MEDLEY MAGAZINE SPRING 2017
THE POWER OF COALITIONS
HOW MICKEY MAHAN LEARNED TO FLY
THE GRIEVING PROCESS
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SU students speak out
“ I discovered that when you fall in love with your life, you want some way to express that”
Why college is the worst place to experience loss
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CONTENTS
ORANGE STATE OF MIND
Spend a night at Marshall Street Bar page 4
GIRL TO GIRL
Meet the president of Brown Girl Published page 6
SU INK
Uncover the stories behind students' tattoos page 8
ONE-MAN SHOW
Ride along with SU's favorite bus driver page 14
STAND IN SOLIDARITY
Witness the sanctuary movement on the quad page 18
BEYOND THE WALLS
Learn about solitary confinement and Syracuse youth page 22
EAT. SLEEP. GRIEVE.
Recognize the struggle to cope with death page 28
MOMENTS ABROAD
See a snapshot of life abroad from SU students page 32
photo by Joey Marion
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF VICTORIA RODRIGUEZ
CREATIVE DIRECTOR JOEY MARION
EDITORIAL
ART
EXECUTIVE EDITOR RILEY BUNCH
ILLUSTRATOR DELANEY KURIC
MANAGING EDITOR LAZARE DE MONTILLE
PHOTOGRAPHERS RILEY BUNCH SAMANTHA LEE ROBLES DANIELLE LAROSE SAMANTHA GUTTADAURIA JUSTIN PATRICOLO
EDITOR-AT-LARGE JACKIE FRERE SENIOR EDITORS CHLOE ANELLO
FIND US ONLINE — ISSUU.COM/ MEDLEYMAGAZINE
ASSISTANT EDITORS ELLIOT WILLIAMS INTERNATIONAL ADVISOR DANIELLE LAROSE CONTIBUTING WRITERS MADELEINE BUCKLEY ANNA LEACH RACHEL LOCKHART ADVISOR HARRIET BROWN
ON THE COVER COALITION FOR JUSTICE On International Women’s Day, the Coalition for Justice organized a rally on the quad to connect personal stories and passionate support. They strived to create a safe space with the SU community. Amy Quichiz (left), a member of the coalition, planned speeches and chants with fellow students.
cover photo & right by Joey Marion
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E D I TO R ’S LE T T E R written by Victoria Rodriguez
Dear Reader,
Over the weekend, I visited my grandparents’ clothing store in West New York, New Jersey. I sat on a stool near the dressing room when a woman came in. Like most of the customers who walk in, she spoke Spanish. I paid little attention while my grandma helped her pick a bracelet. A few minutes later, the woman’s lips began to quiver as she signed the receipt. “My son was recently deported,” she said. She hoped to ship the bracelet to El Salvador, where he and his sister now live. My mouth opened, but nothing came out. While the woman gave details about the hardships her family endured, my grandma listened. She placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder and offered comforting words. On the car ride home, I tried to process it all. “She’s been hearing a lot of stories like that lately,” my mom told me. “I think it takes a toll on her. She gets invested.” I admire my grandma because she offered the woman time and space to express her experience and emotions. Especially now, it’s easy to hide behind a computer screen and shout opinions. I’m the first to say how I feel,
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but more times than not, I learn more when I listen. So this semester, we made the effort to hear other perspectives and experiences. We attended a rally on campus (page 14) and heard the Coalition for Justice talk about sanctuary status and immigrants. We rode along with “The Flying Busman” (page 11) and enjoyed his latest poetry. Our writer Anna Leach learned about Syracuse youth in solitary confinement and listened to local activists at the Patrick J. Corbett Justice Center, which is located just five minutes from campus (page 17). As you flip through these pages, I hope you feel empowered to not only share your voice but also hear out others’. To everyone who made this issue possible, thank you for sharing your stories with us. It’s been an honor and a privilege to listen.
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about us MEDLEY MAGAZINE shares stories from our campus, our city, and our globe that explore the intersection of cultures from a socially conscious perspective. The magazine publishes once a semester with funding from your Syracuse University student fee. All contents of the publication are copyright Spring 2017 by their respective creators.
photos by Riley Bunch & Joey Marion
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O R A N G E S TAT E O F M I N D One writer explores Marshall Street Bar, NYC's take on Syracuse spirit.
written by Madeleine Buckley
illustration by Delaney Kuric
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n February 22, around 9 p.m., the kitchen staff of the Marshall Street Bar in New York City thought their floor was going to cave in as John Gillon successfully sank the three-point, tie-breaking, buzzer-beating shot that won Syracuse University basketball the game against Duke University. At that moment, I, however, sat 17 blocks away in the front row of my race, gender, and the media class, silently watching SU win via livestream on a peer’s MacBook Pro between student presentations. This semester, as part of the Newhouse in NYC program, basketball season has easily slipped in and out of my consciousness. While I consider the program one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, having an internship three days a week, classes most evenings, and a fantastic city to explore on the weekends made it so easy to forget that I would usually be screaming and cheering in the student section of the Carrier Dome, decked out in orange. But finding Marshall Street Bar was the exception. While I couldn’t watch the Duke game in the narrow, dimly lit bar, I did visit for the Pitt game on a Saturday afternoon. Walking in under the blue and orange striped awning felt a bit like walking into the Dome. When my roommate and I pushed open the door, we couldn’t move — we were met by a wall of people. We missed tip off by about 10 minutes, and we left home without eating with hopes of trying something at the bar. The menu caters to the Upper New York college palate with everything from atomic wings to sliders, but we couldn’t even reach the bar through the crowd. We searched desperately for an empty table or bar stool with no luck. We found ourselves becoming irrationally irritable the hungrier we got, so we left to eat a quick, cheap
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brunch at the first place we could find less than two blocks away (Blockheads, which I highly recommend by the way). Our stomachs and temperaments appeased,we returned to the dimly lit, narrow but deep bar with its handful of tables to a slightly thinned out crowd at halftime. We stayed near the wall near the door but had no trouble seeing the game, as eight TVs of various shapes and sizes plastered the walls of the front room alone, making sure no one missed a moment. Watching the game was a good time, but watching the crowd was even more intriguing. Alumni and fans of all ages mixed together, from an infant clad in an SU onesie to two grey-haired gentlemen, one visiting from Florida, embracing and surprised to encounter the other. People in jerseys, button downs, and one AEPi 2014 formal T-shirt broke into cheers when we scored and unanimously groaned whenever Pitt successfully made a shot. Younger alumni carried over traditional superstitious behavior, wiggling their fingers towards the screens whenever a player was up for a free throw. Twice during the half, someone from the crowd started a loud “Let’s go Orange” cheer that spread like a wave from the front to the back of the bar. Best of all was watching the faces of each person who walked in. I knew right away who visited the bar before and who was seeing the small slice of their alma mater for the first time: it was a look of wonder on their faces. As we neared the end of the game, the side conversations and chatter died down and everyone watched with intensity. We were behind by 7 points with only 1:28 left in the game. As the clock continued to count down and our defeat looked definite, people started trickling out the door. When the final score of 75-80, Pitt, came up on the screen, we left with the crowd. However, my Marshall Street Bar
adventures didn’t end there. A few days before my roommate’s 21st birthday, we opened our mailbox only to find a white envelope, hand addressed from none other than the bar. She ripped it open quickly, confused, to find that her parents had sent her the inaugural Marshall Street Bar gift card for $75 (“only to be used on beverages”). When we ventured back to the Midtown East bar, five subway stops from our dorm building, I did a double take as we walked in. A handful of patrons sat in one corner, speaking with a man who we’d soon learn was Jimmy Cafiero, one of the co-owners. Aside from that, the bar stood empty
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“ Alumni and fans of all ages mixed together, from an infant clad in an SU onesie to two greyhaired gentlemen, one visiting from Florida, embracing and surprised to encounter the other.”
on a late Saturday night. One man, wearing a hockey jersey, manned the bar alone without trouble. Behind him, the many TVs played a variety of professional basketball games, which created an almost dizzying effect. After learning that we attend SU, the bartender handed us a permanent marker and sent us towards the rear of the bar to “sign the poster,” a giant Syracuse banner I hadn’t even noticed during our first visit. We also hadn’t noticed the back room, equipped with a pool table, two skeeball machines, and one of those games where you shoot basketballs into a hoop. We stayed a few hours, my roommate using her gift card for the first time as Jimmy, a short man in his late 20s
who never stops smiling, introduced himself and told us stories in his rapidfire, friendly voice. Speaking over the music coming from the touch-screen jukebox, he recalled the insanity of the recent Duke game and how he lost his seat when he stepped away for only a moment. After that, he admitted, he left the bar for nearly the entire game and came back just in time for the exciting finale. He explained the bar’s history too, recalling how strange he originally thought the name “Marshall Street Bar” sounded (he never attended SU) but how the name seems to have a magical effect on alumni. He asked us questions about our lives as students, while my roommate sipped her vodka cranberry and I drank my water, which the bartender had taken it upon himself to spice up with slices of lemon, orange, lime, and a maraschino cherry. “You caught us on a slow night,” Jimmy eventually said, almost like an apology. But we enjoyed our mellow evening. Midway through the night, when both the bartender and the other patrons had roamed out of earshot, my roommate and I talked about this weird little place — how quiet it was for a weekend, but how much we liked it. “I hope it’s sustainable,” she said. As basketball season comes to a close, will they be able to keep up their crowds with other events and a reputation for good food? I hope so. Because when I’m an alumni, I’d love to have this little slice of ‘Cuse in the middle of a busy city. Somewhere I can stand, decked out in orange, drink in hand, yelling “Let’s go Orange” at tip off, and feeling a little like home. •
spring two thousand and seventeen
G I R L TO G I R L Katherine Sotelo discusses empowerment, representation, and community.
written by Victoria Rodriguez
photo by Joey Marion
After high school, Katherine Sotelo, also known as Kat, left San Antonio, Texas to pursue a degree in magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Although she switched majors more than once, she consistently worked to empower others, particularly women of color, through art, photography, and design. Today, she serves as the president of Brown Girl Published, a student organization that caters to women of color who want to work in the publishing industry, which is still overwhelmingly white.
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Why did you decide to attend SU and study television, radio, and film? Well, I started off at SU as a magazine journalism major. I came into SU for magazine journalism because the program is the only kind in the nation. I was a yearbook editor in high school. Although yearbooks and magazines are not the same thing, they are very close in terms of stepping up from the high school level to the professional level. That’s what I felt I needed to drift into. So, I started as a magazine major here, and that’s what initially drew me to SU. When I got here and learned
we have to learn from whatever happens in life and then try to help others as we go more about the program, I very quickly realized that it was not what I wanted to go into. I switched to graphic design my sophomore year because I missed art. Then, after sophomore year, I kind of realized I wanted to use elements of graphic design with writing and photography and other realms that I’ve worked in. I switched to TRF the spring semester of my sophomore year.
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Switching majors can be scary. How did you feel when you made those decisions? I think the leap from magazine to graphic design was very easy because I knew that it just wasn’t what I was interested in anymore. I think the move from graphic design to TRF was a little scary because they’re such different agencies of creativity. I think what really drew me to TRF was that I didn’t know much about it. I was always interested in film and TV, and I always analyzed movies and critiqued things just because I naturally critique things. Then, I kind of realized the program caters to that. I had never studied television or film formally. So I think switching majors made me more excited. It was walking into the unknown, and I’m really glad I switched into the major.
or they feel like that are out of place and they don’t have anyone to talk to or tell them about whatever happened to them that day. BGP kind of works to connect young women of color and create a space for them to talk, network, strengthen themselves, and strengthen their talents. They strengthen themselves emotionally, physically, and mentally. So yeah, I think it kind of fits in there because I’ve been there. We have to learn from whatever happens in life and then try to help others as we go.
When and why did you get involved with Brown Girl Published? I applied for Brown Girl Published at the end of the spring 2016 semester. I became president after that. I think a lot of what I do is focused on empowerment. Every Saturday, I mentor teenage girls, and I’m a literacy-core tutor for third and fourth graders. On Instagram, I like to talk about self-love. I like to talk about mental health. I think I like to talk about things a lot of people are afraid to talk about. I figure we’re all human and we’re all living these lives, and if we don’t talk about the complexities of our lives, we just make life more difficult instead of making it easier. I think a lot of what I do is about empowerment, and I think BGP hit home when I first heard about it because I know what it’s like to be a brown girl in a newsroom. I know what it’s like to feel like a minority. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re looked down upon in professional publishing places. I think BGP fits into my puzzle because I know what it’s like when these girls walk into the room and they feel like they’ve been out of place
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What has it been like to take on this leadership role and empower other girls? I’ve always been a leader. In elementary school, I was a safety patrol officer. In middle school, I was one of the leaders of the various sports teams that I was on. I was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper in eighth grade. I was editor-in-chief of the yearbook in high school. I was class president in high school. I think I just naturally gravitate toward leadership positions. I think kind of being the president or being in a leadership position or mentorship position for BGP is kind of naturally where I fit in or where I have always been comfortable.
Where do you hope to see the organization in the future? Going into the fall 2017 semester, we are hoping to have our website up. So we’re going to have an official website for BGP. We’re also hoping to expand to at least four to five other universities by next spring to create more BGP chapters around the nation and start a collegiate networking environment for these young brown women who are interested in publishing. I think that’s what we’re looking and working toward right now. In becoming an RSO, the support that the university gives us makes those goals more attainable than just working independently. You’re graduating soon. How do you feel heading into the predominately white industry? I’m not afraid. I think my identity and my personal life, no matter what, are going to be intertwined with whatever I do professionally. I can’t be afraid of myself anymore. I have to realize that this is me. I have to be proud of my strengths and continue to make myself stronger in all of my abilities and go into the professional world with a blaze behind me. I’ll figure it out. I’ll be all right. It’s just another step in life. •
What has been the general response to the organization? One thing that striked me when BGP started up was that anytime I told somebody about it or I was having an off day or I was so stressed out, people would say to me, “Well yeah, but it’s so important.” I think being constantly told by people that I matter, people that I talk to or people that just heard about it, reinforced why BGP needs to become an organization, not only here at SU but also nationwide.
Note: These answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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SU INK SU students reveal the meanings and origins of their tattoos.
words & photos by Riley Bunch
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AMY QU I CH I Z
— Omari Ashley is not without his fair share of tattoos. The scorpion illustration on his wrist was his tenth. “I think it’s the most unique out of all of my tattoos. Everything else I have gotten I feel is regular, this one in particular I think makes me stand out.”
— Every time Amy Quichiz feels particularly down, she gets a tattoo. The small needle reassures her she is still living and breathing. Growing up Latina, Quichiz always felt connected to Frida Khalo. Now, just like Khalo’s famous quote “I love you more than my own skin”, Amy’s forearm tattoo pays tribute to her love for the woman she was.
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“She’s always described as a painter, but there’s so much more to her than that. Everyone’s reaction to my tattoo is ‘I love Frida Khalo’ and I always ask ‘why’? I want to know what they know about her, and spread the message not to commercialize her.”
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VE E NAVAR R O — Back home in California, Vee Navarro lived at the beach. The suns soft rays would soak through her skin and bring her to life. Here in Syracuse, facing a drastically different climate, Vee could feel her stamina and energy levels diminishing. This specific tattoo allows her to reflect on her journey from coast to coast: Veni, vidi, vici. I came. I saw. I conquered. “Tattoos helped me become more in tune with my body and confidence.”
DAN NY R OETZ E R — On the day of the Women’s March in Seneca Falls, NY, Danny Roetzer not only marched in solidarity, but got inked for the cause as well. “It was really an inspiring day of unity and togetherness, and I decided to get a tattoo that commemorates strength and solidarity with marginalized identities.”
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J IAN QI CH E N — Although his family is very religious and doesn't believe in tattoos, for Jianqi Chen, his chest tattoo represents his spirituality. Symbolizing his transition and progression through life, the jaguar inked on Jianqi's body gives him the courage to push forward. "My chest tattoo is an inspiration from my life. It represents my character and my personality. I wish to add more to the tattoo as I continue my journey in life."
KATI E S HAFS KY — Katie Shafsky’s dream of getting a sunflower tattoo seemed unachievable when her car broke down in September and would cost more than her bank account to fix. After going to all of her friends looking for help, one offered to lift her spirits and loan her the money for her first tattoo. Now, the bold flower reminds her of how her friends came to her rescue without hesitation when she needed it the most.
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ANA DAN N E R-VE GA — Ana Danner-Vega’s first pair of glasses was round. The style paved the way of her taste in music and close-knit relationship with her father. “John Lennon is kind of my dad and my thing. We would always bond over his music.”
AN NA M E R OD — When Anna Merod got her tattoo of “be love” in her mom’s handwriting on her wrist, the tattoo artist stopped her and asked if she was sure she wanted it facing inwards. Other people won’t be able to read it, he said. She was shocked, the tattoo wasn’t meant for other people. She knew she wanted it facing inward, for her to read and be comforted by it.
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“In life, I think you really want love all the time, but it’s better to just give it and be it. It’ll come back to you.”
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CHAR LOTTE OE STR I CH — It seemed fitting that Charlotte Oestrich’s thigh tattoo features a rose surrounded by geometric lines. Not only is Rose is her and her twosister’s middle name, but her mom’s name is Rosanne. Still, her mom was sure to call her an hour before her appointment to assure her it was not too late to change her mind.
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“I want them in specific places, usually I’m a pretty impulsive person and if I want something I want it then and right then or I won’t want it anymore. I want to add more flowers to it, the national flowers of countries I’ve visited.”
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J OY S CU LL — While walking on Euclid, Joy Scull came across a deer that had been hit by a car. As she watched, the struggling animal reminded her of the anxieties she faced her senior year. Now, the deer is silently symbolized through Orion’s constellation tattooed on her wrist, the Hindu constellation for a deer head. “I was thinking about how much I had been struggling and how the deer was struggling, but in the end the deer was going to die. I just realized this isn’t going to kill me. I’m going to live.”
Z I NA RAS LAN — Three different shapes at the top of Zina Raslan’s neck depict how society categorizes individuals based on social status, race, gender identity and other societal norms. At the bottom, three spirals reveal that, in fact, we are all the same. “I was in a class learning about human intrinsic worth. I thought it was interesting. I had never thought about that before. I decided to get it tattooed on my neck as a reminder that people aren’t always how they’re labeled.”
VE RA R E E S The sharp lines of roman numerals lay delicately on Vera Rees’s rib cage. Memorializing her late grandmother Helen Rees — Chanel lover, traveler, political activist and founder of Rees Literacy Agency in Boston, MA. “People will die throughout my life, but she was very important to me and died so unexpectedly. We don’t know why. Her birthday is the day after mine. I would say I am a lot like her. She was a diva.”
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O N E - M A N S H OW Mickey Mahan, more commonly known as the Flying Busman, offers a new take on storytelling.
written by Elliot Williams
photo by Joey Marion
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n a quiet Wednesday afternoon, while driving down Comstock Ave. toward campus, Mickey Mahan, known around campus as the Flying Busman, breaks the silence by reciting a poem over the intercom. “She can hardly sit still in her bus seat. ‘The bowlers are coming!’ she squawks…” Some students tune in to the performance. Others stare at their phones. Mahan finishes just as the bus rounds onto College Place. As he comes to a stop, he spreads 20 copies of his poem of the day, “Bowlers From God,” a recounting of the 2011 U.S. Women’s Bowling Championship, around the front of his bus. A student and friend of Mahan’s takes a copy of the poem as he leaves the bus. Mahan’s driver’s seat is decorated with pictures of family, friends, and gifts from students. Mahan decorates himself with feathers in his fedora, which he collects from the bus garage. Jewelry hangs from his neck. Quick on his feet, Mahan hops out at the Goldstein Student Center where he runs inside to grab a Dunkin Donuts coffee and say hello to the staff. Back on the bus, the Flying Busman sings names of bus stops: “Maaanleyyyy South.” While run by the same personality, the Flying Busman and Mickey Mahan aren’t always one and the same. "There isn’t a cut and dry line between the two,” he says. “But there is no question as to whether I’m playing a character on that bus.” The Busman is a legendary being who drives his bus routes as if floating on a cloud. At red lights, he takes out a small notepad from the pocket of his shirt and jots down lines of poetry bouncing around his mind. Meanwhile, Mickey Mahan is a scholar, a storyteller, an artist, and a friendly community member.
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Mahan attended LaSalle University in Philadelphia for his undergraduate education with the intention of eventually becoming a Roman Catholic priest. In college, he loved studying philosophy and theology. But when it came time to enter the seminary, Mahan’s initial calling was no longer there. So, in the 1986-87 academic year, Mahan enrolled in graduate school at Syracuse, studying English literature and teaching intro level English. Still, he wasn’t fully convinced this was the right path. Mahan took a leave of absence and joined a temp agency, doing odd
his master’s degree, teaching intro-level English again. At this point, though, he had grown tired of academia, and in 1991, Mahan applied for a part-time job as a city bus driver for Centro. He began driving for the university 20 years later. Aside from his grey hair and Buddy Holly-styled glasses, Mahan doesn't give off 63-year-old vibes. In fact, he’s livelier than most students on the shuttle he operates every day. He wakes up at 3:45 a.m. each day and pogo sticks or skateboards in the Manley South parking lot for about 20 minutes. He comes home, does pushups, chin-ups, and a hula-hoop
“ He wakes up at 3:45 a.m. each day and pogo sticks or skateboards in the Manley South parking lot for about 20 minutes.” jobs in the winter. During the summer months, he operated a hot dog cart on S. Salina Street and started a narrative
“ In fact, he’s livelier than most students on the shuttle he operates every day.”
journal to document his daily life. “It gave me some sense of value in what I was doing,” he says. Mahan wrote reflections, lyrical scribbles, and finally, full poems and songs. After three years of this, he re-enrolled at SU and finished
exercise for another 25 minutes. Next, Mahan showers and meditates. He’s typically out of the door by 6 a.m. and drives from 6:30 to 4:45 p.m. He stops at the Goldstein Student Center, South Campus, Manley Fieldhouse, Waverly Ave., and College Place. And on his 20-minute mid-day break Mahan takes a quick nap, and then writes poetry. At home, Mahan sips on an Anchor Steam beer and licks the froth caught on his curly mustache. He sits proudly in his library, stocked with music records, books, an original 1910 typewriter, and poetry manuscripts packed away in a chest. Down the hall, there’s a kitchenturned-studio he shares with his wife Deb, an artist, herbalist, and gardener.
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photo by Joey Marion
When he’s out of the driver’s seat, he doesn’t consciously think of himself as the Flying Busman. People will see him in plain clothes and say, “Hey, I recognize you! You’re the bus driver with the hat and poems.” Mahan loves that. But the first time he tried out the Flying Busman role, Mahan’s hands were shaking and he was “fuckin’ scared,” he says. Flying down Comstock Avenue en route to College Place, Mahan took out his manuscript and geared up to read a poem. “I looked in the mirror and saw all these faces and I couldn't do it,” he says. “I blew it.” But the next day, he turned onto the final leg of his first shift, gathered all the confidence he could, and recited his first Flying Busman poem of the day. Everyone on the bus cheered. The positive response was enough to encourage Mahan to express himself everyday for the rest of his career. He had found his captive audience. That was five years ago. “I discovered that when you fall in love with your life, you want some way to express that,” he says.
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“So, I gradually started writing poetry and using my experiences of a bus driver as inspiration.” Today, Mahan’s completed Flying Busman manuscript includes 166 poems about life, musings from the driver’s seat, and vivid sexual imagery. The opening essay describes Mahan’s journey when he was a young, talented student at war with his own mind. The volume of poetry that follows is an invitation for readers to explore that mind. Mahan now hopes to publish his work and create a wider fan base. “I just want to
“ You don't write to leave your poems in the chest.”
kick ass for as long as I can,” he says. Even with all the poetry, the job can “seem eternal at times,” Mahan says. His stage name comes from the opera, “The Flying Dutchman,” who, as legend
has it, was doomed to sail the seven seas forever after navigating into the heart of a storm while cursing the heavens. But Mahan has fully accepted his fate, and loves every minute of the ride. “You don't write to leave your poems in the chest,” Mahan says. “You write to communicate, to share with people. My life has turned into the perfect scenario. I get to play this character and have a bunch of fun. And I get to share my poetry.” After a long day of driving to and from College Place, Mahan’s still full of energy. Roy, a bus driver-in-training who has been riding along the whole time, looks at his clipboard and smiles, amused by the whole show. Only seven copies of the “Bowlers” poem remain, lifting gently with the breeze each time the door opens. Like every performing artist, the Flying Busman lives and dies by his audience. “Thank you all for riding today,” he says, adjusting his glasses. “Without you, this bus don’t fly.” •
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S TA N D I N S O L I DA R I T Y Syracuse students rally on the quad and demand a sanctuary campus.
photos by Joey Marion
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B E YO N D T H E WA L L S Alongside activists and organizations, Syracuse youth speak out about solitary confinement.
written by Anna Leach
photo by Riley Bunch
The Patrick J. Corbett Justice Center, located in downtown Syracuse, NY. Most Syracuse residents are unaware of the treatment of inmates within.
T Reporter’s note: This is the first story in a developing series about the solitary confinement of 16 and 17-year-old youth in Syracuse, NY. Trigger warnings: violence committed towards youth, mentions of suicide and suicide attempts, trauma during incarceration
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he biting, Syracuse October wind kicks up again, spitting bits of rain into the faces of a crowd of 70 or so protesters. They hold signs which say “Stop solitary for youth,” “Don’t confine free minds,” and “Sorry for the inconvenience, we are trying to change the world,” but they remain silent, listening. “Today, I want something to be done, so other kids won’t have to go through all of this, just over a basketball, thank you for listening to me today. I hope I can
make a difference,” Jeff DeJesus, a local activist, reads from a sheet of copy paper. The crackling of the cheap, black, plastic megaphone DeJesus uses fill the air. His voice trembles, but the statement he reads is not his, but Randy Pope’s. Many in this crowd have heard the 17-year-old’s story — the story of how, a year ago, he says he experienced conditions in solitary confinement at the Patrick J. Corbett Justice Center that drove him to attempt suicide, by digging into his own wrists with a pencil. But
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hearing the story here — just outside of the Justice Center, where five floors above Pope had attempted to take his own life — keeps the group quiet. Wolf whistles and yells break the crowd’s silence, soaring over the walls of the Justice Center, the shouts tiny but loud. “Keep doing it!” one of the disembodied voices yells. The protesters look towards the building but see no one. But those inside can both see and hear everything happening outside the jail’s walls; it’s a one way mirror. The crowd yells back in acknowledgment. Luchele Chisunka, a lead member of the ACTS Criminal Justice Task Force and former part of Justice Strategies at the Center for Community Alternatives, says the rally, which she helped plan, gave her hope; the fact that so many people came to protest on a cold, wet, rainy, Wednesday at 5.pm. felt significant.” “It’s not just alone hear, shouting, in a forest, to no one. There are people that are listening and who are willing to try to work to make sure something happens,” Chisunka says. Those in Syracuse are not alone in the fight against solitary confinement of youth. In fact, international law prohibits the solitary confinement of anyone under 18, considering the practice an inhumane form of punishment. In January 2016, President Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. And yet, from December of 2015 to 2016, more than 86 minors
were placed in solitary more than 250 times at the Onondaga County Justice Center. Collectively, they were sentenced to more than 7 years of solitary confinement. In September 2016, the
“ If something's not affecting your family, you know, a lot of people aren’t necessarily interested it.”
New York Civil Liberties Union and Legal Services of Central New York filed a class action civil-rights lawsuit to challenge the treatment of these youth, collating together years of data and stories collected by grassroots efforts. The suit helped bring attention to the issue. However, Chisunka says there’s a lot of education still to be done. “Take the average person, I think they don’t know [about the issue]. I think there’s a lack of knowledge that’s out there in the community. If something’s not affecting your family, you know, a lot of people aren’t necessarily interested it,” Chisunka says. It started with a Thanksgiving dinner. Mike Atkins, a member of the congregation of Grace Church, asked Rabbi Joe Murray, rector Reverend Johanna Marcure, and a few other members of Grace Church to serve the meal to a group of young men
“ There are people that are listening and who are willing to try to work to make sure something happens.” —
housed in Pod 2C of the Justice Center. After a few months, the group was returning to Justice Center every Wednesday evening from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Through presentations, games, and discussions, the group seeks to build communication and teamwork skills, emotional leadership, and job readiness for these incarcerated youth. They call it the Grace Project. But shortly into the program, the youth were moved to Jamesville because of overcrowding at the Justice Center. It was here that Dr. Sarah Reks, a neurologist at Upstate Medical and a leader of the Grace Project, began to notice something odd in the attendance records. Some participants, no matter how engaged they might have been during the sessions, would sometimes abruptly stop attending for weeks at a time. There were also the students who were banned from interacting with anyone. During one of the first weeks in Jamesville, one of these youth began to yell, calling out for them, thrashing in his cell. Marcure continued program, moving from activity to activity, but kept her eyes on him, struggling in the background. No one was permitted to help. Since that episode, Marcure says although not all people reacted the same as that boy, they have watched many people “come undone.” When The Grace Project asked about the missing attendees and about those visibly breaking down, they discovered both observations were related to solitary confinement ; the missing students were being held in the section of the Justice Center for those in solitary, and the boys they cannot speak to were serving solitary in their own cells. “They had a different color of skin than my son, but I could see them as my own children. It was hard to watch,” Marcure says. Disturbed, the Grace Project took their findings to an ACTS criminal justice committee meeting. And over
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“ They had a different color of skin than my son, but I could see them as my own children. It was hard to watch.” the next year Marcure and Murray collaborated with organizers on how to bring solitary confinement to the public eye, through education, events, and more. In working with activists, Marcure says she wanted to use the program’s curriculum to introduce an alternative model to the nothingness of solitary, one based in restorative justice and growth. Today, the Grace Project caters to an average of 15, as opposed to eight, participants, having followed the youth in their transition from the Jamesville back to the Justice Center. They keep in contact with a handful of previous program graduates from both facilities,offering advice, support, friendly faces. Three more volunteers — one psychologist, two others who work in legal affairs — will join them soon. Marcure will be one of the first to tell you, though, that even though the Grace Project was the group that broke the news of solitary confinement of youth in the county, the issue goes beyond punishing the Justice Center. “It’s not just [Sheriff Conway’s] problem. It’s a community problem. We all need to contribute to the solution as well. We’ve all at some part played a part in creating [an incarceration model which accepts solitary confinement],” Marcure says. When the youth were moved from Jamesville back to the Justice Center, articles with headlines such as “ACTS declares a victory on the fight against youth Solitary Confinement!” were
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published. Because the move came after large pushes against solitary confinement in the Justice Center, community members assumed the practice would be stopped. The Justice Center also said no solitary was occurring. However, through information provided by those interacting with use inside the jail like the Grace Project, advocates discovered their celebration was premature; guards were still putting youth in solitary. ACTS confirmed this, acquiring official disciplinary records of 16 and 17-years-old male inmates. The documents revealed how the specific coding of inmates could mask solitary confinement in the facility. Instead of being written as solitary confinement, isolation-based punishment appears in three different ways: “lock in” (in cells in the juvenile unit), “administrative segregation” (isolation for up to 15 business days) and “punitive segregation” (addition isolation sentence given after initial administrative segregation). For administrative and punitive segregation, youth are confined to the Segregation Housing Unit (SHU). All three, according to the lawsuit, “amounts to solitary confinement,” or “23 hours a day of isolation with no meaningful social interaction, environmental stimulation, or human contact.” The judicial system which allows youth to be placed in solitary disproportionately affects those in poverty, Chisunka says. The majority of the 16 and 17-year-olds being placed in solitary have not been convicted of a crime; they’ve only been arrested. After an arrest, a judge will set a bail amount. If paid, the defendant (in these cases, the youth) may leave the jail, many going home to their families. More affluent families can afford the relatively low bail amounts, some as small as five hundred dollars. But if bail is not paid, or cannot be afforded, the youth must stay at the Justice Center, until their trial.
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Time between arrest and trial varies; this “limbo,” where the youth are inmates in the jail despite not being officially sentenced, can last for months or even years. The monthly disciplinary records from the Justice Center also show that most of the youth receiving solitary confinement punishment are children of color. This is significant, according to Chisunka, in terms of why they are arrested, why they are convicted as adults in the first place, and why they are forced into isolation. “You’re being punished for, basically, being arrested (but not convicted), for being poor, for being a person of color,” Chisunka says.
“ W hile we talk about these issues, there are kids being impacted every single day, and we can’t get that time back.”
Identities affect how fast (or slow) change occurs on the outside, too. And overall, there’s been a distinct “lack of action from folks in power,” Chisunka says. For example, she says Sheriff Conway seems receptive and forthcoming at meetings, but if he wanted to end solitary confinement of youth today, he could; yet, he does not. “While we talk about these issues, there are kids being impacted every single day, and we can’t get that time back. Sometimes in the back of my head, I’ll be like ‘Is it because these kids are black and poor [that] you don’t care about them? Shouldn’t you care just because they’re another human that is suffering? You shouldn’t have to have a kid with cancer in order to care about trying to find a cure for cancer.” In the next couple months, Chisunka says ACTS continue to focus on finding solutions to ending solitary confinement
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by appealing to the public and others in power, like county legislators, in order to put institutional changes in motion. Orchestrating these conversations can take a lot of time and a lot of patience. The lawsuit will take time, too, but attacking the issue from multiple angles raises the overall possibility of change. “If we could meet with the sheriff right now and we could figure out a way just sitting across the table from each other for this to be resolved, that’s great. But we also think that it’s very important — these kids deserve their day in court.” The segregation housing unit transports is Bedlam. Screams reverberate through the SHU halls. You can hear the yells from inside before you even reach the locked doors to the unit. In the typical cell, linens on the bed are not guaranteed to be clean. If you’re lucky, a single book might sit inside. The concrete floor could be still saturated with urine from the previous occupant. Feces could remain in the toilet. Graffiti and scratches cover dark green walls of the seven-by-nine foot space. Philip Desgranges, the lead New York Civil Liberties Union attorney on the suit, says he and his colleagues heard this kind of description of the SHU many times in their interviews with around 50 youth held at the Justice Center: “I think these kids would describe it as a horror movie, in terms of their experience.” The NYCLU maintains a relationship with ACTS, so when they realized advocates appeals had remained unsuccessful — in that the sheriff ’s office did not change any policies — the NYCLU began their own investigation. Almost all of the youth accepted the interview requests, Desgranges says. Over the course of the investigation, Desgranges learned how some youth had gone from one solitary cell in Jamesville to another in the
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Justice Center. Data revealed youth with documented mental illness, including those with suicide attempts, are sent to solitary. The suit claims youth in solitary do not have proper access to education. Desgranges says the Justice Center emerged as an outlier even among other jails because of levels of harassment by others and the length and causes of solitary sanctions. Youth told stories of adults in nearby cells who would yell threats of rape and assault at them, adults who would or throw excrement at their faces, stories being so afraid of harm, they would chose to stay in their cells for 24 hours. The other option — their one hour out — was the mesh-wire “recreation” cages; but as they could only stand or sit inside, they could not protect themselves from neighboring adults throwing insults and bodily fluids. Desgranges says the solitary sentences were given for “any level of misbehavior,” from singing Mariah Carey in your own cell, to wearing shoes outside of the shower, to cursing. Sometimes, according to the suit, youth could also receive solitary for no reason. Over time, this information and more began to create a “full picture,” Desgranges says, of the realities of the Justice Center — and the importance of the lawsuit in overarching landscape of criminal justice reform. Desgranges says he hopes this lawsuit will have a ripple effect, believing the court will side with the plaintiffs. “Placing them in conditions that are as harmful as solitary confinement is not only wrong, but it’s unconstitutional. Here, it is very clear that the punishment being levied against juveniles is both cruel and unusual,” Desgranges says. Advocacy against solitary confinement — in general and for youth — is not new, 53-year-old Ryan says, but this time, the work feels fresh. The campaigns this time have two key, coordinating parts — youth who want to
speak out themselves and organizations like ACTS, CCA, the NYCLU and others ready to truly raise the issue up. “It’s like a chain link to other movements from the past, but when they do it, they do it on a big scale.” 53 year-old Clifford Ryan Syracuse native “had a short stint” in the Justice Center, and in solitary, as a teenager. Since then, two of his sons have also be placed in solitary, as well as many others in his life. It becomes obvious over time that suffering in those conditions lasts beyond the walls of the Justice Center. “You can always tell the ones that have been there (in solitary) because they’re the angriest. He might go in with a clear mind but come out with an angry mind.
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“You can beat it, but it takes time.”
He’s mad at the world now because he felt like no one cared about him, and he comes out into society, and he can’t adjust. It’s hard to get your mind wrapped back around being free, it’s hard to get your mind back around being around people. It’s hard to get your mind unraveled from the anger. You can beat it, but it takes time,” Ryan says. Many kids don’t understand the seriousness of incarceration, though, Ryan says. So, since July 5, 2015, Ryan walks nearly 10 miles from the Seneca Turnpike to North Syracuse with armfuls of posters reading “OG’s Against Gun Violence.” His organization, by the same name, reminds individuals that their actions that could lead to jail can cause damage beyond what they could ever imagine. The key to the trust he’s built with individuals and organizations alike comes from being constantly actively engaged. “The walking part is so important because you’ve got boots
on the ground in the community.” Ryan remembers advocacy around solitary confinement when he was a kid. But in the past, he says many organizations in the city were working separately, and “if the kids see you divided, that causes them to be divided as well,” leading to less youth who were ready to speak out together. So, there was never any significant headway. But that’s changing, Ryan says; the work this time feels fresh. The campaign this time has two key, coordinating parts — youth who want to speak out themselves and organizations like ACTS, CCA, NYCLU, and independent community members like himself who are ready to raise the issue up together. “It’s like a chain link to other movements from the past, but when they [organize now], they do it on a big scale.” Ryan says since the rally in front of the Justice Center, inmates who have been released since that day have come up to greet him. They pose for photos with his homemade signs. They tell him being able to see and hear folks outside rallying for you — that kind of acknowledgment — can give you strength and hope for both yourself and others. Ryan says, if solitary confinement is about cutting people out, than this movement represents about the opposite — support and solidarity. “When you know that people care and support you, that gives you that drive, that motivation, to have compassion in your heart,” Ryan says. •
See mag.syr.edu/medley for further updates.
spring two thousand and seventeen
E AT. S L E E P. G R I E V E . Grieving college students struggle to find support on campuses, but new policies attempt to remedy the void.
written by Rachel Lockhart
illustrations by Delaney Kuric
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rowing up, Syracuse University senior, Aidan Meyer never flew anywhere. His father preferred taking road trips instead. “One summer, I forget where we were going, but I have a vivid memory of him singing ‘Edelweiss,’ from ‘The Sound of Music,’ in the car,” Meyer says — likening his father to the austere, yet furtively kind-hearted Captain von Trapp. “When my mom went to see him for the last time, a volunteer at the hospital was playing ‘Edelweiss’ on a violin, and when she told me that I completely broke down.” Meyer’s father passed away last spring after a 12 year battle with congestive heart failure. Death loss, while unique to every person who experiences it, is not collectively uncommon among college students. Statistics show that between 22 and 30 percent of college students are grieving the death of a family member or close friend within the past year, a figure which increases to between 35 and 48 percent within the past two years. That means, at SU alone, with a reported total enrollment of almost 22,000 students last fall, more than 10,000 of them could have been grieving at any given time. The effects of bereavement on these students are diverse, and many, whom are experiencing their first significant loss, are unprepared to cope. In a journal article Dr. David E. Balk, author of several books on bereavement during adolescence and among college students, discusses some of these effects. Grieving students can experience intense emotional distress, and physical symptoms such as insomnia and lethargy. They often struggle cognitively — finding it difficult to concentrate in class, study, and remember material, as well as behaviorally — losing the ability to stay organized, manage their time, and meet deadlines. This puts them at risk for decreased performance academically. According to a study
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conducted by Dr. Heather Servaty-Seib, a pioneering researcher in the area of college student bereavement, students’ GPA declines significantly in their semester of loss. Students’ interpersonal relationships can also suffer, when
didn’t want them to feel bad for me all semester. I didn’t want to be that girl. Nobody wants to be that girl.” According to Dr. Servaty-Seib, college students are especially susceptible to these feelings because they’re at a
“ Statistics show that between 22 and 30 percent of college students are grieving the death of a family member or close friend within the past year.” unaffected people in their lives struggle to understand the grieving process. Collectively these effects often lead to what Dr. Servaty-Seib believes is the greatest, and most universal issue facing bereaved college students: isolation. “They’re in a situation where they are unsure how much they can count on people, or how much they can share about a death. They don’t want to burden people with what they’re experiencing,” Servaty-Seib says. Meghan Mistry, an SU senior, who
“ They’re in a situation where they are unsure how much they can count on people.”
lost her mother to breast cancer during her freshman year tried incredibly hard to hide her grief from others. “As soon as you’re visibly upset, your peers sympathize with you, and I didn’t want their sympathy,” Mistry says. “I
place in their lives where independence is emphasized and they think they should be able to “handle it all.” “They don’t believe that their friends can really get it, and I think they’re right a lot of the time,” Servaty-Seib says. “They might be avoiding because they tried to get support from their friends and their friends just didn’t get it. When SU alumna Kelsey Ketzner lost her father unexpectedly in a house fire her sophomore year, that’s how she felt. Grieving transformed her from the bubbly “social butterfly,” who enjoyed going out with friends, into someone who needed her nights and weekends to decompress and be alone — someone her friends didn’t recognize. “They wanted to be there for me, but they didn’t know how to be there for me,” Ketzner says. “It’s hard to know how to be supportive for a friend during that time and I had to recognize that, but it felt like in a way that I’d lost my friends.” It’s not atypical for bereaved college students to withdraw from social situations. Marisa Ramel, an
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“Everybody goes on with their life, and you’re still stuck in this world that you don’t understand. ” SU alumna whose mother passed away in between her junior and senior year due to pancreatic cancer, also felt uncomfortable in social settings, particularly when alcohol was present. She never wanted to be in a position where she felt out of control of her emotions. “I knew they were all just bubbling at the surface, about to get out, and I didn’t really know what they would look like if they did,” Ramel says. Beyond that, she felt like she was done with college all together. “I didn’t want to be around people anymore who hadn’t gone through what I had gone through, because I didn’t feel like I had anything in common with them anymore,” Ramel says. “I felt like an adult who was still stuck in this kid-like world.” Another alumna, Amanda Romaniello, lost her boyfriend to a heart attack caused by Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome, while he was studying abroad. Romaniello thinks that this social ostracism is further exacerbated when the death loss is not a family member. While she initially received a lot of support from her
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boyfriend’s fraternity brothers, and her sorority sisters, eventually the support dissipated, while her grief remained. “Everybody goes on with their life, and you’re still stuck in this world that you don’t understand. You don’t understand why it means anything to you anymore,” Romaniello says. She felt an overwhelming sense that her peers, and even university staff and faculty believed that enough time had passed for a loss of that nature, and that she should have gotten “over it.” “College students have three or four things on their mind. Then you throw in death and that’s too much for them,” Romaniello says. “When in reality some of your friends really want, and need, the support, even months after you’ve stopped asking how they’re doing.” Dr. Servaty-Seib agrees that losing a friend or someone of a similar age is a vastly different experience than losing a parent or someone older, because it can cause the bereaved to start questioning their own mortality. “One of the unique elements about a friend is that they are very close in age to you, and when you experience the death of someone who is of a similar age, there is an added layer: ‘It could have been me. I could die.’ That just because you’re young doesn’t mean that you’re protected from death,” Servaty-Seib says. While it’s clear that most student’s don’t feel comfortable seeking support from their peers, there are few other options available to them. Considering the sizable portion of
affected students, there is a serious lack of specialized resources on college campuses nationwide. And students are often hesitant to utilize the more general resources that are. Dr. Balk observed in a journal article, that according to counselors at four different universities across the nation, issues of loss were present in a substantial portion of the students who came to them for help. However, students, for the most part, felt that issues of loss did not warrant counseling. “We know some bereaved students seek help at student mental health centers, but the overall ratio of student enrollment at the university to caseloads at counseling centers indicates that seeking help is the exception rather than the rule,” Balk writes. Mistry never sought counseling. Partially because she hadn’t heard a lot of positive feedback from students she knew who had been, but mostly because she was busy catching up with school work and didn’t have the time. “I wasn’t going to block out a couple of hours each week to go there and leave feeling like I hadn’t accomplished anything,” Mistry says. Another SU senior, Joyce Lalonde, who also lost her mother to breast cancer her freshman year, did not seek counseling either. Instead she found refuge in campus activism. “You want to be sad. And you want to always be sad because if you’re not sad then are you forgetting? But how can you make that memory live
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on in a healthier way?” she says. Dr. Servaty-Seib believes this can be an incredibly effective means of coping. “It often works well to use grieving energy to do good for other people, or to talk with other grieving students,” Servaty-Seib says. “They feel so isolated that being able to connect with other students makes a huge difference.” Meyer attended counseling for a period prior to his father’s death, and then again shortly afterward. He stopped when he felt the sessions growing stagnant after about a week. “On certain days it was helpful, and on certain days I felt like I was struggling to come up with something to say,” Meyer says. “And I felt like if I didn’t say anything I would lose my spot.” Additionally, the only availability the counseling center had for him was at 9 a.m. on Friday mornings. “I would have to wake up hungover and go talk about this shit. And then one time I slept through it so I never went back,” Meyer says. Ketzner and Ramel both sought help at the counseling center, before ultimately deciding to go elsewhere. Each found a therapist in Syracuse community, who they say were immensely helpful. However, they recognize that it’s a luxury that not every college student can afford, or has access to. In contrast, Romaniello, praised the counseling center highly. Crediting Director Dr. Cory Wallack in particular, for her continued success at SU. Magin Lasov Gregg, an SU alumnus who lost her mother during her junior year to organ failure resulting from juvenile diabetes, describes the following year as “excruciating,” ultimately finding help in a support group offered by the counseling center at the time. “I was a good student, I was very ambitious, and I just wanted to be capable,” Lasov Gregg says. “I thought I was okay
because I was going to class, but I was actually suicidal. There were times when I did want to die, and I didn’t want to live without my mother, and I didn’t want to inhabit a world without her.” The group that she began attending, was coincidentally composed entirely of other women who had also lost their mothers. It was her salvation. Dr. Servaty-Seib hasn’t found suicide to be a high risk for grieving students. “It’s not so much the event that people experience in terms of suicidal ideation, it’s how they interpret and cope with those events,” Servaty-Seib says. “Grief is normal. When people experience a death the emotions, the cognitions, the physiological symptoms they have after or in the midst of coping with that, are all very normal. That doesn’t mean that a death can’t be a catalyst for a mental health condition, but if it is and the person is showing evidence of a mental health condition, then that’s a mental health condition it’s no longer grief.” Dr. Servaty-Seib is using her research to urge universities to take more action in assisting their grieving students. One of her main goals is to push universities to establish official grief absence policies. “I think this is an issue at a lot of big institutions, where it’s very easy for students to slip through the cracks,” Servaty-Seib says. “They’re dealing with so many students that it’s difficult for them to respond to the needs of individual students. So I think big institutions really need something like a grief absence policy.” A grief absence policy guarantees students time off following a significant loss, and helps ensure they are given the opportunity to make up any missed work. Only a handful of universities across the nation, including Purdue University where Dr. Servaty-Seib is on faculty, have adopted any such policy, and Dr. Servaty-Seib is disappointed by the lack of response. Purdue’s registrar
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spoke about the policy at a national conference, and still nothing changed. “I think maybe they think it’s going to be too difficult, that it’s going to be onerous, that it’s going to be this huge task, that’s not doable, and that has definitely not been the case,” Servaty-Seib says. Dr. Servaty-Seib believes this is an important step toward better assisting grieving students, while acknowledging the policy’s limitations. “It is more structured than is fitting for grief, but it’s the best that we can do right now,” Servaty-Seib says. While some of the responsibility falls on the university to help its students. Dr. Servaty-Seib also emphasizes the difference students themselves can make as well. One of the largest resources for grieving college students is an organization named Actively Moving Forward. It was started at Georgetown University in 2006 by David Fajgenbaum after he lost his mother. It has since expanded to become a national organization with chapters on more than 50 college campuses. In the absence of these resources now, most students show remarkable resilience, finding their own ways to move forward. Meyer, slightly embarrassed by his own “cliche,” reveals a tattoo he got at the end of the summer, that he says put him at peace, after the cathartic experience of spreading his father’s ashes at their beloved childhood vacation spot in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. Inked on the pale skin of his left shoulder and bicep, is an edelweiss. •
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M O M E N T S A B R OA D international photos from Syracuse University students
(clockwise from top right) photos by Samantha Guttadauria, Danielle LaRose, Samantha Lee Robles, & Justin Patricolo
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“ I RAISE MY VOICE—NOT SO I CAN SHOUT, BUT SO THAT THOSE WITHOUT A VOICE CAN BE HEARD.”
Malala Yousafzai, education activist