiva can discern the figures vaguely emanating from the voids in Al-Hadid’s sculptural composition.

The Grotto and Citadel are both inspired by a painting from 1475 titled Allegory of Chastity

by Hans Memling. The piece depicts a female figure protruding from a mountaintop, the rocky formation suggesting an overgrown skirt around her waist. “My contemporary eyes saw it as a woman plugging a volcano,” Al-Hadid said.

When asked what inspired her to pair The Grotto with Gradiva, Al-Hadid responded that she felt that “somehow they were magnetized to each other.” The Grotto and Gradiva are wall-like structures

measuring 36 feet long by 14 feet high, and 15 feet long by 13 feet high, respectively. They seem to want to fit together like puzzle pieces, yet it would be geometrically impossible.

In this way, the works seem to be in conversation with each other. The viewer’s perspective on the conversation depends, literally, on where they stand. The porous quality additionally enables the viewer to see through the sculpture, breaching the wall, in a sense.

Al-Hadid was quite pleased to see the College’s beautiful mountainous landscape, which provides the perfect setting for the mountains depicted in her sculptures.

Synonym is made of polymer modified gypsum, fiberglass, powder-coated aluminum and pigment. It appears to be a woman’s torso, headless, handless and legless, lavishly resting, yet devastatingly melting. In Al-Hadid’s own words, the sculpture is “very nebulous.” Opaque obscurity seems to be a defining element of her work.

Dorin shared her own insight on Delirious Matter, stating “it will reveal its secrets over time, and as we get to know it, we will see it change with the seasons. Right now the forms appear predominantly white as they relate to the architecture and the surrounding green hills. Soon enough, the region will be covered in a blanket of snow, and the subtle color on the sculptures’ surfaces will begin to pop.”

Those interested in learning more are invited to attend an opening reception and artist talk in Paresky at 5:30 p.m. today.

Given the current state of the United States and the world, most of us just want something that simply makes us feel good inside. Well, one of the best shows on television has returned to do just that.

The NBC sitcom The Good Place returned for its third season on Sept. 27, and it remains to be an offbeat, uproarious and purely enjoyable half-hour. You wouldn’t think a show that heavily features the works of philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard and T.M. Scanlon could be both critically and commercially successful, but somehow, it is. And this praise is for good reason.

Thanks to shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, television is smack in the middle of the “Age of the Antihero,” where plots are constructed around white men, but with a twist – they’re bad.

Audiences have been encouraged to root for villainous humans for the last decade or so of television, but The Good Place almost actively rejects that premise. In this case, the show features literal demons, but they are far from central to its plot. The Good Place is unique in the context of 2018 T.V. shows because it centers around people who have glaring character flaws but progressively become better by helping each other and constantly striving to become the best versions of themselves.

The Good Place centers around six individuals, including four humans: selfproclaimed Arizona “trash bag” Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), neurotic and worldly moral philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), self-important British socialite Tahani AlJamil (Jameela Jamil) and well-meaning but impossibly stupid Floridian Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto).

They are joined by eternal being Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet, the “anthropomorphized vessel for all knowledge in the universe” (D’Arcy Carden).

As a professor of moral philosophy, Chidi teaches Eleanor and Jason about ethics while he, Michael, Tahani and Janet are all faced with moral quandaries and experience emotional growth as well. Throughout the first two seasons, Chidi overcomes his paralyzing fear of making decisions, Michael deals with an existential crisis, Tahani learns that there is more to life than appearances and Janet encounters feelings and emotions for the first time. All six characters struggle with facing these challenges at various times throughout the show, but eventually, they overcome their insecurities and address them head-on, much in the way that countless people have been helped through therapy.

Of course, kindness and fundamental decency don’t

just set The Good Place apart in the current television landscape; these qualities are also increasingly hard to come by in real life. In a world that grows darker by the day, it is refreshing to watch a television show whose central premise revolves around people trying to better themselves and those around them with no cynical strings attached. Sure, each of the characters have shown their flaws at times throughout the show – even the nota-robot Janet – but the thesis of The Good Place remains the same no matter what: just because people make a series of bad choices does not mean they cannot be redeemed at any point during (or after) their lives.

While The Good Place is by no definition a political show, its message of fundamental decency is particularly salient at this specific moment in time, where social media anger is the dominant societal emotion, and the president of the United States attempts to bully anyone from members of his administration like Jeff Sessions to activist-athletes like LeBron James. This is even a point addressed on the show, when Michael says, “[This incident] was a rare occurrence…like someone on the Internet saying, ‘You know what? You’ve convinced me I was wrong.’” The show is well aware of its purpose and function, so if you ever need a pick-me-up, log in to Netflix and search for it. The first two seasons are there, just waiting to warm your heart and mind.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE DAILY CALIFORNIAN.

Kristen Bell and Ted Danson star in Mike Schur’s fantasy-comedy, returning for its third season on NBC.

9 ARTS

The Williams Record

October 3, 2018

Blood Orange’s latest album reverberates political protest

By PHILLIP PYLE STAFF WRITER My Spotify history is plagued with one-time listens, but every now and then, I find an album that I cannot stop listening to.

Negro Swan, the fourth studio album by producer, songwriter and instrumentalist Blood Orange (also known as Dev Hynes), is one such album. Rooted in synth-funk pop, hip-hop, neosoul and alternative R&B, Negro Swan delivers an experience that only Dev Hynes could manifest.

Hynes isn’t new to transforming listeners with his lyricism and intermixing of instrumentals, for he has been a constant influencer in the music industry for the last decade. His ability to integrate different music styles and genres is likely a result of his diverse collaborations and roles in the music industry. Hynes has worked alongside Solange, A$AP Rocky, FKA Twigs, Mac Miller and many more artists through production and featured vocals.

Along with this, Hynes produced the ambient and somber score for the 2013 Gia Coppola film Palo Alto, starring Emma Roberts and James Franco. No stranger to working in various media forms, his widespread experiences have propelled him into a realm unmatched by other musicians today.

Following where his previous album, Freetown Sound, left off, Blood Orange places politics at the center of Negro Swan. Through personal anecdotes and events highlighted in the news, Hynes discusses the trauma and anxieties present in marginalized populations, specifi-

PHOTO COURTESY OF CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND.

Blood Orange's fourth studio album, Negro Swan, alludes to themes of political protest and sparks a dialogue on mental health. cally speaking to black and queer experiences.

Hynes brings us into the album with a groovy instrumental and what he described to Pitchfork as being a Marvin Gaye-type approach in the opening song, “Orlando.” Hynes juxtaposes the seemingly chill, happy tempo with a painful story from his childhood. Growing up in Essex, England, Hynes often faced bullying because he painted his nails and wore makeup. In an article released by the New York Times the day before the release of Negro Swan, Hynes said “I think people forget that I’m from Essex and had to fight, mentally and physically to, like, keep living.

Being beaten up and going to the hospital multiple times. Being spat on on the bus every day. I hated every living moment. I am

always surprised by the amount of people that have never been punched in the face.” Hynes has never abided by traditional gender or sexuality norms; he’s open about dating model and photographer Ana Kraš and fluidly expresses his sexuality.

Despite past trauma, Hynes never gave up on his artistic aspirations and decided to rebuild himself; he attributes the creation of Blood Orange to this reinvention period of his life. After “Orlando” fades from Hynes’ poetic description into his dark past, Janet Mock – a trans writer, director and activist – provides a social commentary at the end of the song on the idea of ‘doing too much’, saying “so a couple years ago I was like, you know what, my eternal resolution will be to do too much.”

After “Orlando,” Negro Swan explodes into a beautiful jazz sequence and my favorite song on the album, “Saint.” Featuring a blend of traditional hip-hop, jazz and synths, “Saint” cements Hynes as a ‘Renaissance Man’ of music. Although less concerned with political motifs and philosophies, this song is perfect, both vocally and instrumentally. Hynes layers his own vocals with four others, including Porches’ Aaron Maine and experimental R&B artist Ava Raiin. In combining the different singing styles and tones of the complementary singers, “Saint” is a transcendental track, leaving listeners wanting more after its relatively short chorus.

In a string of wildly different sounds, Hynes goes vocal-heavy on “Take Your Time” and leaves

the core of the lyrics up to features on “Hope,” which contains perhaps the most monumental feature: P. Diddy. Based around the mixed feelings that come with love, breakups and reconciliation, “Hope” is an existential look at the origins and reasons behind why love only exists for some. Diddy explains: “Yeah, gee, I don’t, sometimes I ask myself, like, you know, what is it going to take for me to not be afraid, to be loved the way, like, I really wanna be loved?”

After a string of anxiety-ridden tracks, Blood Orange shatters nerves in “Jewelry.” Released beforehand as a single, Hynes sings of the black experience and ways to overcome mental health issues.

Hynes is unapologetically black and doesn’t want to compromise any part of his identity; in this way,

he is protesting against the suppression of blackness in America.

In subsequent songs, Negro Swan also cultivates a dialogue about family, spaces for identity expression and the attachment and separation of white artists to hip-hop.

“Chewing Gum” is perhaps the most audience friendly track of the album, as it features A$AP Rocky and Project Pat and samples Kingpin Skinny Pimp. This song utilizes sexual metaphors to convey Hynes’ irritation with being angry all the time. “Holy Will” breaks the mold of black depression and signifies hope through the means of God. In a cover of a traditional Gospel song, Hynes places his faith in God: “Lord, I just wanna be rooted and grounded in thee.

Lord, place me. Lord Jesus, place me, yeah, I wanna be centered in thy will.”

Negro Swan ends with a sample of another bullying anecdote from Hynes’ time in Essex, as well as a collaboration with world-renowned bassist and producer Steve Lacy, a tribute to New York City and a finale consisting solely of acoustic guitar and sunny dispositions.

A mosaic of stories about black, queer/trans and mental health experiences comes together in a moment of self-love and learning in Negro Swan.

Hynes sees how his anxieties and trauma have shaped him and decides to not eliminate them from his memory, but rather to embrace them as part of his identity. This realization leads to a confident outro that resonates with both himself and listeners: “The sun comes in, my heart fulfills within.”

Studio ’62 showcase impresses audience with performances

By NANDINI SEETHARAMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER Last weekend, the College theatre department presented the Studio ’62 showcase Trains, Boats, Birth & Death.

Formerly known as the Williams College Theater Lab, Studio ’62 is a seven-week long theatre training summer program for students. This past summer, ten students worked on theatre techniques such as playwriting, scene study and performance.

Trains, Boats, Birth & Death is a collection of six unrelated short plays. Four of these six plays were written by students.

Having a series of relatively quick dramas, rather than a longer play, allowed the company to showcase all of the different skills that students honed over the summer. The audience was treated with a variety of genres and plots that made for a very interesting show.

The curtains opened on the first short, a mysterious tale titled Discontent written

by Caroline Fairweather ’20.

The story follows Anthony (played by John Murphy ’21) who harbors a bitter grudge against his father and brother for “stealing his face.” His brother is a happily married man who has just had a son with his wife, Edel (played by Fiona Selmi ’21). Anthony’s lover and Edel’s sister, Rue (played by Nicole Jones ’21), urges Anthony to take revenge on his family by letting her kill his nephew. It is a complicated drama that didn’t provide many answers as it unfolded; I was left a bit confused, but

not enough to keep me from enjoying the performances of the three actors in this dark and murky plotline.

The second short was Ferris Wheel, a romantic comedy about two strangers who ride a ferris wheel together. Dorie (played by Julia Tucher ’21) is a talkative, anxious woman who rides the ferris wheel once a year on her birthday, despite being afraid of heights. John (played by Peter Duke ’21) is a travelling salesman who decided to ride the wheel on a whim. The ride ends up getting stuck, and the situation helps the two progress beyond small talk. It was definitely the cutest story of the night, but more than that, it managed to be a reflective character study despite the simple premise. Without any movement beyond the confines of their ferris wheel cart, Duke and Tucher were able to flesh out these two characters into people the audience could laugh at, relate to and feel for.

The third short, By the Trax, written by William Ouweleen ’19, was a comedic “case about a case.” Three homeless people (played by Samori Etienne ’21, Isabel Ouweleen ’21 and Murphy) living by the subway tracks stumble on a briefcase filled with cash. They begin to argue about how to best split it up to ensure everyone gets an equal share and uses their money appropriately. For me, the satirical banter shed light on the often elaborate and convoluted systems that societies devise to control money.

Following an intermission, the fourth short, The

Old Man and the Sea written

by Ernest Hemingway and adapted by Isabel Ouweleen ’21, gave us a completely unique experience: a puppet show. The entire story was performed through paper cut-outs in front of a light, projected onto a mini screen in front of us. What made this play really stand out to me was the detailed work and talent that went into the production. I felt sucked into the performance, even though I couldn’t see any faces. The cast managed to make the story truly come to life with just their voices.

Watermelon Boats tells the story of two childhood best friends, Kitty (played by Jones) and Kate (played by Fairweather), over ten years. At 11 they are inseparable, musing about their future dreams; at 16 they are growing apart; and at 21 they come into their own and meet each other in the middle.

The story definitely hits close to home for any college student, when Kitty feels like she isn’t good enough and Kate feels too locked inside herself. The audience was silent as the two confided in each other, possibly because they were finding themselves in the story onstage.

Finally, the night closed with The Tome of Civilization (written by Murphy). In this story, Joshua (played by Jack Romans ’20), a maniacal history teacher tries to bargain the tome of civilization from Satan, played by guest actor Dave Simonds. The audience couldn’t stop laughing throughout the whole performance, making it a fantastic end to a fantastic show.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRAD WAKOFF/’62 CENTER.

Students displayed impressive theatre techniques in the Studio ’62 showcase Trains, Boats, Birth, and Death.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NYTIMES.

Michael Moore's new documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, follows President Donald Trump's ascent to presidency.

Fahrenheit 11/9 endorses political upheaval

By KENIA CRUZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Sept. 28 Michael Moore’s new documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, opened at Images Cinema. The film follows President Donald Trump and his ascent to presidency.

The title is a reference to both the famous novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (which is the temperature at which book paper burns), as well as Moore’s 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which discusses the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

This film was intriguing to say the least. Fahrenheit 11/9 begins by bringing the audience back to that infamous night of Nov. 8 in 2016 – election day in the United States. Moore reminds us of how set most of America was on electing Hillary Clinton as our next president. He compares the irony of Clinton’s large, ceiling-breaking venue versus Trump’s small dimly lit theatre box. After Trump had secured the electoral votes to become America’s next president and was coming out to make his acceptance speech, Moore noted, “no one [had] looked so sad to win.” And so began the Trump presidency.

There is no doubt that Moore has a presence in Fahrenheit 11/9. He not only narrates, but also – more often than not – inserts himself into the film. He does this in a variety of ways, ranging from interviewing congressional candidates and showing archived footage of himself being interviewed to even himself barging into the office of Michigan Governor Rick Sny-

der with handcuffs to commit a citizen’s arrest. At times, Moore tries to be comical to hold the audience’s attention as well as ease the tension of the Trump presidency, but it comes off as more nonsensical than humorous. For example, when he fails to make the citizen’s arrest, he shows up to Rick Snyder’s home and asks to see him. When denied, Moore decides his best option is to hose Snyder’s house with the contaminated waters of Flint, Mich.

One of the best qualities of Fahrenheit 11/9 is its use of footage. The film brings back the same emotions that one may have experienced during the 2016 elections. Every speech, every rally, every interview felt, for me, as if I was seeing it again for the first time. This could be due in part to our lapse of memory amidst immense chaos. Yet, even with all the mayhem, Moore makes it so that the audience even questions their own ability to detect such corruption in the government.

All who lived through the 2016 election – before and after – remembers the turmoil surrounding it. Fahrenheit 11/9 reflects that. Its argument is clear, but it is messy. Moore gives the audience event after event, but without having much connection between them.

The only connection really given is Trump and how he handles or acts in various situations. In fact, what Moore does best is mislead the audience for much of the film. This roller coaster of a film starts off as a diatribe against everything Trump stands for and the ways in

which America is crumbling, then turns toshowcasing the incredible men and women fighting for a better America. The film ultimately ends by asserting that this America is not worth fighting for. Moore dismisses the notion of tinkering with the machine and instead wants a completely new and higher functioning machine.

Overall, Fahrenheit 11/9 is a film that very much gives in to the ridiculousness of Donald Trump and his presidency. It theorizes as to how a business mogul become the President of the United States, whether it be through the Flint water crisis or Trump’s need to be paid more than Gwen Stefani on NBC. It leaves the viewer as mind boggled as they likely were on election night.

Moore brings these feelings back to tell the audience that they must get out and change our political system because democracy is dying.

The film ends with Emma Gonzalez, a gun control activist and survivor of the Parkland shooting, speaking at the March for Our Lives. With tears in her eyes, Gonzalez speaks about how her fellow classmates would never have the opportunity to do any of the things they used to do because they were killed senselessly. She trails off, somberly staring at the camera, with feelings of anger, sadness and hopelessness reflected in her face. Yet, in Gonzalez’ expression, there is also a spark – and I couldn’t help but to also see Fahrenheit 11/9 as the metaphorical temperature at which democracy is set ablaze.

10 SPORTS

The Williams Record

October 3, 2018

Women’s soccer shuts out Castleton, Connecticut College

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

On Sunday, Sydney Jones ’21 scored the first goal in the women’s game against Castleton, helping her team win the game 2-0.

By ALEXANDER CHRIST STAFF WRITER Women’s soccer (8-0-1, 5-0-1 in the NESCAC) defeated Castleton 2-0 and Connecticut College 1-0 this weekend. With these wins, the Ephs continue to lead the NESCAC alongside the undefeated Middlebury team.

On Sunday, the Ephs shut out Castleton 2-0 on the road.

As has often been the case, Sydney Jones ’21 scored the

game winner at 46:10, her seventh goal this year. After failing to convert in the first half, the Ephs were aggressive early in the second half.

A stealthy Aspen Pierson ’21 worked her way to the leftside of the penalty box before sending a cross to Jones.

Jones wasted no time, touching the ball once and then slamming it into the goal with her left foot.

In the 65th minute, Madison Feeney ’19 added to the

lead with her first goal of the season. After midfielder Victoria Laino ’21 delivered a perfect through-pass in between the Castleton defense, Feeney collected the ball and then buried it in the middle of the net.

Active play at midfield by the Ephs smothered the Spartan offense. In the first half, all three shots on goal by the Spartans were longshots, which were easily handled by goalie Olivia Barnhill ’19. In

contrast, Williams dominated possession and created an abundance of opportunities within Castleton's penalty box.

The game was scoreless at the half, with several spectacular saves by Castleton’s goalie Loren Henderson, including one in the 34th minute when Rain Condie ’22 broke free of Castleton's backline and got a shot off from point-blank range. Henderson, however, made a diving stop to keep the game tied.

The Ephs broke through immediately in the second half when Jones scored. After Feeney scored at the 65th minute, the Ephs substituted their starters and earned their eighth win of the season.

The Ephs tallied 32 shots on goal – their highest this season – and shot 10 corner kicks. The Spartans finished with three shots on goal.

Barnhill played 72 minutes and had two saves in the shutout. So far, she has allowed only two goals in nine games this season and was recently named NESCAC Player of the Week.

Whitney Lincoln ’20 replaced Barnhill for the final 18 minutes but recorded no saves.

Castleton’s Loren Henderson recorded 15 saves and allowed two goals.

On Saturday, the women held onto the lead against Connecticut College after scoring one goal. With only 20 seconds remaining in the first half, Condie received a throw-in from forward Sarah Scire ’20. After tapping the ball past her defender, Condie dribbled briefly along the right-side before shooting from 10 yards outside the penalty box. The ball sailed over the head of Connecticut goalie Sarah Williams and found the back of the net, giving Condie the eventual game winner and her first collegiate goal.

The Ephs had several chances to score in the first half. At 19:10, Laino collected a blocked pass, cut to her left and drilled a shot towards the left side of the net, but her attempt was

blocked by a diving Williams.

At 22:08, Pierson got a shot on target off a free kick, but Williams caught it again. Finally, Condie’s goal at 44:45 secured a 1-0 lead heading into the second half.

The Camels developed their attack by sending long passes over the Eph’s backline. The tenacity of Connecticut’s Kat Norton and Emmy McGoldrick allowed them to win possession deep in Williams’ territory.

Several of their attempts looked good, but three miraculous saves by Barnhill kept the game scoreless. One save was particularly impressive: a skirmish at the edge of the penalty box kept the ball hidden from Barnhill.

Connecticut’s Kelly Brigham poked it forward towards the right-side of the goal, but Barnhill leaped through the air and intercepted the ball, preventing a 1-1 tie.

With only a minute remaining in the second half, the Ephs moved the ball to the corner to drain the clock, assuring a 1-0 victory.

The Ephs finished with a slim advantage in shots on goal (13-12) and corner kicks (4-3). Barnhill made seven saves in the shutout, raising her save percentage to 0.941.

Williams played the first 45 minutes for Connecticut College, made four saves and allowed one goal. Katy Pelletier replaced Williams in the second half, playing the final 45 minutes. She made three saves and allowed no goals.

The women will host Farmingdale State on Saturday at 12 p.m.

Women’s golf falls to NYU by three strokes at Williams Invitational

By CORDELIA CHAN TEAM CORRESPONDENT This weekend, women’s golf placed second at the Williams Invitational, a biannual tournament at the Taconic Golf Course, falling a mere three strokes behind NYU in first.

After the first day of the tournament, the Ephs led the field with a 315, NYU in second with 319 and Middlebury in third with 322.

The Ephs were led by Joanna Kim ’22 who shot her collegiate best, 4-over 75. Her score put her second individually for the tournament.

“I think the conditions… were fairly difficult and the course played hard but I was proud about how the team pulled through and gave it their all until the last hole,” Kim recalled afterward.

“With my own game today, I was happy with my approach shots and was able to capitalize on them. I’m hoping

to improve my shots off the tee and take some more time around the greens.”

Next up for the Ephs was Cordelia Chan ’19 with a birdie-less 78. Stella Woo ’21 was next with an 80, followed by Olivia White ’22 with an 82 and Holly Davenport ’21 with an 85.

Isabella Wang ’19 led the way in individuals with an 83; Mehr Sewant ’21 was close behind with an 85, and Cindy Wang ’20 completed the team's scoring with an 89.

The Ephs continued to play on Sunday. Unfortunately for the Ephs, Sunday did not bode well and the team could not hold onto their fourstroke lead over NYU. NYU made a raging charge for the title and stroked a 303, seven strokes clear of Williams at 310 and surpassed them by three strokes.

NYU took first (622), Williams was second (625) and Amherst was third (633).

Kim maintained her good standing and followed up her 75 with a solid 77. Her twoday total of 152 put her third for the tournament individually, her lowest score and best finish in her collegiate career to date.

Kim was followed by Chan.

Chan's 77, combined with her 78 from the day before, put her in eighth individually. Davenport made an impressive 14-spot jump up the leaderboard with a ten-stroke improvement from Saturday and her 75 the second day put her in 16th. White rounded off the scoring with an 81 and 84 and they placed 22nd and 23rd,respectively.

The individuals also had a good showing. They were led

by Sewant, who tied her best collegiate round with a 74. She catapulted up the leaderboard to T14. Isabella Wang matched her score of 83 yesterday to place T26. Cindy Wang completed nine holes but ultimate-

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Cordelia Chan ’19 shot a total of 155 in the Williams Fall Invitational, placing eighth individually. ly had to withdraw because of medical reasons.

“We played better today as a team, and didn't have many mistakes,” head coach Tomas Adalsteinsson said. “Each tournament is super exciting

and very few shots separate the teams at the top. Today, NYU played great and edged us by three total. It's easy to go back and find those three shots, but we will look at what we can work on this week to

bring our best game to the NESCAC Championship.”

Following the home meet, the women will make their way to Middlebury to compete in the NESCAC Championship this weekend.

CAPTAINS’ CORNER: MEREDITH WRIGHT ’19 What is your background in sports?

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

By CHARLES XU SPORTS EDITOR

Team: Field hockey Hometown: Duxbury, Mass.

Residence: Rectory Major: Psychology Snack bar order: Nachos with soy cheese, tomatoes, chicken and peppers

I started off playing hockey – my dad played hockey here, so he had me in skates at a young age. Then in elementary school, we had to play every sport starting in third grade, so that was when I was introduced to field hockey.

And then you got to choose what you want to do in middle school, so I chose field hockey and from then, I just got really into it. I first went to camp [at Williams] my first year of high school, and I knew I wanted to play there immediately.

So you came here in large part because of head coach Alix Barrale ’93?

Yeah, she was so awesome in talking to me about Williams and the team. I knew it was competitive both in the sports and academically, since both my parents played two sports here. But she [got] me excited about the field hockey team and what it would be like to be coached by her.

What’s your relationship with Barrale like?

Good! I’ve known her for a long time and her uncle was

actually one of my dad’s professors. So we’ve known her for a little bit, but I didn’t really know her until I actually came here. She’s a very fun, easygoing coach – so it makes things a lot easier, especially working with her as captain.

What’s the dynamic like with your co-captains, Emma Santucci ’19 and Caroline Taverna ’19?

Good! I feel like each of us has our own personality that works for the different dynamics on our team. Emma’s very easygoing and chill, but she’s also great talking with people. Caroline is also calm, but good at motivating people. She’s very funny – she’s in Combo Za. She gets the energy up in that way. And I’m kind of the voice on the field because I play center-mid. During halftime, I try to get everyone refocused on what we need to do. It’s a good balance, personality-wise.

How have you improved or grown as a player these past four years?

Obviously I get nerves before each game, but I think I’ve grown in the sense that year after year, that [feeling] kind of goes down and I am more

excited to play. My play isn’t too much in my head anymore. It used to be sometimes I would psych myself out or worry too much about making a mistake, but not anymore.

I think that just comes with four years of experience playing with the same teams. You get a sense of how opponents play, so you are more ready. I guess my confidence has definitely gone up.

Is there a particular team you don’t like playing?

There’s many. Bowdoin, Middlebury, Amherst and Tufts.

They are just really good.

The team has lost in the NESCAC semifinals two years in a row. What do you think is the key to getting past that hurdle?

I think what kills us is our overtime. We lost last year in overtime to Trinity because we got a little tired at the end. So I think we really need to focus on being first to the ball and getting and sustaining that energy all the way to the end.

Hopefully, that will carry us further than last year.

What are some of your personal goals?

I want to focus on hearing the team’s needs and translating that to [Barrale] and our assistant coach [Kate Kurzanski].

So basically, just doing my best as a captain so that everyone has a great season and has fun.

What are your proudest achievements in the sport?

My grandmother comes to every one of my games – my grandfather can’t make the long trips. Sophomore year though, since we live near Boston, he was able to come to the Tufts game. And I scored twice that game, so that was a really happy moment for me because my grandfather doesn’t get to see me play, and I was able to score twice for him.

What’s the story behind the goofy team pictures?

I don’t know how it all started, but it’s always been a thing from what I’ve been told. This year, we tried to think of an idea [so] that people didn’t have to go out and buy something. So when Libby Dolan [’19] thought of the idea of ‘Battle Buns’ like Miley Cyrus, we decided to go with it – it’s easy, it’s not as noticeable and it’s fun.

Yeah, my hair’s really thin,

so it didn’t really work out with me [laughs].

Do you have any other team traditions?

We do have a dance party before every game, and we usually have a song that becomes the song of the season. We don’t choose the song – the song chooses us. Right now, a song hasn’t chosen us yet, so we’re carrying with the song from last year which is Alex Newell and DJ Cassidy’s ‘Kill the Lights.’ So we will play that to get pumped up. We have these really fun party speakers with lights that go off, which really gets our energy up before we meet with the coaches.

Which professor would you like to play against in your sport?

I’d probably like to play against my advisor [Professor] Nate Kornell in the psychology department.

Who is your recent proathlete crush?

I had a big crush on Sydney Crosby for a while. Or Tyler Seguin – he’s no longer a [Boston] Bruin though, sad.

October 3, 2018

SPORTS 11

The Williams Record

Six former assistant coaches recall their tenure at the College jumped at the opportunity to work under four-time NCAA Women’s Coach of the Year Steve Kuster and to take part in an accomplished program.

“To be a student-athlete at Williams is to be at the highest kind of academic and athletic institutions you can be at for Division III,” Dow said.

Now at TCNJ, a top public institution for Division III in the Northeast, Dow looks forward to gathering from his experience as a Division III athlete at a public college and as an assistant coach at a liberal arts college.

“What I really felt like I got out of Williams was how to create a great team culture; how to motivate student-athletes; how to build relationships with care and support… the culture of the program there – that’s what I’m taking with me,” Dow said.

Shaddock, who served as assistant women’s lacrosse coach for one year, is now the head coach of the women's lacrosse team at Stevens Institute of Technology. After four years as head coach at Lycoming, Shaddock joined Williams soon after her former coach and mentor Alice Lee became the College’s head women’s lacrosse coach in 2017.

“I immediately asked her about an assistant position.

The opportunity to coach with her was such a great learning experience,” Shaddock said.

To Shaddock, Williams athletics was a supportive atmosphere. “I loved how close everyone in the [athletics] department was… so quickly it felt like family,” Shaddock said. “It was a really exciting year for Williams assistant [coaches].I think it speaks volumes about Williams athletics.”

By DIANA GONZALEZ-CASTILLO CONTRIBUTING WRITER Six assistant coaches from the College have moved on to head coaching jobs at other schools, an unprecedented number in one year; these coaches include Alice Read, John McCreery, Joial Griffith, Tommy Crabill, Dave Dow and Karen Shaddock.

As of April, Read is now the head strength and conditioning coach at Vassar. Personal life drew former volunteer strength and conditioning coach Read to the College.

Previously, the senior assistant director of fitness programs and personal trainer at the University of Montana, Read sought to continue her work in strength and conditioning at the College after her husband, Brandon Gruver, became the assistant women’s track and field coach. Months later, Read became the assistant alpine skiing coach for the 2017-2018 season while continuing her work in the weight room.

“Coming to Williams was, in a career sense, exactly the kind of experience I was looking for to get me to Vassar,” she said.

Like many of the other former assistant coaches, Read did not expect to leave the College so soon.

“I wasn’t on a huge job hunt when this job popped up,” Read said. “I was in the middle of the ski season, travelling almost every week.”

Read’s time at the College was the first time she applied her coaching expertise at a Division III level, a setting Read had wanted to work in ever since her time as a Division III athlete. Read’s best memory of the College was

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPRINGFIELD COLLEGE.

After three years as an assistant coach of men’s soccer, Tommy Crabill (right) became head coach of men’s soccer at Springfield. “the relationships [she] built among the athletics staff.”

“The thing that I made sure I saw in Vassar that I loved about Williams was the inclusiveness amongst the athletic department,” she said.

Also assuming a head coaching position at Vassar is McCreery, who spent one year at the College as the assistant men’s lacrosse coach.

McCreery spent three years before his time at the College as the assistant coach of Vassar’s team. “I was planning on staying at Williams for three years, but an opportunity to go back to Vassar to be the head coach – I didn’t think that would happen,” he said.

“It was a great environment to succeed [in],” McCreery said of his time at the College, where he helped the Ephs achieve a 6-4 record in the NESCAC. “I’m using a lot of what I learned at Williams

– especially leadership, training, team culture, team bonding – to establish a new culture here at Vassar.”

Griffith, who served as assistant coach for the women’s basketball team for the 2017-18 season, assumed the role of head coach of women's basketball at Whitworth on July 1.

Having been the assistant coach to the ClaremontScripps Athenas prior to her time at the College, Griffith “liked being at schools where academics were first and foremost” and couldn’t pass up the chance to learn from the Ephs’ Pat Manning, who she refers to as “one of the best minds in women’s basketball.” “[Williams] is a close-knit community that you have an opportunity to learn a ton from – not only within your own sport… Even across campus, people that are not

in athletics are very supportive,” Griffith said.

Whitworth is in Spokane, Wash., “a basketball town” that is also home to basketball superpower Gonzaga.

Griffith succeeds Helen Higgs, who coached Whitworth’s team for 24 seasons.

“This new position is an opportunity to take everything I learned over the last eight to nine years,” Griffith said.

For Crabill, the culture at the College’s athletic department made his three years as the assistant men’s soccer coach memorable.

“As a coach at Williams, the neat thing is that the entire department is so passionate about teaching and leading,” Crabill said. “You can always find yourself on a daily basis in conversation about your job and your work with college student-athletes…. Every day, a lot of the coaches go and eat

lunch in the same space at Driscoll’s. It sounds silly, but to be honest that was some of the best professional development I’ve ever gotten.”

Now as the head men’s soccer coach at Springfield, Crabill feels “lucky that Springfield has much of the same culture.” The Springfield Pride is currently 7-3 in the NESCAC. Dow served as assistant coach of men’s and women’s swimming and diving for three years and assumed the role of head coach at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) on July 30.

Before joining the Ephs, Dow built the swimming and diving program at Bethany College in West Virginia from a roster of two men and five women to two teams that saw their first winning seasons.

Dow felt that he still had a lot to learn about coaching and

Men’s tennis reaches semi-finals in ITA regional championship

By TOPJOR TSULTRIM STAFF WRITER Men’s tennis battled its way to the semifinals of the 2018 ITA New England Regional Championships this weekend at Middlebury. Arturo Kam ’21 competed in the singles semifinals, while Peter Frelinghuysen ’22 and Alex Taylor ’20 took the court in the doubles bracket semifinals.

The Ephs enjoyed solid games of both singles and doubles play to open the first day of the competition.

This tournament is the first competitive matchup for this year’s team, and it met the challenge in full stride.

Sixty-five singles players and 33 doubles teams from 13 different colleges gathered at Middlebury to compete in a six round, elimination-style tournament. After the first two rounds of play, two of the Ephs’ three doubles teams advanced to the Round of 16, joined by two of the six singles players.

Taylor led the way for the Ephs’ singles team and emerged victorious over his opponent from Springfield after straight sets, win-

ning 6-1 and 6-2. His second match to move on to the Round of 16 was much more closely contested. After dropping the first set 1-6, Taylor fought back to win 6-3 in the second set, before completing the comeback with a thrilling 10-8 victory in the third and final set to secure his progression to the next round.

Kam’s grit and determination showed up on the second day. Seeded eighth overall, Kam won his first match in straight sets. Like Taylor, Kam’s Round of 32 matchup went to three sets. After Kam and Tufts’ Isaac Gorelick split the first two sets 6-2 and 4-6, Kam ultimately pulled through with a 10-7 final set to seal the win for the Ephs.

Captain Deepak Indrakanti’s ’19 experience as a senior showed as he battled back from an early 1-6 loss, picking up the second match 6-3.

However, in the end, the comeback fell short, despite a tightly contested 10-5 third set that advanced Middlebury’s Stanley Morris.

The Ephs also found success in the doubles matches of the day, with two of their

three teams advancing to the Round of 16.

In a union of upperclassmen and underclassmen, Taylor and Frelinghuysen combined to take down Trinity’s Kaynor and Bilicic 8-4, advancing to the Round of 16. Kam and Calvin Chung ’21 teamed up to triumph over Bowdoin’s Justin Patel and Oscar Yang, 8-5.

Overall, the Ephs enjoyed victories in both singles and doubles matches, with several groups ready to head into day two’s competition.

The Ephs entered day two of the ITA New England Regional Championships ready to compete after a solid showing the previous day. Five Ephs saw action on Saturday, competing in both the singles and doubles brackets.

Taylor, after a hard-fought comeback to secure his spot in Saturday’s Round of 16, saw his tournament come to end at the hand of Middlebury’s Lubomir Cuba in straight sets, losing 6-4 and 6-1.

However, Kam would soon avenge his teammate’s defeat with his Round of 16 and quarterfinal victories. Kam found himself in the quar-

terfinals matched up against Middlebury’s Cuba, the same player who eliminated Taylor in the previous round. In a heated quarterfinal matchup, Kam opened the first set with a 2-6 loss. He bounced back well, quickly opening up a 4-1 lead in the second set. But, not long after, Middlebury’s Cuba sustained an injury that stopped play. The match ultimately ended there and Kam advanced to the singles bracket semifinals.

Despite his singles loss, Taylor rebounded strongly in doubles play with Frelinghuysen. The duo defeated MIT’s Alex Cauneac and Albert Go, 8-4, in the Round of 16. However, it was the pair’s quarterfinal matchup that proved to be a true highlight.

Williams found themselves face to face with a familiar opponent: Amherst, who began the tournament as the number one seeded doubles pair. The match, as all matchups between these two rivals of antiquity are, was fiercely contested all the way through.

Taylor and Frelinghuysen found themselves tied 8-8 with Amherst’s Zach Bessette and Jayson Fung. As a result,

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK

slip away. Jiang managed to secure the first set 7-5, but Kam would soon come storming back to take the second set 6-2 for the Ephs.

Unfortunately, Kam couldn't complete the comeback victory, as Jiang emerged victorious after a hard-fought third set. “[We] got off to slow starts in [the] doubles and singles semifinals, but our guys battle back well to give themselves a shot,” Greenberg said, commenting on the eventful day. “And Kam’s singles match was just an amazing fight. He managed to turn the tide after a close first set loss, even though Jiang seemed to be on fire, and really stepped up to take the second set. In the third set, he saved six or seven match points but ultimately fell short. But honestly, [it was] an inspiring performance from him that really set the standard for how we want to compete.”

With their first competitive tournament of the fall season behind them, the Ephs will prepare for the upcoming ITA Oracle Cup next Wednesday, Oct. 10.

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“Emma built the volume of her training this summer and it is paying off, especially in how strong she was on the hills in the Saratoga course and how she passed so many in the later stages of the race. We are glad to have her back in action after missing the championships last fall due to injury. ”

“Olivia is an incredible goalkeeper and competitor. Her ability to limit the number of opportunities that other teams get because of her organization and ability to come up with huge saves keeps us in games [and] allows us to play with a defensive confidence that has been key to our September success. ”

– Head coach Pete Farwell ’73

– Head coach Michelyne Pinard

EMMA HERRMANN ’20

OLIVIA BARNHILL ’19

WOMEN'S CROSS COUNTRY NORTHVILLE, MICH.

WOMEN'S SOCCER NEW YORK, N.Y.

Herrmann finished first for the Ephs in the Saratoga Invitational, placing fourth overall and helping her team place second.

the pairs played a tiebreaker, which the Ephs ultimately won, 7-3.

Greenberg was satisfied with the team's collective performance today but made note of points of improvement. “We competed very well at times, but not as consistent as we'll hope to be this year,” he said.

Three Ephs were in action on the third and final day with Kam competing in the singles semifinals and Frelinghuysen and Taylor competing in the doubles semifinals.

Frelinghuysen and Taylor lined up against Bowdoin’s Jerry Jiang and Justin Wang, who began the tournament as the number four overall seed. The match was competitive, with both sides going on runs and making plays, but the Ephs ultimately fell short against their opponents who would go on to win the doubles bracket.

Kam would later line up against Jiang from Bowdoin in the semifinals of the singles bracket. In what would turn out to be a true highlight of the day, Kam and Jiang battled back and forth, both unwilling to let the match

Barnhill has shut out the opposing team in the last seven games, and was recently named NESCAC Player of the Week.

Diana Al-Hadid Opening Reception and Artist Talk The artist gives a talk on Delirious Matter, four public art sculptures temporarily installed on the Williams campus

Wednesday, October 3 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Paresky Auditorium

For more events, visit: events.williams.edu

12 SPORTS

The Williams Record

October 3, 2018

Football beats defending NESCAC champion Trinity

By JOE LAROCCA CONTRIBUTING WRITER Last Saturday, football (30, 3-0 in the NESCAC) scored 14 unanswered points in the third quarter en route to a 21-16 win against defending NESCAC champion Trinity, snapping the Ephs’ losing streak against the Bantams.

The Bantams controlled the pace of the first half, outgaining the Ephs 200-141 yards and consistently getting into the red zone. But each time Trinity drove inside the 20, the Williams defense held.

In the first half, Trinity had three red-zone possessions and only came away with a field goal each time.

Williams had only one firsthalf red-zone drive but scored a touchdown on a seam-route pass from quarterback Bobby Maimaron ’21 to tight end Justin Burke ’21, which put the Ephs up 7-6 before Trinity kicked a field goal to score the last points of the half.

The Ephs made halftime adjustments and outscored the Bantams in the third quarter. This is not surprising since the men have previously outscored their opponents 45-0 in a third quarter play

this season. The Ephs’ first drive of the third set the tone for the rest of the game, as Trinity didn't score again until very late in the fourth.

Trailing 7-9, the Ephs opened the second half by driving all the way downfield in just 1:15 to put themselves on top for good, 14-9. The drive was sparked by two passes from Maimaron to wide receiver Frank Stola ’21, the first being a 45-yard deep bomb down the middle and the second being a 21-yard touchdown in the back left corner of the end zone. Trinity drove right back down the field, but on the third down, linebacker TJ Rothmann ’21 jumped a pass from opposing quarterback Jordan Vazzano, intercepting it at the goal line. After Maimaron briefly left the game due to injury late in the third quarter, the coaching staff called a deep pass on the first play for quarterback Jackson Bischoping ’22. Bischoping delivered, unfurling a perfectly thrown dart that Stola caught at the 15-yard line and took all the way into the end zone to put the Ephs up 21-9.

Nothing seemed to go right for Trinity after the half. Late

in the third, a fake punt attempt on a fourth down led to just a six-yard gain, giving Williams possession inside the Trinity 40-yard line.

In the middle of the fourth, when the game was still well within reach, Vazzano was intercepted by defensive back Ben Anthony ’20. On the Bantams’ second-to-last possession, Vazzano completed a pass that would have been good for a first down, only to see defensive back Desmond Butler ’19 force a fumble, which the Ephs recovered.

With under two minutes to go, Vazzano exploited a blown coverage on a 73-yard touchdown pass that cut the deficit to 21-16. In order to win, the Bantams needed to secure possession with an ensuing onside kick that went out of bounds, allowing the Ephs to kneel out the clock from there.

Out of Trinity's eight secondhalf possessions, two resulted in interceptions, two in turnovers on downs, two in punts and one on a lost fumble, with only the final drive of the game resulting in points. For the second half and the game, the Ephs won the turnover battle 3-0.

“We knew we were going to have to weather some storms

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Receiver Frank Stola ’21 caught two touchdowns during the Ephs’ comeback against Trinity. early, and offensively. We did enough in the first half to give us some breathing room, and the defense made some great stops,” head coach Mark Raymond said, commenting on the Ephs’ approach during the game. As for halftime adjustments, Raymond gave the credit to his assistant coaches and players. “It’s just

the coaches doing a fantastic job,” he said. “We have a bunch of guys who can make adjustments on the run. They work so hard, they prepare so hard and they're able to do those types of things.”

Maimaron completed 12-of25 pass attempts for 154 yards and two touchdowns. Returning after not playing last week

against Colby, Stola caught five passes for an impressive 138 yards and two touch downs. Rothmann was all over the field, registering the pivotal end-zone interception along with a fumble recovery, 15 total tackles and 2.5 tackles for loss.

Next Saturday, the Ephs will travel to face Bates at 1 p.m.

Men’s soccer falls to Connecticut College, defeats RPI

By MANDELA NAMASTE STAFF WRITER Last week, men’s soccer was edged by Connecticut College 1-0 but beat RPI 2-0.

Going into the Saturday match, Connecticut College had only allowed one goal all season. With such a stout defense from the Camels, the Ephs needed to be flawless on the attack, or else the Camels would capitalize. Unfortunately for the Ephs, imprecise passes and faulty footwork led to several unforced errors and potent early-half runs deep into Williams’ territory.

For the majority of the first half, neither team was able to score. Then in the 34th minute, Camel forward Liam Noonan won the ball back after a missed touch, worked a nice give-and-go with fresh-

ly-minted substitute Augie Djerdjaj and kicked the ball over Eph goalie Aaron Schein ’19, putting the Camels up one goal going into halftime.

Entering the second half, the Ephs found themselves down one goal to a nationally-ranked squad. Despite a defensive-minded strategy from the Camels, the Ephs managed to create several worthy chances in the second half. Speedy substitute Nathan Song ’22 headed a ball off a free kick that was saved by Connecticut College’s AJ Marcucci in the 65th minute. Ten minutes later, Eph midfielder Greg Andreou ’19 curled a free kick around a wall of Camel defenders but was also thwarted by Marcucci.

Marcucci saved all five Eph shots on goal, recording his

Games this week Friday Oct. 5 Volleyball vs.

Colby Chandler Gymnasium, 8 p.m.

Saturday Oct. 6 Women's golf, NESCAC Championships (Oct. 6 to Oct. 7) Away, all day Men's golf, Skidmore Invite (Oct. 6 to Oct. 7) Away, all day Women's soccer vs.

Farmingdale State Cole Field, 12 p.m.

seventh clean sheet of the season, while the Ephs’ netminder recorded three saves on the day.

After the match, head coach Erin Sullivan was complementary of his team's form but lamented a dismal finish. “We played well in stretches today and created enough chances to pull something out of the match, but we simply didn't capitalize,” Sullivan said.

Last Wednesday, the men beat RPI 2-0. Will Felitto ’22 and Henry Osborn ’22 scored their first career goals, leading the Ephs to a 2-0 victory over the Engineers on Cole Field.

With veteran striker Demian Gass ’20 sidelined due to an injury, the Ephs started Felitto for the first time in his college career, and it didn't take long for the young for-

ward to validate his coaches’ belief in him. Just over six minutes in, Felitto ran onto a ball on the left side of the box and crushed a shot that just went over the cross bar. Two minutes later, Felitto served up a point-blank shot that was stuffed by RPI goalie Matt LaBranche.

RPI soon gained offensive momentum. In the 12th minute, Engineer player Austin Betterly worked his way around an Eph back and made it to the end line, but his crisp cross was kicked out of play by Liam Bardong ’20.

After a fairly uneventful first half, the action started to flow more quickly. In the 50th minute, RPI’s Trevor McCaughey possessed the ball right in front of the net but turned to shoot before gaining full control, resulting in the

Away, 1 p.m.

Men's soccer vs. Curry Away, 1:30 p.m.

Volleyball vs.

Bates Chandler Gymnasium, 2 p.m.

Sunday

Women's soccer vs. MIT Cole Field, 12:30 p.m.

Tuesday Oct. 9 Men's soccer vs.

Coast Guard Cole Field, 3:30 p.m.

Football vs. Bates

Field hockey vs. Hamilton

Away, 1:00 p.m.

Away, 6 p.m.

when Bobby Fabricant ’20 sprinted down the left side, drawing LaBranche out of his goal. Jules Oberg ’22 proceeded to back-heel the ball to Osborn, who feasted on the empty net for his first college goal.

LaBranche recorded two saves, while Schein had one save, recording his fourth clean sheet of the season.

After the match, Sullivan praised his squad's ability to win while not playing its best match. “This team is just trying to find a killer instinct and do the little things right more consistently, and when other teams drop an assignment, we're going to punish them,” Sullivan said.

The men will travel tonight to play at Skidmore at 7 p.m On Saturday, the men will face off Curry at 1:30 p.m.

Men ’s and women ’s cross country finish second at Saratoga Invitational

Women's tennis vs. Amherst

Oct. 7

ball flying out of bounds. Just minutes later, the Engineers roamed towards the Ephs’ net again, with midfielder Matt Menendez crossing the ball to Betterly, who then knocked it wide right.

In the 55th minute, Chris Fleischer ’20 worked his way down the right side of the pitch until he stood parallel with the goal. He turned inside and passed it to a streaking Felitto, who poked the ball in for his first career goal and first goal of the match.

After drawing first blood, the Ephs looked to put the match out of reach, maintaining an aggressive style.

In the 60th minute, Fleischer worked a nice giveand-go with Eli Petrik ’21, who hit the ball just right of the goal. Williams doubled the score in the 83rd minute

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Aidan Ryan ’21 led the way with a third overall finish in Saratoga.

By LIAM ALBRITTAIN, ELIZABETH BIGHAM,ZEKE COHEN and JULIA GUNTHER TEAM CORRESPONDENTS Last Saturday morning, 16 teams travelled to Saratoga, N.Y. to race in RPI’s Saratoga Invitational. The Eph women raced over a rocky and hilly course, challenging both the puddles and competition in a great 5k race.

For the women, St. Lawrence took first place with a score of 54 points, with two runners placing in the top 10 and five in the top 20. The Ephs took second with a score of 63, with RPI close behind at 67 points.

The overall winner was Christine Myers, a junior from Saint Rose, who ran a fast 17:50.

The women ran together in strong packs throughout the race. Emma Hermann ’20 finished fastest for the Ephs, coming in fourth overall with a time of 17:55. Close behind her was

co-captain Emily Harris ’19, who placed fifth at a time of 18:01.

Soon after, Grace Dailey ’22 and Sarah Tully ’21 came racing in, running 18:28 and 18:30, respectively, for strong 15th and 16th place finishes. Tully and Dailey rounded out the top 20 finishers for the Ephs.

Erica Barrett ’21 and Brianna Bourne ’21 raced in merely eight seconds later, both finishing at 18:38 for 23rd and 24th, respectively. Jaylan FraserMines ’21 kicked in at 18:48 to finish in 32nd.

Abigail Scott ’22 led the next pack of Ephs, racing in at a fast 19:05. Janelle Gowgiel ’20 and co-captain Lindsay Klickstein ’19 followed closely behind Scott to finish at times of 19:11 and 19:20, respectively. Lilliana Wells ’22 kicked in soon after with a time of 19:43 and was followed by Sarah Jane O’Connor ’22 and Hannah Lebowitz ’20, who finished their races at 19:51 and 19:56,

respectively. Adrienne Banks ’20 followed soon after, finishing at 20:27. Lauren Fossel ’22 and Emma Tapscott ’22 came in close behind Banks, both finishing strong races at 20:33 and 20:37, respectively. Avivah Malin ’22 and Julia Gunther ’20 rounded out the race for the Ephs, coming in at 21:43 and 21:53, respectively.

Head coach Pete Farwell ’73 was pleased with the running conditions. “We were delighted to run at the Saratoga Spa State Park course with true cross country trails and hills and rivers, plus a great atmosphere amongst the historic mineral baths, and the RPI band playing throughout,” Farwell remarked. “[Although the competition was strong, the Ephs] responded to that [by] moving up quite a lot in the second half of the race, working the final hill and kicking well over the final 600 meters.”

Farwell highlighted Herrmann and Harris, as well as the Ephs' top pack of seven who bring "depth closer to our front-runners." Farwell and the women look forward to their next few races. “We will now have a 10-day cycle of more challenging training as we prepare for the Connecticut College Invitational,” Farwell said.

Similarly, the men continued a strong season at the Invitational. The team came into the meet after finishing second at last week’s Purple Valley Classic, a resounding statement that saw Williams rocket up in the national rankings from 17th to sixth. At the Invitational, the men faced tough competition from No. 3 RPI and No. 26 St. Lawrence, among other schools. The men finished second to RPI. St. Lawrence came in third with 107 points.

The 8k got out to a hot start, with Aidan Ryan ’21 and Ryan Cox ’20 dueling with RPI’s Sean O’Connor and Grant O’Connor up front. Ryan and Cox held strong through the last straightaway, finishing in third and fourth, respectively, with times of 25:14 and 25:17. William McGovern ’20 and Sam Wischnewsky ’20 also raced well among RPI’s varsity packs, finishing in 14th in 26:08 and 15th in 26:17 respectively.

Sam Gilman ’21 rounded out the top five for the Ephs with a fantastic performance, moving up relentlessly throughout the race, outrunning teammate Chris Avila ’21 at the line to finish 26th in 26:24. Jack Wallace ’22 ran a patient and intelligent race in his debut 8k, rounding out the top seven for the Ephs in 32nd, in a time of 26:31.

Farwell was pleased with how the men performed. "I thought we did a great job out there today,” Farwell said.

“We’ve had a tough week of training, and we’re certainly not sharp right now, but everyone competed really strongly and a number of our guys had good races. It was great to see Sam Gilman and Chris Avila have such strong races, but I was also excited to see many of the runners farther down in our depth chart have big personal records and run really well. I think we’re in a good spot as a team as we head into October and some of the bigger meets of the season, including Connecticut College and the NESCAC Championship.”

Both teams will return to competition on Oct. 13 at the Inter-Regional Meet hosted

by Connecticut College.