Vol. 139, Issue 16

Sthecarlet & Black

Rally to Resist: Grinnellians protest anti-LGBTQ+ legislation

By Nina Baker bakernin@grinnell.edu

Over 1,000 protesters, including Grinnell students, faculty, staff and community members, gathered at the foot of the Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines, on March 6, rallying against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation currently being debated by the majority-Republican Iowa legislature.

The protest was sponsored by groups across the state including One Iowa Action, League of Women Voters (LWV) of Iowa, ACLU of Iowa and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Grinnell, among others. Demonstrators held signs and chanted, urging the legislature to vote down anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The rally came after hundreds of Iowa students walked out of school on Wednesday to protest the legislation, according to the Des Moines Register.

While the majority of legislation affects public educational institutions

or those under 18, Rachel Bly `93, Grinnell College director of conference operations and events, said advocacy for political change is essential to push back against the legislation and create change to protect LGBTQ+ Iowans.

“As students, faculty and staff, we can be advocating, we can be voting, we can do things like go to the capitol,” Bly said. “It’s really, really critically important for us to do so on a personal level.”

Iowa’s legislative session ends April 28, 2023. Legislation slated to be debated on the floor includes a bill mandating that faculty or staff notify parents or guardians of a student’s transgender identity, a bill banning mention of gender identity or sexual orientation from grades K-6, a bill allowing healthcare providers to refuse care on the basis of “sincerely

>> Rally to Resist — Continued on page 2

BSU distributes mutual aid to Black students

By Taylor Nunley nunleyta@grinnell.edu

After multiple acts of racial harassment and vandalism directed towards Black students in October 2022, the Grinnell College Black Student Union (BSU) mobilized to create a mutual aid fund. The mutual aid fund — raised through GoFundMe — was organized in the hopes of alleviating monetary worries for Black students seeking resources following these incidents. On the week of Feb. 27, the BSU, partnered with the Des Moines Black Liberation Movement (Des Moines BLM), began distributing funds to students requesting them.

According to BSU Executive Cabinet members, the need for a mutual aid fund arose in response to inadequate funding the College provided to Black students who required emergency resources such as groceries or transportation for appointments. Compared to the College’s emergency fund, which a student can only request once per year and requires an explanation for requesting, the BSU’s mutual aid fund is less restrictive for students.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Violet Du Feng visits Grinnell

By Krista Spies spieskri@grinnell.edu

Filmmaker Violet Du Feng visited Grinnell to showcase her documentary “Hidden Letters” which focuses on contemporary use of Nüshu, a historical Chinese language that allowed women to secretly communicate amongst each other under patriarchal forces of suppression. Through the combined student-organization efforts of the Chinese, Japanese and East Asian studies (CJEAS) Student Educational Policy Committee (SEPC) and the Film Club, Feng participated in a Q&A session last Monday after screening her film, which was recently shortlisted for an Oscar award, ahead of any theatrical or global release.

“I think what’s so remarkable is that they found their own way to negotiate with the power,” Feng said in reference to the women who used Nüshu. “They found their own way to negotiate with the existing system and structure by creating their own space, creating the safe space, to allow them to be honest, to be authentic with themselves in their circumstances, meaning that they can be vulnerable and share their sufferings with each other.”

“Hidden Letters” explores the lives of two women, Hu Xin, from the rural village of Jiangyong, and Simu, who lives in urban Shanghai. Though young adults, both practice the histori-

>> Violet Du Feng — Continued on page 2

“The whole point [of the fund] is…not denying students money, because that’s what the school can do sometimes,” Evelynn Coffie `24, vice-spokesperson and treasurer of the BSU, said. “And also for students not to have to explain or hash out their traumas or over explain why they need it, because we shouldn’t have to do that.”

Bethany Willig `23, co-spokesperson of the BSU, agreed with Coffie’s statement of not denying students’ requests through the mutual aid fund. Willig emphasized the reservations students had not only with the general environment following the racial incidents but also the College’s response.

“Following the anti-Black hate crimes in the fall right before midterms, we called an emergency BSU meeting where we had 90 or something Black students in one room. We were there for three hours like, ‘What do we do? How do we feel safe?’ And I think it was very obvious and clear that the College was not meeting our needs,” Willig said.

The BSU decided on a mutual aid fund partnered with an outside non-

profit to provide resources to Black students because of the flexibility it offers. As a grassroots movement, a mutual aid fund relies on donations from people in the community it affects. The Executive Cabinet of the BSU noted how the demands Black Grinnell students have been making for years were only met after blatantly racist incidents.

“The fact we have to foster our own environments and make sure that we’re keeping each other safe because we cannot rely on the school or because we cannot rely on our peers is an issue,” said Coffie regarding the racism Black students have been forced to face without support for decades.

Loyal Terry `23, co-spokesperson of the BSU, emphasized the importance of faculty and students stepping in to support Black students instead of expecting College administration to step in instead.

“We’re not the ones that created this system,” he said. “We don’t have the key to unlock it and dismantle it >> Mutual Aid — Continued on page 2

Year-long Spanish course innovates MAP structure

By Oliver Wolfe wolfeoli@grinnell.edu

The Spanish department is offering a new, one-of-a-kind, year-long course taking place in the fall and spring of the 2023-2024 academic year. The course, titled Learning from the Latinx Community, will include the SPN-397 class — a two credit Independent Study — in the fall, and SPN-499 — a four credit Mentored Advanced Project (MAP) — in the spring, totaling six credits. If a student fully completed the course, then all of these six credits will count towards their Spanish major requirements.

According to the course description and learning goals, the MAP emphasizes the importance of community engagement and social justice through service. Students in the course will be matched with one community partner in the Latinx/Spanish-speaking community in Iowa, specifically in Des Moines, Iowa City or Marshalltown.

The students will work closely with these organizations and complete a community service project

with them in order to apply and improve their Spanish-speaking skills. Simultaneously, students will develop and acquire important understandings of cultural diversity, self-awareness, power dynamics and more. According to Maria Carmen Valentin, associate professor of Spanish, “One of the goals of the course is to expose our students to the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Hispanic world.”

Valentin said that she has taught similar social justice-focused Spanish courses before, but this is the first time that the course has been approved as a year-long course, which she said is important for making meaningful contributions to the community.

“We are expecting a year-long commitment because students are not making that commitment with me, students are making that commitment with a community partner,” said Valentin. “We are trying to establish long-term relationships with community partners, relationships that are

>> Spanish MAP — Continued on page 2

OHANA SARVOTHAM

EVAN HEIN

Top: Evelynn Coffie `24 (Left) and Bethany Willig `23 (Right).

Bottom: Loyal Terry `23.

CONTRIBUTED BY MARIA CARMEN VALENTIN

Top: Nicole Cabe `23. Bottom: Associate Professor of Spanish Maria Carmen Valentin

CONTRIBUTED BY RACHAEL BLY

More than 1,000 protestors gathered in Des Moines to protest anti-trans legislation on Sunday, March 6.

CORNELIA DI GIOIA

Visiting speakers spread awareness about climate change through Rosenfield Program

By Ashley Baek baekashl@grinnell.edu

Grinnell College has been featuring events centering the international and domestic effects of climate change. On March 2, the Pakistani Student Organization (PSO) and the Rosenfield Program worked together to produce an informational event called Flooding in the Global South. The featured speakers included Shuchi Kapila, professor of English, Timothy Dobe, professor of religious studies, and Rumi Shammin, professor of environmental studies, from Oberlin College. On March 9, the Rosenfield Program hosted a Scholars’ Convocation on security issues that arise from climate change featuring Cullen Hendrix, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

space that felt comfortable for me and people like me, both in a South Asian and an international student context,” Shaikh said.

Barbara Trish, professor of political science and the director of the Rosenfield Program, stated, “It’s really important to talk about the different consequences of climate change and seeing it from multiple different lenses.

It’s something that we might not have been thinking about as much as 20 years ago when we thought about climate change. I’m really excited to bring in people who are on the cutting edge of thought on climate change.”

does he say that? Because most climate change plots appear in science fiction, because we think, ‘Oh, somewhere in the future, this could happen.’ What would you do if it started happening now and your novel of everyday life starts to have floods and tsunamis? That’s sort of the question Ghosh was asking.”

At the panel, Shammin spoke about his research in Bangladesh. He emphasized the importance of how taking action is more than donation. He claims that the money still helps, but influencing opinion and working with local actors is additionally crucial. He showed the importance of being an ally, learning about how you can help and how spreading that education helps others.

Ekta Shaikh `24 initiated the climate change panel as treasurer of PSO. “After the floods in Pakistan last year, we started the Pakistani Student Organization. We decided that we wanted to do something regarding climate change that would involve a panel discussion. We wanted more awareness, and we thought that a panel discussion would be helpful,” Shaikh said. Shaikh said she was really inspired by the turnout at the event. “It was great centering voices that aren’t normally at the center of a conversation. It was about having the ability to create a

Kapila visited Oberlin and heard a talk given by Shammin about his work in Bangladesh. Kapila described Shammin’s work with activist groups on the ground responding to climate disasters as the reason behind requesting him to speak at Grinnell College. “I thought that would be of interest to students,” Kapila said. “There are many [activist groups] in South Asia because it’s a hotspot, and I felt like this is a good topic of discussion.”

During the panel, Kapila spoke about climate change in literature. One particular novel that Kapila mentioned is “The Great Derangement” by Amitav Ghosh. According to her, Ghosh makes the point that climate change is hard to represent in novels and we have not done as much work in literature as we should. She then launched off that point, asking “Why

Rally to protest anti-trans legislation in Des Moines

tax-exempt non-profit, cannot legally participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of a candidate or make partisan comments in official publications. College employees, however, are not restricted from political activity or speech.

“I think that even if you’re here for four years, you can be part of the balance,” Bly said. Iowa has moved to electing Republicans by wider margins since 2016. In 2022, Iowa Republicans gained a supermajority in the Senate, took control of 60 of Iowa’s 100 House seats, obtained all 6 congressional seats and took hold of every state-wide office except the Auditor’s office.

will destroy the house.

These two events were part of the Rosenfield Program’s focus on climate change. They are continuing their next part of the climate change symposium with Dorecta Taylor on

Monday, March 13 at 4:15 p.m., and she will speak on “Untold Stories of the American Conservation: Privilege and Social Inequality.” The series will continue with an alumni panel on Tuesday, April 4.

“Learning from the Latinx community”: Spanish MAP

based on trust.”

Julie Lascol, associate director of community engaged learning, said she coordinated with the Spanish department, Dean’s office and community partners to make this year-long, six-credit experience possible. One major part of the planning for this course was determining its budget, Lascol said. Grinnell College will compensate the community partners for their time and provide transportation to the students while making sure the opportunity remains completely free for students.

Those who helped plan the course recommend taking it. Nicole Cabe `23, Spanish major and community engagement coordinator, said, “I think this course will be revolutionary. It’s a good opportunity for students to take their learning in Spanish into a very applicable [setting].”

Rally to Resist—

Continued from Front Page

held beliefs,” and a bill restricting students from using bathrooms matching their gender identity from grades K-12.

On Wednesday, March 8, following the Sunday protest, the Iowa House of Representatives passed Senate File 538, a bill prohibiting Iowa doctors from providing genderaffirming medical care like puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgery

to people younger than 18. The bill had been passed along party lines — 33-16-1 — by Senate Republicans late Tuesday night.

Grinnell Representative Annette Sweeney and Senator Dean Fischer voted for the bill’s passage.

“The Republicans have the votes for all of these bills that are left. That’s the reality. These bills are probably going to pass,” Bly said. “That doesn’t mean we need to give up, that means we need to fight harder.”

The College, being registered as a

“We used to be motivated by what was right, not what was political,” Bly said. “There’s not going to be any young people left because of things like this.”

The Grinnell LWV holds regular legislative coffee sessions at Drake Community Library and on Zoom for constituents to ask questions of Grinnell’s elected officials, including questions on LGBTQ+ issues. The date of the next session, scheduled with Fischer and Sweeney, has not yet been announced.

“Hidden Letters” director Violet Du Feng hosts screening

Violet Du Feng—

Continued from Front Page

“To me, the key value of Nüshu is that it allowed this honesty for these women,” said Feng. “Honesty is really the fundamental foundation of me being a filmmaker and also thinking that it’s not just the final product — it’s really every step of the process.”

Feng has been involved in other documentaries not as a director, but as a producer. She said her current professional aspiration is specifically producing women’s work so China may have more female representation in the film industry. “Hidden Letters” represents her personal beliefs and experiences as a woman in Chinese culture, but the film also adds to her work-centered hopes through the inclusion of the work and art of Hu Xin and Simu.

Qiaomei Tang, assistant professor of Chinese, attended the screening. Tang has researched China’s past with a focus on women and their relationship with men and society. She said, “I think it’s always good to hear the marginalized voice as much as we can.”

The following week, the Rosenfield Program held a Scholars’ Convocation regarding climate change featuring Dr. Cullen Hendrix from the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Hendrix’s talk was titled, “An Age of Actorless Threats: Rethinking Climate Security,” and it dove into the security effects of climate change. In his lecture, Hendrix emphasized the idea that “climate change is a silent killer.” He said that climate change is not the big bad wolf threatening to blow down your house but instead millions of termites eating away at the framework, which if left unattended, cal tradition of Nüshu that was utilized in ages before them by women whose worth was tied to the men around them. As the director, Feng takes a feminist approach in including the modern pressures placed on Hu Xin and Simu as women in a male-dominated world — a world that, though seemingly progressive in comparison to the period when the writing practice originated, continues to oppress them.

Kate Murray `23, CJEAS SEPC, worked to contact Feng and get the documentary screened in Grinnell, spearheading the effort since last semester. “Most of what we learn about China is about and/or through men,” Murray wrote in an email to The S&B. “This expanded my understanding of China and Chinese culture in an indispensable way that can’t be communicated otherwise.”

“It’s impossible to have an unbiased, entirely objective documentary, but the subjectivity of it is the important part of activism and change-making,” said Kate Guiney `23 from the Film Club, who helped with the organizational and budget elements of the presentation. She also commented on the aspect of the film that brings in honesty and realness that separates itself from other formats.

“Hidden Letters” speaks not only to the women in China, according to Feng. “At the end of the day, the strug-

SOFIIA ZARUCHENKO

Feng answered questions and discussed the film with attendees following the screening.

gles of what these women are experiencing are quite universal,” said Feng. “When we’re talking about a global context, I think the camera functions in a way that is purely observational so that it makes you feel that you can be present in that.” The film will be launched nationally on PBS on March 27, 2023.

“It’s a unique experience,” Lascol said. “I was lucky to take a community engagement class in my master’s program, and that’s how I found my first job.”

Lascol also reflected on the novelty of this course. “This structure is also very innovative in higher education,” she said.

According to the planning committee, this structure is being viewed as a pilot — if the course is successful, it could open the door for other departments to follow suit and begin to offer year-long courses with significant community engagement portions.

The course registration deadline is May 1. If you are a Spanish student and want to learn more about this opportunity, reach out to Nicole Cabe, Julie Lascol or Maria Carmen Valentin. Additionally, there will be an informative session taking place on Wednesday, March 8 at 4:15 p.m. in the Humanities and Social Studies Center, room N3325.

BSU GoFundMe raises $16,000

by ourselves… I would push white students, faculty and staff to do more work internally before coming to me with the guilt that they have for not doing enough.”

Luke Bryson `25, a student who donated to the BSU’s mutual aid fund, acknowledged the conditions Black students were subject to in October.

“I know going to work shifts during all of that had to have been

By Taylor Nunley nunleyta@grinnell.edu

On March 9, both Grinnell College’s and the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers’ (UGSDW) collective bargaining teams met to discuss the grievance procedure, arbitration, Just Cause, recognition and non-discrimination. The College also revisited implementing a third-party mediator in bargaining.

The session began with the College’s team voicing concerns that little progress was being made in reaching an agreed-upon contract. Frank Harty cited UGSDW’s lack of a comprehensive proposal and their insistence on including academic workers under the Just Cause provision.

UGSDW promised a comprehensive proposal by spring break, and said they would consider implementing a mediator.

UGSDW’s collective bargaining revisited the grievance procedure. Instead of the 10 days student workers have to begin the grievance procedure currently drafted in the contract, the UGSDW collective bargaining team proposed a longer period that would only concern grievances over wages.

The collective bargaining teams also discussed arbitration, a process where a worker requests an outside mediator to settle an unresolved

impossible, so I’m sure people weren’t getting the amount of funds that they normally were. Supporting in that way when I could felt like the right thing to do,” he said. Bryson also told his family back home about the situation who, in response, raised a donation along with friends for the mutual aid fund.

So far, the BSU has raised over $16,000 of their $25,000 goal. They hope to reach this goal soon and by the end of the semester they will be distributing all funds, no matter the final sum collected.

grievance. The College brought up concerns with including an arbitration provision since the UGSDW collective bargaining team said they did not want to include a no-strike clause. UGSDW said including both the arbitration provision and the right to strike would satisfy situations where one or the other was necessary.

“We want the right to say ‘if you don’t resolve this grievance immediately we will strike,’” added Isaiah Gutman `23, member of the UGSDW bargaining team.

The two teams discussed revisions to the Just Cause process which both largely agreed upon.

UGSDW proposed two new provisions seeking to include high school student workers in the contract and allowing for student workers to use the grievance procedure in place of filing Title IX complaints for workplace incidents. The College expressed concerns over both proposals — they cited the definition of a student worker in the contract, which requires an individual to be enrolled as an undergraduate student at Grinnell at least part-time. They also brought up concerns with the College’s bargaining team being unprepared to grieve incidents normally brought to Title IX or VII.

Bargaining will resume on Thursday, March 16.

Spanish MAP— Continued from Front Page

UGSDW Bargaining

PAUL HANSEN

Cullen Hendrix, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, gave a talk about climate change and security issues.

Mutual aid— Continued from Front Page

RACHAEL BLY

Grinnell students, staff, faculty and community members protested for trans rights on the steps of the Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines.

Meal plan price increase raises questions about Dining Hall quality

By Zach Spindler-Krage spindler@grinnell.edu

Following a 5.5% increase in Dining Hall meal plan costs, some students are questioning whether they are getting what they pay for.

For the 2023-24 academic year, the price of the full meal plan — 20 meals per week — has risen to $8,378. According to a campus-wide email from Germaine Gross, treasurer and vice president of finance, on Feb. 21, the board of trustees and College leadership approved a 5.5% increase to comprehensive fees. The email cites inflation, surging operating costs and volatile financial markets as the primary factors leading to the increase.

For the 2022-23 academic year, the full meal plan was set at $7,940, which breaks down to $12 for breakfast, $15 for lunch and $18 for dinner. Aside from cases of severe dietary restrictions or allergies, all first-year students are required to enroll in the full meal plan for their first semester. They can choose between two options for second semester, although the prices are the same for both plans. All students must be on one of six meal plan options unless they reside in designated co-ops and campus houses or live off campus.

The S&B reached out to Gross, Britt McConnell, dietitian, and Jeanette Moser, director of dining services, for comment on this article and was redirected to Mattia Wells, a communications and marketing office spokesperson, who compiled informa-

tion from the College administration.

According to Wells, the cost of the meal plan is determined as part of the College’s budget planning process. Since all elements of the comprehensive fee — tuition, fees, room and board — tend to increase equivalently, the meal plan has steadily remained roughly 10% of the College’s total cost of attendance. Meaning, as seen in the Grinnell College Common Data Set, the proportion of meal plan cost to total cost of attendance has been consistent since the data collection began in 1999.

The cost of the meal plan accounts for food, labor and overhead costs. This includes employee benefits, insurance and educational programs. Currently, dining services employs 84 full-time staff, 75 of which are service and culinary staff. Additionally, there are 14 part-time staff and 117 student staff.

Because the College runs as a notfor-profit, the College states that the goal of meal plan pricing is to enable dining services to provide high-quality options for students, not to make money. According to Julie Lascol, associate director of community-engaged learning, the city of Grinnell, as a whole, faces food accessibility challenges.

To explain why stores that offer local food are often driven out of business, Lascol said, “While the town of Grinnell is not technically a food desert, rural areas, especially in cold climates, face a variety of challenges when it comes to access to food. This has only worsened with stores like Walmart coming to town who can use

Graduating GWSS majors explore ‘bad feminists’ in Sex Wars debate

By Oliver Palmer palmerol@grinnell.edu

Graduating gender, women’s, and sexuality studies (GWSS) majors hosted a Sex Wars debate on Thursday, March 9 at the Grinnell College Museum of Art. During the event, GWSS fourth years replicated contentious feminist debates about sex and pornography that occurred during the 1970s and 80s. The debate allowed the GWSS majors to occupy the voices and perspectives of famous feminists, and it provided students with the opportunity to share conflicting opinions about pornography.

The students who participated in the debate were from Leah Allen’s, assistant professor of GWSS, class GWS 495: Bad Feminists, Bad Critics. In the class, students explore feminists who were considered to be “bad feminists” because of their radical views about liberating women. For the purpose of the debate, one half of the class represented the pro-sex feminist ideas, and the other half represented the anti-sex ideas.

Will Donaldson `23, a GWSS major participating in the debates, said that pro-sex feminists believed that misogynistic violence against women was a result of underlying societal structures, not just a result of their portrayal in pornography. The anti-sex feminists, on the other hand, wanted to ban pornography through legislation because of violent portrayals of women prevalent in porn at the time. Donaldson also explained that the divide between pro- and anti-sex feminists was divisive and sparked infighting within the feminist community at the time.

“What the debate really is about is differing approaches to dismantling the patriarchy,” Donaldson said.

Melena Johnson `23 explained that historically, the pro-sex side won the debate because the anti-sex side failed to pass legislation that would have banned pornography. Many of the anti-sex feminists were removed from the history of GWSS because their ideas were opposed by other feminists. In the reenacted debate,

economies of scale and lower wages to keep their prices down. ”

Lascol continued, “Our dependence on cheaper food and the cascade effect on employment, health and the environment is real.” Due to the short growing season, the availability of fresh, local food is limited to late April through October.

When the College is unable to rely on local food, it becomes expensive to provide high-quality, flavorful food with a low carbon footprint. “Food prices in general have increased 17% in the past 18 months,” Wells wrote in an email to the S&B. “This is more than the meal plan prices have increased over several years.”

Yet, some students feel that regardless of challenges in the food supply chain, the College needs to provide better options if they are going to charge $8,378

Will Chapin `24, who is 100% gluten-free due to celiac disease, said that the College is not following through on its commitment to dietary accommodations and consistent access to healthy food.

“I’ve always felt like I haven’t gotten even remotely what I’ve paid for in regards to the cost of the meal plan and the quality of the meals,” said Chapin. “If they literally bought, like, $12 frozen meals from Walmart, it would already be better. It doesn’t feel fair at all with how much I have to pay to get really subpar access.”

Despite the consistent struggle to create adequate meals, Chapin said he believes the options for accommoda-

tions are unclear and inefficient. “At the start of last fall, I was on the full meal plan, and it felt so much like I was starving that I put in requests with ResLife and disability resources to get off of the meal plan,” Chapin said.

“That meant that I had to move where I was living. So I moved out of Langan and into Food House just because I couldn’t eat the food provided in the Dining Hall.” According to Wells, McConnell is

available to meet with students about medication or personal dietary restriction with or without a referral from disability rwesources. “If the Dining Hall doesn’t have suitable options, specific items can be secured for the student. An accommodation is needed for specialty items to be prepared and purchased on an ongoing basis,” wrote Wells.

Allen said that there would not be a formal winner and the audience could come to their own conclusions.

The event that unfolded in Bucksbaum was, in an effort to emulate the real-life conversations, contentious and heated, with both sides taking shots at the other and rallying the crowd for support. Each took turns advocating for or against pornography and attempted to convince the audience to support their side. There were insults hurled from both sides and lots of drama. The anti-sex side accused the pro-sex side of not taking the debate seriously because of their attire, as the pro-sex side showed up to the event in what some may call risqué clothing. The pro-sex side also ridiculed the anti-sex side for considering Ronald Reagan an ally in their struggle to ban pornography.

“The bigger picture is about the culture of conflict within feminist movements, and both sides did a good job of showing that,” Allen said.

The Sex Wars debate also allowed the GWSS students to explore the ideas of the so-called “bad feminists” and share those ideas with an audience who may have never heard of these ideas before, explained Zoe Gonzalez `23.

“A lot of the arguments, especially on the anti-sex side, are things that are relevant today in terms of things like deep fakes, OnlyFans and privacy issues,” Gonzalez said. “The way that the Sex Wars tend to be framed, in pop culture and things like that, it paints one side as good and one side as evil, but in reality, it’s a gray area both ways.”

The debate was a perfect representation of the personality of the GWSS major, said Donaldson.

“To me, every GWSS class has been this energetic, and filled with controversy and real discourse about not just theory, but how do movements actually work?” Donaldson said. “The value of this is not only that it’s representing the academic side of GWSS, but it’s also showing how much fun and how political our lives can be given the systems we interact with on a daily basis.”

and resiliance in the month of joy: Purim at Grinnell

By Claire Giannosa giannosa@grinnell.edu

Chaverim, Grinnell College’s Jewish student association, hosted their first Purim party last Monday, March 6, from 6-9 p.m. in the Harris Center. Purim is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the survival of the Jews in Persia from the evil plot of Haman, an advisor to the Persian king. The holiday began Monday evening and lasted until Tuesday evening, March 7.

The celebration started with the tradition of reading from the Megillah, or the Book of Esther, which tells of the story of Queen Esther, who helped save the Jews from Haman. Some students read from the scroll in Hebrew on stage, and audience members would boo and make noise with groggers (noisemakers) when they read Haman’s name.

Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay said that the Book of Esther is “a book where I think we learn a lot about power and responsibility and what it means to fight for justice and freedom — to be able to find joy and silliness in our work, and to know that that’s actually a part of our resilience.”

As an associate chaplain and rabbi at the Center for Religion, Spirituality and Social Justice, Brammer-Shlay worked with Chaverim by “supporting the students in dreaming up what they wanted this [the Purim party] to be,” she said. She emphasized the importance of a holiday like Purim, which “is an opportunity to lean into that silliness and joy, which can be hard sometimes, as students, when you have a lot going on.”

Following the reading, Jewish students performed a spiel, or skit, retelling the story of the Book of Esther. E.J. Schwartz `23, who wrote the spiel, said, “even though it was

short and goofy, I like to think that I did have motifs of family running throughout. To me, that is a lot of what religion is — part of my connection to being Jewish is comedy.”

A key aspect of Purim is Jewish resilience and celebration of survival. “You might have cut us, you might have hurt us, you might have done whatever, but we’re still alive,” Schwartz said.

After the spiel, the event continued with games, snacks, costumes, cotton candy and inflatables. Attendees could also donate money to Grinnell Community Meal, an organization that serves meals to the community, as they hope to start up again in April. Among the food offerings was Hamantaschen, which Schwartz explained to be a triangular shaped cookie often filled with apricot, poppyseed and chocolate fillings, representing the hat and ears of Haman.

ing up in costume. “It’s a reminder to not take yourself too seriously, and at this school, that’s pretty important.”

As president, Goffman said she is “a very logistical person,” helping to plan and organize events. “I’m the person people come to if they have an idea that they want to see become reality, and I’m like, ‘let’s do it. Let’s go.’”

For the first Purim celebration at Grinnell, Goffman said the members of Chaverim “dreamt big and envisioned what they wanted the party to look like. And then the Rabbi and I kind of helped see that we could actually make a reality.” Even though it was the first one at Grinnell, Goffman said it was “one of hopefully many.”

“I definitely think there’s some things that we learned when we go to plan it for next year,” Goffman said. “I think attendance was really good. I think everyone had a lot of fun. I’m excited to see how it grows within the next 5 to 10 years.”

“I really believe it’s important to have opportunities for Jewish students to live in Jewish time,” Brammer-Shlay said about the importance of having a Purim celebration at Grinnell. “I think it’s a really fun holiday to bring non-Jewish students into as well.”

Purim is celebrated during the Jewish month of Adar, a month that signifies joy. “We’re told that as soon as the month of Adar begins, our joy increases,” Brammer-Shlay said.

Some students who celebrated Purim said that they found joy within the traditions of the holiday. Marisa Goffman `24, president of Chaverim, said her favorite tradition was baking Hamantaschen. “I think it’s a really fun community event to experiment with the different fillings and bond over the food.” She also liked dress-

“I heard from a lot of Jewish students, and non-Jewish students, that having a Purim celebration at Grinnell was really awesome,” Goffman said. “[It] felt really meaningful to them to have a Jewish event at that scale.”

Overall, Purim is a holiday about celebration and finding joy in life. According to Goffman, “Purim is a really good time to recognize that the Jews didn’t die, take a break from the seriousness of winter, raise up your joy and have a really good, fun time with your community.”

OWEN BARBATO

From left: Zoe Nechin `25, Theo Deitz-Green `23, Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay and Livia Stein Freitas `25 perform a spiel. Celebration

OHANA SARVOTHAM

Some students with dietary restrictions, like celiacs, struggle finding consistent Dinning Hall meals >> Continued on thesandb.com

I really believe it’s important to have opportunities for Jewish students to live in Jewish time.

Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay

By Eleanor Corbin corbinel@grinnell.edu

Grinnell High School (GHS) ran performances of “Crimes of the Heart” on March 2, 3 and 4, marking the directorial debut of Steph Nefzger. The play was partly sponsored by Grinnell College.

“Crimes of the Heart” follows three sisters as they come together in the wake of their mother’s suicide, learning how to be around one another after many years apart. Nefzger said that the themes of found family

By Conrad Dahm dahmconr@grinnell.edu

Located on 5th Ave., Vonda’s Flowers and Gifts, an independently owned flower shop, brings joy and creativity to the Grinnell community. Inside, there are not just flowers but also handcrafted art pieces and décor, all made by owner Vonda Earnhart.

Earnhart said she owned three flower shops before moving to Grinnell and opening her current store in April 2015. She said one of her inspirations for opening this store was her love of creativity. “I’ve been creating and making things since I was probably two years old. I just love making people happy,” said Earnhart.

Earnhart said that she provides flowers for weddings, funerals, proms and any other occasion where one might need flowers. She said that flowers are a powerful thing to help bring out emotions. For these events, Earnhart asks what the customer wants, and then she makes a design that speaks to the individuality of the person.

Earnhart said she gets fresh flowers from many different wholesalers, and she often creates the designs the day she receives the flowers. She offers deliveries to Grinnell and the surrounding communities including Newton. All the flowers arrive fresh, regardless of whether a customer has them delivered or picked up in the store, said Earnhart.

One occasion that stuck out to Earnhart was when Grinnell College asked her to provide flowers for the inauguration of new College President Anne Harris. Earnhart said, “They [the College] came to me and asked me to do the flowers on the stage. They let me be creative, and they got the most beautiful experi-

drew her towards the show.

“What this show kind of champions is understanding that your normal doesn’t have to be everybody else’s definition of normal,” she said.

Prior to her current role as GHS play director and Grinnell Middle School (GMS) 5th grade special education teacher, Nefzger coached speech at GHS and three other Iowa high schools.

When a position opened up to direct at GHS, Nefzger said that she was excited to showcase her skills in theater.

ence for her inauguration.”

Earnhart said she also remembers when people send messages post-event expressing their love of the designs and of the flowers in general.

Along with providing flowers, Earnhart offers other products to her customers. “I have candy bouquets.

My daughter does tie-dye shirts. I’m an artist, I have drawings that I custom draw for people,” Earnhart said.

Along with these items, there are handmade designs from her husband that include bottles from local businesses turned into vases and other containers.

All of the products offered by Earnhart are handmade and designed by her and her family. She said she does not belong to any national flower organization which uses pre-made designs. “I don’t do cookie-cutter designs. I let them [the customers] tell me what they’re looking for. Every design is individually designed for that person, even if it’s only one flower,” said Earnhart.

“I sell sentiment. Flowers can say so much, and they make many people happy,” said Earnhart. “Flowers can represent many different things to different people. I like it to be something that’s very meaningful, and it represents what the customer is wanting,” she said.

Overall, Vonda’s Flowers and Gifts is a great example of what the Grinnell community has to offer. By selling more than just flowers, Earnhart has created a business that offers joy and creativity to all people in the community.

The store is located at 811 5th Ave. and is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday. Earnhart accepts orders for a multitude of occasions.

“I have just a very deep love for theater and a deep passion for sharing that love of theater with other people, specifically students,” Nefzger said. “I just had a really positive experience growing up, myself, in theater settings.”

Just over 200 tickets were sold for the 3 performances, and Nefzger said that she saw a wide variety of community members attend the performances. 10 of those tickets were purchased and reserved for Grinnell College students as part of the College’s sponsorship of the production.

Grinnell College has been making contributions to GHS plays since the College and the high school became partners in education, said Donnette Ellis, community relations and grant coordinator at the College. The donation, this year around $250, went towards general funds to be used as seen fit by the production. Ellis said that this donation is not regular in the sense that it does not happen at a set period of time. Rather, whenever someone from GHS reaches out to the Grinnell College Office of Community Partnerships, Planning and Research to ask for a donation, the College provides one.

Previous GHS play director, Liz Hansen, who currently works as the program director at the office of community partnerships, planning and research, connected Nefzger to the correct channels to coordinate the sponsorship.

In return for the contribution, the College asked for 10 tickets to raffle off to the student body. An acknowledgement in the playbill read, “Thank you! … Donnette Ellis and Grinnell College for the generous donations.” Ellis noted that she, individually, is not typically included in the thank-you.

Beyond monetary contributions, Nefzger said that Kate Baumgartner `15, technical director for theatre, dance and performance studies, provided them with College resources, allowing GHS to use props and set pieces.“It really made for a collaborative process that really created a

Grinnell High School presents "Crimes of the Heart" Vonda's Flowers and Gifts makes Grinnell's creativity bloom

super cool end result,” said Nefzger, “it was nice to be able to say that the college in our community was able to help make the production what it was.”

Nefzger said that she learned a lot from their first run as director, from wrangling props to navigating complicated high school schedules. The show, having been in the works since November, is the result of months of work from Nefzger and her students.

In a play all about complicated personal relationships, Nefzger said that the students worked hard to understand their characters’ backstories and motivations. She said the cast did an activity in which she would tell one of the actors playing the main three sisters a secret that their character was hiding from the other two. The student would then need to incorporate that secret into their acting.

“We played around a lot with familial relationships and relationships with people in their lives in general,” Nefzger said, “and just kind of had really awesome conversations around reaction.”

Nefzger said she was pleased with her students and her first production. She said that she is consistently impressed with the amount of activities students are able to balance.

“I just am really proud of them [the students], and hope that they are proud of what they did,” said Nefzger. “It was just a joy for me to see, start to finish, what they were able to accomplish.”

Drake Community Library offers oral history workshop on March 13

By George Kasinski kosinski@grinnell.edu

On Monday, March 13, from 3-4:30 p.m., the Drake Community Library will host a workshop on conducting oral history in partnership with Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, professor and department chair of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) at Grinnell College.

The workshop will be led by two specialists in the field of recording and sharing oral history. Hannah Viti is a podcast producer, DJ and audio engineer, described in the Drake Community Library’s press release for the upcoming event as “[specializing] in creative communication that promotes deep listening and engagement and [using] sound to tell stories and document life.” Meanwhile, Ariel Mejia is an audio artist, producer, educator, and oral historian with expertise across a wide range of media formats.

Together, Viti and Mejia will facilitate two workshops — one for students in Beauboeuf-Lafontant’s class, as well as the event at the Drake Community Library. Viti has collaborated with Beauboeuf-Lafontant since her time at DePauw University, where the latter was her advisor. She said that the two of them recently reconnected as part of Baboeuf-Lafontant’s work on a project about Edith Renfrow Smith `37, the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College. “I believe it was last summer when the stars aligned and Dr. B proposed that I come and talk to her students,” Viti said.

Viti brings a wealth of experience recording and telling stories in an audio format, and is a strong advocate for the medium. “I started to become kind of obsessed with fo-

cusing on just the sonic realm, and so hearing someone's interview became a lot more interesting to me than reading [it],” she said.

“Traditional historical accounts are written by whoever has the authority and the money, so I think oral histories present an opportunity,” Viti continued. “When we stop saying that one thing happened one certain way, it provides the space for many things to coexist and for many things to be true.”

Viti said it is important for oral historians to let interviewees represent their own, unadulterated personal experiences. “We are concerned with how the person makes meaning out of their own story, and we regard the interviewee as the expert of that story,” she said. “We're trying to create what we call a generative experience rather than extractive experience from the interview process.”

Monique Shore `90, technical administrator at the Drake Community Library, echoed Viti’s sentiment. “When someone retells their own story, it's more likely to capture kind of the impact of an event in terms of the complicated emotions or the things that were super joyous or super difficult,” she said. “There’s power in hearing a story told through an individual’s own words that can get lost otherwise.”

Viti and Shore each mentioned that oral histories are particularly important because they give visibility to otherwise underrepresented or marginalized narratives, and Viti specifically related this to her work producing the podcast Unboxing Queer History. “Oral history is an amazing way to help people tell their queer narratives with a lot of agency and with a lot of concern for how things like trauma are recorded,” she said.

“A lot of oral historians believe that it can be a tool for social change. A lot of times we are focused on voices and events and histories that are pretty much left out of a lot of different, you know, formal histories. I think it privileges, accepts and loves many ways of knowing,” she added. With a focus on the Grinnell community, Shore said that she hopes the workshop will encourage more people to get involved in local oral history and continue to expand the Drake Community Library’s already extensive archive. She specifically mentioned Voices from the Past, a 1992 oral history project conducted by the Friends of Stewart Library ––now the Drake Community Library –– which collected the memories of Grinnell residents throughout seminal historical moments such as the Great Depression and WWII.

“We really see our local history collection as the unique thing that we can offer to the world,” Shore said. She added that Grinnell is incredibly lucky as the Drake Community Library, the Grinnell Historical Museum and the Grinnell College Archive are all dedicated to preserving local memories of the past.

At the event, Viti and Mejia will begin with a presentation on why oral history is important, followed by demonstrations of techniques for conducting interviews and recording audio. “I'm really excited to see what people in the community are already doing, and how we might be able to lend some system support to these projects,” Viti said.

Due to the hands-on nature of the workshop, space at the event will be limited to 20 participants. To register, attendees are encouraged to call the Drake Community Library or visit their website for more information.

CONTRIBUTED BY DONETTE ELLIS

Grinnell College makes monetary donations and contributes props to Grinnell High School for theatrical shows.

A poet in exile: Phan Nhiên Hạo with Hai-Dang Phan at Writers@Grinnell

By George Kosinski kosinski@grinnell.edu

Phan Nhiên Hạo’s poems are short, sincere bursts of life which in simple language capture precise impressions of incredibly complex feelings and emotions, intimately portraying the history of a country, a man and his journey into exile. During the second Writers@Grinnell event of the spring semester on March 2, Hạo and Hai-Dang Phan, associate professor of English, poet and translator, alternated between English and the original Vietnamese to great effect. They rendered the distance, liminality and echoes of memory contained within each verse before a rapt audience of Grinnell College students in the multipurpose room of the Humanities and Social Studies Center (HSSC).

Since arriving in the United States as a refugee in 1991, Hạo has published several poetry collections in Vietnamese — “Radio Mùa Hè” in “Summer Radio,” 2019, “Chế Tạo Thơ Ca 99-04” in “Manufacturing Poetry,” 2004 and “Thiên Đường Chuông Giấy” in “Paradise of Paper Bells,” 1998. His English-translated poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies as well as two books — “Night, Fish and Charlie Parker,” translated by Lin Dinh and published in 2005, and, most recently, “Paper Bells,” translated by HaiDang Phan and published in 2020, which was among the 10 books on the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards Longlist for poetry in translation and shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association’s 2021 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. He currently lives in Illinois, where he works as an academic librarian at Northern Illinois University.

Hạo was born and raised in Kon Tum, a small city in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. He was drawn to poetry at a young age, and he described his family’s extensive library of South Vietnamese and translated European literature. “I read a lot as a kid, and I was a very good student in literature,” he said. “I started to write when I was in my teen years, and then I became more serious in college.”

Hạo said that in many ways, the Vietnam War has defined him as a writer. Though he was only a child during the fighting, he still saw the devastation which it inflicted. In his poetry, Hạo examines the trauma of the war’s aftermath, focusing specifically on the hardship wrought upon his family — formerly officials in the deposed South Vietnamese government. “My family life changed dramatically by the time the war

ended,” Hạo said. “People like us were punished. After 1975, we lived in hardship, not only us but many in the South. That changed my perspective because I always feel like I am punished, discriminated [against] politically, because of my family background.” This ultimately forced Hạo to leave Vietnam. “I just didn’t see a future there for myself,” he said.

As an immigrant in the United States, writing poetry gave Hạo a voice to express the anguish which he and his family endured, unhindered by government censorship. “Our suffering after the war could not be talked about in Vietnam,” he said.

“Only when I was able to get out could I talk and write about that. The impact of the aftermath of the war affected my family and myself tremendously. It shaped the way I look at life. I always have a sense that I need to talk about my story, and I need to talk about the history of the South, which has definitely shaped me as a writer.”

Hạo also incorporates his journey as an immigrant into his poetry, evoking sensations of isolation and loss as well as the immense power — both positive and negative — which memory may wield. “Being a Vietnamese writer in America, I have two important concerns,” he said.

“First is my memory about Vietnam, my sense of history, the past and the war, while the other is my life as an immigrant in the United States. I came here and I did all kinds of odd jobs — working as a newspaper delivery person, working as a janitor, working in factories. I went through all the typical experiences that an immigrant has to go through, and that’s also affected my writing.”

Phan added.

Ultimately, Hạo views his poetry as a call to remember, reaching out to the nation and people from which he was compelled to flee. “I want to talk to people in Vietnam today, to a younger generation, about the past,” he said. “Children growing up nowadays just read the official narrative of the government. I want to tell my story as an immigrant, as a refugee, as a person coming from the South. I want to provide this perspective to people of Vietnam. I may write in English someday, but I write in Vietnamese because that is the audience I most want to connect with.” Hạo added that online publication has vastly improved his ability to escape censorship, share his work with people in Vietnam and form a global literary community.

Phan, however, noted that Hạo still cannot publish his work in Vietnam due to government restriction. “He is writing into the void, writing with a possibility of no audience,” Phan said. “So each poem itself demands and imagines that there is an audience, and each one contains the preservation and the creation of a voice. I find that very powerful and very humane to claim that you have a voice and a subject position.”

doesn’t sound because I don’t have an audience here. But even though it's quiet, it’s still a bell. I just keep writing, even if not many people read my writing.”

Though Hạo’s primary goal is sharing his voice with Vietnamese readers, he said that he views translation as a critical way to share his message with a larger audience, saying, “because of translation, I’m able to reach a large audience of English language readers who hopefully can find something in common in my writing.”

Speaking on the translation process, Hạo said that he feels lucky to have Phan as a translator. “Translation is never perfect, but Hai Dang is a great writer, and he is very sensitive to my poems,” Hạo said. “His translation is very close to the original, but Hai Dang also has his own voice and his own interpretation of certain images and words in Vietnamese.”

of its context,” Hạo said.

Likewise, Phan stressed the importance of the resonance between his experience and Hạo’s, adding that, “he gave me a kind of memory that wasn’t mine, which is connected to my family and my family’s history.” Just as Hạo sees his poetry as a necessary voice, remembering stories that are too often suppressed, Phan sees his translation as calling attention to incredibly important voices which American audiences often overlook. “Hạo reminded me, and reminds all of us, that there are some really interesting and amazing writers living in the United States who work in different languages, and no one knows about them, so translation can be a way to shine a light on their work and advocate for it,” Phan said.

Phan stated that Hạo’s poems continue the tradition of poets in exile, residing in a state of liminality, belonging entirely to neither Vietnam nor the U.S. “His writing is a uniquely, worldly kind of global, yet at the same time it’s rooted in a very particular historical, cultural matrix of South Vietnamese living in Vietnam after the war and immigrating to the U.S.,”

Hạo likened this unique position of his to the metaphor of a paper bell, namesake of one of his poems and title of his most recent English-language collection. “A bell is supposed to be made of bronze, so when you hit it there is sound,” he said. “A paper bell doesn’t make any sound, and that’s the idea. My voice can’t be heard because I write in Vietnamese, because I’m an immigrant and my life is very isolated. The paper bell is a way of saying that I’m a writer who has a bell, but it

Phan, a distinguished poet in his own right, first encountered Hạo’s poetry through translation as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1990s. “Artistically, I was drawn to the poems because they are heavily image-driven and they have this surrealist impulse that is still truly rooted in reality, which I believe is where their social and political force originates.”

Certain parallels also link Hạo and Phan — both were born in the same province of Vietnam, though Phan’s family left the country much earlier than Hạo, settling in Wisconsin, and both are also deeply engaged with the Vietnamese literary community from their homes in the United States. “I think Phan has a great sympathy for my writing and a deep understanding

Speaking on the significance of Hạo’s visit to Grinnell, Phan stated, “it's a unique opportunity to meet and encounter a Vietnamese diasporic writer, a writer in exile, a writer with a very unique path who reminds us that sometimes being a writer is not just about publishing with the big publishing houses and having agents, or popular books, but maybe it's just writing and hoping that you'll find an audience.”

Hạo and Phan continue to collaborate on translation projects, working towards expanding the voice of Vietnamese literature in the United States and globally.

Meanwhile, the Writers@ Grinnell series continues with Sandra Lim and Gabrielle Calvocoressi on Tuesday, April 11 with a 4:15 p.m. roundtable discussion in HSSC room S1325 and an 8 p.m. reading in the Joe Rosenfield Center (JRC) room 101.

Fear, faith and hope in “Arbor Falls”

By Oliver Wolfe wolfeoli@grinnell.edu

This past weekend, the Grinnell theatre, dance and performance studies (TDPS) department unveiled its interpretation of “Arbor Falls,” a poetic play written by Caridad Svich. The abstract work is a new part of Svich’s seven-play cycle entitled “American Psalm,” and through its immersive atmosphere and striking dialogue, it invites the audience to reflect on themes of community, spirituality, communication and change. This rendition is the second

time ever that this show has been officially performed on stage.

The script leaves many choices up to the artists staging it — it is set in the small town of Arbor Falls, but it does not specify where this town is or when the events take place. Additionally, all but one of the characters are unnamed, and none of them have specified genders.

The plot revolves around the moral turmoil of a preacher in their small-town church. The style, feel and behavior of the church are reminiscent of Christianity, but with close attention to the language used in worship,

it becomes clear that this church’s faith is something else — something unique. The central conflict is introduced when a needy traveler comes into the town and begins attending the congregation. The townspeople are afraid of this outsider and begin to gossip. Jen Shook, director of the show and assistant professor of TDPS, said, “This is literal xenophobia. There’s nothing that makes them immediately visibly different than other people in the town, but they just aren’t known. They’re just different and new, and people are freaked out by something

different and new.”

For Shook, the play’s lyrical writing and abstract nature does not prevent it from offering a rich exploration into deeply relevant and poignant questions — in fact, it enables it. “This play, to me, is about a crisis of community — it’s about the feeling of fear and the myth of scarcity, closing down possibilities … but being able to find hope, and possibility and emergence anyway,” said Shook. “It’s also about the way that we get stuck in old systems and institutions that are no longer serving us,” she continued. “We have to remember that we don’t actually need the systems, we need the people.”

For Elle Lewis-Eme `23, who plays the preacher’s lover, it’s about the fragility of community and the difficulty of communication. “There’s just so much misunderstanding of what’s happening, especially between the preacher and the lover,” she said. “We [the lover and the preacher] almost lost everything that we’ve worked for because we didn’t even think about the consequences of our actions and the way that we were talking.”

Grinnell’s performance of “Arbor Falls” boasted a complex and immersive set involving an original soundscape, a hypnotic video backdrop and intricate lighting. This is largely thanks to three artists — Julia Corbett, guest artist for sound and lighting design, Erin HowellGritsch, resident costume designer, and Quinn Legge, guest artist for

scenic and projection design — who all contributed massively to the project.

The show, given the themes of community and small-town life, is particularly relevant for those of us who live in Grinnell. “There’s definitely a sense of being stuck in a place that feels removed from the outside world but threatened by the outside world,” Shook said regarding the setting of the play.

Jen Shook Director of "Arbor Falls" and Assistant Professor of TDPS

The broad framework of the play granted the performers a unique opportunity — they had a lot of autonomy to explore the ways that “Arbor Falls” relates to their own identity and experiences. “There’s a lot of dramaturgical [work], understanding the script and then trying to draw out what we see in the script,” said Shook. “It’s intentionally scripted so that none of the characters have predetermined identity markers. None of them have predetermined gender, or race or ethnicity. It’s really based on the people you cast,” she continued. “Each actor got to determine what they wanted their character to be.”

PAUL HANSEN

"Arbor Falls" featured the work of guest designers Julia Corbett for sound and lighting and Quinn Legge for scenic and projection.

This play, to me, is about a crisis of community.

PAUL HANSEN

Phan (left) and Hạo (right) spoke on memory, belonging and disaporic identity in Hạo's poetry.

The paper bell is a way of saying that I’m a writer who has a bell but it doesn’t sound, because I don’t have an audience here. But even though it's quiet, it’s still a bell.

Phan Nhiên Hao

Men’s tennis extends 19-year MWC win streak

By Nadia Langley langleyn@grinnell.edu

Only 10 meters of open court separated Henry Bridgers `24 from his opponent. Across the net, Central College’s Matthew Den Adel `23 loomed at a staggering 6 feet 9 inches tall, perhaps intimidating at first glance, but Bridgers’ confidence did not waver. The Grinnell College men’s tennis team did not enter their match against Central College as the underdog, and Bridgers only confirmed this with a decisive 6-1, 6-2 win, closing the match out in 2 sets.

Over the weekend of March 4-5, the men’s tennis team faced off against Central College and Cornell College, the latter being their first conference match of the season. They led sweeping victories in both the team’s singles and doubles matches.

Notable wins of the weekend included Leo Esztergomi `24 and Aiden Klass `25 in their 8-1 doubles match against Central College and Wilder Cooke `25 with a 6-0, 6-0 closeout in his singles match against Central in the Charles Benson Bear `39 Recreation and Athletic Center Field House. Against Cornell College, the Pioneers took the lead with wins from Lucas Willett `26 in a 6-0, 6-0 singles victory and an 8-0 doubles win for Sam Rudenberg `25 and Bridgers.

When asked about the matches, Klass and Rudenberg commended the other’s prowess on the court. “Sam was ripping forehands,” Klass said of his teammate’s gameplay against Cornell. Not to be outdone, Rudenberg described Klass’ serves with admiration — “I was sitting there trying to return serves and warmup, and I just couldn’t touch anything,” Rudenberg said, referring to the pre-match volleys between the two.

Grinnell approached both matches, against Cornell and Central, ea-

ger to defend their crown after previously beating both teams last season. The match against Cornell College was especially critical as it marked their 173rd victory in the Midwest Conference winning streak that they have maintained since 2004.

“It was definitely one of those things that I came in feeling pressure about, it being my second year,” said Zack Hasenyager, head coach of the men’s tennis team. “I didn’t want to ruin that streak, and thankfully, we haven’t done that yet.”

Beyond continuing to lead the pack in their conference, Hasenyager said one of his main goals this season is for the team to advance within the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III rankings. How the team performs in their matches lined up for spring break will be a good indication for how close they are to achieving this goal.

While this streak does not mean they have won every individual singles or doubles match against a conference foe in the last 19 years, it means the team is winning every Midwest Conference match-up.

Rudenberg, Cooke and Klass said they have a pretty clear idea what will carry their team through to the national championships, and it has to do with the depth of their bench. As Cooke explained, the skill of the Grinnell players who are not starting often excels past that of their opponents’ bench-

es. “Most teams, I would say, that we’re losing to — we’re probably going to beat them if we play 12 on 12 instead of 6 on 6,” Cooke said.

Besides the depth of talent in their lineup, the team’s confidence and the players’ support of one another plays an integral role in ensuring their future success, said Rudenberg.

Cooke admitted he played a bit too tight at the last match, holding back the full power of his swings in favor of hitting the ball softly and waiting for his opponent to miss. Cooke explained that more than anything, he was playing a mental game that comes down to having confidence in one’s own skill.

“For reference,” Klass cut in, “he can probably hit the ball harder than anyone else on the team, but he won’t do it.” When Cooke realized the impact that confidence could have on his gameplay, he said it was a game changer.

“I say to my coach, ‘what I just

discovered, confidence is everything about tennis,’ and of course, to that he said, ‘I’ve been telling you this for years,’” said Cooke.

Looking forward to their match against tthe University of Wisconsin (UW)-Eau Claire which they played this past Saturday, March 11, the players noted it would be a bit more challenging than what they have faced against recent competitors. With the same regional ranking, UW-Eau Claire lost to Grinnell last season, but the match was on Grinnell’s home turf. “I think they’re going to have a little bit of an extra incentive to beat us,” Bridgers said.

“We know going into it that it’s going to come down to a few points here or there in deciding the ultimate winner,” said Hasenyager.

The results of the March 11 match against UW-Eau Claire can be found on the Grinnell College Athletics website. Grinnell College’s next match will be in California against the University of Redlands on March 25.

Pioneers break records at indoor track and field championships

nell said that this year’s team was particularly strong in long-distance events compared to prior seasons.

In addition to the athletes’ record-breaking performances, Burnell also said that one of the highlights of this season thus far was the community building.

Burnell said that the success of the team at the championship went beyond the numbers and outcomes. Rather, she attributed the success to what she called “the athletes’ desire to be a part of something bigger than individual performance.”

“That is something that’s much less tangible but much more meaningful,” said Burnell.

Regarding the team atmosphere, Carchidi said, “It’s an environment that encourages hard work but without too much pressure.”

Edassery said that one of the best moments of the tournament was being able to stand on the podium with her relay team.

After months of preparation, members of the track and field teams achieved record-breaking performances, cementing their names in Pioneer history. At the Midwest Conference (MWC) indoor track and field championship on Feb. 24 and 25, Grinnell College athletes broke two school records, with others achieving second- or third-best times in program history.

“This is definitely one of the strongest team performances we’ve had on the whole for both men and women,” said Sarah Burnell `14, assistant track and field coach.

Ian Clawson `26 scored a record performance in the weight throw event, throwing a toss of 54-5 1/2. His throw earned him third in the event.

A newcomer to indoor track and field, Eva Carchidi `24 broke the school record for the 60m dash with a time of 8.04 seconds. She would later place second in the event fi-

nals with a time of 8.07 seconds.

Lucas Fadden `26 earned the title of MWC Newcomer of the Year after placing second in the 60m dash and third in the 400m.

second in the women’s 400m finals, and a team consisting of Edassery, Ava Taylor `25, Maile Crowe `25 and Athena Frasca `23 placed second in the 4x200m relay with a time of 1:48.56, the second best in program history.

Keely Miyamoto `26 won the 3000m race with a time of 10:18.91, the third-best time in the College’s history. Miyamoto attributed their performance to their preparation and warmup with their teammates immediately before the race.

According to Miyamoto, they prepared for the race with two of their teammates by practicing laps while listening to music. Miyamoto said that it was this connection that helped push them to perform as they did.

“I knew it was going to be fun to run with them,” said Miyamoto about their teammates.

Additionally, Brian Goodell `24 won the 5000m run, earning his second career MWC title. His time of 15:08.75 was the fastest time for the Pioneers since 2006.

Sonia Edassery `23 came in

Grinnell’s men’s track team placed third in the conference, while the women’s team placed fourth. Last year, the teams placed fourth and fifth respectively — Bur-

“[It’s] one of the best feelings ever,” she said, “because you’re all putting in the work together.”

Following the conclusion of the Midwest Conference championships, the track team is now

moving forward to preparing for their outdoor season, which concludes with the outdoor track and field Midwest Conference championships from May 12-23.

Burnell said that this past conference is an opportunity for the team to assess itself and improve upon weaker areas. To Burnell, the team’s performance at the conference is a good sign that the team is moving in the right direction.

“I think we have a really good foundation,” said Burnell. “That tells us we’re doing things in the right way. And now, it’s just a matter of continuing to do that and pressing the limits a little to see how much we have left in the tank.”

CONTRIBUTED BY TED SCHULTZ

Sam Rudenberg `25 (above) and Henry Bridgers `24 (not pictured) beat Cornell College in a doubles match 8-0 at the March 5 match. Grinnell won 9-0.

I say to my coach, ‘what I just discovered, confidence is everything about tennis,’ and of course, to that he said, ‘I’ve been telling you this for years.’

Wilder Cooke `25

CONTRIBUTED BY TED SCHULTZ Deuce Daniel `26 (above) won his singles match against Central College 6-0 and 6-2 on March 4. Grinnell won the match 9-0.

CONTRIBUTED BY TED SCHULTZ

Ian Clawson `26 (above) broke the school record for the weight throw with a 54-5 1/2 toss at the Midwest Conference indoor track and field championship on Feb. 24-25. He placed third in the event.

By Molly Wilcoxson wilcoxso2@grinnell.edu

I think we have a really good foundation ... That tells us we’re doing things in the right way. And now, it’s just a matter of continuing to do that and pressing the limits a little to see how much we have left in the tank.

Sarah Burnell `14, Assistant Track and Field Coach

This is definitely one of the strongest team performances we’ve had on the whole for both men and women.

Sarah Burnell `14, Assistant Track and Field Coach

By Lucia Cheng chengluc@grinnell.edu

Monterey Park is my hometown but not my home. On Lunar New Year, Monterey Park — the first ever Asian American suburb — was the site of a mass shooting. Monterey Park is also the city where, according to my parents, I will die.

Grinnell was a place where I was supposed to learn resilience, where I could learn to feel safe. A place where I could live up to my potential and be ready to go out into the world, making a difference. But the shooting has shown me what a temporary place this college is. I have the future hanging over my head when I think about how the past haunts me.

Whenever I got sick, my mom would tell me, with spittle flying out of her mouth, “Don’t complain to me about your pain. If it hurts that bad, just die.” Or, “You’ll understand how much I’ve done for you when I’m dead.” So in the wake of the shootings, I don’t dream of bullets tearing through my body. I don’t really dream anymore — I don’t really sleep. I’m scared of being unconscious because what my mom said about my complaining might come true, that because of me voicing my pain, I need to die.

I thought I had escaped my trauma at Grinnell. But as it turns out, my racial trauma and mental illnesses have combined to become something bigger than me. I am the byproduct of a system that chewed me up and spit me back out. My desire to become a changemaker was exploited by Grinnell, and I am left wondering what I have to offer besides the unshakeable conviction I have that I am a failure. What gives me the right to talk about change if I can’t even change myself?

“It’s not just an issue for Asian-American students. It’s an issue for everyone,” said Sharon Quinsaat, Filipina and assistant professor of sociology who teaches SOC 255: Sociology of Asian America.

At this college, we constantly talk about our duties and responsibilities to society. As a person who claims marginalized identities, I feel the pressure

to be outspoken because otherwise, who will step up and say something? Call it my savior complex, call it moral obligation, but I am at the point where I don’t know if anything I have to offer will be able to change this place for the better. After four years at this institution, of living through COVID and watching the people around me fight for even a scrap of dignity and recognition, for real connections and to be seen as real people, I am grieving this college and our society, but most of all, my place in this world. I am watching, helpless, as student organizations snuff out one-by-one, as individuals feel increasingly isolated, as activism dies on this campus. Or maybe I’m just a jaded fourth year.

comes next. In high school, my goal was to escape. I thought college would be my happy ending where everything would be okay as long as I was with people who shared the same values as me. I wanted to do so much here, to leave this place better than I found it. If I just push towards graduation, what happens to the part of me that wants things to change? The future looks like a black hole. If I’m left without a goal, how do I keep surviving? In the wake of the shootings, how can I willingly walk into that black hole where it feels like everything falls apart, with the odds stacked against me?

“I’m always hopeful. If you’re an activist, you have to be hopeful,” said Quinsaat.

was violated. It felt like a reflection of my future,” Won said. “It was everyone who had ever called that home, the feeling of comfort, safety and community that got completely uprooted.”

I can’t make you care, because to care is a heavy burden, to live with unanswered questions is to constantly be sick with uncertainty — and how could I ask you to answer these questions for me? How could I ask you to make a home for me? This college tells us that it will be the place for us to celebrate our differences, that it will become our new home away from home. But what if I never had a home in the first place? What if I have become too different?

“I was the thing that was wrong because I was the one that was different,” Won said.

the question I ask myself daily — what am I doing all of this for?

People say I care too much, but how could I not if this space I occupy has the potential to make an impact on someone? If you’re reading this, would you understand me? I am so tired of feeling lonely all the time.

In hopes of finding solace, I reached out to people from the Asian American Association and got into contact with Alyson Won `25, who feels tension between the generational gaps in her family. Her father’s side has lived in San Francisco’s Chinatown for three decades. Her mother, in comparison, is generation zero, having moved to San Francisco from Taiwan. She told me, “The idea of coming together in community is both beautiful and exhausting.”

Occasionally, people ask what they can do to support me. I never know what to say. I don’t have any particular call to action, but maybe it will be enough for me to tell you about

Grinnell asks us to care about everything, everywhere, all at once. It’s exhausting. And too often, the answers these discussions come to are, “Wait it out,” or “There’s nothing you can do about it” or “You just have to graduate.” How can we come together in community if the end of each discussion is simply that we have no answers?

The problem with putting my head down and waiting for graduation is that it doesn’t quell the fear of what

After the shootings, I don’t know how I’m supposed to have hope anymore. I can’t tell if I am who I am because of my background. I had always imagined myself as someone who tries to stand up for the right things, but now, I wonder when all of my work will pay off, when it will all be worth it for some temporary form of happiness.

I feel like I am living out the epilogue of my life. So what now? What comes after the happy ending of getting into college? Why is it so hard to connect to other people? To come together, is trauma-dumping the only thing we can look forward to?

“Maybe the only thing that can unify all the Asians is a shared trauma from white people. It sucks that the unifying thing is in opposition to something else,” Won said.

L.A. “was a place that was violated. It felt like a reflection of my future”

“Knowing that a place [L.A.] that I feel very comfortable in and wanted to call my home, that was a place that

Office Hours: Caleb Elfenbien, Religious Studies & History

By Raffay Piracha piracha@grinnell.edu

In Office Hours, Raffay Piracha `25 sits down with faculty to learn how their scholarship provides them with equipment for living

I tend to wince when people say they “aren’t religious.” There’s a lot to say about how we define religion — most of the time, we mean membership in an organized group or worship space, reading from some curriculum or embodying a public identity. But to me, religiosity is everywhere — it’s in the private habits we inherit and reproduce to better our well-being (e.g. showering), it manifests as public ritual (like attending church, grand openings and concerts) and it presents especially in the unique and routine observation of cultural norms (like driving on the road and not the sidewalk).

One of my more visible regiments is the curation and collection of sweaters — I adore an oversized cable-knit that feels like a blanket and looks like a work of art. A diagram of various cable stitches and their origins in the Aran islands is plastered on my dorm room wall — one might say I am “religiously” into sweaters.

But in the same way that some don’t claim (or even reject) religion, not all of us say we like fashion — yet we miraculously appear clothed in

public spaces every day. This week, I’m treading into religious studies to complicate my idea of fashion and think just a little about how, through clothing, private rituals interplay with public life.

I think a lot of us have our favorite dressers on campus, and one of mine is Caleb Elfenbein. At the confluence of loving woven blazers and designer sneakers, Elfenbein has both mastered the art of dressing classically professorial and — on more relaxed days — elegantly modern. Crucially, Dr. Elfenbein is a history and religious studies professor with a current (and apt) focus on the nature of cultural habits.

So to better understand the private underpinnings of his wardrobe, I asked Caleb Elfenbein to reflect with me on the habit of curating fashion.

***

The word on the street is that you started wearing ties because you didn’t want to be conflated with other students at your first teaching gig. Is that a myth?

Not a myth. My first teaching job was the year after I graduated from college. My senior year, I had gone to a local community college for all my classes. I really didn’t like high school and was a super mediocre student until that year. And I realized, oh, I actually really like learning. I had

The Scarlet & Black Staff Spring 2023

Nadia Langley

Allison Moore

Lucia Cheng

Ellianna Cierpiot

Eleanor Corbin

Lilli Morrish

Mohammad Igbaria

Jandry Perez Garcia

Millie Peck

Samuel Bates

Nora Kohnhorst

Maddi Shinall

such an amazing experience that year and developed lifelong relationships with my teachers there. They were in a super pinch and asked me if I wanted to come back and teach a section of American politics. I was younger than most of the students in the class, which was an amazing experience. I’m so glad my first teaching experience was at a community college, but I really felt like I needed to dress very professionally to be taken somewhat seriously in the classroom. Over time, I started thinking about the way that I dress when I’m in a particular professional space as a way that I communicate the seriousness with which I take the task at hand. Being in a small town, living basically on campus, and having so much of my life here, dressing differently for work helps me have some boundaries in my life. And that’s just very helpful for me. So the ritual of getting dressed in the morning, I really love.

Would you say this is your favorite ritual?

I don’t think it’s my favorite ritual. I do like it a lot, it’s up there. In part because as I’m doing it I’m thinking about what I’m doing during the day, and it is helping me make decisions. It means that I’m trying to enter the day with some intention, like how am I going to move through this day and how does the way that I’m presenting my-

self reflect how I think about my role in this day? The pandemic changed that a little bit. I used to wear a shirt and tie — don’t do that anymore. One recent thing is that I really love sneakers. I don’t know why that happened.

Did you skip over them in your adolescence?

I would say the only really special pair of sneakers I had, and they were special in part because, growing up with a single mother, [I knew] what she had to do to afford Jordans when I was 13. That would have been 1989, so they were pretty new at that point. And so they felt really special. But I didn’t go down the sneaker path until, I don’t know, a couple years ago I saw a pair of Jordans and I was like, they’re just so beautiful. And so that’s kind of what started it and I’ve gone down that path a little bit. I think for me, part of it is ritual. Like, I love cleaning sneakers, taking care of them. I think, again with some ambivalence around liking things, I think taking really good care of things is one way I reconciled myself to the fact that I like things.

Yes, for me, liking things is just utterly embarrassing, and I’m trying to work on that.

It’s a little embarrassing. Admitting that I really like sneakers. I spend time looking at sneakers, it has been embarrassing to me because liking

I’ve absorbed so much rhetoric about the “model minority” while growing up that it has become ingrained in my being. I grew up in the San Gabriel Val- ley, where Asian Americans are the majority. Even there, I was different. I had lofty ambitions, not to get into the Ivy League but to be able to make a difference in the world, to be able to utilize my unique position to speak up. However, the constant strain of pushing myself to be better and better has taken its toll on my body, and I can barely hold onto my will to live through the day-to-day. And I have to ask myself why I am like this in the face of white mediocrity. I try so hard, and yet some white people are content when they accidentally miss class, when they hand in the bare minimum of an argument as a paper, when they use ChatGPT for a class discussion. They brush it off, knowing that they don’t have to be seen as a representative of anything. That it’s not encoded in their blood to make things better.

And I can’t fault you for that. For most of us, it’s tiring enough just to get through classes, to get the degree, then get the fuck out of here. Except, I will remember each and every time people have failed me.

>> Continued on the sandb.com

things can bleed into excess really easily.

Yes, and a lot of people, me included, sometimes pretend to not care. I think a lot of people care. Being able to be honest, and maybe a little critical of our own consumption practices is probably good. Part of it, for me too, is middle age and how do I want to move through the aging process? What does it mean to age gracefully? But I’ll also admit to doing some research on how you can continue to present yourself in a way that connects with things that are current without being the old guy that dresses like a teenager? So I admit to doing that kind of research. Part of the sneaker thing, for me, is this moment in life where I’m kind of imagining what does it means to be a middle-aged man right now?

you’re reading this, would you understand me?: A look back on four years at Grinnell as an Asian

It’s not just an issue for Asian-American students. It’s an issue for everyone”

Sharon Quinsaat Assistant Professor of Sociology

EVAN HEIN

Lucia Cheng `23 reflected on her college experience as an Asian American student.

OWEN BARBATO Caleb Elfenbien rocking a fabulous outfit.

The idea of coming together in community is both beautiful and exhausting.

Alyson Wong `25

The guy I’ve been seeing finally invited me over, and when I showed up, I found out he lives at a funeral home.

-Hoping the next date’s at the cemetary

This week, Charlotte Krone `24 and Nora Kohnhorst `25 polled 100 students, asking the topical question: Spring Cleaning or Right Leaning? HSSC

88% Right Leaning 12% Spring Cleaning Right

Spring Cleaning

So who’s going to make the tit-head “Cocaine Squirrel”

-Next Steven Spielburg