speaker series

the independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis since 1878
VOLUME 137, NO. 55
WWW.STUDLIFE.COM
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
LOUFEST
A conversation
with the festival’s
organizers
(Cadenza, pg 5)
LONG HAUL
A writer spends five
consecutive hours
on the circulator
(Scene, pg 9)
TRACK AND FIELD
(Sports, pg 4)
SU allocates $124K in funds, accepts 8 proposals Friends,
family
for inaugural ‘Trending Topics’ speaker series
REJECTED SPEAKERS
MORE $$
BRANDON STANTON
Humans of New York
SPB - $75K
C. KRAUTHAMMER
Political columnist
C. Republicans - $75K
BROAD CITY
Comedians, activists
SPB - $50K
MARGARET CHO
Comedians
AMC - $50K
GEORGE TAKEI
Actor, activist
AMC - $50K
Total money allocated: $124K
Number of proposals approved: 8
Number of proposals rejected: 12
EMILY SCHIENVAR
BREAKING NEWS EDITOR
SOLEDAD O’BRIEN
Broadcast journalist
ALAS - $50K
SARAH KOENIG, JULIE SNYDER
Radio producers
WUPR - $45K
JUNOT DIAZ
Author
ALAS - $22K
APPROVED SPEAKERS
LISA LING
Journalist
CSA - $40K
RESHEMA SAUJANI
Founder, Girls Who Code
Studio: TESLA - $22K
3- PERSON PANEL
Transgender poets
PLUs - $21.5K
“DR. Q”
Neurosurgeon
AED - $18K
Candidates
for
Trending
Topics speakers are proposed
by student groups, but SU is
ultimately responsible for booking the speakers and promoting
the Trending Topics events. In
previous years, student groups
submitted speaker proposals in
April, with funding allocated
in the fall of the following academic year. The timeline was
moved up this year, so student
groups submitted appeals in
February, and the session to
allocate funding was held this
Saturday.
In
determining
which
speakers to bring, Treasury representatives weighed several
factors, including the speakers’
price, the widespread appeal of
speakers and the similarity of
speakers to other proposals on
the table.
“It’s a tricky balance,” junior
and SU president Kenneth Sng
said.
Junior Alex Rothbard, a
Treasury representative, noted
the importance in selecting
GRAPHIC BY MADDIE WILSON
speakers that represent the
diverse range of topics and interests on campus.
“We want to get speakers that
are going to appeal to the widest
variety of students on campus,”
Rothbard said. “We really want
to look at that intersectionality
to see what we can get out of
those speakers.”
Sophomore and Treasury
representative Max Thompson
said that while it’s important for
speakers to represent a broad
range of ideas, price tags make
this task difficult.
“I want to go for a diversity of
ideas and speakers, and in doing
that I think some of these price
points are going to be hard to
justify,” Thompson said.
Ultimately, Treasury chose
speakers proposed by eight different student groups: Ability,
Association
for
Computing
Machinery, Chinese Student
Association,
People
Like
US, Spires, Studio: TESLA,
Washington University Political
Review and the Washington
Sigma Chi restructures
final ‘Derby Days’
events, WPA encourages
sororities to participate
SAM SEEKINGS
NEWS EDITOR
Following the cancellation
of events deemed inappropriate in fraternity Sigma Chi’s
annual
philanthropy
week,
the
Women’s
Panhellenic
Association (WPA) decided
to revise their earlier position,
which discouraged sororities
from participating.
Friday’s
joint
statement
issued by the WPA and Sigma
Chi, outlining the WPA’s choice
to encourage sororities to participate in “Derby Days,” followed
Sigma Chi’s decision to cancel
a brotherhood auction, discontinue the exchange of hats for
points and open up the week’s
JOSH SUNDQUIST
Paralympic skiier
Ability - $5K
MICHAEL CASTRO
St. Louis poet laureate
Spires - $800
LESS $$
Student Union Treasury allocated $124,000 for the revamped
Speakers Series, now called
Trending
Topics,
accepting
proposals from eight different
student groups in a seven-hour
session Saturday.
Among the most expensive
accepted funding proposals are
artist and architect Maya Lin,
the designer of the Vietnam War
Memorial, Ezra Klein, editorin-chief and founder of Vox,
Reshma Saujani, lawyer and
founder of Girls Who Code,
and a panel consisting of J Mase
III, Katrina Goodlett and Mya
Taylor, three transgender people
of color.
SU also accepted proposals to
bring violinist and mental health
advocate Vijay Gupta, motivational speaker Josh Sundquist,
software
freedom
activist
Richard Stallman and St. Louis
poet laureate Michael Castro as
part of Trending Topics.
VIJAY GUPTA
Violinist
WUPops - $9.7K
RICHARD STALLMAN
Free software activist
ACM - $5K
PHOTO: Jennifer Huber, Gary He, Agencia de Noticias, Geoff Livingston, Tsar Fedorsky, Jingman, Derek Nicoletto,
Forgemind ArchiMedia, James Byard, Alec Perkins, Methieu, Steve Jurvetson, Kenneth C. Zirkel, The Rudz
ELLA CHOCHREK
NEWS EDITOR
MAYA LIN
Artist, architect
CSA - $35K
EZRA KLEIN
Editor-in-Chief at Vox
WUPR - $25K
BARBARA PIERCE BUSH
Global health activist
GlobeMed - $29.5K
DR. TEMPLE GRANDIN
Animal science advocate
Ability - $15K
remember
in wake
of student’s
death
University Pops Orchestra.
In total, student groups presented $643,500 in speaker
proposals to Treasury, requiring
Treasury representatives to reject
over $500,000 in proposals. The
maximum budget for speakers
was $125K, but Treasury allocated just shy of that, leaving
$1,000 remaining in funds.
Sng also noted that more
groups submitted speaker proposals for Trending Topics this
year than in previous years,
adding that some groups even
removed their own proposals
once they realized funding was
unlikely. Many of these student groups’ speaker proposals
reached $100,000 individually.
Treasury also voted on a
ranked waitlist, which had not
been part of Speaker Series,
meaning that any speakers
who cannot be secured will
be replaced by the highest
ranked affordable option on
SEE TRENDING, PAGE 3
SEE LONGYEAR, PAGE 3
ASHOKA HOSTS HOLI CELEBRATION
final fundraiser, a flag football
competition previously open
only to various sororities, to
allow fraternities to participate.
Although the fraternity set an
initial goal to raise $8,000 for
their chosen philanthropy organization, the Huntsman Cancer
Institute, the group came in
over $4,000 short with a total of
$3,875.
WPA first announced it
would be encouraging sororities not to participate in the
philanthropy week in a statement issued Thursday, declaring
events in the week sexist and
exclusionary.
“Derby Days does not align
SEE SIGMA CHI, PAGE 2
Sophomore Sarah Longyear
died Friday, April 22 in Palo
Alto, Calif., her hometown,
after being struck by a passenger train. Longyear, who was
suffering from depression, was
on a leave of absence from
Washington University and
residing at home. She was 19 at
the time of her death.
A walk-on on the varsity basketball team and member of the
sorority Chi Omega, Longyear
contributed to the Washington
University community in a
number of different ways. A
National Merit Scholar in high
school, Longyear was studying in the College of Arts &
Sciences.
“She was goofy,” her mother
Sally Longyear said. “People
would comment on her laugh
and her smile and how she
would make them feel important and listen to them.”
Sophomores Ellen Sheehy
and Natalie Edwards, two of
Longyear’s close friends and
suitemates, remember her for
her sunny disposition and surprising creativity.
“She’s one of those people,
always had a big smile, she
was always laughing, and she
was someone who when you
talked to her she made people
feel good about themselves,”
Edwards said. “[She] was
always asking questions, asking
about yourself, what you were
doing, what you were interested
in, she really wanted to know
about anything and everything
about everyone else.”
“She had these felt letters
that cut out in exactly the font
of ‘Friends’…And underneath
ALLISON HAMBURG | STUDENT LIFE
Students throw powder at each other during Wash U Ashoka’s Holi Festival: Show the WUrld Your Colors. Ashoka
hosted the celebration, which took place on the Swamp last Friday. For more photos, see pg. 3.
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theflipside
MONDAY 25
MOSTLY SUNNY
84 / 65
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
TUESDAY 26
SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS
85 / 64
WEDNESDAY 27
THUNDERSTORMS
75 / 61
EVENT
CALENDAR
SPB adds programming to week of WILD
MONDAY 25
SAM SEEKINGS
NEWS EDITOR
Assembly Series – Honorable John Paul
Stevens
Graham Chapel, 1:30 p.m.
After a brief talk, Justice Stevens will be
joined on stage by Nancy Staudt, law school
dean, and law professors Greg Magarian and
David Konig for a discussion on “The Second
Amendment and Gun Control,” presented
as part of the Gun Violence: A Public Health
Crisis Initiative. Sponsored by Assembly
Series and the School of Law’s Public Interest
Law and Policy Speakers Series. Reception to
follow.
Lecture: “The Price of Altruism”
Wilson Hall, Room 214, 4 p.m.
Dr. Oren Harman, Bar Ilan University, sponsored by the biology department, The Thomas
Hall Lecture and the History and Philosophy
of Science and Medicine Seminar Series.
TUESDAY 26
Environmental Studies Brown Bag and
Q&A about environmental journalism
Rudolph Hall, Room 203, 11:30 a.m.
Q&A about environmental journalism with
Lisa Palmer, writer, editor and multimedia
journalist. Free pizza will be offered.
Swedish / English Poetry Reading with Ida
Borjel and Jenny Tunedal
Duncker Hall, Hurst Lounge, Room 201, noon
Part of the Literature in the Making events,
two Swedish poets will be sharing their work.
The event will be hosted by Per Bergstrom
and Matthias Goeritz and include poetry in its
original Swedish and its English translation.
WEDNESDAY 27
Research Seminar: “Cannabis Use and
Misuse”
McDonnell Medical Sciences Building, Cori
Auditorium, 11:30 a.m.
Psychiatrists Arpana Agrawal and Lauren
Few discuss cannabis use as a part of the
Wednesday Research Seminar Series. Sponsored by the psychiatry department.
Lecture: “Another 200 Year Flood? What
Missouri Can Do to Stop Repeated Flooding”
Kirkwood Station Restaurant & Brewing Co.,
105 E. Jefferson Ave., Kirkwood, MO 63122, 7
p.m.
Professor Bob Criss will use examples from
local watersheds—both large and small—to
explain why severe flooding has become frequent and made official flood risk estimates
obsolete.
POLICE
BEAT
April 21
Crisis Intervention—Crisis Intervention on
the Danforth Campus, 10 a.m. to 11:08 a.m.
Disposition: Cleared
April 21
Larceny—Complainant’s cell phone was
stolen while left unattended near the
basketball court. Loss $200.
Disposition: Pending
April 21
Lost Item—Complainant reports losing her
Kindle Fire in Ridgley Hall.
Disposition: Pending
QUOTE
OF THE DAY
“Wow. This
is what I’ve
been waiting
for—the most
interesting thing
that’s happened
all night. A
seemingly
inebriated girl
tried to bring a
large branch on
the Circ. I am
confused, but
the driver seems
unfazed. I guess
this sort of thing
happens often
enough?”
- Ella Chochrek,
Staff Writer
WILD Week, a series
of events organized by
Social Programming Board
leading up to and following WILD this Friday,
kicked off Sunday with a
screening of the season
six premiere of “Game
of Thrones” in Tisch
Commons.
Spanning from Sunday,
April 24 to Monday, May
2, the week of festivities
includes multiple film
screenings and concerts,
the semifinals of a nationwide
entrepreneurship
competition, the chance
for students to float above
Mudd Field in a hot-air
balloon and an extended
traditional
pre-WILD
Happy Hour.
Although the WILD
Happy Hour and concert
are familiar fixtures, many
of the other events are new
with an added, expanded
week of programming.
“We’re trying to make
it more legitimate this
year and expand it to a
whole week, as opposed
to three to four days of
events,” SPB president and
junior Rahool Bhimani
said. “What’s nice about
this week is that it doesn’t
have to be the same every
year or semester, because
although there are obviously traditions like WILD
and Happy Hour, the other
days of events are really
open to what the [SPB
exec] board thinks is going
to get a good response.”
This freedom allowed
the board to schedule
a diverse set of events,
including two screenings,
the first of which was
the showing of “Game
of Thrones’” season six
premiere.
Freshman
Abheek
Raviprasad attended the
screening, and noted that
he enjoyed watching the
episode with peers.
“It was a great time
watching the season premier with so many ‘[Game
of] Thrones’ lovers,” he
said. “This episode didn’t
reveal too much as far as
where the season is going,
but it should be exciting.”
The week will also
include an early April
27 showing of “Popstar:
Never
Stop
Never
Stopping,” an upcoming
comedy film starring actor
Andy Samberg about a
rapper forced to rejoin his
old boy band. Bhimani
noted that the screenings
provide
programming
options for students who
prefer more relaxed events.
“Screenings are kind of
low-key,” he said. “They’re
a fun way for people to
come hang out and get
something to eat before the
show. It’s kind of different
from a lot of our other
events, kind of smaller but
always a good time.”
In between the two
screenings will be the
RECESS semifinals competition on April 26, a
national entrepreneurial
competition in the style
of TV’s “Shark Tank.”
Washington
University
start-up Foodshare won
the RECESS campus qualifier at Wash. U. on April 7
and will be compete in the
semifinal. A free concert
at the Pageant by rapper
Tory Lanez will follow the
competition.
Finally, an extended
Thursday
pre-WILD
Happy Hour precedes the
week’s marquee concert on
Friday, April 29.
This year’s Happy Hour
will also be doubled in
length to accommodate the
steadily increasing number
of attendees each semester,
according to a statement
released by SPB.
WILD director and
sophomore Nick Koutrakis
noted that this growing tradition serves as the final
opportunity to excite students for the concert.
“The tradition comes the
night before WILD, and
it’s always kind of buzzing,” he said. “Now that
we’re seeing bigger Happy
Hours than ever before, I
think everything’s going to
climax at the Happy Hour
before WILD.”
The
festivities
will
continue after the central concert, which will
be headlined by the AllAmerican
Rejects
in
Brookings Quadrangle on
Friday, with a final event
on May 2 that will feature
a barbecue and free hot-air
balloon rides above Mudd
Field.
“[We’re] hoping to get
a couple hundred people
up in cycles,” Bhimani
said. “It’s something different compared to what
we’ve done in the past; I
think it’s something that
most people haven’t done
before.”
OWN IT discussion highlights positive
psychology, community engagement
AIDAN STRASSMANN
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Over 30 students discussed
community
involvement at OWN IT:
WashU’s spring event
Tuesday in a way that
mirrored the “break-out
session” structure of their
upcoming fall summit.
The discussion hosted
by the women’s empowerment group featured a
series of short lectures and
fielded questions that led
to conversation regarding
taking initiative in one’s
community.
Women, Gender, and
Sexuality Studies professors Amy Cislo and
Trevor Sangrey, along
with Associate Dean of
Undergraduate Residential
Learning Jill Stratton, discussed the importance
and effects of community
engagement at the event.
When planning the
discussion, event organizers said they were
looking for speakers that
would engage both with
Washington
University
and the broader St. Louis
area.
“[We wanted] somebody
who can take initiative and
change the ways communities are and inspire Wash.
U. students to do the
same,” event co-organizer
and sophomore Ariadne
Bazigos said.
Each speaker at the
event works with multiple
organizations in the St.
Louis area, including the
Girl Scouts Of Eastern
Missouri, Metro Trans
Umbrella Group of St.
Louis and the Red Cross.
“We didn’t want to
focus too much on women’s leadership, in general.
We wanted to bring down
the focus to community
involvement for any sort
of person,” Bazigos said.
Genevieve Leach, freshman and co-organizer
of the event, noted the
importance of community
leadership as the main
driving force behind the
event.
“OWN IT is specifically
about women in leadership, and we think that a
great part of leadership is
figuring out how to serve
your community,” she
said. “We were particularly inspired by certain
examples from our daily
lives, and we figured community leadership was the
way to go.”
The OWN IT team
members chose to host
this event as a preview for
its fall summit. In 2015,
the inaugural Washington
University summit featured 25 speakers and
moderators, ranging from
the heads of companies
to Washington University
professors. The event saw
over 250 attendees in its
first year.
“[The summit] is an allday event where we have
women who are successful in a variety of different
fields, and we have discussions, and the individuals
have lunch with the students. It’s a really inspiring
event,” Bazigos said.
The next OWN IT
summit will be held on
a Saturday this coming
November. The date is yet
to be announced.
Breaking News Editor
Emily Schienvar is the summit director for OWN IT:
Wash U. She was not involved
in the writing or reporting of
this story.
SIGMA CHI FROM PAGE 1
STEPHEN HUBER | STUDENT LIFE
The Sigma Chi fraternity house sits on Fraternity Row outside the Tao Tennis Courts. The fraternity canceled parts of its philanthropy
week after they were deemed inappropriate.
with our community values, and we therefore ask
that sorority chapters evaluate their participation in
the event,” the WPA statement read.
In response to this
statement, Sigma Chi
announced it would work
together with WPA to
restructure the week to
better align with WPA’s
values, eventually canceling the events in question
and allowing fraternities
to participate in the flag
football event.
Despite these efforts
to rectify what WPA saw
as sexist events, the fraternity fell short of both
their fundraising goal for
this year.
Senior Luke SilvermanLloyd thanked all those
who attended the week’s
events on the event’s
Facebook group.
“Thank you to everyone
who came out and supported Derby Days this
year,” his post read. “We
really appreciated your
energy and participation
in helping us campaign
against cancer!”
Student Life reached
out to a total of seventeen
individuals involved in
Greek life for this story,
including members of
the Women’s Panhellenic
Association, Sigma Chi
brothers in exec positions
and multiple sorority presidents, but all either did
not respond or declined to
comment.
Editor’s note: Editorin-Chief Noa Yadidi is a
member of Delta Gamma
and Associate Editor Wesley
Jenkins is a candidate of
Beta Theta Pi. They were not
involved in the reporting or
editing of this story.
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
STUDENT LIFE 3
KATIE MARCUS | SENIOR NEWS EDITOR | NEWS@STUDLIFE.COM
TRENDING FROM PAGE 1
the list. Immigrant and
doctor Alfredo QuinonesHinojosa,
President
George W. Bush’s daughter and global health
activist Barbara Pierce
Bush and Pulitzer Prize
winning author Junot
Diaz are the top three
speakers currently on the
waitlist.
SU Speaker of the
Treasury and sophomore
Bill Feng believed the earlier timeline and waitlist
will have a positive impact
on the process of bringing
speakers to the campus.
“We didn’t have that
waitlist
mechanism
before, and if people
canceled, the money just
[came] right back to
us—we
really
didn’t
do anything about it,”
Feng said. “Now, if we
can’t book these people
now—which is before the
summer, where the contract will be locked with
a cheaper cost, possibly—a lot of that will be
eliminated.”
While SU representatives see benefits to the
updated system, many
student group presenters found it unclear how
the programming process
for Trending Topics differs from that of Speaker
Series.
Sophomore and SU Vice
President of Programming
Richard
Wu
clarified
that Student Union will
be paying speakers and
doing public relations for
the events, with responsibility falling on student
groups to program around
speakers.
“SU is personally bringing
in the speaker—we’re taking
care of flights, we’re taking care of where they stay,
we’re paying them to come,”
Wu said. “Your job as a student group is to engage the
student body and program
around that so they can have
a really welcome audience
when they come here.”
Feng noted that the
Trending Topics process
may undergo changes
before
next
year’s
allocation.
“One thing that we do
probably want to do in
the future is hold an info
session or do one-on-ones
with student groups who
have nominated speakers for Trending Topics,”
Feng said. “Because we
saw in this meeting there
was a lot of confusion.”
“That was just the kind
of person she was—she
would just get involved
in things and succeed at
them.”
Chancellor
Mark
Wrighton offered his condolences to the family
following Longyear’s passing in a statement sent to
Student Life.
“Like the many who
knew and loved Sarah, we
are terribly saddened by
the news and we extend
our deepest sympathies to
her family. We hope they
find peace during this very
difficult time,” Wrighton
wrote in the statement.
Her
mother
also
remembers Longyear as
a warm, effusive person
and acknowledged how
important her friends
and communities were to
Longyear.
“She was a really sweet
and thoughtful and caring and fun-loving, just
wanted to be accepted and
just loved having friends,”
Longyear said. “Ellen and
Natalie were incredible
support and the basketball
team…were
incredible
support for her.”
Both her mother and
her friends noted that
while Longyear went to
great lengths to make sure
others were happy, those
same efforts were often
missing in her own life.
“She put so much
thought into everything
she did and what it really
came down to was that
she was a people pleaser,”
Sheehy said. “She would
do anything to make other
people happy and to make
other people’s day, but she
struggled with her own
happiness. She couldn’t
accept herself. That’s what
it comes down to.”
Her mother hopes that
her daughter’s death can
be an opportunity for
students to become more
aware of mental illness
and seek help if need be.
“One thing to tell the
Wash. U. students or any
student, if you have a
roommate or someone
you know who you think
might be in trouble, and
the hardest thing of course
is if they don’t want help,
but to encourage them to
seek help,” Longyear said.
Ultimately,
Sheehy
noted that she would
remember Longyear not
for whatever she was
going through but for
the direct impact she
had made on her college
experience.
“Her friendship is at
the core of my Wash. U.
experience,” Sheehy said.
“We were always the
ones who maybe smiled
a little too big in the hallways. Anyone that you
ever ask about her will
tell you that she is an
amazing, bright—everyone uses light to describe
her because she brought
energy to a room...
Whenever she did anything, she pulled out all of
the stops.”
LONGYEAR FROM PAGE 1
COURTESY OF ELLEN SHEEHY AND NATALIE EDWARDS
she had
all the pictures of her
friends,” Sheehy said.
“[People] would look at
her wall and be like ‘Oh
you’re an art student’
and she was like ‘No, I’m
just really good at this.’
Everything was as she
liked to say ‘awesome.’”
Edwards
described
Longyear as a person
full of passion about her
involvements—someone
who was excited to take
part in new things and
succeed.
“She walked onto the
basketball team her freshman year—who does that?
She just walked onto this
varsity sport and showed
up at practice everyday
and she was passionate
about it,” Edwards said.
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PHOTOS BY ALLISON HAMBURG | STUDENT LIFE
VOLUME 137, NO. 55
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SPORTS
4 STUDENT LIFE
AARON BREZEL | SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR | SPORTS@STUDLIFE.COM
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
Men’s, women’s tennis fall to Emory in UAA Championship
ROHAN GUPTA
SPORTS EDITOR
The
Washington
University
men’s
and
women’s tennis teams
shared a similar fate this
weekend, both reaching
the University Athletic
Association Championship
before ultimately falling to
No. 1 Emory University in
the title match at Sanlando
Park in Altamonte Springs,
Fla.
The No. 7 men’s team
entered the weekend needing a big win to build
momentum following a
9-0 stonewalled defeat to
a Division II opponent
last week. That loss came
on the tail end of a stretch
that included seven consecutive ranked opponents,
including four in a span of
three days.
The Bears turned around
their fortunes quickly,
bouncing back with a dominant 9-0 victory over No.
23 Brandeis University in
the quarterfinal. With victories in both singles and
doubles, junior Jeremy
Bush recorded his 100th
career win.
In the semifinal, Wash.
U. faced No. 5 University
of Chicago, which had
downed the Bears 8-1 less
than two weeks earlier. The
Red and Green got off to
a good start, taking two of
the three doubles matches
in a trio of thrillers. Bush
and senior Tyler Kratky
managed to win 8-6 against
the same pair that had
defeated them in the previous match, while senior
Josh Cogan and sophomore Johnny Wu pulled
out a 9-8 (7-2) tiebreaker
win. Sophomore Jason
Haugen and freshman
Konrad Kozlowski nearly
pulled off a dramatic upset
against the No. 3-ranked
doubles pair in the nation,
but fell short, 9-8 (10-8).
The Bears were able
to make key adjustments
from their first meeting
with Chicago, especially
on the doubles side, where
they got swept the last time
around.
“We’ve made adjustments each time,” head
coach Roger Follmer said.
“We had a lot of time to
figure out our doubles and
play better.”
In singles, Chicago stuck
with the same lineup that
had worked previously
against the Bears, with one
notable change—Chicago’s
second and third singles
switched spots. The move
paired Chicago’s No. 36
David Liu, undefeated on
the season, with Wash.
U.’s Wu, who was the only
Bear to win a match in the
teams’ previous encounter.
The swap proved to be the
key in Wash. U.’s upset
over Chicago, as Wu came
through to defeat Liu, 6-3,
5-7, before pulling away in
the final set, 6-1.
Junior John Carswell,
the Bears’ first singles, was
in a tight match with No.
6 Nicolas Chua, 6-7 (5-7),
7-5, before rain left the battle unfinished. After losing
his first set 4-6, Haugen
pulled out a second set,
7-6 (12-10) after a long tiebreaker, which proved to
be a turning point, as his
opponent retired early in
the third set, leaving the
Bears with a victory.
Follmer said Wash. U.’s
defeat of Chicago after losing to them earlier in the
STEPHEN HUBER | STUDENT LIFE
Freshman Konrad Kozlowski hits a backhand in the Bears’ game against Bellarmine in March. The team finished in second place at
the UAA tennis tournament this past weekend.
season was not a shock.
“Life’s about second
chances,” Follmer said. “If
you look at our schedule,
we lost to Case Western
[Reserve University] early
in the season, and we
beat them later in the season. And then you look at
another match we lost to
Trinity [College], and then
we beat Trinity on their
home court. And then we
lost to Chicago two weeks
ago and then we avenged
that loss.”
That Wash. U. and
Emory met in the final
was also no surprise—no
other team has won the
UAA Championship since
1989, with Wash. U. winning three since 2009 and
Emory winning every
other. In the final, Wash.
U. again took a 2-1 lead
after the doubles matches,
but could not match
Emory’s firepower in singles, falling to three ranked
opponents for an ultimate
6-3 defeat.
The No. 12 women
started
their
tournament strong with an
8-1 victory over No. 29
New York University.
Needing an upset against
No. 9 Carnegie Mellon
University in the semifinal,
the Bears fell behind after
doubles, 2-1. Still, the Red
and Green rallied for the
6-3 win, with some help
from one Tartan retiring in
the midst of a 5-5 third set.
Junior No. 37 Rebecca Ho
provided the biggest win of
the day, a nearly flawless
6-1, 6-0 defeat of Carnegie
Mellon’s No. 16 Brooke
Tsu.
“Well, we were down
after doubles, and I
truly think that the girls
believed, even with being
down, that we could win
this match,” head coach
Kelly
Stahlhuth
said.
“I think that even being
down, they knew that they
could pull this match out.
So I think we’ve wanted
it really bad over the past
years, but I think today we
wanted it, and we really
believed we could do it.”
Stahlhuth believes that
Wash. U.’s schedule, which
saw them face 15 ranked
opponents in 20 matches,
prepared them for the
upset of Carnegie Mellon.
“We’ve had a really hard
schedule, set of matches,
and I think now, that’s
where it’s helping us,”
Stahlhuth said.
In the final, Wash. U.
took on No. 1 Emory,
which it lost to very early
in the season. Despite
another dominating performance by Ho, 6-0,
6-1 over No. 14 Bridget
Harding of Emory, four
other ranked singles opponents were too much to
handle for the Bears, as
they fell, 7-2. Still, 11 years
removed from their last
UAA Championship match
appearance,
Stahlhuth
remains very satisfied with
the performance.
“It’s amazing. You keep
thinking, ‘Oh, it took us 10
years to get here, and we’ve
been close,’” Stahlhuth
said of the drought. “This
is a great team. That’s how
I got us over this big hump,
and they truly earned it,
and they truly deserved it.”
No Ogede, no problem: Track and field women dominate
UAA field in championship meet, men also earn team title
AARON BREZEL
SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR
When a team loses a star
player, most will—at the very
least—lose a little momentum. That didn’t prove to be
the case for the Washington
University women’s track and
field team. Even with junior
and three-time University
Athletic Association Most
Outstanding Performer Daisy
Ogede sitting out her final
three events, the Bears still
managed to lay an emphatic
hammer down on the rest of
the conference in the championship meet at Bushyhead
Track this weekend. The
Wash. U. women compiled
nine event wins and 221
points, to finish a whopping
48 ahead of runner-up Emory
University.
Meanwhile, the men’s team
reclaimed its usual spot up top
the conference leaderboard,
netting four titles for 161.5
points, 24.5 ahead of Carnegie
Mellon University. The win
marked the men’s team’s seventh UAA championship in
the last eight years after falling
to second a season ago.
WOMEN
After trailing by single digits
following Saturday’s schedule, the Bears grabbed a small
lead when a team of freshman
Elise Grever, senior Emily
Warner, junior Kelli Hancock
and Ogede opened Sunday
with a win and a UAA-record
time of 46.96 in the 400-meter
relay. The Bears then began
to pull away two events later
with a trio of top-five performances in the 100m hurdles.
Ogede captured first place
and 10 points with a time of
14.79 while junior Rebecca
Ridderhoff and freshman Jay
Pittman finished at fourth and
fifth, respectively, to earn the
Bears another nine points to
extend their lead.
It was in this race, however,
that Ogede suffered what
appeared to be an injury to
her left quad. According to
her, she felt a strain in her leg
somewhere around hurdle six
or seven of 10, but pushed to
finish out the last 30-40 meters
to earn the win.
“I did what I had to do
to finish,” Ogede said. “I
was happy to come in with
the first place, despite the
circumstances.”
“She’s one tough cookie,”
head coach Jeff Stiles said.
While the exact nature
of Ogede’s injury is unclear,
she was walking on her own,
albeit with some pain, just 30
to 45 minutes after the event.
The lingering pain did, however, force her out of her final
three events: the 100m dash,
the 200m dash and the 1600m
relay. While, the Bears did not
exactly need her performances
to capture the team title, her
contributions would have
made an already dominant
victory near absolute.
In the preliminaries of the
100m dash, Ogede clocked
a UAA-record time of 11.78
seconds, a tenth of a second
faster than anyone in Division
III this year and also beating
out her closest conference
opponent by nearly half a second. The same was the case
at 200m. Ogede outran her
closest opponent by nearly a
second for the UAA record
and improved on her existing
time as Division III’s fastest
200m sprinter.
“Of course, there were feelings of disappointment that I
wasn’t able to compete, but I
know where I am—I know
the type of athlete that I am,”
Ogede said.
Even in those Ogede-less
events, the Bears still managed
to put together competitive
performances. In the 100m
dash, Grever nabbed second
place with a time of 12.32,
and in the 200m, it was Grever
again, this time with a win at
25.49 seconds.
In the 1600m relay, sophomore Annalise Wagner
subbed in for Ogede and
joined a team of Ridderhoff,
Warner and and Hancock to
shatter the school record by a
hair under six seconds.
“We broke the conference
record in the [1600m] by six
seconds—you don’t do that,”
Stiles said.
In one of the more dramatic finishes of the meet,
Wagner also won the 800m
with a UAA-record time of
2:10.33. After leading nearly
the entire race, Wagner was
overtaken by a New York
University runner in the final
straightaway. With Wagner
apparently destined for second
place, the NYU runner collapsed about 15 meters from
the finish line. Wagner continued on for the win, while the
NYU runner recovered for a
fourth place finish.
Senior Maisie Mahoney
also won two field events for
the Bears on Sunday. First, she
won the javelin throw at 38.82
meters before securing a win
in the triple jump an hour later
with a career-best clearance of
11.36m.
Hancock also defended her
conference title in the 400m
hurdles, clocking in with a
school-record time of 1:00.75.
On Saturday, the Red and
Green captured its lone UAA
title in the 3000m steeplechase
when sophomore Alison
Lindsay raced to a UAArecord 10:47.13.
While the Bears fared well
in the conference meet without
her, a long-term Ogede injury
is a scary prospect, given the
No. 2 ranked women’s team is
looking to make a deep run in
the outdoor national championships some four and change
weeks from now. As one of
the most versatile and consistently successful sprinters
in Division III, a competitive
meet without Ogede is a blow
even to a team that prides
itself on its depth. Fortunately
for the Bears, Ogede was fairly
confident she would be perfectly healthy heading into the
national meet.
MEN
Like the women, the Bears
found themselves trailing by
just a few points heading into
Sunday’s events, thanks in part
to a win in the 3200m relay
on Saturday. In the race, a
team of senior Josh Clark and
juniors Deko Ricketts, Mike
Sullivan and Conor Cashner
won with a UAA record time
7:34.70.
The
Bears
continued
to chase Carnegie Mellon
University through Sunday,
but finally pulled ahead in the
100m dash when sophomore
Roderick Smith closed in from
the back of the pack to earn a
second place finish and eight
points for Wash. U. With no
Carnegie runners in the event,
the Red and Green pulled
ahead of the Tartans by seven
and a half points. The Bears
would pull away from there.
Ricketts earned a victory
in the 800m with a time of
1:51.11, while senior Joey
Pasque cleared 1.99m in the
high jump to round out the
wins for the men.
LOOKING AHEAD
With eyes on NCAA Outdoor
Championships in late April,
the Bear have four more tuneup meets before they hit the
national stage. The first one
comes this weekend, as both
teams head to Jacksonville,
Ill. for the True Blue Twilight
meet hosted by Illinois
College.
SKYLER KESSLER | STUDENT LIFE
Junior Deko Ricketts of Wash. U. gains his lead in the men’s 800-meter run at the UAA Outdoor
Championships on Sunday afternoon. Ricketts set a new UAA record with a time of 1:51.11.
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
LINDSAY TRACY | SENIOR CADENZA EDITOR | CADENZA@STUDLIFE.COM
STUDENT LIFE 5
A CONVERSATION WITH LOUFEST’S ORGANIZER
STEPHEN HUBER | STUDENT LIFE
A large crowd cheers for Misterwives on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips 66 stage at last year’s
Loufest in Forest Park.
STEPHEN HUBER | STUDENT LIFE
Nico And Vinz performs at Loufest 2015 at the Phillips 66 stage. The festival will continue again this
year at the Forest Park central fields.
you all moved on [about] not
having one of your founders
there?
MVH: Our goal is to
STEPHEN HUBER | STUDENT LIFE
Billy Idol performs at Loufest 2015 in Forest Park. The music festival will continue this year in Forest
Park at the Central Fields.
PETER DISSINGER
STAFF REPORTER
With LouFest on the
horizon, Cadenza decided
to get an inside scoop on
the LouFest brand and how
it has grown to become an
integral part of the city’s
music scene over the past
seven years. As you may
know, the festival is run
by local entrepreneurs at
Listen Live Entertainment.
Recently, one of the founders, Brian Cohen, left to
create a multimedia festival,
Murmuration, which is set
to debut in late September
2016. We reached out to
one of LouFest’s managing
partners, Mike Van Hee, to
talk about what has made
the festival so successful and
how they plan to adapt and
grow LouFest in the upcoming years.
STUDENT LIFE: How
does it feel to have watched
the festival progress from
hosting [more] regional
bands to getting headliners
like OutKast and Hozier?
MIKE VAN HEE: It’s
great—those were all part of
the original plan and goal.
It was great to see all of that
stuff come to fruition sooner
than we thought we would
see it. Obviously, the festival
grows every year. We’ve seen
it grow to the level where
50,000 folks [come] over
the weekend, something we
never thought we would be
talking about. I think now
we see the potential of the
festival to continue growing
and becoming an institution
in St. Louis, where everyone
has it blocked off [during]
the second weekend of
September.
SL: Do you think that the
sound last year was much
more of a LouFest brand or
that the sound will change
from year to year in terms of
headlining talent?
MVH: I think every year
will be different. It’s difficult
to say…you can’t expect one
specific sound. When we
check out headliners we have
to take a bunch of things into
consideration—the schedule,
our budget. We take a look
at who’s available and who
makes sense. St. Louis is a
unique town—it’s not the
easiest place to book for. We
want to make sure that we
are trying to tailor the festival
to our core. And that’s definitely you all at [Washington
University]—you are the
shadow of the festival. We
try to make sure that there
are a good number of bands
that Wash. U. students can
get excited about. We’re trying to make LouFest a Wash.
U. tradition—after you guys
move back and settle into
classes, everyone walks over
to LouFest.
always have a festival that
celebrates St. Louis. We
want to enhance the overall
experience of the festival, the
Market Square, the art installations, the Nosh Pit, the
food court—all that fun stuff.
We’re at the level now where
there are more applications
than we can handle, so we
can tailor some of those
areas to feature the best businesses in St. Louis. We don’t
know much about Brian’s
venture, but it sounds like
it can complement LouFest
well. Whatever we can do
on our end to help that
festival…we’re there to support... We know how hard
it is to get a festival started.
It sounds like it’s going to
be an amazing event. I don’t
think there’s going to be
much crossover since it’s
very focused on a multimedia experience. We’re excited
to draw attention to St.
Louis—any kind of festival
is a positive for the city.
SL: The dates for LouFest
were released later this year.
Did that affect your ability to
book artists?
MVH: From a public
SL: How do you guys see
perspective, it took us a
while to get dates out. In
terms of booking, we were
having conversations with
agents already to make sure
artists were holding dates for
us. We’re still on the same
weekend, so everyone that
has grown to get familiar
with LouFest already had it
in their calendars.
Brian Cohen’s festival fitting
in with Loufest? How have
SL: Now that the festival
has become popular, do you
have more artists coming to
you? How does the booking
process work for you now?
own—do you have a chance
to then bring their bands
back to LouFest?
MVH: Now, more than
body that has already been
to the festival has some
familiarity with it. Take
Brandon Flowers, who
headlined with the Killers
at LouFest in 2013. He
had that familiarity and
was releasing a new album
in his solo project. There
was a comfort level in the
experience, and he had a
great time here in 2013.
It makes some of those
initial conversations much
easier when people bring
their side/solo projects to
LouFest.
ever, we’ve got more brand
recognition for the festival.
What helps is that everyone
who comes has an amazing
time. With everything that
they get to do in the park…
we are blessed with the
number one city park in the
U.S.—Forest Park is the hero
of the entire event. Once we
bring some of these bands
to town, and they’re walking
around the park, they’re
saying this is one of the
coolest venues they’ve been
to because the setting makes
the entire experience so
much better. A lot of times at
festivals, artists stay backstage or go back to their tour
buses. It’s completely the
opposite at LouFest—artists
really want to see the festival
and experience it themselves.
Obviously, Forest Park isn’t
on a lot of peoples’ radar on
a national level, but it’s starting to now with the awards
it has received recently. We
really believe that Forest
Park is a gem of the city.
We bring folks from all
over the world to the jewel
of our town. It also helps
when people communicate
to managers, and those
managers iterate to us that
their bands had an incredible
time at the festival. Once a
musician comes to LouFest,
they really understand what
we’re about.
SL: When you have artists
like Albert Hammond Jr.
(The Strokes), Nate Ruess
(Fun.) and Brandon Flowers
(The Killers) come and
perform at LouFest on their
MVH: Absolutely—any-
SL: In the first few years of
LouFest, was there an artist
you caught on the brink
who has gone on to do
incredible things since?
MVH: Phantogram stands
out. They blew up after we
brought them to LouFest
in 2012. They have really
jumped onto another level,
you know? It was great
when they played in 2012.
In terms of someone who
has released a lot of albums
since and has grown year
over year, they really
stick out. As does Robert
DeLong—he has grown
substantially enough for us
to give him a later set. His
live show is amazing, and
he is somebody we have
seen go from an early afternoon slot to the 5-6 p.m.
slot. He had people having
a great time last year. The
other band is Alabama
Shakes. They played in
2013 when they were up
and coming. But, man—
have they grown since.
6 STUDENT LIFE
LINDSAY TRACY | SENIOR CADENZA EDITOR | CADENZA@STUDLIFE.COM
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
CADENZA’S ultimate POP-PUNK PREGAME PLAYLIST
Katharine Jaruzelski, Staff Writer
Call it what you want: pop-punk, pop-rock, emo. Whatever it was, I lived and breathed it from approximately
2006-2012. I bought clothes from Glamour Kills and wore them with my Converse and rubber bracelets. I was
never much of a “One Tree Hill” fan, but I did envy Peyton for her fling with Pete Wentz. I once crowd-surfed at
an All Time Low show and felt like a real badass about it. Though I’ve since moved on from my emo obsession,
that angsty music still holds a special place in my heart.
That’s only part of the reason why I’m so pumped for an All-American Rejects-headlined WILD, though. In fact,
I genuinely think this throwback WILD will be a lot of fun for everyone, not to mention a welcome change of
pace—I mean, how long has it been since you’ve seen a guitar on the Brookings Quadrangle stage? Whether
you’re just as excited as I am or still need a bit more convincing, I encourage you to embrace the mid-2000s angst
with this WILD pregame playlist:
THE ALLAMERICAN
REJECTS
ALL TIME LOW FALL OUT BOY
AND BOYS
LIKE GIRLS
Fall Out Boy (FOB) is
the de facto king of poppunk, in my opinion. My
first concert was a Fall Out
Boy show, and I still feel a
weird sense of satisfaction
knowing that I was also
at their last concert before
their four-year hiatus (an
event that concluded with
Mark Hoppus of Blink-182
shaving off Pete Wentz’s
signature emo haircut).
But enough about me. No
pop-punk pregame playlist
would be complete without
To all those I’ve heard
complaining that the AllAmerican Rejects (AAR)
“only have, like, two songs,”
now is my chance to prove
you wrong. Take a few
minutes to click through
the band’s top tracks on
Spotify, and you’ll quickly
realize how many AAR
classics you had forgotten—
for instance, do the lyrics
“Swing, swing, swing from
the tangles of my heart”
Panic! At The Disco
(P!ATD) is like Fall Out
Boy’s weird little brother
who plays the harpsichord
and went through a steampunk phase. The band
has completely revamped
its image and sound with
almost every album it’s
put out—even dropping
its signature exclamation
point for a few tumultuous years—but most still
associate P!ATD with its
PARAMORE
ring a bell? Even if this list
hasn’t convinced you of
the beauty of pop-punk, I
can pretty much guarantee
you’ll be singing a different
tune (pun intended) when
you’re belting along to
“Dirty Little Secret” with
thousands of your classmates on Friday.
Songs: “Dirty Little
Secret,” “Move Along,”
“Swing, Swing,” “Gives
You Hell”
PANIC! AT
THE DISCO
baroque-inspired debut
album, “A Fever You Can’t
Sweat Out.” That album
was 2006-era teen angst at
its finest; I dare you to listen
to the lyrics “Let’s get these
teen hearts beating. Faster,
faster” without feeling some
type of way.
Songs: “I Write Sins
Not Tragedies,” “Lying Is
the Most Fun a Girl Can
Have Without Taking Her
Clothes Off ”
a healthy dose of “From
Under the Cork Tree”- and
“Infinity on High”-era
FOB. I would happily get
into some deep cuts here,
but it’s hard to beat the
classics—if belting out “Am
I more than you bargained
for yet?” doesn’t put you in
a pop-punk-loving mood, I
don’t know what will.
Songs: “Sugar, We’re
Going Down,” “A Little
Less Sixteen Candles, “A
Little More ‘Touch Me,’”
“Thnks fr the Mmrs”
I decided to lump
these two bands together
because while All Time
Low never quite reached
the same level of mainstream success as Boys
Like Girls, both fourpieces courted a similar
teenybopper demo with
music that was poppier
and more upbeat than
most of their emo counterparts. Plus, All Time
Low and Boys Like Girls
pretty much sum up the
year 2008 in my mind,
a time when pop-punk
seemed to reach its
mainstream peak before
fizzling out in the late
2000s and early 2010s.
Bands like these put a
sunny spin on the genre’s
notoriously cliched lyrics, full of meaningless
metaphors and aspirations
to “get out of this town.”
I don’t know about you,
but I can think of no better way to celebrate the
end of the semester than
by listening to the band
whose “voice was the
soundtrack of my summer” back in 8th grade.
Songs: “Dear Maria,
Count Me In,” “Poppin’
Champagne,” “The Great
Escape,” “Heels Over
Head”
Believe it or not, I was
actually never that big of
a Paramore fan, but that
doesn’t mean I didn’t idolize
the band’s front woman,
Hayley Williams. After starting the band at age 13 (13!!!),
Williams quickly rose to
fame as a badass female voice
in an almost entirely male
genre. Take advantage of this
chance to de-stress after the
end of classes by channeling
Williams’ fiery energy and
screaming along to “Misery
Business” in a dorm room.
Songs: “Misery Business,”
“That’s What You Get”
BONUS TRACKS
“OCEAN AVENUE”
—YELLOWCARD
“HONESTLY”
—CARTEL
“CHECK YES JULIET”
—WE THE KINGS
“TEENAGERS”
—MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
“SNAKES ON A PLANE (BRING IT)”
—COBRA STARSHIP
“THE ANTHEM”
—GOOD CHARLOTTE
CHECK OUT OUR
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
AT STUDLIFE.COM
STUDENT LIFE 7
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
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FORUM
SARAH HANDS | SENIOR FORUM EDITOR | FORUM@STUDLIFE.COM
8 STUDENT LIFE
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
STAFF EDITORIAL
Student Union needs to reorganize speaker funding, selection
E
very year, Student
Union puts
aside an inordinate amount of
money to give students the
opportunity to hear from a
wide range of speakers on
a number of topics—from
lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender rights to feminism to global health. We’re
lucky to go to a university
that can afford to bring so
many influential figures
to campus, but we must
remember that, at its core,
this series is supposed to
appeal to students.
When the time rolls
around each year for SU
Treasury to allocate this
funding, it seems that it
heavily weighs that philosophy of appealing to students
with the price of each
proposed speaker.
Last year, while Student
Union funded eight SU
Speaker Series events—
totaling $206,221.48— three
speakers ended up
canceling. This meant that
$106,134.48 worth of speakers—only $18,865.52 shy of
this year’s entire budget—
never showed. Clearly, these
cancellations are a problem—what good is having a
speaker series if the speakers
never make it to campus?
Thankfully, SU also
noticed this problem. This
year, the Speaker Series has
been branded as “Trending
Topics,” and SU will take
control of the speaker planning process in order to,
among other reasons, minimize cancellations. Also,
the funds were allocated
this month rather than in
September, as they have in
the past. We commend SU’s recognition of this problem in its
process. Treasury even voted
to order those who weren’t
funded into a waitlist this
year that it can consult
should it need to replace a
speaker.
However, Treasury’s
allocation process is still
flawed. Treasury is mainly
concerned with bringing a
wide array of many speakers
and speakers students will
be interested in, but it fails
on both fronts.
This year, eight events
were again allocated funding. The prices of each
range from $800 to $35,000
and the average cost is
around $15,500. However,
not one person on that
list has any real, universal
name recognition. Sure, a
quick Google search might
help you recognize their
significance, but the name
recognition simply isn’t
there.
It begs the question of
whether it is more important
to bring in fewer, more recognizable speakers at higher
price points—that more
students would theoretically
be interested in—or more,
cheaper, less well-known
speakers that would lead to
more events, but less organic
interest.
We see problems with
either approach. If Treasury
were to only worry about
name recognition, it would
potentially silence narratives
that may come in the form
of a speaker at a lower price
point, in hopes to accommodate the most people.
Bringing in fewer speakers
would also lead to a lack of
diversity of gender, sex and
race representation.
On the other hand, the
speaker series is for students.
It loses value and purpose
if students don’t show up—
and that happens if they
don’t care who the speakers
are or if the event isn’t marketed to make them care.
Attracting students outside
of a certain demographic
(that demographic generally
being the student group that
appealed for the speaker) is
objectively harder if name
recognition is not a tool they
can rely on.
Our solution is to reframe
the entire process to look
more like a series. Treasury
needs to care more about
how all these speakers
work in conjunction with
each other and their greater
goals, rather than how each
specific speaker fulfills both
these goals.
How? Split the potential
speakers into two categories:
those above a certain price
point—say, $50,000—and
those below. Treasury
should then vote to bring
one speaker from the former
category and a few from the
latter to campus.
This year, those who
were at price points above
$50,000 included names
like George Takei, Margaret
Cho and Brandon Stanton.
All of these options maintained the name recognition
Treasury is looking for,
however, no speaker over
$35,000 was funded.
Say Treasury brought
in one of these $50,000
speakers. First, it would
accomplish its goal in
bringing a high-profile
speaker whose name alone
would attract all kinds of
students. But, it would still
have $75,000 to allocate to
other speakers. Now, with
one central speaker, it can
then frame a series around
them, using other speakers
to complement the main
speaker. These speakers
would provide the unique
perspectives that student
groups who are appealing
for them are looking to
bring, and SU wouldn’t be
handicapping its ability to
still bring a strong, diverse
slate of speakers.
This way, by framing
Trending Topics as the series
it’s intended to look like,
SU will be able to both fund
speakers will appeal to a
wide range of students while
still providing a number of
speakers with diversity and
specific narratives—achieving the goal it set out to
accomplish.
Not all legends are heroes
MAX BASH
STAFF WRITER
K
obe Bryant
is one of the
most skilled,
competitive
and hardworking players
the NBA has ever seen.
Even after a series of
debilitating injuries, he
dropped 60 points in his
last game ever against the
Utah Jazz—quite the way
to go out.
It was more than a
game, though; it was a
ceremony. People paid up
to $25,000 to watch Kobe
grace the court one last
time. If I were a Lakers
fan, I too would have
loved to watch one of the
greatest basketball players
ever go out in glory, but
that glory is stained.
“The Black Mamba” is
poisonous—not only in
skill, but in his ability to
persuade people to forget
clear-cut evidence against
him. Most of America forgets that he was handed
serious criminal charges.
Instead, we remember
the three-peat from 2000
to 2002, not the “accusations” from 2003.
Statistics published by
the National Coalition
Against Violent Athletes,
from leading researchers on sexual assault and
athletes, Jeff Benedict and
Todd Crosset, show that
athletes are more likely
to commit sex crimes
than average citizens,
but society continues to
give athletes like Kobe
a pass, turning a blind
eye. As Aliko Carter of
Forbes Magazine put it, in
America especially, “we
alter our moral compasses
to accommodate [the]
behavior[s]” of athletes
like Kobe Bryant. Five
minutes of watching the
Kobe finale coverage
makes this abundantly
clear. Everybody seems to
have forgotten about these
allegations.
Charged with sexual
assault—a felony—Kobe
was never convicted,
continuing to support
statistics from the same
study that show that athletes are less likely to be
prosecuted or convicted
for these crimes than the
average citizen. Teams
can’t bring home banners
with superstars behind
bars, so the 24-year-old, 6’
6” guard settled in a civil
suit behind closed doors
through his immense
wealth and resources as
one of America’s top and
most revered athletes.
The facts point to an
outcome that society
was quick to dismiss and
forget as he earned five
rings. The night of June
30, 2003 was a night that
America should at least
remember as more than a
blemish in his story, but
Kobe and others made
the victim out to be the
criminal, regardless of
the “groping, grabbing
and choking” detailed in
police interview transcripts. People want him
to be innocent. Unlike
other high-profile cases
of sexual assault no drugs
or alcohol were involved,
and society has helped
Kobe sweep this all under
the rug. Medical trauma
was consistent with her
description of the events
of that night, but even
with blood, hair and other
forms of evidence, the
detectives made it clear at
the start that they weren’t
there “to destroy [his]
image or [his] career”
because in America we
largely ignore even potential sexual assault when
athletes like Kobe are the
perpetrators. There’s no
pedestal for athletes in
jail, which is why society
tries so hard to keep them
out.
Nonetheless, an undisclosed settlement and a
public apology has made
society largely forget the
incident, which is disgusting in the face of all the
evidence presented. The
criminal charges may
have been dropped, but
the allegations are a large
part of Kobe’s forgotten
history. It’s despicable
that Nike profited off his
image following these
events as “The Black
Mamba.”
Nike isn’t the only one
at fault. Our culture is so
obsessed with sports that
we confuse athleticism
with invincibility and
OP-ED SUBMISSION
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
After the shooting, a question worth asking
MARK ZAEGEL
CAMPUS MINISTER,
CATHOLIC STUDENT CENTER
O
ne of the
central
tenets of the
Christian faith
is that, in this life and in
the next, suffering and
death are always followed
by resurrection and new
life. Suffering never has
the final word. In the
end, good triumphs over
evil. Love triumphs over
hate. Faith, hope and love
remain.
When violence occurs, it
affects people differently.
On Wednesday, when
gunfire rang out, some in
the Washington University
community were far away,
while others I know were
near the social work school
on the Forsyth Boulevard
sidewalk and could see
gunfire and could, in their
words, “feel the bullets
whizzing by.” Some went
about the rest of their
Wednesday as normal,
while others were very
shaken up. People respond
differently, and that is
certainly OK. But one
question remains the same
for all of us: “How will I
allow this to make me a
more loving person?”
Yes, my religious tradition
teaches that it is the way of
all things in life for at least
some measure of goodness to relentlessly emerge
from bad situations. But it
requires my participation
too. How will I let this incident affect me? How will I
participate in the process
of goodness triumphing
and new life emerging? In moments like these,
there’s a certain feeling of
“we’re all in this together.”
So maybe I will allow this
day to help me be just a
little bit kinder to others
who are in this life with me
OUR VOICE:
EDITORIAL BOARD
Staff editorials reflect the consensus of our
editorial board. The editorial board operates
independently of our newsroom and includes
members of the senior staff and forum section
editors.
Editor-in-Chief: Noa Yadidi
Associate Editor: Wesley Jenkins
Managing Editors: Maddie Wilson
Senior Sports Editor: Aaron Brezel
Senior Scene Editor: Nick Kauzlarich
Senior Cadenza Editor: Lindsay Tracy
Senior Forum Editor: Sarah Hands
Director of Special Projects: Noah Jodice
Copy Chief: Aidan Strassmann
Forum Editor: Peter Dissinger
purity. Why a professional
athlete doesn’t need to be
held accountable for his
crime is beyond me. Our
society only holds athletes
like Kobe accountable for
bringing home championships, relegating things
like serious rape allegations to the margins of his
grand narrative.
Kobe may have “sat
here in front of [us] guys
furious at [him]self ” back
then, but it has since
led to “a collective case
of amnesia among the
fans and members of the
media alike,” as Cole
Kazdin of Vice commented. This “amnesia”
will be there until society
and Lakers fans alike
call out Kobe for what
he is and see beyond his
athleticism. Kobe may be
a legend, but his legend is
tainted.
too. Maybe I strive to look
at people a little differently,
seeing not just bodies, but
seeing people’s hearts and
souls. Some on Facebook
suggested to tell someone
that you love them today.
Or maybe I simply take
some time to pause and
think and be a little extra
grateful.
When violence happens
and people have reason to
be shaken up or afraid or
angry, goodness is always
eagerly waiting to emerge
and triumph. How will you
be a part of that? How will
you allow this to make you
a more loving person?
GLENN STONE
PROFESSOR
OF ANTHROPOLOGY
A
n anecdote
from Laura
Bohannan’s
“Return to
Laughter” is well known to
anthropologists and anthropology students. Bohannan,
who spent years living with
the Tiv of central Nigeria,
describes the Tiv prank of
yelling “Snake!” to a blind
man. Since the blind man
doesn’t know where the
snake is, he is terrified and
does not know which way
to run. The Tiv found this
hilarious; Bohannan found
it cruel.
On Wednesday, we were
only told that that someone
had “a weapon” and to go to
where we felt safe. However,
we didn’t know where or
what the danger was. At
the University of Texas, the
shooter was sniping from a
tower, so one needed to get
into the nearest building. At
Sandy Hook, the shooter
was in the building, so one
needed to get outside.
On Wednesday, I found
out very quickly that the
shooter was a man with a
handgun in a black SUV on
Forsyth Boulevard, but only
because I bumped into someone who was nearby when
it happened. Washington
University needs to get this
sort of information out rather
than just yelling “snake.”
YOUR VOICE:
SUBMISSIONS
OUR WEB
POLICY
We welcome letters to
the editor and op-ed
submissions from our
readers. Submissions may
be sent to letters@studlife.
com and must include
the writer’s name, class
and phone number for
verification. Letters should
be no longer than 350
words in length, and readers
Once an article is
published on studlife.
com, it will remain there
permanently. We do not
remove articles or authors’
names from the site unless
an agreement was reached
prior to July 1, 2005.
may also submit longer
op-eds of up to 750 words.
We reserve the right to print
any submission as a letter
or op-ed. Any submission
chosen for publication does
not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Student Life,
nor does publication mean
Student Life supports said
submission.
SCENE
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
NICK KAUZLARICH | SENIOR SCENE EDITOR | SCENE@STUDLIFE.COM
STUDENT LIFE 9
AROUND THE APARTMENT IN 60 MINUTES: Escape the Room combines
teamwork and brainwork to create a unique game experience
ANUSREE NATRAJ
CULTURE EDITOR
We had found all the
keys that opened all the
colored padlocks on the
humongous key-shaped
box that was supposed
to be our ticket to the
outside world. Exalted
cries of “woohoo, we did
it!” echoed throughout the
apartment. We kept pressing the “Exit” button,
but nothing was happening—no door opened.
Suddenly, everyone wondered if there was some
other crucial clue that
we had somehow missed.
How were we going to
escape?
No, this isn’t yet
another mystery story.
This is very real.
Last Thursday evening,
Congress of the South 40
organized a trip to Escape
the Room, an interactive
adventure game in downtown St. Louis. After
waking up at 4:30 p.m.,
however, I was pretty sure
that I wasn’t going to be
able to participate in this
new experience, as the
buses had just left to go
to 1201 Washington Ave.
Fortunately, a 20-minute
cab ride later I somehow
made it in time to “The
Apartment,” one of the
most popular “rooms” at
Escape.
For those of you who
aren’t familiar with
Escape the Room, it has
four different settings
where you can unleash
your puzzle-solving
abilities, brainpower and
teamwork to escape a
situation you have been
trapped in for 60 minutes.
You’re probably wondering what could be so
challenging about getting
yourself and your teammates out of a locked
apartment in 60 minutes
using a bunch of clues
and objects. You may
think it’s probably just
another treasure hunt. I
assure you it is not.
The game began with
10 of us entering a typical
St. Louis-style apartment:
“small, intimate and full
of roommates,” as their
website put it. We were
told that we had an hour
to find clues in the apartment that would help us
unlock a giant key-shaped
lockbox and lead us to the
exit.
And so we started. It
was a one-room, kitchen
and bathroom setup.
We were greeted by the
sight of a cozy couch
with multiple colored
and numbered cushions,
flanked by a table in the
foyer which was strewn
with family pictures and
randomly placed objects
such as a wallet, a tablet
and a restaurant menu.
Further inside the
apartment was a TV area
and a bookshelf with an
assortment of intriguing
books, all hardback and
somewhat musty, right
across from a chessboard
placed strategically on a
side table, with a trophy carelessly tossed in
between the chess pieces.
To the left, the apartment branched off into a
somewhat dingy kitchen
replete with appliances,
an interesting choice of
food (rice, frozen pizzas
and eggs) and a small dining table set with chipped
wooden chairs.
All the way to the right,
on the other end, was
a bathroom with a tiny
shower stall. And, of
course, the most important part of the room—the
screen that showed us
the time remaining and
spewed random hints
based on our progress.
Now, I don’t want to
spoil the game for you,
but essentially, it was a
matter of figuring out
how we could use seemingly normal numbers and
plug them into different
scenarios using previous
clues to unlock multiple
keys, pass-codes and
further clues that could
help us unlock the huge
key-shaped box that said
“EXIT.” Overall, we had to
use some pretty out of
the box ideas and quick
thinking to put together
clues from various places
and use clues that we
already had. We navigated through electronic
tablets, rice packets,
DVDs and microwaves
and rummaged through
bookshelves, kitchen
cabinets and much more.
We even took phone calls
from a restaurant that
was about to bring in a
delivery. To be honest, we
never looked at the time
remaining because we got
so involved that we just
kept finding clue after
clue due to our amazing
teamwork.
Up until the point when
we were down to the last
two steps, I had only been
helping people find clues.
But I felt thrilled when I
found one myself. It was
the last key to the puzzle,
and it unlocked the big
key-shaped EXIT lockbox.
This was when everyone
began to feel good about
having unlocked the EXIT
box, except it didn’t lead
us out anywhere.
Plot twist: there was
another numeric keypad
inside the lockbox that
required a four-digit code.
The blinking red light and
countdown beeps created
a very time-bomb-esque
scenario. Though some
members were shouting random numbers
that we had encountered
previously, some of us
scrutinized the fine print
on the numeric keypad,
which had a website URL
on it. We decided to use
that as our last clue and
voila—we had escaped the
room!
That we managed to
escape in 49 minutes was
a surprise in itself—I also
never expected we would
be the first team to escape.
Well, I guess it just goes
to show that with good
group effort and some
presence of mind, it’s not
all that hard to escape—
especially when you have
the minds of 10 smart
Washington University
students working together.
All in all, if you’re looking for a study break
during finals that keeps
your mind sharp, look no
further than Escape the
Room.
A ROAD TRIP TO NOWHERE: My 5-hour journey on the Circ
By Ella Chochrek, Contributing Writer
ALLISON HAMBURG | STUDENT LIFE
Bear’s Den may
be thought of
as the bona fide
late-night hotspot
for Washington
University underclassmen after a
night out, but given
that drunk people
can hardly walk and
Uber is expensive,
the Circulator seems
like the natural next
best place to find
some inebriated
freshmen on a weekend night. The Circ
drivers probably
go home with some
crazy stories after
the midnight shift,
right? RIGHT?
So, all in the name
of journalism, I
decided to spend
five long hours on
the Circulator from
9 p.m. Saturday
ADD US ON SNAPCHAT
@studlifewu
to 2 a.m. Sunday,
traveling in 15
loops around
the Washington
University campus
in more time than it
would have taken to
get to Chicago.
But before I dive
into my experience,
let’s first have a look
at what I brought
with me on my road
trip to nowhere:
MY CELL PHONE
(If I was going to be on
a bus ride for five hours,
I would need to text.
Talking on the phone or
listening to music were
against my rules, as was
surfing the Internet or
playing games, but texting
was a necessity.)
WHITE
CHOCOLATE
(For some reason a single
kosher white chocolate
bar was the only food I
brought—this becomes a
plot point later on.)
MY LAPTOP
(I didn’t end up using it,
but I had it stowed away in
my tote bag.)
A PACK OF
TISSUES
(It’s allergy season!)
A NOTEBOOK
AND PEN
(Obviously, I couldn’t
write this story without
taking notes. What kind of
journalist do you think I
am?)
And now it’s time to
delve into my travel journal,
SEE CIRC, PAGE 10
10 STUDENT LIFE
NICK KAUZLARICH | SENIOR SCENE EDITOR | SCENE@STUDLIFE.COM
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016
CIRC FROM PAGE 9
replete with my inner workings as I underwent my (at
times seemingly never-ending) journey.
9:00 PM:
It’s here—I didn’t even
check the WUSTL app and
the Circ is pulling in at the
same time as I’m walking to
the stop. Maybe this will be
fun? Either way, at least (for
now) I have a buddy, as my
friend Victor has agreed to
join me for one cycle before
he heads back into civilization. We get on at the stop
outside Dardick House,
and at the next stop—the
Clocktower—a few people
get on. They’re all dressed
up for a formal (I assume),
so I feel a little awkward in
my Superga sneakers and
T-shirt, but it’s OK. The
crowd of nicely dressed
people will be off in a few
minutes.
9:08 PM:
I tell the driver what I
am doing, and he tells me
someone else has done this
before. I am confused, but
whatever—at least he’s not
going to try to kick me off.
He gets off for a few minutes in the Village without
uttering a word. I stay on
and tell a fellow rider what I
am doing. He is confused.
9:24 PM:
The first cycle is down,
and Victor has left me alone
again. But there’s another
round of people headed to
formal. This time they pack
in, and I have to relinquish
the seat next to me (ugh).
The Circ now smells like
a mixture of Smirnoff
and Marc Jacobs’ Daisy
perfume. But hey—could be
worse. We get to Brookings
Hall and they all get off,
allowing me to once again
enjoy peace and quiet.
9:36 PM:
The driver and I are by
ourselves. He didn’t seem
too interested in chatting
before, but now he comments on how there is a
full moon. I can’t really see
it from my seat, but I just
go along with it, since I’m
going to be on the bus with
him for about another four
and a half hours. He also
asks me what my major is,
and I tell him I still don’t
know what I’m doing with
my life. He says I still have
time to figure it out. We’ve
only done two laps of campus and I’m already starting
to feel a little queasy from
all the speed bumps. This
might be harder than I’d
thought.
9:53 PM:
Another group gets off at
Brookings, and the driver
asks me how I’m enjoying the ride. We chat a bit,
and he tells me he does
the midnight shift every
Saturday. His voice seems
kind of familiar to me, and
I soon realize it reminds me
of actor Kenan Thompson
on “Saturday Night Live.”
Interesting. Our conversation dies as we pull back
into the South 40, and a
couple more students head
on the bus. The driver turns
off the bus (and the lights),
announcing he will return
after he picks up a snack
at Bear’s Den. I sit in the
dark, empty Circ at the
Clocktower and my carsickness completely alleviates
as I wait for the driver to
return. A few minutes later,
he gets back into the driver’s
seat with a scone and a cup
of coffee, and we begin
again.
10:14 PM:
I get a text from my mom
telling me the Chicago
Blackhawks won 6-3 against
the St. Louis Blues after
being down 3-1 in the
game—good news for my
family, who are all huge
Hawks fans. She remembers that I’m on the bus
and asks why I can’t just
abandon my mission (it’s
for journalism, Mom).
After students unload in the
Village, the driver and I get
to talking again. He tells
me that he has to count the
number of students who
get on the bus at each stop,
although he isn’t quite sure
why. He again mentions
the full moon, launching
into a story about how he
saw an owl that had “a bad
attitude”—a “chip on his
shoulder.” I tell him that
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen
an owl outside of the zoo,
and he says he hadn’t seen
one himself until he saw
this one.
10:35 PM:
The driver asks where
I’m from, and I tell him the
suburbs outside New York.
He asks me if I’ve ever been
to the Statue of Liberty
(once I passed right by it, on
a fourth grade trip to Ellis
Island, but I’ve never actually been up), and we talk
about the statue for a while.
10:58 PM:
Yet another lap done and
gone, and I’ve gotten used
to it. I’m starting to regret
not having brought any
water on the Circ because
I’m really thirsty. But I
decide to ignore it. I keep
sneezing, though—allergies.
The driver asks me if I’m
OK, and somehow our discussion leads to zits (I swear
he was the one who brought
that up). Weird conversation topic, but I’m grateful
to have someone to talk to
as I sit inside the bus.
11:06 PM:
Someone is talking about
the Blackhawks and how
clutch they are. This guy
sounds like a less-informed
version of my brother Ian.
I decide to text Ian, who
quickly responds that he
is sure the Hawks will win
in game seven. I am not so
sure, but I tell him about my
bus trip and he asks where I
am going. In circles around
campus, I respond. He stops
replying.
11:30 PM:
I am starting to get tired
and lonely and bored. The
Circ has been pretty empty
for the past half hour. And
I’ve been thirsty for about
two hours at this point.
What was I thinking when I
didn’t bring water—or even
better: coffee. I could use a
hot drink at this point. But
I’m halfway through! So, I’ll
be an optimist and pretend
that this journey is almost
over, even though that’s
really far from the case—I
still have as much time left
as I’ve completed.
12:08 AM:
After an uneventful half
an hour, a ton of people
returning from formals head
on the Circ—including
my friend Becca. My first
visitor left around 9:20, so I
am grateful for her unexpected arrival. She tells me
she’ll sit with me for one
loop and then get off by
the Overpass. I’ve managed
to stay pretty anonymous
to other Circ riders for the
past few hours, but the guy
behind me notices my tallies
of people getting on and
off the Circ. He counts off
the heads for me (which is
sort of helpful, to be honest) until he gets off at the
Clocktower.
12:18 AM:
As we head back by
Mallinckrodt, Becca notices
a man in all white clothing
with a long white beard
holding two clear plastic
bags. I tell her that he’s been
there for a while. She tells
me I might want to mention
him for my article—who is
this man in all white and
why is he here? The world
may never know. Soon after,
Becca gets to her stop and
hits the road. The driver
tells me he’s arrived early at
the Village and has to wait
around for a few minutes.
I don’t mind—I’m still
slightly nauseous from riding in all those circles.
12:37 AM:
We’re back at
Mallinckrodt—and the man
in all white is gone? Where
did he go? I contemplate for
a bit and then pull out my
white chocolate. I haven’t
had anything to eat or drink
since like 7:30 p.m., and
though I’d prefer a bottle of
water, I’ll have to make do
with this chocolate bar.
12:45 AM:
So many more people
back from formals come
on the Circ. Some of them
took the Circ when they
were leaving, and I realize
that they’ve gone through
their whole night’s plans
while I’ve been sitting on
this bus—what am I doing
with my life? The guy sitting across from me keeps
looking back and forth at
me, and I wonder if he’s
going to ask me about my
notebook tallies. Nope—he
asks me what I’m eating.
Suddenly I become very
aware that white chocolate
was a very odd food choice
—oh well. I keep nibbling
away.
1:09 AM:
The driver gets off the
Circ to “go stretch.” I sit
and wait for a while. When
he returns we start talking
about the John F. Kennedy
and Martin Luther King Jr.
assassinations. He tells me
that there’s no way Kennedy
could have died without the
government being involved.
I can’t help thinking of my
dad’s own fascination with
JFK conspiracy theories.
More students hop on the
Circ, and our conversation
fades away once again.
1:15 AM:
Wow. This is what I’ve
been waiting for—the most
interesting thing that’s
happened all night. A seemingly inebriated girl tries to
bring a large branch on the
Circ. I am confused, but
the driver seems unfazed. I
guess this sort of thing happens often enough? He tells
her that she cannot bring
the branch on—it won’t fit,
and it takes up seats—and
she decides to walk home
with the branch instead.
Her friends elect to walk
with her. I stay on the bus,
still perplexed by what just
happened.
1:23 AM:
Passengers depart and
the driver tells me there was
no way he was letting the
girl bring a branch on the
Circ—he comments that
she must have been drinking
“whiskey or something
strong” in order to think
that was a good idea. We
head back around to the
South 40—my time is
winding down; we only
have two trips left—and my
friend Sam comes to visit
me. The guy who counted
my tally marks is back too,
and he announces that
three people are getting on
the Circ. This is exciting—
I’ve been alone with my
thoughts for what feels
like an eternity. Sam tries
to use his computer, but
Wi-Fi isn’t working on the
bus, so he decides to shut
his laptop, and he agrees to
stay on until we get kicked
off at 2 a.m. As we cycle
around Sam comments
on how bumpy the ride is.
The Circ isn’t the smoothest ride, but at this point,
I’m only noticing the speed
bumps—I brace myself for
each one, but I know their
locations by heart, which
Sam (as a non-pro) finds
comical.
1:55 AM:
I glance down at my
phone and realize we
really are almost done.
The driver says, “I’m out
of commission” as we hit
the Clocktower for the 15th
time. I rejoice—my mission
is done. I say goodbye and
get off the bus to head
home, desperate for some
water and a better snack.
Next time I go on
a five-hour bus ride
to nowhere, I’ll have
to bring a full meal
and something
to drink. But all
things considered,
this Circ business
really wasn’t that
bad. That said, I
think I’ll be using
other methods of
transportation
for the rest of the
semester—those
speed bumps will
be haunting my
dreams for a while.
STATISTICS
197
191
3
31
PEOPLE WHO GOT ON THE CIRC
PEOPLE WHO GOT OFF THE CIRC
TIMES THE DRIVER GOT OFF THE CIRC
15
10
<1
1
MOST PEOPLE TO GET ON AT ONE STOP
LAPS AROUND CAMPUS
MINUTES: LONGEST WAIT AT A STOP
MINUTES: SHORTEST WAIT AT A STOP
BRANCH ATTEMPTED TO BE DRAGGED ONTO THE CIRC