Your Custom Text Here
Posted by Allison Smith
She outlived three husbands.
She,
Outlived,
Three,
Husbands.
Independent,
Make me dinner,
Make me dinner,
Make me dinner,
Dependent.
Outlived,
No she was not -
Except in her heart.
Three,
One,
Two,
Three,
Husband,
Husband,
Husband,
- Alone.
It would never be hers.
I wish I was her.
I wish I was her.
I wish I were Her.
Posted by Allison Smith
Heavy heart,
Aching back,
No turning back,
Beyond mimicry.
Posted by Eliza Dumais
Bike-riders seem to me the trendiest class of commuters. They are fundamentally hip, simply by virtue of their chosen mode of transportation. They are fearless pioneers of self-sufficiency, bravely exposing themselves to the elements along traffic-jammed highways and narrow, curbside bike lanes. They maintain full control over their direction, over the energy that propels them forward as they speed beside masses of Toyota Highlanders and Honda Civics occupied by drivers resting comfortably in their heated, leather seats. This is, however, a world from which I am entirely excluded: I do not know how to ride a bike.
This is, of course, an inability that I find both humiliating and childish. At nineteen, I am far too old to remain inept in such a juvenile category. I am well aware that, like any motivated, healthy human being, I am fully capable of learning to ride a bike - of taking the necessary steps to join the ranks of profoundly cool bicycle-commuters. But I don't.
I have discovered that this is because I am painfully attached to the idea that I am too late - this ridiculous notion that skill-sets, or certain categories of knowledge are time-sensitive, and that in turn, we are marked with expiration dates for the acquisition of this information. I am simply too old to learn to ride a bike. The older we get, the more reluctant we grow to start over, to immerse ourselves in the areas where we remain entirely ignorant or incapable. We do not want to be made vulnerable to our incompetencies, so we cling to this notion that it is simply too late to learn - too late to exert effort in the face of the unfamiliar, we are too old to be taught. Like bike riding, this is an act of bravery.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the third longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its construction, was opened to the public in July of 1940. It stretched over the Puget Sound, between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington, and it collapsed on November 7 of that very same year. The bridge, while it stood, was nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," as the deck moved violently in the wind, constantly shifting in "vertical oscillations". It was clear that there was some fundamental flaw in the bridge's construction from the moment it was completed, but rather than start over, the Washington Toll Bridge Authority added cables and hydraulic buffers, in the attempt to stabilize the structure as it was. Its collapse into the Puget Sound was reflective of the stubborn lack of willingness to begin again - to admit initial ignorance and start over. The engineering team chose to await imminent destruction rather than acknowledge the design flaws and return to the drawing board. Once the bridge was constructed, they had simply decided it was too late.
David Foster Wallace, in his novel, Infinite Jest, wrote, "Be a Student of the Game. Like most clich??s of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. This is hard." In many ways, to start over is to admit defeat. It is to willingly engage with an acknowledgment of our own shortcomings and it seems that as we get older, we are more inclined to hide comfortably behind the notion that it is too late for us to submit ourselves to the process of learning, to being taught what it is that we do not already know. But, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, "you can be shaped, or you can broken," and the latter is much more likely if we choose to stubbornly hold on to the imperfect architecture of our lives as they are.
It is outrageous that at nineteen years old, I can claim that there is anything at all that I am too old to learn. Bravery does not rest in the realm of things it is too late to access -we owe ourselves a willingness to greet the unfamiliar. Perhaps it is not a matter of timing, but rather, of enduring the vulnerability that comes with choosing to rely on the training wheels. The fearless, too, must start at the beginning.
David Foster Wallace, among the fearless, hung himself on September 12, 2008. In his writing, he once likened the man who contemplates suicide with the man who must choose whether or not to jump from a burning building - both still experience the human fear of falling. "The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames," he wrote, "when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames." Wallace interacted with what terrified him most on a daily basis, confronted the tangled, thankless inside of his own head in order write with the authenticity that resonates, dark and heavy, through his works. He endured the flames, faced them head on in his commitment to communication. Sometimes, the breakage is irredeemable, but there is still enormous value in the bravery that accompanies the process - the embrace of the damage.
I was in the second grade when the Twin Towers fell, along with my belief in constants, in the indestructible - in what could not be damaged. We devote a great portion of our lives to the assurance that we are not breakable, that our bridges do not move in "vertical oscillations" and the David Foster Wallace's of the world are simply flawed at the outset -unfixable. Evidently, this is not true - it is foolish to rely completely on what we choose to believe is permanent.
I remember what I was wearing on September 11, 2001: I was wearing jeans and a Mia Hamm jersey because I promised myself I would be number nine on the U.S. Women's soccer team. That was before I loved words and after I swore never to wear dresses again. I remember sitting on the carpet of the classroom in my jersey when the phone rang. We were learning about Native Americans or clocks or multiplication, when we were interrupted by the news about the jet liners.
I hadn't thought buildings could break like that, that they could collapse so completely. James Glanz covered the attack for the New York Times. He wrote that the cause of the demolition was most likely the fire, fueled by all of the gallons of fuel aboard the two jet liners - "The high temperatures, of perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 degrees, probably weakened the steel supports, the experts said, causing the external walls to buckle and allowing the floors above to fall almost straight down. That led to catastrophic failures of the rest of the buildings." They came down like dominoes, both in pieces, and all at once.
Glanz reported that, "one of the engineers who worked on the towers' structural design in the 1960's even claimed that each one had been built to withstand the impact of a fully loaded, fully fueled Boeing 707, then the heaviest aircraft flying." Like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the World Trade Center was built under the operative belief that we can create something incapable of ruin - that we can construct the unbreakable. On September 12thof 2001, Glanz wrote that, according to the experts, "No engineer could have prepared for what happened yesterday." No engineer could possibly have acknowledged the helplessness of something so stable, so secure, as the twin towers. In a similar article, John F. Burns called us "America the vulnerable." He said that on the eleventh, we had learned that, "no amount of power can provide protection against an enemy with limited means but a ruthless determination." We are incredibly reluctant to take into consideration, the fact that in some regard, from some angle, we are always exposed. Whether we choose to accept this or not, in some fashion, we are and always have been, America, the vulnerable.
Brian Doyle wrote, in an essay called Leap, that he had heard stories of two people, jumping from the smoking skeleton of one of the buildings, and reaching out to hold each other's hands as they free fell toward the smog-shrouded sidewalk. He said it reminded him, "that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires." There is something beautiful about building up from ground zero - something perfectly holy about the significance we derive from devastation. It is only when we address our vulnerabilities, or perhaps when they address us, that we can stumble upon this sort of clarity. Wallace had it right: to live is to submit to, "the terror of the flames," but, still, we are at our greatest, our most transparently pure and most perfectly gratified, only under those great fires.
Choosing to keep our weak points at arms length, to strategically position them within our blind spots, is a product of our desire to hold on to the belief that to some degree, we are invincible. The flaw therein, of course, is that we are breakable. It is fundamental to our very personhood that we are indisputably transient creatures, and therefore, always and inescapably vulnerable in some sense. As with bridges and burning buildings and bicycles, we cannot move forward until we interact with what is difficult, what is new, what implies that we were never perfect, or entirely unyielding to begin with. But, as Wallace would attest, it is in these embraces that we are the most utterly open. This is where we are profoundly authentic in the broadest sense. We are holy in the midst of the flames, built to withstand incredible things and to collapse in the face of others. It is simply a matter of making peace with the possibility of the wreckage.
Posted by Julia Leef
The Skidmore News sits down with the President of Skidmore E-Sports, Dan Petricca '15, to talk about one of the newest clubs on campus.
So, briefly, could you just tell me what E-Sports is?
E-Sports are competitive games that have a large following, enough that there are tournaments with cash prizes. There's a more finite definition of it, but to give a very simplified version that doesn't go into a lot of technical jargon, that's basically what they are. And at E-Sports club, we respect those games and practice them, play them; we have fun.
We have a few goals set in place for E-Sports. We want to eliminate toxicity within the gaming community on campus. I'm not saying that there is a toxic nature within the gaming community on campus, but we just want to try to slowly whittle away at the general level of toxicity. The gaming culture gets a bit of a bad rep because of games like Call of Duty and others of that variety that have bad communities, language-wise and just in general. We're trying to unify the gaming culture on campus to help it grow and become a more accepted part of daily society. People shouldn't be ashamed that they like playing games, but yet they are. And then they think that they grow out of it, but really they just miss it. Some people grow out of it, I admit that, but a lot of people shy away from it because they don't think it's socially acceptable anymore. Times have changed, and it's more "socially acceptable" than it has been, but it's still in a rough patch because in E-Sports there are professionals, professional gamers, and that's not considered an athlete by many people; it is.
Obviously, this is very new, you just started it, and I know you had a bit of trouble getting it started up as a club. Could you tell me a bit about that?
There's a general lack of knowledge as to what E-Sports are, because when we say E-Sports, people say, 'Oh, so you're a video game club?' Yes, we are, but also no, because we're trying to improve ourselves as players by getting better at certain games like League of Legends, Starcraft, DOTA 2 [Defense of the Ancients], Hearthstone, even Pokemon, because its competitive scene is growing very quickly. There's a very big lack of knowledge about it and I think that's the main reason we didn't get issued the first time.
Can you run through what you do during a typical meeting?
Well if there's anything to discuss we usually discuss it at the beginning or the end of the meeting, depending on people's personal schedules. We've had to discuss where we're going with the club, because we have our consistent members and we want to expand. So we talk about different events that we're going to be holding and different games we're going to explore further. We're going to be holding a 'noob night,' and I say that in the most loving way, because people can be new to games and they're 'noobs,' but that's not like, 'Ah, you noob, you're bad at this game and you should feel bad about it.' No, it's like, 'You're new to this game, let me teach you. Let me help you have more fun with this game.' And we're doing things like that.
In our typical meetings we discuss whether we're going to have a tournament or discuss any relevant news in the gaming society or E-Sports. Then we play different games within our E-Sports just to have fun, and we also practice as teams. So teams usually practice in a separate area of the room so that they're together. And then we have fun little games inside of the games. So instead of playing the competitive game where we have to do this, that, and the other, we just go into a game and have fun with it and play it differently.
Do you mean like customizable maps?
No. In League of Legends, which is my specialty, I don't know a lot about Starcraft or DOTA 2 but I'm learning because that's what this club wants to do. You go into a map and basically the normal rules are to destroy the enemy's nexus by accomplishing x, y and z. But instead of that, we ignore the main objective and we create rules within that map ourselves, rather than trying to defeat the enemy traditionally. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think so. I'm not that familiar with League of Legends other than knowing it's some kind of MMO [Massively Multiplayer Online].
Actually, it's a MOBA.
What's a MOBA?
Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
So it's a fighting MMO?
No. It's a real-time strategy game where you control one unit. That unit levels up to a cap of 18. You can get six items per character plus a trinket, and you have four skills that you level up according to your own choice. It's not like a traditional 2-D fighter; it's an over-the-top, epic, head-down game.
For students who have recently joined E-Sports and have not necessarily dabbled in these games before, I'm assuming for something like League of Legends you need to purchase some kind of membership?
Nope. League of Legends is completely free. There are some premiums you can pay for, like cosmetic changes, or you can unlock different champions with cash, but it is a free game to download and play. Of course, a lot of people do bend and break and spend real money on buying champions or skins so that they have not an upper hand but just more versatility with what they can do. Whereas, maybe players starting out only get access to the free champions per week.
So are all the games that you play in the club free for members? Do people have to buy anything?
No. Well, Starcraft 2 you have to buy. But most of the games are free; we're not exclusive in that regard. And if someone came with a problem we'd probably try and pull our club budgeting to create a public-type thing for players who want to try something out.
Are you looking do to anything outside of simply meeting and playing games, like participating in tournaments?
Yes. We just recently had a movie night on a documentary about professional players and their struggles. The movie focuses on pro-players before E-Sports was big. And E-Sports have always kind of been there but they've recently skyrocketed in the past five years. It was really nice. We mainly had the main group of club members come, which is about 15 or 20 people, a large number, but we all got closer from just watching the movie, and afterwards we played a few games and it was fun.
We're also planning on hosting events in the Spa whenever the larger tournaments are occurring--not necessarily tournaments that we're hosting, but when the world happens for League of Legends and when big tournaments for DOTA and Starcraft happen. So we're going to try and rent out the Spa so we can put it on the projector and show people that we're not a bunch of recluses quietly playing our little games; we actually do stuff. Of course we're going to be cheering on our teams like crazy people, and it should be fun.
We also have a few other plans in motion. We're doing noob night where we're going to try and actively bring in members of the Skidmore community who are even the slightest bit interested in understanding what League of Legends, Starcraft, DOTA and Hearthstone is. We'll play Pokemon too, because we do have a competitive Pokemon scene. The Pokemon fan base is pretty big, so we just need to get them to come. We're trying to accomplish little things to make us known, because I feel that a lot of people know that we're a club, but their mentality is, 'Why can't I just play the game from my room? It's all the same.' So we're going to give them more incentive with being active in the community, and having free food.
You're graduating next year. Where do you hope to leave the club?
I want the club to have a very strong base, I want it to be a community. I want members to be able to accomplish different problems and get what they want, basically. I really hope the club has a larger budget when I leave so that they can travel to different tournaments to watch or participate under the school. We have to represent Skidmore as a gaming community, because we have a really big gaming culture here but no one wants to talk about it because, I don't know why, I think they're just afraid. So by the time I leave, I hope that the club has enough money to send people out, to hold enough 'field trips' that players can travel and watch their favorite teams compete. And also hold tournaments where players can feel rewarded if they win; they get actual prizes rather than just 'the glory and the fame.'
Do you ever communicate with other colleges who have similar organizations?
I've been in contact with RPI once. I haven't gotten in contact with a lot of other ones just because I've been trying to set this up and it's stressful and chaotic. But there is a collegiate program for League of Legends where other colleges compete against each other.
You touched on this a bit already but I'll say it anyway. The misconceptions people have about this club I think boil down to the misconceptions about the video game culture in general. Do people ever come up to you and ask you if they have to know a lot about video games to do this?
People have asked me, 'Oh is it just video games? Do you guys play this game?' and people I think have the misconception that we just focus on the games I talked about in this interview. Even though it is E-Sports we welcome all forms of gaming. When we started this club we weren't sure that Pokemon was going to be a part of it. I had no idea that the competitive scene would blow up this much. And people can even bring their own fan-favorite game that we've never heard about, and more than enough of us would be willing to try it out and play it with them. They would teach and we would learn. I don't know if it would become a regular part of the club but we welcome all gaming. We focus on the competitive ones just because that's what we want. If someone wanted something else we'd welcome them with open arms and try whatever it is they want.
So if I wanted to play Wii-Sports, for example?
You could, but it's a console game, and we mainly focus on PC-gaming. That being said, we will always focus on our competitive sports first, but we do have nights when it's open game night. So that's more what I'm referring to when it's like, you want to play Wii-Sports. Okay, bring a system and some controllers and we'll play it.
When are your meeting times?
We meet Fridays from five to seven, most weeks. Sometimes a lot of us are busy and we decide to cancel just because you need people to actually play these games and have fun. So if only two or three people can show up, which has not happened yet, we have a consistent 15-member show rate and I'm proud of that. If only three members can come I would call it a cancel. It's like canceling sports practice; if only a fifth of the team can show up because everyone's sick or it's finals week, then it's not worth having practice.
And where would students find out about that or any other updates or information?
We have a Facebook group and an email list. The Facebook group is public: Skidmore E-Sports. We try and stay consistent with the postings. The email is a little less reliable just because we've had trouble with our list and we're going to have to remake it at this point. But generally we use the Facebook group, word of mouth, finding out through the game, things like that.
Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to say?
One of our long-term goals for next year is to get a bigger budget so we can take a group of students to PAX [The Penny Arcade Expo]. It's a three-day event where a bunch of game developers come and talk about and showcase their games. There are little mini-tournaments with League of Legends and DOTA 2. It showcases E-Sports and traditional gaming, and that's one of the things that we're trying to cover with our club. As much as we want to focus on E-Sports, we do not want to leave traditional gaming behind because we can learn a lot from it.
One of the things we're trying to work towards is getting a stable platform for players who don't have a laptop with the game downloaded, or something like that, to be able to play the game. A lot of people have desktops in the gaming world. If that means being able to use the computer lab and have games on that, or whatever that is, we haven't talked to them yet, but it's something we're going to discuss in the future. It's not something that we're going to demand because that is not something for us to demand, but we're trying to make it more inclusive rather than excluding people because they can't bring their fifty-pound desktop with them to club every Friday.
Posted by Compiled David Goroff
A compilation of all the Campus Safety Reports from the year 2013.
Posted by The Editorial Board
"What seminar are you in?" This omnipresent question is indicative of the impact of Skidmore's First-Year Experience on campus life. According to Skidmore, the FYE is "a combination of offerings and opportunities aimed at the student as a whole person." First-year students are placed in a Scribner seminar that is designed to be the centerpiece of this program. Each seminar is usually paired with both a professor, who also serves as the student's advisor until they declare a major, and a peer mentor, an upper-class student who works to facilitate the student's adjustment to college. The program is designed to both ease the academic and social transition into college and to introduce students to the level of academic rigor demanded by the College. The Editorial Board strongly supports the work of the FYE and suggests several changes to the process of selecting faculty members to teach the seminars in order to better improve the overall experience.
The academic experience is central to the success of the FYE. There are a number of factors that go into making a class successful: the energy and intellect of the students enrolled in the course, the chemistry in the classroom, the content of the course and the level of rigor required. It is obvious, however, that professors play an integral role in this equation. The FYE classes are unlike any other introductory course at the College: the experience extends beyond the basic curriculum into other aspects of students' social, residential and intellectual lives.
Perhaps more than any other experience in the first year, the FYE has the power to influence a student's experience and success at the College. To further improve the first-year seminars, we should do everything in our power to ensure that the professors teaching FYEs are the strongest and the most effective. To do this, we need to change the selection and feedback mechanisms for FYE professors.
Currently, each academic department selects a certain number of its experienced professors to teach first-year seminars each fall. (This number is based on the size of the department and the availability of faculty.) Teaching these seminars is generally regarded as a desirable job: professors are able to teach a topic they are enthusiastic about, which they might not be able to teach within their own department (courses must pass approval from the director of the FYE, English professor Janet Casey, and the Curriculum Committee), and each seminar comes with a spending stipend to enable professors to engage their students outside of class. Despite these incentives, most students will agree that, as with the College in general, professors range in teaching ability. Incoming students are as likely to get a strong, engaging professor as they are to end up with a dull, ineffective one.
To amend this, the Editorial Board suggests instituting a stronger system of student feedback into the process. As with every course, first-year students fill out evaluation forms for their professors. But these evaluations go to the department; their effect on the FYE is more distant. Furthermore, students may positively evaluate their professors on qualities that they liked but undermines the FYE, such as easiness -- thanks for my A, here's yours. The Editorial Board proposes direct student influence on FYE professor selection. Each spring, juniors and seniors within each departmental major would vote for the professors they have found to be the strongest and most engaging. The professors who receive the most votes would be given the first option of teaching a first-year seminar. We reason that upperclassmen in each major have taken a significant number of courses within the department and know the professors intimately. And because these students will not be taking the class, they will not be influenced by factors such as easiness or tendency to get sick. This voting process could become an important part of the selection process for FYE professors, a way of ensuring that the professors who experienced students have benefited and learned the most from have the opportunity to influence future first-year classes.
Student feedback is just one of the many factors that determine whether a professor is effective or not. It would be foolish to assume that one negative course experience means a professor is truly ineffective. Bad classes can be attributed to poor student involvement as often as poor teaching. But direct student feedback should be a greater part of the process, especially for the FYE, which has such a direct and immediate influence on the student experience at Skidmore.
The FYE seminar introduces students to Skidmore; the professor is the student's advisor for almost two years. Guaranteeing that only the best of the best are assigned to these influential roles is imperative to the success of the students.
Posted by Zoe Dartley
I may be bias in regards to Tell the Wolves I'm Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt, because-confession-coming of age books are a weakness of mine, especially when they're narrated by quirky-bordering-on-weird girls. (Am I giving too much away about my own adolescence?) Honestly, though, this book is truly special.
The year is 1987, and fourteen-year-old June Elbus is struggling with growing up in the shadow of her vivacious older sister, Greta. June is shy at school and can't seem to relate to her peers. Rather than socialize or star in plays like Greta, she would rather escape to the woods and pretend to be a medieval huntress. While her mother and father are caring and sympathetic, June finds the ultimate companion in her uncle, renowned painter Finn Weiss.
June's world is shaken at its core when Finn mysteriously dies of an illness her mother won't speak to June about. Stricken with AIDS, Finn leaves behind his devoted partner, Toby. June begins to receive mysterious packages containing sentimental memorabilia, trinkets from her relationship with Finn. This correspondence leads her to reach out to Toby, and the two develop a unique bond in order to help one another heal.
While the beating heart of the story lies in the relationship between June and Toby, it is woven with the intricacies of family heartbreak: June and her sister fail to connect with one other despite each of their desperate attempts to communicate, while June's mother grapples with her grief over the loss of her brother. The dynamic between the Elbus family becomes turbulent and complicated as each member tries to suppress their emotions. Of course, this increases the tension as it finally amounts to a boiling point.
Brunt expertly juggles the difficult task of poignantly narrating the inner-lives of each character while also flawlessly depicting the turbulent period of the late eighties, especially for gay victims of AIDS and their families. She articulates the devastation and confusion of the epidemic with brilliant sensitivity. The mystery that AIDS was at the time parallels the novel's own mystery, which occurs when Finn's last piece of art before his death - a portrait of June and her sister - begins to be vandalized, despite the fact that it is locked in a vault. This mystery haunts the story, adding an eerie page-turning effect to the already turbulent novel.
June is one of the most sympathetic characters that I have ever encountered- racked with grief larger than herself, she is drawn to but also jealous of Toby, who was kept secret from her and her family. As the two grow closer, June must confront her feelings for her deceased uncle: was she herself in love with him? Despite her quirks, June is also a fourteen-year-old girl, and she pines for the intense connection that her uncle and Toby had, as she tries to understand the frightening illness that riddled both of them.
While "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" juggles many themes, it is, above all, a story about love. Through masterful and emotional prose, the novel articulates the different types of love that humans are capable of, and how dazzling they can be.
Posted by Rebecca Shesser
"I am not a failure - I am someone who has failed". These words capped off journalist Megan McArdle's delivery of this spring's Carr Distinguished Interdisciplinary Lecture - a semi-annual lecture series with the purpose of "more intentionally preparing Skidmore students for the transition from college to the working world or to further studies".
McArdle spoke Thursday night, April 10, about her new book, The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success, which is an examination of various social issues through an intense factual lens. McArdle's talk was riddled with charming anecdotes and sobering TED-talk-esque advice. As a self-identified libertarian, McArdle brought a wave of individualistic thought to challenge the typical Skidmore vantage point.
Social Work Professor, Pat Oles, was in charge of the selection committee whose goal was to bring in an individual whose career would provide Skidmore students with guidance and inspiration for their own. Oles, who first started reading McArdle's work when she began blogging for The Economist, thought she would be the perfect Carr resident.
"I like reading business press as well as about politics and policy," Oles commented, "I think she is one of the best writers on the business - politics side".
While liberals might not agree with the political views McArdle expresses regularly in her work, she did not focus much on politics. Instead, her overall message of the night - one that might have resonated particularly for graduating seniors - was that failure isn't necessarily a bad thing. McArdle's most repeated anecdote was about her unemployment status for the years that followed her college graduation. McArdle told of her 2-year, 1,400 resume journey to full-time, stable employment - a story that might have scared many seniors. Luckily, McArdle offered hope for those individuals who may find themselves in sticky and undesirable situations as they make their transitions to the real world.
"We all fail, but we don't all fail well" said McArdle during her lecture - a piece of advice which was weaved throughout her talk. By preaching the idea of "failing well," McArdle advised students to admit their failures, let go of them and move on in order to gain and grow from unfortunate life experiences. "Don't fail blindly," McArdle said as she encouraged the audience to take smart risks and to sometimes let things fail rather not be able to let go, revaluate, and move on.
In addition to talking about her book, McArdle also shared some journalistic wisdom with the crowd. One particularly relevant piece of advice had to do with the Internet's impact on journalism and adapting to the widespread availability of information. She described situations in which (perhaps biased) journalists would post information to the Internet that wasn't quite true. As a result, more informed citizens would comment on this false information, calling out the author on their failure to post the facts. She stated that the journalists that failed well were the ones who checked those facts and posted corrections or apologies. Those journalists who failed less than well would stubbornly defend their work despite the fact that their information wasn't correct.
McArdle closed the lecture by fielding questions from the audience. McArdle delivered two additional lectures: one on Thursday afternoon to a combined government and social work class and another private lecture on Friday morning for those individuals on campus who are interested in pursuing a career in journalism. McArdle's fresh individualistic, libertarian perspective made for interesting conversations around campus and achieved all that the Carr Lecture aims to deliver.
Posted by Katie Peverada
With the playoffs beginning this week, the NHL is in for a wild two months (the best two months in sports!). It also means another two months of speculating who will get an invitation to Vegas for the annual NHL Awards.
With the NHL regular season in the books, the statistical awards have already been handed out and, to absolutely no surprise, Sidney Crosby of the Penguins and Alexander Ovechkin of the Capitals took home the two scoring trophies. Crosby, who finished with 104 points (36G, 68A), won his second career Art Ross Trophy as the NHL scoring champion. Ovechkin used a 51-goal season to earn his second straight Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy as the league's leading goal scorer. And taking home the William M. Jennings Trophy, awarded to the goalie who allows the fewest goals and plays at least 25 games, was the King's Jonathan Quick.
For most of the other awards there are always going to be arguments about players and teams facing different levels of competition. These award picks, however, ignore that and go off of pure performance. Here are my picks for the Hart Memorial Trophy, James Norris Memorial Trophy and the Vezina Trophy:
Hart Memorial Trophy (most valuable player): There's always a discussion over whether this award should go to the player who is the most valuable to his team or the most valuable player in the league. However, Sidney Crosby's 2013-14 season makes that discussion obsolete. Crosby's Art Ross Trophy gives him the best NHL player award, and it doesn't hurt that he finished 17 points ahead of Ryan Getzlaf in that category. If you go down the most valuable player to his team route, Crosby wins there too. Crosby led all forwards in TOI/G (21:58) and took 104 more face-offs (1,887) than any other player. But perhaps the statistic that shows how valuable Crosby was for the Penguins this season comes in the team's league-leading 531 man-games lost to injury. So yes, with players like Lee Stempniak on his wing - instead of Pascal Dupuis - Crosby was still able to carry his team to the second-seed in the East.
James Norris Memorial Trophy (best all-around defenseman): In maybe the tightest awards race, in which there are six legitimate contenders, there should be a repeat winner in the Chicago Blackhawk's Duncan Keith. Among defensemen, Keith is second in points (6G, 55A), eighth in +/- with +22 rating and 15th in TOI with 24:38. Part of the reason Keith was able to be on the ice so often for Chicago was because he only had 28 penalty minutes. His two-way play is of the utmost importance to the Blackhawks.
Vezina Trophy (best goaltender): A year ago, there were questions surrounding Semyon Varlamov's tenure in Colorado, but when Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy took over as coach of the Colorado Avalanche, he was transformed into a Vezina-winning goalie. Varlamov led the league in wins (41), which was also a franchise record, and was third in save-percentage (.927) - all while backstopping one of the weakest defensive teams in the league. He was the only goaltender to face more than 2,000 shots, seeing a league high of 2,013. Varlamov overcame all of this, earning a new contract along the way, to lead Colorado to the playoffs.
Next week: Picks for the Calder Trophy (rookie of the year), the Jack Adams Award (coach of the year), the Selke Trophy (best defensive forward) and the Lady Byng Award (sportsmanship).
The results for the Spring Round II Elections were emailed to students Friday morning. A total of 275 votes were cast in this election, approximately half of those cast for the first round. Here are the results:
Vice President For Communications and Outreach: Lyssa Jackson '16
Senators-at-Large:
Julia Elstein '17
Orr Genish '17
Justin Ho '16
Luca Mobilia '17
Wenting "Lexi" Pan '16
Alex Salerno '16
Emma Starr '16
Student Entertainment Committee (SEC) Chair: Jeff Sadueste '15
Late Night Committee Chair: Musa Komeh '15
Speakers Bureau Chair: Hope Spector '15
Traditions Committee Chair: Lauren Scauzzo '15
Senior Class Social Chair: Jarred Green
Sophomore Class Secretary: Leah Schwaikert
Student Life Delegate: Meg Caccavale '16
SGA Constitutional Changes for ??'Club Affairs Committee Policies and Procedures,' 'Establish a Residential Life Seat on Senate' and 'Late Night Committee Change' were also Approved.
Several positions still remain open, including VP for Diversity Affairs. Students interested in filling these positions can go through Willingess-to-Serve and should contact Madeliene Kanazawa at mkanazaw@skidmore.edu.
Posted by Katie Peverada
On a rainy Tuesday evening, the women's lacrosse team took to the field to take on the No. 3-ranked Amherst College Jeffs, and came out on the wrong side of the 12-4 nonconference matchup. The Jeffs remained undefeated with their 12th win of the season, but the loss dropped the Thoroughbreds to 4-9.
Even though the temperature at game time was hovering around a cold 35 degrees, that didn't stop the Jeffs from opening the scoring with five unanswered goals, a deficit Skidmore was never able to recover from. Amherst's Priscilla Tyler opened the scoring at the 24:23 mark of the first half after she picked up a groundball and eventually shot from within the circle 10 seconds later for her 10th goal of the season. Tyler would go on to score a total of three goals and register two assists, and contributed six of the eight Jeff draw controls in the game.
Skidmore turned the ball over 12 times in the first half, with Amherst capitalizing on several of them. Finally, at the 13:04 mark of the first half, Tyler Phillips '17 put a free position shot up high and past Christy Forrest to make it 5-1. The Jeffs answered right back, though scoring five more unanswered goals to end the half with a 10-1 lead. During the 5-0 run, Meghan Mills netted a hat trick, with all three of her shots coming from within the circle.
Amherst had seven different goal scorers in the first half. Skidmore's Megan Kolopsky '17 faced 22 first half shots, 15 of which were on net, and she registered an admirable five saves.
In the second half, Skidmore seemed destined for more of the same when Tyler completed her hat trick just 45 seconds into the frame to make it 11-1. But Skidmore proved determined to not let the rout continue, and actually outscored Amherst 3-2 in the second half. Spencer Morgan '15 tallied her 20th goal of the season off of a free position at the 21:29 mark. With 14 minutes to go in the game, Caroline Browne '15 responded to a Jeffs score when she took a pass from Phillips and put it past Forrest to make it 12-3. With about three minutes left on the clock, Paige DiAntonio '15 scooped up a groundball and Skidmore was able to maintain possession long enough for Krista Lamoreaux '17 to feed Brittney Dioneda '15 in the circle, who scored her sixth goal of the season.
Even though Skidmore controlled the draws, 10-8, the Amherst attack was too powerful for the Thoroughbred defense. Amherst put up 29 shots to Skidmore's 15, and collected 26 groundballs to Skidmore's eight. Skidmore's 22 turnovers also proved costly, as the Jeffs were often able to capitalize on the miscues.
Kolopsky registered six saves in the game while her counterpart Forrest tallied eight. Offensively, Dioneda, Morgan, and Browne all tallied one goal, Lamoreaux had one assist, and Phillips had one goal and one assist for her eighth multi-point game of the season.
Skidmore sits at 3-3 in Liberty League play, which puts them in fifth place with three league games remaining, with two coming against RPI and St. Lawrence, teams that sit ahead of them in the standings. The Thoroughbreds are right in the mix, and their road to the playoffs starts with a 1p.m. home game on Saturday against RPI.
Posted by Brittany Dingler
It is no wonder that Jack Torrance's "all work, no play" obsession led to a rather, shall we say, unproductive ending while forcing himself to write his novel non-stop in the dead of winter in Stephen King's The Shining. Although a fictitious example, we can all relate to it as we emerge from hibernation only to be greeted by the end of the school year, and a seemingly bottomless pile of final papers, projects, presentations and tests. It seems truly impossible to fit all of our obligations into such a limited period of time and, in response, we push ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally to use every free moment to keep working-even if that means skipping meals, sleep and social commitments with friends. Although this undoubtedly seems like the only possible strategy to get everything done, recent research shows that the all work, no play method is actually more detrimental to achieving our goals. Rather, it is the play that is key to allowing us to complete our work more efficiently and effectively.
One idea that may help to explain the necessity of breaking up study-thons is Parkinson's Law. First identified by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, columnist for The Economist in 1955, this eponymous law of productivity essentially states that we inflate the complexity and difficulty of the task at hand to fit the time we allot to it. For example, if we arrange to clear our schedule to finish a 15-page term paper over the weekend, our minds will stretch the intricacy of the assignment to fit that allotted time. Parkinson's Law, however, suggests that by restricting ourselves to small chunks of time, our brains prioritize the challenge to more quickly and efficiently complete the project, therefore giving us more time later to fix anything and - goodness forbid the thought - have some time left over for ourselves.
Many psychologists and self-proclaimed "life-hackers" like Tim Ferris advocate for this less-is-more approach by working in chunks interspersed with play. Although often considered to be reserved for those age-groups more often seen in Greenberg or the E.C.C., play is a critical tool for surviving the stressors of adulthood. Furthermore, learning how to incorporate play daily is particularly important for college students whose academic and personal lives never really cleave. Playing-even if it just entails skipping through Northwoods, spending some time with a friend's pet (and maybe the friend, too), braving a hike to the top of Palmountain with the Outing Club, reading Frank McCourt's last upper, cooking some vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, (fun-free?) cookies or throwing around a frisbee-reenergizes you to focus on the task at hand, no matter how scary it may be, and prepares you to prioritize so you can slay that task dragon in record time and return to the puppy and the frisbee.
Posted by Anonymous
I am a copy
Posted by Sarah Arndt and Eliza Sherpa
In the following editorial, we attempt to apply the study of whiteness to environmental action. We assert first that American society maintains systems of racism and colonization that center and privilege whiteness while oppressing and marginalizing other identities. As a result, the U.S.-based environmental movement is implicated in a racial system. We believe the movement fails to adequately acknowledge or respond to the racialized nature of the politics and processes with which it engages. This failure manifests at multiple levels, including on our own college campus, Skidmore. While the environmental community on campus has attempted to foster an inclusive space and increase diversity, it has failed to do so largely due to misguided approaches. It is necessary for campus environmental activists to identify, examine, and change the ways in which our actions are influenced by racialized and colonizing economic and political systems. This begins with each of us as individuals learning and actively engaging in the constant process of becoming better allies.
We would like to preface that we are speaking based on our own experiences and analyses of racism, whiteness studies, and environmental activism, particularly at Skidmore. We don't wish to generalize to all environmental activists, but to recognize trends we've observed within many environmental communities through our own participation. We recognize that our lens is undoubtedly limited by our own white racial identities and facets of involvement as environmental activists. We do not intend to commend ourselves for doing something "right" nor do we intend to condemn other environmental activists for failures. Instead, we hope to engage in a continued dialogue with the purpose of collectively strengthening the work we are all deeply committed to.
***
At Powershift in October, a conference to bring together youth climate activists, a woman stood up in a workshop on race and the environment and asserted that while white environmentalists have been talking about how to diversify "their movement," that framing is entirely inaccurate. "This isn't about including people of color in the white American movement, this is about including white people in the global movement that indigenous and communities of color have been fighting for over 500 years." (pers. comm., paraphrase). Environmentalists looking to "diversify" the movement need a paradigm shift; rather than pursuing their own agenda, environmentalists must seek to listen, learn from, and join the global movement of indigenous and communities of color.
Environmentalism, especially on a small scale, is often criticized as a "white man's fight" (see for example, Van Jones on why the "green movement" is too white). The goal of diversification is frequently talked about within environmental organizations, and something our own campus environmental community strives for. While commendable, we need to critically analyze the intentions, vision, and methods of diversification to understand why we seem to continuously fail at moving towards this goal.
One aspect of white privilege we often hear discussed is the ability to be treated as an individual in a white dominated society, as opposed to being profiled. While this may seem an obvious point, what this means within an environmental context is that gaining the participation of a few people of color does not mean we've successfully diversified our movement, since those voices can certainly not, nor should they be expected to, represent all communities of color. While it may seem an obvious point to make, many of us, perhaps unconsciously, make this assumption each time we wait for a person of color to raise the issue of race, assume that our own understandings of racial marginalization applies to specific people of color, or call our movement inclusive merely because of who's sitting at the table.
To address these concerns, efforts to create a broader coalition of supporters must be framed not with diversity as the end goal, but equity, because it encompasses active engagement and participation. One organizer stated in reference to marginalized populations, "We inherited this reality, but we can be architects of the future" (pers. comm.). In this sense, it's not only about gearing solutions towards underrepresented populations or even ensuring that organizing groups are diverse...
It is also about shifting the conversation to focus on lived experiences rather than attempting to apply concepts to specific realities we have not all lived out. While our impending environmental and economic crisis will, and in some ways does, affect everyone, we do not all experience its effects equally or even in similar ways.
Embedded within our social system is the centering and normalization of white experiences, and the assumption that those experiences are universal. While this may not be obviously evident, we accredit and validate people and their ideas based on intellectual credentials but not lived experiences, logical reasoning but not introspective analysis, and collected and articulate dialogue but not passionate assertions. These subtle interactions demonstrate the overemphasis on modes of communication certainly not exclusive to white people, but that are more easily developed through institutions more accessible and more populated by white people. In addition, lived experiences are often far more painful than "objective" analyses, triggering far greater emotional responses. On the issue, an organizer kat explained that "By invalidating our emotions, you alienate us" from the conversation.
We must restructure the American environmental movement so that it values a variety of experiences and analyses including those expressed through anger, pain, and other emotional responses.
Below we aim to demonstrate how the "alternative food movement," as a subset of the environmental movement, offers a lens to understand how the embeddedness of whiteness affects environmental activism. Many advocates of alternative foods share the same goal of diversification as the broader environmental movement. Advocates often refer to the value of getting your hands dirty in the soil, the desire to know where your food comes from, and aninterest in bringing people together through spaces like farmers markets. This framing can lack appeal to the very communities that the movement claims interest in reaching out to because these values are not universal. While not exclusive to white communities, these values often coincide with certain cultural backgrounds and access to resources that not all communities share, and assume that certain populations aren't already well-versed in these practices.
The attempt to universalize these values makes larger assumptions and generalizations about why alternative food is important, failing to contextualize historical and cultural factors. Historically, the explicitly racist ways in which labor has been organized (particularly the legacy of slavery), and the way in which American land has been colonized and re-distributed, is often neglected. In other words, not everyone thinks it's so great to go dig up carrots, or sees it as a radical act, versus one born of necessity. The idea that alternative food spaces can fill a "much-needed" niche to foster community isn't always relevant, or even desired, for people who foster community through other forums.
Not only are the alternative food values culturally-specific, but the strategies for change equally so. Activists and individuals draw from the ideas disseminated by public figures like Michael Pollan who popularized ideas like "vote with your fork" and furthered the idea that those who can afford to buy high-quality food in America should do so despite the fact that not everyone is able to. These goals measure commitment to environmental change through a narrow construction of what constitutes engagement that equates good citizenship with good consumption. Not only are these modes of change exclusionary, but they also don't frame diversifying in terms of equity, and fail to challenge our inherently unequal capitalist economy.
Many people of color are faced with daily interactions where their racial identity is assumed to be essential to their thoughts, ideas, and means of communication. In contrast, due to a normalized racial identity, white people are rarely in situations where their race is apparent due to the centering of whiteness within much of our social structures and collective spaces, as exemplified in the values and methods of change-making in both the food and larger environmental movement.
While we often assume that unless one harbors racist ideals or acts in a discriminatory fashion one is in the clear, an anti-racist. In reality, embodying anti-racism necessitates an active process of constant engagement. What we aim to argue is that to be anti-racist, one cannot just recognize the way a minority identity affects one's lived experience, but how a white racial identity affects one's experience just as much (in very different ways).
The environmental movement misinterprets the call for diversity as a matter of "reaching out." The movement must recognize that sustainable diversity depends on reciprocity and is as much a matter of reflexivity - of looking inwards and understanding one's own positionality - as a matter of reaching out.
In other words, positionality matters.
And we argue that to understand your positionality demands identifying, examining, and changing racially charged and colonizing mindsets. While these engrained mindsets may not be our individual faults, we all still partake, sometimes in subtle and unconscious ways. Put yourself in situations that demand you question your opinions, knowledge systems, and values - situations that make you uncomfortable. Situations that are common for everyone who doesn't "look" white. Get involved with conversations and spaces that address social injustices, and don't come with an agenda but rather to listen and learn. This may be uncomfortable, but only through discomfort can a meaningful conversation begin.
So no, "diversifying" the movement is not a matter of merely co-sponsoring an event with an OSDP club or inviting people of color to come to meetings and join "our movement." It also takes more than just going to "their table," partaking in a "cultural" food event, a dance, or watching a performance.
Instead, it is a matter of investing. Investing in the lifelong task of acting in true solidarity with people of color, who are proportionally more affected by the same systematic inequities that exacerbate climate change and other environmental ills. In order to create the mental and emotional space to truly act in solidarity, we must all engage in the process of decolonizing of our own understanding and mindsets.
By engaging in conversation, one that exposes and challenges the inequality in environmental organizing, we can begin to subvert the foundations of environmental and social injustice affecting all of us.
***
We want to accredit those individuals whose ideas we drew from heavily in this editorial including the following authors and blog writers: Linda Alcoff, Margaret Anderson, Hernia Belalia, Woody Doane, Frances Kendall, Richard Dyer, Julie Guthman, Maya Lemon, Tema Okun, Scott Toi, and kat stevens.
Posted by Andrew Shi
LINE, Skidmore's student-run art review magazine, will be celebrating their release party at 7 to 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, at the Tang. The party will also note the closing of a year marked by changes to the publication.
In a short Q&A, LINE's Editor-in-Chief, Leila Farrer '16, and President, Lisa Fierstein '16, took the time to answer a few questions, including what changes the publication made this year.
SHI : LINE made several changes to the publication this year. Can you describe in more detail some of the larger changes that were made?
FIERSTEIN: This year, we revamped LINE by transforming it into an annual and more in-depth publication (LINE used to have new editions every semester). More than anything, we want students, faculty, and the greater community to know about LINE because it is where the diverse range of talents that exist on Skidmore's campus come together in a tangible form. Our first step to expand LINE was to increase the size of our talented staff of writers, editors, photographers, graphic designers, and artists. We hoped to create an atmosphere of inclusion and collaboration in our staff meetings, and we feel as though the 2013 - 2014 edition of LINE is a reflection of the cohesiveness of our staff members. Overall, the major changes we made this year was to expand the magazine, make the magazine be more cohesive, recruit new staff from all years and departments, increase staff participation and involvement, and create a collaborative environment.
SHI: You mentioned that LINE is a very interdisciplinary magazine. What departments does LINE work with?
FARRER: LINE doesn't work directly with any academic departments at Skidmore, although if I had to categorize it, I would say the Art and English departments. We did have Professor Jay Rogoff from the English department teach a workshop on how to write critical reviews about art in November that was very helpful. He recommended four keys to writing good articles: describe, interpret, evaluate, and contextualize. Beyond that, many of our articles cover student work in the Schick and Case galleries, so in that way we work with the art department. We've also had a lot of contact with the Tang by covering work in their galleries, accessing images of works to include in the magazine, and planning the release party.
SHI: Is there anything else you would like the Skidmore community to know about LINE?
FARRER: I guess I'd just say that we're really excited about this magazine. The staff has worked so hard over the course of this year and we've created something interesting and beautiful that shows the best side of the arts at Skidmore. The whole process has been a huge learning curve for all of us trying first to get people interested in the project and then writing good articles and then laying it all out. I give so much credit to our writers and graphic designers. LINE is a great way to show off the behind-the-scenes creative talent that Skidmore has.
Farrer and Fierstein also wanted to give special thanks to Treasurer Kai Inaba '16 for his hard work and leadership and also thank the rest of the managing editors and staff. This year's LINE will feature reviews of Classless Society, Schick Gallery's Charcoal exhibition, interviews, student artwork and more.
The release party to celebrate the 2013-2014 edition is from 7 to 9:30 p.m., Thursday, April 17, at the Tang Museum Atrium. There will be free food and drink, and performances including music from Skidmore band Otter, The Accents and Ethan Carpene with Mike Stein. There will also be spoken word from Jennifer Florence '15. Free copies of LINE will be distributed at the party. All are welcome.
Posted by Erin Dillon
In recent years, the world of fine dining has diverged from its glorification of French technique to embrace ethnic flavors and cultural fusion. Cuisines like Latin, African and Indian are no longer blue-collar food choices, but serve as palettes on which acclaimed chefs craft their inventive, worldly creations. As a result, ethnic restaurants have become mainstream, even in landlocked cities like Saratoga Springs. This town boasts a slew of ethnic restaurants despite its relatively homogenous racial population; from Japanese to Spanish to Belgian to Turkish, Saratoga offers an abundance of dining options.
Sadly, with a growing demand for global food, the term "authentic" tends to mean the opposite. (Why would sushi be "authentic" 6,000 miles from Japan? And can genuine jam??n ib??rico really come from the back of a Sysco truck?)
Thankfully, one establishment still adheres to the Webster definition of "authentic." El Mexicano, although not quite a Michelin-star restaurant, does not lie by claiming to serve "The Best Authentic Mexican Food in New York."
As a vegan from Maine, I might be unqualified to judge the authenticity of Mexican cuisine. However, my palate can discern a foil-wrapped Chipotle burrito from a dish of rice, beans and tortillas that seems to have been cooked over an open fire at a Mexican hacienda. El Mexicano serves the latter, prepared, presumably, the way mom used to make it. The restaurant serves simple, comforting plates generous enough to fuel a ranchero (or a scrawny Skidmore student). Although El Mexicano's dishes may lack in innovation, zest and molecular gastronomy, they also lack frills. You will go home satisfied from an honest meal.
Walking into El Mexicano induces a sort of sensory overload that soon fades into an endearingly festive ambiance. The space is colorful and well-lit,
Posted by Blair Warren College is an exciting transition into adulthood, full of friends and new experiences. What about after college, though? Do we find it necessary to jump right into our future, immediately stuck in a nine-to-five job and paying bills we didn't even know existed? The novel Young Wanderlust by Evan Kenward explores this question through his traveling with friends, meeting new people, and venturing out on his own. What he thought was just a post-grad road trip became an experience that changed his perspective on life. Kenward began the journey in his home state of Massachusetts with two childhood friends. Their struggles began with car troubles, as does any good road trip story. This car's fragility and seeming mood swings is present through each passing state and pit stop. Throughout the novel, the reader is consumed not only with the development of the story but also with the tribulations of this old, distinctive car. I'm glad I read this book while still in college, as it opened my eyes to the reality of my situation. As a college student, we often think we will be forever young with no truly extensive responsibilities, yet four years is not as long as it seems, and then all of a sudden we have mortgages and regularities, falling into the patterns of our parents. During college, Kenward spent a lot of his time taking day trips, going on hikes, and exploring what the nearby world had to offer, accompanied by friends. Yet he wanted to do more and see more. This began his plan to travel across the country, stopping at places like Michigan, Seattle and San Francisco, and even making his way to British Columbia in Canada. What is so fascinating about this story is the spontaneity, the friend dynamics that evolve after being stuck with each other for a long time, and the unexpected discoveries. Kenward shows his readers how truly beautiful this country can be and the magic of traveling not as a tourist, but as an explorer. A constant theme in the book is the fluidity of characters and the ability to assimilate into different cultures through the mindset of acceptance of norms. Through Kenward's travels, he encounters many people and even stays with strangers greatly unlike him. He tries to be open-minded, though, letting subcultures mesh into his character. He is able to blend in with different types of people, making new friends and gaining different understandings of lifestyles and values. Talking with Kenward, the themes in his novel persisted. He said, "Traveling and discovering new things is an education in the truest sense. I firmly believe, as a person and human being, that seeing things out of one's normal life is important for an individual." He emphasized the significance of getting outside of one's comfort zone, branching out of one's life bubble, and not just seeing but understanding what is out there. He said, "When you go back to your life after traveling, you have the ability to compare and contrast the way things are done in both places. This does a world of good." After reading this book and talking with Kenward, I have gained a better perspective on the excitement of college, the reality of post-grad, and the importance of exploring what's out there. Although, according to Kenward, my perspective must also be based in experience. People should not rush into things, but instead, appreciate the little things and explore the beautiful, the natural, and the authentic. I recommend this book to anyone willing to appreciate the fluidity and freedom one can find in life. In the final words of Evan Kenward, "If people like the book, pass it on and let other people know about it." The final round of the Fourth Annual Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition was held Friday April 11. The $20,000 first prize went to seniors Walter Barber, Ian Van Nest and Andrew Zimmerman for Leaf Pile Media LLC, a "transmedia fictional universe," to put it in their words. Their business's next priority will be to market the game, Champions of Hara, that the three freshman year roommates created two years ago, including the development of a promotional video. The prize money will also go to constructing a website to advertise their product and support sales as well as to setting up exhibits at game conventions and also manufacturing the game. The game takes players on a fantastical journey through a fictional universe called Hara. "Aesthetically, Hara is grounded in everything we've ever loved. It's a hybrid fantasy, drawing in equal parts from ancient mythologies, pop culture, folklore, and everything in between. We've been really influenced by some of today's giants like Adventure Time and Skylanders, but obviously our roots are in franchises like Pok??mon and Harry Potter. Our characters are a little whacky but they all have deep motivations and goals, and I think people are really going to connect with that," Barber said. The game will sell for $50 and, if popular, will be developed further into other medias. " Our primary intention behind the board game is to be the first vehicle for telling their story - it is going to be accompanied by graphic novels and a mobile game, all of which serve to build the world and the characters," Barber said. On what inspired them to create Hara, Barber said, "Hara comes from a mutual love of games and stories. The three of us lived together freshman year and used to pour over comic books together in the window seat and spend hours crowded around a tiny TV playing games when we should have been doing homework. We still play games like Magic whenever we can steal some spare time. As weird as it sounds we really study this stuff; we've been life-long nerds who have always believed we can contribute to the industry." To keep up to date on the happenings of Hara and its creators, visit their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/leafpilemedia The Freirich Business Plan was started four years ago by Freirich, a serial entrepreneur who is now president of Health Monitor Network. In that time span, more than 170 students and 100 businesses have entered the competition. The second prize of $10,000 was awarded to Alexander Nassief '16 and Zach Rohde '14 for Rum Dogs, Inc., a Dominica-based luxury rum brand that ages its rum in barrels submerged in the Caribbean Sea. Third prize went to Seth Berger '14 for East Coast Lacrosse, a maker of custom lacrosse apparel. Berger projects sales to reach $200,000 for 2014 as lacrosse continues to expand in popularity across the nation. Three other teams competed in the final round of the competition and were given $1,000 each. Stella Langat '16 is currently registering Double Dee's LLC in Kenya. Double Dee's LLC will be the nation's first undergarment production company. Adam Beek '15 has launched Munchi Heaven Agri, an organic farming enterprise in Jamaica, and Ezra Levy '15 and Marcella Jewell '15 have started a web-based business called Open Campus, which matches college students with businesses offering real-world projects. This year's competition was coordinated by Paula Tancredi Penman, lecturer in Management and Business. The other judges in this year's competition were: Nancy Cohen Wekselbaum '73, owner of The Gracious Gourmet; Jody Klein '85, chief executive officer of ABKCO Music & Records, Inc.; Susan Magrino Dunning '83, president of Susan Magrino Agency; Nick MacShane '91, senior managing director of Progress Partners; and Ellen Sherman '68, producer for Dateline NBC. Skidmore College's Tang Teaching Musuem's Classless Society interactive feature received the award for the Best Small Museum Project on Friday, April 4, in Baltimore at the annual Museums and the Web conference. Classless Society, which was on exhibit at the Tang from Sept. 7, 2013 through March 9, 2014, investigated class from various social and economic perspectives. Among a number of topics, the show considered class mobility, the different ways that class is visible, the reality of the American Dream and the myths surrounding it in the United States in the 21st century. The special online feature (https://tang.skidmore.edu/app/public/webroot/files/uploads/classless_society/index.html) that complemented the gallery exhibition provides additional background and statistics. It also offers information about the artists and how their work reflects the complex issues surrounding class status in our so-called "classless society." Museums and the Web is an international organization with more than 600 members from 40 countries who work at the intersection of museums and the digital world. The Tang was one of only 11 winners in the annual Best of the Web competition. Other winners this year include the Dallas Museum of Art, for innovation; the Imperial War Museums and National Archives of Great Britain, for use of collections; and the Museum of Modern Art, for education. "This award recognizes how the Tang lives up to its mission by confronting important ideas through art from an interdisciplinary perspective," The Tang Museum's Dayton Director, Ian Berry, said. "Special recognition must go to Vickie Riley, the Tang's digital resources content producer, and to Joe Klockowski, an art major in Skidmore's class of 2014." Riley and Klockowski developed the online feature last summer by blending data and audio and video of personal stories compiled during a "Classless Society Stories" project. Classless Society was curated by Professor of English Janet Casey, Professor of Economics Mehmet Odekon, Rachel Seligman, assistant director for curatorial affairs for the Tang Museum and John Weber, founding director of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The full list of credits for the online feature is as follows: Contributors and consultants: Janet Casey, professor of English; Mehmet Odekon, professor of economics; Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs, Tang Museum; John Weber Founding, Director of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at UC Santa Cruz; Jenna Postler, Curatorial Intern, Tang Museum. Design and production: Vickie Riley, Digital Resources Content Producer, Tang Museum; Joe Klockowski, Classless Society web site designer, Tang Museum. Audio recordings: Gregory Carter, audio engineer; Chris Franzini, audio engineer; Frank Moskowitz, audio engineer. Editorial: Susi Watts Kerr, former Senior Museum Educator, Tang Museum; Jay Rogoff, independent editor; Megan Hyde, Curatorial Assistant, Tang Museum. Graphs: Joe Klockowski, Classless Society web site designer, Tang Museum. Research: Susi Watts Kerr, former Senior Museum Educator, Tang Museum; Sophie Matyas, Curatorial Intern, Tang Museum; Jenna Postler, Curatorial Intern, Tang Museum; Beatrice Moller, Education Intern, Tang Museum; Liz Porfido, Education Intern, Tang Museum; Brett Hartman, Digital Resources Intern, Tang Museum. Class Action for Skidmore Students (student organization). Video: Brett Hartman, Digital Resources Intern, Tang Museum; Sophie Matyas, Curatorial Intern, Tang Museum. Special thanks: Anthony Holland, associate professor of Music; participants in the Classless Society Stories Project; Class Action for Skidmore Students; Skidmore Office of Alumni Affairs. The Classless Society web feature was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Getty Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation and the Friends of the Tang. Incidents of Note: Further Incidents: Friday, April 4: Saturday, April 5: Sunday, April 6: Monday, April 7: Tuesday, April 8: Wednesday, April 9: Thursday, April 10:
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