Emily Hirsch on Changing Her Role On and Off the Field

Even though she considers lacrosse a big part of her life, especially because her dad played throughout his childhood and high school career, Emily Hirsch ‘21 never expected to play at the collegiate level. Now a senior on the Skidmore Women's Lacrosse team, Hirsch reflects on her experience playing at Skidmore and how the pandemic and an injury required a change in her role on the team.

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Saratoga Lakeview Park Residents Faced with Eviction

It’s easy to pass off Saratoga Springs as a fun evening destination to spend time with friends, especially considering that Skidmore College is an insular community in itself. However, a larger Saratoga community rests outside the college, made up of long-time residents, small business owners, and families. Currently, these residents are struggling with affordable housing or lack thereof. One group in particular – residents of the Saratoga Lakeview Mobile Home Park – are in jeopardy of eviction.

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A Q&A With Freirich Entrepreneurship Competition Winner

The Kenneth A. Freirich Entrepreneurship Competition was founded by Ken Freirich, ‘90, in 2010 to encourage interest in business and entrepreneurship at Skidmore. Dylan Telano, ‘23, received the first-place prize of $20,000 for his online writing platform, VoyceMe. I interviewed him over Zoom for a Q&A session about himself and his project. Following are edited excerpts from that conversation.

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How Are Our Clubs Still Adding Color?

Already disadvantaged at Skidmore, OSDP clubs have worked and worried on being supportive and entertaining. Now, they worry about their clubs’ survival. OSDP clubs’ role as an asylum for diverse populations necessitates that they pass something down to future students and that it still exists. Because they lose the opportunity to meet with underclassmen, COVID threatens the future as much as the present. The prospect of failure is scary. None of them want to fail because of the enormous duty that their club has. Many of them wonder if the best they can do is good enough. Nevertheless, it’s astounding how they persevere. Without fail, each club expressed existing plans for next year. How do they still add color? In any way that they can.

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Bobby Stratts on Being a Two Season Athlete

Bobby Stratts ‘22 always thought about playing soccer in college, but because he used to live in the United Kingdom, he knew it would be difficult to get attention from coaches. Stratts also started playing basketball at a young age but didn’t expect to play in college. Being a two-season athlete was not something Stratts had in mind. Now a junior on the Skidmore men’s soccer and basketball team, Stratts reflects on his time playing soccer and basketball at Skidmore.

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By Students, For Students: Tang Party set to dazzle on april 30

April 30th, 2021 will mark the launch of this year’s Tang Party, the annual end-of-year ode to Skidmore students’ unabashed funk and creativity. In the past, multi-colored sheets have given marbled walls to the pondside gazebo while, across the green, quasi-Transavantgarde drawings were projected onto the Tang’s exterior walls, breathing life into the once-blank bricks. Though the pandemic curbed the event in 2020, the Tang Party is now set to make a hearty comeback; this year’s event will feature a diverse array of pieces—from sound art, to documentary film, to textile installations—all while adhering to pandemic-prompted safety regulations.

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Lily Feldman on Growing up with Tennis and Her Current Season

Starting tennis at the age of five, Lily Feldman ‘22 has always considered the sport a big part of her life. Although a big part of her life, Feldman didn’t enjoy playing tennis until she was in college. Feldman further explains that she likes college tennis better because it feels like a team sport. Now a junior on the Skidmore’s women’s tennis team, Feldman reflects on her experience with the sport and on playing during a pandemic.

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Op-Ed: What Does it Mean to be Latinx?

As members of the Skidmore community, we need to see and call out white people and whiteness. Doing so forces faculty and staff to be a part of the conversation on racial inequality, rather than allowing them to deflect, take a raincheck, and never address it. Doing the work also entails taking strides to figure out and specifically define your race. Ending racism is a community effort; thus, in addition to professors and staff, students must also reflect and address the questions above. Change cannot occur within our community if we (Skidmore staff, faculty, and students) continue to refuse to racialize white people. Thus, the time for change is now.

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A Review of “The End of Policing” by Alex S. Vitale

Alex S. Vitale, a sociologist from Brooklyn College, delineates in his 2017 book The End of Policing exactly how the country’s policing system has consistently failed to ensure the safety of the American people and has instead focused its efforts on deterring dissenting political movements, criminalizing “those it leaves behind” (227), and protecting the interests of the wealthy. Vitale’s work is poignant and articulate; he has both a strong knowledge of the system’s failures and substantial ideas for the future. I recommend Vitale’s work if you are questioning what alternatives to policing could be, how past reforms have failed, and how deeply intertwined the police are in the framework of our nation.

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Op-Ed: It's Time Universities Implement American Sign Language into their World Languages Curriculums

If the WLL Department took into account the full panoply of deaf culture and its historical progression within this country, they would find ASL to be an appropriate addition to the curriculum. It has the ability to foster effective communication useful in many situations, provides insight into the deaf experience, connects back to fields such as disability studies and social work, and sheds light on the marginalization of deaf individuals within a particular society.

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A Tale of Two Campuses: Pandemic, Privilege, and Platform

We are always going to be around people with more resources, who will be held to lower standards with less accountability. Student-athletes have to recognize their unofficial positions of power on campus and the level of influence these positions have. As we move forward, it is important that we as a community work towards holding our own peers accountable instead of relying on an absent administration to do the work for us. Only then will we be able to move past social hierarchies and reconcile relations between student-athletes and non-student-athletes.

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Saratoga Springs Constitutional Crisis: What the Final City Council Meeting on Police Reform Revealed

Saratoga Springs finds itself in political turmoil as the city council held another open dialogue on police reform on March 31 on zoom. This meeting was the last open dialogue held before the city council voted to adopt the 50-point plan on police reform created by the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force (SSPRTF). The SSPRTF created the 50-point plan to address Saratoga’s reform of the Saratoga Springs Police Department (SSPD). The proposal has been met with reluctance by the Saratoga city council and open hostility from the SSPD. However, the third draft proposed by the city council was passed with only one member in opposition.

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