ESTABLISHED 1826 — OLDEST COLLEGE NEWSPAPER WEST OF THE ALLEGHENIES
Volume 151 No. 12
Miami University — Oxford, Ohio
FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2023
Nyah Smith and Jules Jefferson elected as Student Body President and Vice President
MEGAN MCCONNELL
Nyah Smith and Jules Jefferson have been elected Miami University’s Student Body President (SBP) and Vice President for the 2023-2024 academic year, making Miami history as the first elected all-Black ticket. The pair won against Cameron Tiefenthaler and Grace Payne with 68% of the vote. After the announcement, Smith and Jefferson were applauded by friends and supporters in Armstrong Student Center. The two said they were at a loss for words. “Grateful. Honored,” Smith said. “Blessed,” Jefferson interjected. Several of Jefferson’s family members attended Miami, including her mother, sister and cousin. But as a Black, female biochemistry and nutrition double major, Jefferson said the idea of being elected Vice President was wild. Smith agreed and said she was told by a college planner in
In this issue
high school to expect a denial letter from Miami. Now, the two sit as Miami’s president and vice president elect. Smith said the support from student organizations around campus was overwhelming, with 18 total endorsements including those from the Asian American Association, The Miami Student and Black Student Action Association. “As a SEAL [Student Engagement and Leadership], that just meant the world to me because I’ve spent my whole time at Miami loving student organizations,” Smith said. “To get that support back means a lot to me.” Smith and Jefferson’s campaign was based on three pillars: sustainability and infrastructure, unity and student empowerment. The pair also focused on reaching out to groups that weren’t normally targeted by the Associate Student Government (ASG), such as international students and athletes. In their campaign video, the pair had a sign
language interpreter and various foreign languages available — Vietnamese, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Fulani — to remain accessible. “Everyone deserves to have a seat at the table, and I think that’s what we’ve been trying to say for the past three weeks,” Smith said. Looking back on the last several weeks, Smith said she was especially proud of their commitment to a natural-hair campaign. “Going to a PWI [predominately white institution] as a Black woman is hard,” Smith said. “And so, to have a big dream of running for Student Body President and Vice President, we did it. Natural and all.” After returning from spring break, Smith and Jefferson are excited to begin working and collaborating with administration and students across campus and to begin “building the table,” which was outlined in their campaign. The pair hopes to create a semesterly campus-wide service project, an
band and won best dressed as they dawned all yellow at the Battle of the Bands last semester. The band performs once a week for the guitar club and plays rock covers from artists like Arctic Monkeys and Jet. Although they don’t currently have any original songs, they’ve expressed interest in creating original music. In addition to their weekly performances at guitar club, the band is looking to book more shows at local bars. “There's been other bands, like I know there's one called the Thumbtack Mechanics that recently just played at Brick, so there's definitely a lot of uptake and they did sell out, so that means there's definitely an audience for us,” Parashar said. All the members involved have majors outside of music, so playing for them is a fun hobby that brings the group together. “We just had this special connection,” Parashar said. “We just clicked, and the chemistry just hit different.” siderie@miamioh.edu
macylj@miamioh.edu
ASG open forum, a career clothing closet and green event funds and resources. Smith and Jefferson also plan on implementing semesterly mental health screenings and community service opportunities to help students pay off parking tickets. “I’m excited to have more voices at the table because I think that’s possible,” Smith said. “I know that’s possible. I’m excited to represent the various communities at Miami. I’m excited to bridge the gap between resources and to provide more resources for students because I think that’s one of the things that we really focused on.” For now, Smith and Jefferson said they appreciate the voters, and hope to see even more students vote in future elections. “Thank you to the voters,” Smith said with Jefferson nodding in agreement. mcconnmn@miamioh.edu
‘Everything just connected so well:’ First-year student joins band
CAMPUS & COMMUNITY ‘Very stressful, very difficult and expensive”: Navigating the Oxford housing market as a student - page 5 ENTERTAINMENT The evolution of listening to music in college - page 6
HUMOR St. Patrick’s Day as a Patrick
- page 8
LEAD SINGER JORDAN MTUI PERFORMS WITH HIS BAND BANANARCHY. PHOTO BY EMILY SIDERITS
STYLE The expressive art of tattoos
EMILY SIDERITS
THE MIAMI STUDENT - page 9
OPINION Saying good-bye to our seniors: graduating seniors' personal columns - page 13
PHOTO A day in the life of Maggie Murphy - page 16
While most students join clubs and organizations their first few weeks of school, first-year finance and business analytics major Umaansh Parashar joined a band. Parashar knew he wanted to be a part of Bananarchy from his first rehearsal performance with them. He showed up for the first performance at guitar club having only met the lead singer. “I get there on a Monday night at Kumler chapel,” Parashar said. “I meet the members for the first time. We've never played together. There's songs I've never played before. [The first song] was ‘Begging’ by Måneskin, and I know that song by heart, so I was able to get in with it, but it was right when we started playing. Everything just connected so well.” Parashar got connected to Bananarchy through Rocktober Fest organized by High Street Records, where he learned they had an opening for a drummer.
Bananarchy formed in the fall of 2021 when guitarist Jack Weber and bassist Cory O’Brien joined forces to create a group for Battle of the Bands, organized by the guitar club. The two had met in class, and Weber introduced O’Brien to Miami's guitar club. The current members consist of guitarists Weber and Luke Thorne, bassist Cory O’Brien, lead singer Jordan Mtui and drummer Parashar. Joining a band that was established a year ago may seem daunting, but Parashar felt confident in his musical background. In addition to playing drums for the past decade, Parashar also had experience performing in front of live audiences. “In high school, I played for this thing called the School of Rock Cincinnati,” Parashar said. “I used to take lessons there and play with their house band. We used to have gigs in all parts of Cincinnati in different venues, different bars. So that really helped me build that performance skill.” Bananarchy received the runner-up title for best performance
LUKE MACY
ASST. CAMPUS & COMMUNITY EDITOR On Dec. 12 and 13, 2022, Ginny Boehme, along with some of her Miami University colleagues, traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to testify before the State Employment Relations Board (SERB). Boehme and her colleagues were there with the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM) advocating for teaching clinical professors and lecturers (TCPLs), instructors, visiting assistant professors (VAPs) and librarians to be included in FAM’s proposed collective bargaining unit. Boehme, a science librarian at Miami, testified to SERB about responsibilities, promotion and the continuing contracts system within Miami’s libraries, arguing that these shared similarities with full-time faculty. So when SERB announced on March 9 that librarians, along with VAPs, would not be allowed to participate in the proposed union, Boehme was disappointed. “It just felt like all of the work that we had done to get to this point was basically all for nothing,” Boehme said. “It was really, really disappointing and then to actually read through the decision and the reasoning behind it was just another slap in the face.” SERB’s decision included points such as librarians’ 12-month contracts as opposed to faculty members’ nine-month contracts and librarians’ similarities to unclassified administrative staff. However, Boehme said the judge for the decision included some inaccurate points, such as librarians being paid hourly — Boehme said librarians are salaried employees — and others that demonstrated a lack of knowledge for what librarians do. “There seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what we do and how our teaching is compared to the faculty teaching. I mean, it is different, but it is still teaching,” Boehme said. “It really seemed like he didn't understand most of the similarities that we share with the faculty.” In an email to The Miami Student, Jessica Rivinius, vice president and chief marketing communications officer, wrote that Miami agreed with SERB’s decision, saying the university doesn’t believe faculty, librarians and VAPs share enough similarities to make up a single collective bargaining unit. “While each of these positions plays a critical part in furthering our University mission and delivering academic excellence to our students,” Rivinius wrote, “Miami believes the experiences across these various groups vary drastically and would not allow for an effective collective bargaining agreement to be reached if a faculty union was established.” SERB’s decision excludes around 30 university librarians from being part of FAM’s proposed union. Boehme was not the only librarian disappointed with SERB’s ruling. Rachel Makarowski, a special collections librarian, although sad about the decision, didn’t let it keep her down. “At first I was a little disappointed,” Makarowski said. “After that feeling of disappointment, when that passed, I was like, ‘Okay, I guess we're organizing the librarians under our own contract with FAM.’” Makarowski has been helping FAM for more than a year. Although she can no longer be included in the proposed union, she still continues volunteering. “Even though the TCPL and tenure-track folks are the only people who are in the determined unit, that still doesn't detract from the fact we’re still one union,” Makarowski said. “So to me, continuing with volunteering just really helps to cement that the fight isn't over.” Rivinius wrote in the same email that the university will still work with those not recognized in the collective bargaining unit. “While the election moves forward with tenured and tenure-track and TCPL faculty only, we will continue to support and work openly with all faculty, Librarians, and those in Multiple Appointments through our model of shared governance,” Rivinius wrote. For librarians like Boehme, though, the SERB hearing made some at the university feel as if they do not have the same recognition from the university as others. “It's always been described in a really, really horrible tongue-incheek sort of way as separate but equal and that's what it feels like,” Boehme said. “We are second class citizens to the university when we still have all the same responsibilities and processes as true faculty.”
NYAH SMITH AND JULES JEFFERSON CELEBRATED WITH FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS AFTER WINNING STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT, RESPECTIVELY. PHOTO BY JAKE RUFFER
ASST. CAMPUS & COMMUNITY EDITOR
Librarians disappointed by SERB decision for unionization