Vol. 114, Iss. 14 | Wednesday, December 4, 2024
The Weekly Student Newspaper
of The College of William and Mary
flathatnews.com | @theflathat
BOARD OF VISITORS
Demonstrators march to board reception Students stand with signs in hall lounge while attendees enjoy food MONA GARIMELLA FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
Thursday, Nov. 21, students at the College of William and Mary protested a Board of Visitors reception at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business with the Whole of Government, Military and Veteran Affairs staff and ROTC program staff to demonstrate their disappointment with the failure of the College’s administration to divest from Israeli-owned companies. The demonstration fell on the same date as the National Students for Justice in Palestine’s call for an international strike, with the College’s chapter hosting a teach-in on Palestine’s history and the boycott movement hours before the demonstration. On Instagram, the College’s SJP chapter posted about their intent to host a teach-in and walkout Monday, Nov. 18. The College Socialists and Dissenters also promoted the event. “Instead of going to class Thursday afternoon, join us for teach-ins on Palestine, the BDS movement, and W&M's connections to colonialism and war,” the post’s caption read. “We will end with a rally to protest the administration's refusal of the student body's demand for divestment. This institution is reliant on us, the students and faculty, to give it value. Let's reclaim our power from the administration!!” At the teach-in event in Lodge One of the Sadler Center, students and faculty spoke on the purpose of the event, highlighting the tumultuous history of the Gaza strip and how students can make an impact by participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. SJP Co-President Salma Amrou ’26 recited a poem highlighting the lasting effects of settler colonialism on the Palestinian people. “Colonizer, you have cut off my tongue and I speak in yours to make you understand,” Amrou said. “I speak in yours to make you understand that life does not end with death. That our spirit transcends the rise and fall of a breathing chest. That all this violence is simply the beginning of a new era.” Members of SJP, Dissenters and College Socialists then presented on topics related to Palestine and the BDS movement. “We are holding this today because the National Assembly has declared November 21st a national university strike against genocide,” a College Socialists member said. “Will we boycott classes, boycott the institutions of genocide, and build our own institutions? Because once the school no longer serves us, we can build our own school and our own institutions that don't serve war, but serve the community and serve the people.” Amrou spoke more on the history of conflict in the region, concluding that the history is vast and goes beyond the phase of violence that started Oct. 7, 2023. “This has been going on for longer than October 7th, and that as much as they would like to have you believe that everything started on October 7th, there is a long history and context behind what happened,” Amrou said. SJP Co-President Iqra Ahmad ’26 similarly spoke on the longevity of the issue. READ MORE AT FLATHATNEWS.COM
PHOTOS BY RYAN GOODMAN / THE FLAT HAT
Off-campus housing conditions raise concerns for student residents ANNA ARNSBERGER AND AGAVNI MEHRABI // THE FLAT HAT
The bathroom Brian Des Roches ’25 shares with his neighbor is covered in black mold. The shower is crammed under a staircase, making it difficult to stand up while using it. On multiple occasions, the toilet has stopped working and the bathtub has filled with sewage. Des Roches is going on two years in his off-campus apartment. While he noticed many problems early on, he was often hesitant to make a fuss. “In my first year, living off campus was like, ‘oh well, I’m just lucky to have somewhere to live,’” Des Roches said. Des Roches’ story is not uncommon. Across Williamsburg, many College of William and Mary students live in poor, dysfunctional and sometimes uninhabitable rental properties. These students often put up with negative conditions as they see no other options. Beyond the bathroom, Des Roches’ apartment has no air conditioning and only a small, ineffective radiator. His front door is broken and lets in bugs. There is also a mystery sludge under the floor. “In between whatever the real floor is and the laminate, there’s sludge kind of,” Des Roches said. “I can kind of peek into it because where it doesn’t quite meet the wall, there’s this really thin layer of grime and dead bugs. But when it gets wet, it leaks.” Gregory Klingensmith ’26 similarly recalls moving into a dirty house filled with fleas, ants and rats. “I just had to be on the lookout all the time,” Klingensmith said. “I placed traps in different places. I remember there was one morning where I woke up around like five and walked into the kitchen, and a rat up here jumped and almost landed on me.” Conditions for Klingensmith and his roommates
got so bad they decided to move out just a few months after their lease began. “We started the moving process once some of the parents came and they were like, ‘yeah, we’re not letting our kids live here,’” Klingensmith said. “My one friend’s mom is an attorney and she was like, ‘yeah, this is illegal.’” Rats are a common occurrence, especially in the older houses near campus. One student who wished to remain anonymous explained that none of their roommates go to the first floor at night out of fear of the rats. “Food has been eaten and like, nibbled on,” they said. “There’s been rat droppings all over our bathroom. You can hear them scurrying through our ceilings and walls.” Elizabeth Fretz ’23 remembers rats being one of many problems with the house she rented as a student. She had to invest much of her own money into buying rat traps, installing curtains and figuring out alternatives to their broken heating system. It took six weeks for Fretz and her roommates to get their landlord to send someone to fix the heating, and she will always remember her interaction with the electrician. “He goes, ‘did you know that there was just a live wire underneath your house, like running the length of the kitchen, not connected to anything?’” Fretz said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, you mean a live electrical wire underneath our wooden floorboards of our very old house? That’s super cool. I love that.’” Before living in the house, Fretz knew it had problems such as warped floorboards, rotted porches and a general lack of maintenance. Still, she decided to move in because the property had been
passed down through her sorority. “I think because it was like a house that had been passed down, I was kind of willing to overlook all of that just for the sense of community that I would have living there,” Fretz said. “But definitely looking back, I should have taken a closer look at that.” Fretz and Klingensmith both found their previous houses from their Greek life organizations and cited community as one reason for moving in. Like many other students, Klingensmith also identified location as a primary concern. “I don’t have a car, so I wanted to be somewhere close to campus, but kind of have my own crib not being like a dorm or something like that,” Klingensmith said. One of the biggest factors contributing to students’ housing decisions is a lack of options. The anonymous student said that she was aware the house she was moving into had problems with rats, cockroaches and heating. They decided to go forward with it anyways, as she couldn’t keep paying for transportation from an apartment far from campus. “There was no other option,” they said. “Like genuinely, I got put on the waitlist for the on-campus housing, and it was basically presented to me that as a rising senior, my options were just like, I couldn’t do that.” The College is currently undergoing a 10year comprehensive plan to renovate dining and residence halls. As a result, there are fewer beds available for upperclassmen students. In 2023, 548 students were placed on a waitlist for oncampus housing. SEE NEWS ANALYSIS PAGE 4
STUDENT ASSEMBLY
SA Senate passes resolution calling for new hall renaming practices Sponsor retracts call for student Design Review Board member, asks for direct student involvement opportunities ABBY FURCY THE FLAT HAT
Tuesday, Nov. 19, College of William and Mary Student Assembly Sen. Mayer Tawfik ’27 proposed and passed The Naming Architecture with Meaningful Epigraphs (N.A.M.E.) Resolution in the SA, advocating for more inclusivity with regards to student voices when naming new buildings on campus. This comes in response to students’ frustration that the names of residence halls are honoring people with legacies not in alignment with the current student body, and the values that the College claims to uphold. Tawfik also had personal motivation for moving forward with the resolution, as he believes students
INDEX Profile News Opinions Variety Sports
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should have a voice when it comes to making long-lasting decisions such as the naming of buildings. “I thought there isn’t student representation in the naming process at all, and a lot of the controversies that arise are somewhat of a surprise to administration, and that comes from a lack of having students in the room when they’re talking about different names,” Tawfik said. “Someone who’s a representative could be like, ‘this isn’t my personal view, but I could see how students could be upset from this.’” The resolution was introduced to the Senate Tuesday, Nov. 12 and was assigned to a committee where it received feedback the following Sunday. It passed voting the next Tuesday, Nov. 19, one week after it
was introduced. Tawfik sees the passage of this resolution as a sign of its significance for all students. “I think it’s important that the people who occupy certain buildings, like residence halls, people who occupy classrooms, are proud of the legacy that the school is honoring through that building, and are proud of that person’s achievements and that person’s reflections of the school’s values,” Tawfik said. Tawfik and other senators intentionally wrote the resolution to be open-ended, allowing for a wide range of ways it could be implemented when discussing future steps with College administration. “I didn’t want to put concrete action steps, and then go and
have those conversations and find out steps one through five are impossible, or you need to try again,” Tawfik said. “So the language is a little vague on purpose to where we can have those conversations, understand our knowledge, how it’s flawed or where it needs expanding, and then evaluating the steps after and being like, okay, we misunderstood the process. This new version of the process, maybe we can pivot and include students that way or find specific gaps where they’re not represented.” Dozens of individuals from other multicultural organizations and advocacy groups on campus signed the resolution, demonstrating that there is widespread support for this outside of Student Assembly.
“The great thing about Student Assembly is everybody is involved in a whole lot of things,” Tawfik said. “And because of that, when you have a team as good as ours, and these are all class of ’27 senators, and class president, these are all people I know well and people who put a lot of work into the projects they pursue. So they came on the sponsors and instantly started to reach out to their circles and the organizations they’re involved in, and that helped a lot.” In an email to The Flat Hat, Diana Kim ’25, former director of the Asian American Student Initiative, described why she was the first nonStudent Assembly student to sign the bill. READ MORE AT FLATHATNEWS.COM
Inside Opinions
Inside Variety
Inside Sports
Lisa Coleman '25 shares the results and her impressions of the data section's "Which TWAMP are You?" quiz. page 5
College of William and Mary alumni share marriage, relationship with partners, loved ones since graduating from alma mater. page 7
Graduate student QB/ REC/RB posts 1,000 receiving, passing, rushing yards. page 10
Thereʼs more than one Typical William and Mary Person: TWAMP revisited
Happily ever after
Mathis helps Green and Gold secure historic CFB record