American Magazine: November 2016

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play One day Shannon Scovel hopes to carve a career writing this kind of story. But for now, the senior swimmer is content being its subject. “It’s so neat to be interviewed by another journalist,” she says, seeming genuinely tickled. Her warmth and enthusiasm are two traits that led her teammates to elect her a cocaptain of AU’s swim team, and the eagerness with which she’s approaching this new situation—answering questions instead of asking them—offers a clue as to why this 21-year-old already has a Sports Illustrated byline on her résumé. Scovel, SOC/BA ’17, carries both athletics and journalism in her blood. Her father, Curt, wrestled at the University of Maryland, where her mother, Kathryn, was a gymnast—and a journalism major. Scovel wanted to emulate them both. “I went into high school with a goal of swimming in college,” she says. “I was never the standout, but I swam distance and I knew that was my place. I wanted a school where I could contribute.” For the Cary, North Carolina, native, that school was AU. During the 2013–14 season she clocked 17:45.45 in the 1,650-meter freestyle at the George Mason Invitational, the ninth-best time in AU history. Last year she recorded three season-best times at the Patriot League Championships. But much of her focus was elsewhere. As editor in chief of the Eagle, Scovel helped oversee about 75 writers. She read every article posted on the paper’s website (up to five a day), devoting 20 hours per week to the job. One of her biggest challenges was working on a story about sexual assault on campus. “It’s always tough when you’re writing about college students that you go to class with, or things that are happening in the community that you’re a part of,” she says. “That was really touchy, and we had to be careful and sensitive with both sides. I’m really proud of the work the staff did.” In the summer, Scovel worked in New York as an intern at the legendary SI. Her timing was fortuitous: in advance of the Rio Olympics, she published stories previewing the women’s field hockey competition and decoding the mysteries of the modern pentathlon. This year, she’s planning to host the Eagle’s first sports podcast, and after graduating she’ll apply for sports writing jobs or look into a master’s program. “Sports is such a huge part of our culture, and I think it’s neat that we can use sports as a way to connect with the people around us and build a community,” the budding reporter says during her brief stint as an interviewee. “I find the writing process to be exhilarating, and I love interviewing athletes to learn more about their experiences. The whole process from start to finish energizes and challenges me. I love the emotion that comes with sport, the triumph associated with a win and the disappointment in a loss. Sports can bring out the best in people, and it’s cool to share those moments with others through my writing.” PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF WATTS WOMEN HIT THE HARDWOOD MEN TIP-OFF, TOO Lauren Crisler led AU in points last season, and this year the senior hopes to score often in early road trips to Penn State (December 18) and Michigan (December 22). AU opens Patriot League play December 30 at Loyola in Baltimore, and concludes the regular season March 1 at Navy. Senior Day is February 25 at Bender Arena. Sophomore star Delante Jones and the Eagles start the season November 11 with a game at Maryland. Home highlights include Military Appreciation Night January 25 against Navy and Phil Bender District Day January 29 versus Colgate. Senior Day is February 19, when AU hosts Holy Cross. 10 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2016
news Four decades after the death penalty became legal again in the United States, the issue remains as polarizing as ever. School of Communication professors Richard Stack and Maggie Burnette Stogner are staunch opponents of capital punishment, but they’ve taken a decidedly nonjudgmental approach to examining it in their forthcoming documentary, In the Executioner’s Shadow, which explores how our decisions about the death penalty define who we are as individuals, as a society, and as a country. “We’ve tried very hard to make this a balanced piece so that a vast range of perspectives are represented,” Stack says. “We’d like the public to begin talking about the death penalty in deeper, more meaningful ways, and we’d like to get people getting beyond their differences and talking about some common ground.” The film follows three main characters whose beliefs and experiences vary widely. Vicki and Sylvester Schieber’s daughter, Shannon, was raped and murdered when she was 23, yet they opposed the death penalty for her killer. For years, it was Jerry Givens’s job to carry out death sentences. As Virginia’s executioner, he ended the lives of 62 men before he resigned and began advocating for the abolition of capital punishment. This summer, Stogner filmed Givens in the nowdefunct, crumbling old Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, capturing strong images she thinks will impact audiences this subject normally doesn’t reach. “It’s the perfect metaphor for a decaying, nonfunctioning criminal justice system,” she says. “Putting him in that situation is visually powerful and engaging. It’s also a metaphor for what haunts him every day, which is that he came very close—within days—of executing an inmate who was later found to be innocent.” The final protagonist is Karen Brassard, who was wounded in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. She struggled with what would constitute justice for the man who carried out the terrorist attack. “We’d like the public to begin talking about the death penalty in deeper, more meaningful ways.” -Richard Stack “She let us into her thought process as it unfolded over the years,” Stack says. “As she wrestled with it, she very thoughtfully explored a lot of issues around what it really means to want the death penalty.” The collaboration, which has also included many graduate students, started in 2013. In addition to the film, Stack and Stogner are developing a suite of materials about the death penalty that they hope can be used to reach wider audiences and stimulate conversations in classrooms or discussion groups. It’s a timely issue. Twenty states have now outlawed the death penalty. If that number reaches 26, opponents may attempt to take a case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the punishment is not only cruel, but unusual as well. “That is the heart and soul of what this is about,” Stogner says. “What is justice?” In recent months, the role of university endowments has come under renewed scrutiny. Some believe that as nonprofits that enjoy tax-exempt status, institutions of higher education should be required to spend more of their endowments on improvements like reducing student debt and making college more affordable for low-income students. US Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) supports legislation that would penalize institutions with large endowments that do not spend enough on student aid. AU’s $600 million endowment is comprised primarily of gifts that have been designated for specific purposes—and cannot legally be used for anything else. “Our spending policy is 5 percent of the endowment value, based on a rolling threeyear average,” says Doug Kudravetz, AU’s CFO and vice president and treasurer. “We are required to spend it based on restrictions imposed by the donors, primarily on scholarships, fellowships, and faculty chairs.” Endowments are intended to provide a long-term economic buffer, says Terry Flannery, AU’s vice president of communication. “A strong endowment roughly equal to the annual operating budget is important for bond ratings, so the university can borrow money or issue bonds for important projects and pay the debt back over time,” she says. “We have reduced student debt and increased affordability through other means.” While AU’s endowment has increased 113 percent since 2005 and is now about the size of its operating budget, some of its competitors have endowments many times larger than their operating budgets, Kudravetz says. “[Ours] does not yet have the value or flexibility of some of the nation’s wealthiest institutions to contribute to operating resources in a meaningful way,” he says. “For many years AU has been primarily a tuition-driven institution and will continue to be so in the near term. But with careful investment and more ambitious fundraising, we will ensure that AU will be less dependent on tuition alone in the long term.” BROOKINGS BOUND RESEARCH WITHOUT BORDERS SPA’s Bradley Hardy has been awarded the Brookings Institution’s Okun-Model Fellowship for the 2016–2017 academic year. The prestigious fellowship—typically given to academics with two to six years of experience—will enable Hardy to build relationships with Brookings scholars researching poverty, social policy, and economic instability. “I’m looking forward to working with such talented economic scholars on issues that matter to the American people,” he says. SIS and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies have launched the Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative, named for the late scholar. AU will recruit six to nine academics from Canada, Mexico, and the United States, who will convene twice a year to share research and brainstorm promising new directions for policy, advocacy, and scholarship. FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 11
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Page 31 and 32: By Mike Unger and Adrienne Frank
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