Dec. 5, 2018: Women’s soccer wins national championship

ARTS P. 8 PAC stand-up show sparks hearty laughter

SPORTS P. 11 The Independent Student Newspaper at Williams College Since 1887 VOL. CXXXIII, NO. 10

Students, faculty discuss free speech

By REBECCA TAUBER and SAMUEL WOLF NEWS EDITORS

On Oct. 29, several members of the faculty sent out a petition calling for the College to adopt the Chicago Statement on Principles of Free Expression, originally released by the University of Chicago in July 2012. The statement, which addresses the occasional disinvitation of controversial speakers, claims that almost all speakers should be permitted to address an institution of higher education, citing the importance of free speech.

The university, the statement said, “is committed to the principle that it may not restrict debate or deliberation because the ideas put forth are thought to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.” However, the statement also made exceptions for banning harassment or defamation. Since 2012, 45 colleges and universities have adopted the statement.

While many faculty members collaborated on the petition in support of the Chicago Principles, the three names associated with the petition were Associate Professor of Biology Luana Maroja, Associate Professor of Theatre David Gürçay-Morris and Professor of Philosophy Steven Gerrard. The petition took a strong stance in favor of the Chicago Statement and free speech on campus in general.

“While there is an understandable desire to protect our students from speech they find offensive, doing so risks shutting down legitimate dialogue and failing to prepare our students to deal effectively with a diversity of opinions, including views they might vehemently disagree with,” the petition stated. The creators of the petition hoped that, if the petition gained sufficient signatures, it could gain the attention of President Maud

Mandel and ultimately lead to the College’s adoption of the Chicago Principles.

In a blog post titled “Freedom of speech at Williams College: are the walls closing in?”

Maroja cited a roundtable featuring religious scholar, Reza Aslan, as a catalyst for the petition. During this roundtable, Aslan's view on freedom of expression concerned her. She wrote that Aslan “started by bragging that he had once been disinvited from another venue, proceeding to say that anything that offended him should not be allowed, and finally asserting that ‘only factual talks’ should ever be allowed in campus.”

Maroja also expressed concern with student reception of his speech. “This nonsense was met with intense student applause,” she wrote. “It was appalling.”

Former President Adam Falk’s disinvitation of John Derbyshire in 2016 also weighed heavily on the Chicago Statement debate.

Derbyshire, who has described himself as alt-right and who once opined that America would be better off if women were unable to vote, was invited to campus by the group Uncomfortable Learning. President Falk ultimately canceled his speech. “Many of his expressions clearly constitute hate speech, and we will not promote such speech on this campus or in our community,” he said.

Gürçay-Morris, another one of the petition’s creators, was guided by his belief that the free exchange of ideas and freedom from censorship is essential for any institution of higher education. “I don’t know how to make art without the basic assumption of those things, and I definitely don’t know how to teach art … if there isn’t a basic assumption of freedom of expression to do things, to fail things, to do better next time,” he said. For GürçayMorris, the ability of some people to disinvite speakers who oppose

their beliefs betrayed those principles. He also emphasized that the initial creation of the petition was intended to spur a dialogue rather than to push an agenda.

For Gerrard, another creator, the petition was part of a broader national movement. “My goals in helping to write the petition were to express solidarity with our colleagues in colleges and universities across the country, especially in the South, who face censorship of their views,” he said.

According to Gürçay-Morris, the petition was originally sent to tenured faculty, with the purpose of not placing undue pressure on untenured faculty to sign it and with the expectation to slowly broaden the discussion. However, many students felt that the petition was being withheld from them, a viewpoint which Gürçay-Morris rejected. “There was nothing about trying to keep it secret or only to the faculty,” he said. “We were trying to do the most bottom-up grassroots thing ever.” The petition’s creators were taken aback by its quick spread, as the petition gained over 100 signatures from both tenured and untenured faculty

by Nov. 5. With this proliferation came a misconception that achieving a certain number of signatures would cause the principles to be adopted, whereas the petition did not have that power and was originally meant as a conversation-starter.

Shortly after its introduction, the petition generated controversy amongst faculty, staff and students, and was discussed at a forum on Nov. 11, which demonstrated the range of ractions and pushback on the petition and Statement.

Gail Newman, professor of German, who spoke with faculty against the petition and reached out to supporting students organizing against the petition,

SEE PETITION, PAGE 4

High school students vandalize MinCo office

By DAVEY MORSE STAFF WRITER The College is currently investigating two instances of vandalism in Paresky that occurred over Thanksgiving Break. On Saturday morning, Nov. 24, dining services reported to Campus Safety and Security (CSS) that ’82 Grill employees had found condiments and napkins strewn all over the Luetkemeyer Lounge in the basement. On Monday, Nov. 26, the Office of Student Life reported that a few chairs were broken and crude drawings and writing were left on the blackboard in the Williams Minority Coalition (MinCo) office on the second floor of Paresky. CSS believes that the incidents occurred on Friday and Saturday night, respectively.

CSS, with the aid of the Williamstown Police Department and staff at local high schools, is leading the investigation. It believes that a group of local high school students were responsible for both incidents; however, it has not yet identified the individuals. According to Vice President for Campus Life Steve Klass, once CSS does identify them, the College will likely issue a no-trespass order. “That process consists of sending a letter to each person we identify in which we specify a time period during which, if they’re caught on college property, they’ll be identified as trespassing and arrested,” Klass said. The typical timeframe for the order is one year, after which these students can appeal it to resume access to the College’s campus.

The two incidents were similar in nature. “They both occurred over break when there was open access to the building and not a lot of people around,” Klass explained. “The damage in each area was similarly juvenile in nature – objects tossed on the ground, broken chairs, a

crude picture on a blackboard, etc.” Moreover, both spaces were relatively accessible; the basement area outside ’82 Grill is an open space and MinCo co-presidents Rodsy Modhurima ’19 and Tyler Tsay ’19 noted that they generally leave the MinCo room unlocked, as it is often used independently

by MinCo’s several constituent student groups. From these facts, the administration believe that the high school students were not looking for a particular office and that the events can best be characterized as “the making of disrespectful mess.” Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity Leticia Haynes, Dean of the College Marlene Sandstrom and Klass authored an

“Given all that we know now, we are quite certain it was neither bias-oriented nor targeted.”

Leticia Haynes, Steve Klass and Marlene Sandstrom email to the student body on Friday, Nov. 30, that affirmed this message: “Given all that we know now, we are quite certain it was neither bias-oriented nor targeted.”

When students first learned of the vandalism, however, it was unclear whether it meant to target MinCo. Modhurima and Tsay were first informed of the Saturday vandalism on the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 28, by the Davis Center (DC). However, Tsay reflected that “important information about the vandalism – that the event wasn't targeted, that there were other things going on in Paresky – was not adequately conveyed.”

Modhurima would not have been surprised if the vandalization were more targeted. “It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for there to be a hateful incident somewhere on campus – it happens every year,” she said. After learning of the vandalism on Wednesday afternoon, Tsay stopped by the CSS office on Thursday morning and learned then that the MinCo office incident was neither isolated nor targeted.

Yet, before learning of further details from Tsay’s visit to CSS or the Friday studentbody email, several students were aware of the MinCo vandalism but not that it was isolated or devoid of hate speech.

Just after hearing from the DC on Wednesday afternoon, Modhurima and Tsay informed MinCo’s constituent student groups of what they had learned. Modhurima commented, “There were a lot of a rumors and a lot of people not feeling safe in the meantime.” A student created a Facebook post on Wednesday, suggesting that the administration had been withholding important information with ulterior motives. It was shared 13 times. The comments on the post included relevant accounts from a couple of students who were at the College over the break, as well from a Sawyer Library employee and an editor at a local newspaper, The Greylock Glass.

The administration apologized for the delay in communicating the incident to the Modhurima and Tsay in the Friday student-body email, remarking: “This was an unintentional delay, which may have led to theories about the timing and nature of the vandalism. ...

We apologize for any distress this caused to students who worried that this may have been a targeted act.”

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2018

Cross country records NCAA top-10 finish

Women’s soccer wins national championship

By ALEXANDER CHRIST STAFF WRITER Women's soccer successfully defended the NCAA Div. III championship, its third in four years. Williams defeated Christopher Newport (CNU) 2-0 in the semifinals. Then, on Saturday, the women defeated conference rival Middlebury 1-1 via penalty kicks to claim their third title in four years.

Sarah Scire ’20 scored a goal in each half Friday night as the women blanked high-powered CNU at UNCGreensboro Stadium.

The Ephs broke CNU’s 16-game win streak and advanced to the NCAA Cham-

pionship because of a tremendous defensive effort.

Goalkeeper Olivia Barnhill ’19 called it their best effort of the season. The women stifled the Captains’ attack by controlling posessions and disurpting passing lanes, capitalizing on Barnhill's four saves. CNU outshot the Ephs 19-11 in the contest, but each team had just four shots on goal.

"We knew coming into this game [CNU] had incredible individual attacking ability," Eph head coach Michelyne Pinard said. "And they were exactly what we thought – they were incredible. Our goal was to deny them the

ball whenever possible and have incredibly tight cover whenever possible. I thought we did a great job of that from front to back. Our effort, not just our physical effort, but our communication and ability to consistently deny them opportunities was amazing given their ability."

The Captains had not been shut out once their entire season prior to Friday night.

In the game's 10th minute, they nearly got on the board as All-American Riley Cook, who had scored in 11 straight games coming into the semifinal, rocketed a shot behind

SEE SOCCER, PAGE 12

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION. Women's soccer won its second consecutive championship Saturday, defeating Middlebury 1-1 following penalty kicks.

Following investigation, College Council votes to retain treasurer; censures co-presidents

By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR Last night, College Council (CC) voted 12-7 to retain Treasurer Spencer Carrillo ’20 and mandated he attend educational sanctions to improve his performance. CC also voted 11-7 to censure CC Presidents Lizzy Hibbard ’19 and Moisés Roman Mendoza ’19 for raising the charges against Carrillo without placing it on the agenda or notifying CC before the Nov. 13 meeting.

The vote followed a report by the Student Government Conduct Committee (SGCC), chaired by CC’s Vice President for Student Organizations Maria Heredia ’20 and Vice President for Community and Diversity Shane Beard ’20, which found Carrillo failed to meet some of his duties but recommended against removal. CC did not livestream or record the meeting – in contravention of its own bylaws – and made all votes taken during the meeting anonymous, asking CC members to close their eyes.

Hibbard and Roman Mendoza presented the case against Carrillo. They reported that he failed to close out CC’s accounts on time over the summer and delayed the College’s audit, failed to file vouchers – as noted by administrators in the Controller’s Office and the Office of Student Life – and communicated unprofessionally and unreliably with CC subgroup treasurers, the CC presidents and the Minority Coalition chairs.

During the summer and fall, Carrillo responded simply “No” or “No thank you” to numerous requests from Hibbard and Roman Mendoza to discuss his performance.

“Moises and I tried reaching out to Spencer privately many times, spoke with multiple

administrators, and brought this issue up at the CC executive meeting prior to discussing it in general Council,” Hibbard said. “We regret it had to rise to this level. As per the CC Constitution the presidents have the sole responsibility to ‘set the agenda for the College Council.’”

Carrillo defended his performance. Regarding the summer transfers, he wrote, “That error was not a result of my malpractice…it was clearly confirmed to me by a previous Treasurer that when I completed the transfers didn’t matter.” He also alleged that the submission of many vouchers was not his job, but the assistant treasurer’s, and defended his communication style: “If I am emailing someone who I know well or am friends with, I am not going to go through the tedium of drafting a formal letter to them.”

Other representatives called for consideration of the method by which Hibbard and Roman Mendoza brought the matter up on Nov. 13, which they percieved as inappropriate. “Any president bringing complaints forward in such a way, effectively lambasting a council member in public for what came off as personal reasons, is acting in a way that is distasteful, unwarranted, and unprecedented. It is something that cannot be tolerated by this or any Council moving forward,” said Representative Lance Ledet ’21.

Ultimately, CC felt that Carrillo’s performance fell short of what his duties required, but agreed that it implicated broader concerns with CC’s bylaws and operations and did not merit removal. “If in any way Spencer were being a structural impediment to making our

system better, I’d understand that. But he’s not. He’s willing to work on these things and he wants to,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Abel Romero ’19.

“We appreciate the hard work put in by Maria and Shane,” Hibbard and Roman Mendoza said. “Their report found Spencer in violation of three of our bylaws and we agree that their proposed suggestions of structural reforms are a good way to move forward after the vote tonight.”

The full investigative SGCC report can be found on the Record’s website.

WHAT’S INSIDE 3 OPINIONS CARE Now reframes free speech debate 4 NEWS Three students win fellowships 7 FEATURES President Mandel reflects on her life 9 ARTS "Widows" remakes classic heist movie 12 SPORTS Coach Renzie Lamb passes away

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2 OPINIONS

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

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Executive Editors Shaheen Currimjee, Nicholas Goldrosen, Rachel Levin and Jane Petersen

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THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE SINCE 1887 WILLIAMSRECORD.COM

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR On George H. W. Bush To the editor: The nephew of George H.W. Bush graduated from Williams in 1996, which is why we were able to get the former president as commencement speaker. Bush by this point was something of a cliché, a oneterm president remembered mostly for the uncanny way that Dana Carvey imitated his wooden speaking style on Saturday Night Live. As he mounted the stage, protected by Secret Service agents concealed in academic robes, the students eyed him curiously.

Before the commencement address, there were three talks by students, and the last speaker startled us. He opened with the customary salutation (“parents, friends, honored guests, members of the class of 1996”), began his speech, and then interrupted himself: “Excuse me; I committed a faux pas. I forgot to acknowledge that we have a distinguished president on stage.”

He repeated the salutation, adding one more name: “and our distinguished college president, Hank Payne.”

Nervous laughter rose from the gathered parents, and he gave a sheepish look: “Yes, I know. That was very rude of me. I should have mentioned that we have a distinguished expresident here on stage.” Again he launched into his salutation, this time adding the name of “our distinguished former president, Frank Oakley.”

There was an audible gasp.

The studied snub earned Bush considerable sympathy, and when he rose to speak, there was

vigorous applause. I sat behind him, off to the side, where I was surprised to see that he had no prepared text, merely an index card on which he jotted some notes during the ceremonies.

His talk was folksy and genial, in the well-known Bush manner, and I remember little about it. But I do recall the deft and seamless way in which he incorporated the remarks of the student speakers into his talk, identifying them with affable asides, e.g., “As X told you, and she was right.” The second time he did this, we realized he was ostentatiously repaying courtesy with courtesy. And we began to wonder if he would respond to the snub.

He did, but in the gentlest way possible. Toward the end of his talk, in the course of some avuncular life advice, he turned to the subject of personal criticism.

“All of you,” he warned severely, “will be criticized in your life, whether fairly or unfairly. And you will be tempted to respond in kind. But when that happens, you need to follow the advice of my good friend Dana Carvey.”

A pregnant pause, and then: “Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.” And this he declaimed with an exaggerated version of his jerky woodenness, doing Saturday Night Live one better: giving us Bush’s imitation of Carvey’s imitation of Bush.

It brought down the house – that unscripted moment where an insult inadvertently provided the occasion for a spontaneous and triumphant moment of grace.

Michael J Lewis Professor of Art On the cancellation of the play Beast Thing

THE WILLIAMS RECORD BOARD In recent weeks, a faculty petition has circulated, recommending that the College adopt the Chicago Statement, a series of policies regarding disinvitation of speakers penned by the University of Chicago.

The petition has produced ardent responses from students and faculty, including a student petition vehemently opposing the adoption of the Chicago Statement. The Record values freedom of expression as the very core of the work we do.

We do not intend to lay out our own comprehensive policy on speakers at the College nor to decisively settle this issue; rather, we hope to contribute several important points to this larger debate on campus and across the country.

Freedom of expression on campus is an issue that should greatly concern those of every political ideology. Despite the political right’s more public focus on this matter, the vast majority of faculty who have been recently sanctioned for unfortunate declines in the quality of theater at the College, but it has reached a new low.

When I started reading the Record’s reportage of the canceled production of Beast Thing (“Theatre department cancels Beast Thing,” Nov. 7, 2018), my initial reaction was fear that injudicious overreactions of over-protected students had resulted in the dangerous practice of censorship. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Having taught and reviewed theater for over 35 years, I passionately believe that, with the exception of physical harm, the theater should not be required to be a safe place. Indeed, some of our most valued plays stir up the pot and invite arguments, challenge accepted behaviors and shake us into realizing the horrors of humanity.

Beast Thing may be such a work, and it is unfortunate that it has not been allowed its voice.

However, the rehearsal space should be safe, and actors (whether student or professional) should not be the experimental fodder for directors who are more driven by ego and cant than humanity and talent. The tales of the cast working under director Misha Chowdhury were truly disturbing – not the stuff of “snowflakes,” but of reasonable and brave students who saw through their tyrant’s shabby clothes.

I am relieved to learn that Chowdhury will not be returning to the College. Having seen his incoherent production of The Wolves, he is as much a liability to good theater as he is to the welfare of his charges.

December 5, 2018

On the Chicago Statement Recognizing nuance and encouraging collaborative conversations around expression expressing controversial views were expressing liberal or leftleaning arguments, according to a recent Acadia University study. But the debate over invitation and disinvitation of speakers is nowhere near the entirety of the issue of free expression on campus.

In particular, this focus on disinvitation has been co-opted by a small number of highprofile and inflammatory white supremacists such as Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, each year sees only 20 to 40 disinvitations amongst the over 3000 colleges and universities in the country. In 2016, 11 of these disinvitations were for one speaker, Yiannopoulos.

The Chicago Statement is in many ways a part of a branding strategy that plays upon the attention such disinvitations get, despite their relative rarity. It in no way is, nor should be, the be all and end all of principles for free expression on campus.

The way in which this conversation has pitted students and faculty against each other is also troubling. We reject the binary that this debate has created on campus, in which signatories feel pressure to attach their name to only one viewpoint or the other. The question of who and what is given a platform at the College is a nuanced one, and the current debate around whether or not to adopt the Chicago Statement has oversimplified the issue to the detriment of the complexities at stake. We also want to acknowledge the substantial areas of agreement between groups on all sides of this debate: that there are, in fact, categories of speech such as harassment, defamation and incitation to violence that no one believes ought to be allowed on campus – indeed, categories of speech that are not even protected by the First Amendment.

Rather than adopt the Chicago Statement, then, we believe that the College should work

internally to think about its values on inviting and disinviting speakers, as well as broaden the conversation about freedom of expression on campus. Questions to be considered might not only include speakers on campus, but also what other barriers to freedom of expression exist.

What people or perspectives are commonly denied opportunities to speak, write and otherwise express themselves on campus?

What categories of people (such as students, untenured or nonvoting faculty and staff) do not enjoy the same systemic protection for their speech as tenured faculty do? Freedom of expression is central to our work at the Record and at the College; valuing such freedom, however, is far more complex than endorsing an outside set of guidelines entrenched in inflammatory debate. We ought to take advantage of the College’s immense resources and talent to foster an intentional dialogue about the many facets of this issue within our community.

Word on The Quad If Williams were to change its motto, what should we make it?

By KATIE BRULE AND SOPHIA SHIN PHOTO EDITORS

MIA HOLTZE ’22

Aliquid non in linguā Latinā (something not in Latin).

DANIEL ORTIZ ’21

Juul pro omnibus (Juul for all).

ASHLEY CONROY ’20

Nescivī proverbium nos habēre (I didn't know we have a motto).

DANI D'OLIVIERA ’19

Cura IV discipula (Care 4 students).

To the Editor: Over the past couple of decades, I’ve witnessed

Ralph Hammann Town resident and attendee of Williams theater since 1965

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

The Record is curently accepting applications to join our editorial board. We are looking for motivated, depenedable editors who are committed to producing the College’s only independent newspaper. Prior experience is not a prerequisite. We encourage members of the Class of 2022 to apply. The positions that follow are accepting application: News Editors, Opinions Editors, Features Editors, Arts Editors, Sports Editors and Photo Editors.

TO APPLY, PLEASE SEND A SELF-NOMINATION (ONE PAGE) WITH INTEREST AND RELEVANT EXPERIENCE TO DANNY JIN (DBJ1) BY 11:59 P.M. ON SUNDAY, JAN. 6.

Why alums really want to help students

By LEIGH SYLVIA, MIKE O'CONNOR AND WENDY COAKLEY Since before you ever set foot on campus, you have probably heard about the power of the “Eph network.”

“Networking” can be a loaded term – sounding daunting, impersonal and self-serving.

Yet networking, or relationship building or connecting, is in fact something you do already and is key to success and happiness.

The reality is, that in today’s job market, it’s not enough to keep your head down, get good grades and send out 100 resumes. You need to be vocal about your interests and career goals and build relationships with people in target fields.

We could bore you with stats on the importance of networks in the current job market or how second and third degree connections factor into career

success, but the reality is: Williams alums want to help you succeed … at everything.

But, why? The College is more than just an institution for many after they leave the Purple Valley, and Ephs want to support the success of other Ephs through the value of their own experiences. Williams alums are dedicated, passionate and want to give back. They want to teach you how to “network” and prove it’s not as scary as it sounds; they want to help you make more informed decisions; they want to help you with course and major selection; they want to help you prepare for post-graduate life and meet people in new cities; they want to share their mistakes and life lessons. And yes – they want you to succeed in your job and internship search.

A main part of our job at the ’68 Center for Career Exploration is to make the formation of these connections

as easy and productive as possible. EphLink, Williams’ first-ever mentorship program, has been thoughtfully designed to facilitate more and easier access to alums. The system is composed entirely of alums who have volunteered to advise students, all opting in and setting up their own availability (as opposed to say, LinkedIn or the alumni directory). Alums customize the ways they can help you and how often; so, if you search and find someone who matches your criteria, you can be confident that they are truly available to you. There are currently more than 1600 volunteer Ephs from all over the world, in a variety of fields and with unique backgrounds and majors available to be contacted, and this number keeps growing daily.

If you’re hesitant about asking for help from older Ephs, we ask you remember that they

were all standing where you are at one time, many just a few years ago. Keep in mind that you worked incredibly hard to get to Williams and shouldn’t hesitate to utilize the resources available to you. “Networking” is about using shared commonalities to achieve your goals – whether you have a quick question or are looking to build a longerterm mentorship, Williams alums are willing and waiting to hear from you.

And, while it may be hard to imagine, you’ll be paying it forward to undergrads here at Williams before you know it.

It’s all part of what it means to be an Eph. Leigh Sylvia is the associate director for mentoring and transition programming, Mike O’Connor is the director of career discovery and Wendy Coakley is the director of alumni career networking.

OPINIONS 3

The Williams Record

December 5, 2018

We belong where we are

Changing the terms of the ‘free speech’ debate

A love letter to Rice House

Confronting national anxieties towards campus diversity

By ROCKY DOUGLAS

is the closest the College has come to affinity housing and safe spaces for Black On November 11, 2018, the Black students, though there have been mulStudent Union (BSU) hosted a town tiple movements for affinity housing at hall in Griffin 3. What we originally in- the College and alumni regularly remind tended to be a discussion on housing us that there have been numerous atand the upcoming Davis Center reno- tempts to “take” Rice House. Although, vations turned into the most radically the threat to “take” Rice House seems to political space I have ever seen at the be mitigated for the time being, and stuCollege. We contrasted the fear of white dents welcome the long overdue renovasupremacists being allowed to speak tions, the struggle to maintain Rice has on campus if the College adopted the been decades long. I personally believe Chicago principles with the shortage of the deterioration of Rice House comes adequate institutional support and af- from that building carrying the burden finity housing for students of color and of trying to provide all of the institutional queer students. Students expressed support Black students have demanded feeling as though Campus Safety and over the decades but have yet to fully reSecurity officers automatically assume ceive. That, and decades of delayed care.

Rice House, though it is in desperBlack and Brown students to be suspect and, after a student recounted an inci- ate need of repair, is proof that there dent of being pulled to the ground by an is beauty in struggle. Black culture and officer, I imagined what it would be like Black identities across time and space are created, preserved for “Black students and restored through [at Williams] to be in the act of gathering. spaces that are made Black culture and Black Rice House is the only for us where people cannot arbitrarily call identities across time and pseudo-autonomous Black space on camthe police on us.” pus where we can conAt one point, in re- space are created, preserved sistently and freely do sponse to comments and restored through the this. In that historic about the microaghouse, we work, we gressions, feelings of act of gathering. cook, we converse, we tokenization and isocongregate, we praise, lation many minoriwe dance, etc., ad infitized students have experienced in entries, I said, “Thank nitum. Dozens of students study in the God I found Rice House, because I Alana Haywood library on the second think that’s the only reason I was able floor each week. Numerous organizato survive.” We could have just as easily tions cook, serve and eat food together been conversing about the lack of affin- regularly to mitigate the homesickness ity housing or the multiple hate crimes many of us have here. Each week in Rice, that have occurred on campus during whose walls are saturated with Black my time here because, in many ways, culture, groups host meetings where Rice House is structurally connected to we digest and critique our experiences at the College, process current events all of these issues.

Rice House is a part of the legacy of and distract ourselves from the chaos.

Black student activism at the College. Rice House is home to Black RestoraAs a result of Demand #12 of the Afro- tion Days, food festivals, collaborative American Society’s 1969 occupation of joint meetings, career panels and cookHopkins Hall, the basement in Mears ing events for students and alumni durHouse was given to Black students ing Homecoming. Frequently, Sankofa, as an autonomous space on campus NBC, Ritmo, BSU, SOCA and members where we could feel welcomed, sup- of the general Black community utilize ported and comfortable. Our original the space on weekends as an alternahousing was disrupted when the Col- tive to other campus parties, which do lege reapportioned Mears House into not feel welcoming to all minoritized offices and moved the African, Black students. The list of ways Rice House and Caribbean groups to Rice House has been vital to me and other Black folk in 1983, which had been a co-op since here goes on.

In some ways, this op-ed is meant to 1981. This move occurred during the same two-year period that a cross was connect the struggle to maintain Rice burned on the lawn of Perry House, House over the past three decades to the BSU’s office was ransacked and other struggles on campus. In other President John W. Chandler and many ways, this op-ed serves as a preservation Black students received threatening of history. Above all, this is a love letter to Rice House, to the Power of Black stuphone calls.

This move significantly altered the dents and to my communities. I could prospect of affinity housing at the Col- not have survived this place without y’all. lege. The original placement of the BSU Rocky Douglas ’19 is an economin Mears House gave us proximity to first-year housing, dining services and ics major and Africana studies conthe center of campus. Still, Rice House centrator from Houston, Texas.

By COALITION AGAINST RACIST EDUCATION NOW The student letter that surfaced in response to the faculty petition was co-authored and edited by over 20 students from a wide range of identities and positionalities. It was, above all, a democratic, grassroots project from start to finish. We are now continuing under the name “Coalition Against Racist Education Now” (CARE Now) in the legacy of Black-led organizing efforts on the Williams College campus.

It is vital to say that CARE Now is not interested in entering a debate about free speech in this current moment. A policy or committee that deals solely with free speech or expression is not the solution.

Rather, we insist on recognizing the positioning of “free speech” for what it has become: moral ammunition for a conservative backlash to increasing diversity. As a grass-roots collective of student organizers, we are concerned with longterm base-building that far surpasses rebuttals to “free speech” crusaders.

To be clear, this “debate” is not about free speech, nor is it about decisions about whom the College invites to speak and whom we do not. It’s a matter of mutual trust and respect between students, faculty, staff and the institution as a whole. By using “free speech” as a discursive cover, those on the right have controlled the terms of debate such that they will always have the moral high ground and divert attention from what is really at stake here. Of course, we don’t want to restrict people’s ability to speak; rather, we aim to question which ideas we promote by way of honorariums and institutional platforms.

For this reason, we refuse to accept the terms of this debate. Instead, let’s see the faculty petition for what it is: an institutional manifestation of a national anxiety towards a more diverse student and faculty population, not an invitation to a dialogue. After we can all agree that this is the ultimate root of this debate, we can then take steps to address it. We want to talk about the issue at the heart of this, which is the reality of bringing in students and faculty from marginalized backgrounds to create a “diverse” institution and expecting their silence and acceptance of the status quo. We will not accept this reality.

Prejudice cannot be talked away; more “dialogue” is not the answer. Oppression can’t be fixed with rational debate because oppression is not rational.

Once we all agree that bigotry simply is not an “opinion” that can be swiftly invalidated in a “two-way discourse,” that such discourse instead needs to involve dismantling the very institutional and systemic forces that demean and denigrate marginalized students, and that the faculty petition represents institutional anxiety towards a more diverse student and faculty population, then we can take steps and move forward. Perhaps the authors and signers of the faculty petition did not have the intent to harm and silence students and faculty of marginalized identities, but they have chosen to enter a national debate that is harmful, toxic and ultimately must be recognized by the faculty and administration. Intent does not equate to impact.

The issue we – the administration included – need to address is establishing and improving resources that aid students’ livelihoods and support their well-being, as well as maintaining and strengthening the spaces, resources and networks created by and for students that already exist on campus.

Only then can the College truly claim to offer all its students the resources and supports they need.

Institutions of higher learning have been reckoning with this for decades and the various student groups who have already taken practical steps to further this conversation have gone largely ignored. For example, the Williams Black Student Union (BSU), has been hosting all-campus Town Halls for years. This year, the BSU’s Town Hall brought students together to voice their concerns about the state of the College, and the “free speech” debate was brought to the floor. Student groups, primarily affinity groups, have furthered conversations about the future of higher learning in relation to diversity decades before the current “free speech” crusade began. The BSU among others has led the charge in creating solutions for these problems, and they are continuously publishing op-eds about current campus issues. These historic and present dialogues are entirely overlooked by framing this as a debate on “free speech,” further erasing and marginalizing the ideas and presence of Black members of the Williams community.

We also wish to decenter this faculty versus student narrative. The petition, though sponsored by several faculty members, has not garnered the support of all, or even a majority of the faculty body. Since the writing of the student

petition, several dozen Williams faculty members have removed their names from the Chicago Statement, and the statement itself has been all but rendered defunct. Now, the faculty organizers, President Mandel and various other members of the Williams community are calling for open “dialogue” around the principles of our “educational environment,” centering the Chicago Statement without explicitly mentioning its name. As stated earlier, we contest the framing of this policy as one of “debate” or “dialogue.” Additionally, we point to the College aphorism, “death by committee,” and note the meager place of student voices on the committee and the ineffectual process through which they are appointed.

Student appointments to President Mandel’s “ad hoc” committee are representative of the ineffectual and unjust process through which student voices are appointed. Though the administration deems College Council and the Minority Coalition the de jure voices of the student community, the fact of the matter is that both are concerned primarily with logistical tasks – of registering student organizations, events and budgetary distributions. To task these logistical bodies with the responsibility of filling the seats on the committee is to resort to the myopia of bureaucracy and is, ultimately, an act of bad faith.

We do not need yet another committee to investigate how our educational environment can be made more “open and inclusive.” Again, we ask: open, and inclusive for whom? Instead, we challenge the Williams community to consider, together, the fundamental anxieties of “diversity” which underwrite the contemporary discourse of “free speech.” How might we offer forms of redress or protection to those institutionally, historically and currently imperiled bodies-in-question?

We can and must make way for alternatives. Until then, all efforts at “dialogue” are but a ruse.

Beyond this statement, we have chosen to not comment on our next steps as we are focusing on building coalition and self-care.

This op-ed was written by the members of Coalition Against Racist Education Now. Liliana Bierer ’19, Audrey Koh ’21, Isabel Peña ’19, Isaiah Blake ’21, Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí ’20, Suiyi Tang ’20, Annalee Tai ’21 and Rocky Douglas ’19 contributed.

Protecting free speech When being ‘right’ is not enough

By ESSENCE PERRY Young people are the beating heart of society. Together, we are a beacon of progress and change for a future that seems in dire need of a revolutionary spirit and revival. Progress will continue only by students debating, discussing and challenging the status quo – and college campuses serve as the repositories for this change. College fosters our mental, emotional and, most importantly, our moral capabilities. It melds our creative energies, dreams and passions to produce effective leaders for the future. To produce young leaders, colleges have the responsibility not only to educate students but to prepare them to advocate for themselves, think critically, feel deeply and communicate their ideas to the world.

There has never been another time in history where we have had so much access to education and information, so much so the twenty-first century has been dubbed the “Information Age.” Yet, despite all of this information, the world is facing impending danger from multiple fronts, ranging from climate change to a global rise in right-wing populism. We have the most advanced assessments and information about these problems, yet nothing is changing because the majority of people aren’t learning and understanding this information.

Our elected representatives don’t believe in climate change, parents don’t vaccinate their children and we vote nationalists into office. The problem isn’t a lack of knowledge or information; it is that students lack the skills needed to persuasively communicate their knowledge to the general public or to those who hold different views than them.

We are becoming smarter and learning more, but that knowledge is useless if it remains in an academic echo chamber for only the educated elite to postulate upon. Academia makes students think

that being “right” or having the best idea is enough to generate change, but we are seeing the exact opposite being true. We are failing to connect to the majority of people and the people we are trying to serve because we cannot make our ideas accessible. I posit a few reasons for this: educated people only perpetuate their ideas with likeminded and equally educated people, they don’t attempt to understand opposing viewpoints and they ignore people they find vitriolic.

This highlights the importance of free speech, especially for college students.

Students have the responsibility to seek the truth at all costs and make these truths accessible to everyone, especially with people who may disagree or challenge us. Free speech ensures that all ideas are exposed and brought out in the open. It is only after we understand our opponents’ arguments that we can strengthen our own and make them digestible to the rest of society. To combat bigotry like racism, sexism and xenophobia – beliefs that are rooted in ignorance and fueled by fear – we must be able to tactically invalidate their fallacies and falsities. Remaining ignorant of their arguments allows these ideologies to fester. It is important to understand the roots of hate ideologies; it isn’t acceptable or useful to simply label people as irrational. Yes, at first, it will make students feel uncomfortable. But we need to use that discomfort as a fuel to convince others of our ideas. We need to challenge ourselves to take into consideration their mindset, listen to their opinions to make our own ideas stronger and approachable.

Being “right” isn’t enough anymore; we need to connect and reach people of all types. This can only happen through discourse that provokes us and forces us to reflect on how we can make change.

Essence Perry ’22 is from Fitchburg, Mass. Her major is undecided.

DARIN LI ’21

In support of free speech What we can learn from exposure to multiple ideas

By LUANA MAROJA We want free speech, and for the most basic of reasons: so that we may listen, inform ourselves, ponder and decide. And so that we too may speak, debate and try to persuade. Free speech reveals our differences and is essential for discovering our common ground. The societies that censor free speech have never been healthy societies; I know this from having grown up under a dictatorship that did not tolerate free speech.

Free speech does not mean bringing neo-Nazis or white-supremacists to our campus, as its opponents charge and which no one has ever proposed. This is argumentum ad absurdum, and it distracts from the main issue, which is that it is precisely when you are at college that you need to be exposed to ideas that are unfamiliar and even disquieting. There is hardly a serious issue in our society today that doesn’t involve two sets of opposing ideas. And to be a decently educated member of that society, you need to know both sets of ideas, not simply your own side. At minimum, you need to hear the best arguments of the other side, not merely

a mendacious caricature of those assimilate the unfamiliar idea, and arguments. For how can you argue ponder it with our friends, we might your position unless you know the find it is worthless and reject it outbest arguments of the other side? right. And once in a great while, we The opponents of free speech might find ourselves won over by a at Williams charmingly (and eu- novel idea that we have never conphemistically) request that college sidered. If that is not happening to speakers be curated. That’s a funny you from time to time, it is a sign word choice: where will you find that you have closed your mind to your curators? In all ideas you don’t Hopkins Hall? At already accept. I a college where evwill not attempt ery point of view is to stop those who ‘Curation’ is indeed the vetted from within stick their fingers perennial problem of those in their own ears to Hopkins Hall, you can rest assured block out what they challenging free speech: that you will never don’t want to hear. hear an idea that who gets to decide what But I don’t want challenges Hopkins them sticking their speech can be heard? Who fingers into everyHall. “Curation” is indeed the perenniwould we trust to do that? one’s ears. al problem of those As I said many challenging free times before, I have speech: who gets to learned a great deal decide what speech from hearing from can be heard? Who would we trust people I deeply disagree with (e.g., to do that? (The Youtube video of creationists and climate denialists).

Christopher Hitchens defending In the end, that is the only way to free speech is a must watch.) have your counterarguments beWhen we hear unfamiliar and un- come clear, logical and ready to be expected ideas, we are often disori- used when the need comes. ented and disquieted. This disquiet is the background noise of a brain Luana Maroja has been at the that is working. After we process and College since 2010.

NEWS 4

December 5, 2018

The Williams Record

Three students receive fellowships

By REBECCA PARK STAFF WRITER Three seniors were selected for prestigious fellowships funding post-graduate studies abroad. Keshav Goel ’19 was selected for the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, Linda Worden ’19 was selected for the Rhodes Scholarship for Canada and Kai Cash ’19 was selected for the Schwarzman Scholarship.

Goel is among 11 other individuals chosen from over 370 applicants as Mitchell Scholars for the class of 2020. The George J. Mitchell Scholarship, sponsored by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, selects up to 12 individuals between the ages of 18 and 30 annually for an academic year of postgraduate study in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

It is designed to connect generations of emerging American leaders to the island of Ireland, building stronger relationships for the future. Goel is the first student from the College to receive this scholarship.

As a Mitchell Scholar, Goel will be pursuing a Master of Science at Maynooth University in immunology and global health, “which is pretty unique,” Goel said. He noted how most graduate programs focus on either one or the other, but not both.

The lab teaching the program specializes in research on Type 1 diabetes, which Goel hopes to research further for his dissertation. Goel is currently working on an immunology thesis about the mechanisms of asthma. After he finishes a year of study at Maynooth, Goel plans to go to medical school in the United States. He is also considering a Ph.D. related to immunology and application toward diseases.

Worden, along with ten other individuals, was named a Canadian Rhodes Scholar for 2019. The Rhodes Scholarships for Canada is a partnership between the Rhodes Trust and the Second Century Founder John McCall MacBain O.C. This scholarship has been awarded to over 1,000 Canadian students since 1904, allowing students a year of postgraduate study at Oxford. Worden is the 39th student at the College to receive this scholarship.

With this scholarship, Worden plans to pursue a Master of Philosophy for Comparative Social Policy. At the College, Worden is currently a political economy major and is interested in how everyday people can get involved with policymaking. She has a particular focus on housing and urban,

community-level social policies. This interest stems from an urban studies class she took, a Winter Study 99 project on precariously housed LGBT youth in Vancouver, Canada, various internships and thesis work.

Worden was encouraged to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship after her junior year abroad at the Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford. “I really wanted to return to Oxford after Williams more than anything, as my year abroad was holistically amazing, and I was impressed by the department of social policy and intervention,” Worden said. During her time at Oxford, Worden actively engaged with the local community, volunteering with the Oxford Homeless Action Group and On Your Doorstep, a student campaign combating housing insecurity.

After studying at Oxford, Worden hopes to return to Canada and work on the newly launched National Housing Strategy, with a focus on consultation processes with First Nations communities. She is also interested in increasing citizen participation in policy-making through municipal, provincial and nationallevel efforts.

Cash was one of 147 students, out of over 2,800 applicants, selected for a Schwarzmann scholarship, which is a yearlong master’s program based in the Tsinghua University in Beijing. The scholarship was introduced in 2016 and Cash is a member of the fourth cohort of acceptances. For his scholarship, Cash will pursue a public health degree and examine the relationship between Chinese public health and cultural and economic conditions.

“I realized that being a physician helps one person at a time, but I wanted to change the entire human experience by influencing the health of not only people, but also societies and cultures,” Cash said. After completing his scholarship, he will be joining Microsoft and plans to eventually find an organization that will improve living conditions for communities and cultures around the world, with an emphasis on historically underrepresented people. “My interest in health care wasn’t limited to being a practicing physician but was augmented by my interest in equity, entrepreneurship, teamwork and technology, so now I seek to lead an organization that combines these interests,” he said.

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR Out of large applicant pools, seniors Goel, Cash and Worden recently won the Mitchell, Schwarzmann and Rhodes scholarships, respectively.

CC allocates funds for MinCo

By SOFIE JONES STAFF WRITER On Nov. 13, College Council (CC) voted to approve a onetime allocation of $34,000 to Minority Coalition (MinCo) to fund heritage month events. At the meeting, MinCo co-chairs Tyler Tsay ’19 and Rodsy Modhurima ’19 presented their proposal for funding, which MinCo will distribute to 17 of its 22 groups.

This funding came out of CC’s general fund, which it opened to MinCo groups last year. The $34,000 is almost 12 percent of this year’s general fund allotment. MinCo groups, unlike most registered student organizations, receive their primary annual budgets from the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity through the Davis Center rather than CC, and are thus not eligible for subgroup funding.

MinCo’s steering board has a yearly allocation of $66,000 from the Davis Center, which is then distributed to its organizations. After fall allocations, the MinCo steering board was left with $7,000 to provide additional funding for the rest of the year, according to Tsay and Modhurima. Because this is not enough to cover the costs of their programming, MinCo groups are left to secure additional funding from the general fund, the Davis Center and academic departments. This disparity between how much funding is needed and how much is actually available “puts a lot of pressure” on the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, Tsay said. Modhurima agreed. “MinCo really doesn’t get that much funding and we need [more] funding,” she said.

CC’s approval will allow MinCo groups to organize more heritage month events and to dedicate more time to actually planning events, instead of securing funding. “We don’t want heritage month to be all about fundraising,” said Modhurima.

Because the recent funding will be used to cover costs that MinCo’s remaining budget would have been needed for, the Steering Board is now exploring ways in which their budget can best support the other needs of student groups. “It gives us more flexibility,” Tsay said.

The MinCo steering board has now created two new funds that MinCo groups can access: the pending request fund and rapid response fund. The pending request fund will allow group leaders to alert MinCo to set aside money, so that groups can negotiate with speakers using already secured funding.

The rapid response fund will allocate small amounts of money for events that are in need of last minute funds.

While this allocation will not be recurring, Tsay and Modhurima hope it has lasting effects in securing more funding for MinCo groups. Tsay noted that this signifies to the College administration that MinCo groups need increased funding as the number of groups and the students involved grow. CC Co-President Lizzy Hibbard ’19 echoed this view. “We were willing to pick up the slack because MinCo groups deserve funding, with the idea being that, long term, it would be better if the administration funded MinCo,” she said.

This also signifies the collaboration that exists between CC and MinCo, two bodies that have seemed disconnected in the past, explained Tsay and Modhurima.

Hibbard agreed and stressed the importance of the two groups working together. “Something we’ve worked really closely with [Tsay] and [Modhurima] on is wanting to build more meaningful connections between CC and MinCo because historically that hasn’t really been the case,” Hibbard said. “The students that are involved in groups in MinCo are a huge portion of the student body, so if you’re not really working with MinCo, you’re not really representing the student body.”

Petition sparks free speech controversy CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Tuesday 11-27-18 3:52 p.m., Hollander Hall: Officers responded to a report of a minor motor vehicle accident in the parking lot. The Williamstown Police were also called to respond to the situation. Names and insurance information was taken and a police report was filed.

Thursday 11-29-18 9:12 a.m., Fayerweather Hall: Officers were called to assist a student asking for crutches and transportation to the Health Center. Officers advised the student to call an ambulance to be removed from the building safely and taken to the emergency room. The student was transported to Berkshire Medical Center (BMC) North.

11:20 p.m., Spencer Art Building: Officers responded to a report of a vehicle that was stuck in the mud. The student called for a tow company to pull the car out.

Friday 11-30-18 8:47 a.m., Chapel Parking Lot: An officer responded to a report of an injured owl.

The officer found a barred owl in the landscaped area between the stairwell side of Sawyer Library. The owl was alert and appeared injured. Dispatch contacted the Williamstown Police and the Hopkins Memorial Forest Manager. The owl eventually flew up and roosted in a nearby tree. The forest manager thought that the owl may have flown into one of the windows of the library and was stunned.

Saturday 12-01-18 1:12 p.m., Stetson Road: While patrolling campus, an

officer noticed three individuals using a BB gun and soda cans as targets in Cole Field behind Thompson Lot. The director of security confiscated the gun because it was a violation of the college weapons policy.

2:54 p.m., Lab Campus Drive: Officers responded to a student who fell on the steps at the gate to West College during the Holiday Walk and Reindog Parade. 911 activated Northern Berkshire Emergency Medical Services (EMS), who then transported the student.

11:08 p.m., Currier Hall: Officers activated 911 for a heavily intoxicated student in need of medical attention. Northern Berkshire EMS evaluated and transported the student to BMC North.

Sunday 12-2-18 12:28 a.m., Bryant House: Officers responded to an intoxicated student in need of medical care. 911 was activated and the student was transported to the hospital

by Northern Berkshire EMS. 12:58 a.m., Sage Hall: Officers responded to an intoxicated student. Northern Berkshire EMS arrived and transported them to BMC North.

2:24 a.m., Woodbridge House: Officers responded to a report of an intoxicated student. The officers activated 911. Northern Berkshire EMS and Williamstown Police also responded to the intoxicated student.

10:43 a.m., Parsons House: Officers responded to an anonymous report of a possible issue involving domestic disturbance.

took issue with the language and divisive nature of the Chicago Statement. “The Statement ... ignores the fact that both of these concepts [‘freedom’ and ‘civility’] have been used over and over again to shut down legitimate calls for conditions of safety that would allow the voices of those who haven't been heard to come forward,” she said.

Senior Lecturer in Psychology Susan Engel expressed mixed feelings on the Chicago Statement and advocated for a “a real conversation, not a debate.”

Engel argued that the College community has many questions to ask regarding speech that extends beyond the Statement itself. “What processes do we use to decide who will speak (or perform, or show their work) at Williams?” she asked.

Mark Reinhardt, professor of political science and American studies, sent an email to the entire faculty urging his colleagues to withdraw their signature or not sign the petition.

He expressed problems with the petition’s format, larger messages and implications of the Chicago Statement. “I know there is among us a wide range of views, rooted in part in very different experiences of the College and American society,” he wrote. “Given that diversity, I propose that any forums be approached as opportunities to consider campus discourse in the broadest possible terms, and not merely as occasions for endorsing or opposing one particular, predetermined framing of our circumstances, challenges and prospects.”

Joy James, professor of political science and Africana studies, published an article in The Feminist Wire in which she argued against the Chicago Statement and outlined its implications for the College community. “The Chicago Statement ‘free speech’ campaign accumulates power for elites and enables their predatory desires and aggressions against marginalized groups,” James wrote. “People of color

are window dressing for a Statement that seeks to legitimize hate speech.”

James linked this view to a previously published article in The Feminist Wire by Kai Green, assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and Kimberly Love, assistant professor of English, which discusses the relationship between academia and injustice. Green and Love detailed the challenges of being Black queer feminists in both higher education and Williamstown, portraying many of the issues raised by those against the petition.

“We are not safe because we are Black radical thinkers and professors who refuse to wait for the right time to point out the antiBlack, transphobic, xenophobic and the list goes on … wrongs of this time,” Green and Love wrote.

Both Green and Love expressed solidarity with James and a group of students who argued against the petition. Student pushback took the form of a counter-petition, which circulated on Nov. 15 and was linked to in an email from College Council in addition with the faculty petition. The student petition quickly gained 381 student and alum signatures and was published in The Feminist Wire a few days after circulation.

The students who worked on the response then created the Coalition Against Racist Education Now (CARE Now). “The student letter that surfaced in response to the faculty petition was co-authored and edited by over 20 students from a wide range of identities and positionalities,” CARE Now members said in an op-ed submitted to the Record.

“It was, above all, a democratic, grassroots project from start to finish.” When approached by the Record for comment, CARE Now members chose not to com-

ment beyond the student petition and their op-ed.

The student-led petition rejected the Chicago Statement and expressed anger with the faculty petition; the students were frustrated by their lack of voice in the conversation. “Not allowing students into the discussion and circulation of the petition limits the potential for conflicting viewpoints and is thus completely antithetical to a free speech premise,” they wrote.

Like the faculty members who pushed back against the original petition, the students took issue with the language of the conversation. “‘Free Speech,’ as a term, has been co-opted by right-wing and liberal parties as a discursive cover for racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and classism,” the student petition said. “The creation of this petition at Williams cannot be separated from those dehumanizing associations.”

Furthermore, the petition questioned the equality of the free speech debate at large.

“Ultimately, power determines whose speech is given space and taken seriously,” the students wrote. “Giving one person space [and] time to speak on campus means that another person is not given that space [and] time.”

The petition urged the College community to reconsider the terms of the free speech conversation. “Why can’t we actually have a campus-wide discussion on this issue, one that is not dominated by conservative and white faculty?

Can this instead be an opportunity to take a critical eye to how free speech is constructed and weaponized at institutions like Williams?” the students asked.

The petition concluded with

“I've decided to charge an ad hoc committee with exploring various points of view and making recommendations” President Maud Mandel

criticism of the college community as a whole, bringing up many of the problems raised at the Black Student Union Town Hall on Nov. 14. “Williams College continually fails to support its most marginalized students, staff and faculty members, despite claiming to have a deep commitment to ‘diversity,’” it said.

The controversy surrounding the petition’s adoption also gained a level of national attention. On Nov. 29, a conservative blog called Ricochet published an article claiming that the debate exemplified a culture of censorship on college campuses. Another article from Powerline, which focused on the student petition against the Chicago Principles, saw the petition as emblematic of an ideology that rejected the concept of objective truth. “[N]o one should send their kids to Williams,” it concluded.

In response to the variety of petitions, articles and responses regarding the Chicago Statement and the College’s policies, Mandel sent an email to faculty, students and staff taking action to continue the conversation. “I’ve decided to charge an ad hoc committee with exploring various points of view and making recommendations for how [the College] can ensure an educational environment that’s both intellectually open and inclusive,” she wrote. Mandel explained that she will counsel with “leaders of faculty, staff and student governance” when forming the committee, which will “contribute to the development of guidelines appropriate for [the College].”

In their op-ed to the Record, CARE Now responded to the formation of the committee, contesting the structure and effectiveness of that format in taking action and listening to student voices.

Mandel hopes to create the committee by the end of this calendar year and plans to update the College community about the committee in early 2019 after its formation.

December 5, 2018

NEWS 5

The Williams Record

Survey examines approval ratings of campus groups

By REBECCA TAUBER NEWS EDITOR This week, the Record sent out its biannual approval ratings survey, which measures student views on a variety of campus institutions. Students could answer “approve,” “disapprove” or “neutral” for each question. The survey was distributed randomly to 500 students, and had a re-

sponse rate of 47 percent, resulting in 235 participants in the survey. The 95 percent convidence interval for each approval rating ranged from four to seven percent.

Like last semester, the faculty received the highest approval rating with 89 percent.

College Council (CC) had the lowest approval rating with 22 percent, a drop from a 34 percent approval last semester.

The entry system had the highest disapproval rating with 28 percent, rising from 19 percent last semester. This corresponded with an approval rating drop from 62 to 48 percent. CC closely followed, with a disapproval rating of 27, rising slightly from 22 percent last semester.

The Office of International Education and Study Away and the Zilkha Center both

had the lowest disapproval ratings with two percent each.

President Maud Mandel, whose approval was measured for the first time, received an approval rating of 74 percent and a disapproval rating of 3 percent. Mandel received a higher approval rating than both Interim President Protik Majumder and former President Adam Falk during his last semester as president. Ma-

Fall 2018 Approval Ratings

jumder received an approval rating of 66 percent last semester, and Falk received an approval rating of 28 percent in the fall of 2017.

Other groups with significant changes in approval included the Dean’s Office, Campus Safety and Security (CSS) and Integrative Wellbeing Services (IWS). The Dean’s Office approval rating increased from 36 to 48 percent, and its disap-

proval rating decreased from 18 to eight percent. CSS increased in approval from 41 to 53 percent, but its disapproval rating remained similar, only changing from 21 to 19 percent, a statistically insignificant difference.

IWS, which received the lowest approval rating last semester, increased its approval from 30 to 41 percent.

Disapproval, however, did not change significantly.

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A CLOSER LOOK

USE OF COLLEGE RESOURCES FOR POLITICAL ACTIVISM

By ARRINGTON LUCK STAFF WRITER Mike Bodnarik, the associate director of the Office of Student Life (OSL), sent an email on Nov. 1 to all student groups, clarifying the College’s policy toward the use of college resources for political activities conducted by student groups.

In the email, Bodnarik wrote, “It's important that we all get involved in elections and political processes if we want democracy to thrive.” He added, however, that because of the College’s status as a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit, certain limits are imposed upon student groups on campus with regards to using College resources for political activities.

Bodnarik’s email laid out examples of political activities that “may not be carried out through the College, or with use of Williams’ name, sponsorship, support or resources (including college spaces and technology).” These activities include conducting voter education activities that favor a candidate, party or issue position; endorsing a candidate for public office, either expressly or by implication; promoting action (including voting) with respect to issues that are closely associated with one candidate or another; and providing free office space, phones, copier use or other institutional resources or support to a candidate, campaign, political party, PAC or the like. OSL also works with

the Office of Communications to ensure that Daily Messages abide by the College’s policy, with OSL working to “assist the group/student to redraft their message, so their intent and ideas can still be shared.”

Though Bodnarik invited students to ask if they are uncertain about anything, he made clear that “If an activity isn't on this list or ruled out by other Williams policies, chances are it's OK.” To Bodnarik, however, there is more to the policy than simply keeping the College’s nonprofit status in place. “We do everything we can to provide an environment that is respectful of all people's rights regarding [f]reedom of [s]peech,” Bodnarik wrote to the Record in an email.

The College and the OSL work with student groups on campus, he added, to “make sure that all candidates/views are represented at the forum/debate.”

OSL’s policy is not without its critics, however. Solly Kasab ’21, who worked to register voters on campus in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, found that the policy’s vague nature “lends itself to a natural stifling of political views.” While Kasab conceded that “the views on our campus are sometimes seen as one-sided (and rightfully criticized sometimes for a lack of intellectual diversity), I think clamping down goes too far.”

Kasab recounts seeing a “Yes on 3” sign being removed by an OSL member, and affirms that signage on campus is clear to observers as not a representation of the College’s views. “I think a reasonable observer would conclude that student-led efforts, such as our registering voters or putting up signs, do not represent the viewpoints of the College as a whole,” Kasab said.

Kasab also contests that student groups should have some level of autonomy in political action, citing that “funds received by student groups are student funds,” and that the money for student groups, by virtue of its nature as the Student Activities Tax, is student money and therefore separate from college resources. “On the whole, the [policy] seems disingenuous, as no reasonable person could expect all student activities to be endorsed and paid for by the College,” he said.

While Bodnarik reiterates the importance of maintaining the college’s non-profit status, OSL is willing to work with student groups and provide assistance to help organizations work within the boundaries of the policy. “This is a positive area for us and when things arise we provide support to allow groups/students to work towards their goals,” PHOTOS COURTESY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE. Bodnarik said.

MARLENE SANDSTROM AND DUKES LOVE ACCEPT SECOND THREE-YEAR TERMS AS DEAN, PROVOST

CC forms subcommittee for high-cost club sports

By SOFIE JONES STAFF WRITER Last Friday, College Council (CC) held the first meeting of a new subcommittee on the funding of high-cost club sports. The goal of the committee is to generate a bylaw proposal for CC to vote on, which would dictate how much money can equitably be allocated to clubs, such as the equestrian, sailing, rugby and ultimate frisbee teams.

“There are a lot of different possible solutions and instead of me and other council members randomly deciding on one and pushing it, we thought it made more sense to bring in the people who actually request the funding and see what they think is most useful,” CC Co-president Lizzy Hibbard ’19 said.

The conversation about equitable club sports funding began this fall, when the equestrian team’s requested budget of $28,000 was cut in half by CC. The club sport, which has 11 riders, was allocated funding for practices but not for competitions. This decision came out of the sentiment among many CC representatives that it is inequitable for a team with so few students to receive such substantial funding.

According to Hibbard, CC receives its annual budget from the Student Activity Tax that students pay every semester.

Out of the $125 tax, CC gets $121 per student each term. “Our thought process is [that] each student is paying about $242 a year, to us, and they should roughly be getting out what they’re paying in. If everybody’s paying in the same amount, people shouldn’t disproportionately be getting way more or way less. That wouldn’t really be fair,” said Hibbard.

Costly club sports tend to receive a disproportionate percentage of funding, given their fairly small number of members. In their original budget proposal, for example, the equestrian team sought roughly $2,500 of fund-

ing per student. “That means that ten other students are paying for one student to do equestrian, proportionately,” Hibbard said. “Is that fair? Maybe not.

But was it fair to tell them, in the fall, we aren’t going to fund any of your competitions with only a few weeks notice?”

CC alone funds all expenses of clubs sports teams except for coaches’ salaries, of which the athletics department pays 55 percent. Jamie Vaccaro ’21, who is treasurer of the sailing team, said that this funding is essential in allowing club sports to exist on campus and to be open for all to join. “It would take the place of athletics on this campus from something anyone can participate in to something that you have to be at a varsity level to participate in,” Vaccaro said, commenting on the budget cuts to club sports.

Vaccaro agrees with Hibbard that “there’s a fundamental issue of what equity means that’s sort of at the center of this,” but does not support the push for a one-size-fits-all bylaw. “That’s not considering the needs and the value of the individual teams.

Ideally, what club sports get out of [this committee] is, at the very least, College Council having an understanding of what clubs really need to function,” he said.

Tess Richman ’19, a boardmember on the Student Athlete Advisory Committee who is part of the new sub-committee, said after the meeting that it was clear that there has been a “lack of communication between CC and club sports in the past.” “I think there will be positive changes, but it will be a contentious issue in the process,” she said.

Hibbard hopes that the committee will reach a conclusion in the form of a bylaw by the end of Winter Study, when her term will end. “Whatever we do, I want it to be consistent and for clubs to know what we are doing,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to feel shocked by what CC does. That’s not good for us and it’s not good for them.”

6 FEATURES

The Williams Record

December 5, 2018

One in Two Thousand

By RACHEL SCHARF MANAGING EDITOR I got to know Hannah Goldstein ’20 through our work together in Students for IsraeliPalestinian Dialogue. I was immediately struck by her sense of adventure, willingness to take risks and care for other people and their stories.

I sat down with Hannah over a much-needed Driscoll brunch to learn more about her love of the outdoor industry, upcoming semester abroad and more.

So, in high school you spent a semester at the High Mountain Institute (HMI), right?

Yeah! My junior spring in high school, I went to HMI, which is a semester school program. It was a really cool experience because it solidified this idea that I had always loved the outdoors, but I had never understood that you can think about them in an academic way. It was a cool opportunity because I was able to connect those dots and started reading things about the environment, which definitely led me to my major here, which is environmental studies.

And you’re going back to Colorado for Winter Study! Tell me about that.

For Winter Study I’m doing a 99 [independent project], and I’m making a podcast on gender politics in the outdoor industry. I came up with the idea because as a woman who’s really involved in a lot of outdoor adventure stuff, especially really intense expeditions, I’ve been in some scenarios where I haven’t been listened to as

much because I’m a woman.

So even in dangerous scenarios where we’re trying to assess the risk of traveling across some part of a glacier, we’re all coming together as a group trying to make a decision as to what to do to move forward, and the group is pretty much all men except for me. I come up with an idea or an alternative route, but people don’t listen to me!

And it really felt like it was because I was a woman. So, there are a lot of other little examples like that, and it really inspired me to examine that more. In the outdoor industry podcasts are really big, and people really like sharing stories, so I thought that this could be a cool way to start some change in that place.

So, I’m starting with ski patrollers and using that as a cross-section of emergency medicine and the outdoor industry. I’ll be traveling around Colorado interviewing a lot of really cool people.

Do you think you want to work in the outdoor industry after graduation?

That’s a good question. I think so. My whole life I’ve wanted to be a teacher. For some reason, [while] being at Williams, I didn’t really take that seriously, even though that’s the one thing I’ve known I’ve always wanted to do. Most of it is because it feels like there’s all this pressure to do professional jobs, so I’ve gone through phases of things that I know I care about, and would want to do, like being a psychiatrist or being an environmental policy-oriented lawyer. But underneath everything, I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. And recently I’ve been like, “You

HANNAH GOLDSTEIN ’20

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR HANNAH'S HOMETOWN BROOKLINE, MASS.

HANNAH'S RESIDENCE BRYANT

know what, it’s okay. I want to be a teacher.” And I think that there’s some really cool potential to combine the outdoor world with actual serious studies, so I’d really love to get involved in that cross-section.

So next semester you’re going abroad – do you want to tell me about what you’re doing?

[Laughs.] Sure! So next semester I’m going to study at an environmental institute in southern Israel. The student population is comprised of one-third Israelis, one-third Palestinians and Jordanians and then one-third international students. And the whole theory and practice of

STUDY ABROAD LOCATION ISRAEL

the institute centers on how to use environmental studies and science as a form of peacemaking. It’s a really cool place, and I think they pay a lot of attention to people’s stories and who they are and how we can use paying attention to people and our environment as a way to make the world in its entirety a better place.

That’s amazing. Tell me about your independent study on the Hoosic River!

I went to a really alternative high school in that it was project-based, so something that I learned there was how to come up with an idea and execute it from all different angles.

Coming to Williams, this was the most traditional academic setting I’ve ever been in, and it was really overwhelming. And I was also kind of fed up with it, because there was this disconnect between what I was learning, the people that were around me and the place that was around me. I felt like I wanted so badly to get smarter, but where was that smartness going to? So, I came up with this idea for an independent study. I had previously taken a course with [Lecturer in History] Annie Valk on oral history, and I really loved that.

And I was thinking about how I could talk about oral history in terms of the environment.

So, I ended up doing an independent study where I paralleled the environmental history and the oral history of the Hoosic River, the river that runs through Williamstown and North Adams, which has some really intense history in the area. I also worked with a local organization, the Hoosic River Revival, and got a feel for what they were doing.

I ended up making a website and documenting some photos that I took and some interviews that I did, so that the stuff that I did could also work with the people that I got that knowledge from, and in a really small way give back a little bit based on all this academic, hoity-toity stuff that was going on in my head. I wanted to share that.

How about your involvement with Storytime?

Yeah! Storytime has always been something that is really important to me at Williams because it feels like a really nice

way to foster intentional community. Throughout this year and this semester especially, we’ve been thinking a lot about what that means and who the community is for and what we can do to really make it a good place for everyone. Honestly, at first, I was really hesitant to make lots of changes, and I was really nervous because for who I was, I really appreciated what Storytime was, and I really valued that. And it was hard for me to see past that, because it was really something that I felt so attached to and felt was so special. But more recently as we’ve decided to institute changes, it feels really right, and it feels like we’re doing the right thing to try to shake things up a little bit. It’s a really good reminder that not everything has to be set in stone. And especially when it comes to people’s stories and how they share them, it doesn’t all have to happen in a uniform way.

That’s awesome. People at Williams are so scared of change, but it can be good!

It’s so true. I try and take a lot of really big risks. You know, I say “big risks,” but they can be really small things. So, if I have a crush on someone, I’ll ask them on a date. And you know what, sometimes it doesn’t go very well. But it feels important to me to just go out and do it. I have a very “do, do, do” personality, where if I come up with an idea, I want to execute it. But I think that it allows me to take risks, which I otherwise might not be super comfortable taking. I just like jumping into things, and just trying to swim once I’m already in the water.

Ephs volunteer at Pownal Elementary

By SAM MERMIN STAFF WRITER

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BENNINGTON BANNER.

Trail House serves a variety of comfort cuisine, including chicken parmesan, burgers and mac and cheese.

Trail House comforts with classic dishes, evokes cozy and warm atmosphere

By CLARA LEE STAFF WRITER Tucked away in North Adams, Trail House seems fairly nondescript from the outside with its cottage-esque exterior. But upon entering, I was greeted by fairy lights, Christmas decorations and the sound of laughter. A warm glow emanated from every corner of the restaurant, shielding diners from the bleak weather. It felt like a log cabin, but amplified by an abundance of decorations.

Usually, restaurants will offer a basket of bread with butter on the side to sate customers’ hunger until the main dishes arrive. Trail House’s version of this was amplified, serving us naan bread with honeysuckle butter on the side. Beautifully arranged and cut into thin slices for convenience, the naan bread blew the classic basket of bread out of the water. It was warm, soft and chewy. The herbs sprinkled on top added a nice touch to an already savory dish. Although I don’t normally like butter, the honeysuckle butter complemented the bread wonderfully. It was the perfect balance of salty and sweet.

My friend and I deliberated a while before settling on the homemade chicken parmesan bites to start us off. Though it is an appetizer, the portion size proved more than sufficient. The marinara sauce that accompanied the dish wasn’t as flavored as I would’ve liked,

so I added some of the himalayan salt Trail House sets on every table. Our improvised chicken bites were absolutely delicious, and even though I knew I had a big meal ahead of me, I ate more than my fair share. I would say that the chicken bites could have been more adventurous, as they were somewhat comparable to chicken nuggets, but they did their job in getting us excited for the entreé.

For my main dish, I opted for mac and cheese with buffalo chicken. It was a very interesting and clever rendition of a classic American dish.

The chef had sprinkled some cilantro and shaved parmesan on the dish, which made for a very flavorful meal. The mac and cheese was spicy due to the chicken, which appealed to my inclination for spicy food.

The dichotomy between the refreshing quality of the cilantro and the savory chicken was unlike anything I’d had before.

When the waitress stopped by to check in on us, I exclaimed, “This is the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had!”

Not only was the food amazing, but the waitress and owner were both so personable and welcoming. They stopped by our table regularly, cracking jokes right and left. After eating so many carb-heavy dishes, I was full to the point of discomfort, but I knew I had to try one of their desserts. The options were so delectable, I knew I would regret leaving without indulging in at least one. I chose the warm

plate of cookies, and in spite of my fullness, I devoured almost all of the soft and gooey dish. They came with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream, which made the dessert as a whole fantastic.

Overall, I couldn’t recommend Trail House more highly. The owner and workers are such genuine, kind and hospitable people, and sitting in the restaurant is akin to sitting at home surrounded by loved ones. The bright and cozy environment almost made me forget that we were in the middle of nowhere, with snow threatening to fall from the skies at any moment.

Furthermore, Trail House’s message is truly inspiring.

They, as written on their menu, are “committed to supporting sustainable farming and fishing,” “acquire and use organic flour and chickens and cage-free/organic eggs” and buy their ingredients from family farms, as opposed to factory farms.

They also offer gluten-free items, ensuring that customers with special food needs are not left stranded. Trail House is an environmentally friendly, health-conscious restaurant and a glimmer of hope in a wasteland of unethical consumption.

I left feeling full, of food definitely, but also of happiness. My friend and I have already made plans to go again, and I recommend that anyone needing to take a break from the dining halls at the College check it out!

For all of the value that an elite liberal arts college can bring to a remote area, there is an inevitable tension created by the presence of a wealthy institution of higher education like the College in a region that is, on average, neither particularly wealthy nor highly educated. Such an institution can either be an asset to the local community or a focal point of resentment and symbol of division. This fall, a group of student volunteers organized by the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA) began volunteering at nearby Pownal Elementary School to help ensure that the College does its part to be a positive presence outside the confines of the purple bubble.

The Pownal program is one example of many that involve students from the College working to help elementary school students. At Pownal, students volunteer in classes, take the younger students on afternoon excursions and lead them on trips into nature. They can volunteer during recesses and even serve as pen pals. Students from the College also volunteer at other nearby elementary schools.

Caroline Case ’22 enjoyed trying new activities, such as track, as a student volunteer. “When I first went to Pownal, I didn’t know what we were going to be helping with,” she said. “I’ve never done track before, and I’m definitely not a runner, but it was still really fun.”

CLiA was formed five years ago in response to student demand for opportunities to learn and volunteer outside of campus and aims to organize programs centered around community engagement as efficiently as pos-

sible. In keeping with CLiA’s broad mission, students volunteer at Pownal for a variety of reasons. Some are there to learn about education or do field work for their classes. Others just like the idea of helping younger students. Jennifer Swoap, director of elementary outreach for CLiA, has been instrumental in organizing the College’s relationship with Pownal. She noted that students’ own past experiences are a common motivator for them to get involved at Pownal. “A lot of times, Williams students have had experiences from their own high schools or elementary schools that [were] important to them,” Swoap said. “And that’s the passion, and that’s what is the impetus [going] forward.”

Swoap observed that, regardless of students’ motivations for volunteering, they all seem to be enjoying and benefiting from it. “The Williams students have a lot of fun,” she explained. “Elementary-age students are very approachable, and it’s very different from the pressure cooker I often hear Williams referred to as.” And the benefits of volunteering go beyond having fun and relaxing. Swoap saw the volunteers also get something more profound out of the experience: “It’s a different role. It’s fun, and the Williams students can tell they’re making a difference.”

Case agreed. “It was a really laid-back and upbeat time, and I loved getting off of campus and interacting with non-Williams people for a change. It helped me get away from academic stress and put it in perspective,” she said.

A notable aspect of the Pownal program is the initiative that students took to start it. Swoap said that CLiA formed this relationship with Pownal because stu-

dents were so driven by the desire to help. “Certainly, the primary driver of work that we do is in response to Williams [students’] interest in furthering the things that they’re passionate about,” she explained. The impact that the program has on elementary school students is most important, but its benefit to the College students is a nice bonus. For Swoap, that value should never be overlooked.

“The growth of Williams students as they go through their four years here is a big part of why we’re doing this work,” she said.

Case said she has formed some meaningful connections with the younger students. “The best part was becoming friends with the kids,” she said. “I especially got close to two fifth grade girls.”

While the Pownal program helps students at the College involve themselves in experiential learning, it also has a meaningful impact on the elementary school students. Pownal Elementary School was chosen, according to Swoap, because it “gives students a different experience with different socioeconomic [classes].” The area surrounding the school has high rates of poverty, trauma, teen pregnancy and domestic abuse.

For Swoap, the impacts of student volunteer activity in that area is particularly important.

While other students do important work at other schools in the surrounding region, Swoap stressed how much the Pownal Elementary School students in particular can benefit from the presence of volunteers from the College. “Their classroom teachers may be the only college-educated adults in their lives,” she said.

“So having someone in their lives who’s college-educated, who’s closer to their ages … the impact of that relationship is huge.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF POWNAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

This fall, College students, working with CLiA, began volunteering at nearby Pownal Elementary School.

December 5, 2018

FEATURES 7

The Williams Record

Mandel recounts academic and personal journey to the College

By LYDIA DUAN and JEONGYOON HAN FEATURES EDITORS At Purple Rain’s concert last Saturday, a sea of students, faculty and parents serenaded President of the College Maud Mandel for her “almost half-birthday.”

As the mini half-birthday celebration demonstrated, many students have embraced Mandel, whose genuineness, approachability and “cool mom vibes” have won over the hearts of College members.

Part of what makes the community view Mandel in this way has been her actions throughout her first semester here in Williamstown. Her concerted efforts to reach out to all parts of campus are illustrative of her passion for involving herself in communities that are committed to promoting education.

And in Mandel’s lifelong journey through various academic spaces and experiences, the College, as she put it, “is the culmination of a lifetime of deep interest in undergraduate learning.”

Even with the College being the latest stage in her academic life, choosing to work at a small liberal arts school is, in many ways, a return to her origins.

“For me, coming back to my roots through Williams is very meaningful,” she said.

The roots that Mandel refers to stems primarily from her undergraduate years at Oberlin, whose close-knit liberal arts environment lent itself to the development of her intellectual curiosity. That curiosity would lead her to study abroad in Aixen-Provence, France, her junior year. It was a formative experience that saw the convergence of her eventual academic interests and her own personal history.

She became connected with people who were Armenian immigrants who migrated to France from Lebanon. As they

JULIA CASSELL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Mandel, pictured with Elizabeth Bigham ’21 and William Conyers ’21, can be found interacting with students throughout campus. grew to know each other, she found personal resonance in the stories they shared. These moments of cross-cultural exchange sparked Mandel’s interest in history, especially in light of her own family, as the granddaughter of Jewish migrants who left central Europe in the late 1930s.

“My whole family life and history was filled with stories of dispersion, refugees, genocide and the birth of states,” she said. “By discovering another group of people’s culture and history, I then started to ask more academic questions about my own background.”

Later, she pursued a doctorate in history at the University of Michigan. While she credits her time at Oberlin for “making me into an intellectual person,” and she thinks of her time at Michigan as the period “where I was disciplined in the field of history.

I learned how to be a historian.”

As she found herself honing her own historical field of interest, her experiences abroad stayed with her, and her dissertation was a comparative study of Armenians in France after World War I and Jews in France after World War II. Because education so fully influenced her own life, she spent 15 years teaching at Brown in the Judaic studies and history departments before becoming Dean of the College there.

Brown is significant to her because it was there that she developed her own pedagogy.

“I became an educator at Brown,” she said. “That’s where I learned how to translate what I knew into a space where I could help students forward the things that they were interested in.”

But Mandel is more than an academic. When asked how she

would separate the hypothetical chapters of her autobiography, she said she would include several chapters on family, defined as both those directly related to her and “families of friends.”

Her immediate family is comprised of her husband Steve, a son, Lev, at Brown and a daughter, Ava, in her first year at Mount Greylock Regional School. As a family, they enjoy taking walks and going to the movies together. Amidst their busy schedules, they try to uphold a tradition of family dinners to touch base throughout the week. Mandel and her husband enjoy the weekend athletic life here on campus, but “that’s not Ava’s pleasure,” Mandel said, laughing.

Mandel said that in regards to adjusting to life in Williamstown, there still are difficulties that come with transplanting her family’s lives to a new en-

Guidebook explores campus with levity

By NIGEL JAFFE STAFF WRITER Which “architectural jamboree” is actually the only building on campus that bears true national significance? Which Amhersteducated architect invites comparisons to Groucho Marx for his lack of steady principles? Which former chapel led Frank Lloyd Wright himself to exclaim, “Who f*cked up that quite nice building with that damned door?”

The answers to these questions, and many more, can be found in Williams College: The Campus Guide, a new architectural guidebook written by Professor Emeritus of Art E.J. Johnson ’59 and Professor of Art Michael Lewis. Both linchpins of the Art department, the duo are uniquely suited to such a project, as former president Adam Falk attests in his foreword to the book. Writing with a warmth that seems to seep right through the page, Falk declares that “E. J. [Johnson] and Michael [Lewis] are among the very few people we could trust to guide us through this ever-shifting landscape.”

And what a superb pair of guides they make. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the history of the College and its architecture, the book then assumes the walking tour-based format characteristic of its more than 25 antecedents in the Princeton Architectural Press series on American colleges and universities.

Johnson and Lewis took on the project out of sheer creative interest. “The provost at the time, Will Dudley [’89], presented the idea to Adam Falk,” Lewis said.

“We decided to do it, more out

of a sense of pleasant duty than anything else. It certainly wasn't going to make us famous, but we felt it was a way to give back.”

The book is split into six localized “walks;” each designated stopping point is given a scrupulous historical examination.

Many such blurbs, especially those concerning older structures, supplement their analysis with archival photographs and original blueprints, highlighting the rich history of the College’s most beloved buildings.

Though the book’s individual descriptions are thorough, most are reasonably concise; its authors are well aware of the fact that, as they note early on, “Scholarly books on architecture do not travel well.” In fact, one of their main goals in developing the guidebook was to allow readers to bring their copy along on their travels without being obstructed by the physical burden: “An architectural guidebook should be lightweight, but only in the physical sense. It walks a perilous line between scholarship and portability.”

Johnson and Lewis wrote with another overarching goal in mind: accessibility. Their lively, often colloquial tone gives life to material which might otherwise become tedious, and their affection for the school is obvious. At times, such an approach drifts into irreverence, but as Lewis noted, “It’s the kind of teasing you can only give to a love object.

The campus is far from perfect, but we love it all the more for its foibles and failings.”

It is this easiness of attitude which sets the book apart from its peers. Rarely is an author’s devotion to a text so palpable as

it appears here. “My feeling is that a book like this, as soon as it goes through the ‘deflavorizer’ of public relations, is dead on arrival,” Lewis said. “Ours stands out among other guides because ours is written freely with no interference from the administration.”

Perhaps such bureaucratic oversight would have prevented the inclusion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s rather impassioned outburst. Either way, other amusing details also shine through as a result of the authors’ relaxed manner. Readers are encouraged to look closely at a lithograph from 1830 for a cow depicted on the lawn through which Spring Street would one day run; they also mention that the columns at the entrance of Chapin are carved from stone so pure that they were featured in an issue of the professional journal of the stone industry (which is aptly named Stone).

Whether through these amusing anecdotes or wider historical and architectural commentary, Johnson and Lewis prove to be storytellers of the highest order.

The guidebook presents an assiduously constructed account of College history on multiple levels, from the particularities of a certain frieze to grand overviews of a college president’s tenure.

Lewis used a striking analogy to describe the process of uncovering those minute details. “It’s as if you’d spent your whole life in the woods, but you realize that you didn’t know bird calls,” he said. Regardless of how readers are drawn to the guidebook, it is certain to deepen their appreciation for the campus’s metaphorical bird – the countless things which make the College the eclectic place it is today.

vironment, yet made note of the warm reception. The closeknit nature of the community coupled with the amiability of the people comprising it has allowed for a “soft landing.”

“People have been very nice to us,” she said. “If you had asked me, ‘How long do you think it’ll take before you’ll feel at home,’ I think I would have said quite a while. But it happened very quickly ... and I think it’s because of the size of this place. You start to run into people you know, … people I know by name, that I can say hello to, and there’s something about that that makes it very quickly become a place you would call home.”

Home is a fascinating question for Mandel. Princeton, N.J., where she grew up and is her mother’s current residence, holds a special place in her

Reindog parade highlights This Saturday, Williamstown’s finest dogs came out to Spring Street to celebrate the holidays. Though the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce gives out their own awards, we at the Record want to recognize some of the pets that made the day merry as heck.

Pug in a stroller This doggo may not look happy, but he’s quite adorable. His “old man” vibes are the perfect touch to his Santa costume.

Future too bright fuzzy furry monster dog This reindog may not be able to see past all the hair in his eyes, but he’s rocking the antlers and is probably kept pretty warm by that jacket.

Hanukkah dog There are few things in this world more precious than a pupper in a kippah. Hearts fullon melted. He’s a keeper.

Dearly beloved dachshund Part reindeer and part dachschund, this four-legged pal walked in stride wearing a plaid ensemble. This was no fashion faux paw.

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR

E.J. Johnson and Michael Lewis co-authored a new, witty guidebook, Williams College: The Campus Guide.

heart. And Providence, R.I., still has a whole host of friends for the Mandels.

But Williamstown is quickly becoming a home for the family, along with a place for Mandel to bring to life her personal, academic and administrative aspirations. Specifically, because she views academic institutions as a space for personal and intellectual enrichment, based on her own experiences, she is eager to work and grow with the community. “[The College] is full of people who are incredibly smart people but also deeply thoughtful and often very committed,” Mandel said. “I mean students, too. The whole collectivity is made of people and everybody has something to offer. What I came to realize more and more was that the most effective way to lead an institution like this is to tap into the energy of that community.”

Mandel is not approaching this effort from a strictly administrative position; she views all academic institutions as collections of individual stories, including her own.

She seeks to connect with the community on a more personal level, given the ways in which her own identities inform her interactions.

“I think it depends on the context in which I am speaking, but I think I would describe myself as a mother, wife, friend and daughter, as an educator, as a historian and now, as someone deeply committed to higher education,” she said.

“Also, of course, as a woman … and as someone deeply committed to the power of education to change lives.”

After speaking with Mandel, we were left charmed and inspired, not only because of her eloquence, grace and passion for learning, but also because of her sincerity.

8 ARTS

The Williams Record

December 5, 2018

Raising Hell enraptures audience with witty, absurd antics

By YASMINA CABRERA STAFF WRITER At 8 p.m. last Friday night, students piled into Paresky Auditorium for the Perennial Amateur Convention’s (PAC) fall comedy show, Raising Hell, which consisted of a few introductory stand-up acts followed by sketches written by the group’s members.

Julia Cochran ’19, PAC president, greeted the audience, giving a nod to the show’s director Abby Lloyd ’20, and introduced head writers Evelyn Elgart ’19 and Benjamin Stanley ’19, the latter of whom she jokingly said was only there “to not alienate the men in the audience.” She acknowledged PAC’s female leadership in a genre of entertainment that has historically been male dominated.

Sam Jocas ’21 performed the first of three stand-up sets, cracking relatable jokes about how CNN is often weirdly played at the gym which can make it hard to work out while “watching the world fall apart.” For the second set, Owen Foster ’22 delivered a refreshingly positive list of “some things that I like,” among those being neck pillows and the uplifting results of the last election.

Joey Mullen ’19 presented a fearlessly blunt set tackling Hollywood’s culture of representation; “Why do movies think we need a white main character to identify with – like a movie about gladiators,” Mullen asked. “I already know I’m not a gladiator, I can suspend my disbelief a little bit more.” He also came to the conclusion that Michael B. Jordan

PHOTO COURTESY OF PAC.

PAC, formally known as the Perennial Amateurs Convention, presented its annual fall show this past Friday in Paresky auditorium. would be a good choice to play him in a movie about his own life.

The next portion of the show began with a gameshow sketch entitled “Pronounce That,” in which three contestants – an English teacher obsessed with correcting people’s grammar, a pretentious theater actress and Johnny Depp – all took turns in pronouncing difficult words.

The punch line came when Depp failed to correctly pronounce “Caribbean.” This act was followed by a job interview sketch that made fun of how popularized astrology has become; two heads of a company are looking for a new employee but the candidate is left frustrated when they reject him after only asking for his birthdate. He becomes extremely analytical and tries to

rationalize with them, proving to the interviewers that he is, for sure, a Virgo.

A class seminar sketch introduced the show’s longest running joke, which centered on an annoying classmate who first interrupts someone in order to give a long-winded response to the professor’s question and does it again later during a wedding sketch when he begins his wedding vows by saying “to piggyback on that.” After his daughter makes her final comments on his deathbed, he comes back to life just to say “I’d like to push back on that…” Although these punchlines were dispersed throughout the show, they received some of the hardest laughs and connected everyone in the audience through the shared experience

of the “irritating classmate” who always starts their class commentary with an obnoxiously overused phrase.

The show was arguably at its best when a sketch about Hannibal Hamlin, America’s 15th Vice President, introduced a sequence of back-to-back sketches that shone not only in their creativity but also in the skillful delivery of an already great dialogue. In the Hannibal Hamlin piece, the ghost of the 15th Vice President stands before the White House press corps as they try to figure out who he is. When they confuse him for Hannibal Lecter, the reporter from Fox News inevitably ends up defending cannibalism. Soon after the sketch ended, one of the group members came running from the au-

dience towards the stage dressed in sports gear, apologizing for being late and that he came to do the show because “who cares what society thinks?” The audience quickly caught on to the High School Musical spoof when he exclaimed, “sports taught me teamwork, theater taught me it’s okay to be who I truly am.”

The next sketch was a reimagining of the first table reading for Call Me By Your Name, in which the book’s author and the film’s director clash over a few creative liberties the director has taken, including changing Elio’s name to “John Jacob Jingleheimer.” Once the comedian who played the director began shouting in his ridiculous Italian accent, another actor mimicked Timothée Chalamet’s

angsty mannerisms, and it was enough to have the entire room shaking with laughter. The comedians seemed to thrive off the audience’s energy as each sketch managed to build off the previous with even more momentum.

The energy in the room was at its peak in a sketch about two exorcists who play “good cop, bad cop” in order to get a demon to leave a young girl’s body. The audience was enthralled as the possessed girl was shaking back and forth and the more seasoned exorcist, who in an effort to defeat the demon, shouted what was arguably the best line of the entire night: “LATIN LATIN LATIN LATIN LATIN.” In the end, through the rookie exorcist’s empathetic tries, we find out that the demon was simply possessing the girl because of self-esteem issues.

The show ended with the lyrical masterpiece “Garbage Man,” a Grease-style slumber party musical number about one of the girl’s boyfriends being a garbage pick-up man.

“It is fully a miracle that this show gets put on at all because the timeline is so short. We have a week for the cast to learn all their lines, stage everything, figure out tech, market the show … this show always miraculously gets put together through the sheer force of comedians needing attention,” Cochran said about putting on the fall show.

“PAC is a crazy week, but it’s worth it every time. We had a great crowd for Raising Hell and I hope the student body keeps turning out to see our dumb comedy show,” she said.

Cap & Bells takes on sinister comedy with The Pillowman

By ZOÉ CHEVALIER STAFF WRITER

PHOTO COURTESY OF SLASHFILM.COM

Beautiful Boy, based on a memoir by the same name, intimately captures the grim realities of drug addiction.

Chalamet delivers visceral, raw performance

By PHILLIP PYLE STAFF WRITER A few Fridays ago, I decided to spend my whole evening at Images Cinema. I watched Damien Chazelle’s First Man at 4:45 pm and Beautiful Boy immediately after. It comes as no surprise that teenage movie fanatics are wondering if Timothée Chalamet will get the Oscar this year. However, after watching both movies, I’m going to make a bold statement: no. While I don’t think Chalamet will win the Academy Award for Best Actor, this was his best performance yet and one of my favorites of the year.

Beautiful Boy, which played at Images Cinema from Nov. 9 through Nov. 22, is based on the memoirs written by a father, David Sheff, and his son, Nic. The film chronicles Nic’s fall into drug usage and his addiction to meth, as well as recovery, relapse and the lasting effects of drug abuse on the Sheff family.

The movie stars Steve Carell as David, Chalamet as Nic, Maura Tierney as Karen Barbour (David’s wife) and Amy Ryan as Vicki Sheff (Nic’s mother). Despite the story being centered around the consequences of drugs and Nic’s choices on the family, this is an atypical family drama. The film features many unnerving visuals, including meth and heroin usage, painful glimpses into relapse and withdrawal and raw emotion concerning Nic’s potential death.

As this is Felix van Groeningen’s directorial follow-up to Belgica (2016), this is not his first rendezvous in filmmaking, which is clearly shown in the execution of the film. The movie tells an astonishing story with candid dialogue, uncomfortable character development and anxiety-ridden sequences. It doesn’t paint drug addiction in a light tone, which makes it hard to bear at times. For this reason alone, Beautiful Boy is not for everyone.

For those who are uncomfortable witnessing “shooting up,” self-harm and intense psychological battles, this is not for you.

That being said, this was one of the first movies I have seen that seemed to show the true nature of drug usage and recovery through these depictions.

In terms of technical filmmaking, there are three aspects I try to pay attention to while watching movies: cinematography, score/sound production and timeline flow. One aspect of this movie I found subpar was its cinematography. Ruben Impens, director of photography, didn’t seem to capitalize on the artistic potential in Beautiful Boy. Other than the diner dialogue shots between David and Nic and the drug usage shots, the cinematography and colorization were bland. There was no experimentation or innovation in the shots, which we have admittedly been spoiled with in recent movies.

Although the story in itself isn’t particularly conducive to extremely radical cinematography, there could have been more tinkering around with lighting and creative liberties surrounding artistic shots. After all, Impens’ artistic direction was phenomenal in the 2016 French horror film Raw, so why couldn’t he have done the same here?

The next aspect is score and sound production, which I found to be satisfactory. The score contained great moments with emotional climaxes and eerie synths that built upon the anxiety of usage and overdose scenes. Sampha’s original song “Treasure,” which played in the credits, was a great addition to the soundtrack, along with appearances by Zola Jesus and Aphex Twin. That said, some of the music was just plain off. A few very emotional scenes were coupled with upbeat, almost happy songs, which detracted from the sincerity of the story.

Aside from that, the addition of brilliant sound production and crisp dialogue audio kept the score on the net positive side.

In terms of the timeline flow, I must admit that the timeline in this movie was occasionally confusing. There are many flashbacks where it is hard to tell if Nic has fallen into drugs yet and how old he is. It’s hard to follow along at first, but eventually, I began to understand when scenes were flashbacks or not, and thus understood the importance of such distinctions between his current state and past states.

Despite these criticisms, Groeningen still adapted the memoirs brilliantly, as the movie doesn’t stray away from the reality of recovery: it is difficult.

Throughout the story, we see Nic relapse time and time again.

Perhaps what struck me most about Beautiful Boy is its timeliness. This is a movie reflecting the current times, despite it being based on something that occurred over a decade ago. The opioid and drug overdose epidemic continues to run rampant in the United States – and the Northeast, in particular – and Beautiful Boy provides an artistic depiction of the horrors of drug abuse. Most importantly, it emphasizes that drug addiction is a medical condition and dismisses the notion that users can recover on their own, for diseases require outside help. This movie makes an emotional case for there to be more extensive funding for rehabilitation efforts and that the system for drug abuse recovery needs to be revitalized in America.

In the end, Beautiful Boy is an emotional roller coaster filled with great acting and real life takeaways. Although the story as a whole is somber, some scenes are particularly tear-jerking. And with award season approaching, I do expect Carrell and Chalamet to both be nominated for awards.

Cap & Bells’ latest show, The Pillowman, is a masterful adaptation of a dark classic. The play, written by Martin McDonagh and directed by John Murphy ’21, was performed on Nov. 16 and 17 in the Directing Studio of the ’62 Center.

The performance, though long, was wonderfully carried out by the five actors: Julia Tucher ’21, Jack Romans ’20, Owen Foster ’22, Peter Duke ’21 and Allison Li ’22. They were stunning in their depictions of troubled characters struggling with childhood traumas. This was not easy to do. The play, defined as a “dark comedy,” is a troubling account of suffering and the violence depicted against children throughout the show is extremely disturbing.

Set in an imaginary authoritarian regime, the play tells the unsettling story of Katurian (Tucher), a writer of short stories who is arrested and interrogated by two police officers for the gruesome content of his tales, which depict violent child murders.

Coincidentally, the stories are similar to murders that the detectives have been investigating, and they suspect Katurian to be linked to them.

As the story unfolds, the detectives Ariel (Foster) and Tupolski (Romans) reveal details about their own traumatic childhoods, involving alcoholic and abusive fathers, as the reason for their wills to protect children.

The last main character, Michael (Duke) – brother of Katurian – adds another layer to this traumatic story.

As part of their parent’s evil plot, Michael was hidden from his brother and tortured for seven years, while Katurian heard all of it. The goal was to make Katurian a “great writer.” The parents’ physical and psychological torture of both of their children leads Katurian to murder both of them, smothering them with a pillow in their sleep. The parents’ gruesome “experiment” forces their two sons to live in a world where right and wrong are blurred.

Michael is defined as “slow to catch on,” and does not seem to grasp reality. He interprets Katurian’s tales as orders, and kills children based on the stories that his brother has written. For example, in Katurian’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” a man is kind to a boy he finds on the street, sharing a sandwich with him, but then proceeds to bleed the child to death by cutting off his toes.

While this murder is being investigated by Ariel and Tupolski, Michael finally confesses to his brother that he is the child murderer.

Violence is hard to depict on stage, especially the description of traumatic acts upon children in this play.

One unforgettably horrific tale, “The Little Jesus,” describes the story of a young girl who is beaten and crucified in the same way that Jesus was in the bible. Murphy,

however, finds a way to represent it – by making these acts appear as shadows behind a screen. This approach is interesting, as the director does not shy away from addressing the brutality of the play, but still maintains a certain distance from it.

“The Pillowman” is also the name of one of Katurian’s short stories, in which a man made out of pillows visits children and convinces them to commit suicide to avoid living out their “shitty life.”

In this brutal approach, McDonagh pushes the audience to consider the connection between childhood traumas and the adults who those children turn into. Eventually, Tupolski seems to compel the audience to reflect upon their own lives. “I’m just tired of everybody round here using their shitty childhoods to justify their own shitty behavior,” he said. “My dad was a violent alcoholic. Am I a violent alcoholic? Yes I am, but that was my personal choice.

I freely admit it.”

Tucher’s performance is particularly extraordinary; without leaving the stage for the entire two-and-a-half hour show, she manages to carry her troubled character through his final death.

Magnificent at the end of the show, with blood dripping down her face as her vision is obscured, she whispers, “I was a good writer. It was all I ever wanted to be. And I was. And I was,” she repeats, right before Tupolski pulls the trigger.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAP & BELLS.

Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman is a gruesome and disturbing investigation of the very nature of art.

ARTS 9

The Williams Record

December 5, 2018

Boiling Under addresses student pressures via interactive dance

By WENDY HERNANDEZ STAFF WRITER This past Saturday I found myself in a familiar place: the Schow Science Library. Only this time, after reaching critical mass, the frenzied motion I was studying wasn’t in a glass beaker. Around fifty of us scurried behind Alexia Barandarian ’19 and her cast in her independent study performance on imposter syndrome, Boiling Under.

Barandarian was inspired by research on psychological “syndromes.” Working within this scope, she reviewed interpretative dance performances tackling the difficult topics of alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder and impostor syndrome. As we filed through Schow’s entrance, we were each handed a rubber band from an assortment of colors and waited on the edge of our seats wondering when it would all begin. Would there be steam?

Lots of deliberate bumping and method acting in the moves themselves, as a sly reference to how molecules in a boiling solution collide with each other?

Looking for clues didn’t seem to help much: the boards were covered, seemingly at random, with slabs devoted to French conjugations, calculus and biochemistry reactions, among other things. But upon closer inspection, isolation in the cast seemed to be emphasized – two dancers dressed in chambray shirts and leggings, stood side-by-side as they worked on completely different things without consulting each other.

Then, suddenly, it happened.

Flitting before our eyes, before

KATIE BRULE/PHOTO EDITOR.

Boiling Under, an independent study performance created by Alexia Barandarian '19, sought to disrupt the illusion of “effortless perfection.” settling into a precariously balanced ballerina pose, a blonde dancer beckoned to us to follow her outside of the Math and Science Resource Center (MSRC). The performance had actually been going on all along – with the dancers ignoring us because they were so engrossed in the busywork building blocks that structure the typical student’s day. The fact that their backs were turned to us, and that they didn’t even acknowledge each other, cast Boiling Under into a spotlight at once delightfully postmodern and disturbingly telling of campus culture at the College.

When I say “culture,” I don’t mean blaming administration,

which is a commonplace and frankly unoriginal response at the majority of colleges and universities in the United States.

Tossed into the sea of bodies, we trailed behind the rest of the cast through a maze: first to the breakout space near the glass room, then to the center carrels, to the rightmost stacks, back to the carrels and finally to the MSRC again.

But if there’s one piece of advice Barandarian’s piece tries to leave the audience with, it’s shaking impostor syndrome and cultivating something that can rescript this negative student culture from the inside out. Barandarian’s research invokes findings from the 1980s of both

Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. Academics found the “impostor syndrome/phenomenon” to be a “pattern where an individual continuously doubts their achievements and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a ‘fraud’, regardless of external evidence of competency,” Barandarian said. While it’s far from easy to try to assure a first-year (or senior) that they weren’t an admissions mistake, I’m wondering if the issue is less one that needs to be treated with validation and affirmation, and more with leaving behind worrying about the past or yourself for too long altogether.

The toll impostor syndrome can take was made evident by the

duets that started with dancers alone in the frame (sometimes drowsy from lack of sleep or addiction – a reference to alcohol issues prevalent in college) that would end up being joined by another trying to pull them into more active, stable postures.

Each piece featured motifs of rising and falling, pushing and pulling – basically any act of opposition that would pull one of the dancers from the syndrome-induced daze. Barandarian explains her choice for these motifs, the piece’s title and the rubber bands as all having to do with high stress situations.

“The unseen agitation that erupts before diving down again” refers to how Boiling

Under in a person can take place beneath the surface and go largely undetected, she said.

But the rubber band stays resilient – it can be stretched by external stresses before snapping back into place, or restoring its own sense of equilibrium. It can also double as a grounding technique to soothe anxiety and call someone back to present.

It is this culture of self-doubt and blame, manifested in Boiling Under, that is arguably the most destructive across campuses – leading to burnout, alienation and desensitization.

Instead of trying to justify to ourselves “how we got here,” something which increasingly turns us inward in a false show of introspection, we should instead ask how to best adapt now that we’re here. Most people try to evaluate themselves based on the past while forgetting that they actually have to be present in order to be “here.”

But this already resolves more than half of the battle. Caring less about ourselves and more about others – for long enough to ditch sleeping at carrels or shutting everyone out in a pursuit of isolated self-improvement – seems to be what’s prescribed by all of the duets in Barandarian’s scene.

This plays out beautifully in the final choreography when all of the dancers are working fluidly instead of in isolated fragments; learning new things from others to actively deal with the present instead of worrying about an already solidified past seems to be the major takeaway. This project is being taken further, and Barandarian’s piece is currently under consideration for a Claiming Williams Day workshop.

Widows subverts the classic heist

By MANDELA NAMASTE STAFF WRITER The heist movie genre is extremely popular and salient in pop culture, and for great reason: the tropes are well-known and obvious, and if a movie utilizes them well, it will be greatly celebrated. The 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven is perhaps the pinnacle of this feat and it remains extremely popular more than 20 years later. However, most heist movies are presented as screwball comedies that do not account for the broader context in which their characters live and work. This makes sense, because creating an immersive world for a singular movie may feel unnecessarily time consuming. However, the best heist films are able to have their cake and eat it too – combining the pulpiness of boilerplate heist flicks with the character-driven tension and meticulous world-building of a regular drama. Widows, which played at Images from Nov. 16 through 29, was able to successfully combine these two traits, and as a result is one of the best films of 2018.

Directed by Oscar winner Steve McQueen, Widows stars perhaps the best film cast of this decade — the titular widows are played by Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki and Michelle Rodriguez. Supporting actors include dynamic talents such as Daniel Kaluuya, Brian Tyree Henry, Liam Neeson, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall.

The film entered theaters with heavy anticipation, and the movie warrants almost every bit of it.

Heat, Michael Mann’s 1995 drama, is perhaps the foundational text of McQueen’s film; however, Widows is a social commentary that comments on many aspects of modern life, whereas Heat is a self-contained character study.

There are many ways in which McQueen’s thoughts are communicated throughout the film, but none is more powerful than a tracking shot, which follows a car carrying Jack Mulligan (Farrell) directly from a destitute black neighborhood to a hightoned area with an abundance of brick mansions in the span of about three minutes. This scene is so packed with commentary that it probably warrants an article all its own, but suffice it to say that McQueen really pokes holes in the “out of sight, out of mind paradigm” – we aren’t as far apart from each other as it may seem. Additionally, there is an added layer of significance when you remember that Mulligan is running for office in the neighborhood he just left, yet lives in a leafy area that – while technically a part of the ward he seeks to represent – stands in stark contrast to its overwhelming demographic. Mulligan lives with his assumed people, but he does not live among them – a point that Jamal Manning (Henry), his opponent, makes right to his face.

This scene is perhaps the high point of the film, but is far from the only memorable moment; the film is all-consuming and immersive. We immediately feel enmeshed in this not-very-fictional world, whether it’s through watching the destructive relationship between Alice (Debicki) and her husband or sympathizing with Linda (Rodriguez) as she learns that her tailoring shop will be closed down in the wake of her husband’s passing. Not many heist films provide real-world stakes to their characters outside of an inevitable large sum of money, so the fact that Widows makes its central heist an almost necessary achievement for its

protagonists places it a cut above the competition.

But lest we forget, there’s also plenty of political and social commentary in Widows that is much more straightforward.

McQueen creates class and ra’ cial differences among the trio of widows and Belle (Erivo), their heist teammate, though he inverts the expected stereotypes here. Veronica (Davis) is the rich woman in this scenario and is quite condescending and dismissive towards Alice, a poor white woman, and Linda, a working-class Latina, for most of their time on screen together.

Their relationship ends on better terms, but unlike in many heist films, these women do not stay involved in each others’ lives afterwards. Here, McQueen reminds us once more of the final thesis of the beloved high school movie The Breakfast Club; at our core, all of us are just merely filling roles in the ecosystem of society. Once they are established, breaking out of these roles is a nearly impossible task, both because of our own wants and needs and because the continued functioning of the social order requires us to stay rooted in our original positions. The movie ends with a shot of Davis and Debicki at a diner, but they are not eating together; their simultaneous presence is a mere coincidence. Even if they wanted to stay friends, the differences between the widows are too vast to be realistically bridged. This is real life, and while it may be unfair, that’s how it is.

Widows is uproariously funny in addition to being an incredibly timely social commentary.

There are twists and turns, character drama and plenty of action – and something for every type of movie fan. I’d recommend everyone to see it should they have the chance.

Olmsted Prize for Excellence in Secondary School Teaching

Each year Williams seniors have an opportunity to appreciate superior teaching by nominating a secondary school teacher who played an important role in your lives for the Olmsted Prizes awarded on Class Day in June. The recipients, usually four, from all kinds of schools and locations, are brought to Williamstown and presented with a $3,000 prize; an additional $5,000 goes to that teacher’s school. Furthermore, every nominated teacher receives a certificate of recognition.

Devoted teachers often receive little recognition for their efforts, and students have too few chances to reward them. If one of your secondary school teachers, who is still teaching, stands out as a person deserving an Olmsted Prize, please submit his/her name.

For more information on the Olmsted prize and the nomination process, see: http://diversity.williams.edu/olmsted/

FINAL Deadline (nominations will not be accepted after this date)

Sunday, January 6, 2019 Thank you for taking the time and effort to honor a member of the profession.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE GUARDIAN.

Steve McQueen rounded up a star-studded cast for this politically charged, gritty action film.

10 SPORTS

The Williams Record

December 5, 2018

Women’s basketball defeats Alfred, falls to Tufts in Holiday Classic

By REBECCA KUO CONTRIBUTING WRITER Last Friday and Saturday, women’s basketball (4-3) played in the Williams Holiday Classic tournament, defeating Alfred with a lopsided margin of 81-40 before falling to Tufts 67-41.

On Friday against Alfred, all of the Ephs who played had points on the board, with three in double-digits – co-captain Lauren Vostal ’19 (16 points), Emily Chang ’20 (13 points) and co-captain Lexi Jones ’19 (11 points and seven rebounds).

Gabby Martin ’21 had the most assists for Williams, with four.

"It’s great for kids who work so hard in practice every day to be able to now get some play time," head coach Pat Manning said. "We’re moving the ball much better – we still need to take care of it more, but I was still really happy with our rebounds and thought it was a really solid team effort."

The Ephs wasted no time building up their lead in the first period, with Vostal scoring eight points within the first two minutes alone. Alfred experienced some shooting troubles but was shored up by Lyndsey McCoy and Jamie Wilcox, who pushed ahead to put the Saxons on the board with a layup apiece. The Ephs built up a strong lead quickly, with Maggie Meehan ’21 and Jones both scoring five points each. Williams ended the first quarter up 30-10 and did not lose the lead for the rest of the game.

The rest of the half saw more success from the Ephs, both in scoring and in rebounds. After subbing in around four minutes in, Chang made three threepoint shots within a minute and a half, boosting Williams to 49-17 over the Saxons. The

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Maggie Meehan '21 led the Ephs with 14 points in the final game against Tufts of the Williams Holiday Classic Tournament.

Ephs would score once more before the end of the second period, with Caroline Lovisolo ’19 sinking a jump shot. She was answered by Chanice Battle for the Saxons, who made a speedy layup with about 30 seconds on the clock to end the half with Williams up 51-22.

Williams held a lead of 29 points or more for the entire third period. A relatively lowscoring third quarter saw the teams fall almost even in scoring. Boland posted four points for her team in an attempt to ward off the Ephs, but it was not enough to stop the women from retaining the lead. With 10 seconds to go in the period, Wilcox made a steal to sink Alfred’s first three-pointer of the game. The Ephs went into the fourth quarter up 63-33.

Layups from across the Ephs’ roster and a threepointer from Meghan Voss ’21 helped Williams maintain a large lead for the rest of the game. Alfred’s Hicks managed two steals and scored three points for her team in an effort to make a comeback for the Saxons but fell short. In the end, Williams ran out the clock, ending the match 81-40.

"We feel our execution is getting better. We’re moving the ball better; our energy is where it needs to be," Manning said.

On Saturday afternoon, the women suffered their third loss of the winter season, falling to Tufts in the Holiday Classic Championship game. Tufts (60), ranked sixth in the country, has won all five of its games this season by double digits.

A solid defensive effort from Tufts and costly misplaced shots from Williams were consistent themes throughout the game, as the Ephs struggled to find holes in the Jumbos’ defense and were often forced into tough positions.

"Tufts plays great defense – that’s what they’re known for, and we didn’t respond well to it," Manning said. "I think we panicked; we didn’t play with poise, and against a really good team like that, you have to play with poise."

Meehan was the top scorer, netting 14 points. Katie Brule ’20 registered 11 points and seven rebounds and Vostal had five points and 10 rebounds. Jac Knapp of the Jumbos sank 18 points, followed by Emily Briggs with 11

points and five rebounds and Erica DeCandido with eight points and six rebounds.

As the ball came down from the tip-off, it was clear that this would be a high-energy game from both teams. The first quarter was optimistic for Williams – even though Tufts gained five points right off the bat, the Ephs kept pace and matched Tufts in rebounds. However, the Jumbos locked up the ball quickly as Briggs took advantage of the Jumbos’ defense to score and shot 55.6 percent over the first half. Tufts took a slight lead halfway through the first period and maintained their distance in scoring throughout the rest of the quarter, ending up 17-13 over Williams.

The Jumbos really picked up the pace in the second pe-

riod, out-rebounding the Ephs and building up a consistent 10-point lead. Meehan pushed back, scoring four points for the Ephs, but the team was still heavily outscored for the rest of the half, which ended with Tufts on top 32-20.

Erica DeCandido of the Jumbos picked up an early layup in the second half, which began an almost three-minute break in scoring for both teams. The dry spell was broken by Tufts’ Cailin Harrington, who sunk a jump shot to signal an end to the drought. Brule responded to the challenge, scoring four points for the Ephs and getting momentum going for the women. Williams managed to out-rebound Tufts in the third period but once again fell short on scoring. The teams went into the fourth quarter with Tufts up 53-29.

Williams played their most competitive quarter in the fourth period, only scoring two points less than Tufts. Meehan and Maddy Mandyck ’22 bagged four points apiece to contribute to the Ephs’ total of 12. Tufts countered with scattered shots from across the bench, using effective coordination to once again out-rebound the Ephs and pick up 14 more points, increasing their lead to 67-41 by the end of the game.

"We just have to get back to basics and make better decisions," Manning said. "This is a window into what conference play is like, and it’ll be good for us down the line. We play a very challenging schedule – it’ll help us going forward."

The women went up against MCLA last night, but results came in too late to report.

Williams will hit the road this Thursday to face Vassar at 7 p.m. and will host Wesleyan on Saturday at 3 p.m.

Men’s basketball topples Fitchburg State, Wesleyan, stays undefeated

By CAMERON BROWN CONTRIBUTING WRITER Last Thursday, men’s basketball (7-0) routed Fitchburg State 109-41. On Saturday, they defeated Wesleyan 80-65.

On Saturday after leading 31-28 with 4:34 left in the half, Kyle Scadlock ’19 and Michael Kempton ’19 powered the Ephs offense to put them up nine going into the break. The Ephs did not hit a three in the first half but were able to find success from mid-range and in the paint.

The Ephs shot 50 percent from the field. At the half, the statistical leaders for the men were Scadlock with 12 points, Bobby Casey ’19 with five rebounds and Henry Feinberg ’20 with two assists. The Car-

dinals shot 37.1 percent from the field. Austin Hutcherson lead Wesleyan with 13 points and five rebounds.

With 7:17 left in the game, James Heskett ’19 became the 36th member of the men's basketball team to score 1000 points in his career. He is also the second member of the senior class to reach the mark this season.

"It was a big day for James," head coach Kevin App said. "It was his birthday, his family surprised him at the game and he got to 1000. I think everybody saw James step up when Kyle went down last year, and that confidence gained has been fun to watch right now."

At the end of 40 minutes, the Ephs shot 55.2 percent from the field and 33 percent

from behind the arc. Heskett led the Ephs with 22 points, Scadlock followed with nine rebounds and Casey had three assists. The Cardinals shot 36.4 percent from the field and 25 percent from behind the arc. Jordan Bonner led them with 18 points and Hutcherson followed with nine rebounds.

"I'm proud of this senior group," App said after the game, "This is the first time they've beaten Wesleyan in this December Little Three game, and they've been leading this group in a fun way."

"We had a tough four straight road games, and I thought the guys got some stops and gutted it out to make some plays down the stretch. Really proud of

them for finishing … with a big win against a good team," App added.

On Thursday, the Ephs downed the Falcons. The Ephs had the hot hand early, outscoring the Falcons 32-8 through the first 10 minutes of action. Four Eph players went 100 percent from the field during the first 20 minutes of action, propelling the Ephs to a 57-26 lead at the half.

"Really proud of the guys," App said. "To get off the bus on a Thursday night after traveling down [to Fitchburg, Mass.] after class and come out and set the tone with our defensive energy that carried over to the offense. Our focus and defensive energy early was the reason why the result was what it was. "

At the half, the Ephs were shooting 63.6 percent from the field and 53.8 percent from behind the arc. The Ephs were led by Casey with 20 points and Matt Karpowicz ’20 with nine rebounds and three assists. The Falcons were shooting 31 percent from the field and 27.3 percent from behind the arc.

They were led by Nicholas Tracy with seven points and Andre Ruff with three rebounds, and they had two players with two assists.

The Ephs built on their lead, keeping the Falcons to only 15 points in the second half. The Ephs put up 52 points, and Marc Taylor ’21would finish his prolific scoring by registering the last seven points for the Ephs.

"The best part of every year is seeing guys step up with some confidence," App said. "Marc has been playing great all year.

From coming in early in the game and making plays and playing with confidence, then at the end of the game seeing him playing as a leader with some of the freshmen. Watching that growth has been the rewarding part. Mickey Babek [’20] continues to play with confidence, Vince Brookins, Jr. [’20] as well. Spencer Spivy [’22] came in and hit shots. That's what these games are for, to get experience and confidence. Our leaders have been doing a great job with this group."

The men will host Union on Thursday at 7 p.m. and hit the road on Saturday to face Springfield at 3 p.m.

CAPTAINS’ CORNER: KEANU HILAIRE ’19 What’s your background in sports?

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

By CHARLES XU SPORTS EDITOR

Team: Men's ice hockey Hometown: Montreal, Quebec Residence: Meadow Major: Computer science and French Snack bar order: Chicken patty and buffalo chips

I’ve tried pretty much all the sports out there, but [with] hockey, I started when I was super young. Being from Montreal, there were skating rinks on basically every street corner, and when I was four or five, I started going out and skating with my dad. And I started playing from then. I’ve played football, soccer and baseball, but hockey is just really a part of me.

And what specifically drew you to hockey?

It’s a fun, physical team sport. I’ve always loved meeting new friends that enjoy the sport as much as I do, and there’s a real camaraderie to it — it’s a sport [where you] beat the other team, but afterward, you shake hands, and it’s all back to real life again. There’s really something special about it.

Why did you choose to come to the College?

So when I was about 16 or 17, I had the chance to go play junior hockey in Canada, but that didn’t really involve a lot of school. I would have graduated with I think three

classes [by] my senior year, so I decided to look at other options to go to school a little bit more, and I discovered a lot of prep schools in the New England area. I ended up applying to a couple of prep schools and got into Kent School in Connecticut. I went there for three years, and during those years and the summers, I would do showcases where you go play hockey in front of college coaches. And that’s where — I think two years in a row — I met with the coach here at Williams, Bill Kangas. The summer before my senior year, I ended up talking with Coach Kangas afterwards, and he told me he had a spot on the team, and he would love me to be able to come here. I mean, it didn’t take much research to know that Williams was something I couldn’t say no to.

The team graduated some of its top scorers last year.

How have you adjusted this season?

Yeah, we lost four forwards last year as well as a goalie, and it’s difficult to think about the guys coming in as replacements. That’s not what it is.

It’s a new team every year…

And there’s a big learning curve, but at the end of the

day, learning our systems and finding good chemistry as a team is tough. [It's hard] not having these guys and every year, you also lose some friends, too — but this year, we have eight new guys who are just awesome. They work as hard as anyone could want, and it’s going well so far.

What’s it like being the only captain on the team?

To me, it doesn’t really come down to who has a letter on their shirt. Our whole senior class obviously has been here the longest, but it also comes with a lot of experience. We all know how this league is.

We all know the expectations from our coaches. We all know what we want to create as a team. Everyone’s a leader out there. Anyone can raise their voice if there’s something they’re not okay with on the team or to pump each other up for a big game. It’s a little different to only have one captain, but at the same time, it’s an opportunity for everyone to just pick up some pieces of the team and bring it together.

You’ve been through a lot of battles in the NESCAC. Personally, who you do not like playing against?

Well, there are two types of teams I don’t like playing against. There are the teams that have always had our number and have always been able to beat us, or at least prevent us from beating them. So I would say Hamilton. In my past three years, we haven’t beaten them yet.

I really want to play against those guys because I really want to take it back to them, but there’s also our rivalry with Amherst, which is huge, too. It’s always a special game when we play them.

How have you developed as a player over the past four years?

I’d say there’s a big difference between playing high school hockey and college hockey.

It’s a lot faster, a lot more physical, and I would say it’s a lot more experienced overall, [given] the types of plays you see and what systems are used. So the way I’ve changed personally is my decision-making becomes faster — it’s more automatic.

My awareness of the game [has improved]. It’s difficult to talk specifics, but just overall, knowing where my teammates are on the ice and knowing what to do in specific situations — that’s really

something I’ve learned and has made my game better.

You lost in the conference semifinals last year. What are some of the team's goals this year?

The goal is always winning a NESCAC Championship…

Winning the conference is a sure shot [to qualifying for the NCAA tournament]. That’s always our goal. Having a great season and maybe getting a bid is sometimes a plus, but you really want to put your eyes on the big prize at the end, and the NESCAC is the start of that.

Do you have personal rituals before games?

Max Fuld ’20 and I play a tiny game of hide-and-seek right after the warm-ups. Then he and I hide, and the first one that finds the other one wins.

It’s kind of a funny little thing, but it gets us going.

Do you win more than him?

Uh, it’s kind of half and half.

We are always bumping shoulders in the end.

Professional athlete crush?

Serena Williams. She dominates, and she’s awesome.

December 5, 2018

SPORTS 11

The Williams Record

Cross country places in top-10 at Div. III National Championship

By LIAM ALBRITTAIN, ELIZABETH BIGHAM, ZEKE COHEN and JULIA GUNTHER TEAM CORRESPONDENTS On Nov. 17, men’s and women’s cross country headed to Oshkosh, Wis. for the 2018 NCAA Cross Country Championships. The women placed seventh while the men placed eighth.

In the women’s race, Washington University won the meet with 98 points. They were closely followed by Johns Hopkins in second with 99 points. The women finished in seventh with 283 points, beating rival and NESCAC champion Middlebury, who placed eighth with 301 points.

Paige Lawler from Washington University won the 6k race in a time of 20:55. Emma Herrmann ’20 was the first Eph to finish, with a time of 22:06, taking 46th place. She was six spots away from becoming an All-American. Co-captain Emily Harris ’19 placed 58th with a time of 22:15, and Audrey Rustad ’20 followed just behind in 61st with a time of 22:16.

Sarah Tully ’21 was the next Eph to meet her teammates at the finish line, running a time of 22:37 for 108th place. Grace Dailey ’22 followed behind soon after and ran 22:39 for 114th place.

Head coach Pete Farwell ’73 highlighted Dailey’s performance, noting that she “truly dug deep to kick it in down the stretch.” Jaylan Fraser-Mines ’21 finished about one minute after Tully and Dailey, running 23:34 for 226th place.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

The No. 7 women’s and No. 12 men’s cross country teams travelled to Oshkosh, Wis. and placed seventh and eighth in the nation, respectively.

Co-captain Lindsay Klickstein ’19 finished right behind Fraser-Mines for 240th, running a time of 23:40.

The Ephs again showed their depth as the difference between runners one and five was a mere 30 seconds, indicating how close the pack was.

Farwell noted that there was “great racing in a dense field [with] everyone moving up and super finishing over the final kilometer, picking up several team places.” He was also quite excited about the Ephs’ finish: “This completed an ex-

cellent team season, beyond expectations,” he said.

Harris recapped her last season. “We’ve accomplished what we have as a team this year because we’ve been able to work extensively with each other in practice and on the course during the race — which, in my 11 years of competing on cross country teams, is something that has been really unique to this year,” she said.

The men came off of six straight second-place performances, beginning at Little Three Championships on Sept.

8 and culminating in the New England Regionals on Nov. 10.

Ranked second in the region and 12th nationally, the men were joined by five other New England teams: No. 8 Amherst, No. 18 Middlebury, No. 19 MIT, No. 27 Tufts and No. 29 Bates.

Last year at NCAAs, the men finished 13th as a team.

Only two Ephs from last year’s squad competed at the 2018 NCAA Championships: Ryan Cox ’20 and Aidan Ryan ’21.

The two have been a formidable one-two punch for Williams this season. Cox has been

among the best in the region this year, with Ryan either in lockstep or a stride behind.

Cox won the NESCAC Championship this year, the first Eph to do so since Colin Cotton in 2014; Cotton finished second in the nation that year.

Joining Cox and Ryan was a talented group: William McGovern ’20, Sam Wischnewsky ’20, Tristan Colaizzi ’20, Kevin LaFleche ’20 and Elias Lindgren ’22. McGovern has been Williams’ third man in every 8k this year, and got stronger as the season progressed. Colaizzi

and LaFleche, All-Americans on the track in the 1500 and 800, respectively, have proven this season that they can compete on the grass as well. Colaizzi has been in Williams’ scoring five in both the NESCAC and Regional Championships.

LaFleche, meanwhile, has either been in Williams’ varsity seven or eight man at every 8k this season. Lindgren has been a diamond in the rough for the Ephs, announcing himself with a fifth place finish at the Little Three Championship to start the year. Although only a freshman, Lindgren races with a patience and intelligence beyond his years.

The men battled it out on the race course and placed eighth overall with a total of 300 points. North Central (Ill.) placed first with 43 points, Washington University came in second with 110 points and Wis.-La Crosse placed third with 127 points.

Cox looked back at the men’s season. “Going into the season, our team [lost] a number of top runners and [faced] a lot of unknowns. It says a lot about the work guys put in that we weren’t entirely satisfied finishing eighth at Nationals, even though it was the team’s best finish since 2015.”

The men graduate Lucas Estrada ’19, Liam Albrittain ’19, Austin Anderson ’19, David Azzara ’19, Adrian Black ’19, Zeke Cohen ’19, Ross Hoch ’19, Jacob Kahrs ’19, Walker Knauss ’19, Mitchell Morris ’19, and cocaptain John Spence ’19. The women graduate Klickstein ’19, Jesse Facey ’19, and Harris.

Wrestling places sixth at the 53rd annual RIT Wrestling Invitational Yeh received a bye in the first round of the consolation bracket. From there, he pinned two out of his first three opponents.

In the fifth round of the consolation bracket, he recorded a 15-4 major decision victory to send him to the third-place match.

For third place, he faced off against Kyle Murray from John Carroll University. He recorded a 7-1 major decision victory to complete his tournament.

At 133 pounds, Williams brought Ben Morton ’19 and Dietrich Hartman ’20 to compete. Hartman received a bye in the first round but was pinned in the second round by a home team representative to go to the consolation bracket. After a hard-fought battle in the consolation bracket, he fell to a Scranton University representative.

Morton faced a stiff series of opponents during his run. After a couple of well-fought decision losses, he finished the tournament in the third round.

At the 141 weight class, Rosetti put on a show for the Ephs.

Two quick pins in the first two rounds of competition over RIT and SUNY Oswego opponents moved him into the quarterfinals. Rossetti continued a dominant performance with another win over a Wesleyan opponent.

In the semifinal match, Rossetti recorded his third and final pin of the day in 2:37. In the finals, he matched up against Jarrod Brezovec from John Carroll University. After an evenly

By ALEX OKINAKA CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Saturday, wrestling traveled to Rochester, New York to take part in the 53rd annual RIT Wrestling Invitational.

This year’s tournament featured 16 different teams from across the region. Amidst difficult competition, the Ephs excelled with a sixth-place finish.

Eph head coach Scott Honecker was very impressed by the team’s performance. “I’m super proud of this squad,” Honecker said. “These guys train so hard and have the competitive spirit to match their preparation. Obviously the youth movement led the day. We knew if Joey [Rosetti ’21] and Nasir [Grissom ’22] brought their toughest wrestling they could win the tournament, and they did not disappoint. David [Yeh ’22] and Ian [Darling ’22] rounded out the youth movement with David storming to third and Ian making a deep run.”

At the 125 pound weight division, David Yeh ’22 stepped in for the Ephs. After a successful start to his college wrestling career two weeks ago, Yeh returned strong again. In his first round match Yeh received a bye, but he was felled in the second round by the eventual runner-up from Wesleyan. In a show of his grit, Yeh won his next five matches to finish third in his weight class with a 6-1 record on the day.

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Christmas Service of Lessons & Carols The identical services feature choral music by the Williams Concert and Chamber Choirs, congregational singing of carols, and the traditional reading of the biblical Christmas story

Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 8 & 9 4 p.m.

Thompson Memorial Chapel There is no admission charge, but all are encouraged to bring an item of non-perishable canned or packaged food for local emergency food pantries

matched back and forth, Rossetti defeated Brezovec 7-5 to take the championship position.

Alex Pankhurst ’19 stepped in for Williams at 149 pounds.

He started the day off with a bye in the first round and a dominant 6:46 pin in the second round. Unfortunately, Pankhurst was edged out in the quarterfinals but rallied well in the consolation bracket. After an 8-6 decision victory over Tyler Barkley from Norwich University, Pankhurst’s day ended with a close decision loss to a John Carroll wrestler.

At the 157-weight class, Brendon Seyfried ’19 and Brendon Kiernan ’21 represented Williams. Seyfried repeated the success he found at the Doug Parker Invitational. In the first two rounds, Seyfried recorded a pin and a 12-3 major decision victory. His performance moved him to the quarterfinals where he was bested in a 5-2 nail biter.

Seyfried returned strong in the consolation bracket to notch two straight wins. His first was a 10-7 victory over a Norwich opponent. He followed that up with a 7-5 decision win over a Wesleyan competitor but was bested in his final two matches to earn sixth place. Kiernan faced difficult competition and was unable to move past his first two matches.

Nick Anselmi ’20 and Dylan Millson ’20 competed at the 165 weight division. Millson put up a good fight, but was unable to

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

Brendon Seyfried ’19 competed until the quarterfinals, as the Ephs finished sixth in Rochester, N.Y. find success in his two matches. Anselmi was also unable to advance in the championship bracket but stepped up in his consolation matches. After receiving a bye in the first round, he recorded a 32-second pin over a Scranton opponent. He was unable to advance further but scored three vital points.

At 174 pounds, Luke Anselmi ’20 and Grissom both had strong performances. Anselmi received a bye in the first round before winning an 8-3 decision victory over a Scranton opponent. He advanced to the quarterfinals but was unable to progress any further.

He returned in the consolation bracket with another decision victory. Unfortunately, his campaign was ended in the

next round by a competitor from John Carroll.

Grissom joined his teammate Rossetti with a tone-setting performance. Grissom notched 9-4 and 10-3 decision victories, respectively, to advance to the quarterfinals. He continued his dominant run with a 7-4 decision victory to advance to the finals. In the finals, Grissom took on Tyler Wilson from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. A 14-4 major decision win ensured Grissom’s victory for the day.

Anchoring the team at 184 pounds were Ian Darling ’22 and Bennet Caplin ’19. Darling started off the day strong with a dominant 20-3 technical fall victory. Unfortunately, he was bested in the second round but rallied in his consolation match-

es. Two major decision victories over New England College and Case Western Reserve opponents advanced Darling to the fourth round of the consolation bracket. He was beaten out in a close 6-2 match but earned 5.5 points for the team in the process. Bennet competed valiantly but was unable to advance past his first two matches.

Coach Honecker is optimistic about the season but knows there is a lot of work to be done. “I love the fight our guys bring,” Honecker said. “We are going to make the technical adjustments, but when the guys love a fight, you really have a chance to be good.”

The Ephs’ next competition will be on Friday at Trinity at 7:30 p.m.

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK “ Olivia is the best goal-

“Joey is the man. He rolled

keeper in Div. III. She does it all, she’s a shot stopper, an organizer, fearless and inspiring.

She is an incredible player, competitor, teammate and leader. We leaned on her throughout the season to help propel us to achieve our goals. We’ll miss her a ton. ”

through this event to win his first tournament title in college. He is good enough to be a very special wrestler in the long history of top Williams athletes.

If he stays the course and keeps improving like he has this early winter, this won’t be the last time he creates a buzz.”

– Head coach Michelyne Pinard

– Head coach Scott Honecker

OLIVIA BARNHILL ’19

JOEY ROSSETTI ’21

WOMEN’S SOCCER NEW YORK, N.Y.

WRESTLING GLASTONBURY, CONN.

With a 3-2 lead in penalty kicks, Barnhill saved Middlebury’s last shot, helping the Ephs capture their third national title in four years.

Rossetti captured his first victory at the RIT Wrestling Invitational with a dominant performance in the 141 pound weight class.

12 SPORTS

The Williams Record

December 5, 2018

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPORTS INFORMATION.

In Greensboro, N.C., women’s soccer defeated Christopher Newport and Middlebury in the semifinal and finals, respectively, winning their second consecutive NCAA Div. III Championship title.

Women’s soccer captures third national title in four years CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Barnhill. However, it was quickly whistled off-sides.

CNU kept up the pressure, and just five minutes later, a Cook shot was rifled just over the crossbar from point-blank range.

The Ephs stayed composed and began to possess the ball a bit more as the half went on. Midway through, Ilana Albert ’21 gained control at midfield and made a run to the Captains’ goal, ripping a shot from about 30 yards out.

The ball hit off the upper arm of a CNU defender at the top of the box and caromed to the right, where the opportunistic Scire raced onto it and quickly flicked a difficult-angle shot back to her left that nestled itself inside the left post with 22:33 remaining in the half for a 1-0 lead.

"Ilana made an incredible, dynamic run inside, and I just continued my run like I’ve been told to do 1000 times," Scire said. "And it worked out for the best."

With 15:22 left in the first half, CNU’s senior All-American Gabby Gillis found some loose space, deftly moving around an Eph defender and firing a shot from 22 yards out that went just wide left.

The Ephs began to mount counterattacks, and one in the 39th minute nearly made it 2-0, as Mikayla Kappes ’21 crossed a ball into the box to Aspen Pierson ’21, whose hard shot was blocked. The ball caromed back to Eph All-American defender Sarah

Kelly ’20, and she ripped a beautiful shot toward the upper 90 on the far right that Captains’ keeper Haley Eiser made a leaping effort to push over the crossbar.

CNU came out with its engine on high to start the second half and nearly gained the equalizer just 69 seconds in when Maddie Cochran took advantage of a bad clear and took a shot from inside the 18. Barnhill raced out to made a beautiful sliding save, and, after a few harrowing moments of the ball bouncing freely around the Ephs’ six, Maria Chapman ’22 was able to clear it out of danger.

The Ephs answered with their own opportunity five minutes in when Lauren Brown ’19 delivered a beautiful through ball that Scire dashed in for, only to be beat to the ball by a sliding Eiser a moment before she could reach it. Just over two minutes later, Liz Girvan ’22 gained control of the ball at the midfield stripe and sent another dazzling through ball toward the Captains’ goal. Scire turned on her jets, moved inside to the left of a CNU defender and reached the ball at the top of the box. Eiser had come racing out as the play developed. Scire flicked a shot to the right that beat the goalkeeper and bounced into an unattended net.

"Girvan put an incredible through ball right to my feet," Scire said. "That’s stuff we’ve been working on all season; it comes with a lot of hard work

and a lot of failure. So the fact that it worked out was a product of that hard work finally paying off. I’m incredibly proud of my team."

Down two goals, CNU pressed forward, but the Ephs held strong and had several dangerous opportunities to make it a three-goal advantage.

The back line of Chapman, Kelly, Nkem Iregbulem ’20 and Liz Webber ’20 was supported beautifully by midfielders Pierson and Victoria Laino ’21, who not only stopped dynamic runs, but blocked shot after shot.

However, somehow the Ephs found another gear defensively and, after a Cochran header that Barnhill stopped with 17:44 left, did not allow a shot on goal the remainder of the game.

"Our defensive effort was outstanding," Barnhill said.

"Something we’ve been working hard on all year and really prided ourselves on, is how hard we work and how tough we are in our one-on-one defending."

"I think we were able to attack because we were defending so well," Laino said. "I think coming into this game, we knew [winning the ball] was going to be key. They obviously have really amazing players who can take shots from distance and are also really good on the dribble. I think in the second half especially, we adjusted slightly and had a little tighter cover, so we did a better job denying them the ball or, if they got the ball, denying them the shot."

The women played conference rival Middlebury in the national championship game

Games this week Thursday

Saturday

Dec. 6

Dec. 8

Women’s basketball vs. Vassar Away, 7 p.m.

Men’s basketball vs. Union Chandler Gym, 7 p.m.

Friday Dec. 7 Wrestling vs.

Trinity Away, 7:30 p.m.

Men’s ice hockey vs. Amherst Lansing Chapman Rink, 7 p.m.

Men’s basketball vs.

Springfield Away, 3 p.m.

Women’s basketball vs. Wesleyan Chandler Gym, 3 p.m.

Men’s ice hockey vs. Hamilton

Women’s swim and dive vs. WPI, Tufts Away, 1 p.m.

Men’s swim and dive vs.

WPI, Tufts Away, 1 p.m.

Sunday Nov. 18

Lansing Chapman Rink, 7 p.m.

Women’s ice hockey vs.

Manhattanville Lansing Chapman Rink, 3 p.m.

come off of a national championship, and I think there were high expectations. When things weren’t smooth right away, this team had an opportunity to fall apart, and they didn’t. They stayed tough, they stayed tight, they stayed together."

The Ephs received a goal from Pierson in the game’s 28th minute. Georgia Lord ’21 dribbled up the left side and sent a cross into the box. Albert one-touched it to the right side, where Pierson ripped a left-footed shot that was just out of the diving reach of Panther goalie Ursula Alwang on the right post.

Williams held that lead for the following 50 minutes, until an own goal by the Ephs tied the game at 1-1. An Eph defender looked to clear the ball from inside the six-yard goalie box, but her attempt deflected off Barnhill and trickled into the back of the net. Fueled by the equalizer, the Panthers buzzed around the Ephs’ goal for the final 12 minutes in regulation, but the Ephs forced the game into overtime and gained back the momentum, outshooting the Panthers 5-1 in the extra time.

Early in the first overtime session, the Ephs had a pair of scoring threats, but Alwang punched a Girvan shot over the crossbar and corralled the second one on a corner kick.

The Panthers looked for the game-winning tally with just over a minute left, but Eliza Van Voorhis’ shot went just wide of the far post. The Ephs then nearly won the game in the closing seconds of the first extra session, as a cross inside the penalty box found the feet

of Scire, but Alwang raced out and deflected Scire’s shot with her foot to send the match to a second overtime.

The game went to penalty kicks, a familiar place for the Ephs and Barnhill. Barnhill has had a solid career at Williams stopping penalties, and Saturday’s national championship game was no different.

She saved the first and third shots she saw. Laino and Pierson made back-to-back penalty kicks, and after four kicks for each team, the penalty kick score was knotted 2-2.

Rain Condie ’22 took the Ephs’ fifth kick and sent a beautifully placed ball along the ground into the lower left-hand corner of the goal. Barnhill then made her stop of Robinson’s shot, and the celebration began.

"It’s pretty surreal to win back-to-back and to have three of our four years be national championship years," Barnhill said. "I think that’s just a testament to my class, a testament to this program, a testament to this team and all our players.

It’s never guaranteed. It’s never easy. It’s ridiculously hard in fact. Every year we aspire to do this, and we’ve been incredibly successful. I think it’s because of how much this team wants to be together and wants to win together rather than for themselves. I will be eternally grateful to have had these four years with these people and this program."

This was the last game in Eph uniform for Barnhill, Brown, Hollinger, Kristina Alvarado ’19, Madison Feeney ’19, Dawn Penso ’19 and Natalie Turner-Wyatt ’19.

Renzie Lamb, hall of fame coach and mentor, passes away at 81

By DAVID SHAKIROV STAFF WRITER

Lansing Chapman Rink, 3 p.m.

Women’s ice hockey vs. Elmira

Saturday evening. It was the fourth time in five years the Ephs have played in the national championship game.

The Ephs and Panthers split a pair of 1-0 decisions this season, with the Ephs triumphing on Cole Field in the regularseason finale for both teams and the Panthers taking the NESCAC Tournament championship game by a one-goal margin in a game played at Farley-Lamb Field.

The final minutes of the game were a fitting end to the women’s season. There stood netminder Barnhill in the steady pouring rain, peering in at Middlebury midfielder Clare Robinson. One penalty kick.

Stop it and the Ephs are national champions. If you know Barnhill, you know the ending.

Diving to her right, she got just enough of Robinson’s shot to deflect it off the left post. Game over, season over, the women were national champions once again – their third time in four years. Williams became the first women’s soccer team to repeat as national champions since 2011-12, when Messiah accomplished the feat. Officially, Saturday’s title was a 1-1 win for the Ephs, with the deciding 3-2 score coming in penalty kicks.

The Ephs finished with a 19-1-4 mark, while the Panthers completed their season at 19-2-3.

"So many thoughts are going through my head, but really just appreciation of this team and how hard they were willing to fight for this," Pinard said.

"Their evolution competitively though the season was incredible. It’s really challenging to

On Nov. 17, Renzie Lamb, a long-time coach, mentor and role model to the College community, passed away.

Lamb spent close to 40 years at the College, providing support through his coaching of the men’s lacrosse and women’s squash teams, in addition to the timeless mentorship he provided to players who struggled with athletic commitments, academic work or personal matters.

Although Lamb has passed away, his perpetual impact on thousands of’ students remains as they fall back on his advice when navigating life’s challenges.

After growing up in New York and graduating from Hofstra in 1959, Lamb went on to the Marines and eventually joined the College in 1968. Lamb was a professor of physical education, an assistant coach of football and head coach of lacrosse. After spending 37 years at the College, he retired in 2004 and remained in Williamstown with his family. After retirement, Lamb continued to attend football games (unlit cigar in-hand, of course), visit the Clark Art Institute and participate in community events. Although he focused most of his energy on sports, Lamb felt com-

fortable around academia as well, often engaging professors in debates on history, ancient Rome and art in between practices – a reflection of his universality and commitment beyond athletics.

Throughout his career, Lamb’s lacrosse players won the Eastern College Athletic Conference five times and claimed victory over the Little Three on 19 occasions. These accomplishments pushed Lamb into the spotlight, and he was later inducted into four separate halls of fame (an impressive feat, given that most hall of fame inductees come from Div. I).

On campus, Lamb was recognized by the College, which

named the Farley-Lamb field in his honor.

In the local community, Lamb was often thought of as the de facto mayor – a father figure to students and a leader to Williamstown residents.

Former football player Blake Davis ’92 remembers Lamb’s most prominent advice, “poise and confidence,” and now he considers it to be a personal mantra. “Over the course of my professional career, I would’ve said those words in my head before every big meeting or interview,” Davis said. “It has served me well.”

Lamb was laid to rest last Friday morning after a service at the College’s Thompson Memorial Chapel.

PHOTO COURTESY OF INSIDE LACROSSE.

Renzie Lamb leaves behind a legacy of mentorship and excellence.