NBN Magazine Spring 2022

north by

spring 2022

northwestern The burnout phenomenon Northwestern’s overwhelming academics and stress culture push students to exhaustion. | pg. 39

Wrestling with the future

Football player and local celeb Joe Spivak discusses his Northwestern experience and WWE future. | pg. 17

Access denied Students say a dismissive ANU culture results in an inaccessible learning environment. | pg. 33

spring 2022

north by

northwestern

“What would your pro wrestling persona be?”

PRINT STAFF

WEB STAFF

EDITORIAL MANAGING

PRINT MANAGING EDITOR Grace Snelling ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Brendan Le EDITORS-AT-LARGE Teresa Nowakowski, Kyra Steck SENIOR FEATURES EDITORS Emma Chiu, The BirenBomb Joseph Ramos, Jimmy He, Mia Walvoord ASSISTANT FEATURES EDITORS Naomi Birenbaum, Sela Breen SENIOR DANCE FLOOR EDITORS Tessa Paul, Maddy Rubin, Rosie Newmark, Jane Greeley ASSISTANT DANCE FLOOR EDITORS Jenna Anderson, Kim Jao SENIOR PREGAME EDITORS Samantha Stevens, Caroline Neal, Eva Lariño ASSISTANT PREGAME EDITORS Brooklyn It’s SAMmer Time Moore, Ava Levinson SENIOR HANGOVER EDITORS Julia Lucas, Tabor Brewster Lights-out ASSISTANT HANGOVER EDITORS Jamie Lucas Dickman, Lauren Cohn DEI ADVISERS Grace Deng, Ellisya Lindsey Bruiser Brewster

CREATIVE

CREATIVE DIRECTOR S. Kelsie Yu ASSISTANT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Hope Goldilocks Cartwright PHOTO DIRECTOR Eloise Apple DESIGNERS Emma Estberg, Bennie Goldfarb, Esther Tang, Jackson Slater, Allen Zhang, Andrew Kwa, Maren Kranking, Bang Tang Juntang Qian The Iceberg

FREELANCE

WRITERS Julianna Zitron, Olivia Abeyta, Ali Bianco, Trent Brown, Grace Deng, Jade Thomas, Iris Swarthout, Chloe Rappaport, Carly Witteman FACT-CHECKING Chloe Rappaport

PLATINUM SPONSORS

Chrissy Lee, Medha Imam, Anonymous Donor COVER DESIGN BY ELOISE APPLE, ANDREW KWA & S. KELSIE YU

Trent Means Trouble

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Trent Brown EXECUTIVE EDITOR Grace Deng MANAGING EDITORS Shannon Coan, Jayna Kurlender, Olivia Lloyd, Bailey Richards ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS Ali Bianco, Linda Shi, Elizabeth Yoon DEI ADVISERS Grace Deng, Ellisya Lindsey La Chancla

SECTION EDITORS

NEWS+POLITICS EDITOR Brennan Leach ENTERTAINMENT EDITORS Hope Cartwright, Nadine Manske ASSISTANT ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR George Segress LIFE+STYLE EDITORS Kim Jao, Astry Rodriguez SPORTS EDITOR AJ Anderson ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR Miles French Kimpact!

SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR Coop Daley INTERACTIVES EDITORS Olivia Lloyd, Nathanial Ortiz FEATURES EDITOR Allison Arguezo OPINION EDITOR Jo Scaletty CREATIVE WRITING EDITOR Lyla Bariso AUDIO EDITOR Maria Caamaño Garcia VISUALS EDITOR Esther Tang

SOCIAL MEDIA

INSTAGRAM MANAGER Maria Caamaño Garcia TIKTOK MANAGER Linda Shi TWITTER MANAGER Bailey Richards

CORPORATE PUBLISHER Julianne Sun AD SALES Linda Shi MARKETING Sammie Pyo, Sam Stevens FUNDRAISING Tina Qu, Natalia Zadeh, Nicole Feldman EVENT CHAIR Ellisya Lindsey

tableof contents

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13

pregame 6 7 8 10 12 13

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dance floor 17 20 22 24 26 28 30

Wrestling with the future A common language The power of the pen Mastering divinity 50 years and counting Navigating sobriety Diversity center stage

PHOTOS BY ELOISE APPLE

Sitting down with Sokolow Minoring in magic She was a sk8er girl Returning to learning The ad hoc talk Recipe for reggae

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features 33 39 44 50

Access denied The burnout phenomenon In perspective Frame by frame

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hangover 57 58 60 61 63

Book recs for beach babes Catspiracy theories Hangover hang-ups Fright at the museums Get crossed!

dear reader,

Many of us on NBN’s current staff met when everything was still virtual. For four quarters, we workshopped stories with writers through Zoom, kept track of edits on a seemingly endless set of spreadsheets and played the occasional game of digital Pictionary. In spite of these conditions, we formed bonds that will help define our collective college experience.

This fall, we resumed in-person meetings. Since then, I’ve watched new friendships take shape and existing relationships grow stronger.

Our staff has worked tirelessly to make a new issue of NBN possible. They’ve spent late nights in the McCormick Foundation Center poring over drafts together. They’ve brainstormed dozens of story pitches, designed breathtaking page spreads and edited every word in this issue. Most importantly, they’ve remained committed to producing stories that highlight community on campus and the push to make that community accessible for all.

This issue explores spaces where students are building lasting connections. In Pregame, we drop in with a growing cohort of female skateboarders and get a glimpse into the classrooms where older adults are continuing a legacy of learning. Our Dance Floor section spotlights a football star-turned-WWE trainee, explores a theological seminary

www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu FREE AND OPEN TO ALL @nublockmuseum

hidden in plain sight and takes a hard look at the lack of diversity in Northwestern’s theatre department.

In our Features section, five students share their perspectives on navigating race and queer identities at a predominantly white institution. We examine the obstacles faced by those seeking learning accommodations from the University and dive deeper into the phenomenon of academic burnout.

Per NBN tradition, Hangover delivers a healthy dose of lighthearted articles. Our sage editors provide advice for your oddly specific qualms and guide you to the quirkiest museums that Chicagoland has to offer. For any avid New York Times crossword puzzlers, the final page of this issue may strike a special fancy.

This magazine wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration of the whole NBN team. Our writers, editors, designers, photographers and corporate staff have taken it from a concept to the physical copy you’re holding now.

Producing this issue has truly been a labor of love. I hope you’ll see our community — and one of your own — reflected in these stories.

Grace Snelling

P R E G A M E

PHOTO BY ELOISE APPLE

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Sitting down with Sokolow Minoring in magic She was a sk8er girl Returning to learning The ad hoc talk Recipe for reggae

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Sitting down with Sokolow A Northwestern art professor illustrates her path.

WRITTEN BY SELA BREEN DESIGNED BY JACKSON SLATER

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eb Sokolow was 12 when she sat in a booth of a Washington, D.C., McDonald’s with her family, watching as a man carrying a briefcase entered the bathroom.

Minutes later, a different man walked out with the briefcase while the first man exited empty-handed. Sokolow felt like she had just witnessed something important — a peek into society’s inner workings. She considers this moment her “genesis” as an artist, and it has inspired her work for years.

Sokolow is an associate professor of instruction and director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Art, Theory and Practice at Northwestern. She has worked at Northwestern since 2009 and teaches “Intro to Drawing,” among other classes related to her medium — all while continuing to pursue art of her own.

Sokolow’s work has been featured in galleries and museums across the world, including in the 4th ​​ Athens Biennale in Athens, Greece, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and locally at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Much of Sokolow’s art takes advantage of her witty sense of humor and balances a fine line between fiction and reality. Early in her career, she explored societal themes like politics and conspiracy theories. But in 2016, motivated by a feeling that her work was no longer “revelatory,” she shifted focus. Her fascination adapted to the implications of architecture, and she now uses her drawings to explore how spaces are engineered and manipulated.

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Sokolow sat down with NBN to talk someone knows to put the paper in about her career and share advice on front of me and a pencil. being a working artist.

The following interview has been edited Q: Is there any advice you’ve gotten and condensed for length and clarity. that really helped you?

Q: When did you decide to become a A: Show up. Especially when you’re full-time artist, and what made you new to a city or a field or you’re postcommit to that decision?

Northwestern, if you want to pursue something creative, you need to go A: I knew I was always going to be an to every single thing that is related to artist, period. Or I would just make what you want to do. Because you need art, whether I was an “artist” or not. I to know what’s going on and what other continued to have day jobs for a while, people are doing. It’s good to know if and I would make art at night on the you’re making work that is a lot like weekends. I always had the rule for someone else’s and to know what the me that whatever space I move into context is for what you’re doing. But post-undergrad, whatever apartment also, show up so that people start to situation or shared apartment, there’s remember who you are and so that you always got to be a studio space. start to become part of a community.

You cannot make work in a vacuum.

Q: What would you tell students who Deb Sokolow in are wanting to pursue art? her studio.

A: I think it’s important to first off ask yourself, “Is this something that I would do regardless of however anyone else thinks of it?” If no one else cares about it, are you still going to do it?

If you are, then you should definitely do it. If you’re doing something that’s creative, but somehow you’re only doing it to receive approval and because people like it, then maybe that’s not right. I think that it really comes from inside — whatever the impulse is to do it, not from outside approval. I view it as a life pursuit.

I’m never gonna give this up. When I have dementia and I can’t remember what my story is, I’m still going to be doing it. I just hope

PHOTO BY ELOISE APPLE

Minoring in magic

Students discuss misconceptions about witchcraft on campus.

WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY HOPE CARTWRIGHT

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THE FOOL.

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einberg fourth-year Gail Everding practices magic, but she doesn’t call herself a witch.

Everding performs tarot card readings, a practice in which cards from a fortunetelling deck are laid out in a specific formation to divine a message about one’s life. She also creates sigils, magic symbols representing intentions she wants to manifest in the world. Although most might associate such practices with being a witch, Everding prefers to identify as a magical thinker.

Even among those who believe in and practice magic, defining what it means to be a “witch” is difficult. Everding says that the varying interpretations of “witch” make it hard to use it as a label.

“If I told two different people that I consider myself a witch, they probably have completely different understandings of what that means,” Everding says. “I would rather just explain what I believe, rather than be like, ‘I’m a witch,’ and they’d be like, ‘Oh, so you have a broomstick?’”

The history of witchcraft is vast, with roots in many diverse cultures and traditions.

Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and History Richard Kieckhefer is an expert on the witch trials of the late Middle Ages and has taught a course titled “Religion and

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THE TOWER. Magic” in previous years. This class attracts students like Everding and Weinberg fourthyear Kennedi Holloway who are interested in studying witchcraft and its history.

Through research, Holloway discovered she didn’t align with specific magical traditions, but preferred to identify her spirituality in more individual ways, which is how she came to label herself as “spiritual.”

Everding is still exploring various forms of magic. She feels the ability to take this individual approach shows how witchcraft is unlike many religions that focus on one agreed-upon doctrine.

“There’s not a lot of room for personal interpretation, usually,” Everding says. “But I found that with witchcraft, it feels like the complete opposite. It’s very subversive in the way that the individual subjective experience is what makes it so powerful.”

Weinberg second-year Riley Boksenbaum describes itself as an occultist, someone who identifies with supernatural beliefs more similar to alchemy and astrology than traditional religion. Boksenbaum’s subjective experience involves an experimental process. It thinks the idea that magic doesn’t align with science is one of the biggest misconceptions about modern witchcraft, as magic “requires a lot of critical thinking and use of scientific methods.”

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STRENGTH. Part of Everding’s personal approach to magic is finding places that feel more spiritual to her, like the Koch Memorial Gardens by Deering Library or the Bahá’í Temple. Holloway also seeks spirituality in nature. Although she feels that Northwestern’s campus can be “stale” due to the overwhelmingly man-made landscaping, the proximity of Lake Michigan makes her feel spiritually grounded.

Everding also finds spiritual meaning by interacting with witchcraft online. In April 2021, she watched a tarot reading on Vanessa Somuayina’s YouTube channel that told her the next person she would date would be a Taurus born in April who would meet her on a Monday. Everything in that reading turned out true.

When she first started, Everding’s Evangelical family was cautious in monitoring her exposure to witchcraft; they called it “demonic.” As a result, her only source of information was the internet — until college. In her search for other magical thinkers, she met Holloway during her first year at Northwestern. While the two practice magic individually, they’ve both found it has changed their lives for the better.

“The world has no limits for me,” Holloway says. “It’s really empowering.”

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Jess Chen practices an ollie on the Lakefill bridge.

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SPRING 2022

n an unusually warm April afternoon, a group of male skateboarders meet up on the Lakefill bridge to practice skating and hang out. They watch each other attempt grinds on benches and flat ground tricks, yelling words of encouragement and cheering when someone lands successfully. A week later, a group of female skaters meet up in the same place, photographing each other and practicing ollies, manuals and shuvits.

The skateboarding scene at Northwestern is growing — especially the number of female skateboarders.

By establishing groups that connect female skaters with each other, the expanding community works to find and create a safe space for women to skate.

McCormick third-year Yabi Ayele says skating can be intimidating, especially because there aren’t many female skaters. She recently formed a group chat with other female students who skateboard. Together, they take the train to Chicago’s House of Vans or Wilson Skate Park.

“I definitely need a community and other people to skate with, so I really like that we have this group chat,” Ayele says. She hopes to see more women skating on campus and commends the three students who formed the Northwestern Skate Club last fall. “[Northwestern Skate Club] is created by girl skaters, which is so cool,” she says. “I feel like it makes it more comfortable for people who are new just to get out there.”

Weinberg second-year Naomi Gizaw, one of the three women who founded the club, says a main goal is to ensure that all skateboarders

feel like there’s a place for them at Northwestern.

“When we first started skating, it was pretty exclusive, and it was very male-dominated,” Gizaw says. “The one special thing about skating is it’s very community-based, and if you feel like you don’t have that sense of community, it’s hard to continue with it.”

The club now consists of around 95 members — over half of whom are female — who meet up to skate and trade equipment. Gizaw was surprised at the number of women who joined the club.

“We have a lot of people all across the spectrum who have never tried [skateboarding] but always wanted to — especially girls,” she says.

While female skaters are beginning to form groups to support each other and encourage new skaters, Evanston does not have a designated park for skateboarders to practice.

Luckily, the city has plans to build a skate park about a mile from campus in Twiggs Park in 2023.

Eric Pitt is the co-founder of Evanston Skates, an advocacy group with around 70 members that pushed for the new skate park. After his initial attempts to push for the project fizzled out in 2010, Pitt says his efforts are finally coming to fruition.

“We showed up to these public meetings and were more organized than I think the city realized skateboarders could be,” Pitt says.

The city granted two of the group members permission to join the committee that wrote a proposal request. Now, most of the city’s next steps will take place behind the scenes until the park is built, Pitt says.

While she looks forward to the new skate park,

Communication third-year Sherry Xue says part of the reason that it’s harder to find a community among female skaters is because the majority of riders at skate parks are male.

“Especially whenever it’s pretty packed, there’s almost that impostor syndrome in a way where you don’t know when to go,” Xue says, referring to dropping into a skateboarding ramp. “Guys are more dominant in the way that they would just go, but for girls, it’s more about like, ‘Oh, should I go now?’”

McCormick third-year Ugomma Korie agrees that skateboarding can be intimidating as a woman.

Korie began skateboarding in the fall of her second year as a way to spend time outdoors during COVID-19 and commute across campus, but now she does it for fun.

“I feel like sometimes I get stares,” Korie says. “Not necessarily bad stares, but I feel like I get attention sometimes when I’m skating. I always ask myself, ‘Is it because I have a skateboard and I’m a girl skater?’ Especially being Black, I feel like I stand out a lot, more so than if I was your average guy skater.”

Korie says she’s had to overcome the feeling that she can’t make mistakes on her board out of fear that people will pay extra attention to her.

Weinberg third-year Jess Chen says her first time at a skate park was anxietyinducing because she felt unwelcome.

“Not necessarily because someone told me, but because we all know when we walk into a room and we stand out or we just don’t feel like we should be there,” Chen says.

“But that has kind of changed over time, and it’s something I think is very much in your

PHOTOS BY ELOISE APPLE From left to right: Yabi Ayele, Ugomma Korie (back), Chen (front) and Sherry Xue meet up regularly to skate together, both on and off campus.

head because of media and exposure and because skating did start as a really maledominated sport.”

However, since that first nerve-wracking experience, Chen says she’s met people at skate parks who have helped make her feel like she belonged, including a woman who invited her to a female skate jam event. She also told Chen about froSkate, “Chicago’s first BIPOC Femme + [Transgender, Queer, Gender Non-Conforming or Non-Binary] centered skate collective,” according to its Instagram bio. The collective has hosted more than 70 local skate park meetups and larger-scale events since it was founded in 2019.

“It’s actually super inspiring because these collectives are an inclusive community first and foremost, but then they’re also just super cool,” Chen says. “That has become so powerful; corporations are taking notice of the people power [skateboarding] has.”

When Evanston’s new skate park is built, Gizaw says it will serve as the skateboarding club’s primary meeting place.

“As much as there are really cool skating spots on campus, there’s no skate park, which is a spot for all skaters to come together,” Gizaw says. “So it would definitely solidify that community in the sense where everyone would go there all the time.”

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Returning A to learning Students come back to school after taking a few gap decades.

WRITTEN BY BROOKLYN MOORE DESIGNED BY JACKSON SLATER PHOTOS BY HOPE CARTWRIGHT

OLLI member and coordinator Naomi Fisher flashes her Wildcard.

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fter four years of making the 90-minute commute back and forth from Naperville, Illinois, to Chicago, Carol Dietz moved to the city. She wanted to live just across the street from one of her favorite places: her Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) classroom. As a member of OLLI, Dietz has expanded her knowledge, learned the science of the human body and found a community after corporate life.

OLLI is a nationwide program with branches at Northwestern’s Evanston and Chicago campuses. As an organization that serves people aged 50 and older, individuals come to the program with a multitude of experiences. OLLI is structured through peer-led and discussion-based study groups. There are no professors, no grades and no assessments; OLLI’s goal is to promote learning and community.

“OLLI is both a place of lifelong learning to engage your mind from that standpoint, but also a social place for many people where it’s their community and they establish friendships,” says Kari Fagin, the director of OLLI. The institute supports learning throughout life, especially for retired workers. It facilitates more than 100 study groups per semester, helping over 1,500 people to continue their education.

Member Naomi Fisher, 79, often coordinates study groups in conjunction with her husband and other members. As a coordinator, she chooses readings and other materials to study that align with a given topic. Coordinators do not need to be experts but are instead tasked with designating materials and facilitating discussion. “[OLLI] attracts people who still have an intellectual curiosity,” Fisher says. “It’s perfectly fine to admit your ignorance. You’re there to get beyond it.”

Members can participate in study groups that cover topics out of their comfort zone or subjects that they are passionate about but never had the chance to pursue.

Although Dietz was an English major in college, literature isn’t her main focus at OLLI. In fact, she has not been a part of a literature study group in any of the dozens of groups she has coordinated.

Dietz focuses her time at OLLI on STEM groups, learning about the brain, immunizations and the intersection of music and psychology. Understanding the science behind her body has helped Dietz through the aging process, she says.

“It helps us know what’s happening in our body and why we don’t run around the block as fast as we used to, but it also gives us hope for the future,” Dietz says.

“What is the future of hearing technology? What is the

“It’s a really special program made up of very interesting and special people. I am really proud of what happens here.”

- Kari Fagin, director of OLLI

future of heart transplantation?”

In addition to her study groups, Dietz currently chairs OLLI’s Science, Technology, Medicine and Health Committee.

“You have everybody thinking and creating about whatever you’re talking about, and then they exchange information,” Dietz says. “That’s what I love. There’s no competition. None.”

Member Diane Valencia, 75, says her experience learning about the Spanish Renaissance helped her better understand the places she traveled to in retirement.

She recalls looking at statues with an artist’s eye thanks to her study group. Through OLLI, Valencia learned how the statue’s limbs were set into place, as well as what kind of paint the artist used to make it look more realistic.

“It’s just something I never expected to learn about. I didn’t even know enough to consider it,” Valencia says.

Aside from learning about a diverse array of topics, OLLI members have created a social community of intellectuals.

Whether it’s going out for coffee after study groups or inviting fellow members to birthday parties, OLLI provides an atmosphere of friendship.

“It turns out to be a wonderful way to make new friends,” Fisher says. Fisher has hosted members at her home to socialize outside of an academic context. Valencia received an invitation to another member’s birthday party and says she plans to invite her OLLI friends to her belated 75th birthday bash.

Member Gloria Gleave, 74, echoes Valencia. She says that despite the challenges of keeping a close group of friends as

people get older, she found a great community through OLLI that continues to grow.

“My husband and I have a circle of friends, and the friends have been collected through various jobs over the years, the people you meet in classes while working on MBAs. And they are moving away, going to where their kids live; they are dying; they are moving to Florida because it’s warmer. And so, in one sense you were seeing the circle of close friends you have leave, and what I see in OLLI is a community of vibrant people that keeps on renewing itself,” Gleave says.

Fagin says that during the pandemic, when OLLI members could not go out because they were at a higher risk, OLLI provided a feeling of community and normalcy. “OLLI saved them, because it was some sort of rhythm to an otherwise disrupted life,” Fagin says.

Today, OLLI has moved to a hybrid format, holding some groups in-person and others online to accommodate individual preferences.

“It’s a really special program made up of very interesting and special people,” Fagin says. ”I am really proud of what happens here.”

OLLI member Gloria Gleave shows off her Wildcard.

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ou won’t see Weinberg first-year Nina Kronengold’s major listed on Northwestern's undergraduate admissions page. She plans to graduate from Northwestern with a degree in art, technology and the business of innovation, a major of her own creation.

Beyond Northwestern’s 133 majors, minors and certificates, students can graduate with self-created, or ad hoc, majors. Ad hoc majors are often in specialized areas that branch across multiple disciplines. Weinberg generally has anywhere from zero to three ad hoc majors per graduating class, according to Weinberg Assistant Dean for Curriculum and Assessment Laura Panko.

The Weinberg ad hoc major approval process centers around presenting an explanation of the intended major and a course curriculum that fulfills the student’s major requirements. The student completes these elements with the help of an adviser, often a professor in a related field.

The student then submits an application with their reason for pursuing their ad hoc major, why their major should be permitted and what sets it apart from offered majors. Members of the curriculum board read the proposal and decide whether to approve it.

Panko reviews ad hoc majors and advises students throughout their major progress. She explains that ad hoc majors are tailored for a select few motivated students who have a specific path in mind.

“It's not a simple thing to think about what constitutes something equivalent to the standing majors and really make the case and not only create a list of classes, but alternatives,” Panko says.

Two summers ago, Kronengold helped develop a startup centered around teenage addiction and social culture, which introduced her to entrepreneurship as a career. She wanted to combine this with the passion for art that she fostered throughout high school.

Kronengold entered college undecided but knew she wanted to do so much more than Northwestern’s major options would allow.

“I started feeling a little stuck, to be quite honest,” she says. “To make sure I was doing something I'm passionate about, I started looking at ad hoc majors at Northwestern.”

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The ad hoc talk

Northwestern students combine academic interests to curate their own curriculums.

WRITTEN BY JULIANNA ZITRON // DESIGNED BY JUNTANG QIAN

Kronengold hopes to take more classes that bridge the gap between entrepreneurship and the arts. Thus far, she has taken the "Design, Thinking and Doing" class at the Segal Design Institute and "Backable," a Northwestern class partnering with The Second City to teach improvisational skills to future entrepreneurs.

Weinberg third-year Julia Mencher is pursuing history and an environmental policy and culture (EPC) major. While the EPC department offers a minor, students have designed EPC majors as an ad hoc.

“Currently at Northwestern there's no program that fits the core ideas that I wanted in the EPC major, weighing science, humanities and social sciences equally,” she says.

Mencher’s interest in the environment stems from her hometown of Washington, D.C., and her desire to protect its natural beauty. Mencher explained that D.C., a hub of political action, also fostered her interest in examining the social, political and human sides of environmental issues.

Weinberg fourth-year Alex Chang’s major in critical race and ethnic studies was approved last spring. Like Kronengold and Mencher, she appreciates the flexibility of an ad hoc major.

“Being able to make an ad hoc major as an undergrad really allowed me to develop my own academic interests in a way that I wouldn't be able to do if I were stuck to one of the programs or departments here,” Chang says.

She says that pursuing an ad hoc major has ensured that she only takes classes she is genuinely interested in.

“I think that making sure that students know that this program exists has the potential to change the academic culture at this school,” Chang says.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTIST PHOTOS BY PHOTOGRAPHER

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Daniel Yeboah in his home studio.

PHOTOS BY ELOISE APPLE

aniel Yeboah works at Sargent Dining Hall from Tuesday through Saturday. However, on Sundays and Mondays, he transforms into a seasoned reggae rockstar.

Yeboah has lived in Chicago since 1997, when he arrived in America as a drummer on tour with reggae band Super High Kings. After the tour, he decided to stay in America and has worked in Sargent Dining Hall at Northwestern for 22 years, simultaneously producing and performing reggae music.

Throughout the week, Yeboah balances music, work and fatherhood.

On work days, he wakes up at 4 a.m. to start his shift, ensuring that the beverage machines are functioning, food is stocked and desserts are cut. He also arranges picking up his children from school with his wife, Sara. When the chance to perform a gig presents itself, Yeboah weighs whether or not he should take time off of work.

“It’s no joke — I am there on time, I don’t run late, I don’t call off.

I take my job seriously and do what I gotta do,” Yeboah says. “If someone needs me to perform, it’s a choice. I need to make a decision. If I’m working that day, I can use my sick hours or give up vacation days depending on how much I make out of the gig.”

As a child, Yeboah would walk around his hometown in Koforidua, Ghana, mesmerized by the sounds of his environment. The chirps of birds and the clamor of pedestrians formed the background melody of his neighborhood.

In church, he taught himself to play the drums and was eventually hired to play at services. This start in the music industry propelled Yeboah into the Ghanaian reggae scene. For several years, he performed in different bands across the country.

After traveling across Europe and Africa with the reggae band Super High Kings, Yeboah was one of the band members who decided to stay in the U.S. following their split in 1997.

That same year, Yeboah and four other band members came to Chicago with an offer from a church called Christ Oasis to perform every Sunday.

a g Re g e

Recipe for

Northwestern dining hall worker Daniel Yeboah leads a double life as an award-winning musician.

WRITTEN BY KIM JAO // DESIGNED BY MAREN KRANKING

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Northwestern and eventually moved his kids from Ghana to America for a better education. He also helps financially support his father and older siblings.

The opportunity to work at Northwestern was a mix of coincidence and curiosity. Yeboah was visiting a friend who worked at the Noyes train station, who then walked him around the Northwestern campus.

When they ended up at Sargent Hall, Yeboah wandered downstairs to the admin office.

“I told them I’m willing to do anything, whatever — anything available,” Yeboah says.

A few months later, he was hired to work Yeboah produces all his reggae music from his studio, at Sargent Dining Hall where he is accompanied by his many instruments. during the week, leaving the weekends free to pursue music.

Yeboah’s music draws inspiration from his father, who, for the most part, single-handedly raised him and his five other siblings.

“Most of my music comes from my dad because of his advice,” Yeboah says.

“He always tells us to talk about positive things.”

Yeboah has some fans at Northwestern.

Medill third-year Shareef Jabba met Yeboah in the dining hall, and the two quickly became acquainted. Since then, Jabba has introduced his friends to Yeboah and his music, and he frequently listens to Yeboah’s songs in the shower.

“There’s almost like this expectation Yeboah’s studio has a variety of musical elements, including a drum set, guitar, that you’re gonna feel good when you’re keyboard and sound system. around Daniel,” Jabba says.

As a father of six, Yeboah tries to “I thank God for America and instill his passion for music in his Chicago,” Yeboah says. “They gave me a children. His son Kobi Yeboah, who lot of stuff Ghana never gave me.” works at Mod Pizza in Norris University In America, Yeboah was able to Center, says that his father taught him develop his music career and make how to record, program and edit music. money to support his family back “He has six kids and takes care of all home. A year after arriving in Chicago, of us,” Kobi says. “He’s never been M.I.A. he decided to get a second job at and has always been a great guy.”

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While Yeboah can’t tour as often as he used to, his music career continues to thrive. In the early 2000s, he formed his own band, Hydro, before starting his solo career under the stage name Atta Ghana Boy to write and perform his own music.

During school breaks, he can travel and tour up to three months at a time.

Otherwise, he occasionally finds time for side gigs at local music festivals, private parties and Jamaican clubs like Wild Hare and Exedus II with other bands.

“

People stress out too much, and too much is going on in this world, outside, in our jobs and in our life. So it’s beautiful [to perform].”

- Daniel Yeboah

”

In 2021, Yeboah won Eastern International Act of the Year and Best African Entertainer in Chicago at the Eastern Music Awards and Chicago Music Awards, respectively. He has also been nominated for the upcoming Ghana Music Awards and plans on releasing multiple new songs. However, Yeboah has begun to adopt a more relaxed approach towards his music career.

“I’m not getting younger. I have to make a decision. I’m free, and I’m good,” Yeboah says. “Music is passion. When the opportunity presents itself, I go for it.”

Nonetheless, he retains the same love for songwriting and performing.

“People stress out too much, and too much is going on in this world, outside, in our jobs and in our life. So it’s beautiful [to perform],” Yeboah says. “When you’re on stage you look at people singing, smiling and dancing. People are happy.

That moment, I think, is a blessing.”

PHOTO BY ELOISE APPLE

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Wrestling with the future A common language The power of the pen Mastering divinity 50 years and counting Navigating sobriety Diversity center stage

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D A N C EF L O O R

WRESTLING

with the future Football player and local celeb Joe Spivak discusses his Northwestern experience and WWE future.

WRITTEN BY TABOR BREWSTER

DESIGNED BY ALLEN ZHANG & EMMA ESTBERG

PHOTO BY ELOISE APPLE

K

ellogg fifth-year and self-described lover of chaos Joe Spivak lifted me over his head with ease as innocent bystanders watched from a distance on the north end of the Lakefill. At 6 feet tall and 300 pounds, it’s safe to say the defensive lineman had me outmatched. Thankfully, what may have looked like a scene from an ‘80s movie in which a nerd finally learns his lesson was just part of a morning workout for Spivak. A light day for the professional wrestler in the making. A big day for the professional wrestling fan in me.

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In December 2021, 25-year-old Spivak, a star player for Northwestern’s football team, caught the attention of World Wrestling Entertainment.

He soon signed on as a part of WWE’s inaugural Next In Line (NIL) class, an opportunity for college athletes to get training from the largest professional wrestling organization in the world.

He joined 15 other college athletes in a program where the multi-billiondollar corporation eyes potential talent, perhaps kindling a few full-time contracts. However, the WWE NIL program doesn’t guarantee a contract or even an on-screen Joe Spivak appearance. These athletes have to strikes a train hard and hope even harder celebratory pose. for their skull-crushing debut in the wild world of professional wrestling.

“I’m just so excited to throw myself into the art of wrestling,” Spivak says.

PHOTO And there’s no better way to COURTESY OF JOE describe professional wrestling SPIVAK than as an art. Professional wrestling is not a traditional competition like football or Olympic wrestling. It’s a performance in which two wrestlers (or three, or four, or 30 in a jam-packed “battle royale”) work together to put on a show in which they fight to an oftenpredetermined outcome. The New York Times described it in 2016 as “half Shakespeare, half steel-chair-shots.” Twentiethcentury French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote an entire essay likening pro wrestling to the “grandiloquence of ancient theater” (fittingly, Spivak was an undergraduate theatre minor).

The WWE is a never-ending TV show with storylines and feuds, in which Hollywood superstars like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson get their start and the company’s very own CEO plays an exaggerated, borderline-evil version of himself.

Sometimes the lines between truth and fiction become blurred, only adding to the performance’s mystique.

But here’s the catch: There are some things you just can’t fake. Sure, you can decide who’s going to win beforehand and script lines for the wrestlers to rile up the crowd, but there’s no way to stage getting pummeled by a steel chair or thrown 16 feet off a metal cage. You can only make it hurt a little bit less.

“What about it is fake?” Spivak asks soberly. “That guy going off the top of the top ropes? He’s still doing that. He’s still flipping. You can’t fake that. That guy that just went through the

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ladder? He actually did that. They’re taking the Kendo sticks to the back.”

So when I learned I would be doing a workout routine with a future professional wrestler, I feared for my body. I pictured a nightmare scenario in which I couldn’t keep up after the first few minutes. Perhaps something akin to Andre The Giant defeating a nameless featherweight wrestler in a matter of seconds (a common situation aptly titled a “Squash Match”).

When I saw Spivak approaching the field in his camo Crocs and he informed me it would be a light day, I was relieved.

I soon discovered that the workout would resemble a Rocky training montage: running, rolling, tumbling, bear-crawling and plenty of stretching.

Troy Hudetz, Spivak’s teammate and roommate since freshman year, describes Spivak’s athletic ability as “powerful, sneaky-fast and catlike.” He says if he were to come up with a wrestling name for Spivak, it would be “Prowler.”

While Hudetz’s suggestion sounds more befitting a mustache-twirling cartoon character, I can’t disagree with the reasoning. Spivak demonstrated an impressive level of agility and speed for an athlete of his size — something that would surely benefit him in the proverbial “squared circle” of the wrestling ring. I can already picture him rapidly springboarding across the ropes, taking down his opponent in a swift clothesline followed by a signature move — maybe something along the lines of a “Spivak Suplex.”

Spivak has spent time studying professional wrestling, especially since joining the NIL program. He describes the program as “a deep dive into the company’’ through which he gets flown to events like WrestleMania, a yearly spectacle often dubbed the “Super Bowl of wrestling” (albeit with more pyrotechnics, less clothing and about the same amount of Sunday-night drinking). In addition to V.I.P. access to these events, he also meets with what he calls the WWE’s “global partners.” The list includes corporate superpowers like Peacock, Hulu and Toyota. Above all, Spivak gets to meet some of his lifelong wrestling heroes.

“Every single person I meet — whether it’s someone executive like Mr. Levesque or Ms. Stephanie — or other wrestlers, everyone is so down to earth,” Spivak says.

Spivak is referring to Paul Levesque, the real name of nine-time WWE champion-turned-executive vice president.

Levesque is more commonly known by his edgier ring name Triple H. Stephanie McMahon, wife of Levesque and daughter of WWE’s CEO, is a fellow TV character-turned-chief executive. “[Levesque] was just genuinely one of the nicest people I’ve ever met,” Spivak says. “I want to make that man proud.

Want to show him that they’re invested in the right guy.”

Spivak wasn’t always bound for the wrestling ring. At Northwestern, he’s been most well-known as a key defensive lineman for the football team. This past year, he was chosen as team captain and promoted to wear the coveted No. 1 jersey. Northwestern Magazine describes the honor as “the player who best embodies ‘Wildcat values’: being a dedicated student, teammate and community member.” Spivak even had professional football ambitions, hoping to secure a spot in the NFL draft.

“I kind of realized, OK, I love football, obviously. I love violence. I love training. I love controlled chaos,” Spivak says.

“And then I quickly figured out that what I love besides that is connecting with people. I love public speaking. I love being in front of a crowd or a camera and really getting human emotion out of somebody. And the more I thought about it, I’m like, well, where do these two things intersect and merge better than the WWE?” Spivak’s teammates inspired him to try out for WWE’s NIL program. After team workouts, in the comedown of a postpump high, he and his teammates would often throw on some classic wrestling music in the locker room and imitate the iconic moves of their favorite stars. He describes one instance in which his friend spewed water across the locker room to mimic Triple H. Spivak says that in moments like these, teammates would approach him and encourage him to seriously consider professional wrestling as a future career path.

“His relentless positive attitude — no matter the highs and lows — carries with him,” Hudetz says. “It’s what’s set him apart to this day.”

Beyond physical ability, Spivak certainly has the largerthan-life personality necessary for a professional wrestler. His quick wit and charisma are apparent in promotional videos for Northwestern’s football team, and he’s emceed events for Wildcat Welcome. Like any great mic-dropping wrestling superstar, he knows how to work a crowd and hype up fans.

“The best part about it all is absolutely, without a doubt, the fans,” Spivak says.

As two lifelong wrestling fans, Spivak and I quickly bonded over our favorite wrestlers. When I asked him the classic question of “Wrestling Mount Rushmore,” or favorite four wrestlers of all-time, he surprised me by naming three — three alter egos of the same wrestler.

(Professional wrestler Mick Foley infamously played three different wrestlers at the same time: Cactus Jack, a barbed-wire-obsessed wild west outlaw; Mankind, a masked psychotic masochist; and Dude Love, a tie-dye-clad hippie).

The decision seemed to reflect Spivak’s three avenues in his life at the moment: school, football and wrestling. I can’t imagine how Spivak manages taking four classes, being a star college athlete and potentially becoming a professional wrestler. But somehow he does, all with an inspiring outlook that will undoubtedly take him to the top of any ladder he chooses to climb. (Or jump from, crash through, etc.)

“I have two unbelievable dreams in front of me.

And I’m also finishing up my time at one of the best universities in the

world,” he says. “My hard days are days that people would dream about.”

That I can confirm. For me, someone who used to envision being a professional wrestler as a kid, Spivak’s days are a glimpse into a dream come true. His easy days are something even greater. As Spivak and I worked through some yoga to finish our training session, the air warmed, the birds chirped and the only thing missing was Vivaldi’s “Spring” concerto.

Somehow, Spivak’s positive attitude seems to influence everyone around him, including Mother Nature.

When I asked where he sees himself in five years time if he’s given the golden ticket of a WWE contract, he wasted no time in getting right to the point: WWE Universal Champion contender. “I have so much to prove, and so much to learn,” Spivak says. “And I’m gonna work my ass off every single day.”

Spivak wrestles with Brewster.

PHOTO BY ELOISE APPLE

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A common language Multilingual students seek community through shared languages.

WRITTEN BY CARLY WITTEMAN // DESIGNED BY JUNTANG QIAN

information, language signals openness to creating a bond.

Content Warning: This article discusses instances of anti-Asian Whether through cultural clubs or social gatherings, a racism. common language helps establish community.

“Language is one of the most salient markers of cultural einberg second-year Sheena Tan has been all over identity,” Horton says. “It’s not the only one, of course, but the world. it’s very salient. When you’re a speaker of a certain language, She grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, where it definitely carries with it this idea that you’re part of a she attended a high school with a significant East Asian larger community.” population. She spent time in South Korea the summer For multilingual students, certain ideas, especially those following her junior year of high school and took a gap year in intertwined with a specific culture, are easier to convey in a Germany after graduation. At home, Tan speaks Chinese and language other than English.

English with her parents. In her travels, she picked up some Weinberg first-year William Wang, who grew up in China Korean and German while also learning Spanish throughout with English as his first language, finds that some concepts high school and Japanese at Northwestern. are better communicated in Chinese.

Because she spent most of her time in high school with “A lot of times it’s not just a word, but some kind of Chinese or Korean people, Tan says she “naturally gravitated experience — maybe a food or an event that’s primarily tied more toward that crowd” in college. A part of what ties them to Chinese people,” Wang says. “If there’s a Chinese food item, together, she says, is shared language. [my friends and I] will definitely say it in Chinese, just because “I think there is inherently something that connects you we don’t even know the English name for it.” on a deeper level when you're able to speak in a language that Wang is a member of Northwestern’s Chinese Student you grew up hearing from the people that you love and the Association (CSA), where Weinberg second-year Kaitlyn Shi people that love you the most,” Tan says. “If you're able to serves as his mentor. Through Shi, he has connected with speak in that language with other people that you call your other CSA members. friends, it makes things much more meaningful, and you “You don’t meet each other because you’re Chinese, but become closer as a community.” because it’s part of you,” Wang says. “You’re able to resonate a According to Northwestern associate professor of bit more often with each other sometimes.” psychology Sid Horton, language plays a key role in McCormick first-year Brighton Sibanda grew up in developing social ties with others. More than transmitting Zimbabwe speaking English, Zulu, Ndebele and Shona. He says

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that when he meets people who speak the same language, they often have shared experiences to discuss.

“There's music, there's food, practices, even religion that comes with the language,” Sibanda says. “If someone speaks to me in a certain language, there's automatically a very big list of things we can talk about.”

Sibanda has met people who have lost proficiency in their native language, and he believes that when people don’t speak it with others enough their link to their culture slowly decays. Speaking Shona everyday with friends helps him stay connected.

Although many multilingual students have found spaces on campus to celebrate their culture and speak languages other than English, some have felt othered at a mostly English-speaking institution. When a student encounters language barriers, cultural differences or racism, speaking a foreign language can be isolating.

Growing up in Istanbul, Turkey, Weinberg first-year Defne Deda always wanted to pursue higher education in the United States. Since coming to Northwestern, Deda has had to navigate a new social environment while simultaneously trying to translate her outgoing Turkish personality to English.

“In ‘Theory of Knowledge’ back in high school, we learned that language is a way of knowing,” Deda says.

“And I never fully understood that, I think, until coming here. Because I really do feel like one person in Turkish and another in English.”

Deda cited the mere-exposure effect as a source of disconnect between herself and her peers. According to the American Psychological Association, this principle describes “the finding that individuals show an increased preference (or liking) for a stimulus as a consequence of repeated exposure to that stimulus.” Deda says this phenomenon can help explain why people treat those who are most similar to themselves with a friendlier attitude.

At Northwestern, she feels that some students unconsciously reinforce their own biases by failing to diversify the circle of people they interact with.

“Even though people here appreciate diversity, I feel like diversity is a thing they enjoy in the occasional conversation,” Deda says. “In the long run, they don't pick that person as their friend, they just focus on that person's life as something to learn about and broaden their

"If someone speaks to me in a certain language, there's automatically a very big list of things we can talk about."

- Brighton Sibanda, McCormick first-year

view. But then that person is left as a diversity object.”

Other students have experienced anxiety from speaking their language in certain spaces out of fear of the reaction that they might receive. Shi says that, when she’s out with her friends, they sometimes decide to speak in English rather than Chinese.

“There have definitely been times in downtown Chicago or in Evanston, typically late at night, where I was like, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t speak predominantly in Chinese.’ My friend group has run into problems with people berating us on the street, telling us to go back to our country,” Shi says.

Tan recalls a conversation with her friends in which they discussed the impact of one’s childhood environment on their perception of their identity.

“When you're younger, if you grew up in a majority white space versus a space where your identity is the majority, it's very different,” Tan says. “Because you don't feel as if you have to justify your ability to speak in a different language, you just can. An extension of that can often manifest in being ashamed of the fact that you are different.”

Tan adds that it can take years to heal from suppressing identity and language at a young age. Older Asian Americans, she says, will often encourage the younger generation to learn their language, as it will become a significant part of how they connect to others. Whether through food, similar upbringings or other shared experiences, Tan believes language links people together.

“The point of language is to be able to connect people to each other,” Tan says. “So not having that connection doesn't necessarily make you feel limited. But it is something that is a blessing when you are able to share it with somebody else.”

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The power of the pen WRITTEN BY LAUREN COHN DESIGNED BY BENNIE GOLDFARB

Exploring Northwestern’s competitive creative writing program.

F

ar-off worlds, stolen glances, toppling authoritarian governments. Creative writing students at Northwestern have the world at their disposal, but it takes more than an active imagination to get into the University’s competitive creative writing program.

The program is housed in the English department with three distinct sections: poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. After submitting an application in the spring, writers gear up to begin a yearlong sequence in one of the three genres for the fall. First, they learn techniques, including imitations of the styles of renowned authors. Then, writers work on developing longer-form pieces.

Students face a demanding test before entering the program: a competitive application process that requires a polished manuscript.

The application asks students for some basic information, the English classes they have taken at Northwestern and a 7-15 page writing sample for creative nonfiction/fiction or 4-5 poems for poetry. They can be accepted to a major or minor in one of the three genres, and those who do not get accepted can also pursue a non-application cross-genre minor that spans the three subjects.

Medill third-year Kacee Haslett is currently in the throes of the yearlong fiction sequence for minors. As a journalism major, she says she wanted to take writing classes in the English department and applied to the program because she missed having a creative outlet.

Luckily, Haslett had a writing sample from a previous writing class to use for the application. She says the process was short but still a little nerve-racking.

“I was hearing all these things about, ‘Oh it’s competitive. A lot of people apply.’ You know, it

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kind of sucks you have to apply to your major or minor,” she says.

While the literature major FAQ page on the English department website may say the creative writing program has an average acceptance rate of 60%, admissions reflect a much more competitive reality. According to the director of the program, Dr. Juan Martinez, around 85-110 students apply to each genre every year. Haslett says her cohort of fiction students is only about 14 writers.

Now in the program, Haslett enjoys collaborating with a smaller group in workshops, where she’s learned to feel more confident in her work. As she studies her interest in writing about romance and mystery, Haslett receives feedback from her peers.

“I love how small it is, and it doesn’t really feel competitive anymore,” she says.

Martinez says that when faculty evaluate applications, they look for writers who have devoted time and effort to their sample. The program seeks to cultivate a group of writers with a wide range of styles and experiences.

“We want to get as many diverse voices as we can, just because it makes the classroom experience better for everybody,” Martinez says.

For Weinberg first-year Zoe Kulick, writing looks like exploring her fifth-grade interest: John Green novels. Now considering a creative writing minor, she hopes to write the same sort of nonstop, immersive reads as her elementary school idol.

Kulick took a creative writing course at Northwestern that introduced her to a broad range of styles. She appreciated exploring the scope of creative writing, but hopes to focus on the genres she’s interested in by selecting a topic within the program.

“It was kind of overwhelming sometimes, but I think that was the point of it. It’s just exposing you to a lot of different forms of writing,” she says.

As a lifelong reader, Kulick understands that the best adventures come from pursuing a challenge.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY S. KELSIE YU & HOPE CARTWRIGHT

“I feel like if you get [in] then you different types of fiction. “The kind of writing class — Sherman is now known know you’re in a very good program thing that they love to read on the DL,” by her stage name “Sarah Squirm” and that’s really going to be people who want he says. debuted on Saturday Night Live this fall. to be there,” Kulick says.

Many great stories stand the test of Jeannie Vanasco (Weinberg ‘06) wrote To Professor Averill Curdy, the time, and the creative writing program her memoir, The Glass Eye, from pieces program does more than teach the has had a place at Northwestern for of the long-form poem she worked on in complexities of diction — it helps writers over 40 years. Mary Kinzie, a poet, the program’s poetry sequence. She later become lifelong learners.

English professor and critic, founded the applied to the fiction sequence for her “I think that’s something that all program in 1979. senior year. Vanasco says the sequences writers share, which is this desire to Today, Martinez feels the scope of instilled a “dedication to reading critically keep learning their craft,” she says. the program has expanded to include a and creatively.” Having now published Curdy primarily teaches poetry diversity of perspectives. He says he’s two books, Vanasco remembers the classes, but also mentors program fondly. prospective and current “For me, the creative students. She says the writing program — that program can be challenging was the best part of because writers need to undergrad. It wasn’t understand that creativity the parties. It wasn’t doesn’t come without anything. It was really work. the creative classes,” “It’s as much labor as it Vanasco says. is inspiration,” she says.

Students can apply Curdy writes what she to the program every director of the creative writing program calls “angsty” poetry, and the Spring Quarter, and theme of transformation while applications for she enjoys in her work often manifests in the seen the program make more intentional 2022 closed April 25, prospective program as writers develop. strides in “opening up the space to more students can begin planning their “To find that thread of passion that voices of color, more intersectional schedules in the fall to include they can then follow deeper is really voices, more queer voices. It feels like a prerequisites. exciting,” she says. much more open space than it’s been.”

Haslett says the program has been The program allows writers to engage The program also has an impressive one of the most rewarding aspects of in the forms of creative writing they care track record. No. 1 New York Times her Northwestern experience. most about. Martinez has a penchant for best-selling author of the Divergent “It’s also really crazy to be in this absurdist and surrealist styles, and he series Veronica Roth graduated from program that a lot of successful writers embraces unique storytelling. He says it Northwestern in 2011 with a degree in have been in,” she says. “So, it’s cool to makes him happy when students in the creative writing. Martinez remembers be among that.” program are able to explore interests in teaching Sarah Sherman in a creative

“Opening up the space to more voices of color, more intersectional voices, more queer voices. It feels like a much more open space than it’s been.”

— Dr. Juan Martinez,

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ADOBE STOCK

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Mastering divinity

A look inside the Garrett Seminary and the pursuits of its theological students.

WRITTEN BY IRIS SWARTHOUT DESIGNED BY HOPE CARTWRIGHT PHOTOS BY HOPE CARTWRIGHT

H

annah Phillips Mollenkamp never considered herself religious. For someone who studied English literature and German at the University of North Texas, it might come as a surprise that Mollenkamp ended up at a Christian seminary with hopes of becoming a pastor.

“I had a lot of feelings about it,” she says. “This is not something I ever thought I would be considering, becoming a pastor.”

Mollenkamp, who grew up in Austin, Texas, and is bisexual, says she had never heard of Methodism being accepting of LGBTQ+ people like herself. The General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted against allowing gay marriage and the ordainment of gay people in 2019. The decision served as a turning point for Mollenkamp, who realized she wanted to fight for LGBTQ+ rights from within the Methodist Church. To do so, she would need to go back to school.

After researching various Methodist seminaries around the United States, Mollenkamp found a small seminary outside of Chicago: Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. The institution

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sits on Northwestern’s campus, hidden in a nook just north of Lunt Hall.

“This is not something I ever thought I would be considering, becoming a pastor.”

- Hannah Phillips

Mollenkamp, Garrett Seminary student While the beauty of Garrett’s campus enticed her, Mollenkamp says one of the main reasons she chose the school was its vocal support for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I had already met with a recruiter who is an openly gay, married, ordained deacon in the Methodist Church, and he recruits for Garrett admissions,” she says. “And so I knew

that I would be supported here no matter what.”

Although Garrett is a faith-based school, Director of Admissions and Recruitment Katie Fahey says interested applicants range from those pursuing social justice degrees to those in public ministry or even non-profit management.

“We have students that come to us and say, ‘I have a lot of questions theologically — big questions,’” Fahey says.

Because Garrett is primarily a graduate school, Fahey says interested applicants come from three main age groups: college graduates, those in their mid-30s leaving previous jobs to pursue ministry careers and those pursuing faith-based careers later in life.

Since her acceptance to Garrett, Mollenkamp says she’s found that many Northwestern students are seemingly unaware of the seminary.

“I’ve been walking up Sheridan behind a couple of Northwestern students, one of them being like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that beautiful building?’ and I was like, ‘It’s the seminary,’” Mollenkamp says. “I do think it’s funny that most of Northwestern has no idea we’re here.”

Stained glass windows depict biblical scenes in Garrett Seminary’s Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful.

Garrett is not a subset of Northwestern’s campus by any means.

In fact, it was founded nearly in tandem with Northwestern in the mid-1850s, when Methodism was the most popular Protestant sect of 19thcentury America, according to Garrett Research Instruction and Digital Services Librarian Daniel Smith.

What started as a six-person school offering a degree similar to a bachelor’s degree gradually became an institution with upwards of 70 students near the turn of the 20th century. For the next century, Northwestern and Garrett were intertwined with one another religiously and academically, as dualdegree programs like a doctorate in philosophy lasted until the early 2000s.

“The relationship was obviously much different then — not that there isn’t a friendly relationship now,” Smith says.

“But I think there was a deep connection and a desire for both institutions to survive.”

In 1972, then-Northwestern President Robert Strotz’s efforts to secularize the University culminated in its official separation from the Methodist Church, Smith says.

“The letters were almost hostile. It was like, ‘Do not list us anymore as a Methodist institution and, in fact, we haven’t regarded ourselves as a Methodist institution for a long, long time,’” Smith says.

Today, the two institutions take part in a biannual interfaith luncheon and dialogue, one that brings religious leaders together to explore crossovers, according to Garrett President

the Rev. Dr. Javier Viera.

Viera says these luncheons grew out of Northwestern President Morton Schapiro’s friendship with Garrett’s former president Philip Amerson in an attempt to advance dialogue between the two campuses and forge connections with the Evanston community.

“That work has continued,” Viera says. “I hope the new [Northwestern] president will want to continue that — I know I will.”

Students from both schools are allowed to take courses at either institution, and libraries permit an interchange of materials between students at the two campuses.

The degree that many pastors receive before becoming ordained is the Master of Divinity. At Garrett, this three-year program provides concentrations such as peace studies or LGBTQ+ studies. Derek Stienmetz, who is finishing up their second year of the Master of Divinity degree, says that while introductory classes are generally geared toward becoming a pastor, other classes — like “Theology of Race and Culture” — focus on broader sociocultural concepts. These classes, Stienmetz says, have encouraged them to think about instituting change within the Church as a whole.

In a Christology course, Mollenkamp investigated various theologians, like Paul the Apostle, without the bias she previously held about their views on the world.

“Instead of just shutting down and saying, ‘I’ve seen this used in a way that was harmful, and therefore I can’t use it for anything that’s good,’ I realized that that is actually really counter to the work that I’m trying to do in this world. I can have a conversation within these texts instead of just rejecting them all together,” she says.

Although Garrett is largely supportive

of progressive ideas, Stienmetz says biases and obstacles that they have encountered at Garrett are common within Western understandings of religion.

“I’ve had to remind a couple of professors, all of which were pretty established at the institution, of my pronouns and queer identity,” they say. “[I’ve also pushed] back on theological understandings and beliefs that uphold not only homophobic ideas but also uphold white supremacy. And that is something Garrett is very mindful of — deconstructing colonial understandings of faith to find something liberated — that’s something that I’ve never experienced in a church setting.”

Now that Stienmetz and Mollenkamp are both about to enter their third years at Garrett, their seminary experiences are almost over. From the moment she stepped on campus, Mollenkamp says she felt like making friends was easy. She says she’s found a lifelong community.

“I never had a group of friends who are my age and who are Christian,” she says. “So it’s kind of funny that I have all these precious, devoted nerds around me now that I can make terrible jokes about church history with.”

When asked what she gained the most out of her Garrett experience, Mollenkamp answered, “Perspective.”

“There really is an emphasis at Garrett on reading theologians from different schools of criticism and backgrounds,” Mollenkamp says. “I’ve just learned that it’s all so big, and I can’t possibly do or hold on to it all. And I’m not alone.”

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50

years and counting

The Department of African American studies celebrates a historic milestone by exploring its creation and accomplishments.

WRITTEN BY CHLOE RAPPAPORT // DESIGNED BY HOPE CARTWRIGHT

I

Stephen Broussard exiting the Bursar’s Office through the window on May 3, 1968.

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n a course called “Gender and Black Masculinity,” Weinberg third-year Jason Hegelmeyer discussed how Black men leading movements, specifically the Civil Rights Movement, were criticized for sidelining non-cisgender Black people in an effort to maintain Black unity and uniformity.

“We talked about how Black men, while also being oppressed through their race, still reinforce patriarchal values within Black communities,” Hegelmeyer says. “So just understanding my privilege and figuring out what I can do to not reinforce systems of oppression for other non-men.”

The 300-level class, taught by assistant professor of African American studies Marquis Bey, is one of the many courses offered

by Northwestern’s Department of African American Studies. This 202122 academic year, the department celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Founded in 1972 during an era of widespread social change and student activism, the department has evolved into a respected and robust program at Northwestern.

Today, the department offers over 60 graduate and undergraduate courses with 45 established faculty members.

Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies and the African American studies department chair, explains that the department values critical thinking and analysis. She says it strives to understand the intersection

of Blackness with other systems of power and the way that Black studies intersects with other disciplines.

“Our mission is to study Black people in the world and to study Black culture, to study Black politics, to study Black social life, to study Black cultural production, to study Black art,” Pattillo says. “And also to study the processes of racialization that create Blackness differently in different times and different places.”

On May 20, students, alumni and faculty — some of whom were at Northwestern for the founding of the department — will gather on campus to commemorate the anniversary. The event, titled AFAM @ 50: Extending Our Reach, will include discussions about the early days of the department and the experiences of current and past African American studies majors. In addition, comedian Ziwe Fumudoh (Comm ‘14) will deliver the keynote address.

The department’s founding dates back to the 1968 Bursar’s Office takeover, where more than 100 students occupied the space for 38 hours, demanding the administration enhance Black student life on campus.

The takeover ended with what is referred to today as the May 4th Agreement, in which administrators responded to a list of student demands.

The University gave an official statement that acknowledged the existence of institutional racism at Northwestern, promised to increase admission of Black students and agreed to add Black

studies courses to the curriculum.

Although the department would not be established for another four years, the sit-in at the Bursar’s Office served as a catalyst for change on Northwestern’s campus, including the creation of the Black House in 1968, the first African American studies classes in 1969 and the creation of the major in 1982.

However, the agreement did not specify the form that Black studies should take on campus. Students and administrators debated whether Black studies at Northwestern should be a full department with its own faculty or a program borrowing faculty from other departments.

This conversation questioned the legitimacy of Black studies, especially as an interdisciplinary subject, Northwestern professor Martha Biondi explains in her book The Black Revolution on Campus.

Until 1971, when the board of trustees finally gave their approval, students fought hard for the Department of African American Studies.

“It’s really important to understand that the generation of students who occupied the Bursar’s Office were very courageous and very committed to opening up Northwestern to Black people in Chicago, to making it a more diverse and representative institution and ultimately making it a better and stronger university,” Biondi says.

Weinberg first-year Allison Pierce took Biondi’s “Black Power to Black Lives Matter” course during Winter Quarter. Pierce loved that the class helped put current-day conversations into a historical context by using an understanding of the past to analyze a recent period of Black activism.

“A big part of the class was just the people sharing personal experiences,” Pierce says. “We shared lived experiences and how our personal experiences related to the text or academic articles that we were reading. And I think our professor, Professor Biondi, left a lot of space for us to do that.”

Pattillo finds it gratifying when students gain a greater understanding of how their identity or experiences have been shaped by race.

“For Black students, I see them learn about themselves or learn about facets of Blackness that were not in their own personal experience,” Pattillo

“

It’s important to remember our roots and where we came from in terms of how we apply policies and make decisions and recommendations.

”

- Jason Hegelmeyer,

Weinberg third-year

understanding and familiarity with these concepts,” Hegelmeyer says. “It makes it like there isn’t really a true space where students can skip past the basics.”

Moving forward, Hegelmeyer says many students hope the department will engage more with Black student activist groups on campus, like Northwestern University Community Not Cops and For Members Only. He feels it is important for the department to affirm the work of these students and provide guidance to them.

Fifty years ago, during a time of change and great cultural shifts, Northwestern students were a part of a large wave of activism at universities across the country. Today, Northwestern students continue to demand that their voices be heard. Hegelmeyer believes that, as the department looks towards the future, it is even more important to look to the past.

“We always have to remember that student demonstration was what brought out the African American studies department [at Northwestern] and also the Latinx and Asian [programs], too,” he says. “It’s important to remember our roots and where we came from in terms of how we apply policies and make decisions and recommendations.”

says. “And then for non-Black students, learning that Black studies doesn’t just teach about Black people. We teach about where Black people sit within racialized systems, within histories of white supremacy, within law and policy.

Through that, non-Black students see where they fit in those stories as well.”

Although the department is small, Pierce says she would like to see more students taking African American studies courses, especially non-Black students.

“I think it’s most important for nonBlack students to take these courses, because a lot of Black students have lived a lot of the content of these more modern-focused courses,’’ Pierce says.

“It’s something that you could talk about and know about just by your daily experience. Those are just things that I think white students don’t think about.”

There are no prerequisites for any African American studies courses or any classes that are specifically for majors. While this may maintain the department’s accessibility, Hegelmeyer says it can be frustrating to need to review fundamental concepts, like the difference between race and ethnicity, in his higher-level courses. “[There are] all these different classes that are supposed to be where you can get really deep into Northwestern University students join in solidarity with discussion and theory, members of For Members Only (FMO) and Afro-American Student Union (AASU) on May 3, 1968. but you’re having a mixed bag of students that have a different level of PHOTOS COURTESY OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DANCE FLOOR

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Navigating sobriety Students reflect on their substance-free college experience.

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA ABEYTA // DESIGNED BY ESTHER TANG

I

t’s a Friday night on Northwestern’s campus, and purple lights beam from behind the stage in the Norris Louis Room. Students perform a variety of open mic acts, framed by reddish-pink fairy lights. The small crowd gives a big round of applause. Sliders, nachos and blackberry lemon mocktails sit on a buffet table in the back of the room.

Even after the performances end, people stay and mill about the space.

The event unfolds like many other student gatherings, with music and cheers echoing throughout the room and drinks being shared. But the cohosting organization — NU Nights — has a mission that sets it apart from other social organizations on campus: All of its events are substance-free. This is just one option for sober students to socialize, and many find community by joining student organizations or hosting their own gatherings.

According to Northwestern’s Alcohol Data Dashboard, 30-35% of incoming first-year students identify as “abstainers,” or those who haven’t consumed alcohol in the past year.

Despite approximately one-third of the first-year population at Northwestern not drinking in the year prior to starting college, finding events that don’t involve alcohol can be challenging.

McCormick fourth-year Alex Manka, the current president of NU Nights, says the group seeks to provide an alternative to the party culture on campus. According to the club’s Instagram, they tend to have events on a weekly basis, usually on Friday nights.

Northwestern “consistently has a lower percentage of ‘abstainers’ than

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the national average,” according to the Alcohol Data Dashboard. Many students who identify as sober attest to how pervasive the school’s drinking culture is. Weinberg third-year Amy Fan has found this to be particularly true amongst first-years.

“I would say there’s definitely an increased pressure to drink because it’s the first time you’re on campus and parties tend to always have alcohol,” Fan says. “A lot of people party pretty hard when they first come, just because they didn’t have the freedom to do that before.”

While Medill first-year Conner Dejecacion says he notices the drinking culture on campus, he doesn’t feel particularly influenced by it.

“I haven’t been pressured to partake,” Dejecacion says. “I haven’t felt like it’s so pervasive that I need to isolate myself from it.”

Dejecacion found community through involvement with multiple gaming clubs and The Hair Ball, a satirical student publication. He also hosts Games with Conner in Willard Hall, an event where residents can play board and tabletop ro l e - p l a y i n g games.

“One of the people I play board games with has an off-campus apartment, and that’s usually where we meet,” he says.

“Otherwise, a lot of my social stuff is really online, so it can be anywhere.”

Fan has also found a vibrant social life through participating in clubs and organizations, including Northwestern University Dance Marathon, Deeva (a South Asian dance group) and Reformed University Fellowship. She said these groups have given her events to attend that don’t revolve around alcohol.

Fan still enjoys going out with her friends, even if alcohol may be present; her sobriety does not affect her ability to connect with people at social events.

“When I go to parties, I don’t tend to drink and I’m a sober person there.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t go to engage with others,” Fan says.

“But I try to stick to my values and not drink, even when I am surrounded by people who are drinking. And it’s also good to be that person who’s sober to help anyone who is not.”

Some sober students acknowledge that it can be difficult to navigate the party scene while sober. Medill secondyear Sriman Narayanan says remaining social without using substances presents a particular challenge in a college environment.

“In high school, you could get away with not going to a party and it wouldn’t be difficult to get along socially, because it happened maybe once every month,” Narayanan says. “No one was really partying every night, every weekend, so it’s definitely harder here because it’s just a bigger part of the culture.”

Students’ reasons for sobriety vary. Narayanan says that his parents don’t drink, but they never “drilled it” into him and his sister.

Despite his choice to be sober, he doesn’t judge anyone for their own decisions regarding substances.

“In terms of my own sobriety, I think it’s just a personal choice that does align with the things I want to achieve, and I don’t smack anyone else for not having those same goals,” Narayanan says.

Due to the two-year on-campus living requirement, dorm life is a significant part of the undergraduate experience at Northwestern. For those under 21, possessing alcohol or drugs is prohibited on campus, but students say that this does not prevent substance use in the dorms. Northwestern used to offer housing options that were guaranteed to be entirely substancefree, regardless of age.

In an email to NBN, Director of Operations and Services for Northwestern Residential Services Jenny Douglas wrote that students over 21 are allowed to have a “reasonable amount” of alcohol in their sleeping rooms, except during Wildcat Welcome.

She explained that in substance-free housing, all students — regardless of age — agree to not possess any alcohol.

Before 1835 Hinman was converted to quarantine housing during the pandemic, it had a substance-free floor.

opposed to changing the policy in the future.

“I think it would be a nice option because I think our society — we’re very intimate with the problems that too much alcohol, too much drugs, can do,” Dejecacion says. “Not only on a personal level but also on a systemic one.”

For students who are looking for spaces to socialize while staying sober, NU Nights also hosts movie nights and arts and crafts events. In the fall, they organized a trip to Six Flags. Members

30-35% of incoming first-year

students identify as “abstainers,” or those who haven’t consumed alcohol in the past year, before the start of their academic year.

- Northwestern’s Alcohol Data Dashboard While searching for substance-free housing on Northwestern’s website, a picture of the building is still visible on the page, but the link offering more information leads to an error message.

As it stands, Northwestern currently has no substance-free housing “due to a lack of demand,” Douglas wrote. However, she confirmed that the University isn’t

“[NU Nights] has values that I like: to be inclusive, forming community, substance and barrier-free.”

say that these gatherings have brought sober students together and allowed them to attend fun events for free Through his time in the club, Manka says that he has felt part of a strong sober community on campus.

“I thought, this sounds like fun.

It’s a good break from academics. It has values that I like: to be inclusive, forming community, substance and barrier-free,” Manka says. “So I decided to stick with it, and I met some really great people in the club. And I’ve been doing it ever since.”

McCormick third-year Chibu Onyenemezu, the rising NU Nights president, says his goals for the club are to continue fostering a safe, fun, substancefree space for students.

“I’d like for this mission to continue,” Onyenemezu says, “Just have something fun for students to do on a Friday night.”

- Alex Manka, NU Nights president

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DIVERSITY center stage Northwestern’s theater community re-examines its diversity and inclusion efforts.

WRITTEN BY JADE THOMAS

DESIGNED BY EMMA ESTBERG

A problem with admissions Communication first-year Journey Cole says they were surprised at how little diversity they found when they started counting the theatre majors of color in the class of 2025.

According to Northwestern Undergraduate Admissions, 52.2% of the class of 2025 is white, 24.5% are Asian American, 12.1% are Black or African American, 17% are Hispanic or Latinx and only 1.6% are American Indian or Alaska Native. Northwestern’s status as a predominantly white institution has a ripple effect across departments, with students of color saying they experience feelings of loneliness, self-doubt and frustration. This is especially true within Northwestern’s theater community, whose racial demographics mirror that of the University at-large.

“You only attract what you’re putting out there, and if you’re just putting out pictures of white students and groups that are not multicultural, then you’re just gonna get white, affluent students every single time,” says Cole, who is African American.

Interim Chair of the Theatre Department Henry Godinez says

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he recognizes that the admissions process at Northwestern hasn’t helped promote diversity in the department.

“I think our admissions office needs to take a really long, hard look at how we can nurture communities of color,” Godinez says. “I think that there has to be a way that Northwestern could create more of a pipeline with communities of color.”

Cultivating a welcoming environment for students of color goes beyond admissions.

Communication first-year Yuni Mora, a theatre major, says certain courses offered in the theatre department are not helpful for students of color and weren’t curated with them in mind.

First-year theatre majors are required to take two “Theatre in Context” classes which aim to have students “think critically about theatre and performance,” according to Northwestern’s course descriptions webpage. Mora says the course’s diversity and inclusion unit in particular fell flat.

“It felt so out of touch being in a room with like, 80% white people, and having this white man talk to us about how important diversity

is in theater and how we need to change that,” Mora says.

Mora finds that it’s not just the out-of-touch course material that poses an issue, but the fact that Northwestern’s theatre classes are taught mostly by white professors.

The theatre faculty recognizes students’ desire to take courses that are inclusive of students of color, as well as taught by professors of color.

“I don’t want students to have the experience I had, which is to never have a teacher that looked like me, that spoke like me, that could relate to my culture,” says Godinez, who is Latino and Cuban American. “In four years of high school, four years of college, three years of graduate school and all those years of becoming what I am as a theater artist, no one ever said, ‘Hey, do you want to work from your own culture?’”

For Mora, that representation is something that the University needs to work toward.

“I think providing the students here the opportunity to have more peers that look like them and have more professors that look like them is such a major thing,” Mora says.

Shifting the culture The theater scene at Northwestern is largely split into two categories: pieces produced by student-led boards or productions put on by Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, which serves the greater Chicago area. The Northwestern Student Theatre Coalition (StuCo) is a collection of student-led boards, representing nine theater boards and two dance groups.

Most theater productions at Northwestern are studentdirected and produced through StuCo, which can create tight-knit communities. However, some students of color say they have felt othered in student productions.

Mora says her high school community in Palm Springs, California, felt more diverse than Northwestern’s, even though it was largely white. Transitioning from that environment to Northwestern wasn’t easy.

“It was a big shift coming from a place where theater [was] safe in the sense you can really express yourself, but also, I just had people around me that understood me and had the same background,” says Mora, who is Mexican. “I didn’t realize how important that was to me until that was taken away.”

As a result of this lack of diversity, Mora says she sometimes finds herself spiraling into selfdoubt and questioning her place as a student of color in theater.

“[I’m] always just having to think about, ‘Am I here to meet some quota? Am I here because they need a person of color for this show?’” Mora says.

Communication second-year Matheus Barbee says student theater boards often discuss diversity and inclusion openly, but actions rarely match words.

“I have a joke amongst my friends that if I go to a musical, I’m going to see two people of color tops,” says Barbee, who is Afro-Latino. “Even behind the scenes, a lot of times, we still see white producers, white directors.”

Barbee’s observation is not necessarily new. The theater community at Northwestern has been grappling with issues of diversity for decades.

Assistant professor of English and African American studies Justin L. Mann, who graduated from Northwestern in 2007, majored in theatre and history.

Like Mora, he says he had a complicated relationship with the theater community. Although he learned from his peers and professors during his time as an undergrad, he also experienced conflicts because of his identity which made him feel isolated.

“I didn’t know or didn’t have the language at the time to really understand how I was feeling as a Black person, one of the few Black people in the community,” Mann says. “I think had I had the

Class of 2025 demographics

52.5%

According to Northwestern Undergraduate Admissions

24.5% White

language then, I would have been more mentally healthy.”

During his second year at Northwestern, Mann says he was in charge of a show and received pushback from the stage manager, who was a white woman, after he asked for something to be done.

He raised his voice during the conversation, which he says he recognizes was inappropriate.

The incident followed him for some time and led to multiple interventions about his behavior.

“I got punished for it, in a way that it almost cost me a job,” Mann says. “I had to have a conversation with an employer about it, and we were able to smooth things over.

But it was not insignificant, and it was entirely about her feeling threatened by a big Black man.”

After that year, Mann says he realized he could not behave in the same ways his white peers could and had to learn to navigate his environment differently. But that felt lonely and self-sacrificial to him.

“We need to come together as a community and accept that what we’ve inherited — or what we’ve made together — is excluding people, reinforces whiteness, reinforces heteropatriarchy, reinforces cisness,” Mann says.

“We need to interrogate why we’re invested in those systems so that we can unmake them and be more welcoming and be more inclusive.”

Asian American

17.0% Hispanic or Latinx

12.1%

1.6%

Black or African American

American Indian or Alaska Native

Reporting method tracks students who identify as multiple races/ethnicities in each category, so the numbers exceed 100%.

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Rejecting tokenism Mora says conversations among her and Cole’s friends about the theatre department being predominantly white always reach the same natural conclusion: They should create their own space to prioritize students of color.

“It just started out as a daydream,” Mora says. “You know, there’s so many different theater boards on campus that specialize in all these amazing things. What if we just created our own?”

Mora and Cole launched Vibrant Colors Collective (VC2), a multicultural student board, this April along with five other executive members. Cole, the cotreasurer and co-special events coordinator of VC2, and Mora, the co-executive director and co-marketing director, say the board is necessary because of its independence from the whiteness typically found in the theater community.

“I think the only way to truly fix a problem is if we create our own space, which is essentially what we did because even if white people produce a play for POC, it’s still produced by white people,” Mora says.

“What VC2 is trying to do is create a space that’s entirely created by POC, made for POC, performed

by POC, so that way, we have a space that’s not infiltrated by whiteness.”

Other students seem to have similar aspirations.

Communication third-year and theatre major Jonyca Jiao played the titular role in The Ballad of Mu Lan, produced by Imagine U

“

and performed at Wirtz from late February to early March. Jiao says it was an honor to play a more realistic version of the legend whose story she says has been romanticized by Disney.

In a larger sense, Jiao says her role as Mu Lan is important because Chinese theater is scarce at Northwestern. Additionally, she says auditioning for roles in productions as an Asian student can be difficult, especially when directors claim race is not a factor.

her friends called EighthDay Theatre Club, which held its first performance in November 2021 with the show Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. She says the club’s primary goal is to uplift Chinese culture and stories on campus.

The club is not exclusive to theatre majors, as Jiao is currently the only theatre major in it.

This May, EighthDay Theatre Club performed The Butterfly Lover, an adaptation of a story from Chinese folklore. The play, sponsored by Wirtz, explored how individuals love one another in 2 spite of social barriers.

Though Jiao has received support from the theatre department in telling diverse stories, she says it’s still not enough.

“I would like to see more support from the theatre department to support student works who are actually trying to promote diversity, cultural differences and different stories on stage,” Jiao says.

The new multicultural boards and initiatives Yuni Mora aim to perform and Communication first-year uplift stories created by and about people of color. Godinez, who serves as the faculty adviser for VC2, says “It’s hard for me, as an Asian, the collaborative spirit of the to know what the director wants,” theater board gives him hope that Jiao says. “People are saying, students of color can write their ‘Yeah, we want to do diversity own narratives. so race is not a consideration.

“The best thing we can do as It’s open to all races, people of human beings, but definitely all races,’ but then, sometimes as human beings of color is to because I am a minority, I still not acknowledge any box that consider how much of that would anybody ever wants to put us in,” be taken in account.”

Godinez says. “We deserve to be Realizing this, Jiao started represented at the highest levels a Chinese theater club with with everyone else.”

What VC is trying to do is create a space that’s entirely created by POC, made for POC, performed by POC, so that way, we have a space that’s not infiltrated by whiteness.

SPRING 2022

“

32

Access

denied

Students say a dismissive ANU culture results in an inaccessible learning environment.

WRITTEN BY GRACE DENG // DESIGNED BY S. KELSIE YU

Content warning: This article wearing a mask, so we make our contains descriptions of ableism. way back to Mudd, hoping to find an empty group study classroom. Emil* cross the first floor of Mudd tells me not to worry — today’s one Library, I spot Emil*. Emil*, of their good days: a day where they with their chunky, natural only need a cane. Most days, they hair twists, strawberry socks and use a walker. For about two weeks poofy, sequined pink skirt, is hard during Fall Quarter, they were using to miss. We have to move spots a wheelchair. because my laptop is near death and Emil*, a Communication there are zero outlets in sight, so Sciences and Disorders secondEmil* picks up their sparkly purple year, jokes that they’re “studying cane and we trudge over to Tech me and myself.” They have lived with Express. disabilities their whole life: They’re Emil* tells me that the ramp autistic and have anxiety, asthma between Tech and Mudd is one of and migraines. But it wasn’t until the the few ramps on campus that’s fun summer of 2021 that their physical to roll down in a wheelchair — fun disabilities worsened. but scary. Most ramps on campus, “I was walking on the walls to Emil* says, suck. get around my house,” Emil* says. “I Tech Express is full, and no one’s couldn’t feed myself.”

A

Emil* has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Colloquially known as POTS, it’s a chronic condition characterized by dizziness, lightheadedness, abnormal heartbeats and fainting. The condition affects blood flow and is often diagnosed through a tilt test, where a doctor straps the patient onto a table and the table is raised to a nearly upright position for 20-60 minutes.

During their tilt test, Emil* lasted six minutes before nearly passing out.

In the classroom, Emil* has two formal accommodations: extended testing time and alternative text forms. In a required three-hour chemistry lab, Emil* says they asked if AccessibleNU (ANU) could provide additional accommodations.

FEATURES

33

“Maybe they think I’m going to be lazy with my accommodations, but I literally need them to have an equal amount of schooling ability.”

- Emil*, Communication second-year

“Chem lab is tight quarters. It’s loud, there’s beeping noises from all of these machines, there’s a bunch of different classes doing different things. We’re supposed to be doing something within the few hours we have ​​— multiple steps. Just all of it. It was just upsetting for every disability of mine,” Emil* says.

They were given a chair.

“Maybe they think I’m going to be lazy with my accommodations, but I literally need them to have an equal amount of schooling ability,” Emil* says.

At Northwestern, disabled students like Emil* say they are often denied the accommodations they need to learn. While students say they have had experiences with ANU advisers ranging from affirming to outright traumatic, many describe a culture of mistrust, misunderstanding and skepticism at ANU. Lack of transparency in the accommodation approval process means students are left wondering why they were denied the accommodations they asked for — accommodations that were often recommended to them by medical professionals.

NBN sent several requests to

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SPRING 2022

Northwestern’s media relations office to speak with an ANU representative, but all were unavailable for an interview.

Being disabled at Northwestern during a pandemic Emil* is immunocompromised, so when the mask mandate was lifted on campus, they planned to ask for additional accommodations to protect their health in the classroom.

Emil* and their ANU adviser kept going in circles trying to schedule a time to meet. Emil* says they decided to give up after a student in a Discord for disabled Northwestern students explained how difficult it was to get accommodations for their immunodeficiency.

That Discord user was Maeve*, a fourth-year Weinberg student with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and what she refers to as a “list of acronyms” of various diagnoses for mental and physical disabilities.

Maeve* spent months attempting to get a mask mandate reinstated in her

classrooms after her request for remote learning was denied. Her ANU adviser had not heard of ME/CFS, so Maeve* explained that ME/CFS is like having long COVID, but instead of COVID-19, she got ME/CFS from the flu.

She says her adviser didn’t know what long COVID was.

“How out of touch with disability issues do you have to be that in the middle of a pandemic, you have not heard of long COVID?” Maeve* says.

“That’s just absolutely ridiculous.”

After getting her mother involved, Maeve* was finally able to get a mask mandate in her classrooms. But after everything she went through, Maeve* still sees maskless classmates, or classmates with masks hanging under their noses. This makes it difficult for Maeve* to focus — so difficult that she almost had to drop a class in Winter Quarter, when masks were required in the classroom, because a student would take their mask off when the professor’s back was turned.

“It’s a visual devaluation of my life and my health, that they’re just sitting there and announcing to me that they do not give a fuck if I get sick and am bed-bound for the rest of my life,” Maeve* says.

When the lines were long at the Jacobs Center, Maeve’s* disability made it difficult for her to wait long enough to get tested, so she would wake up early to beat the line, which was also a challenge.

Maeve’s* immunologist provided documentation and a letter detailing her inability to stand in line, but Maeve* says ANU denied her alternative options until Spring Quarter, when she received access to the ADA area in the line.

“One time [my adviser] sent me a link to renting a wheelchair, and I was like, I can’t get a wheelchair to the testing center, because the bus is not safe for me to ride. And unless you want me to strap the wheelchair to the back of my bike, I don’t know how you expect me to get it there, because I can’t walk or self-propel myself all

the way from my apartment to the Jacobs Center,” Maeve* says. “I don’t think I ever got a response.”

One Weinberg graduate student, Teagan*, asked for remote learning accommodations in Winter 2022 after her therapist recommended them for her obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Her therapist submitted documentation to verify that Teagan’s* OCD was making it difficult for her to attend class in-person, but Teagan* says her ANU adviser told her there was almost no chance she would get remote accommodations.

“The whole vibe of the entire thing was they [were] conforming to this rule, that there are only a certain number of students who can have that accommodation, and we need to make sure it doesn’t create a slippery slope of more people getting it,” Teagan* says. “At one point, the guy told me there’s a lot of people who have been asking for this accommodation, and only three people have gotten it.”

Teagan* says her ANU adviser told her that, so far, only immunocompromised students had received remote learning accommodations.

Although her adviser was sympathetic, Teagan* feels like the ANU office did not view her situation as legitimate.

“It was just a terrible meeting,”

Teagan* says. “I was crying by the end of it.”

Mistrust and misgivings Maeve* says her experience trying to get accommodations was indicative of the mistrust ANU has toward students seeking help.

Despite Maeve* having already provided documentation of her ME/ CFS diagnosis from her doctors, Maeve* says ANU asked for further documentation, including the lab tests used to diagnose her. Maeve* called this both “invasive” and “ridiculous.”

“It’s very invalidating, and it feels like there’s not a lot of trust,” Maeve* says. “Especially with conditions where I have had years of medical gaslighting, it’s like ANU’s little spicy contribution to my medical gaslighting pile.”

Medical gaslighting, or when doctors and medical professionals dismiss physical symptoms or blame them on psychological issues, is often experienced by students with so-called “invisible disabilities” like Maeve’s* — and like mine.

In the summer of 2021, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy without cataplexy. Narcolepsy is diagnosed through a grueling sleep study: After sleeping at a sleep center overnight, a nurse wakes you up. You’re asked to stay awake for an hour and then take a 20-minute nap. The nurse wakes you up after your nap, and then you do it four more times. Normal sleep latency is between 10 to 20 minutes, and the criteria for a narcolepsy diagnosis is a sleep latency of eight minutes or less.

My sleep latency is 2 ½ minutes. In my first daytime nap, I fell asleep in 27 seconds.

ANU told me the sleep study and subsequent diagnosis were not enough evidence to get the “toptier” accommodations I was asking for: excused absences and tardiness, extended deadlines when needed

and the ability to record class in case I fall asleep. These so-called “top-tier” accommodations go through a board at ANU and cannot be given by one ANU adviser alone.

I have often found it easier and less emotionally taxing to ask professors for accommodations rather than going through ANU. However, professors are not always understanding.

In 2020, Eugenia Cardinale** (Medill ‘21) filed a Title IX case against a professor, largely because she says ANU was not advocating for her. Cardinale, who has chronic pain, anxiety, depression and borderline personality disorder (BPD), asked for an extension on a final project under an accommodation called “flexibility for condition flare-up.” While this accommodation is still available to students who were previously granted it, it is no longer offered to newly registered students.

Cardinale says she met with her academic adviser and her ANU adviser, both of whom suggested requesting an “incomplete” in the class. Her professor denied her ANU adviser’s suggestion that she receive an incomplete, and in response, ANU suggested she just drop the class, leaving Cardinale to seek help from others.

The professor, Cardinale says, would often make personal comments about her disabilities, suggest that she was getting special treatment and imply that if she asked for accommodations, she couldn’t be a good reporter. Once, while Cardinale was suffering from chronic pain, she says the professor told her she was being “lazy” for attending class in bed.

“It was really hard to deal with because she was validating a lot of internal insecurities and internalized ableism that I had to deal with,” Cardinale says.

Cardinale chose not to take her Title IX case to court and opted for the “formal conversation” option provided to her by the Office of Equity.

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“I just wanted her to understand and for her not to speak to other disabled students the way she spoke to me,” Cardinale says. “I didn’t want to go through a full trial. I thought it would be very traumatizing.

Because the whole experience was traumatizing.”

Going to class at all costs Cardinale says her experiences with ANU made it difficult for her to trust them to advocate for her. She remembers being told by her ANU adviser to just go to class, regardless of whether she could be there mentally.

“There were times I would have a panic attack, puke and then go back to class,” Cardinale says. “There were situations where I would worsen my mental and physical health to push myself to go, because ANU made me feel like I was lying, or I wasn’t trying hard enough.”

Cardinale isn’t the only student who has been told to go to class,

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regardless of what their body and mind were going through.

If you’ve ever pulled two allnighters in a row, you have an idea of what I feel like unmedicated. The average narcoleptic’s sleepiness and fatigue are comparable to how an abled person feels after being sleep deprived for 48 to 72 hours.

When I asked ANU for excused absences and tardies, I was denied.

I was told by my adviser that being given pre-registration “would solve everything,” even though it was already three weeks into the quarter.

My adviser also told me I had a “weak case” for accommodations because I had only missed one class in three weeks and turned in all of my assignments on time. Apparently, the mental and physical burden I experienced to attend all of my classes and turn my assignments in on time was not a legitimate reason for accommodations.

The accommodations I requested were denied. It didn’t matter that I fell asleep in my Russian literature class

freshman year every time without fail. It didn’t matter that narcolepsy is most often exacerbated by stress, and midterms were on the horizon.

It didn’t matter that two weeks later, I was five assignments behind in one class, and I was taking an hour and a half nap before waking up to open my laptop and sleep through another.

Accommodations not offered In response to ANU’s request for further documentation, my therapist at the time filled out the “medical verification form” ANU provides and requested five accommodations.

“I believe these accommodations would help improve Grace’s mental/ emotional well-being,” my therapist wrote to ANU. “She would benefit from the support of her university.”

ANU provided me with one accommodation, eight weeks into Fall Quarter: extended deadlines, but only temporarily while I was “figuring out medication.”

The next quarter I was on campus, I logged on to the ANU portal to find that the accommodation had been removed because I had to prove I was still “figuring out medication.” I was able to convince my ANU adviser I still needed the accommodation, but I have not received a deadline extension plan for one of my classes this quarter because my adviser never followed up with my professor.

At least I was able to get an accommodation.

Jon*, a Weinberg third-year, originally tried to register for ANU with a bipolar personality disorder (BP) diagnosis, but they never finished registering. Jon* was later re-diagnosed with BP and tried to request accommodations under their new diagnosis, but ANU told them they could not re-register until they finished their previous registration form.

Aside from not having the time, energy or emotional preparation to

fight with ANU over the intake process, Jon* is no longer with the doctor who diagnosed them with BP and doesn’t have the information from their previous diagnosis, which Jon* says has prevented them from registering with ANU. “ANU feels like some sort of secret society where they won’t give any information, and they’re technically there, but who knows,” Jon* says.

In other situations, students say that ANU only provides a narrow range of accommodations for their specific diagnosis, diverging from ANU’s claim that accommodations are tailored to each student’s needs.

Vaibhavi Hemasundar**, a Medill third-year with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), was offered extended testing time, but her ADHD doesn’t impact her ability to take a test within a certain timeframe — it impacts her ability to remember deadlines.

“The assumption is, ‘Oh, that’s just what accommodations look like.’ Well, that’s not what accommodations look like for me,” Hemasundar says. “That’s not what helpful accommodations will look like for me.”

Jon* feels that speaking to professors one-on-one is less emotionally taxing than going through the ANU registration process, especially given ANU’s reputation.

“There has to be a way to register for ANU that does not require a ton of emotional and mental labor for students,” Jon* says. “That’s just not accessible.”

“There has to be a way to register for ANU that does not require a ton of emotional and mental labor for students. That’s just not accessible.”

- Jon*, Weinberg third-year

Accommodations offered in theory, not in practice Certain accommodations, like extended time for testing, are fairly simple to get, according to some students with testing accommodations.

However, the testing center for students with those accommodations closes at 4 p.m., meaning that when professors schedule exams later in the day, accommodations often fall to the professors and their TAs. In some cases, students who need accommodations are all placed in the same room together, regardless of their specific needs.

“My reduced distraction environment was the same size as most of my other classes and the same distraction levels, because they put all the extra time and reduced distraction kids in one room to distract each other,” Maeve* says.

While Emil* loves the testing center employees and often chooses to forgo part of their extended testing time to go there when they have afternoon exams, they pointed out that the building itself is not accessible for wheelchair users.

“You know those automatic door buttons that you press? They don’t

work,” Emil* says. “Literally the building that houses ANU — the buttons don’t work.”

Emil* was once assigned to a study group that met in Locy Hall, which is inaccessible because it has no elevators or entrance ramps. They asked for an accommodation. They were taken out of the study group, but they weren’t offered an alternate study group or location.

Emil* often finds it difficult to get around campus, even in buildings Northwestern labels as compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Some days, Emil* physically cannot get to class on time due to everyday inaccessibility on campus.

Once, this inaccessibility caused Emil* to miss class entirely. When trying to get to a class in Main Library, Emil* was not able to get on the elevator. The wheelchair-accessible elevator in Main Library is manually activated by an operator, which is “expressly prohibited” by ADA standards.

“I was looking out the window and banging the window and saying ‘hello,’ and they just stared at me. So I was like OK,” Emil* says. “I just didn’t go to class that day.”

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Disability justice on campus

Emil* says. “I don’t think there are students showing up to ANU with the intent of cheating the system.”

Maeve* wants more guidance from the administration, especially when it comes to missing class during the pandemic. Maeve* says she heard a student at the Jacobs Center say they waited until after their midterm to take a COVID-19 test, because she was not going to let a positive test make her miss her midterm. Maeve*, who remembers worrying about missing a midterm while in the emergency

environments are designed to be accessible to everyone, regardless of While Medill third-year Vanessa age, disability or other factors.

Kjeldsen is aware of ANU’s reputation “It just felt like a bizarre experience. among disabled students on campus, If this person is working in an she wants people to know that her accessibility office, shouldn’t they be ANU experience was nothing but fighting for the University to create positive. policies that are helping students, Kjeldsen transferred from Boston rather than enforcing policies that are University, whose Disability and not helping students?” Teagan* says.

Services Director Lorre Wolf was Michelle Yin, a SESP professor accused of being “dismissive” and who focuses on disability issues, says “derisive” toward students requesting many products built with universal accommodations, according to design in mind have benefited society students quoted in Boston at large. For example, text University’s newspaper messages were originally The Daily Free Press. When built for people with hearing Kjeldsen registered with impairments.

ANU, her initial intake call “What benefits people with her adviser shocked her with disabilities benefits all,” “in the best way possible.”

Yin says.

“I had a lot of trepidation Emil* says there are going into that call, because a lot of simple, practical of how I had been burned solutions the University before, where I had to fight could undertake to make for my rights,” Kjeldsen says. campus more accessible “And I was amazed at how for physically disabled kind and supportive [they students. The Campus Loop, were] and how much they for instance, would make listened.”

Emil’s* life a lot easier if it Kjeldsen says that students ran during the day. They also often hold misconceptions think a guided accessibility about the purpose of tour could help new disabled accommodations, and she - Michelle Yin, SESP professor students navigate the hopes more people will challenges of day-to-day life understand that they are on campus, as Emil* says neither a weakness nor an it was difficult and timeunfair advantage. consuming to figure out “Accommodations don’t the easiest way to find ADA make you any less,” Kjeldsen says. room because her professor told her accessible ramps and other accessible “People think others are abusing the she couldn’t reschedule, says she can paths on their own. accommodation system to get ahead, empathize.

“One thing I can ask of [ANU] is but accommodations’ purpose is to “I completely understand that fear, just, anytime they go somewhere even the playing field. It’s really unfair especially from having missed a lot of on campus, test the button. See if it if the track star is starting ten meters things from being sick, and I place that works,” Emil* says. “Just do the bare ahead. All you’re doing is moving up blame on the administration,” Maeve* minimum.” the start line to everyone else on the says. “There needs to be more support team.” so that students feel comfortable to * Names have been changed to Other disabled students say they stay home when they’re sick.” preserve anonymity. hope the University will start to see Teagan* says her experience with ** Editor’s Note: Cardinale and accommodations as a way to even the her ANU adviser made it clear to her Hemasundar previously contributed to playing field for all students. that the institution has not considered North by Northwestern.

“I want ANU to be more generous,” universal design, a process by which

“What benefits people with disabilities benefits all.”

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The burnout phenomenon Northwestern’s overwhelming academics and stress culture push students to exhaustion.

WRITTEN BY TRENT BROWN // DESIGNED BY ANDREW KWA

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W

einberg second-year Colin Brennan is no stranger to a heavy workload.

In high school, he felt pressured to maintain above a 98% in all his classes so he could keep up with competitive class rankings. But when school let out for the summer, Brennan found that he wasn’t enjoying his free time like other students might.

“I would literally just lay in bed for five hours straight,” he says. “I wouldn’t be on my phone. I wouldn’t be watching TV. I would literally just be laying with my eyes closed because it was like I could finally breathe.”

When he got to Northwestern, Brennan took on a workload that rivaled what he was doing in high school.

“Last quarter, I did five classes, I was in a club, I was doing research and I was also doing work-study,” Brennan says. “I would explain this to some people, and they literally wouldn’t bat an eye.”

The stress from Brennan’s work in Winter Quarter resulted in feelings of dread that negatively impacted his learning and relationships. He recalls being so drained that he didn’t want to open his phone to respond to texts from his parents or friends.

This pressure and isolation are symptoms of burnout, built up over time as deadlines approach and more work looms. While students experiencing burnout may feel alone, it’s a more widespread phenomenon than some realize.

According to a 2021 survey by the American College Health Association, about 50% of students polled experienced moderate stress within the previous 30 days while another 30% experienced severe stress. Another study at The Ohio State University found the percentage of Ohio State students who were burnt out rose from 40% in August 2020 to 71% in April 2021.

Burnout isn’t just a trend for stressed college students — it’s a medically recognized phenomenon.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND BURNOUT As of 2022, the World Health Organization describes occupational burnout in its International Classification of Diseases as a “syndrome

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conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

While therapists and other medical professionals can assist students dealing with burnout, Northwestern assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences Paul Pendler, who has a doctorate in psychology, clarifies that burnout “isn’t a proper clinical diagnosis.”

To Pendler, burnout is a result of energy depletion. He identifies cognitive, emotional and social energy as potential areas for burnout, resulting in memory difficulties, higher irritability and low sociability.

The COVID-19 lockdowns exacerbated feelings of burnout for many students, Pendler says. A lack of physical movement during virtual classes paired with the unpredictability of quarantine periods contributed heavily to feelings of anxiety. On top of this, students would experience what Pendler refers to as “numbing out,” a non-medical term for when people block out the world around them. “[Students] would just watch aimlessly something on TV but have no memory of what they were paying attention to.

They’d read texts from [their classes], but they wouldn’t remember it,” Pendler says. “That was really the result of the overload people were experiencing with anxiety about getting COVID.” Pendler has noticed a psychological trend compounding these stressors.

Many students refuse to acknowledge their burnout until others can spot it.

“You don’t want to admit weakness; you don’t want to admit that you’re kind of hitting a wall, so you just keep thinking, ‘Let me keep pushing through,’” Pendler says. “But what you don’t realize is that you’re being grumpy, you’re yelling at people, you’re drinking more than you should. You’re numbing yourself out. Other people will notice that before you.”

While the symptoms of burnout sound severe, Pendler offers a solution.

Methodically putting energy into something you enjoy doing rather than something you have to do can create what psychologists call “flow.”

“The more you can create structure and a rhythm for yourself, the more

likely that you can also fight past feeling overly burnt out,” Pendler says.

A SHARED STRUGGLE Brennan knew he wasn’t alone in his stress. Still, the symptoms of his burnout felt isolating.

“I was feeling this lack of motivation, these feelings of inadequacy, and I truly didn’t feel like a lot of other people were going like that,” Brennan says. “So many other people lead on like they’re able to juggle their responsibilities so well.”

Overloading on classes and extracurriculars can take its toll, particularly when the work is consistent and persists over an extended period of time.

Medill second-year Jorja Siemons says she’s felt burnt out after every quarter at Northwestern, attributing it to the University’s intense schedule.

“I think that’s kind of natural to the quarter system because you’re taking really intense workloads for a very short amount of time,” Siemons says. “Lots of my classes are humanities classes, but I still end up having papers that start at week four and continue on into finals, so there’s not a lot of time to breathe.”

Siemons, who works as an editor at The Daily Northwestern, also cited her extracurricular involvement as a source of stress that contributes to her feelings of burnout, especially in combination

with her schoolwork. She dropped a class this quarter as a way to lessen the combined stress.

Because of her burnout, Siemons says she struggled to focus and get through otherwise manageable tasks.

“Burnout can look different for many different types of people, but for me, it was a lot of mental exhaustion,” Siemons says. “Thinking really critically all the time about school, about my life, about my work — that stuff piles up.”

While mental fatigue is one of the more common symptoms of burnout, it can also manifest physically. Weinberg third-year Niko DiStefano started to feel burnout last fall after he took the organic chemistry sequence over the summer.

Going from his summer classes directly into Fall Quarter, DiStefano says his burnout manifested as a consistent pressure in his sinuses.

“It just felt like that constantly,” he says. “Your head just kinda hurts, honestly. Where you know you can’t get any more information in, so you have to stop and do something else. I just don’t want to work anymore.”

As a pre-med student who transferred this year, DiStefano felt that he needed to take the sequence over the summer to avoid falling behind his peers. Medical schools look for research experience, clinical hours and volunteering, he says.

These expectations made it difficult to allow himself to rest.

“You don’t want to admit weakness; you don’t want to admit that you’re kind of hitting a wall, so you just keep thinking, ‘Let me just keep pushing through.’”

- Paul Pendler, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences

“Once you take [a] break, you feel like you’re falling behind everyone else,” he says. “It becomes a vicious negative cycle just to feel like you’re doing the same as your friends.”

Like DiStefano, Weinberg fourthyear Madison L., who asked to remain partially anonymous, went through burnout as a result of being on the premed track and an intense workload that she struggled to balance.

Madison spent the majority of her weekends studying in the library. At a certain point, the time she took away to eat dinner was her only respite from academic pressures. She was in “survival mode,” she says.

“I didn’t see my friends for long periods of time. I didn’t maintain the usual emotional support from friends [and] family,” Madison says.

The consequences of Madison’s burnout extended into other areas of her life. She experienced both physical and mental health repercussions.

Often, she couldn’t even find the time to go to the dining hall for meals.

“The biggest feeling was just exhaustion and also a sense of isolation and loneliness,” Madison says. “I’m very extroverted by nature, and being in the library is not exactly conducive to being extroverted.”

For some students, burnout can take several quarters to set in. For others, the shift is more sudden. McCormick first-year Ashley Brobbey started to feel burnt out midway through this past Winter Quarter — not even two full quarters into her Northwestern experience.

“Fall Quarter was a whirlwind of fun, and it was still new and exciting, being in college, so I didn’t really feel the burnout as much,” Brobbey says. “But then once I got to Winter Quarter and classes started getting a lot more challenging, by midterm season — and the weather also didn’t help — it got a lot easier to feel burnt out.”

Like DiStefano and Madison, Brobbey is on the pre-med track. She says part of the reason she burnt out last quarter was because of the content of her classes.

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problem set,” Brobbey says. “It wasn’t fun in any way. It wasn’t interesting.”

After realizing that she wasn’t enjoying her classes, Brobbey decided to “pick pre-med over engineering” and will likely transfer out of McCormick.

Medill third-year Olivia Yarvis suffered from burnout last winter because of the numerous commitments she took on — four classes, an internship and a high-level editing position at a student publication — because she felt she needed to keep up with her peers.

“Northwestern, in my opinion, just has this culture where everyone feels that they have to be doing everything, and if you’re not, then you just feel like you’re lesser than,” she says.

Yarvis thinks that culture is especially prevalent within Medill.

“You get there and everyone already has so many clips, or they’re working at CNN or something like that. Coming as someone with none of that, I was like, ‘Huh, OK, let me try to catch up,’” she says. “No one else had that experience. It was kind of just all in my head.”

REACHING A BREAKING POINT Last quarter, McCormick first-year Anthony Rematt had to quarantine in 1835 Hinman after testing positive for COVID. His stay in Hinman gave him plenty of time to catch up on homework — and to question whether everything he was doing was worth it.

“I had so much time to think about my actions,” he says. “To see, ‘Do I actually like what I’m doing?’ And I was like, ‘No, you’re literally so sad right now. Your grades are so bad. I was struggling so much. It was affecting my mental health.”

He says the engineering curriculum makes assumptions about knowledge that he doesn’t have, which sets him behind his peers.

“In high school, I wasn’t STEMfocused, I was more humanities-focused,” Rematt says. “I couldn’t take the time to learn the actual material.”

During his time in Hinman, Rematt decided to drop one of his engineering classes and started to consider transferring out of McCormick entirely.

After being sent home due to COVID at the end of Winter Quarter of her second

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“Northwestern, in my opinion, just has this culture where everyone feels that they have to be doing everything, and if you’re not, then you just feel like you’re lesser than.”

- Olivia Yarvis, Medill third-year

year, Madison was able to talk through her feelings of burnout with her dad.

“He asked me questions like, ‘Is this actually making you happy? Is this sustainable? Can you keep living like this without having regrets years in the future?’” Madison says.

The conversation caused Madison to take a step back and consider whether she wanted to continue on the pre-med track.

“I eventually decided that I did — but also that I would need to set better boundaries with work-life balance in the future,” she says.

At the end of Winter Quarter, Brobbey realized that balancing engineering and pre-med coursework, as well as her extracurriculars, was not feasible. She decided to make some changes in her life, starting with looking at transferring to Weinberg.

Although DiStefano has recognized his burnout, he’s struggled to effectively deal with it in the looming shadow of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

“I tried to get better with my time management so that I wasn’t doing as much,” DiStefano says. “That didn’t really work because now I’m studying for the MCAT. So, it’s kinda just like, no break.”

MOVING FORWARD While DiStefano sees finishing the MCAT as an end to much of his stress, other students living through burnout

have to find ways to stave it off as they continue their time at Northwestern.

Siemons realized that the nonstop mentality that she had coming into her sophomore year wasn’t sustainable.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Siemons says. “I think there’s ample time in college to achieve your goals. And it doesn’t always have to be in the form of one quarter or one week, or even one year.”

There is no single solution to burnout that works for every student. However, many have found management strategies that help them cope with the pressures of their intense workloads.

For Siemons, the keys are physical activity and setting goals.

“I picked up running,” Siemons says.

“It was a great stress reliever and a way to get my endorphins going and get my mind off things. Additionally, I started saying no to little things that I could say no to, [like] picking up an extra assignment or picking an extra story, really scaling back.”

Yarvis, a self-described perfectionist, adjusted her mindset toward academic rigor in order to build a healthy relationship with school. She lightened her workload and quit her student publication.

“Recognizing that I am trying my hardest and that’s good enough was one of the mindset changes I had to make to be able to get through,” Yarvis says.

Brennan has found success by drawing strict boundaries between when he works and when he doesn’t.

“I’m gonna set a time every day where I’m just like, ‘No more work is getting done,’” he says. Before he implemented this rule, Brennan would often sit in University Library and work until it closed — on most nights, that’s 2 a.m.

Working with friends has also helped Brennan to stay motivated and overcome his perfectionist tendencies.

Smaller-scale solutions like these can work for some students, but others need to make larger changes. For Rematt, this meant dropping a class; for Brobbey, it meant transferring out of McCormick.

Madison says that speaking with a mental health professional was helpful in working through her burnout.

“I’ve always been the kind of person who’s like, ‘I can handle this on my own. I don’t need to talk to somebody else about my feelings,’” she says. “But I decided that enough was enough. I did see a therapist for the first time last summer, and that’s actually been extremely monumental.”

After coming to terms with her burnout, Madison decided she wanted to help others who were struggling with mental health issues. At the height of the pandemic, she joined Crisis Text Line, a

volunteer-based resource that provides free mental health support. When she returned to campus, Madison joined the Northwestern chapter of Active Minds, a national non-profit student group that promotes ending the stigma about mental health on college campuses.

Conversations that she had in Active Minds helped Madison understand some of the negative tendencies that she had developed.

“People would say something like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve skipped meals because I’ve been too busy,’” Madison says. “That clicked in my head that what I was doing was the exact same thing, and because they thought it was not good, then it must actually not be good. That kind of rewired the neural networks in my brain to see reality.”

The best advice she can give to those experiencing burnout is to evaluate whether their choices will lead to their desired outcome — and whether that outcome is worth it.

“No grade is worth sacrificing your mental health, because it takes a lot of time to get back on track,” Madison says.

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Queer students of color navigate race and sexuality at a predominantly white institution.

IN PERSPECTIVE

WRITTEN BY ALI BIANCO // DESIGNED BY EMMA ESTBERG

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Content warning: This article includes discussions of racism and homophobia.

I

met Communication second-year Kalan Hauser on the bright purple couches lining the third floor of Norris. We were supposed to meet the day prior, but his flight back from attending Coachella had been delayed. Sitting on those couches, he talked to me about dance, about his experiences being a first-year and queer on dating apps like Grindr and about anti-Blackness at Northwestern.

“The assumption is that there’s colorblindness in queerness, and that’s not the reality,” Hauser told me.

Hauser talked about the stereotypes he’s faced as a Black queer student interacting with white queer students on campus. He described the microaggressions and coded commentary about his body.

But he also taught me about self-love and his determination to not allow others to shut him down.

This article contains five perspectives of queer people of color at Northwestern, including Hauser’s.

Two of these stories use pseudonyms names to protect the identities of the students. Understood individually, these are snapshots of the multifaceted experiences each student has faced on campus. Understood collectively, they speak to a wide range of queer POC experiences in proximity to whiteness, but no individual story can or should speak for the entire community.

As Bienen first-year Ismael Perez lugged his bags to Chapin Hall after landing at O’Hare mere hours before, he was ecstatic to enter a space where he didn’t need to hide his queer identity.

He imagined college as a “dream world of social acceptance.” But his dream world soon came crashing down, and reality took its place.

In Perez’s home in Miami, Florida, the attitude surrounding his queer identity was “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

He loves his family, but their conservative Colombian roots meant being out at home wasn’t possible.

He believed Northwestern would be different. During Wildcat Welcome, interacting with his white queer peers through his PA group or programming activities, he noticed the racial diversity within the dating pool at Northwestern was smaller than he had hoped.

Staring at his phone, Perez saw the messages he’d sent asking guys out for coffee or just conversation during their first week on campus. He had been rejected or left on read more times than he could count.

As he looked around campus, he saw the common denominator. His queer friends were white and going out with other queer white students.

Perez is Afro-Latino.

“It was almost heartbreaking, because your entire life, you’ve felt like you never really belonged anywhere. All of the sudden now, everyone is teaching you, ‘Love your gay self, your gay parts.’ But you come here and that part that’s supposed to make you feel so free makes you feel so alone,” Perez says.

Isolation. That’s what Perez felt after he arrived on campus.

Rejection came so often during his first Fall Quarter that it was one of the main subjects of conversation with his therapist. Although he never considered himself ugly, Perez couldn’t brush aside the fact that he wasn’t seeing white queer students going out with people that looked like him.

“It messes with your self-esteem in ways I didn’t think possible,” Perez says. “Something about me is not catering to a person’s idea or perception of attractiveness.”

The isolation that began in his dating life quickly spilled over into Perez’s friendships. Earlier this year, he comforted a friend as they shared concerns about entering straight male spaces on campus, like frat parties, or walking alone late at night in Evanston.

These were fears Perez understood well. But being Black, Latino and queer, he couldn’t help but recognize that he and his friend, a white student, were in different positions of privilege when it came to these concerns.

“I get where they’re coming from, but at the same time, it’s like, think about the people you’re talking to when you’re telling them this,” Perez says. “I’m like, ‘Imagine how we feel!’”

This lack of intersectional awareness left Perez wondering how much he should try to engage with his queer friends. He questioned how significant his queerness should be in his life at Northwestern.

“You don’t fit into this perfect little standard of what the pretty gay guys are supposed to look like. You’re not it and you, as a matter of fact, are going to get excluded from these white spaces,” Perez says.

“

But you come here and that part that’s supposed to make you feel so free makes you feel so alone.

Ismael Perez Bienen first-year

“

Ismael

Perez still doesn’t feel entirely welcome in queer spaces on campus.

But he discovered that he doesn’t have to be in a LGBTQ+ space to be accepted. In Black and Latino cultural clubs on campus, like For Members Only (FMO) and Alianza, Perez has found friends who understand his Afro-Colombian roots, accept all facets of his identity and provide a support system.

“It’s been a really isolating experience, but when you have other queer POC, you really do feel that you’re not as alone in the whole college experience,” Perez says. “It’s not necessarily a trauma bond, but sometimes I think the fact that you both went through very similar things really does help you try to move on past it.”

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Coming from a small, not-sodiverse high school, Tara*, a South Asian second-year student, yearned to embrace her queer identity at Northwestern.

She wasn’t out to her parents and had only recently accepted that she was gay. But in Evanston, Tara* wanted to surround herself with people who were also queer.

Being South Asian, she realized that some aspects of queer culture on campus were unfamiliar to her.

Many queer students around her hadn’t heard of the Bollywood movies Tara* grew up watching. She couldn’t help but think that if other lesbians were listening to Phoebe Bridgers, she probably should too.

“It becomes disillusioning after a while, because a lot of the things that I think I’m conditioned to think are queer culture, like queer movies or music, are also very whitewashed,” Tara* says.

The cultural disconnect started with music and TV, but it spiraled for Tara* as she encountered fundamental differences in the ways she and her queer friends approached their sexualities.

“Sometimes people will be talking about introducing their parents to people they’re dating or when they came out,” Tara* says. “It’s not just that those conversations are things I can’t relate to. They’re also a bit jarring. And it’s a place that I don’t want to go to.”

Tara* doesn’t tell many people at Northwestern that she’s not out to her family. Even her closest friends, she says, struggled to understand her family dynamic. “I’m so sorry your family feels that way,” or “that’s so unfair,” they told her. But she doesn’t see her situation that way.

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It took Tara* years to come to terms with her sexuality. In her mind, if she had a hard time getting a grasp of her own identity, she couldn’t expect her conservative South Asian family to understand overnight. It’s a process.

But it’s a process that she feels few of her white friends understand.

Over time, Tara’s* desire to embrace her queerness gave way to homesickness. She hadn’t found a cultural connection within the queer community, so she reached out to other South Asians on campus.

“I do think I’ve found a lot of home among my South Asian friends, because regardless of who you’re dating, you experience the [predominantly white institution] of Northwestern,” Tara* says.

South Asian culture is deeply tied to family, according to Tara*. This was a value she saw reflected in her conversations with her South Asian friends. They loved to talk about big cultural gatherings like weddings: what they would wear, where they would get married.

Once again, Tara* found herself in a gray space. She enjoyed the excitement surrounding these conversations about dating and weddings, but it also made her wonder what her wedding would look like. She knew these kinds of

“

It becomes disillusioning after a while, because a lot of the things that I think I’m conditioned to think are queer culture, like queer movies or music, are also very whitewashed.

Tara*

“

Tara

family gatherings would be different for her, because she wasn’t out in those spaces.

Tara* had spent all of high school forced to perform heterosexuality, from questions surrounding crushes to who she would be taking to prom.

Once she came to Northwestern, that pressure was lifted. Tara* was able to find community and feel more herself with her South Asian friends.

“To come to a space where [queerness] was a lot more casual, and people were not bothered by it, and it didn’t feel high stakes to be like, ‘Oh, I may not be straight,’ was really nice,” Tara* says.

Ultimately, Tara* knows that when people look at her, they see a South Asian person, not a queer person. But she also knows that even if her South Asian friends aren’t all queer, they will continue creating a safe space for her to flourish by embracing the parts of her culture that other white queer students may not relate to.

“I think it was realizing that, even though there are parts of myself that I can’t really express around my family, it’s important for me to be around people who share that part of my experience,” Tara* says.

Second-year

Jude Abijah “ I feel like a lot of the time I’m in queer spaces, it’s a lot of Black culture represented without the Black faces.”

In academic spaces, Abijah has also talked with friends about white students in African American studies classes raising their hand to comment on subjects like decolonization or white supremacy.

Situations like these left Abijah wondering why white students were entering these spaces and leaving many Black students unable to take the class or voice their thoughts on these subjects.

“I have seen white queer people on this campus, and even non-Black queer people of color, speaking on anti-Blackness in ways that are very racist and uninformed. And I really wish that there would be more reflection,” Abijah says.

Abijah has found a support system within a community of Black peers in the Black Mentorship Program who understand this divergence because they’ve lived it themselves.

By participating in this program and going to FMO events and queer affinity spaces, Abijah felt open to being himself.

Like the Pat Parker poem, Abijah’s advice to the white person who wishes to be his friend is to recognize that as a Black person, Abijah enters spaces with experiences that others might never be able to understand.

Jude Abijah

“

There’s a poem that SESP secondyear Jude Abijah carries with him every day. Stored in the notes app on their phone sits Pat Parker’s “For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend.” The first two lines summarize for Abijah what it means to be a queer student of color entering predominantly white queer spaces.

“The first thing you do is to forget that I’m black. / Second, you must never forget that I’m black,” Parker writes.

When Abijah walks into predominantly Black or African American spaces on campus, his queerness comes with him. They can be themselves in these spaces, unafraid of judgment. But he can’t always say the same about the LGBTQ+ spaces he enters.

Part of the reason for this is the appropriation of Black culture in queer spaces, Abijah says. A prominent example is the use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

“My parents are African immigrants, and so I didn’t necessarily grow up speaking AAVE to the same extent that African Americans did,” Abijah says. “And it kind of shocks me when I hear white people, or just non-Black people of color, using and often misusing AAVE terms in their speech online.”

Periodt, purr, finna and chile are all examples Abijah gave of slang from Black culture and history that have been adopted by many queer people.

This language has cropped up more than once from the mouths of nonBlack students, according to Abijah.

“I just wonder, where did you learn that from?” Abijah says. “What formative experiences specifically allowed you to understand the cultural significance of what you’re saying?

My Blackness and my queerness are intertwined with each other. You don’t have to treat me different, in a negative way, because I’m a Black person. But you also have to realize that because I am a Black person, I am inherently different from you.

SESP second-year

But if they are willing to listen and practice justice in their own life, then community building can start.

“My Blackness and my queerness are intertwined with each other,” Abijah says. “You don’t have to treat me different, in a negative way, because I’m a Black person. But you also have to recognize that because I am a Black person, I am inherently different from you.”

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Parker But during his freshman year, he also started dating white partners who told their friends to “just try” dating an Asian person to see how they would like it. He had another partner who asked to edit his face to look whiter.

At the time, Parker* didn’t realize these comments or actions were tokenizing or fetishizing, and beyond just the impact of the statements, it wasn’t a stranger saying these things.

It was friends and partners — people he was in an active community with.

Parker* has always believed that when his partner says or does things that are misinformed, it doesn’t come from a malicious place. Radical love means practicing understanding, and part of the reason Parker* is willing to do this is because he knows his partner is receptive to change.

“I know that he’s a good person, and I have a lot of faith in him,” Parker* says. “When we talk about it, he really takes it and digests what I’m saying.

That’s my philosophy on the world.”

But not everyone is willing to be in a relationship that requires racial education. Parker* has spoken with

This idea of radicalization through love is basically saying that we can change people’s minds for the better and teach them through an act of love, and it’s been something that Parker* really stuck with me.

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“

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Parker*, a queer Asian American third-year, started dating his partner, a white queer student, over a year ago. When they began dating, Parker* shared with a friend that he was concerned he would have to spend part of his relationship on education surrounding race.

Parker’s* friend told him about a concept called radicalization through love. Created by an Asian American feminist coalition in New York City, this idea was formed by a group of mothers who questioned how to use love to resist marginalization and dehumanization.

“This idea of radicalization through love is basically saying that we can change people’s minds for the better and teach them through an act of love, and it’s been something that really stuck with me,” Parker* says. “I love my partner very much and yes, he does things that are not great, but like, same. I mean, I have a lot of growing to do, too.”

Before Parker* committed himself to radical love and engaged with Asian American feminist queer literature, he was a first-year, excited to be surrounded by queer people on his dorm floor.

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Third-year

friends who are people of color that have said they have no desire to date a white person, out of self-protection.

“People need to heal how they need to heal,” Parker* says.

Parker* and his best friend, a biracial queer student, have been able to find community in their friendship. They both understand the implications of educating white partners and the pressures to date people within their race.

“Because we’re both queer people of color, we just both understand things that other people will just not understand. That is really grounding in a lot of ways and affirming that we are both sane,” Parker* says.

Using this idea of radical love, Parker* and his partner have been able to form a great relationship. And ultimately, his bottom line is that the people in his life, regardless of identity, should bring him joy.

“Honestly, the only reason now that I am really able to articulate queer theory or queer of color critique, and understand racialized issues in a much more comprehensive way is yes, because of the education I’ve gotten here, but mostly because of people who have shown me love and grace and compassion and patience,” Parker* says. “I’m very aware of that, and I just don’t think it’s productive to not show other people the same.”

Kalan Hauser “

I think my queerness and Blackness is beautiful. I’ve learned to live truly in myself. For the people who see my beauty, see my worth and want to get to know me as a human, then I will open up my figurative arms for them in my life.

But for those who don’t, I’m not going to stop shining for you.

“

In the moments before the lights turn on, when Kalan Hauser is on stage dancing for Refresh Dance Crew or Fusion Dance Company, he looks at the audience. He never lets them sense discomfort or fear, and once the music turns on and the steps flow out of him, Hauser is one hundred percent himself. Unapologetically.

This is also Hauser’s philosophy for reconciling his identity as a Black and queer student on campus. But putting his best foot forward every day hasn’t been effortless.

While on Tinder and Grindr his first year, Hauser swiped through the profiles of white queer students sharing preferences for potential partners at Northwestern. When he read their bios, he realized how unwelcome he was in the queer community’s dating pool.

“They have their preferences and what they’re looking for, and oftentimes in their description, they have exclusionary preferences,” Hauser says. “They’ll say, ‘No fat, no bulky, no Black, no Latino.’ It boils down to a direct dislike for people of color.”

Kalan Hauser

Communication second-year

On dating apps that allow users to filter through race, Hauser noticed some of his white queer peers at Northwestern using these features to avoid matching with him. To Hauser, this behavior spoke volumes about how anti-Blackness was excused in predominantly white spaces.

“There’s a comfortability to be able to do that,” Hauser says. “There’s no fear of being ostracized by anyone on the app. It’s primarily because it’s a white majority.”

In past conversations, Hauser has had white queer students in person skip past greetings and “how are you” and begin commenting on his body.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a genuine connection with someone because of this part of my identity that’s often objectified, fetishized and just completely disregarded,” Hauser says.

Many white queer students have not had to navigate the implications of their race on their sexuality and gender identity, so Hauser believes

there is a lack of experience that seperates white queer students from people of color like him, who are consistently confronted with assumptions about their race.

Understanding this anti-Black rhetoric to be prominent in white queer spaces, Hauser doesn’t know if there’s a space for all of his identities to be welcomed on campus.

“Anti-Blackness is so ingrained in everything in our society, this assumption that Black specific people are aggressive; we can sexualize them; they’re not worthy of being humanized,” Hauser says. “As a Black man, when I walk into a room, it’s just not the same as any other person.”

While Hauser could walk into a room and linger on the ambiguous stares he receives, he instead tells himself that they are looks of admiration. He changes his mindset to stand strong. He looks in the mirror every morning and tells himself that he looks good.

“You just have to say things to yourself to make you feel comfortable to move in these spaces because without that, how do you exist? How do you live?” Hauser says. “Especially as a Black queer person, you have all these people doubting you, making assumptions, spewing things at you.

You can’t let them get to you.”

Hauser doesn’t believe in shielding his Blackness for others; he wants to embrace it. For him, radical self-love and acceptance is the key to living with these intersecting identities.

“I think my queerness and Blackness is beautiful,” Hauser says. “I’ve learned to live truly in myself. For the people who see my beauty, see my worth and want to get to know me as a human, then I will open up my figurative arms for them in my life. But for those who don’t, I’m not going to stop shining for you.”

*Names have been preserve anonymity.

changed

to

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Frame

Erin Zhang, setting up set for the final days of shooting.

by frame Shelf Life explores themes surrounding food consumption through stop motion.

WRITTEN BY JIMMY HE

DESIGNED BY S. KELSIE YU // PHOTOGRAPHED BY ELOISE APPLE

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The design plans and dimensions for Shelf Life’s puppets.

T

hree puppets sit at a dining table. One swings her feet back and forth. Another shifts her eyes side to side. The third gives a dramatic eye roll. This short scene covers about four seconds of stop motion film Shelf Life’s ten-minute run time, but is composed of dozens of frames — pictures taken between incremental tweaks of facial features and limbs — compressed together to mimic movement.

Communication fourth-year Erin Zhang received a Bindley Grant to direct Shelf Life in May 2021, over a year before the film was set to premiere. The $5,000 grant, given to two student directors by Studio 22, a student-run production company, allowed Zhang to explore the themes of food consumption and the expectations that society places on people — specifically women — with a “humorous twist.”

“I was mostly inspired by this realization of how much women talk about food,” Zhang says. “When I was thinking about feminine habits toward eating, it’s really easy for negative attitudes to cloud something that is really positive and socially uniting like food consumption.”

Stop motion is an labor-intensive filmmaking technique where figures are gradually moved between photographs. When all of the photographs, or frames, are played together, it creates an impression of movement. In Shelf Life, 12 frames make up each second of Zhang’s film. Zhang’s love for stop motion stems from her fascination with museum dioramas, which she describes as self-contained worlds that are entirely created by the artist.

“To walk into this little space that’s completely artificial but feels so real and you have control over every single thing, that’s what is really exciting about stop motion,” Zhang says. “If I didn’t like that one piece, I can change the color. I can cut it up. I can destroy it.”

Shelf Life is Zhang’s third stop-motion production; she’s worked on two shorter films in the past. Stylistically, she cites Wes Anderson as a huge inspiration, particularly his intricate food scenes, which influence Shelf Life’s focus on eating. Thematically, Zhang draws on her personal Asian American heritage when exploring food’s role in familial relationships.

“I’m sure other Asian Americans, especially women, can relate to this idea of your mom really caring about you when she’s like, ‘You’re getting fat’ or ‘You need to stop eating,’” Zhang says. “It’s very culturally significant, but thinking about it from a Western perspective, it can be hard to hear stuff like that growing up. I wanted to explore that because I know that’s relatable for a lot of people.”

A close-up on one of the puppets in Zhang’s stop-motion film, Shelf Life.

Zhang, director of Shelf Life.

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Mia Mylvaganam adjusts the camera position on the Dana Dolly.

A plate of food ready to be ‘consumed’ by one of Shelf Life’s puppets.

Shelf Life’s crew members look on as the art crew prepares for a take.

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“The tone of this film is nowhere near ordinary. It’s very clinical. It’s very surreal, but there is hidden emotion lurking beneath the surface.”

The puppets representing the younger ages of the main character.

In the basement of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, a scene emerges in vibrant contrast to the wooden pews above. The basement’s walls are painted bright shades of lime green, turquoise, orange and mauve, with handprints and doodles scattered all over them. On one side of the basement are tables filled with sets and puppets, framed by studio lighting and a camera. The other half is primarily taken up by an arrangement of couches.

“The tone of this film is nowhere near ordinary,” Communication fourth-year Tej Narayanan says from a couch. “It’s very clinical. It’s very surreal, but there is hidden emotion lurking beneath the surface. It’s really kind of evoking the hidden anger of what this story is trying to show while also making it seem like a genuine authentic guided tape, like the kind that you would see right in the ‘70s and the ‘80s.”

As Shelf Life’s gaffer, Narayanan focuses on ensuring that the set’s lighting is consistent between takes.

Even a slight shift in shadows can warrant an adjustment and reshoot.

Narayanan, who worked with Zhang on a previous project, says that it was a “no-brainer” when Zhang asked him to reprise his role for Shelf Life.

While Narayanan and other crew members chat on the couches as they await directions for the day’s shoot, Communication third-years Mia Mylvaganam and Sascha Deng set up a camera. As the film’s directors of photography, they’re preparing to execute the first shot of the day: a dolly shot.

The camera is fixed on the Dana Dolly, a device that allows it to slide horizontally to smoothly capture a wide view of an entire scene.

Zhang looks at a monitor displaying the current frame, instructing Mylvaganam and Deng to shift the camera up or down to match the level of their shots from the previous days.

Once they are satisfied, Mylvaganam slowly pulls the camera across the Dana Dolly, panning in and out of the dining room scene.

Mylvaganam and Deng have worked with Zhang since fall 2021, using Shelf Life’s script to devise a shot list of all of the camera movements and framing. Neither has prior experience with stop-motion films.

“It’s this new medium for almost everyone on set,” Mylvaganam says. “It’s so cool to see all of us coming together to learn this new skill and create something really impressive with it.”

After the dolly shot is complete,

- Tej Narayanan, Communication fourth-year

Mylvaganam and Deng reposition the camera and lock it into place. Zhang then begins instructions for the stop motion portion of filming.

“We’re going to do maybe 36 frames without food so all three [puppets] are just kind of moving,” Zhang says.

“And then at 36, we’ll start to go into Girl One’s food.”

Two members of Shelf Life’s art crew crouch carefully between the set and the Dana Dolly. Using tweezers, they adjust the eyebrows and eyes of one puppet. For another, they move its feet slightly to initiate a kick. The third they leave untouched. After adjustments are made, they position themselves out of frame.

“Take,” Zhang says.

Deng hits a button on a controller, and the camera snaps a picture. The crew comes back into frame as Zhang gives instructions for the next shot.

They reference monitors on each side of the set. Both are equipped with onion skin, an animating technique that overlays the current scene with the previous photo taken, so crew members can see the effect of their adjustments.

“It almost seems like when you’re animating, nothing’s happening because the moves are so little,” says Communication third-year and art

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crew member Sawyer Sadd. “You can feel like you’re [not] moving the doll at all but then look at the monitor and see that it’s moving so much.”

In addition to animating, Sadd and the rest of the art crew have worked in the basement since October 2021 to design Shelf Life’s puppets and set.

Sadd’s first job was creating the initial sketches of each puppet and making sure all of the proportions were correct. While Sadd’s primary interests lie in animation and digital media, he says that those traditional types of animating tend to be more isolating.

“This process is super collaborative, especially in being an art crew,” he says. “Even when it comes down to the animation, you’re literally taking [it] frame by frame, so you’re all together in the same space. And I really liked that social aspect of it because I still get to exercise those creative bits of me but also get to be social.”

While the set and puppets are all created by the art crew, the miniature food sculptures — ranging from a tiny cup of ramen to a McDonald’s Southwest Salad — are all the work of Communication fourth-year Hannah So, the film’s editor. So was tasked with designing the miniature clay replicas because of her background in sculpting, having opened an Etsy shop for her creations.

“It’s always just been a creative, sort of therapeutic little outlet for me ever since high school,” So says. “I find when I’m focusing more on the

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little details of a sculpture, I’m worrying less about the bigger details of life.”

Now that shooting for Shelf Life has wrapped up, So sifts through footage, taking notes and preparing to edit. She says that she looks for takes where the characters’ facial expressions reflect the script, as well as ones that are technically sound.

For takes with minor flaws such as a camera wobble or a lighting shift, So must find ways to effectively conceal the technical blunders. She says that some options include incorporating a moment of stillness by freezing on a frame or, if the script allows, momentarily cutting to a different scene.

“Since stop motion is so laborious, there are only like three or four takes per shot,” So says. “[It] is a blessing and a curse.”

Shelf Life premieres on June 4 alongside the rest of Studio 22’s films. Zhang hopes that viewers will become more open to talking about the negative associations one might have with eating and consider how such a simple daily necessity can “have ripple effects in terms of emotions and memories and pain.”

“My attitude toward this wasn’t to do something depressing or about trauma. It was trying to think about all these complex emotions that arise when you think about disordered eating,” Zhang says. “[It’s] focusing on the complexity of food and positive and negative things that are associated.”

From left to right: Sascha Deng, Mylvaganam and Zhang analyze one Shelf Life’s frames.

“It’s always just been a creative, sort of therapeutic little outlet for me ever since high school. I find when I’m focusing more on the little details of a sculpture, I’m worrying less about the bigger details of life.”

- Hannah So, Communication fourth-year

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PHOTO BY ELOISE APPLE

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Book recs for beach babes Catspiracy theories Hangover hang-ups Fright at the museums Get crossed!

Book recs for beach babes Your Hangover-assigned summer reading.

WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY BENNIE GOLDFARB

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ou’re scouring The New York Times Best Sellers list, desperate to find the book that shows the perfect you: mysterious, yet inviting; attractive, yet humble — but you’re left running in circles.

Allow our expert advice to guide you toward the perfect summer read — you have more important things to focus on this summer, like getting that perfect sunburned, aloe-vera-slathered bod in the Hamptons.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger A critically acclaimed classic (and a favorite of pretentious manipulators on South Campus), The Catcher in the Rye will have you fluent in Holden Caulfieldisms, calling everyone who’s just trying to participate in your discussion section a “phony.”

While you sit back on the beach, let this book feed your delusion that you’re not like other girls. Pretend your parents aren’t in the 1%, all while feigning interest in your econ and poli sci double major.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

by Laura Numeroff Written for 3-to-8-year-olds with a Lexile measure of AD410L, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is an easy read for all non-SESP students. With difficult to pronounce words like “comfortable” (com-fort-a-ble) and “remember” (re-member), this one will keep social policy majors busy for at least a couple of hours while they listen to the waves crash and their McCormick friends rant about how they have to “do math and not sleep.”

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie This one’s for all you manipulative little business boys who are looking to climb the Northwestern social ladder. You’ve tried everything: the sailing team, rushing AKPsi — well, actually, that’s all you’ve tried.

This read will guarantee that someone's dad with a finance job will approach you, even if he's asking, "Do we have a problem?" because you popped his daughter's beach ball with your Pit Vipers.

Pick up this book, and in no time you’ll be surrounded by like-minded people with a superiority complex. They might not necessarily like you, but that’s not what this book is about, and if you’re reading this, let’s be honest: Friends aren’t your first priority.

It Ends with Us: A Novel by Colleen Hoover Because recommending Beach Read would be too obvious. This mainstream BookTok favorite is sure to keep the creative writers and liberal arts majors interested as they relax with their toes in the sand.

You might swear you read for intellectual enrichment, but it’s summer, for god's sake; you can’t be expected to carry Steinbeck all the way to your cabana and back. Plus, It Ends with Us and its Wattpad-in-print sensibilities will inspire you to write again by showing you just how low the bar is for New York Times bestsellers. Lay back and enjoy thinking, “I could’ve written this.”

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance If you’re looking to become the next billionaire that jets off to space on their own dime (looking at you, McCormick industrial engineers), an Elon Musk biography is the place to start. For Musk, step one was coming to terms with being unlikeable. While that may be easy for Northwestern engineers, this book is still a must-read for any McCormick student.

Once you’re finished with Musk’s biography, you may find Joe Rogan’s podcasts to be just as helpful in your journey toward being the most insufferable “you” you can be.

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Catspiracy theories

WRITTEN BY JAMIE DICKMAN // DESIGNED BY BENNIE GOLDFARB

Wake up, sheeple! Hangover takes on Northwestern’s wildest conspiracy theories.

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orthwestern University is a long-standing and prestigious institution with top-tier academics and ties to elite alumni.

So naturally, our beloved campus is host to lots of weird Illuminati-type shit. Read on for a deep dive into alleged conspiracies on campus.

An extraterrestrial encounter: The truth behind NU’s anti-CBD campaign Northwestern’s Kellogg building is one of the most mysterious spots on campus. If you’ve ever been inside, you’ve likely gotten judgmental glances from those who can tell you’re not a business student. While an easy explanation is that Kellogg students are exclusive weirdos, the real answer lies in the stars.

“The Kellogg building is actually an extraterrestrial spacecraft that was grounded in the winter of 2012 — in accordance with the ancient Mayan calendar, obviously,” an anonymous source from the online Northwestern conspiracy community NUndercover explains.

According to NUndercover, the construction of the Kellogg building was a cover story for repairs to the spacecraft, the majority of which is underground and can only be accessed through Lower Tech.

The spacecraft is believed to have come from Kepler-452b, the alleged home planet of well-known extraterrestrials such as Danny DeVito and Queen Elizabeth.

The majority of Kellogg students

and faculty are likely extraterrestrials themselves. One source reported that he “was taking a hit of [his] dab pen in the bathroom stall” and watched from the crack in the door as a student shapeshifted from a “regular dude into something resembling Mark Zuckerberg.”

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In what he thought would be his last moments, he hastily took the fattest rip of his dab pen, and as the creature busted the bathroom stall open, he blew the smoke into its face. As soon as it caught a whiff, the creature turned and sprinted out of the bathroom in such a hurry that it left its electric scooter behind.

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“I feel insane, like I can’t trust my own eyes,” the source says.

An expert on NUndercover theorizes, “All signs point to Kellogg extraterrestrials having an aversion to cannabis products.

Have you ever seen a Kellogg student smoking a j? Me neither.”

Although Kellogg students’ lack of interest in marijuana could be attributed to their “grindset” mentality, another crucial piece of evidence has recently arisen: Northwestern’s antiCBD campaign.

Unsurprisingly, this campaign leaves students and faculty confused, with many asking whether CBD is really the drug that warrants anti-use graphics. If you’re an extraterrestrial, then the answer is yes.

It's still unclear if CBD is the specific chemical that repels extraterrestrials.

To be safe, experts say if you need to enter Kellogg, it's best to do so under the influence.

A user on NUndercover says, “I’ve tested the theory myself, and Kellogg shapeshifters avoid you like the plague if you come in just a little high.”

Low(er) Tech There are an unknown number of floors below the basement level of Tech, referred to as “Lower Tech” (a name that lacks pizzazz, but what did you expect from STEM majors?). Every year, the Office of Undergraduate Research receives half a dozen proposals from wannabe evil geniuses, and Lower Tech is where the studies that couldn’t pass the institutional review board are secretly conducted.

If the standards board finds a proposal unethical but intriguing, they’re given research funding and lab space. The best (or most nefarious) proposals are given a “shadow lab” — a damp, cavernous enclave in Lower Tech perfect for an evil lair — in exchange for Northwestern’s exclusive access to the findings.

“Remember that time someone accidentally used the in-development shrink ray on Harris?’” an anonymous Shadow Lab fellow asks. “The history department looked like a LEGO model.

ALERT! Lower Tech does not exist.

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REC Attempting to enter the nonexistent Lower Tech will result in immediate expulsion from the University. There are no circumstances under which undergraduate students are permitted to explore Tech without guidance from a “leader.”

But you probably don’t remember.

No one remembers that thanks to the selective memory-erasing program, which is another devious product of Lower Tech.”

Some of Lower Tech’s most recognizable products include the bathroom door locks that don’t work but you don’t notice until you’re sitting down, the gorgonzola cheese at MOD Pizza, the campus geese that seem to shit twice their weight every day and the data science minor.

Lower Tech’s Shadow Lab fellows are connected with big-name advisers like Jeff Bezos and Dr. Doofenshmirtz.

Advisers help the fellows create moodboards detailing their favorite evil geniuses and discuss what existing inventions they find the most inconvenient or deviant in order to inspire their own inventions.

They even connect them with other industry professionals to set them up for post-grad success. Lower Tech is an incubator for Northwestern’s greatest inconveniences, so if your proposal gets rejected by the regular ethics board, head underground.

Smile at the camera! (You should always be smiling) Campus security is undeniably tight, from the blue light telephone system to multiple Wildcard scanners in every dorm to guards posted at nearly every residential building. Though many security measures are hidden in plain sight, the full extent of campus surveillance isn’t so obvious.

Some universities have taken to using high-tech camera systems or tracking via the campus Wi-Fi to ensure the “safety” and “well-being” of their students. Home of whole-brain engineering, Northwestern would never settle for such unimaginative means of becoming Big Brother, instead developing their own unique technique that takes inspiration from Chuck E. Cheese’s animatronics.

Have you ever noticed a rabbit staring at you for a little too long,

prompting you to think, “Wow, that’s a ballsy one”? Is it usually when you’re open-carrying a White Claw through campus? Well, those watchful little eyes aren’t eyes at all. They’re tiny cameras, and they’ve collected hours of footage of you stumbling down Sheridan every Saturday night.

“The majority of our student body are AirPod-laden sheeple,” says an anonymous authority of NUndercover.

“They’re right there, out in the open, but everyone seems to turn a blind eye.”

Research compiled by NUndercover reveals that most — if not all — campus rabbits are animatronic security devices with built-in camera lenses where their cute little stuffed-animal eyes should be.

“People don’t realize the scope of their monitoring,” the anonymous source says. “You weren’t the only one who saw

your friend throw out an OZZI.” Campus surveillance doesn’t stop with hidden cameras. Sources report that if you order Lisa’s chicken tenders within 10 minutes of the kitchen closing, they give you “special” tenders, which come with your daily dose of precious metals: a microchip. Some theorize that these chips identify and track individuals with low levels of empathy, tagging them as recommended candidates for investment banking internships.

Why are they spying on us? What is Northwestern going to do with the data? While much is still unclear about the University’s motives and goals, we do know that the average student shouldn’t worry. At least, no more than you’re worried about Apple, Google and Meta monitoring your every search, like, message and post.

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s p u g n a h r Hangove

You di dn’t as k, we an swered !

WRITTEN BY HANGOVER EDITORS // DESIGNED BY EMMA ESTBERG PHOTOS FROM CREATIVE COMMONS

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ince its inception, Hangover has provided sage wisdom to the student body. In a generous effort to connect with our avid readers, we opened up a forum for Hangover fans to write in with their most pressing questions so that we could dispense some of our boundless knowledge.

Dear Hangover,

Dear Hangover,

It’s almost summer, and I still don’t have an internship! PLEASE help me figure out what I should do. I’m an econ major with a marketing certificate, but nowhere I applied to has responded!

I looked at my ancestry.com results, and AND is literally in my DNA! What can I do to make my overworked schedule everyone else’s problem?

So you need an internship, huh? Well, lucky for you, I happen to be a marketing expert and extremely qualified business consultant. My experience has included multiple positions at major corporations from Silicon Valley to Hong Kong. I speak seven languages (including Latin) and have patented more than 20 products. My most recent product, the automatic peanut butter sandwich decruster, secured nine different awards, including first place at the Washington Middle School Science Fair. My TEDx talk on the economy of the Great Barrier Reef received a standing ovation.

Anyway, looks like I’ve hit my word limit.

Hope this helps!

You just have so much on your plate, I get it.

Here’s some advice: • When making plans, exclaim with a deep, pent-up sigh of exasperation, “I don’t have the time!

With a cappella, tutoring my nephew and managing stocks, you’ll never see me again!”

• Bring up somebody from a club in every conversation.

There’s always a way to slide in some inside joke from your chemistry study group that nobody else understands. Oh sorry, I forgot you wouldn’t get it.

• Go to every event you said you’d be too busy for but complain about work the entire time. Say something self-deprecating, slightly jitter. Are you stable? No. Is the attention on you? Absolutely.

- Tabor Brewster

Dear Hangover, My dorm has a spider problem, but I’m vegan. How can I get rid of them while still being woke about animal rights?

Hi gorgeous, I totally feel your pain. Spiders are more populous at this school than nepotism babies. Here are a few ways to get rid of them without dirtying one of your vegan leather sandals: • Tell them you’re an econ major with a BIP certificate.

If this doesn’t send them running, they’re probably also finance-oriented and might respond to bribery.

• Blast the playlist your high school boyfriend made you. The sappy Snow Patrol hits and angsty Green Day classics will scare them away or give them a knack for gaslighting.

• Start reading your philosophy assignments out loud.

You’ll either lull them to sleep or they’ll decide your room being private property is unjust.

- Julia Lucas

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- Lauren Cohn Dear Hangover, I’ve had three coats stolen from Reza’s.

My parents have had to buy four Canada Goose jackets, and I’m worried about losing the next one. What can I do to keep my coat?

Many students, including yours truly, have been victims of Reza’s coat thieves. Here are some simple things you can do to keep your coat at the club: • Stop bringing a coat. You may be cold, but those chilly arms come with the comforting knowledge that you have outsmarted even the wiliest thieves.

If they want your coat, they’ll have to pull off an elaborate Ocean’s 11 heist from your room in Sargent.

• Wear the gaudiest coat you can get your hands on, but watch out for theater kids using it as a prop for a tequila-fueled Hamilton bit.

• Give your coat to the skeleton — but if you start having premonitions about your death, take the coat back. And hurry.

- Jamie Dickman

Fright at the museums Tired of the Art Institute? Check out these Hangover-approved attractions.

WRITTEN BY JULIA LUCAS // DESIGNED BY ALLEN ZHANG

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ave you ever wondered what a boxing match between ground squirrels looks like? Wanted to explore the history of glory holes? Wished you could see the Star Trek cast embodied in the form of ceramic jugs? Look no further.

NBN has curated a selection of Chicago’s funkiest, freakiest and most fascinating archives. Experimental taxidermy enthusiasts, kinky Wildcats and students looking for historic, novelty shot glasses: These niche Chicago museums are for you.

Woolly Mammoth Chicago I entered the Woolly Mammoth antiques and oddities shop from an unassuming side street in Andersonville.

This knockoff Borgin and Burkes has everything: an inordinate amount of squirrel taxidermy, a giant bust of King Kong, ancient idols of cult worship — whatever object you’d least want to encounter in the opening scene of a horror movie, they probably have it.

Of the various odd themes present at the Woolly Mammoth, one is bones and another is unconventional taxidermy.

Almost every unlikely artifact is tagged with a piece of paper that reads, “Yes, I’m real, please don’t touch me.” This statement was especially jarring on an entire human skeleton that I almost ran into while backing away from a taxidermied two-headed calf named Brussels Sprouts, also real.

The Woolly Mammoth is not just a display of creepy The Woolly Mammoth features various oddities, including a taxidermied toad (right) and much clown-themed memorabilia (far right).

attractions — it’s also a store. I wasn’t prototype furry costumes. personally enticed by the box full of My least favorite part was the 2-foothuman teeth (only $16 each!) or the tall eyeless cloth idol which looked selection of raccoon penises (also a $16 vaguely like a teddy bear that had been steal), but if you need a gift for your buried and exhumed years later. The weird cousin, this is the place.

Metropolitan Museum of Art There was also a deeply haunting confirms that the artifact inventory of disembodied “deliberately provokes wax heads and animal anxiety” in order to masks that look like “uncover misdeeds.” If the Northwestern Office of Community Standards ever recruits that burlap nightmare for student hearings, I’m folding.

I’ll do AlcoholEdu for a third time.

I wasn’t even sure that I’d be able to leave the Woolly Mammoth. In fact, I was partially convinced that I’d become their newest quirky taxidermy display. Regardless, I recommend that you come experience this shop for yourself. You’ll definitely see something you haven’t before, whether that be an ancient bottle of hair-growth serum or a real shrunken head.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF WOOLLY MAMMOTH

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The Leather Archives & Museum

The American Toby Jug Museum

The Leather Archives & Museum (or LA&M if you’re on a nickname basis) is a collection of art, photography and artifacts paying homage to the history of leather, kink, fetish and BDSM. Although much of the museum is dedicated to providing insight into consent culture within the BDSM community, they also don’t shy away from some of the raunchiest museum matter in the Chicago area.

Past the first room of the museum lay the first interactive exhibit. A massive dildo was attached to the wall at a right angle, protruding from a poorly cut sheet of plywood to depict the history of glory holes.

The installation encouraged passersby to touch it, and according to an anonymous source, it was an incredibly accurate texture. The next wall was paneled with an interactive overview of the many types of bondage material, an exploration of which landed me staunchly in the anti-hemp camp.

The attractions didn’t end with the bondage basics. On the lower floor was a complete history of the international Mr. and Ms. Leather competitions, along with profiles of some of BDSM’s historic icons. The artifacts displayed to illustrate these histories left little to the imagination.

Among the most outrageous were a steel male chastity belt, stainless steel sex toys and an 8-pound butt plug (unused). The least outrageous seemed to be a regular balloon, but I learned that even balloons have a kinky history (ever heard of a “looner”? Don’t look it up).

The best part was probably the leather clothes. There was a bedazzled leather bra that I would totally wear to Dillo, but beyond that, most of it was a little out of my depth.

On my way out, I took a final look at the flag that read, “fuck safely, one day at a time,” and could safely say that I would not return to this museum. Props for the consent culture, negative points for the photograph of a woman pissing onto the camera.

Don’t come here for parents weekend.

Do come here if you’re trying to get a read on whether your boyfriend is down to try out the fuzzy handcuffs you just bought. They’re gonna look super tame in comparison.

The museum that started this saga. It has beguiled me, evaded me and bewitched me, body and soul. The American Toby Jug Museum is an Evanston gem, located inconveniently past Trader Joe’s. Its endless shelves are packed with 8,000+ disembodied, lobotomized ceramic heads of all of your favorite celebrities and least favorite historical figures. Dating all the way back to the mid1700s, Toby Jugs are “figural ceramic pitcher[s] modeled in the form of a popular character, historical, fictional or generic,” according to the museum’s website.

Despite my best efforts to experience the largest Toby Jug collection in the world, the museum was closed every time I called. The first time, a very British man informed me that all three Toby Jug employees had COVID-19, and they would be closed for a while. I wished him a speedy recovery and pictured him sipping tea from the giant ceramic head of Gromit from the hit TV show Wallace and Gromit.

In lieu of a visit, I did a Google Street View search of the location, partially to see if the museum even existed.

From the outside, the Toby Jug Museum could be a local branch of a regional bank. Besides a small shelf of teaser jugs, there wasn’t much to see. There was a set of stairs immediately inside, forcing visitors to descend below street level into the bowels of suburban Illinois to see the ceramic caricatures of cereal icons Snap, Crackle and Pop. You might be wondering how I know the specifics of the museum’s collection without having visited. Well, the American Toby Jug Museum website is populated with images of some of the museum’s jugs and jug lore. I scoured this website in absence of my visit, hoping to discover what makes Toby Jugs so alluring. Although I didn’t figure out why the jugs have such a hold on their niche community of collectors, I did learn that the museum’s founder has scouts around the globe searching for additions to the collection. He even commissioned a jug of his own head.

While this museum is filled with brightly colored anthropomorphic ceramics, I can’t help but feel that there’s something sinister in that basement. Maybe it’s the 1850s clown jug, or maybe it’s the sneaking suspicion that they have a jug modeled after my own head, or yours. Regardless, I will attempt to visit the Toby Jug Museum again — eventually.

The American Toby Jug Museum has ceramics for sale, including this 7” Napoleon toby jug.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN TOBY JUG MUSEUM

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HOPE CARTWRIGHT

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⁶⁸ ⁷⁰ Across: 1 swingers in the trees 6 distributor of cards 9 squirrel snack 10 Medill’s other program (abbr.)

11 the kind of depression NU students from CA experience for the first time their freshman year 15 test your Northwestern trivia knowledge: hall named after the Dean of the School of Music from 1883 to 1931 18 angry wildcat noise 20 feeling enriched at Northwestern (abbr.)

21 Tic ___ 24 typical Friday night purchase 26 what you lost during March Madness 28 lowest female a cappella singers

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⁶⁹ 71 30 place to destress after finals 31 might pop up in your Google search for “silly synonyms” 33 a 2010s trend where you lie down in public 34 graduating class member (abbr.)

35 uncommon slang for friend 36 am, are, __ 38 agreement on Twitter (abbr.)

40 Non Commissioned Officer (abbr.)

41 silver on the periodic table 43 location of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody spin-off 47 common Wordle starter 49 one of the twins in the Doja Cat song 51 owns Northwestern & Northwestern’s own

52 as a dog’s tail 53 adj. used to describe a Thursday 56 HPME students’ future titles (abbr.)

57 CBD “alternative” 59 Italian classic aglio _ ____ 60 immersive acting 62 Megan Thee Stallion’s favorite adverb 68 the middle line on a Canvas assignment grading scale (abbr.)

69 grain storage systems 70 tread lightly 71 popular spot for 1 across

Down: 1 currently holds 2 highest card in poker 3 Minnesota shopping hub (abbr.)

4 the title my grandpa thinks I’m getting (finding a spouse in college) 5 Pono ___ 6 when NU students party like we go to a state school 7 large, flightless bird 8 SAT alternatives 12 tbh 13 rainbow shapes 14 two needed for the bunny ear method 16 meat on a stick 17 Northwestern’s sustainability certificate (abbr.)

19 good place to catch fish 21 Tonik dance group specialty 22 once and for ___ 23 includes red, blue, and purple lines (abbr.)

24 says “hey, you’re really cute, coffee?”

25 where your mom thinks you are on Thursday nights 27 spill it over a cup of coffee 29 on the rocks 32 adjective not for the peanut-free 37 when Twitter replies outnumber likes or RTs 39 political science majors’ career plans 40 time for 48 down 42 they just wanna have fun 44 he marries Meryl Streep’s character in Mamma Mia 45 part of winter that never comes 46 if you’ve got it, shake it 48 activity with your SO 50 home continent of Bhutan 54 fund an econ bro might mention 55 Mazel ___ 58 Parisian cat 61 ___ Frito 63 suffix that forms the name of an enzyme (amyl-, sucr-) 64 picture with debated pronunciation 65 Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin 66 67 Black Opium brand acronym

Get crossed!

Can we have a word?

WRITTEN BY JULIANNA ZITRON // DESIGNED BY ESTHER TANG

key:

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