Oct. 25, 2017: MinCo, MSU, CISU and IC protest Trump travel ban

ARTS P. 8 'Homebrew' wows in Greylock

SPORTS P. 12 The Independent Student Newspaper at Williams College Since 1887 VOL. CXXXII, NO. 4

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2017

Women's soccer secures #1 seed

MinCo, MSU, CISU and IC protest Trump travel ban By TESNIM ZEKERIA EXECUTIVE EDITOR Last week, members of the Muslim Student Union (MSU), Minority Coalition (MinCo), Coalition for Immigrant Student Advancement (CISA), and International Club (IC) teamed up to host a two-day event protesting the latest installment of the Trump administration’s travel ban. Scheduled to go into full effect on Oct. 18, the third iteration of President Donald Trump’s travel ban restricts travel from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Chad, Venezuela and North Korea. Unlike the first and second versions of the travel ban which were temporary, Travel Ban 3.0, — or what many have been calling “Muslim Ban 3.0” — places indefinite restrictions on entry to the U.S. In response, MinCo cochair Amina Awad ’18 found it necessary to mobilize and organize on campus. A member of the Advocates for Youth’s Muslim Youth Leadership Council, Awad was already helping with the launch of the nationwide social media campaign, #MuslimAnd. By encouraging Muslims to post pictures and messages that demonstrate their complex identities, #MuslimAnd seeks to push back against the singular narratives that criminalize Muslim and refugee communities. Inspired by this campaign, Awad was eager to show solidarity with Muslim communities and allies across the nation and began reaching out to different student groups to organize a large campus event protesting Travel Ban 3.0.

“As MinCo we’re always trying to get groups to collaborate … I reached out to the MSU at the beginning, and then I was like ‘Oh, International Club! This is an international issue.’ Then I was like, ‘Oh, CISA — they’re all about immigration,’” said Awad. “And, so I brought all the groups together and they were all really great and super helpful in figuring out logistics and getting manpower.” Working together, these groups tabled in Paresky Center last week during lunch hours, encouraging students to take pictures with various signs that read: “#MuslimAnd,” “I stand with immigrant communities” and “NO Travel Ban Ever.” Additionally, students had the opportunity to write on sticky-notes why they thought immigration was beautiful. Responses varied from “borders are fake” to “because I’m here.” These were then displayed on a large poster at the entrance of Paresky Center. Despite the success of these events, however, campus apathy towards the issue was a source of critique. “There’s a general apathy that scares me,” said Awad. “Because what if every time a new ban comes out, people care less and less every time? I feel like we’re going to reach a point in which nobody is gonna care, and like what if that’s the travel ban that goes through?” MSU co-chair Omar Kawam ’20 echoes a similar sentiment when he notes the complicity of many students. “There is a large segment of people that can easily be complicit about these kind of things if the issue doesn’t re-

late to their identities,” said Kawam. “As a result there’s less of an enthusiasm to be involved and I think that we can work on that.” According to Awad, this coupled with the lack of insti-

Last Wednesday, Carl Sangree ’18 created a petition on change.org to be delivered to the College administration titled “Rehire Robin and Kristine.” As of Monday evening, over 4000 people had signed the petition. In the petition, Sangree wrote, “My friend Robin Alfonso was fired from Williams College this summer. If you don’t know her by name, you probably knew her as ‘the ridiculously friendly Whitman’s snackbar lady.’ Williams security accused her of smoking marijuana with students at the Mt. Hope Mansion during last year’s senior week, despite the denials of both her and students she was with. The administration fired her nonetheless, ignoring her fifteen years of faithful work without any prior incident. She is just as important to our community as any student or professor, yet she has not been treated with any level of fairness.”

Sangree later added an update to the petition, stating he learned that another former employee of the College, Kristine McLear, was “treated just as unfairly as Robin as part of the same incident.” He writes that McLear was also fired due to the same allegations and claims that she was presumed guilty and never given a change to defend herself. Alfonso stated that she and McLear were called in for a 10-minute meeting with Campus Safety and Security. Alfonso said she got a termination notice in the mail regarding her health insurance. When she went into her meeting with her supervisor Bob Volpe, director of dining services, Alfonso was handed a termination letter. “If you look at one date I got in the mail on paper it was June 9 and we were fired the 12th,” she said. “You know it was already done. And I was working; I didn’t do anything wrong. I left that place [Mt.

question that warrants further exploration, Awad said. “It would be ideal if people were willing to stand for one another regardless of their identity and not feel like, ‘oh, we don’t have any say in the

politics surrounding Muslims because we’re not Muslim.’ I hope we can reach a point where an event for one group of students is equally attended by all segments of the Williams community,” said Kawam.

ZAHIRA KELLY GAVE VISTA'S LATINX HERITAGE MONTH KEYNOTE ADDRESS LAST WEEK ON COLONIALISM AND ANTIBLACKNESS AS LATIN AMERICAN NATIONALISM

PHOTO COURTESY OF NEFTALY LARA

Students object to firing of beloved snackbar employees By NEENA PATEL EXECUTIVE EDITOR

tutional support contributes to the desensitization of the College community. Whether this is due to the lack of students from countries on the travel ban or symptomatic of a growing millennial apathy is still a

Hope], brought them home and then went home.” “What really hurts both me and Kristine is that we had trusted our uppers and supervisors and nobody covered our backs,” Alfonso said. “Nobody even talked to us. [Director of Dining Services] Bob [Volpi] was my hero. I just don’t understand. I thought I had such a great relationship with him, and he didn’t even want to talk to me.” Martha Tetrault, director of human resources, said she only recent became aware of the student complaints. “The policies that govern the employee disciplinary process are in the online staff handbook,” she said. The disciplinary procedures at the College start with academic chairs and supervisors. The policy states that “they are intended to be fair, and allow the employee opportunity for improvement when possible; however, the

SEE PETITION, p. 5

THOUGH THERE WAS NO NATURAL DISASTER IN WILLIAMSTOWN, THE COLLEGE STILL EXPERIENCED GLOOMY FALL WEATHER

College restructures custodial pay By JACK BRENT GREENBERG MANAGING EDITOR According to information the Record has obtained from the Committee on Priorities and Resources (CPR), the administration of the College revised its pay structure for custodians about seven years ago to eliminate wage increases tied to seniority within custodial operations, decreasing the earnings that an incoming custodian could expect to receive over a career of service to the College on average. The CPR, a faculty-student-staff committee tasked with advising the president of the College on resource allocation, became aware of this change last year after requesting more information on salaries of hourly employees at the College. The committee filed the request with Fred Puddester, vice president for finance & administration and treasurer. Puddester presented on the revision in pay structure, which is exclusive to custodial work and did not impact any other hourly-wage work at the College, as something that had already occurred, a point which Puddester confirmed to the Record. “The pay plan was changed seven to eight years ago, so since then all custodians have been hired under the current system,” Puddester said. “The College from time to time reviews salaries with an eye towards the market and makes the appropriate adjustments. I was not here when this particular change was made, but I can assume there were at least two factors involved: the salaries and benefits for our custodial staff are well above market and the College was feeling the effects of the recession and was looking for ways to reduce costs without impacting current employees or other mission-critical investments we make on behalf of faculty and students.”

The administration maintains that it is deeply invested in the economic well-being of the College’s custodial personnel. “Virtually all our custodians – who are full-time employees with full benefits – are paid more than $15 per hour and all will be over $15 per hour by next year,” Puddester said. “For our entire team of custodians, 80 percent of them make between $35,000 and $45,000 per year.” According to data from MIT, the living wage in Berkshire County is $11.04 per hour for a single adult with no dependents. Relative to other staff positions at the College, “building staff,” under which custodial service falls, has seen the smallest percentage increase in “staff salary expense” of any sector at the College, according to the 2016 staffing report authored by the provost’s office. Whereas resources dedicated to salaries for employees engaged in faculty support increased by about 29 percent and resources dedicated to salaries for employees, student support and extracurriculars increased by about 45 percent, resources dedicated to salaries for building staff only increased by 9 percent between 2003-2006, after accounting for inflation. Total salary for dining services, in this same period, went down after accounting for inflation. Still, Puddester asserts that the College values the work of custodial services. “I can’t say enough about the work of our custodial team and everyone in facilities,” Puddester said. “They are the most dedicated group I have ever worked with and they care deeply about the faculty, students and staff they support every day.” Moreover, Puddester maintains that the revision in pay structure does not undermine the College’s belief in the importance of retaining qualified custodians: “We are fortunate to have a high level of stability

with the staff. Almost a third of our custodians have been with the college for over 20 years. To me, this means we have an experienced team that is knowledgeable about the campus and can serve an important mentoring role to newer employees. An important component of this change was that it did not impact any employees working at the College [at that time]. In fact, the College, unlike many peer schools, did not let any employees go during the recession – despite a [roughly] 20 percent drop in the endowment.” The Record reached out to Bob Wright, executive director of facilities management, but he declined to comment.

WHAT’S INSIDE 3 OPINIONS A need for change in the dean's office 5 NEWS Williams 101: How the yearly budget works 7 FEATURES Spotlight on research: Prof. Matthew Chao 8 ARTS 'Brad's Status' plays at Images 11 SPORTS Athletic trainers heal student athletes

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2 OPINIONS

The Williams Record

Editor-in-Chief Emmy Maluf

Arts Editors Shaheen Currimjee and Li Yu

Managing Editors Marit Björnlund and Jack Brent Greenberg

Sports Editors Brooke Horowitch and Danny Jin

Communications Director Francesca Paris

Photo Editors June Han and Janeth Rodriguez

Executive Editors Michael Green, Rachel Levin, Maddy McFarland, Neena Patel, Lucy Putnam, Skylar Smith and Tesnim Zekeria News Editors Nicholas Goldrosen and William Newton Opinions Editor Taran Dugal Features Editors Jane Petersen and R.B. Smith

October 25, 2017

Business Managers Scatt Macdonald and Isabella Wang Financial Manager David Madding Director of Outreach Hayley Tartell Head of Advertising Esther Baek Subscriptions Manager Greg Andreou

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Word on The Quad Did you notice there wasn’t a Record on Wednesday? By ANASTASIA TISHENA STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HALLOWEEKEND

Get your low-effort, below-average costumes ready!

FAMILY DAYS

Long time no see!

ALICIA BLANCO ’21

Nope.

JESSICA GUTIERREZ ’20

What’s the 'Record'?

JIAN LU ’19

SENIOR YEARBOOK PHOTOS

“Could

you tilt your head a little to the right please? More. More. Nope, a little back. Perfect!”

PREREGISTRATION

Time to start figuring out how to get your divisional requirements in.

NATURAL DISASTER

The College's emergency alert system, that is.

ON THE RECORD

I have no idea.

At the end of the day, we’re just a bunch of people screwing around.” Andrew Barry '18 on Homebrew, page 8.

ADAM CALOGERAS ’18

*chuckles*

“If you’re with a team for a long period of time, you build a relationship and trust with studentathletes and coaches. That trust makes things run a lot smoother.” Rodd Lanoue, director of sports medicine, on the relationship between the training staff and sports teams, page 11.

WRITE FOR THE RECORD. “We’re still pretty agnostic over whether it’s a net positive or net negative change in the curriculum.” Calendar and Schedule Committee Chair and Professor of Economics David Zimmerman on Wednesday evening classes, page 4.

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

Op-Ed and Letter Submission The Record welcomes op-eds and letters from all members of the Williams community. The Opinions section is designed to reflect the varied views and ideas of the Williams community, and the publication of any letter or op-ed does not indicate an endorsement of the views contained therein. Submissions should be sent to tsd1@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.

KEVIN SNYDER ’09

Diversity in the dean’s office

Documenting microagressions O t e

emco o er eard at

By EMAN ALI, OLIVIA GOODHEART, MADDIE R a dR O A week after the launch of the Feminist Collective’s new Instagram accounts, a member of the board told us about negative comments she had heard about one of our pages. This year, in addition to the new @williamsfemco handle, where we post information about our weekly meetings, we also created another account, a finsta (fake Instagram) if you will, under the handle @femco_overheard_ at_williams. Through anonymous submissions, this account posts racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, hypermasculine, etc., statements said by fellow Williams students that are experienced or overheard on campus. The aforementioned board member received a critique that this account was painting the College in an “overly negative light.” Yet this opinion misses the urgency and necessity of revealing these types of comments that occur on a daily basis at the College. To those that still don’t understand why exposing and bringing to light hurtful and harmful statements that are both overheard and said to specific people on this campus, we invite you to browse through our account. If you do, you will find someone saying to a woman of color: “Do you mind hooking up with my friend too? He still hasn’t gotten his brown girl card.” You will find someone, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and the absolute devastation it brought to countless people and families in the Caribbean, complaining about how they won’t be able to go sailing in the Virgin Islands, because they don’t think “they’ll rebuild the resort in time.” You’ll find the statement “I’m pretty lenient about rape.” Hopefully, as we did, you will not only feel revolted and disturbed by these words, but also apprehensive and scared about having these sentiments present on campus. If not, then you are also part of the problem. We as board members of the Feminist Collective are horrified by the bulk and content of the submissions we are getting, but also hope that this will inspire

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

October 25, 2017

illiams

sta ram

students to take ac tion about microaggressions and call out their friends, classmates and teammates. We are horrified because of the sheer audacity, cruelty, ignorance and apathy that characterize the statements posted on our account, but we are also encouraged by the fact that that these offensive words are being exposed to the public in a manner that is critical, constructive and potentially transformative. The purpose of this account is threefold: First, to provide an outlet for and recognition of the inappropriate and the horrendous things that are said to the women, queer, trans, black and brown bodies on this campus; second, to subvert the myth that this campus is a safe and welcoming place for everyone and third, to establish a precedent that these behaviors are inexcusable, offensive and will not be normalized. Although many would argue otherwise, we never expose the identities of those whose words fill our account. To those that recognize your words from browsing, we hope that you acknowledge the ways in which your words and ideas are affecting and harming individuals on this campus. And to anyone who sees this account as shedding a negative light on the College, we want you to know that we do not relish the existence of this account. In a perfect world, this account would not be necessary, but until then, while racist, homophobic, misogynistic, antisemitic, xenophobic, etc., statements are still being made and not being acknowledged and criticized, this page serves as a space to call out, call in and shed a light on what really makes the College a negative place.

t de ts call or c a e R

RRO R O

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Recently an article was published (“No Team in TeamEph: How Orientation Can Divide Us” (Sept. 20, 2017)) regarding a subculture on campus. Some members of the College community, especially those part of minority groups, were very disheartened to learn that, in the aftermath of the article’s publication, its writer, Calen Firedancing ’20, felt emotionally abused after meeting with David Johnson ’71, associate dean of the College and dean of first-year students, to express his opinions about the athletic culture on campus. We are not here, however, to discuss the validity or implications of the article, or even the subculture it concerned. More importantly, we are here to discuss the behavior of the dean’s office. We wanted to specifically address our concerns about the lack of accessibility to a dean on campus that minority students feel comfortable with. With the departure of both Rosanna Ferro and Rashanda Booker, former associate deans of the College, a number of minority and first-generation students on campus feel uneasy about representation in the dean’s office. We feel that the diverse and accepting Williams community cannot truly prosper without an equally diverse and accepting dean’s office. The dean’s office must include a number of deans who students of all backgrounds feel comfortable with. The dean’s office is the place where

the College needs to start to create a more realized environment of diversity on campus. These are the demands we seek the dean’s office to meet: 1. For the Hiring of New Deans: Create a committee composed wholly of students that will have a clear and significant role in selecting the next dean. Because there is a lack of figures within the dean’s office that minority and first-gen students feel comfortable speaking with, this committee should include both students from the firstgen advisory board and board members from Minority Coalition (MinCo) groups. All participants on the hiring committee should have effective and safe environments to work in. No student, faculty or staff should feel unsafe during discussions throughout the hiring process of the new dean. There should be progressive discussion around resolving the issue of representation of diversity in the dean’s office. 2. For the Deans: A request for the College to investigate and reflect on the current structure of the dean’s office. Currently, the responsibility of first-years falls on one person in the office: Johnson. He is the only person whose job title explicitly includes all firstyears. This is problematic because it limits the options for who firstyears can approach in the dean’s office to resolve their issues. To fix this, we ask that the responsibility of first-years be split among more deans who currently work in the dean’s office. This would also mean

We seek a major and progressive shift in the relationship betwen deans and students.

that their job title would explicitly indicate that first-years could also go to them. In addition, some com munities have felt that the dean’s office needs to improve its under standing of a spectrum of identi ties. Each dean, current and future, should go through sensitivity train ing with the Davis Center to fix this problem. There should be a process towards deciding how much sensi tivity training the deans have been through, and have ever been re quired to go through, in order to ef fectively work with all students, es pecially first-year students, who are still trying to settle into life on cam pus. We need sensitivity training to ensure that our deans understand and can properly accommodate all students and not mistakenly per petuate a culture of sexism, rac ism, ableism, classism, heterosex ism, ageism and all other systems of oppression that could transpire because of a lack of awareness and acceptance. Other issues must be discussed, and this demand will be a longer process that should be reevaluated regularly to resolve other issues that arise throughout time. Today we seek a major and pro gressive shift in the relationship between deans and students. All students on campus should and must feel safe in approaching any dean within the dean’s office. Deans need to be able to appropriately and effectively respond to any and all students of the College. This is the place that the Williams commu nity must start in order to further improve inclusion at the College. Nadia Burroughs ’21 is from Bronx, N.Y. She lives in Williams Hall. Bret Hairston ’21 is from Co lumbus, Ohio. She lives in Dennett.

Eman Ali ’20 is from Coral Gables, Fla. She lives in Gladden. Olivia Goodheart ’19 is a political science and women’s, gender and sexuality studies double major from Lorane, Ore. She lives in Currier. Maddie Grant ’18 is a geosciences major from New York, N.Y. She lives in Lambert. Rachel Jones ’18 is a women’s, gender and sexuality studies major and Africana studies concentrator from New Haven, Conn. She lives in Lambert.

The importance of nature Why students should get outside more By NEVIN BERNET I wake up to the sound of birds conversing in the trees outside my window. They chirp and flit from one branch to the next, darting through the crisp morning air and the flawless blue sky. And yet as my eyes open to the overwhelming brightness of the early day, my thoughts are at once consumed by the complexities of my own existence. Papers I have to write, midterms on the horizon and social expectations immediately distract my attention from the beauty that lies just beyond the glass. But why? Must we always be so engrossed in our own little worlds that we miss the colors of fall, the smile of a friendly stranger, the smell of smoke and rain and falling leaves that drift in the breeze? Here at the College, the world just past our window panes is truly spectacular and filled with wonder, yet so few of us ever take the time to really live in it. For most of us, spending time outdoors is little but a pleasant daydream, a distraction from class or homework. Many would therefore be surprised to know that there are actually proven benefits to such simple exercises as taking a rural stroll or sitting amongst the trees. According to a study conducted on students at the University of Michigan, being outside in nature boosts working memory by an average of 20 percent. Another study conducted on people with depression found very similar results. Other studies have found equally impressive correlations between time spent in nature and decreased stress, strengthened immune systems, increased creativity and concentration and a number of other mental and physical improvements. That being said, many students, particularly at the College and including me, will still opt to spend that time studying. The way I see it, there are two possible explanations for this choice. Students are either uneducated about the

benefits of spending time in nature or, more likely, most have come to the conclusion that the the benefit-to-opportunity-cost ratio of working more is greater than that of taking a stroll or going exploring in the forest. This latter possibility saddens me a good deal, as it implies that most would choose a better grade rather than a more enjoyable existence. I of course cannot condemn such a decision, as I have consciously made it for myself on many occasions. That being said, I would like to ask the question of my peers as well as of myself: Is a more impressive report card worth your own well-being? While I do believe that this question is an important one to ask, I also recognize that it is not entirely representative of the problem, which, as I see it, is how to best spend your time. Now, I cannot pretend to be able to perfectly answer this question for myself, let alone for anyone else, as it is the responsibility and struggle of every individual to decide how to spend their time, a resource of which we all possess in terrifying, finite scarcity. Of course, this is by no means a call to freak out over the way we all live our lives, but it is a plea for us all to critically evaluate the way we choose to spend our “free time.” Too often I find myself and my peers watching TV or browsing social media when we get distracted from work, when we want to relax and when we don’t know what else to do. I hold that this time would be far better spent going outdoors. We should all let ourselves be children again: Build a fort, play a game with our friends, climb a tree or just take a walk. As humans we have evolved over millennia to be creatures of the sun, to walk the natural face of our planet, so I encourage all of my fellow students, and indeed all those who find themselves indoors too often, to spend your next bit of free time outdoors.

The world just past our window panes is truly spectacular and filled with wonder.

Nevin Bernet ’20 is from Topanga, Calif. He lives in Garfield.

KEVIN SNYDER ’09

Improving uncomfortable learning creasi

t e e ecti e ess o co tro ersial s ea ers

By HANNAH LEBOWITZ After attending my first Uncomfortable Learning talk last Wednesday, Christina Hoff Sommers’ “Closing the Feminist Mind,” I felt uncomfortable, but not in the way intended. I did not feel my mind working like it does in a classroom, confronting biases and pushing against pre-established ideas of the world. Instead, my discomfort at the Uncomfortable Learning event stemmed from extreme dissatisfaction with its format. Sommers drew no radical conclusions within her hour-long lecture. She aligns herself with the feminist movement, but believes it veered off course after the first wave of liberal feminists in the 1960s. She espouses equity feminism, which endorses liberal feminism and primarily focuses on legislative reform that awards women the same opportunities as men. She claimed that, since legislation no longer shows a gender bias, there is no patriarchy. Women now have the same rights as men, so wherever women stand in the hierarchy of U.S. society is a result of their choices. She called intersectional feminism a “victim Olympics,” and likened safe spaces to fainting couches of the 16th century. I don’t believe that “equity feminism” is a legitimate form of feminism; it willfully disregards the experiences of the majority of women worldwide, and alleges the patriarchy is something that disappeared along with progressive legislative reform, as opposed to a societal system that

continues to prosper from female oppression. That being said, I was both offput by Sommers’ talk and the audience response it generated. Sommers was invited to campus to present her views, and I attended the talk to listen, which proved difficult due to students in the back of the audience who laughed and spoke audibly throughout her presentation. The Q&A began with an audience member saying, “I will not thank you for coming,” and questioning why Sommers thought she had the right to speak at the College. Sommers responded to accusations of being, among other things, a misogynist, racist and white supremacist by saying she felt like she was talking to a scientologist. The student shouted back, “I’d rather be a scientologist than you!” At one point someone yelled, “You need to read a book, lady!” As both students and Sommers tried to thrust their views upon one another, no one seemed to be listening. These exchanges indicated to me that Sommers’ talk, and the Q&A session that followed, were completely unproductive, if the point was communication and digestion of new ideas. In retrospect, I do not see how any learning opportunity for either students or the speaker could have arisen out of the talk, and this is due to Uncomfortable Learning’s format. Giving a controversial speaker a stage to address an audience creates a power dynamic that defines the atmosphere of the space. Those in the audience who disagree with

the views of the speaker feel marginalized and defensive, and the speaker gains power in her status as informant. The Q&A at the end of the lecture is intended as a time to engage with the speaker, but in this format, all engagement is on the speaker’s terms. If Uncomfortable Learning is going to continue to invite controversial speakers to campus, a panel-style discussion led by students will prove much more effective to ensure that voices besides the speaker’s are fundamental to the conversation. Including students in this way will guarantee the conversation’s relevance to the the College community, and hopefully this format will attract only speakers who are open to a dialogue and not just coming to proselytize. Academic institutions have the obligation to engage students in thoughtful and challenging discussions. The setup of the Sommers talk, in which the speaker was provided a stage and the students a limited amount of time to ask questions, did not encourage such discussion. If a controversial speaker is going to talk on campus in the future, the event must occur within the framework of a true discussion, during which both students and the speaker are encouraged to listen and voice their ideas, creating an educational experience for all participants. Hannah Lebowitz ’20 is from Amherst, Mass. She lives in Gladden.

4 NEWS

The Williams Record

October 25, 2017

Faculty rejects motion to extend Wed. evening classes next year By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN NEWS EDITOR At the Oct. 18 faculty meeting, the faculty rejected a motion, by a vote of 34 to 66, that would have extended Wednesday evening classes through the 2018-2019 academic year, pending a decision on the long-term change to the division of the day. The faculty approved in Dec. 2015 a two-year pilot program of Wednesday evening classes, to be reevaluated for potential extension in the fall of 2018. The motion from the Calendar and Scheduling Committee (CSC) would have extended this experiment to three years, though the ultimate decision in fall of 2018 would still have been based on two years of data collection (from 20162017 and 2017-2018 Wednesday night classes).

David Zimmerman, professor of economics and chair of the CSC, noted that the committee did not have a strong stance on the classes when proposing the extension. “The committee did not have a strong opinion on continuing or suspending the Wednesday evening classes until looking at the evidence,” Zimmerman said. The motion for the extension was partially driven, then, by the increased congestion to both time slots and classroom space that will the demolition of Bronfman Science Center next year will cause, since the committee will still use two years of data in making its more long-term decision. The main opposition to extending the classes for a third year is that it would exacerbate scheduling con-

flicts that departments are already facing because of the classes while lending no new data. The music department in particular has had difficulty with the Wednesday evening slot. “The Wednesday evening class experiment has made it more difficult for the music department to find workable times for ensemble rehearsals,” Marjorie Hirsch, chair and professor of music, said. “The music department relies heavily on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings for rehearsals, and the evening class experiment has created problems for groups that rehearse on Wednesdays because of schedule conflicts.” There were also concerns about increased congestion on other nights of the week since many activities previ-

ously scheduled for Wednesday have been moved to the new class slots. “Music ensemble directors also report that more student musicians say they must miss Tuesday and Thursday rehearsals because of evening exams, review sessions, and other activities that have been moved off of Wednesday nights,” Hirsch said. Finally, several professors at the meetings noted that the additional year would only serve to further normalize and reify the Wednesday night class slot. “The proposed oneyear extension would have gone further in establishing Wednesday evening classes as the ‘new normal’ without providing any additional data about the merits of the twoyear experiment,” Hirsch said. “If the one-year extension had been voted in, three quarters

of the student body – first years, sophomores and juniors – as well as three years of new faculty hires would not have known any other class scheduling system at Williams.” The current response to these classes from students has been mixed but skewed positive. Upwards of 80 percent of students who have taken a Wednesday night class had positive views of them, according to CSC data, as did 55 to 60 percent of those who had not taken one. “While most students were positive, there certainly are some students that mention conflicts that arise with having an additional evening class,” Zimmerman said. “We’re still pretty agnostic over whether it’s a net positive or net negative change in the curriculum.” The CSC will conduct further study on the classes and

their effects, and it will present a motion for longer-term action to the faculty in the fall of 2018. “We will meet with faculty who have taught in those time slots to ask about benefits and costs associated with it,” Zimmerman said. “Importantly, we’ll meet with representatives of activities that have significant programs in the evening – music, dance, theatre, athletics – to determine what those problems are, whether they can be changed by tweaking, or if it scuttles the whole idea.” A faculty vote, most likely in Nov. 2018, would determine any non-temporary change to the division of the day, which currently only allows for evening classes on Monday nights, save for this experiment.

Survey shows that students’ comfort with dean’s office middling, especially for issues regarding gender, race By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN and WILLIAM NEWTON NEWS EDITORS

“Have you ever sought assistance with a personal, academic or other issue from the dean’s office?”

The Record conducted a survey to assess the comfort level of students at the College with regards to going to the dean of the College’s office for assistance with personal, academic and other issues. The survey was sent to a randomly selected list of 500 students, of whom 93 responded. As such, each reported statistic has a margin of error of 9.3 percentage points. The first question asked students to identify whether or not they had sought assistance from the dean’s office previously; 48.9 percent answered yes and 51.1 percent answered no. Students were then asked to rate, on a scale from 1 (not at all comfortable) to 5 (very comfortable), their comfort in going to the dean’s office for assistance with a personal, academic or other issue. The mean score amongst all responding students was 3.3. Students were then asked if they felt there was at least one member of the dean’s office from whom they would feel comfortable seeking assistance for an identity-based concern with regards to gender, and a similar questions with regards to race or ethnicity. For both questions, 55.4 percent of students answered yes and 44.6 percent of students answered no. While the survey did collect demographic information with regards to race and gender, there was not enough data collected to draw any conclusions about significant differences in comfort levels across demographic groups.

SPRING STREET BLUES From the files of Campus Safety and Security Tuesday 10-17-17 12:08 a.m. Mission Park: A first-year student made a report concerning suspicious text messages. Campus Safety and Security (CSS) contacted the Williamstown Police Department due to the disturbing nature of the messages. No one could locate the phone number in any of the College databases, but CSS believes it is a number used for running a scam. Wednesday 10-18-17 1:33 a.m. Currier House: A student reported an ongoing back issue that has flared up. He was offered a transport to the hospital to get the pain checked. He stated that he had taken some medication, felt that it was beginning to work and wanted to give it some more time. He was advised that if he did not feel better in 20 minutes he should call back and go to the hospital. 4:15 p.m. Fitch House: A student came to CSS to report that a couch that someone reported missing from a common room last week had been returned. Thursday 10-19-17 5:30 p.m. Cole Field House: A cross country runner who sprained his ankle requested medical transport to Towne Field House. He was advised to go to the Health Center to have his ankle examined. He was also advised he should complete a statement regarding his injury and a Personal Accident Injury Report, but has not yet done so. 11:30 p.m. Wood House: Officers responded to a noise complaint in the basement. The students were within college guidelines for a small gathering and only had one case of beer. The officers informed them of the noise complaint, and they were very respectful and said they would keep the noise level down. Friday 10-20-17 12:45 p.m. Center for Developmental Economics: Officers responded to the front of the build-

ing after it was reported that a tree limb fell from a tree and hit a pedestrian who was walking his toddler in a carriage in the head. Village Ambulance responded and brought this individual to Berkshire Health North for stitches. Saturday 10-21-17 12:29 a.m. Carter House: Officers responded to a noise complaint submitted via the tipline and found approximately 12 students in a common room listening to very loud music. There was also an extremely pungent odor of marijuana that had just been smoked in the room and smoking paraphernalia was present in plain view. 1:36 p.m. Weston Field: Officers responded to meet with an officer working the football game. A local woman had been walking around the exterior of Lee Track on the sidewalk and had fallen. She had an apparent right wrist injury, potentially a fracture. Village Ambulance was already on scene for the football game and treated her, and an additional ambulance was called to respond. The ambulance transported her to Berkshire Health North in North Adams. 3:18 p.m. Hopkins Hall: A student reported that there was a non-College-affiliated individual on campus who was making him feel uncomfortable and that he was concerned for a possible confrontation tonight. Officers advised him that, if the person did indeed approach him, he should call CSS immediately. Sunday 10-22-17 12:14 a.m. Morgan Hall: Officers responded to a noise complaint on the third floor and found loud music coming from one room. CSS advised the resident of the noise complaint and agreed to turn the music down. 2:30 p.m. Gladden House: Officers responded to check on a possible domestic disturbance in progress. Upon arrival everything was quiet. Officers spoke with several students and asked all of them to come into the CSS office to make statements.

NEASC accreditation team visits College to conduct evaluation By DASOL LEE CONTRIBUTING WRITER From last Sunday to today, a team from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) is visiting the College to evaluate its performance under the association’s nine standards of accreditation. This peer review session, which takes place every 10 years, involves both a self-study, which the College recently completed, and a visit from a team of educators from other institutions. Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, chairs this year’s visiting team. Although not required by the U.S. government, accreditation is an almostuniversally adopted practice that assures the public that a college is an effective educator of its students and is meeting its responsibilities to all its stakeholders. It also allows the institution to offer more financial assistance, such as the Department of Education’s Pell Grant, to its students. When accrediting an institution, NEASC specifically studies standards ranging from the college’s “mission and purpose” to its “institutional resources” to its “integrity, transparency and public disclosure.” To prepare for NEASC’s visit, a 28-member steering committee consisting of faculty, staff and students of the College wrote a 110-page self-study describing what commitment to each standard looks like in the College

community. The writing process began about a year before the visiting team arrived on campus. “One of the [first] things we did was just to inventory, in fact to write kind of a bullet point history of what has happened over the past 10 years,” Self-Study Director and Professor of English Stephen Fix said. Each standard was then assigned to a lead writer, Fix said, who worked with many others to write and revise their drafts. “By the summer, we had a full draft that we were showing to a lot of different people, obviously the president, ... and other senior administrators and members of the Steering Committee,” Fix said. In its self-study, the committee laid out why it values the accreditation process. “We engage every year in multiple forms of self-examination and self-criticism, but ... the accreditation process is a special opportunity to examine the whole institution,” the committee wrote. The committee also described the value of the critique the College receives from outside sources and the opportunity the self-study gives to add to the College’s history. “30 years from now, if someone wants to know, ‘What was the state of the college in 2017?’, this is a place for them to go look,” Fix said. The visiting team uses the self-study to help them evaluate the school over the course of its three days on campus. “We’ve given them a tremendous amount of information,”

Jonathan X. Meng ’18 wins prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for chemistry, math

Fix said. “A lot of their work is to assess things they already know and follow up with other people.” Over the past two days, the team has met with faculty, students and various student organizations. At the open-campus student session on Monday night, Don Wyatt, professor of history at Middlebury, commented on the team’s time at the College. “It’s been action-packed,” Wyatt said. “We’ve had a very full schedule. We’ve met with lots of constituencies.” The team’s time at the College includes meetings on every facet of the College’s operations. “Tomorrow we have Student Life and Diversity in the morning and then some talk about assessment and student well-being, and finances, faculty development [and] trustees,” Kathyrn Graff Low, professor of psychology and associate dean of the faculty at Bates, said. The members of the accreditation team appreciate the opportunity to observe life at the College and hope that their visit will benefit the institution. They see their time at the College as an opportunity for Williams to receive feedback from fellow educators. “It’s always helpful to have external sets of eyes that come from similar yet different experiences to share their perspectives on what they’re seeing,” Stefanie Niles, a member of the visiting team and vice president for enrollment management at Dickinson, said.

October 25, 2017

NEWS 5

The Williams Record

WILLIAMS 101: The Yearly Budget By WILLIAM NEWTON NEWS EDITOR This piece is the second installment in our “Williams 101” series, a set of articles on the basic structure and operations of the College. Our aim in this series is to help the entire College community, and students in particular, better understand and be able to engage with their institution. This second piece will focus on the College's yearly revenues and expenses.

Amount spent per student by funding source in 2017-2018

Where funding comes from This year, the College will spend an average of $108,200 on each of its students, of which revenue from tuition will account for about a third. Just under $80 million of the over $224 million the College spends each year comes from tuition, room and board. According to Provost and Professor of Economics Dukes Love, the College could not rely solely on tuitionbased revenue to pay for its costs. “The College collects money from students, and the rest is basically philanthropy,” Love said. In any given year, the College depends upon a roughly five-percent return above inflation of the current value of its over two billion dollar endowment, normally accounting for about half of the College’s total yearly spending. In order to minimize volatility and smooth out this value, the College uses the simple average value of the endowment over the last 12 quarters (three years). This ensures that temporary spikes, or conversely temporary rises, have less dramatic effects on the current budget. Still, according to Love, the volatility of the money coming from the endowment poses the largest risk to the College’s finances. “The endowment is the College’s largest current risk by orders of magnitude,” he said. The next biggest chunk of the budget comes from gifts, amounting to around 13 percent of this year’s budget. The full amount of an unrestricted gift, unlike the endowment, goes directly into the College’s annual budget. The final piece of income, which only amounts to five percent of the budget, comes from other revenue, comprising conference fees, earnings from the Williamstown Theater Festival, rent from properties the College owns on Spring Street and elsewhere, grant money and various other minor sources of income. On average, about half

INFOGRAPHIC BY WILLIAM NEWTON/NEWS EDITOR WITH INFORMATION FROM PROVOST'S OFFICE.

of the students at the College pays the full tuition of $65,500 and the other half of the student body pays a smaller fraction with financial aid. The average aided student pays $16,500 in tuition, making the average tuition revenue across all students for this year $39,300. While income for the top 10 percent of families has continued to rise, the earnings of lower-income families have become relatively stag-

Projected real 10-year growth rate of tuition revenue by student type

INFOGRAPHIC BY WILLIAM NEWTON/ NEWS EDITOR WITH INFORMATION FROM PROVOST'S OFFICE.

nant. The 10-year projected growth rate (how much the value will increase over 10 years adjusted for inflation) for the average tuition paid by an aided student is 0.2 percent. During this same time period, the average spending per student is projected to increase by 1.2 percent. As a result, the sticker price for tuition must rise at a much faster rate. Over the next 10 years, the inflationadjusted value of full tuition is expected to increase by 2.6 percent, ensuring that the average price per student increases at the same rate as the average spending per student.

percent of the yearly budget. Otherwise known as operating budgets, the stuff category consists of managers’ budgets, including budgets for department chairs, food, library books, museums, admissions and a number of other minor costs the College incurs. When unchecked, however, Love believes this category of spending has potential to grow disproportionately. “It’s

easy for wealthy institutions to get soft,” Love said. To attempt to combat this tendency, Love begins each year by sending out a memo to ask all areas of campus if they have a strong need to add anything to their budget. In order to get funding for any new budgetary item, department chairs must first explain how their request is crucial to the College’s mission, show they have attempted to find any possible savings elsewhere in their budget and have already used whatever endowed resources they have (donations that donors designated only for a specific area of spending). By the time any budgetary increase of any amount over $500 has been approved, Love, Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer Fred Puddester, the Committee on Priorities and Resources and the entire senior staff will have seen it. Love believes that this procedure can significantly cut down on unnecessary spending. The final 18 percent of spending is on buildings, covering repair costs, mortgages and spending on new construction. Normally, the College looks to repair or renovate buildings whenever possible to minimize costs. If the needed repairs surpass 30 percent of the assessed value of a building, however, a significant amount of money must be devoted to ensuring the building is in conformance with code, so the College will often decide to construct new buildings in place of renova-

Spending per category in 2017-2018

Where the money goes The College divides its over $200 million budget into three simple categories: people, buildings and stuff. People, the largest category, makes up 60 percent of the budget and comprises the salaries, wages and benefits of faculty, staff and administrators. The College views employment as a fixed cost, rather than a variable one. That is, the College does not fluctuate its number of employees by hiring more during economic upturns and laying off employees during recessions; instead, it views each new hire as a set cost it will have to pay, regardless of where the economy stands. The next largest category, stuff, accounts for about 22

INFOGRAPHIC BY WILLIAM NEWTON/NEWS EDITOR WITH INFORMATION FROM PROVOST'S OFFICE.

tion when the repair costs are sufficiently high. Love recognized that aesthetic additions, such as the infamous campus marble blocks, will always be subject to scrutiny. “You need to make aesthetic decisions and those will always be contestable,” Love said. “And yet the reason this doesn’t feel like a corporate place is because of those aesthetic decisions. Just functional office space to me is a very dreary campus.” Dealing with crises Every June, the College undergoes stress-testing, where staff members review the current budget and determine if the College could run in a similar fashion given random, unpredictable shocks. Additionally, the College looks at how it would respond to a consistent cut in resources. When there is an economic downturn, such as the most recent recession, the College looks to cut spending in the most flexible areas of the budget. “You don’t want to act rashly,” Love said. “You want to take actions that are reversible … and make sure that whatever we do during a downturn is something that we can unwind when and if things do improve.” The College would first pause any building projects on queue that had not yet started. Although the College protects its employees and rarely lays off workers for economic reasons, the College would be slightly more cautious about replacing staff and visiting faculty who retired or left for other reasons. Finally, the College would make cuts in its stuff category of spending, reducing, for example, managers’ budgets or spending on food and dining. In fact, given the average yearly inflation rate of 2 percent, it is possible to reduce a department’s spending by 10 percent over a five year period just by denying any requests for increases in spending. During the recession in 2008, for example, the College responded by delaying several building projects, including Sawyer Library (on queue at the time), and reduced spending in the stuff category by 26 percent. Still, according to Love, the biggest priority for the College in times of economic crisis will always be maintaining flexibility in other areas of spending so that the most important area, people, is the least affected. The next installment in this series will focus on the College's endowment.

Student writes petition protesting College's decision to fire two snackbar employees last spring CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 College does retain the right to “determine the sequence of discipline in any case.” “If a potential disciplinary issue arises, the department head is the person responsible for conducting a thorough, objective review of the situation,” Tetrault said. “The process typically includes conversations with the employee and other parties who may be involved. Members of human resources staff often participate in such reviews as well – especially when a concern is serious enough that we might have to consider terminating someone’s employment.” In general, the first step towards addressing an issue with an employee is an oral warning issued by their supervisor to inform them of the unsatisfactory performance and acknowledge that they are looking for improvement and what is expected. If performance continues or

reoccurs, the supervisor discusses the problem with the employee again and a written warning is issued. The supervisor gives a statement of the improvement that is expected and the timeframe that it should occur within. The supervisor sends a copy of this statement to Human Resources and the employee is allowed a reasonable time period to correct the problem. If the problem is not corrected or improved, a second written warning is issued. The policy then states that, if the problem reoccurs or improvement does not happen, an employee can be suspended without pay or separated from the College depending on severity. If the employee was suspended, returns and the problem reoccurs, there is an immediate separation from College employment. “I started the petition because I believe Robin was fired unfairly and the consequences have rippled throughout Williams and the broader commu-

nity,” Sangree said. “It seems she was treated like a number, when in reality, thousands of people know just how important she is, as the petition demonstrates.” Sangree cited the comments on the petition, which express the same grief he felt. Most of them are filled with grief and appreciation for Alfonso. “Talking to her personally, she is profoundly devastated. It would have been callous for students not to take action,” Sangree said. “Even assuming that she is guilty, which I believe she is not due to conversations with students she was with (as well as due to conversations with Robin herself), administrators must ask themselves if firing her was truly the best course of action.” In repsonse, Alfonso noted that “Kristine wasn’t even on the payroll. She was off for the summer.” After talking to Assistant Director of Student Dining Gayle Donahue, Sangree stat-

ed that he would contact Tetrault. “I also have a meeting with President [Adam] Falk scheduled for [Friday], where I will present the petition,” Sangree said. “I don’t have a singular target, because it likely wasn’t a single person’s decision, but there are certainly people in the administration who have the power to set this right. I intend to figure out who they are and pressure them to act.” He also stated that he created the petition entirely on his own accord, as he feels that it is the right thing to do. Tetrault said that, while the outcome of most disciplinary decisions at the College can be appealed through grievance procedures, termination cannot. “If you think about it, the reason is simple: Someone who’s no longer employed here can’t be subject to our policies. There are other, outside options available to anyone who believes they’ve been wrongfully terminated.”

Vice President of Student Life Steve Klass said, “We deeply value our staff’s dedication and commitment at Williams. Like any large employer, we run into disciplinary issues now and then. Happily, most can be resolved with a private conversation or careful management. But once in a while we run into issues serious enough to require disciplinary action.” He added that sometimes, rare occasions occur when a problem is more significant and the aforementioned disciplinary process must be followed. Both Klass and Tetrault declined to share specific details related to Alfonso and McLear’s termination, as the College keeps employee matters confidential. “As to the details, we keep employee matters in strict confidence, the way every employer does (or should), just like we keep student academic and disciplinary matters confidential,” Klass said.

“In both student and employee situations, we know there’s a risk that the community will hear part of the story and judge on the basis of partial information. But that’s a risk we have to accept. We simply can’t share specifics about an employee’s situation, regardless of how minor or significant the issues are.” Still, Sangree strongly disagrees with what he believes to be the College's decision to jump to a false conclusion about Alfonso. “At Williams, I have learned to embrace complexity over simplicity, especially in regards to social issues,” Sangree said. “The way Robin was treated suggests administrators took exactly the opposite approach: They embraced simplicity over complexity.” “I just can’t believe how many students care that much,” Alfonso said. “That breaks my heart. It warms my heart.”

October 25, 2017

The Williams Record

FEATURES 6

One in Two Thousand By RACHEL LEVIN EXECUTIVE EDITOR I met Emma last year at the Jewish Association, and was fascinated by her love of animals and her refugee advocacy work. We met up to discuss karate, twins and chickens. How did you spend your summer vacation? I had two jobs this summer, I worked at Hancock Shaker Village on its farm. Hancock Shaker Village is in Pittsfield, Mass., where I’m from, and it’s a living history museum. So, the farm is trying to model what a farm of the Shakers would have been like, but also uses a lot of modern techniques, so we have cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, goats and donkeys now. And turkeys! I think I got them all. So, I’ve been working there. I started volunteering there seven years ago, and I now am working and that was a great job. And then I also worked for CLiA [the Center for Learning in Action], doing some refugee advocacy work. Is the refugee advocacy work you do also throughout the year, through No Lost Generation? Yes, I was involved in that club last year. No Lost Generation is a refugee and immigrant advocacy group through the State Department. The State Department has tasked campus chapters to support those affected by the ongoing global refugee crisis. The Williams chapter has become a lot broader than that. We’re trying to not only focus on the Syrian refugee crisis, which is mostly what No Lost Generation is involved in, but we’re also doing a lot of local work on diversity and bias and things like that. I got involved in that last year, and then I did some work for CLiA over the summer. Mostly working on

websites and meeting with some individuals. We’re doing a lot of presentations this year at different schools.

EMMA LEZBERG ’20

You obviously love animals – do you have any at home? Now I do. I was convinced to get chickens three years ago. I have four at home, and they’re wonderful. I built their coop. You live in Pittsfield. Do you go home a lot? Not quite every weekend; most weekends now. I do karate at home, in Pittsfield, so I try to get back there for that. And I don’t want to make my parents clean out the coop, so I get to do that.

Why?

Are you a black belt? I am. Third-degree black belt. There are eight kyū ranks, which are before black belt, and then ten dan ranks, which are black belt ranks. I’m third of ten, but it’ll take me a while. Your twin Jacob [Lezberg ’20] is also a sophomore. Was that always the plan, to come to school together? Yes! Right, so Jacob’s my twin brother. We knew that we wanted to be at the same school, so we looked at all the same schools, and applied to all the same schools, and it worked out! What else do you do? I am the outreach coordinator for the Jewish Association. I am also on the Interfaith board. I work for CLiA in a couple capacities.... I’m also working at Mount Greylock High School as a writing fellow, so I work both in English classes and then also I’m working with a girl who is from Thailand and doesn’t speak very much English, so I’ve gotten to learn a lot about ELL [English Language Learning] teachings,

RACHEL LEVIN/EXECUTIVE EDITOR EMMA'S HOMETOWN PITTSFIELD, MASS.

EMMA'S RESIDENCE HORN HALL

since I don’t speak Thai. What else? The martial arts club that my brother runs. Education club. Literary review. I think that’s it. What's your major? I have five prospective majors – English, comp lit, poli sci, philosophy, environmental studies. Just last week, a professor recommended that I do a contract major, trying to combine those. I don’t know if that will end up happening, but it’s a possibility. It would probably be critical theory. I didn’t know what that was until last week. It seems like it’s an interdisciplinary humanities subject trying to focus on using information and insights from all those different disciplines to investigate power structures. It sounds really cool; I just need to learn more about it before I decide I’m going to major in it. Any favorite professors? Probably Christian Thorne. He’s in the English department. He’s

"Eph Superfan" shows her school spirit

FAVORITE ANIMAL CHICKENS

the one who’s recommending this major. I took literary theory with him last fall. And I’d heard he was a really hard English professor. And he was really hard. I didn’t do great on my first essay; I mean, I didn’t do terribly, I think I got a B on it. I was all annoyed; I was like, I really want to do well on this. And he’s just, he was incredible at giving really specific feedback. And every time I went to office hours, we’d end up talking for like an hour, and he was really helpful. And by the end, I feel like I grew as a writer quite a bit. And just, you got to talk about things that you never got to talk about in a high school English class. Can you tell me anything that you’re writing now? I’m in the introductory fiction workshop this term. … I just submitted a story – the way the class works is the first few weeks you just read published fiction. And then after that, two students hand in a story each class. And

JANE PETERSEN/FEATURES EDITOR

Emily Elder '20 has a strong lead in the "Eph Superfan" competition, ahead of Athletic Director Lisa Melendy.

“I always used to joke with my friends that I was recruited for fandom,” Emily Elder ’20 said when asked about her incredible enthusiasm for athletics at the College. Elder is the current frontrunner in the Eph Superfan competition, an initiative spearheaded by the Student Athletic and Advisory Committee (SAAC) and the athletic department to increase turnout at sporting events. Any member of the College community can join the competition by downloading the Eph Superfan app, then using the app to check in every time they attend a home game. Each game is worth 10 points, and the only way to successfully earn these points is to be physically present at the game. With 310 points, Elder is in a class of her own; her closest competitor is Athletic Director Lisa Melendy, who has 240 points. Elder connected her motivation for becoming the numberone Eph superfan to her time as a high school soccer player. “Knowing I wouldn’t be on a varsity team myself, I was really looking forward to engaging with that culture from a spectator perspective. And Eph Superfan allows me to be enthusiastic and supportive without the stress and pressure of actually competing,” she said. Placing herself in the broader College community, Elder said, “It’s the least I can do, to go out and support.”

Above all, however, Elder described her quest to become the number-one Eph Superfan as sheer fun. “It brings me so much joy to go out and see everybody doing what they love and succeeding,” she said. “I just love supporting all of my talented friends, and people that I may recognize from a class, and people that I don’t even know.” To get a broader view of Eph Superfan’s history and intended goals, I spoke with Caroline Hogan ’18, one of the SAAC copresidents and a member of the women’s squash and lacrosse teams. “Athletics have been such a big part of my life at Williams,” Hogan said. “I wanted to share the positive impact athletics has had on me with the Williams community.” To that end, the Eph Superfan app was created last year when members of SAAC wanted to increase community involvement in athletic events. The idea came from a SAAC member whose high school used similar technology to boost participation at athletic events. In developing the app, SAAC and the athletic department have worked to create a multilayered experience for Eph Superfan users. Beyond the superfan competition itself, Eph Superfan offers several incentives for community participation in athletic events; for example, members can spend the points they earn on SAACcreated merchandise like mugs, t-shirts, water bottles, phone ID holders and sweatshirts. During

our conversation, Hogan also revealed one of the most practical functions of Eph Superfan: a self-updating calendar for the College’s home game schedule. While it is too early in the athletic schedule for data about Eph Superfan’s impact on turnout at games, Hogan believes that more people attended games early in the fall season, when SAAC began spreading the word about the competition. Ultimately, though, what matters to Hogan is not the number of people who attend, but the fact that people are attending the game in the first place. “All we’re looking for is support,” Hogan said, drawing on her experience as both a College athlete and a leader in creating Eph Superfan. “I know that the school in general is just so supportive; you’ll have professors that will come to your games, you’ll have your entry that comes – I loved freshman year, when my entry would come to my games with signs, even if I wasn’t playing – so I think that using this app is just one way for everyone to support Williams, to love being Ephs and be proud of their school.” From the fans’ bleachers, Elder expressed a similar sentiment. “I think it’s important whether or not you’re on the app or earning points to come out and support, whenever you can,” she said. “Making time for people that you care about and people that you don’t know is important, regardless of how much you have to do or what’s going on.”

I don’t plan it that way, but it just – when I write, you write what you know, so I can’t write about someone who’s lived in the city their whole life, because I don’t know what that’s like! I can write about people who have chickens because I know chickens. What did you have to do to get the chickens? I had to go in front of the city council and basically give a speech on why I want to keep chickens. You have to get a permit to keep chickens, which is why I had to do this. And then there are all these rules like [they have to be a] certain number of feet from your fence, certain number of feet from other people’s houses, things like that. And a maximum of six [chickens] that you can keep. You submit a petition, and then the city sends letters to everyone in a certain radius from your house. And then people can make a petition against it. And I had a few neighbors who weren’t super enthused about it. Mostly because they didn’t understand how keeping chickens works; they thought they would attract rodents or smell bad or be super loud. You can’t keep roosters, so I just have hens. My family had to go up and explain why we wanted to keep chickens, and

myth bust. But they approved it, so I have chickens! So you learned about chickens on your job? Yeah, so when I first started I was 13. I had gone to Hancock Shaker Village as a visitor – if you live around here, you go all the time on school field trips and things. And I met a volunteer who was my age. I thought, this would be really cool. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I thought it would be like, hold chicks for toddlers and that would be it. Within the first day, it was like, restraining rams by their horns and all sorts of things. And I just fell in love with the work and the people and yeah, so it was all just learning on the job. Once one of my co-workers convinced me to get chickens, I spent a couple years doing a lot of research. You should see my library at home. I have the Chicken Health Handbook and My Pet Chicken Handbook. There are also certain very famous – famous in the farm world – chicken bloggers. That's so fun! Yeah. My hope is that when I’m older, I don’t necessarily want to be a farmer, but I want to have other animals. I’ve been trying to convince my parents, what about goats? That’s not going to happen any time soon. But eventually I’d want chickens, ducks and goats, and then maybe a cow, but I’m unsure. That’s a big commitment with the milking. I think you’re ready to be a farmer. When I go back from Pittsfield to Williamstown, we drive by a couple farms each way and there’s one where the house is beautiful, and it has amazing land, and it has horses right now. My mom always looks and says, that should be your farm! It would be cool.

Pilot Wild Oats delivery brings healthy, affordable food to campus By LYDIA DUAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

By SURABHI IYER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

then other people edit them. And it’s kind of cool because you’re sitting there and listening to other people investigate your story as if it were published. It’s interesting. I just had my first one last week. It was [about] a woman who is coming back to her hometown after having been away for a long time after her father dies, and investigating her relationship with her father and with her siblings. Basically, every single one of my stories involves chickens in some capacity, so she was a farmer.

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” “You are what you eat.” And of course, the classic, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” We’ve all heard these ageold sayings about healthy eating, but when it comes down to it, sometimes Lay’s are the only carbohydrates I get for the day. And I know I’m not the only one. Though the image of a college student eating Doritos for breakfast is a classic trope, it comes with larger implications. Last summer, Landon Marchant ’20 and Eleanor Lustig ’18 determined that food insecurity was an unspoken concern for a fair number of Williams students. Students who were responsible for their own meals, be it because they were on reduced meal plans or living in co-ops, struggled with spending time on cooking for themselves, despite the health benefits that came from doing so. From students eating an insufficient number of meals each day to being unable to prepare meals that had proper nutritional value, Marchant saw an aspect of the College community that needed improvement. As Marchant put it, “There was a need. So I said, let’s fix it.” Thus, in a joint effort with Director of the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives Amy Johns, Marchant and Lustig tested out various avenues for supplying students with healthier alternatives. The management at Wild Oats Market was ready to answer the call. After weeks of sorting out logistics and running test trials, they eventually developed a delivery service that brought fresh food items from Wild Oats to campus. Students could order groceries from a Google Form and

then pick up their shipments every Thursday at the Class of 1966 Environmental Center. As the project picked up speed, other students hopped on board. Jillian Jenkin ’19, a Zilkha intern, joined Marchant in managing and troubleshooting weekly orders. Soon, the delivery service became a product of substantial campus-wide collaboration. In partnering with Wild Oats, Marchant created a list of “dry goods and staples” that could be sold to College students via the delivery service. Dry goods, as the name would suggest, are food items like granola and cereal that can be preserved with very little effort, perfect for the everyday college student’s needs. Staples are the classics – rice or bread, eggs or milk, permanent fixtures in any kitchen. The single criterion? The foods on the list had to be healthy. “The unhealthiest things on there were probably the protein bars,” Marchant said, laughing. Because the delivery program gained significant traction over the summer, it could expand its menu options to even include skyr. From butter squash to tofu, the grocery list was comprehensive in variety while also being basic enough for any college student trying out recipes from WikiHow. The initiative was also created with affordability in mind. Marchant stressed that “the prices are comparable to those of Stop & Shop.” And indeed, most of the menu items matched standard food retail prices. Bananas that would be sold at 99 cents a pound at any typical grocery store were also sold at 99 cents through this service. The largest difference in sales price that I found as Marchant took me through the list was only a dollar. After pinning down a set pricing list, the group worked with Wild Oats to establish an efficient payment process. The result: Wild Oats

would keep an open line of credit for Williams students. Once the orders were picked up, students just needed to pay in cash. “We’re working on Venmo; it’s a process,” Marchant said. The pay-atpickup system worked out well over the summer. Above all else, the initiative was designed to be healthy, for both the students and the environment. “Collaborating with Zilkha made sense, because we wanted to be as sustainable as possible,” Marchant said. As the hub of all eco-friendly activities at the College, Zilkha was already involved in multiple ongoing efforts to work within the local community. Providing students with healthy options gave them a baseline from which they could learn to cook and prepare food that would be both tasteful and nutritional. Beyond teaching students how to cook for themselves, the delivery program also provided benefits in budgeting and money management. Students also had to supply their own bags. “There’s a middle ground between instant ramen and plated meal boxes. And that middle ground is food delivery with standard, healthy options,” Marchant said. At the heart of it, the project is about increasing accessibility. Where is the delivery service right now? Temporarily put on hold, as those in charge of the project are looking for someone to whom they can hand over the reins. They are looking for one or two students to supervise the operation, facilitate transactions and order pickup. Marchant is planning on meeting with Wild Oats representatives soon to see how the project can develop. “We would love to continue this into the school year,” Marchant said. “If people are interested, then we would be more than willing to keep going.”

October 25, 2017

The Williams Record

FEATURES 7

Economics professor investigates conflicts of interest in medicine By JEONGYOON HAN STAFF WRITER In May 2017, Matthew Chao, assistant professor of economics, published (along with 10 others) an investigation into the association between pharmaceutical policies in teaching hospitals and physician prescribing. This study, titled “Association Between Academic Medical Center Pharmaceutical Detailing Policies and Physician Prescribing,” gives insight into the relationships between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “We were looking at how doctors are or are not potentially influenced by the marketing activities that pharmaceutical companies use in their interactions with doctors,” Chao said. The authors concluded that there are associations between pharmaceutical representatives’ interactions with physicians and physician prescribing. By looking at data of prescriptions made by academic medical centers that had policies against interactions with certain companies from 2006 to 2012, Chao and the other authors discovered that, in the medical centers with restricted interactions between physicians and a specific pharmaceutical company, marketed drugs prescribed by that company dropped by as much as 1 percent. The relationship between drug companies and medical professionals has been one of increasing interest within the medical field. Pharmaceutical representatives, or “pharma reps,” are hired to frequently “detail” health offices, hospitals and medical centers. This marketing strategy entails distributing new information on drugs or clinical trials, visiting offices and giving free meals, pens,

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMS MAGAZINE

Matthew Chao recently published an article investigating pharmaceutical representatives’ impact on physicians in a medical journal. notebooks and handouts. These handouts present information on new drugs or clinical trials that the company has been working on to medical professionals. The pharma rep business was at its peak in the early 2000s with around 100,000 hired reps, compared to a total of 800,000 to 900,000 doctors and medical professionals in the United States. According to the New York Times, in 2008, pharmaceutical companies spent $16 billion giving

drug samples to doctors and $6 billion in detailing. Though the industry for detailing and drug sampling has been on the decline, this has not quelled concerns that, through such interactions, drug companies influence what drugs physicians choose to prescribe for their patients. For this reason, Chao became fascinated with this study as a new member of a research team at Harvard Business School in 2008, which he attended shortly

after graduating from Dartmouth with degrees in psychology and economics in 2006. The team was conducting research investigating conflicts of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and physicians. Chao said that, though the pharmaceutical industry’s impact in physician prescribing may seem to be a purely medical topic at hand, in actuality, it can also be studied through the lenses of economics and psychology.

“All of these are standard economics questions. These are standard decision-making contexts that we, as economists, study,” Chao said. “This [project] is a great application of a lot of the things we’re trying to study about decision-making and the impact that these different types of incentives can make on how we make decisions.” The study was deliberately submitted into a medical journal instead of an economics journal by the au-

thors so that doctors would have a greater awareness of the potential impacts that their interactions with pharma reps may have on physician prescribing. In many ways, Chao’s research regarding the pharmaceutical industry speaks to his fascination with both economics and psychology. While both of these areas of study have different methods for research and use of data, they both attempt to answer the same questions – and Chao’s recent work exemplifies this intersection between economics and philosophy. “We’re trying to understand how people make decisions, and how those decisions aggregate into market behavior and market outcomes,” Chao said. “In this case, doctors are influenced by all of these incentives and, in aggregate, how does that impact the total drugs prescribed? How does that shift what’s actually happening in the market? Psychologists will focus deeply on that individual question … but we are really thinking about the same things in terms of finding out what makes people tick.” A lifelong appeal to psychology and economics shaped much of Chao’s academic career, including his time at the College, where he has been since 2015. For the time being, he will continue to both teach as an associate professor at the College and conduct research. When he’s not teaching one of his three economics courses, Chao plans to continue conducting research on the impact that health legislation in Massachusetts has had on interactions between pharmaceutical companies and physicians. “Teaching goes hand-inhand with trying to become an expert in some aspect of social science,” Chao said. “If you want to do research, you have to teach.”

By JOE LAHMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER If you’re like me, you spend Wednesday through Monday waiting for Taco Tuesday (by far the best day of the week) at Whitman's. The College encourages students to think beyond its campus and become citizens of not just the College, but the world around it; to let their imaginations roam without restrictions or obstacles. In true Williams fashion, I (and surely many others) have done just that, journeying to Tony’s Sombrero to experience the world beyond Taco Tuesday. Disclaimer: I will eat practically anything with little or no hesitation, but the only food I cannot handle is avocado (yes, even in guacamole form). I figured it would be unfair to review a Mexican restaurant without trying its guacamole, so I brought along my friend, Justin Gross ’21, and his self-professed “high standards of guac.” That night, my sidekick and my appetite accompanied me to Tony’s. We ordered the carnitas burrito, the chicken tacos and the tostadas with a side of guacamole. The prices were maybe a little steep, but they were far from absurd and the portions appeared sizable.

I started with the burrito, which was stuffed with delicious slow-cooked pork and all the staples of a burrito: rice, beans and cilantro. It was served cut in half, with one half elegantly leaning on the other. The restaurant almost achieved the impressive feat of making a burrito look fancy. The taste, for the most part, matched the presentation. The ingredients themselves were sort of segregated, but when they mixed, the flavor combinations were exquisite. I was especially pleased when I got bites of cilantro and lime with the pork, bringing some freshness to the meal. The burrito was very oily, which I like, but I realize others might not, and the cheese could have been a little more spread out. Other than that, there’s little to complain about. As a final note, despite being rather thin the tortillas are remarkably sturdy. This time, for once, everything stayed inside the tortilla. The chicken tacos were just as scrumptious. Like the burrito, the cilantro and lime combination was fantastic, only this time it was a much more prominent flavor, giving the whole taco a delightful tanginess that was only augmented by the addition of onions and green salsa. My friend and I agreed that the taco

could have used a bit of spice, which unfortunately the green salsa failed to provide. The chicken itself was tender and juicy. The chicken wasn’t particularly flavorful, but with everything esle in the taco it didn’t need to be. After the high of the tacos, the tostadas came as a bit of a let-down. On paper it actually seemed like it would be my favorite of the three, with the chicken tinga among the ingredients to pique my interest. Disappointingly, the tostadas tasted overwhelmingly of beans. I’m all for beans usually, but in this case I might as well have eaten a bean sandwich. As far as the guacamole and the side sauces go, Tony’s fared neither especially well nor too badly. I observed that the guacamole didn’t have any tomatoes and was more liquid that usual, with guac-loving Gross confirming that it was indeed subpar. It was fruity and creamy (“tropical”, as he described it), but overall it didn’t live up to expectations. All in all, I would definitely recommend heading over to Tony’s Sombrero if you’re in the mood for some good-to-verygood Mexican food and Taco Tuesday is still six days away. It won’t blow your mind, but you’ll definitely enjoy it.

Photo: Casey Kelbaugh

Tony’s Sombrero offers satisfying offcampus alternative to Taco Tuesday

MA and PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture Students at Bard Graduate Center in New York City study the cultural history of the material world from the arts of antiquity to the twenty-first century. Learn more at one of our fall open houses.

Address 38 West 86th Street, NYC

JUNE HAN/PHOTO EDITOR

Tony's Sombrero serves as a Spring Street go-to spot for Mexican food lovers in the College community.

Open Houses October 29, 11 am November 6, 6 pm

For more information admissions@bgc.bard.edu bgc.bard.edu/admissions

8 ARTS

The Williams Record

October 25, 2017

‘Homebrew’ brews a grand applause at concert By HANNAH TAGER STAFF WRITER Opening for Michael Christmas in Upper Greylock on Friday night, student band Homebrew closed its set with a funky rendition of “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkeley. Mano Sundaresan ’19 took liberty on the keys with Andrew Barry ’18 singing and soloing on the guitar, complemented by the voices of fans singing along in the audience. Homebrew is mostly a cover band, but it seems inadequate to call their works “covers”; rather, they produce “live samples,” as drummer Josh Greenzeig ’20 calls them, live renditions dictated by the different musical voices of the groups’ members. Coming from backgrounds in jazz, hip-hop, rap, rock, funk and classical music, the group’s members mesh to produce their unique live samples. “We all have different sounds we’re going for, and then it just creates this kinky fusion,” bassist Rachel Porter ’20 said. The band’s origins stem from Trevin Corsiglia ’18 and Jack Ferguson ’18 rapping and playing the guitar together. It was only later on that the group casually formed in the fall of 2016. Ruby Froom ’17 joined on vocals along with Greenzeig, Froom and Will Doyle ’18 on the trombone and Jack Hood ’18 on the keys. Sundaresan joined that winter, while Morgan Harris ’19 and Barry started singing with the group this fall. Inter-

PHOTO COURTESY OF EDDY VARELA

Last Friday, Williams-based band, ‘Homebrew,’ performed the opening act for Michael Christmas in Upper Greylock. estingly, Homebrew’s name derivation is not what one might expect – it came from Froom’s “Data Structures and Advanced Programming” computer science class that covered Homebrew, a downloadable package in the programming software Python. While only 10 or so members of Homebrew perform at a time, the group is not exclusive to those mentioned and is perhaps better defined as the 20-some odd students and Williamstown locals who comprise the “Homebrew” GroupMe. Most recently,

Adrian Oxley ’20 joined to rap for one song in a quickly orchestrated feature. The loose nature of the group’s membership is conducive to its dynamic sound. No set score defines Homebrew’s performance or rehearsal, and its process is a mix of playing by ear and tossing in impromptu riffs. “I’d say it’s probably 100 percent improvisation, during rehearsals at least,” Ferguson said. “We learn most of our stuff by ear and don’t really worry if it isn’t the exact chords they’re playing in the song,”

Doyle said. “If it’s not exactly what the original sounds like or what the original is meant to be, well that’s not really what we’re going for.” The group caters to its members sounds and instruments, allowing for rich brass in originally horn-less songs and fast raps over classic soul tracks. “We’re basically just sampling and covering songs we like but completely changing the arrangement,” Greenzeig said. “We could be covering an old soul song and it could feature Trevin rapping over it instead of

anyone singing – it’s basically as if a DJ took the beat of that song and presented it to Trevin, but instead of a DJ we’re a live band.” On Friday night, Corsiglia rapped over “Touch the Sky” by Curtis Mayfield, as well as newer tracks like Mac Miller’s “Dang.” The group also performed an original song by Hood. For the band’s other gigs – at sports teams’ formals, performances at the Log or house parties – the group has covered the likes of James Brown, Vulfpeck, A Tribe Called Quest and

many others. Nevertheless, the band is still looking to add to its repertoire. Harris is scheming for the group to add 1980s salsa and a tap dancing component as percussion. There is also talk of adding a harmonica player. The inevitable turnover of the group, while at times a melancholic prospect for its members, allows for a unique flexibility in the band as parts and voices come and go. Ferguson and Greenzeig have even toyed with the idea of Homebrew becoming an ongoing party band on campus, continuing after they have graduated. They hope to maintain the group’s inclusive and casual nature, without too many regulations or any tryouts. “At the end of the day, we’re just a bunch of people screwing around,” Barry said. Their “screwing around” has nevertheless gained traction, and Homebrew has many gigs on its horizon. On Nov. 3 the band will close an art exhibition curated by Alex Jen ’19 at the Williamstown Town Hall from 7 to 9 p.m. In addition to more concerts and parties, the band is also discussing an outdoor concert in the spring and collaborations with other bands on campus. Its events will no doubt bring fans as the genre-less, hodgepodge of musical talents radiates a contagious and honest pleasure. “We play songs we really like and other people happen to like them, sometimes,” Ferguson said.

Clifford Owens exposes human potential, vulnerability By CARLOS-CABRERALOMELI CONTRIBUTING WRITER

PHOTO COURTESY OF IMDB

Ben Stiller portrays a father struggling with his insecurities while touring colleges with his son.

In ‘Brad’s Status,’ Images finds a gem By MITCHELL MORRIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER At first glance, Brad’s Status probably isn’t going to sound like the movie for you. It is a small, compact story about a suburban dad struggling with his feelings of jealousy toward his old college pals. There is no crime, sex or explosions. It does not attempt to tackle the fundamental issues of our time, nor does it make a profound statement about the resiliency of the human spirit. But give it a chance, as I did at Images Cinema last week. While Brad’s Status may be a small story, it carries a big message, and, supported by a stellar cast and spot-on scoring, it delivers that message in spades. The titular “Brad” is Brad Sloan, played by a graying Ben Stiller. He is the middleaged husband to a lovely and supportive wife in Melanie (Jenna Fischer of The Office fame), father to an intelligent teenage son in Troy (Austin Abrams) and founder of a small, charitable non-profit. By all indications, Brad has a great life. He has a happy marriage and a gifted son. He lives in a nice house in a charming Sacramento suburb and, while he might not be rich, he makes more than enough to get by. And yet, Brad couldn’t be any less content. As nice as his life is, he cannot stop comparing himself to his friends from his college days at Tufts, who have all gone on to amass more wealth, more fame and, above all, more status than he has.

First, there’s Nick (played by Director Mike White), the Hollywood director whose house is the muse of architecture magazines. Next, there’s Jason (Luke Wilson), the hedge-fund millionaire with a gaggle of smiling, sweater-decked blonde children and a private jet. Then there’s Billy (Jemaine Clement), the tech mogul who revels in his polyamorous retirement on a Maui beach. And finally, there’s Craig (Michael Sheen), a prominent political pundit, bestselling author, television celebrity and Harvard lecturer. In comparison to his highprofile friends from college, Brad feels small and insignificant, a feeling made worse by rumors, Instagram posts and a heavy dose of self-doubt. This inferiority complex has been quietly building just below the surface of his uppermiddle class existence for some time, but when Brad and his son fly out east to tour colleges and the two return to Brad’s old stomping grounds of Boston, his repressed jealousy comes to the fore. In spiraling voice-over narrations that become more and more frequent, the audience is invited on a terrifying trip into Brad’s psyche as he battles his feelings of inadequacy. In this role, Stiller is perfectly at home. From Meet the Parents and Along Came Polly to his purely comedic roles in Dodgeball and Anchorman, Stiller has made a career out of playing men with inferiority complexes. In Brad’s Status, Stiller could not be more convincing. While Brad harps on the “what ifs” and “if on-

lys” of his life, Mark Mothersbaugh’s scoring provides the real commentary. Sharp and discordant, Mothersbaugh’s score accompanies Brad’s “woe is me” soliloquies; its over-the-top, melodramatic tone is a subtle, even-handed acknowledgement of the fact that Brad’s problems are not as big as he thinks they are. This perspective gains a corporeal advocate in Ananya (Shazi Raja), the confident, intelligent and idealistic friend of Troy’s who is a current student at Harvard. In an especially cringe-worthy scene, the middle-aged Brad tracks down Ananya at a bar and unloads everything he has been agonizing over during this trip, from his personal to his financial failings. Ananya listens politely, but is not afraid to call Brad out for his privilege and lack of perspective. Brad is apologetic but unchanged by this encounter, because while Ananya certainly has a point, so does Brad. The problem of comparing oneself to others is human, as are the socioeconomic inequalities that Brad bemoans. Simply pointing out others who are doing worse will not solve his problem, just as no child who was ever told “there are starving kids in Africa” suddenly began to appreciate every meal for what it was truly worth. The answer to Brad’s dilemma is never stated; Brad’s Status leaves the question open. In so doing, it provoked my own reflection on what is truly important in my life – and, in achieving this, Brad’s Status is a success.

When a member of the audience stood up to ask Clifford Owens what performance art is, Owens crossed his arms, smiled and said very smoothly, “It’s total bull----.” The audience broke down laughing but Owens’ visage was completely serious. He took a pause after the audience stopped laughing and said one more time, “Ask me anything; I have nothing to hide.” What may have started as an artist Q&A session was actually an exposition of the revealing power of performance art. Owens’ colorful judgment of performance art was quite catching, as Owens is a performance artist – and an acclaimed one as well. Born in Baltimore but based in New York City, Owens has shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Walker Art Center, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and various other locations throughout the United States and Europe. At the moment, he is traveling across the country speaking to university and museum audiences on the development of his work, his “amorously complicated relationship” – as he calls it – between performance art, photography and himself and his desire to reintroduce the idea of performance art with his audience, within the contexts of race, gender, class and family. After a brief introduction by Lisa Dorin, the interim director of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), Owens introduced Your Head is Attached to Your Body as a multi-part piece that started

with a presentation by Owens of his work. Part biography, part anthology, part crash course on performance art, Owens opened up on his creative process and the roadblocks he hit when attempting to thrive in the art world. He described his surprise at seeing an African-American artist in his performance art history book in college. Realizing that the history of African-American performance art has never been formally anthologized nor documented in other formats, Owens made the focus of his first solo exhibit at MoMa to bring all the talents of contemporary African-American performance artists together. The final product became Anthology, where he asked several other African-American performance artists to create “scores” for him to perform at MoMA and to document as a piece of art. “Scores” are guidelines, or instructions that direct a performance piece. The result was a series ranging from him having to lie down naked within MoMA for 24 hours, to having to answer the question: “Be African-American. Be as AfricanAmerican as you can be.” Introducing the audience to the idea of scores, he asked for volunteers that were interested in creating performance art of their own. Owens prompted these two volunteers to do something “they would regret, but not apologize for” to each other and themselves. One volunteer pulled down his pants to the audience, and the second picked the nose of the other. By then, it became clear that performance art is not like other genres that can fit comfortably within a frame or

symphony hall. Owens challenged the audience not by provoking them with an image or sound, but with an act that can truly only be experienced in its entirety within that moment. The name of the piece, Your Head is Attached to Your Body, promises to remind us that there is something physical to art, something that exists beyond the realms of the senses and thoughts sourcing from one’s head. The last part of the piece even brought the bodies of each audience member into play. Owens walked around through the entire auditorium, not limited by the podium or the audience seats facing it. He repeated the same statement over and over: “Ask me anything; I have nothing to hide.” Our bodies had to be constantly turning to be able to keep him within our gaze. As the questions from the audience became more and more probing and cutting, the audience shared in the discomfort apparent in the changing movements and tone of Owens. Owens performed for the audience, but so did the audience for him, without knowing it. By questioning him, learning about his works and responding to everything he did, the performance returned back to the profound love Owens has for art. Art can reveal what cannot be expressed through color or pitch. Performance art, and Owens does this successfully, can capture a moment in time, and include all the movement, thoughts and details – both physical and subliminal – allowing, yes, performance art to be “bull----” for some, but paradise to others.

PHOTO COURTESY OF WCMA

Last Saturday, artist and curator, Clifford Owens, provided a wonderful performance at WCMA.

9 ARTS

The Williams Record

October 25, 2017

‘A People’s History of Performance Art’ fails to perform By LI YU ARTS EDITOR Last Thursday, the People’s History of Performance Art, a live series made in collaboration between the College’s theater department and the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) debuted in the museum’s Rotunda. Featuring works of Yves Klein, Carolee Schneemann, Chris Burden, Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Tehching Hsieh and Marina Abramovic, the series, written and directed by David Levine, depicted scenes from their famous performance pieces with student actors arranging themselves on stage. This was done through the conceit of the 19th century tableau vivant (living pictures) while images were projected onto the ceiling of the gallery. Featuring Samori Etienne ’21, Dew Panalee Maskati ’20, John Murphy ’21, Thomas Robertshaw ’19, Natalie Wilkinson ’19, Yiwen Xu ’21 as themselves and New Yorkbased actress Kate Hampton as the doyenne, A People’s History of Performance Art multitasks: It is a play on performance, a commentary on the Western artistic canon and its documentation. In the playbill, Associate Professor of Theatre Amy Holzapfel is quoted as asking, “The art world adores performance, but it hates theatre. Why? And when is performance ever not theatrical? Instead of fetishizing

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRAD WAKOFF

'A People's History of Performance Art' shows iconic photographs of performance art through artworks as tableaux vivants. the remnants of past performances as artworks, we wanted to showcase artworks as actors in their own right, prompting performance’s futurity rather than memorializing its disappearance.” Aggressively theatrical it is; the tableau vivant began with a leap – that is, Yves Klein’s A Leap into the Void, a photomontage depicting Klein apparently jumping off of a building. Arranged by set designer Marsha Ginsberg, the performance was set underneath the rotunda of WCMA, a rectangular stage arranged in the center of the space fac-

ing the audience, which was arranged all on one side of it. As Hampton announced the work, the stage curtain was drawn to reveal John Murphy, dressed as Klein, suspended in the air by a harness in front of a black and white backdrop. The play thus resurrected Klein’s photomontage into a “living picture,” and physically brought the piece into conversation with the present, as Hampton’s character walked up and entered into the space of the stage, pointing out and gushing over the formal components of the tableau.

Other tableau vivants included Robert Morris’ Site, in which Morris, played by Robertshaw, pulls away a wooden board to reveal Carolee Schneemann, played by Wilkinson, reclining expressionless in the pose of Olympia while garbed in a naked bodysuit with breasts and public hair sewn onto the costume, and Liu as Yoko Ono. An “audience member” played by Maskati cut away her shirt. Murphy, as John Burden performing Shoot, a 1971 piece in which Burden actually shot himself in front of an audience that photo documents avoided capturing, and required treat-

ment at a hospital. In the tableau, Murphy’s character pretends to get shot, drawing shocked reactions from the rest of the characters, before confessing that it was just a prank staged with a balloon and some fake blood. The last tableau vivant was of Marina Abramovic, whose name elicited groans from the rest of the cast whenever uttered by Hampton, and her infamous “The Artist is Present.” Abramovic, played by a melancholic Robertshaw, drew genuine laughter from the audience as she slowly and deliberately entered the stage.

Moments of humor like this were frequent and hard to watch. The People’s History of Performance Art is almost exhausting given how many layers of performativity there are to dissect. The event itself felt integrated into the performance, with live cello music, champagne and ornamented setlists contributing to an undeniably camp atmosphere. The actors, with the exception of Hampton for whom it could be argued was playing a character, performed their roles as themselves, blurring the distinction between the space of the audience and performer. Occasionally, however, it became difficult to differentiate between what was intentionally contrived and what was wanting in the delivery of the performance itself. Hampton’s Doyenne was ridiculous and over the top, but her snobbery wanted just a bit more affectation to make it truly and enjoyably camp. The same could be said of the other performers. The People’s History of Performance Art concluded with a prompt from Hampton for the viewers to get in line to sit across from Abramovic, integrating the audience into the tableau for the final scene, but the moment felt wholly unsatisfying. In the end, A People’s History of Performance Art didn’t quite live up to its conceptual scope, proving that it takes more than a bit of fake blood to make a convincing execution.

Film chronicles controversial relationship between Queen and clerk By ALEX LOVAAS CONTRIBUTING WRITER Victoria and Abdul, directed by Stephen Frears, presents a cheeky and endearing melodrama humanizing the royal Queen Victoria (Judi Dench), who discovers and appreciates diversity and similarities across cultures and status through Abdul (Ali Fazal), her clerk. With loads of comic relief, it is a “feel-good” film. The great concern, though, is that many real and important topics may be hindered or overshadowed by the comedy and mushy-gushy friendship. These topics include imperialism, racism, courtier culture and dominance of a monarch. Neither Frears nor Dench is a rookie to monarchical settings. Dench, in particular, shows prowess in her specialized character role displaying a dreary, bitter Queen, completely underwhelmed by and tired of the redundant daily duties that accompany being Queen of England. Every day, Victoria is hauled out of bed, dressed by her bedchamber maids and seated at the head of a table in front of the world’s most established men and

women, only to eat herself to sleep at the table. There is an air of sympathy for Victoria, more so than for the oppressed Abdul and Mohammad, who are presenters of the ceremonial coin at the Golden Jubilee. Abdul was chosen to present the coin from India simply for his height, Mohammad by accident. Dressed in costumes (it would be wrong to call them uniforms) unrelated to Indian custom, treated as servants of the lowest order and displayed as a foreign spectacle, Abdul and Mohammed present the ceremonial coin to an exceedingly unamused Victoria. The enchantment between Victoria and Abdul begins with a brief sparkling moment of eye contact – a cheesy display of her lack of human connection. Immediately, Victoria’s glistening endearment toward Abdul begins. He becomes her Munshi, or spiritual teacher, to the absolute disgust of the courtiers. Victoria comically continues to defy the dismay of the courtiers – Abdul becomes a member of the house. It’s all very

cheeky and it’s a little toogood-to-be-true, which is addressed in the clever forewarning at the beginning of the film: “based on true events ... mostly.” It’s not all fairy-dust, though. Mohammad, who becomes forgotten by the Queen, Abdul and the audience, is trapped in his secluded chamber, homesick and physically ill. He only reappears on his deathbed to demonstrate the complete lack of care towards him by the members of the house. This is the film’s only real indication of England’s maltreatment of India. It is an indication that the film has its heart in the right place, but overall was far too simplistic for the gravity the tragedy that imperial England’s control of India truly was. If you’re looking for a feelgood movie with some comic relief – this is certainly the film for you. However, if you’re looking for real-time insight into the royal house and the effects of imperialism, this might not be it. After all, it’s a blockbuster Hollywood production, not a BBC documentary.

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Williams Dance Department Paramodernities #2 & #3 Choreography by Netta Yerushalmy with Carol Ockman OCT 27 - 8 PM MAINSTAGE $3 Williams Theatre Department The Wolves

Williams Chamber Players Fri Oct 27 - 8 PM Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall Free The Zambezi Marimba Band Family Days Concert Sat Oct 28 - 8 PM PM Chapin Hall Free

Written by Sarah DeLappe Directed by, Artist-in-Residence Shayok Misha Chowdhury

Art + Science Thursday, Oct 26, 6:30 pm Rebecca Gorelov ’18 gives a roving tour of the galleries.

Reads & Records Thursday, Oct 26, 6:30 pm Close Look The Presence of Absence: Medieval Art and Artifacts Tuesday, Oct 31, 4 pm Contemplate the weird, the eerie, and all the ways objects haunt us with Kevin Murphy, Senior Curator of American Art.

NOV 9-11, 16-18 7:30 PM CENTERSTAGE $3

413.597.2425 62center.williams.edu PHOTO COURTESY OF TIME MAGAZINE

In 'Victoria and Abdul,' Abdul displays the qualities of a genuine friendship to Queen Victoria.

413.597.3146 music.williams.edu

413.597.2429 wcma.williams.edu

10 SPORTS

The Williams Record

October 25, 2017

Ephs earn NESCAC tournament berth in final week of regular season

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Eric Hirsch ’19 scored his first goal of the season in the men’s 2-1 victory over Hamilton on Oct. 18. By JOELLE TROIANO STAFF WRITER Men’s soccer (8–3–4, 3–3– 4 in the NESCAC) closed out its regular season with three games last week, defeating Hamilton before falling to No. 4 Tufts and Middlebury. Yesterday afternoon, the men lost an away game 1-0 to Middlebury. Panthers forward Drew Goulart notched the gamewinner at 26:18.

Although the Ephs had several scoring chances in the second half, they could not equalize. Forward Mark Sisco-Tolomeo ’18 nearly headed a corner into the net, and Chris Fleischer ’20 launched a volley from distance that sailed over the crossbar. The Ephs had a 7-6 shot advantage, and each team recorded four shots on goal. Saturday’s contest versus the Jumbos marked the final regular season home game for the

Ephs, and the team used Senior Day to honor its seven graduating seniors: co-captain defender Tobias Muellers ’18, co-captain midfielder Tom Young ’18, goalkeeper Bobby Schneiderman ’18, defender Milan Jones ’18, forward Malcolm Singleton ’18, Sisco-Tolomeo and midfielder David Madding ’18. “On Saturday we highlighted the seniors and their careers here,” head coach Erin Sullivan ’96 said. “We hope

there’s a lot of soccer ahead for this group.” After the pregame ceremony, both the Ephs and the Jumbos came out with intensity. The ball moved rapidly back and forth across the field as one team’s offense would surge ahead, only to be shut down by the other’s defense. Each side had scoring attempts, but none came to fruition until the halfway mark of the first period. With players crowded in front of the Williams goal, Tufts midfielder Zach Lane broke away from the pack and found the net to put the Jumbos up 1-0. The Ephs had a chance to respond to the opening goal when Nick Ranieri ’21 had a penalty kick. Jumbo goalkeeper Bruce Johnson saved Ranieri’s shot but collided with a teammate, sending the ball out of bounds for a corner. Fleischer sent the ball in, and Demian Gass ’20 put a shot on goal. Johnson, however, made another save. In the second half, both teams threatened again, but neither found the net. Having allowed only one goal in its previous 13 games, the Tufts defense was characteristically strong, butWilliams was able to record six second-half shots. Although the Ephs fell behind early in the game, they created chances for an equalizer. Sullivan applauded the

team’s effort. “Part of our aim is to make sure we win the race to one,” Sullivan said. “On Saturday we didn’t win the race to one, so we had to strike back. What I liked is that we created opportunities and that we kept coming back again and again. “[The players] really played their hearts out. It was a spirited second half, and I was proud of the performance of the seniors.” The Ephs became just the second team this season to outshoot the Jumbos, finishing with a 9-6 edge. Schneiderman made three saves, while Johnson had four. The Ephs saw their nine-game unbeaten streak come to an end, suffering just their second loss of the season in 14 games. On Oct. 18, the men topped Hamilton 2-1 on Cole Field in a crucial game for the conference standings. Though the Ephs had several early opportunities, the Continental defense kept the home team off the scoreboard for the first 30 minutes. In the 34th minute, the game took a turn. The ball broke for Sisco-Tolomeo on a counterattack, and he split defenders on a run into the penalty area. Sisco-Tolomeo slotted a shot into the left side of the net to put Williams up 1-0. Two minutes later, the ball took a bad bounce in Hamilton territory and fell to Eric Hirsch ’19. Hirsch’s shot went in off

the post, and the Ephs doubled their advantage. Hamilton had a free kick just before halftime, but the score remained 2-0 at the break. The Continentals halved the deficit in the 59th minute. Hamilton sophomore Aidan Wood outran his defender on the left wing, and Bobby Chapman redirected his pass into the net. Six minutes later, Wood had a chance to equalize when he got past the Eph back line. Schneiderman, however, made a key one-on-one save. Despite the strong play of a re-energized Hamilton team, the men held on to prevail 2-1. “We were a little petulant in the second half,” Sullivan said. “There were a lot of fouls that cost us some control, but learning how to close out games is part of growing as a team.” Given the proximity of the two teams in the conference standings, the win was crucial for postseason seeding. “At this point in the year, results are critical,” Sullivan said. “We were almost head-to-head with Hamilton for points, so [that game] was really important.” Having qualified for the NESCAC tournament, the men will wait for the results of today’s games to determine their seeding and first-round opponent. The match will start at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Football comes up short against Tufts, suffers first loss in three games By KEVIN COAKLEY STAFF WRITER Football (4–2) fell 21-13 to Tufts on Saturday in a home game on Farley-Lamb Field. The men entered the game seeking a third consecutive win. Amherst, Middlebury, Wesleyan and Williams were in a four-way tie for second place in the conference standings, each with a record of 4–1. Tufts was in sixth at 3–2. Tufts mounted a strong drive on its second offensive possession of the game. Starting a play on the 50-yard line, quarterback Ryan McDonald passed to Winton Blount, who evaded defenders and nearly found a clear path to the end zone. However, a trailing Ben Anthony ’20 punched the ball out of Blount’s hands. Cornerback Amyhr Barber ’19 recovered the fumble in the end zone for a touchback. The offense could not capitalize on this reverse of fortune, however, as it was stopped just before making it to the red zone.

The game remained scoreless after the first quarter, and the second quarter proved to be a defensive standoff as well. With only four minutes left in the first half, Tufts was faced with 2nd and 18 at its own 41yard line. McDonald passed through the middle to Jack Dolan, who accelerated past every Eph defender on his way to the end zone. The Ephs quickly responded to bring the momentum back to their side. Frank Stola ’21 started the drive off with a kickoff return to the Williams 40-yard line. After a 5-yard rush by TJ Dozier ’21, quarterback Bobby Maimaron ’21 aired it out to Stola, giving his receiver a chance to make a play. Although the ball was underthrown due to the wind, Stola made the adjustment and caught the ball for a 42-yard gain. This set up a completion to Kyle Horihan ’20, who got past the defense and ran it in for the Ephs’ first touchdown. Soon after, the Jumbos regained the lead. McDonald

threw a flurry of passes, and in only about a minute, the Jumbos moved 50 yards forward. Running back Mike Pedrini then ran two yards and scored a touchdown untouched. On the point after, an errant snap led to a failed conversion, keeping the score at 13-7. The Ephs attempted a last-minute scoring drive, propelled by a fake-kneel turned into a 27-yard Dozier rush. However, they could not finish the drive in time. Tufts nearly made it a twopossession game, but the defense came up with a big stop to keep the score 13-7. The Tufts drive was set up by a Jumbos sack on the Williams 1-yard line, forcing a difficult punt for Adam Regensburg ’18. As a result, the Jumbos started their possession only 30 yards away from the end zone. They worked their way up to the 1-yard line on third down. However, the men stopped Tufts’ progress on two plays in a row, and the Ephs took over on downs. This ended up still going in Tufts’ favor. On second down,

Maimaron threw an incomplete pass to Stola. A holding penalty in the end zone gave Tufts a safety, which made the score 15-7 and gave the ball back to the Jumbos. Despite receiving excellent field position, the Jumbos punted the ball back to the Ephs after a three-and-out. Shortly thereafter, hoewver, Tufts broke the deadlock. Starting on their own 43-yard line, the Jumbos needed only three plays to record another touchdown. On the scoring play, running back Jay Tyler cut outside and through a heavily-blocked Williams secondary. A missed extra point brought the score to 21-7. The Ephs had a chance to make the contest a one-possession game again, and Maimaron completed three straight passes for 32 combined yards to get his team to Tufts’ 13-yard line. On the next play, Maimaron threw a pass through the middle to tight end Justin Burke ’21; however, a hard hit knocked the ball out of his hands and into the waiting

arms of Tufts linebacker Greg Holt for an interception. After a few quick drives from both teams, the Jumbos had the ball back in Eph territory. On a pass from McDonald to his slot receiver, however, Horihan jumped the route and intercepted the ball. On the next drive, Maimaron and his receivers largely led the way downfield but struggled to find the end zone. Once on the 5-yard line, it took six plays, including a Tufts holding penalty, for the team to score on a 1-yard run by Dozier. Kicker Min Kyu Park ’21 missed the extra point, making the score 21-13 with about six minutes remaining. In the final minutes, the Eph defense could not stop the Jumbos, who methodically worked their way forward, milking the clock as they gained first downs. Tufts kept possession until the end of the game, thwarting Williams’ comeback attempt. Tufts had 484 total yards, led by McDonald’s 336 yards passing, 55 yards rushing and one

touchdown. The men, meanwhile, had 299 total yards, with Maimaron accounting for 229 total yards – 208 passing and 21 rushing – along with one throwing touchdown. McDonald was the Jumbos’ leading rusher, while Dozier led the Ephs with 66 yards and one score. On the receiving end, Dolan had five catches for 119 yards and one score while Stola had six receptions for 73 yards. Despite the loss, Horihan’s play was a bright spot for the Ephs. He was the team’s leading tackler on defense with 11 stops, including two tackles for losses and an interception, in addition to his touchdown on offense. The Tufts defense, meanwhile, had six tackles for losses and a sack collectively. “Tufts is a really good football team,” head coach Mark Raymond said. “Our guys played tough, and we battled, but we just didn’t make enough plays at the end of the day.” On Saturday, the men will host Hamilton on Farley-Lamb Field at 1:30 p.m.

CAPTAINS’ CORNER: BEN DECKER ’18 doing in college, but I decided to run track my sophomore year and had fun with it. I didn’t actually run cross country until I got here because I played soccer in the fall, but cross country is definitely my favorite season of the year now. How did your dad influence your decision to run?

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

By BROOKE HOROWITCH SPORTS EDITOR

Team: Men’s cross country Hometown: Yarmouth, Maine Residence: Fitch Major: Economics When and why did you start running competitively? I started running competitively my sophomore year of high school. My dad is a runner, and he had always run quite competitively in road races. I would go along with him, even when I was younger, but I sort of resisted getting involved with it at first. I played soccer year-round in high school and thought that that would be what I would end up

In a lot of ways. He never really pressured me to get involved, but he definitely showed me that running is a lifestyle sport, and it’s a great way to stay healthy and step away from the stresses in your life. It’s something that can be really fun and fulfilling. Why did you decide to attend the College? I was deciding between here and Amherst, and I went on recruiting visits to both places. I stayed overnight here from Sunday to Monday, which I thought was a strange time to stay, but [head coach Pete Farwell ’73] actually encourages the recruits to come then. I had a really good time here. People were really excited about Williams and about showing me around. People on the team were having fun and were excited about it. I told my parents as we were leaving that this was where I wanted to go.

ferent reasons and at different levels. The nice thing about running is that on most days, we’re just going out at a pace that the majority of people on the team can run at. It’s a really nice way to interact with lots of people who are different and who have cool perspectives but all love running as much as I do. What is it like running for Coach Farwell? Pete is amazing. He was just inducted into the USTFCCA Hall of Fame. That is a really big deal, and he’s been here for forever. The cross country team has been around since 1912, and we’ve had only three coaches. Pete has been here since 1979, and one of the things that I appreciate most about him is that he loves the sport, he loves the team and he just wants to make sure that it is a positive part of people’s experiences here. Given the amount of success he’s had, people might think that winning was his priority, but it’s not, which is amazing. We had won Little Threes for 29 years straight, and this year we lost, and Pete just brought us in afterward and said that it wasn’t about winning. He didn’t think we really lost, and we had put out our best effort. He has a really cool perspective, which I think people appreciate.

What are some of your favorite things about the cross country team?

What is your approach to training and racing?

I love that the team doesn’t make cuts. It’s a big team – I think there are 50 men on the team and 30 women. That definitely makes it so that you have a mix of people who run for a lot of dif-

I’ve gotten more and more excited about running and more willing to put in really good training. One of the things that has been really cool about being on the team is seeing the people

above me who have had success. Emulating them as I’ve been able to progress has been really cool. I’m at a point now where I’m training just as hard as they were, and, hopefully, I’ve put myself in a position to be as successful as them. For racing, I just show up confident and try to go have fun. That’s the most important thing for me – I like to make sure that I’m smiling when I’m on the start line. Cross country is a really cool team experience, and I really enjoy racing with teammates. You’re out there for 24 or 25 minutes for an 8k, and if you’re with teammates, it can be really fun. The team has captured three consecutive NESCAC Championships, and you won NESCAC Rookie of the Year and were Second Team All-NESCAC as a first-year and were named First Team All-NESCAC during your sophomore and junior seasons. What do these honors mean to you? Winning NESCACs as a team has been awesome. It’s also been special for me to finish well at that meet. The team focuses on the meets toward the end of the season, and we’re approaching championships now. It’s NESCACs, then Regionals, then Nationals, and one of the things that I like about that stretch of meets is that you can build a lot of good momentum through them. Doing well at NESCACs, both individually and as a team, has contributed to our ability to do well in the later meets. What is it like competing at Regionals and Nationals?

They’re interesting races but very different from one another. They’re both big races, but Regionals is all about qualifying for Nationals. It’s an interesting experience because you’re trying your best to make sure you qualify because your season is over if you don’t. But Nationals is the following week, so you don’t want to tire yourself out too much, and it’s sort of a balancing act at Regionals. Nationals is a blast. It is always in the Midwest, and we get to fly out, and many people on the team who are not competing often get in vans or carpool and drive out, which is awesome. That’s just a five-mile adrenaline rush. It’s really cool, and it’s different from any other race that we run all year because it’s the top 32 teams in the country, and there is just a gigantic pack of people who are all running within seconds of each other. There is definitely some space at the front and the back, but in the middle, seconds will separate 15 or 20 people. I know that you have had anemia and pneumonia this season. How have you managed that? It’s been difficult. Anemia is a really challenging thing to deal with as a runner. For me, it was puzzling toward the beginning because I wasn’t feeling as good as I thought I should have been when running at certain paces. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, so I went in, and they drew my blood, and it turned out that I have anemia. Getting rid of it, you really have to be on top of consuming a lot of iron, and it’s difficult to gauge how much it’s helping. I’ve been sick for the better part of the

last month, and I went in earlier this week, and it turns out that I have pneumonia, but I’m confident that I’ll turn the corner. Worse comes to worst, I don’t completely rebound, but the team is so big and so deep that they’ll be just fine. You have spent two summers volunteering for the Kenyan Scholar-Athlete Project. What has that experience been like? That has been an amazing experience. The program takes about a dozen of the top Kenyan high school graduates and prepares them for the SAT and walks them through the application process. In order to even apply for this program, the kids need to have performed in the top 1-percent of students, so we get about 120 applications, then we shortlist about 70 to interview, give them a mock SAT exam and have them run a 1500m time trial. Out of those 70 kids, we then pick about a dozen, and these kids are the cream of the crop. They wind up doing great on the SAT and going to great schools. I’ve been doing the program for the past two summers, and it’s been amazing. What is your favorite route to run near campus? I love Blair. If you go out on Route 43 for about two miles, you come to Blair Road. If you take a left, it’s a dirt road, and you go up and down a bunch of hills. At the very top, you take a turn, and the whole valley is in front of you, and it’s beautiful.

October 25, 2017

SPORTS 11

The Williams Record

Trainers revitalize College’s sports medicine department By NINA MCGOWAN STAFF WRITER The sports medicine team at the College faces the daunting task of caring for student-athletes across 32 varsity intercollegiate teams, five junior varsity teams, 24 club teams and an intramural program. Director of Sports Medicine Rodd Lanoue ensures the health and wellness of all student-athletes along with seven other athletic trainers: Lisa Wilk, Yamin Wilkinson, Jillanna Simon, Brian Dowling, Steve Edwards and Kelly Waller. The sports medicine team also includes several parttime interns, who are pursuing a future in athletic training. Lanoue grew up in North Adams and graduated from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He then earned his master’s degree in physical education at Western Michigan. After interning at the College in 1998 as an undergraduate, Lanoue returned to the Williams sports medicine program in 2006 in a part-time position. Lanoue became the director of sports medicine in 2012, when Mike Frawley stepped down from the position after 19 years with the Ephs.

“I feel so lucky to be in this position,” Lanoue said. “I’m super excited about it because of the support from the athletic department and the resources we have.” These resources include access to advanced technology, such as the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill and NormaTec Recovery, to help athletes recover. Lanoue also emphasized the importance of building relationships between athletes, trainers and coaches. “If you’re with a team for a long period of time, you build a relationship and trust with student-athletes and coaches,” he said. “That trust makes things run a lot smoother.” Spread across Weston Athletic Complex, Cole Field House and Chandler Gymnasium, each athletic trainer has a primary assignment to a varsity team. Lanoue works mostly with football, women’s basketball and softball. This way, each team on campus has a direct contact within sports medicine. As seasons overlap, especially between fall and winter sports, trainers juggle the task of caring for two teams at once. Despite these demands, sports medicine seamlessly manages this transitional period as teams compete in postseason play.

For Wilk, the primary trainer for field hockey, men’s basketball and baseball, that is one of her favorite parts of the job. “I love interacting with the athletes, getting involved with their season and watching them compete in postseason play,” she said. Wilk, a graduate of Northeastern and Indiana State, worked part-time for the College from 1992 to 1994 and returned in the fall of 1998. With a background in dance, Wilk incorporates stretching and muscle care in treating her athletes. “When I first came here, [field hockey head coach] Alix Barrale [’93] was one of my student-athletes when she was on the field hockey team,” Wilk said. “It’s funny because now I’m working with her athletes and team.” The athletic trainers’ commitments to their teams and players extends far beyond daily practice hours. They often travel to away games with teams and meet with athletes outside of practice times to offer treatment and physical therapy. Recognizing the level of commitment required of trainers, the NESCAC has a general agreement that each trainer will be assigned two travel seasons and one non-travel season. Lanoue has also witnessed changes in his profession and its

practice throughout his career. The Hunter Sports Medicine Internship used to allow undergraduates to gain experience in the field before attending graduate school. Athletic trainers must now have a master’s degree, however, and this new requirement has restructured the position into a full-time job. Lanoue discussed the evolution of his position. “There wasn’t such an emphasis on sports medicine 20 years ago,” he said. “The profession has come along, and the expectations for consistent and quality care have risen.” While concussion education and awareness have also drastically improved, concussions are persistently difficult to treat. Challenges related to increasing awareness for injuries, recovery and mental health in collegiate athletes remain. “We’re caring for not just athletes but rather for student-athletes,” Lanoue said. “Return to learn is our absolute priority, not return to play.” Lanoue also lauded the entire sports medicine team. “I am proud of the folks that we have [and] the services we’re able to provide,” he said. “We’re a group of individuals that are committed to excellence and to being lifelong learners.”

NINA MCGOWAN/STAFF WRITER

Lisa Wilk (left) and Kelly Waller, pointing at a photograph of Rodd Lanoue, are two of the trainers in the sports medicine department.

No. 8 field hockey finishes regular season tied for third Cross country teams By KIRSTIN MAPES and CAMERON BROWN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS No. 8 field hockey (11–4, 6–4 in the NESCAC) had its six-game winning streak snapped last week, falling to No. 6 Tufts and No. 2 Middlebury in its final two games of the regular season. Yesterday, the women fell 6-2 to Middlebury. Forward Libby Dolan ’19 opened the scoring in the third minute, notching her 17th goal of the year off of a rebound. The Panthers responded with three goals in the next 15 minutes before co-captain Hannah Goodrick ’18 narrowed the deficit to 3-2. Middlebury recorded three additional goals to secure the

6-2 victory and the top spot in the NESCAC. On Saturday, the Ephs hosted the Jumbos, with the two teams entering the contest tied for second place in the NESCAC. The game opened with a backand-forth battle for possession. Tufts had the first shot of the game at 5:14, but the Williams defense prevented the ball from reaching the net. The Ephs’ first shot came off of a penalty corner at 18:58. The Jumbos opened the scoring at 25:47 on a goal from sophomore Rachel Hamilton, assisted by Mary Travers. The women put pressure on Tufts goalie Emily Polinski near the end of the half. Dolan

sent a pass through the Jumbo defense, but the Ephs could not convert. The halftime score was 1-0. Emma Santucci ’19 started the game in goal but was substituted for Abby Lloyd ’20. Santucci did not face a shot, but Lloyd saw two shots and saved one. Polinski saved the one shot she faced for Tufts. Five minutes into the second half, the Jumbos scored their second goal of the game when Travers found the net. Down 2-0, the Ephs went on the attack and had three shots on goal, but a save by Polinski and two defensive saves kept Williams from scoring despite holding a 7-3 shot advantage in the second half.

Head coach Alix Barrale ’93 commented on the team’s second-half improvement. “We came alive in the second half and played the way we normally do,” Barrale said. “It was nice that we outshot them, but unfortunately, we did not finish.” The score remained 2-0 in Tufts’ favor until the final whistle. Overall, the Ephs had an 8-7 edge in shots and an 8-4 lead in penalty corners. Lloyd finished with two saves, while Polinski totaled five. Having finished their regular season in a tie for third, the women will learn their seeding for the NESCAC tournament after today’s matches. The Ephs play their first-round game at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION

Co-captain forward Alex Bennett ’18 has recorded 10 goals and 11 assists this year for field hockey, which is ranked No. 8 nationally.

host Plansky Invite

By JULIA GUNTHER, LIAM ALBRITTAIN and ZEKE COHEN TEAM CORRESPONDENTS On Saturday, current and former Eph cross country runners took to the 5k course at Mount Greylock High School for the coed Plansky Invitational. Runners from Dean, Johnson State, Lyndon State and SUNY Cobleskill also competed. The women won the meet with a near-perfect score of 19. The next team, SUNY Cobleskill, had a score of 44. However, the scoring did not include the alumni racers. Among all competitors, the alumni prevailed, taking five of the top 10 places. Alum and Professor of Psychology Lauren Philbrook ’09 was first to finish. She completed the race in 19:00. Amelia Ortiz ’15 took second with a time of 19:50. Cross country athletes were also joined by the Nordic team. Skier Sonya Jampel ’19 came in third with a time of 19:55, with some of her teammates not far behind. Eight current members of the team competed, led by Tyra Wynn ’19, who took fourth with an excellent time of 20:06. Next to cross the line was Emily Tibbetts ’20, who finished in 10th in 20:59. Not far behind was Hannah Lebowitz ’20, who was the 12th woman to cross the line with a time of 21:21. Adrienne Banks ’20 finished next for the Ephs with a time of 21:53. Chelsey Jordan ’21 came through after her in 22:29. The remaining Ephs demonstrated their characteristic pack running, with three racers working together throughout the race. Wyndom Chace ’21, Julia Gunther ’20 and Jesse Facey ’19 finished close to-

gether with times of 22:47, 22:49 and 22:55, respectively. For the men, former captain and All-American Bijan Mazaheri ’16 came in first with a commanding time of 15:37, despite falling short of the 15:17 course record set by Colin Cotton ’16. Peter Watson ’13 came second in 16:34, followed by Daniel Siegel ’15 in 16:49. The first current Eph was Ben Hearon ’20 in 16:51, with Christopher Heckelman ’21 rounding out the top five with a time of 16:58. Assistant coach and former All-American Dusty Lopez ’01 came in eighth at 17:12. Lopez returned to cheer on his young daughters later in the race. SUNY Cobleskill senior Anthony Bouchard earned the 19th spot in 17:56. Also putting in strong performances for the men were Matthew Peacock ’21 (9th, 17:16), Tyler Johnson ’21 (10th, 17:19), Felix Biwott ’21 (11th, 17:19) and co-captain Andrew Bloniarz ’18 (12th, 17:24). Overall, the first-year runners exhibited maturity and composure, competing well with accomplished alumni. “We had great conditions on Saturday, with peak fall foliage,” head coach Pete Farwell ’73 said. “Even some of the alumni seem to be in great condition themselves. Plansky has always been one of my favorite meets: I just love the atmosphere.” When all was said and done, the top five alumni scored 21 points (1-2-3-7-8) while the current team had 34 (4-5-6-9-10). Both the women and the men will travel to Lewiston, Maine, on Saturday to compete in the 2017 NESCAC Championship race.

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK “Evan is the engine in the middle of the field that makes our team go. Unfortunately, much of what she does goes unnoticed to the casual eye because she doesn’t always show up in the box score, but her contributions are invaluable to our team’s success. As a leader, her belief that we, as a team, have the ability to continue to strive toward a better level of play each and every game is inspiring to teammates and coaches alike.”

“Kyle did a great job for us Saturday. He is a selfless player who is willing to take on any role and will do anything to help the team. Kyle is someone that we can count on to be ready to play at any time. Over the course of the season, he has worked very hard to improve his football acumen. He constantly studies film to continue to grow as a player. A very versatile athlete, he has a tireless work ethic.”

–Head coach Michelyne Pinard

–Head coach Mark Raymond

EVAN GANCEDO ’18

KYLE HORIHAN ’20

WOMEN’S SOCCER PASADENA, CALIF.

FOOTBALL PENNINGTON, N.J.

A tri-captain midfielder, Gancedo turned in a characteristically stellar performance on Senior Day. In the 62nd minute of the 3-0 win over Tufts, she volleyed a shot into the net for her fourth goal of the season. As the primary distributor of the ball, Gancedo has been crucial to the Ephs’ game plan this year, allowing the team to keep possession and capitalize on open space.

Horihan, a linebacker and wide receiver, recorded his first touchdown catch of the season in a 21-13 loss to Tufts on Saturday. He also led the Eph defense with 11 tackles, including two tackles for a loss, and made a critical fourthquarter interception. The sophomore has 23 tackles this year and one sack for eight yards.

12 SPORTS

The Williams Record

October 25, 2017

No. 3 Ephs clinch top seed despite first NESCAC loss since 2015 By DANNY JIN SPORTS EDITOR No. 3 women’s soccer (13–1–1, 8–1–1 in the NESCAC) clinched first place in the NESCAC regular season with a victory over Tufts on Saturday before suffering its first loss to Middlebury yesterday. Yesterday, the Ephs traveled to play the third-place Panthers in Middlebury, Vt., falling 1-0 on an 83rd-minute goal. The women had several firsthalf chances, totaling 16 shots in the period to four for Middlebury. The Ephs’ best opportunity came a minute before halftime. Forward Alison Lu ’20 collected a loose ball in the penalty area and hit a shot off the left post. Early in the second half, the Ephs threatened to score. In the 56th minute, midfielder Natalie Turner-Wyatt ’19 headed a shot on goal, and Panther goalkeeper Ursula Alwang dove to save. Middlebury broke through with 7:21 left in the contest. From a free kick, midfielder Anna Glovin sent a rising shot toward the upper-right corner. Eph goalkeeper Whitney Lincoln ’20 got a hand on the shot, but the ball went into the net off the crossbar. Midfielder Victoria Laino ’21 had a shot in the final five minutes, but her attempt at an equalizer went wide of the near post. Alwang finished with 13 saves, while Lincoln, making her first collegiate start, made two saves. The Ephs finished with a 24-7 shot advantage. Yesterday’s defeat was the first regular season conference loss for the team since Oct. 25, 2015, when the women fell 2-0 at Middlebury. On Saturday, their Senior Day, the women topped Tufts 3-0 on Cole Field to clinch first place in the NESCAC regular season. Tufts’ organization was strong early in the game and, with five

players in the midfield, the Jumbos prevented the Ephs from keeping the ball in Tufts territory. The women began to create chances, however, midway through the first half. From a free kick, Natasha Albaneze ’18 chipped a beautiful ball past the back line, and Natalie TurnerWyatt ’19 got a foot on the ball but sent it wide. Meanwhile, Tufts midfielders and defenders looked to play long passes to forward Liz Reed. In the 24th minute, Reed put in a threatening cross from the left wing. After Eph goalkeeper Olivia Barnhill ’19 palmed the ball away, Jumbo midfielder Sophie Lloyd nearly got to the rebound, but Eph tri-captain Danielle Sim ’18 cleared the danger. The Ephs went up 1-0 in the 28th minute. Midfielder Aspen Pierson ’21 made a run down the right wing and played a cross in for Kristina Alvarado ’19. Alvarado slid onto the ball, and it deflected into the net off a defender. Pierson nearly doubled the lead minutes later when she hit a powerful shot from distance. The ball almost went over the goal line off the crossbar, but Tufts goalie Emily Bower Bower kept it out. The score remained 1-0 until halftime. Creative attacking play in the latter part of the half led to an 11-5 shot advantage for the Ephs. Bower made two saves while Barnhill had one. Lu created opportunities in the second half, notching assists on each of the Ephs’ final two goals. Williams doubled its lead in the 62nd minute, when Lu made a run down the middle and picked out tri-captain Evan Gancedo ’18 at the right edge of the box. Gancedo took a touch and volleyed a powerful shot over the keeper to double the Eph lead. In the 64th minute, Lu curled a brilliant ball past the Tufts back

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Midfielder Aspen Pierson ’21 provided an assist on the opening goal in Saturday’s game, which the women won 3-0 over Tufts. line. Alvarado got on the other end of the pass and slotted for her second goal of the day. The Jumbos had a late chance in the 83rd minute, when forward Mariah Harvey-Brown got a touch on a ball played into the box. Her shot went wide, however, and the Ephs finished the match with a 3-0 shutout, their 11th of the season, to secure the top spot in the NESCAC. Williams and Tufts entered the game first and third, respectively, in the NESCAC standings, with Connecticut College occupying the second spot, three points behind the Ephs and two ahead of the Jumbos. Connecticut College lost to Bowdoin 2-0 on Saturday, securing first place for the Ephs.

After being held to just three goals in its last three games, the women matched that total in Saturday’s match alone, an improvement head coach Michelyne Pinard attributed to the team’s willingness to take shots. “We started, frankly, to shoot,” Pinard said. “We had a lot of the ball the previous weekend and just weren’t taking our chances to strike the ball. On Saturday we did a good job of finishing out our attacking plan.” Gancedo’s 62nd-minute goal was particularly memorable because Saturday’s game was the last regular season home contest for the senior class. Before the match, the Ephs honored their six seniors: Gancedo, Sim,

Albaneze, Hanna Kaeser ’18, Kate Sands ’18 and tri-captain Jacqueline Simeone ’18. “They’ve been, statistically, the most successful class in the history of the program,” Pinard said. “The quality of soccer that they strive to play day in and day out has set the standard for us. They also have a good time and let others have a good time while striving to be excellent.” According to Pinard, the regular season title is a great achievement, but the team’s best soccer is yet to come. “I’m thrilled for us to be regular season champions, but more than anything I love this team and working with [the players],” she said. “They make me

proud every day. I’m proud of how hard they work, how far they’ve come and the incredible soccer they play. What I love is that each game, we have to solve a different problem. From that, we can add a different element to our game. “I think we’re close [to our full potential], but we’ll see how far along we are in November. The pace and intensity of ‘win or go home’ will bring out the best in this team, and I’m excited to see what that looks like.” The NESCAC tournament begins on Saturday, and the women will host a first-round match on Cole Field at noon. The NESCAC will anounce the Ephs’ opponent later today.

Volleyball hosts New England Challenge Crew teams begin season By ELIZABETH SULLIVAN and NICA KOVALCIK STAFF WRITERS Volleyball (10–11, 4–5 in the NESCAC) hosted the New England Challenge last weekend, going 2-1 in the tournament versus Springfield, No. 15 MIT and Babson. On Friday, the women topped Springfield 3-1. Both teams showed off strong offense and aggressive net play. The Ephs quickly went down 6-0 in the first set and took a timeout. The women then took control of the tempo, narrowing the deficit to 10-5. Libero Daiana Takashima ’20 provided critical digs, and setter Alex Newton ’20 served four aces to tie the score at 16. Mia Weinland ’19 and Natalie Albright ’20 earned kills, as the Ephs went on a 9-1 run to win the first set 25-17. The Pride rebounded in the second set, which was close throughout. With the score tied at 17, Newton blocked a Springfield outside hitter to give Williams the lead. However, the teams continued to trade points until they reached a 25-25 deadlock. Consecutive Eph errors then gave the Pride a 27-25 victory to tie the match at a set apiece. The third set was another close affair. Tess Richman ’19 and Erin

Denham ’20 teamed up for a block to give the Ephs a lead, and a kill by Denham furthered the advantage. The women closed out the set 25-21 to take a 2-1 lead in the match. The Ephs jumped out to an early lead in the fourth set, reaching a 10-5 advantage after a kill by Denham. A series of kills from Weinland widened the lead to 20-11. Albright had a cohesive middle block to take the Ephs to match point, and they took the fourth and final set 25-17. The women played a doubleheader on Saturday, losing the first match 3-0 to MIT. The Ephs kept the first set close, reaching an 8-8 tie after Newton set up Denham for a kill. The Engineers then took the next five points to earn the lead. Down 17-10, the Ephs fought back with a kill by Ally Ostrow ’19 from the outside. Ostrow helped the women narrow the deficit with strong float serves, but MIT maintained its advantage and won the first set 25-18. The Ephs started off the second set with energy, as Ostrow, Denham and Richman recorded early kills. The Engineers had the lead at 13-9 after a service ace. Down 14-9, the women called a timeout, bouncing back to narrow the deficit to 17-15 on a kill from Ostrow. Neverthe-

less, MIT held on to take the second set 25-19. In the third set, the Ephs fell behind 10-7, but a block from Weinland and Newton, as well as a kill from Denham, helped the women obtain a 12-11 lead. MIT responded and went ahead 14-12 after an outside kill. The Engineers took control, winning the set 25-18 to secure the sweep of the match. The women rebounded to defeat Babson 3-0 in their third match of the tournament. Strong sets from Newton and kills from Albright, Weinland and Ostrow helped the Ephs go up 6-3 in the first set. Babson tied the score at 10, but three consecutive points for Williams made it 13-10. The lead widened to 22-13, and an error by the Beavers gave the Ephs a 25-17 victory. The Ephs played with consistency and communication in the second set, taking a 10-4 lead. Up 12-5, Newton showed off a low jump serve to maintain the edge. Babson called a timeout trailing 17-9, but Williams cruised to a 25-12 second-set win. In the third set, a series of stellar serves, including an ace, by Allison Frison ’21 gave the Ephs an early edge. Consecutive kills by Richman brought the score to 8-4. Denham had success on a few outside kills to

bring the gap to 16-8. The Ephs took home the third set 25-14 with a kill from Weinland. Overall, the Ephs finished 2-1 in the tournament. “I am incredibly proud of our team’s performance last weekend,” head coach Christi Kelsey said. “We played some of the best teams in our region and fought hard to earn two wins. What is awesome about our group is that they have continued to invest so much and work hard every day to inspire and motivate each other to keep improving.” Having secured a berth to the NESCAC tournament, the team is looking to continue to improve its quality of play. “We are excited about our last regular season match, and we know we are building toward the postseason,” Kelsey said. “We are playing some of our best volleyball yet, and as a coach, you can’t ask for much more than that continued growth. “Our team is locked in and focused on the opportunities that are still to yet to come this season. The NESCAC has been a battle this year, and we expect that our conference tournament will be the same.” The women finish their regular season with a home match versus Middlebury at 2 p.m. on Saturday.

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Middle hitter Tess Richman ’19 recorded five kills in Saturday’s 3-1 win over Springfield and five more in Sunday’s 3-0 win over Babson.

at Head of the Charles

By GRACE CHAMBERLIN and CHARLES IDE TEAM CORRESPONDENTS Men’s and women’s crew traveled to Boston for the 53rd annual Head of the Charles Regatta on Sunday, beginning their fall racing seasons on the water. The Head of the Charles is the biggest rowing race in the world, with over 10,000 athletes competing from over 30 different countries. Crews are sent off at 15-second intervals and are timed on a grueling three-mile course featuring six bridges and innumerable turns. Steering is an extremely important factor on the winding course, and each coxswain does their best to give their boat the inside line and the best chance at chasing down other crews. Technical mastery has been a large point of emphasis for the men throughout the fall, and the Ephs’ top boat tested its improved technique against other crews. The men started well before the wind on the powerhouse stretch shifted unexpectedly. They handled the adversity, however, and continued to flow well. The powerhouse stretch concluded with a sharp turn, which coxswain Devin Flynn ’18 took perfectly. His line through the footbridge allowed the men to make up time on the rest of the field. The Ephs began to find their groove, as Flynn continued to steer neat lines. Carried by adrenaline, the men powered cleanly through the line to conclude a technically well-executed piece in a time of 14:57 for 16th place. University of Virginia won the race in a course record of 14:24. The top three finishing crews each broke the previous course record. Co-captain Sam Ellison ’18 was proud of the way that the young crew carried itself and felt that it demonstrated a strong technical foundation for the rest of the season. “For a young crew, we stayed true to our technical form throughout the piece, a testament to [head coach] Marc [Mandel’s] work,” Ellison said. “Our biggest area for improvement is our fit-

ness. I’m proud of the feel we had on Sunday.” The women sent two boats to the competition. The 1v pulled out a repeat performance of last year’s thirdplace finish in the collegiate eights division, with Bates and Wesleyan snagging the top two spots. The other Eph team of four placed eighth in its category. The eight raced first and came out with a finish time ultimately of 16:34. Co-captains and 1v bow pair Bertie Miller ’18 and Clara Beery ’18 commented jointly on the 1v’s performance. “We have no regrets,” they said. “This race was an exciting building block to spring season. Everyone who got to compete put down solid strokes and we got to see some payoff from all our work thus far. We’re amped and ready to keep finding speed and working hard.” The fours started down the course after the eights. Despite being a young boat, the crew showed maturity in the midst of unforeseen obstacles. The tricky Boston conditions and tough headwind made the long course feel even more challenging. About 600 meters into the race, right as the crew was about to enter the famous powerhouse stretch – the longest straight stretch on the Charles and the optimal portion for passing other boats – the boat’s coxbox lost power, meaning that coxswain Brittany Chung ’18 had no microphone to amplify her voice to her rowers. Nevertheless, the four finished with a time of 18:45, just 25 seconds out of first place in a tight pack of top10 finishers. Both the men and the women return to action next weekend. The women close out their fall racing season on Saturday at the Head of the Fish in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. All members of the team will race in a variety of events, and the novice boat it will make its racing debut. The men will also send varsity and novice boats to the Head of the Fish on Saturday, and the 1v will race on Sunday at the Princeton Chase in Princeton, N.J.