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The November 22 Interactive Issue of The Eagle
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RoommateMeet Your New
AU BATTLES MICE IN HUGHES HALL PAGE 5 !
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MISSION
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By PAIGE JONES
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
AU adjunct faculty may form a union to ensure job security, receive better pay and obtain faculty benefi ts such as offi ce space.
There is no average salary for AU ad-junct professors, who are paid based on variables such as number of years teach-ing and the subject of the class, accord-ing to Danielle Tellish, Human Resources faculty coordinator. Tellish said she could not release any information regarding ad-junct faculty’s salaries.
School of Communication adjunct professor Bob Lehrman said in an April 10, 2010, PunditWire post that he is paid about $4,000-5,000 for teaching a three-credit speech writing class.
The average salary of an AU full-time professor last year was $152,035. Associ-ate and assistant professors average sal-ary were $100,648 and $70,626 the previ-ous academic year.
AU had 153 fulltime professors, 158 associate professors and 236 assistant professors last year, according to the AU Academic Data Reference Book. The Uni-versity does not list the numbers of ad-junct professors in the book.
Adjunct professors make up almost half of the AU faculty and need their pres-ence and contributions to be recognized, Cooke said.
“We’re wonks too, and we’re wonks who work overtime,” said, Erik Cooke, an adjunct professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The adjuncts are considering joining the Service Employees International Un-ion Local 500, a union in the Maryland and D.C. area that bargains for better working conditions for groups such as Maryland childcare providers and part-time profes-sors at George Washington University.
Some adjuncts struggle to make ends meet
There are two kinds of adjunct pro-fessor, according to Lehrman. The fi rst group views their adjunct positions as another source of income and hobby since they hold full-time jobs. The second group depends on their teaching salaries for a living.
For Lehrman, teaching is not main source of income. He also writes speech-es for progressive nonprofi t organiza-
tions and he formerly served as Al Gore’s speechwriter.
“It’s a pleasure to teach,” Lehrman said in an interview with The Eagle. “I would pay AU to let me teach these kids.”
Erik Cooke, an adjunct professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a grant writer by day and professor by night.
He fi nishes his day job at 5 p.m. and then commutes to AU to fi nish his work, conduct offi ce hours and teach his night class. Cooke is does not see his wife and their newborn baby until after 10 p.m. daily.
“I have a more stable income than my fellow adjuncts,” Cooke said. “I know some grad[uate student adjuncts] who are cobbling together a living.”
Cooke said a SEIU Local 500 repre-sentative approached him at the begin-ning of the semester to sign a card to join the union, and he expressed interest in becoming involved in the union.
“SEIU is helping spearhead this so we can all come together and get on the same page,” Cooke said.
The adjunct faculty members have not decided when they will formally come to-gether and form a union, but the process is evolving quickly, Cooke said.
“There’s a sense of urgency,” he said. “For a lot of people, it’s hard to make ends meet.”
Not all adjunct faculty are given access
to benefi ts such as land phones and offi ce space, providing issues for instructors to hold offi ce hours and for students to make up projects and tests.
“Some of them are running around from university to university and trying to meet with students at any available place like McDonald’s,” Lehrman said.
In his blog post, titled “The Adjunct Advantage,” Lehrman promoted the idea of collective bargaining for adjunct pro-fessors across the nation.
“Everyone needs someone to look out for them,” he said, referring to unions.
Certain AU administrators and depart-ment chairs contacted Lehrman about his blog post after its publication to express their agreement.
“I was nervous to write it because I don’t want to offend people who are teachers and friends,” he said. “But I didn’t hear a hint of recrimination from anyone.”
Adjuncts worry about job securityCollege of Arts and Sciences adjunct
professor Mark Plane compared his po-sition as an adjunct professor to his time spent as a pharmaceutical guinea pig dur-ing a SEIU Local 500 conference on Nov. 19.
“I got paid better as a guinea pig,” he said.
Plane said one of the biggest worries
as an adjunct is job security.“It’s not a question of tenure, but of
having a fulltime job year to year and not every three months asking myself ‘will I have a job?’” he said.
Many speakers on the panel, includ-ing Plane, said adjunct professors were treated as “second class citizens” since they are part-time and do not participate in committees and research as fulltime faculty do.
“I think anyone should be entitled to a stable decent pay and a few decent ben-efi ts,” Plane said.
Adjunct faculty at the George Washing-ton University formed a union in 2008 for similar reasons.
“We spent two years fi ghting GW in the courts to form a union,” SEIU Local 500 coordinator Anne McLeer said at the Nov. 19 conference.
The union will now be negotiating their third contract with GWU in June.
AU doesn’t support adjunct unionPresident Neil Kerwin said at a Nov.
17 Board of Trustees forum that he did not have a position on adjunct professors forming a union.
“I believe in the right for individuals to organize, but until we hear something of-fi cial, I have no comment,” he said.
Dean of Academic Affairs Phyllis Pe-res said in an email interview with The Eagle that, while the University is aware that SEIU Local 500 members have ap-proached AU adjunct faculty members to join a union, the University does not sup-port this union.
“While, as an academic community, we respect the rights of employees to explore these types of representational matters, we don’t believe that our adjuncts need a union representing them in their dealings with AU,” Peres said. “Our goal has been to ensure that our adjuncts have competi-tive compensation for their service.”
AU has increased the “salary pool for adjunct faculty” and will reevaluate their salaries with the remainder of the faculty, Peres said.
Although adjunct professors are still in the “talking phase” of forming a un-ion, there is a need for their voices to be heard, Plane said.
“We are the silent majority of higher education,” he said.
Adjunct professors consider joining unionNews !"#$%&'()*+,-$./$0*11)*1233
Professor salaries at AUAU professor salaries range from $70,626 for an assistant professor to $152,035 for a full-time professor. AU does not publish salaries for adjunct professors.SOURCE: AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
Mice in dormsAU addresses Hughes’s mice problem 4
Park it hereAU students forgo parking ticket payments 6
PandoraExec. talks
feminism, business
26
$152,035
AVERAGE SALARY
158 ASSOCIATE
153 FULLTIME
NUMBER EMPLOYED
236 ASSISTANT
$100,648
$70,626
!"#!"#$!%NEWS%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%23445
By PATRICK BURNETT
and PAIGE JONES
EAGLE STAFF WRITERS
President Neil Kerwin de-clared he would be creating an advisory committee to evalu-ate the ethical practices of AU’s business partners at the beginning of next semester at an open forum Nov. 17.
This announcement fol-lowed a Nov. 10 email to the University community regard-ing AU’s principles of social responsibility for its business partners.
“One of the many things we do that has an impact on our record of our accomplishment is who we do business with in a variety of areas where the University requires help from the outside, whether it’s pur-chasing equipment or wheth-er it’s contracting for various professional activities that we don’t provide ourselves,” Ker-win said.
The Social Responsibil-ity Code states AU’s business partners must have a commit-ment to protecting the envi-ronment and practicing busi-ness ethically. The businesses must also follow D.C. and fed-eral law.
The code requires business partners to follow AU em-ployment policies, including meeting AU’s wage policy for employees when the contract exceeds $500,000 and limit-ing an employee’s work week to 48 hours per week and 12 hours of overtime.
This commitment was orig-inally discussed in AU’s 2009 strategic plan, “American Uni-versity in the Next Decade: Leadership for a Changing World.”
The main purpose of the committee will be to ensure AU’s business partners are following the University’s stra-tegic plan in regards to social responsibility, Kerwin said.
He said he sees the Univer-
sity’s commitment to social responsibility as an evolving process that needs to refl ect the diversity of the campus community.
“We need input from people that are working with these is-sues in real time, and I’m re-ally quite serious, people take a wide variety of views on how best to promote the values,” Kerwin said.
Members of the committee will include student represent-atives, as solicited through Student Government, the Graduate Student Leadership Council and the Student Bar Association, as well as faculty representation and staff rep-resentation, according to Ker-win.
“I’ll start there since they have the legitimacy of elec-tion,” he said.
Kerwin said he also hopes to include alumni on the com-mittee.
“Not all companies share the same values as we do,”
Kerwin he said. “We think it needs to be a living document so that we are working with these issues.”
AU Student Worker Alliance demands more
detailsThe Student Worker Alli-
ance, a student organization that promotes workers’ rights at AU, said they were satisfi ed with the formation of the com-mittee, but more needs to be done to ensure this commit-ment by the University.
Hanaleah Hoberman, a jun-ior in the College of Arts and Science and a Student Worker Alliance member, said the commitment to social respon-sibility doesn’t go far enough.
“It is extremely broad and extremely general, especially in terms of employees that are subcontracted,” Hoberman said. “I think the University re-ally likes to use language that
puts an emphasis on their be-liefs that they think are impor-tant, but not a lot of emphasis on their actual commitment to change.”
Members of the Student Worker Alliance see discrep-ancies between the statement and treatment of employees, particularly shuttle bus driv-ers.
Mitch Ellmauer, a junior in the School of Public Af-fairs, said shuttle bus drivers on campus are not able to see their disciplinary code since becoming unionized.
Drivers can be fi red after three infractions, according to Ellmauer.
AU Facilities Management did not respond to requests regarding infraction specifi cs and could not be reached for comment on this article.
Kerwin stated that he is un-aware of the claims regarding infractions.
“I’d be very surprised if they couldn’t [see their disci-
plinary code],” Kerwin said. Kerwin also said shuttle
drivers, since becoming un-ionized with Teamster Local 922 in 2007, operate under a contract between the Univer-sity and union leaders, noting, “I’m sure we observe that to the letter.”
Hoberman said the Univer-sity is not consistent in its em-ployee practices.
“[We found that] the stuff in the Commitment to Social Responsibility Code about commitment to living wage and such aren’t applied to subcontracted employees,” Hoberman said.
Despite the shortcomings, however, Hoberman and Ell-mauer said the social respon-sibility developments are a positive step for AU.
“We really hope they will continue to listen to student concerns and worker con-cerns,” Hoberman said.
Administrators discuss student debt, tiered
parkingAt the Nov. 17 forum, stu-
dents also asked Kerwin and Sine about:• Resolving student debt: “We have a series of steps that we’re attempting to take so that no one comes to this in-stitution and puts themselves in a position of fi nancial ruin,” Kerwin said. He advocated for a more extensive debt educa-tion program for students.• Investing money in local banks despite Capital One overtaking Chevy Chase Bank, a local bank the Uni-versity invested in: “We have banking relations with small minority banks in Washington already,” Vice President of Fi-nance Don Myers said. Ker-win said AU will use local com-panies in the renovations and construction of Campus Plan.• Which aspects of the Uni-versity need more student input: “I’ve heard plenty,” Ker-win said. “I’m just kidding, but maybe I’m not.” Students are well heard in all AU’s deci-sions, Kerwin and Sine said.• The number of environmen-tal science courses offered: “When you look across the University, there’s several fi elds emerging as priorities,” Provost Scott Bass said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if more were in the environmental area.”• Implementing a tiered scale parking system for University employees that bases parking fees on wages: “Next time that would be on the table is next summer when we reconvene for fi scal budget,” Kerwin said.• Eliminating bottled water: “Some steps we’re taking are retrofi tting water fountains and installing quick bottle fi llers in the library in the fu-ture,” Director of Sustainabil-ity Chris O’Brien said.• McDonald’s replacement in the Tunnel: “Because of the campus location and season-ality of sales, we’re consider-ing many options,” said Jorge Abud, assistant vice president for facilities development and real estates. “If we should do it with Bon Appétit, it would be very sustainable.”
By ZOE CRAIN
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
AU faculty and students may be re-quired to participate in a diversity train-ing program similar to Safe Space as early as February 2012.
The newly formed Student Govern-ment Ethnic and Cultural Coalition presented its plans for the program at “AUSG’s Forum on Race and Ethnicity at AU” Nov. 16.
The coalition wants to establish a meth-od to educate AU students and faculty about how to make AU a more welcoming place for racial and cultural minorities.
“This program would help raise aware-ness of diversity issues within campus and educate the community on how to address these issues,”!ECC Director Lau-ren Babb said at the coalition’s fi rst public event in Anderson Hall.!
The program should be ready for im-plementation by February 2012, she said.
The coalition held the forum to boost awareness of the department’s goals and increase acceptance of diversity of minor-ities within the AU community.!
Babb began the forum with a short presentation on ECC’s mission and its major policy and advocacy goals.!
Babb then broke the audience of about 25 into randomly assigned groups to dis-cuss several questions regarding diver-sity at AU.
From these group discussions, stu-dents came up with suggestions about how AU could be more accepting of cul-tural or ethnic minorities.
Some recommendations included a lounge designated as a space for discus-sions on race and ethnicity, as well as having a Welcome Week event allowing cultural minorities to meet and network with each other.!
ECC chose “rudeness” as the theme for the evening, asking the groups to dis-cuss if students at AU are impolite to each other. However, students agreed that their peers are often ignorant rather than intentionally offensive.!
The groups also mentioned that stu-dents in general, not necessarily ethnic or cultural minorities, don’t tend to reach out specifi cally to interact with people from different ethnic or cultural groups. Often students said they didn’t think a dif-ferent group would accept them.!
Continued on Page 5
Kerwin pledges better AU business practices SG advocates for diversity training program
Addresses student
concerns at forum
New Ethnic and Cultural Coalition plans training sessions to address race issues on
campus.
“I’ve heard plenty. I’m just kidding. But maybe I’m not.”
—AU President Neil Kerwin about student input on campus issues
By KATIE FIEGENBAUM
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
AU’s pest contractor started treating rooms in Hughes Hall Nov. 17 to deal with the building’s ongoing mouse problem.
This is a potential solution to a rodent issue that started out small and reached a point where traps and other steps were not effective, Assistant Director of Housing and Dining Sophia Benedicktus said.
Over 20 2-FIX requests have been placed regarding mice in stu-dent rooms since the beginning of the semester, according to Steph-anie Destefano, Facilities Manage-ment ground operations coordina-tor. Destefano has been in charge of handling the mice situation.
“We live in a city, and when you put students in residence halls, they’re open to mice and other pests,” Benedicktus said. “How-ever, we’ve never had a situation to this degree as far as I know.”
Facilities Management origi-nally responded to 2-FIX requests in the normal way by placing traps. They started using poison in late October, but this method did not solve the problem.
Hughes students were in-formed by notices in the dorms
and a post on Blackboard that AU’s contractor, Innovative Pest Management, would be treating rooms Nov. 17 and 18 as well as Nov. 28 through Dec. 30, Deste-fano said.
The mice have allegedly been entering the room through holes in HVAC units.
The pest contractor will be en-tering students’ rooms, taking the covers off the units and fi lling all holes with copper mesh and foam, according to Destefano. They will also contin-ue to do trappings.
“It’s more common to have a mouse in your room than not, and some stu-dents have even named them,” said Sa-gatom Saha, presi-dent of the Hughes Hall Council and a fresh-man in the School of International Service.
Emma Lydon, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and the third-fl oor representative to the Hughes Hall Council, says there are six rooms on her fl oor with mice problems.
“The situation really blew up last week,” Emma said Nov. 16. “My friend Chris pulled his towel off his shower caddy and saw a mouse in it.”
Students are very relieved that
something is being done about the problem, Lydon said.
“There’s also been a communi-cation problem,” Lydon said. “I’ve been working closely with Jason [Autry], our [Resident Director], about the situation and the [Resi-dent Assistants] have been re-ally receptive, but Facilities hasn’t been as responsive. We didn’t know anything was really being done, and no one came to us with a plan.”
In the beginning of November, some students jokingly created a Facebook event called “Occupy Housing and Dining” to make sure progress was made in ad-dressing the problem. The idea has since been abandoned.
Destefano said she was not worried about the situation un-til parents began to call about it. However, when Destefano checked to see if one of the par-ent’s children had put in a 2-FIX request, she found they had not.
“There’s been a lot of report-ing problems,” Destefano said. “Students need to report each and every case as soon as they can.”
Mice sightings likely under-reported
There have been a total of 21 2-FIX requests for mice sightings in student rooms since the begin-ning of the semester, according to Destefano.
However, Benedicktus believes this number is low because stu-dents have not been reporting every sighting.
When entering rooms with pest control on Nov. 17, some students informed Destefano that they were afraid to report sightings since they didn’t want mice to be killed.
However, Destefano said live trapping is not an option in institu-tions such as AU and doesn’t think it would be an appropriate means of control.
Lydon and Saha also expressed concerns that the process took far too long and should have been taken care of earlier.
“We have been very aware of the situation and have moved as quickly as possible,” Benedicktus said. “However, we must make sure we follow the process, do everything we can to exhaust the process and do whatever we need to do. The process isn’t quick enough, but it’s all we can do.”
Continued from Page 4
Babb’s proposed train-ing program would ad-dress this issue, she said.!
“Right now, we’re try-ing to identify some of the major problems regarding diversity relations, and then as a group, we plan on having more discus-sion to identify solutions to those issues,” she said.
The ECC also antici-pates the training program will help combat issues within the classroom.!
Some minority students said they feel uncomfort-able when their peers ex-pect them to “represent” their respective minority during classroom discus-sions on racial or cultural topics.
Making this train-ing program mandatory for faculty and students should help facilitate a more comfortable atmos-phere in and out of the classroom, Babb said.!
SG President Tim Mc-Bride said at the forum that the development of the ECC will help supple-ment SG legislation to fur-ther promote diversity in SG as early as spring elec-tions.!
“We’d like to see more women and ethnic minori-ties feel free to apply or run for positions in Stu-dent Government,” he said. “We certainly plan on working with ECC to reach that goal.”
!"#!"#$!%NEWS%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%2344 5
“We’d like to see more women and ethnic minorities
feel free to apply or run for
positions in Student Government”
—Student Government
President Tim McBride
Training program to address race issues in the classroom
Housing and Dining explores
new tactics
AU FIGHTS MICE IN HUGHES HALL
“The situation really blew up last week. My
friend Chris pulled his towel off his shower
caddy and saw a mouse in it.”EMMA LYDON, Sophomore, SPA
An AU student photo-graphed a mouse in
his shower caddy. Facilities Man-agement put out traps earlier this semester, but started using poison in October
when the traps didn’t solve the
mouse problem.COURTESY OF CHRIS MUELLER
By ALEX GRECO
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Only 17 percent of parking tickets were paid in 2010, according to an AU presentation to the D.C. Zoning Commission Nov. 8.
The lack of paid tickets raised concerns among zoning commissioners and neighbors during the Campus Plan approval process; AU students are raising questions about Public Safety’s jurisdic-tion and its ability to enforce off-campus parking regulations through parking tickets.
Public Safety is-sued 2,029 tickets in 2010. They include:• fi rst offense warn-ings: 43%• dismissed (non-AU) tickets: 27% • appeal granted tick-ets: 3%• unpaid or unchal-lenged: 10%
Public Safety’s Terrence Campbell, coordinator of park-ing and traffi c Ser-vices, said fi rst time offenders aren’t fi ned because Public Safety wants to encourage students to buy park-ing permits.
“We are trying to encourage students to purchase permits, and we will forgive a portion of the tick-ets if they purchase a permit,” Campbell said in an email.
Unpaid or unchal-lenged tickets be-come more expensive as time progresses, Campbell said. After 30 days, the ticket’s fi ne doubles and no-tices are delivered to the offending vehi-cle’s owner.
Ticket fi nes are given on a gradu-ated scale, with fee amounts increasing with the parking vio-lation’s severity.
A $100 fi ne is giv-en to people who are “parking on neighborhood streets adjacent to campus as an AU community member or guest,” according to the University website.
Public Safety’s off-campus parking jurisdic-tion also applies to non-students, according to Campbell. However, residents who aren’t part of the AU community, which Campbell described as
students, faculty, staff, visitors and guests, have their tickets dismissed.
Members in the community around AU pro-vide the University with their license plate num-bers to have the tickets dismissed, according to Campbell.
“The Good Neighborhood Parking Policy has had a positive impact on our efforts in passing our previous plan” Campbell said. “The program demonstrates our commitment to the neighbor-hoods surrounding AU to minimize parking problems.”
Amy Lokoff, a senior in the Col-lege of Arts and Sciences, has lived off-campus for two years and has received nu-merous tickets from Public Safe-ty. While most of her tickets were related to on-campus parking offenses, she re-calls that her off-campus ticket was over $100.
Lokoff said she believes the reason why so many students park off-campus is because campus garage rates are expensive.
“ P e o p l e wouldn’t do that if they didn’t feel like they needed to pay an arm and a leg,” she said.
Hanna Kiskad-don, a senior in the School of Inter-national Service, said she became so frustrated with the parking regu-lations that she didn’t bring her car to school this year. Kiskaddon lives in a house off-campus in Ten-leytown.
Kiskaddon said that when she had a car, she was still ticketed by Public Safety, despite having a D.C. Zone 3 park-ing permit.
Kellie Quinn, a junior in the Kogod School of Business, doesn’t believe Public Safety should be ticketing cars off campus.
“They have no right to do that,” she [email protected]
!"#!"#$!%NEWS%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%23445
Students “plug in” to track appliances’ energy usage
Most Public Safety parking tickets go unpaid
IMAGE COURTESY OF
P3 INTERNATIONAL
SUCK IT UPStudents can use “Kill-a-Watt” energy meters to measure how much energy in watts their appliances use. The library has 12 of these devices available for checkout.
By EAN MARSHALL
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Students can measure how much energy an appliance con-sumers by renting out “Kill-a-Watt” energy meters from the Bender Library Technology Ser-vices wdesk.
The library and the Offi ce of Sustainability introduced meters as part of Energy Saving Month.
Students plug the meter into different appliances to measure how much energy in watts the appliance uses. The devices are available for checkout at any time for the rest of the academic year.
The library has had the 12 de-vices since the beginning of the semester, according to Sustain-ability Coordinator Emily Curley.
Curley said the idea of loaning the meters came after the Offi ce of Sustainability staff noticed lefto-ver meters from the Green Eagles’ project. They used the devices to measure the energy effi ciency in each of the residence halls last November and to audit the energy students spend on appliances.
“We were trying to brainstorm
a way to allow more people to ac-cess the meters,” Curley said.
She said she was surprised to fi nd that some appliances used more energy than she thought.
“For example, my hair dryer consumed 150 watts, while the cable box for the TV consumed about 40 watts,” Curley said.
Not many other students have used these devices, according to University Library Monitor Spe-cialist Lindsey Christensen.
“It’s been mostly Green Eagle students who have been using them,” she said.
Many students said they had not heard of the Kill-a-Watt meters but expressed interest in using them.
“I don’t see why I wouldn’t use it; it seems pretty cool,” said School of International Service sophomore Andrew Chong.
Bender Library and the Offi ce of Sustainability hope to make stu-dents aware of which devices use the most power and to encourage students to turn those devices off when not in use to save energy.
EAGLE FILE PHOTO
TICKET TO RIDEOf the 2,029 tickets that Public Safety issued in 2010, only 17 percent of those tickets were paid. Over 43 per-cent of the tickets were fi rst offense warnings.
By RHYS HEYDEN
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Lonely AU students looking for dates may fi nally have some hope.
A new dating website exclu-sively for college students has recently expanded to AU and other D.C. schools.
In November 2010, Balázs Alexa and Jean Meyer, then MBA students at Columbia University, launched “Date My School” as a social networking startup just for students in the District.
Alexa and Meyer now work full-time on DMS, and the site has over 60,000 student users and close to 100 employees. It has recently expanded to 750 schools nationwide.
On DMS, every user must have a “.edu” email address, and users can set a number of attributes that they want in a person, including college, height, interests and academic major. These categories nar-row the fi eld of users who can potentially contact other users.
After creating a profi le and fi lling out some basic informa-tion, users are greeted by a list
of people whose personal set-tings match up with their own.
Alexa said DMS is unique because it is geared toward col-lege students, unlike more tra-ditional dating sites.
“These dating sites, you know, from the ’90s, like Match.com, eHarmony, they’re not good for meeting people in the college market,” Alexa said. “[Over] 80 to 90 percent of our users on DMS have never ever been on an online dating site, and it’s good like that. We want to be like Microsoft Word after the typewriter.”
Though DMS’s settings make it diffi cult to calculate an exact number, only 20 to 30 students at AU have signed up for an account with DMS since its inception at AU in July 2011, Alexa said.
DMS often has “location managers” and “student ambas-sadors” in major college hubs like Boston and Chicago who handle marketing and promo-tion. These positions that have not yet been fi lled in Washing-ton, Alexa said.
“I haven’t had time to get a hold of Washington so far, but I’m going to get there,” he said.
Emily Fleitz, a junior in the School of International Service, is one of the few AU students who currently uses DMS. She joined the site this summer af-ter hearing good reviews, and but said she has had mixed re-sults so far.
“I like the concept of it in
general,” Fleitz said. “That be-ing said, there seem to be fewer people on Date My School. Sometimes I forget I’m on it because I rarely get emails [re-lated to DMC].”
Fletiz said she has had more success with traditional dating sites like OK Cupid, which is open to anyone with an email address.
In contrast, Alexa argued DMS is better for its exclusivity.
“With DMS, you can fi nd someone within a day,” Alexa said. “You don’t need to fi gure out whether there’s a psycho or serial killer on the other side.”
Both Fleitz and Alexa ex-pressed hope that sites like Date My School can solve what they see as a lack of solutions for online dating in college.
“Technology exists so we can interact with people that we wouldn’t normally get it touch with, so it’s a good tool,” Fleitz said. “It makes sense that dating or fi nding relationships would continue online, espe-cially for college students.”
Alexa expressed the same hope, and added that he thinks DMS will fi ll that void.
“I think it’s strange that dat-ing hasn’t been improved, re-ally, for students by technology, and I don’t see why not,” Alexa said. “Many people don’t want to rely on just luck or chance to fi nd the one.”
By REBECCA ZISSER
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
AU’s Communications and Marketing offi ce hopes to start an The GLBTA Resource Center launched Safe Space 2.0 in Oc-tober to provide more in-depth education on LGBT topics not covered in ongoing, general Safe Space training sessions.
Safe Space 2.0 has had two ses-sions so far.
The GLBTA Resource Center chose the topics covered in Safe Space 2.0 based on requests made by participants in the Safe Space Sticker Workshop. !
“Having this program allows us to go deeper into some of these topics,” said Matthew Bruno, the Program Coordinator for the GL-BTA Resource Center.!
During the fi rst session, held Oct. 28, attendees discussed ways to combat homophobia and het-erosexism on campus.
The second session took place
Nov. 12, and speakers from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and The Center for Ameri-can Progress covered issues regarding national and federal LGBT policy.
The activities varied from ses-sion to session, Bruno said. !
The fi rst session was interac-tive with white boards and big pieces of butcher paper for partici-pants to write on, he said.
The second session on LGBT policy was structured as a ques-tion and answer session.!
The original Safe Space pro-gram was created in the early ’90s and to create a more positive campus environment by reducing heterosexism, homophobia and transphobia.!
Those who passed the program were given “Safe Space” stickers to post around campus to visibly
show support for the LGBT com-munity and identify those who could act as a source of knowl-edge of and help for LGBT issues.!
Safe Space 2.0 sessions have been well attended so far, with 10 people attending the fi rst session and 15 at the second, Bruno said. Audiences have included a mix of students, faculty and staff.
“You don’t have to go through the initial three-hour Safe Space trainings to go to these programs,” said Bruno, “but they start where the Safe Space program leaves off.”!
The goals of this new program are the same as those of the origi-nal Safe Space program: to make the campus more LGBTA-inclu-sive, said Director of GLBTA Re-source Center Sara Bendoraitis.
“I think it’s a program to meet people where they are and contin-ue their education,” Bendoraitis said. “And we hope that it will im-prove the campus climate.”
Rachel Lachenauer, a senior in
the School of Public Affairs who works at the GLBTA Resource Center, is working with Bruno to develop the Safe Space 2.0 pro-gram. !
“We tried to fi gure out what the goals were, and how to bring in topics that people fi nd interest-ing,” Lachenauer said. !!
Lachenauer and Bruno also took into account input from those who had gone through the initial Safe Space program, Lachenauer said. !
“I think [the program is] really great,” Lachenauer said. “There seems to be a lot of interest and people seem to be really wanting to have sessions on more specifi c topics,” she said. !
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College dating site offers hope for lovelorn students
Safe Space expands to address GLBT policies
“Date My School”
launches at AU
“We tried to figure out what the goals were, and how to bring in topics that
people find interesting.”—Rachel Lachnauer, senior, School of Public Affairs
COURTESY OF DATE MY SCHOOL
“Date My School” is a dating site open only to users with a .edu email address.
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Steele “opens the box” on Pandora
Encourages use of reusable bags
SG Senate proposes ban on plastic bags
By HEATHER MONGILIO
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
The Student Government Undergrad-uate Senate passed a bill Nov. 20 encour-aging a ban of all plastic shopping bags on campus.
The bill, sponsored by Class of 2014 Sen. Rob Battaglia, proposes that enrolled AU students receive a free reusable bag at the beginning of the year for trips to the campus store and the Eagle’s Nest.
“American University prides itself on its environmentally sustainable practic-es,” Battaglia said. “I hope the rest of the District of Columbia, and the entire coun-try, takes notice at the policy initiatives we are pursuing.”
Battaglia also encouraged the admin-istration to talk to outside companies to promote themselves at AU through the distribution of reusable bags. He said re-usable bags should be sold for between 99 cents and $1.99.
SG President Tim McBride suggested at the meeting that SG could also use the reusable bags for publicity by putting the SG logo on the bags.
At the meeting, the Senate also created a new staff position, a liaison between the Residence Hall Association and the SG.
The student would be able to speak during Senate sessions but would not be allowed to vote. A student has not yet been chosen for this position.
The resolution, sponsored by School of International Service Sen. Rory Slatko, was passed almost unanimously.
“We as an e-board really feel that it is a really positive step towards continu-ing the positive relationship that SG and RHA had this year, and that, overall, we’ll have a lot more power in working with the administration when we are forming a more united front,” RHA President Cindy Zhang said.
Slatko also sponsored a bill to give previously disenfranchised Washington Mentorship students voting rights during SG fall elections.
Toward the end of the meeting, tem-pers fl ared when senators wanted to give speaking rights to the president and vice president of the College of Arts and Sci-ences Council, turning into a brief shout-ing match.
By LINDA BENESCH
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Jessica Steel, executive vice president of business and corporate development at Pandora Radio, discussed her role in Pandora’s road to success Nov. 15 in the Kogod Student Lounge.
The event was part of Kogod’s Alan Metzer CEO Leadership Speaker Series.
“There’s a phrase in the entertainment business that every overnight success is seven and a half years in the making,” Steel said. “This was defi nitely true for Pandora.”
Steel recounted the challenges that Pandora faced in its early years. Will Gla-ser and Tim Westergren founded Pando-ra in February 2000 when they developed the Music Genome Project.
This ongoing project recruits musi-cians, who have master’s degrees in mu-sic theory, to analyze songs and deter-mine which types of music would appeal to people with similar tastes. They base their choices on a wide variety of factors, including which types of instruments are played in the song.
“Their job is to objectively refl ect what’s happening in the music,” Steel said.
Musicians analyze each song for 20 to 30 minutes. To date, the musicians have analyzed over 800,000 songs for the pro-ject.
Users create unique stations by select-ing a song or artist and then approving or disapproving the songs chosen for them.
Steel said the Music Genome Project was developed at a very fortuitous time, because people were beginning to have access to massive amounts of music and needed a way to sort through all of it.
“It was pretty clear at that point that music was going to be moving into the ce-lestial jukebox,” Steel said. “Our founders saw that once that becomes true, the hard problem is how you connect with the stuff that aligns with your own personal taste.”
The company was originally called Savage Beast, and the founders used the Music Genome Project to sell music rec-ommendations to large retailers like Best Buy.
The Project’s early years were very dif-fi cult, Steel said.
“We had people working for no pay for several years because they believed in the vision and the mission,” she said.
Pandora’s shot at success came in 2004, when venture capitalist Larry Marcus in-vested $8 million in the company with the understanding that Pandora would now begin taking its product directly to the consumer.
Steel joined the company around the same time it launched its online radio ser-vice, which now has over a hundred mil-lion registered users.
Steel attributed Pandora’s success to several strategies she and the co-found-ers tried over the years, including perse-verance, a willingness to try new things, giving up on things that weren’t working and staying focused.
“Shortly after Pandora became popu-lar, lots of people in the media were ask-
ing when Pandora was going to do the Book Genome Project or the Movie Ge-nome Project,” Steel said. “We have been just about radio in the music industry for seven and half years and counting, and because we have stayed on that very nar-row focused path, we have been able to amass four percent of all radio listening in the U.S.”
Steel also spoke about her personal story. She stressed the importance of self-promotion, something she said is of-ten diffi cult for women.
“I’ve asked for every promotion I’ve ever gotten,” Steel said. “One of the gen-der differences I see is that men know how to ‘fake it till you make it.’ If men fi nd one thing in a job description that they can apply to their experience, then they apply; if women fi nd one thing that they can’t, then they don’t apply.”
Despite her graduate degree in femi-nist political theory, Steel said she did not think her gender made a major impact on her approach to her job.
“Presume that it doesn’t matter that you’re a woman,” Steel said. “I can count on one fi nger the amount of times I’ve been sitting around the table and felt a gender difference.”
Steel did say, however, that she was be-coming increasingly aware of the impor-tance of her actions in sending a message to other women in business. She said she realized her own relatively short four-month maternity leave had led to other women in the company also taking four months of maternity leave rather than six or more.
“My actions matter as much as my words,” she said.
Vice president discusses site’s
secrets to success
FELICIA AFUAN / THE EAGLE
Jessica Steele, executive vice president of business and corporate development at Pandora Radio, spoke to students about the music sta-tion’s early years and about being a woman in the business world at a Nov. 15 speaking event in the Kogod Student Lounge.
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Occupy AU considers campus sit-insMay work with faculty
By PATRICK BURNETT
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
Occupy AU proposed a plan to occupy an academic building on campus at its sec-ond general assembly meeting Nov. 17.
The organization may physically oc-cupy a building on campus, pitch tents in professors’ offi ces and establish solidarity marches with students at other D.C. uni-versities.
As of press time, Occupy AU has not yet confi rmed its plans to occupy a build-ing and have not decided which building to occupy.
“It’s something that is on the table, but isn’t the focus, at least not yet,” said Chris Golembeski, a member of Occupy AU and freshman in the School of Communica-tion.
The organization is currently looking to fi nd a central focus and to boost its membership.
During the Nov. 17 meeting, the Oc-cupy AU facilitators asked each member to speak to friends about the cause and to fi nd one central issue to focus on and pro-mote as their purpose in this movement.
Assembly Facilitator Cody Steele, a senior in the School of International Ser-vice, said his personal focus is the student debt crisis.
Members of Occupy AU also proposed that the movement look into how the Uni-versity uses tuition money.
To help Occupy AU grow and become part of the AU community, the organiza-tion established fi ve committees: out-reach, liaison, research, action and media.
Assembly facilitator Cody Steele, a sen-ior in SIS, said the organization does not have a leadership body. All actions of the movement are a group effort.
“General Assemblies are a public, open forum and are meant to speak on behalf of group consensus,” Steele said.
Occupy George Washington University student liaison Eric Gallager also attended the meeting.
Occupy AU also has a committee of three liaisons in place to attend Occupy GW meetings, according to Golembeski. The Occupy AU liaisons, as of press time, are Golembeski; Kirsten Franzen, a fresh-man in the School of International Ser-vice; and Erin Emory, a sophomore in SIS.
Occupy AU is planning an on-campus book drive to build up the Occupy D.C. library at McPherson Square.
By KIERSTYN SCHNECK
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Bernard Schulz, special as-sistant to the vice president of Campus Life, gave a shout-out to American University Aug. 8 on the classic game show “The Price is Right,” before winning a trip to Dubai, a treadmill, an electric mo-torcycle and a pool table.
“The Price is Right” is the one of the longest-running TV game shows, where participants bid on the actual retail price of the of-fered prizes and could win them all if they guess correctly.
Schulz has watched “The Price is Right” since he was child, but this wasn’t his fi rst attempt to get on the show.
Schulz tried out for “The Price is Right” during his freshman year at Los Angeles Valley College with his sister and her friend, but wasn’t selected.
Participants are chosen at ran-dom from the 300-strong audi-ence to stand at the four podiums, where they bid on the preliminary prizes.
The show selected Schulz to participate in the game when he went this year with his two sisters.
“I couldn’t believe it when my name was called,’” Schulz said.
Schulz was in the fi rst group to be called to “Come on down!” He
made the closest bid on the sixth prize, winning a pool table and getting on stage for the fi rst time.
He then played the Money Game, which involved guessing the fi rst two and last two digits of a car’s price.
“I did not win the Ford Focus, so I was a little bummed about that,” Schulz said. “But I did get to spin the wheel.”
All fi nalists can spin the wheel twice to get the closest to a sum of $1.00 without going over.
Before spinning the wheel, Schulz gave his shout-out to his colleagues at AU and his family in Virginia.
“This place has been my home
of 11 years,” Schulz said of AU. “I love what I do; I love working here at AU. So, it was nice to make a comment about the place that, you know, you spend half your time at during the week.”
Campus Life was surprised and excited to see Schulz’s TV appear-ance. Vice President of Campus Life Gail Hanson and Schulz’s co-workers watched the show in the Mary Graydon Center.
“It was just a real surprise to know somebody who was on a game show,” Hanson said. “I think a lot of people who walked by and wondered what we were doing stopped in their tracks when they saw that it was Bernie.”
Schulz got a total of 95 cents after his second spin, beating the two other participants in that round and entering him into the last Showcase Showdown.
“I couldn’t believe it was hap-pening, actually,” Schulz said. “I was like, ‘This is too crazy’. It was a total blast.”
In a showdown, the two fi nal-ists are offered separate prize packages, and they have to guess the total price of their package. The person with the closest bid without going over wins his or her package and can win both packag-es if the guess is $250 or less away from the price.
Schulz won one package con-
sisting of a trip to Dubai, an elec-tric motorcycle and a treadmill by bidding closest to the actual retail price.
He was $754 away from the price: only $504 away from win-ning both packages.
Schulz plans to take his Dubai trip with his sisters sometime be-tween November and March this year.
His advice to any student look-ing to win big on “The Price is Right”: “Just have a good time,” he said. You know, it’s those types of crazy, laid-back outings that make vacations and just life enjoyable.”
AU professor wins big on “Price is Right”
An AU student is tak-ing a different approach to confl ict resolution in Afri-ca by selling jewelry made by Ugandan communities.
Katie Ryan, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Emily Kas-sie, a sophomore at Brown University, started the website Pamoja Products after returning from Africa this past summer.
Pamoja means “togeth-er” or “one” in Swahili.
Pamoja Products is de-signed to fund educational development and help two Ugandan communities re-cover from the country’s sustained confl ict between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army.
A percentage of the site’s sales goes directly back to the communities and funds the grassroots program so the communi-ties can become self-sus-taining.
“These communities are hard working and in-credibly talented,” Ryan said. “They simply need to widen their circle of buy-ers.”
Birth of Pamoja Products
Ryan received $5,000 last spring from the De-partment of Performing Arts in the form of three smaller theater scholar-ships to fund her time in Uganda.
She was awarded the Sylvia and Harold Green-berg Scholarship, the Mary Miller Patton Schol-arship and the Friends of the Department of the Performing Arts Scholar-ship to pursue research in peace and confl ict resolu-tion through the arts while there.
Caleen Jennings, former Department of Performing Arts chair, suggested Ryan be consid-ered for the scholarships last spring after speaking with her about her trip.
Carl Menninger, head of the Theater Department, awarded Ryan the schol-arships at the end of last school year.
While in Uganda, Ryan conducted fi eld research on peace and confl ict reso-lution programs through interviews with repre-sentatives of communi-ties, vocational schools, universities, theaters, pris-ons, shelters and women’s groups. Ryan noted that all the areas that she worked in bore clear signs of the sustained 23-year civil war between the Lord’s Resist-ance Army and the Ugan-dan government.
Ryan also performed in a cultural arts festival called Center By Center while in Uganda and par-ticipated in workshops put on by East African groups.
“It was not a services trip,” Ryan said. “We were all there for different re-search projects, but we all had a common bond in the arts. At the workshops, we were the minority; it was by no means Western-ers coming in and going ‘this is how you should do things.’”
Pamoja Products focus-es on the Ugandan villages of Abayudaya and A River Blue.
Esther Seth, the wife of Abayudaya’s school’s prin-cipal, and eight other wom-en in the community make jewelry out of wire, rolled paper and wooden beads. Esther initially started making the jewelry to sup-port the community, and is now the functional head of the community’s fi nances as well as Ryan and Kas-sie’s main point of contact with Abayudaya.
All the jewelry made in Abayudaya is all attributed to the work of Esther on the Pamoja Products web-site because of her work for the betterment of the community.
Continued on Page 10
Student sells jewelry to help African villages
“I couldn’t believe it was happening, actually. I was like ‘this is crazy.’ It was a total blast.”—Bernard Schulz, assistant VP of Campus Life, about his stint on ‘The Price is Right’
Photo of the Week
ANA SANTOS / THE EAGLE
AU in Motion’s Fall Showcase featured the AU Bhangra club and styles such as breakdancing, hip-hop, ballet and modern. The dancers performed to a nearly sold-out crowd each night in Greenberg Theatre Nov. 18 and 19.
!"#!"#$!%NEWS%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%234443
Continued on Page 9
“Their work is beautiful, but they have a very small market,” Ryan said.
Proceeds are currently going toward the community’s school and will eventually aid the com-munity as a whole.
In A River Blue, extreme pov-erty hinders community mem-bers’ ability to effectively help the students at the vocational school there, according to Ryan. Okwe-ny “George” Ongon established the school in conjunction with the Oloo Primary School to help for-mer child soldiers, sex slaves and children orphaned by the actions of the LRA, said Ryan.
“The school is incredibly poor and has recently been moved from [its] initial building,” Ryan said.
The community is currently struggling to build a new build-ing with separate bathrooms for boys and girls. Many girls drop out of school in Africa once they reach puberty because schools often lack privacy and sanitation,
Ryan said. By May 2012, Ryan and Kassie
hopes to sell bags, laptop covers and wallets made by the women of A River Blue.
Pamoja Products on college campuses
Ryan and Kassie are starting Pamoja Products on the college campus level and then plan to branch outward. Ryan thinks AU is the perfect campus to start this project.
“We are an internationally fo-cused community that believes in grassroots projects,” she said. “This is our chance to help a community trying to help them-selves.”
She said she sees many over-laps in values between AU groups and the communities Pamoja Products is trying to help.
“What an incredible opportu-nity for a college campus to help a community grow and watch the impact we all have through the years,” she said.
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By KENDALL BREITMAN
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
The spotlight was on AU in Motion this weekend as the dancers took the stage for the Fall Showcase.
This year’s showcase took place Nov. 18 and 19 in Greenberg Theatre packed with students, fam-ily and faculty. For the fi -nal performance Saturday night, AU in Motion per-formed in front of a com-pletely sold out crowd.
The showcase featured performances ranging from modern, lyrical and ballet dances to hip-hop, dubstep and Bollywood dances.
“I like that there were so many different dance styles for this perfor-mance,” said Danielle Poupart, campus outreach director of AU in Motion and a College of Arts and Sciences student. “It’s re-
ally interesting to try new styles of dance that I have never done before. It’s a great way to meet people that you wouldn’t normal-ly meet and you all have the common interest of dance.”
In the beginning of the performance, Artistic Di-rector Alina Imam urged the audience to show their cheer for the dancers, cre-ating an exciting and en-thusiastic atmosphere for both the dancers and the audience members.
The showcase began with a dance to a series of dubstep songs, which pumped up the crowd for the show. The performers sported Jabbawockeez-like masks as they per-formed the opening dance to remixes by artists such as Daft Punk and Chro-meo.
Dances that followed in the fi rst act included
a hip-hop performance to “Come and Get it” by Sean Paul, a trans-Siberian rock ballet to the tune of “A Mad Russian’s Christ-mas” and a hip-hop dance, performed by some of the dancers in high heels, featuring music by artists such as Will.i.am, Carmen Beretta and Nicki Minaj.
This year was the fi rst time AU in Motion joined with another on campus organization for the Fall Showcase.
The AU Bhangra club performed an amazing traditional Bhangra dance with some not-so-tradition-al quirks. The beautiful outfi ts and catchy beats of the Bhangra style of dance got the entire crowd mov-ing.
Act 2 included a Bolly-wood performance, a mod-ern/lyrical performance to the song “Turning Ta-bles” by Adele, a samba
featuring music by Ricky Martin and Metro Station, an Irish dance and another hip-hop performance to music from Lady GaGa, Missy Elliot, Nicki Minaj and Pitbull.
The showcase closed to a dance to Flo Rida’s “Turn Around” by the en-tire cast, after which the audience members gave the performers a standing ovation.
“AU in Motion is just completely different than anything else that I do,” said Mike Naumenko, a junior in the School of In-ternational Service. “Come to our performances and if you show interest and you come out and audition there’s a good chance that you’ll join and be awesome like the rest of us.”
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By SETH ROSE
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
What do a baton twirler, an ex-rodeo rider and an actress desperately trying to get a job have in com-mon?
According to Gail Hum-phries Mardirosian, the director of AU production, “Talking With,” it’s an odd question that makes sense after seeing the play in the Katzen Studio Theatre.
“Talking With” is a monologue show written by author Jane Martin that features an all-female cast (with the exception of two male stage managers who made cameos) depicting the struggles of modern women.
Like any good mono-logue show, the characters span a wide range of cir-cumstances and emotional peaks and valleys.
At the lowest valley there was sophomore Elizabeth Bartolotta por-traying with deft subtlety a woman recounting the last
days of her mother’s life; and at the highest peak there was sophomore Sa-rah King as the adorably deranged McDonald’s lady who would like noth-ing more than to share the gospel of plastic with the world.
Musical numbers pep-pered the monologues to provide a bit more variety.
The performances were uniformly spectacular, dredging both despair and delight and fi nding those elusive moments when glimpses of one invade the other.
There is an inherent danger in monologue shows becoming monoto-nous where the meaning gets lost in the words, and there is an inherent dan-ger in shows with feminist themes becoming collec-tions of clichés that have been addressed hundreds of times before.
“Talking With” fell into neither of these traps, and instead presented a collec-tion of real women with
ON STAGE
From Bhangra to break dancing, AU in Motion fuses dance styles for Fall Showcase
AU theater production gets audience ‘talking’
Continued on Page 13
COURTESY OF CATHERINE GANNON
ANA SANTOS / THE EAGLE
D.C. Chillin’College bloggers share D.C.’s best coffeeshops14
U Street EatsWhere to go before and after shows 16
!"#!"#$!%SCENE%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%2344 45
interesting personalities and pasts dealing with be-lievable problems.
And it was a good thing the audience did not appear bored, because the produc-tion took its title very seri-ously.
Intimacy was the goal from the start. The 10 prin-cipal women started the show perching on the rail-ings behind and fl anking the audience and delivered the fi rst collective mono-logue over their heads.
They took any oppor-tunity during the show to interact with the audience, posing questions, sitting among them and generally making them a part of the show as much as possible.
A particularly poignant example occurred when junior Emily Goodell, por-traying the baton twirler from the director’s note, of-fered her baton to a man in the front row to hold as she explained its deep signifi -cance in her life. The mo-ment took the monologue to a place it might not have reached otherwise as we peaked through the fourth wall for just a moment to get a better sense of a char-acter.
The musical interludes between monologues were generally well placed and relevant. The numbers that opened the fi rst and sec-ond acts deserve special note, as they were tightly choreographed and com-plemented the monologues they bordered well.
Performances of “Red Neck Woman” by John Rich and “Tell Them” by Corinne Aquilina however depicted nothing but stere-otypes of Southern women and “housewives,” respec-tively, and nearly dispelled the charm of the realistic women presented until then.
It was frustrating to see a unique and thought-provoking portrayal of a female rodeo champion who laments the commer-cialization of her passion immediately be reduced to a “redneck woman” in the subsequent musical num-ber.
Such moments were few and forgivable in the grand-er scheme of the show, but their presence represented a red mark of banality in an otherwise stimulating pro-duction.
Ignoring these blem-ishes, “Talking With” is a rare production that sets a clear goal and accom-plishes it without the use of gimmicks or overdone spectacle.
It wanted to tell a set of stories about how women in the real world deal with their real problems, and it wanted to enhance that story by cracking and at certain points outright dis-solving the fourth wall.
So just what do the ba-ton twirler, the rodeo cham-pion and the actress have in common? According to Professor Mardirosian, that is up to the audience to de-cide after talking with them.
By SARAH PACHTER
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
Flashpoint Gallery looked unusually dark for an exhibition opening at 6 p.m. Nov. 11. Transformed into a space where screens and projectors showed performance of human re-lationships that interacted with viewers, the gallery was dim except for lights emanating from the pro-jectors onto the walls and screens setup throughout the space.
The exhibit, Andy Holt-in’s “A Theatre of Objects,” is showing through Dec. 21. Holtin is an American University studio art assis-tant professor, as well as a working artist.
Although it was dif-fi cult at fi rst to fi gure out
what Holtin was trying to achieve in his works, he explained in an interview with The Eagle how he wanted to explore “our ex-pectations of connection, [and] how we believe and understand connections between humans and their behavior.”
“Passage,” a piece where nine screens and video players hang by cords from the ceiling in a circle, portrays Holtin’s vision of human behavior through performance.
In this piece, an actress and actor walk, run and leap from screen to screen at different rhythms and with a variety of move-ments. The spectator stands in the center of the circle of screens, interact-ing with the art and real-izing the video never loops
back to the same point.“[It] creates a live
movement because the in-teractions happening are not scripted,” Holtin said.
In “Glance,” two screens, one with the face of a man and the other, the face of a woman, shift toward and away from one another, reacting to the “glances” each one gives the other.
In this way, the ap-paratus (in this case the screens and wires) is ac-tive, as the screens behave like human heads, react-ing and interacting with one another.
The interactions that occur in Holtin’s pieces are emotional and comical.
Holtin’s humor is found in the expressions his per-formers use specifi cally in “Glance.” Spectators can-
not resist smirking at the doubtful and suspicious looks the woman gives the man, and the exasperated expressions the man gives the woman. It is the man versus woman relation-ship we can all relate to in some way that makes the art comical.
Though only three of Holtin’s pieces were on display, their impact was greater than their number, forcing the viewer think about how interactions happen differently in dif-ferent environments.
‘Talking With’ presents all-female monologues
AU professor uses daily interactions for art exhibit
Continued from Page 12
SCREEN SHOTSAU Assistant Professor Andy Holtin presented his exhibit, “A Theatre of Objects” at Flashpoint Gallery Nov. 11. The ex-hibit features video art that shows everyday occurrenc-es, featuring a man and a woman simply looking at each other and people running and jumping. The show runs through Dec. 21.
COURTESY OF FLASHPOINT GALLERY
COURTESY OF CATHERINE GANNON
Flashpoint Gallery is located at 916 G Street, NWWashington, DC 20001
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 6 [email protected]
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D.C. CHILLIN’AU students satisfy their coffee cravings with D.C.’s best cafés
For some college students, coffee is more than a cheap caffeine fi x: it is a passion.
Meet coffee bloggers Chloe Lyon, a junior in SIS, and Ali Villalobos, a sophomore in SOC. Together, these grade-school friends founded “Not So Grounded,” a cof-fee blog dedicated to “fi nding coffee, culture and com-munity in the District.”
The blog came about after these two rebooted their tradition of enjoying afternoons at coffee shops around their shared hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Both bloggers are committed to looking for spectacular coffee no matter the zip code.
“We may be college kids, but we appreciate good cof-fee,” Lyon said.
As a new transfer student to American, Lyon found going to coffee shops around D.C. was a great way to explore the city.
“It’s easy to get stuck here on campus,” Lyon said. “Even if it’s a trek, some great coffee shops around D.C. are well worth it. Plan to spend at least four hours to get a feel for the place.”
Important aspects of fantastic coffee shops include excellent service, fun and innovative environments and high levels of community interaction. Having delicious food and pastries helps too, because nothing tastes bet-ter than perfectly brewed black coffee accompanied with a fresh croissant.
Lyon recommends Big Bear Café by the Eckington neighborhood, while Villalobos’s favorite is Northside Social in Arlington, Va. Some other coffee shops around the District that come highly recommended are China-town Coffee Co., Filter in Dupont and Tynan in Friend-ship Heights.
Villalobos and Lyon are fans of coffee that “doesn’t just taste good, but is ethical too.”
“We are big supporters of Direct Trade, a coffee buy-ing program that stresses developing direct, sustain-able relationships with the coffee farmers,” Lyon said. “Stumptown and Intelligentsia are great coffee brands that take part in Direct Trade.”
(Hint: With the holiday gift giving season approach-ing, bags of Direct Trade coffee beans, a French press or a gift certifi cate to a local coffee shop make great gifts.)
As for future plans of the blog, Villalobos and Lyon plan to fi nish reviewing major coffee shops in the Dis-trict, increase readership and expand to blogging about community events around D.C.
“We also plan to add a section called Talking Sense that catalogs great thoughts and conversations we have had in coffee shops,” Lyon said.
“We may be college kids, but weappreciate good coffee”
—Chloe Lyon, coffee blogger
“Not So Grounded,” check out http://notsogrounded.wordpress.com
Get there by Metro:BIG BEAR CAFÉ IN ECKINGTON:
SHAW-HOWARD/YELLOW AND GREEN
LINE
NORTHSIDE SOCIAL:
CLARENDON/ORANGE LINE
CHINATOWN COFFEE CO.:
GALLERY PLACE CHINATOWN/GREEN,
RED AND YELLOW LINE
FILTER:
DUPONT CIRCLE/RED LINE
TYNAN:
FRIENDSHIP HEIGHTS/RED LINE
By CHELSEA CLAYS
EAGLE COLUMNIST
Courtesy of CHINATOWN COFFEE COMPANY
Courtesy of NORTHSIDE SOCIAL
Courtesy of BIG BEAR CAFE
Courtesy of NOT SO GROUNDED
!"#!"#$!%SCENE%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%2344 45
SILVER SCREEN
IN COMPARISON TO OTHER TWILIGHT MOVIES: AIN COMPARISON TO ALL OTHER MOVIES: C-
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1
By ABBY FENNEWALD
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
In case you haven’t had Internet access or watched TV in the last year, the newest “Twilight” movie is out. “Breaking Dawn Part 1” is the latest install-ment of movie adaptations of this teen romance novel turned epic drama turned comedy.
In “Breaking Dawn Part 1,” the fi lm starts on a hap-py note with Bella (Kristen Stewart, “The Runaways”) and Edward’s (Robert Pattinson, “Water for Ele-phants”) blissful marriage, but continues in a down-ward spiral of increasingly ludicrous and terrifying events. Suddenly, Jacob (Taylor Lautner, “Abduct-ed”) appears as the voice of rationality as the series takes its most absurd plot turns yet.
Poor Lautner struggles to portray this part, since his best acting comes when he’s shirtless and his abs distract the audi-ence from his fl at delivery.
Edward’s only purpose
in this movie seems to be to get Bella pregnant and to continue to look like he’s in pain.
First, audiences see their wedding. Everyone’s happy except Edward, who seems to be hating every minute.
Then they go on their honeymoon. Edward al-most tells Bella that he didn’t like having sex with her, and then refuses to do it again as she is practical-ly begging him to.
When he fi nds out Bella’s pregnant he is not thrilled, but rather Goog-les “immortality,” lead-ing to a creepy montage of misshapen babies as he looks pained at the thought of having a child.
The movie continues, unsurprisingly, to try to convince the audience that Bella is just like them.
It’s because she’s clumsy; clearly illustrated by her inability to walk in high heels.
After Bella becomes pregnant, she looks so sickly and gaunt that it’s actually impossible to fo-cus on anything she says.
She makes Edward look downright tan in compari-son.
Spoiler alert: Don’t read past this paragraph if you want the gory ending to be a surprise.
The movie climaxes in possibly the most disturb-ing, bloody birthing scene in movie history. Edward has blood covering him, but, somehow, Jacob has stayed completely clean. And then, when Bella is “dead,” Jacob imprints (a rare werewolf occurrence where they immediately fall in love with someone) on her child to save her from the werewolves.
While the movie itself is truly terrible, it’s exactly what was expected of this installment.
If any other famous se-ries made movies like this, they would be trashed, but Twilight is OK because it’s a beautiful romance, right? Edward is the perfect man, or something.
To be honest, though, this movie should count in favor of Team Jacob.
By ARIEL FERNANDEZ
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
With the rise of the Oc-cupy movement, the nation is witnessing an increase in the activeness of young people determined to make something happen for themselves.
In the face of all the doom and gloom of the nation’s college students, one blog is a breath of fresh air.
“20SomethingCity,” a blog “made by 20-some-things, for 20-somethings” is making quite the splash among young people in the D.C. metropolitan area for a blog that is only three-and-a-half weeks old. Start-ed by a group of American University and Univer-sity of Maryland students, “20SomethingCity” pries open the inner workings of a whole generation, ca-tering to the interests of young urbanites in D.C.
“The minute someone writes something, it reso-nates with 20 other people,” said Managing Editor and School of Communication senior Nick Rodea, which is one of the reasons the bud-ding blog has been so suc-cessful.
From the best restau-rants to go eat, to paying off student loans, to how to handle a “gay rivalry,” 20SomethingCity explores it all in a relatable way, and does so with all the fi -nesse of major publication. The only difference is the bloggers do it in half of the page length, with twice the honesty.
“Our motto is true,” Ro-dea said. “We’re trying to be for 20-somethings, by 20-somethings.”
Rodea defi nes the blog as a news site cover-ing popular issues, but what really makes the site special is its staff. He describes the blog’s con-tributors as, “just blogging about things that happen to us.”
With a roster of 20-some-thing college students and recent grads, ranging from the employed to those still searching, 20Something City is in the perfect po-sition to give their fellow 20-somethings advice.
The blog’s editor-in-chief, recent UMD gradu-ate Katarina Alharmoosh, 22, is a perfect example of the type of person the blog caters too.
“It all started because she was looking for a job,
and [created] her own thing,” Rodea said.
The blog’s burgeon-ing popularity is a true testament to the power of media, especially in the younger generation. But where the blog hopes to go from here is unclear. Rodea said it is too soon to say defi nitely, but the group hopes to expand into uncharted territories.
“We’re hoping to move into video soon, and we’re playing with ideas about an interview section called ‘Washingtonian-of-the-Week’ that features young professionals in D.C.,” Ro-dea said.
Check out “20Some-thingCity” at http://twenty-somethinginthecity.blogs-pot.com/.
AU, UMD students create urban blog for ‘20 somethings, by 20 somethings’
COURTESY OF SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT
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THE BEST EATS AT U ST.
Located immediately outside the U St./Cardozo Metro stop, Ben’s Chili Bowl catches every-one’s attention. It’s a great place to eat at if you want hot, fast food. And since President Obama eats here, it has to be quality (and indeed, it is).
The quality “All Day” menu consists of typical American food like hot dogs, hamburgers and French fries. There are also “healthy choices,” featuring veggie burgers/dogs, turkey and chicken sandwiches and vegetarian chili. Sides include fries, cakes, homemade coleslaw and potato salad.
Everything is made to order, so the food is fresh. Be warned though: the takeout bag of fries drizzled in ketchup is extremely messy, so snatch loads of nap-kins. Also, depending on how crowded the restaurant is, it might take a while to get your food. Eat-in at Ben’s if you can.
Location: 1213 U St. NWCost: Main courses are all around $6.
Utopia Bar and Grill and other small restaurants wait past the corner McDonald’s. The menu at Utopia has small plates like the renowned steamed mussels, salads, seafood bisque and other soups, sandwiches and entrées, like broccoli and chicken, stir fried vegetables, mahi mahi and blackened New York Strip. It’s a smaller menu than most restaurants in the sur-rounding area.
Location: 1418 U St. NWCost: Entrées cost anywhere from $9-$22.
Famed music venue 9:30 club has its own restaurant full of tasty treats, including quesadillas, pizza, nachos, wraps, sandwiches, ham-burgers and some vegan options, like taco salad. And of course, for dessert, they offer their signature limited supply of 9:30 cupcakes. Snap up these delicious meals for the college-friendly price.
Location: 815 V St. NWCost: $5-$8
Head down 14th St to fi nd more cafés near music venue Black Cat, like Café Saint Ex. If you’re craving a full meal, Café Saint Ex runs on a three-course style menu. Start with a salad, then pick a falafel, burger or vegetarian dish and fi nish with cake, pudding or house made ice cream.
Location: 1847 14th St. NWCost: Entrées can range anywhere from $9-$26.
Next door, DC Noodles offers an exten-sive lunch and dinner menu of noodle dishes — surprise, surprise. This list integrates noo-dles from the wok, noodles salad, noodles in clear soup, noodles in spicy soup, noodles in soy soup, noodles in coconut curry and special noodles. Also, diners can enjoy some starter plates like vegetarian spring rolls and dumplings.
Location: 1410 U St. NW
UTOPIA BAR AND GRILL
BEN’S CHILI BOWL
Busboys and Poets is an event in itself. The calm, cool restau-rant is part café, part bookstore. The seats at the table are mostly couches, so guests feel comfortable while they sip a coffee or nib-ble on a sandwich.
The menu is a bit pricey, but it’s worth it for the delicious food. There is a smorgasbord of eats, including pizza, sandwiches, hot paninis, burgers, soups, meatloaf, lasagna, crab cakes, salads, des-serts and appetizers that are meant to be shared. The restaurant also offers breakfast and brunch until 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
It really fi lls up at night for the open mic nights (which cost about $5) and other cool performances, so be prepared to wait in the bookshop for a bit.
With food this good in such a convenient location, people might forget that they were originally attending a show.
Location: 2021 14th St. NWCost: $9-$23
BUSBOYS AND POETS
DC NOODLES
CAFÉ SAINT EXDESPERADOS BURGER AND BAR
For people who want a quick bite to eat or a late lunch before a show, Desperado’s is a good place to check out. With a name like that, people would expect Spanish food, but the bar’s specialty is actually hamburgers, conveniently priced under $10. Round out the meal with starters like spinach and artichoke dip and various sides, salads and desserts.
Location: 1342 U St. NWCost: Under $10
9:30 CLUB
By SYDNEY GORE / EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Although music feeds the soul, concertgoers should grab a meal before or after attending a show on U Street.
SYDNEY GORE / THE EAGLE
SYDNEY GORE / THE EAGLE
SYDNEY GORE / THE EAGLE
Courtesy of 9:30 CLUBSYDNEY GORE / THE EAGLE
SYDNEY GORE / THE EAGLE
!"#!"#$!%SCENE%&'!()"*+%,-.!/0!1%22+%2344 45
AUDIOPHILELooking for new music? DJs at WVAU share their thoughts on a range of recent releases.
A combination of two separate EPs, this latest release from John Dwyer’s Thee Oh Sees is a relentless, no-frills collection of ga-rage rock stompers, as opposed to the psych-pop tunes showcased on their earlier 2011 album, “Castlemania.”
While a few of the tracks feature short blasts of distortion and general madness,
many of the songs have a raw, jam-like feel to them that capture the essence of the band’s renowned live shows. Most notably, the al-bum’s title tracks (Note: I don’t know if an album can have two title tracks, but bear with me here) “Carrion Crawler” and “The Dream” are furious barnstormers that never feel like aimless noodling or guitar exercises, despite their lengthy running times. If you need a break from synth-dominated tunes or quiet folk ballads, this is the place to start.
Recommended If You Like: Jay Reatard, Ty Segall
BY CAMERON MEINDL
THEE OH SEESCARRION CRAWLER/THE DREAM
Brite Futures proves that the genre of alternative pop is more than just an oxymo-ron. This Seattle group uses their formidable songwriting skills, as evidenced on the brief and tantalizing electronic/classical/R&B “Winterlude,” in a unique way, given their dreary hometown, a place better known for, in the band’s words, “the whole grunge/beard folk thing.”
Instead, Brite Futures creates buzzy, eu-phoric tunes that are essentially a distillate of the better part of fun music; dance-punk (“Baby Rain”), pop punk (“Kissed Her Sis-
ter”), twee-pop (“Black Wedding”), funk (“Cosmic Horn”), top 40 pop (“Too Young To Kill”), ’90s rock (“Best Party Ever”) and indie rock (“Tell It To Me”).
The word “infectious” is an understate-ment here, as the synths hit the stratosphere and the vocal turns follow close behind over grooves that feel familiar but are actually brand new. The lyrics themselves are cutting and funny, a simultaneous spoof and celebra-tion of the tired themes of popular music. Brite Futures is far from stardom right now but is propelled by the songwriting of a ge-nius producer. The members are doing it themselves and getting by with pure talent.
RIYL: Weezer, Cults, The Rapture, Aqua-bats, fun
By JESSE PALLER
DARK PAST
BRITEFUTURES
Teebs, a producer from Flying Lotus’ ter-minally laid-back Brainfeeder camp, follows up 2010’s “Ardour” with a mini-album that pretty much follows in its obscured foot-steps, as well as the rest of Teebs’ hazy peers.
“Collections 01” is a classic L.A. beat scene trip-hop release, slurring sounds and bury-ing loops in reverberant effects to create a thoroughly immersive listening experience.
It languidly fl oats through exotic harp rever-ies, eerie waltzes and analog dreamscapes above clopping beats that feel more like sug-gestions than defi nite pulses.
The overall effect is one akin to contem-platively fl oating in a warm ocean. If you ex-pect music to provide constant stimulation, stay away. If you want to reach higher levels of consciousness while tuning your head-phones to the chillest zone on Earth, you’ve found your album.
RIYL:Flying Lotus, Telefon Tel Aviv, Bonobo, (chill) Four Tet
By JESSE PALLER
TEEBSCOLLECTIONS 01
An assortment of covers, unreleased mate-rial and new arrangements of older songs, this iTunes session from the New Jersey rockers might not seem essential to anyone outside of the band’s most devoted fans. Despite this, the performances are strong enough to earn a listen, with Brian Fallon’s raw vocals leading the way.
Covering artists like Pearl Jam, Tom Petty
and The Who might seem like an undertak-ing, but Fallon proves that he’s up for the chal-lenge, especially on “Baba O’ Riley,” wherein he admirably channels Roger Daltrey’s legend-ary delivery.
Despite this, performing that signature stadium-anthem in a high-tech studio session gives this version a strange, confi ned feel to it. The highlight of the sessions, however, is a slower, more soulful version of 2010 single “Boxer” that should tide fans over until The Gaslight Anthem’s next LP.
RIYL: Bruce Springsteen, The ReplacementsBy CAMERON MEINDL
THE GASLIGHT ANTHEMITUNES SESSIONS
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20 AOL feature21 Like grapefruit22 Cross shape23 It often has two
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candle36 Reunion
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hinders46 Mil. field rations47 Fruity suffix48 Noted51 Cold ones56 Optimal design
for clinical trials58 Tops59 Wading bird60 Yeats’s homeland61 Huck Finn-like
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The AU adjuncts want to organize. A number have been in discussions with a local union, claiming they deserve more job security, better pay and other faculty benefi ts such as offi ce space.
While The Eagle is hesitant to fully embrace an adjunct professor union, we do think University offi cials should give the issue its due attention — much more than they are now giving it. The AU com-munity needs to have this debate.
Some might say adjunct professors are the unheralded sixth man of AU, if we’re going to use sports metaphors. They pro-vide excellent instruction and real world experience to supplement teaching class-es for which tenured and assistant profes-sors are unavailable.
However, the more one looks at the statistics, the more it is clear that adjuncts are all-star players. An astonishing 47 per-cent of college professors nationwide are adjuncts, and it is estimated that AU em-
ploys a similar proportion. Far from teaching a small share of
classes, they directly impact the num-ber of students AU can handle. Higher student capacity in tandem with steady instructional quality means more tuition dollars for the University.
Despite the clear fi nancial benefi t ad-juncts pose to the University, AU hardly gives them the royal treatment.
The University doesn’t keep average adjunct salaries, but individual informa-tion demonstrates the disparity between adjunct pay and University benefi t. AU adjunct Professor Bob Lehrman says he is paid $4,000 to $5,000 a semester. Yet he calculated that each of his courses pro-duce over $25,000 in tuition money.
That’s a huge margin. Especially con-sidering that these adjuncts are given very little in terms of teaching support. No offi ce. No benefi ts. No job security.
This last point is especially important. Employing adjuncts gives the University a lot of fl exibility in hiring professors last minute, as they’re needed. Yet this also means they can be let go with equal ease, with virtually no warning.
Some may not understand why adjunct professors would need either benefi ts or
extended contracts. Isn’t this a second job for these professors? Doesn’t their original profession provide heath, life and dental?
Indeed, this is the case for many ad-juncts. However, a signifi cant proportion of these professors — nearly 28 percent, according to Lehrman — depend on multiple adjunct positions as a vital part of their income. Job volatility can signifi -cantly affect this group, and options for benefi ts and respectable contracts seem to be clear solutions.
Clearly, the University needs to reex-amine its policy toward adjuncts. At the most basic level, lack of transparency from the administration on the issue has been discouraging. All salary information for AU professors is public — except for adjuncts. When asked about his position on the issue, President Kerwin offered a curt “no comment,” claiming that he had heard no offi cial demands from adjuncts. Other administrators were equally reluc-tant to offer straightforward answers.
Only Dean of Academic Affairs Phyl-lis Peres offered a clear “no” to the idea of an adjunct union. Unfortunately, she explained her position only by offering that her opinion was that a union was un-
necessary. Surely, we can have a greater exchange of ideas than this.
Hopefully after both this editorial and increased pressure from organized ad-junct professors, AU will be more willing to explain its opposition to a union. Only then can we have the open and thought-provoking debate that the issue deserves.
This potential debate could provide the information needed to make an informed decision on the issue. Without this infor-mation, The Eagle hesitates to fully en-dorse an adjunct union just yet.
The use of adjuncts as a cost saver for the University cannot be underestimated. At a time when AU students average the most student debt in the D.C. region, AU should make relative tuition stability a priority. Should the union and organized adjuncts demonstrate that a union would not lead to skyrocketing tuition fees, then The Eagle would be the union’s biggest supporter. Until then, we will remain watching and waiting.
So, let’s have this debate so we can hear the arguments from both sides. It’s time for AU to listen to the adjuncts’ case, and make a transparent and coherent re-sponse. !!
ADJUNCT UNION DESERVES DISCUSSIONSTAFF EDITORIAL
Opinion "#$%!&'()*+,-.!/0!1+22*+23""
You say you want a rev-olution.
As far as revolutions go, the United States led the pack for a while.
The American Revolu-tion began with a docu-ment every sixth grader in the United States should be able to recite the begin-ning of, and “When, in the course of human events …” became the basis for our nation’s inception.
The Declaration of In-dependence shook the international community at the time. The Founding Fathers used words fi rst, actions second, to create the nation who’s capital we reside in.
We have a great lineage
of rhetoric that helps to defi ne our nation. The Pre-amble of the Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Procla-mation are all documents wars have been fought over because of the power of their rhetoric and what that language stood for.
That awareness of the power of language is something we sometimes take for granted. We’ve deemed the First Amend-ment so important we have an entire museum downtown dedicated to those 45 words.
A part of the Arab Spring was a want for free-dom of speech and simply being heard. Obama re-
marked a few months ago, “To the people of Egypt … I want to be clear. We hear your voices.”
Democracy is about hearing those voices. It’s what enables town hall meetings and caucuses, blogs and this very news-paper. If there is any form of government that loves its words, democracy has to be at the top of the list. The power of persuasion, of changing people’s opin-ions through language, is democracy at its fi nest.
The revolution we are all living through is, like most, heavily reliant on lan-guage. Occupy Wall Street is as much about what protesters are fi ghting for
as the fi ghting words they use. The movement prides itself of using language, rather than violent action, to get its message across, and it is utilizing every form of communication it can put into the hands of its protesters.
The most visible rheto-ric of the movement really comes down to two per-centages: the 99 percent and the 1 percent. These fi gures, regardless of where they came from, are powerful rhetoric devices in and of themselves.
We like to think num-bers are solid and con-crete: two is always more than one and you can’t dispute that 99 percent is
a powerful majority and 1 percent is, well, 1 per-cent. The connotation “99 percent” has earned from OWS is no longer almost everything; it is every-thing. The number has come to be identifi ed with something almost univer-sal in scope. It’s no longer a part, it represents the whole.
The rhetoric of the movement isn’t about blame as much as it’s about getting the powers that be to take notice of what the people want. It’s about spreading a message and getting the word out there that people are angry and they want change.
Governments can try and stamp down a revolu-tion, but the rhetoric stays with us.
I’m sure that years from now, regardless of what the outcomes of this movement is, we’ll catch ourselves walking around
Lower Manhattan and in-stead of referring to the headquarters of the move-ment as Zuccotti Park we’ll say “Liberty Square.” Occupy Wall Street isn’t something that will slip out of our collective conscious-ness any time soon.
The Beatles had it down, I think: people want change they can see. Change that they can con-cretely understand and will do anything they can do make happen, regard-less of what their oppo-nents say.
As scary as it may be, if you believe in your words, you need to stand behind them. Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?
Francesca Morizio is a double major in CAS and Kogod.
FRANCESCA MORIZIO | SPEAK MY LANGUAGE
Revolutionary words
AU needs to debate the merits of an adjunct
professors’ union.
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I was snubbed recently by the neglectful folks at People Maga-zine who named Bradley Cooper the “Sexiest Man Alive.”
They selected someone more “famous,” “handsome” and “tal-ented,” according to folks in my inner circle. Some in my thick-headed group added the adverb “tremendously” in there just to make sure I emphatically under-stood. I reminded them I share many of the same features as Bradley: brown hair, scruff, two ears, teeth.
They wouldn’t listen. They had consensus in their wrong-ness.
This incident reminded me of some of the feedback elicited from my previous column(s). As people are wont to do, they disagreed with my position, at-tributing their opinion to the overrated activity called actually
thinking about things. I listened to their complaints
while inserting my iPod head-set and went about my day. It seemed that being wrong was gaining traction, and I wanted to hit the gym to ward off an infec-tion of the virus.
As I’m running on the tread-mill at the bunker AU calls a fi t-ness center, I watched coverage of the Penn State scandal. In-stead of sympathy and sadness directed toward the victims, it was heaped onto former head coach Joe Paterno. Students were sobbing over his fi ring and holding vigils for his return.
I was hoping to fi nd some mention of the atrocities com-mitted during his tenure and a call to justice, but this seemed as fruitful as logging onto Eaglese-cure to print fi ve minutes before class.
There was nothing about the children. It wasn’t about the vic-tims. Unfortunately, that’s not terribly surprising.
What is surprising is the re-luctance of people to change their minds when new informa-tion enters the equation. People are more apt to cling to their loy-alty, allegiance and resolve than their discretion.
Despite allegations that Pater-no didn’t contact authorities for something as heinous as child rape, fans ratcheted up their sup-port.
Adoration of President Obama demonstrates another example of this resolute, willful blindness. Obama initially com-mitted to (Democrat supported) public fi nancing in his ascent to presidency only to change abruptly midstream. Democrat support didn’t waiver, instead
they emptied their pockets. After his victory over Sen.
John McCain, the focus swapped to other failed campaign prom-ises, like his inability to close Guantanamo Bay. Again, liberals pointed fi ngers elsewhere and backed their man.
Obama turned out to be nei-ther a leader, nor a liberal. More of the same, not hope or change. Despite the magnitude and emergence of these “relevant facts,” Democrats still support him.
I wonder what would happen if he came out and stated, “La-dies and gentlemen, I’m here to announce my conversion to the Republican Party.” Democrats would probably host a fundraiser for him.
That’s what the Nobel Peace Prize Foundation did. (After all, drone missiles are so much more humane for Democrats.)
We should proudly reserve the right to change our minds. It’s not wrong to alter our per-spectives when new information becomes available.
If Subway is completely out of bread, you don’t request Honey
Oat. You eat salad and then storm back to your dorm and Rant about it. And when you fi nd out you can’t Rant about it be-cause the editors didn’t post the Rant box, you brood and listen to Coldplay or Sax-playing dude.
To paraphrase a commenter from one of my columns last year, “I used to enjoy reading Shapiro until he started criticiz-ing the military. Now I think he should be waterboarded.” He/she changed their mind about me, and that’s totally cool. (Come back, I beg you, I’ll even let my editor waterboard me for charity).
Let’s think for ourselves and remain open to permitting new information to amend our opin-ions.
Here’s hoping People Maga-zine runs a retraction.
Conor Shapiro is a graduate student in the School of International Service.
CONOR SHAPIRO | SMARTER THAN I LOOK
Reserving the right to change our minds
Heartbreaking Redskins loss in over time. And to the Cowboys? Almost unbearable.
Everyone have a great Thanksgiving break! Don’t forget that, alas, fi nals are a mere three weeks away.
It’s been radically warm out lately. And in November, that’s weird.
The merry-go-round of Republican front-runners continues. Last week: Newt Gingrich. Who’s next?
Wait, wait, wait. Finals?
Trending Topics The highs and lows of the week, curated by The Eagle
Pumpkin Pie Thanksgiving Break Warm WeatherD.C. Sport StrugglesMayonnaise
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Over the past semester, I’ve used this column to dis-cuss aspects of AU that I believe could do a better job of serving students. And certainly, as anyone who reads the daily dose of Eagle Rants can testify, there is a lot to com-plain about at AU.
But when we’re going day in and day out keeping up with classes, pounding out papers and projects, study-ing for exams, seeking out internships and navigating through campus bureaucracy, it becomes all too easy to overlook the many blessings that we take for granted as AU students.
And so, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to use my fi nal column of the semester to acknowledge just a few things that we can all be thankful for.
Obviously, all of us can be thankful for the mere fact that we are students here at American University.
Despite our opinions of how the University brands it-self or operates, AU is by most measures a remarkable in-stitution, one where more than half of all applicants aren’t even given the opportunity to attend. In a society where obtaining a college education is essential yet elusive for so many, that in itself deserves recognition.
And part of that blessing is thanks to fi nancial aid. While the amount of aid we receive is never quite enough — and I can’t presume to speak for everyone on this — our fi nancial aid is what affords us the opportunity to at-tend AU.
My family is just able to get by on my parents’ income, yet does not qualify for federal grants, so I absolutely would not have the privilege to be attend this University if I didn’t have an AU scholarship covering a portion of my tuition and expenses.
As much as student organizations like to complain about having to deal with the internal bureaucracy at AU, the truth is that American University does a superior job of allowing student organizations to be run by students.
Although we can debate how effective our Student Government is, we are fortunate that we do have a strong, active and autonomous Student Government that per-forms a number of valuable services for the student body.
On that subject, I am personally thankful that AU has such a strong array of open student-run extracurricular organizations and such a strong internship program.
I’m of the opinion that extracurricular activities are as meaningful, if not more so, as the classes we take, in terms of exposing us to learning new skills, gaining expe-rience and developing networking opportunities.
And whether it be through on-campus organizations or off-campus internships, it is our attendance at AU that affords us the opportunity to discover our passions and career interests that will impact the rest of our lives. That is certainly something worth being thankful for.
And of course, these blessings are just the tip of the ice-berg. Each of us has our own assortment of things we can indeed be thankful for as we carve the turkey this week.
This isn’t to say that we can’t still complain about issues at AU. Looking forward, there are many tasks that need to be undertaken by this campus community to help make AU better. But even as we rant about AU’s defi ciencies, let’s also remember the many benefi ts that we reap from our attendance at this fi ne university, so that together, we may sow the seeds of an even brighter future.
Douglas Bell is a junior in SOC. [email protected]
Within the concerns over our na-tion’s rising debt, legislators have set up a false choice: either hurt the economy by raising taxes or sell out America’s future with severe cuts to education.
When the latter is chosen, these funding cuts leave schools with the decision on what programs to cut. Because schools will not cut subjects such as math or English, they are forced to cut the art and music pro-grams simply on the belief that they are less critical to a child’s education and development.
What legislators fail to realize is that the arts are a stepping-stone to America’s future economic suc-cess, and that’s something we can all agree with.
While it is understandable that programs like math and English avoid being cut because of the im-portance of “winning the future,” part of winning America’s future is promoting the creativity and imagi-
nation of our next generation. Local programs right here in D.C. that embrace the creative arts exemplify this economic imperative.
Mentors of Minorities in Edu-cation’s Total Learning Cis-Tem (M.O.M.I.E’s TLC) is a non-profi t dedicated to “nurturing the ge-nius” of children by creating a transformative educational experi-ence.!M.O.M.I.E’s TLC will continue to fi ght in the battle to keep art an active part of children’s growth and development. The M.O.M.I.E’s TLC program focuses on integrating cre-ativity and culture to students after school through community engage-ment.
M.O.M.I.E’s TLC is currently fi ghting to keep art and culture part of children’s growth and develop-ment through their program. As of right now, M.O.M.I.E’s is raising funds to help fi ll the budget gap of their new building which will house the permanent space for the after-
school program by Howard Univer-sity.
The building will be an eco-green children’s center, with high quality programs that are fully interactive. Their goal is to create a learning environment with a garden roof-top classroom, rainwater tanks and a geo-thermal heating system. An eco-green building will create a multipli-er effect in which savings can gener-ate funding for education rather than building costs. Thus, the fund will be helping children and the environ-ment.
The world around is constantly changing, a lesson we learn every day. Our education system should re-fl ect this and allow for the lessons in our children’s schools to change as well. This proves that if the schools will cut the arts programs, it is the duty of the public to help fund pro-grams like M.O.M.I.E’s TLC, which will help children with interactive learning through the expression of the arts.
Morgan Steinburg,SOC, 2012Jill Gurich, SOC, 2012
According to the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, in 2009, 9-month-olds in poverty had lower profi ciency levels in three of fi ve cognitive skills, compared with chil-dren at or above poverty by only 4 percent.
When observing the cognitive skills of 2-year-olds in the same poverty categories, there was an extremely vast difference.
For example, 29 per-cent of 2-year-olds in poverty demonstrated profi ciency in listening comprehension, compared with 39 percent of those at or above poverty. Fifty-fi ve percent of those in poverty were profi cient in expres-sive vocabulary, compared with 67 percent at or above poverty.
The statistics show that children in poverty have the ability to attain a high education and com-pete with those individuals at or above the poverty level. However, the earlier the learning begins, the
better chance the children have at succeeding.
The Southeast Children’s Fund (SCF) is aware of these statistics.
That is why the nonprofi t organiza-tion has been dedicated to educating residents of Wards 7 and 8 in Wash-ington, D.C., for over 15 years.
Frances J. Rollins founded the
Southeast Children’s Fund with the mission of helping children out of poverty by providing programs to support their social, emotional, cog-nitive and physical development. Children beginning at six months of age coming from some of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of D.C. are provided early care and ed-ucation that will start them on a path to success.
The nonprofi t organi-zation uses the Creative Curriculum developed by Teaching Strategies, Inc. It is based in research and focused on advancing pre-school aged children in the following fi elds: emo-tional, physical, cognitive and verbal.
Children are our fu-ture. They need the right direction at an early age in order to be the next Presi-dent of the United States or Chief of Police. By edu-cating local D.C. children, the Southeast Children’s Fund is a nonprofi t organi-zation that is making a dif-ference in both their and our futures.
Emily Stankiewicz SOC, 2012
M.O.M.I.E’s TLC keeps art alive for D.C.’s children
Southeast Children’s Fund: helping children in need
OP-ED
OP-ED
“Children are one third of our population and all of
our future.” —The Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health.
DOUGLAS BELL | WRITER OF OUR DISCONTENTS
Counting our blessings
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Last week’s “Look of the Week” column incorrectly im-plied that fur is making a come-back. According to the Humane Society of the United States, fur sales have steadily declined over the course of the past 20 years. After confronting the cruelty involved in fur production, con-sumers have rightfully rejected the use of animal pelts and skin for clothing.
Globally, 40 million animals are killed each year for their fur, according to Animal Aid.
The majority of animals used! in fur clothing spend their short, tortured existences on crowded farms before experiencing a painful and unnecessary demise.
Rabbits, minks and raccoons held captive for their fur expe-rience death in the form of a snapped neck or electric shocks sent through electrodes insert-ed in the anus or attached to genitals in order to avoid losing money from damaged pelts.
The remaining 10 million wild animals killed for fur suf-
fer! equally! with a prolonged, grotesque death when trapped in sharp-jawed traps.! These traps!are indiscriminate in whom they catch, often ensnaring cats, dogs and large birds, such as!ea-gles.
Data gathered by Friends of Animals suggest that the lives of! 42 foxes are extinguished to produce one coat.! This number does not include the 126!“trash”!animals!killed simply because their pelts do not meet expected standards for fur coats.
No matter the price tag, fur comes at too high a cost for ani-mals and the environment. The abundance of warm and fashion-
able alternatives prevents even personal vanity from serving as an excuse to wear fur.
Members of the American University community can ex-press their compassion towards animals by celebrating! Fur Free Friday Nov. 25 and com-mitting along with millions of other Americans to oppose fur clothing.! While rejecting fur, fur trim, leather and other prod-ucts produced at the expense of animals seems like a small step, it is a choice that can mean the!world!to animals.
We urge The Eagle to take a strong stance on fur and refuse to feature any fashion! involv-
ing such cruel practices.! !Retro clothing may be in, but fur is a trend that deserves to be left in the past.
William Theaker, CAS, 2014 and Taylor Kenkel, SOC, 2014. The authors are both members of American Vegan Outreach.
Fur comes at too high a costLETTER TO THE EDITOR
Eagle Rants TWITTERSPHERETHE
SAYSThis week’s best & worst of daily Eagle Rants
That moment when you re-alize you’re going home on Tuesday, and that giant hick-ey is going with you.
How can one best describe the horrid stench of the tunnel between North and South side? I believe Freaka-zoid said it best, “I don’t want to go down in that sewer. It smells like poo gas.” Seri-ously, can we do something about that?
Oh, please. You two were not “taking a nap” with your pants off.
@whoever pulled the fi re alarm in mgc/tdr today I hate you. I had a half hour window for lunch and I ate like 2 bites of salad. Please die a slow painful death.
To the girl who reads Par-enting Magazine in class: I read Parents magazine. I love looking up baby names and thinking about my future kids. We should be friends, and we can talk about baby stuff together.
tdr thanksgiving last night was sooo good! #nomnom
For the few hours before it was fi xed, seeing the rants as a jumbled, gigantic, un-formatted cluster was, while unreadable, perhaps a more apt way of presenting them.
During rush hour, there was super heavy traffi c today and the closest AU shuttle
couldn’t make it to its spot. It let its passengers off early and I noticed, so I ran over and jumped on. I was the only one who did. The bus did not stop for more passen-gers. I won’t lie, I laughed manically as we drove past.
Call me crazy, but I’m think-ing the SHOWER is where the leg-shaving needs to remain. Not the bathroom sink. Ew.
i’d be really interested to know how many of these come from phonathoners compulsively hitting refresh throughout the shift wait-ing for the day’s eagle rants. congrats rants god, you’ve successfully turned the en-tire phonathon into crack addicts!!
i’m sorry i don’t want to see you again. you seemed nice, but you ended up puking for most of the night and when you weren’t throwing up you were only focused on getting me back to your room cause your roommate wasn’t there. not exactly the fi rst date i was looking for.
you can judge me for my 10 AM walk of shame, but i’m judging you for rolling a keg down the hallway. if you couldn’t fi nish it last night i would have gladly helped.
@After three months at AU, I’ve discovered I’m super at-tracted to Jewish boys. Can I have a nice Jewish boy to
date?’ This. I know exactly how you feel!
I admit it, I take the elevator to the 2nd fl oor sometimes. I only do it when no one else is around and I’ve had a hard day. Before you severely judge, maybe consider that I’m just really tired and want a break..geez.
@”if there’s anything bet-ter than a warm TDR sugar cookie, I haven’t discovered it yet.” TDR SCONES ON SUNDAY MORNING. ‘nuff said.
I didn’t know it was possible to hate myself so much.
I just want to punch every-one of you in the face who looks at me the wrong way. Don’t piss me off. I’ve just had about enough of this damn university.
If you and your friend must argue about whether or not you are a biddie, then yes, yes indeed, you are a biddie.
What was the best thing be-fore sliced bread?
I know this may come as a shock to contrarian lem-mings like you, but Dasani’s gonna be fi ne if one univer-sity stops buying from them.
Zetus lapetus, I’m a senior. WHEN DID THAT HAP-PEN?!
Kudos to the AU shuttles!
You seem to have made an attempt at staggering the buses, much to my delight.
Lalala, I’m not listening. Go away, paper. Go away. SHOO! I SAID, GIT!
I rant so much I should put it on my resume.
I wish Justin Bieber had been the father. :[
Don’t be hating on sax man. Sax man is pretty cool. He plays sax and don’t afraid of nothing.
I think AU needs a line out-side of MGC similar to the line to go to a frat party. Only the line will consist of people who don’t have a meal plan and freshmen with too many swipes can pick out who they want to swipe in.
I have a napping problem and I need to acknowledge it. We need a napper’s anonymous on campus. The problem is, I probably would’t show up. It would take up too much of my valuable naptime.
I wish I were Asian, so I could smoke outside of the library and feel accepted.
After three months at AU, I’ve discovered I’m super at-tracted to Jewish boys. Can I have a nice Jewish boy to date?
If I have to download safe connect 1 more time I’m go-
ing to kick a kitten! You have been warned OIT!
There are no hipsters at AU. There are people who want to be hipsters.
That awkward moment when you realize you really do have to spell everything out for guys.
Pretty sure my life is about to get really messed up.
I wish the cheerleaders would take those damn bows out of their hair! It makes them look like Japanese an-ime characters, not to men-tion stupid.
AU WHY U NO LET ME REGISTER?
When Nick Rangos becomes King of American, I’ll be his Anne Boleyn [Editor’s note: You’ll get beheaded after a three-year marriage?]Michael Angelo painted the debt ceiling thats why that crap was so expensive
Is it bad the two things that I miss the most from home are my bathtub and my cats?
Obnoxious boy in my class, do you really not really real-ize how rude it is to continu-ously interrupt the profes-sor? You talk so much and argue with her all the time in an extremely rude way. I can’t tell if you don’t realize how rude, pretentious, and
obnoxious you come across as to everyone else in the class, or if you are just one of those people that really likes to argue with professors NONSTOP and irritate the entire class.
Starting midnight this Sun-day, I am not leaving my sword/bottle of bourbon un-til Hyrule is saved yet again. The real world can wait.
You feel asleep, but you’re still pretty hot. I still kinda want to do you, but I don’t want to make that much of an effort…
Bros at gym:Get out of my way.Thank you.
Why don’t people want to live on campus? I’m not old enough to have a backyard. Next thing I know, I’ll be driv-ing a minivan too. NOOooo
Is this guy seriously drunk in the library? It’s Tuesday, and it’s not even 5pm…... #lifechoices
There should be a gym cam so I can see how crowded it is before I go
Today I saw someone actual-ly stop and smell the fl owers.
That awkward moment when your hookup’s fl oor starts betting on when you’ll make it offi cial….
@AOSBORN08
@TOBYCPHILLIPS
@REBEKAHLPEPPER
One of the @AmericanU “World of Wonks” stickers has a typo on the back. The person behind these is clearly not a grammar wonk. #embarrassing
@AmericanU Has the slowest Library computers. #notimpressed
I’m pretty sure I’m going to have the @AmericanU fi ght song stuck in my head for days. #goeagles
AMANDA OSBORN
TOBY PHILLIPS
REBEKAH PEPPER
TWEET @THEEAGLEONLINE
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By CHRIS HALL
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
A strong fi rst-place fi n-ish by redshirt senior Matt Mariacher highlighted a weekend of wrestling for the No. 7 Eagles at the Keystone Classic Nov. 20.
With No. 2 Ryan Flores and No. 4 Ganbayar Sanjaa preparing for the NWCA All-Star Classic, the Eagles placed eighth out of 11 teams at the event.
Coming off a sixth-place fi nish against tough competition at the sea-son-opening Brockport/Oklahoma Invitational in Brockport, N.Y., the Ea-gles traveled to the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania to tangle with No. 16 Penn and No. 24 Northwestern University, among others.
The Eagles placed third last year and suited up this season minus Flores, San-jaa and Daniel Mitchell. AU Head Coach Teague Moore is holding out Mitchell in preparation for upcoming events.
Like at Brockport, Mari-acher stepped up and led the team.
Ranked ninth in the country at 141 pounds, Mariacher won his fi rst two rounds via a pin and technical fall.
After defeating Prince-ton University’s Adam Krop, Mariacher won a tough 4-3 decision for the championship over Jimmy Kirchner from Rider Uni-versity.
Another exemplary performance for the Ea-gles came from sopho-more heavyweight Blake Herrin, who rose to the occasion and produced a strong third-place fi nish.
After back-to-back victories in the fi rst two rounds, Herrin lost a close overtime match to Boston University’s Kevin Innis
3-1 before rallying for a 4-2 victory over Rider’s Evan Craig for third place.
AU also received help with a pair of fourth-place fi nishes from junior Thom-as Williams at 125 pounds and sophomore Kevin Tao at 149 pounds.
Tao notched two victo-ries against Penn’s Jordan Michelson and Harvard University’s Paul Liguori, before losing two close 5-4 matches against Nestor Taffur of Boston and Kevin Friedley of Northwestern.
Williams had an up-and-down tournament, starting off with a pin for a win be-fore losing in a tiebreaker to Rider’s Check Zeisloft. He bounced back with three straight pins before losing a 6-5 decision in the 3rd/4th match, again to Zeisloft.
Redshirt junior Thomas Barreiro wrestled his way to a sixth-place fi nish at 184 pounds. A strong 13-3 major decision over Appa-lachian State University’s Jesse Johnson was fol-lowed by a 7-0 setback to Brown University’s Ophir Bernstein.
Barreiro strung to-gether back-to-back wins in the consolation bracket before dropping his fi nal two matches, ending the tournament with a 9-5 loss to Penn’s Erich Smith in the 5th/6th place match.
Northwestern took home the tournament title with 140 points, and Ap-palachian State and Rider fi nished second and third with 97 and 92.5 points, re-spectively.
AU will next head to Albany, N.Y., Nov. 26 for the Northeast Duals, where Central Michigan University, Purdue Univer-sity and Penn will provide quality matchups for the Eagles.
Without key grapplers, wrestling places eighth at Keystone Classic Fans should appreciate
Caps’ success
Parker impresses at Patriot Invite
Mariacher’s championship leads wrestling during event
By JACK KERNOCHAN
EAGLE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The AU men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams both fi nished sixth out of eight teams at the three-day long Pa-triot Invitational at George Mason Univer-sity Nov. 17 through 19.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County swept the race, taking home the victory for both the men and women.
The Eagles posted top-four fi nishers in several races, highlighted by the per-formance from freshman diver Melissa Parker.
Parker paces women’s teamParker had the best fi nish during the
event for the Eagles, coming in second on the women’s side in one-meter div-ing. Parker’s score of 219.55 in the fi nals placed her second behind George Ma-son’s Ali Marie Murphy, who won the event with a score of 224.85.
Parker also fi nished fourth in the three-meter diving event.
Senior Leah Breen and freshmen Mir-iam Crispo and Grace Ibraham also an-chored the women’s team.
Breen’s best fi nish occurred in the 100-meter freestyle, where she brought in fourth place with a time of 51.87. Breen also placed sixth in the 50-meter freestyle (23.94), and came in 14th in the 200-meter free with a time of 1:57.52.
Crispo fi nished the 400-meter individu-al medley in 4:42.33, which was good for 12th place, while Ibraham fi nished in 15th in both the 100- and 200-meter breast-stroke.
Ballance, Feasley, Ong top fi nishers for men
Sophomore Bobby Ballance, senior Robert Feasley and junior Ming Ong were the top fi nishers for AU on the men’s side.
Ballance placed third in the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 52.19, while placing fourth in the 200 back after clock-ing in at 1:52.29.
Feasley’s best fi nish came in the 100-meter fl y, where he fi nished the race in 51.13 for a fourth-place fi nish.
Ong came in fourth in both the 200-me-ter breaststroke (2:07.59) and 200-meter individual medley (1:54.82).
The Eagles showed their impressive young talent with strong performances on the men’s side from freshmen Phil Piombi-no, Ryan Saunders and Harrison Volaski, who placed in the top 15 in their races.
The next meet for the Eagles will be Dec. 3 at Howard University.
By BEN LASKY
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
The Washington Capitals are offi cially a good sports team.
You know how you know some people, but you don’t really know them, so every time you see each other, you talk about the same subject? That’s the situation I found myself in the other day.
There’s someone I “know” at AU who I will pass on my way to class, say one or two things to about the Caps and keep walking.
What he said to me the other day surprised me. Without even saying “hello,” he yells at me, “Yo, what’s going on with the Caps?”
He didn’t say it in a “Wow, they’re playing great,” kind of way. He said it like he was talking about Tiger.
This is how you know the Capi-tals are good. They’re competing with the Florida Panthers for fi rst place in the Southeast Division, but they’ve lost eight of their last 12 games.
That’s where the Capitals are right now. Good teams aren’t al-lowed to go on losing streaks.
Recently, the New England Pa-triots lost two games in a row and shows on ESPN debated whether or not the league had fi gured out Tom Brady.
During spring training in 2002, a few months after the New York Yankees were three outs away from winning their fi fth World Se-ries in six years, a Yankee fan told Joe Torre that they would do bet-ter in the upcoming season.
Now don’t get me wrong. In no way am I comparing the Caps to the Patriots or the Yankees. But you have to understand that, for D.C., the Caps are on their level right now.
This is a city that still considers itself a football town but hasn’t had a serious Super Bowl contender since the Redskins won it in 1992.
Are the early departures from the playoffs a disappointment for Capitals fans? No doubt about it. But for real Caps fans, even the fact that the team is a perennial playoff contender is something that still doesn’t feel quite right.
When I say “real Caps fans,” I mean anyone rooting for the team
pre-Ovechkin. I’m talking about those who suffered through the Jason Doig era. I’m talking about when the most entertaining part of the game was when the people rode those stupid bikes around the rink in between periods.
What else do D.C. sports fans have right now?
There is no NBA, and if there were, the Wizards would be com-peting for their annual lottery pick by now.
The Nats have a nice core of young talent both at the major and minor league levels, but are prob-ably years away from seriously competing.
And the Redskins have a “who’s not quite as terrible as the other” battle going on at quarterback between Rex Grossman and John Beck.
The Capitals are a very good team, and their strong play over the last few years has raised ex-pectations. Are they great? No. Not until they make a serious play-off run.
That does not necessarily mean a Stanley Cup, but at least an ap-pearance. In fact, at this point, even a trip to the Eastern Confer-ence Finals would be an improve-ment.
Fans have to understand that teams go through rough spots during the season, and that’s what this is.
Think about it this way: If they hadn’t won their fi rst seven and then came crashing down like they did, would it look this bad? If their points were spread out throughout this still-early season, we wouldn’t be having this discus-sion.
The Capitals are too talented to keep playing like this. You don’t go from a team that wins seven in a row to one with a .300 the rest of the season.
So the answer to your question, person I don’t really know, is: Like in any sport, there are ups and downs during the season. Right now, the Caps are experiencing one of those downs.
And maybe it’s a blessing in dis-guise. Get the sloppy play out of the way early in the season so they are crisp going into the playoffs.
SIDELINE SCHOLAR
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Continued from Page 24
Munoz drove to the basket and missed a layup, but Brewer was there to grab the rebound and nailed a short-range jumper to even the score at 26 at halftime.
Despite Columbia’s Blaise Staab hit-ting a 3-pointer to open the second half, the Eagles outscored the Lions early on and got out to a slim 37-35 lead fi ve min-utes into the fi nal period.
Cisco was then key for the Lions of-fense, as Columbia’s center helped push the Lions out to a 52-48 lead with 6:17 re-maining.
But the Eagles responded when they needed to most, going on a 13-1 run over the next 4:21 to take control of the con-test.
In that time, Hinkle scored seven points and Munoz added four as the Ea-gles pulled ahead for good on their way to the 66-58 triumph.
Hinkle, Blake Jolivette and Munoz combined to score the Eagles’ fi nal 18 points en route to securing the team’s second win of the season.
Hinkle hit all three of his 3-point at-tempts on the night and ranks ninth in the nation with 24 points per game.
The two teams were nearly identical from the fi eld, with AU shooting 24-50 and Columbia going 23-48. The Eagles held an edge at the free throw line, as AU went 13-20 compared to Columbia’s 7-12.
AU also won the turnover battle, with the Eagles forcing 15 Columbia turnovers and AU only committing eight.
Five of the Eagles’ next six games will be at Bender Arena, starting with the team’s Nov. 22 contest against Quinnipiac University.
By SAMANTHA RAPHELSON
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
The AU women’s basketball team de-feated Mount Saint Mary’s University 77-62 Nov. 18 at Bender Arena after a strong offensive output made up for 18 AU turno-vers.
Lisa Strack led the effort for the Ea-gles (2-2, 0-0 PL) with a strong all-around performance that included 24 points, four 3-pointers, four assists and seven re-bounds. The 24 points matched a career high for the senior guard.
Sophomore guard Ti’Asia McGeorge added 15 points for AU on fi ve 3-pointers that came during key situations through-out the game. Tori Halvorsen contributed 11 points, while point guard Alexis Dobbs added fi ve assists in the win.
Sydney Henderson paced the Moun-taineers (1-2, 0-0 NEC) with 18 points.
“It wasn’t the prettiest win, but it was a critical win because we had two tough losses on our home court,” Strack said. “So I think it’s really important to get this win under our belt [and] moving forward, working on what we need to work on to
get better.” After knocking in back-to-back 3-point-
ers, Strack converted a layup on a break-away steal to put AU up 11-5 at the fi rst media timeout.
With 9:31 remaining in the opening half, freshman Jen Dumiak scored on a jumper from the right baseline to put the Eagles ahead 19-13 before AU entered an offensive drought. Dumiak’s jumper marked the last time the Eagles scored over the next four minutes, as the Moun-taineers chipped away at AU’s lead.
After two successive layups, the Moun-taineers tied the score at 19 apiece with 4:30 left until halftime.
AU responded by closing the half on a 15-2 run, only allowing the Mountaineers one layup.
The spurt started on a Sarah Kiely steal that resulted in a Geleisa George lay-up. George added a short jumper seconds later that was followed by McGeorge’s fi rst 3-pointer of the night.
“I just tried to be ready every time if the ball found me on offense, and my teammates did a really good job of attack-ing the guards and just pushing out so I
could get 3’s,” McGeorge said. A pair of 3-pointers by McGeorge and
Strack sent AU into halftime with a 34-21 advantage.
McGeorge heated up midway through the second half, hitting two 3-pointers within a minute of each other that extend-ed the Eagles’ lead from 52-47 to 58-49.
McGeorge then found Dobbs, who added another 3-pointer to AU’s total and put the Eagles up 61-53 with 7:54 to play. For the game, AU shot 11-22 from beyond the arc.
Despite surrendering 41 points in the second half, the Eagles snapped their two-game losing streak with the 77-62 victory.
AU Head Coach Matt Corkery said the team’s top focus is to get better at “play-ing together” and “having an identity” as one unit.
The Eagles will next begin a three-game road trip starting with a Nov. 21 contest at Youngstown State University before returning to Bender Arena Nov. 30 to take on the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Strack’s career-high night leads AU to win
COURTESY OF AU EAGLES
Sarah Kiely chipped in eight points in the Eagles’ victory against Mount St. Mary’s to help snap AU’s two-game losing streak.
Trio of double-digit scorers push men’s basketball past ColumbiaMunoz (14 points), Brewer (13 points)
aid Hinkle to defeat Lions
Women’s basketball vs. Maryland Eastern Shore
at 7 p.m.
Men’s basketball vs. UMBC at 7:30 p.m.
Volleyball vs. TBA @ TBA (NCAA Tournament
First Round)
Wrestling @ Maryland at 7 p.m.
Swimming and diving @ Howard at 1 p.m.
Women’s basketball vs. Maryland at 1 p.m.
Men’s basketball vs. St. Joseph’s at 8 p.m.
NOV. 30
DEC. 1DEC. 2
DEC. 3
DEC. 4
PATRIOT LEAGUE STANDINGS
WOMEN’S BASKETBALLArmy 0-0 PL, 3-1
American 0-0 PL, 2-2
Navy 0-0 PL, 1-2
Bucknell 0-0 PL, 1-3
Holy Cross 0-0 PL, 1-3
Lehigh 0-0 PL, 1-3
Lafayette 0-0 PL, 0-3
Colgate 0-0 PL, 0-4
VOLLEYBALLPatriot League Tournament semifi nals:
No. 1 American defeats No. 4 Colgate, 3-1.
No. 2 Army defeats No. 3 Lehigh, 3-0.
Patriot League Tournament fi nals:
No. 1 American defeats No. 2 Army, 3-1.
MEN’S BASKETBALLLehigh 0-0 PL, 4-2
American 0-0 PL, 2-2
Navy 0-0 PL, 2-2
Lafayette 0-0 PL, 2-2
Colgate 0-0 PL, 1-2
Bucknell 0-0 PL, 1-2
Holy Cross 0-0 PL, 1-3
Army 0-0 PL, 1-3
RACHEL DEVOR / THE EAGLE
The AU men’s basketball team is on a two-game winning streak following the victory.
By MICHAEL GARDNER
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
Behind the all-around play of fresh-man Sara Rishell, the AU volleyball team captured its 10th Patriot League Cham-pionship in the last 11 years with a four-set victory over the Army Black Knights Nov. 20 at Bender Arena
“It feels great,” said Rishell, who was named the Tournament Most Valuable Player. “Looking at all the banners up there, they have a ton of them, and just to follow in the footsteps of the teams be-fore us, working hard, it just feels great.”
Coming off a slow performance against Colgate University, the Eagles (23-10, 13-1 PL) jumped out to a 13-8 lead in the fi rst set.
Led by All-Patriot League First Team selection Ariana Mankus, the Black Knights (23-8, 12-2 PL) scored fi ve straight points to tie the game at 13.
The Eagles then won the set 25-21 af-ter sparking a 7-2 run and weathering a late Army comeback.
AU had an almost identical perfor-mance on the court in the second set, as
Juliana Crum registered fi ve kills to help American take the game 25-21 for a com-manding 2-0 lead.
But Army responded.Mankus and Margaux Jarka com-
bined for eight of the Black Knights’ 11 kills to keep Army alive with a 25-21 third-set triumph.
“It’s tough because they’re excellent attackers,” AU’s Rebecca Heath said. “We’ve really been working in practice on staying with plays and with the ball. Even if it’s not perfect, just fi nding a way through it, and I think it showed.”
In a back-and-forth match, the fourth set was no different than the previous three.
With the score tied at 21, Mankus’ serve sailed out of bounds to give AU a one-point advantage. On the ensuing point Rishell, the Patriot League Rookie and Player of the Year, came up big with a tip kill that went over the head of Army libero D.J. Phee.
The Eagles did not look back as they took the fourth set 25-21 to win the championship.
In a game where there were 30 ties
and 12 lead changes, AU Head Coach Barry Goldberg knew that keeping the lead was important.
“The lead was everything in this,” said Goldberg, the 2011 Patriot League Coach of the Year. “That part of the game there, [when you get into the 20s] it’s tough to come back. You’ve got to have some real strength about what you’re doing.”
AU has now won 18 of its last 19 matches, as Rishell, Crum and Heath re-corded double-digit kills in the title tilt.
Heath posted a double-double in both tournament matches as her, Rishell and freshman Monika Smidova were named to the All-Tournament Team.
At the beginning of the season, many had doubts if a team with eight freshmen could regroup and win a title, but this team proved otherwise.
“It feels great whenever you can prove people wrong,” Rishell said. “We did have a young team, but we had a lot of leaders step up, nobody gave up hope. We worked hard everyday and, you know, hard work showed itself.”
Volleyball wins Patriot LeagueEagles earn 10th Championship in past 11 years
RACHEL DEVOR / THE EAGLE
RACHEL DEVOR / THE EAGLE
The AU volleyball team once again fi nished its season atop the Patriot League, as the Eagles defeated Army 3-1 at Bender Arena in the title tilt. AU followed up its regular season crown with the tournament title, and clinched a berth into the NCAA Tournament.
Charles Hinkle poured in 21 points to help the Eagles defeat Columbia. The senior forward is averaging 23.2 points per game, good for ninth in the nation.
Hinkle leads Eagles to 66-58 road victory
Sports !"#$%&'()*+,-.%/0%1+!!*+!233
By ERIC SALTZMAN
EAGLE STAFF WRITER
When the Eagles played Columbia University last season, the Lions hit a pair of free throws with 1.7 seconds re-maining to hand AU its fi rst loss of the season.
This time, AU came away with a win. The Eagles (2-2, 0-0 PL) earned a
66-58 road victory over Columbia Nov. 19 behind a trio of double-digit scorers. Charles Hinkle led the way for AU with 21 points and seven rebounds, while Daniel Munoz chipped in 14 points and Troy Brewer recorded 13.
Brian Barbour led the way for the Lions (0-3, 0-0 Ivy) with 18 points, while Mark Cisco registered a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds.
After giving up the fi rst basket of the game, the Eagles went on a 15-5 run capped by a Brewer three-point play following a fast break layup.
The Lions then quickly overcame the early 15-7 defi cit to tie the game at 18 following Barbour’s jump shot with 4:54 left in the fi rst half.
The teams traded scores for the re-mainder of the half, and with three sec-onds until halftime, the Eagles found themselves trailing by two.
Continued on Page 23
Women’s basketball77-62 win over Mount Saint Mary’s University 23
WrestlingAU places eighth of 11 at
Keystone Classic 22
