| Vassar College's student newspaper of record since 1866
Volume 163 | Issue 11 | May 1, 2025 | miscellanynews.org | | Welcome to The Miscellany News' weekly email newsletter! Each week's articles will be delivered right to your inbox. If you know of anyone who would be interested in receiving this service, please share it with them at this link. | | MARYAM BACCHUS AND EMMA BROWN | On Friday, April 25, a crowd of students gathered on the President’s Lawn in support of a petition put forth by the Working Students Coalition (WSC). The petition calls for several changes to student employment conditions and received 720 signatures, 40 percent of which came from student workers themselves. Three days after the gathering, Vassar’s Student Employment office sent an email to student workers announcing their commitment to portions of the demands made by WSC. | | Emma Brown/The Miscellany News. | | HADLEY AMATO | On Friday, April 25 at 6 p.m., over 130 people packed tightly into Taylor 101 in anticipation of Norman Finkelstein’s lecture, “The Gaza Genocide and Freedom of Speech.” Finkelstein is a renowned political scientist, historian and author, known best for his staunchly pro-Palestinian books and opinions. He has become controversial over his career for pushing rhetoric that challenges the State of Israel and the political power it holds over Palestine. The lecture hall—which held a mix of students, administrators, faculty and Poughkeepsie community members—buzzed with eagerness and excitement to hear the speech. After a long wait, the audience fell silent as Finkelstein walked down the aisle to take the stage and begin to speak. | | EMMA dAROSA | At 7:35 a.m. on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, Pope Francis died at age 88 in his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. The news came after a lengthy struggle with various health issues, most recently a bout of double pneumonia that led to a five week hospitalization. He was discharged on March 23 to continue his recovery and was reportedly improving. On Easter Sunday, though too weak to preside over Mass, he did make a final public appearance, blessing worshippers in St. Peter’s Square and delivering an Easter message. | | JULIAN BALSLEY | A warm breeze swept over the second-story patio bridging the Heartwood Inn and Institute for the Liberal Arts. Servers in black collared shirts carried platters made of tree slices—bark intact—bearing chicken skewers and crab cakes. Clusters of scholars, alumnae/i and students spoke in soft tones, meandering in and out of the sliding glass doors leading from the Institute onto the patio. A group of academics in sports coats and sensible dresses gathered for a photo; as the camera snapped, the breeze carried a shower of flowers up behind them as though signaled by the photographer. | | Image courtesy of Monica Church. | | EMMA ADAMS AND MADELEINE NICKS | After a successful six-season run of “Sex and the City” (2008), it only made sense to follow up the show of the century with a chaotic, camp, two-and-a-half-hour movie of Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda’s next chapter in life. What ensues, you might ask? Carrie goes brunette, Miranda escapes Brooklyn, Samantha takes up cooking and Charlotte stays winning. When it comes to the “Sex and the City” movie, we couldn’t help but wonder: Should they have quit while they were ahead? | | Annie McShane/The Miscellany News. | | LEV WINICKOFF | The film “Sinners,” directed and produced by Ryan Coogler, is built around a singular scene that weaves together cultural threads into a tapestry vibrant enough to make your goosebumps pulse to the rhythm. The other scenes form a historically accurate bassline that the fantastical elements of the film harmonize with. The film follows two revered brothers who have returned to the Mississippi Delta with questionably attained money in their pockets and nothing but ambition in their hearts: they want to create a watering hole of blues music and dancing, in the form of a lucrative juke joint, to quench the dusty town’s thirst for pleasure. | | AURELIA HARRISON | Sitcoms are not the hot thing right now. All the top TV shows—“Severance,” “The White Lotus,” “Yellowjackets”—are big-budget dramas pushing the boundaries of what audiences will come to expect (or tolerate) from streaming content. But some viewers are reluctant to let go of the beloved format that governed the media of our youth: consistent settings, running gags and end-of-episode resolutions. Dramas and thrillers are all well and good, but personally, I am not looking for additional stress right now. Reasonably, some are looking for a fresh escape from mainstream insanity and the mounting threats of armageddon. | | BEN KAPLAN | If there is one genre of television that is associated with brain rot, that always seems to air in between reruns of “Young Sheldon” and “The Goldbergs,” it would be the medical drama. The setting offers innate high stakes and infinite possible situations for an ensemble cast to deal with. But, like many things in life, just because it is easy does not make it good. The quality of these shows, such as “The Good Doctor,” are often hit or miss, and nowadays many of them get attention through shock value clips posted in snippets across social media apps, most notably TikTok and Instagram Reels. Then comes “The Pitt” on Max, a show that applies the modern expectations and depth of prestige television to the setting of an emergency room and its staff. It is really quality stuff. | | NICHOLAS TILLINGHAST | YouTube’s first video, a brief clip of one of the platform’s co-founders telling an understated sex joke, has turned 20 years old. Since the video’s publication, the platform has become the default for independent video publishing. At the same time, the website has also become a site for traditional media such as TV and film to dump shorter-form clips. However, the ephemeral, highly bizarre quality that the website possessed early on is still very much alive. For every Jimmy Fallon highlight, there is a video of someone making chainsaw noises while cutting cheese. | | NOAH DUNCAN | On Friday, April 11, about a dozen students gathered on the patio of Pratt House, next to the labyrinth, beneath the rustling trees. Not a single smartphone was in sight. It was the first meeting of the Vassar Luddite Club, a new organization seeking to provide a community space that is entirely technology-free. Its four founders—Thomas Rombauch ’25, Jane Hurley ’27, Libby Surgent ’27 and George Truax ’27—have all foregone their smartphones for old-school flip phones, rebuking the influence that the digital world increasingly has over our everyday lives. An important aside: students do not need to own a flip phone to join the club. | | Image courtesy of George Truax '27. | | NANDINI LIKKI | And in the blink of an eye, four years passed like sand blowing through the Atacama Desert. You see, life is much like journalism. A young journalist comes into this world, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to make a mark on the world with their listicles and fake news articles. They work their way up the ladder. Maybe they even help edit some articles or write some weird experimental stuff that flops so hard, like your drunk friend at a pool party. Then, before they know it, it’s all over. | | Nicholas Tillinghast/The Miscellany News. | | | JOSIE WENNER | Evil Vassar College, Vassar College’s known archnemesis, has plans to celebrate the centennial anniversary of their evil arboretum. The celebration will include evil cake, evil speeches and evil tree planting (both the trees and the action of planting them will be evil). The evil cake will be flavored with chocolate and malice, and the evil speeches will discuss the triumphs of evil Vassar and their plans for total Poughkeepsie domination. | | NICHOLAS TILLINGHAST | Josie Wenner ’27, one of my many underlings on the paper, recently invited me to play intramural soccer with her electrifying team, “the Lightning,” made up of people from the Noyes house team and other sources. I was enthused: Last year, I spent a series of Wednesdays playing intramural basketball, and that tragically bad team became a brief obsession. Josie told me that her team lost 8-0 on a game that ended at halftime, so luckily, I was in similar company. | Nicholas Tillinghast/The Miscellany News. | | Nicholas Tillinghast/The Miscellany News. | | NOAH DAUBE-VALOIS | At an impromptu press conference on Tuesday, former congressman George Santos shared the next step in his post-political career. “Today, I announce that I am running for pope. I urge the American people to write my name on the ballot come Election Day.” Santos gained notoriety in 2023 for lying about such things as being the former star on Baruch College’s volleyball team, a school that he never attended. Asked to share his favorite Bible verse, he smiled: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” | | | OLIVER STEWART | In a press release published at 9 o’clock on April 22nd, 2,025, scientists in New York City, New York, made a shocking claim: “Our research reveals”, they wrote, “that zebras are, irrefutably & without any doubt, black with white stripes, and any college publications that might impose rigid, contrary rules about this issue are completely, utterly, and entirely in the wrong.” | | | Z | Everything. The end. Just kidding. Though Robert F. Kennedy—RFK— Jr. probably thinks autistic people cannot tell jokes either.
Here is what our Secretary of Health and Human Services had to say about autistic children recently: “Autism destroys families. And more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children.” Yada yada, anti-vaccine nonsense, “And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” | | | | JACOB CIFUENTES | I first began my spiritual journey when I was seven years old, after I picked up a book about Ancient Egyptian Mythology. This led me down a turbulent rabbit hole of “Percy Jackson” books, New Age Alien conspiracy theory YouTube and eventually Mahayana Buddhism. My parents raised me agnostic, meaning we did not practice any specific religion, but had some influences from our Christian and Jewish heritages. During my first year of high school, I was exposed to Buddhism, and I have been enchanted ever since. Now, I am a Religion major and love learning about many faiths and traditions, especially from so-called “mystical” and esoteric teachings. | Annie McShane/The Miscellany News. | | EMMA LARSON AND BETSY SUBIROS | To fellow students: If the Mona Lisa’s smile can continue to launch thousands of theories, then perhaps art history is doing exactly what it is meant to do. Contrary to many first impressions, including a recent piece in The Miscellany News, the discipline is not solely about memorization—it is about context, questioning and learning to see the world through different lenses. Tracing cultural, political and personal histories through visual forms can be deeply transformative and revelatory. Yes, memorization may be a part of the process, but so is interpretation, curiosity and critique. In the movie “Mona Lisa Smile,” the fictional Professor Watson (Julia Roberts) challenges her students to think freely through art history—not in spite of it. | | MARYAM BACCHUS | Vassar’s rugby program is well-renowned, with the women’s team winning several national championships and the men’s team winning the 2023 conference championship. Both teams are known for their friendly personas, which are on display when they table outside of the dining hall during the first few weeks of the academic year. This year marks the program’s 50th anniversary, as well as the 30-year mark for Head Coach Tony Brown’s tenure. Curious about his journey to Vassar and the development of the team, I sat down with Brown to get to know the man behind the titles. | Image courtesy of Vassar Athletics. | | HENRY FRANCE | This year, Vassar women’s basketball player Tova Gelb ’25 became one of just two college athletes nationwide to be given the honor of National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum College Athlete of the Year. The prestigious honor recognizes one male and one female Jewish athlete who have delivered an exceptional year as a college athlete, both on and off the court, field, rink, track and more. Just days ago, the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame announced that Gelb would join Brigham Young University (BYU) quarterback Jake Retzlaff as one of the two athletes to receive the honor this year, which will be commemorated in a ceremony at Suffolk Jewish Community Center in Commack, New York at 6:30 p.m. on May 29, 2025. | | Henry France/The Miscellany News. | | | | |
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site