Vol. CXXXIII No. 20

VOL. CXXXIII NO. 20

FRIDAY, ApRIl 15, 2022

CLAREMONT, CA

Proposed bill would Journalist Soledad O’Brien talks bias increase aid for and tough conversations at Pomona California private college students AMARA MIR & MARCELLA TODD A pending California Senate bill would increase the amount of state financial aid available to California residents studying at the 5Cs and other private colleges, though the amount of aid students receive may not change at institutions that already meet one hundred percent of financial need.

California’s A and B “Cal Grants” are the state’s main form of financial aid to low- and middle-income students, offering competitive grants to students at community colleges, state schools (the California State University system and the University of California system) and private

schools that meet student loan default rate and graduation rate requirements.

The Cal Grant A helps pay for tuition and fees for educational programs that are at least two academic years long, while the Cal Grant B acts as a living and education-related expenses stipend for educational programs at least one year long.

Currently, Cal Grant funding for private schools depends on the number of community college transfer students the school accepts.

53 eligible students at Scripps College received an average

See AID on page 2

ANNA CHOI • THE STUDENT lIFE

“If you want to solve a problem, if you need to figure out how to get to a consensus, you can’t be biased against anyone, or you will not create a good policy,” O’Brien said. “Bias limits the ability to confront real issues.”

MAXINE DAVEY & REIA LI

CAElYN SMITH • THE STUDENT lIFE

The five undergraduate Claremont Colleges provide financial aid with a combination of institutional, state, federal and external funding.

“You have to talk to each other all the time — as painful as it may be at times — about the issues and the biases that separate us,” journalist, documentarian and entrepreneur Soledad O’Brien told in-person and online audiences Monday at Pomona College’s Big Bridges Auditorium.

O’Brien addressed 7C students and staff, as well as members of the Claremont community, at the fifth annual Payton Distinguished Lectureship in honor of Pomona alum and civil rights icon John Payton’s life and work.

Titled “Civil Rights and a World of Possibilities,” O’Brien’s talk focused on the importance of anti-bias perspective in journalism, especially with the critical role that journalists play in maintaining democracy and holding institutions accountable to the people that they serve.

“If you want to solve a problem, if you need to figure out how to get to a consensus, you

can’t be biased against anyone, or you will not create a good policy,” O’Brien said. “Bias limits the ability to confront real issues.”

O’Brien began the lecture by recounting the story of how her parents met in 1958 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a white Australian immigrant and her mother was a Black immigrant from Cuba who came to the United States as a teenager.

They were both Catholic and met at daily mass. On their first date, O’Brien recalled, “every restaurant … would say ‘Yes’ to my dad, ‘You can come in.’ They’d say ‘No’ to my mom.”

O’Brien’s parents eventually got married, but were forced to do so in Washington, D.C. because interracial marriage was illegal at that time in Maryland. Once, O’Brien asked her mom how she managed to raise O’Brien and five other kids in a state where their very existence was against the law, where she’d get spit on while walking down the street.

“She said, ‘We knew America was better than that,’” O’Brien

Kaba and Ritchie reimagine safety at Scripps conference on abolition JENNA MCMURTRY Calling for a reimagination of the carceral state, scholar-activists and abolitionists Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie convened over the weekend as part of the Scripps College’s “Abolition is Feminism, Feminism is Abolition” conference.

Hosting a series of events on the history of Black feminism and how it informs current abolition advocacy today, the three-day conference was held in partnership between the 5Cs’ Intercollegiate Feminist Center, Interrupting Criminalization and the Women’s Foundation California.

This conference isn’t the 5C’s first time hosting an event centered on feminist abolition, according to IFC Director Susan Castagnetto.

Some of the earliest discussions on the topic began in 2000 when Castagnetto was first brought on.

Both Ritchie and Kaba have written extensively on the abolition movement in recent decades, centering their advocacy and books around the intersectionality of prison abolition and inserting a Black feminist approach to the fight against state violence.

Ritchie, who is a visiting pro-

fessor at Scripps this semester as the college’s distinguished O’Brien lecturer, is also the commencement speaker for the college’s class of 2022. Rooted in her experiences as a Black lesbian immigrant and a survivor, her work focuses around ending state violence, in particular against Black women.

Kaba, who participated in the event via Zoom, has founded multiple organizations aimed at ending mass incarceration while centering their efforts on issues surrounding racial justice and gender-based violence.

Promoting their forthcoming co-authored book “No More Police: A Case for Abolition,” which is slated to come out Aug. 30, Kaba and Ritchie touched on the long legacy of abolitionist texts written by organizers that came before them.

For Kaba, much of the work she does today draws inspiration from when she read Barbara Smith’s seminal pamphlet in her twenties, a resource bank to support Black women against state violence through an abolitionist feminist lens, following a series of murders in [city] in 1979.

Ritchie added that Smith’s

initial pamphlet is “very central to illustrating the ways in which Black feminism informs this moment and shapes the movements that we’re seeing right now.”

Kaba added that she acknowledged her connection to Smith’s work because it’s not often that organizers “include [themselves] in the lineages of the histories that came before [them].”

“It isn’t that history provides us with a template for the present, but knowing our history

does help us to ask different and better questions that will help us create the visions in our current moment, that will lead potentially to a better and more liberatory future.”

Described by Kaba as a love letter to organizers, “No More Police” seeks to provide readers with the necessary tools to turn abolitionist theory into action, as part of a contemporary take

See ABOLITION on page 2

JENNA MCMURTY • THE STUDENT lIFE

Scripps’ conference on feminism and abolition is held on Alumni Field.

said, “and I think it’s this that’s really framed a lot of journalism for me.”

Her career in journalism was also motivated by a desire to tell honest, genuine stories of underrepresented people, she said. She recounted her time living in Oakland and working in a newsroom where the executives only printed stories about danger and crime, creating a sensationalized and biased perception of the area.

“I learned very fast [that] if you let others solely tell your story, frame your story and shape your story, there’s a pretty good chance you might not recognize yourself in your story at all,” she said.

O’Brien used these experiences as inspiration to create her own shows and documentaries, anchoring programs on CNN such as “Black in America” and “Latino in America.”

O’Brien mentioned challenges in gaining executive support for these programs, recounting that she was once told, “‘don’t make it too Black.’”

“It’s called ‘Black in America!’” she laughed.

At the event, she showed a clip

See O’BRIEN on page 2

Mudd flood JULIA SCHWARTZ, ELINA LINGAPPA & KATHERINE TAN A seemingly ordinary Monday night turned into a disaster for some Pomona College students, particularly residents of Mudd-Blaisdell and Gibson residence halls, when fire alarms and sprinklers going off forced them to evacuate around 10 p.m.

April 4.

The Mudd basement’s sprinkler was apparently set off by a student trying to hang something in their room, students told TSL, knocking it down and inundating the basement of Mudd with several inches of water. Many students are still grappling with the aftermath more than a week later.

Paayal Ramesh PO ’24, who lives in Mudd, recalled stepping out into the hallway with roommate Aarushi Phalke PO ’24 and seeing her hall mate drenched.

“She came out and she was soaked from head to toe in gas water, like she was reeking of gas,” Ramesh said. “It was just black water all over the floor of

See FLOOD on page 2

SAMSON ZHANG • THE STUDENT lIFE

ARTS & CULTURE Associate Professor of Psychology Sharda Umanath will teach Claremont McKenna College’s first Napier Initiative course, “Effective Learning Across the Lifespan.”

Read more on page 3.

The student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges since 1889

OPINIONS

SPORTS

Fighting with your best friend isn’t a sign of problems in your relationship, Eliza Powers PO ’25 writes. It’s actually a sign of connection. Read more on page 7.

In 1972, the 5C’s offered their first women’s varsity sports, thanks to the newly-passed Title IX which mandated equal numbers of men’s and women’s sports teams.

Read more on page 10.

INDEX: News 1 | Arts & Culture 3 | Opinions 6 | Sports 9

News

pAGE 2

O’BRIEN: Learning from mistakes Continued from page 1 from “Black and Missing,” a fourpart documentary series she helped create for HBO that follows the work of two sisters-in-law who lead the Black and Missing Foundation, which is aimed at spotlighting Black missing persons cases.

Responding to a question about how she was able to push for the series to be made, O’Brien said, “One of the things I really focused on was, regardless of what my subject was, it’s gonna be excellent and … I was responsible for that excellent part of it.”

She also gave practical advice for how to have conversations with people who have differing political views.

“When someone was saying something that felt, especially as a woman of color, like a bit of an attack … I would say ‘That is so interesting.

Tell me why you feel that way,’” O’Brien said. “Number one, it gave you a little distance, but number two, it allowed you to just get more information from people to try to understand them a little bit better.”

However, she recognized the limits of talking to people if they’re not willing to engage in a respectful, thoughtful conversation.

If faced with someone who clearly doesn’t want to listen, O’Brien offered this piece of wisdom from her mother: “Say: ‘You know what?

I’m gonna pray for you,’” drawing laughs and cheers from the audience.

When asked by an audience member about any times she had to face her own bias, O’Brien was quick to own up to a memorable experience in producing her documentary, “Beyond Bravery: The Women of 9/11.”

She remembered blowing off a pitch for coverage of the female heroes present at Ground Zero, believing that this type of coverage of women as rescuers already existed.

When her colleagues pushed her to look at the record, however, she discovered the truth.

“They were right. I was a hundred percent wrong,” she said, going on further to thank them for making her realized her own “stupid arrogance.”

“It really … brought my own bias to bear,” she said. “And it really

made me start talking a lot about bias. You need other people, other diverse voices, to push for things because your own gut is often wrong.”

O’Brien then encouraged her audience to challenge their own biases.

“You can work around your bias. You can talk openly about your bias. You can actually say to people, my bias is this,” she said.

“I find it really problematic when people think they don’t have bias at all … it scares me, because we all do.”

Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Tracy Arwari said she appreciated O’Brien’s transparency.

“It’s really difficult for anybody to be so reflective and so thoughtful about naming what either stands in their way or what they know they need to work through in order to achieve what it is that they want to achieve,” Arwari said. “And I think we could all do a better job of that regardless of what our job is.”

Kayla Hankins PO ’24 came to the talk to learn more about journalism from the perspective of a woman of color successful in the field.

Hankins said that she was surprised by the small ways in which O’Brien got to know communities, like “volunteering or stopping to have small conversations.” “[Something] I’m going to take away from the talk is not being afraid to fall in love with and truly connect to the people you may interview and gather stories from,” Hankins said.

O’Brien ended her lecture by acknowledging current challenges and calling her audience to action.

“Anger and frustration and fear can be blinding. And sometimes the lack of options can be quite depressing,” she said.

“I want to live in a world with possibilities and freedom, a place where we’re all included and respected and willing to dig into tough, uncomfortable conversations. I’ll pass along to you the lessons I’ve learned about how to get there. It takes a lot of work.”

ApRIl 15, 2022

AID: 5Cs already cover need Continued from page 1 of about $9,245 per student in combined A and B Cal Grants for the 2021-22 academic year, according to Vice President for Enrollment Victoria Romero.

The college aims to accept 10 to 15 community college transfer students per year, Romero said via email.

At Pitzer College, eligible students can receive up to $9,084 per year in Cal Grant A funding and $1,656 in Cal Grant B funding. At Pomona College, Cal Grant A funding is the same, at $9,084 per student per year, while Cal Grant B funding is $1,672. At Harvey Mudd College, the maximum combined Cal Grant funding received per student in recent years has been $9,220.

Senate Bill 851, introduced in January by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-25), proposed three primary changes to Cal Grant funding.

First, the bill would eliminate the dependency of funding available to students at private schools on how many transfer students the school accepts.

Second, the bill would require grant awards to adjust with inflation, halting the approximately 50 percent decline in grant value due to inflation since 2001, according to a fact

sheet published by Portantino.

Finally, the bill would provide additional aid to eligible students with dependents at private institutions.

Because all of the 5Cs already meet one hundred percent of demonstrated financial need, an increase in Cal Grant funding would not necessarily affect the total amount of financial aid available to individual 5C students.

The five undergraduate Claremont Colleges provide financial aid with a combination of institutional, state, federal and external funding. State funding accounts for less than 5 percent of need-based financial aid across all 5C schools, and as little as 1.32 percent at Pomona.

Compared to the approximately $490,000 Scripps students received in Cal Grant aid in 202122, Scripps provided $2.9 million in institutional aid, Romero said via email.

At CMC, Cal Grant aid accounts for 11 to 18 percent of needbased aid for eligible students, CMC spokesperson Gilien Silsby said via email.

“With the Cal Grant covering a higher portion of the need-based financial aid, it would increase the pool of institutional funding we have to meet the need of our students,” Silsby said via email.

While the bill may not have a significant impact on the total

SAMSON ZHANG • THE STUDENT lIFE

FLOOD: ‘It looked like a scene out of Titanic’ Continued from page 1 the hallway.”

Phalke said that her hall mate’s eyes were burning from the water which concerned them both.

However, she said that Director of Housing and Operations Frank Bedoya later told them there was no sign of gas.

“Then my concern is, what was the smell? What is in sprinkler water that would do that?” she said.

Ramesh and other students tried to contain the damage amid what she remembered to be complete chaos. She and others put towels under their doors to try to keep the slowly rising water out of their rooms. “[I] walked through the puddle of water to just put everything that I possibly could on the bed,” she said.

“And while I was trying to push that bag to that side of the room, I literally saw all the water seeping into the other corner. And I was just like, this is traumatizing.”

David Ruiz PO ’24 said he was further from the water burst, joking that he initially thought a first-year had set off the fire alarms from burning popcorn.

He evacuated with other students near his room, where they waited outside for a little over 10 minutes. He remembered that the group chat for the floor had several incoming messages, and then a peer texted him that there had been a gas leak, which he initially didn’t

believe.

“We were walking through a little courtyard between Harwood and we smelled something chemical, like something flammable.

I don’t know. But there was a smell that was not supposed to be there,” Ruiz said. “Ultimately, it was determined [by us] to be gasoline.”

According to Ramesh, it took around 45 minutes for anybody to arrive to help in the basement, at which point she was told to leave the building. Thinking it would be a short turnaround, she left her phone in her room as she and the other Muddment residents joined the students already outside.

At that point, Ruiz looked in a window to the basement and saw two to three inches of water above the carpet which continued to rise. He estimated that it eventually reached nearly six inches in depth.

“It looked like a scene out of ‘Titanic’ — not to be dramatic, but it’s true,” he said. “By the end of the night, there were greenboxes floating around the hallway, like there were just objects that were floating in the water.”

Ruiz said that when the fire department eventually opened the front door, water flooded out and flowed nearly 25 feet out of the doorway towards Pendleton Pool.

According to Ruiz, Bedoya did not arrive at the scene until almost midnight, over two hours after the

MARIANA DURAN • THE STUDENT lIFE

The basement of Pomona College’s Mudd Hall was flooded with two to three inches of black water after a sprinkler collapsed from the ceiling of one room.

financial aid for 5C students, it will likely increase financial aid for students at private institutions that cannot guarantee fully meeting financial need.

At the nearby University of Redlands, for example, state funding contributed to 10.36 percent of financial aid, while at the University of La Verne, state funding contributed 17.63 percent, according to the schools’ latest available Common Data Sets.

Opponents of SB 851 worry that the elimination of transfer targets will negatively impact the rates at which private institutions admit community college students as transfers.

“Changes in the Cal Grant program will not negatively impact applicants applying [to Scripps] as a transfer student from a community college,” Romero said via email.

Silsby added that “we believe an increase in the Cal Grant amount for private institutions will broaden our first-year and transfer applicants from California.”

SB 851 was unanimously passed by the Senate Education Committee March 9. On April 4, the bill was placed on “suspense file” by the Senate Appropriations Committee, marking the bill to be considered alongside other substantial fiscal matters once the 2022-23 state budget is prepared in June. If passed, the bill could go into effect as early as July.

initial incident.

At this point in time, students were still not allowed inside the basement due to safety concerns, evoking student frustration. Phalke said it took a long time to shut off the water.

“The rest of the people who lived in Mudd-Blaisdell and Gibson were told to go back and [Muddment residents] were left standing in the cold … with just what we had brought, and there was no clarity, we had to wait,” Ruiz said.

Eventually, Ruiz and six others were let back into their dorms since the water had not fully reached their section of the hall, stopping inches from Ruiz’s door and leaving behind a dark stain.

However, the students whose rooms were inundated were not allowed back in. According to Ruiz, Bedoya told students that there was a housing shortage due to COVID-19 cases and there was no alternative housing for students whose rooms had been flooded.

Bedoya did suggest students could sleep in the lounge of Mudd-Blaisdell, which Ruiz said caused further upset among the students.

Phalke said that Pomona could have handled the situation better.

“Housing is something that should always be guaranteed for every single night that you’re on campus. For something to impact an entire floor and for the college to simply be like, well, we don’t have housing on campus, but you have money,” she said. “We are college students. We don’t have money. Like we can’t find housing somewhere else, just out of the blue.”

She added that she was not upset about the sprinkler being set off accidentally, but was frustrated with Pomona’s lack of support.

Most residents ended up sleeping in friends’ rooms. “[Tuesday] morning, I checked the status of our room. They had this massive fan placed in our room and all the furniture was shifted around,” Phalke said. “But it was not livable. People were coming in and out of our rooms, it was unlocked. Our rooms were unlocked for that whole period of time. All of our stuff was moved and kind of gone through a little bit.”

Phalke added that she emailed Bedoya to receive housing accommodations because the prospect of not having a consistent place to sleep was causing stress, but he responded that her room would be livable by that afternoon.

Only the two students who lived in the room where the sprinklers went off received housing accommodations.

On Tuesday evening, Bedoya

sent out an email thanking students for their patience and informing them that their rooms were done drying and they could return to their rooms that night.

“The next day [the administration was] like, ‘We are so thankful that you were so patient with the situation.’ And I was like, you guys didn’t give us any option. It wasn’t like you were making all these arrangements for us,” Ramesh said. “[Administrators] were literally like, ‘you can’t be in the basement, get out, [you] can’t come back in, can’t retrieve your stuff. Go sleep wherever you can for the night and then we’ll see about it tomorrow.’”

When Ramesh finally entered her room again, she was shocked at the destruction.

“We always knew these roofs [can] slip. The ceilings were fake and shit. But like, we didn’t expect any of them to come down.

You know? Oh god, it was just like, what is happening? And it’s really sad to see your room, or the one thing that actually becomes your home, to get flooded,” she said. “I don’t know, it’s just, I didn’t expect it. But at that time, I just wanted to cry.”

Phalke said that her room was still sticky and wet when she went in the next day. Large fans were also placed in the damaged rooms. One of her hall mates was contact traced and needed to isolate, but their room was too damaged to be in.

According to Ramesh and Phalke, none of the damages to student property are being reimbursed by the college. Bedoya and a Pomona spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Ruiz said he was thankful for other students’ help, in light of the lack of support from the college.

“People were coming from other dorms as late as 12:30 [a.m.] to hug their friends and sit with them,” he said, adding that they brought pillows and blankets to offer to those affected. “And it was a horrible thing. And people weren’t as supported as they should have been. But there was so much support from the community.”

Phalke agreed.

“To have an incident like this happen and then having to figure out everything else on your own and for you to have to come together with other students,” she said. “I think it was a way in which people in our basement kind of bonded together, which I’m very grateful for.”

All of the Mudd residents have now returned to their rooms.

ABOLITION: Kaba imagines a world free of violence Continued from page 1 on the work Smith began.

Ritchie added that while writing the book alongside Kaba, the two focused on emphasizing organizers’ experiences rather than writing from the “ivory tower” of academia. Their forthcoming book aims to reflect the collective effort of feminist abolition while “thinking alongside and as organizers… because it’s all of us grappling together,” when it comes to challenging the current state of the prison system.

For both Kaba, abolition feminism means bringing “a liberatory vision of a world free from all forms of violence, including those produced by the carceral system of surveillance, displacing colonialism and global militarism.”

Kaba adding that creating a more equitable world isn’t possible without an abolition feminist perspective.

“Once you get over that and stop whacking a mole, and you start focusing on the totality of these forms of violence, [you realize they] are often co-constitutive of each other,” she said.

Sophie Adler PZ ‘23 said hearing from speakers who drive meaningful change is an important complement to an education at the 5Cs “At the colleges we are often in a bubble,” Adler said. “I think a lot of the importance of going to things like this is interacting with people who are engaging in this work outside of just academia, intellectualism. The actual work on the ground is probably more important than anything we’re doing in the classroom.”

For the full article, visit tsl.news.

Corrections In Issue 19, photo captions for an article about track and field misidentified Mohammed Ahmed PO ’25 as Logan Spoonemore PO ’25 and Brady Anderson PZ ‘22 as Dante Paszkeicz PO ’22.

TSL regrets the errors.

Arts & Culture

April 15, 2022

pAGE 3

CMC set to offer its inaugural Napier Initiative course this fall VALERIE BRAYLOVSKIY As students are exploring potential classes to take this upcoming fall, “Effective Learning Across the Lifespan” may be the experience they didn’t know they were looking for. An upper-division psychology course, the class’s roster will not only include 5C students, but also local Claremont community elders.

An intergenerational learning opportunity that connects undergraduates to elders, this course is part of the broader Napier Initiative founded in 2010. Although this is the first Napier course at Claremont McKenna College, the classes have been running for 11 years at the 5Cs and are just one aspect of the broader Napier Initiative — a partnership between Pilgrim Place (a local senior community) and the 5Cs. In addition to the Napier courses, the program consists of mentorship and fellowship components, in which two student fellows can win the Napier award which provides them with funding for social impact projects.

Taught by Associate Professor of Psychology Sharda Umanath, the upper-division psychology course is open to all 5C students

by PERM and will be the first Napier course taught at CMC. The course will delve into evidence-based strategies for learning and retention of knowledge, in the classroom and beyond.

“I’m really excited to bridge evidence-based work on learning to what it means to be a lifelong learner,” Umanath said.

Umanath runs the Memory & Aging Laboratory at CMC, where

ClArE MArTiN • THE STUDENT liFE

she conducts research on how knowledge functions in memory and is maintained with healthy aging. She first discovered the Napier Initiative through a colleague and later attended a banquet where she learned more about these intergenerational courses. While preparing to write a National Science Foundation Career Award grant, Umanath developed the idea of creating a Napier class as part of the teaching initiative required

FilM FilES

‘summer of soul’ is a testament to Black unity and pride

for the grant.

“One of the things I wanted to do, in terms of taking the research I was going to do and actually pulling it into the classroom and community, was to teach a Napier class,” Umanath said.

Unlike past Napier courses that have explored a wide variety of topics, such as religion and women in science, this course is directly tied to aging and evidence-based strategies

COUrTESY: SEArCHliGHT piCTUrES

HANNAH ELIOT During the psychedelic summer of the Manson murders and Woodstock ’69, a series of free concerts were held in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park. Featuring names such as Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, BB King, The Staples Singers, Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and The Pips and David Ruffin, the concerts drew an audience of 300,000 people, most of them Black.

Hal Tulchin, a legendary American video and television director, shot the festival and dubbed it ”‘the Black Woodstock.”

Until Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson got his hands on it, footage of the concerts was lost in a basement for 50 years, fading from popular memory.

Questlove’s directorial debut, “Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards. The documentary centers on this footage from the 1969 edition of the Harlem Cultural Festival that he rescued and restored as a passion project.

Questlove — DJ, music historian and founding member of the hip hop band the Roots — is one of only a handful of African American directors who have won an Oscar. Notably, all of these victories have come in the documentary field.

“This is such a stunning moment for me right now, but it’s not about me,” Questlove said in his speech.

“It’s about marginalized people in Harlem that needed to heal from pain. Just know that in 2022, this is not just a 1969 story about marginalized people in Harlem.”

As a big Questlove fan — I love the Roots and the work he did as executive music producer of “High Fidelity” (2020) — I was excited.

Luckily, I was far from disappointed.

The performances in “Summer of Soul” are hypnotic, rivaling those of Woodstock in ’69. In one performance, Nina Simone sings “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” and recites a poem that asks the crowd if they are ready to “kill if necessary,” “smash white things” and “give yourself, your love, your soul, your heart, to create life.” In another, a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder drums out to the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing.”

The documentary also shines on a technical level. It is easy to slip up when assembling archival-footage documentaries, to cut away too often from the best footage, to invite guests to talk over images that speak for themselves. That is not the case

with “Summer of Soul.” In spite of the common shortfalls of these kinds of documentaries, Questlove beautifully blends the music and archival footage.

Recently, I watched some grainy footage of Hendrix playing “Star Spangled Banner” live at Woodstock. Yes, the performance is intentionally distorted (Hendrix allegedly played the song with heavy distortion to imitate sounds of war in protest of the Vietnam War). But it’s still shocking how, if you go back and watch the original Woodstock concert film, the performances are almost unlistenable compared to the documentary’s footage of non-stop classics that don’t just stand but vanquish the test of time.

The performances in “Summer of Soul” exist as an heirloom of this end of the ’60s moment of possibility and pride, but also of deep grief and anger for Black Americans.

While Questlove keeps the documentary’s focus on showcasing the music, he includes commentary on political issues ranging from the heroin epidemic to the Vietnam War, placing the music in a broader social context.

The documentary covers journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who pushed for progress at The New York Times and helped change the common nomenclature from “Negro” to “Black.” It also features Harlem local Willie Tyler, who comments on the moon landing during the concert series, livid at how the government would spend money to send people into space when it could have gone to starving people on Earth.

The historical contributions of the recovered footage shown in “Summer of Soul” are remarkable. The documentary is worth the watch alone for the portrait it provides of late-60s Black America enjoying the national pastime of live, outdoor music.

What is so special about “Summer of Soul” is how, in its intimate footage of Harlem locals dancing trancelike in the sun to the sound of soul, it captures a moment of joy and political expression for Black Americans during a time of social and political upheaval — a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself that is beautiful to witness.

Hannah Eliot SC ’24 is from San Francisco, California. She likes to surf and is on the search for more documentaries to watch.

like food system inequalities on a global and national scale, as well as unraveling ingrained structures that perpetuate these issues.

The course is divided into affinity groups, which are “small groups of about five students who meet for an hour each week outside of class to discuss readings for the class” with one elder, according to Bisaga.

“It was through my discussions about these particular topics that I developed a newfound appreciation for elders who are open to these world view-shifting conversations despite decades of internalized ideologies,” Bisaga said.

Through these affinity groups, Bisaga has not only developed a friendship with the elder in his group but also become more open to having meaningful conversations with older generations. He described this course as “eye-opening and emotionally impactful,” despite going into the semester with no prior knowledge about the Napier Initiative.

For undergrads, this course will pave a way for students to stay involved with the Napier Initiative and form long-term relationships with elders who serve as their mentors. Both Umanath and Hui stressed the importance of Napier courses unraveling stereotypes and biases in society around older people and generational divides.

“I’m excited for students to see that elders have so much to contribute,” Umanath said. “They have a wealth of knowledge and experiences to share and will hopefully make it easier for students to engage with the community.”

QRC, VSA host ‘The Magic Fish’ author Trung Le Nguyen DIYA MEHTA

Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson were two performers at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 featured in the documentary “Summer of Soul.”

for learning that are relevant to both undergraduates and elders.

The class will contain about 12 undergraduates and six elders and involve dynamic group work and civic engagement, as well as smaller projects that undergraduates and elders collaborate on. Umanath is planning on presenting information in the format of both popular science books and journal articles, so the knowledge can be accessible to everyone.

Umanath hopes her course will allow both students and elders to become critical consumers of science.

“We are constantly being asked to learn new things, and not only knowing evidence-based strategies but understanding how that evidence works, are skills that students are going to be able to use across the lifespan,” she said.

Paula Hui PO ’67 has participated in two past Napier courses and described the environment as one where everyone — undergrads and elders alike — participated and shared their life experiences. Both her previous Napier classes incorporated diverse speakers and field trips, as well as reading and writing assignments.

“We [elders] were involved in everything,” she said. “We were treated just like the undergrads and did the work.”

Nikodem Bisaga PZ ’22 is currently enrolled in “Political Economy of Food,” a Napier course being taught by Professor of Politics Nancy Neiman this semester. The class has spent the semester discussing topics

A tightly-woven, lushly-illustrated, tour-de-force of a debut, “The Magic Fish” charts the emotional journey of a young boy, Tiến, struggling with his Asian American and queer identities. Written and illustrated by Trung Le Nguyen, the graphic novel draws inspiration from fairy tales which bridge both Western and Vietnamese traditions to call attention to how stories can heal intergenerational trauma and build community.

Becoming something of a social media phenomenon, “The Magic Fish’’ has gained a wide readership, far surpassing the novel’s intended YA audience.

Its uptick in popularity helped lead to its choice as the novel for a 5C book club, hosted jointly by the Queer Resource Center and the Vietnamese Student’s Assocation.

Around 75 copies of the book were distributed to participants of the book club, who came together to discuss the book on March 5, and then again on March 26. The club culminated with an event on April 7, where Nguyen himself was present via Zoom to talk to those who had engaged with his work.

A delightfully intelligent, warm presence, Nguyen began by talking about the circumstances that led him to write “The Magic Fish,” which is semi-autobiographical, and the intensely personal nature of the process of creation.

“So ‘The Magic Fish,’ really, truly started as an excuse for me to just draw my favorite fairy tales,” Nguyen said. “And then … I realized that all of these things that I carried with me that I was avoiding and denying myself, like being an artist and telling stories in order to be responsible, all of those things were going to bubble up eventually… and I’m really happy that I had an opportunity to let them all come together in this story.”

He spoke about how his relationship with his parents shaped the novel, as he often drew on family archives and photographs to inform how the characters in the novel were drawn. This allowed Nguyen to immerse himself in the small details of his parents’ lives when they came to America.

“I never really got to delve into the bric-a-brac or the texture of the little details that made up the fabric of [my parents’] dayto-day lives while they were new immigrants here,” he said. “And I think that that’s kind of where the specificity and the particularities of storytelling become very special.”

After Nguyen’s presentation, the audience was invited to ask questions. Respect for Nguyen’s work was clear, as audience members asked about everything from his drawing process to his favorite Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield, for those curious).

One audience member asked about the process of writing the story as someone from a marginalized community.

“Often, people task [those from marginalized backgrounds] with edifying the public about what our lives are like, without wondering how we feel and exist as human beings,” he said. “People just want to know [personal] information to contextualize [it] within the larger context of history. But I’m not so much interested in that as much as I am interested in figuring out what that journey was like emotionally for my parents.”

One significant aspect of the novel is how the main character, Tiến, grapples with his queer identity as a young gay man, as well as his Vietnamese American identity, and how these two aspects of his self intersect. Part of Nguyen’s challenge while writing was moving past essentialized, Western views of Vietnamese culture, to depict it in a way that felt more genuine.

“When I visited Vietnam, I would wonder why it didn’t look like what I imagined Southeast Asia to look like, and I realized

that … I just had no frame of reference outside of what was given to me in the United States,” he said.

“I was looking for this essential Vietnamese experience that just didn’t really exist. ” Nguyen also took inspiration from his own Vietnamese heritage to write the novel, traveling to Vietnam to familiarize himself with the country’s landscapes, iconography and history. His travels illuminated the way in which Vietnamese culture is fluid, shaped by a range of historical and colonial forces.

“True culture is something that changes and shifts in order to subsist,” he said. “We think about culture in this very calcified way.

We think about it as an artifact, when it’s something that people live within, so it will shift around a lot.”

Tiến’s coming out story was another element of the novel readers connected with. His coming out unfolds in an overwhelmingly positive way, as his friends and family come together to support him.

“What I wanted to do was set an expectation ceiling,” Nguyen said. “I wanted to impress upon readers that it is reasonable and it is right for you as a queer person to expect that your parents will protect you and love you, no matter who you are.”

The discussion with Nguyen was equal parts enlightening and moving, allowing participants to feel even more connected to “The Magic Fish” and all that Nguyen was able to achieve within its pages. The talk allowed attendees to better grasp the myriad of influences and stories that are woven into the novel and better appreciate Nguyen’s deft hand in creating a work that addresses important issues, such as identity, family and love, in such a beautiful way. “‘The Magic Fish’ is a story about a confluence of cultures and a story about trying to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps to access topics of queerness, through thinking about what [people’s] visual imagination looks like,” Ngyugen said. “That’s what I tried to accomplish with Tiến’s story.”

COUrTESY: ViETNAMESE STUDENT ASSOCiATiON

On April 7, Trung le Nguyen spoke about the creative process behind his graphic novel “The Magic Fish.”

Arts & Culture

pAGE 4 FrAME rATiNG

‘Hackers’ cracks the code of the good ‘bad’ movie GERRIT PUNT

If you ever interact with me in any capacity, then there’s a good chance at some point I’ll ask you if you’ve seen a film called “Hackers.”

If you’re a cool, reasonable person, then there’s a good chance you’ll respond with, “No. I have not. Please, tell me more. I am very eager to hear your thorough and expansive thoughts on this movie.”

If you’ve never been fortunate enough to hear me talk about “Hackers” before and now suddenly feel overcome with sadness, do not fret. I have now decided to bless you with a taste of my thorough and expansive thoughts on this movie.

For those poor souls who have yet to be touched by its light, “Hackers” is a 1995 crime thriller masterpiece directed by Iain Softley and written by Rafael Moreu, who I can only assume is a 13-year-old boy wearing fingerless gloves and a backwards cap. It stars Jonny Lee Miller (a.k.a. the guy from “Trainspotting”) and Angelina Jolie in her very first Hollywood role.

The film follows a gang of high school hackers who find themselves wrapped up in a white-collar conspiracy involving a malicious virus, a fleet of oil-tankers and a villain named “The Plague” who looks like a vampire party magician and travels exclusively by skateboard.

“Hackers” has everything: rollerblading away from the authorities, intense hacking duels, Matthew Lillard. It’s a product of its time in the very best way possible, a magnificent little time capsule from an era when most people didn’t really understand computers but thought they were the neatest things around.

The style is impeccable. It absolutely oozes with edgy mid ’90s counterculture raditude. (That’s radness plus attitude for those not up to speed. I coined that, no matter what Weezer says.) The world of “Hackers” is filled with rebellious tech-smart youths with names like “Crash Override” and “Acid Burn” who wear leather jackets and hang out in seedy underground hacker nightclubs. It is exactly as fun as it sounds.

Matthew Lillard has four ponytails and wears incredibly oversized The Velvet Underground tank tops and little round sunglasses. Does it get any cooler? (That was rhetorical.

It doesn’t.)

Like everything else in this movie, the writing is off the wall. I am thoroughly convinced the screenplay was written by a man entirely unfamiliar with human conversation and the concept of subtlety.

What other film gives you such killer lines as “There is no right and

wrong. There’s only fun and boring” and “I hope you don’t screw like you type”? The answer is none. No other movies give you that kind of experience.

If you couldn’t tell from the classy dialogue, “Hackers” doesn’t qualify as a “good” movie. Its 31 percent rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes is a pretty fair assessment. It is cliched, dated and over-the-top corny. Yet, it is also one of my absolute all-time favorite films. The first time I watched it I thought it was ironically “so bad it’s good,” but at this point my fondness for this film is entirely earnest.

Generally, I like to think I have refined taste. I enjoyed “Drive My Car” quite a bit and I always spell “theatre” the British way (when I’m not referring to it as “the cinema,” of course). I’d be lying, however, if I said that watching “Hackers” hasn’t led to some of my most cherished movie memories — and I’m not even the tiniest bit ashamed about it.

As satisfying as it is to engage with a film that is truly beautifully made, there is something to be said about sitting around with a couple of friends and laughing so hard that you have to pause the movie. There is an undeniable artistry to the good “bad” movie. Sometimes, a film’s most egregious flaws are drowned out by sheer, sincere enjoyability, and, in the very best “bad” films, those egregious flaws are transformed into incredible strengths.

After all, a film that is accidentally much funnier than it means to be is a whole lot more enjoyable than something that wants to be fun but isn’t. Sometimes the mood strikes to watch a bunch of poorly written malcontents hack into a supercomputer, and who’s to say that desire shouldn’t be acted upon? (Another rhetorical.

The answer is nobody.)

Good movies are great, but there is more than enough room in the balanced film diet for movies like “Hackers.” If you have a guilty pleasure movie in your life, whether it be “Hackers,” “Dune” (1984) or — God forbid — “Dune (2021),” I urge you to leave your guilt at the door.

If you don’t have a movie like this in your life, you really should find one (and you should start with “Hackers”).

Gerrit Punt PO ’24 is a Matthew Lillard enthusiast and infamous “Dune” disliker. He is not an elite hacker, much to his chagrin, but he can type at 80 words per minute if he really focuses.

GErriT pUNT • THE STUDENT liFE

April 15, 2022

SElECTED AMBiENT WOrKS

Dreamy yet sharp, ‘Chloe and the Next 20th Century’ is a departure for Father John Misty

JADYN lEE • THE STUDENT liFE

NICHOLAS BLACK Father John Misty, once declared a “convivial (if polarizing) chronicler of society’s growing absurdity,” is back.

The man behind Father John Misty, Josh Tillman, is a highly-acclaimed modern staple of folk music — as well as one of the most proficient trolls of the music industry today. In his latest work, “Chloë and the Next 20th Century,” Tillman seems intent on finally backing away from his highly sardonic persona and shenanigans, delivering a gorgeous album that is centered simply on telling stories. In contrast to past work, which often focused on Father John Misty’s persona, Tillman explores the absurdity of our times through the lens of stories with new characters.

Misty is no stranger to controversy. Since leaving his drummer post with folk rock band Fleet Foxes in 2012, he’s been a sort of antagonizer of popular culture, known for his constant criticisms of American media. The folk singer is intent on speaking his mind, whether he’s calling out pop singers who don’t write their own music (some of whom he works with) or television commercials that ruin catchy tunes in the name of capitalism.

This notoriety saw its peak with the release of “Pure Comedy” in 2017, a body of work that delves deeply into the madness of our times, hinged especially on the election of Donald Trump in the United States. After referring to elected officials as “goons” and “clowns” on the title track, Misty takes aim at virtual reality, conceptualizing “bedding Taylor Swift every night inside the Oculus Rift” on “Total En-

tertainment Forever.” Despite his objective to condemn the dark ways in which technological innovation has manifested, the lyrics earned him much criticism.

Music critics at the time wondered if such antics could be considered a form of “bloodsport, indulged in by a certain kind of entitled male star” such as Tillman. Perhaps for this reason, Father John Misty has taken a step back from this highly self-aware, mischievous persona on “Chloë and the Next 20th Century,” and yet, the quality of his work hasn’t suffered a bit.

The album is a masterclass in exploring wildly different sounds and doing all of them excellently. Despite their disjointed stories and varied sounds, each track is united by their shared gorgeous and complex production, whether it be through lush strings or delightful jazz arrangements.

Opening the album with “Chloe,” a track that sounds straight from a 1930s Hollywood show, Misty then takes a page out of Harry Neilson’s playbook on “Goodbye Mr. Blue,” going all in on that highly recognizable ’70s folk rock sound. Both tracks tell vivid stories; the first describing a drug-addicted “borough socialist” in Hollywood who meets an unfortunate end with a suicidal leap, and the latter centered on a couple reunited by the death of their cat.

Elsewhere, the sweet and sour stories keep on coming, like on “Funny Girl,” where Tillman writes fondly of a highly charismatic yet uninterested celebrity: “You seem pretty indifferent / But you knocked me out when you charmed the pants off Letterman.”

The album’s jazz influence can be heard clearly on an al-

bum standout, “Buddy’s Rendezvous,” detailing a father who goes to give “shitty advice” to his estranged daughter. On it, he directs her to “Forget that lefty shit your mom drilled in your mind” and ponders, “Whatever happened to the girl I knew?”

With this track, Tillman even treats listeners to a collaboration with alternative legend Lana Del Rey, which includes a version of “Buddy’s Rendezvous” sung by Del Rey on the deluxe vinyl.

The album closes with yet another sonic departure, with rare synths and sprawling guitar solos filling listeners’ ears on “The Next 20th Century.” As is routine with Father John Misty, the track speaks to the absurdity of human existence as well as how to cope with it: “If this century’s here to stay / I don’t know ‘bout you / But I’ll take the love songs / And the great distance that they came.” With this, we see that Tillman hasn’t abandoned the ethos of Father John Misty as a musical project. If anything, his decision to detach from the persona only makes his social commentary more visible.

“Chloë and the Next 20th Century” feels like the most powerful display of Josh Tillman’s capabilities, and that is not to detract from his terrific catalog of past work. He proves that he doesn’t need to rely on media stunts or highly sardonic, auto-biographical lyracism to deliver an album that listeners will love. Here, we get 51 minutes of beautiful storytelling, with luscious tunes and sharp social commentary to accompany it.

Nicholas Black PO ’24 is from Rochester, New York. After this album’s release, he will no longer be deleting Father John Misty streams from his Last.fm.

rEGUlArlY SCHEDUlED prOGrAMMiNG

‘Severance’ is a workplace show you won’t want to forget CLAIRE DUMONT Without any other context, the idea of a TV show directed by Ben Stiller, set in a workplace starring Adam Scott, seems like something that has been done before. The TV landscape is no stranger to a workplace show, from comedies like “The Office” to procedurals like “Law & Order.” “Severance” on Apple TV+, however, is incredibly unique, compelling and a mustwatch, revitalizing the genre.

“Severance” stars Scott as Mark Scout, an employee in the MacroData Refinement department at Lumon, a mysterious company that allows some employees to be “severed.” The severance procedure splits memories in half — when the employee is at work as their “innie” self, they have no memories of their life outside of work, and when at home as their “outie” self, they have no memories of being at Lumon.

Mark has gone his whole career at Lumon keeping his head down, believing it’s for his own good, until the appearance of the mysterious new Helly R. (Britt Lower) who starts to ask questions.

As I started the show, I mainly believed the severance procedure was done to create a complete work-life balance. If the employees have no memories of their personal lives, there is nothing to distract them from their work. However, as I watched more, the more sinister reasons for the split began to be revealed. Mark and his coworkers have no idea what their work is actually doing, or what Lumon as a company even does. The severance

COUrTESY: ApplE TV+

“Severance” follows employees at the fictional company Lumon, where employees’ memories are split between their work selves and home selves.

procedure allows them to leave work unable to share any company secrets to the outside world.

When I first heard of “Severance,” I thought I knew what the show would be. Based solely on the premise, I assumed that the primary goal of the show would be to make a critical statement about capitalist work structures.

However, while that is one of the underlying messages of the show, there is so much more at work in the incredibly complex storylines.

I would describe the show as a “dark comedy,” but I also agree with the label of psychological thriller/science fiction that it has been given. The overall tone is dark and dramatic, with chilling shots and episode ending cliff-

hangers. However, one-liners from fellow MacroData Refinement employee Dylan (Zach Cherry) add comedic relief in moments of tension.

Because of how “Severance” is structured, with the “innie” and “outie” selves, it requires incredible performances from its actors.

The cast is able to intricately show the nuanced differences between the “innie,” who can be from a few hours to a few years old, and the “outie,” a fully formed person, in their performances. The change in expression in each character as they ride the elevator up to Lumon and shift between their innie and outie is chilling. Outside of the main employees, “Severance” has riveting performances from

Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel, Mark’s boss, and Tramell Tillman as Mr. Milchik, his supervisor.

In recent years, actors who got their start in comedy are turning to dramatic roles, from Bill Hader in “Barry” to Jason Bateman in “Ozark.” Adam Scott is the latest addition to this trend, as “Severance” is a turn toward the dramatic. Even though the tone is different, at its core “Severance” is a workplace show, something very familiar for Scott’s career. Underneath the serious acting required for the role is Ben Wyatt from “Parks and Recreation” and Henry from “Party Down.” The role is exciting and unique for Scott, and I can’t wait for the future of his character.

The production and set design on “Severance” is also a crucial part of the show. Lumon is located in a bare, almost empty office building, with technology that makes the show seem as though it takes place in the 1990s or early 2000s. In an interview with Vulture, production designer Jeremy Hindle described one of the themes for the set as a “haunted playground.” The sparse yet intricate set designs add to the unsettling nature of the scenes at Lumon, and the show overall.

The eerie tone of “Severance” also allows it to cross over into the bizarre. Throughout the show, the characters mention various tier incentives they are given for reaching a certain milestone or hitting a quota. The incentives include a symbolic finger trap, a drawing

of themselves and a waffle party.

During one memorable scene in the show, the characters engage in a Music Dance Experience, where Helly R. can pick from a list of generic songs such as “Defiant Jazz,” and the employees are allowed to dance for a few minutes before getting back to work. These additions add to the detailed storytelling, while also drawing a comparison to real life work culture.

“Severance” is the kind of show that sticks with you. At the end of each episode, I found myself almost screaming at my TV because of the shocking and often cliffhanger endings. It has a completely unique tone and concept, unlike anything else I’ve seen. The season finale aired last Friday, and it has been renewed for a second season, which I am especially excited for. Because of the incredible storytelling in the show, there are so many questions left to answer, in a way that feels compelling, rather than because of lazy storytelling.

“Severance” is one of the most captivating shows on TV right now, and the entire first season is available to stream on Apple TV+. Since the season finale, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the season and what will happen in the future, and I’ve thought about rewatching all over again. “Severance” is definitely a show you don’t want to forget.

Claire DuMont SC ’23 is one of TSL’s TV columnists. She is anxiously awaiting the return of “Barry” and “Better Call Saul,” and she just started “Criminal Minds.”

April 15, 2022

Arts & Culture

pAGE 5

liGHTS, CAMErA, CASTiNG

Race and representation in ‘Bridgerton’ ANURADHA KRISHNAN & SRIDHA CHADALAVADA This article contains spoilers for “Bridgerton.”

Since its release in December 2020, “Bridgerton” has been consistently applauded for its inclusivity and diverse racial representation of characters. Though the show is classified as a historical romance, it never aims to be historically accurate to the regency era. Rather, producer Shonda Rhimes and creator Chris Van Dusen took Julia Quinn’s book series of the same name and reimagined its characters in a post-racial British society.

The Netflix original series is set in an alternate era where a racially integrated London exists. Here, people of color are included as members of the “ton” (or the high society) and often have titles granted by the sovereign.

As most 19th-century period dramas are overwhelmingly white, Rhimes and Van Dusen focused on casting many BIPOC as main characters who play historically white roles.

Most notably, the second season of the show focuses almost entirely on a pair of sisters of Indian origin.

Kathani “Kate” Sharma and Edwina Sharma are played by Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran, respectively — two British-Indian actresses of Tamil descent.

But while the cast includes an overwhelming representation of various races and ethnicities, there is little to no discussion of racism or race relations.

In an interview with The New York Times, Van Dusen said the idea that “Bridgerton” exists in a fantastical color-blind realm would

COUrTESY: liAM DANiEl/NETFliX

The second season of “Bridgerton” focuses almost entirely on a pair of sisters of indian origin, Kathani “Kate” Sharma (Simone Ashley) and Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran).

imply that “color and race were never considered, when color and race are part of the show.”

Spoiler alert: The show fails at doing that.

“We were two separate societies divided by color until a king fell in love with one of us,” Lady Danbury says to the Duke of Hastings in season one. “Look at everything it is doing for us, allowing us to become. Love, Your Grace, conquers all.”

Except for this comment and a fleeting reference to slavery later on, the show falls short of Van Dusen’s claim that “color and race are part of the show.” Sure, “color” is a part of the show as actors of color stand at center stage, but “race” is most definitely not.

Season two aims to overcome the shortcomings of the first installment, but, while its efforts are admirable, it fails to stand up to Van Dusen’s claims.

The eight-episode season includes zero mention of race — not even a few passing comments like in season one — but attempts to highlight the Sharma sisters’ Indian culture.

Edwina calls Kate “didi,” an affectionate term for older sister in Hindi, and both sisters refer to their late father with the Tamil word “appa.” Kate massages coconut oil into her little sister’s hair, and both Kate and their mother rub Haldi, or turmeric paste, on Edwina in preparation for her wedding. Even the back-

liTErArY WANDEriNGS

lUCiA MArQUEZ • THE STUDENT liFE

“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” is a book that breaks the rules. Even in the fantasy genre, where anything can happen, Marlon James has taken things even further. It’s a story with nearly hallucinatory qualities, told as if around a campfire in a dense, dark forest — or perhaps, more accurately, traversed in one long fever dream.

But “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” is set apart by more than its characteristically Jamesian (Marlon, not Henry) dark, noir aesthetic and four-page-long character list.

For readers unfamiliar with Marlon James, his 2019 PEN Out Loud conversation with Salman Rushdie is a great introduction.

He is wry, clever and never afraid to poke fun at the literary establishment. In 2015, he won the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” which was hailed by critics as destined “to be seen as a classic of our times.”

In the wake of his win and its concomitant international recognition, James turned to the archives, delving into 5,000 years of African history and mythology on an extensive research expedition. He emerged two years later with his plan for the Dark Star Trilogy. “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” is book one.

Pinning down exactly how to succinctly describe this 620page book is immensely challenging. In a broad sense, it tells of the years-long journey of a band of misfits sent in search of a stolen child, but things get far more complicated from there.

The group tracks the child and his captors across the entirety of James’ richly imagined world, through tight city streets and labyrinthine jungles, but they always seem one step behind.

While each member of the group has been specially chosen because of some unique ability — Tracker, for example, can “track” a scent no matter how far away — they rarely get along. Over time, the line between friend and

forth a form of ignorance towards the trauma faced by BIPOC. As per colonization and slavery, people of Indian or African descent have been a recognizable component of British society. However, they suffered ostracization and were outsiders who could not truly assimilate into society.

By ignoring this exclusion, “Bridgerton” eliminates the hardships that people of color in power and in the working class would have endured.

“Bridgerton” takes place in an almost alternate color-blind historical universe, but it doesn’t completely stick to this story with a few passing comments on race and references to culture, and that inconsistency complicates interpretations of the show.

For “Bridgerton” and any future historical dramas, diverse casting is crucial. However, there should either be an acceptance that such shows present a hypothetical society that does not consider race at all, or there should be a thorough discussion of race throughout. “Bridgerton” brings up race briefly, but it fails to fully flesh out the complexities of race relations.

TV shows and movies in mainstream media must take lessons from “Bridgerton.” They should be encouraged to include diverse casting, but this cannot come at the cost of ignoring systemically racist and oppressive structures. This cannot come at the cost of ignoring history.

Anuradha Krishnan PO ’24 is TSL’s diversity and inclusion editor and, along with Sridha Chadalavada PO ’24, spends way too much time listening to Bollywood music and trying to recreate “hook steps.”

rEADEr’S DiGEST

The many truths of the ‘Black Star Trilogy’

RYAN LILLESTRAND

ground score includes a cover of a well-known Bollywood song, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.”

But are these scattered references to Indian culture in the second season enough to compensate for the lack of discussion of race in the post-racial world put forth?

Well, not quite.

As two Indian girls, we appreciate the inclusion of such language and traditions in the show, but diverse casting without substantial discourse on culture and race is simply not enough.

In just about every other mainstream show, Indian characters are mocked or tokenized, but in “Bridgerton,” the Sharma sisters are given a plot that is not just about their “otherness” — something that a lot of POC characters don’t get. The show appropriately, and somewhat authentically, incorporated parts of their culture without making it their entire personality.

However, it is problematic to imagine such an unrealistic, utopian society as this one, especially when there is no thoughtful discussion of the deviations from the historical accuracy of the regency era.

Period dramas often underestimate the presence of people of color in earlier centuries, portraying the society as whiter than it likely was, according to Hannah Greig, a historian who was a consultant on “Bridgerton.”

But while this show includes POC characters, we must consider at what point historical inaccuracy in “Bridgerton” is what should be valued. By creating a post-racial world and not talking about race, “Bridgerton” puts

foe becomes impossibly blurry, and mysteries about the group’s patron, as well as the child himself, call the entire endeavor into question.

There are shape-shifting leopard men, powerful witches, lightning people and a startlingly intelligent buffalo.

It has inspired comparisons with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Game of Thrones,’ which the depth and complexity of James’ fantasy world certainly merits.

However, in other ways, it is precisely the opposite. This is what makes this book (and the planned trilogy) so unique.

First and foremost, in a fantasy genre historically dominated by Eurocentric narratives, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” entirely throws out the script — James has crafted a world unlike any other by drawing from his years of research.

At a Politics & Prose reading shortly after the book’s release, James said that “the novel almost started writing itself” while he was researching.

The book’s other unique element is his planned trilogy structure — James takes unreliable narration to a new extreme.

The story is framed, much like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Sympathizer,” as a sort of confession.

Tracker, the book’s main character, is sitting (presumably in captivity) with someone we only know as the Inquisitor, explaining the wild story of the previous years.

Rather than each successive book in the series telling the next stage of the story, James plans for them to all tell the same story — from different perspectives. For the entirety of book one, the reader sees the years-long saga through Tracker’s eyes.

Book two, which was just released this February, is told from the perspective of Sologon, a powerful witch and another member of the group searching for the child. Reading book one filled me with questions on nearly every page. There are

sections where Tracker and Sologon vehemently disagree or part ways for long stretches of time. What is going on in the intervening months?

When they disagree, who is telling the truth?

And of course, the inevitable question is, even at the conclusion of the trilogy, after hearing three different perspectives on the events of the journey, will we really know what happened?

The only way to find the answers is to read on.

For all its enticing draws, the book sags at times. The prose is spare, simple and at times a bit dead. This is, at least in part, because the story is told mostly through dialogue (maybe roughly 60 to 75 percent). While this is a fascinating craft choice at first, it eventually leads to chapter-long strings of somewhat repetitive conversations that only incrementally push the story forward.

As an ardent lover of long, meandering books, even I must admit that “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” could have benefitted from a bit more editing.

While I can’t honestly say I loved reading the book (nor can I highly recommend it as a “must-read”), I nevertheless feel compelled to recognize its brilliance. One can only imagine the complex overlaying of contradicting stories that James plans to weave together throughout the trilogy.

In the end, what truly happens in the roaming story of the Dark Star Trilogy may be up to the reader. As Tracker says at the conclusion of his testimony: “What is truth when it always expands and shrinks? Truth is just another story.”

Ryan Lillestrand PZ ’23 is a book columnist for TSL. In his constant search for great, big, meandering novels, he is now embarking on Roberto Bolaño’s magnum opus, 2666.

Musin’ about fusion SADIE MATZ My dad and I boarded the F train at the crack of dawn so that we could join an endless line that wrapped around an entire block of Soho. The object of our pursuit? The fabled, internet-famous cronut. Dominique Ansel’s innovative croissant-donut crossover was my first exposure to fusion foods, and it was certainly the sweetest. Little did we know, a ring-shaped croissant would continue the global tradition of blending culture through cuisine — a catalyst for the explosion of fusion foods in the twenty-first century.

Fusion foods captured the zeitgeist of American food culture in the 2010s. Soon after the Cronut made its massively successful debut, Keizo Shimamoto’s Ramen Burger became the subject of many a hipster foodie’s Instagram post. Then came the sushi burrito. Most recently, I tried out a TikTok “hack” that involved tucking leftover Chipotle into a sheet of rice paper and rolling it, burrito style, into a Vietnamese-Mexican-American Frankenroll. The novelty of it was life changing, on a very minor scale.

Despite the virality of foods like the ramen burger, fusion foods aren’t just a gimmicky invention of the age of the internet. Myriad commonly-known dishes are the culmination of a rich, international culinary history. The french baguette and pâté found in a bánh mì are a product of French colonialism in Vietnam. Cuban-Chinese food arose as a result of Chinese people working on Cuban sugar plantations in the mid-19th century.

But these modish mashups aren’t necessarily what comes to mind when one pictures fusion food. A relatively common understanding of the term “fusion” relates to the abundant Asian fusion restaurants that populate suburban America.

The concept of the Asian fusion restaurant has always struck me as odd. To be fair, the invention is a pretty fantastic business opportunity — the prospect of ordering wonton soup and green curry from the same establishment is hard to beat. But the practice of reducing the diverse and distinct cuisines of dozens of countries to a single menu consisting of pad thai and fried rice is undoubtedly questionable. At

the very least, the European fusion restaurant should be popularized too. Personally, I wouldn’t mind having fish and chips and paella within the same meal.

Asian fusion as it is understood today just seems like a bitterly missed opportunity to emulate the novelty and innovation of fusion foods such as the Cronut. Considerations of practicality aside, imagine a kimchi jjigae-filled xiaolongbao!

Or a hot pot just for pho!

Being, in a sense, somewhat Asian fusion myself, I’ve been privileged with the upbringing and palette to explore this opportunity in my own cooking. Allow me to explain — growing up in a Korean-Jewish household, I lack a comprehensive understanding of either Korean or Jewish cooking. What I do understand, however, is how to cook and eat in ways that just make sense to me. I prefer to eat my meals out of a bowl with chopsticks and a spoon. Around Passover, I’ll switch out bread for matzo in my avocado toast. I honestly think that gefilte fish (if it’s not for you, please keep that to yourself) would taste amazing in a seafood-y Korean stew. I’m dreaming about red bean and sesame babka as I write.

“Modern” takes on ethnic cuisines are a sensitive subject in the food world. Alison Roman’s infamous #TheStew is a wonderful illustration of this phenomenon. When executed with care, however, the concept of mixing together dishes from different cultures opens up endless pathways for culinary innovation. It is not only natural but also practical to develop and adopt new culinary practices that optimize accessibility to cooking and challenge creativity.

But creating fusion foods doesn’t have to be — and certainly shouldn’t always be — an individual endeavor. A fundamental function of cooking is to share food with other people. Like music and art, food is a medium through which to unite communities and spread ideas. The boundaries that separate different cultural cuisines are both time-honored and deserving of respect, but we shouldn’t allow them to limit the cross cultural connections and insights that sharing food with others can foster. Food can and should trailblaze societal progress, not just reflect it.

Sadie Matz SC ’24 is a gefilte fish enjoyer from Brooklyn, New York. If you’re thinking of opening a European-fusion restaurant, please invite her to its opening.

SArAH FlEMMiNG • THE STUDENT liFE

OpiniOns

PAGE 6

APril 15, 2022

For Black women, the slap heard around the world wasn’t senseless

lETTEr TO THE EDiTOr

Trustees’ obligations on investment To the editor:

COUrTESY: TECHCrUNCH, DOMiNiCK D, AND DAViD SHANKBONE ViA WiKiMEDiA COMMONS

The Will Smith/Chris rock debate is overlooking harmful prejudices embodied in rock’s joke about Jada Smith, Annika White PZ ‘25 writes.

ANNIKA WHITE I’m sure the topic of this article needs no introduction. I do not debate that the naming of this incident as “the slap heard around the world” is an overstatement.

However, to be perfectly clear about the situation that I will address in the following paragraphs, I’ll recap what occurred at the 2022 Oscars ceremony.

While presenting an award, Chris Rock made a targeted joke toward Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith’s wife, saying he was excited for the next “G.I. Jane movie.”

For those unaware, G.I. Jane is a movie that tells the story of the first woman to undergo special operations training. In the movie, the protagonist has a shaved head. Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair is also shaved, hence the joke.

On live television, the cameras showed the couple’s reaction to the joke. Will Smith was shown laughing as Jada Pinkett Smith rolled her eyes, clearly unamused by the joke made at her expense.

Will Smith then stormed the stage, slapped Chris Rock, and yelled repeatedly at Chris Rock to keep his wife’s name “out of [his] mouth.”

This moment, which lasted no more than two minutes, caused a stir all over the globe. The majority of the conversation is focused

on the violence that Will Smith inflicted on Chris Rock. The conversation is dominated by condemnations of Smith for his violent action on such a public stage, especially as a highly visible Black man.

These conversations are important, but this article will not condemn nor condone Will Smith’s actions. Instead, this article is meant to put forward a perspective on the situation that is being overlooked: the violence that Chris Rock initially inflicted on Jada Pinkett Smith.

To put it simply, Chris Rock’s joke was a form of Black-onBlack violence which occurred in a predominantly white space for all to see.

Violence goes beyond physical harm; it comes in many forms and is driven by many different intentions. There is a long history of violence inflicted upon Black women in this country surrounding their hair.

Black hair has a culture and is held close to the community, which is exactly why Black women are primarily discriminated against due to their hair.

The Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act is a California-based initiative working to end discrimination against race-based hairstyles. The act

has become law in only 14 states in our country, meaning that it is legal to, for example, send a child home from school, send an adult home from work or turn away a customer because of their hairstyle in the remaining 36. This is the country we live in. Needless to say, Black hair is a sensitive topic to be joking about in front of a predominantly white audience — a sentiment that Rock should be familiar with.

Rock is a Black man with two Black daughters. When raising them, he began to notice the complexities of the simple action of a Black woman wearing her natural hair. He even starred in and produced a documentary about it in 2009 entitled “Good Hair,” in which he challenges the idea that Black hair is “bad.” He travels around the country, into beauty shops and hair competitions, to gain a better understanding of the underground world of Black hair.

Rock is a comedian, and comedy is a form of art to which the Black community is not unfamiliar. However, an important trait of a great comedian, like Chris Rock, is to know their audience. Chris Rock knew that he was in a predominantly white space. He knew the intimacy Black women have towards

We need to let go of our idea of ‘genius’

BEllA PETTENGill • THE STUDENT liFE

ALEXANDER CHAO Albert Einstein. Leonardo da Vinci. Elon Musk.

These are common names that come to mind when we think of a genius. They seem to possess an innate talent and intellectual quality that cannot be achieved only by working hard. It is indiscriminate by nature. You either have it, or you don’t.

But what exactly makes someone a genius? And who gets to decide? For instance, philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that a genius is someone who sets the bar for what beauty is. Philosophers like Plato believed that geniuses are vessels for creation and are inspired by supernatural beings or spirits to create radically original work. Whether it’s the unique ability to think outside the box, ace IQ tests or appreciate beauty, there is no clear criteria for genius. Perhaps there are no justifiable means to measure and identify the quality of being a genius.

Despite our instinctive search for what makes someone genius, such an attempt may not be worthwhile at all.

Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin insightfully argues that genius is a social construct that has been historically mobilized to exclude women. This is historically evident. The people who heavily influenced the

notion of genius carried misogynistic beliefs into the criteria for genius, reserving it for white able-bodied men. For example, Kant believed that women can’t be geniuses because they do not have an inner sense of duty, while philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed women were not passionate enough to create art.

As these theories of genius became increasingly significant in the 19th century, it was impossible for women to be considered geniuses. At the time, what made someone a genius was considered then to be exceptional artistic talent. Someone considered a genius artist had to be able to do fine art and create nudist art. The problem is that women were not allowed to paint nudes, which disqualified them from becoming great artists, let alone genius.

The artwork that women made, such as basket weaving and quilt making, was excluded from the discussion of genius.

The gender disparity in the usage of the term “genius” is prevalent even beyond the realm of art. A recent study analyzed 14 million student online reviews of their professors on RateMyProfessors.com across 18 diverse academic disciplines and found that male professors were three times more likely to be called “genius” than female professors.

Meanwhile, they found the use of other descriptors like “excellent” and “smart” to be almost

equal (1:1 ratio) between male and female professors.

While these descriptions, which speak more generally to someone’s skill instead of innate intelligence, suggest that female professors are not necessarily viewed negatively, the prevalent application of these terms to women over men may signal potentially predominant societal biases that women can be skillful only through hard work and effort, not innate intelligence.

They don’t carry the same punch, the same connotation, as the word “genius.” Perhaps people believe women can work hard to become skilled professors, but their hard work cannot overcome their disadvantage: innately lower intelligence potential than genius men.

Thus, this disparity in the use of genius perpetuates our culture’s negative attitudes and stereotypes toward women’s intellects.

These findings also suggest that the concept of genius may be activating negative stereotypes in women’s own minds, making them susceptible to internalizing this biased message and deciding that they cannot succeed in genius-associated fields. One may believe that if we increase women’s representation in genius-associated fields, the term will become more inclusive toward women, but that may not be the case. Instead of increasing the inclusivity of the word genius, women’s increased participation in the genius-associated field of anthropology plummeted the reputation of the field, perhaps because it indicated that it no longer required genius.

Dismantling the exclusivity of the word “genius” may be more complex than simply using it more frequently to describe women or encouraging more women to join genius-associated fields. For many, the word is already deeply associated with a picture of white able-bodied men. No matter what solution you think is best, the first step is to acknowledge the gender bias that we carry. Think hard about how your biases may be affecting your everyday attitudes and actions. Only after we are more aware of our biases can we begin gradually counteracting them.

Alexander Chao PO ’25 is from Taipei, Taiwan. He enjoys reading about nutrition, watching anime and road cycling.

their hair. And he knew the history of how America has made Black women feel insecure about their hair.

As I said earlier, violence comes in different forms and is driven by different intentions.

I cannot speak to Rock’s intentions, but I can report on what he was aware of and speculate that he knew that his audience would get a kick out of laughing at a Black woman’s hair. What he said was violent, hurtful and perpetuates a society that oppresses Black hair.

At this point, some readers may be wondering if I plan to address Jada Pinkett Smith’s illness. I don’t. I wish to condemn Rock’s actions solely on the grounds that I’ve already argued. This perspective, a Black woman’s perspective, deserves light in this conversation because our light has been dimmed for too long.

I don’t believe that violence should be met with violence.

However, we must recognize that “the slap that was heard around the world” was not unsolicited: it was in response to violence in turn.

Annika White PZ ’25 is from Southport, Connecticut. She enjoys hiking, journaling, and making playlists on Spotify.

I am a former editor-in-chief of The Student Life. First, I wish to salute the current editorial leadership and large staff of TSL. It’s a highly professional, thorough, and thoughtful journalistic product.

TSL has varied in quality over the years and decades since I graduated in 1965. It’s now the best it has ever been. Bravo to all involved!

Second, in response to last week’s article on fossil fuel divestiture, the [Pomona College] Board of Trustees has a fiduciary obligation to manage the college’s endowment properly, but it has other obligations as well, including to protect the planet from overheating. If our investment managers cannot find sufficiently high-return investment opportunities other than those based on fossil fuels, they can and should be replaced.

The only question for the Board of Trustees should be, “How quickly can we liquidate our fossil fuel positions without otherwise violating our fiduciary responsibilities?”

A related topic for discussion is digital currencies; “mining” of bitcoins in 2021 consumed more energy globally than the entire country of Norway. Pomona College should avoid investment in any digital currency, NFT, or other investment product that is based on fossil fuel-based energy consumption.

Most bitcoin-type products require proof of intensive energy use before a newly mined bitcoin can be validated. This is destructive to the planet. Some digital currency products are moving to different algorithms than “Proof of Work,” which is the mechanism that most digital currency products use to protect their blockchain network from abuse. Such alternative algorithms can reduce the energy cost of a digital currency product by as much as 99 percent.

Pomona can accelerate that planet-saving move by establishing an investment policy that avoids investment in digital currency instruments that are created through intensive use of fossil fuels.

Lew Phelps PO ’65 Pasadena, CA

OFF THE RECORD

COVID cases are going down!

We just have to flatten the curve, y’all!

Now I can’t use contact tracing to get out of class “Out of an abundance of caution....”

The Motley reopened to 5Cers i got one (1) iced tea on Wednesday

...but only for ~48 hours?

Back to the Pit Stop :(

Anushe got into charcuterie The best that TJ’s has to offer

The ants will feast tonight Ants & Culture???

Thumbs are back “i wanna thumb something” –Siena

Thumbs are back “i will sue you for libel” –Siena

OpiniOns

APril 15, 2022

PAGE 7

The sisterhood On chest binding, Pitzer needs to put the privacy of bickering of queer students first

Why you should fight with your best friend

LILA FELDMANN

lUCiA MArQUEZ-UPPMAN • THE STUDENT liFE

ELIZA POWERS

THE

CLARGUMENT

Two weeks ago, my best friend told me that I incited a rage so deep inside of her that she was going to throttle me against a tree outside of Blaisdell. Five minutes later, we leaned against her twin bed with our pinkies looped together. Our spectators shifted from abject horror to confusion. “I don’t understand your friendship,” someone was saying. “Do you actually get mad at each other?”

The answer is yes, we do. All of my closest friends and I fight.

And you should too. Instead of destabilizing best-friendships, fighting can often strengthen them.

My friends and I bicker like sisters. Why are you always late to Frank dinner? Stop looking at your phone so much. Be present.

Go fill up my water bottle. No, you go fill up my water bottle.

Let’s watch Euphoria at 9. No, 8. No, 8:30. Can you buy me this yerba at the Coop? Why are you out of flex already? You’re crazy.

Stop being mean to me. Your hat looks like a nipple.

But every undercut, snippet of passive-aggression, whine or outright insult precipitates a stronger bond, an authentic connection.

After “brush your hair” comes “aw, you look adorable!”

After “get me a LaCroix” comes “I’m so proud of you for your French essay”. And after every “ugh, you incite a rage inside of me” comes a kiss on the forehead and a knowing look that no one can challenge.

We’ve definitely confused people, going from threats of strangulation to sitting on each other’s laps at the Coop. But bickering like siblings reinforces our sisterhood, an authentic connection that no tiff can ever truly destabilize. Bickering is the glue to our foundation, the slip on clay before putting an art piece in the kiln, the tear that’s been taped so many times you’re shocked it hasn’t fallen apart.

Bickering obstructs a power dynamic from forming: one friend that calls the shots, the

other that stews in resentment. The friend that speaks up, the friend that stays quiet. The confident one, the shy one. The calm one, the frantic one. Bickering helps us to constantly renegotiate the boundaries of our friendship, helps us swim safely in uncharted territory, helps us wrestle with patriarchal power dynamics handed to us about what two girls being friends are supposed to look like and quickly discard them.

And in a world that tells us that girls are too shrill, too whiny, too dramatic, too messy, our bickering is a confrontation. Between the two of us, we feel safe enough to fight, to demand the other scoot over on the bed, to call each other out when someone is gloating. Our friendship is a refusal to hide under niceties, to lovingly request the smallest inconveniences in a docile manner.

Conflict is regenerative.

Just as quickly as we fall apart, my friends and I come back together.

If you see your friendships veering into bickering territory, don’t freak out. This is your strength. Think about the first time you texted each other, with a ton of heart emojis and over-apologies. Now, when you text “wake up, I’m hungry,” it doesn’t mean you’ve lost respect for your friend. It means that your intimacy has been nurtured in a way where you are allowed to drop the mask of how a socalled nice girl is supposed to act, if only for a little while.

Barbara, when you get out of quarantine, the first thing I’ll do is hug you and cry about how much I’ve missed you. And then I’ll yell at you for doing Econ during our Zoom movie night.

Eliza Powers PO ’25 is from New Orleans, Louisiana. She loves reality TV, Phoebe Bridgers, and searching for the perfect avocado toast recipe.

We ask TSL’s Instagram followers a question every Monday and share their responses here.

I’ve always had a weird relationship with my boobs.

This semester, as I was designing the free gender-affirming chest binder program at Pitzer College, it was my own relationship with my body as a lesbian that shaped the vision of providing students with access to chest binders, designed specifically for breast flattening by queer people, that was both anonymous and free. The binder program, as described in a recent TSL article, has received a large amount of support from the Pitzer and 5C communities. With this attention, I want to take the opportunity to tell the story behind the idea for the free binder program and discuss the Pitzer community’s complicated approach to allyship.

We — the Pitzer community— can get trapped in the idea that because people in our community are generally supportive of LGBTQ+ identities, homophobia and transphobia don’t exist, and all queer people should feel comfortable being out on campus.

Don’t get me wrong, Pitzer is genuinely accepting of queer people — moreso than any other community I’ve ever been a part of.

But it’s important to acknowledge that sometimes at Pitzer we become so “accepting” that we regress into harmful stereotypes and assumptions about queerness. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told by a cis straight woman “I wish I was gay because women are so much easier” or “I wanna hook up with girls because they’re hot” in an attempt to ‘support’ and ‘normalize’ sexual diversity.

These statements are not ‘allyship,’ but an invalidation of the struggles and sexualization that lesbians and other queer people face even within a generally accepting community. Sometimes at Pitzer, homophobia comes full circle.

It is important to me that the community understands that someone binding their chest does not mean they are coming out as trans, and that to make assumptions about someone’s gender when they start binding is incredibly harmful to their comfort in our community.

When I bind my chest, it’s more a reflection of my sexuality than it is of my gender-queerness. I have a bad relationship with my large chest because to me it symbolizes the constant sexualization that men have forced on me since I was little.

It bothers me that even though I am not attracted to men, they can force me to be aware of their attraction to me by commenting on my chest, something that is difficult for me to hide.

I present as a femme lesbian — meaning that I often dress in a way that is traditionally considered feminine. I feel comfortable in my femininity, but for a long time I saw my big chest as a part of it, which made me see the sexualization of my body as a part of my femininity as well.

It was wearing a chest binder for the first time that helped me create a detachment between the physical body I am in (and that men have always sexualized) and my gender identity and femininity.

I don’t think people fully understand the impact that having a big chest, something very traditionally objectified by men, can have on people regardless of their gender identity. I am out as lesbian and I have a girl-

friend, yet if I go to a party and wear a low cut shirt I will receive plenty of obscene comments from men about my body. It’s gotten to the point of discomfort that I don’t feel safe going to any nonqueer parties at the 5Cs, and if I do, I am not comfortable having any public physical contact with my girlfriend. Even if it’s not true in reality, wearing a binder makes me feel like there are less men looking at me and objectifying me. A binder enables me to feel slightly more comfortable bearing my lesbian identity in public spaces at the 5Cs. This is all to re-emphasize a long-winded point that chest binding does not equal coming out as transgender or non-binary.

Noticing that someone has started binding their chest is not an invitation to inquire into or assume their gender and sexual identity.

The reason someone chooses to wear a binder is personal and private, regardless of how close to the person you may feel.

It is especially important to me that the community understands this equation as the free binder program launches. Yes, the program is anonymous and people will be able to try binding in the safety of their own space, but it also means that more people will likely be able to begin wearing chest binders in public spaces on campus. The sentiment behind this program is to let people feel more comfortable in their queerness, but the only way it can have its intended effect is if the Pitzer community is ready to create a space where wearing a chest binder is just as normal as wearing a bra.

Guest columnist Lila Feldmann PZ ’24 is an active member of the Queer Trans + Alliance at Pitzer, where she got financial support to start the free anonymous chest binder program.

COUrTESY: SCiENCE HiSTOrY iNSTiTUTE ViA WiKiMEDiA COMMONS

Don’t make assumptions about your classmates’ gender identity just because they bind their chests, guest columnist lila Feldmann PZ ‘24 argues.

Which liberal arts college word are you only pretending to understand?

Paradigm. WTF IS A PARADIGM

Praxis

@a.nina.and.thread

20 ostensibly

Epistemology

8

@henryaschulz

Hermeneutics

Dichotomy

Pedagogy

4

@tonyjin0118

dialectic

4

To weigh in on next week’s question, follow us on Instagram @TSLnews and keep an eye on our story on Monday!

If you have a suggestion for a future question, send us an email: opinions@tsl.news.

@johnnchoi

OpiniOns

PAGE 8

APril 15, 2022

Jasper’s Crossword: Breaking the seal perhaps) 30. Hot goss 31. An ungodly G in OMG 32. Ghostbusters director Paul 33. Be sickeningly sweet 34. Said to 35. Trans Virginia legislator Danica 36. Missouri Rep. Bush 37. Blue Rondo ___ Turk 40. Towel monogram: ____ and hers 41. *Observer regards, perhaps 43. Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Johnson 44. Funny clips featured on a certain ABC show 45. Circle length 46. Moulin Rouge! director Luhrmann 47. Cat’s hello 48. *Stamp a certain approval 51. Spoiled 55. Certain insects’ homes 56. Former Maine senator Snowe 57. Reason a hill might be unbikeable 58. Victim of Cain

JASPEr DAViDOFF • THE STUDENT liFE

ACROSS 1. Like most ballads 5. Data review 13. Initial place to look for discounts?

15. “Ridiculous!”

16. Motorcycle/piano manufacturer, for some reason 18. *Fail to happen 19. Obsessive crossword solver, e.g.

21. One-third of an S, in

Morse code 22. Lil’ doggo 23. Location of the devil?

27. Contends (for) 28. *Regard an increase 29. Puts on (gay apparel,

DOWN 1. Cloud storage location?

2. Smash hit Thurman 3. Artist June Paik 4. Rio on the fronter 5. ___ Arbor, Mich.

6. A single macaroni (macaronus?)

7. Group opposing the pros 8. Future lawyer ’s trial 9. “___ out!”

10. Going in for the kill, on eBay 11. Challenges 12. Oozes (through the ground, maybe) 14. Group that sings “You can check out any time you like/ but you can never leave” 17. Place that my awful drawings were on display in

elementary school 20. Ridley in Star Wars 23. Boom sticks 24. Break up soil 25. Subway stat.

26. Sorta 27. Emptiness 29. Unhinged 32. “For ___” (Dear Evan Hansen song) 33. Sight for many Illinois drivers 34. Group’s emblem 35. Watch on camera, on YouTube 36. YouTube dot ending 37. Pirate’s yes 38. Bold, dynamic Zodiac sign 39. The “A” in WAP 40. Hawai’i senator Mazie 41. Whipped cream container top 42. Actress Findley 43. Charged 44. Ethiopian emperor Selassie 46. Daniel Kaluuya or John Boyega 49. Followers of oohs 50. A sixth sense 52. ___ Hill, San Francisco 53. Baaaa’d audience for an ovine pun?

54. ___ Taco (home of fre shavacado)

LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

Staying positive when you’re positive VIDUSSHI HINGAD It’s been two years. The unprecedented has become very much precedented. Paranoia and uncertainty continue to converse, and in their intricate conversations lies an unpleasant truth. The world has changed multidimensionally: we mask our fear, we vaccinate our doubts, and we isolate our concerns. But this piece is not about spreading more negativity.

This piece is about being positive.

Quite literally.

I tested positive for COVID-19 on March 17, and it was the first time my mother was unhappy that I was ‘positive’ about something.

I had a 104 fever for a couple of days, a terrible cough, fatigue, a cold, and body ache. I fainted a couple of times as well; things were not going great, to put it mildly. I had been moved into isolation and I was scared. I’d been boosted, and I’d had COVID before, but I was still in bad shape. I was talking to my mother, and she told me to keep a positive mindset. And I thought to myself, here she goes again.

My mother is an idealistically positive person. She is an artist who paints a silver lining on every heavy stormy cloud. I am, ironically, a deeply pessimistic person, who sees the silver lining as just an addition to the gray in the sky. It might have been out of homesickness or sheer exhaustion, but I tried to imbibe her spirit and take her advice to heart. With the benefit of hindsight, I would now highly recommend it to anyone (I know she’s reading this article, so I cannot even dismiss her).

Because honestly, my COVID experience could have been much worse. I genuinely felt like I was well taken care of. Pomona College did a fantastic job of grappling with the situation, which was surprising, as I had heard multiple accounts of undesirable experiences. I know that times have become more grave since my time in isolation and isolation housing has become more crowded. I am writing this article not to preach about the college, but to comfort the people who are being contact-traced or who have recent-

COUrTESY: SOPHiE KiM

COViD isolation is a trying time, but it doesn’t have to beat you emotionally, writes guest columnist Vidusshi Hingad PO ‘25.

ly tested positive.

The aspect of the situation that comforted me the most was that I was quarantined with one of my close friends (who also contracted COVID during spring break).

We got assigned to a room together, with access to a balcony as well. We really kept our spirits high, watched movies, gave each other medicines, and genuinely took care of each other.

I am grateful to the college for being cognizant of my dietary restrictions, as they catered to all of my conditions. There was a small mishap when they sent me chicken by mistake, and I could not eat it, as I am vegetarian. I sent the COVID response team an email and immediately got a response that they were replacing it. Thirteen minutes later, they sent three boxes of food for me. I was so lucky to have such

Editorial Board

a responsive team catering to my individual needs.

The biggest highlight of my experience was the fact that all my professors had a hybrid option available. As soon as I tested positive, I wrote to all of them and communicated that I could not attend in-person classes. I expressed how I was very apprehensive and anxious about getting behind my school work, but after learning about my situation, my professors supported my access needs. They let me Zoom in for all my classes, continued to support me and gave me extensions on the work.

I know that the system has its imperfections and that a lot of aspects need to be improved, but Pomona has definitely taken a step in the right direction in comparison to how the college handled COVID previously. I would

love to end on a positive note, but post-COVID complications remain a concern. The 5Cs must account for post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection, better known as long COVID. As soon as I got out of quarantine after testing negative, I was expected to swing back into motion. I still had brain fog, but I was expected to take the same exams as my peers, submit applications, and write essays.

This made me think about whether the standards of merit-based education should change if one contracts COVID. Now that more than a tenth of the campus has tested positive, how is brain fog going to affect academic performance?

Brain fog, a term coined to describe slow or sluggish thinking, has multiple effects on cognition, concentration and attention

spans. Moreover, shifting gears between in-person classes and online classes are also impacting academic learning. As the latest wave of cases hopefully begins to subside and senior thesis deadlines and finals approach, the 5Cs cannot ignore the lingering effects of COVID-19 for potentially a large fraction of the student body. If the unprecedented is now normal, then students deserve accommodations for the risk factors that hinder their cognition. The world has changed, and it’s time for the expectations for academic performance to change with it.

Guest columnist Vidusshi Hingad PO ’25 is passionate about writing, theatre for change, and public speaking.

Her areas of academic interest revolve around developmental psychology, sociolinguistics, gender studies, and epistemological research.

THE STUDENT LIFE

JASPER DAVIDOFF, Editor-in-Chief ANUSHE ENGINEER, Managing Editor CAELAN REEVES, Managing Editor

Senior Staff JAMES KARSTEN, Production Editor GRACE SAUERS, Production Editor MARCELLA CANNATTI, News Designer KLARA JACOBS, Arts and Culture Designer GIULIA BELLON, Opinions Designer JOSIE DE ANDA, Sports Designer LONDON LORDOS, Copy Chief ANNA PREWITT, Copy Chief

HUXLEYANN HUEFNER, Photo Editor NANAKO NODA, Photo Editor BELLA PETTENGILL, Graphics Editor JENNA MCMURTRY, News Editor SIENA SWIFT, News Editor SAMSON ZHANG, News Associate MENA BOVA, Arts & Culture Editor ZOEY LOFGREN, Arts & Culture Editor

LARKIN BARNARD-BAHN, Arts & Culture Associate SAE FURUKAWA, Opinions Editor BEN REICHER, Opinions Editor ALEX CHUN, Sports Editor HANNAH WEAVER, Sports Editor KENNY LE, Diversity & Inclusion Editor ANURADHA KRISHNAN, Diversity & Inclusion Editor GWYN WONG, Business Manager

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SportS

April 15, 2022

CMC’s fly fishing class has hooked students for decades ALEX NASONI Claremont McKenna College’s fly fishing physical education class may be a tradition passed down through the ages, but it’s also the perfect chance for students to experience something completely new.

The course, which has been a constant in CMC’s PE curriculum for over three decades, teaches the intricacies of fly fishing techniques to seasoned fishers, enthusiasts and fascinated beginners alike.

“It’s a really nice break in the middle of my day,” Lara Cunningham SC ’22 said. “And even though I knew how to fly fish before, I think that I’m definitely still learning a lot.”

Fly fishing, which uses a lightweight lure cast over water at the end of a line, is hosted on Parents Field once a week. Instructor Damian Ross offers special experiences for his students each session, taking advantage of the activity’s uniqueness.

“At the end of the semester, we [might be] going to Bonelli [Regional Park] and Puddingstone [Reservoir] to cast some nets,” Cunningham said.

Having previously fly-fished in her home state of Michigan, Cunningham explained how she approaches the sport.

“The more you do it, you kind of get a feel for the line. And I feel the more that I fly fish, the more I realize that it’s not as much about how you move the rod, but more

about how the line moves when you’re casting,” she said.

Cunningham also said the sport is more aesthetically pleasing than normal fishing.

“There’s more of an art to it, like the way that you cast for regular fishing doesn’t really have an effect,” she said. “Fly fishing earned its name from the usage of baits that imitate flies landing on water.”

Ross echoed the sentiment.

“I think it’s more of an art form…. I almost feel like fly fishing is sort of graduating from conventional fishing,” he said. “It’s a graceful sport. It really is.”

In addition to participating in the activity, Ross gives important lessons about the biological aspects of the sport.

“In class, we’re studying the insects and the process of aquatic insects becoming adults … and so those are what we represent with our artificial flies that we either tie or buy from a fly shop,” he said.

Ross’s passion for knowing the intricacies of the sport began nearly forty years ago.

“I had been an avid fisherman and had started fly fishing in the 1980s,” he said. “Some 5C athletic coaches started a fly fishing club called the Inland Fly Fishers. I joined the club and got more involved through that.”

The idea for hosting this unique class came just a decade later.

“The class actually started about 30 years ago, I want to say, and it started with [former CMC president] Jack Starck, John Bianco, and John Zinda, who was the athletic director at that time,” Ross said.

Bianco and Zinda — a former professional fly fisher and casting teacher — later influenced Ross into practicing casting and learning new techniques. Zinda passed away in 1994, a significant loss to friends and colleagues at CMS. Five years later, in 1999, the class was left without an instructor after Bianco’s retirement, nearly ending its long legacy. But fresh out of college, Ross had other plans.

“I enjoyed the class so much I thought, well, it’s a shame to let this go,” he said.

“And so after just graduating from Pitzer, being a college employee, Mike Sutton — the swim and water polo coach at the time — wrote the letter for me and we got it going.”

Since then, Ross has been teaching the class for 23 years. “[Fly fishing] is one of my favorite activities in my life,” he said. “It’s a wonderful thing to be able to share with young people [since they’re] able to learn quickly and possess these skills and knowledge for the rest of their lives. It’s exciting for me to be around the students to teach something I love so much.”

pAGE 9

Pomona-Pitzer men’s golf comes in at a strong second place at SCIAC II tournament

COUrTESY: pOMONA piTZEr ATHlETiCS

Yuki Bannai pZ ‘25 pitches in a chip shot during the SCiAC ii tournament last Sunday.

ELI WEISS The Pomona-Pitzer men’s golf team came in second place at the SCIAC II tournament Sunday, marking headway in a season that has seen progress for the young squad.

The Sagehens finished with a final score of 581, putting them behind their cross-campus rivals, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, and three strokes ahead of Redlands for the weekend. P-P is currently third in SCIAC standings behind Redlands and CMS. One standout performance came from Yuki Bannai PZ ’25, who shot a team-best 142 through both rounds. The achievement propelled him to a second place finish at the tournament.

P-P men’s golf, like many other collegiate sports teams of the past two years, are recovering from the effects of the pandemic. The Sagehens came into the season looking to make a strong push.

When asked about the team’s goals, Tucker Lee PZ ‘25 noted that the season marks a fresh start for the linskmen.

“I’d say we had very ambitious goals, having not been able to play the previous two seasons. The upperclassmen definitely had a lot of anticipation to get their college careers started. And so, with a lot of young players, a lot of young talent we set some ambitious goals for the program,” he said.

“More specifically, we wanted to really start to build the culture around the team.”

For the Sagehens, SCIAC II was a redemption opportunity.

“At Mountain Meadows coming off of two tournaments that were plagued with pretty bad conditions,” Lee said. “We played up in Washington and it was rainy and 40 mile per hour winds and in Las Vegas, it was really high winds.”

The team was looking up going into the tournament. Strong showings from David Wong PO ’25, in fourth with an impressive first round score of three under par, as well as Matthew Lee PO ’25 and Tucker Lee PZ ’25, who tied for fourteenth, raised the bar. But the Sagehens still have room to grow.

“Coming into this weekend, we were really excited because it was obviously our home course and we had played there a lot,” Lee said. “So the main challenges we encountered weren’t really the difficulty of the course or the conditions but really, almost finishing off the job and not making as many mistakes as we made.”

The weekend was filled with a lot of positives as well. P-P shot the best overall on all par fives of the course. Looking ahead, the Sagehens are intent on passing Redland for second place in SCIAC standings at the upcoming championships.

“We really want to try to secure second place and we’re a little behind Redlands,” Lee said. “But it’s not a big margin and it’s three days of golf, so anything can happen.”

COUrTESY: pAUl NUTE

Sports Calendar

Fly fishing, having been around CMC since the 1980s, is more of an aesthetic sport, its practitioners say.

P-P

Women’s Water Polo vs. Chapman

Friday, April 15

Women’s Lacrosse @ Whittier

Softball vs. Whittier Women’s Tennis vs. Caltech

Softball @ Whittier Men’s & Women’s Tennis @ CMS

Senior Day Women’s Lacrosse vs. Cal Lutheran Friday, April 22 Men’s Tennis @ Ojai Invitational Tournament

Men’s Tennis @ Caltech

Sunday, April 17

Softball @ Occidental

Saturday, April 16

Baseball @ Willamette

Men’s & Women’s Track & Field UR/WC/CLU

Wednesday, April 20

Baseball vs. La Verne

Women’s Water Polo vs. La Verne

CMS

Men’s & Women’s Track Men’s & Women’s Tennis and Field vs. Pomona-Pitzer SCiAC Multi-Dual #3 Wednesday, April 20 Friday, April 15 @ La Verne Women’s Water Polo Men’s & Women’s Track Women’s Water Polo @ Whittier and Field vs. La Verne Bryan Clay Invitational Women’s Lacrosse Softball @redlands Men’s Tennis vs. Chapman @ Occidental Friday, April 22 @ Azusa Pacific Women’s Lacrosse vs. Occidental Men’s Tennis Baseball vs. The Ojai vs. Caltech Softball @ Ojai, CA vs. Chapman Softball Baseball @ Chapman Baseball @ Cal lutheran @ Caltech Saturday, April 16

CLASSES OFFERED ONLINE & IN-PERSON THREE- AND SIX-WEEK COURSES TAUGHT BY HMC FACULTY $3,500 (3-CREDIT COURSE)

View program details, courses and registration information at hmc.edu/summer-session22

GET AHEAD. IGNITE YOUR INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY.

SportS

pAGE 10

April 15, 2022

50 years ago, Title IX leveled the playing field

COUrTESY: EllA STrONG DENiSON liBrArY

Top left : Three SCHM track runners circa the run around, representing an early version of the CMS athletics progam.

Bottom left: In the 80’s, SCHM changed its name to CMS, which it has since retained.

Right: CMS volleyball huddles during a practice in Ducey Gymnasium, circa 1994.

HANNAH WEAVER To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Title IX’s passing, TSL is covering the conditions before and after the law changed the experience of women athletes at the 5Cs. On June 23, 1972, Title IX finally passed after years of lobbying and drafting from feminist organizers and legislators like Patsy Mink.

In his statement following the Education Amendments of 1972, President Nixon did not mention Title IX or its implications. But 50 years later, Title IX has become arguably the most impactful law passed that day.

Title IX protects against sexbased discrimination, which most notably has impacted higher education through enforced gender equality in sports and sexual harassment and assault protections.

At the 5Cs, women’s varsity athletics began in 1972 for Pomona-Pitzer and in 1976 for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (called SCHM at the time).

After just a few years of program-building, P-P and SCHM started seeing success with their women’s teams.

In 1978, the SCHM women’s cross-country won their first SCIAC championship title led by Mary Tracey CM ’81, who went on to become the first athlete in SCHM/ CMS history to be named an All-American.

“As a team, we were thrilled and proud to be the first conference champions for the women’s athletic program,” Tracey said in a state-

ment on CMS’ website. “In hindsight, we were trailblazers for all the women’s teams to follow at CMS but at the time we were inexperienced competitors who just enjoyed being good at what we did, had a lot of fun as a team and felt fortunate to come out on top. We were grateful to the CMS program for its support and the opportunities afforded to us.”

For P-P, the women’s volleyball program had some standout performances in its early years.

Alma Zook PO ‘72 was a member of the first women’s P-P volleyball and track teams. She was later inducted into the P-P hall of fame for her participation on both teams and now teaches at Pomona College as a physics professor.

In a Nov. 6, 1975 edition of TSL, a volleyball match between Pomona and Occidental College was described as high pressure, exciting and tense.

“The score see-sawed throughout and neither team ever had a decisive advantage. However, Pomona finally got the upper hand with an amazing score of 18-16,” the article said.

In 1976, students and faculty formed a committee to investigate Pomona College’s compliance with Title IX, according to a TSL article from May 20 of that year.

“Whereas past legislative acts have applied to isolated areas such as hiring of faculty and admissions, Title IX applies to any program that affects students,” the article said.

In 1992, the P-P women’s tennis team became the first P-P team

to ever win a national championship title.

Team members Brenda Barnett PO ’92 and Rochelle Whelan PO ’92 recently reflected about this history-making season as part of P-P’s 50 years of Title IX celebration.

“It is incredibly special that the 1992 Pomona Pitzer Women’s Tennis Team celebrates the 30th anniversary of our national title win with the 50th anniversary of Title IX,” Whelan said.

Barnett said playing tennis for P-P helped her find the “version of myself that I like best.”

“Being a student athlete was everything to me while at Pomona, and to this day I cherish the lessons I learned,” Barnett said.

“On the courts I pushed myself harder than I thought possible (my coach might remember a time or two when I just might have had heat stroke - proof of my efforts). On the courts I met teammates that will be my friends for life.”

In the early decades, women’s teams at both CMS and P-P thrived thanks to an increase in women coaches. Jodie Burton, head coach of CMS women’s basketball from 1979 to 2011, was one such coach.

According to a 1984 Today article titled “Husband-wife coaches,” Burton was MVP of her high school’s basketball team and later went on to Cal Poly Pomona. In an interview for the article, she explained what led her to become a coach.

“I think it’s part of the love for

the sport and the desire to work with young people,” she said.

After coaching CMS women’s basketball for over 30 years, Burton has since returned and is currently the women’s golf coach.

Burton is joined by great company in CMS history, including former women’s soccer coach Keri Sanchez. After playing Division I soccer for the University of North Carolina, Sanchez went on to coach CMS women’s soccer from 2003 - 2017. During her time as head soccer coach, she was a pro player for the Los Angeles Sol and the US Women’s National Team.

When she retired, CMS dubbed Sanchez “the winningest coach in women’s soccer history.”

Though varsity programs thrived post-Title IX, intramural and club teams continued to be valuable spacaes for women at the 5C’s to compete in sports.

In an April 3, 1979 article titled “Cyclists sprint to 3rd,” The Collage (a 5C student newspaper at the time) reported on the Claremont Colleges cycling team’s performance at a race they hosted.

“In the women’s race Marce Hadjimarkos of Scripps took 5th place to earn 6 points for the Claremont team,” The Collage reported. “She also placed third in two prime laps to earn 2 additional points.”

Some athletes, like runner Sue Derauf SC ’79, also pursued athletics independently. She trained by herself for the Boston Marathon, which she qualified for multiple times throughout her years at Scripps.

2022

One Six-week Session: May 23 – July 1

Make your summer count!

Catch up or jump start your year.

Open to all students enrolled in any accredited institution Taught by Pitzer College & Claremont Colleges Faculty Full-Credit Courses • Housing Available Financial aid available for those who are eligible

On April 29, 1976, an article from The Claremont Collegian reported that Derauf ran her second Boston Marathon race in 101 degree weather, with 70 percent humidity. According to the article, of the 2400 runners registered for the race, 300 decided not to race due to the conditions. Despite the adversity, she finished in approximately 3 hours, 50 minutes, ahead of her father.

“It wasn’t as good as I wanted to do,”’ reflected Derauf in the article.

“The weather made the course extremely difficult.”

In 1991, Scripps considered leaving CMS when their athletic agreement expired, according to an Oct. 3, 1991 Collage article. “[Scripps Dean of Faculty Steve Koblik] said that the Scripps students were surveyed last spring and indicated that they ‘want something near them and in a single sex environment,’” the Collage repoted.

After a couple months of negotiating, Scripps decided to stay with CMS. “Scripps will make a commitment to offering more things on campus, such as a soccer playing field, more facilities and physical education classes,” Scripps president Nancy Bekavac said at the time.

P-P and CMS are celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Title IX by recognizing the women trailblazers who participated in the foundational years of their programs.

Siena Swift contributed reporting.

• The Art World Since 1989 • Basic Acting Tools & Fundamentals • Beginning Ballet • Brain and Behavior • Consumer Society and Culture • Contemporary Exhibition and Curatorial Practice • Deviant Sex Cults?

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