THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBL ICAT ION OF THE UN IVERS I TY AT BUFFALO , S INCE 1950

Friday, may 2, 2014ubspectrum.com Volume 63 No. 77

Top 10 athletes of the D1 Era – No. 4: Brittney Kuras

Page

4Page

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10Arevalillo, Alvarez connect far beyond the court

Art students redecorate CFA’s walls for project

AARON MANSFIELDEditor in ChiEf

As Reggie Witherspoon an-swered the final question and his in-home press conference con-cluded, the friends, family mem-bers and former players sitting behind Witherspoon in support proclaimed, “Roll Tide.”

Wednesday, Witherspoon an-nounced he is heading to the SEC to become an assistant coach at the University of Alabama. Witherspoon was the UB men’s basketball team’s head coach for 14 years, from 1999-2013, before Athletic Director Danny White terminated his contract with three years remaining on the deal in March 2013 following a 14-20 season.

In July 2013, The Buffa-lo News reported that Wither-spoon had accepted an offer to become special assistant in charge of athletics at Erie Com-munity College, but in August that deal was nixed because of

a contract dispute – it was de-termined UB would no longer be obligated to pay the remain-der of Witherspoon’s deal if he accepted the ECC job. Wither-spoon said he had been in discus-sion with other colleges recently but there were no definite offers outside of Alabama, and he is grateful to have the “deep sense of uncertainty” behind him.

“People would ask, and I just genuinely did not know,” Wither-spoon said. “‘What are you going to do?’ ‘I don’t really know.’ But thank God. They say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

Witherspoon joins the staff of head coach Anthony Grant, whom Witherspoon said is the primary reason he was drawn to the job.

Witherspoon met Grant when his Virginia Common-wealth team upset Duke in Buf-falo in the 2007 NCAA Tourna-ment. VCU practiced that week

Former UB coach Witherspoon signs as assistant at Alabama

LISA KHOURYManaging Editor

Zubair Trabzada found out his mother passed away two months after it happened. He was 14 and spending a year in Orchard Park, N.Y. – living with a host family and experiencing high school in America.

When he returned to Afghan-istan, his family told him the news.

The youngest of six siblings, and the closest to her, Trabzada was devastated. But it was more than a loss for himself.

Amina, his mother, was a sta-ple figure in both his life and the lives of many Afghans. The wife of an important politician, Ami-na was known for her generosi-ty. She helped dozens of widows and orphans around their home in Kabul – Afghanistan’s capital.

Losing Amina meant losing someone who fought pover-ty and hunger in the third-world country first hand.

Trabzada couldn’t let that hap-pen.

In 2007, at 18, he returned to Buffalo and studied civil engi-neering at Canisius College. He transferred to UB in 2009 and started the Amina Foundation after graduating in 2012. Now, he’s seeking to recreate his moth-er’s generosity.

“That’s the biggest goal in my life,” Trabzada said. “Not to be somebody very rich … but just to be able to be in a position where I could help the people of Afghanistan, my people and these women and children, who a lot of them don’t even know about these wars or they have

nothing to do with these, but they’re suffering through it be-cause of it.”

What started as a mission to collect donations to send to his brothers overseas, who in turn bought food for widows and or-phans in poor villages surround-ing Kabul, turned into a move-ment at UB.

In November, five Middle Eastern UB students – Durgham Alyasiri, Sarah Hussain, Sal-ma Attai, Syed Ali Adil and Ah-mad Adil – and Buffalo State stu-dent Nilab Hussain joined Tra-bzada. Some of them have been refugees. Others have lost family members or been separated from them. They are driven to help because in their eyes, the wid-ows and orphans of Afghanistan aren’t so different from them-selves.

Durgham Alyasiri, a senior bi-ology and health and human ser-vices major, met Trabzada at UB

and helped support the Ami-na Foundation. Born in Iraq and brought up in Jordan, Alyasiri was raised by a single mother – which drives his passion to help women and children who don’t have a man to support their fam-ily.

“In the Middle East, where the more fundamentalists are, wom-en are basically deprived of their basic rights, so they can’t work,” Alyasiri said. “Even if they’re hungry and their children don’t have food, they still can’t go out and find a job. So they live on charity – that’s how their whole life is.”

The 23-year-old recalls what that’s like. He relied on extend-ed family in Iraq and Jordan for financial help. Joining the foun-dation came naturally to Alyas-iri, who now works three jobs to help support his mother and family in addition to going to

A mother’s charitable legacy lives onUB alum, students channel personal experiences to help Afghan widows, orphans

After year away from the game, ‘Spoon’ excited for challenge of SEC

KEREN BARUCHSEnior fEaturES Editor

Jordyn Lowe* remembers the moment she began to despise her body.

She was in the shower, reach-ing back for shampoo when she saw excess skin rolling over her hip.

FAT.She pinched it, then moved on

to her thighs, stomach and arms. She was 5-foot-4 and weighed

121 pounds, but she said she felt like “Shamu.”

Tears dripping from her face onto the shower floor, Lowe vowed she would never let her-self get “big” again.***

Left. Right. Left. Lowe moves faster. Sweat

drips off her nose and onto her chest. She’s going to get where she wants to be – she can feel it.

Her idol: Marilyn Monroe. Mental and emotional distress are experiences Lowe can relate to. She loves Monroe’s story.

Fame. Success. Perfection. She will one day stand on stage

while everyone applauds. But she has to be thin enough. That’s why numbers matter.

A Wegmans medley of red, green and yellow peppers: 70 cal-ories

Bean salad: 200Cookie cake: 1,000 She gave in to the cake. She

tried to fight with all her might to stay away from it, but the warm cookie cake covered in yellow frosting – her favorite – looked too appetizing. Plus, she had been starving herself for days, so why not?

A little treat for all of her hard work can’t hurt that bad, can it?

It can. She feels full. She has to burn more. More than she ate. Burn double her daily intake.

Two thousand. She won’t stop unless the number on the tread-mill’s screen reads “2,000 calo-ries.” It’s her little secret. She’ll

never share it. Left. Right. Left.

***In one semester, the fall of

2011, Lowe lost 18 pounds. She also became one of the 20

percent of college-aged women across the country with an eating disorder.

At UB, the official number of students treated for eating disor-ders this year is 60, said counsel-or Carissa Uschold of UB’s Stu-dent Health and Wellness Cen-ter. But, she added, this is just a fraction of the students who are

starving, bingeing and purging every day.

These unknown students – mostly women but an increas-ing number of men – are hard to find and even harder to help, because more than 80 percent of them are afraid or reluctant to come forward, according to statistics from the National As-sociation of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Close to 48 percent of these students don’t even admit they have a problem with food.

An innocent addictionLowe started counting cal-

ories in a pocket-sized yellow notebook. She carried her note-book with her everywhere and – like Bridget Jones – made cal-culations and notes about her-self.

Fat-free Swiss cheese: 45 Grilled Chicken: 200 Tea with milk: 10 Tostitos and edamame salad:

140 per half a cupStir-fried vegetables with teri-

yaki sauce: 95 Trail mix from Wegmans’

“bulk” section: 240 In between classes, she rushed

to the gym to burn more than she had consumed.

Two hours elliptical: 650 Five miles on the treadmill:

700She wouldn’t dare do biceps

curls, fearing it would make her arms look bigger rather than shrinking them. As long as her calories burned were double her calories consumed, she felt safe.

“I’d wear gym clothes to cam-pus and in between classes I had a place to go where I felt I need-ed to be,” she said. “While my group of friends went to lunch or socialized in the library, I was with my pals: treadmill and ellip-tical.”

A few weeks into her new life-style, Lowe’s friends began to no-tice a change. She had lost about six pounds and had gained new

SEE WITHERSPOON, PagE 2SEE AMINA, PagE 2

Learning to let goUB students recount their experiences with eating disorders, share advice

SEE LEARNINg, PagE 7

AARON MANSFIELD, The SpecTrumReggie Witherspoon, who served as UB’s men’s basketball coach for 14 years, has accepted an of-fer to become an assistant at Alamba. He held a press conference in his East Amherst home to announce the decision Wednesday.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALINE KOBAYASHI, THE SPECTRUM

CHAD COOPER, The SpecTrum(From left to right) Zubair Trabzada, a UB alum, and UB students Durgham Alyasiri, Syed Ali Adil, Ahmad Adil, Sarah Hussain, Salma Attai and Buffalo State College student Nilab Hussain are members of the Amina Foundation.

ubspectrum.com2 Friday, May 2, 2014

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school full time. He says helping others is part of the Arabic cul-ture.

He helped organize the Am-ina Foundation’s first public fundraisers – a bowling event in March and a soccer tournament in April. He spoke in front of his classes, reached out to off-campus organizations and even asked professors for donations.

For member Sarah Hussain, her childhood experience of be-ing a refugee fuels her passion for the Amina Foundation.

When Hussain was 5 years old, she and her parents left their home in Afghanistan to go to a wedding in Uzbekistan. They planned to vacation there for two weeks.

During those two weeks in 1998, the Taliban took over Af-ghanistan.

“It was not safe for our fam-ily to go back, so we just stayed in Uzbekistan,” said Hussain, a senior biological sciences major. “It was difficult because we just planned to stay for two weeks; we left everything there. And not being able to go back to Af-ghanistan was shocking to us.”

Hussain adapted to her new home, learned the language and made friends. But by the time she was 14, her father had signed up his family for a refu-gee visa. Her family’s fate was out of their control – the visa could lead them to Canada, America or Australia. They end-ed up in Buffalo.

So when Alyasiri told his classmate Hussain about the Amina Foundation in Novem-ber, she was immediately com-mitted. Her life goal is to return to Afghanistan as a physician’s assistant.

“At this moment, we’re just doing financial [support]. So my plan was to become a physician’s assistant and go back and help,

but I don’t have to wait until I become a physician’s assistant. I can do it right now,” Hussain said. “All you gotta do is just teamwork, and have the passion of helping, and I found those people. So we united and we’re working on this project.”

With that passion, the group has raised almost $6,000 since November.

Twice per week, Trabzada’s brothers in Afghanistan provide $100 worth of food to a widow and her children – which, be-cause of the difference in cur-rency, is enough to feed a family of four to five for a month, ac-cording to Alyasiri.

Each weekend, when Trabza-da’s brothers drop off the food to a family, they take photos of the family holding a “thank you” sign, written to one person or family who made a donation. That’s one of Alyasiri’s favor-ite parts of the foundation – he said when he looks at the pho-tos, he relates to the children.

Just as Trabzada’s mother did in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where his family fled during the civil war, his brothers give oil, rice, beans, potatoes and other cooking supplies and raw mate-rials.

Before the Taliban seized Ka-bul from the Afghan military in 1996, a victory that began five years of Taliban rule in the cap-ital and large parts of Afghani-stan, Trabzada lived a comfort-able life in Kabul.

His family had a big house, nice cars and servants, whom Amina treated with kindness and respect. When the family fled to Pakistan temporarily dur-ing the Taliban’s occupation, his family lost everything.

“Even when we went to Pak-istan, I mean we had left every-thing, but [Amina] always had a great heart,” Trabzada said. “She

always found people who were in need around us. And every month, she would actually do the same thing. She would find a family who needed a lot of help, and she would provide them food – basically the same thing we’re doing right now.”

In fact, Trabzada’s efforts are almost identical to his mother’s – he focuses on widows and or-phans as she did. He provides them with the same types of raw materials Amina did.

As he spoke about his moth-er’s generosity, he recalled a sto-ry that made him smile. He and his mother were walking to a grocery store when she saw a woman coming out of a tent with her children.

“She actually said, ‘Why don’t you come to our house later on and I’ll give you some raw food?’” Trabzada said. “And then she started giving her a lit-tle bit of oil, potatoes and on-ions and whatever. Then she said, ‘You know what, every month, at the end of the month, why don’t you come to our house, and I’ll give you the sup-plies that you need for the rest of the month?’”

The Amina Foundation re-cently applied to be a Student Association club. In the future, members hope to be a New York State not-for-profit organi-zation.

As a Muslim, Trabzada feels charity is spiritually nourishing.

He doesn’t like much attention or credit. He emphasizes how the foundation’s members, and their hard work, have been able to feed so many families.

For Trabzada, like it was for Amina, it will always be about others.

email: news@ubspectrum.com

at UB, and Witherspoon has been a fan of Grant’s coaching style ever since – particularly his pressure defense and ability to execute it against great teams, and his propensity to go deep into his bench and produce bal-anced teams.

“Coach Grant has been ter-rific with not only me but he’s been great as a coach at Flori-da, at VCU and certainly at Al-abama,” Witherspoon said. “My wife and I, Dawn and I, got a chance to go down there and vis-it Tuscaloosa and were amazed by the hospitality of the people there, by the resources there and by the extensive knowledge of building a program that Coach Grant and his staff have.”

Witherspoon has spent the past year doing freelance con-sulting for teams at every level, from high schools (including the Park School in Buffalo) to col-leges (including South Carolina and Illinois) to NBA teams. Still, not being a full-time head coach was difficult for Witherspoon.

“It’s been a struggle to be away from something that I’ve been doing for so long, but at the same time it’s given me an opportunity to visit different programs … practices, games, and just see how other people are doing it and understand how they’re doing it,” Witherspoon said. “And a lot of it validat-ed some of the things we were doing, but it’s been a challenge, and this will be a challenge, too – to move, to get down there – but it’s one we’re really excited about.”

Witherspoon said he was shocked to learn how many pro-grams were aware of his meth-ods of coaching – likely refer-ring to the patented high-low offense he developed at UB, known in some circles as “Reg-gie Rise-Up,” which many col-lege teams now run.

Witherspoon was born and raised in Buffalo, and before his time atUB, he coached at Sweet Home High School (going from

junior varsity head coach to var-sity assistant to varsity head coach) andECC. Much of his press conference involved remi-niscing on his extensive time in the Buffalo basketball commu-nity – from crying as a young boy after Buffalo Braves losses to becoming a ball boy at UB – and expressing gratitude for those who have supported him over the years.

“It will always be home … we’ll always be connected to Western New York and mindful of the support that we’ve had here for 30 years, really,” With-erspoon said.

“I am really thankful and grateful to be able to serve as part of the Western New York basketball community and to have been able to have helped in any way, and I’m just so appre-ciative and so grateful for their support over the years.”

The decision of White, who was then in his first year as AD, to fire Witherspoon, who had helped lead the develop-ment of UB’s Division I pro-gram, spurred controversy in the Buffalo community. White hired Rhode Island assistant Bobby Hurley to take over, and Hurley’s UB team – led by se-niors Javon McCrea, Josh Free-love and Jarod Oldham – fin-ished 19-10 and lost in the Mid-American Conference quarterfinals.

“Even the support that we got here in Western New York was a little bit surprising, going through what we went through just a little over a year ago,” Witherspoon said. “Everywhere I went here, really, it surprised me how much support we had.”

Grant is 99-51 in his five-year career at Alabama. This year, his team finished 13-19. It was the program’s first losing season in 14 years.

Witherspoon said he and his wife will be moving to Alabama shortly.

email: sports@ubspectrum.com

Continued from page 1: Witherspoon

Continued from page 1: Amina

ubspectrum.com 3Friday, May 2, 2014

oPinion

Friday, May 2, 2014Volume 63 Number 77

Circulation 7,000

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EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITOR IN CHIEFAaron Mansfield

MANAGING EDITORS

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OPINION EDITOR

Anthony Hilbert

COPY EDITORSTress Klassen, Chief

Amanda JowseySamaya Abdus-Salaam

NEWS EDITORS

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FEATURES EDITORSKeren Baruch, Senior

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ARTS EDITORSJoe Konze Jr., Senior

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SPORTS EDITORS

Ben Tarhan, SeniorOwen O’Brien

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PHOTO EDITORSAline Kobayashi, Senior

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CARTOONISTAmber Sliter

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Continued from page 1: Witherspoon

A 22-year-old from Williams-ville lies face down, subdued and handcuffed on the sidewalk. A Buffalo police officer stands over the man and repeatedly kicks and slaps him. Other officers stand and watch while a bystander films the injustice.

The video depicting the bru-talizing of John Willet was post-ed on YouTube last week, lead-ing to federal investigation of the incident. In the wake of the vid-eo’s debut, six officers have been put on leave and public ire is bur-geoning.

The case comes on the heels of a similar incident of document-ed police brutality involving a publically intoxicated college stu-dent in Tennessee and an officer who choked the student until he passed out.

Police brutality also went vi-ral on Twitter, via the hashtag #myNYPD, as what was meant as an innocuous photo contest ini-tiated by New York City’s police department became an avenue to post photos of police brutality and overreach.

Police brutality deserves a spot in headlines wherever it occurs – visibility of law enforcement overstepping clear moral and legal boundaries is critical in stopping the endemic problem and ensur-ing censure for officers who en-gage in unnecessary violent be-havior.

It is unfortunate that our city is receiving national attention for this problem.

Daniel Derenda, Buffalo’s po-lice commissioner, held a press conference Monday to discuss the video of the April 19 event. Derenda assured the public that a complete investigation was under way and that “99.9 percent of our police officers every day do the

right thing.”That remaining tenth of a per-

centage, however, is absolutely in-tolerable. And those who chose to stand and watch are by no means innocent.

Willet was arrested on charges of drug possession and resisting arrest. His suspected actions were

unlawful and he should be held accountable in a court of law for them.

The sidewalk is not the place for justice to be served and the end of an officer’s boot is not an acceptable mode of delivery.

Police brutality itself is an alarming problem that has long

plagued communities across the United States, and one that often goes unreported. More than 50 percent of officers stated it is not unusual for an officer “to turn a blind eye” to improper behavior by a fellow officer, according to a survey by the National Institute of Justice.

The pervasiveness of cameras among such a wide swath of the population has, as indicated by the incidents above, opened the eyes of society to a problem long left unseen, left on dark street corners or alleyways.

Visibility of the issue is the first step to counteracting it.

The case of John Willet in Buf-falo, Jarod Dotson in Tennes-see and the countless individuals whose mistreatment has been il-luminated through #myNYPD reveal a disturbing trend but also potential for change.

As this nation’s eyes are opened by social networking to the wrongdoings by those meant to protect and serve, reprehensi-ble abuses of power can be ad-dressed.

What is needed now, in Buffa-lo and elsewhere, is swift punish-ment for offenders and those that stood idly by as someone sworn to protect the public violated that duty. Officers who are mor-ally indifferent enough to not in-tervene deserve to be reprimand-ed quickly and severely, lest a culture of tolerant apathy is rein-forced among those whose mor-als should stand as an example for the community.

This city’s police department has been tarnished by the actions of a few. Only an appropriate penalty will reinstate the trust of the public.

email: editorial@ubspectrum.com

A violation of law, duty and trust

The death penalty is slowly dy-ing – not because of legal chal-lenges or moral opposition to the practice, per se, but because the tools of the trade are increasing-ly unavailable.

The latest in a string of conten-tious executions came this week when the state of Oklahoma car-ried out the death penalty on con-victed rapist and murderer Clay-ton Lockett.

A striking trend of using new drugs to execute prison-ers has overshadowed executions throughout the year. In protest of the death penalty, European drug manufacturers are no longer pro-viding drugs traditionally used for execution to the United States.

This has left states vehement on executing criminals testing the effectiveness of new, at times un-tested, clearly unsafe drugs. This lack of testing has exacerbated the already arguably cruel and un-usual punishment that character-izes the experience of a prisoner after receiving the drugs.

Witnesses described the Lock-ett’s execution as “botched.”

After witnessing the con-

demned writhe on the gurney 10 minutes after being deemed un-conscious by the doctor present, the injection process was halt-ed. The blinds of the window into the viewing gallery were low-ered. Lockett died of a heart at-tack over half an hour later. Offi-cials say a vein of his “exploded,” meaning the drugs were absorbed slowly into his soft tissue as op-posed to his bloodstream.

The incident has thrust the de-bate over capital punishment back onto headlines across the coun-try. The death penalty is being at-tacked not for its moral or legal grounding, but for its increasing impracticality, spurred by inter-national discontent with the prac-tice.

The question still retains some obvious ethical considerations. When does legal execution be-come illegal cruel and unusu-al punishment? Is a human being wrenching and writhing in pain, clenching his or her teeth and thrusting on a gurney the image of justice served?

Lockett, like Michael Lee Wil-son and Dennis McGuire (crim-inals who have suffered similar-

ly botched executions with new drug cocktails), certainly deserved the maximum punishment al-lowed under the law for his vile crimes.

Wilson and McGuire faced in-humane death sentences with drug cocktails in lieu of the ap-propriate drugs being available. Danish and Italian drug mak-ers have ceased shipping sodi-um thiopental and pentobarbital to the United Stated in protest of capital punishment.

The question is not whether Lockett should have been pun-ished, but whether we as a civi-lized society wish to maintain a practice that is increasingly van-ishing from developed nations. While the world is moving away from the notion of an eye for an eye, we are left killing heinous criminals in increasingly heinous ways.

The question that arises with this latest failed attempt at admin-istering a flawed conception of justice is, is that how we wish to conduct ourselves?

International norms alone are not reason to change a criminal

policy still practiced in the vast majority of states, but it gives cause for careful reflection.

A series of inhumane execu-tions, be they of depraved crim-inals or not, is cause for mean-ingful action and serious recon-sideration of how we administer justice to those we find most con-temptible.

A nation can scarcely be judged by how it treats the average citi-zen or laudable prodigy. It is as-sumed, rightfully so, these pop-ulations will flourish and pros-per in any functioning society. It’s easy to promote human rights when everyone behaves humane-ly.

How we choose to handle in-dividuals who have offended the general citizenry, who have com-mitted actions universally seen as reprehensible and depraved – that will be the test of our character.

With Lockett’s death still at the forefront of our attention, the time to decide how we will define human rights is now.

email: editorial@ubspectrum.com

It’s time to kill the death penaltyBotched execution calls for reevaluation of already questionable practice

Police brutality turns suspect into victim, officer into criminal

art by AMBER SLITER, The SpecTrum

ubspectrum.com4 Friday, May 2, 2014

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LifE, artS & EntErtainMEnt

MEgAN WEALaSSt. artS Editor

For the past few weeks, An-nMarie Agness has been sitting in the basement of UB’s Center For the Arts with a paintbrush in hand and a white wall in front of her.

To the untrained eye, the wall painting that is beginning to ma-terialize may look like little more than jagged lines breaking apart the whiteness of the wall. But Agness’ wall painting is more than that – it’s an exact replica of the audio waves for the track “Black Cow” by Steely Dan. It’s incredibly precise.

Against the top 40 tracks that litter today’s music scene, the au-dio track shows dynamism and scrupulous engineering. Such qualities may be rare in today’s music, but they’re alive in UB’s art students.

“I have lost count of how many hours I’ve spent on this,” said Agness, a junior general stu-dio major. “I’ve been here for the past few weeks – just paint-ing.”

Five years ago, when Joan Linder, an associate professor in UB’s art department, walked through the bare walls of the CFA, she decided something needed to change.

“I used to walk into this build-ing and it felt like Bed, Bath and Beyond – something really anti-septic, not like an arts school,” Linder said. “I just wanted to see something on the walls.”

So Linder incorporated the execution of a mural as a final project in her class, ART307: Thematic Drawing. The murals are projects that let students ex-perience drawing in the public eye and develop their perspective

on location. It serves as a way of creating a voice, developing in-terests and communicating a per-sonal visual language.

The wall paintings go through a long process before the brush-es are dipped into paint. They are meticulously planned and overseen by multiple authorities within the university, including Linder, the chair of the art de-partment and the head of facil-ities.

The wall paintings are more than just drawings – they express UB students’ pride in diversity. On one side of the second floor corridor Joe Vu, a senior studio major, uses thick black paint to curve strong lines into shapes.

“Mostly it’s inspired by Jap-anese line work and commer-cial art more than anything else,” Vu said. “This building sucks. So this adds a little character to it. It kind of makes you feel as if you’re in an actual arts school because this program is very safe and painting the murals messes with that a little bit, which is re-ally cool.”

The lines are forming large,

expressive shapes with flowers and circular patters being dom-inated by waves that have been entwined through the smaller features of the mural.

Neaha Aamir, a junior psy-chology and general studio ma-jor, is seated in the same corri-dor. Her painting, which sits on the wall opposite of Vu’s, rivals the other painter’s bold, artistic stance. At the center of Aamir’s mural is a giant face of a Mus-lim woman.

“This is a Muslim woman, and in society today they’re kind of targeted, so I wanted to do something that was kind of cel-ebratory,” Aamir said. “When-ever I walk into the hallways, I feel kind of inspired by some of them. It’s good that we have this kind of outlet to make it nice.”

The wall paintings weren’t di-rectly intended to spread diver-sity, but the art being plastered across the walls is expressive of the eclectic mix of students who call UB their home.

The pieces of art do not over-bear each other – they stand

Art students redecorate the CFA’s bland walls for final project

No more white walls

CHAD COOPER, The SpecTrumAnnMarie Agness, a junior general studio ma-jor, works on her wall painting as part of the class, ART307: Thematic Drawing. Her paint-ing depicts the audio waves of “Black Cow.”

Kickboxing, choir and French literature Ph.D. student from Germany aims to build sense of community in various ventures

CLAUDIA ORNISStaff WritEr

Halfway through a Cardio Kickboxing and Toning session in Alumni 75, everyone looks tired – everyone but one woman.

With a voice that overwhelms the blaring music in the room, she continues her reps and sings along with the music, seeming-ly unfazed by the high-intensity workout.

This is Ute Inselmann.Inselmann, a Ph.D. student

studying French literature, has been working hard most of her life. Inselmann grew up on a dairy farm outside of the city of Hamburg, Germany. Grow-ing up, she had to do chores with her brother and sisters to main-tain the farm.

“A dairy farm is a business that requires a lot of hard work,” In-selmann said. “I’m used to know-ing everyone has to chip in … There’s no reason why, you just have to be hard working.”

Her upbringing instilled a sense of hard work and com-munity that has followed her throughout her life. While pursu-ing her Ph.D. in Buffalo, she par-ticipates in a German-conversa-tion club that she founded, sings in the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and instructs fitness and French classes – all the while de-veloping a sense of community in each endeavor, which she be-lieves to be integral in enjoying a rewarding life.

Inselmann admits she had no desire to come to the United States before coming to Buffalo. She’s always loved Europe, and in Germany she studied to be a translator and planned to trav-

el to France or another Europe-an country.

But in 2005, when an oppor-tunity came to work as a social worker in Buffalo, she took it and has been here ever since.

Inselmann started her career at UB as an undergraduate. She majored in Spanish, French and German, with a minor in educa-tion, and managed to graduate in three and a half years.

ANDY KONIUCH, The SpecTrumUte Inselmann, a Ph.D. student studying French literature, participates in a Ger-man-conversation club that she found-ed, sings in the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and instructs fitness and French classes – all the while developing a sense of community in each endeavor, which she believes to be integral in enjoying a rewarding life.

SEE MURALS, PagE 8SEE COMMUNITY, PagE 8

ubspectrum.com 5Friday, May 2, 2014

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If you were on campus be-tween 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday or Tuesday, then you probably saw the graphic photos of abort-ed children, lynched slaves and Jews in concentration camps out-side the Student Union. And I’m sure you might have wondered – whether you identified with the anti-abortion or abortion-rights cause – why these offensive pho-tos were being shown.

Were they just there to offend and antagonize people, or did they serve some higher purpose?

One of the amazing things about photography is that it forces us to acknowledge brutali-ty and violence in a way that con-versation never could. Gazing upon the bloody, ripped corpse of a 10-week-old is infinitely dif-ferent from referencing the re-sults of “terminated pregnan-cies” as “blobs of tissue” during political discourse.

Throughout history, photogra-phy has helped expose social in-justices and genocides. During the late 1800s, King Leopold II of Belgium beat, enslaved, muti-lated and brutally killed citizens in the Congo when Belgium’s production quotas for rubber and ivory were not met. Had his actions not been exposed through the photography of Al-ice Seeley Harris and her hus-

band John Harris – missionaries in the Congo during the 1900s – these horrific abuses might never have been exposed. Their photos depicting children with severed arms and legs formed one of the first ever multimedia campaigns for human rights.

Years later, during the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. made sure the brutal at-tacks on blacks were shown re-peatedly and without censorship, on TV and in magazines all over the country. Americans saw the violent photos of dogs attacking blacks; they saw how water can-nons were used as weapons on their fellow citizens. And they were forced to acknowledge the grave reality of racism. He un-derstood, as opponents to abor-tion rights do, that visual societ-ies respond to visual realities.

King said that America would never reject racism until America saw racism. He was right – and today, his niece says the same thing about abortion. Dr. Alveda King, an anti-abortion activist, believes America will never re-ject abortion until America sees abortion.

So do I. And that’s why there were graphic photos outside the Student Union this week. As op-ponents to abortion rights, and as human beings, we have an ob-ligation to bear witness, to testi-fy to the violence and genocide that is abortion. We need the pic-tures to show our campus, and the world, the humanity of the pre-born.

Abortion has become unfor-givably abstracted in our society – so frequently is it referred to as a choice, a reproductive right, a medical procedure or a neces-sary surgery, that we forget what it looks like. We lose ourselves in semantics and when that hap-pens, it’s easy to forget the phys-ical reality of any situation. Lan-

Graphic images are necessary to anti-abortion movementPhotography plays a vital role in all human rights campaigns

JOE KONZE JRSEnior artS Editor

Album: Pop PsychologyArtist: Neon TreesLabel: Mercury, Island Def JamRelease Date: April 22, 2014Grade: C+

Neon lights burn bright when you first plug them in. But af-ter time, the buzzing slows, and their luster eventually fades.

Pop Psychology proves the Neon Trees are no different.

The new album has some catchy tunes, but the simplicity of each hook doesn’t showcase the band’s true talents and the pace of the album suffers, losing the listener’s attention after a few songs.

It takes a few tracks to get the idea of the album, but once you reach “Sleeping With A Friend” – the third track – it becomes apparent what frontman Tyler Glenn was going for: angst and humor.

With a reverbed, mildly dis-torted guitar, the song gives a catchy hook that is easy to lis-ten to and has a nice balance that doesn’t overpower Glenn’s voice.

There is that same bubble-gum pop feel with the fuzzy ’60s dis-tortion that was apparent in the band’s 2012 album Picture Show in tracks like “Everybody Talks” and “Lessons in Love (All Day, All Night).” Complemented by an apparent synthesizer, that al-bum’s tracks grab the listener’s interest in a manner similar to the band’s debut album, Habits.

The new album gives off a “Saved by the Bell,” early ’90s feel – a beachy theme that makes you want to let everything go and not think about the conse-quences.

“Sleeping With A Friend” is the album’s ballad track. It forces

the listener to become involved. Following that ballad, “Teen-

ager In Love” boasts an idea that was clearly well thought out. The lyrics tell a story and so does the music. Each riff is broken up perfectly and you can hear a dif-ferent sound through the verses, with a chorus that you can’t wait to come back around.

But just when you get hooked, the pace of the album drops off and becomes swallowed up by a digital sound that is over-modu-lated, boring the listener to the point that the only tracks that would be included on mixtapes would be the third and fourth songs.

Any listener seeking brilliance in the rest of the album would find him or herself at a loss.

It seemed as though Glenn was trying to get his message across in his lyrics more than the band as a whole was focused on the music itself. And because of

this disconnect, the album suf-fers.

The lack of depth is apparent with the simple catchy hooks, but they never push the limit or do anything else like the music did in Picture Show.

The only other track worth lis-tening to is “Living In Another World,” but it takes nine tracks to get to it.

And if Glenn was trying to get his message across through his lyrics with this album, listen-ers have already skipped the “im-portant” songs to find the catchy ones – which are, in fact, the im-portant ones.

Although the album seems to lack complex music, the band stays true to its pop roots. It still has that Neon Trees feel we fell in love with in 2012, but it falls short of what the band could ac-tually do.

email: arts@ubspectrum.com

Neon Trees lose lusterAfter 2012 breakout album, Pop Psychology fails to meet expectations

CourtESy of MERCURY/ISLAND

SEE ANTI-ABORTION, PagE 8

ubspectrum.com6 Friday, May 2, 2014

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EMMA JANICKIaSSt. fEaturES Editor

May has arrived, and that means we’re honing in on the last couple of days of classes, papers and exams. It also means that this Friday night is First Friday at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, and the First Friday Gallery Walk in Allentown. Next week, be sure to celebrate the last day of class-es by paying a to visit the Burch-field Penney Art Center for Sec-ond Friday. The galleries are free and open to the public.

Part of developing your per-sonal style is finding what con-stantly strikes you – what in-spires you as you look into your closet in the morning. Inspira-tion could be a book you adore, your favorite flower, or a fashion blogger whose closet you’d like to replicate.

If you’re heading to an art gal-lery this weekend, use that as your inspiration.

Like fashion, works of art in all media are forms of ex-pression and since each work is unique, you can really focus on what makes your personal style personal. Art can translate the sometimes incoherent, jarring and sublime ways we put togeth-er colors and styles in our every-day clothing.

I’ve picked out two of my fa-vorite works from the Albright Knox collection that can be rec-reated in fashion form. Pick out your favorite works of art, and I’ll show you how to turn them into your favorite outfit.

Harlequin (Project for a Monu-ment), Pablo Picasso (1935)

Known for his complex use of color, lines and shapes, Pi-casso is an artist who provides the perfect canvas for choosing an outfit. Though every morn-ing I spend too much time look-ing at the print of The Artist and his Model (1964) stuck on the wall

next to my vanity mirror, Harle-quin strikes me as easily re-creat-able.

Here, I’m wearing colored tights from Target, a black and white print skirt from PacSun, a navy blue Forever 21 turtleneck, navy blue brogues and my yellow cloche hat from Target.

Each color I chose direct-ly corresponds to what Picasso chose for his beret-wearing har-lequin. Of course, you could be even more literal with a yellow dress and a purple beret.

What struck me about this work is the use of significant black lines that separate each color from the surrounding ones. This creates shapes with-in defined boundaries – nothing bleeds into the rest of the work.

The skirt recreates Harlequin’s defined shapes, separating colors from each other while replicating the graphic in its print.

The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image, Salvador Dali (1938)

Whether you first see the bowl of food sitting on a table or the landscape of a bay and moun-tains, the floating, lightly colored objects of Dali’s painting de-mand melancholic attention.

Composed of moving neu-trals, recreating this painting in clothing demands soft fabrics and earth tones.

I transposed this painting into my outfit with a beige and black-collared silk Ann Taylor blouse, loose-fitting black Ann Taylor trousers and navy blue brogues. The silk floats on the body just as the napkin in the center of the painting floats in seemingly mid-air.

Unlike Harlequin, this painting does not have extremely defined lines – rather, the objects inter-act. The use of similar neutral colors creates an ample scheme

for inspired outfits. Like the cult-status Urban Decay Naked eye shadow palette, this painting is a canvas from which you can draw a minimalistic, flowing style. ***

If you have a piece of art in mind that you would like to rec-reate with clothing, the best things to draw from are the col-ors used, the definition between objects and the time period in which the work was produced.

If you can’t get over a portrait of a Tudor queen, recreate her style with embroidered dress-es, heavily constructed skirts and what would today be considered costume jewelry. Browse thrift and vintage shops to find piec-es that recall the fashion of the past.

Recreating abstract, avant-garde art through color can be si-multaneously easy and difficult. Working with only one or two colors gives you tons of options

– as long you wear those col-ors, you’re on the right track. But what style should you choose? Should the way you put the clothing pieces together be just as abstract as the work itself ?

It’s up to you.Or you can just wear a classic

blouse and colored jeans and be Mark Rothko’s 1956 piece, Or-ange and Yellow.

With works like Jackson Pol-lock’s Convergence, produced in 1952 and currently not on dis-play at the Albright Knox, you’d want to choose graphic prints. Today’s trends in dresses have created a wealth of graphical-ly stunning options as designers use digital art on fabric. All you need is the dress and a pair of colored tights, and you’re a walk-ing work of art.

Whether you’re going to an art gallery this weekend, or just hav-ing some drinks with friends, use what inspires you in everyday life as you get dressed.

Inspiration is really all around you; it’s in everything you love. If you love art, don’t just hang it on your walls.

Hang it on your body.

email: emma.janicki@ubspectrum.com

À la Mode: A Guide to Style The art of dressing

YUSONg SHI, The SpecTrum

ubspectrum.com 7Friday, May 2, 2014

confidence. She began to think of calorie

intake and exercise as a game. “I would Google how many

calories were in cookie cake and make sure I’d burn at least twice that amount before I had a piece for dinner,” Lowe said. “One night, I decided to treat myself to McDonald’s and then spent the next day at the gym until I burned at least 1,200 cal-ories.”

Lowe thought she had discov-ered the secret to looking good and eating what she wanted with no restrictions. Burning calories gave her life purpose. Her mood depended on creating nega-tive numbers. If she was in the black, she headed for the gym.

She did not consider her situ-ation to be a “disorder,” nor did she think it strange that soon, the minute she saw food, she thought of its calorie count.

After two months and 18 pounds, her friends began to worry. One of Lowe’s room-mates asked her to step on the scale. It read 103 pounds.

Lowe’s habits were no lon-ger an innocent addiction. She promised her friends she would eat.

She did. Then she went to the gym.

Lowe also began to see fat and flaws on her body that weren’t there, a condition known as “body dysmorphia,” which made her feel incompetent and unworthy. This led her to feel depressed and anxious because of the imagined fat in her thighs and arms.

“That’s the way an eating dis-order works,” said UB alumna Allie F., who suffered from dis-ordered eating habits and buli-mia for 11 years, four of which at UB. “It attacks your thought processes and your sense of self worth until it’s fully controlling your mind and has you believing that you’re nothing and deserve nothing.”

Holding on to secrets

Allie found out she needed help from her computer.

On a whim, she took a test on UB Counseling Center’s on-line eating disorder survey. The results flashed in front of her: “YOU HAVE AN EATING DISORDER.”

She had already met the Di-agnostic and Statistical Manu-al of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) criteria for bulimia, but had ignored it. The all-caps words, however, made her act. She is unsure as to exactly why and cannot fully explain it, but see-ing the words on the screen be-fore her impacted her so strong-ly, she wanted to get help.

She had been struggling with disordered eating for 11 years on and off; she always blamed herself for her disorder and iso-lated herself from her support system, just like Lowe did.

When Allie was in seventh grade, she went on Weight Watchers after gaining a few pounds from her birth con-trol pills. She was upset about her weight gain but did not ex-pect her perfectionist personali-ty to allow her diet to complete-ly control her mind.

“I quickly became obsessive about the program and people’s comments about my weight loss encouraged that,” Allie said. “[I was] also having crazy cravings and obsessive food thoughts be-cause I didn’t realize at the time that the number of ‘points’ that the program had me eating was less than the number of calo-ries where most women’s bodies go into starvation mode. I lost a large amount of weight in a few months, then fell into a cycle of bingeing, purging and starving, and gained the weight back.”

This cycle continued on and off throughout high school. Allie’s weight would yo-yo de-pending on whether she was ob-sessively counting calories more or bingeing more.

“It was like a really awful pen-dulum, with no happy medi-um of just normal eating,” Allie said. “And it wasn’t until I start-ed seeing UB’s nutritionist that I linked the cycle back to that first diet.”

Allie advises anyone strug-gling with any sort of an eat-ing disorder is to resist the urge to isolate, she said. UB’s large campus makes it easy for stu-dents to detach from others and keep what they are doing secret, which is exactly what Lowe did once her friends caught on to her disorder.

Uschold is not surprised Lowe hid her disorder so well.

“There is often an element of shame associated with eat-ing disorder symptoms and be-haviors that can lead an individ-ual to hide or deny things,” Us-chold said. “They do have some insight and awareness surround-ing what is going on but have utilized the behaviors as coping and have a difficult time bring-ing these out into the open.”

As a therapist, Uschold has developed an understanding of the path eating disorders can take. She tries to help her pa-tients see that, too.

“[I’m] able to gently assist cli-ents in becoming more aware of what they need and assisting them in listening to their own voice rather than the negative voice of their eating disorder,” Uschold said.

It took Lowe four semesters at UB before she was able to listen to her own voice, rather than the voice of her disorder.

“I was ecstatic [that I weighed 103 pounds],” Lowe said. “But also realized I needed to be more careful – people were starting to catch on to my se-cret.”

So Lowe began to eat in front of the people who noticed her weight loss and then sneak off to the gym. The routine ex-hausted her. It also isolated her from her friends.

But whenever she had doubts, she would strip down and look at her naked body.

She saw herself through the eyes of the disease.

She didn’t see a beautiful and talented woman when she looked in the mirror, like her friends always told her she was, she said. Rather, she saw fat – fat that would keep her from reaching her ultimate goal of becoming an actress. Fat that would keep her from ever find-ing true love. Fat that led her into relationships with men who verbally abused her and made her feel even more worthless, like she felt she deserved to be treated.

Lowe thought her numbers game meant she was in charge of her life – that she was in con-trol.

Now – two years later – she sees that the disease controlled her.

The inception

Anna Gautier, a junior Asian study major, suffered from de-pression and anxiety, which sparked her disorder.

“Eating disorders common-ly stem from current or past stresses, where an individu-al may not feel in control,” said Jessica Nyrop, assistant director for academic instruction in UB’s Division of Athletics. “College is a time where an individual can experience a slew of differ-ent stresses such as class sched-ule, grades, parental stresses or scholarships. These stresses may trigger the onset or relapse of an eating disorder.”

Looking back, Gautier is aware that she focused on her body as a way of dealing with her anxiety and depression – she did not realize how obsessed she became with counting calo-ries until she began to barely eat and purge after her small meals, she said.

She began to suffer from ex-haustion and felt physically ill. When her eating disorder began to make her weak while going through everyday activities, she knew it was time to change.

Lowe also realizes now why her disorder surfaced: It was from a lack of control.

She believes many college stu-dents suffer from disordered eating because it is one of the only aspects they feel they have control over.

“We can study and work hard to an extent, but our final grade is ultimately up to the teacher,” Lowe said. “Those of us who are not financially dependent have to worry about the cost of classes, books, etc., which is in the uni-versity’s control. And especial-ly in social situations, we’re at an age where we’re experiment-ing with relationships and peo-ple and we only have so much control over how others perceive us.”

Changing habits

When Lowe was diagnosed with Korsakoff ’s syndrome, a neurological disorder caused by a lack of thiamine in the brain linked with chronic alcohol abuse and malnutrition, during the fall of 2013, she knew she needed to gain control over her life.

She remembers her mom tell-ing her she looked “emaciated in the face.”

She told one of her best friends she was ready to get help and began to attend therapy ses-sions to treat her Korsakoff ’s syndrome and eating disorder.

Since January, Lowe has been traveling the road to self-love.

Gautier opened up to a friend who had also struggled with dis-ordered eating. She said having supportive friends was the most important thing in her journey toward recovery.

She urges those who feel as if their environment places pres-sure to be as “beautiful and thin as models” to escape that envi-ronment and surround them-selves with friends.

“Opening up to your friends about what you’re going through so it stops being your dirty se-cret and starts being something that you can fight against with the help of a support system [is crucial],” Allie said. “I f you do this early on, you will save yourself a lot of pain, time and money in the long run.”

Lowe took a unique approach on her road to self-love, find-ing solace in art. Though she at-tends professional therapy ses-sions, she needed to do more on her own to escape the demons living in her head.

“After you recognize you have a problem, how, when and why you get help depends on the person,” Lowe said. “There are many forms of therapy one could do to overcome a disorder – from counseling to art class-

es. For me, I personally think the best form of therapy is fig-uring out what you’re passion-ate about and throwing yourself into that.”

So she threw herself into singing and acting – her greatest passions. Since January, she has had professional headshots tak-en and produced her first two music videos.

She finally put down her yel-low notebook – rather than con-stantly writing down what she eats and how many calories she needs to burn to fill the empti-ness inside of her, she doodles. She draws images of things that make her happy, accompanied by quotations about friendship and love.

She began to pre-cook her meals so she would eat them and know they were an appro-priate portion size. Tupperware boxes became her “thing” rath-er than bingeing on cookie cake and then burning double a day’s worth of calories at the gym.

Lowe considers herself lucky to have the support system of friends and family to open the bars of the eating disorder cage she had managed to lock herself in. She genuinely does not know if she would be alive if it were not for them.

Only 50 percent of people re-port ever being cured from an eating disorder, according to statistics provided by North Da-kota State University.

Looking forward

Lowe is not sure whether she is cured “for good.” She be-lieves eating disorders can sneak their way back into the lives of those who have suffered be-cause of how integrated a disor-der can become with one’s life.

But she has overcome the toughest battle: taking her first few steps toward self-love.

She knows she’s not 100 per-cent there yet, but love from her friends and family drives her to continue this road to recovery.

“People don’t realize the im-pact they can have just by showing someone how much they mean to you,” Lowe said. “When I’m struggling with lov-ing myself, knowing that I am loved by others makes all the difference.”

She hopes other students in her former position will under-stand the importance of break-ing free from the chains of an eating disorder. Simply telling someone else can save your life, she said.

*The Spectrum has changed this stu-dent’s name to protect her anonymity.

email: features@ubspectrum.com

Continued from page 1: Learning

ing personally and you go the tournament and lose, then you only let yourself down.”

Although many players strug-gle to adapt to the college lev-el of tennis, Alvarez quickly be-came accustomed to it. After going 11-8 overall in singles and 4-1 in Mid-American Confer-ence play in 2013, Alvarez was named the MAC Newcomer of the Year.

Arevalillo did not find the same success as Alvarez in his first year, but he did find his stride in his sophomore cam-paign. Not only did Arevalil-lo record the most singles wins on the team (13) this season, but his doubles record with team-mate freshman Jonathan Han-nestad also led the team.

Arevalillo and Alvarez’s off-the-court mentalities aid in their success on the court.

For Arevalillo, his hidden pas-sion has come in the form of melodies and instruments; his family is deeply connected in the Spanish music scene. At a young age, he began to play the bass guitar and transitioned to the electric guitar as he learned to play almost entirely on his own with minimal instruction.

Juan José Arevalillo, Areva-lillo’s father, wasn’t surprised by his son’s talent. Arevalillo’s

grandfather was a professional musician and a professor at Ma-drid Music School. He was the first musician to use the vibra-phone, a percussion instrument similar in appearance to a xylo-phone, in Spain and managed to play with world-class stars such as Lionel Hampton.

“With that background and some genetic inheritance, it was not strange that Sergio should be keen on music too,” Juan José said.

Alvarez was not always des-tined to be a tennis player.

Before Alvarez learned to swing a tennis racquet, he was kicking a soccer ball. His moth-er, Begoña Diaz, saw the athletic ability in Alvarez from a young age when he exceled in many different sports.

“Since he was little, he always distinguished in many sports such as skiing, cycling … and cross-country,” Diaz said. “Yet, soccer was what he did best, corroborated when he passed over the first admission tests of the Real Madrid Spanish Foot-ball Club.”

Parents and peers were not only ones to see his soccer skills. Elite soccer clubs in Spain no-ticed as well. Although his suc-cess in the youth programs showed a promising future in

soccer, a growing dilemma was forming for Alvarez. When the commitment to playing both sports became too much for Al-varez and his family, he chose to focus on tennis.

Both Alvarez and his par-ents believed tennis was the bet-ter sport to continue playing be-cause they said it was easier to practice in his spare time and provided a better competitive atmosphere. Alvarez’s love for soccer continues to be evident in his affection for the profes-sional soccer club Real Madrid and his favorite player, Cristiano Ronaldo.

According to Alvarez and Arevalillo, the choice to play dif-ferent sports and instruments gave both of them the freedom many talented tennis players lack growing up. Many of their peers in Spain endured immense pressure from their parents to be elite athletes. This constant stress caused some of their friends to quit the sport entirely.

“Both of our families nev-er pushed us to play a sport or to be good,” Arevalillo said. “When your family puts pres-sure on you, you’re not enjoy-ing it because you’re playing for them and not yourself.”

This lack of pressure from their parents has enhanced their

passion and desire to succeed even more. Instead of playing matches to please their families, Alvarez and Arevalillo are win-ning for themselves.

Both were critical to the Bulls’ success this year, as the team competed in this season’s MAC Championship game against Ball State. Arevalillo punched Buffalo’s ticket to the champi-onship match with a comeback victory to upset the No. 1 seed, Northern Illinois.

Before the title match, Areva-lillo knew his best friend needed a confidence boost, so he pre-dicted Alvarez would clinch the final point for the MAC title. Arevalillo said the entire team knows Alvarez has the “clutch” gene. Alvarez’s match-clinching victories over Pennsylvania and Cornell earlier this season were the most important wins for the program, according to Nickell.

Arevalillo’s prophecy looked to be emerging as Alvarez found himself in the winner-take-all match for the MAC Champion-ship. After winning his first set, he dropped the second to force a third set. With the match tied at 6, Alvarez entered a deciding tiebreaking set.

After battling the entire sea-son through injuries and hard-ships, it would seem like a sto-

rybook ending for the Spaniard to win in the pressure-packed situation. In the end, Alvarez lost 9-7, resulting in a Ball State championship.

“I fought so hard, not only for me, but for the team and my coaches and to represent UB,” Alvarez said. “It gives me moti-vation for next year to fight for it and bring it home. I can’t wait for next season because I love my team and coaches so much.”

In a heartbreaking end to the season, Arevalillo’s first reaction was not to be upset over losing the championship match, but to support his teammate and best friend.

“When we lost, the first thing I did was to run to him and try to hug him,” Arevalillo said. “I knew I had to be there with him because he deserved that game. It was really unfair.”

Alvarez and Arevalillo will al-ways be linked together because of tennis. Their friendship start-ed on the court and grew be-cause of the sport they loved.

Their travels and time spent together off the court has turned the best friends into something more – it has turned them into brothers.

email: sports@ubspectrum.com

Continued from page 10: Teammates

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Continued from page 4: Murals

Continued from page 4: Sense of Community She later decided to continue

her education at UB, and is now working on her Ph.D.

“UB is a good replacement for Europe,” Inselmann said. “All I have to do is walk down the ninth floor of Clemens [Hall] and I get to speak in three differ-ent languages.”

Inselmann was able to keep much of her culture alive by starting a stammtisch, an in-formal German conversation group, four years ago. The group meets in the Center For the Arts to converse in German and learn about German culture.

Anne Lockwood, a member of the Buffalo community, has been part of the stammtisch since it began.

“[Stammtisch] is unique be-cause Ute welcomes everyone from the Buffalo community, not just students,” Lockwood said. “She has given a great deal of her time to teaching [Ger-man] without making anyone feel stupid.”

Living in Buffalo has allowed Inselmann to pursue other pas-sions in addition to studying languages. Inselmann has been singing for most of her life and joined the Buffalo Philharmon-ic Chorus about two years ago. She says music is something one can’t explain, but “it just does what it does to us.” She incor-

porates this inexplicable power of music into her aerobic classes and often challenges students to sing along during their workouts.

Though Inselmann was able to hold onto some of the European culture when she came to Buffa-lo, she felt that her small home-town’s sense of community was missing. Inselmann not only in-fuses her aerobic classes with music but also strives to create a sense of community among her students.

“In the United States, people have a sense that the individual needs to propel themselves for-ward, whereas European cul-tures tend to have more close-ly knit communities,” Inselmann said.

When she volunteered as a fit-ness instructor for a group fit-ness class at the YMCA, working with groups of people trying to achieve similar goals, Inselmann regained a feeling of community.

The power of communal work is something Inselmann carries in all of her endeavors. In addi-tion to teaching aerobic exercis-es, Inselmann is a French teacher at UB and emphasizes the need for everyone to work together.

“I notice in my classrooms that if everyone chips in, it be-comes a learning community that moves forward much more efficiently,” Inselmann said.

“One person who doesn’t want to chip in is enough to break that community.”

The joy Inselmann gained from these communal efforts gave her the desire to continue teaching fitness as a job. She now teaches Cardio Kickboxing and Toning and an Insanity class in Alumni 75.

“Doing exercises with Ute is never easy,” said Sarah Frank, a senior health and human servic-es major in Inselmann’s cardio class. “You have to come ready to work out, and by the end you’ll be sweating your butt off.”

The classes contain high-inten-sity interval training. Inselmann said the exercises are meant to challenge students and have a high impact on their workout.

“I don’t like to waste my time,” Inselmann said. “I know I have to make the most out of every workout because if you want to progress, you have to touch your limits and go beyond them.”

Inselmann believes pushing everyone to their limits always gives the most rewarding and visible results. At the same time, she said her students motivate her to go beyond and to work even harder.

email: features@ubspectrum.com

guage can impede the truth, despite writers’ best efforts to re-flect it.

As oral and literary commu-nicators, I’m sure we’ve all be-come familiar with the limits, and even failures, of language at least once. Hence the old adage that “words fail.”

The graphic photos give abor-tion a face; they anchor the dis-cussion in an inescapable, carnal reality. Most importantly, they do what words can’t do. They show the truth.

In the wise words of Flan-nery O’Connor, American writer and essayist, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” The truth is that photos of abortion are offensive. They’re offensive because they show grave human rights viola-tions. We hate to see the pictures of aborted children for the same reason we hate to see pictures of any genocide – they depict fel-low human beings stripped of all dignity, worth and value. If these pictures did not sicken us, then we would have to call our soci-ety’s collective conscience into serious question.

We all agree the Holocaust was a disgusting violation of human rights, targeting a group of peo-ple’s religious beliefs. And we all agree that slavery was a disgust-ing violation of human rights, targeting ethnic groups as sub-human. In order to ensure these

monstrous injustices never hap-pen again, we must never let our-selves forget the stories of the victims. Pictures force us to re-member the victims’ stories as they happened.

We must never forget that peo-ple allowed society to become so twisted and so terribly misguid-ed that these brutalities were al-lowed to occur. What lies did we feed ourselves, what broken phi-losophies did we operate under, that led to these socially accepted and legally sanctioned horrors?

When we examine the ratio-nales that justified these injustic-es, we quickly realize the haunt-ing parallels between the histor-ical logic of all genocides, and the logic of abortion. When we draw lines between “human” and “person;” when we deem oth-er human beings as “subhuman” based on traits like age or ethnic-ity; when we argue that matters of human life should be matters of “personal choice,” we use the same arguments that killed mil-lions of human beings all over the world throughout history.

We owe ourselves, and the vic-tims of all genocides, the cour-age to face the truth. Let’s use this courage to not only to look upon the transgressions of histo-ry but also rectify them.

anne.mulrooney@ubspectrum.com

Continued from page 5:Anti-Abortion

alone and demand equal atten-tion.

“I’ve been waiting for the Vi-sual Studies department to get a density first, which I think it’s re-ally just starting to get,” Linder said. “You walk in and there’s something yellow, there’s a gi-ant face, there’s flowers, there’s a sound wave, the shoes over here – it’s starting to feel dense enough that spreading out into the campus, where it’s desired, will be great.”

The wall paintings are begin-

ning to spread throughout the campus. Recently, the typogra-phy wall paintings have added a colorful and thought-provoking lacquer to the Lockwood corri-dors. And as the wall paintings receive continual support and admiration, the hope is for the wall paintings to appear more frequently across campus, pro-vided university officials give permission, according to Linder.

Time, thought and planning are essential for the longevity of the paintings. Though some of

the murals that cover the CFA were original works produced five years ago, others have been painted over by other art stu-dents.

“I call them semi-permanent to the students,” Linder said.

No matter the longevity of the pieces, they epitomize UB’s art department – a growing pro-gram that is getting denser and more diverse with age.

email: arts@ubspectrum.com

ubspectrum.com 9Friday, May 2, 2014

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ACROSS

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1 Unspecified philoso-phies 5 Where Margaret Mead studied10 Scholar of Islamic law14 Certain hockey shot15 Manhattan Project’s goal, briefly16 Dunce-hat shape17 Plumb crazy18 Bit part for a big-timer19 Erupter of 197120 Spirit of a culture22 Added nutrients, e.g.24 Medical resident27 Good piece of farm-land28 Solo of sci-fi30 Single stock quantity31 Eyed impolitely34 Suffix with “cyan”35 Mythical queen of Car-thage36 Certain vertebrae37 “___ as good a time as any”39 Pass the buck42 Castle barrier43 Attractions45 The “Say Hey Kid”47 “___ it or lose it”48 Oust from office50 Initials of urgency

Edited by Timothy E. Parker May 2, 2014LADY OF THE HOUSE By Gary Cooper

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20) -- Are you sure you're working against a rival, and not against yourself ? What goes on today can tell you a great deal about your own intentions.GEMINI (May 21-June 20) -- Don't ignore the needs of another, for in doing so, you also ignore your own. Things are more connected today than you might think.CANCER (June 21-July 22) -- You need something that another has laid claim to, but by day's end, both parties can be satisfied. You'll find a creative solution.LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) -- You'll receive an offer you find both surprising and highly attractive -- but you won't be able to move on it right away. Be patient.VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) -- You may grow tired of the same old signs and warnings, but that has nothing to do with their validity. Pay attention to each of them!LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) -- You can maximize your rewards by increasing your capacity for empathy and generosity. They work together to pay you back!SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) -- You know what has to be done, and you know what you are capable of -- but somewhere in the middle, there may be a tricky puzzle to solve.SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) -- You're in the mood for an adventure, and a friend or loved one is likely to provide more than you had bargained for, so be ready!CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) -- You'll be facing certain fears throughout the day, but in the end you'll realize that fear itself is your only real obstacle right now.AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) -- You can learn something important from those who have gone be-fore, whether you know them personally or not. Lis-ten to silent warnings!PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) -- You're hoping to do the impossible. Though others are skeptical, you know just how you can get around a major obstacle.ARIES (March 21-April 19) -- You'll be facing a di-lemma that only a certain friend can help you with, so be sure to get in touch before things get even worse!

ubspectrum.com10 Friday, May 2, 2014

SPortS

TOP 10

D1 ERA

No. 4: Brittney Kuras

of the

BEN TARHANSEnior SPortS Editor

Brittney Kuras needed to be two tenths of a second faster.

She swam in the preliminaries of the 100-yard freestyle at the 2014 Mid-American Conference Championships and finished with a time of 48.9. She would need a 48.7 in the actual compe-tition to accomplish her goal of competing at the NCAA Cham-pionships.

“I had a talk with her during that day of, ‘OK, if you want to make the meet, this is what you are going to need to go,’” said swimming and diving head coach Andy Bashor. “And when she heard that, you could see, ‘OK, this is what I need to do. My goal is to make the meet. I’m ready.’ She went out that night and made a 48.5, broke the MAC re-cord, achieved a lifetime best and qualified for the meet. To me, that’s Brittney right there.”

Kuras only competed at UB for three years, but in those three years she achieved some of the most notable accomplishments in school history.

The biggest competition of the year for swimmers is the Mid-American Conference Champi-onships. Regular season stand-ings no longer matter; the season comes down to points scored by the top 16 swimmers in each event and five relays.

Kuras swam in nine individu-al events in her three seasons at UB. She won nine individual ti-tles.

But she almost did not swim at UB. If it hadn’t been for a coach-ing change at her first school, Rutgers, Kuras never would have redecorated the record board in the Alumni Arena Natatorium.

Kuras originally chose Rut-gers over UB because of the rep-utation of the school and its ac-ademic programs. Rutgers also had an equine program.

But she only competed at Rut-gers for one year. Prior to her sophomore season, she had sur-gery to fuse a joint in her left foot to help with her arthri-tis. Prior to her surgery, move-ment in the joint was so painful that Kuras couldn’t walk without crutches at times.

Following the surgery, she red-shirted her second season at Rut-gers, sitting out four months and spending the rest of the year with workouts limited to 500-1,000 yards. Normal practices consist of 5,000-6,000 yards.

After the coaching change at Rutgers, Kuras decided to leave. Buffalo was her second choice out of high school, which made the decision of where to trans-fer easy.

“Coming out of high school, I just had a really good feeling that she could develop into a very fast swimmer,” Bashor said. “She’s tall, she’s got a good stroke and you could really get an idea that she was a competitor right from the beginning.”

The marriage between coach and athlete at UB turned out to be the perfect storm.

There are two thought pro-cesses when it comes to training for swimming: You either swim as many yards as you can to build as much endurance as possible, or you cut back on the yards and focus on technique.

With Kuras’ arthritis, swim-ming thousands of yards would have only hurt her, so Bashor let her swim with the sprint group even though she was a mid-dis-tance swimmer.

“I’ve had so many injuries that I couldn’t just pile on the yard-age,” Kuras said. “So he put me into the sprint group even though I am more of a mid-dis-tance swimmer and I was able to really focus and work on my stroke and get race strategies down, so that was just what I

needed.”Bashor said Kuras was tenta-

tive when she first arrived in Buf-falo because she didn’t know how hard she could push her foot. She was still limited in some of the things she could do, partic-ularly dry land workouts, which she had to substitute with work-outs in the pool to take pressure off her foot.

But Bashor and the rest of the team got an idea early on of her capabilities.

“We do a bracket set [at prac-tice] in the beginning of the year where it’s kind of like a game and they race each other,” Bashor said. “With that set we saw the competitor that she was and the times she was able to post dur-ing that bracket set and it was like, ‘OK, it just needs a little bit of time for her training to catch up with her competitiveness and she’s going to be really good.’”

Even so, Kuras’ performance at her first MAC Championships in 2012 surprised Bashor. Ku-ras won the 200-yard individu-al medley (1:59.84), the 200-yard freestyle (1:46.3) and the 100-yard freestyle (48.9), setting UB records in all three.

“I didn’t know she had that kind of speed in her,” Bashor said.

Her accomplishments raised the bar for the future. Although she had been able to compete at a high level, she was returning from a year of less intense prac-tices. Bashor saw potential for her to get even faster with a full year of practice under her belt.

She competed at the NCAA

Championships in 2012, becom-ing the first female swimmer at Buffalo to ever do so. She swam there two more times, in 2013 and 2014, and finished 19th in the 100-yard freestyle in 2013. She missed out on qualifying for the finals of the 100-yard free-style by .21 seconds this past March.

Kuras finished her career with her name in the record books seven times for the 100-yard freestyle, 200-yard freestyle, 200-yard individual medley, 400-yard medley relay, 200-yard freestyle relay, 400-yard freestyle relay and 800-yard freestyle relay. She was the fourth swimmer to win the MAC Outstanding Swimmer

Award three times.“I’m so thankful for the op-

portunity to take my abilities and go as far as I possibly could,” Kuras said. “I just love the sport. I’m just grateful that I had the opportunity to continue doing it for as long as possible.”

Kuras already has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and is cur-rently pursuing her graduate de-gree in school counseling. She has two years left in the program, and when she graduates she wants to work as a school coun-selor.

email: sports@ubspectrum.com

no. 10: Branden OliverFootball 2010-14

no. 9: Kourtney BrownBasketball 2006-11

no. 8: Stacey EvansSoftball 2002-05

no. 7: Jonathan JonesTrack 2012-14

no. 6: Turner BattleBasketball 2001-05

no. 5: Desi greenWrestling 2008-11

Kuras achieved rare feat, winning three Outstanding

Swimmer Awards

JEFF PLACITOStaff WritEr

It starts with a quick glance and subtle smirk. There is a con-nection between sophomore ten-nis players Sergio Arevalillo and Pablo Alvarez that requires no words for them to understand each other.

“We just look at each other and know what’s going on,” Al-varez said. “There are moments that sometimes with just looking at each other we know what we mean, or know what to do be-cause we think so similarly.”

When college athletes join their teammates for the first time, a bond often begins to form. This connection is built through tireless hours of train-ing and sacrifice that team mem-bers endure together. Arevalil-lo and Alvarez’s history starts in Madrid, Spain, on opposite sides of the court.

Their friendship first began while playing against each oth-er in tennis tournaments at 12 years old. Arevalillo will be the first one to tell you Alvarez beat

him most of the time, but their matchups were always battles. Tennis introduced the two, but it was their personalities that made the Spaniards best friends.

Arevalillo is high-strung and outspoken, while Alvarez is laid-back and observant. Their rela-tionship is yin and yang with op-posite characteristics coming to-gether to form a strong bond. This connection was nearly sep-arated as the two went different ways after finishing high school.

Alvarez was still looking for colleges to attend while Arevalil-lo enrolled at Buffalo after visit-ing a handful of American uni-versities over the summer. When a player was dismissed from the Buffalo tennis team during the fall of 2012, a spot opened up on the roster. Buffalo head coach Lee Nickell asked Arevalil-lo for help finding a replacement. And who was the first name that came to Arevalillo’s head?

Alvarez.

“We had a player let go for disciplinary reasons and anoth-er recruit not make academ-ic standards, so I just asked Ser-gio randomly if he knew any-one that would be interested,” Nickell said. “He told me Pab-lo was interested and was top 10 in juniors in Spain, so of course we jumped all over him and it worked out for the best.”

From girls to music to tennis, the Spaniards are linked so tight-ly that it is difficult to find some-thing they don’t know about the other. The two are roommates; even when they first moved in, nothing was surprising about each other. They had already learned everything from sleeping over at each other’s house reg-ularly in Spain or playing tennis together.

For some college students, a seven-hour car ride is too much distance between themselves and their family. Alvarez and Areva-lillo are 4,000 miles from home.

Their new teammates and coaches helped ease the transi-tion, but in the beginning they relied on each other more than

anyone. Arevalillo may have had the tougher change of the two, as he is a self-proclaimed mama’s boy, but Buffalo ended up being exactly where he wanted to be.

“When I was in Spain, I was just a kid and my parents did al-most everything for me,” Areva-lillo said. “So when I came here, I was like, ‘Now what? I real-ly have to do everything.’ And I think that helped me grow up and be independent.”

Arevalillo and Alvarez had a steeper learning curve than most freshmen leaving home for the first time. Not only were they experiencing a new country and culture, but also a new way to play the game they had played their whole lives.

Nickell explained that the on-court adjustment must be made by every college tennis player as he or she goes from an individ-ual mindset to a team-oriented one.

“You feel a different type of pressure because everyone’s suc-cess is riding on your back,” Nickell said. “When you’re play-

An unbreakable bondTeammates Arevalillo, Alvarez share connection far beyond the court

SEE TEAMMATES, PagE 7

CHAD COOPER, The SpecTrumSophomore men’s tennis players Pablo Alvarez (left) and Sergio Arevalillo have formed a bond off the court that dates back to their time competing against each other as boys in their native Spain.

CourtESy of PAUL HOKANSON/UB ATHLETICSBrittney Kuras only competed at UB for three years, but for those three years she was the best swimmer in the MAC and appeared at the NCAA Championships three times.