So much to do, so little time. So sleep suffers among college students
By Jessica Watkins
It’s 10 p.m. on a Tuesday-do you know where Adelyn Kishbaugh is?
She’s not asleep under her dark blue bedspread. She’s not brushing her teeth in anticipation of a long winter’s nap. Instead, she’s hurriedly packing her backpack with chemistry books.
“It’s this stupid glow stick project,” she sighs. “The only time everyone in my group was free was 10 p.m. on a Tuesday. And our glow stick has been glowing in the freezer for almost a month. Can you believe that?”
At first glance Kishbaugh, 20, seems energetic enough. As a sophomore English major at Bryn Mawr College, she takes on a slew of academic responsibilities during the day.
And then there are practices for her rugby team, the Horned Toads. And there are rugby games. And there are Student Government Association meetings.
And she has friends who are acting in each of the two plays on campus, so she has to attend both of those. And she has friends in two different a cappella 
groups, so she has to attend their shows. And then she has to clean her room, a testament to all of the above strewn with playbills, posters, and rugby gear.
She’s only slacked off on one of her daily duties-sleeping.
Kishbaugh is not alone-a recent study by the National Sleep Foundation found that 63 percent of college students do not get enough sleep, and those at Bryn Mawr are no exception. In a survey, close to 54 percent of Bryn Mawr students considered themselves sleep deprived.
And don’t think these women are awake chatting or watching TV-87 percent of Bryn Mawr students blame schoolwork for transforming them into Ladies of the Night.
“My sleep schedule varies intensely,” Kishbaugh explains while sitting cross-legged on her bed. “How late I stay up depends on what I have due the next day.”
Does she pull all-nighters?
“Oh yeah.”
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December 31 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
There are students who find life beyond Red Solo cups
By Alex Stratyner
It’s Friday night, and John, a junior at Haverford College, is hiding in a cabinet.
This is no small feat for a fully grown twentysomething male, but so far his plan is working: it’s been over 15 minutes and no one has found him.
Outside, parties are in full swing. Students who have spent the past five days walking to and from class and the library have put their academic commitments on hold.
Tonight, they are pursuing something different and far more easy to define than the illusive “intellectual commitment” that consumes their academic work week.
They want to get wasted. Shit-faced. Trashed. Smashed. Blasted. Hammered. Drunk.
Call it what you want, but it comes in a red Solo cup.
Dressed in their Friday night best, students filter in and out of dorms, headed toward wherever the sound of muffled dance music is coming from, the bass vibrations guiding the way. Girls spotted in sweat pants during the week have pulled their high heels out of the closet and now have smoky eyes, pouty lips, and styled hair. Their shoes clack against the sidewalk as they make their way toward the night’s destination.
For many of these 18 to 22-year-olds, what’s in store for tonight is illegal, but underage drinking - and any of the poor choices to follow - are explained away with six little words: “It’s part of the college experience.”
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December 31 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
This is the night to shine for two new members of Haverford’s premier a cappella group.
By Mara Miller
It’s 9:10 the night before the show, and Leo Sussan doesn’t know his lines.
Other members of the Humtones, Haverford College’s oldest and one of its most popular a cappella groups, are getting a tiny bit tense. In less than 24 hours they have to sing a little, dance a little, perform corny skits, show corny videos-in other words, give students what they expect from a big Humtones show.
The 10 ‘tones sit in a circle on a small elevated platform on one side of the student center, which is just an old gymnasium with a few comfy chairs and a new TV mounted on the wall. They are rehearsing one of several comedic skits for their end-of-semester performance. Sussan, though a sophomore, is one of two new members welcomed into the group just this fall. In the skit, he’s supposed to be portraying an attendee of a Vampire Affinity Group meeting, where the Humtones drop pun after pun in mockery of the Twilight saga in addition to inside jokes about various campus personalities. But his cue comes, and Sussan is silent. “Uhhhh….”
“Dude,” says Mike Gelberg, a senior Humtone. “I know you’ve got a lot going on, but you’ve gotta memorize your stuff.”
“I know, I know,” Sussan mumbles.
They make it through the scene, but nobody is thrilled. “That was pretty terrible,” says Gelberg.
There’s a five minute break, and they scatter to get a drink or go to the bathroom. One remains in the gym, pacing laps around the stage with hands in pockets, mouthing to himself what could be his lines or lyrics for the performance. It is Dan Ikeda, a freshman, and the other novice in the group.
When they it is time to practice the songs, so the guys put the shaky skit behind them and arrange themselves around a central microphone with Sussan, the program’s first soloist, out front. A chance for redemption?
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December 28 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Winter intramural basketball is the place to be at Haverford College
By Jordan Schilit
The fields of Haverford College are all covered with an abundance of snow; temperatures fall and students huddle inside their dorms. But shoes are still being laced and baskets sunk and the gym inside Gooding Arena is just getting warmed-up.
No, this isn’t the NCAA. March Madness won’t tip-off until three months from now. But don’t think basketball throwing, breakaway tackling, and trash talking are out of the picture. You can’t ignore the on-court antics. And some soak in the drama. But this particular basketball league is generally fun and enjoyable.
“Sometimes IBB gets a little heated,” said A league leading “Dot Com” Captain Nathan Karnovsky. “Guys get into arguments but after the game ends, it’s as if they never happened. IBB provides a fun, competitive outlet.”
Intramural Basketball (IBB) at Haverford College is a tradition that dates back at least into the 1980s. This year, IBB has two leagues. The “A” league is more competitive. Teams are usually made up of varsity players from other intercollegiate sports. The “B” league is more casual. Teams are usually made up of students who have little basketball experience. There are a total of 20 teams — seven in the A league and 13 in the B league. Each team plays approximately 10 games throughout the regular season. In addition, the A league has an organized playoff system for the four teams who end the regular season on top of the standings.
IBB is heavy with players who play varsity in other sports, but turn to basketball during their off season from baseball, soccer, lacrosse - you name it.
The A league is entirely male this year. Dot Com, a primarily non-varsity athlete sophomore team, currently sits atop the pecking order in the standings. Haverford Baseball has two A league teams. Men’s Lacrosse has split up into two teams as well. Soccer and freshman varsity athletes have also entered teams.
In the B league, teams are often coed and sometimes entirely female. They range from the women’s varsity lacrosse, field hockey, and soccer teams to junior varsity men’s squads. Some lineups are filled with pick-up basketball naturals, whereas others have players with no playing experience.
Haverford Basketball captain Matt Palmer ‘10 is the current IBB commissioner. He organizes the A and B leagues and determines their schedules. He makes sure to watch every IBB game during the season.
“I have noticed that IBB is taken very seriously at Haverford,” Palmer said. “Most teams in the A league consistently hold practices.”
Both the A and B league teams have two games scheduled per week. The first games are either on Wednesday or Thursday. The second games are always on Sunday. All games are played in the Calvin Gooding ‘84 Arena. continue reading »
December 28 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
What is that smell, students ask. Here is the answer.
By Harper Hubbeling
You can smell them from the stairwell.
Students unconsciously wrinkle their noses as they haul heavy backpacks up the three flights to their Tuesday morning Intro Psychology lecture in the Koshland Integrated Natural Science Center at Haverford College.
Most don’t know where - or what - the stench comes from.
“Smells like sewer rat,” one boy grumbles.
Close. The smell is mice: 1,000 of them.
Two flights above the psychology classrooms, on the deserted fifth floor of the biology wing, behind two heavy steel doors with restricted key card access, is room S501. The mouse room.
“The mouse suite is pretty bare,” said Eliza Reiss, a senior biology major and the student manager who is in charge of maintaining the rodents residing in room S501.
Inside, overhead fluorescent lights flood concrete floors. Floor-to-ceiling metal shelves line the walls. The shelves hold 200 cages. Each cage holds two to six lab mice. Bend over and you can see them through the sides of their Plexiglas cages: squirming, tunneling, and compulsively scratching their flimsy ears.
While most Haverford students don’t even know this room exists, a select few know it well.
Working in S501
Reiss spends three hours a week in S501. She feeds, waters, and cleans cages for the biology department mice and oversees the other student workers. She enjoys the job. She says she, “likes spending time with the mice,” especially when other aspects of her life at Haverford get busy and hectic.
“I do talk to them sometimes when I’m there alone,” Reiss admits.
Brian Suh, a junior biology major, is another student who frequents S501. He cares for the psychology department’s mice.
“It’s not very complex work,” said Suh, “so I can just chill and listen to music.”
While Suh admits that the, “repetition sometimes gets to (him),” he also says he enjoys the job.
“I get to do my own thing,” he says.
Both Suh and Reiss agree on their least favorite part of the job.
“The smell! I hate the smell!” says Reiss.
“If I go in my clothes will smell really bad,” said Suh. Suh and Reiss plan their hours based on shower schedules –working late at night or right before athletic practice.
But while the mice in S501 may reek like any other rodent, they are not your average field mouse. Most of these mice have been inbred for twenty generations.
Twenty generations of inbreeding makes for very polite, docile, but not exceptionally bright mice.
“They are slow,” said Reiss.
These mice don’t bite. And they have almost no sense of self-preservation.
“When they escape they just sit on top of their cages,” said Nicole Cunningham, a biology research assistant at Haverford, recently given the title of “colony manager.” continue reading »
December 13 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
A surprising number of Bryn Mawr students struggle with eating disorders
By Clare Mullaney
If you saw Bryn Mawr College senior Joanne Mitchell walking to class or crossing Lancaster Avenue, you would think she was fine.
Her long, blonde hair might stand out, or her sense of style: a fashionable grey cardigan over a graphic tee of Hillary Clinton. When people speak with her, they find her bright, witty, and compassionate. They might think that for her, life is easy.
But, that’s anything but true. For Mitchell, every day is a battle.
Since sixth grade, Mitchell, whose true name she prefers not to be used in the article, has been struggling with anorexia. For years, her life has been defined by depression, anxiety, and obsessions with weight and food.
“If I was forced to eat, I would throw up or over exercise,” she said.
Most people at Bryn Mawr don’t know about Mitchell’s struggles and many students, including Mitchell herself, complain about the lack of discussion concerning eating disorders on campus. 
Like Mitchell, 10 million females and one million males struggle with an eating disorder, according to the National Association of Eating Disorders. The organization defines anorexia nervosa as life-threatening disorder characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss. Bulimia nervosa is also life threatening and is defined by a cycle of behaviors such as self-induced vomiting to compensate for binge eating. Unlike bulimia, people with binge eating disorder binge eat without compensatory measures to undo the excessive eating.
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December 12 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Haverford College now has 7 - count ‘em - 7 a cappella groups
By Mara Miller
Haverford College likes to pat itself on the back for things like its varsity cricket team (the only one in America) and the witty and attention-grabbing 13-mph speed-limit signs on campus.
Another of the small college’s claims to fame is its national record for the number of a cappella singing groups per student capita.
For years, there have been five well-established groups at Haverford: two male, two female, and one coed. Add to that a handful of groups made up of students from Haverford as well as Bryn Mawr and even Swarthmore and, well, if you want to sing you’ve got a lot of options.
But in the last two years, that smorgasboard has grown even larger with the addition of two more a cappella groups to the Haverford and Bryn Mawr consortium: Counterpoint, whose name itself sounds like a challenge to the status quo, and the Mainliners, whose name refers either to the college’s ritzy environs or to a method of heroin injection, whichever you prefer.
At first, Haverford didn’t take so well to these new groups. A cappella is the stuff of tradition, and being accepted by the S-Chords or the Humtones, the two revered all-male groups, is like getting into the coolest frat. You can’t just build a new frat. Or can you?
Counterpoint was founded in 2007 by two Bryn Mawr students disgruntled with their former troupe, the Night Owls. Counterpoint started out as coed, but is now all women, though its members attend both Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Of the original male contingent, one left to focus on academics, one graduated, and one got into the S-Chords, “which he’d dreamt about since birth,” said now-senior Ryan Mulligan, the last man standing. When Counterpoint made the all-female switch, Mulligan hung around to help with administrative work.
He said that Counterpoint has always struggled for recognition, battling the assumption that people only start new groups because they can’t get into the “real” ones.
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December 09 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Bryn Mawr students resist the impulse to label their sexuality
By Margaret Ernst
Natalie Armentrout, 20, and Sarah Capasso, 21, share a cigarette. Their hands hang outside the window of Capasso’s dorm room at Bryn Mawr College. They’ve reached an agreement.
Capasso, who has long, brown hair and wears shimmering tights, has identified as a lesbian since summer. But Armentrout has found every reason to avoid putting a name on her sexual orientation, even since she started dating a girl last fall.
“Labels are supposed to help you define yourself within a larger community,” says Armentrout. “But they shouldn’t limit you.”
Capasso nods. Though she has begun to find empowerment in calling herself a lesbian, Capasso says a label shouldn’t put an end to “fluidity” in her sexuality.
Call Armentrout a non-labeler, or a lesbian who’s not really a lesbian. Or better yet, don’t call her anything.
There’s an increasing constituency of women at Bryn Mawr who are dating people of the same sex, but who don’t want to choose a label for themselves. Like at other “Seven Sister” schools, the LGBTQ community has grown larger and more visible at Bryn Mawr since the 1980s. Now, fewer eyebrows raise when students date fellow women even when neither identify as gay. The lines between the gay community and the straight community are blurring-at least on campus.
‘Just me’
Sarah Sheplock, 21, is a senior who is dating another woman for the first time. She says she doesn’t really know if there are words for her sexuality.
She does have two words: “Just me.”
Anisha Chirmule, 21, and Crystal Fraser, 20, laugh when they find out they identify the same way. They’re dating, but they’ve never really talked about labels before.
“I’m attracted to whom I’m attracted to,” says Fraser.
“I kind of just like who I like,” says Chirmule.
The fluidity is a sea change from their parents’ generation, when identification with a label-lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans-gender, or queer-was the foundation of gay liberation.
For Armentrout, the “label of not labeling” was confusing if not devastating to her parents.
“For my dad, the gay rights movement was people who absolutely appropriated these labels,” says Armentrout, who wears a silver ring from her girlfriend on her right hand. “This fluidity thing is a whole new concept.”
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December 02 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Blackouts boards that map sexual conquests are a tradition at Haverford dorms
By Jessica Watkins
Haverford College students are no strangers to sexuality. In fact, they’re so familiar with it that they’ve given the month of November an unusual name. They call it Sexvember.
Sexvember brings many special events to campus — baskets of sex toys raffled off in front of the Dining Center, a special information session on “rough sex”– that only come around once a year. But, not every month can be Sexvember, which means something else has to remind students about the sex culture on their campus. For that, they have blackout boards.
In each freshman dorm there are different floors. And running through each of these floors is a hallway. And hanging up in each hallway is the ultimate reminder — the freshman blackout boards.
They’re simple, really. Just a map of the campus divided into small squares. When students have sex with someone from a certain dorm, that building gets “blacked out” with magic marker.
It’s up to the Customs People, two sophomores on each hall who act as freshman mentors, to create and decorate the boards before the freshman arrive each August.
No two boards are alike. Some are mounted on neon pink poster board. Others are decorated with stickers, pictures and glitter. And some have added nearby colleges such as Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and the University of Pennsylvania to the list of places waiting to be “blacked out.”
“They’re weird,” said Kevin Caulfield, a Haverford freshman, frowning at the blackout board on his hall. The board is right outside of his alcove, where he lives with three other male students.
Sixty-three squares are lined up on the board.
Three are crossed out.
“My floor gets criticized and made fun of because we barely have any squares blacked out,” he remarked.
Then he laughs. “I heard that the floor above us is planning an assault where they can pair one person up with each of us so they can finally black us out on their board.”
How’s that for school-spirited competition?
Jack McNeilly, 18, thinks the boards promote a sexual rivalry between floors. Otherwise, they wouldn’t compete and competition is fun..
“I’m a huge fan,” he said, grinning broadly.
Most students agree. The words “blackout” and “fun” almost always pop up together in conversation.
Love them, hate them
Annie Reading, 18, thinks the boards are fun, “something to talk about.”
“They’re kind of entertaining,” said Lindsay Reid, 18.
“Our hall treats it as a fun thing,” said Christopher Lake, 19.
Then there are the neutrals, those students who remain ambivalent when it comes to talking about the boards. continue reading »
December 02 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »