Erica Rigoroso

Category: Journalism

  • The emerging gaming scene of Southern Maryland

    By Erica Rigoroso     

    In the center of the room, extension cords, PC monitors, and various gaming consoles are carried away and placed on neatly organized rental tables in the large community center of a classy apartment complex. There are a handful some other young men waiting around. Some are sitting alone, while some engage in heated discussion about “broken” gameplay mechanics and playable characters in the popular fighting game, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. A young man with impeccable posture diligently distributes electronics to their respective tables, black cords dangling from his hands, swaying like vines as he strides towards a small table in the middle of the room.

    Every Wednesday night, 23-year-old Reid Hancock travels 40 miles to the southernmost part of Southern Maryland to host an independent fighting game tournament. Being the only event of its kind within the Southern Maryland region, Reid provides an opportunity for competitive gaming enthusiasts to connect with others with similar interests.

    With the only other and larger gaming tournament being located in Laurel, Reid’s passion and enthusiasm allows for an easily accessible and supportive entry into the competitive gaming scene.

    Seated at a counter in the venue, an apartment complex’s community center, Reid eats a burger from Wendy’s as he enters competitors’ usernames into a program that generates the tournament bracket. He dons a red fleece jacket, casually keeping warm in the air-conditioned space.

    “This program I’m using is basically a matchmaker; it’s easy to use, but can be really tedious. I try not to get too frustrated when 7 o’clock approaches and I have yet to fill the brackets in completely when there are so many people, but I’m glad that so many people are interested at all.”

    Reid, helpful and courteous, explains each step that goes into running Mega Drive.

    “I just wanted a cool video game-related name for the tournament,” he chuckles about the weekly competition’s namesake.

    For how eager he is, it’s hard to believe that only he and one other person run this entire event each week. He never seems exhausted by the work he does, the passion and dedication he has for this tournament can be felt even during the more mundane parts—clicking and typing away on a small grey laptop.

    Though tasked with essential technical and organizational duties, Reid makes sure to welcome each person that comes in. He’s got a disarming presence, making anyone who walks in comfortable as he gives a friendly wave and smile.

    “Hey, sorry to interrupt you, but hey there,” a regular attendee says to him as he straightens out a monitor placed on the counter next to him.

    Reid steps out of his focus when he recognizes the face greeting him—a stout, blonde man named Matthew—his expression quickly changes as his eyes light up and his mouth curls into a smile.

    “Hey! It’s great to see you! It’s been a while since you’ve come around here,” Reid excitedly responds.

    This kind of interaction repeats over and over again as 7 o’clock approaches, his excitement never faltering or having any less enthusiasm.

    “He’s generally pretty cheerful and positive,” a friend named Anthony contests, “he always brings a lot of good energy wherever he goes.”

    Another friend, Michael, chimes in: “When he ran Mega Drive at a different venue, you could really tell he put his heart into this tournament. He’s definitely passionate about these games and just wants everyone to enjoy themselves.”

    Growing up, Reid found a community online dedicated to discussing video games, spurring his excitement and fervor for this hobby. Forming friendships with like-minded individuals in middle school and high school only fueled this interest as he discovered his love for this type of gaming.

    “I was the typical nerdy band kid at school,” he laughs, “I was even in Computer Bowl and marching band—I played alto sax.”

    The friendly disposition forged by this enthusiasm for what he loves has made making friends an effortless skill for Reid, eventually majoring in Communications at the local community college, the College of Southern Maryland.

    “Holding this tournament is extremely fulfilling, I’ve made so many friends through this,” he explains.

    Though grateful for how far Mega Drive has come since its beginnings in the March of 2019, Reid looks back on the obstacles that he’s faced since then.

    He furrows his brow a little as he goes through the list of struggles when running an event like this; yet, there isn’t a hint of despair.

    “Well, COVID really hit this tournament, with quarantine and all ceasing all in-person playing. We’ve been gone for two years, but now we’re back, and I’m glad to be here again. But one of the main struggles I still have to deal with is having enough equipment, including tables or chairs, and mostly everything here belongs to me. Some people bring their own stuff, like controllers, but I don’t like the idea of having to rent things out.”

    As the night continues on, Reid becomes more and more involved in every match happening, observing the skills of attendees and enjoying the atmosphere of camaraderie. Nothing else can compare to knowing that you’ve provided a positive outlet for those who need it.

    Despite being an ordinary guy, Reid’s friendliness and passion for his hobbies has spurred a great community of those with shared interests in the underrepresented region of Southern Maryland within the fighting game scene.

  • How Maryland Locals Connect with Nature and History

    By Erica Rigoroso

                A weak breeze sweeps over the Potomac River, creating gentle ripples across its surface. The sun rises higher in the sky, radiating a pleasant warmth in the cool morning air. A murder of crows squawks noisily above, spreading their wings and clumsily bundling together. On the shore, chunks of concrete act as wave breakers against the lapping tide, reaching to wisps of dry grass and brittle, dead branches. The stone is weathered and worn, rounded in every corner, covered in sea-green lichens and moss crawling on its surface.

    In the distance, large, luxurious homes with oversized rectangular windows glimmer in the morning sun. The private docks and boat launches reach out toward the open water, standing still as the breeze picks up. Opposite these impressive homes, a stone and brick fort atop an eternally spring-green hill guards the Potomac.

    At Fort Washington Park, several volunteers walk along the rocky shore hauling yellow plastic trash bags, highly visible against the blend of brown, gray, and green of rocks and earth. A National Park Ranger stands alone to the side, overseeing the event.

    An event organizer wearing colorful rain boots and dark sunglasses welcomes an older Hispanic man and his teenage son to the clean-up, explaining which forms need to be signed and thanking them for their time.

    “Are these gloves for everyone?” a volunteer inquires.

    Park visitors and volunteers alike spread along a small stretch of sand, examining the smooth stones on the ground, spotting decaying fish, or picking up sea glass. An older man with a heavy dark brown work coat quietly makes his way toward a line of bags in the grass. He drops his bags off in the pile, then plops on the ground to rest. A woman with a denim baseball cap, donning green rubber kitchen gloves, asks a few younger volunteers, “have you seen any big bundles of fishing line stuck in the rocks?”

    This park, where elderly folks walk in the mornings, children ride their bikes, and teens practice their driving skills, was once an important component in the military defense of Washington, D.C. During the Mexican War and Civil War, Fort Warburton defended the river approach to the nation’s capital.

    The fort is over 200 years old, originally built with brick and stone, then reinforced with steel in the 1840s. From the War of 1812 to World War II, the fort’s space was used in defense training.

    Shortly after WWII ended, the park shifted from military to civilian uses. In 1946, Fort Washington Park was taken over by the National Park Service. Now, the historical area welcomes visitors to bike along its various trails, picnic, fish, or just relax on its boundless stretches of soft, green grass.

  • Eroding History: a community struggle against environmental racism

    By Erica Rigoroso

    On March 14th, environmental journalist Rona Kobell spoke at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)  about her recently released documentary, Eroding History. The film follows the community of Deal Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and illuminates the rich lives of its residents despite the growing environmental challenges plaguing the area.

    Kobell first found a passion in investigating the stories of those affected by environmental racism when writing her master’s thesis at the University of Maryland. Her subject was rural redlining, which is a discriminatory practice in which mortgages and other financial services are withheld from neighborhoods with significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities.

    When looking at the process of redlining and its negative effects, Kobell saw how government and institutional practices affected Black neighborhoods and other marginalized communities. She decided that she wanted to increase the visibility of affected communities through her work.

    “Now that I see it, I can’t unsee it,” Kobell says of historic racism and its enduring effects.

    One of Kobell’s efforts to educate others on the issues was her founding in 2021 {check year} the Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative (EJJI). Her goal was to empower others to tell stories about their communities, and to inspire and mentor the next generation of environmental reporters.

    “People don’t want to be studied, they want to be part of a story but don’t want to feel like you’re coming to look at them like a specimen,” Kobell explains. Rather, the goal is to tell their story and connect them with resources to aid them.

    Last April, Kobell and her team sought out to make a film illustrating the long-standing effects of sea level rise, historic racism, and the disappearance of Black communities through Deal Island.

    In a Q&A after the UMBC film screening in March 2024, nearly a year after the project commenced, Kobell and co-producer Sean Yoes, and director Andre Chung said that Eroding History is one of the few Chesapeake Bay documentaries [DR1]  focused on Black stories.

    In the film, residents talk about why their ancestors chose to settle on such low-lying land—white people didn’t want it because they couldn’t grow tobacco and other lucrative crops there so it was the only land Black folks could purchase. Today, as sea levels rise, this low-lying land is experiencing the most severe effects of climate change.

    Resident Boyd Ducky Wallace of Deal Island states, “With years to come, this [Deal Island] is gonna wash away.” Others describe the island as a “vanishing shared memory.”

    One of the issues that Deal Island and its residents face is depopulation within the black community, with the number one cause being residents moving away.

    Unlike white communities on the Eastern Shore, black families are more likely to lose their land due to high property taxes, contributing to a loss of heritage and identity with the land they are strongly tied to.

    Retired Pastor William Wallace states in the documentary that he “thinks about racism experiences when he thinks of Deal Island.

    White communities on the Eastern Shore do not share the same experiences to the extent that the black community experiences. Despite this, these same white communities are much more likely to receive help and visibility from the state of Maryland—something that Deal Island has been struggling with.

    Though Kobell and her team paint a clear picture of the struggles that Deal Island residents face in Eroding History, there is still much work to be done to get Deal Island the appropriate support they need.

    “People don’t recognize the racism happening on Deal Island,” Kobell said during her talk at UMBC.

    By focusing on Deal Island in the film, Kobell, Chung, and Yoes aim to persuade policy makers to grant more funding to address the issues its residents are facing.

     [DR1]Could be the only one?

  • Quarantine the past: looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic affected UMBC students

    By Erica Rigoroso

    The beginning of the COVID-10 pandemic changed the lives of millions around the world, including the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

    COVID precautions created a physical distance between students and professors as quotidian campus life came to an abrupt halt in March of 2020, and classes migrated online.

    But more than just physical distance separated students from campus life. Students at UMBC and other colleges experienced a mental distancing; not just from other students, but from feeling part of a campus community.

    Have students—and the university as a whole—recovered from the disruptions caused by COVIID?

    Trevor Jansen, a UMBC alumni who lived on campus in 2020 during the COVID lockdown said that he felt that UMBC managed the sudden transition to online learning from in-person classes.

    Jansen states the lockdown was handled “about as well as they could have considering the circumstances. The transition to online learning wasn’t seamless, but they managed to keep the school year going without any major disruptions.”

    He pointed out that not only student, but professors too had to adapt very quickly to a new way of teaching and learning.

    “It seems like professors were kind of thrown in the deep end and expected to swim with their classes.”

    Jansen says that he found it harder to connect to students and professors during online classes and meetings.

    “Things definitely felt more distant with online learning,” he said.

    “There was much less incentive to pay attention in class, and group activities were even more awkward online than they were in person. I got to the point where I would just leave a class if they started putting us into breakout rooms.”

    Though he said that he had some good classes during the online period with memorable professors, “I don’t remember them nearly as well or as fondly as the professors I got to see and meet with in person.”

    Fellow UMBC alumni Michael Fialkowski offers a slightly different take on how UMBC handled the sudden jump to online classes.

    “I felt so bad for the less tech-savvy professors; turns out its difficult to teach when you can barely work a Zoom room. I feel that it’s easy to forget how far everyone’s digital literacy has come since we were forced online for school and work, and we had to figure out how to do videoconferencing on the fly.”

    Fialkowski feels that the school could have done more to address the mental health effects of the pandemic for students.

    “I also know that those times were tough on the mental for many – but as far as I know we didn’t receive much guidance on seeking out counseling or other mental services.”

    COVID-19’s impact on college students

    A collaborating team of researchers from Chinese and American universities conducted a study on 335 college students monitoring their mental health experiences from the start of the pandemic in 2020 to two years later in 2022.

    The researchers wanted to examine the way that emotions like fear and happiness were connected to university students’ mental health and these effects on their education.

    Participants were screened for psychological disorders and answered questions that would measure their anxiety, depression, hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, and sleep symptoms over the two-year study.

    Other factors considered by researchers included which students received the COVID-19 vaccine and students testing positive for COVID. 60% of students tested positive for COVID, with more female students than male students being affected.

    The results of the study presented a correlation between the effects of the pandemic and college students’ mental health and education.

    Participants showed an increase in feelings of fear, stress, and decreased happiness, with a reported 95.7% of the sample reporting and experiencing moderate to severe mood disorders.

    In turn, the self-reported decline in mental health took a toll on how participants were able to retain information from class. Students reported an average score of 7.6 on a scale of 10 rating how much COVID affected their ability to learn during the pandemic, with 10 being the most severe.

    Another group of researchers reported their findings on COVID’s effects on 4,714 college students in New York and New Jersey, the largest and most diverse sample of college students as of April 2022.

    The researchers studied the psychological, academic, and financial health of college students, along with paying attention to how racial and ethnic groups may have had different experiences during the pandemic.

    They conducted a survey for the students, which included a broad range of topics, such as COVID-related stressors, social behavior, and financial, academic, and mental health changes.

    A large number of students reported changes in socialization both with their families and on social media, with 73% reporting less interaction with their friends and families, and 75% reporting more social media use compared to before the pandemic.

    In addition to the lessened levels of socialization among participants, most students reported a decline in their mental health. 74% of students reported feeling more depressed, 76% felt more anxious, and 83% experienced more frustration or boredom.

    Moreover, the shockwaves from the initial changes from the pandemic can still be felt by students in both their academic and social lives.

    The Return to Campus

    Eighteen months after the initial lockdown, UMBC opened its doors to in-person classes and residence halls at full capacity during the 2021 Fall semester.

    At UMBC’s annual Fall Opening meeting in 2021, Provost Philip Rous said, “I feel like I’ve waited a very long time to say this, but… welcome home.”

    Though some older students were returning to campus, and to their sense of “normal college life,” many new residents were experiencing college for the first time in a post-quarantine world.

    The 2021-2022 school year welcomed almost 2,100 new students to UMBC—the largest incoming fall class in UMBC’s history.

    What did it mean for students to come out of high school fully online and then come out into the world beyond the extent of COVID precautions?

    Jonah Sichelman, a third-year student who came to UMBC as a freshman in Fall 2021, expresses the kind of social anxiety he felt in the transition from high school to college.

    “My entire last year of high school was online and I wasn’t leaving the house much at all then, so I had definitely gotten used to note being around people or not making new friends,” he said.

    Despite his worries, Sichelman felt welcomed by the UMBC community and connected with others because of this shared experience.

    “It was surprisingly much easier to make friends than I thought it would have been because of how things had been beforehand. Living on campus made it surprisingly easy to make friends and meet people despite being in the middle of a pandemic.”

    As a returning student, Fialkowski felt not just relief about coming back to campus, but also a sense of gratitude. He believes that the struggles that the UMBC community faced as students and faculty experiencing quarantine brought people closer together.

    “Once we came back to campus, I felt that my classmates and professors took more care to connect with one another, and I had noticeable better relationships post-lockdown,” he said.

    “Maybe it took a pandemic to recognize that we shouldn’t take our relationships – no matter how small – for granted.”