spring 2014 issue 1
DESCRIPTION
Spring 2014 Issue 1 of The Campanil.TRANSCRIPT
see Smoking page 3
// Student-run newspaper serving Mills College since 1917 //
02.04.14// Volume 99 // Issue 8 //
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In this issue Notes from Abroad >> pg 6
News
Arts & Entertainment Opinions
Sports & Health Response to Call to Action >> pg 2Learning to Eat Real >> pg 7
A student shares her first expierences in Morocco.
LUNAFEST 2014 >> pg 5Dorothy Calimeris teaches students to eat healthy.
Check out this film festival by, for, and about women.
Natalie Meier
Learn about Mills’ current educational initiatives.
UC Berkeley was proclaimed a tobacco-free campus Jan. 1, em-ploying the simple campaign slo-
gan: “Breathe.” Elsewhere, Mills College’s once rampant discussions about creating a “smoke-reduced campus” are now stagnant.
In 2011, the Associated Stu-dents of Mills College (ASMC) discussed creating a “smoke-re-duced” atmosphere by designat-ing 10 smoking zones on campus.
Then-ASMC-President Modesta Tamayo and Vice President Rebec-ca Freeman spear-headed the effort in conjunction with the Smoking Committee, a group that formed around the same time to handle best practices surrounding smoking on campus. They planned to submit their final decision to Mills faculty
as a strong recommendation for how the campus smoking policies should be modified.
However, the smoking poli-cy was never officially altered, and discussions about the policy abruptly dwindled to a moot point with the departure of Tamayo and Freeman. Currently, the policy
still stands--students can smoke anywhere on campus with the ex-ception of the Art building and the Children’s School, and are not per-mitted to smoke within 30 feet of any building entrance.
“[These meetings were] a combination of interested parties,
Changes at UC Berkeley spark Mills’ smoking policy debate
Mills enacts conservation efforts
TESSA LOVE
When you imagine Mills Col-lege, your first image may be the beauty of the campus – tall trees, blooming flowers, lush green lawns. But all this vibrant veg-etation takes its toll on the water supply, and as California’s worst drought in over a century continues to turn up the heat, the campus may have to sacrifice a little beauty for a little water. And students may have to sacrifice some showers, too.
“More than anything, we need
to value our water flow,” said Linda Zitzner, Associate Vice President for Operations and co-chair of the Sustainability Committee, which works to unify various environ-mental departments and efforts across campus to promote and de-velop sustainable practices.
According to Zitzner, Mills has used about 28 million gallons of domestic water every year in the last four fiscal years and is on track to use that amount this year, too. But ideas are in the works to reduce the college's use by 20 percent, the amount Governor Jerry Brown urged all Californians to cut in his recent drought declaration.
So far, no official drought plans
have been made for Mills, but, ac-cording to Zitzner, the sustainabil-ity committee and the grounds crew are all investigating a number of options. But the most effective way to reduce water use, she said, will come from the community itself.
“The biggest savings opportu-nity we have is through behavioral modification and raising awareness with the college stakeholders,” she said.
This means that students and faculty alike must work together to save water and become more aware of the ways water use can be re-duced. Zitzner and the sustainability
see Drought page 3
tessa love
NATALIE MEIER
Congresswomen visit Mills
JEN MAC RAMOS
On Feb. 1, 2014, a stamp was dedicated to former congress-woman Shirley Chisholm at Mills by a current congresswom-an and Mills Alumna, Barbra Lee ‘73. For more photos see page 2.
2 News02.04.14
Tessa LoveEditor in Chief
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Chief News Editor Ari Nussbaum
Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Mibach
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contact the Editor in Chief at [email protected]
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At the Higher Education Summit recently held at the White House, President Obama announced a call to action to increase college opportunities for all, especially low-income and first time college students. Public colleges across the country have since pledged to make the commitments the President called for. As a private institution, Mills College was not effected by these initiatives. However, much of what the public schools pledged to do are items Mills already has under consideration, or are current-ly being developed, according to Brian O’Rourke, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Mills.
“There were some new initiatives and there was a lot of new funding involved with what was referenced [by the President],” O’Rourke said. “It just wasn’t necessarily this broad sweeping change.”
As a collective, collegiate lead-ers at the Higher Education Summit agreed to more than 100 commit-ments to take new action in four key areas critical to increasing college access and success, according to the White House website.
One such area is to connect low-income students to colleges that are right for them, as well as ensur-ing that they graduate. At Mills,
Mills’ VP of Enrollment responds to President’s recent Call to Action
the building blocks to support low income students through col-lege to graduation have already been developed. Every year, Mills enrolls a very high number of Pell Grant eligible students, who have the highest need. A Pell Grant is government funded aid awarded to eligible undergraduate students based on their financial need, attendance, and academic status (full or part time); the Pell Grant does not have to be repaid. Data has shown that Mills’ enrollment of Pell eligible students is con-sistently over 35 percent, in some years over 40 percent, according to O’Rourke.
“What we are proud of is we are [also] graduating those students at a rate significantly higher than the national average,” O’Rourke said.
Mills is also currently devel-oping a retention predictor score. The new scoring system, currently in the data collection phase, will help Mills predict if a student will succeed and graduate. Ultimately the scoring system is not intended to increase exclusivity at Mills by blocking low ranking students out, but instead to help students see what they need to do to get their score up and succeed at Mills.
“I want to make sure the data is telling us what support we need to provide,” O’Rourke said. “We have selectivity to our process that sets students up for success.”
Another key area from the sum-
mit was the commitment to increase the number of students preparing for college through programs that encourage and help students pre-pare for college as early as elemen-tary school. Mills is considering a few options in this area. As part of the strategic plan, Mills is looking at collaborating with high school districts and other colleges in an ef-fort to “cast a wider net,” according to O’Rourke, which is another area in which Mills is ahead of Obama’s call to action.
One way Mills is achieving this is through programs like College Track, a national college comple-tion non-profit that enables students from under-served communities to graduate from college by guiding students from the summer before ninth grade through their college graduation. Last year Mills reaf-firmed their formal commitment to College Track, the first private school in the nation to do so, ac-cording to O’Rourke. The program is already producing results: the first College Track student is cur-rently a first-year at Mills.
“Our hope is that we will enroll more students this upcoming year,” O’Rourke said, “and continue to develop that relationship.”
The college has also entered into an agreement with other pro-grams similar to College Track and is holding preliminary conversa-tions for opportunities to formally partner with high schools, districts
and community colleges, according to O’Rourke.
Obama’s initiative also called for leveling the playing field in col-lege advising. Often low-income students are further disadvantaged when entering college due to lack of funding for counselors and ex-tra advising at their schools. Par-ticipants at the summit committed to increasing additional resources like school counselors and summer preparation programs.
Mills currently has two pro-grams in place that address this growing need of additional sup-port for first-time and low-income college students. The Summer Academic Workshop [SAW], is a four-week residential program designed for first-generation col-lege students and students of color, providing them with a strict transi-tion into college while also devel-oping relationships for continued community support.
“The summer academic work-shop takes a small core of students and really focuses on the study skills and the college acclima-tion information that they need to help set them up for success,” O’Rourke said.
Mills also offers counseling and psychological services to all their students, including eight counsel-ing sessions each academic year free of charge. The option for free counseling services allows students a safe space to talk about their tran-
sition into a four-year college.The fourth and final key area
detailed at the summit is to strength-en remediation to help academi-cally underprepared students prog-ress to get through and complete college. While helping get students to college is valuable, helping them succeed and graduate is the key to a successful middle class.
Mills has a number of early in-tervention techniques to help stu-dents succeed and ultimately grad-uate. One of these techniques is the Academic Warning, which alerts the student, professor, advisor and counselor of a bump in a student’s road to success. Academic warn-ings require immediate responses from all parties and an appointment with an academic advisor.
“Its amazing how much infor-mation we are able to glean from faculty advisory appointments,” O’Rourke said. “Collectively [we] share that information to see what we can do to make sure that we give every student the opportunity to persist here.”
Though Obama’s summit didn’t spur any “global change,” accord-ing to O’Rourke, it helped solidify the initiative Mills has taken on its own to help all students succeed.
“We really want to make sure we are admitting students that we believe can do the work and persist,” he said, “and then when they are here, give them every opportunity to do so.”
Congresswomen unveil Shirley Chisholm-inspired stamp
ALL PHOTOS BE JEN MAC RAMOS
For the full story visitwww.thecampanil.com
committee plan to educate the community by conducting meetings, adding signage around the campus, and issuing reminders to do small things such as lowering number and length of showers, turning off water between tasks, and waiting to do laundry until you have a full load.This grassroots technique proved use-ful when the campus attempted to reduce electrical use. The sustainability committee provided students with reminders to con-serve energy, and with the information to illuminate where they had wasted.“When people have the data to know,” Zitzner said, “when they can see that they have wasted, they can make a change.”While behavioral changes will contribute to the bulk of the savings, water conserva-tion is at the top of the Sustainability Com-mittee’s list according to Zitzner, meaning other conservation efforts are being ex-plored and enacted.According to Dorothy Calimeris, direc-tor of auxiliary services, low flow shower nozzles were installed in all the residence halls a few years ago to be proactive about water conservation, and low flow toilets were installed in all new construction and replacement units. According to Zitzner, this practice will continue.Plantings and irrigation systems are also being reevaluated for efficiency. This in-cludes updating irrigation systems to re-duce waste along the way, replacing inva-sive plants and grasses with more drought resistant options, and researching the best water practices for such plantings – includ-ing watering less. But, Zitzner said, they don’t want to underwater, either.“We want to make sure everything remains
healthy,” she said. “Stress happens to the trees and vegetation. It’s important that we optimize water delivery so they don’t die off. That would create more problems for us.”As of now, the irrigation systems are turned off and the grounds crew is only hand wa-tering targeted areas, but as soon as the plants begin to show stress the irrigation will come back on. The grounds crew is also discussing further irrigating Lake Al-iso, Zitzner said, which is just beginning to fill up with water that funnels straight to the bay. Tapping into this source would put less of a burden on the domestic water sup-ply, which supplies our tap water.As for more long-term plans, the college is looking into grey water catching sys-tems, specifically for laundry, but due to shortcomings in technology, infrastruc-
ture (water must be diligently separated and the water source must be controlled), and city permit issues, the process is moving slowly.“There have been some hurdles,” Zitzner said, “but it’s still a goal.”In the end, though, there is only so much these modifications can save. A change in every community members’ habits is what is most important.“We need to get the most bang for our buck,” Zitzner said. “We can upgrade the technologies, we can replace plumbing, but there’s only so much that’s going to do. It really comes down to behavior.”Check back with the Campanil for updates on Mills’ conservation efforts, and feel free to contact Linda Zitzner at [email protected] with any tips or suggestions for how to save.
3News 02.04.14
smokers and non-smokers, and the wellness coordinator at the time,” said Linda Zitzner, head of Facilities and co-chair of the Smoking Committee.” But the wellness coordinator left and the Smoking Committee kind of fell apart, so we don’t really have anything formal going on right now.”
Zitzner explained that with a campus of 1500 college stu-dents, placing regulations on smoking has the potential to present a myriad of challenges.
According to Annie Neves, co-chair of Mills’ Smoking Committee and Executive Assistant to the Dean of the School of Education, when she came on as co-chair of the Smok-ing Committee with Zitzner, the entire education complex, including the children’s school and the art department area had elected to be smoke-free zones. But, a consensus was never reached on whether or not to establish “smoking is-lands” because there was little to no funding to accommodate them with tables and benches. Now, Neves does not believe anyone feels up to tackling the smoking issue.
“Things just fizzled out last year and I think people just sort of refocused on other things,” Neves said. “I would love to see Mills go smoke-free, so I don’t understand what the hold up is. It would cost nothing except to put together a pro-posal and send it to the board of trustees.”
While there are no plans to change the current smok-ing policy on campus, some students still strongly feel that changes should be happening for the health of themselves and other students. Sophomore Lily Leighton, a non-smoker and nursing student, said that she was surprised to find an abun-dance of smokers upon her arrival to Mills.
“I think that having some sort of new guidelines, like where you can and cannot smoke, would be nice because some people who don’t smoke don’t want to smell ciga-rette smoke as they walk from class to class,” Leighton said.
“Maybe if there were some guidelines in place, it would dis-courage people from smoking in between classes as much because it’s gross when a student in a class makes the whole room smell like cigarette smoke.”
Senior Casey Honath, who does not smoke cigarettes, feels that smoking on campus is okay, but it should be confined to spaces that are “off the beaten path” where non-smokers won’t have to come directly into contact with the smoke.
“I am sensitive to cigarette smoke and I know many other students at Mills who are,” Honath said. “I find it inconsider-ate of smokers who smoke on common paths and blow smoke into the air.”
Sophomore Julia Taylor-Brown, who smokes frequently, believes that where people smoke on campus is an unrealistic thing to control, but the policy as it stands is not a problem.
“[Mills] does a really good job of accommodating for smokers, giving them places to put the butts, reasonable sig-
nage and rules,” Taylor-Brown said. “Everyone knows the rules and I’d say most people abide by it.”
Taylor-Brown also believes that smokers at Mills are gen-erally considerate about where they choose to smoke, even though smoking happens between classes and the smell of a cigarette is not an uncommon one around campus.
“I know the rule is 30 feet away from the door, so I re-ally try to make sure that I’m away from that,” Taylor-Brown said. “It’s legal everywhere else in public places, and I feel that even though this is a private campus, we should treat it with public rules.”
Similarly, senior Kelly Dingman, who smokes daily, be-lieves that Mills’ smoker population is not infringing on the space of non-smokers.
“I feel like there aren’t many smokers on campus, and the people that do make it a point not to smoke in Adam’s Plaza or right in front of NSB,” Dingman said. “They’re not right in people’s faces.”
A large concern for non-smokers is the amount of second-hand smoke that is inhaled from nearby cigarettes. Not only could some students be allergic to the smoke, it also affects the health of students in the vicinity. A statement on UC Berke-ley’s Tobacco Free Campus website insists that not only does a tobacco-free campus “support tobacco users who are trying to quit,” it also “reduces the number of new tobacco users by promoting the social norm of a tobacco free environment.”
Neves said she was surprised that UC Berkeley had enact-ed a tobacco-free policy because they are a state school while Mills, a private institution, has failed to jump on the smoke-free bandwagon.
“There are schools in the deep South, in the tobacco belt, that have gone smoke-free,” Neves said. “If they can do that, why can’t we? We could be an example.”
Students can discuss this topic at an open forum on March 5 from 4:30-6pm in the Student Union. The forum will be lead by Mills’ Wellness Action Group.
TESSA LOVE
from Drought page 1
Drought inspires changes at MillsThe Drought
What You Need to Know:
o The drought is caused by a large high pres-sure zone or ridge in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, which has been blocking storms from hitting California for over a year - an un-precedented amount of time for such a zone, according to the National Weather Service.
o The Sierra Nevada snowpack, an essential source of reserve water for much of Cali-fornia, is only 20 percent of the historical average, according to the Department of Water Resources.
o On Jan. 15, temperatures reached record highs throughout the Bay Area, bringing the number of broken records to 36 since Jan. 1. Oakland International Airport reached 77 degrees, with downtown Oakland at 76, both beating records set in 2009, according to the National Weather Service. Do we also perhaps want to include the cold snap just to make a point that the weather extremities this year have pointed toward a drought?
o According to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, around 150 wildfires have burned in California during the month of January alone. The average amount of fires for this time of year is around 12.
o The California Department of Public Health reported early last week that 17 small wa-ter districts in 10 California counties could run out of water in 60 to 120 days due to the drought. These include districts in the coun-ties of Santa Cruz, Fresno, and Sonoma.
Mills’ smoking policy remains stagnant
from Smoking page 1
Mills’ conservation efforts include planting more native and drought-resis-tant plants, as seen in front of GSB, and hand-watering select vegetation.
ARI NUSSBAUM
Currently smoking is allowed on campus, with re-stricted areas, though some want this to change.
4 Arts & Entertainment02.04.14
Ajuan Mance: Mills professor and artist
Photo of the Week:
Be sure to check out the new exhibit at the Mills Art Muesum! Anne Colvin, A Granite Note: installation view.
PHIL BOND
Kate CarmaCK [email protected]
COURTESY OF AJUAN MANCE
Ajuan Mance (center) is not only a beloved and respected professor at Mills, but also a talented artist who is currently working on her project “1001 Black Men.”
Successful artist, published au-thor and respected professor, Ajuan Mance is an African American Lit-erature specialist who has been in-spiring students at Mills since 1999 as a professor of english.
Originally, Mance’s focus was in women’s poetry, until one of her dissertation advisors dubbed her an African American literature specialist after he reviewed her dis-sertation about the topic. Although Mance has always been interested in literature, it was this push that al-lowed her to pursue it.
“[He told me] this is what I see, and you have a lot of good things to say; this is what you should be doing,” Mance said. “And it turned out he was right.”
When Mance was an assistant professor at the University of Or-egon, she longed for a more urban environment. So when the opportu-nity to apply to work at Mills came along, she had to take it.
“I decided to come to the cam-
pus, and I met the faculty, and I just thought: this is where I need to be,” Mance said.
Mance currently is honored with the May Treat Morrison Chair for American History, one of Mills’ endowed chairs, a three year term allowing chosen professors to teach one less class per semester to de-vote more time to work on personal research projects. Mance is using this time to work on an anthology of nineteenth century black writ-ers and get it published. She now uses some of the content she’s dis-covered for the anthology in her 19th Century African American literature class.
“Once I started doing research, it completely changed my nine-teenth century course,” said Mance. “Now almost all of what we read in that course is stuff that isn’t even in print.”
Shanna Hullaby, former stu-dent and teacher’s assistant to Mance, said not only is she an in-spirational teacher, but also a tran-scendent mentor.
“I had never seen a teach-er that was so smart and knew
so much about their subject matter,” Hullaby said.
Mance has always gotten excit-ed about discovering new writers, and in her teachings it’s her excite-ment that really inspires students.
“I think sometimes it takes you a couple of years as a professor to realize that there are the things you need to teach,” she said. “But in the end the teaching just has to come out of what excites you.”
For Mance, the book that sparked this excitement was Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon.” Although the first few times she at-tempted to read the book she admit-tedly couldn’t make it past the first 75 pages, she eventually assigned the book to a class she taught in grad school. After she got through those pages, she couldn’t put it down.
“When I closed the book it made me feel happy and privileged to be a black person,” Mance said. “I had never had that experience with a book.”
In addition to African American literature, Mance is also passion-ate about art. Mance has a unique
style of artwork that she applies to a particular subject matter –black men. For Mance, the impact her work has on African American viewers is particularly interesting.
Her current project, “1001 Black Men” is an online sketchbook and series of drawings of black men that she scans and adds color and special effects to, which gives it a stained glass look; which was actu-ally the inspiration for her style.
“I think we are so concerned about, especially with certain generations, our representation,” Mance said. “Our image has been used to do so many not nice things to us, and say so many bad things about us. It almost makes people nervous just to see so many repre-sentations of black people.”
According to Mance, drawing African American images is load-ed. While her style is sometimes controversial, she understands that there is a suspicion and a little bit of fear over them: will this help or will this hurt. But she believes that it is important to emancipate yourself from what other people think about your image.
“When you start to use a graphic design or street style, I think that [it] can make people a little bit ner-vous because everyone thinks we are already cartoonish or everyone thinks we are only worthy of street art,” Mance said.
Mance has also always been interested in masculinity as a subject and the ways in which maleness is represented with and without masculinity.
“I think male beauty is some-thing that is very profound,” Mance said. “But its not drawn as much. Even a lot of women will draw women as opposed to men and I feel like masculinity is so much more interesting,” Mance said.
Although Mance’s artwork and her literary career seem like sepa-rate entities, she connects them in her classroom with her passion for dissecting African American cul-tures and how they became what they are. At Mills, Mance integrates both of her passions into the class-room by using the inspiration she has found in her research to reach her students and form her own vibrant literary community.
502.04.14Arts & Entertainment
In the two semesters since their creation, the Archaeology, Lin-guistics, Physical Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology Club (ALPACA) has gained momen-tum on the Mills campus, creating a unified space for students inter-ested in anthropology to gather and talk about any aspect of anthropology.
"We wanted a space where we could explore what we're not getting in class," said found-ing president and recent graduate Heather Myers.
Unlike the major, which offers classes focused on one of the four disciplines at a time, ALPACA takes an interdisciplinary approach by looking at how each of the sub-jects represented in the club's title work together.
"Anthropology is the study of humans, and it's meant to be holistic," Myers said, demonstrat-ing this togetherness by linking her fingers together. "When it's all broken up, you don't get all those connections."
Maura Finkelstein, visiting as-sistant professor of anthropology and ALPACA's advisor, echoed this notion.
"The department is limited," she said. "We can't do everything. This club gives students the opportunity to get together and talk beyond those limits."
As a group, ALPACA mem-bers work to expand, share and offer support for each other's ideas in the field of anthropol-ogy, and also offer insight into the different angles from which these ideas can be viewed. Each of the eight to ten core members have their own area of study and interest within anthropology, and with such a varied group, this holistic approach can manifest.
"Anthropologists get out and talk," Finkelstein said. "They form communities and learn from
each other."Which is exactly what
ALPACA does."I learn something new every
time we meet," Myers said.The main practice of the club
is the weekly meeting and theme discussion. Every week, current president Erica Veitch, sophomore and anthropology major, or another member sends out a theme-relat-ed article to the group, then they gather to talk about it, trying to enter the idea from different angles and discussions.
"There's an element of pure in-teraction," Veitch said of the meet-ings. "There's a lot more room for discussion than in the classroom."
The club also organizes guest lecturers to come speak to the group, and is working on organiz-ing a trip to Angel Island to look closely at the anthropology of im-migration. To Veitch, this will be a great way to practice the intersec-tion of all the ALPACA disciplines, all of which, she feels, are present in every field of study.
"No matter what you're ma-jor is," she said, "anthropology is in there."
Veitch cited this as a reason why anyone, not just anthropology stu-dents, should join ALPACA.
"Don't be frightened off by the academic-sounding title 'anthropol-ogy,'" she said. "There's something for everyone in this group, and we actually have a lot of fun."
Myers reflected this idea. Though they are an academically focused group, she said, they are also a fun group, summing it up by saying:
"We like to mix our academics with our amusement."
ALPACA meets every Thurs-day 12pm to 1pm in Vera Long room 102, though the location may change. For more information, email [email protected].
Club Profile: ALPACA
Tessa Love [email protected]
emiLy mibach [email protected]
LUNAFEST: a Film Festival by, for and about women
Nine short films, all under 20 minutes, will be shown at the LU-NAFEST in Richmond, a festival featuring films solely made by, for and about women.
The festival, which will be held on Feb. 7, is hosted by the Zonta Club of Berkeley, "an international service organization focused on advancing the political, economic, social and educational status of women worldwide" (zontaclub-berkeley.com). The club hosts LUNAFEST in a wide variety of places throughout the country.
"First Match" will be one of the films featured at LUNAFEST, which was created by first-time filmmaker Olivia Newman. New-man submitted "First Match," a film about wrestling, to be shown at LUNAFEST last year, but it was not selected.
"[LUNAFEST] had told me that there was another film about wres-tlers selected and to submit the film again next year," Newman said.
"First Match" is about Mo, who is the only girl on her high school wrestling team in New Jersey. The film depicts Mo's attempts to win over not only her teammates and coach, but also encourage her sin-gle father to truly accept her wres-tling, especially in a co-ed context.
"There is no question that this is about a girls' experience," New-man said. "Through her eyes, it's a very subjective film. It's about Mo and there are not any parallel storylines."
Another film of the nine to be featured at LUNAFEST is the 10 minute version of the full length film "Granny's Got Game," cre-ated by another first-time direc-tor and lifelong basketball player, Angela Alford.
The 74-minute version of the film, which can be viewed on
DVD, is a documentary about seven women who played basket-ball in high school in the 1950's, but did not have the opportunity to keep playing after. Nearly 20 years ago they started a team called the "Fabulous 70's." Alford's docu-mentary follows the team to Hous-ton TX, where they compete in the National Senior Championship.
"When I first heard about these women I thought that they must be genetic anomalies; however when I met them, I realized that they have the same problems as other elderly women and athletes," Alford said.
Two of the women are breast cancer survivors, and pro-ceeds from both the film and the film festival go towards breast cancer funds.
These two films and seven oth-ers can be seen on Feb. 7 starting at 6:30 pm at the Craneway Pa-vilion in Richmond, Calif. To find out more about LUNAFEST, visit www.lunafest.org
Former Alpaca Club president Heather Myers (left) and cur-rent president Erica Veitcht (right) at last week’s Block Party.
TESSA LOVE
The 14th annual LUNAFEST, a short film festival, will be hosted in Richmond, CA. TOP: LUNAFEST.ORG, MIDDLE: GRANNY’SGOTGAME.COM BOTTOM: FIRSTMATCHFILM.COM
6 Opinions02.04.14
Notes From
abroad: Morocco
Ha v e s o m e t h i n g t o
s a y ?Come to our open meetings!
Tuesdays @ 6:30 p.m.
or contact: [email protected]
Staff Editorial OVERHEARD DIALOGUE*
*These are overheard snippets in passing and are in no way representative of the entire student body.
“I really want stripper hair.”
“It couldn’t have been her. She doesn’t even
wear underwear.”
COMPILED BY THE CAMPANIL STAFF
“That weird poetry girl isn’t in the class anymore.”
“I think she was intimidated by all the canned laughter.”
“Who is she again?”“She’s the one who did the
exorcism in my room.”
Holidays have long been com-modified and used for commercial gain; that’s not new. Before we even recover from the festivus of winter, the pinks and reds of Valentine’s Day scatter store aisles. Holidays, or “holy days,” are changing from sacred to purchasable. The question we at The Campanil ask is, where is the line drawn? On Jan. 20, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The Freedom Train traversed the 54 miles from San Jose to San Francisco, parades and festivals sounded above traffic, and volun-teers everywhere responded to Dr. King’s call, “What are you doing for others?” It is, in part, a day of remembrance, celebration, reflec-tion, and community. Which is why when a Campanil editor heard an insurance company use Dr. King’s words as part of a sales pitch, she was shocked.
This MLK Day, we as a staff no-ticed an increase of radio and inter-net marketing, as well as company sponsorship of the holiday. While it makes some sense that celebrations about gift giving come with sales and mass buying, MLK Day is not
about consumerism. When Malt-O-Meal Cereal wishes you, “Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Get a good breakfast so you’re fueled to do something meaningful today!” on Twitter, suddenly the day is as-sociated with cardboard cereal. When ZzzQuil tweets, “Today is the day for dreaming. Happy MLK Day,” a world-changing speech is snipped and reduced to an adver-tising slogan. These corporations have found a new holiday to con-tinue to sell, sell, sell.
For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, there are multiple reasons why this is uncomfortable, why a day about the fight for equal rights of Black Americans and people of color should not be a vehicle for commercialization. We think that these advertisements use Dr. King as a commodity —he becomes an endorsement for products that he did not consent to endorse. The holiday is only 21 this year, barely a legal adult, and already it’s being desecrated. But it doesn’t just end with advertisements.
As one editor explains, even conservative politicians who have
long legislated against people of color used Dr. King’s words to qui-et justified criticism and outrage. This MLK Day, Sarah Palin mis-used Dr. King's own words to urge President Obama not to use "the race card." We think one reason that MLK's history and writings have been (and are) whitewashed by the media and politicians is because we are taught and socialized wto believe that he was speaking for everyone and everything. Though Dr. King has inspired and contin-ues to inspire many of us who care deeply about social justice, he was speaking mainly to African-Ameri-cans and he dreamt of eliminating anti-blackness in the world. He wasn't thinking of making white people nicer to black people, but for black people to have their own agency, rights and acknowledged humanity. And he definitely wasn't thinking about using his beliefs to sell merchandise.
The question we’re left with is, in a world that sells Malt-O-Meal Dr. King cereal, is anything sacred when it has potential market or political value?
in Rothwell 157
The streets of Rabat, Morocco come to life through the seductive scents of the merchants' freshly baked goods. Shop owners wait patiently by their candy stands and hole-in-the-wall boutiques as willing customers negotiate their ways into a cheaper buy, speaking in both Arabic and French. A small piece of common sense I seemed to be lacking this evening: never whip out your money while try-ing to negotiate a better price! Ha! Nevertheless, they're always up for a bargain.
Notes From Abroad: Morocco is written by Fatima Sugapong and is the first in a series.
BACK 2 SKOOL
COMIC BY BECK LEVY
The Commodification of MLK Day
PHOTO COURTESY OF TWITTER
FATIMA SUGAPONG
702.04.14 Sports & Health
In Dorothy Calimeris’ Eating Real class, students are taught the value of eating and cooking healthy. MACKENZIE FARGO
Cyclone of the Week honors go to first year cross country runner, Katie Meyer. Katie saw improve-ment throughout the season, cul-minating in a personal best at the NCAA Regional Championships. Hard working and determined, Ka-tie has not missed a practice all sea-son. She comes each day prepared to work and has the ability to push herself to her limits without the motivation of other runners around her. This work ethic clearly paid
off, as she took 42 seconds off her previous best 6K time, running 12 seconds per mile faster.
Coach Cindy Olavarri notes that “her attitude is always positive and she is a pleasure to have on the team.” We look forward to see-ing Katie’s continued growth as a Cyclone runner!
From working in the kitchens of Martha Stewart to owning her restaurant, it would be an understatement to say that Dorothy Calimeris is passionate about food.
“The thing about food is that it is such a hard job and usually so underpaid,” Calimeris said. “You have to be passionate about it. Otherwise, you’re not going to put up with it.” And her passion comes not only from cooking, but from presentation.
Calimeris, who is now the Director of Auxiliary Services on campus, began working at Mills as a high school student during the summersessions in the din-ing halls and kitchens. She was able to gain experience in food preparation as well as proper serving and din-ing etiquette through serving students and faculty. It was then Calimeris was taught the art of entertaining by former Director of Housing Management and Din-ing Services, Elizabeth Burwell; at the time the dining experience at Mills involved fresh cut flowers, linens, real silverware and candlelight. This love for entertain-ing continues to spill over into Calimeris’ teaching of her Eating Real class. Students not only learn the value of eating real whole foods, but also how to truly enjoy the food that they are preparing.
“I think my favorite part of the class (besides eating, which was an absolutely A+ experience) was playing fancy chef, arranging the food on the serving platters and my plate, and then coming home and showing my roommate what I made that day," senior Eleanor Strong said in an email.
Calimeris believes that you should not only enjoy making food, but also enjoy eating it.
“The thing that we are conditioned to forget about or miss is the satisfaction of eating," she said. "If there is something you want, and you know exactly what it is, and you go to the store and get it and go home and make it and thoroughly enjoy it, you have truly dined.”
On the first day of class for her spring session, Calimeris asked students, “What does eating real mean to you?”
“I think that it means eating things that you know where they came from and also food that is minimally processed,” junior and Campanil editor, Mackenzie Fargo said.
Calimeris believes that there is no mystery to healthy eating, as it is really about eating whole foods and messing with them as little as possible. To start off the first day of class, Calimeris brings a variety of sugars, salts and butters for students to taste, so they can see for themselves what they do and do not like. There is no right or wrong in a student’s preference. She tells the students that a large part of the class is
simply discovering what they love. And the beginning of that discovery can start with something as simple as what kind of butter they like in chocolate chip cookies.
“To me, there is no other chocolate chip cookie be-sides one with salted butter,” Calimeris said.
Students are given questionnaires before the begin-ning of class and are asked to describe what they hope to learn to make throughout the course. Sometimes an entire class ends up wanting to make the same thing, such as a semester where the whole class wanted to make pizza. Calimeris tries to cover a wide variety of dishes when possible and always informs the class of the total bill of all the supplies needed for the meal.
“I buy organic and local when possible,” Calimeris said. “There are less expensive options like the farm-er’s markets and Berkeley Bowl. I am a firm believer that you need to do what works best for your body, budget and time.”
According to Calimeris, a huge misconcep-tion about healthy eating is the idea what works for one person will work for another. To her, every diet book is trying to convince the public at large of this misconception.
“I’ve tried to not eat meat, but my body needs ani-mal protein," she said. "I believe that you need to honor your body and listen to what it is telling you."
Even though the media pushes ideas of “non-fat” and “low-fat”, Calimeris does not fall for the myths of these marketing strategies.
“It’s all about trends and what buzzwords advertis-ers are using," she said. “There is no such thing as “fat-free. The only thing that is fat-free by nature is angel food cake.”
Calimeris hopes that if the food curriculum at Mills were ever expanded, it would include an emphasis on women and their relationship with food. She has seen not only the effect of negative and positive relation-ships with food in her own life, but also how food can easily control young women.
“One big piece of it would be exploring women and food and eating issues--how we let that usurp our cre-ativity and power throughout our lives, and how sad that really is,” she said.
But one of Calimeris' biggest beliefs is that cooking and food should bring nothing but joy and satisfaction. There should be no guilt; there should only be plea-sure. During the first class meeting, Calimeris reads the class a quote the she has loved for years by M.F.K. Fisher: “Since we’re forced to nourish ourselves, why not do it with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing skill?”
Water WalkingFridays @ Mills College
Aqautic Center7:15-8am
Weight Training CircuitFebruary 4
@Haas Pavilion, 11612-1pm
Please RSVP.
Fit for All WorkshopFebruary 7
@ Haas Pavillion Fitness Center
8-9amPlease RSVP.
To RSVP for a class, go to http://bit.ly/1fG4GkQ
“As a quarterback, there's no better way to finish your year, in winning a Super Bowl, than with a touchdown pass. The chances of that happen-ing, by the looks of most of the Super Bowls, is a very rare chance. Fortunately for me, I had
an opportunity.”
- Joe Montana (NFL Hall of Fame Quarterback)
Dining with Dorothy: An Exploration in
Eating Real
Amanda [email protected]
Cyclone of the Week:Katie Meyer
Cyclone of the week is provided by APER’s Allie Fox.
KURT LOEFFLER
UPCOMING EVENTSSwimming
February 13-15, 2014@ Principia College
10:00 am
Free Fitness Classes:
Quotes from the Greats
8 02.04.14
RoxieMascot
Mackenzie FargoOpinions Editor
Francesca Twohy-HainesDesign Editor
Melodie MiuOnline Editor
Ari NussbaumNews Editor
Emily MibachArts and Entertainment Editor
Amanda PolickSports Editor
Tessa LoveEditor in Chief
Natalie MeierManaging Editor
The mission of The Campanil is to serve the Mills College community through the practice of ethical and responsible journalism. Knowledge and progress in all areas of life is accomplished through the sharing of correct information. The Campanil strives to accomplish this standard by report-ing and writing the truth in a way that enlightens and informs our entire community, while providing information in a manner that seeks participation through thoughtful response, dialogue and action. Our clear objective is to serve the student body and we realize the importance and impact of this endeavor. We do not make news but cover the events that stimulate and change our community and college life.
Meet the Press
Kate CarmackCopy Chief