Emily's Work

UMass Students on the Party Culture

Emily Bedenkop and Zac May

April 8, 2013

Watching her friend get hit in the head with a beer bottle at the recent Blarney Blowout party at the Townhouse Apartments has not stopped sophomore Yina Li from enjoying what she called the fun party culture of University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

“That’s the reason I came here. The parties are part of the culture,” said Li, a chemistry major.

As the weather warms, tensions between UMass students and residents of the town of Amherst rise as more parties take place off-campus and outside. Students interviewed around the UMass campus acknowledged this tension and the issues with police enforcement it often brings, but do not think there is much students or the administration can–or should–do to change it.

“We should be able to have parties. It shouldn’t be a problem as long as we’re respectful about it,” said freshman David Buccheri. 

Student David Baccheri

Buccheri cited problems of property damage and general disruption as the root of student-town tension, and many other students shared this view. 

“I don’t think the town likes it when this time of year comes around,” said senior music education major Ariel Chu. She said that large outdoor parties like the one last spring at Puffer’s Pond generally create a “mess.”

Changing the UMass party culture and the reality of springtime parties would require a major overhaul on the part of students and the administration, said Chu.

Senior management and communication double-major Steven Samson said that efforts on the part of the administration have been ineffective because students are not inclined to listen to the administration.

Student Ariel Chu

This is especially the case with regard to freshman and sophomores just entering the college party atmosphere. “They don’t know how to behave on a mature level yet. They need to just chill out,” said Samson, who recommended targeting those hosting parties as a more effective solution.

Sophomore Kristen Conley felt differently. She acknowledged that students can get out of hand, but said that the town is also part of the problem. “The town is mean. But stop throwing bottles at cops,” said Conley.

Some students like Li sought out the party culture in deciding where to apply, and are unconcerned by the unlikeliness of major changes in student-town relations. However, most said that what Chu referred to as a “30-year reputation” of being a party school did not affect their overall decision to enroll at UMass.

Students’ interactions bring life to annual class trip to Sicily

Emily Bedenkop

April 3, 2013

Tucked away into a corner of Rome’s Fiumicino airport on a recent weekday was a small encampment of exhausted students, lying across one another and trading backrubs, hair braids, and the scraps of food they could afford with their limited supply of remaining euros. Just 10 days before, these same students were self-segregated by school, alternating awkwardly getting to know one another and wandering the same airport to look at the limited assortment of duty-free stores.

For 16 years, students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have traveled to Sicily each spring semester as part of a course on travel writing and photojournalism. Harford art majors concentrating in illustration and photography have been joining the UMass group for over a decade. Getting to know one another and residents of the small Sicilian towns visited are highlights of the annual trip, students said.

Though the itinerary of visits to temples, museums and wineries in small towns from the mountains to the seaside varies from year to year, these slight changes are balanced by how the same people have always coordinated the trip. Their familiarity with each other and the general experience makes the trip run smoothly.

“We started planning this trip on the plane ride home last year,” said Hartford Art School Associate Professor Jeremiah Patterson.

Patterson, a renowned watercolor painter with work exhibited throughout the country, is also a UMass graduate. He traveled to Yucatan as an undergraduate with Rick Newton, who has coordinated UMass programs going to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and now Sicily since 1991. Newton, known for the extra memory cards he carries for over-shooting photographers, was nicknamed “Salty” by students amused by the number of things that bother him, like plastic bags “ruining” scenic shots.

As photography instructor, Newton shares the UMass class with Carol Connare, director of Development and Communications for the UMass Library. Connare has taught the travel-writing component for three years, and after the trip works with the writers to create a magazine of their work and students’ photography. This magazine is in addition to each student’s final project, a portfolio composed of short vignettes and either photography or lengthier feature stories, depending on the class section.

In the months before the actual trip to Sicily, the two alternated teaching together on Sicilian history and culture, and dividing the 16-person class into its writing and photography sections for more technical instruction.

“Rick taught me an overwhelming amount in an extremely short period of time,” said junior journalism and English double-major Kyle Little, who admitted he had been worried about barely knowing how to operate his newly purchased digital camera. Pre-trip photography classes involved learning to control depth of field, blur or stop motion, and avoid using what Newton calls “dummy mode” – the completely automatic setting – at all costs, said Little.

Junior journalism major Lindsay Davis is the UMass teaching assistant this year, and decided to concentrate on photography because she was in the writing section last year. Returning to the course and Sicily for a second year, said Davis, gave her the opportunity to reflect on Sicily, rather than just touring. Davis said that experiencing small towns like Castelbuono, the residents of which invited students to join their Saint Joseph’s Day celebration, made her realize how close-knit Sicilian communities are compared to the large UMass campus.

Senior illustration major Michele Epstein is the teaching assistant for Hartford, and like Davis felt drawn back to the class and the island; “To me it kind of seems like the trip was on a separate time, kind of like the rest of the world paused when we were there. Going a second time it seemed to go by even quicker,” said Epstein.

Other students had reflective experiences like Davis, returning to school with a different perspective because of their travels. “I don't feel as concerned with some of the things that used to bug me, now they seem more minor and insignificant,” said Andy Bates, a junior illustration major at Hartford.

Like Bates, senior accounting major Felisha Amato said that being exposed to a different way of life in Sicily made her less enthusiastic for upcoming academic obligations; “Comparing my life to the lives of the Sicilians in small towns made me question why I do the things I do and what is most important to me. I almost wonder if living in some sort of ignorance is easier.”

For the majority of students traveling to Sicily for the first time, the class’s balance between academics and touring made for an ideal traveling experience. “The opportunity for three credits and the prospect of active travel writing and photography was intriguing,” Little said when asked what incited him to apply for enrollment. Though the trip costs nearly three thousand dollars, said Little, “Looking back it was worth every cent.”

During the 10 days of the students’ trip, they traveled from the capital of Palermo in the northwest to Taormina at the base of Mt. Etna on the northeast coast, from which you can see the boot of Italy. Small pockets of pale yellow stucco buildings with red-orange roof tiles and green doors compose the towns in between, nestled into the mountainous interior of the island and along the rocky cliffs and beaches of the coast. Balconies adorn nearly every window, providing locals with the chance to socialize, hang laundry, and cool off in the Mediterranean climate that yields summer temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Students seized the chance to wear shorts and sundresses in the sunny warmth of Sicilian springtime, drawing more confused stares than ever from natives still bundled up in wool coats.

“The landscape and atmosphere was so different from anything I had previously been used to that I was like a sponge soaking everything in that I could all trip long,” said Bates.

What is referred to as the “Sicilian Team” on the UMass course’s website transforms the trip from a class tour, bringing life to and personalizing the traveling experience. Rosa Rizza, the Durgan Travel Service tour guide, strikes the perfect balance between affectionate and informative; “She quickly became a second mother to me,” said Bates. Though a Sicilian by birth and spirit, Rizza spent her adolescence in Connecticut. She has the perspective of someone who has lived as both an outsider and insider, not to mention the bilingualism.

In addition to fielding the group’s questions about Italian politics, for example, Rizza lectured on topics ranging from Greek and Roman theaters to the mythology of Mt. Etna. The mountain is an active volcano believed to be the home of cyclopes under which lies the forges of Hephaestus, god of fire and metalwork.  

Also key to the trip was Mario Fili, who owns the bus company and acts as driver for the trip. Fili is remarkable for his ever-present smile, good-natured mockery of students’ Italian pronunciations, and wearing a suit while negotiating the bus through the narrow winding Sicilian roads throughout the week. This year’s trip was the first to include a visit to Fili’s hometown of Alimena, where he had requested the ceremonial decorations of St. Joseph’s Day to remain intact for an unprecedented extra day so the students could see them.

“The man knows what's going on and pulls a lot of strings, all while remaining unimposing,” said Bates.

St. Joseph was known for feeding the poor, so the symbolic offerings of bread, oranges, and pasta placed before a painting of him and the infant Jesus in Alimena were a fitting celebration. St. Joseph’s Day doubles as the Italian Father’s Day and a tribute to this generosity to the poor. Each year on this day towns across Sicily have lunch together, with a few people preparing a simple meal to be shared by whoever wants to join.

Many students on the trip this year had never traveled outside of the United States or North America before, making the trip to Sicily more unique and increasing the necessity of guidance.

“When you travel it’s not the country that has to adapt to you, you have to adapt to the country. That’s how you become international. And be international, it’s more fun,” said Rizza.

Partaking in an olive oil tasting with Rizza’s parents and meeting one of Fili’s oldest friends at the farm where he makes his own ricotta cheese helped make the tour experience more personal. Said Davis, “Sicilia is their homeland, and being with them for the ride makes it feel like yours too.”

Because Newton, Connare, and Patterson have been traveling to Sicily for so long together, said Davis, going with the class feels like tagging along with a family. They crack jokes and remind each other of Sicilian trivia on long bus rides. In each town the teachers and Sicilian Team have favorite restaurants or sunrise observation spots that they return to each year, and they share these locations with the students. “That's what family is, making and treasuring these traditions,” Davis said. 

This sense of family is evident in student interactions, too; according to veterans Davis and Epstein, the bonding that occurs throughout the trip translates back to the classroom upon the students’ return.

“We know everyone's personalities and mesh well together,” said Davis. Used to being together, writers and photographers in the UMass class refused to work in separate rooms upon returning from Sicily, despite the fact that they are working on different final projects. UMass and Hartford students said they plan to visit one another, and have begun planning an exhibition of all the students’ work to be possibly shown at both schools in the fall.

Said Bates, “My expectations were to fall in love with just about everything, which happened, and to really devote myself to the experience, which also happened.” Concerns about traveling in a foreign country with UMass students he had never met before, Bates said, were quickly assuaged; “I felt instantly accepted, and grew to love them and value our friendships regardless of the relatively short amount of time we’d known each other.”

Police Visit Response

Emily Bedenkop

March 12, 2013

An expectation of privacy is key in determining what is acceptable, said Amherst Police Department Detective Jamie Reardon during his talk Monday with Mary Carey’s Journalism 300 class. Reardon, who spoke with students at the Amherst Police Department, explained his police interactions with the press and how it is to work in area with a high concentration of college students.

In public places there can be no expectation or enforcement of privacy, Reardon said when asked him about cell phone cameras. Videotaping arrests is a frequent occurrence, and is completely legal as long as the person with the camera is a safe distance away from the scene and not interfering. “I expect to get videotaped,” said Reardon.

Videotapes can also be used as either direct evidence or background information for an investigation; “It’s one of the best sources of information that we have. There’s no expectation of privacy, and it’s free,” said Reardon of the APD’s reliance on social media, particularly videos posted to YouTube and photos on Facebook.

When asked about “Blarney Blowout,” the St. Patrick’s Day-themed party that took place Saturday at the Amherst Townhouses, Reardon spoke about the ways the APD attempts to prepare for similar events that are sure to require police presence. Extra staffing, coordination with colleges and landlords in the area, and working with state and university police forces are all tactics employed by the APD. Additionally, officers often speak with house owners before large parties occur to warn them of potential consequences.

Preparation efforts and even the calls that bring police to a scene can never be complete, however. Even with his 13 years of experience at the APD, Reardon said: “We never know what we’re getting into, it’s never perfect.”

An expectation of privacy extends to the information released by the APD to members of the press. Once a suspect is arraigned in court, their arrest is public information and can be released and published as such.

Victim information is a different story, though, said Reardon, citing concerns about victim safety, the possibility of retaliation, and prejudicing a jury. Releasing information about warrants is also unusual, as it could affect an investigation or potentially lead to the harming of informants.

“I’ll give you what I can, but I can’t give you everything,” Reardon said with regard to what information is released by the APD. 

Press meetings every weekday allow for a controlled release of information by the APD that is accurate, not in violation of privacy laws, and released for legitimate reasons like asking the community to aid in an identification, said Reardon.

Ultimately, said Reardon, much of his decisions come down to a mixture of common sense the over 80 APD policies. Questioning the students about how they would react in certain situations, as well as by answering their questions, helped students to get a better grasp of Reardon’s role and responsibilities in the APD. 

UMass Professor Sut Jhally integrates research interests into passionate, subversive teaching

March 11, 2013

Emily Bedenkop

Sut Jhally leans onto the lectern, delivering a lecture on “Media, Public Relations & Propaganda” with the ease and presence of a well-seasoned professor. He has spent the entirety of the hour-long class, recorded for online education, pacing back and forth at the front of the room with no lack of hand gestures to accompany his talk. Jhally’s voice fills the room as he looks around at his students, who are silent with the exception of a few quickly stifled coughs.

Jhally’s accent is a testament to his British roots, though he was born and lived in Kenya until he was six. The way various identities mix within Jhally himself helped him to realize the fluid nature of identity, said Jhally, and in combination with his university experiences prompted him to study how identity can be affected by its environment.

The way Jhally’s interests and work at the Media Education Foundation, of which he is founder and executive director, are incorporated into his career at UMass lends passion to his teaching.

Before coming to UMass in 1985, Jhally completed graduate degrees in Sociology and Communications in Canada, and taught for a year in New Hampshire. “My background is fragmented. I’ve always been, I wouldn’t say an outsider, but someone who didn’t fit in directly,” said Jhally in a recent interview at the MEF in Northampton, Mass. “When you’re not inside [the culture], you think about the culture you’re in in a different way.”

In the lecture recordings, Jhally wears a blue V-neck tee, looking as comfortable in front of his projected slides as he might relaxing at home. His glasses are tucked into the collar of his shirt, and his thin gray hair drifts across his shoulders as he motions towards the advertisements and commercials reproduced on the screen behind him.

“I’ve always thought there was a very strong relationship between what I taught and the way I taught and what I was interested in and the kinds of research I was doing. I never think of myself as a teacher or a researcher, it’s so integrated, it’s a total experience for me,” Jhally said.

For Jhally, online classes are similar to teaching in large lecture classes; in both settings, he said, the only students a professor really gets to know are those that attend office hours or seek to connect on an out-of-class basis. Both platforms give him the chance to teach as many students as possible, one of his goals as a professor; “Over the last five years, I know I can say for a fact: I’ve taught the most students,” Jhally said.

Jhally first became interested in the relationship between media culture and identity as an undergraduate student at York University in England in 1974. The multidisciplinary studies of Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham helped to shape Jhally’s academic interests from the start of his college career.

The videos he produces through the MEF cater to young students and are designed to be used in high school and college classrooms, according to an interview with Jhally on the MEF website. The MEF works to make complicated subject matter more understandable with its videos: “We think these issues are too important to be left just to a discussion by experts,” said Jhally. There is no division between his research and the undergraduate courses he teaches on similar subjects, which range from gender and race to health and politics.

The most renowned of Jhally’s films is “Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video,” produced in 1990. This video challenges young students in particular to examine the music culture they are surrounded in by analyzing the glamorized sexism in music videos, according to the MEF website.

The most jarring part of this film is that the music of the videos is replaced with Jhally’s narration and analysis: “The challenge, then, for something like “Dreamworlds” is making sure people do not get lost in the seductive power of the images, and to make the images problematic, to take familiar images and make them strange so that they can be seen at a critical distance in new ways,” Jhally said a 2005 interview with Lynn Comella and Jeremy Earp.

The images of the video were certainly problematic. Though it was initially only distributed for educational purposes within the UMass Communications and Women’s Studies Departments, MTV Network’s legal department soon contacted Jhally with a cease-and-desist letter and the threat of a lawsuit for copyright violation. Though MTV did not pursue its legal case, the coverage “Dreamworlds” received “became a catalyst for Jhally’s future successes by increasing sales,” according to a MEF-produced factsheet about “Dreamworlds 3,” the most recent installment in the series.

The threat of a lawsuit also pushed Jhally to found the MEF. At the time, Jhally said UMass encouraged him to quiet his bolder opinions and publications. The university was implicated in MTV’s claim both because it employed Jhally and because the film was founded in his teaching. Rather than “essentially shutting up,” Jhally said he used media attention to draw attention to his film and make a publicized statement about academic freedom, free expression, and copyright laws.

The decision to create the MEF did not strain Jhally’s relationship with the university, however, and the foundation is now fully incorporated into his life: “What I do at UMass and what I do at MEF is not a job, it’s what I do. Friendships and other things happen around that, but that’s not what really drives me. And I don’t make that separation between, this life over here, and that life over there.”

“Dreamworlds” exemplifies the integration of Jhally’ research and productions with his teaching. The narration of the original installment is a succinct compilation of his classroom lectures, and most of the clips had been originally used in Jhally’s media criticism-oriented classes. According to the MEF factsheet, classroom responses to the film helped revise it into the 55-minute final production, which incorporates images from more than 160 music videos.

Ana Reyes, who graduated from UMass in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in communications, interned with the MEF the summer after taking a class with Jhally. Though it was a large lecture, her experience with the class helped her to decide on her major: “I wanted to take more classes like it,” said Reyes. Jhally’s lectures included “subversive things I’d never heard before. It was absolutely riveting.”

Reyes’ most memorable experience with Jhally was an in-class illustration of the power of symbols. Everyone in the large class was instructed first to draw a picture of the American flag on a piece of notebook paper, and then to write the words “American flag.” When Jhally asked students to crumple and step on the words, most did so without hesitation. Asking the same for the picture of the flag, however, was “met with a really loud silence,” said Reyes. “There was just this sense that it felt wrong.”

The power of symbols penetrates most aspects of society, says Jhally, who chooses to focus on media and advertising in many of his productions. Reyes said her work with the MEF was to review a “real collage of images” ranging from commercials to print ads to billboards. In doing so, Reyes was ultimately helping to choose what would be featured in the MEF film on college binge drinking, “Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies & Alcohol.”

Jhally’s classes are popular, something he attributes to a mixture of teaching crowd-drawing topics like advertising and gender and his evident passion for teaching. Jhally checks RateMyProfessors.com occasionally when bored, and finds a broad variety of student-submitted reviews on the website. Students’ comments ranged from “This class really opened my eyes” to simply “Sut Jhally lectures are wild.” One student said, “He just preaches his own views,” while another said, “Very biased, but well informed in his subjectivity.”

Jhally is not at all upset by the occasional negative comments, though. Said Jhally, “Good teaching should disturb you. If everyone likes and agrees with you then you’re doing something wrong.” 

Leonardo DiCaprio Fake Obituary 

March 1, 2013

Emily Bedenkop

LOS ANGELES - Actor and film producer Leonardo DiCaprio lived Wednesday morning, Feb. 27, 2013 in his Los Angeles home. The cause of life is still unknown.

DiCaprio was born on November 11, 1974 to Irmelin and George DiCaprio. His parents divorced soon after his birth and he was raised by his mother. DiCaprio attended John Marshall High School and the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies.

His first acting roles were in commercials, educational films, and the short-lived television series "Parenthood" as a young child. DiCaprio's breakthrough role was as the star of "This Boy's Life," a film directed by and co-starring Robert De Niro, in 1992.

Following his 1992 big screen debut, DiCaprio has acted in over 25 films, including "Titanic," "Catch Me If You Can," "The Departed," "Inception," and most recently "Django Unchained." DiCaprio also had roles in two films scheduled to be released in 2013. He had been nominated for a Golden Globe Award nine times, which he received for Best Actor in 2004 for his role in "The Aviator."

In addition to his acting career, DiCaprio began to produce films in 2004. Notable productions include "The Aviator" and "The Ides of March."

DiCaprio was an environmental activist and humanitarian. He funded the Leonardo DiCaprio Computer Center in the Los Feliz branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, and was noted for donating to Haiti relief funds and the Wildlife Conservation Society. DiCaprio also contributed to the presidential campaigns of now-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008.

He is survived by his parents and long-time friends actors Tobey Maguire and Kate Winslet.

A private service will be held on Saturday, March 2, 2013 in Los Angeles.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the SOS Children's Village International organization online at www.sos-childrensvillages.org.

Students Take Part In Sexual Assault PSA Auditions

February 12, 2013

Emily Bedenkop

Students crowded a New Africa House hall and went over their lines in hushed voices.

They were waiting to audition for an upcoming series of Public Service Announcements about sexual assault, which were organized by the Massachusetts Northwestern District Attorney’s office in conjunction with an awareness campaign that hopes to highlight consent as the necessary element that separates sex and rape.

“We wanted to create a campaign that would be something students would recognize, that would be attractive to students, that students could relate to,” said Mary Kociela, programs director for the D. A.’s Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Unit.

With the PSAs, which are intended to target college students, members of the student body from the Five College Consortium and Greenfield Community College were highly involved in the process of writing and editing the scripts, campaign organizers said.

Kociela and Assistant District Attorney Susan Loehn are working closely with students throughout the process to make the conversations and situations portrayed more relatable.

“We wanted to find a way to address the high incidence of sexual assault” on campuses, Loehn said.

Recent local cases of sexual assault brought the issue close to home for many students and faculty, encouraging the campaign, Loehn and Kociela said. An expansion of the unit in the District Attorney’s Office opened up the possibility of grant funding and increased resources.

The Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Unit’s campaign, funded with an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, was launched to educate college-aged students about sexual assault, prevention and increased reporting of incidents.

A group composed of students and staff from the Five College area and GCC, staff from the D.A.’s Office, and media consultants, have worked since last fall to create and promote these efforts.

When auditions began, Natalia Muñoz, director of Verdant Multicultural Media, and Mary Patierno, principal of Reel Communication, asked students a few questions, including whether or not they would be comfortable portraying the characters described in the scenes. In attempting to re-create a party atmosphere, each individual PSA is centered on an archetypal party scene, while all three skits explicitly feature alcohol.

The campaign focus on emphasizing one’s inability to give full consent while under the influence was important to Kociela and Loehn.

“There is almost always drugs or alcohol involved on the part of one person and the victim,” Loehn said.

In addition to the persistent involvement of drugs and alcohol, a high level of miscommunications and gray areas make such cases difficult to prosecute, especially without physical evidence.

“They are very difficult cases,” Loehn said. “They are not stranger rapes. It’s people, it’s acquaintances, it’s friends of friends and there are a lot of miscommunications.”

The PSAs will be filmed on March 9 with the students selected for the scenes from the auditions. The campaign also hopes to recruit students to be extras in the scenes.

Any interest in being an extra can be directed to Muñoz, who can be reached at (413) 225-1210.

The PSAs will first be shown at a conference in early April, at which campaign participants will discuss the next steps both on campuses and in the community at large.

Suburban/Urban Mix Found in West Roxbury

February 4, 2013

Emily Bedenkop

Both going to school and living outside of her hometown of West Roxbury, Mass. gave Ellie Harte an outsider’s perspective on the neighborhood of Boston that is a blend of both suburban and urban life.

Despite being technically part of Boston, with a population of around 30,000 West Roxbury is comparable to suburban towns outside of the city. Its growing number of banks and nail salons is “kind of ridiculous,” said Harte. Having a backyard and the ability to walk to friends’ homes in her neighborhood, said Harte, gave her a sense of safety not usually associated with city living. “I don’t even have a key to my house,” Harte said, though she admitted that might be more of her parents’ doing than a standard practice.

Harte did emphasize, however, that she feels like she grew up downtown. The accessibility of public transportation meant that she never had to rely on her parents for rides to the friends’ homes or the movies, which Harte said were some of the more popular pastimes for her and her friends. “Even though I live in the city, I can’t think of things,” said Harte with regard to how she kept herself busy on the weekends in high school.

Most West Roxbury residents attend public or private schools outside of the neighborhood, and Harte herself went to Boston Latin School. “My school was basically a pressure cooker, I’m a perfectionist because of it. But I felt really prepared for college,” said Harte.

Though Boston Latin is a public school, because of its required entrance exam and emphasis on history and tradition, Harte said it did not feel like a public school. Because students in West Roxbury and other nearby neighborhoods tend to go to high school outside of their district, Harte said that Boston Latin gave her the opportunity have friends from throughout the city.

Despite the balance between suburban and urban qualities found in West Roxbury, Harte said she wishes she had grown up in a town like Stars Hollow, the fictional town featured in the television show “Gilmore Girls.” “I always wanted a town where everyone knows each other,” Harte said.

Before going to high school at Boston Latin, Harte went attended school in Newton, Mass. and lived for a year in Ireland, where her parents are from. In the future, Harte said she definitely sees herself traveling a lot and then living in a city, possibly Manhattan; “Boston is awesome, but I feel like I need to get away from it. Maybe I’ll go back one day.” said Harte.