By Aubrey Violeta Gelpieryn, The New Boundaries*

It’s Friday night, and you’re at your local bar. As soon as you order, there’s someone standing behind you offering to buy your drink and trying to talk to you. No matter how many times you insist that you’re fine and want to be alone, this person doesn’t leave. What are you supposed to do next?

“What’s surprising is the persistence of men,” said Jordan Clarke Halsey, 23, a bartender at Barcelona Wine Bar in Washington, D.C.’s Cathedral Heights neighborhood. “When you’re watching behind the bar it’s so obvious that women aren’t interested.”

Halsey says that despite this, bartenders don’t always know when or how to step in. 

Safe Bars, a D.C.-based organization that took off in 2016, holds two-hour bystander intervention trainings for bar staff and management with the goal of creating a safer and more welcoming nightlife culture.

“A safe bar is a place where the staff have been trained to have your back,” said Lauren Taylor, the co-founder and director of Safe Bars. Her training sessions focus on fostering discussion and communication among restaurant and bar staff.

Safe Bars has led trainings in nine cities and counties around the country. Taylor has close to 100 requests for trainings. She says the #MeToo movement sparked an increased interest, both by individuals and by groups, to take part in the training.

Miguel Brajas, the co-manager and event coordinator at Ten Tigers Parlour in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., completed the Collective Action Safe Space training through Safe Bars with his staff in August.

Brajas says that even before the training, they made efforts to be all-inclusive with the events held at his bar. As a gay hispanic man, Brajas says his staff have always known that diversity and inclusion is one of his top priorities.

Most of what they were taught at the training were already being implemented by his staff, said Brajas, but the Safe Bars training helped reinforce what they should do and gave them more options.
​
Taylor says this is usually the case. 

“We walk in knowing that in most establishments people who work there are already doing things,” said Taylor. “I have found that among the staff there hasn’t been a sharing of techniques.”

*This story was originally shared on The New Boundaries and has been re-posted here by the author.

by Aubrey Gelpieryn
American University
​
WASHINGTON – There’s a rustling as Quincey Tickner shuffles through a crate of records she’s discovered in the radio studio. Excitedly, she picks each one up, commenting on the collection.

“It [vinyl] is important to get people more in touch with the artists themselves and to really know what an album is,” says Tickner, a senior at American University and the host of “Vinyl Richie,” an exclusively vinyl music show on the No. 1 student-run, internet-only station in the nation, WVAU. “We live in an era where music is released online and you don’t even have to go to a record store. People take music for granted in a way because it’s so easily accessible,”

Like Tickner, a lot of young people are starting to collect vinyl music. Trends show an influx in vinyl sales, especially with people between the ages of 13-24, who represent 24 percent of vinyl listeners, according to surveys conducted by MusicWatch Inc.

Suah Cheong, a sophomore at American, decided to buy her turntable after finding a new Foster the People record at T.J. Maxx for $9.

“I was already planning on getting a record player,” says Cheong. “Then I saw that cheap record and was like, it’s time now.”

Nationally, vinyl sales are on the rise. BuzzAngle Music’s industry numbers show that vinyl sales increased by 22.5 percent from 2016 to 2017, reaching a 25-year high.

Cheong says she first became interested in vinyl because of “peer pressure.”

“All my friends in high school had record players,” says Cheong. “It was a social activity to go to my friends’ houses and sit around listening to records.”

Though it’s a growing trend, not all vinyl fans are new to the scene.

“For some people they [records] never left,” says Ambrose Nzams, a manager at the Washington-based vintage clothing and record store Joint Custody.

Nzams has been collecting records since he was 14 years old.

“I started listening because when you get into punk and hardcore, it’s a medium that never went out of style,” says Nzams. “If you want something, it’s only available on a seven-inch, so you have to buy it on a seven-inch.”

Listening to music on vinyl isn’t just a new fad for Tickner either. She thinks that records help people connect with the artist more than digital streaming.

“I grew up listening to records, so when I switched to digital music it didn’t sound as genuine and realistic,” says Tickner. “I put on The Supremes records in the morning, and they’re like they’re performing in my room.”

James Gianello, another manager at Joint Custody, says his main way of listening to music is on vinyl.
“You can have really high quality digital, but it hasn’t quite caught up yet,” Gianello says. “With the stuff you’re streaming, you lose a lot.”

Although the warm audio quality is a popular reason for people to say they like listening to vinyl, not everyone can tell the difference.

“Not gonna lie, I’m not enough of an audiophile to be able to say the sound quality is better,” says Cheong. “It’s all the same to me, but there’s something more personal or intimate about putting a piece of plastic on the record player and sound coming from the plastic. It’s like a toy.”

And there are more components to records than the sounds they produce.

“With vinyl you get the full package,” says Gianello. “You get the art. You know you can really sit down and you’re kind of forced to focus on it more than you are with digital, where you can skip a track very easily.”
Nana Gongadze, a freshman at American, shares the sentiment.

“When I have my records it’s about the tactile experience,” says Gongadze. “Holding it, putting it on the player, just enjoying it and looking at the artwork­ – it’s much more about the physical experience of putting it on to listen to it.”

However, not everyone is sold on the Vinyl trend. Brianna Ryan, a sophomore at American, prefers to listen to her music with Apple Music, a digital streaming application.

“I wouldn’t even know where to buy that stuff and it’s expensive,” Ryan says, when talking about why she doesn’t listen to vinyl records.

Her style of listening to music differs from Tickner’s, who believes that albums should play in their entirety in order to best respect the artists’ layouts of their music.

“I choose songs,” says Ryan. “I only listen to full albums if it’s an artist I really love. Otherwise, I only listen to the popular songs.”

While it’s undeniable that record players aren’t as convenient as other formats for quick listening to music, there’s still a loyal base of people who shop at record stores regularly.

“I really value physical space and I think physical space is really valuable for communities,” says Nzams. “I like having the store as a place where people can be comfortable and come in and talk about music.”

Joint Custody, which is located on Washington’s U Street, is a store that prides itself on being a place where people from all walks of life can come together to appreciate music. The staff keeps the bins stocked with a variety of records in all genres to make sure they have something that appeals to everyone who comes in. Across the speakers, the music pauses momentarily, as the turntable stops and record flips to the B-side.

As the vinyl trend continues to grow, stores like Joint Custody help develop a community of people who listen to records by connecting the new fans with those who have been collecting for years.
​
“Some people buy it for the art, some people buy it because they prefer the sound quality and other people like collecting,” says Nzams. “I think it’s all about having the physical, and that’s what it comes down to.”

By Aubrey Gelpieryn
American University

WASHINGTON – Jennifer Lawless spent her younger years planning a run for political office. When that didn’t pan out, she decided to dedicate her life to helping other women achieve that dream.
Lawless said she had an interest in politics from a young age and always knew that she would run for office; in 2006, she did.

She lost the primary campaign for the House of Representatives, but still did much better than local media outlet anticipated. A popular incumbent in Rhode Island ran against her, and while estimates claimed she’d only win 10 percent of the vote, she won almost four times that.

“I spoke to people that I wouldn’t normally speak to,” said Lawless. “I heard about peoples’ problems and concerns, and I was able to, I think, really become a more empathetic, compassionate person because you understand the struggles that people are going through on a day-to-day basis.”

It was Lawless’ real-life political campaign experience that really opened her eyes to how women are treated in politics and put her in a role where she could bridge the practical with the academic aspects of political leadership.

Since the fall of 2009, Lawless has served as the director for the Women and Politics Institute at American University, a role that allows her to work with a bi-partisan team to encourage women to develop and follow their own political ambitiond.

“The two research questions that I’m most interested in are why don’t women run, and what happens when they do,” said Lawless, who added that the answers to those questions are the same on both sides of the political aisle. “It’s nice to be in the rare position … of being able to talk to people, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, and share research findings that resonate with them and apply.”

Her research has found that the main inhibitor of women running for political office is that they believe they had to be twice as qualified as men in order to run, which studies have proven to be untrue.

Along with being the director for the Women and Politics Institute, Lawless teaches classes on the subject at American. These classes tend to attract a variety of students, with ranging political views, genders and beliefs.

Ryan Guerra, a junior at American, is one of Lawless’ students. He said he’s learned a lot about how political ideology is a more prevailing factor than gender in politics. He decided to sign up for her class this semester because he was curious to know more about the roles of women in politics following the 2016 presidential election.

“I think it’s interesting, and I like when she talks about her running,” said Guerra. “She talks about it with a lot of passion.”

Lawless is in the process of publishing her next book with Richard L. Fox, “Women and Men in U.S. Politics: 10 Big Questions,” which will be released in the fall and discusses how gender and politics plays a role in the everyday lives of people as well as in politics.

Lawless has published five books so far. Her most recent is “Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era,” which is co-authored by Danny Hayes, an associate professor of political science at The George Washington University.

“The book is an attempt to figure out whether women really do have to be twice as good, and the good news is they face a pretty level playing field from the moment they announce until the votes are counted,” said Lawless.

Hayes and Lawless met when he worked at American. They both were interested in women and politics, and after having some conversations on the topic, decided to co-author a book.

“Anyone who has worked with Jen would describe her as a force of nature. She has a capacity to get more things done in a day than most people can accomplish in a week,” said Hayes.

Hayes said that before their collaboration, there hadn’t been research conducted on what it looks like when women run for office for a few decades, and the two of them were excited to update it.

Even though she stays busy inspiring other women to recognize their political ambition, don’t discount Lawless’ own potential for a return to politics.
​
“Like I always say, I have no plans to run, but I hope to at some point in the future,” she said.

By Aubrey Gelpieryn
American University

WASHINGTON – Michael Phelps sat before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Tuesday morning and told the Representatives that he didn’t think he’d ever participated in a “clean” Olympic Games.

Phelps, who retired from swimming after winning his 28th medal in the Rio de Janeiro Games this past summer, shared a personal testimony of his experiences having known other athletes were using drugs to gain a competitive advantage.

Though he had previously avoided talking about the subject, Phelps said that his newborn son is what inspired him to finally step forward and share his criticism of performance-enhancing drugs and why he never felt the need to partake in doping.

“I put my body through pain that I’ll never see again, trust me. But it just needs to be fair,” said Phelps. For me, having a son, I want him to enjoy clean, fair sport.”

A panel of witnesses, that included shot-putter and Olympic gold medalist Adam Nelson, United States Anti-Doping Agency Chief Executive Officer Travis Tygart, World Anti-Doping Agency Deputy Director General Rob Koehler and IOC Medical and Scientific Director Dr. Richard Budgett, joined Phelps as witnesses.

The subject of anti-doping was particularly personal for Nelson. He was awarded his gold medal nine years after competing in the Olympics, when it was revealed that the competitor who had bested him did so with the assistance of performance-enhancing drugs. His gold medal, which he showed to the members of congress, was not given to him on the Olympic podium, but in an airport food court.

After talking to congress, Nelson was ready for action to take place.

“I think the first next step is for the IOC and WADA to actually follow up on what they talked about today. The fact that the IOC representative said that they’re going to consider separating sport from this particular element is a really big step,” said Nelson. “I’ve had the opportunity to represent my country in competitions all over the world, but to have the opportunity to come and represent clean sports in this particular venue is an element that you just don’t get to do very often.”

Nelson said he hopes that “major changes” will result from this hearing.
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Tim Murphy. R-PA., said the hearing was important because it sent a message to American youths.

“Sports should be a place where your determination and your skill, your focus, your psychosocial makeup are things that are the difference between a champion and just a competer,” said Murphy “Drugs should not be a part of it.”

The topic of anti-dopoing is especially relevant after this past summer’s Olympics, during which time 68 Russian athletes were banned from competing due to positive tests, according to the BBC. Phelps described this incident as “frustrating.”
​
He said that while he was tested 13 times in the six months leading up to the 2016 Games, sometimes being woken up at 6 a.m. on his off days to complete a test, athletes from other countries were allowed to participate even after testing positive twice.