On Wednesday, students and faculty alike are expected to gather in the Albin O. Khun Library for a discussion regarding the implications of literary censorship in honor of the nation-wide Banned Books Week. 

Banned Books Week was first created in 1982 by the American Library Association, or ALA, to inspire more people to freely read literature after the Supreme Court decision Island Trees School District v. Pico, which restricted public institutions’ ability to ban books and other media solely based on disagreements with the content. Each year, UMBC hosts an event focusing on the new theme selected by the ALA for Banned Books Week. The theme for this year is “Censorship Leaves Us in the Dark. Keep the Light On.” 

“I think ‘Keep the Light On’ can be interpreted a number of ways,” says Jeremy Weiner, a senior in the INDS program who is co-running the upcoming event. “But in planning the discussion we considered it in terms of who does and who does not have a voice in the popular narrative.”

One voice often removed from the popular narrative belongs to the LGBTQ+ community. According to the ALA, the vast majority of books contested last year had LGBTQ+ characters or themes. Many institutions challenge those books for religious reasons or at the request of parents who want to introduce their children to certain concepts at home. 

Dr. Christopher Varlack, a lecturer for INDS and the Honors College, has been in charge of UMBC’s Banned Books Week events for the past three years and believes there is no situation where a text should be outright banned. Varlack thinks that even the most controversial and radical texts should be protected. 

“Pairing those texts up with other texts that offer a less biased perspective allows us to see a multisided point of view on a complicated issue, expanding the conversation,” Varlack said.  

UMBC has a history of censorship dating all the way back to its third year of being a university. UMBC’s first literary magazine, Dialogue, caused a statewide uproar for featuring photographs of nude dancers in its 1968 issue. After criticism from several state legislators (one going so far as to call UMBC “an institution of pornography”), Chancellor Albin O. Kuhn cut Dialogue’s funding and revoked the University’s affiliation with the magazine. Students had no choice in the administration’s decision and ultimately moved on, creating Bartleby in 1972. Dialogue serves as the first major form of censorship affecting UMBC’s campus.

According to Jeremy Weiner, censorship on campus still exists, just in more subtle forms. 

“I think censorship on campuses is very covert; the book that isn’t in the library’s collection or the topic which is not covered in any classwork, for example,” Weiner explains. Weiner, alongside Varlack, wants all marginalized voices to be unrestricted on campus. 

“The most immediate way for students to fight censorship is to read banned books and engage with their ideas on a critical level,” Varlack said. He also recommends that students initiate open conversations with their professors about what views are being left out of their classes.  

“Censorship disables us from having a valuable conversation about identity, about culture, about difference,” Varlack said. “Ignorance can be very dangerous.”

This past summer, professors from all disciplines at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County encouraged their students conducting research on campus to submit to UMBC’s go-to print journal for undergraduate research, the UMBC Review. 

The UMBC Review, currently working on its 21st edition, is “a peer-reviewed publication, completely directed by UMBC undergraduate students,” according to the UMBC website.

“[It] gives students the opportunity to publish their research,” said Dr. April Householder, Director of Undergraduate Research and Prestigious Scholarships. “Every aspect from learning how to do research and finding those opportunities at the beginning of the process, through presenting, through funding, and the culmination of all of that is that they’re ready to publish something in a journal like this.” 

Householder believes that writing for the Review can be helpful in several ways. It gives students a resume boost, and even if their work does not make it into the Review, they can get feedback on their writing. “That is something that they might not normally get in a classroom setting,” she said. 

Householder described the rigorous process of writing for the Review in different steps, starting with “the student [editors] reviewing and giving writing feedback if they think it would be a good fit for the journal.”

“The next step is the [editors] are responsible for finding off-campus reviewers,” she said. “The student editor may find a professor at another university and get the off-campus reviewer to review [the paper]. In that way, the reviewer has no connection to UMBC so they’ll look at it based on the merits of the writing, and that’s why we call the process rigorous.”

The new science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) editor for the Review, senior biology major Kristina Atanasoff, is excited for the new edition. Other sections include arts and culture and humanities. “We work with all kinds of students with different majors. I’ve read chemistry papers, mechanical engineering papers and statistics and economics papers,” Atanasoff said. “There are all kinds of subjects.”

Atanasoff thinks that the UMBC Review is important because there are very few other universities that have similar publications.“There are some [papers] that I think are really cool and exciting. The excitement is kind of amplified by the fact that it’s undergrads like me at UMBC doing this,” she said. 

 “I think the Review and being published is a really cool and unique thing about UMBC,” she said.  “I really like the emphasis our university places on undergrad research and encouraging that.”

As the weather gets colder every fall semester, University of Maryland, Baltimore County students traditionally flock to Starbucks for their hot beverage needs. But now there may be another option: From Turkish coffee to Moroccan mint tea, the new Hot Beverage Club looks to expand students’ cultural knowledge through different and diverse drinks.

According to the club’s founder, senior computer science major Nikita Wootten, his idea for the club started his freshman year. He was inspired to start the club per his Russian roots. “Russians are very heavy tea drinkers,” he said. “I go through probably a huge canister of loose leaf tea a month.” 

His love for tea prompted him to explore other cultures’ hot beverage habits. “We [the club] try to explore different cultures through their beverages, considering a lot of cultures do hold some level of status to their drinks,” he said. 

He found that between his culture’s love for tea and the Bangladeshi tea-heavy background of the club’s Vice President, senior computer science and information systems major Sadia Rahman, they made a great foundation for the club. 

“It took about a year for it to go from just group meetings to get recognized as a club,” Wootten said. “[The most difficult part] was setting up the initial infrastructure, but we got a lot of advice from other clubs. The whole idea is for it to be a low-stress, friendly environment. Somewhere to unwind.”

As the club begins to pick up momentum, there are plans to have more hot beverages such as apple cider and Turkish coffee at events. Wootten and the rest of the Hot Beverage Club team have events planned in collaboration with multiple student organizations on campus. “The collaborations that other clubs have come up with have been amazing,” he said. “We are collaborating with ChewMBC, the cooking club, and with the Korean Dance club, as well as the Russian Club.”

Rahman said that she did not expect much after the club’s initial creation. “We didn’t expect to gain all that many members, but I’m so happy that people are interested,” she explained. “At Involvement Fest, we ended up getting over 120 sign-ups. People wanted to come and create their own cultural beverages with us.” 

However, Rahman added that newcomers may be surprised that there is little truth in the name of the club. “Although we are called the Hot Beverage Club, every beverage we’ve served so far has been cold,” explained Rahman. “[Our name is] a big, fat lie.”

Manning a sailboat is no easy feat, but Nathan Thompson is confident that anyone can learn. 

Thompson graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County last winter but has come back to campus to coach the Sailing Club this year. Thompson has fifteen years of sailing experience under his belt, five of which have been dedicated to racing. As a student, Thompson was an active member of the club and briefly held the Commodore position, which helps lead general body meetings. He now works at the Annapolis Sailing School, teaching the basics to novices. 

UMBC’s Sailing Club formed in 1998 to connect sailors within the student body and to competitively race against other colleges. The Sailing Club welcomes all skill levels, including no skill at all. In the past, five or six new students would join the club each year. But this year, existing members worked hard to spread awareness of the club at Involvement Fest, resulting in a resounding 28 new members — many of whom signed up without ever having set foot in a sailboat. 

Due to the number of inexperienced members, the Sailing Club utilizes two different types of meetings designed to educate new sailors: water practice and Chalk Talks. Chalk Talks are informational meetings that teach members techniques to improve their sailing and serve as a crash course in sailing basics for beginners. During water practices, members put the strategies they learned at the most recent Chalk Talk to the test by sailing on the Bay weekly.

“Wind is the bread and butter of sailing,” Thompson explained to a room of inexperienced members at a recent Chalk Talk. “There comes a time when you will start to feel [the wind’s direction] on your ears or on your nose.” The movement of a sailboat relies heavily on how the sails catch the flow of wind. Facing the wind straight-on causes sails to ‘luff,’ which is similar to the motion a flag makes when it frantically flaps. This prevents the sailboat from moving forward. Angling the sails 90 degrees catches the most wind, making it the fastest point of sail. The position is called ‘beam reach’ because the wind reaches the beam, or thickest part of the boat, before anything else. 

Defining nautical terms is also an important part of the weekly Chalk Talks. Each new term is accompanied by an etymological explanation. The word ‘starboard’ originates from Viking longships, whose steering oars were placed on the right side of the boat. Somewhere in the translation to English, ‘steering oar’ became ‘starboard.’ Similarly, ‘portside’ describes the left side of the boat because that is the side you want to approach the port from to avoid damaging your rudder. 

“Vocabulary is the most intimidating part to beginners,” says William Gao, a recently graduated computer science major. He was a beginner himself three years ago when he joined the Sailing Club and quickly fell in love with the sport. Last year, Gao became the Co-President of the club along with fellow senior Zachary Vance. Together, they restarted the club, which had disorganized after the previous executive board members graduated. Now, alumni Gao and Vance volunteer at the water practices, making the transition into this year’s executive board as smooth as possible. 

Last practice, Gao was in charge of the coach boat, a dinghy with an outboard motor. He piloted between the two UMBC sailboats in use, switching out the new members so everyone could get an equal amount of time working with an experienced skipper on the water. 

“We only almost capsized twice,” Mathew Lioter gushed as soon as he stepped from one of the sailboats into the coach boat. This was only the second time Loiter, a junior biology major, had sailed. He already plans on competitively sailing with the club. 

UMBC competes within the Intercollegiate Sailing Association, or ICSA, in competitions known as ‘regattas.’ Coming from the Venetian word for contest, regattas are tournaments of boat races that normally last for two days. “The main goal of racing is to be as big a dick to your opponents as possible so you can get ahead,” Thompson advises. In sailing, that means stealing the wind from your competition or positioning yourself to take the right-away in a course. 

Admittedly, UMBC doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to races — last spring, the Sailing Club placed last in two separate regattas and got 16th out of 18 in another regatta. Regardless, the Sailing Club is looking forward to beginning the new season and watching their new members improve. 

This review contains spoilers.

Being the bad guy is not so bad when there is someone far worse than you. This sentiment is especially apparent in the 2019 comedy thriller “Villains.” Directly after fleeing from the scene of a gas station robbery, criminal couple Mickey (Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe) find themselves stranded on the side of the road without gas. Their solution: Break into the next house they see and steal a car. 

When the film first begins, we are exposed to the wild Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque couple of Mickey and Jules. The charm of their relationship and interactions between one another allows the audience to be drawn in and find a likeability in these bad people. Bonding together, the two have a peculiar love that is explored throughout the film. 

Of course, their actions of robbery, acute substance abuse and home invasion are wrong, but they show the lengths of moral ambiguity a main character can possess while still being rooted for. In the beginning, the audience is not necessarily supporting them, but they are emotionally invested in what looks to be a telling of the duo’s unfortunate demise.

But that quick caught-red-handed moment never happens. Instead, in the couple’s criminal pursuit, they find a young nameless girl (Blake Baumgartner), only referred to as Sweetiepie, locked up in a mysterious basement. Their reactions are both wholesome and human, considering they just robbed a gas station at gunpoint.

Jules’ inviting reception to the young girl balances out Mickey’s skepticism and overall shock of the situation. It is only at this point when Jules suggests freeing her, leading audiences believe these protagonists are truly worth rooting for. They are not good people, but they are not bad people. 

The tipping point in Mickey and Jules’ story is when the true villains of the story, George (Jeffrey Donovan) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick), return home and find the couple planning to free Sweetiepie. The dynamic between our protagonists and George and Gloria continuously shift as they and the audience learn more of the couple’s twisted past. Mickey and Jules’ unfulfilled lives, in their eyes, justify their inclinations towards violence. However, their experiences only scratch the surface of the horrors Mickey and Jules will have to endure.

Through many tribulations of vent climbing, lock picking and overdose drugging, Mickey and Jules find themselves close to saving Sweetiepie and obtaining their freedom. At the cusp of the two’s victorious car escape stood George pointing the barrel of a gun at Mickey in the driver’s seat. He calls for Jules and Sweetiepie to duck and accelerates into George, after sustaining a few fatal shots. 

The heroic acts Mickey displays are not at all out of character because his motivations were clearly set at the start. His character, first introduced robbing a store at gunpoint, pays the ultimate price to save not only an innocent girl but also the love of his life, Jules. People are not just good or bad; there’s a spectrum for morality. While George and Gloria camp the far end, Mickey and Jules grow on the audience and move closer to good throughout the film.

The film does not justify Mickey and Jules’ crimes but finds their humanity and centers their moral compasses. The film’s message spreads farther than your typical morally ambiguous couple by extending to people with questionable pasts. If these characters are worth redeeming, maybe there are real people being counted out for mistakes they regret. People deserve the chance to show their true colors, and the protagonists of “Villains” take strides to do the right thing, disregarding their past.

Photo: Poster for “Villains” at Regal Majestic & IMAX in Silver Spring, MD. Photo by Shesh Batni.

By Adam Sachs, Registered Dietitian

Caffeine intake is a part of many people’s daily routine, but what is caffeine exactly and how does it have an impact on our body and our health? Now that the days are getting shorter, more and more people are reaching for their morning fix in one form or another. Caffeine is a mild stimulant found in many types of plants such as coffee, tea, and cocoa. It can also be synthesized and used as a food additive. Caffeine is known for its ability to reduce tiredness and increase focus, and when consumed from natural sources has many health benefits. On the other hand, consuming caffeine from certain sources and in high quantities can have some unwanted side effects.

How does it work?

Caffeine is a chemical compound absorbed quickly into the blood stream if consumed in a food or beverage. As it gets broken down, it splits into components that react with other brain chemicals. The most noticeable action caffeine performs in the body is blocking certain neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) that make us feel tired. This is why caffeine often makes us feel more alert and can help you wake up in the morning. This also the same process that can keep us awake at night if we have a source of caffeine too close to bedtime.

Health benefits

Caffeine has been shown to increase focus and even improve brain function to a degree. These factors obviously have a big impact on our mood and productivity throughout the day. Another important factor to consider is source of your caffeine. Tea leaves, coffee beans, and cocoa beans are all natural sources of caffeine and all have their own set of health benefits. All three contain several types of antioxidants which help to reduce inflammation and can even fight off cancer cells. Caffeine used as a food additive comes without all of the antioxidants, and is usually combined with added sugars and other preservatives (think energy drinks like red bull, monster, etc.)

Consumption and recommendations

If you choose to consume caffeinated products, the FDA recommends a moderate amount daily. This is defined as 300-400 milligrams per day. This is the equivalent of about 3-4 8oz cups of coffee, 4-6 cups of tea, or 1-2 energy drinks per day. The amount of caffeine must be labeled on a packaged product, so you are able to keep track of your consumption on a day to day basis. There have been very few reports of caffeine related overdoses, and they usually are linked to caffeine pill or energy drink overconsumption. It is however very possible to go throughout caffeine withdrawal. This can happen from consuming more than the FDA recommendations and usually presents with excessive grogginess and chronic headaches.

Best Practices

Caffeine can be a very beneficial and healthy addition to your daily diet. Caffeine from natural sources is highly recommended, and consuming without added sugars or creamer is something to consider. Although it is rare, it is possible to consume too much caffeine but following the FDA standards is a great way to prevent this. Like many aspects of health and nutrition, moderation and more naturals sources are key concepts for caffeine consumption.

Effective October 14^th all UMBC graduate students who wish to make an appointment with the Graduate Writing Advisor must do so through umbcwritingadvisor.youcanbook.me

Once you log-in, select the time you would like to reserve and fill out the subsequent questions.

Email your paper to the Writing Advisor at least one hour prior to your appointment.

If you encounter any issues scheduling an appointment, please contact gsa@umbc.edu or tuckz1@umbc.edu ATTN: Writing Advisor

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

Last September, Botham Jean, a 26-year-old accountant, was shot in his home by his neighbor and Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger. Recently, Guyger was sentenced to ten years in prison for his murder. During the sentencing, Brandt Jean, the brother of the deceased, demonstrated an act of forgiveness with more than just words: He hugged the woman who had been convicted of his brother’s murder.

That act created a debate about forgiveness from the black community. Some praised Jean for his capacity to forgive, holding him up as an example. Others cited the event as the latest example in which black people are expected — even encouraged — to forgive those responsible for injustices they have suffered.

I’m more inclined to stand with the latter camp. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with what Jean did. However, it wouldn’t be wrong if he didn’t. Some of the praise directed toward Jean implies that his reaction was right; an example of human generosity and compassion, the best reaction someone could have.

But expecting forgiveness from someone who has been wronged revokes their agency to express their grief. Believing that every act deserves forgiveness flippantly disregards the emotion of those who can’t or won’t forgive for the injustices suffered by their community, their friends, their family or them personally. By tagging Jean’s actions as the “right one,” then any other reaction is, at best, less right, if not altogether wrong.

Those who hold an unshakeable anger in the midst of their grief aren’t wrong or even less right. They just have a different reaction. For the individual, forgiveness can bring a sense of calmness and ensure that they aren’t consumed by their anger, which is a positive. Many black people see their anger as their downfall, either in their personal lives or in their behavior in the larger society. In that situation, the possibility of letting go of that weight is a great thing.

But society needs angry people. It needs people who can’t forgive, because they can’t accept what has happened and the idea that there might be nothing stopping it from happening again. It needs the angry people to speak their grievances and castigate those in power who are more than happy to see the endurance of the status quo.

Jean’s reaction was an indicator of hope for his family. It brought a sense of optimism, a belief that they could overcome a terrible and avoidable incident. But sometimes the only hope people have is in their anger, because it drives them to fight for change. There isn’t a simple “right” reaction to the kind of horror that Jean’s family has suffered. There’s just what gets a person through.

It’s important to be cautious when reflecting on events like Jean’s reaction to Guyger’s sentencing, because we send a message about what we want our society to be. The people who say that marginalized and traumatized communities shouldn’t be expected to keep forgiving injustices are right. Without the fury that drives those statements, the progress that could save others from a fate like Jean’s would be marching even more slowly.