California Tech v. 123:1, September 25, 2019

Special Rotation Issue The California Tech VoL. CXXIII No. 1 PASADENA, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 BECHTEL REPORT CARD SAKTHI VETRIVEL, VIVEK BHARADWAJ, & MARGARET THOMAS | FEATURE STORY It looks a bit like a prison, doesn't it?" undergraduate junior Lauren Li whispered as she looked up at the concrete facade of the newly constructed Bechtel Residence. She had been living in the residence since it opened its doors in September of 2018. As we walked in, Li tugged on one of the doors with construction tape draped over it. "Oh wait, not that one. That one doesn't work, she chuckled. Settled on Del Mar Blvd, just west of Hill Avenue, the Bechtel Residence is the newest addition to student housing in over two decades. In stark contrast to the Mediterranean Revival feel of the rest of the Caltech campus, Bechtel looks more like an office building than a student dormitory. The 95,000 square foot building, complete with a 400-person dining hall, multiple student suites, laundry rooms, study rooms, and community lounges, came to be through a generous pledge from the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation in the amount of $25 million in 2012, spread over five years. Since the donation funding the new dorm was announced, the Caltech community has been absorbed in a logistical whirlwind to determine exactly what to do with the cash and how to best supplement the existing, unique under- graduate housing system. As Caltech's official statement pro-claims, "The design process drew on the input from hundreds of students, faculty, and staff throughout the planning and design phase." But this design process was hardly a straight line from B CH Sakthi Vetrivel, Vivek Bharadwaj, & Margaret Thomas Undergraduate junior Lauren Li looked onto her new home for the next year. Point A to Point B. Catherine Jamshidi, the chair of the Spanning over six years, designs Interhouse Committee in 2015, recol- went from " a set of six distinct units of lected, "Yeah, the only stipulation was two to three stories in height, connect- that the dorm had to be completely ed around a shared courtyard" to one suite-style, but we still struggled to work building made up entirely of six-person within that." Associate Dean Leslie Nye, suites with a central dining hall, to its who has served at Caltech since 2011, final form today as a dorm of various shook her head, "It was actually past sized suites, from singles to twelve-per- students that really pushed for suite- son suites. style living. It wasn't pushed by admin- During the planning stages for the istration or by the donors or anything." Bechtel residence, Vice President for Sarah Crucilla, the current Interhouse Student Affairs Joe Shepherd noted Committee chair, looked at the blue- that the students have been leading the prints and remarked, "It's like they just charge in thinking through all aspects built a building and then said, 'Huh, of the new residence, from how it will who should we put there?"" relate to the existing house system, to With the lack of continuity in the who will live there, to what the dining students working on integrating Bech- experience will be. "We should be think- tel into the community, the planning ing about how we do that, how we make process has generated a lot of frustra- that change, in the most positive way tion towards the administration due to possible." the perceived lack of student input. Nye Students have indeed been leading recalled, "There were so many meetings the charge. Six generations of student with student government leaders and leaders have had input, and with the the architects. Students were really ac- constant changing of the guard, student tively shaping what this building would government has struggled to keep the look like. facts straight and maintain a consistent I CONTINUED ON PAGE 4| viewpoint. MEN'S SOCCER SCORES FOUR UNANSWERED FOR FIRST WIN OF 2019 MARK BECKER | SPORTS PASADENA - Led by a pair of goals off the foot of freshman midfielder Sam Klauer (Knoxville, Tenn. / Christian Academy), the Caltech men's soccer team bagged its first win of the season over Providence Christian College on Saturday af-ternoon. Klauer became the second Caltech player to notch multi-goal salle in 2019 after junior forward Rohan Mirchandani (Pleasanton, Calif. / Foot-hill) accomplished the feat earlier in the week. Both of the freshman's strikes ended up being insurance goals, as the Beavers hung four unanswered on the Sea Beggars after falling into a 1-0 hole to begin the game. The men's soccer team overcame the early adversity thanks to the poise shown by its veteran players. Two minutes after the visitors got on the board, senior midfielder Theo Yang (Columbia, Md. / Long Reach) struck a beautiful free kick from about 30 yards out to knot the game at one goal apiece eight minutes in. Sophomore midfielder Samir Johnson (Portland, Ore. / Jesuit) scored his first goal of the season just 15 minutes later. The reigning SCIAC Newcomer of the Year finished a solid run up the middle initiated by some nice one-touch passing from Michigan-born defenders JD Walker (Grand Blanc, Mich. / Grand 18 Blanc) and Josh Finnerty (Walled Lake, Mich. / Detroit Catholic Central). Klauer's first goal came with just seven minutes to go in the first half. The freshman, who took all of the Beavers' corner kicks in Saturday's contest, successfully curled the ball in front of the opposing net but with no player on either team able to touch it, the ball rolled over the line to give the rookie his first career goal. Just two games into the sea-son, Caltech has found a number of ways to score goals and can now claim direct braces on penalty kicks, free kicks and Caltech Athletics corner kicks. Klauer finished his second goal on a similar run to Johnson's in the first half. The midfielder took off down the right side and delivered the Beavers' final goal of the game with 10 minutes to go in the second half. Both Mirchandani and Yang picked up assists on the finish. After surrendering the early goal to the visiting team, the Caltech defense held strong over the game's final 83 minutes. Junior Gianfranco de Castro (Weston, Fla. / Cypress Bay) got the win between the pipes and made a trio of nice saves in his goalkeeping debut. TECH@CALTECH.EDU CELEBRATING THE 50TH CLASS OF WOMEN UNDERGRADUATES SEBASTIAN BEDOYA | OpINION When Caltech was first established as Throop University in 1891, women were free to attend, though the offerings of the institute differed significantly from what it became. This ended in the first decade of the 1900s, when Throop's president James Scherer, instrumental in the transition to the California Institute of Technology, revoked this right. Caltech then developed for years into a renowned institution with little female influence. It wasn't until 1964 that a wom-an, Lorraine Fisher, earned a Ph.D at Caltech. Another 5 years passed before Jenijoy La Belle became the first female professor at Caltech, joining the English department in 1969. Shortly afterward Olga Taussky-Todd, distinguished in the field of mathematics, became the first tenured professor in 1971. She was not offered this position when she became a research associate in 1957, but this is largely due to her husband becoming a professor and policy against providing professorships for married couples. Around the same time, in 1970, the undergraduate population welcomed. as The Tech put it, " '... that long awaited new addition: girls." Though it's shock ing this was less than 50 years ago, many prestigious universities did not become co-ed until around the same time. Yale and Princeton had admitted women the year before, while Columbia didn't allow them until 1983. MIT, on the other hand, admitted its first woman undergraduate in 1870 and became officially co-ed in 1882. Not everyone could go to Caltech after all. Today, we are seeing the beginnings of a Caltech shared by women. We are privileged enough to have Frances Ar-nold, who last year became the fifth woman to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry and the first female laureate among our faculty. Last year, women made up 45% of the undergraduate population, more than doubling 1990's 21%. Women graduate students have gone from making up 20% of the population in 1990 to 29% in 2018. It will take some time before the graduate and faculty demographics catch up, but with parity becoming prevalent across undergraduate populations, our future is looking ever more female. Caltech Archives INSIDE THIS ISSUE ROTATION DINNER SCHEDULE ...... 2 ROTATION RULES EDITORIAL .. s VOLLEYBALL STUNS WHITTIER ….. PuzzLE: SUdoku 2 THE CALIFORNIA ROTATION DINNER SCHEDULE SEPTEMBER 25.2019 aptev Abdullal hoonhsi 1】】 Contali 【圍 脂 TECH@CALTECH.EDU | EDITORIAL & SPORTs | SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 ROTATION RULES AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH ALBERT NAZEERI | EDITORIAL The past few years have seen large changes to the rotation rules. What was originally "The Four Laws of Rotation" was reduced last year to just three, and this year the coup de grâce was administered with rotation now being governed by an unnumbered amount of "Guidelines." In the past, these laws of rotation banned upperclassmen from discussing "stereotypes or rumors of any House except their own" and students were ordered to "consult an IHC member before speaking about a House of which they are not a member." Similarly, prefrosh were told they "should not discuss house stereotypes or rumors." The past rules, unlike the toothless guidelines, were accompanied with a list of concrete consequences: loss of House picks, temporary PNG status, or, my favorite, "any other punishment handed down by the IHC." The current guidelines, unlike the previous rules, states that "upperclassmen may speak freely" when it concerns the Caltech House system. This generosity on the part of the IC when it comes to our speech points to a strange situation: when did you need permission from some committee on what you could or could not say? Even though Caltech is a private institution, you are still explicitly granted your First Amendment rights through California's Leonard Law. The idea that some group of students could even think they have the power, one not even given to our Congress, to regulate the speech on this campus should seem ridiculous if not, frankly, revolting. It should be mentioned that the motivation for changing the "Rules" to "Guidelines" was the realization by the IC that the rules most likely conflicted with the law. It was argued in the past that these rules were necessary to ensure that no unfair advantage was taken of any member of the Caltech community. Of course, nobody wants a prefrosh to feel uncomfortable in their new house/residence, but somebody else's potential discomfort is insufficient a reason to suspend free speech on cam-pus. In my opinion, the most egregious overreach of the rotation rules happened last year: the rules were extended to the then uninhabited Bechtel Residence. This choice by the IC meant that all the divergent opinions at town halls, critiques on its hideous grey façade and complaints on the process used to decide aspects of the building were suppressed as to "ensure [Bechtel] is accurately represented by fact." Now that this campus has found itself unshackled from these rules, what are we to do with this newfound freedom? As upperclassmen we must open carry our opinions on our house, the other residences and Caltech in general and furnish them readily to the wide eyed prefrosh. We must encourage the prefrosh to seek out a wide variety of opinions before they make their housing choices and we must trust that they, future scientists and engineers, can separate the wheat from the chaff. The solution to the potential slandering of a house by an upperclassman isn't repression, rather it is the facilitation of conversation and inquiry on the part of the prefrosh. OK MOLES, WE NEED A TECH AD TO CONVINCE PREFROSH TO VISIT US VUKING KOINTION HOW ABOUT "LN ICE CREAM: VANILLA, OREO, AND MORE" CALTECH STUNS WHITTIER IN SCLAC VOLLEYBALL OPENER MArK BEcKEr SPORTs PASADENA - A team performance for the ages earned the Caltech women's volleyball team a 3-1 victory in its 2019 SCIAC opener against Whittier College for the second conference win in the history of the program. As scholars and scholar-athletes began to make their way back to campus for the fall semester, the Beavers came to life in front of a lively crowd and jumped on the visiting Poets with a 7-2 opening run. After the visitors clawed their way back, Caltech's veteran players took the initiative. The Beavers ended the first set with a pair of kills from junior Krys-tyna Maruszko (Redondo Beach, Calif. / Marymount) and senior Lauren Li (Bel-laire, Texas / Bellaire) to give the home team the early edge. "The fact that we started so strong makes me optimistic moving forward," Head Coach Tom Gardner said. "Our team was very well prepared and played well together from the jump." The Beavers replicated their first set success in the second frame, this time jumping out to a 7-1 run to put the pressure on the Poets. While the visitors once again worked their way back into the set late, Caltech managed to assume late control thanks to a few key points. Li painted the line with an athletic kill to give her side a 23-21 advantage and freshman Dallas Taylor (Phoenix, Ariz. / Saguaro) eventually closed things out with a powerful kill to give the Beavers a commanding 2-o lead heading into the third frame. While the Beavers slipped with a lackluster third set, their experience would later shine through with the victory still in reach at the start of the fourth. This time, the Beavers and Poets traded blows up until Caltech forced a Whittier timeout at 18-all with high stakes well in reach for both teams. ONCE WE LOKE TH WE'LL ENGAGE THEM WITH VUK OI KHNOC HNL INI EKESTING PROJECIS. TUKNING THE CHKTHINIOH VANILLA FOR ME! TING SHOULU HAVE PI ENTY OF SALT. BAAAHH BAAH OK WE COULD JOSI ENJOY THE AMBIENCE OF E-WASTE AND MEME MUSIC MY MEMES AKE AKTI WHY WALK WHEN YOU CHN SPoOL?? ...BUT EVERYTHING COME TO BLACKER HOUSE'S EVENT DIRECTLY AFTER ANY DINNER HLI CANHTIVE FURTIO UF T KANSPOKI ATION AKE ENCOUKAGED.... WOW! 'MSO EXCITED TO BE HI CHLIL FAIR WARNING! 3......... BOOM! BLACKER HOVSE DOING STUFF. BE THERE. The California Tech is published weekly except during vacation and examination periods by the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology, Inc. The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the authors and advertisers. Letters and submissions are welcome, e-mall submissions to teen @calteen.eau as plain-text attachments, Inclaamng the author's name, by Friday of the week before publication. The Tech does accept anonymous contributions under special circumstances. The editors reserve the right to edit and abridge all submissions for any reason. All written work remains property of its author. The advertising deadline is 3 PM on Saturday; all advertising should be submitted electronically or as camera ready art, but The Tech can also do simple typesetting and arrangement. All advertising inquiries should be directed to the business manager at tech@caltech.edu. "The message was to really just keep playing the way we're capable of while setting the pace early in points," Gardner said. "We weren't too worried about specific situations and did all the things we needed to do to execute, whether it was a good pass or dig before transitioning into some offense." Caltech took a patient approach to the final 10 points of the match, taking what the opposition afforded them while winning some of the longest rallies of the contest. The Beavers' final three points came from Whittier errors with Li, along with freshman Charley Lafayette (Toronto, Ontario, Can / Branksome Hall) putting a stamp on the win with an assisted block on match point. Li finished the night with 11 kills and three assisted blocks while Lafayette gave the Poets fits with six assisted blocks of her own. Caltech's proficiency in the middle block has quickly become a strength of this year's team, as evident in the Beavers outpacing the Poets 3:1 in total blocks. Ultimately, the Beavers managed to keep their cool when it mattered most and showed themselves to be a product of their trials over the past two years since winning their last SCIAC game. "In volleyball, the first point and the last point are the same," Gardner said "You don't need to put additional pressure on yourselves to score a point at 24 any more than you do at one. It comes down to each player doing their job in a given situation and executing like we know they're capable of." Maruszko had a standout performance of her own and stuffed the stat sheet with 32 assists, 12 digs and six kills. Taylor finished the match hitting •353 as the team's most efficient offensive player and sophomore libero Megan Wang (Henderson, Nev. / Advanced Technologies Academy) added 29 digs to her team-leading total of 151 through nine games. Meanwhile, Marusko upped her assist count to 277 and is already 70 away from fifth on the single-season list. 山雲固 Noelle Davis The California Tech EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Albert Nazeeri PAGE EDITOR Aileen Zhang COPY EDITOR Rebecca Mikofsky CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sebastian Bedoya | Sakthi Vetrivel Vivek Bharadwaj | Margaret Thomas SPORTS Mark Becker ACTING BUSINESS MANAGER Alex Krotz ADVISOR Richard Kipling THE CALIFORNIA TECH | FEATURE | SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 BECHTEL REPORT CARD FROM PAGE I| Caltech's website assures its visitors, "Bechtel was intentionally designed to provide the community with the greatest flexibility in maximizing space and determining its use." But student leaders like Varun Shanker, an undergraduate sophomore and the current undergraduate student body president, take issue "If the goal was to provide the greatest flexibility, maybe there wouldn't be such strict regulations on the exact number of freshman that live there, or some ability for returning students to rank their house preferences to be assigned for the next year. The current housing procedure forces students to choose Bechtel if they have any doubt that they will not be able to secure a spot in another residence. Otherwise, there's the possibility of having nowhere to live." Shanker lamented, "The new rules are written to favor Bechtel, even if students would rather live elsewhere. Another Bechtel resident, Vincent Park, shared his frustrations over using the space. "Sure, there's a lot of meeting spaces in the building, but no one uses them, since every suite has such a spacious lounge. But also because it's incredibly hard to get permission to use the dining hall or the kitchens to hold any sort of event." Every new building has its own special set of problems, and Bechtel has been far from immune to these chal-lenges. After opening, residents reg- istered a number of complaints. The building suffered from a lack of hot water for an extended period. There was no heat in certain areas of the building. The windows are too high and inaccessible, rendering them very difficult to clean. The showers were built featuring black surfaces that retain unsightly residue from water deposits. And the walls were painted such that a casual cleaning will strip a few layers of paint. In fact, the original plan was to hold students responsible for the cleaning of the residence-something not expected of students in any other undergraduate residence at Caltech, but due to how easily damageable every surface seems to be in Bechtel, cleaning crews quickly became a part of the ecosystem. The exterior of the building has posed a unique set of challenges as well. A plumbing issue required the excavation of a large hole on the west side of the residence. A portion of the sidewalk was closed for an extended period while staff explored solutions. In anonymous posts online, students expressed frus- tion with the focused environment that Bechtel provided, as well as the chance to interact with the two faculty in res-idence, an opportunity not shared by any of the remaining student Houses besides Avery. "It's quiet here. There's always things that can be improved; but I would like to live here all four years, if I could," Olaya said. But even for satisfied Bechtel resi-dents, changes to the housing lottery induced by Bechtel's introduction have ensured a final cruel twist: many of them have lost the ability to live in the residence next year due to the convoluted lottery system, and in contrast to the other student houses, the residence offers no storage space for residents over the summer. "It's really difficult to have to move your items [to one of the student hous-es] to store over the summer," says Olaya. "I definitely know friends who got screwed over [by the housing lottery]," he said. As he spoke, two other undergraduate freshmen walked into the lounge of his suite and expressed frustration with the housing lottery that prevented them from continuing to live in Bechtel; they declined to comment for the story. Despite the hiccups in the building's rollout, Olaya still believed that the future of the Bechtel residence is bright. "Bechtel will improve. It's the first year of opening, so it's understandable that the committees [and representative groups for students] were not there at the beginning. I'm confident that these administrative bumps will eventually get sorted out." ORDER ONLINE Competitive Prices Custom Printed & Embroidered Goods 626•441•4415 1500 Mission St. South Pas., CA ellenssilkscreening.com Caltech Facilities Various iterations of the floorplans for Bechtel from 2015, ranging from six separate buildings modeled after the Houses to one large dorm with a dining hall in the corner. tration with the lack of identification card readers for any entrance except the south door, limiting the building's number of entry points to one. In the face of security issues caused by students propping open entrances without card read-ers, building administrators relented by agreeing to install card readers at either the east or west doors of the building A student who watched the building in all of its construction phases stated they saw the landscape going in, and then portions removed and relocated as the area was overcrowded. Trees that were installed too close to the building had to be moved further away to prevent future damage from the roots invading the structure. And for some reason, all of the gravel around the trees were epoxied into place. The opening of the Bechtel residence has caused dramatic changes in Institute housing policies. With two hundred and eleven more beds on campus, Caltech was able to house more undergraduates than ever before. Whereas only freshmen were required to live on campus prior to Bechtel's opening, Caltech's residency requirement now mandates that freshmen and sophomores live on campus during their first two years. The current policy is a revised version of an earlier four-year residency requirement introduced just before the opening of the Bechtel residence, which administrators walked back after students pro-tested. The changes have extended to Rota-tion, the campus process for assigning new undergraduate students a House affiliation and living quarters during their first year. Diego Olaya, a member of Ruddock and one of the first cohort of undergraduate freshmen to live in the new residence, expressed satisfac- Bechtel's concrete facade as seen from Moore Walk. ROTATION EVENTS SCHEDULE EVENT Do Try This at Home Dabney Event Initiative Chill @ Page Open Mic Night Avery Tea Bar Dirty Dodgeball Capture the Flag and Milkshakes Ruddock Café Ruddock PUZZLE SUDOKU WEBSUDOKU.COM | EAsY 3 1 4 6 HOUsE Blacker Dabney TIME After Dinner After Dinner Page 10:30pm-12:30am Ricketts Avery 10:00pm-2:00am 8:00pm-10:00pm Fleming 10:30pm-12:30am Lloyd 4 5 11:59pm-2:00am 8:00pm-10:00pm 3 2 5 8 DATE Every Day Every Day 7 Thursday Friday 9 Saturday Saturday Saturday Sunday 2 Caltech Facilities 2 7 9 3 1 5 1