NBN Magazine Fall 2023

northwestern NORTH BY

FALL 2023

The year of the girl In 2023, every night is girls’ night. | pg. 26

Scripts of change Northwestern students and faculty aim to decolonize classical theater, opera and ballet works. | pg. 40

BANDING TOGETHER Northwestern’s marching band builds community and connections. | pg. 51

NORTH BY

northwestern

What is your presidential campaign slogan?

FALL 2023

print staff web staff For the girls.

EDITORIAL

PRINT MANAGING EDITOR Jenna Anderson ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Julianna Zitron EDITORS-AT-LARGE Jimmy He, Mia Walvoord SENIOR FEATURES EDITORS Emma Chiu, Noah Coyle, Christine Mao, Caroline Neal ASSISTANT FEATURES EDITORS Courtney Kim, Shae Lake SENIOR DANCE FLOOR EDITORS Audrey Hettleman, Katie Keil, Maya Krainc, Ava Mandoli Vote for me or I’ll cry. ASSISTANT DANCE FLOOR EDITORS Sarah Lonser, Mitra Nourbakhsh SENIOR PREGAME EDITORS Hannah Cole, Sarah Lin, Anavi Prakash ASSISTANT PREGAME EDITOR Indra Dalaisaikhan SENIOR HANGOVER EDITORS Bringing sexy back to the Whitehouse.

Julia Lucas, Natalia Zadeh

CREATIVE

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Iliana Garner ASSISTANT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Grace Chang Legalize giant DESIGNERS & ILLUSTRATORS Michelle Sheen, snails.

Jackson Spenner, Allison Kim, Allen Zhang, Sammi Li, Laura Horne, Michelle Hwang, Valerie Chu, Elisa Taylor, Abigail Lev, Olivia Abeyta, Jessica Chen PHOTOGRAPHERS Taylor Hancock, Lavanya Subramanian, Ashley Xue, I’ll just Valerie Chu, Elisa Taylor, Alessandra Esquivel print more money.

FREELANCERS

Sophia Vlahakis, Lindsey Byman, Olivia Abeyta, Cammi Tirico, Ashley Wong, Jerry Wu COVER DESIGN BY ILIANA GARNER COVER PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU AND ASHLEY XUE

MANAGING

Wake the f*ck up samurai, we EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kim Jao have a government to burn.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Christine Mao MANAGING EDITORS Astry Rodriguez, Conner Dejecacion ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS Olivia Abeyta, Arden Anderson, Jaharia Knowles DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION EDITORS Sammi Li, Astry Rodriguez Let me be your woman

(president), woman, woman, woman (president).

SECTION EDITORS

NEWS EDITOR Joanna Hou POLITICS EDITOR Gideon Pardo ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Kelly Rappaport LIFE & STYLE EDITOR Chloe Que I won’t stop until zero SPORTS EDITOR AJ Anderson Americans suffer from ASSISTANT EDITOR Maggie Rose Baron dairy intolerance!

INTERACTIVES EDITOR Manu Deva FEATURES EDITORS Sara Xu, Ava Hoeschler OPINION EDITOR Mya Copeland ASSISTANT EDITOR Hannah Zhou CREATIVE WRITING EDITOR Amaya Mikolic-Berrios AUDIO & VIDEO EDITOR Sammi Li PHOTO EDITOR Lianna Amoruso That’s a rock fact!

GRAPHICS EDITOR Iliana Garner

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORS

INSTAGRAM EDITORS Sara Xu, Kim Jao TIKTOK EDITOR Lianna Amoruso TWITTER EDITOR Jade Thomas

CORPORATE

Bring back the Oxford comma.

PUBLISHERS Julianne Sun and Stephanie Kontopanos AD SALES TEAM Grace Chang and Janice Seong MARKETING TEAM Sam Stevens WEBMASTER Ziye Wang

AD

Dear

Readers,

W

hen the football scandal broke this summer, I was shocked, saddened and embarrassed. After reading The Daily’s admirable reporting, I knew NBN had to find a way to cover the issue in our fall edition and capture the melancholic feelings of the student body. Our answer is the unofficial theme of this magazine: Varsity Blues.

You’ll notice cool tones dominate this issue. The pops of warm colors at the beginning of the magazine gradually fade out until all color disappears in the black-and-white cover of our photo story, “Banding together,” a feature on the Northwestern University Marching Band. We highlight this often overlooked group and ask how it feels to be cheering for a team that experienced such a dark episode. The band’s thoughts on who they truly root for may surprise you.

We also take a look at the football team’s history in a Dance Floor story, “Purple reign.” Using Northwestern archives, the piece shows just how many times the team has bounced back in their 141 seasons. You’ll read about the many moments when the student body rallied around the team, especially at their low points.

And we found plenty of other things to celebrate this fall. In our Pregame section, we uplift Mariachi Northwestern, still on a high from their performance at this summer’s Lollapalooza. Our Dance Floor section documents an increase in campus- and city-wide access to Narcan, the lifesaving medication for opioid overdoses. And have fun filling out the games page in the Hangover section!

Warm colors finally return to the magazine in that final section, a reflection of Northwestern’s continued efforts to heal from the negativity surrounding the football scandal. For me, this staff of editors, designers and writers was a source of solace and community this fall. I couldn’t be more grateful for their talent and dedication to NBN. My hope, dear readers, is you’ll finish reading this magazine with the feeling that, even in our darkest moments, we can turn to one another and find something to cheer for.

Sincerely, Jenna Anderson

Table of Contents PREGAME

7 Pho-nomenal!

8 Resonating roots 10 After (office) hours with Professor Tan 11 Grow ‘Cats!

12 Backstage bosses

DANCE FLOOR 15 5, 6, 7, 8!

18 Writing (and rewriting) history 20 The road to education equity 23 Gray area 26 The year of the girl 28 Purple reign 31 Over the counter and onto campus

FEATURES 34 The fitness journey 40 Scripts of change 45 Blending cultures, forging identities 51 Banding together

HANGOVER 58 Spill the broth 59 Op-ed: What am I to do without my campus celebrities?

60 Serving (the Evanston people) 101 62 Hometown how-tos 63 Kids menu

Pregame 7 Phonominal!

8

Resonating roots

10

After (office) hours with Professor Tan

11 Grow ‘Cats!

12

Backstage bosses

PHOTO BY ASHLEY XUE

Pho-nomenal!

We tried the Big Bowl Special Beef Pho at Joy Yee. It’s pho-king delicious.

WRITTEN BY SARAH LIN // DESIGNED BY ALLISON KIM // PHOTOS BY ASHLEY XUE

S

ometimes, all you want is a comforting bowl of soup.

Rich, tangy, savory, meaty and fragrant, Joy Yee’s Big Bowl Special Beef Pho is sure to satisfy your cravings. But be warned: It lives up to its name This fall, four NBN staff members traveled to Joy Yee with big hopes and even bigger appetites. Our goal? To find the bottom of the bowl.

Priced at $29.95, the pho is a symphony of ingredients, including beef broth, rice noodles, brisket, meatballs, radishes, red onions, basil and bean sprouts, among other palatable components — such as beef lungs and beef tendon. Served in a bowl measuring approximately a foot in both diameter and depth, the mass of pho has the potential to serve many. In our experience, it feeds more than the suggested two to three people.

In Vietnamese cuisine, pho is a staple comfort food that people can find in street stalls, households and restaurants.

Pronounced “fuh,” the dish’s popularity

extends to America, where food outlets like the Michelin Guide have released rankings of the best pho in the U.S. Joy Yee’s large serving is also reflective of Vietnam’s culture of sharing food.

Meals are often served family style as opposed to individual portions. According to the Hanoi Times, even the country’s choice utensil of chopsticks signifies “community solidarity” as they are used to “pick food up and give to others.”

As we chowed down, we observed a couple of things: Hannah found the soup especially “comforting,” Indra noted the “slight sweetness” of the beef broth and Ashley welcomed the bean sprouts’ crunchy contrast to the soft noodles and meat. We all agreed the pho tasted absolutely delicious.

We were able to finish all the noodles, meat and vegetables but were unable to consume all of the broth. This may have been because the broth was incredibly rich, so we struggled to polish it off without the other ingredients balancing its flavor.

We measured our progress through the smaller bowls we scooped the Big Bowl Pho into. Ashley devoured two and a half, Hannah demolished three, I slurped up three and a half and Indra wolfed down four whole bowls (our MVP!) for a total of 12 small bowls.

As the days grow colder, Joy Yee’s Big Bowl Pho is not only a great way to warm up but also a chance to share food and conversation with friends.

Reminiscent of a Vietnamese-style family meal, the “challenge” of finishing the pho, soup and all, is guaranteed fun.

SARAH LIN (3.5 BOWLS)

HANNAH COLE (3 BOWLS)

ASHLEY XUE (2.5 BOWLS)

INDRA DALAISAIKHAN (4 BOWLS)

PREGAME 7

Resonating Mariachi Northwestern traces their heritage through music.

roots

WRITTEN BY JERRY WU // DESIGNED BY OLIVIA ABEYTA PHOTOS BY LAVANYA SUBRAMANIAN AND ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

I

n black ornamented suits, a sixmember ensemble lines up shoulder to shoulder before a crowd of returning Northwestern graduates at the Latino Alumni of Northwestern University Homecoming Tailgate.

The troupe of singer, trumpet, violin, bass guitar guitarrón and five-string guitar vihuela players string together a few chords to signal the start of their performance.

The audience forms a semicircle around the group when a high-pitched yell and laughter erupts from the ensemble, unveiling a stream of warm and lively cadences.

Since its establishment in 2012, Mariachi Northwestern has strived to share historically rich music and offer a sense of community for Latine students at Northwestern.

This year, they have performed several times in collaboration with Latino affinity groups on campus — including Alianza, a group supporting the Latine student community — and they have played at events hosted by the Latina and Latino Studies Program. The group also performed at Lollapalooza this summer.

“Mariachi music is about fighting to be heard. It is bright, loud, full of energy and passion through so many different themes,” says Daniel Flores, one of the founding members of Mariachi Northwestern and a Class of 2014 alumnus. “It’s been a tradition handed down from generation to generation, and being part of it means you are continuing the legacy.”

The mariachi music genre originated in the 1850s from ranches and small towns in western Mexico, including the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit and Colima, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

An ensemble of four or more performers in matching outfits called traje de charro perform with traditional instruments like

the vihuela, guitarrón, violin and trumpet.

“Playing music in the ensemble is a feeling that cannot be matched and something you cannot replicate,” says Patrick Reyna, Weinberg third-year and Mariachi Northwestern president. “I want to serve other Latinos by having this music be around and [help them] feel a little bit like they are at home.”

Mariachi Northwestern’s annual recruitment process involves looking for members who demonstrate an appreciation for Latine and mariachi culture with a solid grasp on musicality. While the pandemic saddled the club with a decline in membership, they saw an uptick this year with a total of 13 auditions.

For some members, mariachi has been a passion since childhood. Weinberg third-year and the band’s current lead singer Julianna Schuch says she decided to join the group last year to return to her roots.

“I wanted something I

Mariachi Northwestern performs at the Latino Alumni Tailgate.

8 FALL 2023

was more comfortable to place a cultural element on. I wanted to find some form of cultural singing on campus, and because [Mariachi Northwestern] met all the criteria, I joined it,” Schuch says. “It is also a way to reclaim your heritage. It feels most real when I put on the traje.”

Schuch grew up watching folklórico dances to mariachi music with her paternal grandma. Her maternal grandma had always wanted to be a mariachi performer, so when her family came to see her perform at the spring rehearsal, she was overcome with emotion.

“I almost cried on stage when I saw my grandparents and my mom because I know they never had the opportunity to [perform mariachi],” she says. “They were just so happy I did it for them, and it was the first time they got to see me.”

The band meets every week for a onehour rehearsal session. They also have optional jam sessions throughout the week. The band spends these get-togethers going through their repertoire, learning new music and revisiting old music.

The group’s efforts culminated in August with a performance at Lollapalooza, an annual four-day music festival in Chicago.

Latin pop singer Lesly Reynaga invited the

“Mariachi music is about fighting to be heard.”

Daniel Flores Comm (‘14)

band to perform during her set.

“When they invite us to things like big academic conferences or when we get invited to Lollapalooza, it puts mariachi music in the limelight and [highlights] the beauty of Mexican culture,” Reyna says.

Before performances, the ensemble will sometimes guide the audience through song lyrics or release an erupting wave of laughter or yell, known as the grito, to gauge the crowd’s attention. The band always looks forward to the reactions they get from the audience.

“We want the audience to dance along. We want the audience to be involved in the music,” says Weinberg secondyear Sebastian Gomez, the band’s trumpet player.

Even now, Lizet Alba, a Class of 2016 alumna who resides in the Chicago suburbs, is reminded of her heritage and ties to the Northwestern community whenever she hears the band perform. She has seen nearly a dozen performances.

“When I hear Mariachi Northwestern play, it is a great connection to where my parents are from, the country I consider home,” she says. “Mariachi is representative of Mexican culture but different narratives come to fruition with each song.”

As Mariachi Northwestern Mariachi Northwestern performs at the Latino continues to build its musical Alumni Tailgate. repertoire and increase its number of performances, it aims to reach new audiences and bring Latine culture to life.

“I’m Mexican, and I grew up with mariachi music.

It’s important to me to hear that music be put into places of prestige,” Reyna said. “It’s also exciting for me to see the things that I grew up with being appreciated

by Mexicans and also non-Mexicans.”

In essence, the lasting impact Mariachi Northwestern has had on campus comes down to its members. From putting on week-in and week-out gigs to spending hours in rehearsal, the band fully embodies the values and narratives commemorated by timeless mariachi.

“It’s music that comes from the heart. The most fulfilling thing I enjoy while I am playing [mariachi music] is that I can see the audience smiling,” Gomez says.

PREGAME 9

After (office) hours with Professor Tan A conversation with the inaugural George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling, one of Medill’s newest professors.

WRITTEN BY ASHLEY WONG // DESIGNED BY SAMMI LI PHOTO BY TAYLOR HANCOCK

I

n April 2023, Northwestern University awarded journalism professor Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Medill ’97) the inaugural George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling at Medill.

Born and raised in Singapore, Tan moved to America at age 18 to attend Northwestern, where she majored in journalism. Thirty years later, she is the author of two internationally recognized books and served as an editor and contributor to two anthologies.

North by Northwestern chatted with Professor Tan to find out how she is transitioning into her new role, what her time as a Northwestern undergraduate looked like 30 years ago and how she hopes to guide a new generation of storytellers.

Q&A This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

NBN: Congratulations on your new professorship! Can you tell us about what your role as George R.R. Martin Chair entails?

Tan: I will be mainly creating the George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop that will help mid-career journalists transition into writing fiction, film, TV or plays.

The idea is that journalists out there are already such good storytellers in the world of journalism. A lot of them probably have good ideas that can be amazing books, TV shows and screenplays. We want to help them transition into fiction writing.

NBN: There seems to be quite an intersection between journalism and creative writing. How does your background in both fiction writing and journalism influence your storytelling?

Tan: I keep the two very separate when it comes to journalism because journalism has to be real; it can’t be fiction. But when it comes to fiction, I feel like my most compelling work actually comes out of nonfiction or journalism.

NBN: How has your transition been, from being a professional writer to now becoming a professor?

Tan: I’m still learning! While I wrote professionally, I always wondered how I was going to teach something I learned very instinctively. I’ve never really learned the craft of fiction — I took one creative writing class in my life, at Northwestern — but my whole career I’ve pretty much been: Let’s just figure out how to do it, and then I’ll do it.

A lot of it has still been figuring it out and really learning from the students as much as I hope they’re learning from me.

Medill is the place where I felt like I grew up both as a writer and as a person. The idea of having a role in helping nurture the great minds of the future is very exciting to me.

NBN: Just like myself, you were an international student from Singapore trying to carve out your career in America. What kind of advice would you give to fellow international students trying to make it in the media profession in a new place?

Tan: Pitch as many stories as you can. Write as much as you can. An editor told me once, the more you write, the more you will write. Good clips and good ideas will get you everywhere in the world. Put yourself out there.

10 FALL 2023

Grow

‘Cats

South Area’s “Garden of Eatin’” provides fresh produce for Northwestern students facing food insecurity.

WRITTEN BY CAMMI TIRICO AND SARAH LIN DESIGNED BY ILIANA GARNER AND JULIE PARK

N

estled within the heart of South Campus, four planter boxes feed Northwestern University’s foodinsecure students. The 6 by 4 foot woodenframed garden beds overflow with tomatoes on 3-foot vines, purple flowers and an abundance of other fresh produce.

Every Thursday, a group of students, community members and volunteers harvest the beds and bring the produce to Purple Pantry, a free food pantry located in 1835 Hinman. The weekly harvest depends on the season and conditions, but in the first week of October, the garden yielded 15 bags of fresh tomatoes, kale, swiss chard, cucumbers, herbs, sweet peppers and hot peppers.

“International students don’t qualify for [federal] financial aid, which means they can’t qualify for SNAP and EBT or food stamps,” SESP fourth-year Lily Ng says. “So that means they rely heavily on the food pantry. Having hot peppers, something they use within their cuisines, has been really nice for them.”

According to the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, one in three college students in the U.S. face some form of food insecurity. The idea for the garden grew from a desire to connect the Evanston and Northwestern communities and to make fresh fruits and vegetables more accessible on Northwestern’s campus, Ng explains.

A group of students, including Ng, spent the 2022-23 school year planning the South Area community garden for their Civic Engagement Certificate capstone project.

The greatest challenge they faced was finding a location to host the garden, Ng says.

After receiving multiple rejections from Northwestern administration, Ng says she

contacted Reverend Julie Windsor Mitchell from the University Christian Ministry (UCM) and Professor Ava Thompson Greenwell, the faculty-in-residence for the South Area. In collaboration with Evanston Grows, an organization dedicated to reducing food insecurity in Evanston through locally-grown produce, UCM provided a plot of land for the garden.

In late May 2023, Evanston Grows, Ng and over 30 volunteers officially opened the garden and planted their first seedlings.

The South Area community garden is not the first project UCM has worked on to help eradicate food insecurity. In 2015, UCM worked alongside other campus ministries to found and run Purple Pantry until 2022, when Northwestern Dining assumed control of the food pantry.

“We really are trying very hard to put what I call ‘feet to faith’ — actually live our faith and live out our commitment to ecojustice,” Mitchell says.

The group will plant garlic this winter, and the rest of the garden will be “put to bed” until spring. In the season-closing event, South Area students revealed the garden’s official name: the Garden of Eatin’.

When the garden reopens in the spring, those involved say they are looking forward to seeing what the new season will bring.

“I discovered how being close to the soil and out in the sun are all important things,” Greenwell says. “To actually be able to get out and see something that starts as almost nothing, a seed, and see it become something. The wonders of life are still simple, yet complex.”

PREGAME 11

Backstage bosses Come behind the scenes with three Northwestern stage managers.

WRITTEN BY ANAVI PRAKASH DESIGNED BY ABIGAIL LEV PHOTOS BY ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

W

ith one hand holding her blue Stanley cup and the other ready to give directions, Communication third-year Anushka Agarwala makes her rounds through Shanley Pavilion while simultaneously directing mic check. Occasionally, the theatre major is heard yelling about water bottles being left on the stage.

Then, when everyone is in their places, it’s showtime.

All her preparatory work comes to the forefront now. It’s time for Agarwala to stage manage a production of Once On This Island, a musical loosely based on a

Caribbean-set retelling of The Little Mermaid called My Love, My Love or The Peasant Girl

by Rosa Guy. In her role as stage manager, Agarwala has spent hours coordinating the cues she will give her team during the show, ensuring it runs smoothly.

Stage managers connect the creative and technical sides of a production, making sure everyone is on the same page and the cast and technical crew know their cues for the show. Agarwala calls her role “omnipresent.”

“You really are always there,” she says.

“The stage manager is always there in every room, always watching, giving notes and just taking information.”

Agarwala puts cues into her calling book.

12 FALL 12 FALL2023 2023

Communication second-year Wylde Laden and Weinberg second-year Sophia Mitton-Fry, co-stage managers of last spring’s production of The Thing About The Dream, echo this sentiment and believe stage managing is all about communication.

“Being the bridge between people is the most important part,” Laden says.

Cues for the show come together in the stage managers’ scripts, which also include information on where the actors are at all times and notes from the designers and the director. In short, it has everything they need to make the show happen.

Beyond her script, one of Agarwala’s main aspirations as stage manager is to create a collaborative and inclusive environment for the cast and crew.

Over time, she has found that open communication and team building activities are key to achieving her goal.

“If the cast ever had any issues or anything, [I made] sure they knew they could communicate that with me and we would try to solve the issues immediately,” Agarwala says.

She describes her relationship with the Once On This Island cast as “close.”

“Some of the actors, they do things before I ask them to because they’ve been asked to do them so many times,” Agarwala says. “It’s more of a gelled relationship.”

With the crew, it’s a bit different. Most of the crew members are Agarwala’s friends outside of the theater.

“It’s a little bit tricky because you’re in a power position of authority over your friends and classmates,” she says. “But this group is really good because they all

have a level of respect for me, and they know I’m trying to move the show along.”

For most shows, the first time the entire crew comes together is during tech week, a week full of dress rehearsals. In the midst of putting all the pieces of the show together, Laden’s utmost goal is to create a positive environment.

“I try to make the room as fun as possible during tech week because I know it’s a lot of stress a lot of the time,” she says.

She adds that tech week is her favorite part of the show process.

“Once we get to tech week, it becomes my room,” Laden says.

For Mitton-Fry, the majority of her time before tech week is spent thinking about tech week. She counts down the days until full run-throughs begin to determine what needs to get done beforehand.

Prior to tech week, a lot of what stage managers do involves keeping everyone accountable and on the same page.

Laden writes “frantic” notes and creates templates she can fill out to communicate logistical and show-specific information to her cast and crew in the most efficient way. Mitton-Fry creates a Google Drive folder to store the vast amount of information given to her.

Though this process is “crazy,” MittonFry says she loves stage managing because she gets to meet people who are equally passionate about the work they are doing.

“I like the energy of it,” she says.

Laden loves the Mitton-Fry sits at a tech table preparing to read cues. new things she learns.

The Thing About The Dream was a unique experience for her because she had to cue off of Bollywood songs even though she didn’t know how to speak Hindi.

For Agarwala, Once On This Island is a special show for two reasons.

“The music is joyful, it’s colorful,” she says.

“There are some heavy topics obviously, but overall, it’s a celebration of love and life, so I’m excited for everyone to witness that and see the love and passion all of us have put into the show.”

When the lights dim at the top of the show, Agarwala sits for Agarwala is because it was one of at an elevated table, next to the show’s the first Northwestern shows with a lighting designer. cast made up entirely of people of color.

As soon as the opening number, “We That diversity was part of the reason Dance,” starts, Agarwala is dancing, why Agarwala prioritized creating an mouthing the words as the cast sings inclusive, safe environment. them. She follows along, performing on “[I wanted an] atmosphere where we the sidelines for the entire show. can express ourselves and our different Another reason the show is important identities and cultures in a way that is safe and collaborative,” she says.

Agarwala says this show is important because theater, including at Northwestern, has been a historically white industry.

“It’s very possible in the future, or even now, to do shows that are full POC team and cast and everything,” she says.

“These stories don’t have to just be in the professional world because they have the resources and the people to do it. It’s very much within our realm on campus.”

Her faith in theater’s future at Northwestern stems from her passion for theater and stage management.

“I found my niche,” Agarwala says.

“The stage manager is always there in every room, always watching, giving notes and just taking”

Anushka Agarwala Communication third-year

DANCE FLOOR 13 PREGAME 13

15

Dance Floor

5, 6, 7, 8!

18 Writing (and rewriting) history

20

The road to education equity

23 26

Gray area

The year of the girl

28 31

Purple reign

Over the counter and onto campus

PHOTO BY ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

r 5, 6,7, 8!

WRITTEN BY LINDSEY BYMAN DESIGNED BY LAURA HORNE PHOTOS BY ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

Three student choreographers step into the spotlight.

T

he world is a muse for choreographers. Inspiration for a routine begins as an impossible party idea, music from a video game or a song’s gripping plot. In the process of crafting and reworking sequences, teaching dancers and making edits, a moment’s vision becomes a performance.

For student choreographers Alexandra Romo, Amanda De la Fuente and Mary Kate Tanselle, hours of work culminate in just a few minutes as their dancers leave it all on the stage.

Alexandra Romo Multiple DJs and choreographers told Communication fourth-year Alexandra Romo they didn’t know how to produce the 10-minute, “Back in Time”themed performance she planned for her quinceñera — or if they did, it was too

Dale Duro dancers entertain a crowd of Northwestern students with their wellrehearsed routine.

expensive. So Romo mixed the music and choreographed the dance herself, complete with a custom-made holographic jumpsuit and prop umbrellas.

“I was like, ‘If I have the vision already, what if I just do it?’” Romo says.

Later in high school, she would choreograph and mix music for other people’s quinceñera dances. She also choreographed and performed Latin dances at high school talent shows.

Now, as co-head choreographer for Northwestern Latin dance group Dale Duro, Romo’s routines play on song lyrics. When Bad Bunny sang, “Let’s take a selfie,” during the group’s performance of his song “Tití Me Preguntó,” Romo and her dancers did just that. She also researches formations to choreograph “the type of dance that will get you tired.”

Romo began dancing hip-hop when she was 8 years old and later got into Latin dance. She says she tried Mexican folklórico dance when she was 13 and liked it so much she continued practicing it until she left for college.

Romo missed registration for Dale Duro her first year at Northwestern but jumped in the following year as a choreographer, excited to find a space that combined her Latin identity and passion for dancing.

“I’m a senior already, but at least I’m grateful,” she says. “I was part of something bigger.”

At the Latino Alumni Homecoming Tailgate, she performed an upbeat hiphop-style Latin dance with Dale Duro.

Smiling at the crowd in pigtails and a purple skirt, she commanded center stage for much of the routine.

This spring, for one of her final performances with the group, Romo is incorporating more Mexican dance styles.

Her ideas have been coming together since last year after the crowd screamed

Romo takes center stage and shares her contagious energy with the audience.

DANCE FLOOR DANCE FLOOR 15 15

in excitement for her dance at Dale Duro’s annual spring showcase. The dance included zapateado, a Mexican dance style named after dancers tapping their shoes against the ground.

“Everybody loved it. And then they were like, ‘Oh my god, what is that?’” Romo says.

Amanda De la Fuente

This year’s Fall Dance Concert, hosted by the New Movement Project, finally gave De la Fuente a chance to translate When Communication third-year Amanda the song’s colors to movement. Her De la Fuente first heard the theme from dance and musical theater choreography, “The Last of Us,” she saw its black and which draws on contemporary, modern, gray melody woven with deep green in jazz and ballet dance styles, is unique her head. She has synesthesia, a condition in its storytelling. She says her theater where sensory information goes through experience fuels this interest.

In her routine, five dancers wearing large multiple brain pathways, allowing individuals to experience multiple senses black dresses perform staccato motions at once. In De la Fuente’s case, this means until they individually break into fluid sequences, removing their layers to reveal she sees colors when listening to music. ‘“I’ll listen to music and I’ll be like, saturated cool tones with one person in purple, two in green and two in blue.

‘That’s yellow,’” she says.

“Don’t let society dictate what you want to be,” De la Fuente says of the message she tried to convey through the dance.

Scrolling through her camera roll, De la Fuente says she records herself while crafting a routine to remember the moves. She also likes to Amanda De la Fuente bounce ideas off others, like Communication third-year her friend Angel Jordan, a Medill third-year with whom she founded Eight Counts Ballet Company in 2021.

“Trust yourself. I trust you. And if we crash and burn, we crash and burn, and that’s OK. ”

16 FALL 16 2023 FALL 2023

De la Fuente leads fellow students through a choreographed routine.

When teaching, De la Fuente encourages trial and error. This relieves anxiety when she forgets what comes next, which she says can happen because of her ADHD. “Wanna crash and burn, try it out?” she asks her dancers at rehearsal.

Demonstrating the routine, she instructs them to keep energy in their arms “as if there’s magic coming out of [their] fingers.”

De la Fuente’s choreography career began her junior year of high school when she went on a run and ended up improvising a dance to “A Friend Like Me” from Aladdin in a parking lot. About a year later, she finished choreographing the song and played a video of herself doing it at a senior showcase.

“It was my little pride and joy,” she says.

Her favorite aspect of choreographing is the final run-through in rehearsal, when she tells the dancers to give it their all.

After the finishing sequence, De la Fuente claps and jumps, kicking her feet behind her with a smile.

“I love telling people, ‘Trust yourself.

I trust you. And if we crash and burn, we crash and burn, and that’s OK,’” she says.

along with a musical shift. She says she loves the lightbulb moments when she has an idea for a routine.

Tanselle typically choreographs multiple versions of a dance and takes feedback from dancers throughout the process.

For Weinberg second-year Mary Kate “You’re never really done,” she says.

Tanselle, a typical Sunday begins at her “But that’s just like anything artistic, right?” organic chemistry study group and ends with rehearsal for Tonik Tap, Northwestern’s only tap dance group, where she is a member and company manager.

“It always feels like I get to use every part of my brain,” Tanselle says.

She began tap dancing at 3 years old. In high school, she often stepped in to choreograph musical theater productions, but a Tonik Mary Kate Tanselle Tap performance to Mac Miller’s Weinberg second-year “The Spins” last spring was her first college experience choreographing tap.

She adds that she still thinks of changes In the routine, the dancers dressed in Rugrats-esque costumes that fit tropes she’d make to “The Spins” performance. such as nerds and jocks. She says she Tanselle is currently co-choreographing initially worried if the dancers would like a dance to Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” it, but Tonik’s supportive members were Dancers will wear different funny coats and receptive to her idea. sunglasses as they tap. But she has crafted Since she’s new to choreography, moodier numbers as well, including one Tanselle says she takes her time. One to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” performance lasting around three minutes for Northwestern’s Steam Heat Dance could take her up to seven hours to Company last year. choreograph, not including the time she She says she enjoys choreographing spends teaching it to the dancers. arm movements and facial expressions to Playing the music on repeat on her add interest to her piece. way to class, she visualizes one dancer “You get a lot of magic out of people if becoming an ensemble tapping in unison you give general guidelines,” she says.

Mary Kate Tanselle

“You let each person have their own interpretation of whatever the emotion or movement you’re doing is.”

Another feature of Tanselle’s style is breaking the fourth wall, the invisible divide between performers and the audience. Last spring, she did this by having her dancers mouth along to Mac Miller’s ad-libs in “The Spins.”

She says this keeps the audience thinking about her piece when it’s over, but no two choreographers have the same approach.

“Everybody could do something different with the same song and the same set of dancers,” she says.

“It’s what makes dance an art form.”

“Everybody could do something different with the same song and the same set of dancers.”

Members of Tonik Tap rehearse their routine in the cellar.

DANCE FLOOR DANCE FLOOR 17 17

(and rewriting)

Writing

history

Cody Keenan wrote speeches for President Obama. Now, the professor is training the next generation of speechwriters.

WRITTEN BY JULIANNA ZITRON // DESIGNED BY VALERIE CHU // PHOTO BY ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

O

n the 50th anniversary of the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, then-President Barack Obama addressed the nation: “We honor those who walked so we could run.

We must run so our children soar. And we will not grow weary.” Peers and renowned publications alike would hail the speech as one of Obama’s best.

Two nights before the landmark anniversary, a severe snowstorm shut down the federal government. While most government employees took the day off, then-Chief of Speechwriting Cody Keenan took the opportunity to collaborate one-on-one with the former president. The pair passed five drafts of the speech back and forth over two days, each draft better than the one before.

“We had never ever been able to do that before because the job is just so busy. We never were able to do it again,” Keenan says.

Keenan served as a speechwriter for the Obama campaign and administration beginning in 2007. Today, he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Political Science department where he teaches the art of speechwriting through his course, “Professional Linkage Seminar: Speechwriting.”

Before he wrote speeches for the nation, Keenan was a Wildcat.

18 FALL 2023

He graduated in 2002 with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Hispanic Studies, now Latina and Latino Studies.

After graduation, he realized a life in politics is not as glamorous as The West Wing. He spent months searching for jobs before landing an internship with Senator Ted Kennedy’s team. Keenan cites this as the best educational experience he’s ever had. After his internship ended, Keenan was hired as a staff assistant and promoted three times within the team.

In 2004, Keenan attended the Democratic National Convention where he heard then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama deliver a speech for the

first time. He was “transfixed” by Obama’s words. Keenan wrote his first speech for Kennedy soon after.

His first project was a Senate floor speech. Even though such addresses are commonly given to a nearly-empty chamber, Keenan says watching Kennedy read his words was electrifying.

“It’s like if you’re Eddie Van Halen and somebody handed you your first guitar,” Keenan says. “You’re like, ‘I want more of this.’”

When Obama announced his presidential candidacy in 2007, Keenan knew he wanted to be a part of the campaign. He connected with Obama’s speechwriter, Jon Favreau, who hired him as an intern.

Two years later, Obama was in office and Keenan was still writing with Favreau. In December 2009, the President was supposed to go to Pennsylvania to deliver a speech on the economy that Keenan had written.

That morning, Keenan flew on Marine One for the first time, but he couldn’t enjoy his flight.

The night before, Keenan learned the President didn’t like the speech.

He spent the entire plane ride frantically rewriting. Keenan recalled the terror he felt in that moment, wondering if he would lose his job.

“There’s no time for apologizing. There’s Two presidential terms later, in 2023, no time for training,” he says. “They can Keenan still writes speeches as a partner find another speechwriter for the White at the speechwriting firm founded by House very quickly if you can’t cut it.”

Favreau. He also makes a weekly five-hour Despite having to rewrite the entire plane commute to Northwestern to teach speech on the fly, Keenan cites this his course on the art of speechwriting. moment of panic as one of his greatest “Let me put it this way: I live a learning experiences.

15-minute walk from NYU. I commute to Even after two years with the President, Chicago every Monday to teach writing a speech for someone else to deliver at Northwestern. I love it proved to be a challenge. He explains here,” he says. writing for another person requires Keenan’s considerable face-to-face interaction to dedication does develop a “mind meld” with the speaker, not go unnoticed but Keenan didn’t get much face time with by his Obama until he was promoted to deputy students. director in 2011. Before that, Keenan relied Darby on Obama’s past speeches, books and the Hopper types of edits made to his speeches.

(Medill “You’re not just writing what you think ’19), who they want to say, you need to figure out was his why they want to say it,” Keenan says. student This lesson proved true for Keenan in 2018, years later. One of President Obama’s more reflected renowned speeches is a eulogy he gave fondly on for Reverend Clementa Pinckney. In this working 2015 speech, the President sang “Amazing with Grace” to the audience.

Professor Keenen giving a lecture during his speechwriting class.

Though he had been working with Keenan. the President for eight years, Keenan’s “He continues to fly to campus every The class is unlike others in the version of the speech was not read aloud week for this class just because he thinks Political Science department because it that day. The President rewrote the back this is so important,” she says. “That focuses less on political theory or rhetoric half of the speech. shows how he and instead is geared toward practical Keenan cites this teaches the class experience. Students leave the class as the only time and how he with a portfolio of 10 different speeches, he apologized for a continues to be ranging from a eulogy to a State of the speech not meeting a resource for Union Address. the President’s former students.”

“I wouldn’t say my time in politics has standards. But he After graduating, passed, but I did have my time,” Keenan admits Obama’s Hopper went on to says. “Now I get to train a new group of edits made the work as a full-time speechwriters every year and send them speech “better” speechwriter for out into the world until ultimately, ideally, and “beautiful” Illinois Governor all of politics is staffed with my kids.” as the President J.B. Pritzker.

Whether writing speeches for a i n c l u d e d She says president, a governor or a class project, a reflections on the strict speechwriter’s work is not finished until grace and racial deadlines the presenter is at the podium reading it bias in America.

Keenan set aloud. As stressful as it may be, Keenan “He put his hand for class enjoys the challenge of writing speeches. on my shoulder assignments He acknowledges no one is a perfect and said, ‘Brother, prepared her writer — it’s collaboration and revision we’re collaborators. for the time that ultimately make a speech great.

“By the end, you get this piece of You gave me Political Science sensitivity the scaffolding I Professor speechwriting sheet music and you get to conduct the needed to build requires. audience with those words,” Keenan says. something here. You’ll recognize your work in “Deadlines are real and “You can make people nod, you can make what I wrote. And trust me, when you’ve been you don’t get an extension when people cheer, you can make people cry. thinking about this stuff for 40 years, you’ll the governor is like, ‘Hey, where’s It’s a really extraordinary gift to be able to write for a live audience.” know what you want to say, too,’” Keenan says. my speech?’” she explains.

“You’re not just writing what you think they want to say, you need to figure out why they want to say it.”

Cody Keenan

DANCE FLOOR 19

The road

to education equity

Plans for a K-8 school in Evanston’s Fifth Ward aim to address more than 50 years of education inequity.

WRITTEN BY AUDREY HETTLEMAN // DESIGNED BY ELISA TAYLOR AND AUDREY HETTLEMAN

I

n 1966, lifetime Evanston resident Janet Alexander Davis enrolled her son in kindergarten at Foster School, which was walking distance from their home in the Fifth Ward.

Her son would be one of the last local students enrolled at Foster School before it became a magnet school and eventually closed. The next year, when racial integration went into effect in Evanston Public Schools, Davis’s son was bused to Lincolnwood Elementary School in northern Evanston.

“It put a real damper on how much earlier we had to get up and get out of the house,” Davis says.

With the loss of the school and the dispersal of local children to schools throughout the city, the Fifth Ward’s sense of unity was shattered. But in a few years, that 50-plus-year inequity will be rectified.

As plans currently stand, beginning in 2025, Fifth Ward students will have the chance to attend school in their own neighborhood for the first time in over half a century. In 2022, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 (D65) approved plans to finally construct a community school on what is currently Foster Field. Proponents hope the project will decrease racial and educational inequities caused by the lack of a local school in a historically Black community.

The Fifth Ward school Davis once enrolled her son in, Foster School, opened on the corner of Dewey Ave. and Foster St. in 1905. It quickly became a pillar of the Fifth Ward community. Black students comprised 99% of its K-8 student body as a result of redlining and de facto segregation. With a school in their own neighborhood, parents could bond over their shared surroundings and kids could run home after school to play with neighbors. A community coalesced around Foster School.

“This is where relationships were formed,” Davis says.

But a fire at Foster School in 1958 decimated the building, causing $500,000 in damage and forcing D65 to find alternative temporary education sites for Foster students. At the time, many of Evanston’s schools were still segregated. Foster School students were not fully integrated into white classrooms around the city — their classes were instead taught in gymnasiums, cafeterias and community centers.

“There are aspects of the city’s race situation of which Evanstonians can’t be proud,” a 1958 Evanston Review article said.

Still, the article said, the integration of Foster School students was an example of “great and commendable progress.”

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Map of Evanston’s revised school attendance areas from 1967.

The current Fifth Ward is highlighted in yellow.

Courtesy of the Evanston History Center.

Foster School reopened within the year and students returned to their regular classrooms, but Shorefront Legacy Center Executive Director Laurice Bell says this disruption had lasting consequences.

“You have people who’ve been traumatized by the experience of a fire at their school and having to leave something — and these are young kids,” Bell says. “Their teachers are being forced to leave, and they’re just having to deal with makeshift spaces that were not preparing people to be educated. And they got to see the difference in terms of how they were treated.”

The community faced a significant loss when Foster School closed to local students in 1967 as part of D65’s integration initiative. In its place, D65 approved plans for a “city-wide laboratory school for testing new ideas in education,” according to a 1967 article from the Chicago Sun-Times, and renamed it the Martin Luther King Jr. Experimental Laboratory School (King

March 2022 Lab School). The district aimed to attract white students to the primarily Black area as D65 integrated. The majority of Foster School students were therefore relocated to other D65 schools.

In 1979, the district moved King Lab School to Skiles Middle School in the Second Ward, effectively closing the last form of schooling in the Fifth Ward. The closure caused controversy, as it meant busing Black children at disproportionate rates compared to their white peers. Roughly 450 Black Fifth Ward students from Foster School were bused to one of seven other Evanston schools.

The rest of the local students were reassigned to schools within walking distance but outside of their immediate communities.

“When they closed Foster School, there were people that really believed integration would be a good thing for the Black community. They felt like if you have an integrated school, it’s good for your educational experience,” says Henry Wilkins, Evanston resident and STEM education advocate. “However, I don’t think it was understood what a burden was placed on the Black community to achieve integration.”

One year after the district converted Foster School into a laboratory school, Bell began elementary school at Dewey Elementary in the Fourth Ward. While she remembers befriending Fifth Ward students who were bused to her elementary and middle schools (Dewey and Nichols, respectively), she also notes the impact coming into a community as an outsider could have had.

“Typically, what desegregation has done is put the weight of anything onto those who are being affected the most,” Bell says. “When I think of being a child and making playdates with people who lived in another area … the accessibility to community experiences were different.”

That lack of community access is still present. Today, according to Wilkins, children living on the same block in Evanston’s Fifth Ward may attend as many as four different elementary or middle schools scattered throughout Evanston.

At the end of the day, Wilkins says one of the main reasons rebuilding a Fifth Ward school wasn’t a top priority for D65 was racism.

“There’s a lack of empathy for what the Black community had to go through,” Wilkins says.

There have been several previous initiatives for a Fifth Ward school since Foster School’s closing. In 2012, D65 proposed a referendum that would have provided funding for a new K-5 school in the Fifth Ward, along with improvements to existing schools. The referendum failed, with almost 55% of Evanston voters deciding against it. Wilkins says this was due to various residents’ concerns over taxes and the resulting lack of diversity in their own schools. In the Fifth Ward, though, 76% of voters were for the referendum, and rates were similarly high in other wards primarily composed of people of color.

On March 14, 2022, the D65 school board approved a new Student Assignment Plan, which included plans for returning a neighborhood school to the Fifth Ward. This plan specified the school would be a three-story, K-8 school with a 900-student capacity and a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

District 65 approves plans for a school in the Fifth Ward. Two plans emerge as frontrunners: a K-8 school with room for magnet programs, or a K-5 neighborhood school.

December 2022 The first site concepts for the Fifth Ward school are presented to the community for feedback. A Dec. 6 community meeting brought over 150 community members to FleetwoodJourdain Community Center, eager to share feedback.

Spring 2023 Planning logistics, including zoning and design submittals, begin. The City of Evanston and D65 continue to seek community input on the school’s development.

October 2023 A D65 financial assessment reveals the project is projected to be $25 million over budget. D65 board members convene a special board meeting during which they consider alternate plans for the school.

Spring 2024 Construction is expected to begin on the new school site.

Given the October budget revelations, this is subject to change as plans fluctuate.

DANCEFLOOR FLOOR 21 DANCE 21

(LEED) Gold certification, a building sustainability measure. in this project and says D65 has, at times, failed to solicit it. She There was also a proposal to include space for the Dr. Bessie points to the school’s proposed location, Foster Field, as one Rhodes School of Global Studies, a K-8 bilingual magnet program. example of the district’s lack of consideration. In an area already Community input has played a large role in determining densely packed with businesses, residences and churches, Davis what the school should look like. One example is the “Amplifying says, developing a three-story building could negatively impact Black Voices on Education Equity in Evanston” initiative from the surrounding community. education nonprofit STEM School Evanston. Completed in 2022, “It’s not a perfect plan at all,” Davis says. “Nothing may be, but the project surveyed over 400 Black Evanstonians to gather their it has brought up some really uncomfortable situations for some input on Evanston education and Fifth Ward school plans. of the people that live there and businesses that have been there.”

Wilkins, who founded the nonprofit, says the survey In addition to location concerns, a recent budget issue revealed that Black Evanstonians considered STEM the “number has upset those invested in the project. At an Oct. 16 special one subject area to focus on,” with African Centered Curriculum meeting, D65 interim Superintendent Angel Turner announced being the next most popular subject area. He says he sees the the proposed Fifth Ward school plan was 60% over its original school as a form of repair but thinks it should go further than that. $40 million budget.

“Give the community STEM Board members say this drastic at school. That’s the interest,” increase in price was due to a Wilkins says. “You replaced combination of issues: namely, the physical building, but design changes, sustainability the community has asked for efforts, inflation and an something more.” overestimation of savings from for what the Black community Evanston’s history greatly not busing Fifth Ward students to had to go through. informs current discussions other schools. around a Fifth Ward school.

“I am just outraged,” Davis - Henry Wilkins The Shorefront Legacy Center, says. “Especially when there STEM education advocate an organization that records, were people meeting with [D65] studies and preserves the and suggesting certain things history of Black residents on the North Shore, has helped provide and talking about funding at the same time.” that context.

In an effort to bring down costs, the board modified plans Bell, the center’s executive director, sees the current at that meeting. Now, the new Fifth Ward school may be a twodevelopments as a good step forward. However, she says, it floor, K-5 school with a 600-student capacity and a LEED Silver doesn’t erase the impact of closing Foster School all those certification — although that is subject to change. years ago.

“There’s some people that don’t feel like it was ever going “We robbed people of a certain type of education by to work,” Davis says. “So now that all this has hit the fan, I’m closing that school. The community, in many ways, changed hearing a lot of negative feelings in the community.” a great deal, and it’s not coming back,” Bell says. “Having While the exact specifications of the new Fifth Ward a school will be an important step for the community. I School remain uncertain, Bell says she still believes in just know that it’s a different community than what was the importance of community schools. She stresses the previously considered.” significance of listening to community voices every step of Now in her 80s, Davis co-chairs Environmental Justice the way to ensure the school accurately reflects the wishes of Evanston (EJE). She and other members of EJE have attended those in its immediate vicinity.

D65 meetings, published op-eds and lent their environmental “Schools don’t just provide teaching of arithmetic or equity expertise to the district as they discussed building plans. reading or history,” Bell says. “It’s a community space. It’s a Davis emphasizes the importance of community input safe space.”

“ There’s a lack of

empathy

”

School Year Earliest any programming will go into effect.

2025-26

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area

GRAY

Not quite international and not quite domestic, students from U.S. territories navigate uncertain classification on campus.

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA ABEYTA // DESIGNED BY JESSICA CHEN

A

s new Wildcats, Medill first-year Ariel Paul and Communication third-year Gabriella Burgos were welcomed in two different ways. Both are students from a U.S. territory, but one was labeled as a domestic student and the other was placed in International Student Orientation (ISO).

U.S. territories hold a gray area quality — both legally and socially — when it comes to their perception within the U.S. and how their residents see themselves. Some students say they feel stuck in limbo, being not quite international or domestic. Their experiences reflect the larger issue of how the United States categorizes its island territories as part of itself and vice versa.

Today, there are five inhabited islands that are U.S. territories: Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. The combined population of these islands is more than 3.6 million people. Residents of these territories are not allowed to vote for president, and their delegates in the House of Representatives do not have voting rights.

A tale of two orientations Burgos, who is from Puerto Rico’s capital San Juan, says the part of the city she’s from is “very Americanized.”

While Spanish is the dominant

PUERTO

RICO AMERICAN

NORTHERN U.S.

MARIANA

VIRGIN

SAMOA

ISLANDS

ISLANDS

GUAM

language overall, metropolitan residents commonly speak Spanglish, a mix of Spanish and English.

When Burgos arrived in Evanston, she recalled feeling anxious to order food or talk to a doctor in English, as she didn’t speak it often outside of her conversations with school friends in San Juan. Suddenly having every conversation in English was an adjustment, she says.

“I know the words but it sounds a little awkward when I say it,” Burgos says. “Am I being too formal? How do people say this? Those little things ran through my head a lot when I got here.”

On Burgos’ first day of ISO, she started talking to another student and wasn’t aware that she had initiated the conversation in Spanish. Burgos’ “initial reaction” to start speaking in Spanish was another thing she had to change. Paying attention to how other people spoke helped her pick up some subtleties in language, Burgos says.

“I did find it useful meeting other students from other Caribbean and Latin American countries,” Burgos says. “They would ask me, ‘Oh, you’re an international student?’ And I would be like, ‘No … not really. Maybe culturally?’ I still don’t know how to answer that question.”

Burgos says she relates to the experiences of students from Latin American and Caribbean countries more than U.S.-born students with Latine/Hispanic heritage, citing the differences between growing up Latine in the U.S. and living most of your life in another country.

Overall, Burgos says ISO was a good experience where she made friendships she still has to this day. She says those DANCE FLOOR 23

connections, especially with students from Latin America, were the most valuable thing ISO gave her in adjusting to life at Northwestern.

However, not all students from U.S. territories have the same orientation experience. Paul was born and raised on the island of St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands, but went through domestic students’ orientation instead of ISO. On their official documents, Paul identified as a domestic student.

Hilary Hurd Anyaso, Northwestern’s director of media relations, stated in an email that “anyone who wants to join social events for international orientation is able to.” However, anyone who does not have an F-1 or J-1 visa is not contacted by the Office of International Student and Scholar Services. It is not required for students from U.S. territories to undergo ISO. “There is a lot of confusion on what counts as international, and you don’t really know what your options are because of that,” Paul says.

For Paul, leaving St. Thomas’s closeknit community was a big change of pace.

“We have a lot of customs where we say good morning wherever we go to whoever [and have] a lot of respect in the community,” Paul says. “Everybody knows everybody.”

Culture shock varies from student to student, depending on which territory they are from. Something Paul had to figure out was what their communication style was going to be. Paul often codeswitches their dialect to assimilate to how people talk here in Evanston.

“In the Caribbean, most islands have a distinct accent and a dialect which is kind

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of different from how people talk here. I basically put on an American accent to make it easier for people to understand me and so I can navigate better,” Paul says.

Because of the gray area they occupy, students from U.S. territories can also get lost in the shuffle of administrative logistics like receiving their Wildcard.

Domestic students receive their Wildcard in the mail while international students pick them up at their area desk.

Paul did not get their Wildcard in the mail, so they went to their area desk in Allison Hall to ask about it. Paul says after the desk learned they were from a U.S. territory, they assumed they wouldn’t have it. They redirected Paul to the Wildcard Office at Norris, but the Wildcard Office sent them back to the area desk.

For the second time, the area desk asked Paul if they were an international student. “Not technically,” Paul said, “But can you still check?” It turned out their card was there all along.

“With some aspects, like with the Wildcard, I get treated like an international student,” Paul says. “It’s a really weird liminal space of being international, but also not.”

Northwestern’s domestic students’ orientation assumes students are familiar with aspects of U.S. life such as navigating a city or setting up a bank account.

But Paul suggests the University could do more to help students from U.S. territories acclimate, such as explaining how to use public transportation.

“I definitely would have benefited from some of the things international students get,” Paul says. “Like they got to go [on a field trip] to Chicago and be here a little earlier.”

“It’s a really weird

liminal space of being international,

but also not.”

Ariel Paul Medill first-year Despite bureaucratic confusion and culture shocks, Paul says their friends have played an important role in helping them acclimate to life in Evanston, such as shopping for a rain jacket and taking the CTA buses to Skokie for the first time.

U. S.

Hiding an empire The liminal space Paul speaks of is emblematic of the effects of the “logo map,” a term used by Northwestern history professor Daniel Immerwahr in his book How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.

Immerwahr explains that the logo map is what people typically think of when they envision the United States: a country bordered by Canada and Mexico and enclosed by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans — “From sea to shining sea,” as the song “America the Beautiful” goes.

However, that iconic shape only represented the true borders of the U.S. for three years: 1854-1857. The incorporation of inhabited and uninhabited territories expanded American borders far beyond the continental U.S. “I can see why it helps to affirm something real, which is, if you’re coming from Guam you are not immigrating because Guam is a part of the United States,” Immerwahr says. “I can also see why it might be helpful to acknowledge the other thing that’s real, which is that Guam is a different kind of part of the United States than Wyoming is.”

How the University views and manages its students from U.S. territories reflects the perpetual question of how the U.S. views these ambiguously defined areas. This relationship is especially complicated due to the colonial and imperial history behind how these places came to be territories.

“I don’t think this is Northwestern making imperial policy,” Immerwahr says. “I think it’s reflecting the imperial policy of the country.”

The ISO blueprint Current ISO programming offers a reference point for what the University could do to help ease the transition for students from U.S. territories and international students alike.

Weinberg second-year and Vice President of the International Student Association Sarah Norman tries to help students adjust to campus through her work as an international peer advisor (IPA). The IPAs work closely with the

?

Office of International Student and Scholar Services to plan all of the programming for International Student Orientation, which takes place before Wildcat Welcome. But Norman says the responsibility for leading ISO activities fell primarily on IPAs. “The IPAs took the kids to Chicago, we did all the social events, we took them downtown to AT&T when they were setting up their phone and we guided them on how to set up a bank account,” Norman says.

ISO receives less funding than Wildcat Welcome, Norman says. While there have been conversations regarding future collaborations between ISO and Wildcat Welcome, she says they have yet to become a reality.

Northwestern has regional programming with various admissions officers.

Domestically, the U.S. is broken up into regions like the Midwest, Northeast and so forth. U.S. territories are included in these domestic regions, with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands being in the South and Southwest region.

Norman is from the Philippines but says students from U.S. territories might benefit from having something like ISO’s regional networking program, which helps students find “that sense of community away from your actual community.” International students are also organized into regions of the world — such as Oceania and Southeast Asia — for bonding activities, which are run by the IPAs and take place during orientation.

“In comparison to the other international student events, this was an event that gave students opportunities to mingle with people that have a more

similar culture. They’re from different countries, but they’re still from the same region,” Norman says.

She adds, even though international students may be from different countries, it doesn’t mean they are the only ones who have to adjust to a new life at Northwestern.

“Even if you’re from a different state in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the same experiences or you’re not going to be shocked,” Norman says.

89.9% Domestic

10.1% International

Data taken from Northwestern Undergraduate Class of 2026 profile.

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year of the girl In 2023, every night is girls’ night.

WRITTEN BY SARAH LONSER // DESIGNED BY ALLISON KIM // PHOTO BY LAVANYA SUBRAMANIAN

T

his past summer, the Barbie movie, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour seemingly took over the world as extravagant, glittery ensembles dominated movie theaters and football stadiums.

“Having the freedom to not feel like we had to hide femininity and outrageous expressions of femininity is a really freeing thing,” Communication third-year Lena Moore says.

“Girlhood” may be having its moment in current media, but the significance extends far beyond the pop-culture sphere.

A special interest in girls, especially as consumers, has wide-ranging social and economic effects. According to TIME magazine, there have been more than 1 billion Barbie dolls sold globally over the six decades since the doll was first released. Forbes says the Eras tour “has the potential to generate a staggering $4.6 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone.”

What girlhood means has been debated for years, both in pop culture and in the classroom.

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At Northwestern specifically, School of Communication Professor Janice Radway taught a class called “Girlhood in Public Culture” from 2009 to 2022.

The course investigated how girls are portrayed in media and culture — be that feminist literature or “girlzines” — and responses to that representation.

Over time, Radway has seen how social media and celebrity culture have intensified conversations about these topics at Northwestern and beyond.

“There was a moment where I realized these students, suddenly, are different,” Radway says of her students today. “They have a very different, much more flexible and fluid idea

“I could be myself

and be a girl

at the same time.”

Max Sullivan Medill third-year

about gender than my students had 10 years before.”

For a more historical, but still relevant, approach to girlhood, English Professor Ilana Larkin teaches a class called “American Girlhood” which revolves around ideas of girlhood from the 19th century to the present. Larkin says conversations about girlhood in her Northwestern classes are unique because of the students. Their willingness to dive deep into complex issues, she says, makes for a thoughtprovoking and accepting space to discuss topics like girlhood.

“Northwestern students are very conscientious and canny readers who are really attentive to the dynamics of race and class and gender and sexuality,” she says.

Girlhood in the spotlight Girlhood is having “a real cultural moment,” according to Larkin. She says this movement is partly driven by a collective desire to reclaim the past.

Larkin attributes this desire to factors such as the current political climate and increasing cynicism, which have likely made people yearn for simpler, more innocent times.

Moore says she believes the surge of young women writing about their experiences in girlhood is a large part of why this moment is happening now.

“We, 21st-century girls, are being written by our contemporaries for the first time,” Moore says.

Moore is one of those contemporaries.

She cites songwriters like Swift, Lorde and Olivia Rodrigo as inspiration for a play with original music she is working on.

“Something that I thought about a lot was, ‘How can I represent my peers?’ and that’s something Olivia Rodrigo is doing,” Moore says. “She’s writing for people her age about her own experiences.”

Moore highlighted Rodrigo’s album GUTS, whose songs like “teenage dream” and “making the bed” exemplify an angsty adolescence to which many girls relate.

GUTS is one piece of media that brings girlhood to the spotlight, but girls are also sharing their experiences

“We, as people who identify as girls or women, are feeling less and less like we need permission to tell our stories,” Moore says.

A critical look at girlhood

in less formal ways. TikTok allows a greater number of teenage girls to share their stories through “get ready with me” vlogs, storytime videos and edits of their favorite girlhood moments set to songs from the Barbie soundtrack.

Reclaiming girlhood Memories of girlhood remain powerful across decades, especially for the eraslong reign of Taylor Swift. As a longtime Swiftie, Moore describes the magic of the Eras Tour, a space for embracing and celebrating feminine joy.

“A lot of people tell you you should not take pride in [being a Swift fan], or that you should maybe keep to yourself or not be as sparkly or dancy or flamboyant,” Moore says.

Now, in an era of reclaiming and redefining girlhood, it’s time to embrace as much or as little sparkle and flamboyance as you wish.

But there is more to girlhood than glitz and glam. Both Larkin and Moore note a rise in the acknowledgment and acceptance of the darker parts: the mistakes, the anger and the angst.

Some pop culture examples, The New York Times says, are rageful scenes in WandaVision, Big Little Lies and Beef. The Times describes these as “striking scenes within a culture that still mostly prefers women either to carry their anger calmly and silently or to express it within a misogynistic framing.”

Women in the media are also letting themselves express the emotions they were once shamed and belittled for.

Swift and Rodrigo attempt to address the scathing nature of female rage in songs “mad woman” and “all–American bitch,” respectively.

There is no “one” girlhood, but there are parts of girlhood being pushed to the forefront of culture by businesses and larger institutions, says Weinberg secondyear Inaya Hussain. She notes the capitalist influences on girlhood and how commercial brands and the media manufacture certain ideas of girlhood to young girls.

“Girlhood is oftentimes, especially now, sold to us,” Hussain says. “Everything I can think about what I consider girlhood in my childhood is the big media brands.

I would watch the Barbie movies, I would play with Bratz dolls, I would do all these things that fit into this girlhood ‘brand.’”

This commercialization pushes forth a view on what girlhood “should” look like, which can make some young people feel left out. Medill third-year Max Sullivan says social pressure in their childhood years pushed them in the “not like other girls” direction.

“I was a contrarian, still am to a degree, and so I really embraced this, ‘No, I am smart and I don’t care about vapid, silly things,’” Sullivan says, “I found that persona made sense for me at the time.

Of course, I don’t think that now.”

Prior to coming to Northwestern, Sullivan attended an all-girls school from fifth grade through 12th grade.

During the later part of their high school years, though, they became more accepting of girlhood as a concept.

“‘Girl’ felt like a category I was inevitably falling into. It was not a choice I was making,” Sullivan says. But after they learned to broaden their definition of girlhood, “I could be myself and be a girl at the same time.”

Once at Northwestern, Sullivan began to regularly meet nonbinary and gender non-conforming people, which allowed for more nuanced discussions of girlhood.

Even so, there are times when Sullivan feels the need to “tread lightly” in some of these discussions due to the chance for judgment, bigotry or misunderstanding from others.

The current discourse around girlhood follows a transformation of pop culture perspectives. For what feels like the first time in mainstream media, girls are being written about candidly and openly by their peers. To fully understand girlhood at this moment, Sullivan says, we must listen to those who are currently experiencing it.

“We, as adults who have a lot of knowledge and experience to share, have to also recognize that girls do too. They are so incredibly cool,” Sullivan says.

Communication first-year Lal Kahvecioglu applies colorful eyeshadow.

DANCE FLOOR 27

reign

Purple

RUNNING BACK 141 SEASONS OF

northwestern FOOTBALL. WRITTEN BY MITRA NOURBAKHSH DESIGNED BY JACKSON SPENNER PHOTOS FROM UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

I

t was November of 1948, and The Daily Northwestern’s front page had the words “No School!” plastered across the top, with a huge headline reading, “ROSES!” On Nov. 23, Northwestern students flooded the streets of Evanston in celebration of a sport that, these days, is more often a source of frustration than delight.

For the first time in history, the school’s football team had qualified for the Rose Bowl and would be setting off for California that weekend. Little did they know, the team would not make it to another bowl for 47 years.

While Northwestern excels in some sports, football has not always been one of them. As the Wildcats conclude their 141st season, North by Northwestern takes an archival journey down memory lane to chronicle the highs and lows of Northwestern football.

Taking

the field

Football first found its place on campus as a game casually played between friends. As its popularity grew throughout the 1870s, students formed

Local publications highlight Northwestern’s inaugural Rose Bowl berth in 1948.

a team and played a few annual games against other schools.

By 1889, Northwestern students were enamored with the gridiron pastime.

“A final football game is now the society event of the season in New York and Chicago,” said an edition of Northwestern, a campus publication at the time. “And we think we see signs showing that our faculty are beginning to recover from

their unaccountable prejudice against the noble game, so that next season will be one of glory and fame for the glorious and famous N.W.U.” Glory came just three years later in a nail-biter of a game against the University of Michigan that set the school’s attendance record with a turnout of over one thousand fans. With lots of enthusiasm but no Midwestern league to

1870-1900

1905-1907

1921

1925-1926

Northwestern’s football team and the Big Ten are born.

Football is suspended at Northwestern due to safety concerns.

Northwestern hires its first full-time coach and begins recruiting players.

The Wildcats finish second in the Big Ten, Dyche Stadium is constructed.

1900 28 FALL 2023

1910

1920

1930

1940

play in, Northwestern became one of the founding members of the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives, which later became the Big Ten. For all the excitement on campus, in those days, football was more violent than it is today. A Northwestern article reported that, in a game between Yale and Princeton, “nearly every man was painfully hurt, and two of the participants were crippled for life …. Blood flowed as freely as at a prize-ring entertainment, and in several instances fists were used with serious consequences.”

Along with a number of other schools, Northwestern suspended its team over safety concerns. By 1907 though, the second year of suspension, more than 90% of the student body had signed a petition to reinstate the team. With new NCAA rules in place that made the game safer, football came back to the University.

Although students were excited to have a team once again, there weren’t many wins to celebrate. Northwestern football just couldn’t stop losing, and by 1921, the University had had enough. They hired a full-time head coach and, for the first time, began recruiting more intentionally.

Pick

six

With these changes in place, the next 30 years were marked with success.

The Wildcats finished second in the Big Ten in the 1925 season, followed by the inauguration of state-of-the-art Dyche Stadium (now Ryan Field). A decade later, the Wildcats beat No. 1 ranked University of Minnesota, and 1941 brought Northwestern three recordbreaking years with All-American Otto Graham as quarterback.

What is still remembered as one of the most remarkable moments in Northwestern football history came soon after, on New Year’s Day in 1949.

Local publications highlight students’ exuberant celebrations of Northwestern’s Rose Bowl bid and their victory over the University of California, Berkeley.

Celebrations began the day the team’s Rose Bowl bid was announced in 1948. According to The Daily, “the demonstrations were proof that the much-mentioned Purple Spirit was back after its long wartime vacation.”

Chicago Sun-Times reported on a “Wild day for Evanston,” saying that “Evanston’s dignity was tossed for a heavy loss today as 8,000 Northwestern students swarmed into Fountain Square, tied traffic in knots, and took over …. They sang, cheered and cavorted. It was all spontaneous, which increased the fun.”

School was canceled for the remainder of the week, and the Wildcats traveled to the West Coast and triumphed over the University of California, Berkeley, in front of 92,000 fans.

1948-1949

1950-1970

Northwestern qualifies for and wins the Rose Bowl for the first time.

The Wildcats record several hard-fought winning seasons.

1950

1960

The football team continued to play a number of hard-fought winning seasons in the following years, but the good times didn’t last forever.

Fumbling

the ball

1973 marked the beginning of Northwestern’s slide down the rankings.

In the next five years, the team won 12 games and lost 43. In the two years after that, the team won only a single game.

During those losing years, Northwestern football also reconciled with racism within the team.

Black athletes reported that coaches pressured Black players to return from

1973

1981

Northwestern’s slide down the rankings begins.

The University hires Dennis Green, the first Black coach in the Big Ten.

1970

1980

1990 DANCE FLOOR 29

injuries before they were ready and kicked Black athletes off the team for minor offenses. The head coach at the time, Rick Venturi, also allegedly said he “wished he could get rid of the entire senior class of African American athletes,” according to a report by The Daily.

Thirty-one Black Northwestern athletes banded together to create Black Athletes United For the Light (BAUL) and came to then-Vice President of Student Affairs Jim Carleton with allegations of unequal treatment.

BAUL’s efforts were instrumental in Northwestern’s decision to fire Venturi.

In his place, they hired Dennis Green, the first Black coach in the Big Ten. “We hired what I consider to be one of the finest coaches in the country who has had many offers from other institutions,” then-Athletic Director Doug Single said in a 1981 Daily article. “I think he’s going to be very successful.”

A

hail mary

Green had high hopes for his first season coaching the team, but nine months later, the headline of The Daily’s sports page read, “Not Again! Same old Wildcats Lose 42-0.”

In the article, Green was quoted saying, “For the last nine months I’ve been here, I’ve been saying pretty positive things.

But how could you sit and watch that game without throwing up?”

The statistics backed up Green’s sentiment. That year, Northwestern became the Division I team with the longest losing streak in history: 29 losses in a row.

After the team’s record-breaking loss to Michigan State, students rushed the field, chanting “We’re the worst” in an ironic celebration. They tore the goalposts out of the ground, tossed them over the edge of the stadium, marched them down Central Street and threw them into Lake Michigan.

“Dyche Stadium south goalpost covered more ground yardage Saturday than the Wildcats,” a Daily staff reporter remarked.

The event attracted journalists from national outlets like CBS, NBC and The New York Times. Many fans and journalists attributed Northwestern’s athletic failures to the strict academic standards student athletes had to meet, but not everyone agreed.

30 FALL 2023

The Daily reports on two victorious seasons in recent history: Northwestern’s 1995 Big Ten title and 2018 Big Ten West title.

“You don’t need to lower the standards to win,” one student pointed out. “How can we have good tennis and volleyball teams but not football teams?”

Still, the football team did not improve much, and by the mid-1980s, most students only went to the game for the “wild, booze-drenched tailgates” and to throw marshmallows at the marching band.

The

comeback

Although it seemed inevitable that successful years would be followed by embarrassing ones, it also became clear that no matter how much the football team lost, they would eventually make a comeback.

“IT WAS ALL

spontaneous WHICH INCREASED THE FUN.” CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

In this case, it took 15 years and a new head coach. Gary Barnett replaced Dennis Green, and he came to Northwestern with a mission to “take the purple to Pasadena.”

The Wildcats had not been to the Rose Bowl since 1949 and hadn’t won a Big Ten title since 1936. Under Barnett, the team did both. They shocked the football world with an upset win against Notre Dame.

Then, in front of a sold out crowd at Dyche Stadium, they beat Penn State. The next game, at Purdue, clinched Northwestern’s Big Ten title.

The team didn’t have many recordbreaking seasons over the next five years, but by the early 2000s, Northwestern football became consistent. As a team that was notorious for its ups and downs, consistency was something to be proud of.

Fourth

quarter

Pat Fitzgerald led the team to a number of victories during his almost 17-year tenure coaching the Wildcats, including back-to-back bowl wins and Big Ten West division championships in 2018 and 2020.

But his legacy was marred by a hazing scandal that overtook the football team this past summer.

Former football players alleged “egregious and vile and inhumane behavior,” including players being “restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various ‘Purgelike’ masks, who would then begin ‘dryhumping’ the victim in a dark locker room,” according to a Daily article.

The scandal led to Fitzgerald’s dismissal as head coach, and the University named new defensive coordinator David Braun the interim head coach.

With a program shaken by this summer’s revelations and coming off an almost winless 2022, many students had low hopes for this Wildcats football season. But the team has more wins than last year, and many are hopeful about Braun’s leadership going forward.

In any case, history has proven that no matter how bad things get, Northwestern football will bounce back.

Over the COUNTER and onto CAMPUS How Evanston and Northwestern are making lifesaving drug overdose treatments more accessible.

WRITTEN BY HANNAH COLE // DESIGNED BY MICHELLE HWANG

S

tudents scatter throughout Evanston Public Library, readers browse the hundreds of titles and parents usher their children in for storytime. However, not every visitor enters the brick building for literary reasons. On the first floor, near the circulation desk, is an emergency overdose box equipped with two doses of Naloxone nasal spray and instructions for use.

From January 2022 to July 2023, the City of Evanston reported 174 opioidrelated emergency room visits. In response, officials installed five overdose emergency boxes in locations across the city, including Evanston Public Library, Robert Crown Community Center, Evanston Ecology Center, Levy Senior Center and Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center.

Northwestern University also introduced its own initiatives regarding opioid overdose prevention and Naloxone training on campus.

The University offers students the opportunity to learn how to administer Naloxone and provides two free doses upon completion.

These measures are meant to protect residents and students from potentially fatal overdoses.

Naloxone, or “Narcan,” is a lifesaving medication that stops the

effects of opioid overdoses. Lesli Vipond, the assistant director of substance misuse prevention at Northwestern, says the treatment only works for opioids.

This includes fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid increasingly found laced in other drugs. “[Narcan] binds to the same receptors in the brain that the opioid binds to and essentially just kicks out the drug from the brain,” Vipond says.

She adds that it’s still important to seek medical attention after using Narcan because opioids can rebind to the receptors after Narcan has worn off.

The decision to increase Narcan access at Northwestern stemmed from the University’s collaboration with Mayfest Productions to provide free fentanyl testing strips and train members on administering Narcan for Dillo Day in 2023, Vipond says.

“Last year was the first time we had any sort of drug safety initiatives,” says Lahari Ramini, Mayfest Operations Force Committee cohead and Weinberg fourth-year. “The first part was offering fentanyl test strips during wristband distribution ... the other side of that was Narcan training, and we had a portion of Mayfest members participate in Narcan training.”

DANCE FLOOR 31

“The most important

hindrances or barriers to them accessing Narcan.”

For some community members and college students, the price of Narcan at pharmacies is too steep. For others, the stigma surrounding drug use might prevent people from seeking help.

While students may Lesli Vipond worry pharmacists or Assistant Director of Substance providers at Northwestern will judge them for needing Misuse Prevention Narcan, Ramini says the goal is to keep students Following Dillo Day, some students safe if they use substances expressed interest in learning more about rather than shame them for their choices. overdose prevention and recognizing the “When we go into this approach of signs of opioid-related issues. If someone no drug use, it really does make things took a fentanyl-laced drug, Vipond says a difficult, especially when you’re trying to trained student could better identify the provide a safer environment for a huge symptoms of opioid use. music festival,” Ramini says. “We want to She says the hour-long training educate the students instead of saying no sessions explain how to recognize an and not providing any resources. So, we opioid overdose and administer Narcan, said providing resources is the best way to specifically the nasal spray version. do that and prevent that stigma.”

The school hosted three sessions during Evanston accounts for residents or students Fall Quarter — one in October and two in concerned about accessing the boxes due to November — and they plan to offer more stigma by limiting communication between training during Winter Quarter depending workers and community members at the on student interest. various box spots, ensuring anonymity.

The University implemented these “We’ve heard from a number of measures following the Food and Drug community members on how accessible the Administration’s approval of over-the- boxes are,” Ogbo says. “No questions asked. counter Narcan in March 2023. Beginning You’re not going to someone’s desk to ask for in September, people could access the it. We understand there might be a stigma medication from their local pharmacy without a prescription. However, according to The New York Times, a twodose box of Narcan typically costs $44.99, a price not everyone can afford.

Though Evanston is not facing an opioid epidemic, the City of Evanston Director of Health and Human Services Ike Ogbo says the opioid-related emergency room visits reported in 2022 and 2023, along with potential barriers to Narcan access, inspired the city’s emergency box program.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while the rates of opioid overdose increased for all populations, the epidemic is hitting American Indian, Alaska Native and Black communities the hardest.

“The focus for me is distribution,” Ogbo says. “Making sure that it’s available and accessible and also ensuring there are no

thing is we reduce the likelihood that someone experiences an overdose.”

32 FALL 2023

attached to people who are experiencing these life circumstances.”

In a similar effort to reduce stigma and encourage students to seek resources, Northwestern focuses on harm reduction, Vipond says.

A harm reduction framework recognizes that practices like drug use are pervasive, and rather than stigmatizing or mistreating people who use drugs, it attempts to reduce the physical and social impacts associated with the activity.

“If you choose to use [a substance], it’s super important that we reduce risks,” Vipond says. “The most important thing is we reduce the likelihood that someone experiences an overdose or has some sort of extreme negative reaction to using any of these substances.”

After receiving 500 fentanyl test strips ahead of Dillo Day 2023 from a community organization called Chicago Recovery Alliance, the University ran out in two days.

Moving forward, Vipond says Northwestern is focusing on maintaining stocks of Narcan and fentanyl test strips. Test strips are now available on the 3rd floor of the Searle Health Services building as well as at the Norris desk.

Both Northwestern and Evanston representatives express a desire for future collaboration to mitigate overdose risks.

The potential of joint efforts to provide free Narcan, testing strips and training works toward a common goal: creating a safer campus, city and community.

“That’s what we were trying to do at the heart of it,” Ramini says. “We want to prevent anything dangerous from happening.”

=

Where to get emergency Narcan in Evanston

The fitness journey Weights, workouts and whey. What does fitness mean to Northwestern students?

WRITTEN BY JIMMY HE // DESIGNED BY ALLEN ZHANG

T

he first-floor weight room in SPAC is quieter than usual. Dull thudding weights and clinking barbells ring above the background pop music.

The air is heavy with the scent of sweat and sanitary wipes.

It’s 9:30 a.m. on a rainy fall morning and the first time I’ve been back to the gym in over two weeks — the longest break I’d taken since I began lifting in 2021. The ill-timed combination of COVID and appendicitis left me itching to go back as soon as I left the hospital. For me, the bustling atmosphere of SPAC has been a collegiate constant.

Even with so many college students working out, one 2019 study from the State University of Maringá found that 67.1% of undergraduate students are unhappy with their body image.

This dissatisfaction is a complex

34 FALL 2023

phenomenon people of all body types experience, regardless of their gym goals or what they believe to be the ideal physique.

I spent my middle and high school years on the swim team.

I swam competitively enough to tone my body but never committed time to weightlifting and gaining strength. I came into college happy with how I looked, but after a bad breakup, it felt like my former athleticism wasn’t good enough.

At Northwestern, I embarked on a fitness journey that thrust me into a search for selfconfidence far more nuanced than I had ever imagined. I experienced both victories and struggles that motivated me to continue pushing myself, helped me realize the limits of my body and forced me to question why I work out.

The

first lift

On my first day back in the gym, while finishing an incline bench press set, Weinberg third-year Lauren Lee dropped by to say hello.

Donning a swimsuit under her sweats, she planned on doing a quick 600-yard workout of sprints and dives before her Tuesday classes.

Lee began competitively swimming when she was 8 years old and continued all throughout high school. Sometimes she’d swim as much as four hours a day — 90 minutes in the morning and two-and-a-half hours in the afternoon.

After arriving at college, a heavy course load drowned out Lee’s swimming habits. She calculated that she was only working out about 3% of the amount she did in high school. With time, she noticed some of her clothes no longer fit as well, and her strength had decreased.

It wasn’t until the summer before her junior year that Lee found time to revitalize her workout routine. That summer, Lee spent her free time playing tennis, learning pickleball and swimming twice a week. In the fall, she added morning lifts to her routine and started going to the gym with her former roommate, an experienced lifter, who showed her what exercises to do and what muscles they targeted.

“I thought people just go in and pick what they want to do and just do it and leave,” Lee says. “But there’s a whole routine of certain things you want to target. It’s very organized, and I had no idea.”

Lee’s lighter course load this year has allowed her to focus on her physical well-being. She says she’s been working toward building endurance and achieving the same swimming times she did in high school. After a two-year hiatus, it’s comeback season.

“The pent-up energy from there, I’m using it now as motivation to do what I wanted to do last year,” she says.

“It’s exciting to see the progress.”

While some people like Lee have only added weight training to their routine recently, others like McCormick fourthyear Kevin Considine have been lifting for nearly a decade.

With three fitness-focused older brothers, Considine began working out at 13 with the goal of becoming stronger than his siblings.

During middle and high school, he would lift about two days a week. At Northwestern, that regimen grew to hour- or hour-and-a-half-long sessions five to seven days a week.

Unlike Lee, who prefers to lift in the morning, Considine often goes at night, right before club water polo practice. He likes to organize his days around the gym, which means planning ahead and occasionally bringing homework to do between sets.

“I need to be able to lift at 7 p.m. What do I need to do in the next three to four hours to make that happen?” Considine asks.

Through years of working out, Considine has learned about the strengths and weaknesses of his body. By tracking his growth, he’s realized he has disproportionately strong shoulders and lats but a weaker chest and hamstrings.

Sometimes, those limitations can be frustrating, but Considine prefers not to compare himself to others at the gym. By focusing on his personal journey, he says working out has contributed to a measurable confidence boost.

And while his older brothers have all since traded lifting for running, Considine doesn’t have any plans to cut back.

“It makes me happier when I lift,” he says.

FEATURES 35

Routines

built,routines broken Working out has always provided stability to my hectic Northwestern schedule. I’ve been tracking my lifts on the note-taking app Notion for nearly two years now, and no matter how many different classes I take or clubs I participate in, I can always count on at least three gym entries each week.

After my appendix surgery, I was not only afraid of losing my hard-earned progress, but my routine had been thrown into chaos. I had lost a core component of my weekly rituals and grappled with making up for lost time. For gymgoers across Northwestern, injuries can force reckoning and re-evaluation.

When Communication fourth-year Caitlin Carr-Smith was in high school, she would train five to six days a week to keep up with her high school’s competitive field hockey program. She would do weighted sprints outdoors and lift weights with her dad using the equipment in her basement.

However, during her junior year, Carr-Smith got a concussion that limited her exercise to walking.

After months of hard work and training, the setback took her off the field for six weeks and jeopardized her penultimate field hockey season.

“The first day I came back, I remember having to sprint to something and I felt really slow,” Carr-Smith says. “I did cry about it because I was so upset.”

With time and recovery, CarrSmith slowly regained her original strength. By the end of the season, she was nearly back where she had started. Carr-Smith says she still sometimes feels the struggle of exercise withdrawal but has since become more comfortable with taking breaks.

“When it’s taken

36 FALL 2023

away from you, and there is absolutely no option, you start to focus on other things,” she says. “By the end of it, you’ve realized, ‘OK, I kind of look the same as I did before.’”

Northwestern Associate Professor of Counseling and Sports Psychology Michele Kerulis says it’s common for people to feel guilt or sadness when they’re forced out of the gym because of injury or illness.

Working out can give exercisers feelings of euphoria and a post-workout endorphin rush. When people aren’t able to go to the gym and achieve those feelings, Kerulis recommends finding other ways to manage one’s mental health.

“If you cannot go to the gym, what’s something else that can help maintain your mental health?” she says. “That might be socializing in a different way. That might be another activity that is not physical.”

During Lee’s sophomore year of high school, she got sick right before her sectional swim meet.

This was the only meet during which swimmers could qualify for state championships, and Lee did not get the times she wanted. A year later, a week before the same meet, Lee broke her foot.

“I was frustrated, a little bit nervous and [felt] just a lot of negative emotions,” she says. “What if I can’t make it to states senior year? What if this broken foot sets me on the wrong path?”

Despite her initial discouragement, Lee says she used her recovery to refocus on her goal of qualifying for states. Once she got back in the water, she channeled her worries and pessimism into motivation to work hard.

By spring, Lee was swimming the same times she had before her injury. One year later, she emerged from her sectional swim meet victorious — she had qualified.

“You’ll always bounce back,” Lee says. “It might take long sometimes, or it might take a lot of work and it might be painful and you might not want to do it. But the end goal, just keep that in mind, and you’ll eventually reach it.”

Gain, grind,

girlboss

Growing up in the Miami suburbs, Medill fourth-year Joanne Haner’s early school days were often preceded by her mom’s 5 a.m. workouts. In the early morning, her mom would train with light dumbbells and do total resistance (TRX) exercises.

Then, when Haner was in fourth grade, her mom got into a car accident. A dump truck rearended her vehicle, and the impact herniated all the discs in her back, nearly killing her.

“The doctors say the only reason her back didn’t just snap in half is because she had a really strong core and a really strong back,” Haner says.

“A large reason why she’s alive and not paralyzed is because her core and her body were so strong.”

When COVID forced her to isolate with her family, Haner began doing TRX workouts under her mom’s guidance. Her mom taught her exercises she had done since Haner’s childhood.

The summer after Haner’s freshman year, her neighbor was starting a career as a personal trainer and offered to train Haner for free. At the gym, her neighbor showed her how to use machines, target different muscle groups and exercise with the correct form.

These experiences allowed Haner to be confident when she began working out at Northwestern. But even with two female fitness coaches, Haner says it took time to realize her body was different from her male friends’. Sometimes, a challenging weight for her would be a good starting point for male friends who had never worked out before.

“I had to get over that hump,” Haner says. “I am a woman working out, and my body is built differently than a man’s. If I was a man working out as much as I was now, my body composition would be so different.”

Kerulis says men and women have some things in common when it comes to working out, such as aesthetic and performance pressures. Fitness has spurred an industry of gear, clothes and makeup designed to make people look good in the gym. Men and women alike often worry about how much weight they’re lifting or how they’re performing in group fitness classes.

However, for women, she adds that there are additional factors that may affect performance. Menstrual cycles, for example, can both decrease motivation and affect selfperception in the gym.

“There’s so many different degrees of what that feels like for a woman,” Kerulis says. “For some individuals who are super lucky, they have minimal symptoms, cramping or pain.

But for other people, they might have really severe symptoms and pain and cramping and just feel uncomfortable and really icky during that time of their cycle.”

For Carr-Smith, menstrual cycle symptoms include her hips being weaker, back cramps and generally having less energy. Some days it means that she has to decrease weight during exercises. Other times, her back cramps so badly she can’t run.

In addition to physical differences, women may often feel overwhelmed working out in predominantly male spaces. Carr-Smith says she’s had female friends who’ve wanted to work out but felt too intimidated to do so. She recommends finding a female friend to go to the gym with or working out on the quieter, less male-dominated second floor of SPAC. For anyone hesitant about working out, CarrSmith urges them to “just do it.”

“To be honest, most people in the gym are so focused on themselves,” she says. “They’re so focused on how they look, how much they’re squatting and whatever buddies they have with them. Just focus on yourself because that’s what you’re there for. You’re not there for anyone else.”

FEATURES 37

The

gymfluencer

gold standard

When I first began lifting, Google searches for workout tips and exercise suggestions transformed my social media algorithm. My Instagram Explore page became saturated with photos of influencers flexing their workout regimens. TikTok became a breeding ground for how-to videos on achieving the perfect abs, arms, chest and legs.

These portrayals of fitness created a Sisyphean task of achieving the perfect physique blind to posing, lighting and genetics. As someone with a fast metabolism, it seemed like I could never put on enough weight no matter how much I ate. The progress I saw in the mirror seemed far slower than that of online influencers.

This diet of fitness content is spurring some teenage boys to develop bigorexia, a form of body dysmorphia The New York Times describes as “a preoccupation with not feeling muscular enough and a strict adherence to eating foods that lower weight and build muscle.” The condition, which can impact people of any age, can lead to dangerous habits like restricting food intake and developing unrealistic body expectations.

For Weinberg fourth-year Sean Pascoe, working out is about balancing his life.

He says his time in high school was solely centered around academics. At Northwestern, he realized exercise — even as little as a quick yoga session or taking the longer route home on his bike — could improve his happiness.

Cooking at his apartment and eating at dining halls, Pascoe says he feels like he has a lot of control over what he puts in his

38 FALL 2023

body. For him, working out and eating healthy stem from the same goal: maintaining his health, both physical and mental. That goal also requires setting realistic expectations.

“I would love to look like Instagram models, but I also know I would never control my eating that way,” Pascoe says. “I have a healthy enough view of body standards that I don’t feel the need to.”

Meeting new people at Northwestern also set realistic expectations for Pascoe in regard to his own body image and allowed him to reckon with what is typically deemed attractive on social media.

“One of the biggest things in terms of body image is me realizing I don’t really care about other people,” he says. “A lot of that comes from, ‘OK, I need to have a six-pack so people think I’m hot,’ but I realized that’s not something that is a deciding factor.”

Genetics can also affect what is achievable for exercisers. Certain muscle groups may simply be stronger for certain people no matter how hard they work out. Ethnicity may also play a factor in how peoples’ bodies are built.

Haner says as a Latina, her body type has curves that aren’t necessarily present in other people. Working out can accentuate different parts of her body than it may for others, and sometimes clothes don’t fit her body type as well as they do for others.

Haner describes YouTuber Chloe Ting as the epitome of the fitness influencer. Despite only doing a couple of Ting’s workouts during COVID, she recalls the varied effects those workouts had on people with different body types. Today, Haner still gets fitness influencers on her Instagram and TikTok feeds but doesn’t view that as a realistic measure of comparison.

“Your life is fitness influencing,” Haner says. “As a college student, it’s not feasible for me to go to the gym six days a week. If I go to the gym three days a week, I’m happy.”

Sean Pascoe “Honestly, it varies, but anything that will make me passionate.”

Chappell Roan Phoebe Bridgers

Lauren Lee “Upbeat, fast, highenergy. I wouldn’t say angry, but borderline intense.”

Caitlin Carr-Smith “I have one playlist called ‘bad bitch energy’ that’s all female rappers and singers.”

Megan Thee Stallion Def Leppard

When I first started lifting, I couldn’t help but compare myself to the people working out around me. Each set I did was accompanied by fears of whether I was using an embarrassingly low amount of weight and if I was actually doing the exercise correctly. Even now, with a couple years of experience under my belt, I still struggle sometimes to separate my self-image from those around me.

“There’s always people stronger than you, and I guess it would be nice to catch them, but it isn’t necessary in any way,” Considine says. “The only person you should compare against is yourself in the past.”

Even as I’ve become more comfortable in the gym, I still struggle sometimes to balance fitness and well-being. I’ve become self-conscious about eating certain foods I once enjoyed without batting an eye at nutrition labels. I’ve pressed forward with working out despite oncoming sickness to make sure I’ve checked off my weekly workout boxes. While I try to maintain good habits of staying in shape, there are also bad habits I’m trying to break.

“You’re pushing yourself to be better but not to the extent that you can’t enjoy food anymore, you’re feeling pain or to some extreme,” CarrSmith says. “You should be able to push yourself so you can be better, not so you fall apart.”

I sometimes look back at myself when I first started working out and wonder if I could’ve anticipated how complicated a journey I was about to embark on. But through working out, I’ve also realized that however complicated the relationship is, fitness will always be a defining aspect of who I am.

“It can be a large part of your life and be a small part of your life,” Haner says. “But at the end of day, it’s not your life. I think that’s how it should be.”

As for her past self, she looks back fondly.

“She’s doing great,” Haner says. “And she had to start somewhere.”

The musical motivation that fuels Northwestern’s fitness fans.

Travis Scott Trippie Redd

set

Young Miko Anitta

Completing the

Gym grooves

Joanne Haner

“I listen to basically exclusively Latin music in the gym.”

Kevin Considine Slipknot

“In the gym, it’s a little more metal, hard rock oriented.”

FEATURES 39

Scripts of

CHAN E

Northwestern students and faculty aim to decolonize classical theater, opera and ballet works.

WRITTEN BY CHRISTINE MAO AND CAROLINE NEAL // DESIGNED BY GRACE CHANG

C PROGRAMME ACT I. ‘On Decolonizing Theatre’

ACT II. Northwestern’s curriculum

ACT III. What does decolonization look like?

ACT IV. The future of theater

40 FALL 2023

ommunication third-year Yuni Mora stepped into Shanley Pavilion her freshman year ready to see one of her first plays at Northwestern: the student theatre group Lovers & Madmen’s take on Much Ado About Nothing. But this was far from a traditional rendition of the Shakespearean classic.

Taking in the vibrant colors adorning the stage and the cast of predominantly people of color, Mora says she had never seen a Shakespeare production like this.

“It opened my eyes to what theater is and what theater could do,” Mora says.

In the Lovers & Madmen production, the cast and crew transported audience members to modern-day Miami, in a reimagined world where the cast was as diverse as the city’s population.

With dancing, interjections of Spanish ad-libs and a palpable sense of Latine culture, this performance shifted away from the classic rendition usually set in Elizabethan England.

Traditional Western playwrights and composers are ever-present in the performing arts scene. In fact, for music and theatre students, a core element

of their curricula is classical works, many of which include themes that are now considered problematic. As performing arts companies update these works through their interpretations, Northwestern’s music and theatre communities consider the role these shows play in both performance and academic settings.

ACT I. ‘On Decolonizing Theatre’ This academic year, Northwestern is hosting “On Decolonizing Theatre,” a series of public seminars that examine theater, opera and ballet works from the late 17th to early 19th centuries. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the year-long project aims to address colonialism, imperialism, racism, patriarchy and misogyny present in early works, as well as inspire conversations on how theater, opera and ballet can become more inclusive and culturally sensitive.

Barber Professor of Performing Arts and Professor of English and

Theatre Tracy Davis is the co-principal investigator of the seminar. She conceived the idea during the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down live theater, concerts and operas worldwide.

Davis says this artistic silence, along with the Black Lives Matter movement, allowed the performing arts community to reflect on its role in addressing issues of social justice, diversity and inclusion.

Calls for works by individuals from marginalized backgrounds increased, and Davis says such discussions set the stage for critical re-evaluations of classical works containing problematic elements.

The Mellon Foundation and Northwestern accepted her seminar proposal, and now Davis leads the project with co-principal investigators Jesse Rosenberg and Ivy Wilson — both professors at the University — and postdoctoral fellows Caroline GleasonMercier and Keary Watts.

“Together, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how we can … create a situation at Northwestern where people can come from many different disciplinary perspectives and talk about, experience and contribute to

how the performing arts can be involved in the work of decolonization,” Davis says.

The conversations examine how theater and music communities can increase the inclusivity of works such as Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, which are established in performance canon and may have been progressive for their time, yet remain undergirded by colonial dynamics and racist themes.

The seminars feature a panel of speakers, ranging from performers to producers of modern adaptations of these classical productions. After the panelists take questions from the seminar leaders, attendees can direct their own questions to the panelists or voice their opinions.

Gleason-Mercier says ultimately, the project’s goal is to foster dialogue examining how modern productions of canonical works may be “recoded” to resist or decenter old ideologies.

Davis says she hopes these discussions will help influence the ways people teach these canonic works and fulfill everybody’s obligation to “work on anti-racist, anti-discriminatory diversity and inclusion measures in our pedagogy.”

“

We can ... create a situation at Northwestern where people can come from many disciplinary perspectives and talk about, experience and contribute to how the performing arts can be involved in the work of decolonization.

”

- Tracy Davis

Barber Professor of Performing Arts and Professor of English and Theatre

ACT II. Northwestern’s curriculum Controversial works are often embedded into music and theatre students’ curricula. Such works are considered part of classical canon: the body of art that is considered notable, has stood the test of time and is well-known by most people.

Bienen students are required to take “The Classical Canon,” a course that aims to further examine pieces of music and their characterization as “classical.”

Jesse Rosenberg, a Northwestern professor who teaches “Opera and Race,” says he believes efforts to address these problematic issues in introductory courses, including “The Classical Canon,” FEATURES 41

is indicative of progress, though he adds, “We have a long way to go.”

“The habits of concert-going [and] these entrenched attitudes about what kind of music is worth paying attention to — it’s very much part of a culture that is inculcated into many people,” Rosenberg says.

Students also believe there are more steps needed to fully diversify the curriculum.

Bienen and Communication thirdyear Rushil Byatnal says he believes these works should still be taught in the curriculum, though he adds that there should be more efforts to incorporate diverse works currently designated to elective classes.

“I feel there should be a push to bring these out of specialized little pockets and bring them into our general canon,” Byatnal says. “Because no one puts Shakespeare into a little thing.

Shakespeare is the big meal, you know?”

The theatre department’s acting sequence includes a year of learning acting techniques and a second year interacting with texts, with students studying Greek works in the fall, Shakespeare in the winter and contemporary works in the spring.

Mora, a Theatre and Latina and Latino Studies double major, is currently taking a class on Greek theatrical texts. According to Mora, professors in the department are free to teach these works in the way they think is best, meaning there are no guidelines on teaching the historical backgrounds of these works.

Even though Mora says her professor has incorporated folklore and ritual texts from other cultures, she says some professors might not put in this effort, instead teaching only about Greek texts.

“There’s sort of an imbalance in the education different students are getting,” Mora says.

Mora also acknowledges that at this time in the theatre industry, it’s necessary to be educated on these Western, foundational works. However, like Byatnal, she believes more diverse works should be incorporated into the curriculum, especially if the department wants to make the program more diverse and inclusive.

“So much of that is not just admitting more POC or minority students. It’s 42 FALL 2023

also re-analyzing what you’re teaching them, because if you’re not teaching your students texts and techniques they connect to, then it’s all for nothing,” Mora says.

Byatnal says through conversations with his peers, he feels other students share similar beliefs on how curricula should address these works.

“I think no one necessarily wants to take these works from the canon because that’s just less education and less awareness of our history in society and in this world,” Byatnal says. “There is just a general need to bring in more.”

From his experience as a double major in the School of Communication and Bienen, Byatnal says he’s noticed a difference in the way each school approaches these topics.

According to Byatnal, the School of Communication “is more willing to adapt and does adapt,” while Bienen — and

music culture in general — doesn’t always properly address how these works achieved their status today.

“This is reflective of Bienen’s old culture, which is very stagnant and very traditional in many ways,” he says, noting that works by European composers

such as Beethoven and Bach are considered “classical music” around the world, despite each country having its own traditional “classical” music.

“That is a direct effect of colonialism, where these composers that were the greatest were passed down into these cultures and the other traditional, classical genres specific to those regions were kind of swept under the rug,” he says.

ACT III. What does decolonization look like?

During Byatnal’s time at Northwestern, he has noticed student groups often address the historical backgrounds of these works in a more “responsible” way than Northwestern productions, which he speculates could be a result of student productions being “less institutionalized.”

“Northwestern student productions do it the best because there’s just a lot more initiative taken, and I think students feel a lot more responsible to make other students feel welcome,” he says.

Mora, who is on the executive board of Vibrant Colors Collective — Northwestern’s multicultural theatre board — says she has also noticed this, preferring to participate in student-led productions rather than Northwestern’s.

This fall, Vibrant Colors put on The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical about a fictional spelling bee. Though this musical does not have a race-specific cast, Mora says Vibrant Colors has an all-POC cast and production team.

For her, watching one of the rehearsals was “eye-opening,” as it represented a dream of hers and her friends: a space to just exist in their bodies.

“We didn’t have to be tokenized, and we didn’t have to be the ‘other’ in the room, because everyone in that room looks like you or shares your same experiences,” she says. “You get to share that, and you get to create something beautiful out of it.”

To Byatnal and Mora, this concept reflects a broader sentiment that resonates with Watts’ emphasis on the need to examine power structures and decision-making processes of institutions in order to take meaningful steps toward decolonization.

For the performing arts community, Watts says decolonization goes beyond mere representation and inclusion and involves granting complete artistic control to Indigenous artists and people of color. It means empowering marginalized communities through significant roles in the arts that allow them to redefine narratives and practices.

“

Students feel a lot more responsible to make other students feel welcome.

”

- Rushil Byatnal

Communication and Bienen third-year

“What I hope is that our approach to performance and performance training can become broadened to include alternative modes of professionalization,” Watts says. “How can we incorporate Indigenous and Africanist and non-Western ways of training into our curricula that are genuine and uplifting rather than fetishizing and othering?”

Gleason-Mercier underlines that decolonization initiates a set of questions that scrutinize established norms and practices in the theatrical and operatic world. In the context of the musical world, Gleason-Mercier acknowledges that people have a “deep connection” with music and “feel very emotionally invested in it.”

This emotional investment in classical works can make it challenging for some to consider any form of alteration or reinterpretation.

However, Gleason-Mercier says this resistance to change should not deter the performing arts community from engaging in these conversations.

“If we’re going to challenge systemic injustices, and we’re going to challenge structures that have created injustices, we have to be conscious in that,” Gleason-Mercier says. “It can’t just be a byproduct.”

For instance, last February, Northwestern staged its production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute — an opera that contains racist elements such as the character Monostatos, who was historically played by a white actor in blackface. In Bienen’s production, the program included a section written by cast members dedicated to explaining the racism in the show and emphasizing the importance of engaging in conversations.

Melanie Stapleton, a second-year graduate student, says she believes program notes, such as the one in Northwestern’s The Magic Flute, are a good way to address these issues without abandoning the work altogether, especially when the performers are actively involved in the process.

Mora also spoke on the importance of listening to cast members who are people of color when producing these shows.

“Being a person of color in a play that you know wasn’t written for you and you were never intended to be in is extremely draining, more draining than it would be for any white person to be in a show like that,” she says.

Despite this, Mora emphasized the importance of considering whether it’s necessary to produce these shows, urging productions to ask if there’s a FEATURES 43

different, more inclusive show that shares the same message.

Davis makes clear that the “On Decolonizing Theatre” group isn’t saying there is an easy solution to decolonizing theater. Rather, “it is very much in process.”

“We’re not there yet, but we have the opportunity of the excitement, of stumbling along and trying to figure it out, of having the imperative to figure it out,” Davis says.

Gleason-Mercier also noted that people do not have to have a full understanding of decolonization to attend the seminar. In fact, she encourages discussions with people questioning the meaning of decolonization, even if they are worried they’ll “say the wrong thing.”

“I would encourage people to be brave and come and learn and put that fear aside, because that’s the only way I ultimately see us all growing from projects like this,” she says.

Disputing the negative connotations associated with the word “ignorant,” Stapleton says it’s important to encourage dialogue and education because it’s a matter of taking the time to educate oneself.

To a similar end, Stapleton is the founder of Blurring the Binary, a website dedicated to bridging the gap

44 FALL 2023

between music educators and transgender students. In February, Stapleton is presenting in Texas, where she has experience teaching, on how to responsibly include social change in a high school curriculum.

This presentation will include the importance of taking the time to learn the history of a work and understanding how these performances could affect marginalized groups.

“Sometimes we’re very quick to cast judgment, and sometimes people just didn’t know better,” she says. “And I don’t think that’s a crime.”

ACT IV. The future of theater Emphasizing a push for groups to work together instead of against each other, Mora says there is a sense of determination among theatre students “to restructure what producing theater looks like.”

“It’s great to see that we all have this common goal of making student theatre at Northwestern a better place, not just for ourselves, but for the people who come after us,” she says.

But decolonization does not come without its challenges. Some are hesitant to criticize these iconic works. Watts, though, says he believes this project is about “updating” and “engaging with culture.”

Despite resistance, the project leaders are hopeful that these seminars will spark discussions in the performing arts community, especially within education. Davis says the vast repertoire the seminar examines will help move these conversations outside of the performing arts sphere. “​​ The ideas that come up in these performances are ideas that we should be talking about in our classrooms and at lunch tables and when you go home at Thanksgiving,” Davis says. “All these things are our topics that shouldn’t just exist on the arts pages of the newspaper. They are central to our lives.”

Blending cultures,

forging identities Mixed race students at Northwestern give an oral history of their experiences.

WRITTEN BY SHAE LAKE DESIGNED BY MICHELLE SHEEN PHOTOS BY ELISA TAYL OR

I

t is impossible to simply define the “mixed race experience.” This is a lesson I’ve learned over and over throughout my life. Whether I was in preschool, struggling to come up with an answer when my classmates asked “What are you?” or in high school, attempting to ignore my complex identity while it hovered over me like a dark cloud, articulating my experience has always been a struggle.

Feeling out of place in most spaces is, and always was, normal to me. However, when I transferred to Northwestern University this past September, I felt especially nervous about moving away from my home state of California. I was a Taiwanese and Jewish American person leaving the West Coast Wasian mecca. I

was anxious about leaving my old life behind for a top-rated university in the Midwest, and for good reason.

According to the U.S. News and World Report, 7% of Northwestern students identify as two or more races, making mixed-race students one of the smallest minority groups on campus. Although they only made up 10.2% of the U.S. population as of 2020, mixed-race individuals are one of the fastest-growing minorities according to the United States Census Bureau. This is why I find myself frustrated when our experiences are pushed aside.

The following stories seek to bring the experiences of mixed-race Northwestern students into the spotlight. Some of these narratives take place on campus, while

others focus on life before Northwestern.

These are not the only mixed-race stories at Northwestern. There are identities and experiences that are not represented in this piece, and it is my responsibility as a writer and mixed-race individual to acknowledge that. Nevertheless, I hope these three students’ stories will inspire other mixed-race students to embrace their own narratives and start conversations with the wider community about their lived experiences.

The world is becoming more mixed each year. It is our responsibility as an academic community to embrace and celebrate that reality.

The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

FEATURES 45

SARAH KIM: CONNECTING WITH KOREA I’m from Woodstock, Maryland, which is in Howard County. My dad is Korean. His family immigrated from Korea when he was 3 years old. My mom grew up in a very small, very Republican white town called Hagerstown in Maryland — she is white.

My paternal grandmother lived with my family until she passed away when I was in seventh grade. There was an extension of our house with the one door that would lead to her living room. She had a little kitchen, a bedroom, a closet and a bathroom — her own little area to live in. Growing up with my grandmother shaped the Korean aspects of my identity. It was very hard when she passed away because she was like another mother. She basically raised us when we were young, when my parents were at work. She took care of us.

Although my dad never spoke to me in Korean, my grandmother tried to teach me when I was younger, but I was too impatient and immature to want to learn. That’s been one of my biggest regrets. Right now, one of my biggest goals in college is to learn Korean. It’s a part of myself I really want to explore.

46 FALL 2023

“

“

I tried to carry on what I learned from Northwestern, that there’s power in looking different.

SARAH KIM MEDILL SECOND-YEAR

When I was younger, I would come home from school, and my grandmother would have food for my siblings and me. After she picked us up, she would have whatever type of dish she made waiting for us in her side of the house. We’d all walk over and help set up the table. She’d then bring the food out and sit there with us as we ate. I didn’t appreciate it when I was young, but looking back, all I wish I could do now is go back and experience that again because that’s a big part of Korean culture. Food is a big love language.

I remember watching my grandmother make gimbap. She would add the rice, then all the ingredients and then roll it up. I found it very interesting, but I wasn’t always paying close attention. I think I’m always a little annoyed at myself for not being as present or conscious of my identity or of how amazing people like my grandmother were in my life. I feel like I’ve become a lot more conscious of that in college and also of living in the moment. I get really mad at myself sometimes for the things I can’t remember or that I didn’t acknowledge how lucky I was.

But again, as a child, I think it’s hard for people to be like that. Not everyone can be that mature at a young age, and I don’t think I was.

Growing up, I went to McDonogh School, a predominantly-white private school. There were not many Asian people. There was a certain type of beauty standard, which was very white and Eurocentric, and there were lots of microaggressions. Since coming to Northwestern, I feel like I’ve grown a whole lot. I feel a lot more confident in myself without being restricted by those standards.

I’ve had lots of conversations with my brother about what it was like as a mixed person at our

school. After my older brother graduated high school and went to Columbia University, he told me he never viewed himself as attractive in high school, and he didn’t realize he could be considered beautiful until he got to college.

This past summer, I studied abroad in Korea to connect with my heritage. I was very proud of myself for doing it. I tried to carry on what I learned from Northwestern, that there’s power in looking different. I found a lot of power in that and chose to go to Korea to explore that side of my identity.

Unfortunately, many Korean people don’t like foreigners. There were multiple times when people were rude or mean. Any of that is hurtful, but I feel like there’s another level of hurt when it happens to people who are there to explore their Korean identity. Not everyone in Korea was like that, a lot of people were very, very kind, but a couple of times when it happened, it really ruined my day.

Being in Korea made me a lot more grateful for living in the U.S. and for growing up in a society where everyone looks different. At Northwestern, there are a lot of different types of people. In Korea, there were all the same types of people with all the same clothing styles. It felt more monotonous than I initially imagined. There are a lot of fun things there, but now that I went, I’m very content with where I live now.

In terms of my identity, I realized I should just be happy with who I am. I don’t need to go to Korea and try to be more Korean. I have to accept that I’m not full Korean. I realized it’s so beautiful that I’m mixed. I don’t have to be just Korean or be just white: I can just be who I am.

FEATURES 47

RACHEL SPEARS: DIM SUM AND COLLARD GREENS I’m half Chinese and half Southern Black. The first time I met another Blasian person who wasn’t family was when I was 15 or 16 on a college tour.

I don’t remember it super specifically, but I remember thinking, “Oh, other Blasian people do exist.” It was nice to see that, outside of my little bubble, the world is a diverse place.

I grew up in the Philly area, in the Delaware County suburbs, which was predominantly white. It wasn’t super diverse, but we were close to a big city, so I was able to see different cultures. In my senior year of high school, I lived in Massachusetts, in the Boston suburbs, which was even less diverse than Philly had been.

When I was young, I understood that I was different. And it wasn’t

something I necessarily liked about myself. I didn’t often focus on finding community with Asian people or with Black people growing up. Most of my childhood friends were white, and we connected over other aspects besides our identities.

When I was younger, I saw being mixed as a bad thing. I felt like, “Oh, I can’t belong, because I’m not like everyone else.” But as I grew up, I got to experience both Asian and Black culture, and I’ve been able to meet so many different people. I’ve learned that I’m not excluded from being in Black spaces or being in Asian spaces.

I can be in both. I really started to see the value in it. It’s just really fun to connect with people who are different and learn so much.

With my parents, race was always a conversation, especially because my mom’s full Asian and I’m not. Hair is a very important part of Black culture, and I have curly hair, while she does not. That was always something that was discussed growing up. But I also have cousins who are mixed, which made my family more diverse than the average family.

My cousins are half Black, half white. When we were really little — I want to say 7 — my grandfather was a bus driver. We were out in

“

public. He was driving the bus. We’re sitting next to each other, doing our thing, and this stranger came up to us and was asking us all these strange questions. He made a comment about the fact that I looked Asian in comparison to my cousin. And I think at that moment, I realized, “Oh, we’re not the same.”

Christianity played a big role in my childhood as well. In fact, my parents met at a Bible study in New York. There was always this idea that God loves you no matter what. So I think that played into how I view myself, especially in middle school, thinking, “Oh, I am enough.” I am OK with the fact I am mixed. Now I don’t really think about it with that connection as much, but I think it kind of helped me get there.

Food is an important part of both of my cultures. Eating Asian food and feeling like, “Oh, this is my food,” and then also being able to go down South and have collard greens with my grandma, I’m like, “Oh, this is my culture, too.” It’s just a good feeling.

I’m super grateful for the experiences I’ve been able to have.

Not many people can go to dim sum for lunch and then eat Southern food for dinner. I get to experience life from a different perspective that other people don’t get to have, which is super cool.

So far, my experience at Northwestern has been very positive.

I’m in the marching band, and that’s

Not many people can go to dim sum for lunch and then eat Southern food for dinner.

“

48 FALL 2023

RACHEL SPEARS MEDILL FIRST-YEAR

been really fun. It has nothing to do with my race or anything, but it’s just a community of people who like having fun and love Northwestern.

So I found a lot of belonging there, and I’ve also joined Blackboard, the Black magazine on campus, and I’m really excited. I’ve also really enjoyed going to the Northwestern Mixed Race Student Coalition.

However, Northwestern is still a predominantly white institution.

A few weeks ago at Northwestern, someone asked, “What are you, ethnically, I mean?” I was annoyed because they didn’t ask me my name.

A lot of the time, people ask me, “What are you?” For me, it’s not unusual, but it is so weird. If you’re not mixed, don’t ask people what they are. You’d never walk up to a white person and ask what they are. I’ve also had people ask me, “Are you Mexican?” or “Are you Filipino?” and when I tell them no, they ask, “Are you sure?” You know better than I do what my ethnicity is? That’s crazy.

EDEN CRUMBLY: CHECKING THE BOX I grew up in Hampton Roads, Virginia — that area is predominantly military, so it’s a lot of people from around the country kind of all in one place. My dad’s African American and my mom’s white, but all the social groups we were a part of, including the homeschool co-op that I was a part of and the church that I went to, were very much predominantly white. Growing up, I didn’t really see anybody who looked like my skin color besides my siblings. There were a lot of things I didn’t know how to do. I didn’t know how to do my hair. Nobody knew how to do my hair. I couldn’t fully embrace both sides of myself until I got a lot older.

All of my siblings are younger than me. I have a 16-year-old brother, an 8-year-old sister and a 7-year-old sister. All of them are mixed-race. My sisters are young, so they always talk about Barbies and how they want

their hair to look. When they say, “Oh, I wish I had straight hair like my friends,” I’m like, “No, your hair is beautiful. It’s unique. Don’t wish that,” because I had that mindset a lot when I was growing up.

One of the ways my parents raised me was to love everybody regardless of how they look. Obviously, it’s a great message, but I wasn’t really aware that wasn’t the norm for everybody. I was a little naive. I thought, “Of course, why wouldn’t you love this person just because they look a little different than you?”

I’ve talked to my dad about race, but for him, it is very different because he’s male. Black men have a different perception in society compared to lighter-skinned females, but we could kind of relate to some things. Also, the Black side of the family lives 500 miles away, so I don’t talk to them super often.

My mom definitely tried to talk about race. She was very intentional about that, but there were also some things that she couldn’t fully understand, never having gone through it. So some of that I figured out by myself or from friends who had similar experiences.

I’ve also had friends who would tell me when I was younger, “Oh, I love your skin. I wish I could have it.” I’m like, “Do you really?

Because, sure, it looks like I have a tan but it comes with stuff. It comes with baggage.”

I would say I definitely have privilege because I’m a lighterskinned Black person, and I don’t face the same kind of discrimination because I have really light skin, but it does come with being a person of color, and that’s going to affect just your day-to-day interactions and

FEATURES 49

Photo courtesty of Eden Crumbly.

“

how you go through life. It especially affects my brother. He’s very tall for his age and a little darker than I am. My parents have sometimes gotten worried just because he seems so intimidating, but he’s a kid.

Growing up, I felt sheltered from everything. I didn’t even know what direct or implicit racism was until I was older, around my mid-teens. It was a good thing that it didn’t hurt me directly, but also a bad thing that I wasn’t even aware.

When COVID happened, there were so many racially motivated EDEN CRUMBLY attacks and police WEINBERG SECOND-YEAR brutality happening in the news, and I started seeing it everywhere. That was my rude awakening.

It was around then when I really started looking into who I really am. That was the question: Am I white or am I Black?

Because up until that point, I’d always felt Black. But now I feel like in different social settings, it feels different. When I’m hanging out with a lot of people who

Nobody knew how to do my hair. I couldn’t fully embrace both sides of myself until I got a lot older.

“

50 FALL 2023

are white, I definitely feel like a person of color. When I’m hanging out with people who are really dark-skinned, I feel almost white, so it’s kind of odd.

I’ve learned not to prioritize one over the other, just fully embrace that they’re equally a part of who I am. That’s why it’s so annoying when trying to fill out a survey and pick your racial identity. I’m torn. In that case, I usually pick Black just because if I’m walking down the street and somebody sees me, I wouldn’t be white.

Before transferring to Northwestern, I went to the College of Wooster for my freshman year. It was a much more diverse school, and there were a lot more African and African American students there. We had an African Students Union club, and we all had the same cultural identity, which is not something I had ever experienced before, so it was cool to see how people can live out their cultures and their identities and not be at all ashamed or embarrassed. And that’s how I learned to do so for myself.

One of my favorite parts of my old school was how many different friends I had from all over the world. In my closest friend group, I was the only American, which was amazing, and it was the opposite of my high school experience.

Even just by talking with them and living with them, I became aware of a lot of prejudices I didn’t know about.

I remember a few of my friends were walking back one time from an Ubuntu ceremony, and they had an African flag.

My school was in conservative Ohio, so somebody drove by and yelled at them to go back to where they came from. I was pretty surprised.

I want people to know not to look at somebody and assign them a certain perspective based on the color of their skin. People are sometimes surprised when I talk about my history with both sides of my racial identity. They expect something else and view it as wrong when I don’t give them what they expect. And it’s a little weird because it’s my identity.

Banding

together

Northwestern’s marching band builds community and connections.

WRITTEN BY MAYA KRAINC DESIGNED BY ILIANA GARNER

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU Band director Daniel Farris stands at the conductor’s podium, calling the band to attention.

“It’s something that challenges you because you’re not just playing. It’s also very physical.”

Christian Rodriguez Weinberg fourth-year

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

52 FALL 2023

A

s band director Daniel Farris climbs the conductor’s podium, the 130 members of the Northwestern University Marching Band (NUMB) gather in a semi-circle formation across Long Field. It takes just seconds for conversations and laughter to die down as the students pick up their instruments and wait for the call.

“Horns up!”

The music swells.

This is one of the last rehearsals before Northwestern’s Homecoming football game against Howard University. The set is more involved than usual, as the band will perform alongside NUMB alumni and follow a performance by Howard’s renowned marching band.

Weeks of rehearsal go into the routines the band performs on Ryan Field. According to Weinberg fourth-year and alto saxophone section leader Christian Rodriguez, the work starts before the football season does. Every year, the marching band arrives on campus three weeks before classes resume to get a head start on music for the football season, splitting the time between learning fundamental skills and practicing music and routines. They rehearse daily from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., breaking only for meals.

The rehearsal moves quickly: From “The Final Countdown” to the alma mater to

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

After practice, the band prepares to perform at Ryan Field. Band members brandish their instruments with pride as they prepare to cheer on the team during the game before their halftime performance.

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” the band members flip from page to page, song to song, as Farris directs and gives notes.

A hand wave and a few words from Farris are enough to abruptly cut off the music.

“Again, it sounded like you were running out of breath,” Farris says. The music starts again, continuing for a couple bars before being cut off.

“Again.” They restart, this time continuing without pause.

“Good, thank you.”

After rehearsing the music, the band runs through the Homecoming marching sequence. Instruments in hand, the band members make sharp movements from side to side and perform quick dance moves as they travel across the field.

They take synchronized steps, forming lines and shapes that weave between one another in a dizzying array as Farris counts the beats.

The complexity of these performances is one of the main draws for Rodriguez.

He first played in a marching band in high school, finding it an exciting

change from concert and jazz bands.

“It’s something that challenges you because you’re not just playing. It’s also very physical; you’re always on the move,” Rodriguez says.

But NUMB is not limited to students with marching band experience or music majors, Farris says. All skill levels are represented on the team, and many people join simply because it looks fun.

McCormick first-year Steven Liu is one such member. He played saxophone in a concert band in high school and wanted to continue performing with an ensemble in college. Marching bands were new to him, though. As an international student from Canada, he never went to or watched football games. After looking at videos of NUMB performances online, he saw an opportunity to continue playing and try something new.

The students’ varied degrees of experience contribute to the joy of directing the band, Farris says, as the common denominator among all members is their enthusiasm for being there.

“Horns up!”

PHOTO BY TAYLOR HANCOCK

Daniel Farris Marching Band Director FEATURES 53

He adds that getting everyone on the same page is made possible by the students themselves, who lead, teach and help one another. The band is divided into various sections by instrument and marching groups, which are led by one or two students each.

“I could not do this without them,” Farris says, gesturing to the students on Long Field. Everyone is moving before the start of practice, refining a few measures of music, setting up equipment and spray painting lines onto the grass to demarcate positions.

The mutual support among NUMB members was an important factor for Liu when he decided to join. Performing in a band has always been a significant way for Liu to build friendships.

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

PHOTO BY TAYLOR HANCOCK

54 FALL 2023

The marching band enters the field, clad in their signature purple uniforms.

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

The added performative elements of marching band — coordinating the moving parts with bandmates, playing in the stadium and practicing for long hours together — only made those bonds stronger.

“You have this sense you’re part of something bigger than yourself,” Liu says of typical band performances.

“With marching band, it’s every single moment when you’re in the band that you can have that feeling.”

For Rodriguez, the game day atmosphere is one of the most fulfilling parts of being in the band. He feels a sense of pride in being center stage on Ryan Field, performing the routines they’ve rehearsed for weeks.

“It’s hard to find a feeling like it,” Rodriguez says.

The band also carries this pride off the field in their many shared traditions.

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

One of Rodriguez’s favorites is “SPAC Nine,” where the band meets at SPAC at 9 p.m. and plays music around campus, showing their spirit and having fun.

Another is “Spirit Sessions,” a tradition that started in the ‘80s after the football team had a long losing streak.

The band started getting together outside of practice to raise morale. Today, they still gather weekly to talk about how the football season is going, exchange jokes, create chants and keep spirits high.

The football team and the marching band are intrinsically linked — NUMB was formally organized in 1926 to cheer on the team, and the band showcases all of their work at the games. When news of the hazing scandal broke this summer, members of the band had to consider its implications for their own team.

As an incoming freshman over the summer, Liu says he was concerned when the news came out, given the band’s connection to the team.

“We play for the football team. That’s our entire job,” Liu says.

However, he adds the marching band represents far more than that — it’s an independent organization that cheers for not just the players but the student body as a whole, an idea Farris emphasizes and Liu takes to heart.

“I’ve always thought of it as we exist because of the football team, but we don’t exist for the football team,” Liu says.

As a senior and leader of the alto saxophone section, Rodriguez says the news from the summer made him see his role through a different lens. The band and its student leadership looked inward, reflecting on their own team environment.

“You have this sense you’re part of something

bigger

than yourself.”

Steven Liu McCormick first-year “We’ve done a lot of self-reflecting within our own organization, looking at all of the stuff that we do and making sure we provide a safe and comfortable community for everyone,” Rodriguez says. He adds that as a very diverse student organization, the situation has only made that evaluation all the more important.

Liu says he felt that positive intention when he joined, with returning students ensuring new members were always comfortable.

That sense of community among band members is one reason being on the team plays a large and lasting role in the lives of its members, Farris says. His own experience in a marching band has stuck with him through adulthood, as he still maintains relationships with friends and mentors from that time in his life.

This trend is present in Northwestern’s band as well. After watching the current students carry on the band’s spirit during practice and from the sidelines of the games, alumni returning for Homecoming weekend joined the band and performed again. Farris says seeing how the experience of marching band sticks with alumni is one of the most rewarding parts of his job.

“It’s not just all about marching and playing,” Farris says. “It’s about building lifelong friendships and relationships and really connecting to the University.”

PHOTO BY VALERIE CHU

FEATURES 55

P

Hangover 58 Spill the broth

59 Op-ed: What am I to do without my campus celebrities?

60

Serving (the Evanston people) 101

62

Hometown how-tos

63 Kids menu PHOTO BY ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

Life’s a bitch. Hangover is here to help you drown your sorrows in soup.

WRITTEN BY JULIANNA ZITRON // DESIGNED BY OLIVIA ABEYTA

L

ife as a college student is full of unknowns. Like, why is life so tough right now? Idk, don’t ask us ridiculous questions.

Even though we can’t answer all of your philosophical queries, we sure do give good advice. Here at Hangover, we asked you, our beloved readers, to send in your most pressing problems for us to solve.

Want a one-way ticket off the struggle bus? Grab a bowl and a spoon and strap in.

Dear Hangover, Last week, my boyfriend asked if we could have an open relationship. I said yes because I wanted to be one of those “chill” girlfriends, but now I feel like I never see him anymore. What should I do?

Warmly, The “not-so-chill” girlfriend Bonjour!

Might we recommend a bowl of French onion soup? The onions and stinky French cheese will surely remind you of your boyfriend’s musk. Plus, the comforting broth will keep you warm at night when you lie in your bed without him.

Bonne chance!

Hangover

58 FALL 2023

To whom it may concern, Last week, I was rejected from all the business fraternities. None of them seemed to care that I’ve read The Wealth of Nations four times. How will I secure a six-figure post-grad job now?

Thad McChad (ur/mom) First-year Economics major Northwestern University Thad, Yikes! The chances of you getting that Deloitte internship now are slim to none.

While all the newly admitted members are enjoying their Panera Bread-sponsored lunches, you can start preparing for your future unemployment by eating a can of cold SpaghettiOs. Best of luck with your future ventures, Hangover

Hey Hangover, My favorite campus couple broke up last week, and I am distraught. I’m so used to living vicariously through them.

However will I go on without them?

Love, Little Miss Delusional

can dream of their destination wedding in Sicily while enjoying a mini meatball. Hope this helps!

Love, Hangover

Hangover, I need your help!

My roommate and I used to get along fine, but ever since he joined ShireiNU, he keeps me up all night practicing his solo. I don’t think I can hear “Try” by P!nk ever again. Please help for the sake of my sleep schedule and general sanity.

- A sleep-deprived freshman Sent from my iPad Hi sleepy, This problem has an easy solution.

Any self-respecting Jew, like myself, is unable to resist the appeal of a piping hot matzo ball. Get yourself a homemade bowl of matzo ball soup and toss the balls out into your dorm hallway. Your roommate is sure to run after them, giving you ample time to deadbolt the door behind him. Hope you enjoy your peace and quiet.

Shalom, Hangover

Hey girlie, So sorry for your loss. One tip we have for you is to indulge in a massive bowl of Italian wedding soup. Feed your delusion (and stomach) while you fantasize about them getting back together. You

P.S. Any names, characters, businesses, places, events or incidents are fictitious.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

20

POSTAGE

WITH LOV E FROM:

100

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

50

POSTAGE

WRITTEN BY NATALIA ZADEH DESIGNED BY SAMMI LI

R

ejoice? I’ve come back to campus, excited for my first year without distros or my disintegrating fake ID, only to realize that I’ve been abandoned by half of my class.

How dare they? Don’t they know I’m terrified of change? I’m dodging mopeds on Sheridan while my friends are halfway around the world meeting Margaret Thatcher on their way to Oktoberfest.

To make matters worse, my campus celebrities are nowhere to be found. Northwestern is not the same without them.

It’s not my fault that my degree program has me trapped in Evanston until June 2025.

Since this is a safe space, I feel comfortable sharing that I’m at quite a loss without the various Northwestern juniors I’ve developed parasocial relationships with. Like the girl who walked me back to my dorm after an unfortunate (albeit enlightening) night at Bob’s Pizza. Or the guy who almost nose-dived into Sheridan Road on his electric scooter last spring. How are they? Where are they? Who are they?

Walking around campus already makes me feel like a 20-year-old octogenarian. The entire Class of 2025 being abroad (in western Europe) only exacerbates this. All of the

freshmen are so spry and nimble that one can only assume The Dorm Mold (which Northwestern has yet to patent but should seriously consider) hasn’t gotten to them yet. As I find myself swarmed by unfamiliar people born in 2005 (WHAT!?), I can’t help but wonder what my favorite campus figures are up to.

Day drinking? Boating in Ibiza? Suffering without central air?

The horror! Maybe they should come home. These days, I do find myself missing the dark ages of online study abroad.

I suppose in some ways, this is a positive change. I’m just preparing for graduation, when my campus celebrities will disappear forever and I’ll inevitably need to find new ones. Job celebrities? Apartment celebrities? I’ll work on that.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to find some new campus idols. I’ve scoured Norris. I’ve walked the Lakefill. It has not been going well. I just can’t shake the feeling that these efforts are all in vain. I’m too attached to my old flames. My abandonment issues are going crazy right now. Why would you ever want to leave Evanston? We have a 24-hour 7-Eleven and eight boba shops all within a two-block radius.

For now, though, I’ll keep up with my daily affirmations. I don’t chase, I attract. My campus celebrities will come back.

V

A HANGOVER 59

SERVING 101: (the Evanston people)

We ran for President of Evanston and survived.

WRITTEN BY NATALIA ZADEH AND JULIA LUCAS // DESIGNED BY JESSICA CHEN

Illustrations courtesy of Natalia Zadeh and Julia Lucas (not endorsed by designer).

Y

ep, that’s us. The future of local democracy. You might be wondering, “Why did Hangover’s finest editors decide to run for President of Evanston?” Good question. Maybe it was a stroke of civic inspiration, maybe it was our insatiable thirst for power, maybe it’s Maybelline.

If we were going to single-handedly run Evanston, we needed to get eyes on the opposition. And as someone once said, “The road to power is paved with Public

60 FALL 2023

Works and Administration meetings.”

The stars and stripes aligned, and we found ourselves in the James C. Lytle City Council Chambers on a Tuesday evening.

First on our campaign agenda: infiltrate the current government proceedings.

Donning our cowboy earrings, a clear homage to our forefathers, we were ready to make democracy our bitch. At this point, we knew nothing of the strife that lay ahead, but as they so often say, ask not what you can do for your suburb — ask

what your suburb can do for you. If this meeting was Watergate, we would be Woodward and Deep Throat.

After entering through the back door, it was clear we were in for a challenge — an interior design challenge, that is. This place was straight out of our ‘60s cubicle office nightmares. After traversing a maze of linoleum-lined hallways to the meeting room, we took a seat in the back — where the cool citizens sit.

It soon became clear we were sorely unprepared for the Administration and Public Twerps meeting we’d infiltrated.

What exactly were we here to do? What is public works? More importantly, why were they all speaking like they were at a Model UN conference? Motions?

Yay? Nay? Or is it neigh? Horse girl representation does seem to be mounting these days.

Add to political agenda: dress code.

Fashion-wise, the meeting was grim. The government is arguably the mecca for adult male manipulators, and isn’t the male manipulator trademark a sweater vest and a faux pearl necklace? And yet, there wasn’t a Vivienne Westwood knockoff in sight. Blasphemous! Maybe if our local representatives updated their looks, our local political scene would see some fresh takes too. Fortunately, one council member brought the vibes. In the face of her button-down-wearing peers,

she donned a classic GAP zip-up. Her platform was clear: Make the City Council chill again.

Pens in hand, we sat and watched as our political adversaries struggled to project their Zoom call.

They’d be easy work in our climb to the top, but the other chamber members would pose a

greater threat. Namely, the midwestern DILF we spotted flirting with the scribe before the meeting. His name was Dick.

Soon after the meeting commenced, a quarrel about contract logistics broke out.

In the heat of the moment, Natalia nearly dropped the pen she’d been drawing Councilwoman Kelly with. It was sexy, we promise, you just had to be there. Perhaps now, in this time of political instability, was our golden opportunity to take the reins. The elderly man in front of us seemed unbothered by these proceedings, however, wearing his vintage headphones and the same jacket as Julia. We wondered if he listens to boygenius too. At least we knew we had an ally.

Overall, the chamber proceedings were deathly boring. We wanted objections, detainments, people rushing the stage, the banging of the gavel, “Order in the court!” like they do on Judge Judy, but we were let down. Instead, the council members started listing letters and numbers that we assume correspond to proposed legislation but felt more like we were losing a one-sided, mindnumbing game of battleship. On top of that, all of the blinds were drawn so we couldn’t look out the window and construct imaginary scenarios in our heads. All there was left to do was focus on the meeting.

The “diplomacy-core” TikToks we binge-watched before this meeting didn’t prepare us for this. Were the council members friends outside of this chamber? Did they go out for Chili’s margs after their long days in their windowless hall? We certainly hoped so.

By the middle of the meeting we were hungry for effective democracy — and more urgently — food. Thank God Natalia brought rations. Fueled by packs of fruit snacks we crinkled loudly in the back row, we listened to some guy, clad in a cardigan that made him look like Dr. Dolittle, ask for $11 million for the Water Bureau. Note: Rob the Water Bureau.

You might be thinking, “What actually happened in this meeting? There is barely a mention of the proceedings!”

That’s because we have no idea, and we don’t think anyone else does either. We learned that all you really have to do is spit out letter/number combinations and recommend that another committee

should review it. That’s so real! We should all take on a strong “that’s not my problem” mentality.

You might also be wondering, “In what way did the two of you run for President of Evanston? Is that even a real position?”

No, it is not.

That being said, for future meetings, we recommend a few changes: an adjacent screen playing Subway Surfers footage or a slime video, themed meetings (imagine if everyone pulled up in togas!), more skits, a giant hourglass timer to measure how long the meeting has gone on (we could’ve been in there for 20 minutes or 20 years, it was impossible to tell) and walk-up music for each council member.

We are Hangover Presidents Natalia Zadeh and Julia Lucas, and we approve this message.

Polling Evanstonians: Are you voting for Julia or Natalia?

Who the hell are you?

What?

Natalia

HANGOVER 61

how-tos

Hometown

cting with ual waking nightmare of interaer we like our ann an is ys ida hol the for e wheth Coming hom to know what we’re majoring in, friends and family who all wantone new. This year, come prepared! Here’s a rundown down. classes and if we’re seeing any nts for your next hometown hoe of a few foolproof talking poi

cas y julia lu written b er on spenn by jacks designed

#1

For YOUR high school boyfriend

dO: Tell him you’re busy. doN’T: Tell him all of your college

friends call him “Balloony” because

nts tive grandpare r YOUR conserva

Fo

think he looks like Dr. Doofenshmirtz’

s

hood best friend

For YOUR child

Willie

#3

how time flies. Just s in ning lemonade stand

t dO: Reminisce abou

tones of “Sweet Caroline” never hit

doN’T:

#4

the football games. Go ‘Cats!

doN’T: Tell him you never actually entered

the gates of Ryan Field — but did enter Ryan from

Sig Chi’s house to hit his record-holding four-foot

bong. That thing could take down Northwestern

Football’s finest men.

#5

For your local barista

dO: Tell them about the time your college friend group went to a karaoke bar!

ildcat

dO: Tell him about how much fun you had at

health hazards. you started watching doN’T: Tell them won’t and over again. They Glee. Obsessively. Over does. understand. No one

up

the W

entrepreneurs e so enlightening! guest speakers ar a small business Tell them you run : ’T oN d o still get s to freshmen wh selling $85 fake ID s keep s at Chili’s. Their ID offered kids menu booming! ed, so business is getting confiscat

For your dad

yesterday you were run Mike’s now you’re pounding your front yard, and c at are borderline publi Hard in backyards th

For your high school friend gro

e in the out your experienc e capitalist hip club. The ventur

ab dO: Tell them

they

anthropomorphic balloon companion.

extra points, mention how the student center Starbucks just doesn’t have the same hometown charm.

mutual high school classmate who

used to practice clarinet in the bathroom “for the acou stics.” Even if they got hot, keep that one to your self.

#6

dO: Ask her about the new holiday flavors! For

The dulcet

so hard.

Tell them you hooked up with your

doN’T: Tell her you almost got a septum

#7

piercing too, but you don’t want your parents to know you’ve been questioning your sexuality. You’re an art major — they already know.

For the high school TEACHER you run into IN THE WINE AISLE

For your younger sibling

dO: Tell them their English class really

dO: Catch up on the latest family drama. Did

helped you find your voice!

Uncle Dan ever militarize his fleet of parakeets?

doN’T: Tell them “your voice” is a subtly

doN’T: Tell them you overcharged them

erotic ASMR TikTok account.

62 FALL 2023

#2

for their fake ID. No family discounts.

#8

Ultra-easy maze WRITTEN BY NASHVILLE ZIPPER (NATALIA ZADEH) WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY AMISH ZIPPER (ALLEN ZHANG)

Hilarious joke: Why is Willie the Wildcat afraid of nuns?

Find the answer at the bottom of this page!

Use your initials to discover your official Hangover nickname!

PHOTO BY ALESSANDRA ESQUIVEL

ADULT HOOT HORSE

MATCHA TEEN TOOLS

VASE WARLOCK

Can you help me find Willie?

First letter of last name: A ..................................... Arch B .................................... Baby C ......................... Christmas D ....................... Dumptruck E ....................................... Egg F .................................... Fargo G ..................................... God H ......................... Hanukkah I ......................... Igualmente J .................................... Jesus K ....................... Kardashian L ...................................... Lake M ............................. Morton N ................................ Nipple O ............................... Olaplex P ................................ Private Q ................................ Queen R ............................ Rasputin S .................................... Schill T ................................... Tinkle U ............................... Umpire V ................................ Vortex W .................................. Wipe X ............... X (think Twitter) Y .................................... Yoink Z ................................. Zipper

Answer to hilarious joke: Balls.

Find these words!

First letter of first name: A .................................. Amish B ................. Boris Johnson C ............................ Crashing D ................................ Daring E .................................. Evelyn F ............................... Fanciful G .................................... Gold H ................................. Hunky I .................................. Impish J ............................... Jeweled K .................................. Krazy L .................................. Lonely M ................................ Merry N ........................... Nashville O ........................... Olfactory P ........................ Passionate Q ................................. Quirky R ................................. Rowdy S .................................... Sleek T ................................. Tic Tac U ................................ Urgent V ............................. Verbose W .................................. Willie X .................................. Xavier Y .................................... Yikes Z ...................................... Zoot

HANGOVER 63