The College Hill Independent Vol. 40 Issue 5

the VOLUME 40 ISSUE 5 13 MARCH 2020

HAUNTED PAINTINGS

POLITICS IS A FEELING

SCHOOL DISTRICT DÉJÀ VU

The female ghosts in Portrait of a Lady on Fire

A conversation with writer Jenny Zhang

Two education reports, two decades apart

Indy

the

Cover Consent Not To Be A Single Being Gala Prudent

From The Editors

News 02

Week in Necessities Kaela Hines & Alana Baer

15

A Panoptic Education Adrian Oteiza

Metro 03

Chalked Up Alicia Mies

05

School District Déjà Vu Deborah Marini, Miles Guggenheim, & Ricardo Gomez

The task ahead of us remains the same. We have to fight to win justice and liberation for all people. We have to organize to win universal healthcare and a peaceful, livable planet. We have to join hands to build power to challenge this empire and its institutions: the presidency, the prisons, the banks that maintain it around the world. This has been and will be our task—until we win, which we will. But it is also our task to win by any and all means necessary; we must win when and where we can. That means the task ahead of us remains the same—to win the imperial presidency for a good man, an imperfect man. A man who will on some days let us down because the office we will put him in can never fully lift us up. A man who will not carry us into the future we will one day win, but who will get us closer. So don’t despair. This is what we have to do. We are going to win.

Ephemera 04

I Let the Establishment into My Home Sindura Sriram

Arts 07

Haunted Paintings Chong Jin Gan

Features 09

Politics Is a Feeling Alex Westfall

11

Kainan Sa Duwar Olivia Mayeda

13

Joey Han BRDD ‘22

Science+Tech Flesh Without Blood Andy Rickert

Literary 17

love poem melting + Others Stella Binion

MISSION STATEMENT

STAFF

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/or classism.

WEEK IN REVIEW Emily Rust | NEWS Anchita Dasgupta Peder Schaefer Tristan Harris | METRO Ricardo Gomez Miles Guggenheim Deb Marini | ARTS Zachary Barnes Eve O’Shea Isabelle Rea | FEATURES Audrey Buhain Mia Pattillo Nick Roblee-Strauss | SCIENCE + TECH Bilal Memon Izzi Olive Andy Rickert | LITERARY Catherine Habgood Star Su | EPHEMERA Liana Chaplain Sindura Sriram | X Jacob Alabab-Moser Ethan Murakami | LIST Ella Comberg XingXing Shou Cate Turner | STAFF WRITERS Alana BaeR Leela Berman Mara Cavallaro Uwa Ede-Osifo Eduardo Gutiérrez Peña Evie Hidysmith Kaela Hines Muram Ibrahim Anabelle Johnston Jennifer Katz Emma Kofman Evan Lincoln Zach Ngin Jorge Palacios Nell Salzman Issra Said Kion You | COPY EDITORS Josephine Bleakley Muskaan Garg Sarah Goldman Marina Hunt Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address Christine Huynh Seth Israel Thomas Patti Ella Spungen | DESIGN EDITORS Daniel Navratil these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, Ella Rosenblatt | DESIGNERS Anna Brinkhuis Amos Jackson Kathryn Li Katherine Sang | and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond. ILLUSTRATORS Sylvia Atwood Leslie Benavides Natasha Brennan Bella Carlos Ryn Kang Eliza Macneal Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Pia Mileaf-Patel Claire Schlaikjer Floria Tsui Veronica The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to Tucker Katrina Wardhanna | BUSINESS Caín Yepez Abby Yuan | WEB Ashley Kim | SOCIAL make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing MEDIA Muskaan Garg | SENIOR EDITORS Ben BienstocK Ella Comberg Olivia Kan-Sperling process provides an internal structure for accountability, we Chris Packs Tara Sharma Tiara Sharma Cate Turner Wen Zhuang | MANAGING EDITORS Matt always welcome letters to the editor. Ishimaru Sara Van Horn Alex Westfall | MVP Audrey Buhain

13 MARCH 2020

VOL 40 ISSUE 05

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

WEEK IN NECESSITIES RED SCARE IN A RED STATE

BY Alana Baer and Kaela Hines ILLUSTRATION Floria Tsui and Gemma Brand-Wolf DESIGN Daniel Navratil

Last week, with 112 votes in favor, none against, and one abstention, the Scottish Parliament passed a bill that will make Scotland offer free pads and tampons to all those who menstruate. Meanwhile, across the pond, a Tennessee lawmaker recently expressed concern that including period products in an upcoming tax-free holiday would encourage menstruators to hoard tampons uncontrollably. Not unlike cramps, the ignorance embedded in such a concern makes this Indy staff writer coil up in a fetal position. Tennessee’s annual sales tax holiday, held at the end of July to coincide with back-to-school shopping, allows residents to purchase items without paying the usual seven percent sales tax. This year, Democratic Senator Sara Kyle introduced a bill to include tampons and pads on the list of tax-free items. Yet one politician just couldn’t seem to go with the flow. In a recent hearing, the bill faced pushback from Senator Joey Hensley, who follows an agenda that favors anatomy like his own. In the words of Hensley, “I would think since it’s a sales tax holiday, there’s really no limit on the number of items anybody can purchase.” The Republican senator seemed concerned that once the tax is lifted, people might run up and down as unfounded as one might initially assume. His oppo- Democrat Mark Levine, legislation to repeal the law the aisles of stores, clearing the shelves and causing sition to the bill incidentally points to the financial was signed by Governor Ralph Northam this month. In a blood-bath over the much sought-after packaged barrier of products that constitute a necessity for half 2018, Levine attempted to repeal the law but could not pieces of cotton. Joey, who has yet to sync up with the of the population. Tennessee should, at the very least, get the law past the committee. needs of Tennessean menstruators, fears that shelves sacrifice a slight erosion of revenue productivity for the Levine, affectionately known as Virginia’s “most would become depleted and dry, not unlike a used sake of menstrual equality. And the state should do so sex-positive dad,” was one of the first to suggest the tampon—a discomfort he has never had to experience. not just for one weekend a year, but all year round—a removal of this law, telling CNN, “We should not have Among Joey’s other political contributions is a move that a number of states have already made. Even laws that make most of the population into criminals.” proposal to classify children born through in-vitro so, when aiming to destroy the economy, the best (and Somewhere in Virginia, same-sex couples laughed fertilization as illegitimate as well as a bill that would bloodiest) approach would be to do so one tax-exempt in the background, well familiar with laws that crimban schools from discussing LGBTQ+ issues. It is tampon at a time. Or, alternately, Tennesseans could inalize people for loving who they love. Levine added, not all that surprising that Hensley would express abandon such hoarding and start bleeding freely, “Times are very different now than they were in the his concern with a tampon free-for-all. Perhaps Betty which would instill fear in both the patriarchy and 17th and 18th centuries,” perhaps nodding to the oh-so Friedan’s “problem that has no name” may actually be Little Joey in one fell swoop. difficult era before the invention of Tinder. a problem whose name is Joey Hensley. According to the Sheriff’s Office in Richmond, The logic of his opposition to Senator Kyle’s bill —AB there were no fornication convictions in 2019. doesn’t even check out; it remains a mystery why Little However, Levine suggested that fornication is often Joey would lose sleep over the hoarding of tampons VIRGINIA IS FOR (YOUNG) LOVERS? added onto other sex-related misdemeanors, such as instead of the hoarding of any other tax-exempt Oh Virginia, the birthplace of our nation, unless you’re public nudity—perhaps to increase the fine. “Charge item. He pays no attention to potential stockpiling not married. After decades of relying on deserted park the crime that occurred, don’t just pile on with things risks of other tax-free items in Tennessee—Viagra for benches, sandy beaches, claustrophobic bathrooms, that shouldn’t be a crime anyway,” Levine said. May example. This is not to suggest that the senator might and the backseats of their parents' cars, Virginia teens University of Virginia frat boys now streak across be engaging in some stockpiling behavior on tax-ex- can now get laid in the comfort of their own homes public spaces in peace. empt items himself, but this proposition would also not without fear that the police will come knocking. As However, the Virginia sex law has unfortunately be impossible. of March 4th, premarital consensual sex—previously come in handy for some. In 2003, Muguet Martin filed To be fair, though, Joey is not the only one who is considered a Class 4 misdemenaor with a fine up to a complaint against her ex-boyfriend Kristopher Ziherl off-base with regards to periods and period products. $250 —is legal in the Old Dominion State. for failing to inform her that he had herpes. In response, Tampon commercials often make “that time of the Virginia’s fornication law was first enacted in Ziherl filed a demurrer, rejecting the accusations, month” look like the time of your life—clean, blissful, 1950, as many Virginians were still mourning the justified by a 1990 case known as Zysk v. Zysk. This and always the occasion to play beach volleyball. Even days of secession from the North. Perhaps the law was case concluded that if a person participates in illegal with a growing number of menstrual product options, imposed to maintain past traditional Southern values activity and is harmed while doing so, they cannot seek such as DivaCup and Thinx (underwear that can be of loyalty (to the Confederacy), commitment (to Jim compensation for those injuries—taking “don’t do the bled into and cleaned by machine-washing), far too Crow) and gender roles (that disenfranchised most crime if you can’t do the time” to a new level. Following much period discourse is based on misconceptions women). the logic that she too was committing a crime, Ziherl’s that negate financial obstacles and make the bloody Needless to say, throughout its 70-year history, defense argued that because Virginia banned fornitopic taboo. Additionally, as covered in an Indy literary this law has received minimal attention. Across cation, Martin could not obtain compensation for her piece a few years ago, NASA once asked astronaut Sally Virginia, high school lovebirds and children born out “injuries.” Ziherl's demurrer was sustained, resulting Ride if 100 tampons was enough for a week-long trip to of wedlock are living proof that the government has in the dismissal of Martin's suit. In the end, Martin space. bigger fish to fry. As Democrats began to realize that appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, which What is most notable, not to mention most their state was living a lie, they decided to squash the declared the fornication law to be unconstitutional. concerning, about Little Joey’s comment is that it is not law once and for all. Introduced for the second time by While Virginia has left the chat, Idaho and Mississippi have tightened their chastity belts. Today, a person in these states who has premarital sex could face a six-month jail sentence. Based on North Carolina law, men and women who “lasciviously associate, bed, and cohabit together” could be found guilty of turning their situationship into a relationship. Although the fornication law generally had little impact in the last century, its invasiveness brings to question which legal constraints still exist and whom they victimize. Further, it exemplifies the ridiculousness of the country’s obsession over people’s bodies and privacy. While most of these laws aren’t enforced, it’s safer to get rid of them than have them resurface with the potential to set the country back decades. Luckily, after years of suffocating social norms, all Virginians, young and old, married and unmarried, can now hit it without putting a ring on it. —KH

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WEEK IN REVIEW

13 MARCH 2020

CHALKED UP

Introducing an Indy series on public education in RI

BY Deborah Marini, Ricardo Gomez, & Miles Guggenheim ILLUSTRATION Leslie Benavides DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

In 1993, the Public Education Fund—a nonprofit at a time. In a moment calling for structural change, DOJ found program implementation to be severely organization composed of Providence business Weingarten stressed the importance of community inadequate. Structurally, the report also noted how leaders, educators, and citizens concerned about local outreach and individual dedication. Pointing to similar English-language learners were often unnecessarily schools—sponsored a year-long investigation into underperforming school districts across the country, segregated from other students. the Providence public school system. What followed she was eager to provide examples of school districts In her call to action published by the Providence was a document called as the “Providence Blueprint that changed their situation from the bottom up, rather Journal last November, Infante-Green, wrote, “On for Education,” a study that identified both problems than from the government down. the RICAS [Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment and potential solutions within an education system Whether intentional or not, Weingarten’s message System], just 12 percent of PPSD students in grades 3 that was failing its K-12 students. Stressing problems reflected an unspoken tension between the teachers, through 8 met or exceeded expectations in math, and with teacher development training, English-language students, and parents hoping to enact change on the 17 percent in English language arts. On the SAT, 15 learning opportunities, and equity for students from ground and the government officials attempting to percent of students met or exceeded expectations various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, reform from the top. Although Infante-Green and in math and 25 percent in English. It will take time to the "Providence Blueprint for Education" tried to be a the RI Department of Education plan to incorporate move those numbers.” A focus on “moving numbers,” rallying cry for systematic reform. community feedback from teachers and parents, it however, has its limitations. Test scores are not the ultiAlmost three decades later, however, an indepen- is unclear how these more nuanced testimonies of mate index of success or positive change. As much as dent study from the Johns Hopkins report, confirmed life within the PPSD will mingle with the demand for they reflect cause and effect on a surface level, they do that none of these problems had changed. Teacher immediate, institutional change. In the midst of the not accurately pay attention to the social fabric on the and student absentee rates were at an all-time high, politcal frenzy, students and community organizers ground. Despite catalyzing the potential for change, building facilities were unsafe, and the English- have been struggling to make their experiences heard. government takeovers in Ohio, Arkansas, and Florida learning programs within schools were so mismanaged Organizations such as the Providence Student Union have historically compromised the connections and understaffed that they were deemed a violation of and Youth in Action have known and lived the prob- between school districts and their communities. When the Equal Educational Opportunities Act. lems before the report put them in ink, but still have to government-appointed officials are held accountable Unlike “Providence Blueprint for Education,” fight to be heard. by state power rather than parents and community however, the Hopkins report aimed its critique at the Running parallel to the state takeover is a class voters, rifts between what is represented on paper and bureaucratic nature of the Providence public school action lawsuit filed by Providence student activists and what is needed in the community can only widen. system. In these terms, no amount of funding or atten- parents against Governor Raimondo and the state. It tion could alleviate the problems they identified. The claims that Rhode Island and its public school systems +++ issue was portrayed as structural and fundamental, have violated students’ constitutional rights to exerand thus the solution demanded top-down govern- cise their civic responsibilities—students require an Gaps in understanding—chasms between expectation ment intervention. Starting last November, Governor education that prepares them to be capable voters and reality—not only point to systematic failure, but Gina Raimondo vested State Education Commissioner and participants in the democractic process, and the also to problems of representation. Over the course Angélica Infante-Green with unprecedented political schools havn't delivered. The civics suit has emerged of this education series, the College Hill Independent power to resolve this multi-decade struggle to “fix” the as an organized push for reform and for basic student will not endorse one avenue for change over another. public education system in Providence. rights, raising concern for the other deficiencies within Schools are not reformed in a vacuum. Although it is Providence public schools that continue to be under possible to standardize their inner workings, study +++ addressed. their flaws, results, and demographics, we must constantly recognize the reality that schools are not On February 29, students, parents, and members +++ isolated systems, but a collection of various cultures, of the Providence Teachers Union gathered at the realities, and social fabrics. Juanita Sanchez Education Complex for a series of Almost 60 percent of PPSD students come from homes To handle a multidimensional problem, our goal speeches and workshops aiming to address progress where English-language is not the primary spoken is to produce multidimensional coverage through in the PPSD. In a rousing speech to kick off the event, language and roughly 33 percent of these students are a combined effort of theory, history, and up-close President of the American Federation of Teachers, accounted for as English learners. Yet PPSD funda- reporting. Our purpose is not to produce a unified Randi Weingarten chose not to acknowledge Infante- mentally lacks the education that these students model of seeing, but rather to demonstrate a variety of Green or any aspect of the government takeover. For demand, and, in 2018, the US. The Department lenses and voices through which we can process this Weingarten, progress still remaines in the hands of of Justice (DOJ) found that the PPSD had placed moment in time. teachers. In her words, teachers are “society’s first hundreds of English learners in schools without the responders,” individuals who come face-to-face with proper instructional language services. Moreover, RICARDO GOMEZ B'22, DEBORAH MARINI B'22, the nuanced problems of American life, one student even in schools where such programs existed, the and MILES GUGGENHEIM B'20 lost in tetherball, every time.

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13 MARCH 2020

I live in the little blue house on Kim Street with my mommy, my dad, and our small feline overlord. His name is Cleo (though he is called by many, many other non-related names). Cleo is a fully white cat, with a light pink nose and light pink asshole to match. Sometimes his nose looks bright pink, like when he gets it wet or licks it, but usually his nose is a very pale pink that almost blends into his fur. His asshole, always on display, is also always the same type of pink.

"I Let The Establishment Into My Home" a modern sob story

The white bastard, like many other white and speckled-gray bastards, feeds on the emotional toil and labor of this hardworking brown immigrant family. He has been alive for all of one year, and knows nothing of the miseries we have suffered, the poverty we have overcome — He knows nothing of our history. Yet he lounges around the house like he owns the place, sleeps on cushions on top of cushions like he went and earned these luxuries. He can’t remember when we had to sleep on floors, or in the crack between beds, or out on the street. He sleeps on his petite cat-bed, which lays on top of a full-sized human bed. This cat uses beds on beds; obviously his perception of the world is a bit skewed. Cleo can pick up a lot of minute things, sure. He can at times be a very smart cat — ­ he’s figuring out how to open doors, for instance — but he fails to understand so many basic things. Us three humans all possess the ability to feed him, yet he believes only my mom can. He only ever bothers her, meows at her, climbs on her, even after watching me and my dad feed him many times. We each serve different roles, at least in his eyes. My mom plays the coveted food lady. I’m not as weak-willed as my mom, perhaps that’s why. She’s scared to death of Cleo biting or scratching her, so she does whatever he says. I am not so scared. The little runt is 10 pounds, I could squash him if I sat on him. I don’t, obviously, but he knows that I think these thoughts. At times, he is especially cruel to me. Everyday he wakes with the sun or the birds or whatever and insists on being let out of his bedroom immediately to prance around the house. After someone has tended to him and he is adequately fed, he makes his way to my room, where he meows until someone opens the door for him. Then he comes and sits on top of me, right on top of my diaphragm so I can’t breathe. He stares intently at my face, into my face, until I finally open my eyes and acknowledge him. When I say “Good morning, sir,” he says nothing, only looks deeply into my eyes, studying me silently. Then he slaps me on the cheek and I feign shock and fear — all steps in our monotonous daily charade around each other. His eyes are full-black as he stares back at me. I close mine again, hoping in vain that he’ll let me sleep, but I know that he will slap again, and when he does, he nicks my eyelids with his uncut claws.“Ow,” I say, “You’re hurting me, Cleo.” To this he will laugh, sardonically, and shift his weight so that his ample butt borrows directly into the convex pit of my diaphragm. His posterior comfortably seated, he will rise to his full height on his front two legs, painfully pressing into my breasts. I stupidly close my eyes again, then slowly crack open one eye to see if he is still staring at me. He is, and makes direct eye-contact with my tiny sliver of exposed iris. I see, roughly, a large white figure rising up and I know he is about to strike me again. I pull the blanket over my head, which enrages him; he attacks, he pounces and scratches and scratches at the part of my blanket where my face should be. His claws poke through the flimsy cloth and drag sharply against my face. When I finally give in and sit up he slides off me like Jell-o and then sits at my side, looking up at me sweetly, so I pat him on the head while I glare at him. I look at the clock and it’s only 5:13 am. All the birds are up, this cat is up, so everyone in this house is up. This is the kind of bullshit he pulls every morning. But when I go to chase him, he skitters away and hides. I know he is just a cat, but sometimes I really do hate him.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

BY Sindura Sriram ILLUSTRATION Sindura Sriram DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt & Daniel Navratil

EPHEMERA

04

TWO EDUCATION REPORTS,

School District Déja Vu BY Alicia Mies ILLUSTRATION Eliza Macneal DESIGN Daniel Navratil

school buildings’ conditions even brought “seasoned the implementation. Recommendations include redesigning the budget process at the school board members of the [Johns Hopkins] team to tears.” The year was 1993. The Providence River was still Filled with bar graphs showing declining profi- level, establishing informal student town meetings covered by a four-lane highway, the school district ciency rates, quotes from interviewed students experi- and student committees, and instituting professional was facing serious budget cuts, and the now infamous encing significant stress in school, and percentages of development and evaluation of teachers. Vincent “Buddy” Cianci was only two years into his Black, hispanic, and white students in Providence, the Despite the disappointing statistics that pointed to first term as Mayor of Providence. It was in this context report conveys a real depression and hopelessness—a racial inequity—38 percent of high school students, for of new leadership and a severe state-wide economic stark contrast to the almost cheery tone of the PROBE example, believed that teachers made “unfair judgedownturn that a group of local business leaders and report. ments” based on their racial identity—and the admiseducators prepared and released the “Providence Clearly, little to nothing has significantly changed sion that new funds for education were not readily Blueprint for Education” (PROBE), which refers to in the over 25 years since the PROBE report was available, the report is surprisingly encouraging. both the 125-page report and the coalition of 33 parents released—Domingo Morel, an assistant political-sciThe report includes students’ glowing compliand community leaders assembled to carry out the ence professor at Rutgers who assisted the Johns ments of teachers. One student said, “My high school study. Hopkins team with its report and attended PPSD is like a second home. The people and teachers here Under the non-profit Public Education Fund and schools, told The Atlantic, “there’s really no difference” make you feel welcome. They will help you out and do with support from the Greater Providence Chamber between the school district now and then. Arguably, anything for you.” Regarding increasing racial and of Commerce, PROBE was enlisted to complete a Providence schools have gotten a lot worse. ethnic diversity in the school district, one Hope High thorough, independent study of the Providence public Unlike the PROBE report, the Johns Hopkins report School student was quoted saying “Everyone likes schools. Through analyzing Miller Analogies Test doesn’t provide any concrete solutions­ — certainly, each other! They don’t care what race you are!!!!!” (Yes, and SAT test scores, focus groups, and surveys with not a laid out plan of action like in the PROBE report. five exclamation marks included). students and teachers, and data collection about school This could be because the Johns Hopkins Institute Each set of recommendations is preceded with an systems in comparison cities, PROBE painted a picture of Education Policy was not specifically tasked by inspirational mantra written in all caps like “IMAGINE of the Providence Public Schools District (PPSD) at the Infante-Green to provide resolutions; it could also be WHAT YOU WILL SEE IN THE PROVIDENCE time and detailed concerns that still ring true today. because the PROBE commission consisted of 33 local SCHOOLS…...WHEN PEOPLE CHANGE”—PROBE’s PROBE found falling standardized testing scores, low parents and community members whereas the Johns own touch. attendance figures, unchallenging and monotonous Hopkins team was based out of Baltimore. curriculums, questions of teachers stereotyping based +++ The Johns Hopkins report leaves the problems of on ethnicity, and problems with the Limited English Providence public schools open and seemingly calls Proficiency (LEP) language learning program. for a state takeover. It criticizes the district’s problems What has changed since 1993 are the demographics Despite these challenges within the school district, the as inherent and structural—it writes that the district of PPSD. In 1993, 33 percent of the district were white, PROBE report remained incredibly enthusiastic, posi- is overburdened with multiple, overlapping sources 30 percent were Hispanic, 25 percent were Black, and tive and encouraging. Then-president of the University of governance and confusing bureaucratic struc- 12 percent were Asian, according to the PROBE report. of Rhode Island and chairman of PROBE Dr. Edward tures that paralyze action and halt change. The report The Johns Hopkins describes the current district as Eddy started off the report with a promise that, “Better conveys that the problem is too big for local govern- 9 percent white, 65 percent Hispanic and 17 percent schools are within the reach of Providence.” ment or the School Board and, without a direct call to black. Johns Hopkins also says that 87 percent of the In his introduction, he gives his word of honor that state action, triggered the state takeover. student body is “economically disadvantaged,” a Providence schools will be reformed and transformed statistic that the PROBE report does not describe. with little necessity for extra funds, as long as the city The report left Providence residents high and +++ has “bold leadership” and cooperation by all those dry, wondering what could be done to enact the strucinvolved—students, parents, teachers, administrators, Written by a committee of parents and community tural change needed to truly reform public schools. city officials, everybody. leaders, the PROBE report analyzed budget infor- After reading the report, Commissioner of Education Fast forward to 2019. In June of last year, the mation, student demographics, MAT and SAT scores, Infante-Green told WPRI 12, “My initial reaction was Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, based conducted focus groups and surveys with students, devastation. It was tough to read without feeling the in Baltimore, Maryland, published a scathing report and interviewed with teachers and administrators. pain. I actually was sick after I finished reading the on the PPSD. At the invitation of the Rhode Island The report also compared Providence schools to report.” Department of Education (RIDE) Commissioner similarly-sized school systems, including New Haven, On the night that the State Board of Education Angélica Infante-Green, Johns Hopkins conducted Pawtucket, and Syracuse, and found that Providence voted to hand authority of the Providence Schools to in-person interviews and focus groups with parents, was both worse funded and worse performing. the state, Infante-Green said the 1993 report was proof school leaders, teachers, and leaders at all levels Compared to its peer school districts, Providence that Providence has “failed at least an entire generaand made visits to schools across the city. The team receives a smaller percentage of their funding from tion of students.” She also promised “there will be no also reviewed a broad range of documents and data the state. According to the report, 49.5 percent of 3rd report.” provided by PPSD and RIDE. The PROBE report is forward-looking and PPSD funding came from the state while, on average, The report exposed the district’s faults from all 57.2 percent of the observed Northeastern districts constructive with a clear path towards great schools. angles: students not meeting performance standards, were state funded; this lead to PPSD spending almost The Johns Hopkins report shows a deep sorrow and teachers feeling unsupported by the district, and $1000 less per-pupil compared to those Northeastern regret—without any clear indication of where to go to school buildings deteriorating to the point of becoming districts. next, it simply laments the state of public education in hazardous. PROBE also found that PPSD had the fewest the city, and, by proxy, the country. Unlike the PROBE report, however, the Johns mandatory hours spent by students in school, Hopkins report describes public education in compared to other districts. Pittsburgh elementary +++ Providence as dreadful. Dysfunctional. Heartbreaking. school students were in school three and a half weeks Some of the anecdotes presented in the report are more than Providence students, and Rochester high The PROBE report recommended creating smaller astonishing. In one school, raw sewage leaked from school students were in school four weeks more than learning environments, establishing and enforcing the ceiling and onto the heads of children. One English Providence students. strict code of ethics, instituting professional develLanguage Learners teacher did not speak Spanish, opment for school district leaders, encouraging despite being many Spanish-speaking students’ only the community to volunteer and donate expertise +++ academic resource at school. According to students, and facilities, hiring a full-time grant writer, and bullying occurred everyday at lunch in an elemen- More than half of the report is made up of 39 concrete more. It advocated for the Rhode Island congrestary school, and stealing from backpacks happened recommendations (only 15 percent of which were sional delegation to “push with vigor” the funding frequently across schools. Seeing some of the observed supposed to require extra funds) and a timeline for of federal programs for preschool opportunities and This is the first installment in the Chalked Up Metro series

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TWO DECADES APART

multicultural arts programs; it also recommended an loss of funding has resulted in inter-district competi- needed, to reconstitute the schools by restructuring integrated and networked data collection and dissem- tion that has pushed public schools to actively market their governance, budget, program, and personnel ination system, “essential health and social services their schools to out-of-district families. Nevertheless, and making decisions regarding their continued agencies” for students and their families in four to six in 1993, the PROBE report saw choice programs as a operation.” schools among other measures. potential pathway for radical and permanent change. In response to the Johns Hopkins report, Mayor The report concluded with Recommendation 39: The PROBE report positions Recommendation Jorge Elorza echoed this idea. At a series of community “If significant progress has not been made within a 39 as a last resort—in the eyes of the commission, the conversations, Elorza said, “We really need to get to relatively short span of time, then—again for the sake preceding 38 recommendations should have done the the heart, to the core, to the foundation, to the strucof students—the school system must undergo radical, job in fixing the district’s problems. Most of the imple- ture of this thing, and since we simply cannot do that permanent change.” In that case, PROBE suggests a mentation of the 38 recommendations were for the under the powers that we have here in the city, that’s switch to choice programs, in which students can use School Board, superintendents, and principals. The why we’re looking to the state for help.” a government subsidy to enroll in a school other than report doesn’t call for huge structural change (or even The PROBE report relied on local politics and the those in their system, if various choice experiments at major state funding), nor is it a critique of the public power of individual community members coming the time were beneficial to students. school system itself. Instead, the report recommen- together—now, over 25 years later, the answer to the Choice programs have become increasingly dation’s focus is clearly local and individual and its enduring problems in PPSD put forward by RIDE is common in some school districts across Rhode Island, message is resoundingly clear: great public schools are distinctly different. By ending with a board member with hundreds of students choosing to transfer school within reach if Providence residents work together. recommending a “restart”—new teachers, new buildsystems to access career and technical education , pathings, new cafeteria board, (seemingly) new everyways, or programs. The 203 pathways programs in the +++ thing—the Johns Hopkins called for state intervention state prepare students with skills in music, arts, sports without explicitly saying so. and more. Because the money follows the student in By pointing out that the root of PPSD’s problems is its Rhode Island, districts either make or lose funding structural bureaucracy and governance, the Johns ALICIA MIES B’20 enjoys reading 125 page reports depending on how many students come and go for Hopkins report indirectly requests a state takeover. from 1993. pathways programs—the Warwick public schools The state’s formal written decision to takeover PPSD district pays about $17,000 per year to send a single reflects this diagnosis. It reads: “The time has come for student to pathways programs in other cities in Rhode the State to exercise control over the budget, program Island, according to a WPRI article. The potential and personnel of PPSD and its schools and, if further

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

METRO

06

BY CJ Gan ILLUSTRATION CJ Gan DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

The vocabulary of film discourse contains a rather reductive palette of praise, one critics love to slather on every striking work that emerges. A selection from reviews of Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is revealing: “A hauntingly intimate vision of love.” “A haunting, erotic, and evocative period piece.” “Hauntingly beautiful.” It’s a strange turn of phrase. The question to ask of a ‘haunting film’ is—who is being haunted? And who is the one haunting? For when we speak of haunting, we evoke the figure of the ghost, the specter of the dead, or, put another way, the presence of an absence—something gone but not quite disappeared that lingers on.

The female ghosts in Portrait of a Lady on Fire

+++ Portrait is set in eighteenth century France, on a remote, quiet island off the coast of Brittany. Marianne (Noémie Merlant), an artist, is tasked with the job of painting a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a young aristocratic woman, which must first be sent to her suitor in Milan for his approval before their marriage can proceed. This affair is arranged by her mother, the Countess (Valeria Golino), but Héloïse is reluctant to give up her freedom and marry a man she does not know, and so refuses to sit for her portrait; when Marianne arrives, she has already exhausted th efforts of a previous painter. Marianne must thus pretend to be her companion for walks while secretly observing her for the painting. After establishing this premise, the film breathlessly unravels. The two of them are inexorably drawn to one another; when the subterfuge is inevitably revealed, Héloïse coldly criticizes the portrait and Marianne tearfully grabs a cloth and smears the still-wet paint, destroying the face. However, upon seeing the ruined portrait, Héloïse abruptly changes her mind and agrees to pose for a second portrait. The Countess must leave for the coast of Brittany, and in the absence of her controlling presence, Marianne and Héloïse’s attraction grows—but when the painting is finished and the Countess returns, Marianne must leave. non-being. Power haunts as well, and its ghost does They will never meet again, yet they see each other inescapable. everywhere. Perhaps their romance cannot last—but that does not stay silent forever. It lurks in the shadows, biding This is not a spoiler; the events of the film unfold not mean that it dies. It lingers, even if unseen to all its time, only to suddenly, shockingly, lunge into vision, without surprises or twists, almost foregoing a conclu- but them. That is the imperative that they lay down when Marianne wakes up after her last night with sion. In this film, it is not what happens inasmuch as to one another: Remember. Do not forget. Black queer Héloïse, walks into the kitchen, and sees a man sitting how it happens, not what is shown but how it is shown— feminist Sharon Holland once said that “Bringing there. At this moment, you realize that since the fourth and how it is not shown—that captivates. back the dead…is the ultimate queer act.” The erasure minute of the film, for almost the entire runtime, you There is an invisible thing in this film that reveals that society enacts upon non-normative sexualities haven’t seen or heard a single man. It is a chilling itself without being shown; that is unspoken and yet relegates them to invisibility and non-being. To cling moment in which the world that the two women have ever-present. Marianne and Héloïse’s queerness is onto haunted memories is to allow that which society built for themselves abruptly crumbles. The man in the kitchen is tantamount to a ghost appearing in a horror never explicitly discussed, never once drawn to our condemns to death to live on. attention as something special or extraordinary. There Earlier in the film, Marianne, Héloïse, and Sophie film—as Sciamma herself put it in an interview with is never even a mention of them loving one another, discuss the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice—how Vox; the “jump scare of patriarchy.” Even though we only see this patriarchal ghost an almost necessary cliché of heterosexual romantic in turning to look back at her on the trek out of hell, stories—though there is a more general discussion Orpheus chooses to sacrifice his future with his wife to near the end of the film, it’s evident that it has been of love, it refers only to heterosexual relationships. preserve one final perfect memory of her. Héloïse, in a haunting this place for a long time. It was waiting for the There are no words for what they have in a linguistic flash of insight, says, “Perhaps she was the one who said, Countess when she first arrived on the island decades discourse in which only heterosexual relationships ‘Turn around.’” So as Marianne flees from the house, ago. She grew up in Milan; her parents arranged her are condoned. Moreover, there is no need for any word unable to bear what she must do, Héloïse, as Eurydice, to be wed to a nobleman living on the island, and sent for it; it resists the very act of being named. Because to commands Marianne to turn back. Sciamma resists her portrait ahead to be vetted by her husbnd-to-be. name it would be to mark it as different, as an object the temptation to enact a wish-fulfilment fantasy of Stepping into the house for the first time, she looked upon which meaning can be inscribed, something that queer relations persevering and blossoming against all above the fireplace and saw the portrait staring down must be explained, made sense of, contained. There odds, just as Orpheus ultimately cannot save his lover at her. “She was waiting for me,” the Countess tells are no words for this haunting presence. It merely is. from hell. But she also denies the tired trope of queer Marianne. The haunting gaze of this marital portrait is Throughout the course of their romance, Marianne love as a fatalistic tragedy. She rethinks the binary of reincarnated in the portrait that Marianne must paint is literally haunted by the vision of Héloïse—a pale, queer narratives and posits a new way that love can live of Héloïse. Both are intended not for the sitter but for a ghostly presence who controls the image without being glowing form clothed in white, foreshadowing the beyond its death. agonizing moment of her departure. This surreal Heeding Héloïse’s command, Marianne looks at there: a man who appraises the woman and judges if interjection in the film is complicated by the temporal her one final time. As their relationship dies, a ghost is she is beautiful enough to marry. The gaze inhabits Marianne too. The Countess’ framework of the entire film, which unfolds as a flash- born. marital portrait was painted by Marianne’s father; she back in present-day Marianne’s mind. Perhaps this inherits not only his trade as a painter but also the male ghostly apparition is Marianne’s knowledge of what +++ gaze inherent within his art. Thus, when Marianne will haunt and taint her memories of what came before. Or perhaps it is truly something seen by Marianne in But the figure of ghost is not only a vessel for first attempts Héloïse’s portrait, the image is lifeless: the past, the premonitory omen of a fate she knows is marginalized identities to speak against erasure and her face plastered with a faint, sickly smile so cold and

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and dissected, confronting Marianne’s gaze by looking back at her. This negotiation of the mutual gaze manifests in a camera that frequently swivels and moves between the perspectives of Marianne and Héloïse, as the relationship of subject and object is constantly reversed. In a particularly vivid instance, Héloïse and Marianne go out walking by the cliffs for the second time, their mouths wrapped in scarves. The entire sequence is shot in one long take without dialogue, lasting 45 seconds. Framed in extreme close-ups which allow us to see only one person’s face in frame, this shot is composed entirely of a tense exchange of gazes. The camera begins on Marianne, who gazes off-screen at Héloïse from the back, attempting to make out her features. As if following the path of her gaze, the camera pans over to the back of Héloïse’s head, assuming Marianne’s gaze. But in a subtle, barely noticeable sideways motion, the camera then exits Marianne’s gaze, framing Héloïse from the side removed from her animated, frowning face. Upon through necessity over centuries: the need to survive, as she turns to look back at Marianne, so that she now Marianne’s confession that she has been painting to see and treat the female body that is not acknowl- controls the gaze. Finally, the camera pivots behind Héloïse all along, Héloïse scrutinizes the portrait edged, let alone cared for, by the rest of society. Héloïse to fully enter Marianne’s subjective point-ofand cannot recognize herself. “Is that how you see When Sophie brings Marianne and Héloïse to a view. Just as it seems that Marianne has resumed power me?” she asks. Marianne stutters, “It’s not only me… feast held by these village women to consult a doctor over the gaze, however, Héloïse abruptly turns to look There are rules, conventions, and ideas.” It is not only on her abortion, something magical happens. The back at Marianne, and in so doing gazes directly into Marianne who is acting here; there is another hand women gather around a fire and begin to sing—nothing the camera. that haunts her brush, a ghostly hand formed by these but their voices and the clapping of their hands. A When characters stare into the camera, they break “conventions” of how art has configured the image of a crescendo builds slowly on surreal, eerie harmonies the fourth wall and confront their audience. In this woman: demure and yielding to the invisibly present that layer over one another, and bursts into a series scene, Sciamma forces us to become self-aware of male looker. The male gaze, Sciamma shows us, is a of polyrhythmic chants and calls. It has the air of a the thoughtless objectification we engage in when we spirit that transcends the eyes of men; women, too, can mystical, tribalistic ritual; Sciamma deliberately watch cinema as an unseen, invisible voyeur, lurking be possessed by it. constructed the scene to “convoke the imagery around behind the screen and staring at the characters as witches.” For what is a witch but a ghostly, abject objects of our gaze. Sciamma makes Héloïse look back +++ woman, one whose strange feminine magics—like defiantly, resisting the passive state of the object. In their herbal medicinal brews or psychedelic drugs— doing so, she makes us, as audience, feel looked at. The presence of the male gaze in the film isn’t are deemed abnormal and deviant by society? These As distance disintegrates between Héloïse and remarkable. After all, the male gaze is everywhere; it witch-women might be deemed abject by patriarchal Marianne and affection blooms, there is a shift in pervades and infiltrates everything produced within discourse, or relegated to the margins of society, but Sciamma’s visual vocabulary. The eyeline match shot a patriarchal system of meaning. What is remarkable they live fiercely and with fire. They love, they cele- structure of the film’s first half is increasingly replaced is that the film boldly exorcizes the male gaze halfway brate and make music: all things that have been stifled with a two-shot, in which Marianne and Héloïse are through. The Countess—the matriarchal figure for Héloïse in her aristocratic upbringing. framed side-by-side on the same plane and talk to who imposes traditional order upon the household— Earlier in the film, when Héloïse is first allowed out one another in unbroken long takes. The camera now departs, and in her place, another ghost emerges. of the house, she sprints toward the cliffs and the sea. shows two characters speaking to one another without At first, it is subtle. The dynamics in the house shift “I’ve dreamt of that for years.” “Dying?” Marianne privileging the gaze of either, not as self and other but between the three women: Marianne, Héloïse, and asks. “Running,” Héloïse pants, with a hint of a smile. as a female self interacting with another self. In other Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), the maid. The silent distances Later, lying with Marianne, she takes out a drug that words, creating female intersubjectivity, the invisbetween them vanish as the three begin to play cards she bought from a woman at the feast. “She said it can ible space formed between two women who look at together, read stories together. Most powerfully, in one make you fly,” she says to Marianne, with a glint of one another not demanding power but rather seeking scene, Sophie embroiders fabric at the kitchen table magic in her eyes. understanding and love. Héloïse whispers to Marianne, while Marianne and Héloïse cook for her. This scene In the face of subjugation and oppression, the “Do all lovers feel like they’re inventing something?” reuses the same shot composition—head-on, wide— village women do not accept invisibility and death as Perhaps it isn’t invention as much as it is an unveiling used earlier in the film to depict Sophie serving food to their only fate. Instead, they imagine a new kind of of something that has not been allowed to be publicly Marianne. The visual continuity between both scenes life—not a special one but an insistently everyday exis- seen. is contrasted against the role reversal of servant and tence—that lies beyond the purview and censure of the artist in the later scene. Sophie’s practice of a female male gaze. They rebirth themselves in an after-life as +++ folk craft is now implicitly elevated to the status of art witches and ghosts, beings who are free, who do not that is traditionally reserved for lofty mediums like merely dream of running, but instead learn to fly. The final shot of the film takes place years later, when painting. Marianne spots Héloïse across a crowded orchesIn the first half of the film, Sophie only ever appears +++ tral hall one last time. It starts with us positioned as to serve Marianne or provide expository dialogue Marianne, staring across the vast theatre at Héloïse. before she vanishes like a ghost. But after revealing In cinema, there are “rules, conventions, and ideas…” But the camera smoothly tracks in, creeping closer and her unwanted pregnancy to Marianne, Sophie’s efforts that tell you how to see, and what you can see. For closer toward Héloïse until she fills the frame, even to abort her pregnancy become a prominent focus example, there is the eyeline match. It is a sequence of as she stares intently off-camera. As the music swells, of the film’s plot. The film emphasizes the paradox of two shots: first, you see someone gazing at something, Héloïse begins to weep, and in the distant look in her abortion as a vital health procedure and the absurdly then you cut to what they are looking at. This simple eyes, we know that her gaze is far, far away, searching arduous, secretive methods of obtaining one. Later, as structure allows the viewer to enter into the gaze of for Marianne—or perhaps just a memory of her. Swept Sophie undergoes the agonizing process, Marianne, the looker and identify with them, and conversely, to up in the tide of her emotion, the camera tilts as her unable to bear the sight, averts her gaze, only for objectify what is looked upon. Conventionally, the head rocks, matched exactly to the motion as if we are Héloïse to command her fervently: “Look.” That night, subjective camera is gendered male, as it looks upon locked within her gaze. Héloïse re-enacts the abortion scene in their home. a female object—and through the act of looking, By moving the camera from Marianne to Héloïse, She poses as the doctor, kneeling by Sophie’s feet while imposes meaning upon her. The male gaze does not Sciamma refuses to definitively place it in either she commands Marianne to paint. To bear witness to merely exist on-screen; the male gaze is the screen. woman’s gaze. This is not a relationship in which there the plight of women that the male gaze refuses to see, So what lurks beyond the edges of the screen? is one authoritative subject whose gaze commands its to immortalize a ghost in art, is the urgently necesSciamma overturns these conventions in the object. It is a relationship of equality founded upon a sary mission that Héloïse confers upon Marianne, that opening shots of the film. Slashes of charcoal are drawn mutual gaze in which both women are at once looking Sciamma does herself by making this film. on blank canvases, but Sciamma cuts away before a and being looked at. Nestling the camera in this intiIt is significant that Sophie is a working-class figure ever coalesces. Then we see the lookers—young mate space between their gazes, Sciamma merges woman—the discovery of her pregnancy would cost her female artists-in-training drawing an unseen woman. Marianne and Héloïse’s subjectivities, so that even as her job as a maid in an upper-class household. Sophie is But she does not cut to the reverse shot—instead, she they part ways forever, they are held together, if only thus forced to wait until the Countess leaves to finally cuts to shots of other artists looking at a still invisible for a brief moment, in the camera’s eye, and in ours. deal with her abortion. If issues of the suppressed figure. And then we hear the woman command us on The camera never cuts to what Héloïse looks at. It can’t, female body affect working-class women the most, it how to look at her: “Not too fast… Take time to look at and it doesn’t have to. We too have been haunted, and is fitting that the solution comes not from the lofty me. See how my arms are placed.” The object of the we know. male-dominated institutional realms of medicine but gaze takes control of the camera, refusing to yield to rather the folk practices of village women on the island. our interpretation without speaking for herself. CJ GAN B’23 needs his year of rest and relaxation. These women do not conform to the academic, schol- This subversion of the subjective camera is evident in arly qualifications policing the profession in this histor- the initial dynamic between Marianne and Héloïse. ical moment, during the height of the Enlightenment, Marianne tries to impose the conventions of portraibut the embodied wisdom and experience of their ture on Héloïse by trying to wrest her image from her, diagnosing eyes and healing hands has been forged but Héloïse resists, refusing to pliantly be examined

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

ARTS

08

A CONVERSATION WITH WRITER JENNY ZHANG

There are mistakes in Jenny Zhang’s titles. The name about any of that stuff. Some of it is text messages I've respond, “I don't know! I'm no scholar in immigration of her 2012 poetry collection, Dear Jenny, We Are All had with friends. Texting is a kind of poetic because of history; I am simply someone who has immigrated to Find, misspells its final word, and the possessive “s” is its natural line breaks; everyone is creating poems by the United States.” I can't explain the ways in which lost in that of her upcoming collection, My Baby First phone. I don't want to make it sound like the collection policy is made and how that trickles down to affect Birthday. These are mistkes, but they are also so much is lofty; it’s also extremely un-lofty! different people—it would take days to just explain how more. They are acknowledgements that we live in a it affected me or my friends! world of many languages. They are proof of the impos- AW: I love the both-ness with which you’ve described sibility of communicating exactly what we mean. They the collection, which reminds me—in college, you There is something that happens when I read books are refusals to correct, to edit, to conform. studied both race and ethnicity studies and creative that capture an experience that in some way is tied This unabashedness is viscerally felt across Jenny’s writing. I’ve found that the separation of disciplines to the macro-changes happening in domestic and fiction, poetry, and essays. The chorus of Chinese- in schools often makes it hard for someone who both global politics and policies. I'm having a hard time American preteen girls who narrate her 2017 story studies theory and makes creative work—it is up to the articulating, but I think there is something very cerecollection, Sour Heart, have treasure-trove interiori- student to navigate the realms of absorbing knowledge bral about policy and talking about ideology. For most ties that spill into run-on paragraphs; their innermost and creating things. Is this resonating at all? people including myself, in experiencing it first-hand, thoughts are given weight through entirely capitalized politics is more like a feeling. So I try to capture that sections. Her essays published in the online maga- JZ: You’ve unlocked something for me, which was that feeling in my writing. zine Rookie orbit around ideas of coping and uncer- I've always felt like I was neither that nor this—but I tainty—how to use humor as a foil for racism; how to think really, it's what you were saying, that there is such AW: When you mention politics as emotion, I immeresist the burden of your friends’ drama—building for pressure and a cultural impulse to have an identity diately thought of your prose poem “How it Feels,” her readers an unofficial survival guide to adolescence. with defined borders. I've always felt like I was floating published in the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Magazine. And her poetry is tactile and urgent: between things, living in these interstitial spaces. I You tackle this question of turning raw emotion into was drawn to studying comparative studies in race and writing, making space for your reader to question why the first human year ever recorded ethnicity at Stanford because it was interdisciplinary. we crave to process our feelings. I was wondering if you melted so flagrantly it became stylish to be poetic I didn't just want to take a sociology class—I wanted could talk about how you turn interiority into somefor the end of the world history, comparative literature, political science. thing that feels ready to be seen publicly. Do you see value in unpolished, uncalculated art? The insistence in this language—one that places Depending on the kind of writer you are, it makes sense geological time and notions of apocalypse in the same to be curious about the world. But college is a time JZ: I think a lot of people come to art in whatever form space as an earthly, everyday reality—welcomes a where you're supposed to be “professionalizing,” and I because it gives a shade, a value, a look to something sense of extreme closeness, of enormous intimacy. It’s was bad at that; I don't think I respected it. So I studied that we feel but may not always be able to express— as if once you begin reading, a spotlight shines down, a lot of different things. I took lots of creative writing especially when we're young. Everyone has that and the distance between reader and writer collapses— classes because that was what I was really nerdy about memory of hearing that one song where you suddenly Jenny is speaking to you, and only you. and wanted to do as much as possible. find that your whole body is vibrating, and you don't Jenny called me while she took an afternoon walk even know why. I was talking to my good friend, the around her new home of Los Angeles. Over the phone, Stanford was a pretty dorky place. I didn't know what a comedian Jenny Yang, and we were talking about her voice is sincere and measured, her ideas bursting Libertarian was until I got there... every freaking dude the film Mulholland Drive. And she was talking about at the seams. Here, we discuss made-up languages, there was a Libertarian and probably now identifies as how she'd seen it as a teenager, and how there was a texting as poetry, and how to champion living in the a sapiosexual or something—like that class of person, scene with a singer in a club who sings this beautiful, in-between. ha! I would meet people and think, “Oh, we share haunting song. And she just started crying. I’ve had similar politics, but we don't share a similar sense of those moments too, where suddenly I see, hear, or Alex Westfall: What can we expect (or not expect) humor,” or maybe they’d have regressive ideas about read something, and I can't stop laughing or crying. It from the poems in My Baby First Birthday? sex. And the people I shared more of an aesthetic sensi- was like my body knew before my brain did that it was bility with, they were not people I shared a political meaningful to me. There is something so mysteriously Jenny Zhang: The first thing that ever happens to us relationship with. So that was a common thing to feel at pleasurable about that. The downside is when you need is that someone makes the decision that we're going to that age. It has been the project of my entire life up until to process but can’t—when you're like, “My body wants exist. That the first thing we all experience is non-con- now and is still ongoing: to find people with whom you to die, I don't know what to do about it, and I don't know sensual is troubling; so is the great paradox that the can be at home in all these different quadrants of your how to relieve myself of this depression, this fear, this only way out of existence is to die. I have this dream of, identity. It’s been hard, but I'm always looking. anxiety.” So it can go both ways. “Well, what if I could go back in time? Then I wouldn't have had to ever feel like I exist.” It’s a silly thought. Or AW: You’ve worked as both a union and youth orga- Writing is both a very conscious and unconscious maybe it’s sad, depending on what place you're in. I’ve nizer. As you've moved through your life as a writer, thing. Sometimes the first draft of things I write are also thought, “Well, I've experienced life, I've made it how have you reconciled the realms of art and politics? more unconscious—I couldn't tell you how I wrote this far.” So in some ways, I can't give up existing, but “How it Feels,” I just remember that I was locked up in I've kind of existed against my will. Am I supposed to JZ: I don't want to make it sound like I'm an activist, my apartment for 24 hours on a hot summer day, and cherish that? because I am definitely not—much respect to those I had no A.C. Somehow, I wrote it. Then there are who are and do that as part of their life and daily prac- other times where I do remember. Editing is more of a I’m also interested in the fetish we have for mother- tice. As a writer, it was never a conscious decision to be conscious act for me. hood and being a baby. I’m drawn to this idea that we able to comment about politics or things happening in get to begin innocent, how we're less and less so as time the world. I was never like, “How do I make the polit- I like when I read something less structured, that goes on, and the unfairness of that. There is a desire to ical personal or the personal political?” It was just that I evokes a familiar feeling. But I'm also very happy return to innocence even if most of us probably have had lived the life and had been around people who had reading extremely plotted things, being on the edge of no memory of it—it feels like a fantastical place, like a lived the life. I encountered politics as a lived person. my seat. I think I try to do a combination of those two dream. things in my work. When Sour Heart came out, people would ask, “How So the poems are about all that stuff. They’re also not do you think immigration policy has changed?” and I'd AW: You've spoken before in praise of bands like the

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FEATURES

13 MARCH 2020

BY Alex Westfall ILLUSTRATION Liana Chaplain DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

Cocteau Twins, who would often sing in their own AW: I'm thinking about what you said about poetry— writing the essay, and the form has somewhat become made-up languages—how you love that you can't deci- how it can be the most unconscious, raw, or pure a way for young people, queer folks, and people of color pher what they're saying. What is exciting to you about version of yourself at a moment in time, versus some- to confess their traumas. And that gets consumed in art or writing that is “illegible?” thing that's more traditionally thought of as “truth,” a certain way, and that gets fact-checked by a whole like your early autobiographical essays in Rookie. culture, and then that becomes evidence for more JZ: We come to art in mysterious ways. A song that And then there are your more hybrid works, like the truth. There's something about that whole process that you first listen to when someone has broken your heart fictional stories in Sour Heart that sometimes draw feels so unverified and so exploitative. And though I has this power for the rest of your life—when you hear from experiences you've had. I guess I’m just thinking didn’t ever feel comfortable, I participated in it. it, it transports you back to that time and a feeling. I about the different layers there. remember I had this taste in my mouth when someone AW: In “How it Feels,” you write, “I think everyone just close to me had just died. I was really hungry, and had JZ: That word has definitely become politicized. Now wants to make something touchable.” I love the idea of eaten this snack. That taste always brings me back to that I've had some experience working in Hollywood, writing something that is touchable in both the physthe hospital. I’ve noticed a fetish for the phrase “based on a true ical and emotional senses. Have you read, experienced, story.” In some cases, it automatically makes people or seen something recently that has felt touchable to I think it makes sense that many people's first attempt more interested, or it makes it feel more incredible, you, or something that you've been touched by? at creative writing is poetry—it is the form that most that it “really happened.” There is something both closely mimics the unconscious. It embraces the scary and cultish to me about anyone who says “I have JZ: The films of Yasujiro Ozu and Abbas Kiarostami unknowable of it all that we’re trying to work through. the answers, I'll tell you how to really live,” you know, have been so impactful recently. I’ve started listening And I think the reason it is embarrassing to look back people who are all like, “I want the facts. What oil do I to Beach House again—the album Depression Cherry, at poetry you’ve written is because it doesn't make eat that will keep me healthy—coconut oil or avocado I love. My friend Victoria Ruiz is in this band based in sense. It's esoteric, so mysterious, so personal, that it oil?” It's constantly changing, you know? People will Providence called Downtown Boys, and I went to their is untranslatable to someone who didn't live in your preach one thing, and then a single article comes out, concert a few months ago—I couldn't even use words brain; who didn't live in your body. It's always inter- and suddenly that thing becomes, like, never again. to tell you how it was because it was beyond words. As esting to me: the process of maybe feeling something, far as poetry goes, I started reading Danez Smith, and but how do you get someone to feel it with you—that’s There’s a fetish in the culture for being able to discern always like to read my friends Tommy Pico and Morgan a whole other thing you have to learn to do, if what you the truth, but there are people living in entirely Parker. I love to read one of their poems out loud at the want to do is write stuff for other people to read and get different realities from our own. In writing these end of a long day. something out of. essays for Rookie, I had to get fact-checked for the first time in my life. It's strange, because I don't think there ALEX WESTFALL B’20 is patiently waiting for My AW: You write poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and now, is one single thing that two people would describe, that Baby First Birthday—which Mitski said “devoured scripts for film and TV. How do varying degrees of both have experienced, in the same way. So that high- her”—out in May 2020 via Tin House Books. truth operate across the different mediums that you lighted for me what I don't know. I can only describe a work with? reality in writing, and can only be true to that reality. JZ: I'm curious to know what you mean when you say I’m not sure there is much more that I, as a fiction writer “true.” Or are you asking me to define what truth is? and poet, can do. Maybe that's why I stopped writing essays. There are so many expectations placed on

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KAINAN SA DUWAR FINDING HOME IN A FILIPINO RESTAURANT IN AMMAN BY Olivia Mayeda ILLUSTRATION Olivia Mayeda DESIGN Alex Westfall

Across the traffic circle, through screens of dust and exhaust, I could see that the long line of sandy buildings met an abrupt end. An empty lot opened up to a rare, sprawling view of the hills of Amman. The sun sat over the earth like a yolk, and I followed it to the vacancy. One month into my intensive Arabic program in Jordan, I decided to explore a neighborhood in Jabal Amman near Second Circle. I was missing home, severely out of place in a program designed for forehead. wannabe CIA analysts and American ambassadors “Kamusta ka?” asked the woman on the other side to fill-in-the-blank country. Meanwhile, I dreamt of the counter, knocking me out of my haze. A golden up new ice cream flavors like miso-candied morrel Fortune Cat sat on the display case, rigid, save for its or labneh chamomile when I was bored in class and right paw, which boxed the air endlessly in anticipation made Palestinian Makloubeh and rolled grape leaves of new customers. with my host mom, Faiza, on the weekends. I watched “Mabute! Kamusta ka?” I responded automatically friends rap and perform slam poetry in Arabic at open with the only Tagalog I knew. mic night at the House of Dreams and rewatched the “Are you hungry?” she asked in English, hearing opening scene of Eat Drink Man Woman when it rained. my accent. She adjusted the fold of her hijab under her When the light turned from frothy yellow to the chin. deep orange of a duck egg, I turned back to the road, “You don’t have halo-halo, do you?” thinking of my parents’ cooking, and encountered a “I’ll make it for you.” second sun. This one had abbreviated rays that termiI asked her how much it was, and she waited nated in round petals. Three buttery stars guarded the patiently while my fingernails dug at the bottom of solar blossom on a triangular void, clasped onto two my backpack picking up grit and paper scraps. I was 85 edges by blue and red stripes. Below, magnified photos qirsh short. of food laminated sliding glass doors. It wasn’t just any “That’s okay,” she laughed, brushing what little sun, I realized, all at once recognizing the pixelated change I had produced from the counter into her palm. plates of food as sinigang, lumpia, and pancit—it was a “Sit.” Filipino one, blooming on the flimsy plastic flag of my She slipped through two hanging canvas panels mom’s birthplace. I followed my feet in disbelief to the dividing the dining area from the kitchen. I sat at a long doors and slid them open. The smell registered first: plank jutting out from the wall. Fraying duct tape lined simmering coconut milk and dried bay leaves and the the edges of the wood, serving no apparent purpose. pungent oil left over in the pan after my grandma fries At the plank in the opposite wall, two women ate from tilapia. I was convinced that some inexplicable portal plates of rice and what looked like dinuguan: a stew of had opened to my grandma’s kitchen in the middle of chili, vinegar, garlic, and pork blood. As a kid, I was the Ammanian hills. ashamed whenever my mom made it. I would mimic Like Grandma’s kitchen, Kainan Sa Duwar was the disgusted expressions of my friends when they smaller than my bedroom on the other side of the came over to our house, horrified by our vampirism, city, cases of coconut milk cans shoved in the back but I grew to appreciate its unrivaled richness over corner. As a kid, I always knew it would be a good day time. at Grandma’s house if I saw those familiar brown and The chef returned with a familiar, psychedelic white labels peeking out of the garbage—a promise arrangement of layers of red and green Jell-o and sweet that coconut milk chicken adobo bubbled in a blue beans on a bed of condensed milk-drenched shaved enameled cast iron pot on her stove. ice nested with a scoop of deep purple ube ice cream, a Displayed in what looked like a recommissioned square of leche flan, and, of course, Rice Krispies. I dug gelato case were tubs of golden battered shrimp, in, excavating each layer one by one, overcome with stewed chicken liver, and whole fried fish towered childlike bliss. The flan was dense, barely jiggling from one on top of the other in alternating orientations like the bowl to my mouth, just the way my mom made it— tempura jenga, the glass windshield so scrubbed and no skimping on egg yolks. scored in a past life to the point of fogginess. Lining the shelves on the walls were kutsinta, the caramelly +++ medallion sticky rice cakes I would sneak from my grandma’s pantry. There was turon filled with banana One of my earliest memories is of resting my cheek on and langka—jackfruit—wrapped in pastry and deep the cold, granite countertop in my parents’ kitchen in fried. When I was six, I crouched on a stool, helping my the summer. Across the counter, my mom, wearing mom fold dough around slivers of brown sugar-dipped slippers taken from a hotel, scooped an overripe banana and langka for my grandpa’s surprise birthday avocado into an old plastic bowl of whole milk. She party, but I was clumsy and didn’t tuck the dough into spooned in white sugar and used a fork to mash the itself properly. I watched the filling bubble out of its creamy avocado meat against the sides of the bowl so wrapper, filling the pot of oil with cinnamon and loose that deep green paste burst between the metal tines. fruit. “Oops,” my mom laughed, kissing me on the “This is what we would have in the Philippines

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when there was nothing else. Just milk, avocado from the neighbor’s tree, and a little sugar. Here, Olivia, try.” She brought the rim of the bowl to my mouth. The milk was a muted, Hulk green and chunks of avocado stuck to the sides of the bowl, browning from oxidation. My mom, having grown up in a household where abundance was unfamiliar, raised my sister and I not to be picky. I took a sip without hesitation. Fatty, sugary molecules lathered the inside of my cheeks. It was rich and delicious. Afternoons in my grandma’s kitchen in Pinole, one nucleus of the Northern Californian Filipinx community, taught me the intuitiveness of good food. Pork stewed in coconut milk and oxtail served with fermented krill paste were some of my favorite meals from childhood. They were neither simple nor extravagant, but every bit as sumptuous as the fine dining at French or Italian restaurants in the East Bay. There was something just as indulgent about fork-mashed avocado, milk, and sugar as there was about a slab of pan-seared foie gras. Still, when the upscale Filipino restaurant—FOB Kitchen—debuted in Oakland, my parents complained about how expensive it was. The only Filipino food they would pay for was fast food halo-halo and breakfast combos of longanisa sausage, garlic rice, and a fried egg at Jollibee for a grand total of four dollars. “If we’re paying that much we should just go across the street to Pizzaiolo!” my dad groaned at the dashboard one night while we were deciding where to have dinner. There was something about exposed brick and imported prosciutto di parma that put an immigrant family like mine in the mood for 30 dollar chicken. +++ Kainan Sa Duwar turned out to be something of a hub for the Filipinx community of Jabal Amman, and it didn’t pander to anyone. Produce was bought wholesale out of a van that came by every couple days. The woman who had served me was known tenderly by her patrons as Tita Thelma, or simply Ate, a term of respect used when addressing an older woman. Tita had been living in Jordan for over thirty years, and she had four daughters, all studying back home in the Philippines. When I returned two days later, eight men were sitting at the left plank eating shrimp. One of them was a soldier in an exchange program between the Filipino and Jordanian air forces. He was accompanying a fleet of jets on loan from the Jordanian military back to the Philippines in another six months. Another was a company driver, two of them students, here to study the Quran, and the other four were civil engineers.

13 MARCH 2020

They met in a pickup basketball league in Amman and debt-ridden Filipino economy. In theory, these women of the children dropped a napkin or when the mother became a team. After failed attempts at English and are granted the same rights as Jordanian workers asked for her reading glasses. I felt myself fading too. Tagalog, we spoke only in Arabic. under Jordanian labor laws, but domestic abuse Kainan was the one place I felt at home while “Sit,” they said, and a bowl of rice and shrimp against Black and Southeast Asian domestic workers is abroad, a home open to the public seven days a week was assembled in front of me before I could sit down. commonplace. from 8 to 12 a.m. The restaurant was everyone’s grandI asked them if there were any other good Filipino One woman, Lorewina, left her home in Mindanao ma’s kitchen, brought from oceans away in wornrestaurants in Amman. 15 years ago to work for a family in Saudi Arabia. She down bowls. It was where people, who looked like “Only this one!” always came to Kainan with her best friend, Edna— the pictures of my Grandpa Valentin when he was Tita Thelma smiled and showed me a framed also a domestic worker from the Philippines. They young and worked at a textile factory in Manila, came picture of her and the team she kept by the register. We met at the supermarket in Galleria Mall while buying together after long shifts, after basketball games, and peeled the shrimp with our fingers, and they told me groceries for their employers. for the one day they had off every two months. that they missed the fuller tropical air of home. When “Edna looked so lost,” Lorewina remembered. “I Before I left Amman, I brought the two brown all that was left were serrated antennae and translucent helped her, and we became friends.” They told me and white cans from my bedside to the kitchen in the scales, I noticed a golden orchid painted on the bottom over pancit that it had been six months since either next room. I poured one into a pot on the stove and of my bowl, and I thought of my grandma’s garden in of them had been home to see their families, loops of simmered it with chicken thighs, soy sauce, and bay Pinole. Thick stems and waxy petals in various stages translucent glass noodles hanging off the edges of our leaves for my host mom’s dinner. I used the other to of life and death rocketing from the depths of repur- plates like necklaces. Neither of them had been given a temper six egg yolks whisked in sugar and canned ube. posed paint cans. She would water each row, telling me formal day off by their employers until years into their I cradled each yolk until the gelatinous white released that when she was my age, she would run lunch over contracts—for Lorewina, it took ten years of working through my fingers into the water glass below, leaving to her grandfather while he tilled the family farm. We for the same family. When Edna asked her employer, in my palm a yellow globe. I left the frozen coconut ube had taro, bitter melon, sweet potatoes, avocado trees, whom she called “Madam,” for a day off several custard in an old pickle jar at the restaurant with the rice, corn, everything! months into her contract, “Every day is your day off” torn corner of a page. The electric insect trap crackled a neon lilac, star- was the only response she got. “For Tita.” tling only me. The soldier, Romnick, rolled a log of “But Madam and her children like Filipino food,” baklava as dense as a roll of quarters onto my plate. I she added, “they love pancit.” Edna and Lorewina OLIVIA MAYEDA B’21 is still looking for Filipino food asked him how he liked living in Amman, and he said it hugged me before they went back to work. “You make in Providence. Hit her up if you have insights. She is was “okay,” breaking through layers of filo dough with me miss my daughter!” Edna said to me, tears in her also looking to start an ice cream company that invents his molars, “most of the time.” It was worse for the eyes. Filipinx and Japanese ingredient-based flavors and is Filipina women who worked in the homes of Jordanian I heard more stories: stories of physical and sexual in search of a business partner. Serious inquiries only. families as housekeepers, he said, who were tasked abuse and pay witheld for months. While Jordanian with nearly anything the family needed at all times. law dictates that this kind of treatment is illegal, many “They don’t get to eat with the families you know,” women don’t go to the authorities. Romnick continued. “They have to eat in a separate “Embassies trust Jordanians more,” Tita told me room.” over lunch one afternoon, “If they report the abuse, I asked him if that was the worst he’d heard, and he they’ll be sent back.” stopped peeling his shrimp, leaving it fleshy and half Black and Southeast Asian domestic workers were armored in its bowl. “No.” everywhere in Amman. I never endured their experiAfter finishing my homework and a plate of dinu- ences, but I brushed up against lesser symptoms: the guan, I took two cans of coconut milk home with me. wary closeness of store managers tailing me from one I left them on my bedside table next to the tea candle, aisle of clothes to the next, cars packed with young the avocado seed I was hoping would sprout but never Jordanian men slowing down to solicit my attention, did, and the persimmon Faiza had left for me because sometimes in Tagalog, as I walked home from class. she knew it was my favorite: a makeshift shrine to all One evening, as I ate my usual Armenian sausage the women in my life who fed and cared for others sandwich at my favorite barbeque restaurant in the before doing the same for themselves. neighborhood of Weibdeh, I observed a familiar scene: I came back to eat Tita’s food every week for the a family sitting around a table, enjoying the same wax next three months. I met a lot of the women Romnick paper-wrapped meal. The parents tapped their phones had told me about. Like many of the women in my while their three children fought over an iPad. A family, they had left the Philippines—their homes, woman looked on, not sitting, but standing awkwardly their spouses, and their children—to find employment where the register met the wall. She had thick, dark as domestic workers for affluent families in the Middle hair that reminded me of my mom, which reminded East. For decades, migrant Filipina workers in the me of myself. She was a shadow, still and unspeaking Middle East have been the backbone of an otherwise at the edge of the frame, materializing only when one

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BY Andy Rickert ILLUSTRATION Alana Baer DESIGN Alex Westfall

GRIMES, DIGITAL EMBODIMENT, AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LIVE AND RECORDED MUSIC Grimes delivered her performance at The Game the defining fact of the recorded is the absence of the as the live. One of the most iconic album covers in Awards in traditional cyberpunk fashion. Hunched live.” Under traditional assumption, liveness implies contemporary music, The Clash’s London Calling over a bulky computer terminal while lasers cast a spontaneity and authenticity, whereas the recorded is does not depict the band in Wessex Studios, where it Tron-like grid over the stage, the popstar borrowed more contrived or artificial. The live performance is was recorded—its cover features their bassist on stage, from science fictions of the past to imagine a show in a moment when the audience can access the unmed- smashing his guitar into the New York Palladium. the future. At first, the concert could be mistaken for iated performer, without the meddling of sound engi- The live allows the studio recording to exist, because any other of Grimes’, who boasts a decade-long career neers or the opportunity to redo a take. Upon further it suggests that there is something authentic or real making experimental electronic music. However, after inspection, this binary breaks down; technologies of behind an otherwise opaque, mass-produced object. the singer dons a headset halfway through the song recording have mediated the way audiences experi- It’s barely a secret that every artist on a major label and collapses into a smoking vat, the performance, it ence performance from the introduction of the modern has a team of writers, sound engineers, and creative seems, is over. On the monitors behind her, a blue rock record. This false opposition plays a crucial role consultants. However, rock music depends on the woman in a metallic dress and glowing hair is rendered in weaving the mythology of the artist, both in the mythology of the live performance as the origin of its from the feet up in a vast digital landscape, picking up popular imagination and in the music industry itself. art object, even though its origin is a studio. Listeners the show from where Grimes left off. What’s immediAuslander describes how common understanding expect the artist to have written a song to translate ately striking is how natural this transition feels. The maintains that “the live event is ‘real’ and that medi- their strife into something beautiful; rarely do they woman on the screen bobs and twists just like Grimes, atized events are secondary and somehow artificial sever the music from the body that bears its voice. The while the virtual cityscape below her leaves no desire reproductions of the real.” In this case, the assumption mythology surrounding the performer informs the to return to the physical stage from moments ago. The would be that The Doors’ concert is the origin of their experience of listening. spectacle of Grimes herself is certainly lost, but the art product while the record is a mass-produced recreThe live concert thus becomes a way to access way the camera chases the new figure across its vast ation. While The Doors challenged this assumption by a mythological authenticity. If a guitarist is unable digital skyscrapers couldn’t be possible with only her placing a recorded event within a live event, such that to perform a solo they once recorded, the musician flesh and blood. Shortly after, the avatar turns to dust, the live event very literally became its own reproduced loses their integrity. For the rockist, the listener who and the song fades out. depiction, this binary had been threatened from the subscribes to this cultural mythology, the live is where “I think live music is going to be obsolete soon,” very beginning of the rock genre. Whereas a jazz fan performers can’t hide behind the facade of autosaid Grimes on the podcast Mindscape. “People are attends a performance to see a unique improvisation, tune or 30-person writing teams. Without an unmeactually just gravitating toward the clean, finished, or a classical listener evaluates the success of a perfor- diated live, there would be no way to know whether fake world. Everyone wants to be in a simulation. They mance through paper scores from the 17th century, the the talent behind the record is real. The binary of don’t actually want the real world.” original, essential object for the rock listener, with few live and recorded can thus be theorized in terms Music fans’ immediate uproar would appear exceptions, is the studio record. of Baudrillard’s simulacra, in that both parts of the to disprove Grimes’ sweeping claims—how could Pre-rock genres are certainly recorded and binary are “conceived from the point-of-view of their something become obsolete that no one is ready mass produced in the same market as rock, but the very reproducibility,” resulting in a “reversal of origin.” to surrender? As headlines like “Grimes Believes content of these records is not predicated upon the Neither the record nor the performance are “real”— Artificial Intelligence Will Make Live Music Obsolete” act of recording. An art object exists outside of these both are artificial and point to the other as its origin. circulated, fans took to Twitter to express their outrage, records. Classical records always distinguish a specific This blame game produces its own reality that is both with one performer outright calling Grimes “the voice orchestra performing a specific symphony—one independent from and dominant over its audience; a of silicon fascist privilege.” For many, the live concert recording never claims to be the definitive version play of signs called simulacra. is a critical part of engaging with any musician’s work. of Beethoven’s Fifth. Although jazz records might This simulated reality can be unweaved when the The uniqueness of each show, the physical presence of not make this distinction in their title, the unique, rules it defines for itself are revealed as arbitrary or the artist, and the communal experience of a crowd singular recording session that constitutes an album merely referential. At a concert, tools like autotune all culminate in something computers can’t simu- like Coltrane’s A Love Supreme informs the listening break down the binary between live and recorded late. However, Grimes is far from the first musician to experience. The recording does not insist upon its own by suggesting that there never was an authentic perform digitally. Hatsune Miku, a fictional animated reality; it still points to a specific moment or event. For origin to the art piece—it was always artificial. In the popstar, has been touring worldwide as a digital projec- rock, however, the studio album is its own world. rockist mythology, all forms of technology threaten tion since 2012. At Coachella the same year, a holoAbbey Road is not a recording of something that authenticity because they mediate the presence of graphic 2Pac performed alongside Snoop Dogg and happened; it doesn’t capture something that exists the performer, allowing for deception. Of course, a Dr. Dre. Even without embodiment, these performers independent of it—Abbey Road is Abbey Road. Its iconic tool like autotune can be employed deliberately—that are able to please a crowd of festival goers all the same. cover and audio mastering are just as much a part of is, without the intent to obscure—just as Jimi Hendrix What’s lost in uniqueness is made up for in novelty. Abbey Road as the music itself. To witness John Lennon might use an electronic pedal to create a new sound Digital bodies are more or less capable of performing perform “Octopus's Garden” is not to encounter the from his guitar. Therein lies the arbitrariness of the just as any human might. Grimes asks if they could original piece of art in the same way one might see the opposition of live and recorded: it’s not that the live ever replace live performance altogether. Mona Lisa in person after only encountering reproduc- can’t be mediated by technology to still be considered tions on a postcard or on a TV program. For the rock live, it’s that a specific threshold of mediation has been +++ album, the mass-produced object is the original art, culturally constructed, and varies from generation to and the performance is a reproduction of the recording. generation. Up until a certain point, the live artist can In 1967, American rock band The Doors stopped The success of the record is not gauged by how closely appropriate technology and still be authentic. Whether playing their instruments in the middle of a live, tele- it mirrors the live show. Instead, the success of the it’s Bob Dylan going electric or a hip hop MC rapping vised performance. Several monitors had been left live show is gauged by how closely the performer can over a sample, the appropriation of technology into onstage, tuned to the channel of their very broad- capture the essence of the record. live performance has always threatened the fictional casting. After turning up the volume, the band sat I first saw Grimes at a music festival after my authenticity of the live, only to eventually become the and watched their own performance on TV on TV, the freshman year of high school. I don’t remember much, status quo. rebroadcasting of the performance becoming the other than how badly I wanted to hear “Genesis” Grimes’ performance and comments on performance itself. This stunt gestures toward a truth performed live. Every time the audio faded between Mindscape mark the most recent iteration of this concealed within any mediated culture: the original, songs, I got excited all over again thinking the next trend. If the performer onstage is a digital body, then essential piece of art is not the event the cameras have track would be “Genesis.” When she finally closed everything about the performer’s image is thrown into been pointed at—it’s the recording itself. Recording is with it, everything around the song made it incredible; question. How can we locate the origin of the song on not a foreign presence that captures a live event and the backup dancers, the massive fan blowing her hair the record without a voice, much less a body to place distributes it to an audience that wasn’t physically every which way. “Genesis” sounded great live, but it it onto? The ability to verify the physicality, much less there—the live performance is the recorded perfor- was performed nearly identical to the studio recording. the entire existence of the popstar, is lost. Of course, mance. The camera is as much a part of it as the guitar. What made the performance special was the context, this has always been the case behind the thin curtain This story runs contrary to common assump- not the content of the song. of simulacra—a name on an album has never needed tions about live performance, which performance to point to a living person in order to have a page on theorist Phillip Auslander helps us understand: “the Spotify. Digital performance could set us free from +++ categories of the live and the recorded are defined in this limiting narrative of authenticity, but its audience a mutually exclusive relationship, in that the notion of The origin of the rock record as a world of its own would first have to be ready to let it go. the live is premised on the absence of recording and becomes obscured under the mythology of its origin

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this series of acoustic performances became a rite between the recorded and the live is largely simulated. of passage for all corners of the industry. Crunchy Fans get upset. A performer—in this case, the very Two decades before Grimes first took to the stage, icons like Neil Young were primed for Unplugged, but same one—provides an antidote through nostalgia. widely speculated claims that the Grammy Award- what about acts like Mariah Carey, without a single The threatened simulation has been regenerated, even winning R&B duo Milli Vanilli had lip-synced on acoustic song in their catalog, or Bob Dylan, whose stronger. This is not to say that Grimes has pulled a their record were confirmed by the performers. The adoption of the electric began one of the first crises of fast one on her entire audience, or even intended to fallout—having their Grammy revoked, full refunds mediation 30 years prior? MTV Unplugged perfectly reinstate this binary opposition. Rather, it goes to for purchased albums, lawsuits, and petitions—should embodies Baudrillard’s conception of nostalgia in show how the pattern of simulation deprives Grimes come as no surprise. A manufactured talent threatens that it produces a myth of origin whose truth only has of the ability to imagine a post-human concert. It’s not the rockist by revealing that the origin the album basis in opposition to the threat to simulation. The that artificial representation could never replace live pointed to never had to be there for the music to exist. past that Unplugged draws nostalgia from never really performance in theory; it’s that the simulation that Moments like this are not a crisis because an artist existed; there never was a time where rock was unmed- necessitates such a lie to stabilize power would never cheated their fame, but because now any artist could iated. However, the crisis of a moment like Milli Vanilli allow it. Considering how pissed her interview made conceivably have a ghost performer on a record. Of makes the rockist vulnerable to such false histories. everyone, it’s no wonder she brought in the violin solo. course, it's always been the case that the mythology The threat to simulation only tightens its grasp. The rest of Miss Anthropocene furthers this motif. of the performer did not mirror the origin of their As the refrain of “You’ll miss me when I’m not around” art, but crisis pulls away its plausible deniability. For +++ goes: “if you don’t bleed, you don’t die.” On the closing Auslander, moments where reality leaks through can verse, a pitched-up, synthetic voice appears over her be catastrophic for the industry as a whole. He writes, “Delete Forever,” the first single of Grimes’s latest vocals. The reverence for the body and the fear of a “If the distinction between live and mediatized perfor- album and her first release following her comments bleak, immortal future is just as present as on “Delete mance were to be revealed as empty, then the ability to on the obsolescence of music, begins with acoustic Forever.” Even the cover shares these technophobic sell the same material over and over again—as a studio guitar chords. In an interview, she admits that she is undertones. Yes, it features a 3D rendering of an angel recording, as a music video, as a live performance, as a not playing the guitar here, that this song is the “oppo- taking a selfie, but it also includes the graphical user video of the live performance, as a live album—would site of Grimes,” that she wanted “something raw.” The interface of a photoshop-esque software and dozens disappear.” Milli Vanilli can no longer step foot on subject of the lyrics is death from the opioid crisis. of lines of code superimposed behind the image. If stage and offer the authentic, unmediated version There is a violin solo, perhaps the last instrument that Grimes wants to celebrate human materiality, what of the record once it has been revealed that it never comes to mind when imagining a robot apocalypse. In better way to do that than by calling attention to the existed. the music video, she sits solemn atop a white throne hollow, nascent, digital body, which doesn’t bleed Many of such crises have happened, and yet the in a galactic, Ozymandian landscape. The set plays when you cut it, but crashes. rockist mythology persists in the popular imagination, homage to Akira, an Icarus story about a boy who fuses even for genres that came after rock. For Baudrillard, with technology in an attempt to be more than human, +++ the persistence of this myth can be attributed to the and then explodes. One YouTuber comments, “this regenerative power of nostalgia, “When the real is no song makes me nostalgic for a year that doesn’t exist,” Grimes’ album might have answered her own queslonger what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full and Baudrillard smiles from his grave. tions, but is it still worth asking what performance meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin The album is titled Miss Anthropocene after the could do without humans. Four years after he watched and signs of reality...an escalation of the true, of the geological period in which humans are the dominant himself on TV on TV, Jim Morrison of The Doors passed lived experience.” In this case, the “real” in question influence on the climate. Everything about this project away after a heroin overdose. In an interview about is the belief that the live and the recorded exist in polar feels like a past being imagined from a distant future, “Delete Forever,” Grimes offers an explanation: “we opposition. In the years following the Milli Vanilli a mythical nostalgia for our present. By crowning see so many artists dying because people use drugs to scandal, the music industry placed a heightened herself ruler of this epoch, she signals its approaching chase the heightened state of emotion they need to be emphasis on the authentic: the acoustic, the song about end. The rhetoric of ‘computer replacing man’ from a great performer.” The rockist obsession with authenlove and the song about death, things from the heart of her interviews is still here, but Grimes has assumed ticity exploits the human qualities of the performer the artist whose truth could never be manufactured. a new role. The harbinger of obsolescence no longer it claims to exalt. Pitchfork named the Grimes track No piece of media exemplified this more than MTV descends into machine mid-performance—she clings “Oblivion” from several years back the second-best Unplugged, the NPR Tiny Desk Concert series of the to the things that make her human. That this song song of the decade. The lyrics recount Grimes’ sexual 1990s. This program depicted acoustic performances takes on the death of her friends to heroin is no coin- assault, and the tastemaking publication lauds it for by music industry titans, playing into the nostalgia of cidence. The unique, inevitable experience of death “galvanizing pain into a complex anthem of vulnerafans who missed ‘the good old days’ before technology couldn’t be any further from the world of immortal bility and nihilism.” Grimes, on being asked to sing it distanced the performer from the fan. Its title alone data, a truth winked at by the title of “Delete Forever.” every time she gets on stage: “Fuck, this is crazy that I locates the program as distinct from the qualities that The public rollout for Miss Anthropocene follows a have to just constantly think about this song.” threaten the live. familiar script. A new form of technology, in this case The irony here, that a televised program could digital embodiment, threatens the human qualities ANDY RICKERT B‘21 is exploring the possibility of simulate an unmediated performance, is clear. Yet of live performance by revealing how the difference a digital Spring Weekend.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

SCIENCE+TECH

14

What does it mean to fix the very system of public Mann nor any of his contemporaries spoke of a factory success and school drives us toward a singular idea of education in America? As engineer W. Edwards model. The term itself is a product of school reform what our life goals should be. Deming said of the things we build: “Every system movements from the late 20th century whose goal was Education has changed since Mann’s ideas were is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” This to reimagine the entire way school defines a successful first envisioned nearly two centuries ago. While there is equally true of mechanical systems and of social student. have been adjustments to school curricula—Latin and creations such as public schools. However, among While the “factory model” highlights much of the Greek, for example, are no longer taught in most public nationwide surveys, barely half of high school students day-to-day functioning of the school system, it isn’t as school—the largest changes on a structural level have describe their schools as “satisfactory” and over 70% helpful for describing how school homogenizes indi- happened on the national stage. The goals of President say they are bored “some to most of the time” that viduals. Instead, the theory of the Panopticon provides Obama’s Race To The Top (RTTT) fund highlight they are in class. Be it student absenteeism, decaying a good model to understand how discipline, examina- some of the priorities of modern education. The plan buildings in Providence, or the chronic underfunding tion, and systemization combine to create compla- establishes four priorities for K-12 education: of education across the nation, public schools seem cency within schools. Designed by English philosopher to be failing. I’d like to propose, however, that the Jeremy Bentham near the end of the 18th century and 1. Developing a national definition of educational American school system is working perfectly: the issue first built in 1817, the Panopticon is a prison in which standards lies in what it was designed to do. As it stands currently, cells cover the outside walls of a rotunda with a central 2. Measuring student success via testing public schools limit student success through a process guard tower in the middle. While the singular prison 3. Continuing teacher development of controlling homogenization. guard cannot actually watch everyone at once, the 4. Turning around the lowest-achieving schools. The American public education system is incred- threat of possibly constant surveillance would scare ibly complex. Not only are there excessive bureaucratic the prisoners into self-regulating their behavior. Interestingly, priorities one and two of RTTT perfectly complexities in the funding and running of individual Famously, the postmodernist thinker, Michel Foucault match the 200-year-old model of preparing students schools, but the majority of decision-making power applied the metaphor of the Panopticon to better to fit into society by measuring their success in class and funding is concentrated on the local level. While understand discipline as it occurred in prisons, hospi- and prioritizing standardized education, mirroring the there are occasional elections, most governmental tals, and even schools. goals of Mann and the theories of Foucault. Priorities positions are appointed directly by the state governor However, the theory of the Panopticon assumes three and four are what’s new in schooling. Priority or other political bodies without the general public’s that subjects enter already knowing how to behave, three is driven by much of the new research from the approval. For this reason, school policy across the which is rarely the case. One common pattern with early 2000s that suggests that the largest predictor of nation is as heterogeneous and complex as the diverse panoptic prisons is that those imprisoned are made a student’s success in class is having skilled and caring groups it serves. However, there is also much about to go through a few weeks of intense punishment and teachers that look like the students they are teaching. American public schools that work the same. Despite scrutiny before they are expected to“self-regulate.” If students have a teacher they can trust, it makes the many structural intricacies, such as complex In other words, in the logic of the panopticon, those students more successful in the classroom. Priority budgets and ever-changing curricular requirements, imprisoned need to learn the rules before they can four echoes coded language for replacing public there are commonalities. All of us would be capable follow them. schools with public charter options. It is often easier to of recognizing a school and are familiar with common This period of intense punishment and scrutiny is scrap a failing school and try again with an alternate structural characteristics and practices such as class- the primary job of schools today. They serve as a small- system than to fix the school from the inside. rooms, teachers, and grades. scale simulation of the rest of the social world. Clear The philosophy that guides charter schools is to However, public education hasn’t always been rules and standards of success help guide student make traditional schools “better, faster, and stronger” available to all. The modern conception of a standard- behaviors. Some of the harsher edges are taken off as Todd Dickson, founder of Valor Charter Schools in ized public education system emerged near the start and teachers tend to be more kind than the panop- Tennessee, put it. They generally try to tailor the broad of the nineteenth century in Europe and was closely ticon’s prison guards, but the effects remain similar. programming of schools to fit a particular type of followed by a near-identical system in the United The education system measures one’s success by how student (generally a group that has historically strugStates. While there may have been a political revo- closely students are able to follow the rules. Primarily, gled in school). While this approach often seems to lution in 1776, the United States still modeled itself, to avoid getting punished by teachers or administra- work, the highly specialized and unregulated nature culturally and philosophically, after Europe. In the tors, students must learn to respect their teachers, of charters makes it difficult to evaluate their success 1840s, Horace Mann, an educational reformer and refrain from physical violence, and arrive to class along standardized lines and has critics concerned politician, proposed a plan to institute an extensive punctually—all characteristics of social life outside of that the charters are not providing crucial services public education program in Massachusetts. In order school as well. to their students. Most concerningly, charters often to pass such a large and expensive piece of legislature, Consider your own school experience. Teachers take away large funding streams from the local public Mann convinced his fellow congressmen of his most only scold the students whose behavior is disruptive schools that need it the most. By turning around our steadfast belief: “Schoolhouses are the republican line to the rest of the class or in clear violation of school lowest-performing schools through the creation of of fortifications.” Like much of Mann’s philosophy, this policy. However, school has an added complication. charters, the American education system abandons quote is embedded in a militaristic and homogenizing Unlike prison, which is exclusively for people who are the very public schools that need care and attention the belief about what it means to be an American citizen. not conforming with the rules of society, school is most. Unfortunately, today, the public rarely thinks designed for all children. As a result, there is a multiBe it in a charter school today or a Massachusetts critically about education as a civic responsibility. In tiered measurement of success that enables people schoolroom in 1840, American public education fact, a group of students has recently sued the state of to measure their ability to conform through getting continues to provide the same model of success Rhode Island for providing inadequate civic education. good grades. Those who struggle have their future to its students. By inculcating young minds with a Surely, Mann would be displeased with such an igno- career options limited or are even held back to repeat strong sense of the rules, schools work to make sure rant implementation of his vision. However, in the 19th the lesson. This especially hurts marginalized groups students fit into society. Like a Panoptic prison, regucentury, Mann’s principle to educate everyone in the who already have to struggle more to meet the same lated society works because we watch ourselves. It’s entire nation was highly visible and was created as a requirements because of systemic inequalities perpe- because of school that we know what behavior to means to advance American democracy. Mann argued trated outside of the school building. Those who watch ourselves for. Is this bad? Not everyone can be that by educating everyone, the people would be able struggle economically, for instance, rarely have as above-average, but should a good education provide us to keep the government in check. much time or resources to study for tests as those who with the tools to reinvent the world if we want to? As Under the leadership of Horace Mann, public can afford tutoring and don’t need to work a job. poet Gloria E. Anzaldua says, “Nothing happens in education came to America, not as a way to uplift Mann’s system of education exists not as a the 'real' world unless it first happens in the images in individuals, but to ensure the government could be Panopticon in and of itself, but rather as a critical our heads.” Education is ultimately the fundamental checked by the people effectively. Mann was a staunch component of the Panoptic aspects of post-secondary basis for constructing those images. What if schools supporter of the power of standardized opinions going society. By providing students with extensive rules helped us each curate our own blank canvas instead so far as to say, “We go by the major vote, and if the and continually reminding us how well we succeed of simply photocopying the world around us? I believe majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.” at following them, we are inculcated with the rules school can be more than just training for us to live in a It is through education and socialization that we of complacent behavior, and we naturally begin to social version of the Panopticon even if that is all that learn what is accepted by the majority and what is self-regulate. we are told to expect from the real world. If we truly not. Without an educational process, our democratic Is there anything wrong with self-regulation wish to use education to build a better world, certainly norms would fall into chaos. Just like other state-cre- in schools? In general, those involved in education we should ensure Mann’s goals are met. A better world ated systems, education was essential to properly reform paint schools as total failures. While I do agree should have a stable society, but a good world should maintain peace in society. For Mann, “Jails and state that a panoptic education is concerning, there is an also be more than just stable. As the great American prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as extensive grey area when it comes to thinking about philosopher—and contemporary of Horace Mann— you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the purpose of school. If all they did was teach people Henry David Thoreau writes, “The life which men the former.” There is a clear philosophical relationality to speak out, we would likely be in the midst of a rebel- praise and regard as successful is but one kind.” So why between schools and prisons that extends beyond the lion. Furthermore, following the rules in school and must school define success so narrowly? Surely, there school-to-prison pipeline. For Mann, public education self-regulating is the fastest way to succeed financially. is more than one way to thrive. A proper public educawas nothing more than a secondary line of policing. By The most common and successful pathway into the tion should embrace this multitude and teach students ensuring everyone was in agreement about what the middle-class today is through the pursuit of STEM to self-evaluate not self-regulate. laws were and how to enact them, school would keep fields or other “professional” degrees. For those who citizens in line. For Mann, the education system was wish to succeed in American economic society and ADRIAN OTEIZA B’23 is watching you. designed to homogenize society. provide for their families, self-regulating is central. Public education—as envisioned by Horace There is a very good argument to be made that this Mann—is often described by education reformers as a is, in fact, a good thing. It is incredibly honorable and “factory system.” There is some validity in this compar- valuable to provide for one’s family. However, I still ison and it serves as a good model to understand the wonder if this is all school should be doing. As young school system but is not entirely accurate. Neither children, we are often full of our own definitions for

15

NEWS

13 MAR 2020

BY Adrian Oteiza ILLUSTRATION Georgianna Stoukides DESIGN Alex Westfall

A PANOPTIC EDUCATION HOW PUBLIC SCHOOLS TEACH US TO WATCH OURSELVES

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

16

love poem melting in the swell of the moving shifting bits of I can’t hear anything but the wind running against my neck — moan gargle whisper enough without trembling dig into the cement sidewalk of this or that or open or closed or curbed curling kicking Oh but when I come, I will begin & end in a center nowhere I am an outskirt here in this dream-imagining we are everywhere I am never by myself in a tornado remembering and returning settling & you, the ground tugs closer beneath feet believing mistrusting, maybe, our mass body boulder so that time runs slowly across back shoulders hunched hard around the yielding warm of us gooey not yet ready I think of skin softening in the sunshine again & how everything jogs into stillness just in time

BY Stella Binion ILLUSTRATION Leslie Bena-

vides

DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

& even if I’m saying something useful I’m not saying anything with a locked jaw cemented with I know until I —soothed hands & lick across back’s blade & a now belonging in the same place— know we will not fleet when buried somewhere pulsing molten a want for soupiness a choice so clear

a dream of August I remember how August got caught / hot & salt-soaked in the back of my throat / again I guzzle when I want to gulp the sun our most powerful body hidden behind a smudged sky / morning until dusk recently / still maybe the cement keeps the earth so cold here / how would we know? how come skin stays blue in a bath tub steaming / soaked soaping / shea-rubbed / still there must not be oxygen on my surfaces again my brown / loud-mouthed / father-born / all of a sudden hidden each day covered / woken / without sun each morning, sitting in the front room, I have woken up & painted in the sun on a palette I mix shades of daylight / the ones that I know the ones hidden behind bank buildings / man-made metal circuses / circuits florescent-soaked it’s a cloudy day here / again shaded grey / land-burdened / standing still minutes pass / still lethargic without sun I become unmoving / again wombed / I remember the red in the skin that I know hot / soaked in the solar / lodged between the tissue we keep / hidden my mother says that our mother is hidden that we’ve made her still / recently I’ve been dreaming of leaving my home / a suitcase soaked in all the down pour from here & a ticket west / I set out for sun move away from what I know I dream of August / red / sticky / again I’ve only known waiting / a mourning cold / until summer returns again valleys / sanded / in the southwest / or nearby / hidden I’ve only ever believed what I know a city / myself in movement / a day on a subway / so much hung above my head / no place to be still no one asks / where is the sun? I sit next to a window unopened / lying in a bath tub / soaping / relearning warm / soaked again / I am blue-soaked I know to / dry / bare my shoulders / prepare for sun I leave the front door unlocked / the key on the stoop unhidden / & even though I don’t look back / I throw one last prayer / into the sky / still

17

LITERARY

13 MARCH 2020

land-kept / water-locked new skin / February-kept hard-shelled over / tight zygomatic / the swollen fruits of my face Savannah / shallow with water low / pulls her body in as a buoy I’ve dreamt of Lake Michigan monsters in moats around my bed / a shoe lace pull like puppet / at lungs and necks we all sink further toward spring water floor / littered Papa places his hands in his pocket / a rain hat / a mask tells stories of salt-water storms / five night clubs in Greenwich village a cigarette break in the back alleyway / drag / says lungs could still exhale the smoke then at the water’s edge I see no break in earth and sky / the in between / my home this land left to what devices / but the ones darting in airfields above ground near souls / in gas masses a stratosphere / over so many material things neon signs / plastic grocery bags / sidewalk trash next to drawn chalk moving beside me as though within all of us oil detonates beneath a current / of which our earth-body / my home did not want all this sorrow man-made from beauty / a vein poisonous politicized / machined not sure if I’m ready to go but I may / we may in a December-summer / February-skin peeling I’m soon to be years old / water’s surface melted Savannah-sister and I / a body spilling / a safety hazard in an oiled current a plastic buoy / no boats permitted in years a bottle / a shoelace a lung / a neck

rescue recollected Wife

Husband

balcony

fiddles a colored-bright plastic ring

unrailed

Daughter

looped around fingers

this balcony above Tagus River

age two

spinning circles

pours to the Atlantic

undisturbed

serene the woman

fair-featured slight

herself

the man Daughter

door

in brassiere and underwear

dark-skinned older restless in still

sighing short stories to

sits shirtless

reading a newspaper

the woman cradles her

walks to the apartment

turns again

begins

shaking pushing

panic ripples

the sunny

grasps knob

turns

Husband stands

joins her attempt

breeze

between two parents

a building ledge

their unsettled infant

Inside

Little Boy

shaggy

features mirror baby sister’s

five

sits

television reruns

Rugrats Scooby-Doo

Father’s voice

Luca. Lucas!

his back

follow closely

his sister

wailing

His mother

breaths out a path

with keys

knocking pounds the balcony door

Listening

he wonders if he is in trouble

listen close

kitchen

matured

the stool

a commercial jingle floats at

Mother has her serious voice

pressing his ear to the small hole of light

they keep yelling

Key. Key. where?

down the stairs

the hall

toward the

please be careful on the stool

look

there is a bowl

is there a bowl?

safety pins and rubber bands

like at Montessori

Get the keys.

Held-breath silence

ears pressed against

keyhole

paces balcony edge cautious ring

looped around finger

of fear

Little Boy

teetering

door pushes forward

steady in stature

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

the woman rocks Daughter Chink

relief

metal

rushes remnants

unconcerned

LITERARY

18

content warning: police violence In New Bedford District Court on Monday, activist Sherrie Andre was found guilty of trespassing and disturbing the peace after participating in an anti-ICE protest in the summer of 2018. They were sentenced to 30 days in jail—the maximum sentence—to be served in the Bristol County House of Corrections. Inside the courthouse, the behavior of those wielding institutional power—the racism of the prosecutor, the apathy of the judge, the violence of the security guards—made shockingly evident how the criminalization of peaceful protest is legitimized inside the courtroom. These charges are the result of a nonviolent direct action organized by members of the FANG Collective, of which Sherrie is a co-founder. By blockading the entrances to the Bristol County House of Corrections, the protest was intended to raise awareness about the horrific conditions inside the facility. The action was held in solidarity with a hunger strike by those detained inside the jail and marked the launch of FANG’s “Shut Down ICE” campaign. “We are surprised by the guilty verdict, and shocked and enraged that the Judge decided to impose the maximum sentence on Sherrie, despite dozens of letters of support submitted on Sherrie’s behalf by community leaders,” said FANG in a statement. “This harsh sentence is ref lective of the violence that the Bristol County Sheriff ’s Department inf licts on people every single day.” The Bristol County House of Corrections has received widespread national attention over its inadequate food, abusive guards, medical neglect, and lack of mental health care. According to the Boston Globe, the facility is responsible for a quarter of all jail suicides in Massachusetts, despite holding only 13 percent of the state’s jail population. The Bristol County House of Corrections is overseen by Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, who is currently facing lawsuits over the mistreatment of those held inside his facility and who infamously offered up the labor of ICE detainees to build President Trump’s southern border wall. FANG’s protest was also meant to call attention to the ways in which local sheriffs control and dictate immigration policy. Bristol County is one of three counties in New England with a 287g agreement, which deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration agents within their jurisdictions. This agreement allows police officers to question people about their immigration status and detain people on immigration charges. Bristol County also has an Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGSA), a federal contract in which local jails and prisons provide space for those detained on immigration charges. The trial itself was painful and drawn-out. Originally scheduled for January 7 and 8, the first day was inexplicably postponed, despite the full preparation of both the prosecution and the defense. Over 100 people showed up in support of Sherrie on January 7, but all were agressively removed from the courtroom. Once underway in early March, the trial lasted two full days. Before the jury delivered their verdict, multiple security guards filed into the courtroom and faced those who had packed the room in support of Sherrie. After the verdict was delivered and the maximum sentence announced, the exclamations of shock, shouts, and audible gasps were followed by immediate and harsh directives from the court officers. All those who yelled out in support of Sherrie were ordered from the courtroom. One supporter who refused to move was violently arrested. In addition to revealing the entrenched power of local immigration policy, Sherrie’s trial highlights the intentional way in which the criminal justice system chooses to debate not the brutality of the police or the violence of 287g agreements or the existence of the Bristol County House of Corrections but the technicalities of nonviolent protest. For all those fighting for the freedom and dignity of the people detained in Bristol County, the outcome of this trial is enraging. “We will continue to support Sherrie in the coming weeks as well as all those impacted by the Sheriff ’s violent policies,” said FANG in a statement. “We will keep fighting to support our community and hold the Bristol County Sheriff ’s Department accountable for their violence.” -SVH THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

ANTI-ICE ACTIVIST SENTENCED TO 30 DAYS IN BRISTOL COUNTY JAIL