Over the past four days, I have talked to students participating in rush, affiliated sisters, and unaffiliated students. The general consensus was that the rush process for men “is much better and easier” than that for women. In addition, co-ed rush is “relaxed and very informal,” according to Reyna Ramirez ‘10.

On Sunday, January 10th, I registered for rush in Carson 106. While filling out my application, I wondered, why do they need so much information about me? Clubs I participated in during high school? Amaka Nneji ‘10, an affiliated student who works for the Panhellenic Council, explained that the long registration process is required for those who become part of national sororities.

The registration is standard for all national sorority organizations and Dartmouth sororities are not allowed to change the process. Nevertheless, the Council is considering ways to make it less detailed and more inviting.

Like many women on campus, Nneji says, “Every year, rush makes me love sororities even more!” Her excitement and dedication to rush represents her commitment to the Panhellenic Council. After two days of rush, I grew to appreciate a sisterhood that was both inclusive and exciting.

On the other hand, a recent rush participant commented: “[Rush] is socially terrible. It’s the most fake way to judge another person, without real substance.”

Another student said potential new members essentially sign up to flirt with sisters without getting to really know the people they meet.
This student felt that she was “making decisions based off of manufactured descriptions in a planned system.”

A Fayer resident explains, “This is the way rush week is, and a better way has yet to come along, so we go with it.”

The rush process reminded me of a moment in my past when I wanted to fit in with a specific group of people. Nothing else really mattered to me. I felt an immediate connection between my emotions the first nights of rush and the emotions I had felt some years ago. The feeling was familiar, negative, and fake, but that changed over a period of time.

The emotional turmoil that Dartmouth women experience during rush lasts about a week, but the rewards are highly worth it for the majority of Dartmouth women who go through the process. Even if the concept of sisterhood may initially seem forced, people still want a place of acceptance.

Throughout rush, I was surrounded by groups of women who felt lost in an overwhelming field of people. One girl explained that she was aware of the fact that she knew little about sororities but wanted to continue with rush because she wanted to make more friends and expand her experiences. She wanted a safe place on campus. She wanted a community.

Jessica Duncan ’12 proposes a solution for rush week: a two-faced coin. Rush is like “a two-faced coin because of its arbitrariness. Just flip a coin!” I encourage the next group of women who enter registration to remember the two-faced coin: always fair, but never predictable.

Sorority names will always connote certain stereotypes, but it is up to the individual to see through the stereotypical window and understand her sorority for what it means to her.

Rush is not for everyone. In fact, some people don’t even receive a bid. The emotional effect that has on a student is difficult. It’s always good to remember that college is a playing field; you will struggle, and you might fumble a few times, but somewhere in the maelstrom of excitement, pressure, and stress, you will find special moments of euphoria.

You may not find that happiness during rush week but it lies embedded in the myriad opportunities at Dartmouth. Just be willing to step on the field and search for your moment of exhilaration.

As Jessica Duncan said, “Just flip a coin!” On any path you take on Dartmouth campus, whether you are affiliated or unaffiliated, will grow and discover more about yourself.

THE MASTHEAD
Editor-in-Chief: James H. Wang
Publisher: Isabel S. Murray
Executive Editor: Amanda R. McNally
Managing Editor: Soo Jeong Kim

DFPer Chris Desir climbing with the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club. Photograph courtesy of DMC.

12:14, not 12:15, but 12:14. That’s when John Joline, a Dartmouth alumnus and enigmatic mainstay of the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, suggested we meet to catch the free shuttle to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. “Does the bus have a bike rack?” I asked in my confirmation blitz, and luckily, it did. So I pack my bag with my climbing shoes and chalk, a water bottle, and some pre-made sandwiches from the Hop—the essentials. I walk down the staircase of Maxwell only to find my beloved bicycle stolen. My initial wave of panic-tinged rage subsides as I realize I left my bike chained to a fence outside of the Hop the previous morning. I retrieve my most prized possession from its burglar proof moor and find a seat in front of the Dartmouth bookstore, waiting for John, and the shuttle, to arrive.

I spot John walking down the street. His signature outdoor attire, free-to-be white hair, and oversized glasses are unmistakable among the Main Street mix of chic Dartmouth students rushing to class and Hanover working folk in their business attire. I tell him my “stolen” bike story and he is easily able to relate; he says he too often misplaces his bicycle. As we wait for the bus, John, in his unusual and effortlessly eloquent English, begins telling me about “new” (he made sure to note that although they were new to us, they had been there for thousands of years) boulders we hoped to climb before the sunset. Given that it is 12:14 on a mid-November day in New Hampshire, we have to hurry. On the ride over, John’s emphatic talk about the beautiful, sculpture-esque objects in the woods draws a few strange looks. One man’s curious glance seems to say, “These guys are talking about rocks!?” Yup. Rocks. And we were excited.

The bus ride is short. We get off at the hospital stop and retrieve our man-powered vehicles from the front rack of the petroleum-powered behemoth and set off for the nearby trailhead. On the brief ride over, we share our mutual amazement at the seemingly endless number of boulders in this part of the world.

The woods surrounding Dartmouth are no exception, and John recounts the countless hours he has spent hiking, bushwhacking, and even snowshoeing through the area in search of, among other things, the most climbable and aesthetically interesting rocks. We use John’s lock to secure our bikes to a tree near the outcrops, and he tells me his lock combination in case I need to leave before he is ready. We plan to hike to what John calls the “UFO” boulder first. Next, we’ll head to the nearby “Stamina Wall,” and finally we’ll end at the “Tip Top” boulder, so named for the disintegrating Tip Top Bakery truck permanently parked nearby—a vestige of the now overgrown road that circumvents the Hanover forest. I had never seen the Tip Top boulder before and its hidden novelty sounds particularly exciting. John goes on to describe other difficult and interesting boulder problems that might satisfy my desire to climb—at least for the day.

We make the short, easy hike to the “UFO” boulder—a 15 foot high, 70 foot long granite beauty— and John shows me his hidden stash of brushes and other tools that he uses to clean lichen and excess climbing chalk from the outcrop. We clean and prepare the boulder for about ten minutes before we begin climbing. John, who is a strong climber for any age, knows every hand and foothold on the rock, and it shows. We traverse back and on forth on a formidable crag for some undefined period of time (neither of us had a timepiece) and sit down to change from our climbing shoes into our walking shoes.

“What’s your major?” he asks during the interim between boulders. “Philosophy,” I answer, which changes the nature of the conversation for the rest of the outing. In between boulders, we talk about our favorite philosophical ideas and traditions. We touch on subjectivity, enlightenment, and the ineffable quality of experience, all before we even get to the Stamina wall. By the time we reach the Tip Top boulder, we’ve covered—in as much depth as a couple hours in the woods will allow—thousands of years of philosophical and spiritual thought. We arrive at the Tip Top boulder and return to the business of cleaning and climbing.

The easier of the two most obvious problems on the 16-foot high, slightly overhung, pure granite boulder stumps me. I fall a few feet from the top three times. We don’t have a crash pad (think of a portable gymnastics pad), but the ground is soft and almost flat—a boulderer’s dream landing. John gives me some helpful tips as to the easiest way up the boulder, but I am unwilling to commit to a high, sketchy heel-hook near the top of the rock that would have me a hanging inverted 10 feet above the ground. Exhausted and running out of light, I resolve to come back later with a crash pad, to give it another try. John draws me detailed map, and we set off into the fast approaching darkness for our bikes.

We hike through the dimly lit trails. John leads and I can barely see the ground as he calmly guides us back to the main trial, politely refusing the headlamp I offer him. “I like to use it as a last resort,” he says, and “I have one in my back-pack.”

John comments on the “bittersweet” sound of cars getting louder as we reach the road. “It’s nice to be able to share this with someone who appreciates it,” he says, and I thank him for the tour. We ride off in different directions and I lament at the darkness; John gave me directions to many more boulders that I now want to visit, but I can barely see the road in front of me—not to mention my bleeding hands and aching muscles. Fortunately, the relatively small area of woods around us has the potential to supply enough boulder problems to occupy a lifetime, and (just in case I get bored) the thoughts running through my head—the aftermath of our free-wheeling philosophical discussion—could occupy a few more.

The Ray Comfort edition of The Origin of Species. Photograph provided by Living Waters Ministry.

On Wednesday, November 18th the DFP blitzed out a news alert about The Origin of Species paperbacks being passed out on campus, and since then we’ve received many varying responses. Almost all thanked us for getting the information out to campus about the disingenuous campaign to subvert the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.

For those who missed the creationists passing out their “Special 150th Anniversary Edition” of The Origin of Species undercover, here is a description of the event by Campus Progress:

“Ray Comfort, famous for partnering with Kirk Cameron and arguing that bananas are proof of God’s intelligent design, claims he’s going to distribute 170,000 copies of an adulterated Origin, including an egregiously inaccurate introduction by Comfort. The introduction lists the usual litany of nonsense: claiming Darwin was responsible for the Holocaust, that evolution is a doomed science, and that it encourages atheism. Then he spends a while deriding Islam, Buddhism, and the theological value of ‘good works.’ He plans to distribute these books on 100 college campuses in the US, and 20 in Canada.”

Dartmouth was one of the campuses specifically targeted by Comfort, and on Wednesday morning, November 18th, followers of Comfort descended on Hanover, taking up positions that are usually occupied by individuals passing out New Testaments. But instead of the New Testament, they were passing out these special copies of The Origin of Species, holding up signs scrawled in red marker sloppily celebrating something about the 150th anniversary of the book.

Now, to answer some of the qustions we received after our alert:

Who is responsible for this?

Living Waters Publications (livingwaters.com), which is part of The Way of the Master (thewayofthemaster.com), a Christian Evangelical ministry based in California. The organization believes in direct outreach “in the way of the master,” by which they mean the way of Jesus Christ. In fact, WDJD (What Did Jesus Do?) is literally part of their logo. The people that passed out the books near Collis, on the Green, at Baker, and a variety of other points on campus are a part of the thousands of volunteers organized by The Way of the Master to pass out these books.

Is the actual text of The Origin of Species changed?

No. They added an introduction, which is typeset in a significantly larger font than the actual text and adorned with various comics deriding Charles Darwin. If you wanted to read The Origin of Species, you can. It’s manageable, but the text is not only smaller, but more squished together than you would normally see in a published book. As such, it’s not the most pleasant reading experience in the world, but for some strange coincidence, the introduction doesn’t seem to suffer from this problem.

But either way, the text doesn’t have to be changed for Comfort to achieve his purpose. Darwin’s work—while revolutionary for his time and surprisingly insightful given his context—is now 150 years outdated. Since then, entirely new fields of evolutionary science have emerged. They are all in some way based on the original theory, but Darwin’s Origins is far from state of the art.

Comfort not only frames the argument with his introduction, but he also avoids debating living scientists by simply attacking the original inspiration of evolutionary theory. It’s far easier to “debate” someone who had none of the tools of modern science and was just starting to feel out the basics of his theory. To add to all of this, Comfort disingenuously disguises his (flawed) criticism in the context of an “impartial” introduction.

How can I respond to these people?

They quickly moved out after 10s, so students didn’t have much chance to talk to them even if they wanted to. Some were told to “talk about this book in your science class,” but other than that, we haven’t heard of any instances of sustained conversation between any of the distributors and Dartmouth students (if you did have a conversation, we’d love to hear about it).

Many students across the country have already flooded livingwaters.com with angry comments and responses to the ministry, and as a result, the ministry has now refused to comment further than this initial response:

“An angry backlash from atheists has prompted best-selling author Ray Comfort to stop answering questions about a special edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species he plans to give away on university campuses this fall.

‘From now on I will refuse to answer questions about the book or its contents,’ Comfort said, ‘because there is such a deep-rooted anger in the atheist world about this publication.’”

People like to say that you can run into fellow Dartmouth alumni across the globe. When they say this, I don’t think they expect you to meet one just across the street in Hanover. While the sentiment still holds as true, I’d like to add that you can meet some of the most interesting people—people such as Eric Hasse—right near campus.

Established in October 2006 with the support of friend and fan Paul Olsen, Hasse Gallery has been the gallery and studio space of Eric Hasse ’80. Hasse has early onset Parkinson’s disease, and is unable to talk or hold a brush. However, through his newly digitized method of artistic expression, he is still able to practice visual arts on a daily basis.

Unlike a “usual” art gallery, where exhibition openings are held with wine, cheese, and artsy schmoozers throughout trying to make superficial conversation and win facetime, Hasse Gallery looks—and is—anything but that. With several pieces in a store display window, a “for lease” sign for a home taped on the window, and the interior of the gallery containing as many artworks as Beast’s Library in Beauty and the Beast, Hasse Gallery is more of a secluded oasis and trove of discovery than just another pretentious art gallery. At Hasse, all that is important is art and the free-flow of expression. Fortunately, the gallery was open that day, and I finally had a free afternoon to check it out.

Born in Palo Alto, California, Hasse moved to Connecticut when he was 7 years old, where he adjusted to life on the East Coast. An English major who graduated Dartmouth in three years (to save money, he wrote, to which I agreed), Hasse has also been committed to literary arts, particularly poetry. Even though he has not continued writing poetry, he continues to publish his work—one of which was through an International competition published in 2008 and was on display at Oxford.

After graduating from Dartmouth, Hasse was a chef at the 5-star hotel The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, ran Jesse’s Restaurant in 1980-1981, and toured Europe, North Africa, and Greece for 10 weeks. After his time working professionally in the culinary arts and traveling, he came back to the Upper Valley to work in various aspects of finance and ultimately raising capital for Internet start-ups. Despite his life on the fringes of the corporate world, as an artistic person, Hasse continued to write poetry, read all of Carl Jung’s works, and picked up visual arts (sumi ink drawings) in the 1980s, the decade before his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at age 35. He continued to work in finance until 2003, when the progression of Parkinson’s put him “at death’s door.” He writes that his health is “far better today since my deep brain stimulation neurosurgeries.” Still, the uncertainties of Parkinson’s causes him to be particularly vigilant of taking “each day as it dawns.”

Despite his condition, Hasse works at his gallery most days, creating giclées on canvas. Hasse defined a giclée as a French term meaning “ink spraying” to define the technical process of printing digital files. Currently, he scans different objects such as fabrics and combines different images into a single image. He particularly focuses on creating images from mundane objects I scan. Images from this series are extremely colorful with layers of texture, each seeming to accent the beauty of the objects within.

In some of his earlier works around 2003 with a focus on visual arts, he applied saturation to the black and white sumi ink drawings he made during the 1980s to produce color and create new works of art. Each digital image is made into a print, of which Hasse displays throughout his large gallery space. This entire process is done right in Hasse’s gallery, allowing him to be fully self-sufficient in making art. “I can’t imagine returning to paint. The possibilities for print series are huge,” writes Hasse, with a smile.

Besides displaying his work at the Hasse Gallery, Hasse is not interested in seeking fame or fortune, or to “fill the void with my visions in the usual careerist sense of narcissism.” He is most interested in “conveying my joy and wonder in the world of living,” especially his consideration of “the life immanent in all things and their luminosity—an outpouring of the spirit.” Carl Jung is one of his primary influences, particularly Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious. He also believes in the “Zen/Taoist concept of living in the present moment,” which is constantly apparent in his work.

Since The Dartmouth’s reporting of the opening of his gallery in 2006, Hasse has created 5,000 new prints. His goal is to make “10,000 digital images in honor of the Taoist ‘ten thousand things’ [their way of saying infinity] by my 30th reunion in June.”

Besides working at his studio, Hasse continues to “devour art books from the Sherman Art Library, make repeated visits to the Hood Museum of Art, and listen to and absorb more fully the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu.” With the help of his friends and family, he hopes to “continue my quiet work in the gallery space beneath The Gap…providing an oasis of contemplation in a boogie woogie world upstairs, outside, and far, far away.”

Amidst the countless aspiring artists and gallery owners, Hasse is indeed one of the most successful, though he may lack the grandiosity of more celebrated artists. Shedding the superficiality, prima donna attitudes, and unnecessary glamour associated with the arts, what Hasse conveys through his art and space is genuine curiosity and loyalty to the arts—a rare find these days with the loudness of the contemporary art world. In the manner he makes and presents his art, Hasse does have a unique voice to contribute to the contemporary art canon that should not be missed.

Finally, as I usually do with all Dartmouth alumni, I asked Hasse about how to make the most of one’s college years, and how to prepare for what’s to come after college. With that, I’ll leave you with his words:

“If you seek fame and fortune, I am not your counsellor. If you are in quest of a life comparatively contented and at peace with your modest place in the grand scheme of the Tao, I would encourage you to start your journey of a thousand miles with your first footsteps here at Dartmouth. Learn all you can from courses, experiences, and folks you meet along the road about the lessons of compassion and tenderness and let them ripple out from your center in the life ahead.

Finally, in the words of T.S. Eliot: ‘Teach us to care, and not to care. Teach us to sit still.’ …tough advice in our hustling world, but still the best if we are to survive as individuals, and as a species.

Oh, and have fun!”

Many Cold War notables were there as was the ever-popular Lech Walesa who led the Solidarity movement that unraveled the communist state in Poland. The list of attendees also included Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last premier, whose glasnost reforms set the stage for the wall’s collapse.

On November 9th, 1989, an East German official decreed that civilians could “immediately” pass into West Germany and the Berlin Wall came crumbling down.
Joyous East Berliners and their compatriots in the west swept towards the wall.

Cameras rolled as hammers began knocking off concrete. The wall was already covered in anarchistic graffiti that lent the wall quixotic absurdity. The otherwise oppressive monument had become a piece of post-modernist art.

The shockwaves of the wall’s collapse were felt across the world. By then the wall had become emblematic of more than a long line of concrete and concerta wire. It was the ultimate symbol of communist repression. East Germany had become a literal prison, and its communist government required a physical wall to keep its citizens from escaping.

Oh, how times have changed. Berlin’s reunification was only one narrative in the revolutions of 1989, but the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago joins Tiananmen Square as defining and world-changing moments in recent history. Who knows when the course of history will change next?

If and when Berlin-style manmade barriers in Korea or Cyprus fall too, they’ll be comparing it to the magic of Berlin. Hopefully, though, it won’t take another twenty years.

A lot of what we wear here has less to do with self-presentation in the traditional sense and more to do with associating yourself visually with a tribe (i.e. Greek house, athletic team, or campus group). We live in kind of an alternate universe, one where sparkly fanny packs denote a higher social standing than dress ties? But we aren’t completely disconnected from society and its fashion dictates. We go to West Leb occasionally (…Tuxedo Store?) and browse online sales during 10As. We have a vague understanding of fashionable colors and silhouettes. And then we throw this notion in the blender with three cups of flair, a liter of Keystone, and three weeks at the end of the term without enough DA$H left to do laundry. And that’s when things get real. Real beat. So we’ve canvassed our peers to find out what they think the most offensive campus trends are. Here are the results:

“If people here actually followed real fashion trends, I’d say Aladdin pants. They look like kitten hammocks between your legs.”
–Kathleen Mayer ‘11

“Psi U unis.” –Anonymous

“KDE’s ‘Down to 09F’ pledge shirt just rubs me the wrong way. Especially because it comes from a sorority that claims to be progressive on the gender equality front. It seems like a step in the wrong direction.” –Anonymous

“See-through leggings as pants.” –Everyone.[Disclaimer: I am a prime offender of this trend. It is becoming an offensively perennial staple in my wardrobe.]

“Tights as pants…not that I’m complaining.”
–Andrew Mertens ‘12

“Dartmouth Indian T-Shirts.”
-Hilary Krutt

“The word Dartmouth plastered on everything.” –AJ Kuhr ‘13

“Your tights.” –Mary Ann Carolan ‘80
[Disclaimer: these were actually
leggings. See above.]

“Kappa ribbons.” –Anonymous

The Grill Guys hard at work in FoCo. Photograph by Liz Klinger.

Eating at Dartmouth is unlike eating in at a restaurant or at a dinner table. Most of us don’t think of a late-night trip to FoCo as a chance to enlighten our taste buds, and it is certainly not the kind of place where you wait for your friends to sit down before you dig in.

We get so wrapped up in our to-go wraps, our “facetime” and our frenzied hunter-gatherer instincts that we don’t stop to appreciate the hands that are feeding us. If you haven’t noticed the interesting people who work for DDS, then you are a victim of this hunger-induced blindness.

To find out more about the ways we interact with DDS employees, I waited for a lull at FoCo when there wouldn’t be any lines. I met many recognizable faces for the first time and shook their hands across the counter.

DFP: I think for a lot of people at Dartmouth, getting food is more of an expectation than a privilege. What do you think is the best thing people can do to connect on a more personal level with the servers and improve their dining experience?

Hippie: To me, the most important thing in our interaction with the students is good manners. “Please” and “thank you” are like the grease on the wheels of communication, and we really appreciate that.

Kevin: The “please” and “thank you’s” are nice, especially for the older guys on the grill. Being the oldest guy on the grill, and having at least one child almost your age, saying please and thank you really helps. I don’t demand it, but in some ways I still expect it.

DFP: What time of day do you find your job to be most enjoyable?”

Kevin: Things are usually easy going anytime before late at night. Around a quarter to one or twelve thirty is the worst time. Sometimes you’ll have customers who are belligerent for one of a number of reasons, usually alcohol-related. You’re all around 20 years old… We were all there once.

Eric: One night at around 11:30 we had a long line of people all chanting, “We want Mozz Sticks! We want Mozz Sticks!” because we had temporarily run out of them.

DFP: What do you guys do to deal with that? Do you just take a cigarette break? Or do you try to intervene?

Kevin: You know, I let it roll off. But a lot of times I will say, “What’s the magic word?” You know, just like I would do with my kids. We enjoy having a little fun just to interact with the students. Sometimes I say, “Cluck like a chicken.” Some people will flap their arms and go “bck bck bck,” and some of them just go, “Give me my steak.” I wouldn’t make them cluck like a chicken, you know? At the same time, maybe next time that dude comes around, I’ll do something a little better for him.

DFP: Are they any circumstances where you don’t have to serve someone?

Kevin: In some cases if the person is being really belligerent, we won’t serve them food, and we’ll probably just call one of the managers.

DFP: If people do share casual banter and have good manners, does it really make a difference?

Eric: Yeah, if a guy is cool, we might put a little more pizaz on his cheese steak. Or if he orders the same thing every day and he’s nice, I might get his food to him a little earlier. I might see him at the end of the line, and he’ll just put up one or two fingers, and I know he wants a grilled chicken so I throw it on the grill right away.

So next time you’re awkwardly standing in line at the Hop or FoCo with nothing to say to the people next to you, try throwing a comment across the counter to one of the cooks. This could be a simple “top of the morning,” a commentary on something happening behind the counter (“I saw what shape you made that fried egg, heh”), or if the line isn’t too long, it could even be a brainstorm of some outlandish and exotic dish—don’t be mistaken, they love making something different.

Whatever way you choose interact with the DDS employees, it will pay off, whether that means not eating an egg that was once in the shape of a phallus, getting your food earlier, or getting your cheese a little more melty.

And bring back the trays at the Hop (I wonder who it could be, AD pledges?)! We already have enough to juggle in our lives.

Untested sexual assault kits at the Los Angeles Police Department storage facility. © Patrica Williams 2009.

Take a moment to consider these facts, and try to comprehend the gravity of the problem of sexual assault in America:

1 in 6 American women have survived a rape or an attempted rape in their lifetime
1 in 33 American men have survived a rape or an attempted rape in their lifetime
Every two minutes, someone in the U.S is sexually assaulted
60 percent of sexual assaults, including rape, are not reported to the police
If a rape is reported, there is only a 50.8 percent chance of arrest
Factoring in unreported rapes, only 6 percent of rapists ever spend any time in jail

For the 40 percent of rape survivors who choose to report the crime against them, a long, frustrating, and often unsuccessful process follows. The victims first endure a 4 to 6 hour procedure, including a full-body examination, photographs of all visible physical injuries and body cavities, and swabs of every part of the body where ultraviolet light reveals DNA evidence. All these samples are placed in large white envelopes, and these “rape kits” are handed over to the police.

The ostensible next step would be to test these rape kits for DNA and other evidence that could lead to the arrest and conviction of a rapist. But in most large cities across the United States these rape kits rarely make it out of storage facilities and remain untested. San Antonio has 5,191 untested rape kits in storage; Houston has 3,846; Albuquerque has 1,116; and Detroit has somewhere between 5,800 and 10,000. A Human Rights Watch report from March spawned this count of stored rape kits across the country after highlighting Los Angeles’ failure to test an astonishing 12,699 rape kits.

Why aren’t these rape kits being tested? In the HRW report, no police chief or city official offered an excuse that justified leaving thousands and thousands of rape kits unattended. “We can only do so much with the resources we have,” said Greg Matheson, the Criminalistics Lab director for the City of Los Angeles police. That excuse is hardly sufficient when the 2004 Debbie Smith Act provides federal funds for state and local law enforcement entities to test DNA evidence—with rape kits specifically in mind.

A Los Angeles police officer offered another excuse to Human Rights Watch staff and this “justification” is just as fallacious as the previous one. The officer assumed some rape survivors just lie about what happened. Less than 2 percent of reported rape cases are false accusations, yet this unnamed officer exemplifies the erroneous belief that this percentage is much higher: “I am also not going to submit a kit when I don’t think the case is founded, where something about the victim’s story just doesn’t add up. As you know, some people report a rape to get back at their boyfriend, or to hide from their parents that they were having sex with their boyfriend, or all sorts of reasons. So, you don’t just test every rape kit that comes to you.”

The California State Assembly recently tried to address this problem with Assembly Bill 1017, which would require all local law enforcement agencies in the state to report to the Department of Justice the total number of rape kits in their possession that have not been tested or analyzed. This would at least give the state an idea of the scale of this problem. The bill easily flowed through both houses of the state legislature but stopped at Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk.

While the Governor made sure to say that he “strongly support[s] efforts to ensure that rape kits are analyzed and processed in a timely manner in order to identify and prosecute sex offenders,” he vetoed the bill because he claimed it required too much time, money, and effort on the part of police departments and the Department of Justice.

The U.S Senate has recently recognized that police departments like Los Angeles’ cannot be trusted to prioritize rape kit testing, and neither can state governments. As a result, Senators Al Franken (D-MN), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have proposed the Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act of 2009. The act, which has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, would require the federal government to collect all untested rape kits and prioritize their testing in federal DNA funding programs, including those highlighted by the 2004 Debbie Smith Act.

Every major city in the United States will need the approval of this law to set fire to their feet on this issue—all, except New York City. The NYPD discovered their rape kit backlog problem way back in 1999 (and it was a BIG problem, with 16,000 untested kits) and vowed to have every one tested by 2003, as well as to immediately send every new rape kit to the crime lab for testing. Since 2003, the rape arrest rate in NYC has risen from 40 percent to 70 percent with the help of every rape kit being tested within 30-60 days of its collection. These figures prove that the backlog problem can be solved, and show that Los Angeles, along with every other city, county and state with a backlog of rape kits, needs to stop making excuses and make rape kit testing a priority.

The Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble plays. Photo courtesy of the Hopkins Center.

I grew up listening to the Pat Metheny Group, Thelonious Monk and the Yellowjackets. I am no foreigner to the world of jazz, yet Big Band Now: The Sound of Young New York was a necessary addition to my jazz education. Don Glasgo and Dartmouth College’s Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble put their best foot forward with special guest, Jason Lindner at the Hopkins Center of the Arts. Pianist, composer, arranger and producer Lindner “is a musical universe” according to prolific pianist and composer Chick Corea. The New York Times takes it a step further, describing him as “only partly interested in jazz’s idiomatic customs. What matters to him is groove.”

The journey began with “Song for Jason,” a piece written for Lidner by his friend and colleague, Israeli bassist Avishai Cohen. Grant Neubauer ‘13’s nostalgic piano solo brought me back to busting afternoons on 34th Street, the notes rushing past me like a line of taxi cabs at rush hour. “Rumors” was supercharged with angst and grit. Lindner spilled his soul all over the keys in an improvisation that sent chills down my spine. Yet overall, the sound was silky and smooth. Alan Gottesman ‘13 lent the smoky sound of his tenor saxophone to the contemporary collage. For me, the piece embodied the rich flavor and glamour of New York, from Greenwich Village, to DUMBO, to the heart of Flushing. “Freak of Nature” was by far the classiest piece, evoking elegance in the midst of hustle and bustle. Trumpet and trombone solos distilled the sweet essence of the music. The saxophones swayed in a group solo reminiscent of mambo. Graduate student Patrick Barter’s drum solo moved the piece to its powerful climax.

“Aquarius,” originally called “Self-Portrait,” is the only piece Lindner wrote in the A key. In an intersection of music and astrology, each of the twelve music keys are assigned their own astrological sign. It just so happened that Lindner’s astrological sign, Aquarius, corresponded to the A key and the name stuck. The piece began with a floating flute solo from Stephanie DeCross ‘13. The song was not only a portrait of Lindner, but a portrait of a sunny autumn afternoon in Central Park, at times soft and warm but a bit melancholy at others. In contrast, “Space” had a cool, blue sound of the city at twilight. The piece listed back and forth like a more traditional 1950s big band song.

Lindner also gave tribute to John Coltrane in his arrangement of “Giant Steps.” While most of the music of the night came from his 2007 album Live at the Jazz Gallery, this piece came from a 2009 album of Linder’s more experimental works, Now vs. Now. “Giant Steps” began with the refreshing sound of an electrical keyboard, and Lindner interwove the keyboard’s unique sound into the waves of energy emanating from the band.

The final piece was “U Near Blew” which started out with a piano piece by Lindner that evoked gospel and 1930s blues. Suddenly the song swelled into a powerful big band number with Katie Pine ‘11 and her lean, mean tenor saxophone at its helm. Then there was a soulful interplay of trombone solos with Chris Martin ‘10 and Erin Michet ‘13 on trombone and Paul Finkelstein ‘13 on bass trombone. Lindner’s piano spoke back and forth with Neubauner’s organ before the meat ‘n’ potatoes of Andrew Lohse ’12’s bass solo. And of course there was a spectacular big band finish.

Lindner’s, Glasgo’s, and the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble’s music was a pleasure to listen to. It was also a pleasure to play. Grant Neubauer will never forget trading solos with Lindner: “Playing in my first Coast concert with Jason Lindner was a truly amazing and humbling experience. He is so talented, and at the same time, friendly, down-to-earth, and an all-around great person. It’s clear that instead of showing people his music, he would rather share it with them… Everyone was so inspired and played with such passion that I was just swept up in the musical energy. I can’t wait for future shows!” Katie Pine also enjoyed having Lindner as a special guest: “Being a part of Jason’s compositions and playing for an attentive, excited audience was thrilling. I’ve never been part of a musical experience so magical.”

Playing Lindner’s “Live at the Jazz Gallery” a day later, I reflected on the fact that he is a native New Yorker as I am. I feel his music did the city justice. The soul of his jazz embodies the soul of the city, an essence easily recognizable to anyone who’s been there. His music pays homage to the big band tradition going back to the “young New York” of 1920s Harlem and Sinatra’s 1950s. Yet it also speaks to the modern feeling of youth and freedom in a world of opportunity—a city like New York, or a college like Dartmouth—where anything is possible.