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Cheeky Business boosts self-care

Transfers tough out transition

Athlete scores in academics

The Berkeley Beacon

Emerson College’s student newspaper since 1947 • berkeleybeacon.com

ursday October 13, 2016 • Volume 70, Issue 5

THE FEATURE

Students

Sexual health and self-care combine

surprised by automatic tuition charge

Bret Hauff, Beacon Staff
Kyle Labe, Beacon Staff

In the words of iconic hip-hop duo
Salt-N-Pepa, “Let’s talk about sex.” Or rather, as Cheeky Business aims: sex-positivity.
Cheeky Business is a feminist website created by Emerson alumni Ashley Cunningham. It seeks to examine the intrinsic connectivity of sexual and mental health, and to bring taboo branches of self-care, like masturbation and pornography, into the spotlight.
With articles ranging from body image in bed to the various flavors of one’s vagina, the website features original content from Cunningham, and submissions and forums.
Cunningham graduated in ‘15 with a degree in marketing. She was president and founder of Active Minds at Emerson for her four years, and started Cheeky Business just earlier this year.
If you didn’t check your ECmail this summer, you may have missed a few emails that could’ve saved you $130.
In years past, students voluntarily enrolled for tuition insurance to assure they would be refunded 80 percent of their tuition and fees if they leﬅ the college mid-semester because of a physical or mental health issue. is year, all undergraduates were automatically charged for the insurance, according to Emerson’s website. Students were given until Sept. 7, the first day of classes, to opt out of the plan.
e college does reimburse a portion of students’ tuition if they drop out for medical reasons, but the amount decreases as the semester progresses. If a student must leave during the first two weeks, Emerson will reimburse 80 percent of their tuition. But if someone leaves aﬅer the fiﬅh week, uninsured, the college will give them nothing.
“Cheeky Business is essentially a culmination of my advocacy,” Cunningham said, “[It] is a call to action to disrupt sex-negative culture, to defy stigma.
is year, 2,971 students bought—or Women deserve stress-free erotic spaces did not opt out of—tuition insurance. Al- more than anything else.” though the Office of Enrollment provided these figures, it declined repeated requests for comment.

One of the Dragtoberfest performers woos the audience. • Shelby Grebbin / Beacon Staff

Students with the insurance are guaranteed 80 percent of their tuition if they drop health problem, physical or mental. Room out at any time; insurance covers what the and board are not refunded.

"There are alternatives to automatic enrollment." —Ragan

school doesn’t. If someone who is insured

Last year, 84 students purchased full-

leaves in week four, the college will pay 20 year insurance and 12 more paid to be percent and the insurance pays 60 percent. insured for only the spring semester,
But this coverage is only applicable if a according to the Oﬃce of Enrollment. student leaves because of a medical issue. Of these students, seven leﬅ the college Students must have a doctor's note and mid-semester, along with another 66 who veriﬁcation from the college to certify the were not covered.
Addy Rose, a junior writing, literature, and publishing major, said she didn’t

See Tuition page 3

See Cheeky page 8

Lower

Junior quartet launches production company

Olivia Gerasole, Beacon Correspondent

Monto, an acquaintance at the time, for assistance in producing. She discovered they were an amazing team. Around the third movie, the two played with the idea of starting a production company together, and Velle quickly joined.
“One day, I overheard them talking about starting a company and just said, ‘I want in,’” Velle said. “I also knew I wanted Chance with me, so I brought him along.”
e meaning behind the studio name sheds light on how the group of juniors work together. Before the four joined forces, Velle and Molenda created the character of the Colorless Queen in a ﬁctional world they thought up together.

"One day, I over-

Watching the seed of an idea blossom successfully doesn’t happen very often. But for junior visual and media arts majors, Katya Alexander, Victor Velle, Chance Tyler Molenda, and Alex Monto, their seedling dream became reality early in 2016, when they founded their own film production company: Colorless Queen Studios.
e locally-based indie business carries projects through to completion and covers everything from consultation and pre-production to filming and post-production. What started as a small company of four kids making films out-of-pocket has turned into a business with clients like photographer Christian Hopkins and dance company Take it Away Dance, who approach the studio through its website.
Last year, when Alexander had many projects on her plate, she reached out to

heard them talking about starting a company and just said, 'I want in." —Victor

“e Colorless Queen is the main character in this world and she’s sort of this perfect mix of all these diﬀerent species, and is the closest thing to what the original human was,” said Velle.

False alarm in Little Building

Velle, junior VMA and co-

By Max Reyes p. 3
•

Evacuated students waited outside for updates. • Nathanael King / Beacon Staff

See CQ page 7

founder

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e Berkeley Beacon October 13, 2016

2

3

news

Immigration advocacy rolls out

Students surprised by tuition charge

Continued from page 1

Bret Hauﬀ, Beacon Staﬀ

phone, from a coﬀee shop in Denver. “I think in this moment, all problems with
Members of the Emerson community immigration is a big connection with edare making their way across the country ucation.” in an eﬀort to humanize the immigrant experience.
e three are about halfway through their weeks-long, 4,500-mile trip from
Continuing the two-year-long en- Boston, through Colorado, to California, deavor, Proyecto Carrito, a cross-country but they won’t stop there. know about the insurance. “e fact that it costs extra, that students weren’t consulted, is a bad thing,” she said. “But it's good that students have that option [to be insured].”

trip in a van literally wrapped in the text

e group will ﬁnish their trek by

of the immigrant stories of its members, looping back to Kentucky, where they’ll co-directors Tamera Marko, an Emerson meet with Maria Portillo, another Emerprofessor; and Ryan Catalani, an Em- son maintenance worker, to present at the erson alumnus and former Beacon edi- omas R. Watson conference on rhetoric tor-in-chief, are traveling with Emerson and composition at the University of Loumaintenance worker Mario Ernesto Oso- isville from Oct. 20–22. rio to promote his immigrant story.
Emerson offers this policy through a partnership with Quincy-based national tuition insurance firm Dewar. Ragan Lower, vice president of the firm, said that nearly a quarter of the about 140 colleges the firm serves enroll students in tuition insurance automatically, like Emerson did this year.
“I think it’s a very beautiful time because my story is about immigration and

The Proyecto Carrito van’s itinerary map .

Courtesy of Ryan Catalani

education,” Ernesto Osorio said on the  [email protected]
To understand why institutions are doing this, it’s important to know how insurance works. All policyholders at Emerson paid a $130 fee. is money is put into a pool from which all claims are paid.
Say Emerson enrolls 100 students in this policy; the college would have $13,000 to reimburse any one of those 100 students if they dropped out due to medical emergency. at’s hardly enough to cover 80 percent of one student’s semester tuition. But if every undergraduate at Emerson (3,757 people, according to the school’s website) enrolled in the program, the college would have $488,410 to draw from.
More students enrolled in tuition insurance means the college has more money to reimburse if some leave mid-semester.
“What we’ve seen over the past ﬁve years is a very large increase in the number of mental health withdraws,” Lower said. “With the increase in activity, it became more diﬃcult to cover the premium for withdraws.”

Overheated A/C

Teach-in to touch on racial issues

'Clowns' on campus

sets off alarms

Max Reyes, Beacon Staﬀ

Students in the Little Building were

At least two people wearing costume

Ross Cristantiello, Beacon Staﬀ

evacuated Wednesday for what was later masks were sighted on Boylston Street

determined to be a false alarm.

on Wednesday night. Two men were de-

In an eﬀort to spur conversation about

race-related issues at Emerson, the college is convening a teach-in at various locations across campus, according to an email sent by President M. Lee Pelton. A teach-in is an educational forum, similar to a seminar but with less restrictions on topics and time.
is event sprouted from the ad-hoc
Cultural Competency Committee formed in Spring 2015 as a reaction to student protest about the lack of diversity among faculty members and the treatment of students of color, according to the Teach-In’s Facebook event.
Beginning at 10 a.m. in the Cutler Majestic eater, the teach-in will feature a keynote speech from Eddie Glaude, Jr., chair of the Center for African American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University.
Glaude’s talk, entitled “A Revolution of
Value: A Politics for Our Time,” will focus on changing how Americans should view their government and race, according to a schedule posted on Emerson’s website.
Pelton also wrote that the teach-in is organized with support from the Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and Associate Professor Jabari Asim from the writing, literature, and publishing department.
At 2:45 p.m., Emerson’s Emergency tained by Emerson College Police Depart-
Notification System warned students of a ment officers. possible fire on the fiﬅh floor of the Little Building.
ECPD Lieutenant Robert Bousquet said in an interview that there were no
Students on the fourth, fiﬅh, and sixth arrests, and no one was harmed. He defloors were evacuated. ose on other clined to comment further or say whether floors were recommended to take shelter charges were filed.

"It was kind of like in

where they were. Around 20 minutes later,

Emma Weeks, a sophomore visual

ENS conﬁrmed that the Boston Fire De- and media arts major, said she saw a man

partment secured the building.

wearing a baseball cap and another man

ere was no ﬁre. An overheated air wearing a Mario mask outside the Coloconditioning and heat air intake system nial Building.

Psycho." —Emma Weeks, soph-

triggered the alarm, according to the ENS.

According to Weeks, the man in the

Students reported smelling and see- baseball cap was pacing back and forth ing smoke. Elissa Chojnicki, a graduate and yelling and the man in the Mario communication studies student and a mask was holding a knife in a menacing residence assistant on the third floor, said way toward the people in the Colonial she went to the fiﬅh floor and found it was Building entrance.
ere are alternatives to automatic enrollment, Lower said. He said institutions could increase the premium for a tuition insurance policy, but raising the price could deter students from enrolling.
Lower said he expects more institutions to make this transition in coming years because many colleges do not have enough students enrolling in tuition insurance to cover the number of claims.
Pablo Escobosa, a senior visual and media arts major, said he didn’t know about the insurance and he doesn’t know if he is insured.

omore

ﬁlled with smoke.

“[It was] kind of like in Psycho,” Weeks

VMA and witness

“It basically just smelled like a micro- said, referring to the classic Alfred Hitchwave had blown up,” said Shelby Renjifo, cock ﬁlm. a sophomore visual and media arts major who was on the ﬂoor.
Two other witnesses reported seeing up to four people in costumes also on Boyl-
e Boston Fire Department could not ston Street.

be reached for comment.

is report follows sightings of individ-

uals in clown costumes across the United States and United Kingdom. CBS Boston has reported clown sightings at many colleges in Massachusetts, including Emmanuel College, Merrimack College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“I’m glad that [Emerson] has it,” Escobosa said, “but they should have done something better to inform us.”

 [email protected]

Pointing students in the 'write' direction

Maya Pontone, Beacon Correspondent

Program graduate students, Grant said. to strengthen their skills and better pre- students interested in writing to apply to He said this allows them to connect with pare them for college, Grant said.
Emerson College, it also helps other stu-
Despite having only just begun his first year of college, freshman Antonio Weathers is no stranger to the Emerson campus.
In high school, Weathers attended
EmersonWRITES—a writing program offered to junior high and high school students in the Boston area. e program consists of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and multi-genre classes that run from October to February, introducing students to different aspects of creative writing in contrast to the academic writing typically taught in schools, said Christopher Grant, one of the program’s coordinators and associate director in enrollment management.
Weathers took the EmersonWRITES poetry classes for three years, aﬅer a high school teacher recommended it to him as a sophomore. While the program helped him develop his skills as a writer, it also boosted his confidence and provided him a group of friends outside of school who shared a common interest in writing, Weathers said. younger students through sharing their own writing experiences.
“It was just a great way to connect with dents, no matter where they choose to go students and have them talk about things to school, to prepare for college applica-

"It was just a great way to connect with stu-

“e opportunity to teach in Emerson- that are going on in their community, tions, Grant said.

WRITES was one of the things that made things that were going on outside in the

In Weathers’ case, the Emerson-

me apply to Emerson for my MFA,” said world; just being a creative outlet, but also WRITES program made Emerson College Breauna Roach, a graduate student enter- helping them to become better writers,” his ﬁrst choice when he applied to college. ing her second year teaching poetry class- Grant said. es in the program.
Having experienced the school’s writing

dents and have them talk about things that are going on in their community, things that were going on out-

In addition to the four writing classes, program first-hand, he said he was already
Roach also teaches introduction to col- the program offers various college prep familiar with it and knew Emerson would lege writing and research writing in Emer- and financial aid workshops to give pro- be the right college for him.

son’s FYWP, and poetry at Berklee College spective students a better sense of the

e EmersonWRITES program begins

of Music. She said she felt that her expe- application process, said Grant. Unlike its ﬁrst class of the year on Oct. 15. rience with the program helped her grow other college programs, he said Emersonas a writer as well: it introduced her to the WRITES gives students advice from the diﬀerent perspectives of younger students college perspective, providing informaand helped her reassess her own knowl- tion on letters of recognition, college es-

edge and writing.

says, and scholarships.

While the program does help attract  [email protected]
EmersonWRITES, originally developed by both the Oﬃce of Enrollment and the FYWP, was initiated in response to the quality of college freshmen admissions essays, said Grant, who used to work in the admissions oﬃce.

Corrections & Clarifications

side in the world."

e October 6 article, “Howdily doodily, it’s e Simpsons creator,” inaccurately stated in the headline that Mike Reiss created e Simpsons. He is the show’s writer, producer, and former showrunner.
Aﬅer reading applicants’ essays, it became clear to the oﬃce that many students needed help preparing for the expectations of Emerson’s writing courses, he said.
As a result, the college reached out to young writers through their high school teachers and guidance counselors in order

—Christo- pher Grant, program

“I had a group of friends who I could always show my poetry to, and they would always be cool listening to me, like an audience at home,” he said.
e program’s classes are taught by many of Emerson’s First-Year Writing
e April 6 article, “SGA talks student concerns, ﬁtness center,” misgendered Student Government Association Journalism Senator Sam Amore. Amore uses they/them pronouns.

coordinator

4

editorial

More than just talk: combating rape culture rhetoric

Last week, a tape released by e Washington Post captured a 2005 conversation between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and former “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. e recording captured Trump discussing sexually assaulting various women, stating, “when you’re a star, they let you do it.” ize sexual assault. It’s ammunition for the behavior, gender performance, and socially constructed sexual dichotomy that has historically fueled sexual assault. Language is powerful, and dismissing violence against women as innocent, meaningless banter between men ignores a problem that impacts everyone in this election and everyone on this campus. directly combatting those uncomfortable situations with programs about intervention, education, and equality takes those complaints out of the abstract web and into reality. ese changes are happening because the student body is listening to the rhetoric being used on a nation stage by people like Donald Trump, and it is recognizing, “We don’t want that happening he re.”

At issue:

Donald Trump's comments perpetu- ate rape culture.
We're set- ting our- selves up for fail- ure if we don't pay close at- tention to language and se-

e release of the tape incited immediate backlash from both parties. However, this isn’t the first deplorable comment regarding women the real estate mogul has made—there have been many offensive remarks made in his campaign. As Megyn Kelly pointed out in the GOP debate this August, Trump has called women “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs,” and “disgusting animals.” ese comments have caused considerable controversy but have all somewhat been rationalized by Trump supporters because they were targeted at specific women. ese comments are much harder to rationalize because the identity of the woman Trump speaks about is ambiguous—essentially, his comments are targeted at all women.
With advocacy campaigns like Emerson STANDS, Violence Prevention and Response’s interpersonal violence prevention strategy, and the Office of Housing and Residence Life’s upcoming domestic violence and street harassment awareness week, our community is doing its part to combat violence. Emerson STANDS week is sponsored by WPR, with Director Melanie Matson and survivor advocate Greta Spoering leading the events. is program is a direct response to the needs of college students and is created to not only start a dialogue but to provide students with the proper tools to prevent violence. It’s a strategy for halting power-based violence, including sexual assault, harassment, stalking, and abusive relationships. Violence, in all its forms (even words), is intolerable, and disrupting rape culture begins with proactive programming like Emerson STANDS.