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Volume 165 | Issue 6 | March 26, 2026 | miscellanynews.org | | The Miscellany News is back with another 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. | | JULIAN BALSLEY | Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is no longer planning to turn a warehouse in Chester, New York, into a detention center, according to State Assemblyman Brian Maher. In a Feb. 20 press release, Maher’s Chief of Staff Meghan Hulburt wrote that the plan was abandoned for the time being after Maher, whose district includes Chester, spoke with a senior ICE official. | | Eli Lerdau/The Miscellany News. | | JACKSON HREBIN | On Feb. 24, the Vassar Alliance for Ukraine hosted “Tribute to Ukraine: Childhoods During the War” in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. The event marked the four year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Students, faculty and community members gathered to listen and reflect on the impacts of the Russo-Ukrainian War, sharing their personal experiences and connections to the conflict. The Office of International Services and Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices helped organize the event, which included speeches given by several student leaders within the Vassar Alliance for Ukraine, and concluded with a candlelight vigil led by Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices Reverend Callista Isabelle. | | Annie McShane/The Miscellany News. | | MAKENNA BROWN | The “Women’s Work: Preserving Independent Film and Video Histories, Connecting Media Futures” program took place at the Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts from Feb. 26 to 28. Organized as a three-day event, it was held in conjunction with an exhibition at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center on view from Feb. 25 to March 24. | Image courtesy of Kelly Marsh. | | MAKENNA BROWN & SOPHIA MARCHIOLI | On Saturday, Feb. 28, Vassar’s Student Music Union, known as StuMU, hosted its second Slush Pit concert in the Aula. The event highlighted a range of student performances that leaned into punk, alternative and grunge sounds, complemented by Monster Energy drinks and slushies at the back tables, which quickly ran out. The space soon filled as coat racks overflowed and the low-lit room buzzed with adrenaline. The opening act tuned their instruments as clashing and blaring guitar strums reverberated throughout. | | Eli Lerdau/The Miscellany News. | | GRACE FINKE, BRENDAN KENNEDY | Since Fall 2023, Vassar Tiny Desk—a collaboration between the Student Music Union (StuMU), Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE), Vassar College Television (VCTV) and The Miscellany News—has been a coveted opportunity for student musicians to record and share their work. On March 1, three performances were filmed in a classroom in Blodgett Hall, which was decorated with numerous tiny knick-knacks, a static television and a baby doll with sparkly pink fairy wings. The Miscellany News had the opportunity to see the sets live and sit down with all of the performers afterwards. | | Image courtesy of Anya Berg ’28. | | ALAINA DESAUTELS | When I first heard the saxophone solo that opens “I LOST MY MIND IN PARIS,” the first track in “FILM NOIR,” I immediately knew that this was not going to be a typical album. “FILM NOIR,” singer-songwriter Faouzia’s debut album, was released in early November 2025. However, I was not aware of it until last month when Faouzia appeared on my Instagram feed, ecstatically sharing that the work had entered the top pop albums worldwide. In the past two years, the album as an art form has truly grown on me, and I now make it a point to listen to full records in order. So when I found myself on a long bus ride to Ithaca, New York, it felt like the perfect opportunity to dive in and appreciate Faouzia’s creation. | | SOPHIA MARCHIOLI | Over spring break, I traveled with Professor of Geography Mary Ann Cunningham’s class, Environmental Studies 260: Energy Technologies and Local Power, across Denmark and Sweden for 10 days. Of the trip, Cunningham stated, “The goal was to observe and discuss decarbonization strategies in a place where there are lots of examples all close together, and where climate protection is embedded in a wide variety of practices and policies.” My classmates and I conducted research for our final papers which look at topics such as housing, district heating, biofuels and mobility. In addition to Professor Cunningham, Professor of Physics Jenny Magnes, Associate Professor of Physics Juan Merlo, Research Associate and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Michael Roth and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Taylor Teitsworth joined the trip, advising our research based on their expertise. | Image courtesy of Sophia Marchioli ’28. | TINA MAO | Last summer, I had just hopped off a plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport to head home after a particularly distressing job when a stranger caught my eye. In the crowd rushing toward me was a woman dressed in a graphic hoodie, wide-leg pants, heeled boots and a pair of over-the-ear headphones. When my gaze settled at the face of this stranger, I froze. This was the face of the woman on the cover of “Puberty 2” and “Be the Cowboy.” Waves of panic diffused across my body as I came to the startling realization: Wait, did I just see Mitski? My teenage self stayed up dreaming about a scenario like this, but now that it was happening in the present, I was more paralyzed than thrilled. In the instant that Mitski passed by, I took what felt like the most obvious course of action: I pretended not to recognize her and kept walking. | | Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. | | CATHERINE PHILLIPS | In January 2025, I fell in love. Not with a person but with a city: Paris, France. From January to May of 2025, I lived in the 15th arrondissement of Paris as part of my Junior Year Abroad (JYA). When my semester of fresh baguettes came to an end, I returned to Vassar for my senior year. I was excited about senior year, but it was a difficult goodbye. Little did I know that just over a year from when I first arrived in Paris, I would return to play the role of a tour guide for my roommate Luke during our spring break trip. With an itinerary and my skills from being a Vassar summer tour guide, we headed to the City of Love. | | Image courtesy of Catherine Phillips ’26. | | HADLEY AMATO | Spring break arrived as an explosion. It had been a dark first half of the semester. I spent most of it inside, hemmed in by the brutal cold. Clouds of stress, sadness and anxiety became all too familiar to my Vassar routine. So, when break came, I exploded west to California’s Bay Area—searching for new experiences and new meaning in a landscape I knew very little about. Being from Los Angeles, I had spent very little time up North. With Joni Mitchell playing in my ears, I looked out at the jagged landscape of the Bay from my plane's window. The rolling hills, impossibly long bridges and thin skyscrapers lulled me into a romantic stupor: “Will you take me as I am? / Strung out on another man / California, I’m coming home,” Joni sang sweetly as I daydreamed about the week ahead. Life was to be lived, and here I was, ready to live it. | | Hadley Amato/The Miscellany News. | | | WREN BUEHLER | MATH 002 - QuantAnal for Humanities Majors, Rocky 312 In this lecture course, students who need to fulfill their quantitative analysis requirements but cannot count will be given a refresher on concepts like “addition,” “number lines” and “shapes.” Attendance will be optional. Please, guys, we’re making this easy for you. It’s just one credit. Thomas Wiggles. | EVAN SEKER | An unfortunate Vassar College student has discovered a catastrophic chemical, known as Chemical C (Chemical Catastrophus or Catastrophe if you’re not the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), which, without fail (and in a strongly unethical manner), produces a reaction that ruins your lab. Frequently preceded by desperate pleading, and proceeded by angry swearing, the synthesis of Chemical C, which is completely unknown due to its tendency to make you forget synthesizing it always, is calculated to occur in 13 percent of all experiments, although it could occur in 41 percent—or even 83 percent of all ruined experiments. | | NOAH DAUBE-VALOIS | Citing decades as a leader in gender equality, Vassar College announced on Wednesday, March 25, that the school would “heroically and fearlessly-consequentially” pay female professors equal wages to their male counterparts during Women’s History Month. The College’s gender pay gap received national attention in 2023 when five professors sued the Seven Sisters college, alleging that discriminatory practices are behind the school’s average female professor earning $13,900 less than their male colleagues. As a result of the bonuses, the women professors will be required to teach an unpaid course next semester. | | JACOB CIFUENTES | Many of us on the Left owe an apology—sort of—to the QAnon movement that was influential during the first Trump term. If you forgot or were unaware, QAnon is an online movement that originated on 4chan. QAnoners believed that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats was in control of every facet of American society and secretly running a cannibalistic child sex-trafficking ring, which was—ironically—to be exposed by Trump, a close friend of sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. | | ANONYMOUS | In my time at Vassar College, I have found that many are unsure of how to feel about the ongoing conflict in Gaza. A popular consensus on campus seems to be that “Israel is bad” or it is correct to say “free Palestine,” but more often than not, we are left with questions that have no singular answer. Being an echo chamber of ideas, the Vassar student body reflects the anti-Israel sentiment, and one is hard-pressed to find a difference of opinion. My goal is not to convince you that either side is “good” or “bad,” but to answer two specific questions from my perspective as a Jewish liberal, who is both in support of Israel, the country, as well as incredibly critical of its government. | | ELI LERDAU | In the early 20th century, few groups defined the struggle against hatred to the extent of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Founded in 1913 in response to the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man falsely accused of rape and murder in Georgia, they fought for civil rights and anti-hate crime legislation. Now, over a century later, the ADL has changed. The ADL today is a partisan organization that distracts from the true fight against antisemitism. We must oppose this organization. | | ZOE RODRIGUEZ | There is something missing in biology. As an almost-English-major who switched to neuroscience, biology lectures are frustrating. Take something simple we learned in class, for example. The sodium-potassium pump is a protein lodged in the cell membrane of all animal cells. It pumps specific ions in and out of the cell. In neurons, they make sure the electrical charge in your cells is just right so that electrical signals can fire in your brain. It is a mundane, microscopic detail that you would not be able to live without. Biology is full of that junk. There is a mind-numbing amount of insanely complex, tiny machinery pumping away, like a jigsaw puzzle with a billion pieces. | | VISHNU LAKSHMAN | As Dominik Szoboszlai walked down the tunnel after receiving a red card for denying a goal-scoring opportunity, he probably realized that he had just become a victim of yet another Video Assistant Referee (VAR) controversy. Meanwhile, referee Craig Pawson announced his decision to overturn the on-field decision of a goal and instead give a red card to Szoboszlai and a free kick to Manchester City. In that moment, all Pawson should have been thankful for was that this decision did not affect the result that the match was headed toward. It just meant that on Feb. 8, City beat Liverpool by two goals rather than three in the English Premier League for the first time at Anfield (Liverpool’s home stadium) since 2003. VAR’s pesky interventions in this crucial encounter between two English giants in the final few months of the Premier League’s season add to the enormous list of controversies that have built up over the season. | | HENRY FRANCE, CASEY MCMENAMIN | This is March! After another marathon college basketball season, “The Big Dance” has arrived. After a rollercoaster opening weekend full of upsets, excitement and classic March Madness moments, we are ready for more. Without further ado, let us dive in and break down the tournament so far. | | | | |
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