THE COLLEGE HILL

INDEPENDENT
VOLUME XXII, ISSUE 8 Road Trips // 9
APRIL 7, 2011 Copycat Art // 11
BROWN/RISD WEEKLY Underdogs // 13
 IN MEMORIAM: THE ISSUE:
Matthew Ernest Strickland B’09, famous for his love of life and passion for
people, passed away in Birmingham, AL on Tuesday, April 5. He was 23. Born in News
Huntsville, Alabama, Matty marched to the beat of his own drummer long before at-
tending Brown University; he started the very first club to represent the Democratic WEEK IN REVIEW p.2
Party at his predominantly conservative high school. He was an adept hunter, and by Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, and Erica Schwiegershausen
not only did he possess an almost inhuman athletic prowess (he inadvertently humili-
ated Keeney’s gym-goers on a regular basis), he was an Urban Studies concentrator FAMILY PLANNING & THE FEDERAL BUDGET IMPASSE p.3
and architecture expert. Since early childhood, he was passionate about becoming by Ben Tucker
a doctor. In 2009, Matty was indisputably crowned Mr. Brown after charming the
judges and audience with his outgoing and gregarious nature. And it probably didn’t
hurt that he had an impeccably choreographed dance to “Call on Me” although he Metro
was already well-known around campus for his unbeatable moves. But what made HYPOCRISY AT THE HOME SHOW
him a truly remarkable man was his empathy and compassion for others. Never p.5
did he pass judgment on a stranger or a close friend. Matty was very confident and by Malcolm Burnley
true to himself, and that was clear by the way he treated others--with love and re-
spect. His unwavering enthusiasm for adventure and his love of people will be both PROVIDENCE BITES p.11
celebrated and missed. by Emma Berry and Jonah Wolf

Opinions
CAN’T KEEP ‘EM DOWN ON THE FARM BILL p.7
by Ben Tucker

Features
NEW MEDIA TRAVEL JOURNALISM p.9
by Mimi Dwyer and Annika Finne

THE INDY IS: Arts

MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Emily Martin • NEWS Emily Go- RUNAWAY PRINCE p.11
golak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford • METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley, by Ana Alvarez
Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf • FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate
Welsh • ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto • LITERARY THE ART OF BARTER p.17
Kate Van Brocklin • SCIENCE Maggie Lange • SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg by Olivia Jen é Fagon
Berman • OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan• LIST Dayna Tortorici •
STAFF WRITER Erica Schwiegershausen • CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipin-
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TRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson • DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis, CINDERELLAS ON THE COURT
Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Jennings, Eli Schmitt, Joanna Zhang
p.13
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• PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher • STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Sarah Friedland,
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Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex Verdolini Literary
COVER ART Emily Martin A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE p.15
by Sam Alper, Erik Font, Taylor Anne Lane, and Micah Thanhauser
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EPHEMERA:

WEEK
REVIEW
by Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, and Erica Schwiegershausen
FACEBOOK SQUASHES “THIRD
PALESTINIAN INTIFADA”
After receiving numerous complaints and appeals, in-
cluding a request from the Anti-Defamation League—a
U.S.-based Jewish advocacy group—and a letter to Mark
Zuckerberg from Israeli Foreign Minister Yuli Edel-
stein, Facebook agreed to take down a page titled “Third
Palestinian Intifada.” By the time the page was removed
on March 29, it had been up for several weeks and had
garnered over 350,000 followers. In addition to quotes
and film clips advocating killing Jews and Israelis, the
page called for Palestinians to take to the streets on May
15—Nabka Day, the date that Arabs mourn the estab-
lishment of Israel—and liberate Jerusalem and Palestine
through violence.
Facebook said that despite the use of the word “in-
tifada,” which translates to “holy war” and has been
associated with violence in the past, the page began as
a “peaceful protest.” It wasn’t until the page’s public-
ity grew that comments “deteriorated to direct calls for
violence,” claims Facebook’s public policy communica-
tions manager Andrew Noyes. One such comment read,
“Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the
Muslims have killed all of the Jews.”
Initially, Facebook seemed hesitant to remove the
page, citing the company’s belief that people should be
free to express their opinions, stating that though “some
kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for
someone… that alone is not a reason to remove the dis-
cussion.”
Such ethical dilemmas are not exclusive to Face-
book; the page directed users to related content on Twit-
ter, YouTube, and other websites. Facebook ultimately
rationalized their decision to remove the page by citing
existing content regulations that prohibit posting mate-
rial that contains or promotes “hateful or violent content
directed at an individual or group.”
Edelstein and the Anti-Defamation League have ap-
plauded Facebook’s decision to take down the page. But
not everyone is so easily satisfied: American attorney
Larry Klayman filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Facebook
last Thursday in response to the page. Klayman, who de-
scribes himself as an American citizen of Jewish origin,
alleges that Facebook did not take down the “Third Pal-
estinian Intifada” page soon enough, and willfully kept
it up in order to further their reviews and the net worth
of the company. A Facebook spokesman told the French
news agency AFP that these claims were “without mer-
it,” and that the social-networking site plans to fight the
suit vigorously. But of course, we all know by now: you
don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few
enemies. –ES
APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
IN
CRACKED OUT
First they stop serving peanuts, and then there’s a hole
in the ceiling: the airline industry is having a tough time.
On April 1, a Southwest flight between Phoenix and
Sacramento was forced to make an unexpected pit stop
when a crack in the fuselage erupted into a five-foot
hole. While 34,000 feet above Arizona, the Boeing 737
experienced a sudden drop in pressure; passengers fum-
bled with oxygen masks, wishing they hadn’t tuned out
the pre-flight seatbelt spiel so quickly. All 118 passengers
landed unharmed in Yuma, AZ, with the exception of
one valiant flight attendant who sustained a bloody nose
during the debacle.
Southwest cancelled about 300 flights on Friday,
leaving passengers stranded in airports across the coun-
try. Engineers conducted inspections on 79 other 737s,
turning up five more planes with small fuselage cracks.
When a flight costs only sixty bucks, it’s no wonder that
these overworked planes aren’t getting the TLC they de-
serve.
It turns out, however, that Southwest’s aggressive
cost-cutting program (RIP peanuts and personal TVs)
may not be the only one to blame for the hole; the fault
may actually lie with Boeing. On Tuesday, the company
announced that many of its 737 planes would be suscep-
tible to fatigue cracks sooner than expected. Originally,
however, Boeing engineers boasted that the aircraft
would not need to be inspected until they had completed
60,000 cycles (takeoffs and landings). Their guess was
wrong: the tired 737 that split open on Friday had only
completed about 40,000.
As per an emergency directive issued Tuesday, the
Federal Aviation Administration is requiring inspections
of all 737s over 30,000 cycles. But just because you and
the plane you were on made it back from spring break all
in one piece, don’t breathe easy yet. In the next twenty
days allotted for inspections, it’s anyone’s guess how
many more planes will turn up cracked. This is the third
in a string of recent fatigue tears, following a similar in-
cident with a Southwest jet in 2009, and another on an
American Airlines 757 last October. After the first and
second emergency landings, you’d think the FAA would
have gotten the need for earlier and more thorough in-
spections. Third tear’s the charm? –BC
NEWS|2
PILLS FOR POPULARITY ILLS
This week, the drug world figured out what consumers
really need: “Fluent in Klingon?” reads a billboard along
a highway outside Charleston, “Consider REACHE-
MOL.” Another: “Before REACHEMOL, I was just a
tool. Now, I’m the whole shed.” Apparently, Reache-
mol (popularitus maximol) is a drug intended to treat
Deficient Popularity Disorder, a disease not listed in
the American Psychiatric Association’s standard Diag-
nostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The
drug fits nicely into the pantheon of semi-homonym fad
drugs—“Aciphex” for heartburn, “Lunesta” for sleep,
“Viagra” for youth and a powerful flow). Reachemol,
for its part, is prescribed to “increase popularity, boost
self-esteem, become more attractive to the opposite sex,
win elections, sway juries, and weasel your way back
into the will.” As Milton Carrero writes in the Leigh Val-
ley Health Blog, “When I saw the next one asking if my
friends on Facebook are my only friends, I almost cried.
‘Oh my God,’ I thought, ‘I’m a patient.’ ”
The catch, as you’ve probably guessed, is that
Reachemol isn’t real—and it isn’t a dark social commen-
tary on overmedication, either. It’s a new nationwide
billboard marketing campaign from Adams Outdoor
intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of billboard
advertising. You know, like the ones that read, YOU’RE
READING THIS, AREN’T YOU? Of course, when the
billboard is running next to countless nondescript law-
firm and casino ads, the point is probably moot. Plus, the
people who are looking into Reachemol tend to be a little
sensitive: as Carrero mourned after asking his doctor for
the drug, “I was disappointed because I really want more
friends who refuse to get Facebook accounts.” –MD
3 |NEWS ANALYSIS APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

N N I N G
P L A
A M
F HE FED ILY ERAL
T D G E T
B PASSE
U
IM
Phys
ician
s Sup
port
Title
X on
Capit
by E ol Hi
rin S
chik ll
owsk
i

A
s the Independent went to press, leg-
islators on Capitol Hill were still
struggling to agree on a budget
for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011. If
Congressmen fail to do so by April 8, the
government will shut down for the fifth
time in US history—which, according to
The Economist, would “be highly disrup-
tive” given the current fragility of the eco-
nomic recovery.
In negotiating a budget, legislators
have been particularly torn over Title X,
the only federal grant program devoted
entirely to family planning and related
preventative-health services like prena-
tal care, educational programs, contra-
ceptive counseling, and cancer and STI
screenings. In February, a Republican-
controlled House passed a budget that
would have eliminated Title X completely
and drastically reduced funding for doz-
ens of other programs. The Senate reject-
ed this bill in early March.
As budget negotiations wore on last

ed
eed
nn
ome
dw
eI slan
0R
hod
,00 en age
62 d wom
*O ver e Islan
Rhod
c ent of
en p e r
* Sixte
en t of Rh od e Is land clients served
* Eighty perc
* As of 2006, Rhode Island had seventeen family planning centers that received Title-X funding. That included nine community health centers, seven independent clinics,
and exactly one Planned Parenthood.
week, your correspondent joined physi-
cians from across the country for Federal
Advocacy Day, an event sponsored by
the American Medical Women’s Associa-
tion (AMWA) and Physicians for Repro-
ductive Choice and Health (PRCH). On
March 31, approximately 60 physicians,
nurses, medical students, and other par-
ticipants visited dozens of Congressional
offices to argue—not as lobbyists but as
constituents—that cutting Title X would
have devastating consequences for the
poorest women and families nationwide.
ON THE GROUND
Title X-funded services must be offered
free of charge to those living at or be-
low the poverty line; this, according
to the Guttmacher Institute, describes
two-thirds of all clients who receive care
through Title X-funded providers. The
National Family Planning & Reproductive
Health Association (NFPRHA) reports
that in 2009, Title X enabled providers
to perform 2.2 million Pap tests, over 2.3
million breast exams, nearly six million
STI screenings, and one million HIV tests.
By law, no Title X money may be used for
abortions.
Early Thursday morning, Advocacy
Day leaders emphasized the importance
of medical professionals’ stories. First-
hand anecdotes, they explained, make
“these experiences come alive for leg-
islators and others who don’t get to see
what [medical professionals] see” on the
ground. Many participants had stories
to share about patients who benefit from
Title X and other publicly funded family-
planning programs.
Dr. Catherine McKegney B’76 told
of a woman named Olivia who was from
rural Minnesota and marginally unem-
ployed. Olivia was unable to support the
fourth child with which she was pregnant
and would ultimately choose to have an
abortion. She would then seek affordable
contraception to prevent subsequent un-
intended pregnancies. Olivia wanted her
fallopian tubes tied after giving birth to her
second child, but her doctor maintained it
could not be done without a husband’s sig-
nature. In reality, there was no such law,
but it did prevent Olivia, who had no hus-
band at the time, from having the proce-
dure done. When McKegney placed her
intrauterine device (IUD), which was cov-
ered by a state family-planning program
designed for women who neither qualify
for Medicaid nor have insurance, McK-
egney said Olivia “practically kissed [her]
feet for putting that IUD in, she was so
grateful.” The IUD would prevent Olivia
from having further unintended pregnan-
cies or abortions ever again.
Through contraceptive counseling
APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
in
rvices
tive se
tr acep
ed con
pport
licly su
pub
ance
healt h insur
44 h ave no
d fif teen to
or below the federal
pr ov id er s liv e at
by Title X-funded
and services, publicly-funded family plan-
ning obviates a total of 800,000 abortions
each year, according to the Guttmacher
Institute. However, some who oppose
Title X do so because providers may give
an abortion referral upon the client’s re-
quest. This referral consists, according
to National Abortion Federation, of “a
name, address, telephone number, and
other ‘relevant factual information,’ such
as what insurance is accepted.” Although
many organizations receive Title-X fund-
ing—the majority of which are state, coun-
ty, and local health departments—Planned
Parenthood has recently found itself at the
center of the Title-X debate due to the
fact that some Planned Parenthoods offer
abortion services.
Even if a Congressman’s constituents
are opposed to abortions—which, in any
case, are not funded through Title X—the
fact still remains: Title X saves money. In
the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and
Underserved, researchers reported that for
every dollar spent on Title X, taxpayers
saved four.
Christina Nordstrand, a second-year
medical student, told a vivid anecdote
about the cost-saving benefits of Title
X. Ana was one of Nordstrand’s first pa-
tients, a mother of four who had been ad-
dicted to heroin between ages twelve and
sixteen. Due to the prenatal care she re-
ceived at a Title X-funded clinic, Ana gave
birth to two healthy children despite being
addicted to heroin. Following two uncom-
plicated deliveries, neither child required
a stay in the neonatal intensive-care, which
costs $3,500 per day according to a recent
article published in the American Medical
Association Journal of Ethics. Nordstrand
said Ana currently has four children and,
though “healthy now, Ana is still far below
the poverty line and continues to receive
care at similar clinics.”
THE DEFICIT
Still, there is no escaping the fact that
many programs will need to be cut if Con-
gress is to reduce the nation’s $1.3 trillion
deficit. Last Thursday, the halls of Con-
gressional office buildings were filled with
various interest groups, from insurance-
company representatives to park advo-
cates to religious groups to the AMWA/
PRCH physicians, all of them hoping to
leave an impression on lawmakers.
According to the nonpartisan, non-
profit Congressional Management Foun-
dation, in-person issue visits from con-
stituents are most likely to influence an
undecided legislator’s decision; constitu-
ents’ individualized letters and emails,
phone calls, and comments during tele-
phoned town-hall meetings are each at
least ten percent less likely to have “a lot
NEWS ANALYSIS| 4
.
onal
ternati
RTI In
and
stitute
acher In
eGuttm
rces: th
Sou
8.
200
ent.
e is 2 2 perc
al figur
ation
; the n
poverty level.
of positive influence.” For politicians like Kingston, cutting
During Advocacy Day, Dr. Neelum Title X would seem to be as much about
Aggarwal, a Chicago-based neurologist political leverage as reducing the deficit.
specializing in Alzheimer’s Disease, ex- According to The Wall Street Journal, Presi-
plained to a Congressional aide that cut- dent Obama said that “there can be some
ting funding for Title X—while better negotiations about composition” of the
than eliminating it altogether—would be budget cuts, but that he would not com-
extremely damaging for the communities promise on ideological matters like abor-
that rely on it. “With cuts,” Dr. Aggarwall tion at a time when the priority should be
said, “trust is lost. That’s extremely hard preventing a shutdown. The same article
to rebuild and repair. People expect to quotes Obama as saying, “We don’t have
come to these clinics and be able to get the time for games, not on this.”
care they need.” If the government shutdown of 1995-
When they can’t—when, for example, 1996 can provide any political lesson, it’s
one clinic can no longer offer reduced- that no party wins when a government
cost STI screenings—a patient may forgo shutdown occurs; the public loses faith in
screenings and other preventative-care the government as a whole. Mark Heth-
services for years at a time. Or if a cervical erington argued in The American Political
cancer test result is inconclusive, a doctor Science Review that voters’ declining politi-
may not be able to repeat it due to lack of cal trust can actually contribute to future
funding. Dr. Aggarwal said that “normal- voter dissatisfaction by “creating an envi-
ly, when funding gets cut the biggest hit is ronment in which it is difficult for those in
in the hours that the clinic stays open, the government to succeed.”
hours that someone is handling the phone So much is at stake, both politically
calls—and, if cuts are severe, it limits ac- and in terms of affordable health care, but
cess to physicians. A clinic may have three as it stands now, the future of Title X is un-
to five physicians and with cuts it goes clear; it may be cut entirely, partially, or
down to two physicians. This causes over- not at all. The best one can do at this point
load for everyone, long waits, and with is hope that Americans living at or below
long wait times, people leave.” the poverty line will still have access to
While visiting Alzheimer’s patients in contraceptive and reproductive-health
their homes, Dr. Aggarwal meets women services after April 8.
who care for loved ones with Alzheimer’s.
She said they quite often rely on Title X-
funded clinics for free cancer screenings,
contraceptive services, and other preven-
tative health-care measures. One of these ERIN SCHIKOWSKI B’11.5 wonders
women told Dr. Aggarwal, “I need to whether the zoo will need volunteers dur-
keep me strong so that I can take care of ing a shutdown.
Mom.  Mom can’t go in a nursing home;
I promised I wouldn’t do that to her.”
Most physicians attending Advocacy Day
agreed that entire families—not just wom-
en—benefit from Title X.
POLITICS AS USUAL
Unfortunately, some Representatives
are firmly opposed to compromise. On
Monday, The Hill reported a House aide
as saying that the Republican leadership
was “preparing for a shutdown. Instead of
coming to the table to work with Demo-
crats and the White House, who have of-
fered $33 billion in cuts, Speaker Boehner
is taking his marching orders from the Tea
Party, who want to ‘cut it or shut it.’”
In digging their heels in, some Repub-
licans have framed the elimination of Title
X as being more than just a budget-reduc-
tion measure. In reference to health-care
reform and Planned Parenthood, Roll Call
recently reported Representative Jack
Kingston (R-Ga) as saying, “There are
some things that we have to be able to go
back to our base and say we got a victory,
not just a mathematical accomplishment.”

The hidden turmoil of
housing in Rhode Island
F
rom March 31 to April 3, thousands of Southern
New Englanders flocked to the annual Home Show
sponsored by the Rhode Island Builders Association, a
gathering of various segments of the housing industry—
from lenders to lawn-care specialists, geothermal install-
ers to septic designers—who set up shop in the massive
second-floor hall of the Rhode Island Convention Cen-
ter. The $10 admission gave convention-goers access to a
maze of over 400 exhibitions pitching home products that
ranged from mortgage loans to steam-powered mops, all
part of a carnivalesque atmosphere.
If the Home Show is indicative of the health of
Rhode Island’s housing industry, the spring of 2011
will be a cheery time for homeowners. Positivity ema-
nated from exhibitors, who handed out free candy and
showed renewed optimism in a resurgent housing mar-
ket. Around every corner were deals and sweepstakes on
anything remotely related to a home: low-priced window
installations, roulette wheels with home insurance poli-
cies, jars of jelly-beans promising100 gallons of free oil for
a correct guess. Most significantly, lenders, bankers, and
realtors were enthusiastically catering to customers, with
hope unfelt since the housing boom ended in 2005.
“It’s a buyer’s market,” Bruce Lane, the Head of
Finance for William and Stuart Real Estate in Cranston,
says, voicing the consensus opinion in the housing indus-
try right now. “There is an unnatural combination of low
interest rates and low prices,” which makes for oppor-
tune conditions for first-time buyers and investors alike.
“The damage of the bust has been done. From here on in,
all the opportunities are for buyers, because reality has
set in for sellers.”
Over the past year, he says that properties have been
selling at 75 to 80 percent of their peak 2005 levels, and
up to 40 percent down in some instances—that means buy-
ing a $270,000 property for only $180,000. But Lane’s
assessment oversimplifies the current housing market
in Rhode Island, where opportunities are not evenly
distributed across income brackets. Lane acknowledges
that the current market favors home buyers with income
over $100,000, who can capitalize on depressed property
values; meanwhile, multi-family housing units continue
to be foreclosed upon in urban communities, especially
Providence.
The Home Show is primarily a commercial housing
extravaganza, but its superficial positivity glosses over
the troubling state of affordable housing in Rhode Island.
Underneath the event’s brightly-colored balloon animals
and promotional glass boxes filled with billowing money
is the stark reality: a dreary present and volatile future for
by Malcolm Burnley
Graphic by Eli Schmitt
low-income housing statewide.
OCEAN STATE HOUSING WOES
Cranston’s William and Stuart Real Estate saw a 15 per-
cent rise in sales from 2009 to 2010, part of a slew of en-
couraging figures recently released that cite an uptick
in first-home buyers across the state. According to the
Rhode Island Builders Association, building permits for
single-family homes rose in 2010, up 6 percent from
2009—but still down 50 percent from 2005 levels. Yet
even those slim signs of progress in the housing market
have largely passed over low-income districts, where
multi-family units have been hit hardest in the housing
crisis.
Of the 1,213 foreclosures in Providence from Janu-
ary 2009 to December 2010, 816 were multi-family
homes; statewide, they accounted for 58 percent of all
foreclosures. In multi-family units, tenants can be pay-
ing continuous rent and then suddenly find themselves
evicted because another tenant balked on monthly pay-
ments or an owner failed to pay the bank. Much of the
state’s $5.6 billion lost to foreclosures, has been incurred
by low-income residents living in multi-family units. Fur-
thermore, when multi-family homes are boarded up,
they become noticeable blights on neighborhoods—since
they’re visibly larger than single-family homes—and nega-
tively impact surrounding property values.
Census figures from 2000 to 2010 indicate the per-
sistence of high foreclosure rates in low-income commu-
nities throughout the state, particularly in Central Falls,
Providence, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket. In part of the
Smith Hill neighborhood in Providence, about 20 percent
of all homes are vacant. At the Home Show, this sobering
reality is barely accounted for, except for the few booths
manned by non-profits, such as Rhode Island Housing.
Rhode Island Housing is a 30 year-old organization that
has become a leading provider of loans, grants, and coun-
seling for Rhode Islanders distressed over mortgage pay-
ments, about to enter foreclosure, or currently involved
in one. “There are a lot of hurting people,” Mike Elias,
a Homeownership Assistance Specialist for the organiza-
tion, says, without the unequivocal optimism of fellow
exhibitors.
In the past three months, Elias has seen just about
every type of person come in for counseling: professors,
waitresses, top-level executives, and factory workers.
But most often, he sees couples and individuals suffer-
ing through unemployment or underemployment, fall-
ing deeper in the hole each month. Until Rhode Island’s
stubborn unemployment rate—still hovering around 11
percent (compared to 8.8 percent nationally)—sees sus-
tained improvement, Elias expects the demand for low-
income residency and affordable housing services to rise.
“We go to bat for them, because we know how to
speak the language,” Elias says of his job. During face-
to-face meetings, he provides budget analysis and risk as-
sessment, then puts together a re-modification package
to send to mortgage companies, a blueprint to keep
families in their homes. While the package may take
just weeks to make, mortgage companies rarely re-
spond for months, if at all, often allowing foreclosures
to proceed. Without refinancing a mortgage, there are
few options left for Rhode Islanders who face eviction.
Even the state’s emergency loan services are also begin-
ning to dwindle in number and lose funding.
BUDGET CASUALTIES
When a family spends in excess of 30 percent of income
on housing costs, they become eligible for state money in
affordable housing services. A staggering 46 percent of
Rhode Island currently qualifies, making for an overbur-
dened system. Building Homes Rhode Island, a $50 mil-
lion state program that has constructed 1,000 affordable
homes since 2006, will have exhausted its entire budget
by July 2011. In order to keep pace with affordable hous-
ing needs, it will need another infusion of funds, but no
stimulus has been announced.
The state’s affordable housing crisis will be exacer-
bated in the coming months, as relief programs are threat-
ened by state and federal budget cuts. Rhode Island has
the worst foreclosure crisis in New England and one of
the ten most depressed markets in the nation. Nonethe-
less, Governor Chafee is prepared to eliminate $1.5 mil-
lion in state funding to the Neighborhood Opportunities
Program, a state-run low-income housing initiative cre-
ated in 2001. Rather than scrap the program, which has
built 1,200 low-income housing units in 27 communities
over ten years, Chafee has proposed transferring its bud-
get to Rhode Island Housing.
If the General Assembly approves Chafee’s bud-
get, Rhode Island Housing will have to cut $1.5 million
from its own services to accommodate taking on Neigh-
borhood Opportunities. Richard Godfrey, the execu-
tive director of Rhode Island Housing, spoke over the
phone about the impact of losing $1.5 million for afford-
able housing: “Generally, we provide funding at about
$40,000 per home,” he says, “which translates to 35-40
affordable homes that will not be built.”
At the federal level, House Republicans and Sen-
ate Democrats remain in deadlock over a budget com-
promise, but both parties seem to agree on drastic re-
ductions to affordable housing. Republicans stand to
cut $4.8 billion from the Low Income Home Energy
Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Senate Democrats
essentially agree, proposing $4.7 billion in cuts. 34,000
Rhode Islanders failed to pay heat and electric bills last
year; slashing federal aide for heating, Godfrey believes,
will force cash-strapped families to rely on illegal space
heaters, “which will create all kinds of fire hazards and
violate health conditions.” The contested federal budget
will also include significant cuts to Community Develop-
ment Block Grants and the Neighborhood Stabilization
Program, which Godfrey calls, “our primary tool” for
renovation, used recently by Rhode Island Housing to
revitalize neighborhoods in Olneyville.
About one in ten mortgaged homeowners in Rhode
Island faces foreclosure or serious delinquency, a number
that will inevitably climb once the budget battles are set-
tled. Godfrey estimates that in two years there will be a
60 percent reduction in the number of affordable homes
being constructed in Rhode Island, with major drop-offs
in 2012 and 2013 as a result of state and federal budget
cuts.
Rhode Island’s troubled housing market reflects the
nationwide picture. Even as steady job growth and the
rising stock market signal that we might finally be recov-
ering from the recession, foreclosure rates are steady,
and even increasing in some states. To help assist low-
income residents struggling with their mortgages, mass
refinancing events have been held in convention centers
from Orlando to L.A. The Rhode Island Convention Cen-
ter was bustling last week at the Home Show, but there
were few low-income homeowners in attendance. Even
for those who did pay admission, there was little sweet-
ness beyond the free candy, because the affordable hous-
ing crisis continues to swell in Rhode Island.
MALCOLM BURNLEY B’12 is thankful he’s got a roof
over his head.
 APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
PROVIDENCE BITES: ‘digestible’ news
from around town
FEWER KIDS—AND THEY’RE NOT ALRIGHT
Despite a crippling recession that left Rhode Island with
one of the highest unemployment rates in the country,
the population in Little Rhody actually went up in the
last decade according to the 2010 census—but it only
grew 0.4 percent, the weakest increase of all the states
in the United States. (Michigan was the only state with a
net population loss, driven by the decay of the American
auto industry.)
But this week, the Providence Journal reported that
while RI’s overall population rose, the number of chil-
dren in the state shrunk by 10 percent. In some areas, like
Newport, the decline was over 20 percent. Meanwhile,
under-18s are a more diverse group than ever, racially
and, especially, ethnically: the number of Hispanic chil-
dren in the state grew 31 percent.
Anonymous ProJo commenters saw the data as
cause for alarm and blamed it on the usual culprits: gays,
unions, automated customer service lines that ask you to
press 1 for English. Sociologists pointed to the economy
as a factor in both: families with children to support may
be more likely to leave the state to seek employment,
and people may put off having children during tough eco-
nomic times. Meanwhile, for many immigrants, Rhode
Island is the land of economic opportunity, at least com-
paratively.
Despite the state’s economic strain, Rhode Island’s
child poverty rate is still lower than that of most other
states—unfortunately, that still means that one in six RI
children lives in poverty. Almost 50 percent of those
live in extreme poverty, defined by the government as a
single-parent household with two children and an annual
income of less than $8,643. Here’s hoping that recent
upticks in national employment bode well for everyone.
–EB
METRO|6
THE SAINT COMES MARCHING IN—TO COURT
On Thursday, March 24, after three postponements for
medical reasons, 69-year-old Anthony “the Saint” St.
Laurent—whose faulty bowels have earned him the so-
briquet “Public Enema No. 1”—finally appeared in US
District Court, pleading guilty to charges of murder-for-
hire in a conspiracy against his former associate, Robert
DeLuca, 64. In exchange, the government agreed to dis-
miss St. Laurent’s extortion, dating back to 1988, of two
Taunton, RI bookmakers—a crime for which his wife,
Dorothy, and son, Anthony, Jr., were already serving
time.
The rift between DeLuca and St. Laurent opened in
2001. That year, DeLuca, already in prison for shaking
down local restaurateur Paulie Calenda (DeLuca threat-
ened to blow him up in his car if he didn’t hand over his Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent
diner, the Fore ‘n’ Aft), appealed a prior gambling sen-
tence, chalking his initial plea of “no contest” up to igno-
rance of the fact that his codefendant, St. Laurent, was a
government informant.
In his plea agreement, St. Laurent admits to meeting
his would-be gunman on April 12, 2006, and driving to
the Sidebar restaurant in downtown Providence, where
DeLuca’s attorney, former Cianci aide Artin Coloian,
had set the paroled mobster up with a kitchen job. St.
Laurent was arrested for extortion the following day. As
the plea agreement states: “During the last six months of
2007, while incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center at
Fort Devens, defendant solicited another inmate to find
someone who would kill DeLuca. This inmate expressed
concerns about the problems that could befall someone
who killed a “made” member of the LCN [La Cosa Nos-
tra]. Defendant indicated that he received permission
[redacted]. Instead of offering financial compensation for
Robert DeLuca
DeLuca’s murder, defendant offered only to ‘propose’
the killer for membership in the LCN as reward for car-
rying out the murder.”
Also included in the plea agreement was the Saint’s by Emma Berry &
confirmation that Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio had
served as the head of the New England branch of La Cosa Jonah Wolf
Nostra. On January 19, the same day that St. Laurent ini-
tially filed his plea, Manocchio was arrested (along with
126 other alleged Mafiosi) in what Attorney General Eric
Illustrations by
Holder called the “largest mob bust in American histo- Andrew Seiden
ry.” –JW
 CAN’T
7 |OPINIONS APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

‘EM DO
his Tuesday, students from ten mostly elite colleges and universities
throughout the Midwest and northeast held protests against the lat-
est farm bill, a massive piece of federal legislation passed every few years
that funds a wide variety of food-related programs (from nutrition research
to food stamps to farm subsidies) and sets food trade policies. Brown was
among the universities involved; in a rally at Providence’s Burnside Park,
concerned students and citizens objected to the subsidization of factory
farms that drive out smaller, more sustainable farmers and make processed
food artificially cheap.
Despite the wind and rain, there was a large turnout with good-natured
call and response chants (“I don’t know but I’ve been told/ Grain subsidies
are getting old”). Jonathan Leibovic B’12, one of the organizers of the Prov-
idence protest, described it as an effort to “call attention to this bill and its
perversions, because it’s not a very well-known bill, even though it contains

THE FAR
$288 billion worth of programs.” The timing of the protest coincides rough-
ly with the beginning of hearings for public comment on the 2012 farm bill,
and protesters are hoping that raising awareness and calling for more hear-
ings will spur dramatic change. Leibovic added that despite limited reform
in 2008, “agribusiness subsidies persist, and that’s why we’re protesting.”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FARM BILL

The farm bill hasn’t always been this way. The modern farm bill—multiyear
legislation supporting the price of crops and income of domestic farmers—
came into being in 1965. It’s firmly rooted in Cold War concerns: its goal
was to support a heroic, classically American way of life and make sure that
our food supply would be produced domestically, keeping it safe from for-
eign threats. In the early years, that rhetoric largely lined up with what the
policy really did. The 1970 farm bill capped payments to farmers on a per-
crop, per-farmer basis, and dictated that unsold surplus was to be collected
and distributed by the government. In this original system, overproduction
and factory-style, single-crop farms didn’t pay, but small farmers producing
a variety of crops at the level they expected to sell experienced a new level
of security. As more Americans left farms for salaried jobs, this guaranteed
income was supposed to bolster the security of rural life, right at the time
when American cities faced the tumult of civil rights struggles.
STUDENTS PROTEST AGR
The 1970s saw a change in federal policymakers’ approach to farms.
Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, announced the new attitude
in unambiguous terms, famously telling farmers to “get big or get out,”
and advocating single-crop commodity farms over diverse farms appealing
to local market demand. The transformation of the farm bill’s function—
from protecting the classic American farm to supporting the modern fac-
tory farm—continued through the 1980s, following the transformation of
American agriculture. In 1987, new rules were published specifying how
the multiple financial entities that operate a farm should be counted as “per-
sons” for payment purposes, indicating the American farm’s change from
family enterprise to corporate operation.
In 1996, the Freedom to Farm Act, also known as the 1996 farm bill,
instituted a system of direct payments intended to allow for a smooth transi-
tion away from the old system and into a free market future. The direct pay-
ments were to be a temporary measure that would continue to support ag-
riculture without the market distortions of guaranteed prices. Neither the
old system nor the ‘temporary’ program have truly come to a close. Today
the ‘temporary’ payments alone send billions of dollars to factory farms.

WHAT YOU SAY ISN’T ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET

Though the implications of the farm bill have changed drastically over the
last 50 years, the rhetoric hasn’t. President George W. Bush, signing the
2002 farm bill, said: “American farm and ranch families embody some of
the best values of our nation: hard work and risk-taking, love of the land and
love of our country. Farming is the first industry of America — the industry
that feeds us, the industry that clothes us, and the industry that increasingly
provides more of our energy. The success of America’s farmers and ranch-
ers is essential to the success of the American economy.” The farm bill has
less than ever to do with the classic American farmer, but that farmer con-
tinues to be valorized in defense of agricultural subsidies. Bush’s celebra-
tion of the American farmer brings the classic figure into the 21st century
by associating it with the hopes for a corn-fueled future. Indeed, the discus-
sion of corn-based ethanol as an energy solution in the 2000s renewed the
rhetoric tying farm subsidies and national security, as energy independence
took up the place that food independence held in the Cold War.
But just because the administration has changed parties doesn’t mean it

by Ben Tucker
Illustration by Katherine Entis
Graphic + Design by Eli Schmitt
T KEEP
APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org OPINIONS| 8

OWN ON
has changed talking points. Current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
sounded a lot like Bush when he defended agricultural subsidies last month:
“Those folks are good people, they populate rural communities and support
good schools and serve important functions.... There’s a value system there.
Service is important for rural folks. Country is important, patriotism is im-
portant.” The only point he added to signal his party affiliation was high-
lighting rural poverty: “In terms of abject poverty and significant poverty,
there’s a lot of it in rural America.” For Vilsack, these were all reasons not
to touch farm subsidies.
There’s a certain irony to this logic, both in the way it combines com-
mon tropes of political rhetoric and in the policies it produces. Though the
contemporary farmer appears to receive subsidies because we valorize him,
by receiving them he comes to resemble the welfare recipient, despite the
normally different treatment these two groups get in political rhetoric.

RM BILL
Some Democratic Representatives, such as Oregon’s Earl Blumenauer,
have identified “the rather expensive support we provide to agriculture”
as a place to cut the federal budget. However, the legislators defending
agricultural subsidies, House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee,
recently signed a letter to the chairman of the Budget Committee express-
ing their opposition to cuts to agricultural subsidies and advocating cuts to
food stamp programs instead. The notion that the urban poor are victims
of the market holds little ground with the Right, yet when it comes to rural
folks, there seem to be billions of dollars available as protection from mar-
ket fluctuations.
If the rhetoric of the farm bill accurately described the effects of the
policy—that is, if the farm bill were really just funneling money to the classi-
cal American farmer—then swapping food stamps for farm subsidies would
amount to little more than a preference for the rural poor over the urban
poor. In fact, the rhetoric is more an ideological cover for the farm bill than
an accurate description of it. From 2003 to 2005, the largest 1 percent of
farms received 17 percent of the subsidy payments. In the last few decades,
the farm bill has shown a preference not only for the rural over the urban,

RI-BUSINESS LEGISLATION but also for the big over the small. Given the misleading rhetoric, this seems
like a preference that today’s policymakers, savvier than Secretary Butz,
don’t want to express publicly.
But bringing home the bacon is essentially what the public has come to
expect from their Representatives, and that seems to be why the current
system of agricultural subsidies has persisted so long. The 24 districts of the
House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee receive over a billion
dollars from the farm bill in direct payments alone, and they’d hate to see
them go.

THE SILVER LINING

Fortunately, as recent protests indicate, voters are watching, and they’ve
noticed that the oratory and the policy don’t line up. For years, New York
Times editorials have decried the inequitable and wasteful spending in the
farm bill. Environmentalists and ‘real food’ advocates like Michael Pollan
have pointed out the consequences for ecological and human health. The
United Nations Development Program has noted that first-world agricul-
tural subsidies cost third-world countries tens of billions of dollars. In taking
up these criticisms and questioning the official face of the farm bill, pro-
testers are transforming the issue of agricultural policy from an instance
of special interests overcoming the public good to a moment of resurgent
democratic self-assertion.
Rhode Islanders getting off the bus in Kennedy Plaza talked to the pro-
testers and made phone calls to Debbie Stabenow, the chair of the Senate
Agriculture Committee, to ask for subsidy reform and more public hear-
ings. The protesters’ goals seemed to be just as much about making the leg-
islative process fairer and more open to the public as it was about bring-
ing fairness to the legislation itself. Explaining what brings college students
from around the country into their communities, Leibovic said: “These
students feel empowered in the political process, and therefore are likely
to raise their voices when they see injustice.” Regardless of whether the
protest itself did more than fill up a congresswoman’s voicemail inbox, that
feeling of empowerment pervaded downtown Providence.

BEN TUCKER B’13 didn’t think he could ever feel comfortable holding a
sign with “stop big ag” painted on it, but here we are.
 #MUSINGS
new media travel
journalism

As we later
learned, “Don’t
Some house alarm systems have a speaking go to that
feature that is difficult to turn off. The mechanical Mexican restaurant
chorus of “rear side door to the backyard porch in Galax because all the
open” is perfect for parents trying to bust their stoner waitresses are women.”
children. Nestled in the woods outside of Washington
D.C., this voice made us hyper-aware of whenever
a house’s innards were exposed. It didn’t even have
a Garmin British accent but it made us feel abusive
whenever we left or entered. For bodies to function
we need our skin to stay sealed at all times. It’s easy
to deride security systems for being dehumanizing
but voices can help us anthropomorphize them.
What if the voice was saying something
like “Close my window, I’m
bleeding!”

The
curtains in McLean Family Restaurant are plaid; there
is full bar in the back corner of the restaurant, where no one will see
it. The clients are old. They suck oxygen from wrinkly nostrils. Scrub-clad
nurses wheel them to the register; they bring their checks to where the cashier
sits—usually a teen girl, but no one today. Decrepit Cliff pays his check in exact change
to the penny. He used to ask me to open my mouth when I sat at the register. When I
complained to waitress Mean Deena, she called Cliff over and he said you got a problem
with me? I am ninety-three years old! Off the register stand, Cliff doesn’t look at me
twice. Senile libidos need an identifying pedestal.
 JANUARY 7 2012 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org ARTS| 4

Near the Mason-Dixon line, pride for the

To balance the
south is fleeting, noticeable only in the
clarity and mistiness of the early spring Blue Ridge
occasional Confederate flag on a pickup.
Parkway, a city kid gets dark. Pass a biker and pretend
Battlefields mark themselves on familiar
to hit him, turn the music up, hostile takeover in the
Park Service plaques: FIRST CONTACT.
woods. The men in the vehicle have selected us for the
LEE’S RETREAT. SPOTYSYLVANIA
quality of our wombs. No gas stations for sixty-three
BATTLEFIELD. STONEWALL JACKSON
miles and a quarter tank. Coo at a squirrel then hit one
SHRINE. What stays in a place where things
shortly after. The thud is small and gratifying.
already happened? The houses are new and
modest with fake palm trees but the churches
are old and lit up like flags in the night. A store
What’s up, UVA? Labels, marriage, secret societies
marquee with removable letters: “Candles,
and colonial buildings. History and (a copy of) the
cigarettes, tanning.”
Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson built
all this shit, you know. If you lie upside down on the
steps, the colonnade looks like a reflection of the sky
over a river because it is so symmetrical and also you
Fiddler’s Roost in Galax, Virginia did not
are six Sam Adamses in. Nice work, Jefferson. Every-
have a security system or locks on its doors.
body smiles on this weird campus. The coolest stu-
This was a place of loving and places of
dents are selected by popular vote to live on the green
loving have got to be open in every sense
next to the coolest Professors. Everybody wants in.
of the word. As we were told upon arrival,
“We had to kick the kids out because people
like to walk around naked.” The cabin was
Once, they said, Winston-Salem was the biggest city in
porous and skin-like, more welcoming
the east after New York. Now, there’s a smooth jazz
to flesh than flesh itself. It was at the
station three towns over and the pastime is to answer
end of a dirt road. We noticed small
its trivia questions, or at least get a shout out. Does a
cat statues on top of all the doors.
nub mean your woman might not be all woman? The
The guest book had an exquisite
Wachovia Building is modeled after the Moravian
drawing of a man dressed in
Star. The company moved to Charlotte ten years ago.
an owl suit holding a flag.
Things are in there now but what do they know about
There was a couples hot
Moravia? Therocking-chair porches down the
tub on the porch.
city streets are all painted white. No one
Massacre!
smokes the cigarettes you’d think
they would.

What should we really be scared of?

Machines? Ghosts of secret affairs and marriages before
children, after children? Drugs? Megalopolises/megalopoleis/
megalopoli? That big rave in Charleston? Probably all of
the above. The world is a scary place. Never go
outside.

By “Meme” Dwyer and Anni“qua” Finne

Graphics and design by Annika Finne

11 |ARTS APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
RICHARD PRINCEand
APPROPRIATING
T he Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin once said, “Art is either plagiarism
or revolution.” But after a landmark decision by the United States Southern
District of New York last month, it seems that Richard Prince might have brought a
revolution to the art of plagiarism. Judge Deborah Batts ordered Prince—one of the
most successful appropriation artists of the contemporary art world—and the Gago-
sian Gallery, which represents him, to destroy over $10 million worth of Prince’s
work as part of her ruling in favor of French photographer Patrick Cariou. Cariou
called foul on Prince’s well-know appropriation technique after Prince used several
of his photographs for new pieces, garnering Prince and the Gagosian millions while
leaving Cariou empty-handed.
This copyright conflict stretches back to the 1990s, when Prince was gaining no-
toriety as the-next-big-thing among a host of other appropriation artists like Barbara
Krueger and Sherry Levine. While Prince was selling prints of “appropriated” Marl-
boro cowboy ads for millions, Cariou spent most of the 1990s in Jamaica living with
Rastafarians. Once he returned from Jamaica in 2000, Cariou published Yes Rasta, a
photography book that featured portraits of young Rastafarian men. In 2008, Prince
found Cariou’s images from Yes Rasta and decided to use 35 of them as “raw mate-
rial” for a piece entitled Canal Zone. He later expanded Canal Zone into a series of 29
paintings, of which 28 contained Cariou’s work in some form. Although the paint-
ings from Canal Zone rely almost entirely on Cariou’s material, Prince altered—i.e.
collaged, enlarged, cropped, or painted over—most, though not all, of the images.
the
ETHICS
of
art
by Ana Alvarez
Graphics + Design
by Eli Schmitt
The Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea later showed 22 of Prince’s paintings, of which eight
were sold for over $10 million.
At the time, the owner of Manhattan’s Clic gallery, Christiane Celle, was plan-
ning to display Cariou’s Rastafarian photos. But once Celle became aware of Prince’s
show at the Gagosian, she refused to feature Cariou’s photographs because she did
not want to exhibit work that had been “done already.” After failed negotiations,
Cariou sued both Prince and the Gagosian Gallery for copyright infringement and
demanded that all of Prince’s paintings be destroyed if he was found guilty.
THE CLOSEST THING TO THE REAL THING
One of the most intriguing aspects of the case against Prince is that it has taken this
long for a lawsuit to occur. Appropriating images for new artworks has been a staple
technique of 20th-century art. The examples of appropriation in modern and con-
temporary art abound: Picasso appropriated everyday objects like newspaper clip-
pings into canvas paintings, and Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp’s “readymade” piece
L.H.O.O.Q appropriated DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. Appropriation artist Barbara Krueger,
Prince’s contemporary, appropriated images from advertisements and juxtaposed
them with text, raising questions about feminism and consumerism. Sherry Levine,
another artist from the time, even appropriated sculpture in her 1991 bronze-cast
Fountain, which was modeled after Duchamp’s infamous urinal.
The term “appropriation art” and its tie to re-photographing photographs didn’t
 APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
AN IMAGE BY CARIOU AND ITS USE BY PRINCE
arise until the 1980s, when photographers, influenced by postmodernism, began
photographing previously produced images. In doing so, these photographers at-
tempt to challenge, or “deconstruct,” modernist artistic traditions that envision the
artist as a sole genius, elevated above the rest of us. Instead, appropriation artists
claim that all the visual resources of our world have already been exhausted. As art
historian and critic Douglas Crimp explains, the work of these appropriation artists
challenge “photography’s claims to originality, showing those claims for the fiction
that they are, showing photography to be always a representation, always-already-
seen.”
Still, even though they base their work on previously taken photographs, ap-
propriation must go beyond simple re-photographing. Appropriation art questions
“the truth function” of photography and draws attention to power relations and con-
sumer tendencies that saturate the images that constantly surround us. In Prince’s
most celebrated appropriation series, The Cowboys, he re-photographed Marlboro
advertisements depicting cowboys. Prince eliminated the advertisement text from
images and cropped them to solely feature the cowboy, “The Marlboro Man.” His
final product is a “new” photograph which depicts the cowboys outside the context
of the Marlboro ad. In doing this, Prince questions the reality of this hyper-macho
character, and overall, the reality of advertisement images. As Prince explains, “By
generating what appears to be a double, it might be possible to represent what the
original photograph imagined. The result is a photograph that’s the closest thing to the
real thing. […] I find the best way to make it real is to make it again.”
In the contemporary art world, appropriation artists have garnered both finan-
cial success and critical skepticism. One of Prince’s re-photographed Malboro ad
pieces became the first appropriation artwork to raise over a million dollars in auc-
tion. Yet many contemporary artists question the validity of appropriation photogra-
phers like Prince, who gain millions off of work that essentially isn’t theirs. Cariou’s
own opinion of Prince’s work sums up many artists’ concerns about appropriation
photography: “If it’s to steal photographs or paintings to create something, you
shouldn’t be an artist in the first place. To me Richard Prince is more of an art direc-
tor than an artist. I think he’s a good art director, and a great thief.”
THE NATURE OF TRANSFORMATION
Clearly, appropriation and copyright lawsuits are nothing new to the art world. Fel-
low appropriation artist Jeff Koons also got sued for copyright case infringement in
2006 after he appropriated a magazine image of a woman wearing Gucci sandals.
The image was stripped from its context and used along other images of woman’s
legs in a collage entitled Niagara. Unlike Prince, however, Koons won his case. An-
other well-known copyright case involved street artist Shepard Fairey, who appro-
priated an Associated Press image of President Obama for his iconic HOPE poster
campaign during the 2008 elections. Like Prince, Fairey declared “fair use” of the
AP’s photo. But after admitting to destroying evidence of the act of appropriation,
he reached a settlement with AP.
What distinguishes Prince’s case from these other examples is Judge Batts’s le-
gal basis for Prince’s defeat. The first question addressed in the case was whether
Cariou held proper copyright of the Rastafarian images. Although Prince’s defense
claimed that Cariou’s photographs were not “creative works” eligible for copyright
status, the court upheld Cariou’s sole copyright of Yes Rasta. However, even with a
copyright, Prince claimed he was still entitled to fair use of Cariou’s material.
The application of fair use onto Prince’s work, and perhaps onto all of appropri-
ation photography, became the defining question of the case. Under the legal clause,
copyrighted material can be used fairly only if the purpose of the new work is in
some way “transformative.” In order to be considered transformative, a new work
must alter or comment on the meaning or character of the previous work. Deriva-
tive works, or works which merely adapt copyrighted material without added com-
mentary, are not considered transformative. As Judge Batts stated in her ruling: “If
an infringement of copyrightable expression could be justified as fair use solely on
the basis of the infringer’s claim to a higher or different artistic use... there would
ARTS| 12
be no practicable boundary to the fair use defense.” Judge Batts referenced Section
107 of the 1976 Copyright Act which defines fair use as only for “for purposes such
as criticism [and] comment.” She concludes that unless the intent of a new piece is to
comment on the previous work, even if the new work is intended to be creative and
new, it is not transformative.
Yet Prince testified that for Canal Zone he had no particular interest in the pho-
tographs he appropriated. On the contrary, Prince testified that his work “doesn’t
really have a message.” Instead, with Canal Zone, Prince intended to pay homage to
artists Willem DeKooning and Paul Cezanne and allude to a post-apocalyptic script
he is writing which features a reggae band. In other words, it was never related to
Cariou or his work. To Prince, deciding to appropriate an image is “just a question of
whether [he] like[s] the image.” When pushed to testify on the intended meaning of
one of Cariou’s appropriated photos depicting a young Rastafarian, to which Prince
added a cut out of a guitar, Prince responded, “[H]e’s playing the guitar now, it looks
like he’s playing the guitar, it looks as if he’s always played the guitar, that’s what my
message was.”
The other factors for constituting fair use also worked against Prince. One fac-
tor considers the portion of copyrighted work used, which in Prince’s case was sub-
stantial. Another factor considers the effect fair use had on the copyrighted work’s
potential market. As was shown with Cariou’s cancelled exhibit at Calle’s gallery,
Prince’s paintings “usurped” the market for Cariou’s images. On top of denying
Prince fair use, Judge Batts also ruled that Prince and Gagosian Gallery acted in bad
faith because neither sought permission from Cariou before using or displaying his
images even though they knew he held copyright. Consequently, the judge complied
with Cariou’s request that all of Prince’s paintings using any of Cariou’s photographs
must be handed over to Cariou. It is up to Cariou to decide what to do with Prince’s
work; in an interview he said he hoped to raise money from the pieces to donate
back to Jamaica, although it is still illegal to sell the work. Prince has not announced
whether he will appeal the judge’s decision.
THE FUTURE OF APPROPRIATION
Regardless of the effects this case will have on Prince and Cariou, its most important
impact will likely be how it affects other appropriation artists—who, in light of this
new legal precedent, will have to be more conscientious of their intent when they
appropriate others’ images. Judge Batts’s definition of “fair use” in this case might be
too restrictive and discourage future artistic work.
Still, in Prince’s specific case, perhaps this ruling was called for. Prince’s earlier
appropriation work engaged with the content he was appropriating, namely images
from advertisement. But with Canal Zone, it seems like Prince has become too com-
fortable with his appropriation technique, to the point that, as he testified, he takes
images without any consideration. Ultimately, this lack of consideration only weak-
ens Prince’s work. When looking at Cariou’s photographs and Prince’s appropria-
tions side by side, one can’t help but wish Prince hadn’t ever reworked the beauty
of Cariou’s images. His work doesn’t render the depictions of Rastas any truer than
Cariou’s; instead, it simply degrades what were originally striking images.
What’s even more troubling is Prince’s sense of entitlement over Cariou’s work,
which seems to stem partly from Prince’s art-world status. Since he is a well-known,
wealthy artist, Prince apparently feels little responsibility for the work of an obscure
photographer, or the need to ask for permission. “I was in the room when Prince and
Gagosian were deposed and they have an overwhelming sense of power,” Cariou
said. “They think that they’re untouchable. Prince got away with it for 20 years.”
Perhaps this ruling will improve appropriation art by requiring artists, and the galler-
ies that support them, to include a critical approach when borrowing work. Cariou
himself hopes the ruling might ultimately “bring some sanity into the appropriation
world.”
ANA ALVAREZ B’13 is the closest thing to the real thing.
 13 |SPORTS APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

Jesus Christ
Although the son of God, Christ Almigh
mother. The road to prophecy was not
endured numerous challenges and bou
early age, he was betrayed by his best f
got lost from his parents in Jerusalem. L
into a showdown with the devil that las

CINDERELLAS
desert. But Christ persevered before m
hands of the Roman Empire. Still, even
for this great underdog—he was resurr
days! Jesus stands on the list of the Ind
because although he is one of the worl

ON THE COURT
messianic figures, his teachings of love
remain afterthoughts in this world of m
shout out to Moses and Muhammed. --

Why underdogs in the NCAA aren’t actually overco

No one roots for Goliath, and the sports world is
no exception. Underdog stories are perennial head-
line grabbers, from the 1980 Olympic hockey team
to one-legged NCAA champion wrestler Anthony
Robles. This year’s March Madness tournament fea-
tured one such underdog: Virginia Commonwealth
University. Sports pundits heralded VCU’s trip to
the final four as the most remarkable one to date,
overcoming 820-to-1 odds. The hype for the team
was enormous; profiles on the players, the coach,
and even on the university itself exploded in media
outlets across the nation.
The day after their shocking victory over Kansas
University in the Elite Eight, the number one Google
search was “Virginia Commonwealth University”;
at number two was “VCU.” According to the Wash-
ington Post, VCU was mentioned 3,200 times in the
media in the same time span it usually gets just 300
mentions; over 11 million people visited the univer-
sity website. But this publicity is not necessarily war-
ranted—both the validity of the statistics and quality
of VCU’s journey are questionable. In reality, there’s
a reason why March Madness churns out so many
Cinderellas: the underdog storyline is built into the
NCAA system.
SELECTION SUNDAY
The Cinderella stories of the NCAA tournament
grow largely out of the selection process that deter-
mines which teams qualify. 68 teams enter the tour-
nament; 30 of these teams automatically qualify by
winning their conference tournament and the Ivy
League regular-season champion also automatically
qualifies (there is no tournament), leaving 37 others
to be selected by a committee. The selection commit-
tee consists of ten members—eight of them athletic
directors, two conference commissioners—from uni-
versities across the nation. These committee mem-
bers are supposed to represent every national con-
ference, giving all teams a fair chance to enter the
tournament. In order to avoid conflicts of interest,
members leave the room when their university is in
question.
The criteria with which the members are cho-
sen remain shrouded in mystery: some claim that
choices are based a statistic called RPI, ratings per-
centage index, which basically assesses the quality of
a team’s record based on their opponents and their
opponent’s opponents; others believe the choices
are based on stats like how much a team scores in a
given game.
Nevertheless, the conclusions of the commit-
tee remain entirely subjective, and every year the
committee finds itself justifying its selections to
the general public to quell protests. Of course, of
the 37 teams selected, most are not surprises: na-
tionally ranked top 25 teams almost always qualify.
However, there are always teams that are “on the
bubble”—teams that aren’t sure about their chances
to make the cut. These teams often face the verdict
only when the official lineup is announced on televi-
sion on “Selection Sunday.”
In the end, teams that should make it don’t, and
others are shocked to discover their entry. The Mis-
souri Valley Conference is renowned for being ig-
nored by the NCAA tournament, with many quality
teams high in the national rankings failing to make it.
For nearly a decade, Missouri State has not been se-
lected despite ranking well within the top 37 teams
in the nation. In 2004, Utah State did not enter the
tournament despite its 25-2 record for the season. In
these surprising instances, both the method behind
qualification and the motives of the committee have
proven to be unreliable.
In their attempt to add the underdog ingredi-
ent, the committee shies away from recognizing that
some conferences are simply better than others. It is
undoubtedly more entertaining, and an inspiration
to smaller universities with lesser athletic programs,
to have the tournament structured to allow teams
from all these conferences to qualify automatically.
However, if the aim is truly to put the best talent on
the center stage, there is a clear structural flaw—the
Ivy League gets a free in? But the surprising outcome
of “Selection Sunday” should not necessarily come
as a surprise: it’s not clear whether it is, in fact, in the
best interest of the tournament to allow teams like
Utah or Missouri—who should technically qualify—to
play.
It makes good sense to ignore some of the more
qualified teams in favor of lesser-known underdogs
that are “on the bubble.” First, it makes the pre-
tournament hype much more exciting, introduc-
ing an element of anticipation that has led to the
development of an entire field of sports analysis.
“Bracketology,” in which sports analysts make edu-
cated predictions about the findings of the selection
committee., results in hours of television, radio, and
Internet coverage of the tournament even before it
gets underway. Second, in addition to increased ex-
posure, the selection committee’s more interesting
choices are a win-win of sorts for the NCAA. If these
underdog teams are eliminated in the early rounds
of the tournament, then the homemade brackets of
fans and pundits alike are enhanced, as most brack-
et-makers opt for the likely winner. Thus, potential
viewers are compelled by the success of their brack-
ets— interpreted as March Madness clairvoyance—to
continue to watch the tournament, thus benefitting
the NCAA. On the other hand, if the underdog pulls
off an upset, then the NCAA gets to bask in the pub-

underdogs through history

Sidney Prescott
(Neve Campbell) in Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3.
Neve was already in a bad mood when she went to high school
one day and found out her best friend Drew Barrymore had been
killed. The killer, a masked ghoul with a nasty knife and a nastier
tongue, was still on the loose. Alone at home, Neve receives an
eerie phone call before being ruthlessly attacked by the ghostface
killer and barely escaping with her life. Soon, the bodies of her
friends—including the seemingly immortal Henry Winkler, aka the
Fonz—turn up everywhere. In the end (SPOILER ALERT) Neve
discovers that the killer is actually two people, weirdo Matthew
Lilard and hottie Skeet Ulrich, whom she just lost her virginity to.
With a lil’ luck and a lotta gut, Neve smashes a TV on one murderer
and shoots her (now ex-) boyfriend in the head. As if high school
hadn’t been hard enough, a year later Neve would have to battle
more psychotic killers in college during Scream 2. Four years later,
more killers would return in Scream 3. Only time will tell if she
survives Scream 4, set for release April 11, 2011. You go, Neve. --EF
Toon Squad in Space Jam
When his extraterrestrial theme park “Moron Mountain” starts hitting Erin Broc
the pits, the evil Mister Swackhammer (voiced by Danny DeVito) When she w
sends his minions, the Nerdlucks, to Toon Town, hoping to capture the becoming a
hilarious animal characters for a new attraction. In a battle for their Pacific Coas
freedom, the Looney Tunes challenge the puny Nerdluck minions to without an
a classic game of B-Ball. However, Bugs and the crew were unaware court for al
of their alien powers and the Nerdlucks traveled to earth to steal the town of Hin
powers of some of Basketball’s greatest talents, transforming them on top? Bio
into the infamous, all-powerful Monstars. Fortunately, Bugs comes up every good
with a plan to summon the game’s greatest and recently-retired player: Now, w
Michael Jordan. As the game begins, the Monstars play brutally, sending group calle
half the Toon squad to the bench with devastating injuries. After a prep own websi
talk for the ages, Jordan, Bill Murray and the Toon Squad lead a furious provides a p
comeback. In perhaps the most epic game of all time, the Looney each one u
Tunes’ freedom comes down to the final posession. Down by one, the a header th
ball comes to Jordan’s hands. But as he goes to dunk, all five Monstars blonde hair
hold him down. It seems like he’ll never make it to the basket. Using his she remind
recently acquired Looney Tunes powers, Jordan extends his arm from
half court to the basket and dunks, winning the Looney Tunes their
freedom and restoring happiness to Earth. If only. --EF
 APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org SPORTS| 14

Ma-Ti from Captain Planet

hty was born to a single
an easy one, and Christ
uts of self doubt. At an
friend Peter and once
Later on in life, he got
sted for forty days in the
meeting his fate at the
death was no match
rected after only three
dy’s greatest underdogs
ld’s most famous
and respect often
money and war. Holy
-EF
Captain Planet was the childhood hero of a generation, saving the
environment one episode at a time. With a turquoise mullet and
largely undefined powers—able to fly, telecommunicate, manipulate
the weather, and shape-shift depending on the challenge at hand—he
remains the illest hero to date and also the most pertinent.
His team was composed of five members from five different
nations: Kwame from Africa, Wheeler from Brooklyn, Linka from the
USSR, Gi from Southeast Asia, and Ma-Ti from the Amazon rainforest.
But while all the other Planeteers of the show got totally badass
powers—Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water—Ma-Ti, raised by a Kayapo
Indian shaman, was cruelly shortchanged with the power of Heart, to
instill empathy into others to care about the planet. As powerful as
compassion can be, no way Ma-Ti stood a chance against all those evil
corporate foes. In the end, though, Ma-Ti was the true Cinderella—he
had his own monkey sidekick, Suchi: by far the best character on the
show. --DA
Rosa Parks
Straight out of Tuskegee, Rosa Parks was a tiny woman
with a huge appetite for justice. She became active in
the civil rights movement at the age of 30, and was the
only female member of Montgomery’s NAACP chapter.
And, of course, there was her glorious bucking of the
system on a city bus in 1955, the ultimate underdog
story: when asked by a white man to give up her seat
in the all-colored section, she flat-out refused. Parks
landed herself in jail for a night and was fired from her
job as a seamstress, but her act of civil disobedience set
a city bus boycott in motion and set the national civil
rights movement on fire. We salute Parks for fighting
for the right to sit wherever she damn well pleased.
--GB

oming odds by David Adler
licity surrounding their Cinderella, and again, major
boosts in media coverage and viewership ensue.
STATISTICAL LIMITATIONS
The success of these underdogs through the years
highlights the problematic structure of the tourna-
ment itself, allowing good teams to slip through the
cracks. The defining element of the NCAA tourna-
ment is that every game matters: win and move on,
lose and go home. In each game, teams are fighting
for their life and for the one chance they may ever
have in their short college careers to claim basketball
glory. But the effect of this one-and-done tourna-
ment style is that the good teams fall prey to the un-
derdogs far more easily than they would in a 7-game
series, like those in professional basketball. Trivi-
alities like the team’s dinner or the quality of their
sleep become determining factors that could decide
whether a team will imprint itself onto the historical
memory of the NCAA tournament—which, for the
majority of the players on these teams that never go
pro, will be the most famous they will ever get.
Virginia Commonwealth had only to play five
games to reach the Final Four—and while their
chances were very slim, the reality is that the insane
820-to-1 odds cited by sports analysts fail to display
the heightened capacity for flukes particular to the
NCAA tournament. While that statistic has been
thrown around a lot in the past week, its origin is
largely a mystery. It is the compilation of various
factors—wins and losses from the regular season, in-
jury status of players, point-difference in games won
and lost, efficiency ratings—all of which neglect the
intangible factors that dominate the tournament. In
March Madness, the victor is not always the one with
the best mathematical probability of winning—much
more so than in other tournament styles. It is often
Illustration by Becca Levinson
the result of momentum, passion, and emotion. For
example, consider the matchup between a team that
casually demolishes its opponent by 20 points on its
way to the next round, and a team that had to battle
and push themselves to the last second in an exciting
matchup in its previous game. Though the former’s
domination would add up statistically to portray
them as the likely winner, the momentum carried
through from the emotional performance of the lat-
ter is a major factor to drive them in the next game.
When it comes to the NCAA, such stats are re-
ductive, though they are ironically the information
most treated as gospel—the computer models that
produce them are so complex that few sports ana-
lysts can actually understand what 820-to-1 actually
means. It becomes a digestible sound bite that can
make pundits seem particularly erudite, and in the
process, make VCU look like a miraculous Cinder-
ella rather than a fortunate opportunist.
Though the NCAA tournament tale of Virginia
Commonwealth University ended last Saturday, un-
able to break down the stalwart Butler defense, the
spotlight remains. Coach Shaka Smith will face a
barrage of offers from more prestigious athletic pro-
grams; players like Jamie Skeen and Joey Rodriguez
who emerged as stars for VCU may even have NBA
prospects. All the while, the NCAA gets a nice slice
of the merchandise pie as the university sells out of
all its Final Four shirts, mugs, and hats.
For most of us—drinking a beer, watching the
game—VCU is the paradigm of NCAA entertain-
ment. The world of big-shot college basketball pro-
grams is replete with corruption and rule violations,
pampering athletes like poodles with plenty
of under-the-table cash tossed toward
recruits. From the Fab Five at Michi-
gan University—a group of freshmen
Design by Joanna Zhang
phenoms later discovered to have received massive
amounts of money from the university—to Chicago
Bulls star Derrick Rose, who reportedly had some-
one else take the SATs on his behalf, the Goliaths of
the NCAA deserve to get punched in the face by an
unlikely candidate.
But even though we cherish the underdog story-
line, the fact is that lesser teams ultimately enhance
the chances of the major universities. The consistent
success of underdogs in the tournament belies the
fact that they are really a gift to the teams that face
them later on—evidenced by the fact that almost ev-
ery famous Cinderella of March Madness never ac-
tually won the title. The more effective ‘fuck you’
would be to put the best talent on the court and
force the inflated egos of these college stars to throw
down. Otherwise, there is really no incentive for
mediocre teams to strive for greatness. As NCAA-
spurned Missouri State coach Cuonzo Martin asks,
“What’s the point of having a regular season if it
comes down to this?” The NCAA must clarify for
whom exactly the tournament is played—the viewers
who love the underdog, the teams that often suffer
because of the underdog, or the organization itself
that gets rich from them.
DAVID ADLER B’14 knows a dream is a wish your
heart makes.

by David Adler, Gillian Brassil, and Erik Font

ckovich
was a Kmart employee, she had big dreams of
a beauty pageant queen. When she was named Miss
st, she had bigger dreams of saving the world. And
ny legal training, she took Pacific Gas and Electric to
ll they were worth, earning defendants of the California
nkley $333 million for the PG&E’s malpractice. Cherry
opic starring Julia Roberts as Brockovich. We think
d underdog story should end with Julia Roberts.
with her J.D., she runs her own consumer advocacy
ed Brockovich Research & Consulting and has her very
ite. A self-proclaimed “modern-day ‘David’”, Brockovich
page on her website entitled “Whistleblower,” where
us can report a complaint for her to investigate. With
hat features a glowing Brockovich portrait, her silky
r tousled and her blue eyes gazing off into the distance,
ds us that anything is possible with a good jaw line. --DA
 15 |LITERARY APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

Pampa by Taylor Anne Lane

1. you were tracks run like roads
There is nothing other than the pyramid sipping through the straw goading every dog
of tires that seeks amnesty in your sordid dungarees you & the casts of angels
from the flatbed-truck-baggers had fertilized your lawn
lurching by, outside like Friday had put 3.
city limits. change into the jar Pampa is the second largest
for a car wash. township in the Panhandle of Texas.
The diaspora the carpetbags smooth out
their disparate fantasies every morning— Without the piano bench It’s where the diaspora are
and the pyramid owns its own frost nothing goes for harmony so it’s where you are.
the herds their soluble graze the fringe without the window You are there. There are
their flatbed sack dreams but not yet onlook to Hobart Ave snapshots of you there.
the pick-up. it’s the sheet music that warms
the seat the metronome whose reverb Like the ambivalent wasp in your neck
The diaspora are in the clammy grips of morning rights the whole passersby into pace. it is there snap snip zipping
when the eddies of the clockhands swell It’s all for the handwriting throughout your neck & this is like
with the kickings of the day hours. in music theory from two generations Pampa that pinch
ago under the seat that of the heartstrings
The other misses— with geometry they’re yours too. ever so squarely
spit spat toddling engine swine but a jagged pinch
gruff daddies laid out on the cradle metal These are your sweaty palms nonetheless.
huffy snouts and muted eyeballs in Pampa, your bedside
astray in the landscape’s mirror table & your beauty
that smothers noise— shop in Pampa.
like their moustachery ruffled by the sweet strums of the wind. —cotton fields for the outskirts
for the first time!—
Case in point that linearity breeds and the inskirts is you
on flatlands leaving bastards due making ginger snaps
for a tune-up lube job— & struggling with god.
the sign reads Pampa

A SENSE
but the diaspora aren’t there yet. She is touching
the English Grammar edition 1854.
2. No one sees her
The High School lawn the fabric thin wispy hair onset
scenery on the eve of everyday at the bookshelf the collections
—just like that ol’ from Lorena she
state road!— rubs their oil before
lunchtime & her face greasy & bittersweet.
where the chummy
chums thick faced compadres Her robe is silky
chugged spat kicked across the avenue Her trees fall apples
sweet leather milk arms Her hands are abrupt
by the denim wash but lotioned
—or the light-up reindeers near the porch!— Her Sundays are the same
but you’re there but the others are different
you’re there like yesterday it’s Tuesday She grips the wrists of her grandchildren
& like Monday you were there tightly & slaps their backs hard in love.
like the ashtray cupid ashes of
a fallen last week Alleyways like derby

SCRIGDIG by Sam Alper

Remember when that orange soda bottle exploded in your hand?
You weren’t clutching it hard or anything.
One time you asked me why I don’t write proper poetry.
We were at one of the tops of the world,
up the Santa Monica hills off Barrington,
looking out over the scriggly diggly lights of LA.
I asked what you meant,
took a hit first,
So it would come out on a cough and sound casual.
You don’t write poems, you said, you use no poetic language,
you say ‘scriggly diggly,’
you don’t try very hard.
You didn’t sound very casual and I got a tear in my eye because I guess you’d hit a nerve.
The lights got more blurry and squiggly.
I was feeling the hit I was feeling
scriggly diggly what’s wrong with that, I said.
Would you rather I told you that the warm wind tonight blew as if from the mouth of
A sleepy lion?
That we are cradled in the dusty soil thinking about Rome?
Would you rather I talk more about Rome?
Because I can do that, I said, I can do the Rome thing.
My head was light I wasn’t breathing.
You were staring through me like you were waiting for a street light to change.
You don’t get it.
No I don’t, I said.
I try to but,
when I try to reach out and grab it
everything gets all diggly.
You said you poor thing, all casual.
That may have been the first night we kissed I don’t remember the rest is all,
um,
you know.
 APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org LITERARY| 16

America: 12/17/10 - 1/25/11 by Micah Thanhauser

Mencius Confucius, Caddie, Caddie Mussels and jellyfish crash upon the shore
Inbox alarm clock days ticking Dive into caverns Exploding into bits, to gather and burn
Bonetired getting into car a Spiked icicles growing and clinging With driftwood, twisted and huge
Pale cold creature. With all the chaos and energy of life, Rocks like mountains
Get lost on the way out of Providence Millennia of patient silted water drops Air even vast and free
Lose self, sleep till New York Wind and acid, elements combined Water thundering echoes
Traffic jams and stop lights blaring And formed in the earth’s wet womb. Electric green moss crawling over trees,
So long cold Brooklyn, Soft sunglints of snowflake
Roaring into the soft Virginia night. Climb into caves Frozen stillness of treetops in postcards
For fifteen years filled Snow-rain mud squishing under silent boots.
Cheese water pumpernickel bread With baskets of corn and red plumed birds
Smokey mountain sunset Red rock with closed mouths of mud Drifting into backseat slumber
A great shit in Georgia Long-gone people dancing, praying, making love, Head on warm lap
Into Texas, Kentucky Whiskey and a ripe loaded grapefruit tree, Left, leaving pasty white ghosts A whispering “let them sleep,”
The bayou sky glowing red To haunt and wander Falling in again
With the imagined fire at the end of the road. Murmuring and singing echoes. Naked body wrapped in sleeping bag cocoon
Headlamp beam falling quiet
The Mississippi river Find west at last Against the crashing sea.
Big bowls of tamales Drink a Manhattan in LA
Sunflower husks cracked and spit From big sky back to box homes Fall into a warm soft-haired new years bed
Into an empty box of fiber cereal, Men in ties, women eye-lined lipstick Lying childish together,
Racing shaking into the full moon Frightened and clawing Warm wet hands held
Breathing and sighing Sad small lonely tired. On this edge of gaping ocean,
Setting tents with rocks whipping Tomorrow will I wake up where I am?
In the wind, the chatter of bones and cascading pebbles. The Pacific so wild and calm
Trade bags in a coffeeshop
Tired of travel, cutting through space
Cutting and cutting finding only new outsides,

E OF WHERE YOU ARE

Skidding down a snowy mountain pass
Alive, winding into dusk
Among ridges like teeth ripped wide
Swerving into gentle January wind
Swirling up dust, harsh in the headlights
Soft in moon.

All day through deserts

Scrubby grass and sometimes cactus
Streaks of salt, ravens and smooth-eyed foxes
Sunrise too beautiful country too big
Racing to America’s Best Value Inn,
Fried pie in Oklahoma closed at 5
Teenagers with cowboy hats and pickups
Kids and dads with camo hats
Sipping soda in gas station diners
Long straight roads,
North Carolina mountains, cashews
Ripening avocados bought in California
A cold floor mountain shack
Curling close to the fire
A clay face on a clay pot
Curling smoke and banana pudding.

Drive East - to home

Cold air, clean toilets,
Warm arms, and a cozy bed.
photos by John Fisher, design by Joanna Zhang

Étretat ‘79 by Erik Font

in the corner of Brittany
a cliff at Étretat dips its finger into the
water like a piano player
here they met
the wind the water
bore twins on tricycles

parked on tall grass under a shadow of concrete

they peer over the handlebars and through their bangs
the century ends
17 |ARTS
I
n 1969, Patti Smith and Robert Map-
plethorpe hawked their sketches and
paintings for a month’s rent at the
Chelsea Hotel. Pablo Picasso traded his
sketches for coffee and the bar tab in Paris
throughout the 1920s. A sheriff in Shenan-
doah, Virginia owns two gestural paintings
by Jackson Pollock, works he used as bail
for convictions of drunken and disorderly
conduct. Last month, New York-based
artist Dave Vinod traded a painting with
Designer Braces, an orthodontics office,
for his thirteen-year-old’s braces.
Amidst the past six years of econom-
ic insecurity, working artists have been
stuck in a double bind in which money
isn’t greasing the cogs of artistic creativ-
ity, and artistic creativity isn’t paying the
rent. Bartering, then, a common practice
for those in the art trade, has accordingly
become a survival tactic. In May 2010,
the O+ festival was set up Kingston, New
York, in which uninsured artists and musi-
cians exchanged and bartered their work
for medical attention from participating
physicians and medical firms. Innovative
swaps like this demonstrate a collective ef-
fort by the art community to breathe new
life into bartering.
The logic behind bartering, a form of
exchange that preceded the invention of
money, is simple: You have something I
need, I have something you need, and we
trade. The barter system allows you to ne-
gotiate the worth of your object or service
in relation to products or services that you
want. This formula has always resonated
within the art community, where carving
out innovative ways to sustain creative
production is a must.
The appeal of bartering lies in its options:
any object, good, or service is on the table.
Greenwich-based artist Tracey Ellis once
traded a mural series for a down payment
on a car, and a piece of artwork for a Has-
selblad camera that came with three lens-
es. For Ellis, bartering is a “way of life.”
“Any time you can save your money, and
you can get your work out there, it’s key.”
Ellis, like many other artists, barters pure-
ly for the satisfaction of doing business on
her own terms. “I’ve bartered art pieces
for meals, yoga and pilates classes, graphic
design work, so many things,” Ellis ex-
plained. “It’s such a great way to strength-
en ties with the art com-
munity around you
and support one
another.”
Far from
relying on
arbitrary
pre-
illustration by Robert Sandler
APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
THE ART OF
BARTER
Hawking your creative wares
for goods & services
by Olivia Jené Fagon
scriptions of worth, artists who barter do
so with a definite understanding of their
works’ value—a value that is intimately
tied to what they need. New York artist
Avani Patel’s art supplies cost her around
$5,000 per year, so when bartering she
tries to exchange her work for items that
either equal or exceed the amount of mon-
ey it took to create that particular piece.
In recent years, bartering’s grassroots
popularity has made the transition to more
large-scale art events. “Art Barter,” an in-
novative new exhibition concept started
in 2009 in London, gives the public the
opportunity to acquire artwork through
bartering. Over the three or four days of
“Art Barter,” participants make offers on
artworks (whose creators are unidentified
in order to prevent calculations of market
worth).
The results of the event, which has
taken place in several locations around the
world, are a testament to both the wide-
ranging answers to that question and the
art community’s eagerness to harness that
potential: 30 hours of French tutoring for
a Tracy Emin sketch; a Jason Dodge paint-
ing for a week-long stay in Scotland; three
months of psychotherapy for a Gavin
Turk installation. Commerce can get a lot
weirder when you’re bartering.
Unsurprisingly, art bartering has
made its way online. OurGoods is an on-
line community of artists, designers, and
cultural producers who swap skills, spac-
es, and work amongst themselves. Cater-
ing predominantly to the New York area,
OurGoods is geared toward reestablishing
face-to- face exchange and in-
person networking
in arts dealings. “If you’ve got a show com-
ing up, you may need somebody to run
your lights, write your press release and
design your postcards,” said Jen Abrams,
the network co-founder, “OurGoods is
about finding those three people, and re-
ciprocating. It’s simple.”
It’s exactly this simplicity that makes bar-
tering so attractive. In the modern econ-
omy, our understanding of what things
are worth has far exceeded the dollar-for-
-dollar equation, with the space between
an individual and his assets now occupied
by the digitized processes of online bank-
ing, credit cards, interest rates, premi-
ums, automatic teller machines, and elec-
tronic-funds transfers. “I went straight
from Maryland Institute for the Creative
Arts to the East Village, and nowhere did
I learn about financing, market values, in-
vesting… I really only understand the re-
cession in that no one is buying my work,”
John Michaels, a D.C.-based artist, ex-
plained. While artists and finance are in
no way mutually exclusive, bartering re-
mains attractive because of its comparable
straight-forwardness—because it works in
the hand-to-hand exchange of what’s mine
for what’s yours.
While bartering’s resurgence is in no way
exclusive to the art world, art’s compli-
cated relationship with money makes the
practice of bartering, and its exclusion of
the dollar, especially dynamic. The opin-
ion that art should transcend monetary
value is common. “I paint,” Michaels
stated. “Sometimes it takes me months,
even a year to complete a painting. All
the time, the effort, the failures, the elec-
tric moments of inspiration that go into a
piece—to put a final price tag on that…
it’s brutal. Almost irrational.”
Much of the ten-
sion between art-
ists and the art
market can be explained by the seemingly
arbitrary—and perhaps fundamentally
inappropriate—prices of art. In January,
Jenny Seville sold her painting Branded at
Christies for $3 million, a little above its
market value. At the same time, Michaels
traded a large oil painting to a broker for
a portion of the down payment on a studio
space. Two exchanges of art—yet the dis-
parity between the two is one not of ‘good
art’ versus ‘bad art’ but between those in
demand by the market, and those outside
of it.
Michaels explained that for him bar-
tering offers any artist the “freedom to as-
sign the world with the value we believe
it should have, regardless of the market.”
Perhaps this is why, “even when it is ineffi-
cient,” as Michaels explains, “people bar-
ter to feel good; people will barter to feel
free.” Because bartering places value on
a localized scale—the scale of individuals,
rather than the ‘value by mass consensus’
that money and the market supposes—it
puts the terms of exchange in line with the
terms of the individual artist.
While bartering’s resurgence in popular-
ity could be considered the development
of a parallel economy, the traditional
characteristics of capitalism are still in
full play. Artists still consider the market
value of their works when trading it, and
even write up bartering contracts, outlin-
ing specific terms of exchange. But with-
out binding contracts or a universal value
system, bartering lacks an established
system of checks and balances outside of
notions of trust and reciprocity, bringing
up concerns over what constitutes a fair
trade.
While bartering can liberate artists,
it also creates situations in which they
have the most to lose. Unable to sell their
work, artists are often forced to barter
pieces for less than their market value out
of immediate need; they need the medical
attention now, their children need braces
now, they need studio space to work now.
There is nothing risk-free about any ex-
change, bartering included.
There is an almost unavoidable idealism
present when talking about off-the-grid
practices like bartering—it’s an anti-insti-
tutional tactic! a testament to the bullet-
biting artists’ ingenuity in the face of the
repressive market! But reasons for barter-
ing are more often than not about making
ends meet. When it comes
down to it, is bartering
ever an artist’s first choice
when it comes to exchang-
ing his work? Ellis, Vinod,
and Michaels would probably
prefer a gallery visit and a cash
purchase of their work, money
they could spend in any way they
wanted, received in an exchange that
could be contractual and binding.
First choice or not, and romanti-
cized or not, most artists today are
working headwind, and there is
integrity in attempting to carve
out new pathways for subsidizing
their creativity while reaffirming
the value of face to face trade. Ulti-
mately, bartering has the potential
to silence the questions most often
heard when acquiring anything:
Can you afford this? and What are
you willing to pay? and one that,
in a culture in which money has
become part and parcel of the
language of identity, perhaps isn’t
asked enough: What do you have,
besides your money, to offer?
OLIVIA FAGON B’13 will trade
this article for pretzel M&Ms.