ARTS P. 8 Cap & Bells performs rendition of ‘Pygmalion'
SPORTS P. 12 The Independent Student Newspaper at Williams College Since 1887 VOL. CXXXII, NO. 10
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2017
Women’s soccer wins, claims NCAA title
Rev. Rick Spalding retires from College chaplaincy By FRANCESCA PARIS COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR After over 17 years, Reverend Rick Spalding will leave his position as chaplain to the College at the end of the semester. Spalding joined the College’s staff as chaplain to the College and coordinator of community service in the fall of 2000, after moving from Boston. Since then, he has worked with students to engage in conversations across different religious and spiritual spectrums. When he applied for the job in the summer of that year, Spalding had spent time working at Harvard, which confirmed his desire to work with emerging young adults. He was attracted to the opportunity he saw at the College to work across religious differences. “By the late ’90s, there was this interest in thinking about how different religious groups interact,” he said. “What does it mean that we’re all here together? Williams seemed ready to engage with that question.” Coincidentally, Spalding's partner had grown up in Williamstown, so he had visited numerous times before he was hired as chaplain. For the first few years, the community service aspect of the job dominated his work. As the only staff member dedicated to community service, his job required him to constantly wrangle details: getting vehicles, finding places for students to volunteer and making connections with local schools. When the College created a more robust infrastructure to support community engage-
ment, including hiring a parttime staff member and then later founding the Center for Learning in Action, Spalding’s focus shifted to the work of chaplaincy. His relationship to the community engagement aspect of life at the College continued through Where Am I!?, the first-year orientation program that he created and supervised, which has run every year since the fall of 2002. With the help of students, Spalding launched the program as an alternative to Williams Outdoor Orientation for Living as First-years (WOOLF) that included community service and a reflective component on that service. Helping organize First Days has been just a small fraction of Spalding’s work in the College community. He reflects on the job as containing three major parts: pastoral work, sectarian work and general service to the College. The pastoral work involves oneon-one supportive conversations with students. Sectarian work is dedicated to working with the Protestant Christian community, as well as supporting religious communities that don’t have a specific chaplain dedicated to them. Finally, he serves on committees, participates in events, helps handle crises and officiates weddings and memorials. All three parts have contributed to what he sees as the primary motivation for the concept of chaplaincy. “The College thinks it’s helpful for students to have people accompany them into the depths of this experience,” he said. “You come to college to figure out who you want to be as an adult. That
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE
Chaplain to the College Rick Spalding will retire from the position at the end of the fall semester after 17 years of service. project generates big questions in people’s lives. The way we do liberal arts doesn’t necessarily give you ways to answer those questions.” He says education does not come with inherent meaning, and he tries to help students begin to think about how to make meaning for themselves. Religious perspective can be a helpful lens, Spalding added, but the majority of his conversations with students have not been explicitly religious. He
describes them as “supportive, spiritual, ethical.” Through his work at the College, Spalding says he has developed a new appreciation for the complexity of religious diversity. “I was attracted to the opportunity to engage across religious differences at Williams,” he said. Through the years he has come to believe that there is no single, underlying theory tying various religious faiths and people
together. “I’ve learned that it’s not at all simple. There’s no substitute for hearing each person’s story.” Father Gary Caster, Catholic chaplain, has worked with Spalding for just over a decade, and he says Spalding’s absence will be a profound change in the chaplain’s office. “Rick cares deeply about each person with whom he comes in contact, and is the most guileless person I know,” Caster said. “However, Rick’s
most beautiful characteristic is that he walks humbly and gently through life. … Rick’s example has touched all the varying dimensions of my work as chaplain, and I truly believe I am a much better person because I have had the privilege of working with him these past 10 and a half years.” “I can say definitively that the opportunity to work alongside Rick represents SEE CHAPLAIN, PAGE 5
College routinely monitors Twitter account naming alleged lead levels in campus dorms sexual misconduct perpetrators By WILLIAM NEWTON NEWS EDITOR Before Reunion last spring, alumni with children under 6 years of age who stayed in certain campus dorms, including Frosh Quad and West College, were asked to sign the Massachusetts Vacation Rental Notification form indicating that lead paint could be present in the buildings. According to the Massachusetts “Short Term Vacation or Recreational Rental Exemption,” the property owner, in this case the College, is “not required to abate or contain any paint, plaster or other accessible structural material containing dangerous levels of lead” provided that the building owner ensures that there is no “cracked or otherwise deteriorated plaster or putty or peeling, chipping or flaking paint.” If the property owner meets this requirement and a series of similar ones outlined in the ordinance, then they can rent their property to renters with a child under 6 years
old, provided that the child is there for less than 31 days and the renters sign a waiver. According to Frank Pekarski, manager of safety and environmental compliance, the College goes through extensive checks to make sure its buildings are in compliance with this regulation in advance of Reunion, so that the College can appropriately apply the exemption and ensure that all campus buildings are safe for young children. To start, according to Pekarski, the Office of Alumni Relations and Development outlines a list of all dorm rooms that must be checked for any chipping, flaking or peeling paint. Afterward, the College conducts inspections to determine whether or not these listed buildings are in good condition. If not, they are sufficiently repaired and then re-inspected to ensure compliance. “This process ensures that there are no hazardous conditions related to lead in the building when overnight visitors with very young children are present,” Pekarski said.
The College then provides the relevant information and forms to the alumni office, which then sends the lead waiver to any parents of children under 6 years old who will be staying in campus dorms with lead paint. Using 3M LeadCheck swabs, Record staff checked for lead in several locations on campus during the past month, including Frosh Quad entries and West College. The majority of the tests returned negative, but the tests were positive in the Williams C basement stairway where there were several areas with chipped paint. The test also returned positive for the doorway in the West College basement. Pekarski emphasized that the College is continually aware of campus buildings with lead paint, and regularly checks for anything potentially dangerous. “There are buildings on campus with lead paint and [the lead levels] are managed appropriately,” Pekarski said. “This is something that we monitor as part of our routine.”
ADAM FALK PREPARES TO DEPART COLLEGE FOR ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION AFTER SEVEN YEARS AS COLLEGE'S PRESIDENT
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE
created, taken down
By SAMUEL WOLF STAFF WRITER Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence. On the morning of Nov. 20, a Twitter account was created with the handle @ WilliamsRapists and the description “Sexual Assaulters of Williams College.” Over the course of the day, the names of at least five current students were posted, in addition to a message encouraging students to “Please share the link to this page on facebook and ask your friends if they have names to submit!” It is unclear whether the survivors of sexual assault themselves submitted names or whether peers and friends undertook the task. Regardless, after about 12 hours, the account was made private and then deleted. It is no longer accessible. For students across campus, the account stirred up elation, concern, frustration and overwhelming emotion. “The first thing that I thought when I saw it was immediate concern for the safety and agency of survivors,” Ayami Hatanaka ’18, co-chair of the Rape and Sexual Assault Network (RASAN), said. Hatanaka, who does in-person contact work with survivors of sexual assault on campus, saw the account as potentially problematic. “It can be incredibly healing for a survivor to have an outlet like this, but it can also be deeply re-traumatizing,” she said. She elaborated that some survivors could feel uncomfortable in seeing the name of their perpetrator, or feel guilty if they themselves do not feel able to name the person who has harmed them. Hatanaka also emphasized that RASAN was
in no way involved in the creation of the Twitter account. However, RASAN did hold emergency open office hours in response to the account and the resulting confusion and atmosphere of crisis for some on campus. Director of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Meg Bossong ’05 found a diversity of reactions to the account’s creation. “I hear from people who are feeling everything from overwhelmed, to a feeling that their experience is missing from the narrative that’s in focus at the moment and wondering about what that means for them and their support system to feeling solidarity and relief that the issue is being discussed more broadly. Those are very big categories of human experience,” she said. For Hatanaka, this divergence of experience was reflective of her work throughout her time on RASAN. “That’s part of what’s really hard about doing activism work on this topic. … How do you acknowledge that different survivors want different things and protect confidentiality?” For Bossong, the appearance of the account, though shocking, hardly struck her as a new phenomenon. “People have been talking about their experiences of violence and harassment for a long time, including naming the person or people who harmed them,” she said. She was additionally skeptical of Twitter’s potential to revolutionize the reporting of sexual assault, adding, “as far as Twitter, it’s a tool. Some people find it useful and effective; some people find it ineffective or troubling.” Hatanaka, too, did not see the account as an isolated incident. “Over the past couple of years, there have been re-
peated calls for something like this,” she said. As for why some survivors or allies chose this particular method of reporting, Bossong said that it “has to do with everything from personal coping styles to how people perceive the support levels of those around them, to very real safety risks.” However, for Hatanaka, there was a far clearer explanation for the choice to resort to Twitter: a SEE TWITTER, PAGE 5
WHAT’S INSIDE 3 OPINIONS Rev. Rick Spalding reflects on his tenure at the College 4 NEWS OSL revises housing appeals process 7 FEATURES New club boggles the mind with word-play 9 ARTS Reading of ‘Harvey’ held at bookstore 11 SPORTS Farwell to be inducted into USTFCCCA Hall of Fame
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