Movie posters, hollywood themed decorations and a makeshift red carpet adorned Quinnipiac’s Echlin theater as students and faculty came together to celebrate the 2018 Quinnies, an annual film festival and award show run by the Quinnipiac Film Society. Students submit any film they’ve created, though within the 10 minute maximum limit, and the short is then screened at the event and entered for a prize.
This year’s Quinnies featured 24 films across all genres. Comedies, dramas and documentaries were all represented in the submissions. Two submissions were from this year’s South Africa trip run by professor Liam O’Brien. Another two were from Q30 Television’s comedy show “Quinnipiac Tonight.”
The event also featured catering by Moe’s Southwest Mexican Grill and raffles for Beats headphones, a TV, various gift cards and a year subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud.
QFS President Connor Carey said the Quinnies is the club’s biggest event of the year and that it takes months to plan. Carey, a senior along with rest of the QFS Executive Board, was pleased with the turnout at the event and sees a bright future for the club.
“It shows a good emphasis on our film program and a lot of interest in the film society,” Carey said. “We had some underclassmen win and seniors win Quinnies, so as long as freshmen keep staying involved like they are I think we’ll definitely be good for the future.”
Professors Becky Abbott, Philip Cunningham and Fritz Staudmyer were the official judges for the event and decided who won awards such as: Best Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture.
The Best Picture of the day went to Matt Kravitsky for his film “The Better Man.” This is the third year in a row that Kravitsky has won the award. He filmed “The Better Man” while in Los Angeles for the QU in LA program. He said he faced many obstacles while filming his short.
“We only had one day to shoot it,” Kravitsky said. “We were shooting at Joshua Tree National Park, which is illegal … and we didn’t get a permit … We got in trouble by a park ranger who said if we didn’t get out in 15 minutes he’d see us in court. But I’m really happy with how it came out, and it was definitely worth it.”
The two films that stole the show nearly tied for the Fan Favorite award at the end of the afternoon. “On Time,” submitted by Bret Schneider, is a comedy about a man running late for an appointment set to well-known songs. While “Tenacity,” submitted by Zack Carlascio, is a dramatic film about a man who lost his wife in a car accident and has trouble coping with the loss. Tenacity won Fan Favorite by a single vote.
Kravitsky, who has spent four years in QFS, got emotional talking about his experience with the club.
“I don’t want to talk about it I’m going to cry,” he said. “I’ve met all of my best friends and connections at QFS. Now that I’m graduating I’ll probably go to LA and try to make stuff with the people I met in QFS that now live there.”
QFS meets on Wednesdays at 9:15 p.m. in Echlin 101.
More and more Quinnipiac students are turning down the opportunity to travel across the ocean for study abroad. Instead, they are choosing to travel across the country to Los Angeles, California for the Quinnipiac in Los Angeles program.
The QU in LA program launched in 2014. The goal of the program was to send communications students, especially film students, to LA for a semester or summer to do an internship and take classes.
Since the program’s launch, enrollment has increased by 150 percent. 26 students will participate in the program this summer, and about the same will go for the Fall 2018 semester.
The program website boasts many well-known companies where students completed their internships. Some of those companies include ABC News, Disney, Marvel Studios, Miramax, Universal Music Group and Warner Bros.
Senior film major Remy Sullivan spent the Spring 2017 semester in Los Angeles as an intern for a company called More Media. She says the program is important for communications majors to get a taste of what it is like to be in the film or television industry and that influenced her decision to go there.
“LA is one of the top places to be right now I’m the film and television industry,” she said. “Plus I love the city and wanted to get a feel of what it would be like to live there long term.”
Mark Contreras, the new dean of the School of Communications, agrees that going to LA will benefit students in their professional lives.
“The environment (in LA) is just filled with people who do this for a living,” he said. “To me if you’re going to get out of school with a complete understanding of both coasts, it’s a really important part of your life … Our QU in LA program puts a student right in the middle of this maelstrom.”
Contreras credits program director Jameson Cherilus for much of the program’s success. Cherilus is a Quinnipiac alumnus and is the only QU in LA faculty member that is physically in Los Angeles with the students.
Cherilus comes to Quinnipiac twice a year to provide information sessions for students and spends much of his time finding companies that will work with the university to expand internship opportunities for students in Los Angeles. He does all of this without a physical office in California or Connecticut.
“He lives in West Hollywood and his office is his cell phone. He’s very hard working.” Contreras said.
Contreras says expansion of the program is due to a combination of word of mouth from previous participants in the program and the university’s efforts to improve the program and make students more aware of the opportunity.
“I do think there is a buzz occurring largely because of Jameson’s leadership that it’s a really good experience and he’s making it that way,” he said.
There are three students majoring outside of the School of Communications that are going to Los Angeles in the summer. Contreras says this is also a growing trend with the program.
“I think as the buzz continues, more and more students will want to be out there,” he said. “One of the things I want to add as dean is you’ll be prepared but you’ll also have choice and optionality for where you go to work. To me, that’s important.”
Sullivan’s advice to other students that may want to do the program is simple: just go for it.
“Clear the fence and run,” she said. “You will not regret the experience as a whole if you want to be a part of the industry in the future.”
When it comes to future plans for QU in LA, there housing options have already been improved and Contreras is working to get more faculty members out to Los Angeles. But will there ever be a Quinnipiac campus in Los Angeles?
“No, not yet,” he said. “A person can dream … it would take a lot of planning and a lot of fundraising for us to be able to afford a permanent place.”
The Connecticut Whale celebrating a goal (credit: Michael Hertzel)
By Sam Prevot
Cydney Roesler first stepped on the ice when she was 5 years old.
Her father was a former college hockey player for Colgate University and taught her how to skate along with her mother. This is normal for a kid growing up in Canada, where ice sports are a way of life. At 8 years old, she made the switch from a Canadian sport called ringette to hockey. She immediately fell in love with the game. Even at a young age, Roesler was competitive and this fast, physical game was a perfect match. However, there was one catch: Roesler had to play with boys.
“There weren’t any good, competitive girls’ leagues at that time so I felt like boys hockey was my only option,” Roesler said. “People would always ask me, ‘Did the boys try to hit you all the time?’ and to be honest some of them did.”
For Roesler and so many other girls, the opportunity to watch their role models only came once every four years.
“For me it was tough growing up because I wasn’t really exposed to female hockey players … it was really just every four years,” she said. “You watched the Olympics and that was kind of it.”
Roesler on the ice for the Connecticut Whale of the NWHL (credit: Rob Rasmussen)
Roesler started playing girls hockey in high school and then played for the Quinnipiac University women’s ice hockey team.
Since the passing of Title IX, opportunities for women in sports have increased dramatically. However, there is still a long way to go when it comes to professional women’s sports. In professional women’s sports leagues are much smaller, teams struggle to put fans in seats and media coverage is lacking.
Women’s hockey has progressed since Roesler’s childhood. The Canadian Women’s Hockey League was founded in 2007 and the National Women’s Hockey League was founded in 2015, during Roesler’s junior year at Quinnipiac. She now plays for the NWHL’s Connecticut Whale.
The NWHL is just three seasons old. The league’s only broadcasting deal is with Twitter, to stream a “Game of the Week”, and three out of the four teams are still league-owned.
Attendance was high in the inaugural season, with an average of 1,000 people attending each game. Now, that average is closer to 750 people. Salaries are also an issue for the league, some players have been downgraded from a set salary to now receiving payments for each game they play. Most players have other full time jobs in addition to playing NWHL games on the weekends.
The Women’s National Basketball Association is a more established league, but it faces similar questions about attendance and salaries.
The WNBA celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017. The league has a television deal with ESPN and a few of its teams have partnerships with their NBA counterparts. Average attendance continued to decline, but resurged and reached its highest levels since 2011 last season.
Sylvia Fowles of the Minnesota Lynx won the WNBA regular season and finals MVP in 2017, and was paid a salary of $109,000. The NBA minimum salary is more than $562,000.
Amber Cox, vice president of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, sees the league as a growing business that needs more commitment from fans.
“There’s a patience involved when it comes to building a fan base. In this day and age you can survive and be a growing sport,” Cox said.
“I think sometimes the miss is with fans, they’re sort of casual about it. When I’m talking to potential season ticket holders, you think you’re supporting us by coming to three games and watching us on TV and reading about us in the paper, but the way that we are going to continue to have financial success and grow this thing … is by full season tickets … Take that commitment up. If you say that to people, typically the light will go on.”
There is a disconnect in our society when it comes to men’s and women’s sports. The widely held belief is that a men’s professional sport will be of higher quality and entertainment value than women’s.
Quinnipiac sociology professor Devon Gross who teaches “Sociology of Sport” says that looking at women’s and men’s sports differently is a learned behavior based on gender constructs and the way we socialize.
“We’ve always associated masculinity and sports together,” she said. “We think of sports as aggressive and violent and competitive and those are all things we associate with men more than women. We’ve been socialized and told constantly that sports and men go together. So when women are playing sports we don’t really know how to react to that.”
There is a cultural belief that women are not as good at sports as men, and to watch women’s sports is to “settle.” There is also the comparison of women to men and the idea that female athletes are less feminine because they play sports.
“Anyone who is associated with that we automatically think of as having masculine traits. That’s where there’s the stereotype that women athletes are lesbians or that they’re more masculine,” Gross said. “There seems to be a pretty strict binary in sports and you’re either doing girls sports or boys sports and if you cross the line in any way we’re pretty uncomfortable about it.”
There is also the issue of sexualization of female athletes. Scholars say that the way male and female athletes are represented in the media is designed to “uphold sport as a male preserve” and there is still embedded sexism.
Cydney Roesler believes games like the gold medal finals between the United States and Canada’s women’s hockey teams in the Winter Olympics prove that the sport can be exciting and draw audiences.
“There shouldn’t be that disconnect between the two (men’s and women’s hockey),” she said. “Even games in our league, it gets pretty fired up. It gets physical and everything like that. It’s kind of like ‘Hey, here are the aspects the men’s game has that we’re bringing to ours too,’ why aren’t people more drawn to it? A lot of people watch hockey because they think it’s so tough with the fighting and the hits. We’re not going to fight … but we’re still physical, we’re fast, we’re skilled.”
The University of Minnesota is home to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport. In an article titled Playing but Losing: Women’s Sports after Title IX, Tucker Center researchers discuss the inequalities between men’s and women’s sports that still exist today after laws like Title IX were passed.
One particular issue mentioned is media coverage of women’s sports. Although broadcast coverage of women’s sports has increased and improved in quality, this change has not translated to newspapers, magazines or televised news and highlight shows.
The article cites a 2010 study by the University of Southern California that found that ESPN aired 100 segments and over three hours for the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and 11 segments and just six and a half minutes for the women’s tournament. That coverage of the women’s tournament was mostly a scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen.
The Hartford Courant covers the Connecticut Sun’s home games, and some away games depending on how the team’s season is going. Jeff Smith, deputy sports editor at the Courant, says that the paper’s coverage is all about which teams are successful.
“Like any other industry that’s trying to find its way through financial challenges, we have to make choices,” Smith said. “So we can’t cover everything … when the team (Connecticut Sun) was not so good, we had to make choices and spread our resources. We would always have Sun coverage in the paper but not always with a reporter. But then last year, when the team did better … clearly that shifts the way we cover them.”
When Sports Editor Sean Barker started at the New Haven Register in 2000, there were 28 sports writers on staff. Now among three of the papers owned by Hearst in the area, there are six.
Barker believes in fair coverage for men’s and women’s sports. But he admits that traditional beliefs from older journalists and a small staff can affect coverage of women’s sports. The Register’s Connecticut Whale coverage consists of one feature per season.
“Women’s sports have come a long way in media coverage, but there is still a fight for media space. I get challenged by this every day,” Barker said. “There’s some arguments that there’s more media coverage on a television level that leads to people wanting to know more about men’s sports. Then there’s the basic argument that honestly people don’t give women’s sports the respect that they deserve.”
When it comes to these coverage choices, Barker points out that the media could sometimes create more readership for the sport instead of the sport dictating the coverage.
“Does attendance rise because there’s more media coverage, or do you get more media coverage because your attendance is higher? It’s an interesting dynamic. So if we covered the National Women’s Hockey League on a consistent basis, how would that affect attendance? It would probably go up.”
For the Connecticut Sun, Cox thinks the team should take matters into their own hands and help bring attention to the sport and the players.
“There is always more opportunity (for media coverage),” Cox said. “One of the things I tell my team all the time is that we have to continue to be responsible for telling our own story. If LeBron tweets something about something political or the type of cereal he likes, everybody retweets it and the media picks it up and they talk about it. We don’t necessarily have that critical mass on a national level.”
At the end of the day, Roesler and Cox are both optimistic about the future of women’s hockey and basketball. Rising attendance, increased coverage and social media presence are all creating a loyal fanbase for the NWHL and WNBA to build a foundation on and young girls have more role models to look up to.
“You’re just now getting to the point where WNBA players grew up watching the WNBA,” Cox said. “That is creating a cycle of ‘I know I can do this for a living, I can earn a living playing in the WNBA’ and as a result are training for it.”
Roesler recognizes loyal fans at games and at the team’s postgame signings. She sees that as a sign that the future is bright for the sport.
“There’s definitely that fan loyalty,” she said. “And you start to see the same little girls coming to the games … so you see new faces but then again you see those returners who just love to be there. For little girls now they can come watch us and dream and hope they’ll be where we are.”
Students made headlines around the country for walking out and protesting for gun control in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Now, teachers are protesting for better work conditions, higher wages, and fighting against budget cuts. These walkouts are becoming more and more widespread, leading to statewide school closures in some cases.
The question now is: will teachers in Connecticut walk out as well? The answer is, most likely not.
This movement began in March when West Virginia teachers went on strike and shut down every public school in the state. Those teachers’ demands included defeating the expansion of charter schools, fixing a health insurance crisis and pay raises. The teachers also wanted to stop a proposal that would eliminate seniority, meaning the state could replace older teachers with younger ones that could be paid less.
The situation in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona is similar.
Kentucky teachers are walking out in protest of pension overhauls and are demanding better funding and working conditions. Arizona teachers are participating in “non-disruptive walk-in demonstrations” this week.
Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma signed a bill to provide $50 million more in funding for schools, increased teacher salaries and pay raises for support staff. However, this wasn’t enough to meet the teachers’ demands, and their walk out went on as planned. The teachers want the funding to improve conditions such as replacing decades old textbooks that are beginning to fall apart.
Teachers in Oklahoma are some of the lowest paid in the country, with kindergarten teachers making an average salary of $40,370 per year. Elementary school teachers in Arizona and West Virginia make an average of $42,730 and $45,520 respectively. Kentucky comes in a bit higher with an average salary of $52,420.
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
On the other hand, Connecticut teachers are some of the highest paid in the country. An elementary school teacher makes an average salary of $76,740. The only state that pays teachers more is New York. There is the factor of cost of living, as it is higher in states like Connecticut and New York than in the Southern states.
According to USNews, Connecticut ranks 14th overall in education nationally, but ranks fifth nationally in PreK-12 education.
Professor Mordechai Gordon of the Quinnipiac School of Education says his students may not even be aware of these walkouts. However, the faculty are aware and according to Gordon, the professors at QU are very sympathetic to what the teachers in these states are going through.
“The school supplies were in very bad condition and teachers sometimes had to draw on their on personal funds to get supplies for their classes,” Gordon said. “And just in general the way teachers are treated in those states is very reprehensible. Our teacher candidates are hopefully going to go into situations where it’s much better.”
The QU School of Education works with many schools in the area and conditions there are “considerably better” according to Gordon. Teachers are getting raises, and are generally being treated better.
“We’re glad that they’re organized and were able to, at least in West Virginia, get some things changed in the right direction,” Gordon said.
There are currently no reports of walkouts or strikes for Connecticut teachers.
Teri Alves, a second grade teacher in Orange, Connecticut, does not expect teachers in her district to organize a walkout. She says she rarely spends much money out of pocket for classroom supplies and the district and Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) help meet her needs.
The PTA for Alves’ school gives teachers money to spend every summer, which is enough to get her through the school year. Her school also bought her a new classroom library this year when she made the switch from fourth to second grade.
Alves was surprised by the working conditions of other teachers around the country.
“When I saw some of the things on the news like those books falling apart, I’m like well I have some of those in my closet because they weren’t cleaned out from the other teachers, but I wouldn’t ever think of using them,” Alves said. “So if that’s what people really have to use as their teaching materials, that’s pretty sad. I’ve never had that experience at all.”
Alves’ school provides laptops for students, and she has a SmartBoard in her classroom. She also says there is little to complain about when it comes to her pension and healthcare plans. A former teacher in her district is now the president of the Connecticut Education Association union, and Alves says the union is strong when negotiating things like salaries and other work conditions in the teachers’ contract.
So when it comes to the question of Connecticut teachers striking in the future, Alves is confident in her response.
“She is a tireless and effective fundraiser,” UCLA distinguished professor Steven Lippman said.
Olian spearheaded a fundraising windfall that saw $400 million come into the school.
Lippman added, “Dean Olian has shown herself to be incredibly energetic and hard working with unsurpassed attention to detail. Her entrepreneurial bent is ideally suited to help Quinnipiac University excel in general and ascend the rankings in particular.”
Before Olian officially becomes president on July 1, here are some facts you may not know about her and her journey to Quinnipiac.
1. She had a unique upbringing
Olian’s parents escaped the Holocaust — a disaster that separated the couple for seven years before they were reunited. They moved to Australia, where Olian was born. She “ping-ponged” between Australia and Israel during her childhood, and also spent time as an au pair in Switzerland, according to a website run by UCLA assistant dean Dylan Stafford.
That same website revealed that Olian had cancer in her 20s and left her unable to have children. She said her experience is part of the reason why she loves working with young people and being involved in their education.
3. Her education has an international flair
Olian earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After traveling to the United States with her first husband without a work visa, she entered grad school. She earned her master’s and doctorate in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
4. She teaches an extremely popular class at UCLA
Olian teaches “Critical Milestones in Preparing for Life in Leadership” with Peter Guber. Guber is CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and owns the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
5. She is more than just a professor and dean
Olian is also the author of a weekly syndicated newspaper column and host of a monthly television show on current topics in business. She is a much sought-after speaker and consultant for major corporations. In addition she serves on the board of advisors for Catalyst, a nonprofit organization with a mission of creating better workplaces for women.
