The Heights Momentum Awards

mo men tum(n.) . .1. The strength or force

that allows something

to continue to grow

stronger

May 5th, 2016

THE HEIGHTS’ 2016 MOMENTUM AWARDS

KATIE CROWLEY, C2-3

CARLY PARISEAU, C4

AFUA LAAST, C4

ERADICATE BC RACISM, C 5

JERE DOYLE & KELSEY KINTON, C5

CAI THOMAS, C6

...

...

THE HEIGHTS’ MOMENTUM AWARDS C2 Thursday, May 5, 2016

K atie Crowley stares warmly

at three picture frames

hanging on the wall across

from her desk. They all show the glory

of Boston College women’s hockey

teams of years past, but she’s specifically

looking at the one in the center. That

one is of the Beanpot several years ago,

held up by three of her former captains:

Kelli Stack, Molly Schaus, and Katelyn

Kurth.

For Crowley, those players, along

with Deb Spillane and Allie Thunstrom,

are her cornerstones, her rocks, the

reasons she is The Heights’ 2015-16

Person of the Year. As she recalls what

it was like to have them as her players,

she can’t help but smile and think of

suffering through practice, sharing a

joke in the locker room, and, of course,

raising trophies.

“That group was instrumental in

bringing our program to a new level,”

Crowley says.

What Crowley fails to mention is

how instrumental she is the whole BC

community. BC Athletics is mired in

losses across the board—unless baseball

wins out, only softball and women’s soc-

cer finished with a record above .500 in

the ACC this year. Football and men’s

basketball’s winless year brought moun-

tains of bad press and embarrassment

on the University. Even men’s hockey,

the preseason No. 1 overall team, failed

to meet its own expectations to bring

home a sixth national title. Yet women’s

hockey’s legendary season provided

enough excitement and pride to redeem

BC. And the head coach was at the

center of it all.

This is the tale of two people, each

with an inspiring story. One is “Kinger,”

one of the greatest players in the his-

tory of women’s hockey. The other,

Coach Crowley, has shaped a middling

program into the nation’s premier

destination for young girls aspiring to

become champions—of Boston, of the

nation, and of the world. Just make sure

to keep track.

“There needs to be more Katie King’s

… er … Crowley’s out there,” said Mar-

garet Degidio Murphy, her former head

coach at Brown University.

And, however you remember her

name—Kinger, Coach, King, or Crow-

ley—one thing is certain: BC would be

a little less complete without her.

S he was a little weirded out

at first.

I kept calling her Katie

Crowley throughout our phone inter-

view, but I honestly could’ve called her

anything. Murphy, better known as

Digit, doesn’t know one of her former

star players as Katie Crowley—that’s her

married name. The girl she recruited

back in 1993 was Katie King, a pow-

erful forward out of Salem, N.H. The

longtime women’s hockey head coach

just had to laugh.

“I’m never going to get used to call-

ing her Katie Crowley,” Murphy said.

“She’ll always be Kinger.”

As she began the ever-arduous

recruiting process, Kinger knew she

wanted to pursue hockey. Yet, like her

current two-sport star Kenzie Kent,

who plays lacrosse in the spring, Kinger

also wanted to go somewhere that

would let her play softball in addition

to hockey. The pickings were already

slim enough for hockey—only the Ivy

League, Providence, New Hampshire,

and Northeastern sponsored varsity

women’s ice hockey by the time she

had to submit that deposit. Murphy

gave her that opportunity, and sold her

on Brown.

What she bought was pure gold.

In Kinger, Murphy found a true pow-

er forward, comparing her to the gritty

Boston Bruins Hall of Famer Cam Neely.

The left winger had an imposing pres-

ence on the ice, using her body to power

her way through the net. If skating on

the right, she’d come down hard and

attack the net. You’d often find Kinger

as the one prepared to deflect a puck in

from a shot at the point, forcing her way

around blue liners and the goaltender to

give her teams the lead.

“If you got the puck to her, Katie

King was going to go down the ice and

score,” said Courtney Kennedy, Crow-

ley’s associate head coach at BC and a

former defenseman at the University of

Minnesota.

When asked who currently on BC

women’s hockey has the most similar

playing style, the only person who came

to Kennedy’s mind as at all similar was

freshman fourth-liner Ryan Little. But,

for the most part, that toughness and

grit are now forgotten attributes. Play-

ers today obsess over the finesse side

of the game. It’s not a bad quality—the

best of the best have all perfected the

flashy moves—but what’s the moti-

vation? Who can make the best toe

drag around a defenseman to score is

often code for who wants to make the

SportsCenter Top 10 tonight. But that’s

not how Kinger played.

“She was like a freight train,” Murphy

said. “You couldn’t stop her.”

Perhaps more players should con-

sider adopting that strategy, because it

certainly worked for Kinger. She’s still

the all-time leading scorer at Brown

with 206 points, topping off her career

as Eastern College Athletic Conference

Player of the Year in 1996-97. In that

time—the pre-NCAA Tournament

days—Brown won three ECAC regular-

season titles. That tenacity translated

to her softball career, too, in which she

won ECAC Player of the Year in 1996

and ECAC Pitcher of the Year in 1997.

It was Kinger’s leadership qualities

that made her stand out—and why she

became a natural fit as a head coach.

She captained Brown for two years on

the ice and three years on the field.

Along the way, Murphy watched as

her young star grew more mature and

more confident with every step. She

wasn’t the fiery captain who would get

in your face to pump you up and get

you ready for a game. Instead, Kinger’s

warm and inviting personality allowed

a team like Brown, full of big personali-

ties and star players, to mesh and eye a

championship.

She wouldn’t get one at her alma

mater. But she did get one representing

her country.

A year after she graduated, Kinger

joined the United States National

Team in the 1998 Winter Olympics, the

first-ever Olympic Games to sponsor

women’s hockey. Despite being mas-

sive underdogs, the Americans took

home the gold medal, 3-1, over Canada.

Kinger herself was fortunate enough to

be on the ice for the final shift, right

after Sandra Whyte’s empty-net goal.

How did she react to that first Olympic

gold?

Well, there aren’t many videos of that

game, but one of the few in YouTube’s

archives shows a glimpse of King’s emo-

tion. As the camera begins to follow

the puck and time expires, you can see

Kinger out of the left corner, jumping

and screaming, throwing her stick in

Katie Crowley michael sullivan

the air, and racing toward the mob in

front of the goal.

“That was the most memorable shift

of my career, because you knew you had

it, you knew it was it,” Crowley said,

looking back on it now. “And we weren’t

supposed to that year.”

Her success on the international

stage wouldn’t stop there. Kinger went

on to grab silver in Salt Lake City and

bronze in Turin. When she stepped

away from playing, she was the all-time

leading scorer for the United States: 14

goals, nine assists, 23 points. Her most

successful Olympics was 2006, capped

off by a hat trick in the bronze medal

game against Finland.

Utah is where she developed her

strong dynamic with Kennedy, who also

played on the Olympic team. Kennedy

believes they connected because of

Kinger’s great sense of humor. While

not particularly the comedian of the

crowd, Kinger has an infectious

laugh and is willing to go along with

anything.

“That was always great, because I

love to tell jokes,” Kennedy said.

And so began the most prolific rela-

tionship in women’s hockey history.

R ecruiting is a pain in the

ass.

Ask a coach at a mid-

major in football that doesn’t have

any tradition or likely prospects in the

future. Every kid in the country wants

to play for Michigan, Texas, or Florida.

Try selling them on Western Michigan,

Texas El-Paso, or Florida International.

You want the real thing, the one that

everyone watches on Saturday knowing

they’ll get to Sunday.

Once upon a time, Boston College

was one of those programs.

While the BC men have long been

in college hockey’s lore, the women

are practically infants. And in their

earliest days, they were clumsy infants,

at that.

BC began sponsoring women’s

hockey at the varsity level for the 1994-

95 season. The Eagles had some early

success, with a 15-10-1 (4-9-1 ECAC)

campaign in their inaugural season.

Yet it didn’t get much better. BC had a

losing record in the next eight seasons,

with single-digit win totals in seven of

them. A move to Hockey East didn’t

make matters any better.

So when you can’t sell the program

or success to recruits, what can you

do?

You have to sell the school. You have

to sell the future. And you have to sell

yourself.

So Katie King sold her recruits—

hard—on all three.

She joined BC in 2003-04 as the chief

No. 2 to head coach Tom Mutch, an as-

sistant on that 1998 Olympic team. The

Eagles suffered through a pitiful 6-22-3

campaign their first year at the helm,

with only a single victory in Hockey East

play. It’s not that the team didn’t have

talent—today, Crowley is convinced

that it did—but, as she puts it, it just

wasn’t in the cards.

That was until she got her first big

recruiting win: Spillane. A Franklin,

Mass. girl who spent two years playing

on her high school’s boys’ varsity team,

Spillane wasn’t difficult to convince. She

was drawn in by the beautiful campus

and Jesuit education—things every team

at BC sells recruits on—but, more so,

an opportunity to take BC to the next

level. And Spillane began to do just that,

providing steady production with 133

points over four seasons. As the star of

the program, Spillane helped BC win

its first Beanpot in 2005-06, helping the

program get a winning record for the

first time in more than a decade.

“She knew what the program was

at the time when she was coming in,

she knew it had been down,” Crowley

said. “She saw a route where she could

help build it up and help get it to be

successful.”

With Spillane helping to prove that

the coaching duo at BC was a force to be

reckoned with, King recruited the best

class of her young career. First came

Thunstrom, the lightning-fast forward

who broke out in her freshman year

with a 30-goal campaign, and Kurth,

the bruising defenseman out of High

Bridge, N.J. Then arrived Schaus—a

player who, Crowley said, stressed her

out with how long she had to wait for

her decision—as the first elite goaltend-

ing prospect BC ever had.

But no one was more important than

Stack. The moment she convinced Stack

to come, Crowley said, the program

changed. Realistically, it wasn’t very

hard. After all, King had been there

before.

“I wanted to be coached by someone

who had been to the Olympics,” Stack

said in a phone interview. “And she sold

me on the fact that I would get a lot of

playing time early on … We wanted to

put BC on the map.”

She certainly did. Stack scored 17

goals and had 37 assists in her fresh-

man season, 2006-07—the best in the

program’s young history. The Eagles

won another Beanpot and reached their

first NCAA Tournament, and BC made

it all the way to the Frozen Four before

ARTHUR BAILIN / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

“We didn’t win it, but we got the ball rolling. Now, because of [Crowley], it’d be weird not to see BC in the Frozen Four.’’

- Kelli stack

THE HEIGHTS’ MOMENTUM AWARDS C3Thursday, May 5, 2016


ARTHUR BAILIN / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

falling to Minnesota Duluth in double over-

time. Though early, it appeared that Mutch

and King would become a legendary duo in

maroon and gold.

Yet it wouldn’t last long. Shortly after

the season ended, Mutch resigned amid

suspicion of sharing inappropriate text

messages with Stack.

And it ended up being the best thing

possible for BC.

H as it really been 10 years?

When we look back on all

she has accomplished, Crow-

ley can’t help but wonder where the time

has gone. So much has happened in that

time. She has since married Ted Crowley,

a former BC hockey player and Olympian

himself, in 1994, and had a child, Camryn,

who is now 2 1/2 years old. She’s spent a lot

of time with Kennedy, who she brought in

to coach alongside her after she took the

reins for the 2007-08 season.

Oh yeah, and there have been a lot of

wins.

Prior to her tenure as head coach, BC

women’s hockey was 104-240-29. Since

Crowley and Kennedy have been in charge,

the Eagles are 220-73-39, with a 119-37-20

record in Hockey East play.

“Wow” was all Kennedy could say when

she heard those numbers. Yeah, BC has

been that good.

A lot has helped Crowley achieve such a

high level of sustained success. One is more

institutional support. When she began at

BC, she could only offer seven scholarships

total. Now, Crowley and Kennedy can fill

the team with a maximum 18 players on

scholarship. Another is winning the games

that matter. With that original core of Stack,

Schaus, Kurth, and Thunstrom, the Eagles

became dominant—2010-11 gave BC vic-

tories in the Hockey East Tournament and

Beanpot, as well as another Frozen Four.

Five years later, winning trophies and going

far in the tournament is just old hat.

“We didn’t win it, but we got the ball

rolling,” Stack said. “Now, because of

[Crowley], it’d be weird to NOT see BC in

the Frozen Four.”

But the bigger key has been their

message, which has convinced stars like

2015 Patty Kazmaier Award winner Alex

Carpenter and Haley Skarupa that BC is

the place to be. Many, like senior captain

Dana Trivigno, truly believe that their

best chance of getting to the apex of the

sport—the Olympics and a national cham-

pionship—is with the help of Crowley and

Kennedy.

“Her and Court sold me on the fact that,

you’re coming to BC, you’re going to get a

good education, but, you know, we’re put-

ting a good team together,” Trivigno said.

“Having two people who have already done

it—the highest level a female ice hockey

player can get to—was huge.”

Once they’re here, Crowley can get the

most out of her players and turn them into

superstars. She has a hands-off approach

with the forwards, while Kennedy takes

the defensemen. She doesn’t place a lot

of emphasis on a particular system and

making sure every player can fit into it.

Rather, Crowley prefers to allow her play-

ers to show her what they can do and use

their creativity as effectively as possible.

As she watches them on the ice, Crowley

also pays close attention to their behavior

in the locker room. She’s not the type that

has one set style of motivation. If one player

needs to be taken aside to have a mistake

carefully explained, Crowley will do that. If

another needs to be screamed at, she’s got

no problem adjusting to that as well. As

long as everyone is doing well in the class-

room—something Kennedy said Crowley

makes sure of—things are probably going

to be fine.

That has all culminated in the last two

seasons. BC was undefeated for a long

stretch in 2014-15 and finished 34-3-2

with another trip to the Frozen Four, al-

beit without a victory in the Beanpot and

Hockey East Tournament. This season, BC

and Crowley took it to the next level. The

Eagles’ 40-1 record was the second-best

season in the sport’s history, and they took

home three trophies: the Beanpot, Hockey

East regular-season title, and Hockey East

Tournament title. And, for the first time

in program history, BC made the national

championship game. How did Crowley

achieve such a big jump in only one year?

Don’t tell Allen Iverson.

“Alright, everybody switch

sticks!”

Katie Burt was con-

fused at first. Switch sticks? What is Coach

talking about? That’s like putting on your

first pair of high heels. It’s probably going

to be disastrous. But it’s equally bad to start

an argument with your coach. So everybody

on the team dropped their sticks and gave it

to the girl next to her. The righties became

lefties, the lefties became righties. Pande-

monium ensued. Girls were flopping all

over the ice. Carpenter, one of the greatest

players in the history of the sport, could

barely move.

“It was so funny,” Burt said. “You give

someone the wrong stick, they can’t even

skate.”

It’s that kind of laid-back atmosphere

that attracts players to Crowley’s coach-

ing style. She and Kennedy make sure

every practice has an element of fun in it

by never taking themselves too seriously.

They don’t mind the repeated onslaught

of pranks brought on by Carpenter. They

constantly bounce jokes off each other like

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.

This season, Crowley tried something

drastically different. As the season wound

down, she dramatically cut the length of

practice from the standard two and a half

hours to one. Her players were greatly ap-

preciative—BC student-athletes tend to

have more difficulty juggling classes, social

lives, and practice schedules than most

other student-athletes. None appreciated

it more than Burt.

“Best decision ever,” Burt said while

bursting into laughter. “I thought it was

great.”

Though it indirectly gave the players

some R and R, Crowley’s primary focus

was to keep the team engaged while she and

Kennedy nitpicked the little things. Crow-

ley believes those longer practices hurt the

coaching staff more than the team—there’s

only so much you can go over in two hours

and keep the attention of your players to

perform at a high level. And, after return-

ing largely the same roster, Crowley knew

what her team was capable of. By cutting

the time down, she could concentrate on

smaller skill drills, such as having forwards

operate in the defensive zone on a strong

backcheck or learning how to finish in front

of the net. Practicing those intricacies of

the game allows them to become habits,

just like skating and shooting.

“It may seem monotonous at the time,

but the repeated patterns become habits,

and that helps you in hockey,” Trivigno

said.

W ith the women’s hockey

season already over, Crow-

ley and her family took a

trip down to Tampa to see the men play in

the Frozen Four against Quinnipiac. No one

was more excited than Camryn. But what

she didn’t realize was that her best friends

wouldn’t be there this time.

“And as we’re leaving the hotel room to

go to [the Amalie Arena], she said ‘Okay, so

I’m going to see Carp, and I’m going to see

Haley, and I’m going to see Dana, and I’m

going to see Grace [Bizal], and Makenna

[Newkirk], and Kenzie [Kent],’” Crowley

recalled her daughter saying, with a big

smile. “‘And Katie Burt!’ It’s always two

names with Katie Burt.”

Crowley’s husband and daughter attend

every home game, and try to get to as many

road games as possible. And, over this sea-

son, Camryn, known as Cami, has grown

up around the team. Her bubbly personal-

ity has touched each of the players as she

bounces around outside the locker room

in Conte Forum. Along the way, Cami has

changed how Crowley coaches. Somehow,

Crowley still puts her family and the team

first, giving everyone everything she has.

Having Cami around all the time, her play-

ers believe, has changed her perspective

and helped her see the team as her own,

helping an award-winning coach become

even better.

“You can tell how much she cares by the

way she acts toward her daughter, toward

her family as to us,” defenseman Megan

Keller said. “She treats us as 23 of her next

daughters, and it’s amazing how much

she cares and she puts towards us and the

amount of time she sacrifices.”

At the same time, her old head coach

believes it helps Crowley keep things in

perspective. Murphy has dealt with losses

in the national championship game before.

Instead of thinking too much about it,

Murphy said, her kids helped her remember

that life goes on.

But it’s even better when you get to cel-

ebrate with your kid. And Murphy doesn’t

think it’s going to take long, especially

when you’ve got a great coach like Katie

Crowley.

“I think they have it,” Murphy said. “I

think they’re going to win it all next year.”

K atie Crowley’s office is lined

with trophies. They come in

all shapes and sizes. Some

have the NCAA logo, others say Hockey

East. They’re small enough to hold over

your head while screaming in jubilation,

but heavy enough to remember the weight

of the grueling grind that is the collegiate

women’s hockey season. Others can be

worn around your neck. Those come in

three different colors—gold, silver, and

bronze—each with a hint of red, white,

and blue.

The most impressive-looking is a large

glass bowl with “2014-15 AHCA COACH

OF THE YEAR” in big letters on its stand.

There’s a space right next to it for the one

she received for her work this season. I’ve

heard it just arrived, a week after we last

spoke.

But it’s that picture of her three captains

that she looks at with the fondest memo-

ries. And, as she stares at it, I ask her that

question. Coach, with Carpenter, Skarupa,

and Trivigno gone next year, what are your

expectations for next season? Immediately,

Crowley breaks her gaze at the past—the

days of Kinger and Olympic medals and

Stack, Carpenter, and all of her prior

teams—and focuses on the future with

determination, imagining the final trophy

she needs to add to the shelf.

THE HEIGHTS’ MOMENTUM AWARDS C4 Thursday, May 5, 2016

I f Carly Pariseau pays a visit to your

offi ce, it’s usually for a bad reason.

As the associate athletic director

for compliance, it’s Pariseau’s job to under-

stand and interpret the intricate web of NCAA

eligibility rules. Th ose rules cover issues that

range from academic eligibility, to the re-

ceipt of impermissible benefi ts, to off season

practice limitations. If you get a visit from

compliance, it’s usually because one of those

incredibly nuanced rules was broken, and you

have a problem on your hands.

So on one early October afternoon this

past fall, when Pariseau started making the

rounds to the offi ces of all the members of

the BC athletics senior staff , they were un-

derstandably horrifi ed.

“Most people have a heart attack when

they see me coming into their offi ce because

they think I’m there to tell them they have

a violation and they’re in trouble,” Pariseau

said.

But it wasn’t a violation this time around,

she assured them. She had no rules violations

to report, so she watched as the faces across

the desk from her relaxed slightly, if only for

a moment.

Th en another terrible thought crossed

their minds—after 10 years, Pariseau, a

beloved member of the athletic department

family, was leaving BC.

Wasn’t that either, Pariseau would re-

ply—she loved it at BC. Couldn’t imagine

herself elsewhere.

Her response was met with perplexity.

What, then, could have brought Pariseau into

each of these offi ces on this particular day?

“Well,” she recalls telling her colleagues, “I

have breast cancer.”

Pariseau would need to spend at least

two months out of the office, the first of

those consisting of minimal contact with the

outside world. She planned to have surgery,

scheduled for less than a month from the day

she received the diagnosis. She was fully confi -

dent in her staff ’s ability to function normally

in her absence.

Pariseau knew there was no real other way

to tell them—she just laid it out there, unsure

of how they would react. She wasn’t expecting

the reactions that she got, though.

“Everybody was so concerned that they

either had a violation or that I was leaving,”

Pariseau said, “so when I told them that it was

breast cancer, it was almost a bit of relief.”

It might sound selfi sh or insensitive—

hearing that a coworker, a friend, a mentor

has cancer, and feeling relieved? But those

fi rst-impression reactions are just about as

far from selfish as possible. The fact that

her bosses weren’t any more emotional than

Pariseau speaks to her fi ghting spirit. It speaks

to her methodic, calculated determination. It

speaks to the confi dence they had that Pari-

seau would challenge her foe head-on.

Her coworkers saw it diff erently.

Deputy Athletics Director Jaime Seguin

has worked alongside Pariseau since coming

to BC from the University of Massachusetts

in May 2014, and the two have become close

friends during that time. She, too, remembers

the day that Pariseau dropped the bombshell

on her coworkers. But when they came to talk

to Seguin after those meetings, she saw a side

of them that Pariseau didn’t.

“Some people were choked up and in tears

after she informed them of her diagnosis,”

Seguin said. “Quickly after, though, everyone

started asking, ‘What can we do to help?’”

Chris Cameron, too, remembers how

Carly Pariseau

I was a little shocked when Afua Laast,

LSOE ’16, told me to be selfi sh. Based

on her track record as a Shaw House

mentor, Undergraduate Government of Bos-

ton College vice president of diversity and

inclusion, and a resident assistant, I never

would have expected those words to come

out of her mouth.

Laast went on to explain that when it

comes to race and injustice issues on campus,

everyone needs to be selfi sh, regardless of our

race, gender, or sexuality, because these issues

aff ect everyone walking across Stokes Lawn.

“Ultimately, stop being all about the

selfl essness and be like ‘how is this going to

benefi t me?” Laast said. “Once you change

your mindset and it becomes more personal,

then things can actually happen.”

Th is fall, Laast organized the “Blackout” on

Stokes Lawn, where students rallied together

to stand in solidarity with students at the

University of Missouri.

Th e night before the Blackout was set to

take place, Laast sent out a Facebook event

inviting BC students to join her on the Quad.

She didn’t expect much response, as the plan-

ning of the Blackout was so last-minute. To her

surprise, more than 770 students responded

on Facebook that they would attend the peace-

ful protest.

I remember the day of the Blackout

vividly. It was the fi rst big story I covered for

Th e Heights and I was nothing but nervous. I

recall students, dressed head-to-toe in black,

covered O’Neill Plaza while rain came down in

buckets. Standing on the bench, overlooking

a sea of umbrellas, Laast called upon students

to share why they stand in solidarity with the

University of Missouri.

Student after student came up to stand

on the bench next to Laast. Th ey spoke of

the need for honest conversations about race

issues at BC, the discrimination they face on

campus, and the need for a change at universi-

ties across the country.

Students cheered and hollered whenever

another volunteer would step up on the bench.

Th e crowd responded to each student’s testi-

mony by raising their fi sts in the air, a sign of

solidarity. I could sense the respect that these

students had for Laast and the power she had

when she talked about these issues.

“We have to stand in solidarity to reach

any kind of success,” Laast said while atop the

crowd of students.

Change on campus begins with the stu-

dents, the Board of Trustees, and the admin-

istration, Laast said.

“[Inciting change on campus] has just

been really hard and really long and a lot of

conversations over the past few years,” Laast

said. “Th e goal has just been to improve the

quality of life for all students. Th e headline

on these events is the AHANA student, but

ultimately, every group of students on this

campus will benefi t.”

Laast was born in the United States, she

lived in Ghana from the time she was three

months old. Th ough until she was 7 years

old. Her father, who originally comes from an

impoverished family in Nigeria, moved to the

U.S. and currently works as a fashion designer.

Laast’s mother moved from Ghana and earned

two master’s degrees when she arrived in the

U.S. She is also legally blind.

“My educational striving comes from that,”

Laast said.

When I asked Laast’s older brother, Ous-

man, what she was like as a child, he could

only laugh.

“I’ll say Afua’s always been independent

and opinionated,” Ousman said.

He continued to describe Laast’s strong-

headed nature as the strengths she has used

to forge her own path.

As Laast will graduate this year, Ousman

hopes that she continues to do what makes

her happy. He hopes that she has the courage

to follow her own path and the fortitude to

keep adapting to what is most challenging

and fulfi lling.

Laast began her extensive involvement in

the BC community before she even stepped

on campus. Over the summer going into her

freshman year, Laast applied to the Shaw Lead-

ership Program, and lived in the Shaw House

throughout her fi rst year at BC.

“I wasn’t going to apply to Shaw because

I thought it seemed like too much for just a

place to live,” Laast said. “But then I was look-

ing at it and saw a kitchen, and I love to cook.

I literally retyped ‘Shaw Program’ and went

back to apply for it.”

Only 20 students are accepted to Shaw

each year, and continue with the program

throughout their four years. By attending

leadership workshops and participating in

community service, students develop the skills

to be successful leaders in the world.

After seeing students in Shaw become

so involved early on, Laast felt the need to

immerse herself in extracurriculars, she said.

Moving into her sophomore year, Laast ap-

plied to be a resident assistant. She was placed

on Newton Campus in Duchesne East, and

instead of feeling isolated, Laast grew to love it.

She said that it was one of the best experiences

she has had at BC.

Laast still gets excited when she sees

residents from her sophomore year, who are

now juniors, because she loves seeing how

they have grown and developed throughout

their time at BC.

In addition to working as an RA, Laast con-

tinued her involvement with UGBC under the

AHANA Leadership Council. She also worked

as an orientation leader and tour guide, and

said that she gained inspiration from the

parents of prospective students.

“I think that was also really cool just giv-

ing tours, and hearing where all the parents

worked, and what they are doing,” Laast said.

“It just gives you new ideas of what you are do-

ing with your life and where you want to go.”

Laast shared a story of one parent who

asked what other schools Laast was looking

at when she was applying to college. When

Laast responded that, in the end, she was

choosing between Cornell and BC, the parent

suddenly became inquisitive. Why didn’t she

pick Cornell?

Laast recalls the mother saying, “I just

have never heard of someone that turned

down Cornell.”

emotional he was the day that Carly dropped

by his offi ce. Th e associate athletic director re-

calls a lot of hugs, an abundance of off erings of

support, and a time of honest conversation.

“We’ve all been aff ected by cancer—it’s

not exactly good news that you want to hear,”

Cameron said. “You’re obviously empathetic,

and your fi rst reaction is one of support. Th at’s

what BC does best. If you fall, someone will

be there to pick you up.”

F or the first few months after

Pariseau lost her hair, she wore

a hat just about everywhere

she went.

Part of it was undoubtedly because of the

cold winter weather, sure, but it was deeper

than that. For a while, Pariseau had some dif-

fi culty coming to terms with her situation, and

for good reason. She was a former collegiate

volleyball player, a woman in good health who

never smoked and had no family history of

cancer. Why her?

“You can drive yourself crazy trying to

answer that question,” Pariseau said. “So, I

fl ipped the question and said, ‘Well, why not

me?’ Th ere are women that are much healthier

than I am that get it. Th ere are also women

in much poorer health than I am and don’t

get it. Th ere’s really no rhyme or reason for

it, and it’s hard.”

Instead of wallowing in sadness, Pariseau

mobilized her army and prepared to fi ght. She

researched everything she could about her

symptoms and her courses of action. She at-

tacked it just like she would an NCAA rule.

And attack it she did, even as she faced

setbacks. Pariseau thought she would only

have to undergo surgery for treatment, but

found out shortly after she would need rounds

of chemotherapy and radiation because the

cancer had spread farther than expected.

But the setback was just that—a setback. It

didn’t derail her. After surgery in November,

Pariseau began chemotherapy treatments

in December and fi nished in February. She

started radiation shortly after in March, com-

pleting that round of treatment early in April.

Pariseau returned to the offi ce after the end

of Winter Break in January, and only missed

work occasionally for her treatments. Yes, her

hair was gone. Yes, her brain will occasionally

take slightly longer to make connections with

her memory—she calls those lapses “chemo

brain moments.”

But Pariseau was there at work, and that’s

more than a lot of people could have managed

at the time. People took notice, too.

“My grandmother had breast cancer and

I watched it take a lot out of her,” BC women’s

hockey forward Dana Trivigno said. “Watch-

ing Carly, you couldn’t even know.”

W henever Pariseau found her-

self down after her diagnosis,

she liked to try to accomplish

two things: laughing and learning.

Th e laughing part was easy because she

does it so often. Immediately after receiv-

ing her diagnosis, Pariseau went home and

watched Frozen with her parents. She wanted

to take a valuable chance to turn out the world

and, in her words, “let it go”—pun presumably

intended.

“I just needed something to sing along to,”

Pariseau said with a smile.

Th e learning, on the other hand, came

with a bit more eff ort. Pariseau, whose offi ce

is lined with books about sports, motivation,

and empowerment, soaks up information

like a sponge.

She recalls checking Google for inspira-

tional women who have dealt with similar

struggles. Pariseau quickly named Today Show

co-host Hoda Kotb as an infl uential woman in

her life, but she couldn’t remember the name

of another inspiration.

“I’m trying to think of her name, but I’m

drawing a blank on it,” Pariseau said. “She’s

a correspondent for ESPN, she had breast

cancer, the lady that does the NFL with the

long, strawberry-blonde hair. Shelley… Smith?

I think it’s Shelley Smith.”

Excluding a few mental lapses here and

there, Pariseau says her mind is now operating

at close to full speed. Her body, however, will

still occasionally impose limitations.

“What she wanted and what her body al-

lowed were two very diff erent things,” Seguin

said. “Her mind wanted to work a full week,

but her body would tell her no.”

Whenever she felt weak, Pariseau would

look to her sources of inspiration—the Kotbs,

the Smiths, the Robin Robertses in her life.

She watched their journeys with breast cancer

unfold on television, and she watches them

now, their mere presence on screen a giant

middle fi nger to the disease that nearly rav-

aged all of them. Pariseau watches them on

television and feels hope—for herself, and for

all women who are presently dealing with the

same exact situation.

When you think about it, though, it’s a bit

ironic that someone who relied so heavily on

inspiration from others was such an inspira-

tional fi gure herself.

And boy, does the BC community consider

her an inspiration. When Pariseau was in the

hospital, her fi rst visitor was—to no one’s sur-

prise—men’s hockey head coach Jerry York.

Football head coach Steve Addazio checked

in on her a few times over the phone. Stu-

dent-athletes from BC men’s track personally

paid for her grocery delivery. She got enough

fl ower bouquets, Edible Arrangements, and

home-cooked meals to last a lifetime.

But Pariseau meant something special

to women’s hockey, since, as the program’s

administrator, that’s the one she spent the

most time around.

“At the beginning of the year we heard

about how sick she was, and we rallied around

her, and she rallied around us,” sophomore

goalie Katie Burt said. “I think we gave her a

bit of hope too, but she gave us something to

play for other than ourselves.”

F or the first few months after

Pariseau lost her hair, she wore

a hat just about everywhere

she went.

But the day I fi rst met her, a beautiful

Th ursday morning in the middle of April,

when the sun radiated more energy than a

machine ever could, Pariseau was not wearing

a hat. She strolled down the hallway outside

her Conte Forum offi ce, grinning from ear to

ear and chatting with those she passed by.

She took the better part of an hour that

morning to chat with me about the things that

bring her down, the things that lift her up, and

the people who have been there every step of

the way. Upon the completion of our meeting,

I thanked her for her time and congratulated

her on the recent end of her treatment. She

smiled appreciatively and walked me out of

her offi ce.

Th en she sat down at her desk and got

back to work.

Tom Devoto

Afua LaastAfua Laasttaylor st. germain

Her response was typical Afua.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t like it.”

Th at is what makes Laast truly unique—

she is not focused on prestige, recognition, or

rankings. Laast does what she loves and loves

what she does.

When the student tour was over, the

mother, Dianne Renwick, handed Laast her

business card and told her to call her if she

was interested in taking on an internship.

Laast didn’t think much of it until she saw the

woman’s position—“New York Supreme Court

Justice.” With an interest in law at the time,

Laast followed up and worked as an intern the

following Winter Break.

After working with Renwick, Laast decided

that law was no longer the route she wanted to

pursue, as she wanted to focus more on policy

reform. In her junior year, Laast applied to the

fi ve-year graduate school program through the

School of Social Work.

With graduation less than a month away,

Laast is planning on staying in Boston for one

more year to complete her graduate degree.

She is currently taking classes in the School

of Social Work, which also serve as elective

classes for her B.A. Laast originally started

on the clinical track, when she thought she

wanted to pursue psychology.

“I thought I wanted to be a psychologist,

but then I realized I couldn’t,” Laast said. “My

fi rst internship was at Brighton High, and I

was like ‘One-on-one is cool, but you sitting

here and talking to me is, like, not going to

fi x anything.’”

From there, Laast switched to the macro

practice track in the School of Social Work and

would now like to pursue social justice, possi-

bly through a non-profi t. She learned through

her time in UGBC that she would like to work

for policy change and eventually become the

U.S. Secretary of Education.

I showed up for my interview with Laast

about 10 minutes early. It was the fi rst

time I had ever been in the UGBC of-

fi ce. Cubicles lined the perimeter of the room.

I sat at a giant table in the middle, feeling com-

pletely out of place. Students sat on top of tables,

swapping stories from the past week.

While I waited for Laast, I began to eaves-

drop on their conversation.

“Did you hear Afua won another award?”

one of them said in reference to my awkward

presence in the UGBC offi ce before inter-

viewing her.

In 2015, Laast was named one of the King

Scholarship fi nalists for her work within the

African-American community. Just last week

she was the recipient of the Alfred Feliciano

and Valeria Lewis Award for her eff orts in fur-

thering the ideals of the AHANA community.

And now, Laast is being recognized as one of

Th e Heights’ Momentum Award winners.

After sitting down with Laast for the

better part of an hour, it became clear to me

why she receives and deserves such ample

attention.

AMELIE TRIEU / HEIGHTS EDITOR

AMELIE TRIEU / HEIGHTS EDITOR

THE HEIGHTS’ MOMENTUM AWARDS C5Thursday, May 5, 2016

L ast April, I met with three gradu-

ate students outside of Campion

Hall under a warm, spring sun

and budding cherry blossom trees. Shaun

Glaze, LGSOE ’16, Chad Olle, LGSOE ’17,

and Sriya Bhattacharyya, LGSOE ’16, had just

created an infographic with the breakdown

of AHANA students and faculty at BC, and

I was writing an article about it. Little did

any of us know that this would be our fi rst of

many interviews together, nor did I realized

it would lead to the inception of Eradicate

Boston College Racism.

Since our meeting, Eradicate managed to

lead a wave of protests to oppose the lack of

administrative initiative in addressing or even

acknowledging institutional racism. At the

same time, it created a supportive, inclusive,

and tight-knit community for students who

see and who face racism at BC.

Th e group walks in stride with move-

ments occurring at other college campuses

across the nation, including Yale University,

Brown University, and the University of Mis-

souri. Eradicate aims to go against the grain,

to make people feel uncomfortable, to hold

a mirror up to BC community members and

ask them to really look at themselves and

evaluate the ways in which BC institutional-

izes racism. Th ey dare to speak out against the

University, often without the administration’s

approval.

Eradicate’s tactic is not to be subtle. From

fl ying a banner reading “Eradicate Boston

College Racism” over the Commencement

ceremony last May, to singing Christmas

carols about white supremacy on BC’s cam-

pus, the group has become one of the most

contentious, yet vocal and infl uential, student

groups on campus.

G laze, Olle, and Bhattacharyya

met in Leigh Patel’s Critical

Race Th eory class last spring.

Th ey decided to take what they had learned

in Patel’s class about racial justice and apply

it to the BC community in the form of the

infographic on racial inequality.

“As a teacher, as an instructor, that’s

amazing to see—that people interact with

some of the things that happen in a course

and then run with it, move well beyond the

course,” Patel said.

In the fall, Eradicate was confronted with

more constraints from the administration,

which provided an opportunity for it to critique

the University. Members of the group distrib-

uted fl iers that read “BC SILENCES ANTIRA-

CISM” after the administration did not allow

them to distribute a fl ier that promoted an

upcoming lecture on race. Th is bold accusation

by the group did not go unnoticed—the fl iers

were immediately removed from campus.

As Eradicate began to speak out in more

prominent ways against the University, BC

students began to take notice and joined the

movement. Th e group currently has about

20 active participants and a broader scope of

about 50 students who participate in its major

events, such as protests.

Gloria McGillen, LGSOE ’17, who was

classmates with Bhattacharyya, Olle, and

Glaze, joined Eradicate because she believed

in the importance of its message, and she

wanted to support her friends of color who

experienced racism on campus.

“I came to BC to be trained as a clinician

... and if I’m not seeing that refl ected in the

institution that’s teaching me, then I think I

have a responsibility to help speak out against

that,” McGillen said.

While Eradicate stirs the pot on campus,

it also stirs the pot during its monthly potluck

dinner. Th e dinner, which is open to any and

all students interested, provides students a

space to engage in dialogue with other stu-

dents about the racism they see on campus

and how they believe it can be combatted.

“It’s not just doing activist stuff together,”

Bhattacharyya said, “It’s also recognizing that

being a student on this campus is hard, and

we’re here for each other for that.”

A real turning point for Bhattacharyya,

she said, was when she attended Modstock

last year to hold up posters in protest of in-

stitutional racism. She was asked by a BCPD

offi cer to leave, and when she did not comply,

he put his hand on her, she said. For the next

six months, Bhattacharyya feared coming to

A lot of people used to say that

Jere Doyle, BC ’87, didn’t have

a real job. When he graduated

and went to work for a fi ve-person startup in

Spain, his friends all said it. So did his parents.

Everybody thought he should go to an estab-

lished company and work there forever.

But Jere Doyle likes a good, healthy dose

of risk, so off he went to run marketing for a

small tourism company based in Marbella,

a resort city about an hour’s drive from Gi-

braltar. Within six months, he had expanded

marketing eff orts from English to Dutch, Ger-

man, and French. Not bad for a 22-year-old

kid from Philly.

Together with Kelsey Kinton, BC ’12, Doyle

runs the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship, a

new Boston College initiative that debuted

last September to give some infrastructure

and mentorship to students in BC’s budding

startup scene. Doyle is the managing director

of Sigma Prime Ventures, a major Boston

venture capital firm, so he’s less worried

about the logistics and more focused on his

vision for the Center. Kinton is the assistant

director, handling all the day-to-day stuff like

organizing the Center’s packed slate of events

and working with Start @ Shea, the Center’s

20-member student board.

Th ey have this sort of mantra that they

both told me separately: Th e Shea Center is

like a startup in a 150-year-old company. With

that comes a challenge—you have to build it

the right way.

“Startups are much more likely to die of

indigestion than starvation,” Doyle said. “Th ey

try to do too much, too early, and it just kills

them. So we’re going to try to make sure we

don’t do the same thing here.”

Sure, they won’t starve, but they’re still

hungry.

D oyle’s three great loves are lit-

erally—perfectly—his family,

Boston College, and entrepre-

neurship, and the Shea Center is very much his

baby. Th rough Sigma Prime Ventures, Doyle

is plugged into the Boston startup ecosystem.

He also works with a lot of alumni, like Tom

Coburn, BC ’13, who founded the online

marketing platform Jebbit, for which Doyle is

a major investor and mentor.

“He’s a valuable adviser to the Center in the

sense that he’s an entrepreneur, too,” said Clau-

dio Quintana, a member of the Start @ Shea

board and CSOM ’16. “He brings that passion

and that experience, and it’s pretty valuable for

students to have access to somebody who’s

actively involved in a lot of companies.”

Doyle did some talks at BC about his ex-

perience, judged the BC Venture Competition

a couple of times, and he felt like BC needed

to be doing more to give students the types of

opportunities that could be found at Harvard

or MIT, with their centers and innovation labs

and countless Cambridge tech startups.

When Doyle went to Dean of CSOM

Andy Boynton and University President Rev.

William P. Leahy, S.J., with the idea for the

Center, they jumped on it. And last spring,

following a donation from the late Bay Area

venture capitalist Edmund H. Shea, Jr., the

Center got up and running, though it was

largely under wraps for a few months until its

offi cial announcement.

That’s about when Kinton came into

the picture. She found out about the Center

last year, right around when the donation

was made, and took the opportunity. After

graduation she spent three years at a nonprofi t

marketing fi rm for the city of Boston. Th e

fi rm’s goal is to boost the local economy by

promoting hotels and restaurants, and the job

gave her a unique perspective on the booming

Seaport District. Working at the Center would

give her the chance to get BC more involved.

Plus, she’s a big fan of Shark Tank.

Doyle is a big ideas kind of guy, hugely am-

bitious but also pragmatic and results-focused.

As they’ve worked together over the past year,

he’s become Kinton’s mentor.

“[Jere’s] all over the place,” she said. “But

he’s always available and very approachable.”

He pushes her to think bigger and

smarter, to be more analytical. Kinton

suggested that they start an internship

program for this summer, for example,

and before agreeing Doyle wanted to

campus, especially when she saw a BCPD

offi cer. While an investigation was ordered

into the matter, the fi ndings have yet to be

released.

Although Eradicate was founded by

graduate students, McGillen said, it now also

has active undergraduate student members.

The undergraduates have more of a con-

nection to other student groups on campus,

which has allowed Eradicate to join together

with several other groups, including Climate

Justice at BC.

“Th ere is a really remarkable consistency

of the issues and frustrations and pains that

people have, which I think speaks to the fact

that the institutional climate is very similar

across the two groups,” McGillen said.

While the University, for the most part,

chose to publicly address racism with silence,

Eradicate continued to scream and shout

about institutional racism at BC.

In November, during the question-and-

answer session following a talk given by the

writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, 30 members of Eradi-

cate stood up in the crowd with signs that said

“Eradicate #BostonCollegeRacism” and wore

duct tape over their mouths in protest of the

institutional racism at BC. One of the mem-

bers also took the stage, talking for 10 minutes

about the inherent racial hypocrisy at BC.

In December, the group organized a

protest during which members of the group

began outside of the doors of a Board of

Trustees meeting in Gasson Hall and then

walked across campus, singing Christmas

carols with altered lyrics, including “Leahy

Baby” and “Walking in a White Man’s Won-

derland.” Th is event was part of the group’s

“12 Days of BC Racism” campaign, which was

held over the 12 days before Winter Break. In

addition to caroling, the group raised money

from BC alumni, gave gifts to supportive

faculty members, and distributed fl iers that

compared BC’s responses to racism to other

universities’ responses.

Eradicate’s shouting has been heard across

the country. It has been featured on NPR and

in Th e Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside

Higher Education, and Th e Nation magazine.

This summer, members of Eradicate will

host a workshop on combating institutional

racism on college campuses at the annual

convention of the American Psychologists

Association in Denver, Col.. Th e group will

present its six-point “Tool Kit,” which is a

guide for students interested in creating a

movement on their own campuses. Th ere will

be several thousand people from across the

world at the convention, McGillen said, and

many students who combat racism at other

universities, including Missouri and the Uni-

versity of Kentucky, will be in attendance.

“It’ll be a good chance for us to continue

deepening relationships with people like that

and also helping bring new people into this

movement,” McGillen said.

When I met with Eradicate last week, it

was a bittersweet encounter. We convened

in a lounge on the fourth fl oor of McGuinn.

As each member walked in, he or she sunk

into the couch with a sigh of exhaustion, the

end-of-the-semester crunch taking its toll

on everyone.

When the conversation moved from

papers and exams to Eradicate, however,

smiling and animated faces replaced the sul-

len expressions of the over-worked students.

We reminisced about our fi rst meeting under

the cherry blossoms and laughed about the

number of emails we have exchanged over

the course of the year—scheduling interviews

and discussing Eradicate’s upcoming events.

With some of the members of Eradicate

graduating this year, we began to talk about

the future of the group.

“Eradicate responds to what’s happening

on campus in the moment, so it’s not neces-

sarily like we’re planning on being around

for forever,” Bhattacharyya said. “We’re not

trying to institutionalize and become a body.

It’s important that student groups form in a

moment where there’s an important need

to fi ll and to resist against, and I think as the

University continues to display things that we

can actively resist against then that’s what our

work will be.”

EradicateBC Racism

sophie reardon

things work.

“For me, the learning experience has been

that you can disrupt things,” he said. “You can

always fi nd problems with the current system

and fi nd ways to fi x that problem.”

Before the Shea Center, there was always

some uncertainty about the status of the entre-

preneurial scene at BC. Th ey never knew if the

University was going to keep funding events, Li

said. But Doyle and Kinton have added a for-

mality to the movement, a vote of confi dence

from the school that it cares. Th e BC Venture

Competition is now run by the Shea Center,

as well as the Elevator Pitch Competition, in

which students with business ideas are given

one minute to sell their product or service to

potential investors. Th ose programs have big

prizes—$10,000 for fi rst place in BCVC, which

was awarded on Monday to Emocean, a music-

streaming service started by two alumni and

two current students.

Another goal of theirs is to open up en-

trepreneurship to a wider audience, to make

the Shea Center a focal point for innovation

at BC. One thing that means is making the

culture more inclusive by getting a wider range

of students involved, particularly people with

engineering and computer science interests

who may not otherwise consider working for

a startup. Quintana said that the Center is

defi nitely moving in the direction of focusing

on software, and Doyle said very few startups

of any kind exist nowadays that don’t make

some use of fairly advanced technology.

Th ere’s a social aspect of this work, too:

seeking out more female founders is one of

Doyle’s biggest goals.

Elyse Bush, MCAS ’16, is a co-founder

of ModilMe, a clothes-sharing service that

lets students rent out their unused clothes.

ModilMe won for Best Service at this year’s

Elevator Pitch Competition and spent several

weeks this spring in the Shea Center’s new

accelerator program, which gave Bush and her

coworkers access to funding and mentors.

Th e Center hosted a female founders panel

this year, which Bush said was encouraging.

But she also thinks more needs to be done.

“Even in entrepreneurship, it can very

much be male-dominated,” she said. “I had

to become really comfortable with going to

events full of BC men.”

So there’s work to be done. But who better

to do it than Jere Doyle and Kelsey Kinton.

A fter we talked, Doyle took me

downstairs to see the actual

center, a brightly lit room with

giant whiteboards for walls and a big confer-

ence table. It’s easy to imagine as the offi ce for

a fi ve-person startup.

Two people were in there working on lap-

tops. One of them was probably an undergrad,

the other looked a little older, maybe a grad

student or a BC employee.

“What are we doing in here, innovating,

studying?” Doyle joked. He’s a magnet, taking

over the room, fl ipping it upside down, making

us all think a little harder.

Th ey laughed.

“A little of both,” the kid said.

Doyle smiled. Perfect.

Jere Doyle&Kelsey kinton

know why, how, where, and who—think-

ing like an entrepreneur, basically. And

it’s pretty clear that his thinking tends to

be successful.

S pain was the beginning. Doyle left

that small marketing company to

get an M.B.A. at Harvard. Th en

Spain was the middle, too: when the company

started struggling, he went back and turned it

around. After the company sold in 1997, Doyle

started Prospectiv, which helped connect retail-

ers to customers online during the dot-com

bubble of the late ’90s. Rather than go under

when the bubble burst, as so many companies

did, it found a niche and started Eversave.com,

one of the largest online retailers at that time.

After that sold, too, he struck out on his own,

launching Jere Doyle Enterprises and a couple

of angel investment funds.

Still, it took about 20 years for Doyle’s mom

to come around and decide that he had a real

job. One of his companies was featured in Th e

Wall Street Journal, and she fi gured that was as

good a sign as any that he had made it.

Doyle always stuck to his guns, even when

everybody questioned his career moves, and

that drives his vision for the Shea Center. It’s

about confi dence and exploration.

“He knows just how much you can do and

the potential that you have when you decide to

work for a startup and experience the culture,”

said Robbie Li, former co-chair of Start @ Shea

and CSOM ’16. “He wants students to be curi-

ous enough to try that.”

Doyle and Kinton’s goal is for students to

want to go to work for a startup, which they

think is the best way to learn about business.

With the debut of an entrepreneurship co-con-

centration in CSOM, they want to combine

classroom learning with co-curricular and

experiential learning.

“I feel like a lot of BC students feel like they

should go to the big consulting or the big fi nance

fi rm at graduation,” Kinton said. “I think that

working for a small business you get to do a lot

more than you would at a bigger company.”

Th e Shea Center doesn’t really care about

starting companies, though some great ones,

like Jebbit, have come out of BC. Coburn left

school early when the company took off , and

Doyle made him promise he would come back

and fi nish his degree. Getting a versatile liberal

arts education and learning as much as pos-

sible about career possibilities is what matters

most to Doyle and the Center.

Li said Start @ Shea is an opportunity

to spend time around people who think like

he does. He’s interested in the culture of the

startup, the constant questioning of how

Kelsey kintonconnor murphy

DREW HOO / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF


Jere Doyle&

THE HEIGHTS’ MOMENTUM AWARDS Thursday, May 5, 2016C6

T here’s a certain energy that emanates from Cai Th omas.

It’s not something that’s easy to describe, if you recognize it

at all in the fi rst place. You can’t meet her without immediately

knowing she’s diff erent from the average college student, because right away

she looks diff erent, just based on her clothes.

She started out the fi rst of her four years at Boston College wearing mostly

athletic garb for a couple semesters, before eventually settling on the “uniform”

you see her in today: a printed button-down shirt, black jeans or dress pants,

and a baseball cap. Like her hair, her fashion, which comes from mostly the

Gap, Grand Frank, and H&M these days, is distinctly her.

“I’m defi nitely nowhere near Obama, but I remember him saying having a

uniform is one less decision he has to make in a day,” Th omas said in an email.

“It’s really simple and what I’m most comfortable in.”

But it’s not only her clothes—dressing like a hipster doesn’t automatically

mean you can command a room the way she does. Yet the producer and fi lm-

maker still has the natural ability to both stand out and then blend into the

background when she needs to.

“She has a certain draw to her,” said Alex Stanley, an audio assistant on a few

of her projects, a former sports staff er on Th e Heights, and MCAS ’16. “I’m not

sure what it is. But she does … I’ve heard other people say that it’s somewhat

intimidating. You kind of want to impress her.”

Stanley had a soft smile on his face as he said it, as he did for most of the time

he spent talking about one of his best friends. After a few seconds, he added:

“She’s super confi dent, too. Th at might have something to do with it.”

U nlike many of the people I talked to about Th omas, I don’t have

a clear recollection of the fi rst time I met her.

Like me, she has worked as an undergraduate employee with

Video Services, a department at BC that handles requests for fi lming classes

and events. Th e offi ce, buried in the dreary basement of Campion Hall, was

where I fi rst saw her around last winter. As a freshman new to the job, I just

wanted to keep my head down and get through my three-hour shifts.

Th at’s not at all how Th omas works. Combine that with the fact that our

shifts haven’t overlapped very often, and we didn’t talk much. But I distinctly

remember the fi rst time our interests really aligned in a conversation about

a year later.

She had organized a digital media panel called “Black: We Are Here,”

featuring writers Jamilah Lemieux and Rembert Browne, the latter of whom

wrote some of my favorite all-time pieces for Grantland during its heyday. She

was mediating the panel, a job that required her to research the fi ner points of

their work. When I made an off hand compliment about Browne’s writing on

Grantland, I suddenly had her undivided attention. We spoke a little about his

work and then shared a laugh about the perfection of Browne’s analysis of a

Nicki Minaj photo alongside several boys at a bar mitzvah. I then recommended

she listen to an appearance he made on an episode of Longform, described on

its Web site as a podcast with “a weekly conversation with a non-fi ction writer

or editor on craft and career.” By the time I’d fi nished telling her what it was

about, she had already pulled it up and begun listening to it.

Th at might be the biggest diff erence between Th omas and everyone else:

She doesn’t beat around the bush. Th ere’s no fl uff , no bulls—t. If she takes an

interest in something, she’ll pursue it and ask about it, hungry to know more.

If she doesn’t think something’s important, she won’t entertain it.

At this point in her life, she has a pretty good sense of when she’ll fi nd

someone interesting—in her words, when she’ll “vibe” with them. If the signs

are good, she won’t hesitate to go right up and ask them if they or someone

they know have any good stories, if they’ve heard of a project she could col-

laborate on. Th at approach worked with Kirsten Johnson, an award-winning

documentary fi lmmaker, who Th omas went up to with “a little spiel.” Th e pair

clicked, ended up having dinner, and have kept in constant contact since.

It’s this part of Th omas that has allowed her to build up a vast network across

the country—she says there are few metropolitan cities she could go to without

a connection. It took a little more to make her latest project, an international

endeavour, happen. Specifi cally, she needed the Jackie Robinson Foundation,

which she entered as a graduating high school senior. Th e competitive program

has provided Th omas with scholarship help and career support services for the

past four and a half years. Th at Foundation, besides helping her out one time

when she got stuck in Cleveland pursuing an opportunity to work on a movie

set that fell through, allowed her to complete her latest fi lm project: a trip down

to Brazil to work with Sonia Dias and WIEGO—Women in Informal Employ-

ment: Globalizing and Organizing—on the Gender Waste Project.

Th e project was intended to empower women, who work at “cooperative

sites” (a.k.a. trash pits) to sort out recyclable materials from garbage. For every

kilogram of paper the women collect—that’s about 200 sheets of 8.5 x 11-inch

paper, for reference—they make 12 cents of reais, which is just about 4 cents.

It’s extremely hard to support a family doing it, but many have no other choice.

In capturing their struggle, Th omas had to work around not only the foreign

location to fi lm, but also the language gap. She was forced to bring along a

translator from BC and remain silent for many interviews, not wanting to reveal

she only spoke English, which could make her subjects uncomfortable.

“As a fi lmmaker, especially as a camera person, you just want to blend in

and sort of just tell the story,” she said.

Th e fi lm, which took countless hours to edit over the course of the past

couple of months, premiered at Arts Fest this past weekend. But that’s just one

of the more recent trips she has made in pursuit of something that attracted

her. She has been pretty much everywhere—Brooklyn for a summer internship

at How to Tell You’re a Douchebag, a fi lm that premiered at the Sundance Film

Festival; Phoenix for Major League Baseball’s Diversity Business Summit in

March; Telluride, Col., for an international fi lm festival, at which she almost

bought Rachel McAdams popcorn when the actress forgot her debit card.

Oh, those are just a few highlights from the past year.

She has been so many places in the last several semesters that she has

trouble recalling them all.

Yet, she almost always has something new on the horizon. She is missing

her last day of college classes today because she’s at the White House with

24 other student journalists as part of a program called Newsroom U. Th is

will allow Th omas and the others to meet with the press secretary team (and

hopefully, maybe, President Barack Obama) and then produce stories about

the upcoming election.

After graduation, she’ll be off for 10 days to Northern Ireland, where col-

lege-age students from across the world will meet to discuss peace-building

through economic development. Th en she’s heading to Birmingham, Ala.,

telling environmental fi lm stories.

And that’s as far as she knows, at least for now. Th omas almost always has

a new project she wants to pursue, a new story that has piqued her interest

and is therefore about to suck up sizable portions of her near-endless energy

in the weeks to come. Th at’s just the way she likes it—after all, she puts in more

eff ort to pursue them than just about anyone. Her projects are almost never

a “random opportunity that just came up,” a phrase she used to describe her

White House venture. Th ey’re the result of putting in the time to build a resume

and applying for everything.

Th at fi lming in Brazil? Th e costs

were covered by a grant from BC,

which allows film students to go

abroad and make a social justice

documentary. Th e internship on set

in Brooklyn? Th ose high expenses

like rent and food were covered by

BC through the EAGLE Summer

Internship Stipend. The Telluride

Festival, the White House trip, the

Jackie Robinson Foundation—all

those opportunities were opened to

her because she sat down and applied

to them.

“A lot of people don’t want to

put themselves out there all the time

because they’re afraid to be rejected,

or because they don’t really know in

what way it’s going to tangibly mani-

fest itself, they don’t know if they have

the time,” said Molly Boigon, another

one of her best friends and MCAS

’16. “Th ere are a lot of things that hold

people back from embracing op-

portunity, and Cai fi nds opportunity

everywhere, and constantly.”

All of that could seem impossible at a school like BC, which isn’t rich in

fi lm resources. Th omas laments the general lack of access to equipment, but

appreciates that the program is small enough that she can send out a few texts

and usually borrow what she needs to shoot. Even if it were harder, Th omas

would fi nd a way to make things work—probably by applying somewhere to

get more equipment.

“I bet you right now she’s applying for something online,” Boigon added.

Actually, she was fi lming in Th e Heights’ offi ce, about which she had taken

a sudden interest in doing a small project less than a week after our interview.

But close enough.

I f there has been anything that put Th omas on the map at BC, it was her

appearance on NESN Next Producer, a competition for which she pro-

duced a fi ve-minute fi lm on Blake Bolden, a former BC hockey player

and the fi rst African-American player in the CWHL as a member of the Boston

Blades. Th omas was one of 10 fi nalists on the show, an especially impressive

task considering she did much of the fi lming and editing on her own.

Sports in general have been her main focus at BC—including both her fi lms

on Bolden and Lou Montgomery, a highly talented running back for BC just

before World War II and the fi rst black football player at the University. But in

the grand scheme of things, that’s not what Th omas is really about.

“I’m trying to move away from that,” Th omas said. “Do more news stories,

do featurettes and things of that nature. I realized that I don’t want to be cutting

highlights or working at a sports network, I want to do stories that are going

to have an impact on people.”

She has sought to have as profound an eff ect as possible on her fellow

students here. As a gay, black woman, she has been heavily involved with

promoting on-campus events for both LGBTQ and AHANA students.

Just as she holds high expectations for the people she works with, she has

them for both the student body and the administration. She was disappointed

with the low turnout at her digital media panel, where just 25 people, mostly

from Boston, came out to listen to two of the country’s best writers, in her

eyes. She is disappointed that the University doesn’t have more AHANA

faculty members.

But that’s why she tells her stories—she can’t change everything at once,

but she can keep seeking out injustices where she fi nds them and present them

to the world in her own way.

No one is exactly sure where Th omas will end up after she fi nishes up in

Alabama this fall, but at the same time no one is particularly worried about

her fi nding a good path to head down.

Like her Twitter and Instagram handles say, Th omas aspires for greatness.

She is well on her way.

Cai Thomasalec greaney

“She has a certain draw to her. I don’tknow what it is, but she does.“

- Alex Stanley, MCAS ’16

LIAM WIER / HEIGHTS STAFF

LIAM WIER / HEIGHTS STAFF

The Heights Momentum Awards

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