The independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis since 1878 THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023
VOLUME 144, NO. 22
CARNIVAL
Photo essay from the Thurtene Carnival hosted on the Danforth Campus (Scene, pg 3)
WWW.STUDLIFE.COM
PELL PAST AND PRESENT
BEARS BASEBALL SWEEPS BRANDEIS
First-generation student numbers since 2008 (Scene, pg 4)
WashU second in conference going into final UAA weekend (Sports, pg 7)
Sexual assault awareness installation damaged on Mudd Field
ELLE SU | STUDENT LIFE
S.A.R.A.H.’s public sexual assault installation, comprised of purple flags planted around Mudd Field was vandalized on April 7.
AVI HOLZMAN MANAGING NEWS EDITOR A demonstration on Mudd Field organized by the Sexual Assault and Rape Anonymous Helpline (S.A.R.A.H.) for Sexual Assault Awarness month
(SAAM) was damaged on Friday, April 7th. S.A.R.A.H. has raised awareness on campus during SAAM by planting f lags or pinwheels on Mudd Field for the past 7 years. This year they reserved the field for the week
of April 2-9 and planted 2,505 purple f lags, along with a banner explaining the demonstration. The demonstration represented the estimated number of students who experience nonconsensual sexual contact according to a survey by the Association of
Guest speakers reveal the secret to happiness LUKE MYERS AND NINA GIRALDO CONTRIBUTING WRITER SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
The event “What Would You Do if You Only Had One Week to Live?” fostered dialogue among students and faculty on the science of happiness and finding meaning in a time-limited life, April 12. The discussion was hosted by the Veritas Forum, a nonprofit Christian organization working to “seek truth” through questions of philosophy and science. In a lecture attended by 90 people, Lecturer in Philosophy Nic Koziloek moderated a conversation between Tim Bono, Lecturer in Psychological & Brain Sciences, and Lydia Dugdale, Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. Koziolek began the discussion by elaborating on the title of the lecture, revealing that the true question lies in how one should live their life knowing that time is finite. Bono explained how confronting the scarcity of time is important to recognizing its value. “I think that it’s important for us to acknowledge the impermanence of life,” Bono said. “In our own minds, when we become aware of our impermanence, at least on Earth, that changes how we interact with things. It puts things into a proper perspective.” Koziloek added that happiness is not a goal that can ever be
achieved, rather is an activity to be constantly worked on and maintained. Bono shared that people often, mistakingly, look for a “wow factor” when searching for the secret of happiness, and should instead focus on the accumulation of small, daily intentional behaviors over time that contribute significantly to one’s well being. Through the lens of her own medical background, Dugdale explained how patients frequently pass away without feeling ready or at peace. “Why are patients dying so poorly? If you have your whole life to live knowing that you’re going to die, why is it that you are not really facing up to your mortality over the course of your life?” she asked. Dugdale explained how the answers to these questions lie in the idea that life and death go hand in hand. “If you want to die well, you have to live well,” she said. “That is, the art of dying and the art of living well are very much intertwined. Let me begin cultivating today the kind of character that I want to be known for when I die.” Bono also stressed the importance of nurturing relationships and expressing gratitude as a means of happy living, particularly in the age of social media where social comparison exists as one of the biggest detriments to happiness. The speakers agreed that the cliche of “living everyday like it
is the last” is not a sustainable approach to living, as it overlooks the realities of day to day obligations. Instead, if you were to hear you only have a week left to live, you should not have to make any substantial changes to the life you are already living. First-year James Corbett described the lecture as thought-provoking. “I liked that Dr. Koziolek said that in the morning, he just drinks his cup of coffee and he sits down and he reads,” Corbett said. “I think that’s crucial to being happy — just sitting and reflecting and doing nothing sometimes…I take multiple sits throughout the day, just doing nothing.” Junior Solomon Kang hopes to implement a balance between meeting everyday deadlines and investing in important relationships. “I really like the idea that to die well you have to live well,” Kang said. “It made me reflect on the current status of my relationships with those around me and how I can invest more in those areas.” In the lecture, Dugdale concluded that living well requires answering questions about one’s mortality. “Part of living well is attending to these questions while you’re still able, because I’ve certainly cared for patients who were not able to think clearly at the end of their life,” she said. “So it’s just good to wrestle with this stuff and there’s no better place [to do that] than college.”
American Universities in 2019. “On Friday, members of our group saw that the banner facing the DUC had been damaged. The stakes were broken and the banner was bundled using zip ties, obscuring the message that described the purpose of
the f lags,” S.A.R.A.H. said in a written statement submitted to Student Life. The club has reached out to both WUPD and the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention (RSVP) center about the incident but neither organization is aware of who was involved in damaging the banner. Despite their protest being defaced, club members said they are “grateful” for the support they have received by the campus community following this incident, according to the same written statement. They also hope that students will continue to reach out to them and attend some of the events taking place later this month on April 25 and 26. “Despite this unfortunate occurrence, S.A.R.A.H. will continue to advocate for and maintain a safer community for survivors on campus,” read the end of their written statement. Students can call S.A.R.A.H. 24/7 throughout the rest of the semester until May 10. Their hotline number is: 314-935-8080.
Editorial Note: S.A.R.A.H. cited the preservation of club members anonymity as why they denied requests to conduct an interview in person, over the phone or via Zoom.
The end of an era: WebSTAC FACES is no longer ALIANA MEDIRATTA JUNIOR NEWS EDITOR After decades of connecting Washington University students, picture-based online directory service WebSTAC FACES has stopped operating due to the rise in popularity of social media. FACES allowed WashU students and faculty to search for individual students in a database of profiles that consisted of a student’s full name, email address, school division, and student ID photo. In order to find a student profile, searches could be conducted with first or last names, as well as additional search parameters such as school division. In the first week of March, students were informed on their WebSTAC homepage that FACES was going to be decomissioned due to the rise of other social media platforms. By the end of the month, the platform had been taken down for good. University Registrar Keri Disch said that taking down FACES had been on the IT Department’s to-do list for several years. “A number of years ago,” Disch wrote in an email to Student Life, “knowing that commercial social media functionality and usage was outstripping anything WashU could or maybe should attempt to maintain, IT and my office reviewed this feature with an eye toward what we could decommission to support our journey to replace our core student systems. Since this is not required functionality to support registration or degree progress it was viewed as acceptable to sundown.” The most comparable social media platform for an online directory is Instagram, which allows people to easily search for profiles by name
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ILLUSTRATION BY TUESDAY HADDEN to find photos that their peers have posted. However, not all WashU students use this platform, including sophomore Ella Brodey, who used FACES often as a way to look people up and remain connected with other students. However, Brodey also believes that FACES serves a unique purpose for everyone, even those who are active on social media. “It’s not even used for social media, it’s just a good database to find people,” Brodey said. “If I get paired with someone I don’t know for a group project, I want to see what they look like if I’m meeting them somewhere. A lot of other people don’t have Instagram, so you can’t find everyone on there, but everyone was on FACES.” Brodey said that she used FACES for more than just finding project partners though, recounting a time when she used it to help decorate for a dinner party. “My friends and I printed out the FACES photos of everyone who was invited to the party and hung it up on the walls,” Brodey said. “There was just an entire wall covered with
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