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Krauthammer speech critiques Obama policies

By Stuart FoSterCollegian Staff

Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist and author, challenged the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s foreign and domestic policy during a lec-ture titled “Consequences of American Retreat” at the Fine Arts Center Wednesday night. Organized by the University of Massachusetts Republicans Club, Krauthammer’s speech focused on how the United States appeared weak and incapable, especially in the Middle East due to these pol-icies. He also examined the impact of Obama’s domes-tic policies, particularly the Affordable Care Act. “Nature abhors a vacu-um, and so does geopolitics,” Krauthammer said. “In this case, adversaries and irre-deemables have stepped into the vacuum.” Much of Krauthammer’s view of the president’s domestic policies was influ-enced by his view that Obama’s political views are socially democratic and comparable to those of ide-ological political parties in Europe. Krauthammer con-trasted this with American politics, which he described as being much more centrist. He described Obama’s domestic policies, especial-ly the Affordable Care Act, as ambitious and sweeping reforms that would define his legacy.“Obama sees large things, he wants to nation-alize them,” Krauthammer said. However, Krauthammer viewed these policies as becoming increasingly unpopular in a country that he described as being center-right politically. Krauthammer emphasized how Obama’s health care reform was implemented to enforce the will of the fed-eral government, and that it was rejected by the United States in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections. “Obama has left the Democratic Party in ruins as a result of these elections,” Krauthammer said. He explained Obama’s success in his 2012 re-elec-tion was a result of his character and personal-ity, rather than his ideology. Krauthammer said Obama seemed like a much more relatable candidate to vot-ers than Romney, and that Romney had a “personality deficit” which severely hurt him in the election. Krauthammer also felt that Romney’s inability to criticize Obama’s health care reform due to his implementation of similar reforms while governor of Massachusetts severely hurt his chances of election. “If the presidential can-didate can make the case, he wins,” Krauthammer said. “Romney had trouble mak-ing the case.”

Krauthammer said he viewed the current Republican candidates for President as being more capable of making such a case. Krauthammer added that foreign policy would play an unusually large role in the 2016 election as a result of the Obama admin-istration’s policies. Krauthammer described Obama’s foreign policy as evasive, stating that the inability of the United States to support its allies in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Pacific Rim had resulted in American power being challenged globally. “Our allies don’t trust us, and our adversaries don’t fear us,” he said. Krauthammer was very critical of the current administration’s inability to provide defensive weap-ons to Ukraine, and called the sanctions levied against Russia “pinprick.” Krauthammer also viewed the success of the Islamic State as a result of American withdrawal from Iraq and described the beheading of American journalist James Foley as a defining moment in Obama’s foreign policy. However, he was most critical of the Obama admin-istration’s relations with Iran, citing the recent nucle-ar deal as a major error. Krauthammer said the deal gave Iran “a paved highway to nuclear weapons,” and would encourage countries such as Egypt and Iran to acquire such technology. “Think of the world for your children where the most unstable region in the world is bristling with nucle-ar weapons,” he said. Krauthammer implied that American disagree-ment with Obama’s domes-tic policies and anger with his foreign policy would result in a Republican vic-tory in the 2016 presidential election. “We’ve just had six years of everything else, and I’m convinced we’re going to do the right thing,” he said. Krauthammer also dis-cussed the recent Baltimore riots, calling the video of Freddie Gray’s arrest “hor-rifying,” and described Gray’s inability to move his legs while being dragged by police as a signal that he had been paralyzed. “It is a kind of torture, and it is a travesty,” he said. Krauthammer criticized Baltimore’s investigation into Gray’s death, which he said lacked transpar-ency, and the inability of Baltimore authorities to protect the city from riots.

Stuart Foster can be reached at stuartfoster@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @Stuart_C_Foster.

Columnist rejects presidential doctrine

CADE BELISLE/COLLEGIAN

Students gather on the lawn outside of the Old Chapel as a part of the Founders Day Campus Cookout Wednesday.

Food, Fun and Founders

Working with what he’s given

This is Part 2 in a two-part story on Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy. To read the story in its entirety, go to DailyCollegian.com.

By Nick caNelaSCollegian Staff

Kumble Subbaswamy has made many stops throughout America since immigrating for graduate school, but never visited New England until 2011. He hoped to change that when the chancellor’s post became available at UMass. Education, research and out-reach, Subbaswamy said, are practices he values. And the chancellorship embodied all of those elements. On March 26, 2012, the Board of Trustees unani-mously elected Subbaswamy to be the 30th chancellor in University history. He offi-cially took over July 1 of that year. “This is just my calling. I think it’s almost like every-thing I’ve done prior to this has been preparation for a position like this,” he said. Subbaswamy made it his primary initiative to restore the relationships and trust lost under his predecessor, Robert Holub, and has done so in a way that has been all-inclusive, according to Ernest May, a music professor who

serves as secretary of the faculty senate. He’s been a breath of fresh air to those who’ve interacted with each of the last two chancellors. “He’s intended to be much more collaborative, much more inclusive and he doesn’t care how long it takes,” May said. “He’s really striving for consensus, which is really hard to get in a place this big.” Subbaswamy made it his primary initiative to restore the relationships and trust lost under Holub, and has done so in a way that has been all-inclusive, according to May. He’s been a breath of fresh air to those who’ve interacted with each of the last two chancellors. “He’s intended to be much more collaborative, much more inclusive and he doesn’t care how long it takes,” May said. “He’s really striving for consensus, which is really hard to get in a place this big.” Subbaswamy’s approach to change has also differed from Holub’s. The University needed time to absorb and adjust to the initiatives Holub laid forth for both budgetary and identity reasons, May said, and Subbaswamy has afforded that by gearing his focus toward undergraduate education. It’s an approach unprecedented among past chancellors, according to May. “He’s the chancellor who’s

by far the most focused on the quality of undergraduate education of any of the chan-cellors I have served under,” he said. One of the major under-graduate initiatives, May said, was making sure stu-dents could get into required courses without long waiting lines. That meant expand-ing on the number of faculty when necessary, and in turn, the number of courses avail-able to students. May said Subbaswamy is trying to give “equal weight” to investments between undergraduate edu-cation as well as graduate education and research. “Not every chancellor has shared those priorities,” he said. According to Richard Bogartz, a psychology profes-sor who serves as secretary on the faculty senate, the con-trast between Subbaswamy and Holub is most visible dur-ing faculty senate meetings, which take place about once per month. As chancellor, Subbaswamy is the president of the faculty senate. Yet he always raises his hand and asks permission to speak at meetings. He’s always recep-tive to people’s suggestions, and respects any objections to his own ideas. “He just emanates respect for everyone around him,” Bogartz said, later adding, “His predecessor wasn’t aware of those things.” Bogartz listed on a yellow notepad all of Subbaswamy’s qualities that have stood out to him the most. He noted his respect, honesty and knowl-edge. Most importantly, Bogartz said, the chancel-lor has followed through on his initiatives over the past three years, highlighting Subbaswamy’s creation of a joint task force for strategic planning and his push for a more transparent resource allocation plan as some of his strongest movements. “When he sets up a plan,” Bogartz said, “it’s followed

through.”

Shooting for transparency

When interviewing for the job, Subbaswamy said the message that “came through loud and clear” was the feel-ing among students, particu-larly the Student Government Association and Graduate Student Senate, that there wasn’t enough communica-tion and openness between the administration and the student body. He’s made it a point to be transparent in regards to decision-making and consulting in the last three years. According to Vinayak Rao, who served as SGA president over the last academic year, Subbaswamy has largely ful-filled that promise. Rao has worked with the chancellor more than any other under-graduate this year, meeting with him to discuss various issues, and has been a ben-eficiary to the chancellor’s all-inclusive manner. But, he’s encountered instances where the chancel-lor left students uninformed on certain decisions. “He can always do more, but I would say he’s achieved it to the best of his ability,” he said. The University announced in mid-February that it would no longer admit Iranian national students into cer-tain graduate programs in the College of Engineering and the College of Natural Sciences to avoid violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. The decision was effective Feb. 1. According to Rao, who said he didn’t find out about the policy until it was posted on the UMass website, students, including himself, were not consulted when the decision was initially made. However, it was Subbaswamy’s action thereafter that stuck with the president. Rao met with Vice

Chancellor handles past and moves on

SENIORCOLUMNS

‘Mad Men’ poses its last pitch

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CADE BELISLE/COLLEGIAN

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy speaks to students at the annual Dine & Dash. see CHANCELLOR on page 3

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN2 Thursday, April 30, 2015 DailyCollegian.com

By ElizaBEth KanECollegian Staff

There are seven student businesses on campus, and there are some people on campus that feel there should be more, with an easier way to establish and support them. Recently created as a subsidiary governing body of the Student Government Association, the Student Business Investment Board aims to advocate for and help secure funding of current and prospective student businesses. The board was unani-mously voted into the senate’s bylaws on April 6. Recently appointed Chairman of Finance Michael Turner initially developed the board last fall with input from rep-resentatives of the Center for Student Business and the Board of Student Businesses. The creation of the board, according to Turner, resulted from their attempts to put new businesses in the Hatch, and the difficulties that arose during this process “(In our attempts to use the Hatch), we discovered just how difficult it was to start a new student busi-ness,” Turner said. “There was no funding, no space and not even an applica-tion. While it was prohibi-

tively expensive to put new businesses in the Hatch due to regulatory con-cerns, it ignited the idea of the SBIB.” According to Turner, the SBIB intends to pri-marily address these issues with new student businesses by granting them start up loans and helping with space alloca-tions. The board also plans to aid existing student businesses by supporting the formation of symbiot-ic relations. These goals, Turner stated, will meet the needs of both current and prospective student businesses. “(The board will give) excellent service to the startups and provide auxil-iary sources of income and the potential for new rela-tionships,” Turner said. “This meeting of interests allows new student busi-nesses to learn key skills (and) enriches our current student businesses, allow-ing them to supplement their co managers, and help integrate into the overall community.” To achieve their goals, the board is trying to securing funding over the summer from the SGA and outside donors. Turner said the board’s goal is to to raise $64,000 in funds by the fall semester. “With the target seed funding, we would be able to start eight new stu-dent businesses over the

next year,” Turner said. “Interest free returns from this target will provide funding for a new student business each and every semester afterwards. The indefinite 5 percent of revenue directed into the fund will mitigate issues with risk and will make the fund self-sustaining and self expanding – with-out any need for additional funds.” In addition to collect-ing funds, SGA represen-tatives will also educate New Student Orientation attendees over the sum-mer about the board and its mission. Turner hopes that informing the commu-nity about the Board will increase funding as well as expand the amount of student businesses on cam-pus. “I hope that (the board) will ignite a renaissance of new student busi-nesses across this cam-pus,” Turner said. “With increased funding, the opportunities for opening new spaces across campus will be magnified; rent-ing space on and off cam-pus will become viable; and placing loans for food trucks would make more options. The board will be a catalyst for the entrepre-neurial spirit on campus that will develop new stu-dent businesses wherever they can take root.”

Elizabeth Kane can be reached at erkane@umass.edu.

SGA establishes board to support student businesses

In the wake of an earth-quake that has trauma-tized Nepal, a candlelight vigil and donation drive for the victims of the Nepal earthquake will be held today from 7-8:30 p.m. on the lawn of the Fine Arts Center. On April 25, Nepal was hit by an earthquake that registered a 7.8 on the

Richter scale. More than 5,000 people have been killed and thousands more have been injured and stranded, according to the event’s Facebook post. Attendees are encour-aged to bring homemade signs and posters, as well as Nepali flags. Per request of the FAC, flameless can-dles will be used.

Proceeds from the event, which is being hosted by the Nepali Student Community of the University of Massachusetts, with sup-port from Girl Up and South Asian Sisters in Solidarity, will go toward the International Medical Corps and the Help Nepal Network.

Collegian News Staff

Vigil to be held for Nepali victims of earthquake

SBIB hopes to raise $64,000 by the fall

UMass Fly Fishing Club brings sport to the future

By ColBy SEarS Collegian Staff

Christopher Roller was first introduced to fly fishing while on a trip to northern Maine when he was just seven years old, and was immedi-ately hooked. As the president and founder of the University of Massachusetts Fly Fishing Club, the junior natural resources conservation major is looking to bring both the sport and environmental awareness to campus and the Pioneer Valley. “The main goal of the club (when it was founded in 2013) was to connect with other fly fishermen on campus and in the region,” Roller said. “But the overarching goal, and one of my personal goals, is to introduce fly fishing to the next generation and to get peo-ple to understand the value of conservation.” Fly fishing, according to Roller, differs greatly from the sport of regular fishing. In both fresh and salt water, fly fishermen cast out weightless, hand-tied “flies” to catch fish. These “flies” resemble fish organisms when casting in salt water and invertebrates when in fresh water. The sport also requires different rods and lines than those used in regular fishing. “I like fly fishing a lot more than regular fishing because you kind of have to become a

part of the ecosystem,” Roller said. “You have to judge the river, see where the water is flowing, predict where the fish will be, understand their behavior, and then try to trick them into believing your fly is an actual organism.” Roller said members usual-ly catch trout, bass, perch and pike, as opposed to the striped bass and bluefish they usually hook in saltwater. Typically, members fish in groups of two or three on the Swift River, Deerfield River and Millers River. The sport is also very season-specific. Considering many insects are hatching this time of year, Roller said the club, which currently consists of about 30 members, repli-cates different bug life phases as they develop to trick and lure in fish. According to Roller, the club receives support and rod donations from the UMass Department of Environmental Conservation, particularly Professor Andy Danylchuk, who helped Roller found the club. Danylchuk is a Patagonia Fly Fishing Ambassador, rep-

resenting just one of the many companies who also support the club. “They see that we’re the next generation and they kind of need to get their foot in the door with us. … There’s been a lot of good support from com-panies willing to help us out,” Roller said of the club’s sup-porters. Though the club does not have an official sponsor, some of these groups currently include Patagonia, Cortland Line and fly distributor Umpqua. In a successful attempt to connect with the local fly fishing community, the club screened the Fly Fishing Film Tour last year in the Student Union with nearly 60 people in attendance. Roller said it was “a real-ly good opportunity to meet other fishermen on campus and in the area.” The club was the first col-legiate group to host the event, which showcased fly fishing films and demonstrations. Though Roller has yet to find any other collegiate fly-fishing groups in the area, the UMass club has attended multiple Travel Unlimited meetings in the offseason to meet and connect with fellow anglers. Roller will be attending the Cheeky Fly Fishing tourna-ment in Cape Cod this sum-mer with other members, and hopes to hold a casting clinic for potential fishermen in the fall. With donations from fly-fishing faculty members, this event will teach beginners how to cast with flies and properly handle fly fishing equipment. Colby Sears can be reached at csears@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @colbysears.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER ROLLER/FLY FISHING CLUB

The Fly Fishing Club typically catches trout, bass, perch and pike.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER ROLLER/FLY FISHING CLUB

A member of the Fly Fishing Club holds a steelhead bass.

This week on DailyCollegian.com

Best of Spring 2015: Photos: The best photos from the Massachusetts Daily Collegian during the spring 2015 semester.

Baseball Beanpot Championship Highlights: The sports desk collects the

“You’re the best Jaclyn ever.”-Editor-in-chief Nick Canelas

after receiving a bus schedule from news

assistant Jaclyn Bryson Wednesday night

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN Thursday, April 30, 2015 3DailyCollegian.com

CHANCELLOR continued from page 1

Chancellor of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Enku Gelaye and Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement Michael Malone shortly after the decision was announced to discuss his issues with the policy. Rao never reached out to Subbaswamy, but learned from Gelaye that the chan-cellor intended join this dis-cussion before an emergen-cy forced him to change his plans. He sent his apologies to Rao. “Here I am. I didn’t ask the chancellor a single ques-tion about this; I didn’t speak to him about this,” Rao said. “That’s how much he puts students ahead – it took an emergency to not come in. That speaks to his character.” Subbaswamy reached out to the SGA in subsequent meetings, seeking student input in the discussion. Less than a week after the decision went public, the University announced a revision to the policy that admits Iranian students into science and engineering programs with individualized study plans to meet the requirements of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012. “It meant a lot to me,” Rao said of Subbaswamy’s col-laboration with the students. “It showed me that he real-ly wanted to set the record straight and take the fault for what happened, although I’m sure there were multiple peo-ple involved in that decision. He’s the one who claimed responsibility for it and that’s what a true leader does.” Looking back two months later, Subbaswamy admitted he wished he handled the sit-uation differently. “It was done in a fairly compressed time frame with various decisions that had timelines,” he said. “I wish I had done more consultation before coming to that point and more independent check-ing with how other institu-tions were handling some of the regulatory burden.” The situation was dam-aging to the University from a publicity standpoint. However, the way the chan-cellor acknowledged his mis-take, revisited the situation and calmly managed the cri-sis stood out to those involved with the University, particu-larly Rao and May. May, in fact, used it as a prime exam-ple of what most separates Subbaswamy from Holub without naming the former chancellor specifically. “No administrator is going to be free of making mistakes,” he said. “The ques-tion is how you handle those mistakes. Something like the Iranian student admission thing, Swamy did the right thing. “There are chancellors who wouldn’t have handled it that way. They would’ve said, ‘No, we’ve made our decision. This is it.’ I would say the flexibility to recognize when something is going awry and to fix it is a hallmark of an excellent chancellor.”

Damage control Subbaswamy’s openness is a pleasant surprise. He was prepared to discuss the trou-bling events and controversial decisions that have clouded his brief tenure at UMass. Before each answer, he nods his head and occasionally adds light laughter before he provides protracted answers. Damage control is part of the job, but the publicity that these occurrences received make crisis seem as common in Amherst as homework and exams. Arrests, protests and unrest are common-place in some respects, but social media only heightens the attention when things go disastrously. That couldn’t be more evi-dent in the events during and after “Blarney Blowout” on March 8, 2014, when 55 people were arrested following the pre-St. Patrick’s Day off-cam-pus drinking event. The event made national headlines as

pictures of the large gather-ings and the various arrests made by police, who were clad in riot gear and equipped with pepper spray in an attempt to disperse the crowd, circulated through social media. At this time, Subbaswamy was receiving calls from student affairs and the University’s media office, which were explaining the situation to him. He followed by asking himself a series of questions, such as who to call and how to contain the situation, and what statement needed to be released. He responded with an email to students: “I want to make it unequivocally clear that the University of Massachusetts Amherst condemns the outra-geous behavior of those stu-dents who acted out without any regard for public safety and the community in which they live. They have brought shame on our fine university and run the risk of devaluing the college degree that all of our students work so hard to achieve.” The magnitude of the situation, Subbaswamy said, determines the course of action. The widespread scope of the 2014 “Blarney Blowout” was due to the impact social media, which in turn increased the damage control. “The whole thing hap-pened over a two-hour period. By the end of the afternoon everything was back to nor-mal here,” he said. “There was a general assumption by people who just saw those pictures that there was some huge rioting going on and that the campus was in great unrest. Parents or relatives or even my own friends in Los Angeles who would call and say, ‘Is everything OK?’” Next on Subbaswamy’s mind was how to learn from the experience and make sure it didn’t happen again. The University called in Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis to conduct a thorough review on how the incident was handled, and offer advice to both Amherst and cam-pus police on how to man-age large-scale events in the future. The University took sig-nificant measures to ensure last year’s events wouldn’t be repeated this year. Planning sessions were put in place well in advance of March 7, when this year’s “Blarney Blowout” was scheduled, and Subbaswamy was constantly updated on the progress of these meetings. Students, who were interviewed as part of the Davis report, played a crit-ical part of that preparation, according to Blaguszewski. The result of these plan-ning sessions was a campus-wide guest and parking ban on campus for the entire weekend of March 7, and a free “Bring the Spring!” con-cert set for that day at the Mullins Center, featuring pop-ular acts such as Kesha and Ludacris. While the strict policy was met with criticism amongst students, the measures proved successful as the crowds were small and only six arrests were made. The hope, Subbaswamy said, is to change the culture at the University and introduce the next generation of students to a campus free of rowdy cel-ebrations the weekend before spring break. But has a precedent been set for how this weekend will be handled in the future? Not necessarily. According to Subbaswamy, the next gen-eration of students may not require such strict policies if the awaited expectations from them are met. The chancel-lor, however, didn’t rule out making the concert an annual event. “Having a concert that par-ticular weekend before spring break may be a good thing because you dig out of winter such of what we had this past winter,” he said. “I think stu-dents may need an outlet such as that.” “Certain things may be

necessary. The huge expec-tation of trying to call on police may not be necessary, the curfew may not be neces-sary, we’ll evaluate. But I’m confident that in a matter of a couple of seasons we will change expectations of stu-dent behavior because stu-dents themselves have come forward and said, ‘We want this to change.’”

Cleaning old messes

Perhaps Subbaswamy’s greatest challenge has been cleaning up messes he didn’t make. The biggest one being the football program he was handed. The University invested millions to move the program to FBS – the highest level of college football – starting in 2012, and has received signifi-cant pushback from a num-ber of faculty members. Some have been outspoken about this opposition for the pro-gram, such as Max Page, a professor of agriculture and history who serves on the pro-gram’s Ad Hoc Committee. Others have quietly support-ed the program’s elimination. Subbaswamy recognizes the mixed feelings toward the program. But it’s clear-ly begun to wear on him. In December, the chancellor spoke passionately in defense of the issue when the com-mittee spoke at a faculty sen-ate meeting, and stormed out in frustration. The message was clear at the time and is still clear now: Subbaswamy’s tired of defending, and debat-ing, a decision made by the chancellor before him. “Just having to spend so much time containing some-thing that I didn’t create is a little frustrating,” he said. An even greater dilemma occurred when The Boston Globe published a story in September about a UMass student and campus police informant who died of a hero-in overdose in his off-campus apartment in October 2013. The Globe report revealed the student had been caught selling LSD and the club drug Molly a year before his death. Instead of punishing the stu-dent, campus police offered to keep the crime a secret if the student became a confidential informant. The program was in place before Subbaswamy arrived at UMass. But he was at the forefront of questions about whether the University did enough to help the student struggling with addiction. The chancellor was aware of the Globe story before it came out, and met with Rao to explain to him what the situ-ation was. He asked for his input on the situation, which helped lead to the review of the program, its suspension and its official end in January. “He takes advice and he listens,” Rao said.

Student relations Gelaye is in some ways a reflection of the man who hired her. She is unassum-ing, yet confident in her role. Pleasant, yet mindful of her authority. As the vice chan-cellor of student affairs, stu-dents are her No. 1 priority. That’s apparent as a pair of students exit her office as she welcomes another student-guest in. Gelaye, who was one of Subbaswamy’s first major hires at UMass, works direct-ly with the chancellor on a regular basis. She’s part of his “leadership team” that includes vice chancellors, Provost Katherine Newman and other members of the administration. This group discusses policy, approaches and relevant events at the University. Gelaye also meets one-on-one with the chancellor, who’s her direct supervisor. They discuss what’s happening in student affairs and assure her goals are in line for the University’s direction. She’s seen Subbaswamy’s commit-ment to students firsthand. Not only through policymak-ing and strategic planning,

but also through interaction with those he meets. One pleasure Gelaye finds in her job comes at the start of the academic year, when par-ents move their first-year stu-dents into their new, tempo-rary homes. Always present is Subbaswamy, interacting with parents and students in the parking lot while handing out lunches as they pass by. What Gelaye often finds is par-ents know who Subbaswamy is before they come to campus and are excited to meet him. “It blows my mind,” Gelaye said. Gelaye has joined the chan-cellor in lunches with stu-dents on multiple occasions. He asks students, “How’s life on campus?” with no expecta-tion of positive feedback. In fact, hearing students’ con-cerns is preferred, Gelaye said. “It’s not about adoring your leadership or giving your leadership a sense of reality,” she said. “We’ve got to have a complete picture of what life is like for students.” Subbaswamy’s commit-ment to students shows in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, where UMass has improved its mark from No. 52 to No. 30 among public uni-versities from 2010 to 2014, and moved from No. 91 to No. 76 nationally in the last year. According to the Princeton Review, the University has improved its four-year gradu-ation rate to 80 percent. Beyond the statistics, Gelaye said the chancellor’s generated excitement around the University. She’s seen that excitement through the search committees she’s par-ticipated in, where prospec-tive faculty members apply because they want to work with Subbaswamy. It’s also present through the confi-dence parents and students express to her toward the direction of the University. “I don’t think there are words to capture how impor-tant that is for a campus,” she said. “Even though we’ve had a lot of difficult issues to contend with, there’s a lot of confidence in his ability to manage these issues and make decisions that are good for the University in the long run.”

‘Extremely positive’ feedback

Rao’s tenure as SGA presi-dent has concluded. One of the final contributions he was asked to make to the University was to serve on the review committee appointed by Caret. This committee led a series of discussions with var-ious constituents on campus, seeking honest opinion and evaluation from those it spoke to in order to form a proper assessment of Subbaswamy’s three years as chancellor. Negativity was hard to find. “It’s amazing,” Rao said. “A majority of the feedback

we received was extremely positive.” Rao wouldn’t provide fur-ther details of the review given its confidentiality. However, the outlook appears good for the chancellor, despite the criticism the University has been subject to the last three years. “Swamy is what you might call a servant leader,” May said. “He’s a humble man, he’s not a politician, he’s not a brilliant orator, he’s a person who actually does things. … He’s a workhorse, not neces-sarily a show horse.” Bogartz declined to provide criticisms of Subbaswamy for this story. To him, it’s too important that he paint the chancellor in the best light possible. With that being said, he expects nothing short of a glowing review from the com-mittee. “The only possible thing I could imagine where he wouldn’t be reappointed is if they had some political rea-son to put their own man in,” Bogartz said. “Then it doesn’t matter how good he’s been. They can put their man in. That’s not unheard of in poli-tics.I don’t think it’s going to happen. I would bet heav-ily against it, but you never know.”  “He’s vision-driven,” Gelaye said. “What I’ve noticed about whatever we’re doing, whatever situ-ation we’re in, whether it’s a day-to-day question or a crisis, is that he’s very grounded in his approach.” When asked for his thoughts on the review, Subbaswamy dismisses the possibility of concern. Not because he’s confident he’ll have his contract renewed, but because he said he’s concerned with good of the University. He’s concerned with fulfilling his desire to be a “change agent” for social justice. He’s con-cerned with meeting the goals he set three years ago. “When you get to a posi-tion like this, you do what you do because you’re try-ing to make the institution better,” he said. “You take a job like this with a longer-term goal than, ‘I want to get renewed.” This mentality, he said, goes back to his upbringing. He has an obligation to put UMass first. He acknowl-edges that reality, citing the characteristics that were instilled in him early in his life – that detachment from material desires – as the foundation for his work. He did, however, offer one dose of reflection on his ten-ure thus far. “I feel really good about the three years looking back,” he said. “From what I hear from the various sectors of the University and having just gone through the review, I feel very good. I think we as a com-munity feel pride in ourselves

and I think UMass Amherst is in a really strong position compared to four years ago.”

Final thoughts The conversation nears its end. Subbaswamy wraps up his thought and Blaguszewski stops the question-and-answer cadence and holds out five fingers to alert both sides that, surprisingly, the hour is almost up. This is the final chance to learn more about the chancellor, who, as outgo-ing and personable as he may be, remains reserved about his life outside the chancellorship. When asked about his personal life, he dodges any particu-lars. “This job has so many different features to it, including participating in arts events, sports events, seminars and the reading I have to do to keep up with what’s going on in a book somebody writes within the faculty,” he says. “My job has sort of integrat-ed into the entertainment aspect as well.” He admits to having interests outside his work, such as being by the ocean, food, music and most importantly relaxation. He keeps his family close to the vest. He has a wife, Mala, and two grown children – a daughter, Apurva, and son, Adarsh. He reveals little about them and discourag-es their involvement in this story, requesting to keep them a private part of his life.  When the time is up, Subbaswamy is back to making small talk with his guest, discussing the weath-er among other topics. Then he makes his way back to the L-shaped desk, once again walking sprightly. His eyes will soon be fixated on the monitor in front of him, mind away from any poten-tial distractions. Soon, he will learn just what his peers think of his performance over three years; whether or not he, as he put it, “checked all the boxes” listed when he inher-ited a University trending downward. But to concern himself with that wouldn’t be in line with the values he proudly grew up with. Past decisions can’t be changed. Public perception can’t be controlled. The review is over, results permanent. Subbaswamy has meet-ings to schedule, events to attend and a University to lead. Everything else in his mind is secondary. As the door closes and he disappears from view, he’s already on to what’s next.

Nick Canelas can be reached at ncanelas@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @NickCanelas.

Opinion EditorialEditorial@DailyCollegiancomThursday, April 30, 2015

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

“Saying goodbye doesn’t mean anything. It’s the time we spent together that matters.” - Trey Parker

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian is published Monday through Thursday during the University of Massachusetts calendar semester. The Collegian is independently funded, operating on advertising revenue. Founded in 1890, the paper began as Aggie Life, became the College Signal in 1901, the Weekly Collegian in 1914 and the Tri–Weekly Collegian in 1956. Published daily from 1967 to 2014, The Collegian has been broadsheet since January 1994. For advertising rates and information, call 413-545-3500.

EDITOR IN CHIEF - Nick CanelasMANAGING EDITOR - Patrick Hoff

MANAGING EDITOR/DAILYCOLLEGIAN.COM - Conor Snell

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NEWS ASSISTANTS

Catherine FerrisMarie MacCune

Jaclyn Bryson

OPINION & EDITORIALOp/Ed Editor - Zac Bears

Maral Margossian

Op/Ed ASSISTANTS

Ian HagertySteven Gillard

ARTS & LIVINGArts Editor - Cory Willey

ARTS ASSISTANTS

SPORTSSports Editor - Mark Chiarelli

SPORTS ASSISTANTS

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Araz HavanPHOTO ASSISTANTS

Robert Rigo

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NIGHT EDITOR - Patrick Hoff

COPY EDITOR - Catherine Ferris

WEB PRODUCTION MANAGER - Claire Anderson

NEWS DESK EDITOR - Anthony Rentsch

Op/Ed DESK EDITOR - Zac Bears | Ian Hagerty

ARTS DESK EDITOR - Alex Frail

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COMICS DESK EDITOR - Tracy Krug

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Anthony ChiusanoAndrew Cyr

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t h e m a s s a c h u s e t t s D a i ly C o l l e g i a n

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Alex Lindsay

Leaving the Collegianin a better place than I found it

The preface for my final words at The Massachusetts Daily Collegian begins in Madison, Wisconsin.

It was a Saturday night in late August, just days before the start of my junior year at the University of Massachusetts. Hours earlier I was covering the first of the UMass football team’s many blowout loss-es that season. After the game, I joined Collegian alumni Daniel Malone and Bob McGovern, who covered the team for other publications, on an outing through downtown Madison. We ate dinner. Bob had a few drinks. But we had flights to catch the next morning, so we left early in the night for our respective hotels. Dan and I rented cars for the week-end and Bob asked me to drive him back to his hotel. Full disclosure: I’m still not sure whether Bob was feeling sentimental as we chatted during the drive, or if it was the alcohol talk-ing. Either way, it was an important conversation that replayed in my mind seven months later when I ran for editor-in-chief. What stood out most were words that are passed down to each generation of

Collegianites: “Leave the Collegian in a better place than you found it.” It’s simple – and a little cliché – but it’s significant. All year a typed copy of those words have hung on the wall behind my desk in the business room. It’s a reminder of the tradi-tion of the Collegian and it’s meaning to those who have adopted the window-less abode in the Campus Center basement as a sec-ond home. Those words were the inspiration behind my EIC campaign. It’s been my goal to continue that legacy and fulfill the words passed down to me. Whether I’ve achieved that goal is not my call ( just don’t ask the Student Government Association). The point in this is to explain why the Collegian matters – to me, to those before me and those who will come after me. I was about 10 years old when I first realized I wanted to be a journalist. I was old enough to realize I didn’t have the talent or athleticism to be a profes-sional athlete, so covering sports in some capacity was the next best thing. I entered college in fall 2011 with an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. At first I wanted to be

on television – something about wanting to be famous – but two short weeks at the Collegian sparked an addiction. There was a thrill in seeing my name in print. It was rewarding. It ignited a passion for jour-nalism and a desire to have a career in this industry. The Collegian changed – and ultimately shaped –

my college experience. I’m a loner by nature. I strug-gle to make, and maintain, consistent friendships. I’m guarded. I loathe talking about myself. Somehow, the Collegian brought me friendships I’ll never lose, forced me into the lives of the funniest, smartest and most caring people I’d never known – people who exceed my defi-nition of friendship. Let me tell you a quick story. It was the end of my sophomore year. I was an assistant sports editor at the time, working desk on my 20th birthday. I didn’t mind. It’s not like I had plans on a Wednesday. But midway through the night Katie Landeck, the EIC at the time, and Steve Hewitt, then the sports edi-

tor, EIC-elect and one of my good friends to this day, entered the newsroom with a pair of small birthday cakes – one chocolate and the other vanilla – with candles lit for me. I felt part of a special group. My parents went through an ugly separa-tion the summer before my

sophomore year that ended in divorce t was a grim experience that still affects me. The Collegian was my outlet. I felt the satisfac-tion of spending late nights tucked away in that dingy, yet cozy, office, trying to master Adobe InDesign, write flawless ledes and memorize all the state abbreviations in AP Style. It was the perfect dis-traction. My dog died my junior year. I sped to the war room, which at the time had no working lights, stationed in the nearest corner of the newsroom. I cried. I needed a quiet place to do my homework. The Collegian was my destina-tion. I wanted people to watch a game with. I stood inches from the TV in the

Collegian business room as Koji Uehara struck out Matt Carpenter in Game 6 of the 2013 World Series, and as Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson at the goal line in Super Bowl XLIX. On April 9, 2014, UMass basketball guard Derrick Gordon became the first openly gay Division I men’s college basketball player. Patrick Hoff, then the news editor, current managing editor and one of my good friends, and I spent about 15 hours in the newsroom that day, engineering the best possible coverage of an historic event. That was my favorite day at the Collegian. Given my current job status and the difficulty of thriving in this busi-ness, I’d be lying if I said I’ve reaped professional rewards yet. But without the Collegian, I wouldn’t have had three summer internships, covered col-lege and professional sporting events, and built alumni connections with those who came before me. That at least translates to potential. I ran for editor-in-chief last spring because I want-ed to give back, to lead the Collegian in a direction in which it could thrive for the coming decades.

Working at the Collegian, especially as editor-in-chief, was like getting a tattoo. The pro-cess was painful at many points, but the significance of this news organization will always be imprinted in me, making it all worth it. There were nights when I yelled at people, got into heated arguments. I made plenty of mistakes. Went home some nights with regrets. But over four years, the Collegian pro-vided with skills, charac-teristics and friendships that I could never equally repay it for. There’s another small piece of paper that I hung on a wall in the newsroom. It says, “Never be satis-fied.” I embody that three-word phrase. It’s why the little things irk me. It’s why nothing I write is good enough, why none of my page layouts are creative enough. But the Collegian has left with me a satisfaction that is often unattainable. There’s nothing more I can do. The result, I hope, is a Collegian in a much better place than I found it.

Nick Canelas was the Collegian’s editor-in-chief and can be reached at nickcan424@gmail.com.

“I was about 10 years old when I first realized I wanted to be a journalist.”

Nick Canelas

Nine months ago tomor-row, I awoke into my worst nightmare – the worst news

I had ever imagined hear-ing. My best friend had died. Her death is now a defin-ing event in my life. I could not picture life without her once. In the intervening months, I have barely pic-tured life at all. The day of her death, I had plans and goals for my senior year and career. The day after her death, I didn’t have goals for the next six hours. I have regained some semblance of con-trol over my emotions and my life, but I still wake up some days with no passion for existence in a town and at a university where no matter the place, a memory we shared together lingers. Those lingering memories have slowly become less painful. Now I try to focus on positive remembrance, but some days it’s very hard. Perhaps the most important lesson my time at the University of Massachusetts has taught me is how we are all shaped by the circumstances of our lives, events and char-acteristics entirely out of our control. This academic year has been by far my most dif-ficult. I have missed class-

es, been late on assign-ments and procrastinated everything. But I haven’t received failing grades or notice that my perfor-mance will prevent me from getting a degree. In fact, my circumstantial advantages – white skin, a male body, heteronor-mative presentation and privileged understanding of University bureaucracy – provided more support than I ever expected. Last fall, the Dean of Students Office reached out to me to see if there was anything they could do to help me. They reached out to my professors and told them about the situa-tion, requesting that they provide “support and assis-tance.” I wouldn’t have been able to stay at UMass without that support, and I am grateful for it. But many people who knew Hannah Frilot did not have the same experi-ence, and they have had much more arduous jour-neys dealing with missed assignments, less-than-stellar grades, and profes-sors, administrators, and peers who did not under-stand the injury for which they were in recovery. “Injury” never described the experience of grief, chronic stress or trau-ma before this past year, but the effects on mental health are the same as any physical injury’s effect on

the body. One must recover from a debilitation of the mind that does not abate magically but requires fortitude and courage to confront fears that feel easier to avoid. It took me months to realize that avoiding my fears – which had shifted from writing my thesis to just walking into a classroom, going to work or hanging out with my friends – meant that I would never be the

person I was before and deeply wanted to be again. Confronting the reality that my existence is inde-pendent from Hannah’s, and that I could again embody the confidence and passion I had when she was alive, subconsciously drove my seclusion and isolation. But even under these tragic conditions, my expe-rience with stress, grief and trauma-related men-tal illness occurred in iso-lation, based on a single

event that new acquain-tances would not know about. My experience has occurred from a position of privilege. I controlled access to knowledge of my struggle. So many people in this country and on this campus are not as lucky. I will never understand what it means to be a per-son of color, a woman, transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, gender non-con-forming, disabled or any

other description that puts me outside of soci-ety’s norm The stress that comes from ever-present and overwhelming anti-black, anti-woman, anti-LGBT, anti-disability and “pro-normal” forces in our society can be just as debilitating as the loss of a loved one. I faced a single event that undercut my self-worth and the value of my existence. Marginalized and socially devalued peo-ple have a mile-long list of

traumatic events that have the same existential effects. I’ve spent months trying to deal with one. I will never understand what it means to have the validity of my existence questioned every day. And where I received institutional support at every turn, people who have to deal with trauma and hatred on a daily basis don’t have that safety net. I was listening to BBC Radio over the weekend, and one guest criticized “people who can’t realize how lucky they are.” Even in the face of unexpected and painful tragedy, I am very, very lucky. I was born into a stable family, went to good schools, got into a good college and have had internships and jobs that have fulfilled lifelong dreams and positioned me for future success. My columns have been cited in The Boston Globe. New England Public Radio and the Daily Hampshire Gazette have interviewed me to provide student perspective on important issues. Tens of thousands of readers have read my views on national and state politics. And I’ve had three years filled with great teachers, peers and friends. Outside of the Collegian, I have had the best boss in the world at Commonwealth Honors College. She has taught me so much about writing,

management, teamwork and, while I may not always heed her advice, brevity. My professors and classes have been exceptional. I didn’t know what economics was when I came to UMass, but I may be an economist at the Department of Labor after I leave. The real highlights, though, involve the won-derful people I met every single day at UMass. On my first day, I met my best friend, and I never stopped meeting impressive and amazing people who have given me so much, from the support I needed to get through this year to knowl-edge of what it means to be a woman, or queer or a person of color in a much more intimate and person-al way than can ever be taught in a classroom. While I may always feel a twinge of pain from the scar of a terrible injury when I think about UMass, I have gained a lot more than I lost in my time here. I have even gained from my loss. UMass taught me that no matter who we are, we are products of circumstance, and that will live with me forever.

Zac Bears was the Opinion & Editorial Editor and a copy editor and can be followed on Twitter @zac_bears.

“While I may always feel a twinge of pain from the scar of a terrible injury when I think about UMass, I have gained a lot more than I lost in my time here. I have

even gained from my loss. UMass taught me that no matter who we are, we are products of circumstance, and that will

live with me forever.”

A product of circumstance

Zac Bears

Alex Frail

Jackson Maxwell

Erica GarnettMadeleine Jackman

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN Thursday, April 30, 2015 5DailyCollegian.com

If someone were to ask me what I do for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian I would have to say I run. I run, I bike, I do whatever it takes to

get the shot. I am the photo editor, and photo-journalism has taught me that a lot can happen in 1/500th of a second. And it is for that reason I can say college did not go by in a flash (it could also be because I do not use flash equipment). Photo puns aside, 1/500th of a second is the usual speed the shutter blades on my camera close and open again to capture the tiniest sliver of a moment possible. In that instant I have seen goals scored, futures realized. The faces of triumph, joy, utter despair, sorrow, excitement, fear and almost every other human emotion imaginable. I have seen it all at the University of Massachusetts, almost quite literally, because as a newspaper photographer I have to so everyone else can. ‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ is essentially the standard today, and I am responsible for provid-ing pictures of every major and minor event on campus, but that became less of a task and more a drive to get ‘the shot’. The one that says it all, those thousand words and more. My passion for photojournalism while at UMass grew in a very similar fashion to my love for hockey. At my student orientation, I watched game seven of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals and saw the Boston Bruins win. However when the third period ended, not knowing better, I assumed there was still more of a game left. A senior at orientation recommended going to the school hockey games. That semester when I saw my first game, I felt the excitement of the sport. I knew from then on I would make that rush a regular sentiment during my time at UMass. Before college I had not actually done a whole lot of photojournalism. I was the photo editor of my high school newspaper, but besides covering science fairs I mostly did ‘artsy’ stuff, like still life photography. So after joining the photo department of the campus newspaper, I asked to tag along with the main sports photographer for a game. When I arrived at the Mullins Center, he showed me where to shoot and said he would be leaving after a period. Alone in one corner of the rink, I started shooting.

Photojournalism was a different kind of rush, an analytical one where I had to coordinate my hands to always keep the camera pointed where the puck and action was. I was almost a different kind of student-athlete in that regard. A few days later students began protesting the possible elimination of campus jobs. I was not entirely sure protesters would be as exciting as sports, but I soon found any sort of demonstra-tion could prove interesting. Whereas sports provide aggressive action shots, I would eventu-ally come to realize activism and important news coverage produced photos of anger, passion and the utmost seriousness. My pictures started mattering more and more. Just as I slowly learned the rules and terms of hockey I was learning that my images were the ones telling stories and giving readers first-hand view of happenings. Writers can describe crowd estimates, but only photographs can show what a sea of people really looks like. Or what despair and anguish looks like on the face of an athlete that just lost the biggest game of their life. Only photographs can say everything about an event without a single word. At the conclusion of my freshman year, I was hired by the Massachusetts Daily Collegian to be an assistant photo editor. More student protests, a whole lot more sporting events and many cam-pus events later, I found myself shooting better quality stuff than I thought possible. As friends and colleagues graduated, I took on more responsibilities. I was shooting Atlantic 10 championships, and even decided to add a jour-nalism major. My first time at the TD Garden was photo-graphing UMass basketball from the Celtics parquet. Agganis Arena, Gutterson Feildhouse, Barclays Center, Gillette Stadium, Beaver Stadium, Providence Civic Center, Schneider Arena and even Fenway Park – I have shot at them all. I have covered all of the 19 UMass sports. I’ve attended every hockey home game three years straight, every men’s basketball home game the past two years and every 2014 home football game. I have shot well over 400 events for the Collegian, 175 sports-related ones, and of those, 137 official NCAA collegiate games. I’ve shot famous musicians, NFL players, politicians in every level of government, including some of the highest offices. I leave here with a well-rounded portfolio, and even if I do not end up working in the field post-graduation I will always keep shooting. UMass and the Daily Collegian helped foster a passion for chasing the perfect shot, and for that I am deeply grateful.

Cade Belisle was the photo editor and can be reached at cbelisle@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @CadeBelisle. A photo slide-show of Cade’s best photos will be available on DailyCollegian.com.

The photo man

“Writers can describe crowd estimates, but only photographs can show what a

sea of people really looks like.

Cade Belisle

“I’ve never spent more hours in the Collegian and while it may have kept me from getting

work done at a decent hour of the night, every minute I spent in that basement was worth it.”

It’s all over now, baby blue “People are sheep, man.” – Tommy Verdone

Our society is built on a mass of ignorant, scared and easily distracted people who are willfully controlled by a small minority of the super powerful and super wealthy. These powerful people decide everything – major political alliances, war, finan-cial spikes and falls – behind closed doors, in secret meet-ings you and I will never have access to and in which we have no representation. They keep us happy and satisfied, with cheap and addictive food, drugs, and entertainment to distract us from what’s going on around us, which makes us easier to control. The news media capitalizes on its position within the end-less stream of information we receive via television, radio and the Internet. The corpo-rate entities that own and con-trol these news outlets pur-posefully brainwash the mass-es, keeping us distracted with a 24-hour, constantly updating news and entertainment cycle. Even if you can find a news outlet you trust, give that trust dubiously. Widen your scope of input, and draw from a

wide variety of sources – don’t take any one side of the story as the truth, ever. All this runaround – it’s enough to make you want to just ignore it all together. To just bury your head in the sand and keep going with your day-to-day life. Why worry about things you have no con-trol over when you can instead

focus on sports, on celebrities, on fashion or on your job? BECAUSE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE. Yup! Each and every one of you reading this will die. Me too. Life is short, and basically pointless. No matter what you accomplish or who you meet while you’re here, eventual-ly we’ll all just dissolve into the cosmic soup. The sun will explode, the universe will col-lapse and nothing will remain. Everything is temporary, and there is no afterlife. This is all you get, and it’s full of pain and suffering and death. But life is full of amazing things too, like all that pret-ty nature everyone talks so

much about. Also the usual great stuff, like sunrises and birth and art and music and cheese. Honestly, I think the most amazing part about life itself is that you get to live it. It might be completely point-less, but it has to be better than the alternative. I wanted to take the space in this senior column to

remind everyone, myself included, that just being alive is FREAKING AMAZING. There are really no rules or restrictions. You can do abso-lutely whatever you want, all the time. You’ll have to live with the results of your choic-es, but the choice is yours to make. As I exit the protective womb of college and spill sud-denly headfirst into the “real world,” I find myself terrified by the enormity of possibili-ties in front of me. But I’ve also never felt more liberated to choose my own path than I do now. My time with the Collegian has connected me to so many

of my peers who I thought I’d never meet. By learning to tell other people’s stories, I think I’ve better learned how to tell my own story – or, bet-ter yet, how I’d like to write it. The Collegian – along with Amherst Wire, WMUA and all other campus media – serve a critical role in keeping the stu-dents here informed against the constant barrage of PR and media relations bull. So here’s what I’ve learned in my time here: Embrace the futility! Be part of that ignorant mass but do what you can to improve your space in this world. Liberate your mind. Read a ton – newspapers, books, web-sites – the more the better. Travel, even if it makes you go broke – nothing is more worth your time and money. Help other people, but help yourself too. Experiment with things you might be scared of, and let go of things you don’t need. Eat well. Study hard in school because it’ll pay off later, but don’t forget to have fun. And most of all, be a cynic – but do it with open eyes, and an open mind.

Conor Snell was the Web Managing Editor and can be reached at csnell@umass.edu and followed on Twitter at @snellofsuccess.

Conor Snell

“Joining the Collegian was one of the best things I did while at UMass. It broke me out of my

boring shell and inspired me to abandon my plan.”

Ditching the plan I had a plan freshman year. A great plan.

I would stay at the University of Massachusetts for a year before transfer-ring to the school I had been deferred from the year before. I would study biol-ogy, and become a doctor. But like most life plans, it didn’t work out. The plan that was keep-ing me sane my tumultu-ous freshman year was shat-tered when I took chemistry, abolishing my solid GPA. I tried to hold onto the idea that everything was okay, that chemistry was just a bad hump in the road, but it was not. I just couldn’t bring myself to let go of the plan. I felt like someone had suddenly ripped the rug out from under me and I was falling. After some wallow-ing, I gathered what courage I had left and in a snap deci-sion partly fueled by anger and partly just to prove to myself that I was still good at something. I came to The Massachusetts Daily Collegian. I was always a pretty good writer and

thought a different hobby would give me some stabil-ity. My first printed piece was an opinion piece, and was quickly ripped apart by the night editor. She didn’t like it because the piece was dry, too much like a class paper instead of an opinion piece. I had no idea what to do, again feeling like a rug had been pulled out from under me. She sat me in front of a com-

puter in the Collegian offices and made me think: what did I want to say with my 750 words? Why would the topic of presidential nominee Newt Gingrich’s proposal of sending people to live on a moon base apply to anyone? I started reflecting on how silly the proposal was, and my mind leaped to the idea of living in space, then to the neon jumpsuits and funky earrings in Disney’s “Zenon.” I realized the col-umn needed some spark, some of my strange brain

leaps. It was a weird night, but by the end I was all set to be published in the next morning’s paper. I left the offices with a high that I have been chasing ever since. Joining the Collegian was one of the best things I did while at UMass. It broke me out of my boring shell and inspired me to abandon my plan. I started spending more time at the Collegian,

writing articles and annoy-ing the other columnists until I realized I was hang-ing out in the offices just for fun. The Collegian became one of my favorite places to be and remains my favorite spot on campus. Despite the fact that I loved the newspaper and that my plan had burst into flames, I wasn’t prepared to be a journalism major. Instead I created my own major through BDIC, one of the hidden gems at UMass. I took all kinds of classes,

including some at Amherst College, where I saw a lot of pastel outfits that I could never pull off but also made some great friends. I went abroad for a year, spent one semester in Brazil, before hopping continents and studied in Germany for a semester. Journalism is exciting. I never know where a story will take me, whether it is a government protest in Brazil – best protest ever – or a veteran’s march. I found my home with the Collegian and storytelling. It sounds tacky, even writing the words I can tell you are rolling your eyes. This year I repre-sented the Collegian at the Neiman Foundation’s col-lege journalism conference, covered UMass’ reaction to the Super Bowl, reported on heroin addiction in west-ern Massachusetts and lost 10 pounds – how was your senior year? I am so glad I ditched my plan.

Claire Anderson was the Op/Ed Senior Producer and can be reached at clairea@umass.edu.

Claire Anderson

I may owe Nicolas Cage an apology. I’ve made him the butt of

thousands of jokes this year, including two articles published in this paper making fun of nearly every one of his choices, both as an actor and a human being. But before I get to that, there is something much more important than an apology, that the most interesting man in Hollywood will likely never see, that I’d like to discuss, and that is the very section that those articles were published in and how glad I am to have been a part of it. I came to The Massachusetts Daily Collegian with abso-lutely no interest in doing anything more than writing film reviews. I remem-ber walking up to the Collegian’s table at the Activities Expo my first year here was hesitant to join. The only thing that really made me put my name down was the promise of a free movie ticket for any movie I decided to review. That first year, I stayed on the fringes of the section, never really going to meetings and only taking the occasional film or TV review for something I really just wanted to see.

Very slowly, howev-er, the section dragged me in. The next year, my junior year, I went to the first meeting, then the next one and the next one. Pretty soon I was at every meeting. I found myself looking forward to them each week. The arts section seemed like some cool “Breakfast Club”-like group of misfits from all walks of life that just happened to come together every week to create a fantastic sec-tion of arts content. Before I knew it, I found myself more and more invested in this goofy little group, to the point that when the assistant editor posi-tion for TV and film opened up, I applied without even thinking about it. It just seemed like the next natural step. Despite being terri-fied of screwing up the arts page on a week-ly basis, and almost always feeling incred-ibly anxious to speak at the arts meeting, I grew to really love working for the sec-tion. The hard work

and dedication of the other editors and writ-ers made me care so much more than I ever thought I would. When the arts editor position opened up at the end of my junior year, I desperately wanted the position. Somehow this group of people that I hadn’t known just a year and a half before had made me care about something that I started doing just so I could see movies for free. That was incredi-ble to me, and I wanted to make sure that sense of care and camarade-rie continued into the next year. This past year as arts editor has been the most stressful, and yet, the best period of my college career. I’ve never spent more hours in the Collegian and while it may have kept me from getting work done at a decent hour of the night, every minute I spent in that basement was worth it. Whether it was time spent on desk for the food and drink section while we looked for another assistant for what seemed like the tenth time, com-ing up with the best, terrible skybox head-lines with the graph-ics desk, churning out the half-disaster/half-success that was the Halloween Special Issue or, yes, making endless Nic Cage jokes, I will always remem-

ber those nights in the office as some of the best nights of my time at the University of Massachusetts. To close out my year as arts editor, I would like to say thank you to all of the amazing peo-ple who helped make this year’s arts section just as wonderfully weird as it was when I first joined. It has been a fantastic couple of years and I can’t wait to see where the sec-tion goes next. Finally, I would like to apolo-gize to Nicolas Cage for making him the focus of my ridicule since this past September. Please know that, much like the arts sec-tion, you will always be one of the most excel-lent things in existence in my eyes. People will continue to put you down and question everything that you do, but I am begging you, PLEASE never stop acting. I love watching your awful, awful mov-ies.

Cory J. Willey was the Arts Editor and can be reached at cjwilley@umass.edu.

I’m sorry,Nicolas Cage

“I’ve never spent more hours in the Collegian and while it may have kept me from getting work done at a decent hour of the night, every minute I spent

in that basement was worth it.”

Cory Willey

CHRISTINA YACONO/COLLEGIAN

Top row, from left: Conor Snell, Cory Willey, Nick Canelas, Zac Bears and Claire Anderson. Bottom row: Tracy Krug, Aviva Luttrell, Catherine Ferris and Jaclyn Bryson.

“So give me the coffee. Give me the police scanners, the long rides in the car, the

emotional peaks and valleys that come with the job. You’re never truly ready for what this job throws at you, but I couldn’t think of a better

way to learn than at the Collegian.”

Finding my place When I was a little kid rid-ing in the back of my father’s

car, there was always a third presence with us: a portable police scanner crackling stat-ic, electronic bleeps and the occasional emergency. My father was a news reporter and met my mother while they were both working at the same newspaper in Waltham. I grew up hearing stories about my parents’ careers as journalists – the car acci-dents, fires, murders and all. I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve heard them reminisce about their first double byline covering a Valentine’s Day stabbing. How romantic. People in the business like to tell me I was “doomed” from the start. But being a reporter never crossed my mind until sophomore year of college when a friend con-vinced me to take an intro-ductory journalism class with him. And I fell in love with it. I’d never considered myself anything more than medio-cre at the hobbies I’d taken up throughout high school – cheerleading, gymnastics, various musical instruments. I was shy and self-conscious. I hated nothing more than being called on in class and

felt like I never quite fit in. And this continued into col-lege. And then one evening in September of my sopho-more year, I walked into The Massachusetts Daily Collegian office in the Campus Center basement. It looks like every other newsroom I’ve

been in – dusty and messy with stacks of newspapers everywhere. But soon enough, it became a second home to me. I was hired as an assistant news edi-tor my junior year and rose to the position of news editor as a senior. And as they say, you find your people where you find your place. I’ve made some of my best friends here and for the first time felt like I found somewhere I belong. The Collegian has taught me so much about not only the technicalities of journal-ism, but about life in general, who I am as a person and how I fit into the world. I’ve learned not to worry

so much about what people think of me. I’ve learned to take risks. And I’ve seen over and over again how hard work pays off. I can’t even count how many gallons of black coffee I’ve drunk or how many times I’ve broken down crying at 3 a.m. after a long night on desk. This job

has been far from easy, but I wouldn’t trade the experience I’ve had for the world. I spent hours with a stu-dent who performs as a drag queen and documented with audio, photos and words how his hobby helped him finally become comfortable in his own skin. I woke up at 4 a.m. to watch student farmers pick vegetables before sunrise. I spent several afternoons with a recovering heroin addict for a story, that for reasons of privacy, I was never able to publish. Gaining this type of inti-mate access into peoples’ lives is probably my favorite part of the job. Journalism

not only allows me to meet all sorts of fascinating people, but to have the privilege to tell their stories. It’s also made me take risks and push myself far out-side of my own comfort zone. I’ve talked my way onto the kill floor of a slaughterhouse for a photojournalism assign-ment. I covered the emotion-ally taxing trial of a man who was convicted of gang-raping a freshman in her dorm room. I’ve covered many student deaths. None of these stories were easy and I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I’ve learned anything from the Collegian, it’s that you learn a lot about yourself when you’re forced to deal with adversity. Life as a journalist is chock full of it, both when reporting stories and watching others around you. So give me the coffee. Give me the police scanners, the long rides in the car, the emo-tional peaks and valleys that come with the job. You’re never truly ready for what this job throws at you, but I couldn’t think of a better way to learn than at the Collegian. I couldn’t think of a better place to be.

Aviva Luttrell was the News Editor and a night editor and can be reached at alut-trel@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @AvivaLuttrell.

Aviva Luttrell

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN6 Thursday, April 30, 2015 DailyCollegian.com

“So it goes.” - Kurt VonnegutArts Living

Arts@DailyCollegian.comThursday, April 30, 2015

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Gen X meets ‘Young’ Gen Y

By NathaN FroNtieroCollegian Staff

Eventually, we all have to grow up. There’s a grim air to that statement – it smacks of morbid cliché – but the inevitability of aging is a powerful moti-vator. The trouble comes when we get caught up in the frenzied, rolling pres-ent and forget to take a minute and appreciate the extra breaths we can spare. Searching for suc-cess in life can distract us from finding fulfillment in it. I don’t know if writer/director Noah Baumbach is a cynic but, like me, he is a critic. With “While We’re Young,” Baumbach takes a scalpel to percep-tions of both youth and truth. His case study fol-lows two couples from dif-ferent generations. Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are happily married in their forties, but that pro-verbial spark – as it is accustomed to do – has gone missing. They’ve decided against having children after unsuccess-ful attempts. Their rela-tionship is straining under Josh’s stressed efforts to free his new documentary from post-production hell. In one scene, they wonder, “Why do we stop doing things?” As chance and social commentary would have it, Josh teaches a college film course that piques the interest of Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a hip-ster couple in their twen-ties. The two of them are walking fireworks of free spirit that quickly charm the middle-aged Josh and Cornelia. Jamie is enam-ored with Josh’s work and has documentary film-making aspirations of his own. Darby makes and sells her own brand of gourmet ice cream.

Josh is won over with Jamie and Darby’s ear-nestness and spontaneity. So Gen X hops on the Gen Y train in the busy back-drop of New York City. It’s worth noting both couples are evidently financially comfortable members of “New York’s creative class.” Baumbach’s cri-tique focuses on differ-ences of aesthetic and approach rather than socioeconomic divides. The music and editing in “While We’re Young” work seamlessly togeth-er to convey the film’s intriguing ideology. In one of the film’s most remark-able sequences, Baumbach and editor Jennifer Lame cut between the forty and twenty-somethings to show their respective habits. A noticeably hard distinction begins to form. The older two fill their lives and living spaces with digital technology, the younger two fill theirs with analog. Josh and Cornelia have modern, polished fur-niture and décor. Jamie and Darby have a grid of typewriters mounted on one wall, tapestries adorning others. Josh and Cornelia watch movies in bed on an Apple TV. Jamie and Darby watch worn VHS tapes on a tiny cube-shaped television set. These contrasted life-styles have corresponding musical cues. Middle age is associated with Antonio Vivaldi’s baroque-period strings. Youth is matched with James Murphy’s ana-log synth melodies. The keyboards feel freer than the violins, and oxymoron-ically, more organic. This dichotomy grows murkier as the film pro-gresses, and the cool kid affectations start to rub off on the more seasoned folks. Darby brings Cornelia to her hip-hop dance class. Jamie introduces tweed, a fedora and chic glasses to Josh’s wardrobe. This glossy stylistic coat of paint can only go so far, though. Conflicts emerge

as the couples spend more time together, consequent-ly exposing Baumbach’s headier philosophies. The director reveals his cen-tral investigation is into authenticity. Late in the film, Josh and Jamie clash over their differing approaches to documentaries while attending a Lincoln Center tribute to Josh’s success-ful filmmaker father-in-law (Charles Grodin). Josh believes in a fervent adherence to truth and reality. Jamie is comfort-able with fabricating some of his “truth” in order to boost entertainment value. Grodin’s character delivers a speech about truth in filmmaking that Baumbach intercuts with their confrontation. Synthesizers reemerge beneath their dialogue and rumble in deep, mel-ancholically pensive tones. The inorganic music empathizes here with Josh’s enlightened commitment to integrity while Jamie dismisses his criticism. Complicating this motivic relation-ship shines more light on Baumbach’s thesis. The film suggests Jamie’s loose and eccentric way of life is built on something false. His youthful hodgepodge of uniquely cultured expe-riences is only a façade. “While We’re Young” presents several defini-tions of authenticity set at odds. The film fierce-ly condemns the media-tion of life experiences through technology and equally damns false genu-ineness. Baumbach posits that growing up, accepting one’s place in the world and living a surprising and satisfying existence are not mutually exclu-sive. The director instead emphasizes that our lives – regardless of what we choose to fill them with – must be lived honestly.

Nathan Frontiero can be reached at nfrontiero@umass.edu.

Baumbach posits profound queries

F I L M R E V I E W

Draper ruminates on the future as he faces the end

By eli FiNeCollegian Staff

“Mad Men” has never been the most serialized of shows, its creators prefer-ring to produce themati-cally related, but for the most part standalone indi-vidual episodes. So it’s no wonder that the first three episodes of the series’ last batch of seven barely move the series’ plot along at all. Matthew Weiner has always been a slow-paced show-runner, and “Mad Men” is anything but a plot-driven show. It is about theme and character, and the first few episodes of this mini-sea-son fit the bill. Through the first few episodes of season 7B, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has a series of disconnected mis-adventures. Some of these misadventures involve the women of Don’s life: past, present and future. Don finds out that a former lover has passed away, he puts the finishing touches on his divorce settlement with Megan (Jessica Paré) and Don begins a new relationship with a deeply troubled waitress, Diana (Elizabeth Reaser). And by the way, if Jon Hamm never wins an Emmy for Don Draper, the Emmys should no longer be a thing. His is one of the great performances in tele-vision history and deserves to be recognized for his work. Don spends an episode thinking about the future – what more does he want out of life now that he has his dream job, massive wealth and no serious familial commitments? An SC&P employee, Mathis, accuses Don of achieving success entirely as a result of his good looks rather than his knack for advertising. This leads to a powerfully affect-ing parenting moment later

in the same episode, when Don tells his daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka), “You’re a very beautiful girl. It’s up to you to be more than that.” That moment comes about after Sally confronts Don in a similar fashion to Mathis. Earlier in the epi-sode, Don takes Sally and her teenage friends out to dinner, and one of Sally’s friends becomes shame-lessly infatuated with Don. It makes for an awkward scene when Don flirts back with the adolescent in front of his daughter. Later, Sally pointedly tells him that she wants nothing more than to be a different person than he and her mother Betty (January Jones). It’s a strong moment, possibly the best scene of these first few episodes. It’s an important moment for Sally not just because her father is teaching her a valuable life lesson, but because it comes after she learns that he child-hood friend Glen (Marten Holden Weiner) is infatu-ated with Betty and about to join the army, a prospect that terrifies Sally. She is disenchanted with both of her parents and their pro-clivities, and hearing those down to earth words com-ing from her father gives her something to think about. The plot picks up again in the fourth episode of these last seven. McCann Erickson tells the SC&P partners that it has decided to absorb SC&P into the larger parent company. The SC&P gang spends an episode trying to maneuver their way out of this pro-fessional predicament like they did in the season three finale, “Shut the Door. Have a Seat.” However, this time it does them no good – McCann’s decision is final. The McCann people even convince the SC&P part-ners to look at the absorp-tion as a good thing, as they

will be working for some of the biggest brands in the world, like Nabisco and Coca-Cola. When the SC&P partners announce the news to the office’s lower-level employ-ees, the employees all voice their annoyance. As they all filter out of the com-mon area, Don shouts at them, “This is the begin-ning, not the end!” The end of “Mad Men” itself is fast approaching, and its pro-tagonist can’t let go of his intrinsic need to always be starting out, to never actu-ally reach the finish line. Through these epi-sodes, other members of the ensemble have their moments to shine as well: Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) finally shares her big motherhood secret with Stan (Jay R. Ferguson), Joan (Christina Hendricks) develops a romance with a rich retiree named Richard (Bruce Greenwood), Pete tries, unsuccessfully, to get his daughter into a pres-tigious school and, most importantly, Lou Avery (Allan Havey) decides to move to Tokyo to pursue his dream of making his comic strip “Scout’s Honor” a reality. The scene in which Avery tells Don he is moving is my favorite scene of these epi-sodes – the way Lou gloats about it and rubs it in his face, and Don is just mildly annoyed – pure comedic genius, I tell you. “Mad Men” is every bit as wonderful now as it ever has been. It’s an all-time great TV show, and I hon-estly can’t believe that it’s going to be over so soon. Weiner has developed each and every character on the show so well and with such care and attention to detail, and as a result it’s unlike any other show currently on TV – uniquely sensitive and empathetic.

Eli Fine can be reached at elazarfine@gmail.com and followed on Twitter @ElazarFine.

‘Mad Men’ finishes strong final run

T E L E V I S I O N R E V I E W

Derivative ‘Ex Machina’ is more artificial than intelligenceBig step down for Issac and Gleeson

F I L M R E V I E W

UNIVERSAL PICTURES INTERNATIONAL

Alicia Vikander stars as Ava in this deritive A.I. genre vehicle.

By eli FiNeCollegian Staff

“Ex Machina” is a mildly entertaining movie that, put very simply, should be bet-ter than it is. Written and directed by Alex Garland, “Ex Machina” desperately wants to be a deeply thought-provoking film but manages only to bring to mind better, more intelligent films like Spike Jonze’s “Her.” Like “Her” and countless other artificial intelligence films, “Ex Machina” focuses on the relationship between a lonely human man and a newly created artificially intelligent female machine. It takes place in the not too distant future and has a dis-approving eye to society’s reliance on technology. “Ex Machina” has a total of four characters: Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), Nathan (Oscar Isaac), Ava (Alicia Vikander) and Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno). The film opens as Caleb, a computer programmer working for the world’s largest search

engine company, Bluebook, discovers that he has won a companywide lottery to meet Nathan, Bluebook’s eccentric and elusive CEO. He is flown out to Nathan’s high-tech fortress in the mountains where he is to spend the week getting to know his boss. Almost immediately, Nathan tells Caleb the real purpose for their meeting: Nathan wants Caleb to per-form a test on his newest creation in order to deter-mine whether or not Nathan has successfully imbued it with artificial intelligence. The creation is a female robot named Ava. As soon as Caleb begins to talk to Ava, a romantic relationship starts to form between them. As the film develops this relationship, it also explores Nathan’s nefarious pur-poses for creating an A.I., his evil intentions for the technology, his treatment of Ava, his alcoholism and the story behind his mysterious, speechless butler, Kyoko. Like “Her,” “Ex Machina” really begins to fall apart in its third act, where it shame-lessly gives way to nearly all of the tropes of the genre.

Humans turn out to be robots, robots turn out to be human inside and Nathan doesn’t have as much control over his own technology as he thinks. Throughout the film, various plot twists and story beats are presented as if to say, “Shocker! Betcha didn’t see that one coming!” An observant viewer will have predicted every plot point from the moment Ava is introduced into the film. The most bizarre and off-putting aspect of “Ex Machina” is its casting. Every decision made by

the film’s casting depart-ment seems odd. Isaac and Gleeson are two of the best actors working today. Isaac gave a monumental perfor-mance in the Coen broth-ers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” and has since been terrific in such movies as “A Most Violent Year” and “The Two Faces of January.” Gleeson was incredibly charming and moving in “About Time,” convincingly naive and impressionable in “Frank” and chillingly creepy in a cameo perfor-mance opposite his father in

“Calvary.” However, both of their work in “Ex Machina” leaves a lot to be desired. In “Llewyn Davis,” “A Most Violent Year” and “January,” Isaac gave very intense, heavy perfor-mances and was spectacu-lar. The intensity of his “Ex Machina” character, Nathan, on the other hand, is supposed to come through with his almost exaggerated nonchalance. Therefore, “Ex Machina” has Isaac saying “dude” quite often, talking very casually and getting sloshed. The one thing Isaac barely gets to portray in “Ex Machina” is his specialty – intensity. Therefore, his per-formance, unfortunately, is unremarkable. However, what really gets me mad is what “Ex Machina” does to Gleeson. He is an Irish actor, and has played an Englishman very well in many of his previous films. His English accent in “About Time” is extremely charming and is a large part of what makes that performance work so well. The same goes for his accent in “Frank.” Here, however, Gleeson does a ter-rible American accent that

drains all his ample cha-risma and charm, rendering him a blank slate. The casting of Vikander as Ava is understandable. She has a perpetually curi-ous and innocent expres-sion, which fits very well with the new A.I. However, curiosity and innocence are just about all Vikander can do. This becomes a problem when Ava begins to do things that seem out of character, and Vikander’s performance does not give us any hints at her motivations. As a result, Vikander’s contribu-tions to the film’s ending feel unearned and unnatural. “Ex Machina” is a sub-par robot A.I. movie in more ways than one. The special effects for Ava are very good, but much of the other CGI in the film is pretty shabby (scenes involving a stabbing are particularly egregious). Bad CGI, unfortunate cast-ing choices and lousy deriva-tive plotting add up to the very forgettable movie that “Ex Machina” is.

Eli Fine can be reached at elazarfine@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @ElazarFine.

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN8 Thursday, April 30, 2015 DailyCollegian.com

THANK YOU EVERYBUDDY!Put your comics in front of thousands of readers.

Questions? Comments? Email us: comics@dailycollegian.comComics

What Woe this hilarity has been.

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4056. That’s how many horoscopes I’ve written since I got this job. You really think you were going to get one more?

H O R O S C O P E S aquarius Jan. 20 - Feb. 18

Seriously, this is was the worst part of the best job in world. So, obviously, predicting your future everyday was so super terrible.

pisces Feb. 19 - Mar. 20

I am currently sitting amongst the greatest friends I’ll ever have.

aries Mar. 21 - apr. 19

Honestly, this is quite depressing and rambly. But such is college and that’s the college way!

taurus apr. 20 - May. 20

Thank you for having me for the last three years, as this has been the most formative in my life thus far.

gemini May. 21 - Jun. 21

Through sheer sassiness and honesty, I hoped to provide humor for you all.

cancer Jun. 22 - Jul. 22

These are very serious horoscopes you know, and I’m so validated that so many have said “Ugh, where are my real horoscopes?“

leo Jul. 23 - aug. 22

I was there when you had a large lecture and needed entertainment.

virgo aug. 23 - Sept. 22

I was there when you were sitting in the dining hall with nothing but this page to keep you company.

libra Sept. 23 - Oct. 22

scorpio Oct. 23 - nOv. 21

I love you all, will miss this job dearly, and I hope to have made everyone’s day-to-day life these past three years just a little better.

sagittarius nOv. 22 - Dec. 21

Give em the ol‘ razzle dazzle. It’s all you can really do. Love, Tracy.

capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan. 19

I was there for you in the only way I could think of: pal-hood and comedy. Two of the greatest gifts one could give.

Day 4 of 4: Thank you.

Dinosaur ComiCs By ryan north

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN Thursday, April 30, 2015 B7DailyCollegian.com

BASEBALL continued from page 8

of the ball, it’s been tough to win games. But with the pitching giving up so many runs so early in games, it is even harder for the Minutemen offense to get anything going. UMass has given up more than eight runs in five of the 10 games. They gave up 13 runs twice, get-ting knocked around 18-5 and 15-1 against Florida Gulf Coast. Now, they are faced with the tough task of manag-ing the Spiders big hitters. Richmond has four regu-lars hitting over .300 with three of them hitting over .350. The team is hitting a combined .284. In compar-ison, the Minutemen are hitting .241 as a team. Ryan Moloney, Conor LeBlanc and Brandon Walsh are slated to start

this weekend against these powerful hitters. Stone spoke about what they need to do to get UMass back on a winning tack. “They need to execute pitches,” Stone said. “If they do that, it can give us a chance to hopefully win.” Matt Dacey is hav-ing a great season for the Spiders, hitting .301 with a team-high 12 home runs. As a team, the Minutemen have only hit five homers. It has been a real struggle for UMass but it is not all on the pitching. The offense has been just as lackluster. It will not get easier for them either, however, as Richmond comes in with one of the best pitching staffs in the Atlantic 10. The Spiders combined 4.39 ERA is a

little overblown; their top three starters all have ERAs under three. Ryan Cook leads the staff with a 6-2 record in 10 starts. He has posted a 2.77 ERA in those starts. “We are going to have to make adjustments,” Stone said. “Our hitters have to shorten swings and make sure they are getting good pitches to hit.” Stone is still looking for his team to give effort and commitment despite their 11-game losing streak. “We need to win the effort battle (to end the streak),” Stone said. “I want to see effort and com-mitment (the rest of the season).”

Tyler Fiedler can be reached at tfiedler@umass.edu and on Twitter @Tyler_Fiedler.

LACROSSE continued from page 8

lar season. Starting goalie Zach Oliveri followed up a strong 14-save perfor-mance against Drexel April 24 with a poor out-ing in UMass’ season fina-le against Delaware. The junior allowed seven goals and stopped four shots before being replaced at the half. Replacing Oliveri for the final 30 minutes was freshman D.J. Smith (four saves, three goals allowed) who has played sparing-ly this season in similar situations when Oliveri struggled. According to Cannella, the starter in net for Thursday hasn’t been determined yet. “The wins that we’ve had, look at the save totals, then look at the save totals

for the losses. There’s a big difference,” Cannella said. “Hopefully (Oliveri) can respond well but both of these goalies are still fighting and (the decision) is up in the air.” On offense, although Cannella is happy with the balance of scoring on the score sheet, he added that no one has “taken over” in a game. He said this scor-ing threat often plays an important role come play-off time. “We haven’t had a guy who scored more than three goals in one game and that’s not good,” Cannella said. “We need to get off at some point and we haven’t had it.” The obvious player to look toward for this chal-lenge is sophomore Nick

Mariano, who leads the Minutemen with 21 goals. However, he hasn’t record-ed a multi-goal game since March 21 at Hofstra. “Nick knew that com-ing into the year that after last year he was going to get the top defenseman,” Cannella said. “Until we get somebody who could beat someone off the dodge, he’s still going to get the top guy. And that’s not going to change.” UMass and Fairfield will square off Thursday at 7 p.m. in Fairfield, Connecticut. No. 2 seed Drexel hosts No. 3 seed Towson in a semifinal game at 4 p.m.

Anthony Chiusano can be reached at achiusano@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @a_chiusano24.

TRACK continued from page 8

ed on to finish well. Carly Zinner will also be entered in the race for UMass.

Minutemen Spread Their Talent Out

The Minutemen will use depth across many events to try to score most of their points on Saturday and Sunday. “For the most part we have just about every event covered, we’re a little thin or weak in a few areas, but we’ll still have athletes competing in those areas with little room for error,” O’Brien explained. The Minutemen have similar goals as the Minutewomen – they believe finishing in the top

five is a very real possibil-ity. “I think we’ll surprise some people with how much we score and where we score during the meet,” O’Brien said. The roster UMass will field has almost 20 athletes ranked between fourth and tenth in their respec-tive events. This means the team has potential to score in the top eight in most events. Another major charac-teristic of the Minutemen is their youth. The team is only sending four seniors to Fairfax. This makes intan-gible and emotional aspects of the meet a slightly big-ger factor.

“Momentum is always big in meets like this regardless of the com-position of the team, but with a young team it’s a little bigger and it has a slightly larger effect on the athlete’s psyche,” O’Brien explained. Both teams have simi-lar goals and expectations, but differ on how to achieve them. For the women’s team, this will be the start of a last hurrah for a very talented senior class. For the men, this could be their message to the rest of the conference that they are becoming a force to be reck-oned with.

Nicholas Souza can be reached at njsouza@umass.edu.

CHRISTINA YACONO/COLLEGIAN

Redshirt junior Tim Cassidy delivers a pitch against Quinnipiac Wednesday at Earl Lorden Field.

By Dan ConnollyThe Baltimore Sun

BALTIMORE — When Orioles first baseman Chris Davis slammed a three-run homer over the right-field scoreboard in the first inning Wednesday afternoon, there was no wild cheering within Camden Yards. There was virtual silence. Crickets, with light typing in a hushed press box mixed in. MASN broadcaster Gary Thorne’s call from the third-floor press box, “Goodbye, home run,” resonated some in the empty seating bowls. And there were muffled shouts from behind the sta-dium gates beyond left-cen-ter field and the balcony of the Hilton Baltimore where another group of fans had congregated. That was the extent of the celebration in a six-run first that propelled the Orioles to an 8-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox. It was the first game played here since Sunday due to pro-longed civil unrest follow-ing the death of city resident Freddie Gray while in police custody. Because the club did not want to pull security resources away from poten-tial riot scenes – and because it did not want to postpone all three games of the White Sox series – the teams played what is believed to be the first contest in Major League Baseball history without fan admittance. The stadium’s seating

section, capacity 45,971, was completely empty with the exception of two scouts, the pitch-information score-board operator and the occa-sional news photographer. No family members, no fans, not even the stadium vendor with the shrill “beer” call that has become ubiquitous over the years. There was no anthem singer – a recorded version was used – and the tradi-tional “O” screamed during it was limited to less than 10 fans listening intently out-side the stadium’s left-center entrance. Players were still announced over the loud-speaker, the early innings had walk-up music and “Thank God, I’m A Country Boy” was blared during the seventh-inning stretch. That’s about the extent of the normalcy on Wednesday, which included a very un-Orioles-like time of game – the affair lasted just 2 hours, 3 minutes, by far the short-est game of the year. It was so quiet that at one point a media member yelled another reporter’s name and Orioles center fielder Adam Jones, in the on-deck circle, looked up and pointed. It was so eerily quiet that on a popup in the third, White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu’s, “I got it,” and Orioles first base coach Wayne Kirby’s, “Run it out,” were crystal clear. In the second inning, after Davis fanned for the third out, White Sox catch-

er Geovany Soto tossed the ball into the empty stands and it clanked around – as did numerous foul balls throughout the day. There was an obvious lack of energy and buzz in the stadium – closer Zach Britton before the first pitch said he expected it to be like a B-game on a spring train-ing back field. “It’s just going to be dif-ferent,” Britton said. “It’s just unfortunate this is the way it’s got to be, but there are more important things going on outside in the city that needed the attention of the law enforcement. We understand that.” On the field, the Orioles (10-10) made their first game played in three days count, scoring six runs in the first against Jeff Samardzija (1-2), who was tagged for eight runs (seven earned) in five innings. Dating back to the third inning on Sunday, the Orioles batted around and scored six runs three times in a span of seven innings. Davis had the big blast in the first, homering onto Eutaw Street, the sixth of his career to land on the walk-way behind the flag court. Everth Cabrera had an RBI double and Alejandro De Aza had a walk and single in the first inning. Manny Machado had three hits on the day, including a solo homer against Samardzija in the fifth.

M A J O R L E AG U E BA S E BA L L

Orioles top White Sox at empty Camden Yards

QU 3

UMass 0

@MDC_SPORTS Sports@DailyCollegian.comThursday, April 30, 2015

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

By Victor Pusateri Collegian Staff

The Massachusetts base-ball team’s struggles continued Wednesday afternoon, as their losing streak hit 11 after a shut-out loss against Quinnipiac, who won by a final score of 3-0. UMass (11-22, 7-8 Atlantic 10) could not overcome a three run fourth inning by the Bobcats (21-21, 11-7 Metro Atlantic Athletic). Tim Cassidy, who dropped to 1-3 on the season, gave up three runs on six hits through eight innings of work while striking out six and only walking one. Minutemen coach Mike Stone was very pleased with his pitch-er’s performance despite the loss. “I thought he pitched great today,” Stone said. “That one inning was tough, especially with the leadoff walk, but he put us in a position to win and we couldn’t do anything about it offensively.” Cassidy’s performance also gave Stone the opportunity he did not have in a while – to give his bullpen a well-deserved rest. “Yesterday we were also hop-ing to not go to our bullpen as early as we did but things didn’t go as planned,” Stone said. “But Tim was able to give us eight strong innings and our bullpen was able to get some rest.” A solid pitching performance was once again wasted by UMass as its offense wasn’t able to get any-thing going against Quinnipiac pitching. After struggling in the first, Bobcats starter Charlie Murray found his groove and held the Minutemen in check with six scoreless innings, allowing only three hits, along with four strike-outs and one walk. Then in the seventh, Robert Hitt came in for the Bobcats and pitched three perfect innings to

close the game. Paul Yanakopulos had the most success at the plate out of all the Minutemen as he had

two of the team’s three hits. Yanakopulos was 2-4 for the day, one of his hits being a double. Brett Evangelista accounted for the team’s third and final

hit with a single in the bottom of the fifth. The final 14 UMass bat-ters were retired in order. Stone wasn’t overly impressed with Quinnipiac’s pitching and thought the lack of hits had more to do with his team than any-thing else, and his third baseman felt the same. “I didn’t see anything from them that made them unhitta-ble,” Stone said. “We managed to make him (Murray) throw 34

pitches in the first and I thought we were going to be able to hit off this guy. Unfortunately we did not.” They did a good job locating their pitches and getting us out but I thought we could have done more,” Yanakopulos said. “We’ve been struggling the last couple of games and we need to improve.” During their current losing streak, the Minutemen’s offense has struggled mightily. The game against Quinnipiac is the fourth time in the last 12 that they have been shut out and they have not totaled more than seven runs in a game. With the season dwin-dling down, Stone and senior Yanakopulos would like to see a lot more from their team in the final 10 games. “I would like to see resiliency

from this team,” Stone said. “The defense has been solid where it has to be. I want to see good pitching from our guys and I want to see improvements on the offensive side.” “I want to finish the season strong and aim for the Atlantic 10 conference tournament,” Yanakopulos said. “We have a big inter-conference series coming up this weekend against Rhode Island. We are in control of our own destiny so hopefully we can get it done.” UMass will have a break from game action Thursday and then look to end their longest losing streak of the season when they start a series against Richmond on Friday.

Victor Pusateri can be reached at vpusateri@umass.edu.

UM shut out again in loss against Bobcats

Minutemen drop 11th straightBA S E BA L L

CHRISTINA YACONO/COLLEGIAN

Mike Geannelis swings at a pitch against Quinnipiac. The Minutemen were shut out for the fourth time in 12 games.

UM to host Spiders in A-10 play

By tyler Fiedler Collegian Staff

After finally reaching the .500 mark at 11-11 on April 15, the Massachusetts baseball team has free fallen to a record of 11-22 after Wednesday’s loss to Quinnipiac. The 11-game los-ing streak is the Minutemen’s longest of the season. The road ahead of UMass does not get any easier as they take on the tough Richmond Spiders team in Atlantic 10 action. The Spiders enter the weekend at Earl Lorden Field with a record of 21-17, including a 10-5 mark in the A-10. Richmond, however, is in a slump of its own, as the Spiders are losers of six of their last eight games. But the Minutemen are in an even worse decline. During UMass’s 11-game losing streak, opponents have scored a total of 91 runs. On the other hand, the Minutemen have scored a measly 24 runs in those games, while being shut out in four of them. UMass coach Mike Stone has not been pleased with his teams play and he showed his frus-tration after the Minutemen’s 10th straight loss. “We need to play better, period,” Stone said. “As a team we haven’t done enough. We have run into some good teams but lost games we should have won.” The Minutemen’s combined earned run average has sky rocketed to 6.23, while oppo-nents have a 2.96 ERA. With UMass’ struggles on both sides

Three-game series to begin Friday afternoon

UMass returns to CAA conference tournament

By anthony chiusanoCollegian Staff

A season after missing out on playoff action for the first time since 2008, the Massachusetts men’s lacrosse team returns to the Colonial Athletic Association tournament as the No. 4 seed. The Minutemen (4-9, 2-3 CAA) travel to face No. 1 seed Fairfield (9-5, 4-1 CAA) in the semifinals Thursday, looking to avenge a one-goal loss suffered earlier this month. The Stags won seven of their last eight games to close out the regular sea-son, including a 10-9 win in Amherst April 4 where a five-goal run late in the first half and into the sec-ond was key in holding off a late UMass comeback attempt. “It was a tough one for us because we started out so slow, which has kind of been our M.O. for the sea-son, getting off to a slow start and then having to claw back,” senior mid-fielder Ryan Izzo said. “But I think it serves as motiva-tion second time around. “Any time you get to

play a team twice in one season, it’s a great oppor-tunity. So we just have to take advantage of it.” Fairfield has shown a propensity for playing in one-goal games, like in its win over UMass. After starting the season 2-4 – with all four losses com-ing by one goal – the Stags have excelled in close games since, something Minutemen coach Greg Cannella said is a testa-ment of their experienced group of players. “Those one-goal loss-es have turned around for them, they’ve pushed through it,” Cannella said. “They have really strong leadership throughout the

team and they are very well-coached.” This leadership starts on offense with senior Tristan Sperry (20 goals) and junior TJ Neubauer (29). Neubauer scored four goals in the April 4 match-up. “He’s a great player, we saw that last game,” Izzo said of Neubauer. “We just have to expect the same thing out of him and be ready to fight, ready to play defensively.” To limit Fairfield’s strong offensive corps, Cannella stressed the importance of goaltending, which has been inconsis-tent throughout the regu-

Minutemen to face Fairfield in rematch

M E N ’ S L AC R O S S E

JUDITH GIBSON-OKUNIEFF/COLLEGIAN

Dom St. Laurent carries the ball in a game against Delaware on Friday.

Minutemen and women prep for A-10 track meet

By nicholas souzaCollegian Staff

After wrapping up their regular seasons, the Massachusetts men and women’s track teams will travel to Fairfax, Virginia, this weekend for the Atlantic 10 championship. Both teams are entering this meet with confidence built up over the past few weeks of successful per-formances by many of their athletes, and coaches of both teams expressed a level of excitement looking forward to the A-10s. “I’m very excited about the competitive enthusi-asm and instinct that the team has demonstrated over the past few weeks, and I can’t wait to see it down at A-10s,” men’s coach Ken O’Brien said. “We were top five in the indoor season without some of our best athletes, and we were only 20 points from being second place, so I’m excited to go down there and compete for second, third and fourth again,” women’s coach Julie LaFreniere added. After performing well all season without top

point scorers like Rebecca Stoyle, the Minutewomen believe they could finish as high as second place. However, the goal for the women’s side according to LaFreniere is to finish in the top five again. The team has the advantage of senior experience on their side heading into the meet with a strong senior class. “Sometimes senior ath-letes can want to perform well so badly that it can sometimes get in the way of their performances, but for the most part our seniors step up to these kind of meets,” LaFreniere said. While rankings are usu-ally not the best predic-tors to how a champion-ship meet will turn out, they can give insight on how a team will stack up against its competition. The Minutewomen have many athletes ranked near the top of multiple events who can potentially grab big points for the team. It starts with three seniors who will be com-peting in the long and triple jump. Courtney Kromko, Ashley Palmer and Rebecca Stoyle will all be expected to finish near the top of either event. In addition to the jumps, UMass could also

produce points in the field events from their throws. Emma Robinson is cur-rently ranked at the top of the javelin throw. The team will also be looking for Margaret Riseborough and Sara Wagner to come through in the shot put and hammer. On the track, the team will be looking toward a slightly younger group of athletes. Heather MacLean will be running the 800-meter dash, an event she has a strong chance to finish first in. However, MacLean has been battling through persistent calf tightness as of late. “She was originally going to run the 1500 as well, but I’m a little worried about her calf. Hopefully as she matures these little wear and tear injuries will become less of a problem for her,” LaFreniere said. The team will also be looking for freshmen Colleen Sands to deliver points in the steeplechase. Despite her youth Sands has displayed the tough-ness needed to compete in such a demanding race. Finally, there will be a highly contested 1500-meter race where senior Rachel Hilliard will count-

Coaches aim for top five finishes

T R AC K A N D F I E L D

see LACROSSE on page 7 see TRACK on page 7

see BASEBALL on page 7