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Track and Field: Relays yield five qualifications

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William and Mary played host this weekend, welcoming more than 80 teams for the 46th annual Colonial Relays. The men’s and women’s teams placed 10th and 30th, respectively, while racking up several qualifications and records.

“All in all, it was a solid meet,” head coach Stephen Walsh said. “We had some good performances on our side. We take away from it what we got out of it, and go from there.”

On Friday, junior Brandon Heroux defended his championship at the javelin toss for the third year in a row, throwing 67.55 meters. It marks the sixth longest throw in school history and earned him an IC4A qualification.

The men’s team — led by sophomore Josh Hardin, who finished with a time of 14 minutes, 18.82 seconds — scored five qualifications in the 5,000-meter run. Junior Alex McGrath and freshman Ted Richardson also took seventh and eighth place, respectively.

The final qualification came in the 400-meter hurdles from senior Chris McIntosh, who took fifth place with a time of 53.62 seconds.

On the women’s side, freshman Kathleen Lautzenheiser continued to impress by eclipsing the freshman record in the 5,000-meter race by more than 16 seconds. Her time of 16:43.58 earned her seventh place and an ECAC qualification.

“It was a good night for the 5K and a good pace,” Walsh said. “The girls that ran in front of her were some strong girls so to get in that pack and hold on and then finish strong was nice. It’s a good solid run, but
won’t be the last one.”

This year’s meet included four new events: 3,000-meter runs and sprint medley relays for both men and women. While the 3,000-meter run is rarely included in outdoor competition, Walsh said the addition was largely to help athletes who want to work their way up to longer distance runs.

“In terms of a training purpose, you go from 1500 to 5K which is a big jump this early in the season,” he said. “It’s good for developmental reasons.”

This coming weekend, the Tribe will send a handful of athletes to Fairfax for the Mason Spring Invitational, but will rest for the most part as the most difficult stretch of the season arrives.

“George Mason next weekend which will be very thin,” Walsh said. “After the next weekend, that’s when you’re really looking to hit it. All the training that we’ve been doing all year now is going to come to its culmination.”

Men’s Gymnastics: Team season ends at ECAC Championships

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The team portion of William and Mary’s season came to an end this weekend as the Tribe placed third out of six teams at the ECAC Championships Saturday with a score of 336.40.

The event was hosted by the University of Illinois-Chicago, which placed first overall with a score of 346.90 and received an automatic bid to continue to the NCAA Championships later in the month. Temple also placed above the Tribe, ending with a score of 338.30. The other teams in the event — Springfield, Navy and Army — ended the day with scores of 338.30, 333.20 and 326.70, respectively.

The College just missed its last chance to qualify for the NCAA Championships, in which the top twelve nationally ranked teams participate.

“Everything was on the line, and we just missed it,” head coach Cliff Gauthier said. “It looks like we’re going to finish up in the 13th position, so we just missed the NCAAs. That was a little bittersweet.”

The Tribe placed third in the floor exercise category with a score of 56.20, falling behind UIC and Springfield, while senior captain Andy Hunter placed fifth overall in the event with a mark of 14.4.
Then in pommel horse, the Tribe secured a second-place finish with a score of 55.6.

The Tribe placed at the top on the rings with a score of 56.90, beating out second-place UIC by an entire point. Freshman Landon Funiciello got the gold for the event with a mark of 15.1.

Although the College placed fourth overall in the vault, freshman Daniel Potemski did well once again, bringing in a mark of 15.5, placing third individually.

The Tribe ended the day by placing third and fifth in parallel bars and horizontal bar, respectively.
The College then sent five gymnasts to the individual competitions Sunday.

Potemski brought home gold on the vault with a mark of 15.65, earning the College’s first ECAC vault recognition since 2008. Funiciello ended second in the ring event with a score of 14.75, and Hunter earned awards in both pommel horse and floor exercise, placing fourth with 13.70 and sixth with 14.25, respectively. Deutsch placed sixth on pommel horse with a mark of 13.55 and Smurro placed sixth on the parallel bars with 13.60.

Gauthier said he predicts the team’s five individual competitors as well as senior captain Dave Ellis and sophomore Kris Yeager will qualify for the individual portion of the NCAA Championships on April 14. Funiciello is currently No. 10 in the nation, giving him the possibility of earning All American in his first year of competition, something that would be a first for the Tribe.

Such high-marking performances from his younger players leaves Gauthier optimistic about the seasons to come.

“We lose some fantastic leadership, but the guys coming back are just amazing, and we’ve got some good freshmen coming in,” he said. “When you look at it from a coaching standpoint, these are the kind of guys you want to be surrounded by.”

And although the team portion of the season is over, the coach looked back on the season with delight.
“The season was so great overall that if I look at it as a total picture, I couldn’t have asked for more,” he said. “It was just fantastic.”

Women’s Tennis: No. 49 Tribe takes down Syracuse, 6-1

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When William and Mary took the court Saturday morning against Big East foe Syracuse, visions of its nail biting 4-3 loss to Brown were still fresh in the minds of many.

At the end of the day, however, the No. 49 College erased all doubt by blowing out the Orange, 6-1. The victory was the Tribe’s fourth in its last five matches, and it moves its record to 11-8 on the season.

“It was obviously a good win, especially a 6-1 win against Syracuse,” head coach Meredith Geiger-Walton said. “It was a good day for [freshman] Hope Johnson, winning her singles match, a good confidence boost for her. We won all three doubles matches, which is another boost of confidence of us. There’s no doubt our
team is getting better and better with each match.”

The College maintained control from the very beginning, claiming all three of the doubles matches, and only dropped one of the six singles matches on the day.

The day began with a highly anticipated clash between two of the country’s best doubles teams, as sophomore Anik Cepeda and Johnson, the No. 40 tandem in the country, faced the Orange’s No. 32 duo of Emily Harman and Maddie Kobelt in the No. 1 slot.

The battle between the two talented tandems was close, but Cepeda and Johnson ultimately prevailed in a tiebreak, claiming a thin 8-7 (5) victory over their Syracuse counterparts.

“Anik and Hope recorded another nationally-ranked win, putting them in good position for the NCAAs,” Geiger-Walton said. “They still need to knock off VCU’s No. 1 team, but they definitely have good wins behind them.”

The Tribe’s other doubles teams, in contrast, dispatched the Orange with relative ease. Junior Katie Kargl and sophomore Marlen Mesgarzadeh defeated Simone Kalhorn and Aleah Marrow, 8-4, at the No. 2 position while senior Lauren Sabacinski and freshman Jeltje Loomans registered an 8-5 triumph over Alessondra Parra and Christina Tan at the No. 3 post, claiming the doubles point.

The College found even less resistance in the singles portion of the match, as all but one of the Tribe’s singles players emerged victorious.

Mesgarzadeh recorded a 6-0, 6-4, straight set victory over Kobelt at the No. 2 post, Loomans defeated Parra 6-3, 7-5, at the No. 3 position and Cepeda clinched the College victory with a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Tan.

Cepeda and Mesgarzadeh both won for the sixth time in their last seven matches. Cepeda’s victory was her 21st this season, the most for any player for the Tribe this season.

“Marlen is cruising,” Geiger-Walton said. “[She] and Anik have big winning streaks right now … We are getting better and stronger and we are starting to increase our confidence.”
Although the fate of the match was already set, Johnson still prevailed over Harman, 5-7, 6-4, 10-5 in the
No. 1 position while Sabacinski downed Kalhorn at the No. 5 spot in a hard fought 7-5, 3-6, 10-4.

“I think everyone came away from that match with a boost in confidence, feeling good about their performances and getting more wins under their belt,” Geiger-Walton said.

Baseball: Bats go to town on Hofstra pitching

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After falling in the Friday opener of their weekend series against conference-foe Hofstra, William and Mary came back with a vengeance over the weekend, stomping the Pride by a combined 18 runs in the final two games of the series, putting the Tribe (16-15, 9-6 CAA) above the .500 mark for the first time this year and into fourth place in the CAA.

The team has now won 10 of its last 12 meetings with Hofstra, and has an astounding .777 winning percentage over its last 18 games. In a conference that most speculate will not receive an at-large bid to the regional portion of the College World Series, the top four finishers in the conference will qualify, making the College’s fourth place standing significant. Still, the Tribe has 15 conference games remaining on its schedule, including a three-game set against third-place UNC-Wilmington.

The series kicked off Friday in a game that resembled a pitcher’s duel until the ninth inning, when some unforced errors by the Tribe and timely hitting from the Pride culminated in a game-clinching four run inning for Hofstra.

Entering the ninth, junior pitcher Matt Davenport was cruising, having allowed just one earned run — two total — in the first eight innings. The Tribe scored in the first — when senior second baseman Jonathan Slattery singled to drive in junior designated hitter Stephen Acrure — and then in the fifth when junior shortstop Derrick Osteen’s sacrifice fly scored sophomore right fielder Derek Lowe, who had reached on a Hofstra throwing error.

With the game tied at 2-2, Davenport returned to the mound for the top of the ninth. After getting the first Pride hitter of the inning to fly out, Davenport walked first baseman Jared Hammer. Hofstra second baseman Logan Davis then singled, and Hammer moved to third on a throwing error by sophomore center fielder Ryan Brown. The single marked the end of the night for Davenport, as head coach Frank Leoni called on sophomore reliever John Farrell to take the ball.

But Farrell wouldn’t fare any better, allowing the winning run to score on a wild pitch, hitting a Pride batter and giving up a single and a double. All of a sudden what had been a 2-2 game was a 6-2 game, and the College went down in order in the bottom half of the inning.

But while the Tribe could have been demoralized by the disastrous ninth inning the night before, the team came back Saturday seemingly determined to do the demoralizing, and essentially ended the game with a seven-run third, capped by a two-run homer from sophomore left fielder Ryan Williams.

From there, senior pitcher Logan Billbrough dominated, who extended his scoreless-inning streak to 20 with a masterful performance. Billbrough threw seven shutout innings, striking out ten while keeping the Pride to four hits and three walks. A two-run fourth and a three-run seventh secured a 12-1 win for the College.

The rubber match of the series on Sunday was only slightly more competitive than the second game.
Hofstra jumped out to a 1-0 lead before the college lineup ever stepped up to the plate. Freshman designated hitter Devin White then tied the game with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the first. The Pride once again put up a one-spot in the second frame, giving Hofstra a 2-1 lead that would last through three and a half innings.

In the bottom of the fourth, however, the College’s bats erupted for a one-out, five-run rally. Freshman third baseman Ryan Lindemuth, Osteen, Slattery and Acrure all had RBIs as the five-hit inning once again broke the game open early.

While the Tribe’s junior pitcher Cole Shain didn’t make it out of the fourth himself — finishing with three and two-thirds innings pitched and two earned runs — the College’s pitching would flourish from the fifth on, as sophomore pitcher Brett Koehler turned in another masterful relief performance, picking up his fifth save of the year by tossing four scoreless innings, striking out five and allowing just three hits. A four-run eighth inning for the Tribe sealed the series win as the College scored the 10-3 victory.

The College now returns to non-conference play, travelling to play Richmond Wednesday.

LWC leads walk out in support of living wages

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More than 100 students marched out of their classes to the Crim Dell Meadow as part of the national “We Are One” walk out at 12:15 p.m. Monday to show their support for a variety of different issues, including living wages and affordable education, both at the College of William and Mary and on the national scale.

On campus, the event was spearheaded by the Living Wage Coalition, which coordinated the walk out in conjunction with the larger national initiative. National chapters of the NAACP, Amnesty International, Young Democrats, Voices of Planned Parenthood and United Students Against Sweatshops, as well as National labor unions like the AFL-CIO, endorsed the national walk out in an effort to promote affordable education, health care, workers’ rights and living wages.

The event was billed as one of the largest national walk outs in history, as students, workers and professors from across the nation rallied for workers’ rights.

“I’m here to fight for the workers’ rights on campus and nationally,” Shannon Davis ’13 said. “The administration needs to think about living wages and put them into something of more importance than the stuff they’re spending money on now.”

The event was held on April 4, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. King was in Memphis to support African American sanitation workers who were on strike protesting unequal wages and working conditions.

“The [LWC] really fits in with the national scope in this time of crisis,” LWC member Maggie Russolello ’11 said.

The event was related to the labor union law issues occurring in Wisconsin, Indiana and other states where workers’ rights for collective bargaining are jeopardized.

The LWC sent an email to College President Taylor Reveley requesting he bring up the issue of living wages at the April 13 Board of Visitors meeting. They hope the deadline will press Reveley to show he is taking concrete steps towards incorporating living wages into the budget.

“We’re hoping that the administration responds and sees that this is a community issue. Not just an issue of importance on campus, but nationally also,” Arielle Pak ’13 said.

The LWC encouraged students to leave class for the midday rally. College professors, along with the custodial workers, labor union members and student representatives, spoke at the event. Some professors weren’t overly supportive of the idea, but others brought their entire classes to the event.

“It is clear to me that the spirit of activism is still very much alive here at William and Mary,” theater professor Artisia Green said to the crowd. “This is a story for the history books. Economic injustice is tied to every other social problem and challenge.”

Student representatives took turns at the microphone encouraging their peers to advocate for the issues and to show their own support for the cause. Students demonstrated their support through speeches, banners and poetic verse.

“Now is the time to come together and show that justice too long delayed is justice denied,” NAACP member Kameron Adams said.

After the speeches ended, participants marched around across campus holding signs and shouting the LWC chant, “What do we want? Living wages! When do we want them? Now!”

College maintenance staff member Kirk Fatrell and his wife Roxanne Fatrell have worked as part of the custodial staff at the College for over a decade. They each had to file a leave of absence in order to miss an hour of work in order to be at the rally. They stayed after the event to talk with students about their experiences.

“I believe in anything worth fighting for. You have to fight for what you want and let them know what’s important,” Kirk Fatrell said.

Roxanne Fatrell explained that many of her co-workers work another job after they finish their seven-hour shifts at the College.

“I hope the administration will listen and show appreciation for all the support the students have been giving us,” Roxanne Fatrell said.

Mash Bros. transform Chesapeake into club

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The Super Mash Bros., a trio of college students who make party music for college students, brought their distinctive brand of sonic wizardry to the College of William and Mary Friday night.

The Los Angeles-based group performed in front of a sold out crowd in the Sadler Center’s Chesapeake Ballrooms, transforming the space into a temporary night club complete with flashing strobe lights and music video montages. The cyber-DJs took to the stage equipped with MacBooks and mixing equipment, briefly firing up the crowd before launching into their techno-infused set.

“Super Mash Bros has actually been an idea that’s been thrown around for a year now,” AMP music committee member Nick Velleman ’11 said. “Girl Talk was a hit two years ago, and when this Chesapeake show opportunity came up for us, we wanted to go with another mash-up.”

Nicholas Fenmore, Ethan Dawes and Dick Fink — excluding Fink, who does not tour with the group — combined daring mash-ups with video presentations of YouTube clips and old school cultural references to create a show both energetic and nostalgic. They mixed musical genres of all types, resulting in the fusion of the obscure and the odd. One of their most popular tracks, “I Fucking Bleed Purple And Gold,” opens with Eminem’s “Without Me” laid over the synth line from MGMT’s “Kids.”

Their first two releases, “Fuck Bitches. Get Euros.” and “All About The Scrillions” have earned them some critical acclaim. The Tape, a popular music blog calls Super Mash Bros. a “super fresh respirator swooping in at just the right time.”

Perhaps more importantly, they have developed a grassroots following by touring relentlessly and giving away their music for free, all while maintaining their enrollment as full-time students. What makes Super Mash Bros. so relatable is their understanding of the college student’s desire to blow off steam at the end of a long week. They certainly brought the party Friday night.

Fenmore and Dawes kept the tunes coming at a nearly constant rate, pausing occasionally to rally the wild crowd. During a brief break, fully aware of the audience to whom they were playing, the duo threw handfuls of purple and yellow condoms into the outstretched arms of their eager fans.

From a performance aspect, the show was nearly flawless. Unfortunately some overzealous partygoers let the atmosphere get the best of them, and Fenmore and Dawes repeatedly told the audience to stop pushing forward. At one point the lights were turned on to discourage the rowdy behavior.

The concert — a brief hour and a half in length — was nonetheless a great success, and the extremely positive response to both Girl Talk and Super Mash Bros. is indicative of the growing popularity of mash-up artists. The genre offers a fresh twist on already beloved songs, packaging them into a condensed and danceable blend. Mash-ups are not just a flash in the pan, and Super Mash Bros. are proof of the style’s continuing evolution.

Mental health at the College

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From March 25 to April 1, the College of William and Mary’s Committee of Mental Health and Wellness Committee hosted its annual “Love Your Body Week,” designed to raise awareness of eating disorders and body image at the College.

All week, students representing the Collegiate Awareness Regarding Eating Smart team set up tables in the Sadler Center offering information about eating disorders and dealing with issues of body image.

“I think ‘Love Your Body Week’ has definitely had a positive influence, at least on getting people to be more conscious of themselves this week,” CARES volunteer Katie Wood ’14 said.

Each day, students and faculty participated in events spanning the entire campus, each focusing on a different aspect of body image awareness. Events included a brisk morning fitness walk with College President Taylor Reveley, a “love your body fair” a “Celebrating Our Bodies” dance showcase and a student panel on eating disorders.

In August 2010, CARES merged with the Mental Health Task Force to create the Mental Health and Wellness Committee, designed to better address a wide range of health issues by promoting outreach and distributing valuable resources to students.

Working together with the College’s Health and Counseling Centers and groups like Health Outreach Peer Educators, the committee, as the name suggests, looks to address both mental and physical components of student wellness.

“Our goal is to provide the William and Mary community with up to date and reliable health information,” HOPE President Jackie Pembleton ’12 said. “As an accountable resource to the community, we strive to facilitate an on going dialogue about health issues.”

The issue of mental health is often misunderstood, Pembleton explained.

“Mental health is not just the absence of an illness, but also the presence of overall well-being,” she said.

As part of its program, the mental health branch of HOPE offers a series of 15 minute presentations, covering mental health and depression, better sleep, and stress management. Starting April 11, HOPE will be hosting an on-campus awareness week called “Depression Counts.”

However, some students say that the College needs more than student groups to properly address issues of mental health.

“The school shouldn’t rely on student outreach things in substitution for an adequate counseling center,” Andrew Ray ’13 said.

Ray also shared his thoughts about mental health issues among college students.

“The school in general can sometimes invoke an anxious atmosphere, or perpetuate an anxious and hectic student mindset,” he said.

Such a mindset is not confined to the College, however.

“It’s not like a William and Mary-specific thing,” Ray said. “It’s more a human thing and it comes to surface when people come to an academic setting.”

Behind Closed Doors: Daring girls to ride solo

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Everyone laughs at the line in a movie where the mom tells her greasy-haired teenage son not to touch himself because he’ll go blind. Girls will giggle quietly at this joke while guys laugh uproariously. Males seem to recognize this message for the comedy that it clearly is, and as a result they have an easier time talking about masturbation. I have a group of guy friends who all live in a house together. Not only do they openly reference masturbation — how often they do it, when they were doing it — but they go so far as to try to catch each other doing it. I thought that seemed like a game in which everyone involved lost, but hey, if they want to catch each other petting the one-eyed snake, who am I to judge?

My girl friends, on the other hand, can barely say the word “masturbation” without blushing, and I think that’s a pretty widespread phenomenon. For some reason, females have largely internalized the idea that self-pleasure is unacceptable, and that they don’t need to (or shouldn’t, or maybe even can’t) touch themselves because someone else is supposed to be doing it. The question coming from the happily attached, regularly-getting-some audience is: If someone else is pleasing me, why do I need to do it myself? And the masturbators in the audience are quietly laughing, because they know better. In high school, my three closest friends were all girls I had known since elementary school, and we convinced our slightly over-protective parents to let us go to beach week after we finished our senior year. At Myrtle Beach, we decided to go to lingerie party, so we spent the whole day searching for the perfect sexy-but-not-skanky outfits (little did we know that one, such things did not exist in Myrtle Beach and two, college was going to rock our worlds). It was nearing the end of the day, and we wandered, tired, discouraged, and desperate into a place with blacked out windows called Lulu’s Lingerie. The place was light on the lingerie, but heavy on the dildos, handcuffs and porn. In spite of the fact that we had been friends for nearly 10 years, the four of us didn’t talk about sex very much; two of us had significant others and two of us were riding solo, and none of us really knew how much information was actually too much. What we found was that being in Lulu’s made all of us a little uncomfortable. However, our intrigue won out. So right there, in the middle of the sketchiest store I have ever seen, (the door to the viewing room was right behind us, in case you needed a porn break) we had our first conversation about sex toys and masturbation, and I swear to you, I learned things that I bet Lulu herself could not have taught me. The two of us that had gone on the trip with significant others talked about how we didn’t really know what we liked, and no, we didn’t really touch ourselves, our partners did, and yeah, of course it was fun! Oh, did we orgasm? No, not really that often … I mean sometimes … well, maybe. We weren’t really sure if it was an orgasm … And as the conversation went on, our single, much more self-actualized friends looked incredulous, and even a little sorry for us. They talked about how they knew exactly what they liked, and shared some tips with those of us who weren’t as lucky. And they told us that they could come whenever they wanted! No partner? No problem! To make a long story short, Lulu’s probably saw more business that day than it had in quite a while. My single friends had taken the initiative to map out what had always been uncharted territory for me, and had struck gold. Not only were they successful in finding the elusive female orgasm, they were also empowered; they didn’t need someone else in order to be sexually fulfilled. They could do it themselves, and they could do it better.

If I could give my high school self some advice, it would be to spend more time figuring out that uncharted territory. I wish I had known that I should have made time for me in order to get to know what I liked, and I wish I had known that I wouldn’t go blind. In fact, things might have even been a little clearer than they were before.

__Krystyna Holland is a Flat Hat sex columnist and recently bought a new pair of glasses but has yet to lose her sight. Contact Krystyna at kaholland@email.wm.edu.__

NCW discusses 2012 budget

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Saturday marked the monthly meeting of the Neighborhood Council of Williamsburg at the Quarterpath Recreation Center. The agenda for the meeting featured an open forum offering community members a chance to voice their general opinions, as well as an overview of and general commentary on the 2012 fiscal budget plan with Williamsburg Finance Director Phil Serra.

Kate Hoving, a communications specialist for the City Manager’s office, began the open forum section with a program organized by the city’s Green Team, designed to encourage residents to be more ecologically friendly in their homes.

“This [ecological program] is a friendly challenge … we don’t want to make anybody feel less “green” than anybody else,” Hoving said.

Two Sharpe scholars from the College of William and Mary, Margaret Schwenzfeier ’14 and Danielle Waltrip ’14 then introduced the Neighborhood Engagement Committee, a program which focuses on recruiting members from neighborhoods that are underrepresented in the NCW.

“The NCW is a great community forum and we would like to get more people involved, including students and neighborhoods that don’t send representatives to the meetings,” Schwenzfeier said.
Serra then spoke about expenditures and revenues for both 2011 and 2012.

“I promised you that you would learn where your tax dollars are going,” councilman Don Hess said when introducing Serra.

Serra began with a PowerPoint presentation detailing the budget since fiscal year 2006.

“We had high operating funds from 2006-2009 … though they began to lower by 2009, we are still expecting a surplus of 1.3 million and a balanced budget of 32 million,” Serra said.

Serra outlined the main revenue generators, highlighting the contribution of property taxes and general state revenues to this area. He also noted the main expenditures of the budget: public work projects such as the reconstruction of Prince George Street, in addition to the public school system in general.

“The [economic] downturn has affected real estate values in different communities… the majority of our revenue is invested in government bonds or commercial paper,” Serra said.

This differentiation was deemed significant because government bonds are generally less affected by economic fluctuations than common stocks.

NCW chairman Jim Joseph was ambivalent about his approval of the budget.

“Yes, I do [approve], but it’s difficult to comment, as [Serra] did not go into specifics about proposed expenditures,” Joseph said.

A confused coalition

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The Living Wage Coalition cited Martin Luther King Jr. as inspiration for events such as Monday’s “We Are One” walk out. While some stances the LWC supports are related to those King supported, we believe it is not appropriate to compare this movement to King’s movement and the Civil Rights Movement. It is no longer 1968, and the art of protesting has changed. Drawing comparisons to King also misrepresents opposition to the Living Wage Coalition.

For the most part, we are not against higher pay for workers, better health care or any of the other goals the LWC hopes to achieve. Instead, we question how the group goes about trying to accomplish these goals. Instead of radicalizing their tactics, the LWC should take a more moderate approach without watering down its message for improved workers’ rights. Maybe then the campus would no longer regard the coalition as a polarizing group and instead would embrace it for its attention to an important issue on campus. Students, faculty members — and maybe even the administration — would become supportive.

To continue bombarding the College of William and Mary administration is completely pointless. College President Taylor Reveley is seemingly powerless when it comes to worker wages on campus — the commonwealth of Virginia controls the budget. Williamsburg hasn’t been the capital of Virginia for 231 years. The senators and delegates in Richmond are the ones with the power and authority to change workers’ salaries. It is time to move on to Richmond, and stop breaking down Reveley’s door.

It isn’t just the choice of who to target which is making the movement ineffective. The LWC is also expanding its platform, so much so that some of its original message appears diluted. The group began as a body of students dedicated to raising the pay for the workers who do so much for the College. It was a noble cause. Now its platform covers a variety of issues — maybe even too many. It is also partnering with other organizations, which may be a factor in the dilution of its mission.

For the walk out, the LWC partnered with NAACP, Voices for Planned Parenthood and the Young Democrats. While all these groups support the same ideology to a certain degree, they also have very different purposes. And partnering in a national movement doesn’t necessarily make a group more effective; it is the actions taken by a group and the results of those actions that make a movement successful.

Lately, the reputation of the group has been perceived negatively on campus. With seemingly endless complaints against it, the group has started to alienate people who could have been helpful in their mission. Although King did say moderates could be harmful because of their lack of action, he also understood that moderates need to be inspired in order to encourage participation and truly change a society. Moderates have the ability to influence both sides of the argument. Harnessing this group is important to any movement, and the LWC should seek their endorsement, not scare them away.

The LWC has the right to assemble. It also has the right to free speech. Both are wasted, however, when the message is lost in a dramatic radicalization of the movement in a way that demonstrates intense anger and dilutes substance. The LWC’s efforts are also wasted when the protest is aimed at the wrong people.

The LWC needs to go where the budget decisions are made — and that place is not Reveley’s yard.

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