B I N ’ STAFF WRITER Halloween morning, two days after a long and overloaded Homecoming weekend, President Hass sent an email announcing the creation of a team fo- cused on reshaping on-campus alcohol policies and attitudes. She cited several alcohol-related inci- dents over the past few weeks including a car accident and instances of emer- gency medical intervention. She laid out a plan to both change policy and form a task force to “guide us in creat- ing a healthier culture.” “My instinct is to take a public health approach to the epidemic of extreme drinking,” co-chair of the new task force and Director of International Programs Dr. Barron Boyd said. “As President of ATO [at Rhodes] I had to attend the funeral of one of my fraternity broth- ers who was killed in an automobile accident. I would do anything in my power to spare current Rhodes students that horror. e only redeeming virtue to this loss is trying to prevent it from happening to others,” Boyd said. In addition to Boyd, the task force will be co-chaired by new Associate Dean of Student Jamia Stokes. “e co-chairs are going to work with RSG members to identify four or five students who will serve on the force. We’ll also look for faculty and staff to get involved,” President Hass said. “We have a trustee who is also a physician on board and we’ve asked an alumna to join who has college-age children herself. We are hoping to get a broad cross-section of the community and be open with ourselves about what it is we can do to make Rhodes a happy and healthy place moving forward.” Some of the primary groups expect- ed to chime in come from Greek Life and Student Life, including new Dean of Students Russ Wiggington. In her initial email, President Hass alluded to hopes about changes to open container policies on campus. “Our current policies are sound but need refreshing since they’ve been in place since 2009,” Wiggington said. “I am still evaluating the consistency in which policies are enforced but I be- lieve a bigger issue is making sure all students receive a thorough education on them upon their arrival to Rhodes as first year students.” By and large, the community has been skeptical to the changes. “I think sometimes institutions are worried about talking about the issue because they worry that students may see this as some sort of Draconian crackdown or outsiders will perceive this as ‘Rhodes has a serious problem,’” President Hass said. “But in my mind there’s nothing we shouldn’t be able to talk about as a community. It’s not about anger or about despair; it’s about love. We should be a campus that loves each other so much that we can help each other be healthy.” V. N. Y The Sou’wester R C N , An All-American College Newspaper Drinking Culture at Rhodes College, Problematic?
Transcript
B I N ’STAFF WRITER
Halloween morning, two days after a long and overloaded Homecoming weekend, President Hass sent an email announcing the creation of a team fo-cused on reshaping on-campus alcohol policies and attitudes. She cited several alcohol-related inci-dents over the past few weeks including a car accident and instances of emer-gency medical intervention. She laid out a plan to both change policy and form a task force to “guide us in creat-ing a healthier culture.” “My instinct is to take a public health approach to the epidemic of extreme drinking,” co-chair of the new task force and Director of International Programs
Dr. Barron Boyd said. “As President of ATO [at Rhodes] I had to attend the funeral of one of my fraternity broth-ers who was killed in an automobile accident. I would do anything in my power to spare current Rhodes students that horror. � e only redeeming virtue to this loss is trying to prevent it from happening to others,” Boyd said. In addition to Boyd, the task force will be co-chaired by new Associate Dean of Student Jamia Stokes. “� e co-chairs are going to work with RSG members to identify four or fi ve students who will serve on the force. We’ll also look for faculty and staff to get involved,” President Hass said. “We have a trustee who is also a physician on board and we’ve asked an alumna to join who has college-age children
herself. We are hoping to get a broad cross-section of the community and be open with ourselves about what it is we can do to make Rhodes a happy and healthy place moving forward.” Some of the primary groups expect-ed to chime in come from Greek Life and Student Life, including new Dean of Students Russ Wiggington. In her initial email, President Hass alluded to hopes about changes to open container policies on campus. “Our current policies are sound but need refreshing since they’ve been in place since 2009,” Wiggington said. “I am still evaluating the consistency in which policies are enforced but I be-lieve a bigger issue is making sure all students receive a thorough education on them upon their arrival to Rhodes as
fi rst year students.” By and large, the community has been skeptical to the changes. “I think sometimes institutions are worried about talking about the issue because they worry that students may see this as some sort of Draconian crackdown or outsiders will perceive this as ‘Rhodes has a serious problem,’” President Hass said. “But in my mind there’s nothing we shouldn’t be able to talk about as a community. It’s not about anger or about despair; it’s about love. We should be a campus that loves each other so much that we can help each other be healthy.”
V. N. Y The Sou’wester R C N ,
An All-American College Newspaper
Drinking Culture at Rhodes College, Problematic?
Page 2 November 10, 2017
News, CoNt’dThe Sou’wester
Staff of The Sou’wester Writing Staff:
Staff Writers, India Nikotich ’19, Sam Brown ’21, Rylan Lorance ’21, Noah Mesa
’21, Ramiz Somjee ’21, Madeline Dean ’19
Editorial Staff:
Editors-in-Chief, Jordan Hulseberg ’19& Will Morrow ’19
Interested in joining The Sou’wester? Have any stories you think need a voice? Comments/concerns? Email us at [email protected] us on Instagram @souwesternews and Facebook at facebook.com/souwesternewspaper
AOII Philanthropy Event: Smoke-Out Arthritis
By Warren Socher ’19CirCulation Editor
Alpha Omicron Pi hosted its fall philanthropy event, “Smoke Out Ar-thritis,” to benefit the Arthritis Foun-dation last Saturday. For just $5, folks indulged in all-you-can-eat barbecue prepared by teams challenging each other in a competition to serve the best food at the event. There was a second portion of the competition to create the best dessert. The consumers received three tickets to vote for their favorite
barbecue dishes and two to vote for desserts. Some of the main dishes prepared were brisket, BBQ pulled-pork sand-wiches prepared by Kappa Alpha Or-der, chili dogs and fajita meat seasoned and cooked by Sigma Nu. The dessert array included walnut chocolate chip cookies, cheesecake squares and brown-ies—all incredibly delectable. The win-ners of the barbecue competition won a $150 cash prize and the winners of the dessert competition won a $50 cash prize. The family of AOII member
Marilyn Mazac ’20 won both compe-titions for their flavorful pork loin and fried cheesecake squares. Smoke Out Arthritis coincided with AOII’s Dads’ Weekend, allowing many of the competing teams to be AOII fathers and daughters. Alongside the contest, KA hosted “Dunk-a-Hunk” to raised over $200 for the Muscular Dys-trophy Association. Despite the dreary weather, KA members donned their bathing suits and sat atop the dunk tank. Their lips turned blue as they awaited the softballs that would inevi-
tably drop them into the water. Only four participants were willing to participate in the hot dog eating con-test. AOII Taylor Majewski ’19 fought fiercely to win as the fluffy buns slowed down her fellow contestants. The so-rority did not forget its staple “Pie a ’Pi” activity and many AOII’s were left covered in whip-cream. The first annu-al “Smoke-Out Arthritis” left its large crowd satisfied after the philanthrop-ic cookout. Through the event, AOII raised over $1,500 for the Arthritis Foundation.
November 10, 2017 Page 3The Sou’wester
Within the Gates
By Rylan Lorance ’21Staff Writer
Priest Spencer Reece spoke in Hyde Hall regarding the lessons he’s learned over his tenure as a international minis-ter. No one would call Spencer Reese’s path “traditional.” As a priest, Reese re-sided in Spain as an active member in the Episcopal Church. He has written three books of poetry; one of which James Franco turned into a film. He has also published “Counting Time like People Count Stars: Poems by the Girls of Little Roses,” a series of poems writ-ten by young orphaned girls in Hon-duras. When Reese took the podium in Hyde Hall, he exhibited a quiet de-meanor. His hands were folded in trian-gles when he spoke and his words were deliberate and slow to form. He caught audience members off-guard when he began asking individuals to talk about
a time they felt alone or forgotten. He listened to the students carefully and compassionately—using his priestly experience as people bared their souls. Reese spoke about his identity as a gay man, a title he has only become com-fortable with in the past few years. He transitioned to reading a poem featur-ing a girl he taught at Our Little Roses Home for Girls, a full-time residential home for abused, abandoned and ne-glected girls in San Pedro Sula, Hon-duras. This girl felt alone because her mother abandoned her in a well with a rock tied around her neck at the age of four. Reese moved to Honduras with the sole intention of staying there for a few months to learn Spanish. The night be-fore he was to leave, a young girl told him “Don’t forget about us.” This girl so moved him that he decided to stay in Honduras. He began teaching En-glish as the only thing he knew outside
of faith. He used poetry to make En-glish exciting and the girls eventually warmed up to the idea. A documentar-ian from the United States heard about this and began filming a documentary “Voices Beyond the Wall: Twelve Love Poems from the Murder Capital of the World” about the girls and their poetry. Reese read poetry written in both En-glish and Spanish which he translated into English, the girls wrote about their experiences growing up in Honduras. Reese became emotional when he dis-cussed these poems, especially while reading the one he named the book af-ter, “Counting Time Like People Count Stars.” Reese also spoke about the living conditions in Honduras. “In recent years, drug gangs from Mexico have moved in. Violence and drug trafficking has increased. Planes filled with cocaine fly over the one sto-ry cinder-block houses in faded pastel colors. The banana industry, once the
foundation of the economy, has de-clined from global competition. Hur-ricane Mitch in 1998 blighted many plantations,” Reese said. The city he worked in had the sec-ond highest murder rate in the world. According to Reese, the number of Honduran children who are orphaned equates to “around a third of the popu-lation of Memphis.” Many of these girls came from parents who died or aban-doned their children because they were unable to take care of them. It was difficult for Reese to leave the girls he cared for behind but he felt good knowing a grant was started to send poets and artists down to the Girls of Our Little Roses. Anthology of the underrepresented has been a vital part of his work. Reese promised the young girl again before he left that she would not be forgotten. “Attention must be paid to people who are unknown,” Reese said.
Priest Spencer Reese Speaks in Hyde Hall,“Attention Must Be Paid to Those Who Are Unknown”
Page 4 November 10, 2017The Sou’wester
Within the Gates
By Will Morrow ’19Editor-in-ChiEf
Dr. Ayanna Thompson came to Rhodes on behalf of the English de-partment to address how one can come to understand Shakespeare on Thurs-day, Nov. 2. As President-elect of the Shakespeare Association of America, Thompson has focused much of her time researching non-traditional cast-ing what it means to teach Shakespeare with purpose. When asked what she feels is the best way for instructors to portray and per-petuate the modern relevance of Shake-speare, she noted that, due to the fact that the texts are over 400 years old, “It is no surprise when students feel that they are distant from their own lives.” She continued,“The language is 400 years old and is pretty distant from to-day’s American English. Nonetheless, there is great fun to be had in puzzling out the meaning of these complex texts. Math games like Sudoku and word games like crossword puzzles are ridic-ulously popular because people LOVE
puzzles. Well, Shakespeare’s plays are like puzzles, but the puzzle is not the plot or the characters—topics that can be quickly and easily told to students (after all, Shakespeare stole most of his plots from other sources!). Rather, the puzzle is what is being is said, how it is being said, and why it is being said that way. The puzzle is also in figuring out what to do with the ugly parts of Shakespeare—the moments that are racist, sexist, and/or anti-Semitic.” According to Thompson, it is crucial to recognize Shakespearian works as “living texts that take shape and mean-ing in the moment in which we read and perform them.” Only if we do this do they become relevant. Acknowledging the gap between the current generation and that of Shake-speare, Thompson believes the texts are best understood by students if they are perpetuated interactively. “Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be experienced as performance pieces,” Thompson said. However, keeping this in mind, it is not the case that students must perform the plays to understand
them but “it does mean that students should think through the implica-tions of performance choices: this is the groundwork for interpretation and analysis.” To put her statements in context, Thompson said, “When I am teaching Titus Andronicus, I always ask my stu-dents to tell me what Lavinia does at the end of the play. Her father kills her because she has been raped and muti-lated and there are no stage directions to indicate whether Lavinia struggles against her father or if she acquiesces willingly. Students usually have a vision in their heads before I have asked them the question and there is no “right” an-swer. But each performance option has implications for the characterization of Lavinia, her father Titus and the larger family, social and political dynamics. Once students realize there really is no one right answer, then they see the full puzzle of the play. If Lavinia does A at the end, then she must be like B at the beginning, etc. Again, my goal is to get the students to see the text as a living document that comes to life through
their engagement with it.” Her current area of focus, nontradi-tional casting, entails the utilization of actors of color in roles originally imag-ined as white characters to be performed by white actors. When asked about the acceptance of the practice, she said, “Nontraditional casting is practiced so widely now that it has been labelled by some as new-traditional casting. There are very few who argue against nontra-ditional casting on historical grounds. That fight has been won (for the most part). The issues that have not been fully addressed are how to employ non-traditional casting and how audiences make sense of what they are seeing on stage.” Despite this progress, Thompson said, “Race is still such a contested top-ic in American culture (e.g., kneeling at football games) that theatre companies find it tricky to articulate what they are doing for fear of alienating audiences and audiences find it difficult to articu-late their confusions around casting for fear of sounding racist or uneducated.”
Shaking Up Shakespeare
November 10, 2017 Page 5The Sou’wester
Beyond the Gates
Exploring Memphis Through Food: Brother Juniper’s
By Sam Brown ’21Staff Writer
The journey for flavor does not dis-criminate when it comes to meals. Prior to Saturday morning, I realized I have been limiting myself exclusively to din-ners. Needless to say, it was time to shake things up. This week, I traveled about 15 minutes from Rhodes to the Highland Strip which is closer to Uni-versity of Memphis territory. Tucked away on a side street lies Brother Juni-per’s—a Memphis classic for a delicious breakfast. I walked inside and was told the wait would be around 45 minutes. General-ly, my instinct would be to take my ap-
petite to a place where I could be seated immediately but I was told 45 minutes was short for this place. I ordered a mo-cha and waited patiently. During my wait, I read the story behind Brother Juniper’s. The origi-nal Brother Juniper was a cook for St. Francis of Assisi. The family was poor but Brother Juniper still managed to prepare delicious meals—his speciality being homemade bread. As I was sat down and my meal began, it was obvi-ous the bread had not been undersold. Brother Juniper’s is known for its open-face omelets which is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially, it is an omelet that has been unrolled. All in-gredients are placed on top of a three
egg omelet—and it works. I went for the Florentine: a face omelet topped with sautéed spinach, tomatoes, green onions, turkey sausage and mozzarella cheese over a bed of delicious pesto. The face omelets are served with some spec-tacular cheese grits and either toast or a biscuit. Get the biscuit. Although I ordered the Florentine, I left with a yearning to try other open-face omelets because they looked so uniquely delicious. Brother Juniper’s says it is known for the “San Diegan” and the “Garden and Lamb.” The San Diegan includes sautéed portobello mushrooms, green onions, tomatoes, bacon, cheddar and feta on a bed of sour cream and home fries. The Gar-
den and Lamb is a mix of gyro meat, feta, mozzarella, spinach, tomatoes and green onions. Based on the one I ate, I have to assume all of these are terrific. Besides these omelets, Brother Juni-per’s boasts a variety of pancakes, po-tato dishes, waffles, benedicts, breakfast specialities and, of course, an array of coffees. Brother Juniper’s is worth the wait. With the affordable prices and delicious dishes, Brother Juniper’s is a great location for Rhodes students to grab breakfast on the weekends. You will leave stuffed, satisfied and ready for round two next weekend. For this rea-son, I give Brother Juniper’s 4.5/5 stars.
By India Nikotich ’19Staff Writer
For two of Rhodes College’s clos-est neighbors, the coming years will be rife with change. In early October, the Memphis College of Art (MCA) announced it will close by May 2020 after fulfilling its obligation to its cur-rent students. Across Overton Park sits the Brooks Museum of Art, another Memphis institution two months into a major transition: by 2022, the mu-seum will be set up downtown on the riverfront. For many Rhodes students and staff, MCA has been a home to friends and
family who attend, teach and volunteer on the campus. For eighty years, MCA has contributed to Memphis’ hard-fought habit of creative excellence. Many from the Rhodes community are mourning the loss of a sister insti-tution whose existence is connected to our own: another small, private, liberal arts college nestled within our growing, green Midtown neighborhood. “In the immediate term, our attention is focused on the internal MCA fami-ly,” MCA Interim President Laura Hine said in an official statement. “Going forward, we will rely on the thousands of MCA alumni in Memphis and across the country to carry on the legacy of the
college through their art, their creative energy and their innovation.” Many of its beloved properties—like the iconic, white-lattice Rust Hall in Overton Park and office space along Poplar—will be up for sale soon. These changes in the composition of the neighborhood invite questions about Midtown development and opportu-nity. Overton Park will continue to be home to a nine-hole golf course, the Memphis Zoo and the Levitt Shell (in addition to its natural areas and Green-sward) but the exit of the MCA and Brooks Museum leaves much empty space to be filled by developers and community members —if they are up
for the task. “There’s something to be said for the uniqueness of having the zoo, the col-lege and the art museum all in one lo-cation,” Tate Mulligan ’18 said. “How many cities are there already with a downtown art museum? Art should be in a natural space and having tourists come to Overton Park expands the out-side view of Memphis to show different flavors and different districts.” Only time will tell if the Brooks Museum will garner success in its re-development. For now, it is up to the Overton Park Conservancy to find new artists and projects to fill its slowly qui-eting space.
Brooks Museum Moving, Memphis College of Art Closing
November 10, 2017Page 6 T S’
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Hello there! For the rest of the academic year you will notice some political discourse in our Letters to the Editor section of the paper. Each month, Rhodes College Republi-
cans and Rhodes College Democrats will select a topic to discuss for the entire month. � ey will take turns and write into the paper every other week—responding to what the other organization had written the week prior. For the month of November, the two organizations will be discussing tax reform. We en-
courage you to respond to their discourse in a letter as well. Letters can be submitted to [email protected]. -� e Editors
B A S ’RHODES COLLEGE REPUBLICANS PRESIDENT
Last week, my colleague asked for the Rhodes College Republicans to be honest about the tax reform policies put forward by the congressional tax plan. Our colleague asked us to say that tax cuts aren’t tax cuts for all – but rath-er for the elites in society. But being honest, most empirical evidence does not support that claim. Tennessee is a perfect example about how conser-vative tax systems work. We live in a state where taxes are low and fair, and as a result our statewide economic sta-tistics are the best they’ve been in de-cades! Unemployment in Tennessee is at a record-breaking low. Last month, Governor Haslam (TN-R) announced that Tennessee currently sits at 3% un-
employment, which is the lowest re-corded unemployment rate in history. Meanwhile, at the beginning of this year it was reported that Tennesseans would benefi t from a statewide revenue surplus of over $2 billion. How does Tennessee do so well in comparison to other states economically? What do we not have in Tennessee have that other broken states (such as Illinois with their current debt crisis) use? Traditionally blue states like Illinois use a statewide income tax; Tennessee does not. Tra-ditionally blue states like Illinois use a payroll tax; Tennesseans specifi cally voted for a constitutional amendment preventing the state from levying a payroll tax. To argue that conservative taxation does not create economic pros-perity for citizens is not supported by empirical evidence. So, we would ask those opposed to
tax reform to be honest about the Fed-eral tax system: it’s broken. If someone’s an advocate for the #NotOnePenny campaign, a good question to ask their government would be: why don’t we currently have better education in the US? In 2015, the U.S. reportedly took in $3.18 trillion dollars in tax revenue. Why is it with the tax system we cur-rently have, we don’t have better infra-structure? It’s because time and time again, democrats fail to understand the key tenet of economics: governments do not create wealth; individuals and fi rms do. Individuals make goods and pro-vide services which create wealth. Firms do the same. We should never be trust-ing the federal government to create the same type of wealth that businesses and individuals create for themselves. Any and every time a government bu-reaucrat puts restrictions on individu-
als’ or businesses’ abilities to produce, keep the money they earn, and reinvest it for more economic growth, that gov-ernment bureaucrat is putting politics before proven science. We know for a fact that the $15 minimum wage stan-dard will destroy businesses. � at’s not how businesses work. People enter the workforce to gain skills, and then they use those skills to seek better opportu-nities or get raises. Most every problem the government tries to solve via taxa-tion can be solved by individuals and businesses in the private sector – so why don’t we let them? Why don’t we admit that the current tax system is broken? � ere’s no excuse. � e American mod-el, put forward by the White House and passed through the House of Rep-resentatives, is a clear step in the right direction. Honestly, it’s time to get real reform done.
An Honest Response
EDITOR’S NOTE: � e opinions and views expressed in the content below are those solely of the writer and do not re� ect the opinions and views of the Sou’wester or its sta� .
Additionally, the writer takes full responsibility for the accuracy of their work and its adherence to college policy. Letters to the editor are not edited.
November 10, 2017 Page 7The Sou’wester
SportS
So I leave New York. Get to Chat-tanooga and I’m on the news playing football. My name is in the paper. I’m, like, having high yardage in games, scoring touchdowns. Everybody knows my name. I’m going to Walmart and people are saying, “Hey, how you do-ing...” And it hits you—this is the life. But, towards the middle of my first semester here, I just got hit with a lot of shit: relationship-wise, academically, socially. Man, I just got hit with a lot of shit. The icing on the cake was this in-jury I sustained playing flag football. I had to go home for a semester and that threw me out of wack ‘cause now it’s October, November but I’m at home not even in school and I’m sitting down trying to recover and get better. I feel I lost a big sense of what life meant. I felt mortal, so to speak, where I was once this big time football like celebrity in Chattanooga. And I’m here and I’m just a regular-ass college student that can be faced with “death.” I mean anything
can happen at this point; there’s noth-ing that makes me different. So I was in the slump for a little bit, but I got back on my feet. Regardless, anyone’s outlook on life is going to change and I guess it’s better it happens earlier, so you’re asking those questions sooner rather than later, and now I am at the point where if I had to set my sights on something to be after college I’d be homeless, like yesterday, ‘cause I’ve got no clue what I want to do. But I know I want to do something that I can be passionate about. Do I remember the play? Yeah, like it was yesterday. We were playing ATO. So I’m playing quarterback that game and we’re losing by like 12 points. So the play right before the half, I go out at receiver and I’m just like, “throw it up I go up,” and get it—like OBJ style—and there was a DB who had it too, so with my one hand I ripped it from him and as he fell backwards his legs clipped mine. So now I’m falling backwards. As
he hits the ground he curls up into a fetal position and I land on top of his knee. His knee perforates my clothing. It’s half-time and my guys were like, “You good, you alright,” and I’m like, “Yeah I’ll be fine, Imma be okay.” And I was thinking like, “guys get hurt every-day. This is regular.” We come back after halftime and we’re just rolling. It was crazy. Touch-down, touchdown, touchdown. And then we’re up by like seven and they were on their last drive. They score. Go for two and they get it. We lost. So afterwards I’m in the library think-ing, “This don’t feel right.” But, you know, it’s still manageable pain so I drank a Powerade and called it a day. I go back to my room and see a friend of mine and she convinces me that if I’m still hurting in the morning I’d go to a doctor then. So I go to the store, come back and go to my other friend’s room and just collapse on her floor. I’m like, “Hillary, I’m in a lot of pain. It hurts.
Ugh.” And she’s like, “Now you know how we feel when we’re bleeding.” And I’m like, “You know this is no time to make period jokes. I could be dying.” So she Googles the symptoms and calls Campus Safety and they drive me to the hospital. Saved my life. Well, I didn’t take any of the pain meds. I was just there lying in the bed in pain. Dealing with it. The lowest of the low was when I was in the bed and couldn’t eat. I woke up in the middle of a night and there was an Arby’s com-mercial on the TV and I was just so f*cking hungry. I just missed that, you know, experience of eating—scarfing down fries. I was really craving grapes for a while then. I was thinking of not coming back but I was like, if I don’t come back then they win. Here I am.
Humans of Rhodes: Athlete Adrian Harris ’20
Page 8 November 10, 2017T S’
THE BACK PAGE
B M P ’SATIRE EDITOR
Two students in Introductory Anthro-pology halted an otherwise productive class discussion today when they acci-dentally spoke simultaneously. Both students found it impossible to recover as they continued to interrupt each other by furiously apologizing and urging the other person to speak fi rst. Reports surfaced of the students re-peatedly saying “no, you go” and then making pained sounds of laughter, dra-matically refusing to make a game-time decision and causing pandemonium in Frazier-Jelke the likes of which had nev-er been seen. � e class waited in silence for over two minutes, hoping for one of the stu-dents to take a calculated risk and just jump in there. One student became so distressed she felt forced to escape to the bathroom. “I couldn’t tell if I was getting the go-ahead to speak,” said Andrea Jack-son, 18. “� e professor was somehow making eye contact with both of us at the same time.” Jackson explained that during a nor-mal class, students add to class discus-sion by speaking one at a time but to-day was a whole diff erent ballgame. � e professor reportedly pleaded with students to take a gamble but they each refused and continued to bitch out, ramping up the veritable maelstrom of social tension. After leaving class, Jackson made the added misstep of holding the door open for a male student who was six feet away and they were forced to make sustained eye contact as he approached the doorway.
B R L ’STAFF WRITER
Rhodes Activities Board hosted hyp-notist Matt Grisham last Saturday at the Lair. Grisham entertained a crowd of skeptics and believers with his not so witty humor and mystical power. Grisham used his mind-controlling abilities to hypnotize a few willing Rhodes students. As he took the stage, students debated whether Grisham was actually a man of magic or a mere im-postor.
After choosing a few volunteers to get hypnotized, he put them into a trance and with the snap of his fi nger put them to sleep. At his instruction, they woke and began to act out wacky scenarios. At one point, a male student—under trance of course—went into labor as several others delivered his invisible baby. Later, the volunteers—still under trance—began to sing and dance on stage. He even made them slow dance through the Lair.
His jokes were not great but it was typical stage humor and the volunteers made it entertaining for everyone to watch. Berkeley Barnett ’21 said, “� e hyp-notist was entertaining but I didn’t get hypnotized which was sad. I had to fake it but it might be because I am too much of a spaz to be hypnotized.” Oth-ers thought they may have been hypno-tized but were not certain. All in all, RAB’s show was entertain-ing but only by virtue of its peculiarity.
Students Accidentally Speak At Same Time, Become Too Bashful To Continue Class
