joshua bennett

FEBRUARY 2, 2012 • THE CAMPUS NEWSPAPER OF SWARTHMORE COLLEGE SINCE 1881 • VOLUME 135, ISSUE 3

THE PHOENIX Inside:

Mawrter reimagines the American DREAMNew columnist teaches the act of reading

Swarthmore professors pick the Super Bowl

Renowned spoken word artist and Penn graduate Joshua Bennett will deliver a poetry performance today in LPAC alongside O.A.S.I.S. to kick off Black History Month. p.11

WordsPower

WordsPower

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PHOENIXPHOENIXPHOENIX

Thursday, February, 2 2012 Volume 135, Issue 3

2 February 2, 2012 THE PHOENIX

The PhoenixThe independent campus newspaper of SwarthmoreCollege since 1881.EDITORIAL BOARD Marcus Mello Editor in ChiefCamila Ryder Managing EditorAdam Schlegel News EditorKoby Levin Assistant News EditorBrad Lenox Living & Arts EditorSteven Hazel Assistant Living & Arts EditorReem Abdou Opinions EditorTim Bernstein Sports EditorAllegra Pocinki Photo EditorCindy Luu Social Media CoordinatorPeter Akkies WebmasterEric Sherman Webmaster

STAFFAmanda Epstein News WriterCharles Hepper News WriterYi-Wei Liu News WriterSera Jeong Living & Arts WriterSamme Sheikh Living & Arts WriterAllison Shultes Living & Arts WriterChi Zhang Living & Arts WriterDylan Jensen Living & Arts ColumnistNate Blum Living & Arts ColumnistVianca Masucci Living & Arts ColumnistLanie Schlessinger Living & Arts ColumnistRenu Nadkarni Living & Arts ArtistNaia Poyer Living & Arts ArtistTyler Becker Opinions ColumnistDanielle Charette Opinions ColumnistHarshil Sahai Opinions ColumnistShirhan Shen Opinions ColumnistSam Sussman Opinions ColumnistEmma Waitzman Political CartoonistJames Ivey Sports ColumnistAxel Kodat BloggerJulia Carleton PhotographerCristina Matamoros PhotographerHolly Smith PhotographerJustin Toran-Burrell PhotographerSophie Diamond Copy EditorTaylor Hodges Copy EditorJaimi Kim Copy EditorAxel Kodat Copy EditorMargaret Lawlace Copy EditorVija Lietuvninkas Copy Editor

BUSINESS STAFFBusiness Manager Paul ChungCirculation Manager Emily Richardson

COVER DESIGNAmelia Kucic

COVER PHOTO COURTESY OF:joshbennettthepoet.tumblr.com

CONTRIBUTORSHenry Ainley, Maria Anleu, Victor Brady, Amelia Dornbush

OPINIONS BOARDReem Abdou, Marcus Mello and Camila Ryder

EDITOR’S PICKS PHOTOS COURTESY OF:(clockwise from top left)traveldiary101.blogspot.commyaimzistrue.blogspot.comrising.jhu.edu

CARTOON HEADSHOT ON PAGE 9:Naia Porter

TO ADVERTISE:E-mail: [email protected] phone: (610) 328-7362Address: The Phoenix, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081

Direct advertising requests to Amelia Pos-sanza. The Phoenix reserves the right to refuse any advertising. Advertising rates subject to change.

CONTACT INFORMATIONOffices: Parrish Hall 470-472E-mail: [email protected] phone: (610) 328-8172Address: The Phoenix, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081Web site: www.swarthmorephoenix.com

Mail subscriptions are available for $60 a year or $35 a semester. Direct subscription requests to Marcus Mello.

The Phoenix is printed at Bartash Printing, Inc. The Phoenix is a member of the Associ-ated College Press and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

All contents copyright © 2012 The Phoenix. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

NewsSwatties re-envision the meaning of diasporaA new course is being offered by the Eng-lish Literature Department this semester that connects Swarthmore students with students at a sister school in Ghana to ex-amine the cultural and literary traditions of diasporas in a collaborative manner.PAGE 3SBC lowers student activi-ties fee after much debateIn response to concerns regarding histori-cal rollover excess for student groups, the Student Budget Committee has voted to de-crease the student activities fee beginning next academic year. PAGE 5Palestinian children’s draw-ings find sanctuary at SwatAfter being blocked by a Jewish lobby from their original destination at an Oakland museum, drawings created by Palestin-ian children during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009 will be coming to Swarthmore for a brief exhibition scheduled for April.PAGE 6

Living & ArtsFly Union returns to Swarth-more for LSE “appetizer”The Fly Union performance at Olde Club last Friday managed to transcend disap-pointment with the LSE committee because of the groups’ originality and enthusiasm in their own music.PAGE 7Orchestra 2001 challenges convention and expectationSunday’s concert featured the Swarthmore affiliated orchestra that challenges tradi-tional ideas of what it means to be an or-chestra, which includes new arrangements and composers as well as performances in Cuba and West Virginia. PAGE 7

Navigating relationships with the good old Kanye WestA new column with a new take on Swarth-more relationships from a male perspective muses on the lessons you can learn from even the worst relationships.PAGE 8Rehak explores nostalgia, media and the role of the fanProfessor Bob Rehak of the Film and Media Studies Department discussed monsters, models and how fandom merges mass me-dia with personal identity. PAGE 8Picking beer is like picking books: dry, dense or chewyComparing beer purchases to the search for a good book, Brad Lenox offers some tips on which types of beer to buy with pro-files of Pilsner, Porter, and India Pale Ale. PAGE 9A$AP Rocky’s album asks the question: cash or more cash?Dylan Jensen reviews A$AP Rocky’s new album, LIVELOVEA$AP, and tries to deter-mine whether a starter album deserves $3 million from a record label. PAGE 12New campus clubs offer chances to read and playWriter Alli Shultes examines three Swarth-more clubs that combine hobbies with com-panionship: the Shogi Club, the Graphic Novel Club and the Bridge Club. PAGE 12

OpinionsCollapse of Chester schools: worlds apart, minutes awayThe Phoenix brings to light the financial distress the Chester Upland school district is facing and how we as Swarthmore stu-dents can impact those dire circumstances in the nearby city.

PAGE 14

What role does race and ethnicity play in the GOP?Tyler Becker and Sam Sussman offer op-posing analyses of the claim that Republi-can politicians and political strategies are marred by racism.PAGE 15The coming age of Pax Pa-cifica: chances and chal-lengesShiran Shen analyzes the nature of the rise of China, as well as why and how the U.S. should seize the opportunities to reinforce its leadership role in mediating disputes and maintaining peace in the Asia-Pacific.PAGE 16

SportsHow responsible are man-agers for their players?In his debut column, James Ivey takes a look at the recent controversy in English soccer, and asks what kind of control man-agers should have over players they know to be aggressive.PAGE 17The need to find greatness somewhere, somehowThe Giants and the Patriots aren’t great teams, and they weren’t destined to play each other in the Super Bowl. So why are we being told otherwise?PAGE 19

Justin Toran-Burrell The PhoenixA member of the women’s swim team dives into the pool. The women fell to Gettysburg 110-95, while the men lost by a score of 110-55 on Senior Day at Ware Pool. PAGE 20

CorrectionsFROM THE JANUARY 26, 2012 ISSUE

The photo on last week’s contents page (2) was attributed to Julia Carleton, when it was actually taken by Justin Toran-Burrell.

swarthmorephoenix.com

THE PHOENIX February 2, 2012 3

NewsEvENTs MENu

TodayThe Bathtub Debates: Vollmer vs. Tierney vs. Marissen

Are you a sophomore looking for a major? The Peaslee Debate Society in collaboration with the Deans Of-fice present The Bathtub Debates, an annual event that features three pro-fessors from each academic division, will take place at 7 p.m. in Sci 101.

Joshua Bennett Poetry PerformanceSwarthmore’s O.A.S.I.S. poetry

group will be laying down some verses alongside renowned spoken word artist and 2010 UPenn gradu-ate, Joshua Bennett, in LPAC’s Pear-son Theater at 8 p.m.

TomorrowCollection in Honor of Black History Month and Religion and Spirituality Week

Head over to the Friends Meeting House at 1 p.m. to hear the Reverend Dr. Charles Howard, Chaplain at UPenn, speak on leading from with-in to kick off Black History Month and Spirituality Week.

Comparative Politics Candidate Lecture

A candidate for the comparative politics position in the Political Sci-ence Department, Dr. Payam Mohse-ni, will be hosting a lecture entitled “Guardian Politics in Iran: A Com-parative Inquiry into the Dynamics of Regime Survival” in Trotter 301 at 4:15 p.m.

“Glory” Movie ScreeningStarring Denzel Washington and

Morgan Freeman, “Glory” depicts the stories of the 54th Massachu-setts Volunteer Infantry, the first formal unit of the US Army made up entirely of African-American men. The movie will begin at 8 p.m. in the LPAC Cinema.

Saturday, January 4thLantern Festival Celebration

Join the Swarthmore Chinese So-ciety in celebrating the lantern fes-tival in Shane Lounge at 7 p.m. with lanterns-making activities, desserts as well as a surprise guest perform-er.

Monday, February 6thiDevice Clinic

ITS will be answering any ques-tions you may have regarding hand-held devices in the Beardsley Media Center at 3 p.m. (iFriend problems will not be addressed at this session.)

One Act Play Festival interest meetIf you would like to let your in-

ner Thespian out, but don’t have the time in your busy Swarthmore schedule, the Drama Board may have an answer for you. Both actors and directors are being sought, so come on down to Kohlberg 115 at 5 p.m. to see what it’s all about.

Submissions to the events menus may be sent to [email protected]

Swatties re-envision the meaning of diaspora

By CHARLie HePPeR [email protected]

Overcoming the limitations of the traditional classroom en-vironment and enabling students to actively participate with their peers in the emerging global learning community has long been a goal for modern higher education. “Re-envisioning Diasporas,” a collaborative and interdisciplinary seminar-style course established this year between Swarthmore Col-lege and Asheshi University in Ghana, aims to accomplish just this.

Swarthmore faculty members Sunka Simon, associate professor of German and film and media studies, and Carina Yervasi, associate professor of French, developed the course together and co-teach the curriculum in conjunction with Pro-fessor Mikelle Antoine of Ashesi University, located near Ac-cra, Ghana.

The project was funded by grants from the SUNY Center for Online International Collaborative Learning and the Tri-College Digital Humanities Initiative, a teaching and research collaboration that seeks to understand the expertise students and faculty need as citizens and professionals in a networked world.

The course is being offered by the English Literature De-partment, with enrollment at seven students from Swarthmore and 30 from Ghana.

The centerpiece of the class’s meeting this past Tuesday was a group Skype session with their Ashesi counterparts via a large projection screen.

Individuals in both classes addressed their peers before the camera and seemed very eager to share their observations and opinions, with participants on both sides queuing and compet-ing for speaking time.

While students offered many interesting perspectives, the discussion format remained rooted in individual monologue, making conversational exchange and response to individual points difficult.

Issues touched on in the discussion included the authority that one’s voice possesses, with many students in both classes drawing on their personal experiences as members of linguis-tic minorities and polyglot communities.

The primary themes explored by the course include global-ization, nationality and the nature of one’s identity as a mem-ber of a diaspora. Students examine the experiences of commu-nities that have been separated from their homelands as well as the ways in which these groups are represented through historical, visual, aural and literary sources from Turkey, Lat-

in America and West Africa.Simon hopes the course will provide students with first-

hand experience in international and cross-cultural commu-nications through the means of Skype, blogging and other interactive forms of cooperative learning with their fellow par-ticipating students in Ghana. “We hope the students learn pro-fessional life-skills, appreciating the difficulties and rewards inherent in committed cross-cultural communication, prod-ding them to take up careers in international cooperations (NGOS and others) bringing with them a sensitivity and expe-rience-base outshining some of their less tested competitors,” Simon said. “At the same time, students will have worked with several technological tools, including the production and edit-ing of sound files, still images and film, thus providing them with additional hands-on experience to list on their resumes.”

Katie Schultz ’13 describes a typical class as including a “10 to 30 minute Skype session with students from both schools discussing the assigned readings and media with each other.” From time to time, class structure develops a collaborative or group-focused orientation, in which a Swarthmore student might discuss class material with several Ghanaian peers via blogging or voice-recording. “This approach has helped me gain a lot of insight into how their points of view differ from mine,” Schultz said.

Professor Simon notes that technological difficulties and disparities between the classes are not uncommon, regarding this as another vital aspect of the class’s overall experience. “Students are already discovering the perpetual non-simulta-neity of new media, even as that new media promises to over-come the obstacles of time differences and space,” Simon said, adding that the frequent malfunctioning of electricity or tech-nology has led to the adoption of “minding and living with the gap” and a “No-Frustration policy” as course mottoes.

The unique opportunities for cross-cultural interaction and learning through multimedia provided by this class were ma-jor selling points for current students enrolled in the course.

Kara Stoever ’12, a biology and English double major, stated that she couldn’t turn down the opportunity to join the course. “Though Swarthmore is diverse in many ways, to discuss dia-sporic movements with students in Ghana who identify as part of diasporas has been incredibly meaningful,” she said.

Swarthmore graduate Patrick Awuah ’89 established Ashesi in 2002. The school was the first liberal arts institution estab-lished in the West African state of Ghana. Ashesi has previous-ly collaborated with Swarthmore, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington in designing its academic programs.

Julia Carleton The PhoenixProfessors Sunka Simon, left, and Carina Yervasi, right, lead a lecture in the new course “Re-envisioning Diasporas,” in which Swarth-more students have the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with Ghanaian students at Ashesi University.


swarthmorephoenix.comNewsWEEk IN PIcTurEs

Maria Anleu The PhoenixDr. Shervin Malekzadeh, a candidate for the Comparative Politics position in the Political Science Dept., hosted a lecture on Iranian education last Monday.

Julia Carleton The PhoenixComposer and musician Ted Nash hosted a jazz masterclass yesterday afternoon in LPAC.

Maria Anleu The PhoenixThe women’s rugby team convened for snacks and conversation at a luau party in Shane lounge last night.

Bryn Mawr student publicly announces

undocumented status By koBy levin [email protected]

When an activist friend invited Jes-sica Hyejin Lee to lobby for the DREAM Act in the U.S. Capitol Building, Lee hesitated — she was scared. As an un-documented immigrant, she knew that entering the heart of the government could lead to her arrest and deportation, ending the life she had built in the land she called home.

Lee, a junior double-major in phys-ics and political science at Bryn Mawr, decided to go anyway, but she didn’t get deported. Instead, she ended up reveal-ing her undocumented status to a pair of Senators.

“I almost wasn’t going to go, but I did, lobbying openly for the first time, saying I was undocumented,” Lee said.

“I got to talk with two Senators and some legal aides, and I told them I was undocumented, that I worked hard in school and was contributing to America. That’s how I found out it’s OK to lobby even though I’m undocumented,” Lee said.

Since then, Lee has used her undocu-mented status to continue advocating for immigrant rights. Last November, she and eight other undocumented students traveled with a group of activists to Ala-bama, where she assited in the staging of a sit-in at the state capitol building in protest of a bill that would have cut off undocumented immigrants’ electricity and running water. Though Lee didn’t get arrested, many others did. Still, no one got deported.

The city released them along with a statement that they were, in fact, docu-mented residents, which she claims was intended to play down the incident.

Lee plans to bring her activism to Swarthmore in late February as part of her latest project, “Be A Sanctuary,” which presses institutions to promise they will not reveal the immigration sta-tus of those under their jurisdiction.

A precedent has been set in New Ha-ven, CT, where the police department never asks for immigration papers.

“I’m trying to build support from in-dividual organizations to raise aware-ness and a sense of urgency that there are these undocumented immigrants who are so limited and are not free in this country,” she said. “These are un-documented Americans.”

Her visit to Swarthmore will be part of an effort to get the entire Tri-Co to “go sanctuary.”

Swarthmore is currently not an offi-cial sanctuary for undocumented immi-grants, but its Admissions Department policy, like Bryn Mawr’s, is status blind.

“We welcome all students from all backgrounds to apply,” Dean of Admis-sions and Financial Aid Jim Bock ’91 said in an e-mail. “If they are admitted, we meet need regardless of status,” Bock said.

Lee’s activism is bolstered by her im-migration status, which provides an in-spiring narrative and has even attracted media attention.

To some, the attention she has gar-nered seems like an invitation for depor-

tation. “The other day I was on the front page of The Philadelphia Enquirer and people were concerned about that expo-sure,” she said. “They said, ‘what are you going to do now, are you going to be careful about your status?’”

To others, though, media attention helps protect against deportation. “Peo-ple who come out as undocumented have a better network behind them,” Jovanna Hernandez ’13 said, a gender and sexual-ity studies major who has been involved with immigrant rights activism through the on campus organization Swatties for a Dream. “Once people know about an undocumented immigrant, they are more likely to fight that person’s depor-tation,” Hernandez said.

Lee believes that she is protected by being “out,” dismissing concerns that she will be deported with a motto — “I am undocumented, unafraid and unapol-ogetic.”

Still, her friends voiced measur-able concern. “I am concerned about [her being deported] especially because her story garnered so much attention,” Elena Swartz ’13, a Bryn Mawr growth and structure of cities major, said in an e-mail.

“However, she does have a very sup-portive community at Bryn Mawr and at DREAMActivist PA (an immigrant rights organization with which Lee has been involved) and beyond who have strategies and are willing to help if she was detained,” Swartz said.

The “supportive community” at Bryn Mawr was not aware of Lee’s immigra-tion status during her initial flurry of activism.

Lee was concerned about the effect her coming out might have in the “very personal, small space” of Bryn Mawr, but she finally decided that she “want-ed to influence the opinions of people around me. They were so close, and they were all opportunities to make a differ-ence.”

Thus she found herself holding the microphone at Judith Butler’s second lecture last fall, ostensibly asking a question but really making a statement: “I said ‘Hi, I’m Jessica Lee, class of 2013, and I’m undocumented,’” Lee said. “The whole auditorium became noisy.”

The reaction at Bryn Mawr was over-whelmingly positive, said Edward Mene-fee, a sophomore at Haverford who is currently dating Lee.

“Professors have invited her to speak to their classes. Other students, staff, and alumni have come out as currently or formerly undocumented. Administra-tors are meeting with her to talk about what can be done on campus for undocu-mented Americans,” Menefee said.

Lee’s efforts on “Be A Sanctuary” continue alongside the demonstrations she is organizing.

On March 12th she will symbolically come out again, this time in Love Park, located in Center City, Philadephia, to protest a deportation. Protesters there are likely to carry signs just like the ones Lee laid in Alabama: “we will no longer be in the shadows.”



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SBC lowers student activities fee after much debateBy yi-wei liu [email protected]

Following a series of long and contentious debates, the Student Budget Committee recently decided to lower the student activities fee.

The SBC consists of eight students who are appointed by the Swarthmore Student Council, and meet weekly to discuss the funding of student groups and campus-wide events. This funding comes from a student activities fee that almost all students not studying abroad are required to pay. The fee for the 2011-2012 academic year was $334, recently deemed by the SBC as too high to be justified.

The process that led to the decision to lower the fee involved thorough internal dis-cussion among SBC members throughout the fall. A recommendation to lower the stu-dent activities fee by the SBC was then made to the Student Council for review at the end of the fall semester. In the past week, the Student Council adopted the SBC recom-mendation and submitted it to the administration. In the next two weeks, the Board of Managers will ultimately decide whether to lower the fee and incorporate the new fee into the overall Swarthmore budget.

While the fee is a small fraction of the overall tuition at Swarthmore, it still repre-sents a significant cost for students and parents. “We view our charge as supporting stu-dent life, but also spending as responsibly and, especially due to recent economic trends, as tightly as possible. Swarthmore is an expensive experience and the SBC wanted to take responsibility for the area of that cost that we oversee, ” Amelia Mitter-Burke ’13, chairperson of the SBC, said.

Student groups seeking funding from the SBC are required to fill out a form to the Student Budget Office, and all money must be spent in accordance to Student Activities Account regulations. Yet at the end of each academic year, some student groups still re-tain excess funds that they did not need to use. Lowering the student activities fee helps the SBC reduce budgeting inefficiency and yearly rollover waste that is either lavishly spent at the end of the year or simply remain unused.

The SBC members agreed that Swarthmore’s wealth could support a rich, dynamic student life without the need to charge students as much money as the current fee.

Nonetheless, there was considerable debate over how much the fee should be de-creased, and the vote on whether to recommend the smaller decrease or the larger de-crease came down to a tie. Mitter-Burke, as SBC chairperson, had the tie-breaking vote between the two proposals. “I chose the smaller decrease. I believe we should take it slow in the reforms we are making this year and lower the fee further next year if our efforts work well, and that we need to explore how different levels of the fee contribute

to the financial and social accessibility of Swarthmore,” she said.The SBC decision to lower the fee is expected to receive both support and concern

from students. “I am in support of the move if the cut is significant and improves ef-ficiency,” Shiv Bhandari ’12 said, a former member of the SBC.

“When I was in the SBC, I suggested larger cuts of $20-30 rather than the $5 cut they eventually implemented, because we should manage a smaller budget properly and not simply make gestures,” he said.

The student activities fee for this year was recommended by the SBC and Student Council and set by the Board of Managers last year. The lowering of the fee, if ultimately approved, will be in effect in the academic year 2012-2013.

The Board of Managers’ decision will be announced when it approves a budget for next year in the next two weeks.

Holly Smith The PhoenixThe Student Budget Committee’s lowering of the student activities fee, included in tuition, will go into effect beginning in the 2012-2013 academic year.

arOuNd HIgHEr EduCaTION

By Deanna kerley www.thedp.com, Jan. 31, 2012

A new bill under deliberation may present a catch-22 for local residents.The bill would allow Philadelphia bars to stay open until 3 a.m. — an hour later

than the current closing time — and would donate the extra revenue toward the School District of Philadelphia.“Education is the single biggest indicator of suc-cess for children and youth, and the greatest deterrent from crime,” Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, who introduced the bill, said in a statement. However, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said extended business hours of bars may cause an increase in alcohol-related crimes around campus.

“Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.,” Rush said. “There’s definitely a correlation between accidents and alcohol.”

“If you make it 3 a.m., they’ll be there until 4 a.m. We don’t want people walking the streets intoxicated at 4 a.m,” she added.The bill is expected to raise $5 million for the School District of Philadelphia. $42 million of liquor taxes in 2010 will also be donated to the school district.

Currently, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has sole authority over deter-mining the business hours of the state’s bars. Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown is intro-ducing the bill to the State House of Representatives to give the city control over bar hours.The bill must be passed in the State General Assembly to receive approval for practice in Philadelphia.

“In this day and age of budget shortfalls and declining education funding, we must think of creative solutions, thinking outside the box and exhaust unconven-tional avenues of revenue,” Councilwoman Brown said in a statement.With the bill still under deliberation, the Division of Public Safety has not made any significant preparations for the potential increase in crime.

“It’s still in a very early stage. We’re already doing all that we can,” Rush said.Bar staff also hope to prevent alcohol-related incidents.“As a bartender, you have the authority and responsibility to cut people off. It’s

not much different if it’s 2 or 3 a.m.,” said Chris Ryan, a bartender at Smokey Joe’s.Local bars do not believe the bill would bring significant change to the ebb and

flow of patrons. Blarney Stone owner and manager Rich Roller — who has owned Blarney since he purchased the establishment in 1999 —said he does not believe the new law would increase his sales “because kids will [just] start going out later” and “pregame a little longer.”

According to Roller, business hours at bars do not see a constant stream of busi-ness. Instead, sales peak at certain hours and dissipate near the end of the night.

If anything, the new bill will simply shift the peak times back an hour, he added.“I don’t think it’s going to impact us that much. Other bars in the city, maybe.

They might benefit because they get a lot of transient customers,” he said. “It’s not going to add an hour of drinking to their time frame.”

The new law would not have “much of an effect on business,” Ryan agreed. “Peo-ple are kind of used to leaving at two.”

Philadelphia bar hours now extended to 3 a.m.


swarthmorephoenix.comNewsPalestinian children’s drawings find sanctuary at SwatBy amanda epstein [email protected]

After being blocked by Jewish lobbyists in Oakland, California, an exhibit of draw-ings by Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip will be coming to Swarthmore on April 6. The project’s originator and organizer, Susan Johnson, met with the Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine (SPJP) on Monday night to discuss the specifics of their collaboration effort.

The drawings were collected by Johnson herself, who, in 2009, visited the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that borders Egypt and Israel and is home to approximately 1.5 million people. Operation Cast Lead, a three-week bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel that took place in early 2009, resulted in the death of around 1,300 Pal-estinians and caused enormous and largely irreversible destruction (to the regional economy and infrastructure). Johnson and her group visited centers, where they were shown drawings made by Gaza’s children as part of an art therapy program that dealt with the trauma sustained during these three weeks of invasion.

“I sat and I cried the whole time [the director] was showing the pictures to us ... I decided that there had to be a traveling exhibit of these children’s drawings,” Johnson said during the meeting.

Johnson contacted six different centers that then asked their children to create drawings themed around the experiences they lived through on the weeks of Opera-tion Cast Lead. The drawings were created with the express purpose of showing them to the rest of the world.

“I think that seeing a child’s suffering through his paintings can send a strong mes-sage,” SPJP President Ahmad Ammous ’13 said. Ammous is an international student from Ramallah, a city in Palestine’s West Bank.

After passing through 10 states and being received quite enthusiastically, the col-lection, titled “A Child’s View From Gaza,” traveled to California’s Museum of Chil-dren’s Art in Oakland (MOCHA), where it was blocked by Jewish groups, according to Johnson.

“I was devastated, because I was so excited that the drawings were going to be in a museum — a real museum,” she said. “But in the long run they shot themselves in the foot ... We would have never gotten that kind of attention if it weren’t for them [the Jewish groups].”

Daniel Hirschel-Burns ’14, a Jew and active member of SPJP, does not understand how anyone could have blocked the exhibit. He said that the images were “powerful” and “far more disturbing” than he could have imagined.

“To not feel anything after seeing these pictures, and to think that they are purely a political statement, I think, is missing the point. These are just children and they suf-fered terribly,” he said. “Even if you are pro-Israel and you believe that Operation Cast

Lead was a strategic move that Israel had to make, not allowing the suffering of these innocent children to be exhibited is pretty incomprehensible.”

Ammous, like Hirschel-Burns, thinks it is a shame that some groups are willing to use their influence to prevent “the truth from coming out.”

“This is not an armed militant who’s being subjected to such horror, but kids,” he said. “Hopefully the exhibit will increase awareness of the ongoing humanitarian cri-sis in the Gaza strip, and make sure that the attacks are not forgotten.”

The children whose drawings will be displayed are aged seven to fourteen. The col-lection is tentatively scheduled to arrive at the college for four or five days later this year in April.

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Courtesy of http://tiny.cc/ywbtpThis drawing from the upcoming exhibit is one of the many drawings by children from Gaza that were a part of an art therapy program.



Living & ArtsFly Union returns to Swarthmore for LSE “appetizer”by samme sheikh [email protected]

It doesn’t take a lot to have a fun rap concert. Besides a venue with an elevated stage and some space

for an audience, all that’s required for a successful perfor-mance is a basic level of competency from the rappers. This means that rappers don’t have to showcase a distinct lyri-cal style or engage the audience with interesting themes. To put on a satisfying show, rappers need only to present a recognizably “hip-hop” product.

Fly Union, the rap group that performed at Olde Club on Jan. 27, did just that. The trio from Ohio composed of Iye Ball, Jay Swif and Jerreau Smith performed into exis-tence a ghostly apparition of hip hop, shared and enjoyed by all the students who attended the concert that evening. By manipulating particular circumstances inherent to the nature of performance, the group rendered both the form and appearance of hip-hop, but without any of the sub-stance.

This emulation of rap, in terms of verbal content, de-rives from a general grasp of mainstream hip-hop’s ideas on rhyme, cadence, delivery and other formal elements of rap. Most people in America have a vague, unconscious fa-miliarity with these conventions simply due to the extent to which hip-hop has entered into the popular culture.

Most of what rappers say at their concerts isn’t audible anyway; in order to pull off a successful show, the perform-ers simply have to sound like they’re rapping. Since sub-ject matter has long since become a formalized part of hip hop, it would probably work in a rapper’s favor if he or she performed a love song featuring queasy, over the top imag-ery, or just dropped synonyms for marijuana and cash on every drum note.

This was an integral aspect of Fly Union’s performance

at Olde Club. Over the rhythmic din of instrumental mu-sic, most of their songs’ verbal content was wasted on the audience, and the occasional exception of predictably em-phasized end rhyme served to reinforce their “rapper” sta-tus and bolster the image of hip hop they were inflating.

Conveying this familiar hip-hop vibe also requires an adherence to production or “beatmaking” trends. Innova-tive approaches to making beats periodically take the rap world by storm, with Kanye West’s brand of chipmunk soul and Lex Luger’s trademarked combo of sweeping op-eratic vocals and frenetic drums serving as chief examples of how these sounds can define taste for years. Since the members of Fly Union produce their own beats as opposed to paying for the production talents of professionals, as most other rappers do, they are uniquely positioned to ap-peal to the sensibilities of listeners.

The beats Fly Union rapped over in their concert lay within the parameters of the public’s cultivated tastes, and as a result, they could get away with not really rapping and still be seen as hip hop artists — people who provide cul-tural products comparable to those of Nas, RZA or any oth-er eminent artists in rap’s history. Fly Union’s concert at Olde Club could’ve been billed as a three person DJ set and not a hip-hop concert if it wasn’t for Fly Union’s unmistak-able appearance that informed their rap credentials. Three young black men, all dressed in the idealized urbanwear of todays “new rap,” walked onto Olde Club’s stage last Friday night, proceeded to jump, talk, sweat, rhyme and smoke whilst bass-heavy instrumentals looped and college students danced.

People who attended the concert or were considering attending the concert seemed to have made note of this distinction between actual rap music and a fun hip-hop performance.

“They [Fly Union] put on a great performance, it felt

like a party,” Amelia Kucic ’15 said. Steve McFarland ’15 was hesitant to attend the Fly

Union concert at first. “I wasn’t planning on going because I didn’t like their [Fly Union] music, but I ended up just going because I thought it’d be fun,” McFarland said.Mc-farland’s ambivalence towards the show was echoed in the conversations of students on campus in the days leading up to the concert. This was because of the Large Scale Events committee’s long-publicized efforts to secure a popularly chosen recording artist to perform after winter break.

To many, Fly Union’s concert, which was advertised as an “appetizer” for the performance of some more famous artist at later date, actually appeared as a gesture of ap-peasement from the LSE for not booking artists that they initially said they would bring to Swarthmore. However, LSE Chair Shane Ogunnaike ’12 said that Fly Union’s show is actually representative of a difficult and convo-luted booking process. “The bookings we were working towards fell through in a matter of days,” Ogunnaike said. “We were able to easily book Fly Union because of our previous relationship,” Ogunnaike said referring to Fly Union’s performance at the 2010 Worthstock.

The hubbub and disgruntled sentiments surrounding Fly Union’s concert dissipated at the actual event. The members of the rap group were a dynamic bunch, able to cajole typically languid Swarthmore concert goers into a rowdy, dancing, and all around jubilant crowd. The LSE brought a fun party to Olde Club, but when judged as a hip-hop show, Fly Union’s performance fell short of show-casing an individual artistic identity within the rap genre, which in a perfect world, should serve as the sole criterion for designating a show as a rap concert.

Disclaimer note: Amelia Kucic is a graphic designer for The Phoenix. She had no involvement with the production of this article.

Orchestra 2001 challenges convention and expectationby chi zhang [email protected]

When thinking of a traditional or-chestra performance, one image comes to mind: an incredibly large ensemble, toiling through a long and complex three-movement symphony. We even imagine the classical and traditional sounds of a violin, viola or cello in a Schubert or Mo-zart composition. At Sunday’s Orchestra 2001 concert, the performance veered from the typical sounds of an orchestra, with in-strumentation ranging from a solo violin with live electronics to exotic percussion and voice. Orchestra 2001’s ensemble per-formed contemporary American composer George Crumb’s “Voice from the Heart-land: American Songbook VII,” as well as Louis Andriessen’s “Letter from Cathy” and “Anthèmes II” by Pierre Boulez.

With the mission to “perform and pro-mote the music of the 20th and 21st centu-ries, premiering new works, providing a major focus for the best new music of our time, while introducing unknown older works, and reaching out to regional and in-ternational audiences through recordings and tours,” Orchestra 2001 brought audi-ences into a new and diverse music world. “I hope they [audiences] are curious when they come. We are not doing Beethoven symphonies, Mozart symphonies which you know; we are doing something that you probably never heard before,” James Freeman, professor emeritus of music at Swarthmore and conductor and artistic director of Philadelphia’s Orchestra 2001, said.

Freeman shared his thoughts on choos-ing these pieces and putting them in cer-tain order. “‘Voices from the Heartland’ is a world premiere by a very important and significant composer and that was where the program began,” he said. This indis-pensable and internationally well-known composer is George Crumb who received

the Pultizer Prize for Music in 1968.Besides this approximately 45-minute

piece, Orchestra 2001 performed this Sun-day a piece by Boulez, a French composer of contemporary classical music, in each of their upcoming performances. Boulez’s piece “Anthèmes II” is regarded by Free-man as an interesting addition in compari-son with the music of Crumb.

The set-up of the percussion instru-ments is a very significant element that Freeman must take into consideration. “We had to have that whole percussion situation in place because it takes three hours to set it up. You can’t set it up in in-termission,” he said. The first half of the performance needs to contain relatively short pieces in order to fit for the whole percussion set-up. In addition to the selec-tion from Boulez, Freeman chose the short piece “Letter from Cathy” by Andriessen, a Dutch composer. According to Freeman, it is a very touching piece. As one of the su-per stars of the contemporary music in the ’50s and 60s, “Cathy” is known by many in contemporary music circles. This intimate and quiet piece is quite a contrast to those of Boulez and Crumb.

Upon first reading the concert’s pro-gram, audience members in attendance may have felt confused as to why “Letter from Cathy” was to be played twice. “I’ve often thought that with a new piece of mu-sic, a piece that nobody has heard before, it would be nice to do it twice. But you can’t do big pieces twice,” Freeman said. “This short piece is six minutes long so you can do it twice and the audience gets to hear it for the second time.”

Together with the careful and com-prehensive consideration of Freeman, the highly professional performers and composers ensured the success of this auditory feast. Gloria Justen, a violin-ist and composer who played the violin, has an abundance of performance experi-ences under her belt, often with different

kinds of ensembles like the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Justen believes that Boulez wants each memeber of the audience to have their own experience of the song and to enjoy the sounds. “What is interesting about this piece is the combination of the human being playing a physical instru-ment and the sounds which are generated by the computer. So it’s a conversation be-tween the violin and these computerized sounds,” Justen said.

Marlon Cooper ’14, who plays the French Horn and is a member of Swarth-more College Orchestra, expressed his ap-preciation for the violin solo. “I thought the performance was really interesting, especially the Boulez,” Cooper said. “The amount of effort the violinist must have put into learning that piece must have been tremendous, and the electronics in the piece were the best I’ve heard, although I have not heard many electronic pieces to begin with.”

Peggy Thompson, a member of the cho-rus and the Balinese Gamelan (Indonesian percussion orchestra) at the college, at-tends Orchestra 2001 concerts whenever she can, along with her husband Peter Thompson, professor emeritus of chemis-try. “For us, largely, it is a learning experi-ence,” she said. “We didn’t grow up with this music at all. We had classical music.” However, upon discovering Orchestra 2001, the Thompsons realized that the more they attend the performances, the more they can enjoy the beauty of the music. “In the beginning, you just couldn’t under-stand. But I just enjoy listening to it and find it fascinating,” Peggy Thompson said.

Thompson also commented on George Crumb’s works, some of which she had listened to before the concert. “One of the things I love about George Crumb is how inventive he is. He takes ordinary things and converts them into percussion instru-ments,” she said. She showed as an exam-

ple one big silver container, probably from a washed tub, that was used to produce certain sounds for the performance. “The sound that influences my music a lot is the sound of nature,” Crumb said, who infused many sounds like those of sea or wind into his music.

Orchestra 2001, founded in 1988, is in its 24th concert season and the founder Free-man hopes to continually bring more new and contemporary music to Philadelphia. “I started it because I thought there was a great need in the Philadelphia area for audiences to hear new music. There are many wonderful composers in the world and a lot of them live in and around Phila-delphia,” Freeman said. “I think [the] Phil-adelphia Orchestra ensemble focuses on 19th century music primarily, not 20th cen-tury music, partly because it’s expensive to rehearse. It takes a lot more rehearsals.”

Bill Gatti, the administrative director of Orchestra 2001, explained the relation-ship between the College and the orches-tra. Many concerts of the Orchestra 2001 are presented at the College and those programs that are performed here are all free to the public in return for the gener-ous support of the college. “It’s a very nice thing the college does for organizations like ours. We get to use Lang Concert Hall for rehearsals; we get to use a whole bunch of wonderful incredible percussion instru-ments,” Gatti said.

“Next year is our 25th anniversary. We want to reach wider audiences, not just in this country, but abroad. We are planning tours next year to Cuba, as well as to West Virginia and the Library of Congress,” Freeman said. Orchestra 2001 is constant-ly making efforts to bring new American music to new audiences.

Even the orchestra’s name suggests a modernity, as their website says, one that “marks the beginning of the 21st century and points in a new way to the future of the music of our time.”


swarthmorephoenix.comLiving & ArtsNavigating relationships with the good old Kanye West

Swatties, you are wit-nessing the dawn of a new day, a new era. A day that has been thought about and gone over for the past six … days. This is the launch of the rela-tionship column at The Phoenix. The column will be known as “Behind My Shades” because relation-ships are subjective to the individual, and no one can give anyone blanket relationship advice. Sim-ply because each relation-ship is so different, that is not what this column is here to offer. Let me pro-

ceed to introduce myself: I am fun, I like long walks on the beach, I go to Swat, blah, blah, blah, but biggest of all … wait for it ... I’m a guy. I am writing to get some misconceptions out of girls’ heads of the male species here at Swat but most importantly in the larger world. I will be tackling a lot of different topics over this se-mester, but don’t make any mistakes — I’m not Dr. Phil or a dating advice website. I am a real person who has gone through the best and worst of relationships. I’ve been wrong and I’ve had others do me wrong, but the most important thing I’ve come to understand is that you learn something with every relationship.

In this article, I am going to talk about something that I learned from my last relationship and from one of the unlikeliest of sources — Kanye West. Let me frame my last relationship; it was one of those rela-tionships in which the girl was really into it. She was truly invested in the relationship. Now don’t get me wrong: I was too, but where she was in it 100 percent I was pushing more towards 45 percent and was in it for the wrong reasons. This went on for about a year and

a half. There were good moments, but there were a lot of bad ones as well, mostly caused by my actions. I can admit that I didn’t treat her in the best way; I should have been better, but I wasn’t and both guys and girls are guilty of this. My reasoning for this — regardless to how bad this may sound — is that I knew that she wouldn’t leave because of how invested she was in our relationship. This past summer she broke it off and it was only then I realized how bad I was to her and how much she truly meant to me. I missed her.

My thoughts were all over the place; she no longer texted me “Good Morning :-)” — those late night con-versations were gone, not to mention her daily tweets of how glad she was to have me in her life. Through the period of the initial breakup, I spent a lot of time listening to the over ten thousand songs in my iTunes.

But one song stuck with me and gave me a mirror of how I felt: “Runaway.” If you haven’t heard this song by the critically acclaimed Kanye West, go check it out. In the song, Mr. West talks about his relationship with a woman whom he does wrong and he acknowl-edges his flaws and even praises them. Before telling the girl to run away because he can’t be there for her emotionally or intimately, he puts the blame on him-self for how their relationship turned out. Don’t be mistaken, I didn’t cheat nor am I on the level of Kanye but the song mirrored my situation and it showed me the error of my ways.

It is painful knowing you drove someone away that you genuinely love so much it hurts. The thing that strikes me even now is that I can still see her leaving, and knowing that I was the cause of this still burns, but I’m a better person because of it.

Guys will be guys, sure, and girls will be girls, but truly we all have feelings, some are just better at hold-ing them in. Relationships aren’t as complicated as we make them; if we would just see the good in the other person just as they see in us, things would be fine. But, at times that is hard. The thing is: when it isn’t, you know you have something special, so hold on tight.

Until next time, take care.

Behind My Shades

Rehak explores nostalgia, media and the role of the fanBy amelia dornBush [email protected]

On Thursday, Jan. 26, Professor Bob Rehak of film and media studies deliv-ered a lecture as a part of Swarthmore’s Faculty Lecture Series. Following his lecture, Rehak then took questions from the audience. This was the first talk of the spring semester in the series, with future events featuring speakers from the departments of sociology and an-thropology, psychology, art and educa-tional studies.

Rehak’s talk, titled “Materializing Monsters: Fan Objects and the Fantas-tic,” discussed the role that models and garage kits based off of media phenom-enons have. “My talk looks at the phe-nomenon of monster models and garage kits in the United States, exploring how these scaled-down versions of fantasy figures reflect a larger history of objects based on fantastic media,” Rehak said in an e-mail. In his lecture, Rehak put forth the argument that “unreal” media make themselves real through the use of mate-rials, such as action figures, collectible statues, prop replicas and wargaming figurines. Discussing how models are able to personalize mass objects, Rehak claimed that models are “objects that merge the mass and the personal.”

However, the lecture also spoke of the more sinister components of the culture that often accompanies models. For in-stance, in asserting that “boy culture comes perilously close to rape culture,” Rehak displayed an advertisement for an Aurora model, known as “The Vic-tim,” which featured a scared woman running away from a monster.

Peter Haury ’13, a double major in film and media studies and economics, found the lecture to be enjoyable to lis-ten to, even though he only came at the end. Haury, who was previously a stu-dent of Rehak’s, said in an email that he was “excited about [the lecture] because

Bob is a professor of mine and fascinat-ing to listen to.” Haury says that an ad-ditional reason he went to the lecture was that he is interested by Rehak’s “ap-proaches to discussing popular culture and fandoms.”

Another student in attendance, Ta-yarisha Poe ’12, who is a special major in visual ethnography, was also inter-ested in the lecture as a result of having had Rehak as a professor. “I’ve been in several classes and many conversations with Professor Rehak and am continu-ously astounded by the depth of his cin-ematic knowledge, so when I learned of his lecture, I knew I had to attend,” Poe said in an e-mail. While Poe was only able to make half of the lecture, she said that attending “changed the way I think of the generational nature of well-known cinematic moments.”

In an email, Rehak said that he first became interested in models as a result of his childhood experience with them from the ages of eight to thirteen. “As a child, I built models constantly — al-most all of them monsters or science-fiction kits like the Enterprise from Star Trek or the droids from Star Wars.” Re-hak plans to continue his research in the area. He said that his lecture was the “cornerstone” of his next book, which will discuss “how contemporary fantas-tic media generate and rely on objects at different points along their lifespan, from making movies, television, and videogames.” The book will also talk about the ways in which fans interact with these models.

Rehak said that he enjoyed being able to deliver a lecture at Swarthmore. While he joked that the best part of de-livering his lecture was “getting to the end,” he added that, “More seriously, the chance to share my work with inter-ested colleagues and students is a rare and delightful thing.” Rehak said that he was “pleased” by the number of peo-ple who came to attend the lecture and

“pleasantly challenged by the questions the audience asked.”

Rehak also discussed the differences between presenting at Swarthmore and elsewhere. “Swarthmore is a friendly and supportive community, which is not something you find everywhere. So in one sense, speaking in public is less stressful, because you’re not wor-ried that people are gunning for you. At the same time, you need to put your best work forward, so you really have to bring your ‘A’ game — it’s pressure, but not unpleasant.”

Should students be interested in learning more, Rehak suggested that they take courses in the film and media studies program. Additionally, Rehak said that Maya Nadkarni’s course, “An-thropology of Mass Media” in the soci-ology and anthropology department and Tim Burke’s course, “History of Play

and Leisure” in the history department, could also give students a greater under-standing of the subject.

Students in the Art History Majors Workshop discussed Rehak’s ideas Wednesday in class. “There is currently a debate amongst art historians about what qualifies as art,” said Declan White, an art history student. “In one hundred years time will figurines be deemed by art historians as art, nostalgic objects or just another item that must be included in the expanding academic field that is visual culture? I found it all very inter-esting that something as ordinary as a monster figurine could have implica-tions for both visual culture and a cur-rent debate amongst art historians.”

The next lecture in the Faculty Lec-ture Series will be delivered by Farha Ghannam, an associate professor of an-thropology, on Thursday, Feb. 9.

Relationships aren’t as complicated as we make them; if we could just see the good

in the other person just as they see in us, things would be fine.

allegra Pocinki The PhoenixAssistant Professor of Film & Media Studies Bob Rehak gave a lecture titled “Materi-alizing Monsters: Fan Objects and the Fantastic” last Thursday in Scheuer Room.



Living & ArtsHow to read: rethinking how to have fun with novels

Picking beer is like picking books: dry, dense or chewy

Reading was once a val-ued pastime. If one was edu-cated, he or she was expect-ed to read. But reading was rapidly replaced by lazier forms of entertainment, and is now largely seen as a boring activity at best, and a painful academic chore at worst. But reading itself is not the issue: it’s the way we were taught to read that is to blame. In the coming weeks, I will review criti-cally acclaimed novels and discuss the ideas that they explore. But to begin, let’s discuss how to read novels.

FocusSetting

Everyone has a different reading style. Find a com-fortable spot where you can still be alert, like sitting up in a comfy chair. You’re not fooling anyone (yourself in-cluded) by pretending that lying on your back holding a book above your face will allow you to last longer than a few pages.Speed

Every reader has a natural speed. Whatever that pace is, it is controllable. I am naturally a rapid reader, but there are books that demand a slower pace. So while I might read something relatively straightforward, like Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”, at top speed, a novel richer with prose than plot, such as “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier, requires that I slow down. Your mind naturally gauges where your speed should be; it should not always be constant. If you can’t remember what hap-pened in a chapter five minutes after you read it, or find yourself constantly rereading sentences, slow down. If you are so bored that you would rather be cleaning your grandma’s attic, speed up.Get Sucked In

Set aside a long chunk of time to read. Every time you pick up a book, you have to orient yourself, which takes a few pages. Reading is an escape from reality. The

physical world has to be temporarily suspended to make the text accessible. The reader has to allow himself to be sucked into the text and trust that the knowledge gained from the book will follow him back to real life, when it’s time to return. If a reader is aware of the page number or the clock, pleasure is lost.

ConfusionAllusions

Look them up. The 15 seconds it will take you to load Google using SwatNet plus the 30 seconds it will take you to pull up the Wikipedia page and read the first three sentences of the article combine to a measly 45-second task that will drastically improve your reading experi-ence. Allusions transform a novel from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. The author is making a point by referring specifically to Van Gogh rather than a general artist. If you don’t know who Van Gogh is, you will miss the point.“Big” Words

Look them up. It takes 30 seconds. This is a form of confusion that is easily resolved. Why force yourself to endure unnecessary confusion? Strange Format

This form of confusion is slightly less easily resolved, but you have to give great authors like Faulkner a chance anyway. Don’t reject masterpieces because the layout is bizarre or because the font changes every paragraph. In-sist on figuring out why the author is playing on the page that way. If your insight fails you, try another Google search! Such an obvious literary technique is bound to catch others’ attention as well, and a few have undoubt-edly felt compelled to blog about it.Characters and Plot

This is the confusion that a good reader cherishes. Characters and plot lines are supposed to be complex. If the reader naturally and instantly understands these, there is no intrigue. The allure of the novel is diminished or even demolished if it is too simple. To be clear, the idea is not to torture the reader with dramatically complex and altogether incoherent characters and plot twists; they should flow and gradually reveal themselves to the reader. But the heart of thought lies in contradictions — in two things that seem mutually exclusive becoming mutually dependent. Reading is often about learning to

accept “both” as a genuine answer. Rather than being frustrated with confusing characters and plot lines, a reader should cherish them.

AnalysisAnnotating

Annotate. Don’t color-code different literary devices or circle every character’s name. Do only what feels nat-ural. I only annotate to write down ideas that I find in-triguing. Or if I notice great repetition, I might note that, but I am not searching for it while I’m reading. I annotate what I happen to notice.Thinking

While you read, you are thinking. But you’re unlikely to ever really understand a book if you don’t actively think about everything you’re reading. Dedicate two to five minutes to thinking about what you just read every time you put a book down.Discussing

There’s a reason people join book clubs. They aren’t only for PTA moms. Discuss what you read, even with people who didn’t read the book. Rereading

I don’t think you ever really understand a book with-out reading it twice. That is not to say that you can’t take a wealth of insight from a single reading, but merely that you don’t genuinely understand a book until you read it again. Reading Taste and Level

Read what you like and read at your level. Reading is a skill, and the more you practice, the better you get. Your level will get higher, but there is a world of difference between challenging yourself and torturing yourself.The Secret to Enjoying Reading

The real secret to enjoying reading is to read for the story. The more you read, the more you learn to naturally recognize important styles and techniques, so don’t waste time searching for them. Avid fiction readers have, at their hearts, a deep love for stories. Accept that reading fiction is about the stories, just like watching a movie, and reading will become a pleasant experience rather than an academic chore.

Next Week: “Heart of Darkness,” Joseph ConradLanie Schlessinger is a first-year. You can reach her at

[email protected].

B r o w s -ing the beer aisle of your local neigh-b o r h o o d store is like s t r o l l i n g through the library. The shelves from floor to ceil-ing are filled with names and imag-es — some well known, some famil-iar and oth-

ers entirely alien. When you or a friend says one evening,

“What kind of beer should we buy?” all of these choices in front of your eyes can seem like a nuisance. Because all of us love our habits, especially when it comes to food, the question is usually answered with a “go-to” beer — something you know well and have enjoyed before. However, even the best of beer-buddies can tire on your palate after a while and wanderlust will eventually take over. If you want to avoid spending $20 on something that goes down the drain, choose your beer the way you choose books.

At the library or bookstore we all find something new by starting with what we already know: a series, author or favorite genre. Organized around a loose but dis-tinct collection of conventions and expec-tations, genres give you an idea of what a book will be like before you open the cover. Beer styles, like pale ale, classify beer in a similar manner — two beers of one style

will taste similar but not exactly the same.Based out of Chicago, the BJCP — or

Beer Judge Certification Program — is the national organization that regulates and or-ganizes all beer tasting competitions. In a competition setting, determining who wins and loses based on subjective “taste,” liter-ally and figuratively, makes fair beer festi-vals difficult to run. In order to solve this, the BJCP has codified “beer style” into over 100 distinct and materially defined catego-ries. For example, “American Pale Ales” must fall within a certain range of alcohol by volume (ABV), color, bitterness and oth-er metrics in order to be classified as such.

Though choosing new beers by brewery name is a good plan itself, the standardiza-tion of styles makes it much easier to know before the bottle is opened whether you will like what’s in it. While you might really enjoy Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, most brew-ers usually brew only one beer in any given style, so a Sierra Nevada Torpedo of Bigfoot might make you gag. However, Troegs Pale Ale or Anchor Liberty Ale might have just the right balance of bright hoppiness and crisp flavor that your favorite regular beer has.

Styles, in addition to conveying differ-ent flavor profiles and ingredient choices, also reflect the unique historical and social origins of national brewing traditions. Dif-ferent styles have been popular in different countries at different points in history, but the current stage of brewing has seen a few styles come to dominate the international market.

PilsnerPilsner, arguably the most popular and

economically successful beer style in his-

tory, originally began as the local style of brewers from the city of Pilsen, in Bohemia, Czech Republic. A type of lager, the pilsner taste developed its unique character from the unusually soft water of the city’s river and the Saaz hop variety native to the Bo-hemian valley. Pilsners are light straw to golden color and crystal clear, with a spicy hop bitterness and floral aroma.

Famous for its smooth and crisp finish, as well as its crystal appearance, pilsner went from a regional tradition to an inter-national juggernaut with the help of Ameri-can brewing giants like Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, Miller and Coors, whose flagship products all fall under the pilsner umbrella.

Those looking for local examples of this classic style should try look for Victory Prima Pils, Troegs Sunshine Pils or Sam Adams Noble Pils.

PorterPorter, as mentioned in my previous

column, in contrast to the monolithic pil-sner, is a style that was almost not seen on shelves or on draft until the last few decades of the 20th century. A British style by origin, porter take its name not from a geographic location but from its target au-dience — literal porters. Originally very popular with working-class men, the dark color and opacity of the beer — in contrast to things like pilsner — once masked impu-rities in brewing techniques.

Porter’s popularity has oscillated since Industrial England, becoming known as a “lady’s beer” for its sweetness compared to pale ale (or “bitter”) for a period. With its signature roasted malt, American brew-ers have embraced porter’s coffee-like and chocolate notes by using indigenous hop va-

rieties to create some flavorful but balanced examples of the style.

Some of the best porters available on Pennsylvania shelves are Founders Porter, Anchor Porter and Stone Smoked Porter.

IPAThis year at the GABF or Great Ameri-

can Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado, there were more entries into the category of IPA, or India Pale Ale, than any other. Sales figures and word of mouth suggest that IPAs are very popular among consum-ers and these beers often represent a large portion of any brewers total yearly sales.

Like porter, IPAs come out of a very spe-cific national and historical context. Dur-ing the mid 19th century, British brewers — hoping to supply the market of native Britons living abroad in India — began brewing beer designed specifically for ex-port. In order to preserve the beer over the long and hot journey, greater amounts of hops than normal British pale ales or “bit-ters” were used in the boil.

Outside of England, American compa-nies, especially on the West Coast, have taken the style in a direction that empha-sizes hop flavors. Using varieties like Citra, Cascade and Columbus, citrus, pine and herbal notes usually take the driver’s seat with malty sweetness staying in back.

With almost too many choices on shelves, narrowing it down to three is hard. Staying local, Victory Hop Devil and Dog-fish Head 60 min are stellar, but for my money Bear Republic Raver 5 IPA might be the best around.

Brad is a junior. You can reach him at [email protected]

Brad LenoxBrew’s Clues

Lanie SchlessingerBibliobabble


swarthmorephoenix.comLiving & Arts

Kyle, the smallest dorm at Swarthmore College, has just eight occupants, all of whom are female. Nestled next to the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, it maintains a quiet presence on cam-pus. Sophomores Caitlin Sequira and Jillian Ma occupy a double on the first floor, a room they acquired through the blocking process.

As rising sophomores, their lim-ited housing options lead the stu-dents to seek Kyle as an alternative to Willets, where Ma and Sequira roomed together their freshman year. “We decided on Kyle because it would be a change in atmo-sphere,” Ma said. Ma, a potential neuroscience and engineering ma-jor, found the proximity to Science Center, where most of her classes are held especially appealing.

Aside from the female wing of Parrish and the third floor of Dana, Kyle stands as the lone all-female dorm. According to Myrt Westphal, associate dean for student life, Kyle b e c a m e a female house af-ter the 2nd floor of Par-rish was converted from all-f e m a l e h o u s i n g to admin-i s t r a t i v e offices. As for its diminutive tenancy, “it was supposed to hold 13 students, five on the top floor but [Swarthmore] Borough restrictions said we need-ed to build a $250,000 enclosed fire-proof staircase as a second means of egress so it only houses eight students,” Westphal said.

Kyle is unusual as it is isolated from other dormitories and located in a part of the college that has lit-tle pedestrian traffic. Judging from its exterior, the property, painted white with eggshell blue window frames, could easily be mistaken for a residential house. Structur-ally, the property has all the same features as a typical house like a living room, kitchen and a sprin-kling of rooms. However, standard issue dormitory furniture lends Kyle a college dorm atmosphere rather than a homely ambiance.

Sequira and Ma live in a spa-cious double that was once a ga-rage. Whilst most evidence of the conversion is difficult to spot, Ma qualified that “sometimes it gets pretty cold.” The isolation and qui-et make the dormitory conducive to sleeping and, according to Sequira, “intense studying.” Otherwise they spend most of their time elsewhere.

Kyle, which cannot be neatly described as either an off-campus house or on-campus dormitory, has left Ma and Sequira with a

somewhat incomplete experience of dorm life. According to Sequira “Sometimes [living in Kyle] is lone-ly. I miss dorm life.” While Kyle’s RA, Dina Sharhan, who lives in Woolman, makes an effort to ex-tend Woolman’s dorm life to Kyle residents, this does not completely replace dorm life for Ma and Se-quira. “Since we don’t live in the building, there is a disconnect,” Se-quira said. An aspect of a dormito-ry she misses is the ability to walk into various hall mates’ rooms and socialize. As a result, they frequent other, more typical dorms such as PPR or Willets where many of their sophomore friends reside to social-ize.

The girls do not mind the ab-sence of males in their residential life. “When you see a guy in here it’s weird, but other than that, it’s not that unusual,” Ma said. As for visitors, they describe a feeling of intrusion upon seeing them in the house. According to Ma, “It feels

like some-o n e ’ s in your house and you don’t know what they’re do-ing here.”

B u t there are many as-pects to Kyle the girls en-

joy, such as access to a private bathroom. With only eight people sharing a fully equipped kitchen, it allows Ma to occasionally bake cookies. Their double also provides the students ample room, and it was big enough to host Sequira’s surprise birthday party, which took place earlier this semester.

Sequira has decorated the wall adjacent to her bed with personal memorabilia such as birthday cards and thank you notes she has collected over the years. To Se-quira, a potential psychology ma-jor and Asian studies minor, these personal touches are important. “It just shows people care about me and whenever I read them on the side [of my wall] it makes me happy.” A birthday card drawn by her cousin, a graduate from School of Visual Arts in New York City stands out, as does a portrait of her Chinese grandmother, which hangs above her bed.

Ma takes a different approach to decorating by filling her walls with her collection of large Lady Gaga posters, including some from Lady Gaga’s breakthrough “Just Dance” days. Ma diversified her poster display by including ones of Nick Jonas and Albert Einstein. “I hang them because they take up space and I like attractive people decorat-ing my walls,” Ma said.

At Home with Solitude in Kyle

DORM DIVE

by Sera Jeong

Top to bottom: Sequira’s wall of postcards and pictures; a motivational poster signed by Sequira’s cousin; Ma and Sequira relax amidst their creature comforts.

Judging from its exterior, [Kyle], painted white with eggshell blue window frames, could easily be mistaken for a residential house.

[email protected]

Photos by Cristina Matamoros


swarthmorephoenix.com Living & ArtsSpoken word artist Joshua Bennett performs today

c a r t o o n b y r e n u n a d k a r n i

By CAMILA RyDER [email protected]

When we interact with poetry, in a classroom, in a book or even scribbled on the bathroom stall door, we of-ten only read the words. Too often we forget to speak the poem and to hear the stresses, the breaths and the rhythm. For spoken word artists, like Joshua Bennett, reading their poetry aloud injects a new life into the words that one might never have seen from simply looking at them. The words jump off the page when they merge with the speaker’s voice, his physical movements and the rhythm, speed and tone to create spoken word.

When listening to spoken word artists like Joshua Bennett or Swarthmore’s own Our Art Spoken In Soul (O.A.S.I.S.) read poetry, you’ll recognize how powerful the performance is to their poetry. Both Bennett and O.A.S.I.S. will be performing today in honor of Black His-tory Month in LPAC’s Pearson-Hall theatre at 8 p.m.

If you’ve never heard of Joshua Bennett, search for a video of his performances on YouTube and you’ll dis-cover what it is about Bennett’s voice and his physical-ity that have generated such acclaim and buzz. Bennett graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. Not only did he graduate with Phi Beta Kappa and mag-na cum laude, Bennett has performed his poetry at the White House in 2009 and at the NAACP Image Awards, was featured on HBO’s “Brave New Voices,” was the first African-American to receive the United Kingdom’s Marshall Scholarship, and he recently published his first book of poetry titled “Jesus Riding Shotgun.” Not bad for a 23 year old guy from Yonkers, NY.

Bennett has been writing stories and poetry from a very young age. “I just used to write stories, just really elaborate plagiarizations of Power Rangers,” he joked. In his sixth grade English class, though, they were required to write a poetic response to “Aida.” “That’s the first time I remember people saying my poetry was good … and then when I was 17 [that] was the first time I wrote a spoken word poem ... after a Hurricane Katrina relief benefit,” Bennett said.

For Bennett, he feels there is a definite difference be-tween spoken word and poetry read on a page because of the performer themselves. “My favorite spoken word po-ems are always narrative in nature, not necessarily lin-ear narrative, [but] there’s always a sort of overarching crux of the piece that’s deeply personal that I appreciate,” he said. He also finds that spoken word has a different editing process, even how line breaks work are different.

His poetry encompasses many different themes. “I write a lot about my family, my environment and faith,” Bennett said. In many of his pieces, Bennett explores his “relationship with God and [his] understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” He also considers himself to be a philosophical and theological writer. “I try to think deeply about what our everyday human interactions mean for the way we live, the way the world works and how I understand myself in relation to the supernatural. I guess I’ve always tried to write in a way that … operates on a bunch of different levels.

This universality of Bennett’s poetry has inspired many other poets, spoken word artists or anyone who has listened to him speak. Sean Bryant ’13, a member of O.A.S.I.S., attended high school in New York with Ben-nett. Bennett was Bryant’s mentor in the school’s Life Skills program, where seniors were matched with fresh-man. “Josh is the one who got me into spoken word,” Bry-ant said. “I always wrote poetry — it’s always been some-thing that I’ve always done — but I never really started performing and doing spoken word until my freshman year of high school and then from freshman year and on ... I kept writing.”

Spoken word poetry, for Bryant, does something even more amazing than poetry does on a page. “It’s your voice, it’s how you say certain words, it’s the actions that go with them, it’s the emotion that’s behind them [and] it’s the story behind them,” Bryant said.

During his time at UPenn, Bennett was a student and intern of Swarthmore’s Dean Karlene Burrell-McRae’s, who had the opportunity to hear him “drop his lines on many occassions.” Burrell-McRae recalled how many times Bennett would stop by her office, sometimes when she was having a down day. “I’d just say ‘I just need you to perform, do something for me,’ and he would … he would do his thing and it would make my day and all would be well in the world. He has a real gift,” she said.

For Burrell-McRae, Bennett’s poetry did more than just make her day. “[His poetry] sort of made all my sens-

es come alive. He allowed me to remember the humanity of others and the role that I can play in … making my own life better and the lives of other people better,” she said.

Bryant loved one of Bennett’s performances of “Ta-mara’s Opus,” a poem that addresses his deaf sister. “[‘Tamara’s Opus’] really just touched me,” Bryant said. “It’s one of those poems that not everything is just about the words all the time. Sometimes poetry can get lost in all the metaphors and similars and so many other things, but this one had [those aspects], but it had something so much more real and just raw emotion that I really, really loved.”

Not only is today’s performance a chance for many students to hear Bennett’s and O.A.S.I.S. members’ po-etry, it’s also the kick-off event in celebration of Black History Month. “I’m a black youth,” he said. “I grew up in a Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban neighborhood and I grew up in a black church, but I always went to [pre-dominantly] white schools.” Though he noted that there are aspects of the African-American literary tradition that have resonated with him, this large array of different cultures and how he fit into each was “something that I struggled with.” “Always being somebody that was black, but sounded ‘white;’ being black in a white environment; being black in a Latino environment … I think I always felt this sort of split,” he said.

Bennett believes that black culture is around all of us and it has become even more apparent in both American culture and abroad. “I think we’re all sort of participating in [black culture] and being affected by it.”

McRae finds that Bennett often speaks to her own life in his poems. “He often talked about my experience of self-identifying as someone who’s of African descent, someone who’s a black woman … some of the pieces he does [are] about celebrating who we are,” she said.

Bennett’s poetry speaks to black culture in a way that encourages everyone to participate with it, which is some-thing McRae hoped that the entire campus could share in. “We want to be real inclusive of the entire Swarthmore community,” she said about today’s event and also for Black History Month as a whole. One of her goals for the month’s events were to “get the entire campus to recog-nize that this, too, is a part of the Swarthmore identity and anyone can participate or engage … [and recognize] that when one thinks about diversity it’s about how to be

inclusive of anyone who wants to be included.” Bennett hopes his poetry strikes a chord with those at

the performance today. “I just hope that the story reso-nates with them. I hope that people walk away feeling like their story is important, like their individual story is worth telling,” he said. He also hopes that “people’s lives are not the same when they leave.” “I know that seems like a really heavy expectation [of] a performer, but I re-ally do think the best performances I’ve ever seen, I didn’t think the same when I left the room.”

Today’s performance will feature O.A.S.I.S. artists be-fore Bennett takes to the stage, such as Bryant, Alaina Brown ’13, Javier Perez ’13, Ana Rosado ’12, Noel Quiño-nes ’15 and many more. The event will begin at 8 p.m. and is in the Pearson-Hall Theatre in the Lang Performing Arts Center.

Courtesy of http://tiny.cc/f1mn8 and http://tiny.cc/k2xyqJoshua Bennett’s poems have garnered much acclaim over the past few years, landing him a spot on HBO’s “Brave New Voices,” as well as a performance for President Obama and the First Lady in 2009.

A$AP Rocky’s album asks the question: cash or more cash?If you haven’t heard

“LIVELOVEA$AP” by the controversial Har-lem rapper, A$AP Rocky, then be sure to pay close attention. Over the past year, the gold-toothed 23 year old has made a seri-ous splash in the world of rap and hip-hop. The videos for his first two singles, “Peso” and “Pur-ple Swag,” earned him an opening spot on Drake’s tour after receiving sev-eral million hits on You-Tube, and positioned him

(and his A$AP crew) at the center of rap’s spotlight.Born in 1988, Rakim Mayers was named after the

rapper, Rakim, of the revolutionary Eric B. & Rakim duo. After witnessing his father’s arrest at the age of 12, and his brother’s death a year later, A$AP quickly took up rapping as an escape from the danger and vio-lence of the streets. With his influences beginning in his home of Harlem with rap group The Diplomats, A$AP began experimenting with Houston codeine mu-sic, dark Memphis rap and more harmonic rap à la Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.

After being in and out of various shelters around Manhattan, A$AP and his mother ultimately settled in Elmwood Park, New Jersey. Over the next couple of years, however, ASAP wouldn’t do much in the hip-hop world, aside from the obscure mixtape guest spot for artists like Oakland’s Main Attrakionz. In fact, most New Yorkers largely criticized A$AP’s early releases for their parody-like resemblance to Hous-ton’s syrupy, down-tempo Screw music and refused to claim him as their own. Now to me, this does not sound like the story of a major label star. So how did a rapper with only a handful of guest appearances earn a $3,000,000 major label record deal in less than a year?

Upon the release of his first video for the Houston anthem, “Purple Swag,” A$AP received much atten-

tion, but it wasn’t necessarily for the music itself. The song’s video featured a Caucasian girl wearing gold fronts mouthing the “N” word. As word of A$AP’s “Purple Swag” video spread virally, his popularity soared. Outside of New York and New Jersey people began to appreciate the unique influences and con-struction of ASAP’s mu-sic. “Purple Swag’s” ex-perimental approach to the slow-mo Houston sound came off more as a tribute anthem than a parody or imitation. It’s no surprise then that ASAP Rocky’s sin-gle for “LIVELOVEA$AP,” “Peso,” was an instant Youtube sensation. Adopt-ing a different approach from “Purple Swag,” “Peso” employs Rick Ross-esque beats, an MIA hook and production from one of his partners, A$AP Ty Beats. Quickly gaining over 4,000,000 views, “Peso” drew the attention of the rapper, Drake, who cur-rently has A$AP opening for him on his world tour. When a performer as large as Drake believes in some-one’s talents, I suppose it makes sense for a record label to take a risk on them. After all, great risks can lead to great gains. But was A$AP Rocky really worth $3,000,000?

“LIVELOVEA$AP” was released in late October to largely positive reviews from the critics. Pitchfork awarded the mixtape a “Best New Music” nod and on-line music reviewer, Stereogum, placed it in the top 50 releases of 2011. And, for the most part, these reviews seem completely accurate. If you haven’t listened to the album, you’ll quickly notice that the lyrical depth

in A$AP’s songs doesn’t extend much deeper than a kiddie pool. Common references on the album include purple drank, dice games, weed, Harlem, Berettas and, of course, money. In spite of this fact, ASAP maintains an acceptable flow throughout the album. He’s cer-tainly no Mase or T.I., but he manages to distinguish

himself from the litany of new of school rappers by adopting a Midwestern slang coupled with a Wiz Khalifa haze. His variety of influences on the album — Memphis rap, Screw music, country rap — reveal noth-ing short of excellent taste, and tracks such as “Bass” and Houston Old Head” ex-hibit this nicely.

However, these are not the reasons the album shows potential. Rather, the impressive aspect of the album is the production, specifically the tracks pro-duced by the recent Internet sensation, Clams Casino, and Rocky’s partner, A$AP Ty Beats. The beats laid down by each of these pro-ducers reflect an entirely unique, much more experi-mental tangent from main-stream hip-hop. The songs

on “LIVELOVEA$AP” triumph from the warmth, tex-ture and atmosphere derived directly from the beats, which could undoubtedly stand on their own. So was “LIVELOVEA$AP” worth the $3,000,000 contract? No. Not in the short term that is. But the mixtape does re-veal a potential direction for rap music to explore and, more importantly, an artist with the potential to go there.

Dylan Jensen is a junior. You can reach him at [email protected].



Dylan JensenMusic Now!

Courtesy of wineandbowties.comNew York native rapper A$AP recently released “LIVELOVEA$AP,” his first official mixtape, in October.

by allison shultes [email protected]

Bored? Tired of lounging around campus with nothing to do? Looking for something to fill up your gigantic blocks of free time? Check out these develop-ing Swarthmore clubs to beat back that weekday boredom.

shogi ClubThe Swarthmore College Shogi Club

was founded in 2004 by Associate Profes-sor of Philosophy — and 2008 US Shogi Champion — Alan Baker. Although the club’s campus debut is far from recent, the loss of its founder to sabbatical leave has encouraged Adrian Wan ’15, along with other returning club members, to seek new recruits.

A variant of chess most popular in Japan, Shogi appeals to players who de-sire a complexity which is usually lost as chess game progress. “Unlike chess, when you take a piece, it’s retained in hand — that is, you can play the piece and drop it [back on the board],” Wan said. “There’s always the same number of pieces [in play], which is [what makes it] so fun.”

Potential members may find the piec-es, which are in Japanese characters, to be intimidating. Wan admits the learn-ing curve is rather steep, but that Shogi Club members “are more than willing to teach new players,” since most remem-ber their first introduction to the game

as well. “In an hour you can be pretty familiar with the pieces,” Wan said.

The club, which Professor Baker lists on his faculty bio as being “the only college Shogi Club outside of Japan,” as far as he knows, really just wants to raise aware-ness of the game. “It’s ex-tremely fun to play — I’d love to see it played in Cornell, [for example]. It’s easily ac-cessible,” Wan said.

Intrigued? Stop by Kohl-berg’s second-floor rooms on Mondays from 4 to 6 p.m. or Tuesdays from 3 to 5 p.m. for an introduction to the game.

Graphic novel ClubFounded this semester by Joan Huang

’15 and Jonah Schwartz ’15, the Graphic Novel Club’s inception should come as no surprise to those that know Joan. A comic book junkie with a Daily Gazette column titled “Graphic Content,” Joan’s interest in the genre manifests itself in

day to day interactions and, most recent-ly, her ambitious plans for a blossoming student group.

“We’re going to try to watch one movie, read one graphic novel, and one comic book each month,” Huang said. “Our goal is to meet four times a month, so about once a week.”

So far, in-terest for the club seems strong; be-tween 15 and 20 people showed up for the first meet-ing, and many more emailed

declarations of intrigue. “I actually got an email from the Psi Phi Club saying there were a lot of them who were really interested,” said Huang with a laugh.

What got Joan into the world of graphics and comic strips? “I got a car, so my parents couldn’t ostracize me for reading comics anymore,” Huang said. “The serious answer? I really like the way [comic strips and novels] mirror the way we see the world — in short strips and pieces, [and how they] com-

bine visual and textual elements.”Intrigued? Email Joan at jhuang1@

swarthmore.edu.

bridge ClubCurrently in the in-between stage of

transforming from a loose assemblage of Bridge players to a chartered Swattie organization, the Bridge Club is moving into the fringe of legitimate club-dom with a strong track record. Begun by Dana dwellers last year, the group origi-nated with a few strong players who were eager to teach their dorm mates the rules of the game, and has since re-cruited the occasional passer-by peer-ing into a Kohlberg lecture room during game time. “There are a lot of CS [Com-puter Science] people, and we’ve had some people come and join who’ve seen us playing in Kohlberg,” Jeremy Rapa-port-Stein ’14, the informal president of the loose organization, said.

In addition to the handful of new members, the club occasionally enjoys the participation of professors from the Mathematics and Computer Science de-partments.

Rapaport-Stein is responsible for or-ganizing meeting times and maintaining an email list of interested players. He is also presently writing up a charter and application to present to the SBC, which he hopes to complete in the next two weeks.

Intrigued? Email Jeremy Rapaport-Stein at [email protected].

New campus clubs offer chances to read and play

Courtesy of undercaffeinated.deviantart.comShogi Club meets Monday and Tuesday in Kohlberg.



editor’s picks By Brad Lenox

Swat Basketball vs. John Hopkins

Saturday Feb. 4Womenʼs 1 - 3 p.m. & Menʼs 3 - 5 p.m.

Tarble Pavilion

Kitao GalleryThursday, Feb. 2 at 5:30-7:30 p.m. &

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 3:00-5:00 p.m.

enlace presents:

Saturday, Feb. 4 10 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Olde Club

The Oil Paintings of

sunG min ma & sarah diamond

Noche d

e Trav

esuras

Chinese LanternFestival

Saturday, Feb. 3 at 7 - 9 p.m. Shane Lounge



OpinionsStaff Editorial

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LETTEr, OP-Ed aNd cOmmENT POLIcy

The collective familiarity of Swarthmore students with Chester is diverse. In other words, it is not shared. Most likely, interactions with or discussions about the city are tangentially related — and limited — to education department place-ments, community fellowships awarded through the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, student group initiatives, or, more mundanely, driving directions to the College.

So it might come as a surprise to several students, whose extra-curricular ac-tivities don’t coincide with the affairs of the city (a city a mere ten minutes away from campus), that the Chester Upland school district is bankrupt.

And not just tight for cash or ripe for comprehensive bailout, but nearly flat-out broke. With only $100,000 in its savings account, a $1 million payroll and a pro-jected debt of $20 million by the end of the school year, schools in the district are at risk of shutting down.

According to school officials, the financial meltdown was generated by the state’s illegal funneling of the district’s money to charter schools, which, appar-ently, more students attend. Recently, however, a judge ruled that the state give a $3.2 million advance to help keep the public schools open at least for another few weeks into the month of February. Yet throughout the disintegration of the district, teachers (who are members of the local teachers union) have promised to keep working “as long as they are individually able … even if they are not paid.”

But where does that leave students for the rest of the school year?Options range from sending them to private schools, to having them live with

relatives and go to other public schools, to altogether dropping out of the school system. Still, each of these alternatives costs money. Whether that is a financial burden on students’ parents or the schools of another district is a reality that could perhaps fuel the insolvency of yet another city’s educational system.

Despite the limited recourse Chester students and parents have, Swarthmore students and administrators have at their disposal a range of social, political and economic resources that, when used even sparingly, are profoundly impactful. From volunteer groups like the Chester Youth Court, to student groups like Dare 2 Soar (a tutoring and mentoring program), to the College Access Center (which provides free homework help and SAT/ACT tutoring for Chester students) located in the city itself, the possibilities for drawing attention to and becoming involved in Chester are inexhaustible. What is required on our behalf, then, is a consistent commitment to a worthwhile and critical cause through the several avenues of service available to us.

The economic deterioration of Chester nurtures high unemployment, poverty and crime rates. Allowing the one institution of social progress — education — to collapse in a city like this is to provide purchase to those figures. Allowing it to collapse as Swarthmore students is to throw away an opportunity for tangible and meaningful change in our surrounding community — a material initiative of the College and a crucial role of its students.

To sign a petition urging Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett to approve emer-gency funding for the Chester Upland school district go to http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-of-pennsylvania-pay-teachers-in-chester.

Collapse of Chester schools: worlds apart, minutes away

Emma Waitzman The Phoenix

Courtesy of educationvotes.nea.orgChester High is just one of the schools in the school district facing insolvency by the end of February due to financial distress. It is only 15 minutes away from Swarthmore College.



What role does race and ethnicity play in the GOP?Opinions

The 2008 g e n e r a l e l e c t i o n campaign b r o u g h t A m e r i c a i t s f i r s t A f r i c a n -American president. B a r a c k O b a m a ’ s e l e c t i o n will forev-er stand in the hearts and minds of Ameri -

cans as a moment of progress. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech less than fifty years ago, to put the achievement in perspec-tive.

Despite President Obama’s election, race continues to cement itself as a politi-cal issue. Obama has made some slip-ups of his own, including getting involved in the Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates’s arrest and the administra-tion’s quick dismissal of Shirley Sherrod for an out-of-context sound bite.

Obama talked about a “post-racial” America when he was campaigning for president. This is the kind of America I want. A color-blind society where we neither define each other as members o f a p a r t i c u l a r race not forget the heritage shared by members of a race or ethnicity may be an idealistic goal, but is an attainable one. The issue in our society today is an intense focus on race that makes race an issue in the wrong situations.

Accusations of racism have been lobbed at GOP presidential candidates throughout this primary season. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) charged Obama with being a “food stamp president,” and his remark was reported by Democrats as racist despite the num-ber of people on food stamps rising as part of the stimulus package, and more whites than blacks being on food stamps. Food stamps are not a “black” program. The program is meant for the poor of all races, and it is wrong to equate a small government argument with being racist.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) en-dured a great deal of scrutiny leading up to the Iowa Caucus about newsletters printed under his name that harbored racist sentiments. It turns out the most damaging racial statements were likely put into the newsletters without Paul’s knowledge, and his not deleting the statements was a serious oversight er-ror. All this occurred despite Paul’s can-didacy attracting diverse crowds and his commitment to equality as a libertarian-leaning Republican.

Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) has been called racist towards Hispanics due to his opposition to illegal immigration, despite the law supporting his position. Campaigning in Florida,

Romney said illegal aliens would not be rounded up and deported, but programs such as e-Verify, which check the im-migration status of potential workers should be put in place. He used the term “self-deportation” to describe his policy position. Romney is not a racist; he just has a position harbored by 60-plus per-cent of Americans who oppose illegal immigrants gaining legal status. Former Speaker Gingrich went too far with his radio ad calling Romney “anti-immi-grant,” just another example of how race is misused by politicians.

This focus on race is unnecessary in our political system and poisonous to our politics. Republicans and the Tea Party are not trying to create policies that harm minorities. That is a ridicu-lous claim, and one made to defend the big government mentality of the Demo-cratic Party.

We need to move past these endless debates on race, and focus on more clearly defined issues. If a Republican or conservative says anything racially-in-sensitive, I will be the first to denounce that individual. Taking statements out of context or obscuring what the speaker meant is not acceptable. We cannot just assume that someone is a racist because of their particular political ideology.

While I do not think it is possible to completely ignore race in the po-

litical context (nor should we) , we need to change the way race is dis-cussed in the pub-lic sphere.

Race and eth-nicity are quintes-sential aspects of the Swarthmore experience. We are exposed to

people from a variety of different back-grounds, all here for the same reason: to engage in the intellectual pursuits that define who we are as people. With our campus divided about fifty-fifty between whites and minorities, each person brings his or her own racial and cultural experience to the table.

There are ethnic and cultural groups on campus, but friend groups are very diverse and nobody gets as caught up in the racial stereotyping spewed by the media. I often hear jokes on campus about race, as Swatties are so comfort-able with each other on the topic. The rest of society is not as mature as the majority of Swarthmore with regard to race because we are all exposed to differ-ent cultures here. Accusations of racism are thrown around all the time, often for the minutest words or statements taken completely out of context.

I want the rest of society to be like Swarthmore when it comes to discus-sions about race. I want people to be able to celebrate their background, but, in the public sphere, see human beings not just as members of a particular racial group. This starts with us ignoring the charges of racism that occur all the time in the media and in politics, and focusing on how we want to talk about race. It’s time to start that dialogue.

Tyler is a sophomore. You can reach him at [email protected].

Tyler BeckerThe Swarthmore

Conservative

L a s t week , the Republican P r e s i d e n -tial Prima-ry reached a new low — w h o would have thunk it? — even before Newt Gin-grich prom-ised a 51st state on the moon (this, s a d l y , i s not a joke.

Google it). In the days before the South Carolina primary, Rick Santorum sloshed into the muddy backwaters of racial poli-tics with this caring commentary: “I don’t want to make black peoples’ lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.” If dear Rick was trying to outdo leading Mitt-alternative Newt Gingrich, it was a dread-fully weak effort. Newt set a high standard earlier this month when he expanded on his frequently deployed description of Barack Obama as “the food stamp Presi-dent” with this unsolicited advice: “If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their con-vention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” So far, no invitation yet.

These are not merely “gotcha” mo-ments. Rather, the use of racially charged language is a forty-five year Republican project that runs from Richard Nixon’s promise of “law and order” to Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” to Bush Senior’s shameful (yet successful) attempt to define Michael Dukakis by convicted black mur-derer Willie Horton’s mug shot. Racially charged language, the ultimate purpose of which is to associate government with excessively generous assistance to poor blacks, has been the prime mechanism by which the GOP has built its case for “small government.”

The GOP first pioneered the “Southern strategy” of injecting racial resentment into economic debates in 1968, after years of failing to win economic arguments against liberal Democrats. Over the previ-ous three decades, Democrats had built a middle class society on the pillars of pub-lic education, strong support for organized labor and Social Security. FDR’s party was thanked at the polls, winning seven of the nine Presidential elections between 1932 and 1964. Yet by 1968, domestic political news had been dominated for three years by race riots in black urban centers and Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. The Republican strategy was simple: redefine the Democratic Party as an advocate of the urban poor, while branding itself defender of middle class Americans who needed protection from a “big government” in-tent on redistributing their wealth to the black underclass. Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips termed this strategy “Democratic-Negro mutual identification.” Clever.

Because overtly racist language was no longer in vogue after the civil rights movement, Nixon’s task was to speak to white racial resentment without sound-ing explicitly racist. Republican strategist Lee Atwater explains: “You start in 1954 saying ‘nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968

you can’t say nigger anymore — that back-fires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights.’”

Nixon, too, was less than coy about his double-speak. After filming a commercial that combined his soothing promise of “law and order” with footage of rioting African-Americans, Nixon announced to his staff: “This hits it right on the nose … it’s all about law and order and the damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there.” Nixon also used the language of “cities” and “the poor” to associate government spending with African-Americans: “We have been deluged by government pro-grams for the unemployed, the cities, the poor … it is time to quit pouring billions of dollars into programs that have failed.” Never mind that the “War on Poverty” slashed the number of Americans living in poverty by 35%.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Ronald Reagan built on this vocabulary as he cobbled together a sustainable conserva-tive coalition. Most infamous is his be-loved anecdote of the “welfare queen.” She was “a woman in Chicago,” who abused welfare and food stamps to the tune of $150,000 per year. Lazy, irresponsible and overly sexual, the welfare queen’s exploi-tation of “hard working, decent tax-paying Americans” (read: white people) epito-mized everything wrong with “big govern-ment.” There is reasonable evidence that Reagan himself was no overt bigot, yet this language was invaluable to him and his Big Business allies who were intent on tarnishing liberal government programs at all costs.

Neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan has been a force in American poli-tics for nearly a quarter-century, but the language of racial resentment with which they argued against liberal governance is still with us. When Republicans speak of “big government,” “the entitlement soci-ety,” being “tough on crime” and repre-senting “hard working, decent, tax-paying Americans,” it is essential to understand that this vocabulary developed to ma-nipulate racial resentment into blanket condemnations of government itself. It is this language with which Republicans have diverted Americans’ attention from the vital role of public health, education, employment and regulation; this language with which Republicans have justified gargantuan tax cuts to the rich while eroding public services to the middle class and poor; this language with which Republicans have repeatedly succeeded in securing the support of working class white voters whose economic interests are best served by liberal governance.

In classic tragic form, it has been these voters who have been most hurt by the hollowing out of manufacturing, erosion of public services and gross inequality wrought by the death of the liberal con-sensus. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has failed to redirect the anger of a shrinking middle class toward those who have truly “lived off government” — the financial sector, Big Oil, military contrac-tors and the pharmaceutical industry, who have for decades been the recipients of yearly government subsidies, no-bid contracts and ad-hoc bailouts. As the 2012 Presidential election nears, the winning strategy for Democrats is to combat the inevitable racialization of activist govern-ment with a redirection of public outrage toward these true “welfare queens.”

Sam is a junior. You can reach him at [email protected].

Sam SussmanSussing out the

Substance

Tyler Becker argues that accusations of Republican racism are unwarranted

Sam Sussman maintains that the racialization of politics is a GOP strategy

This focus on race is unnecessary in our political system and

poisonous to our politics.


swarthmorephoenix.comOpinionsThe coming age of Pax Pacifica: chances and challenges

H i s -tory has w i t n e s s e d many eras of peace un-derp inned by a single nation pos-s e s s i n g d o m i n a n t e c o n o m i c and mili-tary power. For ex-ample, Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, Pax Mongolica of the Mon-

gol Empire, Pax Britannica of the British Empire and Pax Americana of the United States. However, the “End of History” in Western liberal democracy envisioned by political scientist Francis Fukuyama may not really be the end of history. In recent years, there has been an emerging con-sensus on the coming age of Pax Pacifica in recognition of the peaceful — but not too peaceful — development of China in terms of both wealth and power. Despite China’s growing clout in the region, it is crucial to recognize that the U.S. still has an indispensable leadership role to play in mediating disputes and maintaining peace in the Asia-Pacific. The US should seize such opportunities to reinforce its role in the region. In the meantime, a smart U.S. strategy cannot succeed without effectively managing potential fault lines of conflict concerning: 1) Taiwan, 2) the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance, and 3) disputable islands claimed by multiple parties that involve China.

During a recent speech at the Asia Soci-

ety in New York, Australian Foreign Min-ister Kevin Rudd called for a new interna-tional framework, or “Pax Pacifica.” Rudd has been a China expert since his under-graduate years at the Australian National University, where he majored in Chinese language and history. Acknowledging the crucial role that China plays in interna-tional trade and security, Rudd argued that forging the framework of Pax Pacifica would help Asia embrace the rise of China amid ongoing differences and rivalries be-tween Beijing and Washington. Failure to do so, Rudd warned, would have “profound consequences for the world at large.”

Rudd’s call to action came at a time when China’s rise is making its neighbors — especially those that have territorial disputes with China or with whom China has historically unresolved grief — skepti-cal of the prospects of regional peace. Ja-pan’s 2011 Defense White Paper expressed grave concern over, and dim predictions about, China’s military buildup. Since the end of last year, there has been a series of strategic moves aimed at China, including the basing of thousands of U.S. Marines in northern Australia and the stationing of Navy warships in Singapore. A talk be-tween the Philippines and Washington is currently underway about expanding U.S. military presence in the island nation in preparation for potential Chinese provoca-tive behaviors in the region.

Despite popular claim that the U.S.’s leadership role in the Asia-Pacific is wan-ing, the call for Pax Pacifica presents many opportunities for the U.S. to reinforce its preeminence. It is increasingly clear that China’s policies are for Chinese interests, not a stable world order. The turning of Asia-Pacific governments to the U.S. for military assistance is enough to demon-strate the indispensable role of the U.S. in mediating disputes and maintaining peace

in the region. Even the hostile government of North Korea — after a cold, hard calcula-tion of history and the realities of geopoli-tics — would welcome U.S. presence to buf-fer the heavy influence that its neighbors already have over a small country sand-wiched between China and Japan. The U.S. should thus spare no efforts to demonstrate its commitments to its allies and leader-ship in the region.

Even though U.S. Asia-Pacific policy may take a different trajectory if Obama fails to get re-elected, the current admin-istration has crafted a promising regional agenda. In an address to the Australian Parliament in November last year, Obama declared the commitment that the Penta-gon would “rebalance” the armed forces toward the Asia-Pacific region in the after-math of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the winding down of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Obama also emphasized that the shrink in the military budget would not influence the reorientation of U.S. armed forces toward Asia.

On the other hand, challenges remain. In an effort not to make the “China Threat” a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is important to stay tuned to the voices from Beijing. In fact, there is a pronounced commitment by Beijing to maintain a peaceful environ-ment in East Asia. From at least the early 1990s, Chinese foreign policy conforms to the guideline spearheaded by the great Chinese reformer Deng Xiaoping, which says: “keep a low profile and achieve some-thing.” The reformulated version is now taking shape. During a speech at a highly influential, People’s Liberation Army-af-filiated think tank in Beijing, General Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the PLA states that China should “uphold keeping a low profile and actively achieve something.” This revised recommendation is crucial given the growing PLA influence

in the Chinese Communist Party and the consensus required between the two before any new guidelines can be announced. Bei-jing’s continued commitment to peaceful development is self-revealing.

To manage potential fault lines with China, there are three areas that the U.S. needs to handle with care. First, Taiwan will remain a priority in Sino-American relations. The Beijing government regards Taiwan as the last uncovered part of the Chinese nationalist body, and is almost willing to do anything to prevent Taiwan-ese independence. Second, China’s histori-cal unresolved grief dating back to Japa-nese occupation during WWII still factors heavily into China’s foreign policy: for Chi-na, Japanese militarization is much more haunting than that of any other countries. In light of this, a strengthened U.S.-Japan Security Alliance will not only consolidate a U.S. military foothold in East Asia, but also ease Chinese security anxiety about a resurgence of Japanese militarism. Third, disputable islands in East and South China Seas may develop into battlegrounds if mis-handled. The U.S. should actively maintain a gesture that it is willing not to stand by any one party, but to help facilitate com-munication and mediation among involved parties.

To embrace the coming age of Pax Pa-cifica, the U.S. should actively seize the opportunities to reinforce its much-needed leadership in resolving conflicts and main-taining peace in the Asia-Pacific against the backdrop of withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. However, challenges remain and may develop into conflicts if not handled appropriately. Only with such understanding in words and deeds can the Asia-Pacific be truly pacific.

Shiran is a senior. You can reach her at [email protected].

Shiran ShenThe Swarthmore

Globalist

BY ALEX AHN & HAYDEN DAHMM [email protected], [email protected]

In 1824, a lengthy article titled “General remarks on the temper-ature of the Earth and Planetary Spaces” appeared, buried deep in the back pages of the French

scientific journal Annales de Chi-mie et de Phy-sique. Its author, Joseph Fourier, was a mathema-

tician and physicist who was in-vestigating possible sources of the additional heat that appeared to keep the Earth significantly warmer than it should be, given its incredible distance from the sun. One of the ideas he postulat-ed in the publication — that the atmosphere might function as an insulator for the planet — grew in the next two centuries into what is perhaps the most complex and controversial subject of scien-tific and public discourse: global warming. But why should it be so controversial?

If there ever was one, global warming is the greatest threat to civilization in the foreseeable future. Rising temperatures and consequential climatic shifts threaten to throw the Earth’s en-ergy balance into irretrievable positive feedback loops, increase the likelihood of extreme weather disasters that previously were extremely rare, damage count-

less ecosystems and impair crop yields in critical production re-gions around the world.

So who’s talking about it? Not many. There is a dearth of cover-age in the mainstream media, and even when it is covered, standard practices of journalism demand that skeptics of questionable credentials and ulterior motives be placed on equal footing with climate scientists who conduct scholarly research. However, be-cause legitimate climatologists who disagree with the scientific consensus are so rare, reporters are forced to cite a small number of skeptics who are typically un-qualified.

Myron Ebell, Director of En-ergy and Global Warming and International Environmental Pol-icy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), is one such exam-ple. Despite his impressive title, he has no academic background in climatology or any natural sci-ences. That has not stopped him, however, from writing numerous op-ed articles on the exaggeration of the dangers of global warming or convincing the Bush admin-istration not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Christopher Horner, another high-ranking expert at CEI, has written three books on global warming but has never in any way been involved with climate research. He has a law degree, but no scientific qual-ifications.

Coupled with a sophisticated

campaign financed by the fossil fuel industry to malign scientists and to spread disinformation about global warming, the failure of mainstream media and envi-ronmental messaging has result-ed in the solidification of a large sub-population of this country who are tragically misled on the status quo of climate science. Ac-cording to a Yale study conducted last year, 40 percent of Americans believe that there is a lot of dis-agreement among scientists as to whether global warming is hap-pening, which is utterly false. It is important to note that before a campaign was mounted by the coal and oil lobby to manipulate public opinion, the scientific con-sensus was known about by av-erage Americans. Case in point: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now of-ten denounced on Fox News as a political scheme to push left-wing agendas, had the full support of then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush in 1988 when it was formed to advise policymak-ers on the world’s climate. In fact, he was even quoted thus on the campaign trail: “those who think we are powerless to do anything about the ‘greenhouse effect’ for-get about the ‘White House effect’; as president, I intend to do some-thing about it.” Bush promised, that as president, he would take dramatic measures to curb the rate at which we were changing the global environment: “we will

talk about global warming and we will act.”

The IPCC published its First Assessment Report in 1990, re-vealing the imperative for coun-tries around the world to tackle global warming (i.e. reduce car-bon dioxide emissions). Immedi-ately, the fossil fuel lobby — to be more specific, the Edison Electric Institute, Western Fuels Associa-tion, and the National Coal Asso-ciation — launched a coordinated attack against the public under-standing of science, according to a leaked memo published in The New York Times, to “reposition global warming as theory, not fact.” It was called the Informa-tion Council on the Environment, and counted numerous discred-ited experts on their scientific ad-visory panel. Unfortunately, the ICE has been followed by numer-ous other projects from the fossil fuel lobby that have been much more successful.

The history of this disinfor-mation campaign is surprisingly well-documented, though little noticed. The impact it has had on the public sphere, however, can-not go unnoticed. A Gallup poll in 2011 revealed that 43% of Ameri-cans believe that global warm-ing is caused by natural changes in the environment, and that the same percentage believe it is gen-erally exaggerated in the news.

Although this is a status quo no other developed nation suf-fers, America’s position as a glob-

al superpower has allowed such domestic propaganda to set the agenda for the entire world. As the Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm dangerously and creep ever near the tipping point of runaway positive feedback loops, we find ourselves in critical need of clear messaging on the climate front unadulterated by the politi-cal or financial interests of those who are responsible for this envi-ronmental and human crisis.

This dire necessity is precipi-tated in the formation of “Think Climate” — a new student orga-nization on the Swarthmore cam-pus poised to join the struggle for clear, honest reporting on climate and renewable energy, as well as critiquing the mainstream media on their climate coverage. This initiative has manifested itself as a weekly radio program on WSRN 91.5 FM, also under the name “Think Climate.” We hope to branch out into the commu-nity and to spark a lively discus-sion on campus centered around climate change, emphasizing the necessity of immediate action. Through this op-ed column, we hope to lay the seeds of this im-portant discourse. Please write to us if you have any questions about global warming.

The first official meeting of Think Climate will be held on Fri-day, Feb. 10, in Kohlberg 114, be-ginning at 4:30 p.m. All students, including skeptics, are welcome to attend.

Think Climate: a campus dialogue on global warming

OP-ED

Early last season, Ful-ham captain Danny Mur-phy became engaged in a war of words with the Wolverhampton Wander-ers manager over the role of the manager in getting players overly excited dur-ing games. Murphy’s com-ments were in response to the challenge by Wolves midfielder Karl Henry that left Fulham striker Bobby Zamora with a bro-ken leg. Henry was later punished after another

dangerous tackle on Wigan’s Jordi Gomez. While Murphy raised the issue that some managers

are known for a more physical type of soccer, it has not been addressed. Last season had some particularly bad tackles: Zamora’s broken leg, Nigel De Jong’s season ending challenge on Hatem Ben Arfa, Paul Robinson’s tackle on Abou Diaby. This season has seen a few bad challenges already. But what is more interesting is whether the managers should be considered responsi-ble for how their players act on the pitch.

A great example of how a manager can often put players in unnecessary stress about a game is José Mourinho’s handling of the recent batch of Classicos. The now infamous incident of the hand stamping by Pepe and the late dismissal of Sergio Ramos in the sec-ond leg point to the problem that Real Madrid became much too worked up against Barcelona. Real Madrid received 11 yellow cards and one red across two games while Barcelona received only four yellows in the same period. The difference is huge and one major reason for it is in the way that Mourinho and Josep Guardiola pre-pare their players for the matches.

While Guardiola is a calming pres-ence that prepares all his players psychologically for the task ahead, Mourinho is almost a polar opposite. The recent criticisms leveled at the Ma-drid manager have caused him to be-come quite rattled over the last week. First he was booed during Madrid’s 4-1 victory over Athletic Bilbao at the Bernabéu, followed by the supposed bust-up within the dressing room and on the training field between him and Real Madrid talismans Ramos and Iker Casillas. This leads me back to my main point: should Mourinho be held partial-ly responsible for unrest from within the club spilling out onto the field? In the case of Pepe, this has all happened before. Pepe was given a 10 match ban in 2009 for twice kicking Getafe’s Javier Casquero, followed by a stamp to the body, whom he had just brought down in the area.

Ramos is no saint either, having been sent off in a 2010 Classico for bringing down Lionel Messi from be-hind and then getting into a brawl with Carles Puyol. Both of these players

have a history of making bad decisions in high-pressure matches against Barcelona and the pressure put on the coach beforehand would only have made their situation more desperate as they would no longer have the typi-cal calm of Mourinho to look to.

You can’t completely blame Mourinho for his team’s lack of dis-cipline but he does not help them with his antics, both on and off the field. He cannot help but get into a media war with Barcelona and the press before every match, most re-cently staying silent during a press conference, leading to members of the local press storming out.

In the Spanish Super Cup at the beginning of the season, he tried to stick his finger into Barcelona assistant manager Tito Vilanova’s eye during a brawl on the sideline. Mourinho has never been a perfect example for his players and can create more problems than he solves. Mourinho, the “Special One,” is anything but a regular manager, though. And so maybe these antics can be attributed as a cause for the discipline problems that beset Real Madrid during high pressure matches such as the Classico. But Mourinho cannot be held fully responsible for his players being sent off because a manager never wants to play a game with only 10 men on the field. Real Madrid’s best defen-sive players have to look in the mirror and see that de-spite all the hype of the Classico, it is up to them to not get carried away if they want to win. The last time Real Madrid beat Barcelona (2011 Copa Del Rey) they lasted until the 120th minute before losing Angél di María.

The English equivalent to the Classico, the North West Derby, was, in contrast, a well-mannered affair for the first time in years. The previous match between

Manchester United and Liverpool had been overshad-owed by the racism scandal between Luis Suárez and Patrice Evra but this match was played with minimal fuss and resulted in only one card for a professional, but not malicious, foul by United’s right back Rafael on Stu-

art Downing. Because the tackles and fan hooligan-ism typically overshadow this game, it was refreshing to see the game finish with no controversy.

The biggest reasons for this well-ehaved display, in my opinion, were the continued attempts by both managers to get their teams to play respectfully. For the two weeks leading up to the game both Kenny Dalg-

lish and Sir Alex Ferguson gave interviews where they stressed the importance of playing within the rules and of the players and fans behaving themselves. The man-agers helped to make the game cordial and clean unlike the Classico.

Both of these games are the top derbies in their re-spective countries, but the approaches were completely different. I don’t think this is down to the football cul-ture, since the British fans are typically the worst in terms of behavior (Glasgow derby) and exerting their will upon the clubs’ policy (Blackburn). This was down to the way that the managers prepared their teams for the game and they presented the game as an athletic contest, and not a chance for revenge or humiliation.

Mourinho seemed to have lost some control of his team and the team consequently acted with ill disci-pline. Ferguson and Dalglish made sure they had con-trol of their dressing rooms and produced a fine display

of football that contained only one bad tackle throughout.

The first example I used in this column was of Danny Murphy accusing Karl Hen-ry over his horror challenges and Wolves manager Mick McCarthy of exciting his players too much. These were problems in mid-table premier league matches be-tween two teams that had little history of playing each other. Henry is a perfect example of a player that needs a manager that can calm him down as his dismissal for kicking Mark Albrighton two weeks ago showed. Some players — like Karl Henry, Sergio Ramos, and Pepe, for exam-ple — need a manager not to psych them up for the game but to calm them down.

While a manager obviously wants his team to play the best that it can against the opposition, he has a responsibility to his players, the opposition, and the game to prevent players he knows to be rash from making such bad tackles and possibly end-ing someone’s career. This isn’t always possible, but the game should never be raised to the intensity that a person may have a career ending injury.

James is a sophomore. You can reach him at [email protected].

swarthmorephoenix.com Sports


GARNET IN ACTION

FRIDAY, FEB. 3

Track & Field, Haverford McElligott Invitational, 5:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, FEB. 4

Track & Field, Haverford McElligott Invitational, 11:00 a.m.

Swimming at Dickinson, 2:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, FEB. 4 (CONT.)

Women’s basketball vs. Johns Hopkins, 1:00 p.m.

Men’s basketball vs. Johns Hopkins, 3:00 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 8

Women’s basketball vs. Washington College, 6:00 p.m.

Men’s basketball vs. Washington College, 8:00 p.m.

Courtesy of givemefootball.comDanny Murphy (left) caused a recent controversy over how managers handle players.

While a manager wants his team to play the best it can,

he has a responsibility to prevent players from

making bad tackles and ending someone’s career.

James IveyOut of Left Field

How responsible are managers for their players?


swarthmorephoenix.comSportsThis time, no trouble for Gettysburg vs. Garnet womenby victor brady [email protected]

When the Swarthmore women’s bas-ketball team hosted Gettysburg in the final game before Winter Break on De-cember 9, the Garnet led by four at the half and held Alyssa Oursler, a first team All-Centennial candidate, without a sin-gle point for the game before ultimately falling in a heartbreaker 55-52.

But on Saturday in the rematch on the Battlefield, the Bullets jumped on the Garnet early, building up a double-digit lead just 7:30 into the first half of play and closing the first half on a 21-5 run over the final 7:22 to lead by 22 at the break en route to a 77-51 final that left the Garnet cling-ing to their last strands of playoff life.

The Bullets shot a staggering 65.6 percent from the floor in the first half and were led by 17 points in the period by Oursler who scored only two points in the sec-ond. With a combination of backdoor cuts and fades, she scored at will even as the Garnet switched between man and zone in an effort to slow down the seem-ingly unstoppable Gettysburg offense.

“They run through their offenses re-ally well, so even when they don’t score quickly, they wait for a good shot so that makes them very hard to defend,” Nicole Rizzo ’12 said. “They are a very disci-plined team, have a few set offenses that they run consistently well, and always stay composed.”

Staying disciplined on defense has been a focus in practice this past week for the team. “Something that we’re working on in practice is being more ag-

gressive with our man defense and we’re working on implementing new zones,” Kayla Moritzky ’14 said. “Everyone is a little bit frustrated but we all have the will to continue to fight and continue on through the last three weeks of the sea-son.”

The Garnet scoring was led by Madge Ross ’13, who posted an efficient 15 points on 6-of-10 shooting while adding five re-bounds and two steals. Moritzky was the only other Swarthmore player in double figures with 10 points as the team again struggled from the floor, shooting just 25.8 percent for the game including just 25.6 percent inside the three-point arc.

“ G e t t y s b u r g played great,” head coach Renee DeVarney said. “We didn’t play horrible, but they were a step quick-er and made all of their open shots. We played better in the second half, but that seems to be the story of our

year. When we put two halves together, we can do well.”

Indeed, the Garnet forced seven turn-overs and held the Bullets to 26-percent shooting in a strong defensive perfor-mance after halftime.. But the offense continued to struggle as the team hit on just five of 32 field goal attempts, 15.6 per-cent. Since a dominant victory at Haver-ford on January 18th when the team shot 51 percent, Swarthmore has hit just 56 of 171 field goal attempts, 32.8 percent.

Over that same span, the team is just 12-61 from three. For a team whose iden-tity revolves around living and dying by the three, the shooting touch has desert-ed the Garnet.

Swarthmore also caught the Bullets at a bad time. The win on Saturday was

Gettysburg’s seventh in a row. No team has scored more than 60 points in that span. Add in a nearly-three-hour bus ride and it’s all a formula for Saturday’s result. Interestingly, it has been nearly two full years since Swarthmore’s base-ball team won at Gettysburg, the last time the Garnet was victorious on the Battlefield in a varsity team, as opposed to individual, sport.

The Garnet remains optimistic and excited about the challenge of playing five contests to end the season which are, for all practical purposes, each elimina-tion games. “We’re going to go at each as hard as we can. They are tough games, but this Conference is great because it is so competitive, and we know that anyone can beat anyone else. I know that play-offs are still possible for us,” Rizzo said.

Added DeVarney, “We have really been on a roller coaster. We know we

are not as good as our greatest day at Haverford and we know we are not as bad as our worst days at Gettysburg or Hopkins. Many of our key players are freshmen and sophomores and I think consistency will come. We are excited and cautiously optimistic.”

The roller-coaster ride continued Wednesday on the road against Muhlen-berg, where the Garnet fell to the Mules 81-46. They shot 32 percent from the field.

The Garnet returns to the court on Saturday hosting Johns Hopkins at 1 p.m. When the teams first met in Balti-more this year, the Garnet led 20-18 mid-way through the first half before Hop-kins closed out the opening stanza on a 30-8 run en route to a 71-39 win.

The Blue Jays, who sit in first place in the Conference, were ranked No. 25 in the latest d3hoops.com national poll.

GarNET aTHlETE Of THE wEEk

Supriya DaviSfIrST-YEar, SwIMMING, CHaPEl HIll, NC.

wHaT SHE’S DONE:In addition to being part of the relay team that finished first in the 400 medley, Davis also won back-to-back individual events in the 200 IM and 200 butterfly.

faVOrITE CarEEr MO-MENT:“My favorite career moment was probably the cheer the wom-en’s team did in the middle of the Gettysburg meet because everyone had so much energy.”

wHaT SHE waNTS TO DO:“Our goal is to swim our hearts out at conferences.”

BEST ClaSS SHE’S TakEN aT SwarTHMOrE (SO far):“‘Chem 10H Seminar.”cristina Matamoros The Phoenix

faculty Picks: SB XlVIThe Phoenix e-mailed a bunch of your professors and coaches, asking them to predict the Super Bowl. Here are their guesses:

Michael Brown, PhysicsPATRIOTS 24, Giants 21

Vera Brusentsev, EconomicsPATRIOTS 28, Giants 7

President Rebecca ChoppGIANTS 24, Patriots 20

Bruce Dorsey, History ChairPATRIOTS 24, Giants 20

Carr Everbach, EngineeringPATRIOTS 27, Giants 21

Phil Everson, Statistics“PATRIOTS 31, Giants 24. You reminded me I did want to compile the data to add to my big NFL data-base. I ran some basic regressions to get a prediction for NE vs. NYG on a neutral field. The best fit for NE’s score was between 29 and 33, and for NYG it was between 23 and 27 (of course, the prediction intervals are enormous!). Then I looked at the frequencies of individual point totals in NFL games and picked 31-24 as a likely score. We’ll see what actually happens.”

Stan Exeter, Baseball Head Coach“GIANTS 34, Other Team 27. Go Big Blue.”

Ted Fernald, LingiusticsPATRIOTS 34, Giants 31

Scott Gilbert, Biology“I’m still recovering from the dread-ful performance of the Packers, but I’ll go with the GIANTS: 24, Patriots 21.”

Steven Hopkins, Religion“This is difficult, but the gut says, without thinking too much—does the gut ever think?—GIANTS, crazy squeaker, 26-24. Trails of star dust coming out.

from the untucked shirt of Eli Man-ning? But anything can happen.”

Brian Johnson, Russian“Patriots by 6.”

Ellen Magenheim, Economics ChairGIANTS 24, Patriots 21

Michael Marissen, Music ChairGIANTS 28, Patriots 21

Matt Murphy, Political Science“GIANTS 28, Patriots 23. Because let’s face it, some real giants could beat real patriots.”

Donna Jo Napoli, Linguistics Chair“What’s the Super Bowl? Who’s play-ing? I say the one with the shorter name will win.I say the score will be 49 (since 7 x 7 is such a lucky number) to 42 (since close games are more fun).But I hope it’s a tie, because I love ties.”

Tia Newhall, Computer Science“I could only give you a random guess … Packers by 10 points?”

Eric Song, English“GIANTS win 24-21!”

Richard Valelly, Political Science“PATRIOTS will win, but not by much.”

Elizabeth Vallen, Biology“2 concussions to 1 concussion. Not sure about the winner.”

Andrew Ward, Chair of Psychol-ogy“Given that I grew up not all that far from Foxboro, MA and I have a nephew who has worked for the or-ganization and their former coach once lived on the next street, I think I have go with the New England Pa-triots. I’ll say PATRIOTS 24, Giants 17.”

SPOrTS POll

We’re going to go at each [game] as hard as we can ... I know that playoffs are

still possible for us. Nicole Rizzo ’12

It took less time than normal for this year’s Su-per Bowl coverage to make me feel like heatstroke was imminent. Looking back, it might have been the article with the headline “Ahmad Bradshaw’s heart inspires New York Giants” that fi-nally did it. Maybe it was the story about how the Pa-triots had d i v i n e interven-tion on t h e i r s i d e a g a i n s t

Baltimore because a receiver dropped a touchdown and the kicker missed a field goal in the same game. Could it have been the debate on “ESPN First Take,” still TV’s best case for deafness, on whether or not Eli Manning has a “psychological edge” over Tom Brady? Lest any Giants fan lose sleep, Stephen A. Smith thinks he does.

All the same, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for everyone tasked with providing two weeks of hype for these teams. If this year’s coverage seems a little more awful than usual, as if every writer is going with his sixth-best idea for a story, the urge to retch is under-standable. Divine intervention and Ah-mad Bradshaw’s heart aside, neither the Giants nor the Patriots are anyone’s idea of a “great” team, and while it’s anybody’s guess of what “great” truly is, it’s a little easier to see what it isn’t. New England had not defeated a team with a winning record this year before they beat the Ravens to go to the Super Bowl, and appar-ently it took “an angel on their side” to do even that.

The Giants, for their part, would be the first Super Bowl-winning team in NFL history to have been out-scored on the season. The ’07 Patriots and ’86 Giants these teams are not, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Somebody has to win every year, and as far as the 2011 contenders were concerned, things could have been a lot worse. T.J. Yates? Green Bay and the worst defense in history? (whisper) Tim Tebow? Maybe things worked out for the best, and not just because the Giants and Patriots played a reasonably entertaining Super Bowl only four

years ago.To hear the voices in the media, however, you would

think that a Giants-Patriots Super Bowl has been decreed from on high, preordained by the same football gods who once let Trent Dilfer win a championship. It’s a fascinat-ing opportunity to see how the media either can’t or won’t deal with a situation where two obviously flawed teams are the last ones standing. The hole in the football nar-rative caused by the absence of any real greatness gets patched up with stories of destiny and intangibles (Eli’s “psychological edge”), as greatness in disguise. As a re-

sult, these become the two ends of the spectrum in the media’s story — greatness or destiny, with nothing in between.

Of course, there’s a chance none of this really mat-ters, since as long as everyone is willing to go along with those two choices, then the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of middle ground won’t mean a thing. But I hope that it does matter. I want to believe that we are get-ting smarter in the way we watch sports today, and that the notion of fans being intimidated by the gray area is ridiculous, and insulting. I’d like to think we could deal with it if the weekly columnists and talking heads calmed

down and acknowledged that the Giants were a decent team with a very good quarterback whose defensive line got healthy at the right time and avoided the one play-off match-up that really scared them (having to play the Saints in New Orleans). This seems immensely preferable to being force-fed the idea that the Giants’ clutch, gritty intangibles are flat-out better than any other team’s. The last time I checked, their roster isn’t made up of fifty-three Derek Jeters, and they aren’t scoring points off of Ahmad Bradshaw’s heart.

It’s hard to deny the appeal that comes with watching a truly great team, and so those involved can be for-given for doing their best to convince us that we are watching exactly that. Yet, some sports better than others have been able to embrace the constant dis-connect between the best teams and the champion-ship teams; in baseball, a wild-card team that won 90 games could only win the World Series so many times before the experts threw up their hands and the “Moneyball”-inspired con-cept of playoff randomness started to gain real traction.

On the flip side, it’s in the NFL universe, more than anywhere else, where this notion that only the best will make it to the fin-ish line stubbornly persists. Whoever wins on Sunday will automatically become the brightest star in the constellation, no matter what.

There are probably a dozen other columns to be written about why exactly this is, all pivoting on one glib axiom or another about foot-ball as a symbol of … whatever. Life’s constant struggle to gain even a little ground? Sure. The meritocracy that doesn’t exist in the real world? Fine. A strategic military campaign? George Carlin already did that one.

Instead, I’ll go with the simplest answer I can think of: Football is the people’s game, and in the media’s eyes, the people demand greatness above all else. Well, either greatness or destiny. But nothing in between.

Timothy is a junior. He can be reached at [email protected].

swarthmorephoenix.com Sports


It has been a common theme of late for the Swarthmore men’s basketball team: a late surge leaves the game for their taking, only to give it away in the final minutes. Such was the case once again on Saturday, as the visiting Garnet overcame a double-digit halftime deficit to pull close, briefly take the lead, and watch Gettysburg go on a run of its own to close out the 80-65 win.

Swarthmore (1-18, 1-11) came out cold in the first half, shooting only 30 percent from the field as Gettysburg (9-10, 6-6), behind junior center Christian Bors and his 17 first-half points, built up a lead that stretched to 22 points five minutes before halftime. On the Swarthmore side, only Jay Kober ’14 provided any kind of first-half offense, putting up 10 points.

“We started out a little flat offensively in the first half, getting good shots but they just weren’t falling,” senior forward Marc Rogalski ‘12 said. “Our defense was hurt in transition and in the paint, but we [later] did a good job of correcting that.”

The Garnet was able to chip away at the Bullets’ lead somewhat before halftime, and went into the locker room trailing 39-27. When the second half started, however, was when they truly caught fire. In the first twelve minutes, Swarthmore outscored Gettysburg 29-16, taking a 56-55 lead with 7:54 remaining. High-scoring forward Will Gates ’13, who had been held to three points in the first half, came alive with 16 second-half points, including the two free throws that put Swarthmore out in front. On the whole, Swarthmore’s shooting improved considerably from the first to the second half, going from 30 to 42 percent.

“We tightened up defensively and started taking the ball to the basket causing their defense to collapse, which then opened up more good looks that we started to make,” Eugene Prymak ’13 said.

That one-point lead, however, would prove to be the Garnet’s only one of the game.

Though a Prymak layup would tie the game at 60 with 5:20 to go, from there Swarth-more would manage only five more points as the Bullets took a commanding lead once more. After a three-pointer by Gates cut the deficit to 71-65 with just over a minute to play, Gettysburg would tack on nine unanswered points to seal the victory and leave the Garnet out in the cold.

Gates’s 19 points lead the team, while Kober ended up with 14 points as the only other Garnet scorer in double digits. Off the bench, Jordan Federer ’14 added eight points and four rebounds, while Jordan Cheney ’14 led the team in assists with three.

For the Bullets, while Bors was eventually slowed down with only three second-half points, forward Alex Zurn more than made up for it with 15 points in the second half, ultimately leading both teams with 21.

Junior guard Derek Brooks was the third Gettysburg player with a double-digit point total, tallying 17 along with four rebounds and five assists. Although the Bullets did not hit a single three-point shot (0-for-7), they still managed an incredibly effi-cient 56 percent from the field, outscoring Swarthmore 46-22 in the paint. The Garnet shot 36 percent on the afternoon.

“We have been in a position late to win the game four games in a row now,” Pry-mak said, “so our improvement is showing and its only a matter of time before we get another victory.”

Unfortunately, that victory did not come on Wednesday, as the Garnet lost once more to Muhlenberg 68-51 to fall to 1-19 on the season and 1-12 in conference play.

The Garnet will return home this Saturday to take on Johns Hopkins, who de-feated Swarthmore 70-61 on January 12th. The tip-off is slated for 3:00 p.m.

BY TIMOTHY BERNSTEIN

SPORTS IN BRIEF

Another rally falls short: Gettysburg beats men’s basketball

The need to find greatness somewhere, somehow

Timothy BernsteinBullet Points

Courtesy of fanfeedr.comThe New York Giants will play the New England Patriots on Sunday in Super Bowl 46 from Indianapolis.

swarthmorephoenix.comSports


For swimming, losses can’t dim the joy of Senior Dayby timothy bernstein [email protected]

Pitted against the defending conference champions on Senior Day, the Swarthmore men’s and women’s swim teams both fell to the visiting Gettysburg Bul-lets on Saturday at the Ware Pool.

The women’s team played Gettysburg competi-tively all the way through, but ultimately fell in the final relay to lose the meet with a score of 110-95. On the men’s side, Gettysburg thoroughly dominated the Garnet, with the score end-ing at 110-55.

“It would have been great to send our seniors out with a bang, but Get-tysburg has a really strong squad,” Daniel Duncan ’13 said.

“Still, both our men’s and women’s teams had some really great swims and it’s good to see every-one swimming so well so close to conferences.”

In the first event of the day, the relay team of Becky Teng ’14, Kate Wise-man ’15, Maggie Regan ’14 and Supriya Davis ’15 fin-ished first in the 400-yard medley, easily outpacing Gettysburg with a time of 4:06.32. Davis, who has had one of the most impressive first-year seasons in the program’s history, added two more individual wins in the 200-yard butterfly (2:07.54) and the 200-yard IM (2:12.03).

However, Davis was not the only Garnet first-year with an exceptional performance on Satur-day. Wiseman added two individual victories of her own in the 50-yard freestyle (25.17) as well as the

100-yard freestyle (54.44).Other notable performances include Erin Lowe’s

’14 first-place finish in the 500-yard freestyle (5:23.54), and Regan’s win in the 200-yard breaststroke (2:30.82), a victory that kept the Swarthmore women in conten-tion to win the meet.

“I was actually really nervous before the race, be-cause the coach told me that I had to win, if we had any chance of winning the meet,” Regan said.

“I think it helped that the girl swimming next to me had beaten me in [Conference] Championships last year, and so I told myself, ‘I’m not going to lose to her again, I’m going to win,’ and I did.”

The Garnet and the Bullets traded victories all the way until the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, which would determine the winner. Unfortunately for

Swarthmore, Gettysburg’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams took the top two spots in the relay, ultimately decid-ing the meet in their team’s favor.

In the men’s meet, Gettysburg placed first in every event except for the 1000-yard freestyle, which was won by Swarthmore’s Josh Satre ’13 (10:22.79).

On the afternoon, Satre also placed fourth in the 500-yard freestyle (5:05.56), two places behind teammate Dan Duncan ’13 (5:00.02).

Although the Garnet men did not win another event, they barely missed out on several more victories. John Flaherty ’14 took second in the 200-yard butterfly (2:04.74), finishing less than a second behind Samuel Griffiths of the Bullets.

Tim Brevart ’12 was the runner-up in the 50-yard freestyle (22.01), losing to Gettysburg’s Mike Harmon (21.94) by just seven-hundredths of a second.

Senior Day honorees from the men’s team in-cluded Brevart, Sam Bullard-Sisken ’12, Dante Fuoco ’12, Lance Liu ’12, Neil Palmer ’12 and Travis Pollen ’12.

Pollen and Bullard-Sisken, who both gradu-ated in December, made their return to Swarth-more for the festivities.

Naomi Glassman ’12, Rosalie Lawrence ’12, Jacqueline Scala ’12, Carmen Perez-Leahy ’12 and Amelia Possanza ’12 were the Garnet wom-en honored.

“Walking toward the coaches to get my hugs and yellow rose was surreal,” Pollen said in an email.

“I’d seen plenty of seniors do it before me in previous years, but I never thought about what it would be like to be one of them.

“Four years on the team seem like they have

gone both slowly and quickly. The hours spent prac-ticing in Ware Pool felt interminable, yet the time I shared with my fellow seniors in the water and out has raced past me,” Pollen said.

While Pollen appreciated the honor at Saturday’s meet, she says the “true honor is having been able to swim alongside the fine senior ladies and gentlemen who stood beside me during Saturday’s ceremony.

“I’m so proud of all of us for sticking it out all four years, despite tough athletic and academic times.”

Reflecting on the day’s proceedings, Coach Sue Davis found the perfect story to convey the enthusiasm of this departing group of seniors.

“Last year, I sur-prised the seniors by saying, ‘Why don’t you sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner?’” Davis re-called.

Lawrence suggested this year that the se-niors sing the national anthem. “All of the se-niors sang it, and sang it very well,” Davis said.

The Garnet now finds itself near the end of the 2011-12 sea-son. This coming Sat-urday, the team travels

to Dickinson for its final dual meet of the year (start time scheduled for 2:00 p.m.).

Swarthmore then suspends competition for two weeks before traveling to Gettysburg for the Centen-nial Conference Championships, held Feb. 17-19.

“We’ll go one meet at a time,” coach Davis said. “I just pray everybody stays healthy.”

Justin toran-burrell The PhoenixFalling in the final relay, the Garnet women just barely lost.

Justin toran-burrell The PhoenixThe women’s team lost a close meet, 110-95.

Justin toran-burrell The PhoenixDespite many impressive individual performances, the Garnet dropped two meets to Gettysburg.

joshua bennett

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