NBN Magazine Winter 2019

winter 2019

BOLD features | p. 38

how organizers on campus define their work — and themselves.

NORTH BY

northwestern editorial managing editor | Paola De Varona senior features editors | Claire Bugos, Mila Jasper senior section editors | Duncan Agnew, Molly Glick, Elizabeth Guthrie, Emma Kumer associate editors | Andres Correa, Sylvia Goodman assistant editors | Naomi Andu, Meredith Ellison, Jessica Mordacq

onlline staff

print staff

winter 2019

creative creative director | Audrey Valbuena photo director | Sakke Overlund art director | Rachel Hawley assistant creative director | Sarah Zhang assistant photo directors | Nikita Amir, Victoria Woodburn designers | Emily Cerf, Aine Dougherty, Sarah Fernandez, Alena Rubin, Stephanie Zhu

contributors Cleon Beckford David Deloso Audrey DeBruine Noah Franklin Maggie Galloway Amelia Langas Sophia Lo Hayley Miller Tejav Narayanan Alisa Nazaire Leanna Rice Elly Rivera Sofia Rubin Gabe Schmittlein Salina Tsegai Lexi Vollero Sumin Woo

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editor-in-chief | Maggie Harden executive editor | David Gleisner managing editors | Mia Mamone, Jakob Lazzaro, Elly Rivera assistant managing editor | Carlyn Kranking senior features editor | Justin Curto news editor | Amy Yang politics editor | Kalen Luciano assistant politics | David Guirgis entertainment editors | Lillian Aff, Nav Sekhon assistant entertainment | David Deloso sports editors | Shreyas Iyer, Jono Zarrilli assistant sports | Jacob Munoz life & style editor | Lilly Pace assistant life & style editor | Zoe Grossinger photo/video editor | Kathryn Mohr assistant photo/video | Alexis Lanza opinion editor | Ryan Wagner writing editor | Brennen Bariso assistant writing | Julie Swanson science & tech editor | Sophia Lo graphics editors | Maia Brown, Rita Liu identities editor | Adam Mahoney interactive editors | Audrey DeBruine, Maxine Whitely mag-to-web editors | Josh Klein, Emma Kumer

corporate staff publisher | Victoria Alfred-Levow webmaster | Maxine Whitely director of ad sales | Lilli Boice director of recruitment & development | Clarissa Wong social media manager | Mia Mamone social media editors | David Deloso, Jacob Munoz, Amy Yang

pictured on cover Sharmain Siddiqui cover photo | Nikita Amir cover design | Audrey Valbuena

38 feat u re s

BOLD How organizers on campus define their work – and themselves.

contents

08 pregame

16 dancefloor

44

Send noods We tasted all the noodles so you don’t have to (but you probably should).

Letters to my family First-generation Northwestern students reflect on their college experience.

Money talks Talking to your partner about finances is awkward. It doesn’t have to be.

features

56 hangover pictured | Jessica Ogwumike photo | Nikita Amir

Party crashers We went to three Illinois universities to see if their parties are as lit as ours.

Winter 2019 | 3

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Go beyond Hothe Bean

Ho wa 54t rd h/C wa e rd rma For For n est k est Par Par Mid Har k k wa lem y Kim Loo bal EngageChicago.org 95t p l Ho h/D wa an rd R M y idw Ho an wa ay For rd est Par k

4 | Winter 2019

pregame 6 The name’s Bond, tuition bond.

7 An ASMR star is born 8 Send noods 10 Sending it back

Winter 2019 | 5

The name’s Bond, tuition bond. n 2019, it’s possible to attend Northwestern University tuitionfree and save a grand total of $216,480 over four years. All it takes is a slip of paper from the 1800s granted to you by a will.

The deal sounds far too good to be true. In a world where the budget crisis rages on and tuition costs tick up by 3.6 percent every year, Northwestern would never let a student avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars per year. But what if the University is legally required to do just that?

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Imagine this: it’s June 23, 1853, and Franklin Pierce has just succeeded Millard Fillmore as President of the United States.

The country is slowly but surelygrinding toward civil war, with Illinois bracing for the rise of Abraham Lincoln. Just two years ago, nine prominent Methodists founded Northwestern University as the first chartered college in the state. They’re scraping to find adequate funding for their prized institution. They turn to selling $100 bonds in exchange for free University tuition.

Fast forward to 2019. Northwestern has just cracked top 10 on the U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings list, and NU athletics basks in the glory of a brand new, $270 million lakeside practice facility.

Yet, if you arrive on campus with one of those precious bonds, you’ll get a $54,120 discount — the current tuition price.

Northwestern was all-male between 1853 and 1867, when University officials sold these perpetual scholarships. After the school opened its doors to women

How a sweet deal in the 1850s could have gotten you free tuition.

WRITTEN BY DUNCAN AGNEW | DESIGNED BY STEPHANIE ZHU

in 1869, NU began accepting scholarship bonds that had been handed down to daughters, as well.

University Archivist Kevin Leonard notes that scholarships “can be passed on,” meaning that one family member in each generation can redeem free tuition at Northwestern. Forever. As long as the tuition bond transfers hands properly through a will, it can be reused indefinitely.

When the first class of students enrolled at the University in 1855, tuition was $45 per year, so these bonds initially gave families a 45 percent discount on four years of tuition. Over time, as Northwestern tuition costs skyrocketed to tens of thousands of dollars per year, those savings grew exponentially.

“

net gain on the sale of perpetual scholarships. By 1959, the University had sold 1,161 bonds, but only 341 students had redeemed free tuition scholarships. According to Northwestern University: A History by Jay Pridmore, just “a few additional scholarships” have been used in the last 60 years.

The University general counsel’s office and provost for enrollment, Mike Mills, did not respond to requests for comment on the most-recent redemption of a perpetual scholarship.

“The reason [Northwestern] went from a small-scale operation — just this threadbare, clawingto-hang-on school — to something more substantial was, in part, because of the sale of these scholarships,” Leonard says.

In 2019, anyone would jump at the opportunity to buy perpetual scholarships, but Leonard points out that it was actually a risky investment for purchasers in the 1850s and ’60s. Hundreds have gone unused because of the contract’s specific parameters.

For instance, scholarship holders still have to gain admission to Northwestern, which has grown increasingly difficult in recent years.

As long as the tuition bond transfers hands properly through a will, it can be reused indefinitely.

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”

“When the school is able to establish itself better and realize greater revenues from tuition and other sources, they cut out the scholarship business,” Leonard says. “In the end, that’s gonna bite you if you sell too many of those things.”

Still, those Methodist businessmen knew what they were doing. In just the first year, Northwestern made $91,000 from the sale of perpetual scholarships. According to Northwestern University: A History 1850-1975 by Harold F. Williamson and Payson S. Wild, selling such scholarships “was a common device for raising money in the pre-Civil War period.”

In fact, Northwestern made a

Nowadays, the University occasionally fields questions about the validity of these bonds.

“Every few years, we get a call from someone who is investigating our records on scholarships because they have one and are wondering if it’s still applicable,” Leonard says. “So there’s some of them still out there. God knows how many.”

PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKITA AMIR

Like andOoooooh...Welcome back to my Channel!

Can you hear Subscribe. .. me now? Yeah....

It’s me, Gibi!

An

Hello Everybody !

ASMR star

ibi makes people tingle. For a living.

Heading into her final year of college at NU, Gibi worked multiple jobs. She nannied for a local family, worked in the Fisk editing lab and walked dogs in her free time.

Six months later, she quit her side hustles and gave up her search for a post-graduate job. She had a bigger project in the works.

Soon after, Gibi, now 24 became one of YouTube’s rising stars: she is the number two-rated ASMRtist, a video blogger who posts content that sparks autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) in its viewers — aka tingles.

Known for her elaborate role plays, complete with costumes, wigs, accents and props, as well as her soothing voice, Gibi has 1.7 million YouTube subscribers. NBN talked to Gibi about the art of the tingle.

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NBN: How did you get involved in ASMR? Gibi: I had been watching ASMR since sophomore year of high school. I never told anyone about it because it was kind of weird back then. No one had heard of it. I was super involved with YouTube as a viewer, and I knew that you could do it full time. I started my channel in June, right before senior year started.

Nobody at that time was posting normally; everyone was just sort of

n r o is b

NU alum and YouTube’s second-most-famous ASMRtist shares her insight on life as a professional Youtuber.

WRITTEN BY HAYLEY MILLER | DESIGNED BY AINE DOUGHERTY

doing it. I got a posting schedule going and tried to monetize it and figure out what people wanted to see and how I could make it better.

I did a combination of things that everyone has on their ASMR channels and things that I had never seen before.

I just kept on social media and tried to be as interactive as possible, and it just sort of took off. But it wasn’t like it blew up: it was a very steady incline over time.

What did your family and friends think about you getting into ASMR? All around, you get a lot of confusion at first. Once you try to explain it, people usually want to just go and watch it for themselves. Most people think it’s really cool. I have good friends and a good family. They think it’s hilarious that I relax people because I’m very loud in real life. They know that whatever I’m doing is probably something quirky and interesting.

What are the biggest misconceptions surrounding ASMR? People who don’t understand it just assume that it’s a fetish. It’s just not.

Sexual ASMR definitely exists, but it’s just a modifier, like horror movies.

Every horror movie is a movie, but

not every movie is a horror movie.

I don’t know if this is a myth or not, but I don’t think that everyone can experience ASMR. Some people have it, some people don’t. And that’s probably why it’s misunderstood. But I do think that anyone can enjoy ASMR videos because they tend to be relaxing.

Some stuff might be hit or miss, depending on if you actually get the tingles or not.

How do you know what will make a good ASMR object?

Oh, we gotta touch it, of course.

If it’s something for sound, I will find things randomly either around the house or in stores. If it’s role play-based, I do a ton of Amazon shopping. I just did a camping video, so I just bought up a ton of cute camping stuff on Amazon and it was awesome. I like a lot of very cute props that you get to use your hands with a lot.

With so many subscribers and online fans, have you ever had any funny fan encounters?

I’ve gotten recognized by two TSA agents, which is hilarious. I went to a bar, and the bartender recognized me and made me take tequila shots with her. That was hysterical. She said that I was the only thing that made her sleep better than tequila.

Winter 2019 | 7

8 | Winter 2019 Winter 2018 | 12

NOODS

SEND We ta have sted all t h to (b ut yo e noodle s u pro bably so you d shou on’t ld).

WRITTEN BY DAVID DELOSO & SOPHIA LO PHOTOGRAPHED & DESIGNED BY ALENA RUBIN PICTURED: TONKOTSU RAMEN FROM TABLE TO STIX

here’s only one good reason to leave your room on a winter night: noodles. The freezing winds, snowcovered boots and general feelings of agony all melt away over a piping hot bowl of deliciousness.

With the sadness and pain of winter, no one should be expected to find the best noodles in town themselves. Luckily for you, we’re unreasonable people. We braved the elements and walked (despite David’s insistence that we Uber) to three popular noodle shops in Evanston. We rated the noodles on a scale from one to three bowls to show you where you should, and shouldn’t, take your next carb craving.

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TABLE TO STIX

VIET NOM NOM

SIAM SPLENDOR

1007 Davis Street

618 1/2 Church Street

1125 Emerson Street

High stools and geometric patterns gave Table to Stix a modern and sleek look. With small tables, the restaurant felt intimate, perfect for small groups and dates. We tried the Classic Tonkotsu Ramen, which was topped with sliced pork, corn, bean sprouts, bamboo, a fish cake, green onions and a seasoned soft-boiled egg. Out of the three restaurants, Table to Stix was the most expensive. A bowl of ramen ranged from $13 to $15.

Our Hot Take: Ramen ranks high on our list of favorite foods, and this was delicious. The broth had a deep pork flavor. It was creamy without being too heavy, and it wasn’t too salty. The texture of the noodles was perfect: just a little chewy. We loved all the toppings. The corn and bean sprouts added crunch and fresh flavor, while the bamboo had a more savory, earthy taste. The pork fat melted in our mouths, making us temporarily forget about the frigid hellscape that awaited us outside. Although well-seasoned, the egg was a little overcooked with the yolk edges nearly cooked all the way. The bowls were enormous, so even though it’s a little pricier, Table to Stix was well-worth the cost.

The interior of Viet Nom Nom was forgettable, like most quickbite restaurants. Although there’s limited seating, the service was quick; the proximity to campus is also a definite perk on a weeknight. Our hunger pangs went crazy when we saw the glowing white neon “nom nom nom” sign, so we both ordered pho with pork, which came with bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, green onion and lime. For an additional 50 cents, we added crispy shallots, totaling just over $10.

Our Hot Take: The first thing we noticed was the texture of the noodles. They seemed undercooked and a bit stiff, which emphasized the lukewarm temperature of the soup. The room-temperature broth was a letdown, especially because we were looking forward to hot soup after being cold outside. The pho didn’t have the beef broth that purists like us expect. In fact, the menu didn’t have beef at all, offering only pork, chicken, tofu and shrimp. On the plus side, the veggie broth option means Viet Nom Nom is vegetarian-friendly.

That being said, we don’t plan on going back anytime soon.

Tucked between a Pizza Hut and a Subway, Siam Splendour didn’t look like anything special from the outside. On the inside, however, it was spacious and inviting. Siam Splendour was definitely more of a sit down restaurant, so don’t go in expecting a fast meal. If you frequently eat at Thai restaurants, you can already picture the restaurant’s interior with incense at the door and stylized animal artwork. For just $10, you can get pad thai which is big enough for two full meals.

Our Hot Take: Siam Splendour was a 14-minute walk from campus, a little long for us.

Although we were on a mission for noodles, we were hungry, so we ordered the lime chicken appetizer. It blew us away. The crispy chicken was the perfect start to a delicious meal. Once the main course came, we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of chicken in the pad thai. The noodles had a rich peanut flavor without being too sweet, and were complimented by the zestiness of the lime. We were full from the chicken and the large portions. Both of us took pad thai to-go and were thankful we could stay in for dinner.

Winter 2019 | 9

Sending it back Evanston’s own post office is a New Deal relic.

WRITTEN BY MOLLY GLICK | DESIGNED & PHOTOGRAPHED BY SAKKE OVERLUND

trek to the post office likely conjures hesitation and dread in any mortal being. Few first-time visitors to the Evanston Post Office on Davis Street expect the gold-covered aluminum structures of men slinging bulging bags of mail, their expressions strained. What, exactly, do striking, severe metal figures have to do with mail?

In 1937, the United States sat sandwiched between the Great Depression and World War II. Evanston, meanwhile, decided it needed a new post office. The city sought out artists to spruce up the new building, funded by the Department of Treasury’s New Deal Section of Painting and Sculpture.

The city commissioned Robert I. Russin, a lauded Wyoming sculptor known for his public building art, to complete the two lobby figures. Their titles, Throwing the Mail and Mail Handler, are pretty straightforward. The golden men resemble the Monopoly figures that one might lose under the couch.

Outside, two limestone relief sculptures deliver a more ambiguous

A

10 | Winter 2019

message. Armin A. Scheler carved out the ominously named exterior works: The Message and The Answer.

In the latter sculpture, a woman sits on a crooked tree with a man at her feet. “The Message” seems to align with the New Deal’s nationalistic drive for economic prosperity. A rugged man, barefoot, surveys land with an early model tool while the other looks on adoringly. “[In the Section of Painting and Sculpture art], the people are very rounded and strong,” says Heidi Hoppe, owner of the Evanstonbased architecture firm, Heidrun Hoppe Associates.

Evanston’s somewhat frightening post office art is no rarity. Along with the other members of the non-profit Design Evanston, Hoppe documented the city’s architectural history in the 2016 book, Evanston: 150 Years, 150 Places. The authors learned that the Evanston Post Office is just one of over 1,100 New Deal post offices throughout the country.

Through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, the municipal governent commissioned artists to install pieces in public spaces. Post offices are an

important symbol of the government, Hoppe says, which presented an opportunity to quell residents’ anxiety during the Great Depression. “[The government] thought if they would build these post offices, which were beautiful and solid, then that would give people hope,” Hoppe says.

The city also hosts artworks constructed by the New Deal’s Public Works Administration.

They reflect the Machine age aesthetic: think metal, stone and brass. Evanston’s public schools once displayed plenty of New Deal art, Hoppe writes in Evanston: 150 Years, 150 Places. While most works have disappeared with renovations, a few remain. Nichols Middle School still displays pieces by the Harlem Renaissance painter Archibald Motley Jr., one of the only Black New Deal artists.

“In downtown Evanston, we have this built reminder of what was going on in our country in the 1930s,” Hoppe says. “It represents a history that some of us lived through, some of us didn’t live through, some of us will never live through in the future.”

dance floor Letters to my family | 16 Screen solidarity | 20 The things she carried | 24 Sharing a laugh | 27

Winter 2019 | 11

Show me the ropes

At the Actors Gymnasium, Northwestern theatre students reach new heights.

WRITTEN BY AMELIA LANGAS DESIGNED BY EMILY CERF PHOTOGRAPHED BY LETA DICKINSON

he summer after her second year at Northwestern, theatre major Becca Schwartz signed up for a summer intensive at the Actors Gymnasium to strengthen her circus skills. Over six weeks, she tested out aerial apparatuses like silks, trapeze and the lyra, a suspended hoop for dancing in mid-air.

During the intensive, Schwartz fell in love with the aerial net

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12 | Winter 2019

that she describes as a hammock.

It’s suspended far higher than the portable ones dotting the lakefill, though.

“I got on this aerial net and things just sort of clicked in for me,” Schwartz says, smiling as she recalls her fondest memory at the Actors Gym. “I understood how to manipulate it and use it to my advantage. I remember Sylvia [Hernandez-DiStasi] came over and looked at me and was just like, ‘Yeah,

I think you found your apparatus.’”

Schwartz says Actors Gym training has given her unique skills beyond acting and singing to better market herself as a performer.

Casting people with experience in aerial dance, or other circus arts, allows directors to do something “new and exciting” with their productions, she says.

At the Actors Gym, tucked inside Evanston’s Noyes Cultural Arts Center, you notice the chill

Show me the ropes | DANCE FLOOR

immediately.

Floor-to-ceiling windows invite cold air inside, and cavernous ceilings hold ropes and silks extending down to the padded floor. The classroom doubles as a performance space with a curtain draped behind the stage and chairs awaiting an audience.

Artistic Director Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi co-founded the gym in 1995 to develop actors’ movement and physical theater skills through circus, gymnastics, drumming in addition to voice classes. The increasingly popular classes have since been refined to focus on circus arts, such as trapeze, contortion and unicycling.

Hernandez-DiStasi is a petite middle-aged woman with a soft yet authoritative voice, ideal for gently critiquing students. She literally grew up in a circus; her parents were circus performers, traveling with the likes of the Ringling Bros Circus. By age 5, Hernandez-DiStasi went out in the ring with her parents.

Seeking change, she moved to Chicago in 1989 and began coaching circus movement at the Lookingglass Theatre Company.

“There’s something about the camaraderie of a circus class that I think is like nothing else,” Hernandez-DiStasi says. “It’s noncompetitive and people are very supportive and not judgmental.

Everyone can get to where they want to get to.”

Around 1998, HernandezDiStasi’s ex-husband Larry DiStasi — who graduated from Northwestern with a theatre B.A. in 1988 — initiated a partnership with the Northwestern Theatre Department. After all, the Gym sits down the street from the University.

Until this year, HernandezDiStasi taught the second year movement classes at the Actors Gym. She currently teaches a similar class in Northwestern’s Wirtz Center. Students previously took eight hours of Actors Gym class per quarter, learning the basics of circus performing such as ball balancing, juggling and trapeze.

The students wear typical workout clothes: women in leggings, men in shorts and everyone in sweatshirts. After a couple of laps, some stretching, cartwheels and somersaults, they begin shedding sweatshirts and long-sleeve shirts to reveal T-shirts and tank tops.

Farrah Sklar, a third year theatre major, took the 2018 winter quarter class. Sklar had prior gymnastics experience and says she looked forward to her first circus course.

Not everyone in her acting class had a relevant background, though.

A nervous energy resonated in the Gym’s frigid air.

“We were definitely trying to see what we could do, flexibility-wise and strength-wise,” Sklar says.

The group gained confidence over the course of four classes.

After mastering a complex juggling technique, Sklar was so successful that she bought her own equipment and practiced outside of class.

“By the last day, we had all watched each other try and fail and succeed at so many things. We were all more comfortable to try these things and more excited to push ourselves,” Sklar says.

In addition to a Northwestern class and the Lookingglass Theatre partnership, the Actors Gym offers child and adult classes, a professional training program, a youth circus company and summer camps. The Gym maintains an active presence in Evanston, Hernandez-DiStasi says.

“It’s a huge part of the makeup that is unique to Evanston.

Not every community has ... a professional circus training program in their backyard,” Hernandez-DiStasi says. “If you go down Noyes Street or you take the Purple Line in the summer, you’ll see kids walking stilts and riding unicycles … My son said, ‘We’re all a little bit different, and with circus, we find out how we are the same.’”

Winter 2019 | 13

Th_ mi_sing vari_ble How Northwestern’s female engineers are working to close the industry gender gap.

WRITTEN BY SYLVIA GOODMAN | DESIGNED BY AINE DOUGHERTY

hen Molly Dudas first walked into her internship with an engineering design company, she was shocked to see the 79 other interns. Except for one of the two directors, she was the only woman in the design studio. Later, when Dudas was chatting with the directors, they told her that they would have loved to include more women in the program, but they only received three applications.

Though Dudas was frustrated by the lack of women engineers, she at least felt hopeful because one of the directors was female.

Of the executive leadership within the top 20 grossing U.S. engineering companies, only 11.6 percent are female. Many of those women hold positions not directly related to engineering, such as ethics and compliance officer or marketing and communications director. And this trend begins long before reaching the top of the corporate ladder: like many schools, Northwestern has few women engineering students and even fewer in leadership positions.

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high at the time. By 2018, this number had increased marginally to 34 percent. Worsdall points out that McCormick’s gender proportions match the numbers at many of Northwestern’s peer institutions, like Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, which is about 27 percent female.

Representation may have improved, but it’s still not equal.

Inequality pervades the experiences of many female engineers, like Dudas, who joined the Society for Women Engineers (SWE) to address this phenomenon. She eventually became the director of HeforSWE, a program that educates men and engages them in the conversation about gender discrimination. The main mission of HeforSWE is to train male advocates to feel more responsible for their own behavior, as well as their colleagues’.

Most students know how to recognize outright sexism in the classroom and workplace. However, much of the sexism in STEM is more insidious. Jacqueline Vega, the president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers

“ Your gender does not give

you an advantage when using a calculator.

“

– Ellen Worsdall, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at McCormick Ellen Worsdall, McCormick’s assistant dean of student affairs, says that when she first came to Northwestern 19 years ago, her job was to increase the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds in McCormick and to improve their experience. Around 28 percent of students were women — a number considered relatively

14 | Winter 2019

(SHPE), knows about this kind of sexism: the kind that builds up over time, erodes your confidence and makes you question your abilities and convictions.

“I’ve had teachers who have actually told me, ‘Oh, maybe you should reconsider engineering.

Your grades are on the lower end of the scale,’” Vega says. “This is what

I want to do. I was just trying to ask for help.”

Vega wondered whether these teachers would have said the same thing to her male peers. Weathering the constant storm of disapproval is tiresome and frustrating, and not all women make it out to the other side. Several female engineers at a SWE event described it as “death by a thousand cuts.”

While Dudas estimates that 30 to 40 percent of executive boards of STEM clubs are female at Northwestern, the number of female presidents of engineering clubs gave her a rude awakening.

While attempting to organize a focus group of men leading engineering clubs for HeforSWE, Dudas realized that almost all of the clubs she looked at had male presidents. At a HeforSWE workshop, participants noted that women often hold positions like social or philanthropy chair, sitting in the background with more stereotypically “female” roles while men stand at the front as president or project manager.

To name a few, Northwestern’s chapters of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Baja SAE (a club that builds small offroad vehicles), the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Neuro Club, NU Robotics, NUSTARS, Formula Racing and more all have male presidents.

Alice Eagly, a Northwestern psychology professor who has written numerous publications about women in leadership positions, stressed the importance of getting leadership experiences, especially in college. So, why aren’t there more women engineers in leadership positions at Northwestern?

Simply put, there are fewer

The missing variable | DANCE FLOOR

women to fill leadership positions in the first place. There are also few female faculty members in McCormick, though this is the norm among engineering schools.

Worsdall provided the same reasoning for the small number of female student leaders as faculty.

“You don’t ever want to hire someone just because they fit into a box, right?” Worsdall says.

“The pool for female faculty is smaller than that for male faculty. And so we have to do more to change the pool.”

For this reason, Worsdall runs programs to increase the number of women entering engineering in the first place. According to Worsdall, Northwestern has worked hard to grow its female engineering base and is happy with its progress.

“We’ve made changes to the programs because of insight from students or suggestions from students, but basically the bones of the programs were created long before I came,” says Worsdall.

Worsdall is in it for the long game; progress has been ongoing but slow. Societal influences discourage women from entering engineering, Worsdall says, which are hard to change in just one generation.

“I think there’s all these subtle messages if you’re a female that maybe you should look at something else. Maybe you should work with people more,” Worsdall says. “Your gender does not give you an advantage using a calculator. If you look at AP high school physics classes and calculus classes, we still have students who talked about how there were only two girls in their physics class.”

Worsdall says that the only way to fight these influences is to support young women early through programs that shift them away from an anti-math perspective.

Now, some of the students Worsdall reached out to early in her career are enrolled in Masters and PhD programs. Worsdall proudly displays

Of the executive leadership within the top 20 grossing U.S. engineering companies, only 11.6 percent are female.

Editor’s note: The terms “male” and “female” are used in this graph according to the way in which the statistics were reported.

Percentage of women students in McCormick

34% 28%

2000

2018

on her filing cabinet the graduation announcement of one student whom she mentored as a sixth-grader.

In McCormick, the retention rate of female students is actually higher than that of male students.

Ninety-three percent of female students stick with engineering, compared to 87 percent of male students. Worsdall attributes the healthy retention rate to a growing support and mentorship system for female students. Comparatively, according to SWE, over 32 percent of women switch out of STEM degree programs in colleges across the country. This number is staggering considering that fewer women are admitted into STEM programs in the first place.

Despite low enrollment statistics and stifling stereotypes, Dudas remains hopeful that programs like HeforSWE can do some good.

HeforSWE programming inspires her and fuels her desire to keep going in the industry. Even if it’s slow, the field of engineering is changing and executives are becoming more sensitive to the challenges women face in engineering and other similarly male-dominated fields, Dudas says.

Dudas remembers one speaker at a SWE event who discussed a specific time when she didn’t have to stand up for herself. When the speaker worked in a cooperative education program, an indirect superior cut her off and spoke to her rudely at a board meeting; she felt like she couldn’t say anything.

A fellow male intern told their boss, who, at the next meeting, told the man to apologize to her. The relief she felt that she wouldn’t have to confront him herself or, worse, deal with further disrespect, was palpable.

“We’re trying to promote stuff like that,” Dudas says. “Not that we can’t stand for ourselves. But why should we always have to?”

INFOGRAPHICS BY AUDREY VALBUENA

Winter 2019 | 15

First-generation students reflect on their college experience.

WRITTEN BY VARIOUS AUTHORS DESIGNED BY SARAH ZHANG

Editor’s note: these letters have been edited and condensed for clarity. Find the full-length letters on our website.

I

don’t FaceTime you as much anymore because your red eyes sadden me. You smile at me and tell me everything is going okay at home.

Maiye, I always know more than you know. Your back aches from spending hours on your feet. Your heart aches because your youngest was pushed out of high school. Your eyes look at me with so much hope because I am your first.

I am your first child in this world, the first in our family to immigrate, the first to go to university.

Sometimes, I want to cry with you, too.

They don’t always understand me here. They pretend I don’t exist, use words and mannerisms I don’t understand and make me feel like I do not belong. I do not, but you taught me that I must create belonging for myself. I will remember you coming home from work and telling me, “I know my English is not good, but my work is good. That is why they love me.”

16 | Winter 2019

You’ve shown me that only I can create my own path to success; because no one will build it for me. Getting here and navigating has been hard, but, Maiye, I am doing it.

I know you are scared. I’ve been raped, jailed, stalked and more since I started at Northwestern. Yet you remain hopeful. I’ve seen the world from Israel to Detroit to Germany. In spite of my hardships, I’ve continued to excel academically. I helped launch the Black Mentorship Program, a peer-to-peer organization that provides Black first-years with the support and community I did not have coming in. I’ve continued to spark controversy with a “Canada Goose is Classist” poster and support others who are also first-generation and low-income. I’ve done so much with what I have because I know there’s no other choice.

It’s not your fault that life has happened this way.

You’ve done so much more than you realize, Maiye.

You’ve shown me resiliency in the face of abuse and neglect. You’ve shown me how to give more than I have to others. Without these lessons, I would not be the person I am today.

You couldn’t give me silver spoons, but you gave me love. Thank you, Maiye.

This degree will always be for you.

I

’m about to become the first person in our family to graduate from a four-year institution.

I thought I had already honored our family by becoming the first high school graduate, but now this accomplishment means much more.

It will change our lives forever.

In my time at Northwestern, I have already experienced what life has in store for me. I arrived at this school penniless. There were times when I had a negative value in my bank account. I worked strange hours to make enough money to get by. This school broke me.

I didn’t realize how difficult it would be. I’ve had to fight

Letters to my family | DANCE FLOOR

depression and poverty — at the same time. After four years of fighting, I can finally say I’ve made it out. High school was so easy by comparison, but I learned how to navigate and make the best of this system. During my time here, I worked on five scientific research projects and studied abroad in Ecuador and Costa Rica. This school taught me things about myself I never would have imagined, and I had to learn about my limits the hard way. I’m leaving here a different person, strengthened by this rigorous curriculum and ready to accept even greater challenges coming my way.

Although I have great pride in my accomplishments, I also feel great sorrow. I’m sorry for not calling as much as I should have and never relying on you. I’m sorry I never sent money back home.

And, Mom, I know you must feel sorry, too. I know it’s difficult being unable to send money when

you knew I was struggling.

I know it’s difficult to see me come home and share what I’ve learned, yet not understand any of it. I’d also like to believe that you feel sorry for denying my mental illness and making me feel this was God’s form of punishment. It’s difficult for all of us. Mom, I know I will never be able to fully relate to you because, despite our similar roots, we now live in different worlds.

I wish I could offer you more and make your wildest dreams come true. I wish you didn’t have to struggle anymore. I wish you didn’t have to work 50 hours a week to keep our family afloat. You’ve lived a hard life, and I’d like to imagine that our lives will be different now.

All I know is that we’re both fighters and we’ll figure it out as it comes.

The greatest thing you taught me was resilience. I know we’re going to be resilient together.

Love, Jennifer.

you understood my experiences, you never stopped supporting me.

You both know what it’s like to start college: leaving home for the first time, thrown into an entirely different environment that no amount of training or television

could prepare you for. You both longed for the company of family and the comfort of your mother’s cooking, disappointed when served tasteless Mexican food. You both have sat in a classroom with other anxious strangers, all learning

I

’m incredibly lucky to have you as parents. I couldn’t have asked for parents who never let me quit at the first sign of failure, who told me after my first ACT that I could do better and reminded me that a misstep — a failed calculus exam, a rejection from a dream school — doesn’t mean all is lost. You didn’t want me to be a writer because you thought I wouldn’t make money, yet you also taught me to stick up for myself: if I can’t, who will?

I’m sorry for not calling as often as I promised or visiting home as much as I should. I already know what Mom will say: “Don’t say sorry, just do it!” I have one year left to do everything I’m too scared of doing or am saving for the right time — though I’ve learned there is no such thing as a “right time.”

Even when I refused to believe

Winter 2019 | 17

DANCE FLOOR | Letters to my family

English to survive. You know what it’s like to not fit in, to try so hard and lose yourself in the process. The feeling of wanting to be anywhere else is one too familiar and painful. I’m sorry for not telling you this sooner.

I’m one year short of earning my degree, meaning you’re one year away from earning yours. It would’ve been nice if you could’ve shown up

I

t’s difficult to find the right words. I’m sitting in Norris, watching the lake’s waves, and this feels more like a letter of congratulation.

My diploma will represent your accomplishment more than my own. Before I ventured out to become our family’s first college graduate, this started as a dream you shared: creating a future where your children would never doubt their promise and importance or experience the same roadblocks and lost opportunities as you did.

As you know, I haven’t always

18 | Winter 2019

to my 9 a.m. classes when I was too lazy to get up, but I’ll get over it. If only Mom were here to nudge me after one too many alarm snoozes.

It doesn’t feel like it’s been two years since Mom and I held each other and cried in the fifth floor Hinman lounge, two years since Dad handed me that $100 bill and said, “This is twice the amount I had

felt like I had a place here. Being first-generation at Northwestern makes me question if I was built to succeed in an institution favoring affluence. I entered my first year chemistry lecture and heard my peers talking about generations of family working in medicine.

In those moments, I reminded myself that future challenges would pale in comparison to the sacrifices you made for me. I cannot tell you how much our daily phone calls and weekends back in River Forest, filled with squeeze hugs and special home-cooked meals, have

in my pocket when I came here.”

This season of our lives doesn’t feel close to being over. Thank you for giving me the privilege of a college education and believing in me when I wanted to give up. I haven’t made it to the end yet, but I can’t wait to celebrate together when I do. This one’s for you, Mom and Dad. Love, Elly. fueled me. The love in your smiles and the warmth of your hugs are my greatest source of inspiration in this unfamiliar environment.

My deepest life lessons have come not from Northwestern, but from you both. You two are the wisest professors I’ve ever had. You have taught me how to love boldly, to give freely, to live righteously, even when no one is looking, and Dad to exemplify faith and courage, even in the face of death.

Dad — I love you more than you will ever know. My greatest pride will always be that I’m your little girl. You are my hero and I will carry you in my heart until we are together again.

Mom — you are my absolute best friend. I cannot thank you enough for modeling what strong womanhood looks like. I pray I can become half the woman you are. I love you, always.

To my brothers — may we find prosperity through our education, share successes with others, and remember that real esteem comes from character. Even when we desperately needed others’ support, Mom opened our doors to struggling relatives and Dad worked overtime to help others, often without compensation. I hope you both will follow in their steps and continue living in service of others. I love you more than you will ever know and pray you both feel Dad’s utmost love and respect when thinking about the incredible men you have become. I could not be prouder to be your sister. You are more than just my brothers; you are my best friends.

Love, Marissa.

We visited three Evanston grocery stores to find the best produce deals.

MORE

When students move off-campus, they face a range of new lifestyle obstacles. The most challenging, though, is cooking healthy meals for yourself once you have to buy groceries.

How do students get their nutrients without the cornucopia of Sargent produce? I visited the most common grocery stores in Evanston to find the optimal place to buy fruits and vegetables.

Here are some handy graphs to inform your next grocery run.

$3.97

B

$ per lb

$3.33 $2.64

E

$2.50

$4.29 $3.18

$1.44

WRITTEN BY GABE SCHMITTLEIN DESIGNED BY ALENA RUBIN

WF $2.99

J-O

$1.99

TJ’s

$4.13

NA

$1.07

FOR YO U R

$3.40

B

E

Buy packaged produce (strawberries, mushrooms, brussels sprouts, etc.) at Trader Joe’s. Do not buy these items at Jewel-Osco!

$3.99

Produce prices at Whole Foods, Jewel-Osco and Trader Joe’s compared to the national average.

Evanston’s supermarkets are almost always more expensive than the national average, with one exception — romaine lettuce.

$0.97 $0.68 $1.95

Data Collection

C U

TS $3.99

$2.99

Whole Foods has a reputation for being expensive, and the data supports that. However, if you’re in the market for baby carrots, Whole Foods is the place for you.

I began with a survey of about 40 off-campus Northwestern students. A consistent takeaway from these surveys was that cost dictated how offcampus students eat. I continued my data collection by recording the prices of fruits and vegetables at three of Evanston’s main supermarkets.

At each store, I tried to find similar items (same weight, packaging, etc.) and converted the price to dollars per pound, comparing each with the national average.

Apples (and, to a lesser extent, oranges) are very expensive at Trader Joe’s because they price most of their raw produce “per item” rather than “per pound.”

$2.64 $2.79

K

$1.29 $1.49 $1.99 $0.77

Winter 2019 | 19

SOLIDARITY How Northwestern students rely on group chats to build community.

WRITTEN BY ALISA NAZAIRE | DESIGNED BY STEPHANIE ZHU Editor’s Note: The writer chose to use the spelling womxn to be more inclusive of all identities.

fnan Elsheikh stared down at her phone and felt alone. She found herself disappointed by a lack of connection to other Black womxn at Northwestern.

“I realized I didn’t know that many Black girls on campus,” she says.

Determined to change that narrative, Elsheikh and one of her friends would later create a space linking Black womxn from all over campus with the help of the messaging app GroupMe. A year later, Elsheikh stares down at her phone and watches the messages stream in from the group chat community she helped create.

For some Northwestern students with marginalized identities, these spaces connect them with others who look like and see the world like them. They check in with each other, complain, find comfort and laugh together knowing that this virtual space was created by them, for them and belongs to them.

Elsheikh and Jamaica

A

Blk ‘Cats

Ponder, both second years, started a group chat with their Black female friends last spring. But it wouldn’t

20 | Winter 2019

stay confined to that small friend group for long.

“At first, the group chat started with Black womxn in our year, and then, after that, upperclassmen were added,” Elsheikh says. “It just became all Black womxn on campus.”

For these two friends, the Blk ‘Cats chat became a step toward building the Black community.

“I think that it’s really, really hard to foster a cohesive sense of community because we’re constantly being forced to navigate within predominantly white spaces, whether it’s academics or extracurriculars,” Ponder says.

The Blk ‘Cats chat serves as a resource for Black womxn to connect and ask questions related to textbooks, joining student organizations, best places to get your hair/nails done, classes and more. I was added to the chat a few months before this school year started. Since then, I’ve found suggestions for the best eyebrow threading place in Evanston and gotten a textbook or two.

“It’s a lot easier to just open an app and say, ‘okay, this is what’s going on and these are things I can go to if I’m passionate about them.

This is the information I need to be there.’ It just makes it more accessible,”

Ponder says.

At a predominantly white university like Northwestern, it’s easy for Black students to feel disconnected from a larger Black community.

These students often find themselves separated by different majors, schools and activities.

“There’s a lot of fragmentation within the Black community,” Elsheikh says.

And that’s exactly why Ponder thinks this chat is so important. The chat currently has 175 members and is still growing.

“I also felt when I got here that there wasn’t as much a Black community as I would have wanted,” Ponder says.

“But then there are ways to mitigate the physical and logistical barriers to that.

And I think that group chats are a really good way.”

Many Black womxn on campus heard about Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, a visiting evolutionary psychology researcher, through the Blk ‘Cats chat. In 2011, Dr. Kanazawa published a highly controversial article titled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women,” which was brought up in the chat.

“

Screen solidarity | DANCE FLOOR

It’s a lot easier to just open an app and say ‘okay, this is what’s going on and these are things I can go to if I’m passionate about them.’

“We found out about it through the Blk ‘Cats group chat and like talked it through, decided next steps and actions,” Elsheikh explains.

Those next steps included sending emails expressing concern to the Northwestern Provost, starting a campuswide petition to have Dr. Kanazawa removed from campus and in-person discussions about how best to protest his presence at Northwestern.

In a lot of ways, group Where to Eat?

chats serve as safe spaces for underrepresented people, but their discussions aren’t always centered around those marginalized identities. Most of the time, third year LaTesha Harris, a Black womxn, uses her online spaces to kick back with her friends and have heated discussions about potential dinner spots.

“I’d say my biggest group chat right now is actually comprised of just gay people, bi people and gender nonconforming people,” Harris says. “There was this time where we argued about where to eat for like two hours.”

Harris says that the demographic configuration of the chat is purely a reflection of the people she chooses to surround herself with, rather than a coordinated affinity group. Beyond general groups, she also enjoys using themed group chats to send funny images and even talk about board games.

“I have one that we really only send memes in,” Harris says. “And I have another one for Dungeons and Dragons updates.”

Fourth year Brittany Owens, like many students, mostly

Secret Secret Group uses her personal group chats to release tension. She finds herself venting to her friends or sharing funny photos she’s stumbled across on Instagram.

But Owens also has a reputation for creating secret group chats that don’t include everyone. When it comes to celebrating birthdays of close friends and getting gifts together, she feels compelled to use covert group chats.

“Basically, it’s just discussing what you think the best gift idea is and then sharing prices and links to it,” Owens says.

For Owens, who enjoys the process of planning and giving surprise gifts best suited for each of her friends, this type of group chat is especially important.

“We can speak without having to speak in person because that is suspicious,” she says. “Especially if you’re in a friend group, it’s going to look suspicious if y’all are out whispering somewhere.”

Owens was once able to coordinate two different secret group chats at the same time, where people in group A were trying to get a secret gift for group B, without realizing group B was also setting up to surprise group A with gifts, as well.

“We presented the gifts at Taco Diablo, and they were unsuspecting. I think for me that was the most memorable,” she says. “The planning for that and trying to manage all these chats at once to pull off the surprise was good.”

Informal LTA

Third year Yurizet Villa finds comfort in the informal group chat of her sorority, Lambda Theta Alpha. In contrast, their

—Jamaica Ponder

”

formal chat focuses on topics surrounding business items, but their casual group chat is a place where she can talk about her day in a judgment-free zone.

“When something goes down that happens to you, and you have to tell a specific group of people that you’re comfortable with, they’re the first people.

I start sending capitalized messages like ‘OH MY GOD you won’t believe what just happened to me,’” Villa says.

Villa, a legal studies major, identifies as Mestiza — a woman of mixed race, descending from indigenous and Spanish ancestry. In a world that separates ethnicity and race into clearly defined boxes, this grouping feels more inclusive for Villa.

Lambda Theta Alpha is a Latina-based sorority that serves as a support system for womxn in higher education.

This informal group chat supports Villa and her fellow members by informing each other about resources.

“We also use this for a lot of reminders, like reminders to tell each other like, ‘hey, there’s an opportunity on campus, you should totally do this.’ Or, ‘if you want this free thing, there’s food here,’” she says.

Most importantly, the informal LTA chat provides a welcoming atmosphere.

Recently, Villa used the chat to talk about her interest in immigration law.

“I just felt my heart pour out all my passions. I sometimes feel like I can’t necessarily put [that] in just any type of group chat, you know?” Villa says.

“I find myself sometimes like policing myself to make sure I’m not talking about myself too much, but here I’m very comfortable to send like a thousand messages.”

Winter 2019 | 21

Leaving the nest WRITTEN BY TEJAV NARAYANAN

s a Hindu growing up in Christian school, my concept of spirituality fluctuated. All of my grandparents were eventually diagnosed with cancer, one by one. It was always surreal hearing that another one of my idols would die. My whole life felt like it was being pulled apart. I prayed daily to the gods to relieve my family’s suffering, but nothing happened. Were the gods not listening? Why should I pray if this would only lead to tragedy? My entire concept of spirituality was uprooted; I had to reinvent its very definition. Instead of losing faith, I developed a new version: an inward focus on my own soul instead of material objects.

I still focus on the higher powers, but now I think they’re meant to simply aid me in seeking inner peace.

I think of my paradigm shift as “leaving the nest.”

A

Finding faith in concert

Testimony for Christianity WRITTEN BY LEXI VOLLERO

was in seventh grade when I met Sarah. She was adopted and had moved countless times before turning 13, but she was radiant; she credited her “identity in Christ.” I wanted what she had. When she took me to her Bible study, I was floored. I had attended church but had no idea that Jesus was so important. I didn’t know I could have an active relationship with God, that Christianity is based in grace, or that I needed a savior in the first place.

This shift seemed wrong because I grew up attending an Episcopal school and in a nominally-Christian family divided between a Catholic dad and non-denominational Christian mother. As cliché as it sounds, in losing my religion, I found my relationship with God.

I

WRITTEN BY ELLY RIVERA

’m at an outdoor concert during first weekend in San Francisco, and the city welcomes me by hurling Home Depot-sized buckets of cold rain down my back.

I’ve been waiting for this one song the whole night, and HAIM tells everyone to turn on their phone flashlights.

Goosebumps from both the cold and the reverb of the guitar sprout on my arms, sealing my body in the moment with an ease that only music is capable of. I’m listening to this song in the rain and remember dancing in my childhood bedroom.

I attempt to make sense of feeling simultaneously empty and complete. I didn’t come here for answers, but the moment indicates that feelings disappear as easily as they emerge, just like this one will. When it’s over, I say goodbye to this night and the feeling I want to bring back home with me.

I

RE: Spirituality Whether it’s a standalone vignette or just a simple moment they can’t let go of, we asked students across campus to tell us a story in 150 words or less. This quarter’s theme is spirituality — however they choose to interpret it.

22 | Winter 2019

RE: Spirituality | DANCE FLOOR

The drug-laden quest for God WRITTEN BY NOAH FRANKLIN

Northwestern gospel choir

I

WRITTEN BY CLEON BECKFORD

was set to perform my first solo during the Northwestern Community Ensemble concert. As I figured out my expression, my heart beat loudly in my chest. Yet, when performing, I felt like someone else possessed my body and sang for me. I felt more than just a confidence boost; it was as if the Holy Spirit was guiding me. There came a point where I had to let go because focusing on my performance did not allow me to worship God. The Holy Spirit then gave me elevation and guidance outside my own ability. I didn’t think about my nerves; my heart was so focused that everything else melted away.

I

’ve had inconsistent results searching for God. One time, I put a tab of LSD on my tongue.

My friend explained how the world is a spider web.

Another time, I went to my friend’s apartment and ate some mushrooms. I laid down on a carpet and read him a book for three hours.

The book was about God, but I got really nervous because the narrative of ascendence didn’t feel like my own. Or like it ever would be. So, I got depressed and ate some dining hall cereal and went to bed at 7 p.m. The third time, I went biking with two friends. We ended up on this little sheltered beach on the Potomac River and, when we put our ears close to the surface and stirred the shells with our toes, it sounded like Pop Rocks.

When it started raining, we whirled a hammock over our heads like those beachball-colored parachutes in third grade gym class. Our world shrunk to the pinch of air between our three bodies, the rain thumping on our cocoon. It’s always a relief to come back to Earth. I’m getting tired of trying to leave.

“My entire concept of spirituality was uprooted; I had to reinvent its very definition.

Instead of losing faith, I developed a new version: an inward focus on my own soul instead of material objects.”

- TEJAV NARAYANAN

ILLUSTRATED BY RACHEL HAWLEY DESIGNED BY HENRY ROGERS

Winter 2019 | 23

The things she carried After five assault incidents on campus last fall, Northwestern women act live with heightened anxiety.

WRITTEN BY MILA JASPER | DESIGNED BY SARAH FERNANDEZ | PHOTOGRAPHED BY SAKKE OVERLUND

ersonal alarms. Whistles.

Pepper spray, batons or keys, facing outward, between the knuckles. This is just a sampling of the equipment Northwestern students — particularly those who identify as women — are using to arm themselves after incidents of harassment and grabbing rocked campus last fall.

But more important than the selfprotection strategies themselves is the psychological toll they represent. Regardless of what physical objects students carry, safety stress is an anxiety some aren’t putting down, even as the Northwestern University Police Department says that increased foot patrols and other tightened security measures have brought an end to the attempted grabbings.

P

When Kiana Jones steps off the shuttle, she has a block and a half to walk to her apartment. “Not that much,” the Weinberg third year says.

But every couple of seconds, every time she hears a sound, even if it’s her own footsteps, she looks to both sides. She will even do a complete 360, just to be sure that no one is approaching her from behind.

“It’s becoming habitual,” Kiana says. “I keep doing it, picking up my pace a little bit, and I’m like, ‘Why am I acting like this?’”

When she gets to her building, she enters a code and steps inside, shutting the door behind her quickly so it locks. “I go, ‘Okay,’ and I act like I didn’t just completely freak out outside.”

Kiana describes the incidents in the fall as wake-up call. She says

24 | Winter 2019

there was a stark difference in safety between Evanston and the Chicago neighborhood where she grew up, Morgan Park. The park nearest her house is notorious for shootings and fights, she says. By contrast, Northwestern and surrounding Evanston felt comfortable, especially because her cousin had also been a student here. Until the incidents.

"I got nervous in the fall and very scared and I'm like, 'I'm from Chicago,'" she says. "I wasn’t scared when my mom wouldn’t let me go to the park, and I wasn’t scared when there was a shooting … Why am I scared because of some wannabe kidnapper?” Jones says.

After two years of feeling secure in her environment, the

idea of people being assaulted is one Kiana can’t get out of her head. It’s the same for Camille Guzman, a McCormick second year who lives in Willard, adjacent to where some of the incidents occurred. She says that because of her proximity to the physical space where the grabbings occurred, safety is on her mind more than ever.

“Sometimes, I would totally forget about what happened and be close to the sorority quad, and then I would r e m e m b e r, and I’d be like, ‘Crap, I should be walking a lot faster,’” she says.

Camille and her friends have a group chat where they occasionally ask if they can call another member in the group so they can talk to someone until they reach the safety of home.

She says that her male friends help out, but that they don’t fully understand the impact the incidents have had on her and her female friends.

“They did express concern or sympathy for us,” Camille says, “but they didn’t seem visibly worried at all because it wouldn’t affect them.”

According to Wesley Skogan, a Northwestern political science professor who specializes in crime and policing, women have always felt more vulnerable to victimization. “At any level of actual crime, any level of actual real risk, there’s very substantial

difference between men and women,” Skogan says.

But the incidents last fall served as a pointed reminder that women are often targets, not just of harassment, but of physical, bodily harm.

On a cold and slushy Tuesday night, I joined a group of 15 women assembled in a second floor room in Norris. Hot pink goodie bags were lined up on a table pushed against the wall to make room for the circle of women, who were laughing with their peers as they flung their fists through the air.

We were learning how to punch, kick and claw our way out of danger during a self-defense class called “GRL PWR” hosted

by Victoria’s Secret PINK’s campus ambassadors. While it was high on branded freebies and positive affirmations, the group was gathered for serious reasons.

Near the end of the class, instructor Kayla Carter realized there wasn’t enough time left to talk about the three situations for which she had planned. She asked the group to vote: did they want to learn how to escape a choke, knife or grabbing situation? After some quiet murmuring, grabbing emerged as the victor. It felt like the most likely scenario the group would have to confront.

Kayla, a McCormick third year, always thought that learning self-defense was important for women. But after she heard about the third incident in the fall, she immediately scheduled a training for students living in Slivka, where she serves on the executive board. “[I felt] angry and frustrated with the administration and the police,” she says. “It’s sad but even sadder when the people who are supposed to be protecting us aren’t being transparent.”

Part of the confusion in the fall centered around the fact

that NUPD didn’t realize the events were connected until after the third incident. This was frustrating for a lot of students, who wanted as much information as possible, but Skogan says there are so many random incidents that it’s not always easy to discern a pattern with immediacy.

When it becomes clear that events are connected, “all of a sudden, people have probably the realistic sense that the place that they’re at is being targeted.” This is much more frightening for people than the possibility of a random incident perpetrated by someone who will probably never be seen again, according to Skogan.

At the beginning of winter quarter, NUPD announced that the assaults had stopped because of new safety initiatives they had spearheaded, in conjunction with the Evanston Police Department, as well as the foot and vehicular patrols they had stationed on the south end of campus, where the incidents took place. But not all students feel more comfortable around NUPD. "It wasn't a question, it was more of a, 'This would definitely help,'" Kiana says, referring to the decision to increase police patrols. “It may be good for ... white-identifying students, but for Black students, for Muslim students or any other identity it’s like … it actually made us go in the opposite direction of NUPD, which kind of defeats the point of having them there."

Kiana is addressing the specter of police brutality, an omnipresent issue in the news media and a particularly poignant problem for a community in the shadow of Chicago. Policing practices were deemed unnecessarily aggressive by the federal government in Chicago, and the Laquan McDonald case has been front of mind in the community since 2014.

Winter 2019 | 25

Kiana says she feels the problem is that NUPD doesn’t seem to have relationships with students. Just seeing a NUPD officer doesn’t make her feel any safer. “They don’t speak at all,” she says.

“I’ve walked past plenty of foot patrols, no acknowledgement, no ‘Are you OK? How are you doing?’

Nothing.”

Calls for stronger personal relationships between officers and the people they police are common in many communities, Skogan says. People want a level of familiarity with their police officers that breeds mutual respect and understanding.

But for police departments, it’s a challenge of resources.

“The organization has to believe that establishing that kind of rapport is important and important to the other things they do,” Skogan says. “Because if they’re doing that, they’re not doing something else – it’s a 100 percent tradeoff.”

NUPD went door-to-door in the area surrounding the location of the attacks to ask residents whether they would like to speak to officers about security planning and also hosted personal safety seminars in addition to the new safety initiatives, according to Deputy Chief of Police for NUPD Eric Chin.

Chin says it is NUPD’s goal to be approachable. “We know that a lot of our student base comes from other areas, and perhaps their relationship with their law enforcement agency isn’t quite the same as ours,” he says.

“What we would like to be able to do is dissolve that perception for students that come in.”

26 | Winter 2019

Throwing kicks towards Kayla’s face during the self-defense class felt awkward. But as she came around the room holding up pads to practice with a real target, nearly every woman in the circle asked to take an extra turn. *NAOMI ANDU CONTRIBUTED ADDITIONAL REPORTING

“Sometimes I would totally forget about what happened and be close to the sorority quad, and then I would remember and I’d be like, ‘Crap, I should be walking a lot faster.’”

– Camille Guzman

queued up the photo in my messages with my mom and paused before pressing the arrow to send it halfway across the country to her phone in Maryland. Would she understand? Would it be as funny to her as it was to me?

The last time I sent her an amusing post I saw on the Facebook meme group Subtle Asian Traits, the bilingual pun flew over her head. She panicked that I, her anemic daughter prone to fainting spells, had actually donated blood.

Before I could explain it was a pun, she frantically texted me to ban me from ever giving blood.

This time, for good measure, I added laughing emojis and let it whiz off to her phone. Almost immediately, the typing bubbles popped up.

Humor, especially puns, is difficult to communicate when the two parties vary in language fluency.

I grew up translating English jokes into Korean for my parents, and the other way around for my brother, often losing the wit found in the original language. Naturally, I got excited when I found funny things my entire family could enjoy, and this photo, I hoped, was something we could all understand.

My mom is taking too long to type what I hoped her immediate response would be: ㅋㅋㅋ, simple Korean characters that stand for laughter. Is she going to get on my case again? Am I going to have to explain the joke to her with my limited Korean writing skills?

My mom’s reply comes in, and I finally feel like I’ve succeeded. She responds how I normally would, as if she understands my hopes for bridging the gap between us with this joke. These three letters are enough for me: “LOL.”

I 하하 !

Sharing a

laugh Thanks to Facebook groups like Subtle Asian Traits and movies like Crazy Rich Asians, Asian culture has entered the mainstream.

WRITTEN BY SUMIN WOO | DESIGNED BY SARAH ZHANG

Subtle Asian Traits is part of a growing online trend of social media groups created for people to share jokes and relatable posts with peers. Created last September by a few Asian Australian teenagers,

Winter 2019 | 27

DANCE FLOOR | Sharing a laugh

the group now has over one million members from around the world. Joining Subtle Asian Traits is not contingent on a person’s race, ethnicity or culture, but those of Asian descent compose most of the group.

The memes in the group range from puns in various languages, including Vietnamese and Thai, and posts about bubble tea (a popular drink originating from Taiwan) to discussions about mental health as it pertains to Asians. Posts are pre-screened for inappropriate and offensive content by a group of administrators.

Northwestern third year Janet Lee, a self-described Korean American from the Midwest, was invited to join the group by her best friend from high school, a Korean Australian.

“She invited me to the page before it got so big, so I didn’t know it would take flight,” Lee says. “It was a lot more related to Asian Australian culture, and there were things so specific that I didn’t quite understand. Then I found some that were relatable.”

Thanks to a recent explosion of Asian culture in the media, the sudden rise of Subtle Asian Traits comes at a timely moment. The group was launched less than a month after the August 2018 releases of Crazy Rich Asians, the first Hollywood movie in 25 years to feature a majority-Asian cast, and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” a Netflix hit starring an Asian American woman in the lead role. “[After the movies], people are more empowered in their Asian identities, which is really cool,” says third year Shaleahk Wilson, who is Black and Japanese. “I feel like the group kind of complements, supplements that, helps that move forward.”

Subtle Asian Traits, Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before depict the narratives of Asians across the world. Memes, films, even food — Yakult, a probiotic drink that is a staple in my refrigerator at home, went viral after appearing in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before — share stories that, after going uncovered for years in the mainstream, are finally starting to be told.

Memes, films, even food... share stories that, after going uncovered for years in the mainstream, are finally starting to be told.

28 | Winter 2019

LOL.

Like Lee, I found my way into the group through my non-Asian friend, third year Juan Solera, who was already a member. Solera, who only stayed in the group for a few weeks, was added randomly by a friend.

“In the beginning, I thought it was really funny because I have a lot of Asian friends, and what they do is on the meme page,” he says.

Ultimately, the posts in various Asian languages led Solera to leave the group.

“I didn’t understand what was going on, so I had no point in being there,” he says.

Unlike Solera, language sparked second year Kanaan Dopp’s involvement with the group. Dopp, who is white, minors in Asian Languages and Cultures with a concentration in Chinese language. “[A friend who speaks Chinese] told me about this Facebook group … which had a lot of Chinese-language related puns, so I thought, ‘Okay, that is pretty cool,’” Dopp says. “Then I did see there’s a lot more to the posts than language. There are several other aspects of several other different Asian cultures.”

As in any meme group, a post’s applicability or appeal to each person varies, regardless of the intensity of the person’s affiliation with the group. Lee tends to not relate to the memes about bubble tea because she didn’t grow up drinking it as often as others. Dopp, whose Mandarin Chinese vocabulary is conversational, is a fan of fourpaneled language memes that make jokes or puns from similar characters and phrases because he can understand their humor.

Second year Diya Vuthandam, who is Indian, also picked up Mandarin while living in Singapore for eight years.

“I know it’s not my personal culture, but I do feel kind of connected to Chinese culture because I grew up around it,” Vuthandam says.

Sharing a laugh | DANCE FLOOR

Subtle Asian Traits has spawned multiple offshoot Facebook groups. There’s Subtle Asian Networking, which functions as a pseudo-LinkedIn. People can “auction” their friends into relationships using Subtle Asian Dating. Subtle Curry Traits, which Vuthandam is a part of, is specifically for South Asians.

With so many of the memes catered toward East and Southeast Asians, Subtle Asian Traits is where Vuthandam goes for humor, while she looks to Subtle Curry Traits for relatability.

“I think they’re really different. There’s obviously overlap between East Asian lifestyle and South Asian … [but] to have one big group for all of it is just too much,” she says.

Vuthandam added that Subtle Asian Traits and Subtle Curry Traits achieve similar purposes. Memes that are specific to certain cultures and traditions strike a chord with those who belong to them.

“I guess I was always a little bit insecure about my heritage. I’m sure everyone feels a little bit of that, so seeing memes about it and other people talking about … their culture, it’s nice to be a part of that,” she says.

Wilson says the memes on Subtle Asian Traits are funny because they are relatable and bring a sense of nostalgia.

“Growing up, I never felt like I belonged in either [ethnic] group,” he says. “[Now] I feel more connected because of the [meme] group to my Asian side because I think similar narratives growing up for Asians are highlighted by the group.”

Wilson, who wasn’t raised with traditional Japanese culture, says his relationship with Subtle Asian Traits is a distant one. Some of the jokes, especially those in the Japanese language, go over his head, but he can connect to the memes that bring him back to his memories growing up.

“They post a lot about, like, weird food combinations, and that reminded me of when my uncle visited from Japan,” Wilson says. “[He] would put ketchup on everything, which is a pretty common thing to do in Japan.”

Ultimately, the Facebook group has rekindled a deeper connection to his heritage.

“There’s such a large base of people who wanted to be a part of this community, are part of the community or people like me, who want to learn more about themselves,” Wilson says.

Lee is contributing to the wider visibility of Asians on campus as the lead writer for an on-campus play called Project NU. She and four other Asian writers are collecting interviews from a variety of students to showcase their stories as part of Project NU, which she says is meant to “collectively reflect on the different experiences of Northwestern students.”

She focused on a specific demographic on campus because “Asian international or Asian American students are individuals in everyone’s classrooms, sharing the campus and the college experience,” she says. “These are Northwestern stories that are relevant to everyone. This is very much the story of our campus whether everyone thinks about it or not.” Thanks to Lee’s efforts, Asian culture at Northwestern keeps growing, alongside Subtle Asian Traits.

“Growing up, I never felt like I belonged in either [ethnic] group. [Now] I feel more connected ... to my Asian side.”

– Shaleahk Wilson I’m still in Subtle Asian Traits.

Though the numerous posts from its large membership are starting to get a little overwhelming, this group is an outlet I’ve felt such a strong connection to. I tag my friends in memes that have applied to us throughout the years and message my brother ones about growing up in an Asian household while trying to assimilate into other cultures.

After sharing memes from Subtle Asian Traits, I’ve discovered that my dad and I share a love of “dad jokes,” apparently bemoaned and amusing in any culture. Though it seems like a trivial meme group to most people, Subtle Asian Traits has let me reconnect on some level with my parents and their senses of humor. Despite generational, cultural and language barriers, I can finally send them things that make me laugh and know will make them laugh, too.

Winter 2019 | 29

WRITTEN, DESIGNED & PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKITA AMIR

COLOR BLOCKED Northwestern theatre’s color-conscious casting policy aims to diversify the stage. But sometimes, it shuts out actors of color instead. ook at that crowd out there. What’s the ratio of people of color to eight-byeleven computer paper lookin’ motherfuckers?”

That was just one of the fourth wall breaking

“L

30 | Winter 2019

lines of dialogue written by Rishi Mahesh for AME%/ X72#3ICAN MADE, a play produced by Spectrum Theatre Company in January.

The play was born out of Mahesh’s desire for students to watch

something entirely written and created by people of color. The truth of the theatre scene is that, on any given night, the ratio of a Northwestern audience consistently skews white.

But this lack of diversity doesn’t just exist in the audience.

In fact, out of the three productions featured that night, AME%/ X72#3ICAN MADE was the only one with a

non-white actor. With fewer students of color, audition rooms end up overwhelmingly white — and this carries to the stage.

Mahesh, who is Indian American, has faced the challenges of colorconscious casting along with the other handful of theatre majors of color.

Color-conscious casting, a common practice at Northwestern and in the greater theatre world, is a policy intended to avoid whitewashing roles meant for people of color. For example, if a script includes a Latinx role, then the actor casted must be Latinx. In theory, this is beneficial because it prevents white actors from being cast in roles clearly meant for specific nonwhite ethnicities. However, theory and practice don’t always align.

In an environment where the majority of writers, directors and actors are white, color-conscious casting often works against people of color. When roles don’t prescribe a specific race or ethnicity, the casting tends to presume whiteness. This leaves people of color with limited options for potential roles: they’re often only cast in roles specifically designated as “ethnic,” but there are few of these roles to begin with.

RTVF major Ariella Khan is Pakistani, and family members have often told her she’s lucky to look ethnically ambiguous. Khan voiced the concern other actors of color face when cast for an ethnically-specific role: Did I get this because I’m good or because I look a certain way?

Khan’s frustration with the word ‘ethnic’ has

reached new heights during her time at Northwestern.

Her screenwriting work usually features Pakistani

“EVERYONE HAS AN ETHNICITY. WHY ARE YOU CALLING EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T WHITE AN ETHNICITY?” or Pakistani American characters, and when she shares it in creative writing classes, students often respond, ‘Is that what happens over there?’ or, ‘That’s so ethnic.’ “Don’t call it ethnic. I don’t understand that. Everyone has an ethnicity. Why are you calling everything that isn’t white an ethnicity? What does ethnic mean?” Khan says, her voice rising in exasperation.

Mutual frustration brought Khan and Mahesh together across two different majors to create AME%/X72#3ICAN MADE. They used the show to start a conversation about race and color with biting remarks on how tricky it is to navigate these conversations at places like Northwestern.

“How many times are we going to get people to hear what we have to say?”

Mahesh says. “Now that we have the audience of lilywhite Northwestern theatre

students, what is it that we want to say to them now?”

Valen-Marie Santos, a Latinx second year, took her concerns with the issue one step further.

After multiple rants with her friend Alessandra Hernández, the pair decided to start a new theatre board called Radius Theatre, which is “dedicated to creating theatrical opportunities for and amplifying the voice of students of color.”

As actors and writers of color, Santos and Mahesh both acknowledge the double-edged nature of the policy. During fall quarter, Mahesh was cast as a Latino man in the play “Earthquake Chica.”

The color-consciousness of this decision only extended to Mahesh’s skin color. While student directors make the effort to visually do justice to roles, the commitment to accuracy sometimes ends there. But Santos, who was on the production team for the show, concedes it was a tough call to make.

“It’s a slippery slope because you want to tell these stories about Latinx culture, and it just gets iffy because sometimes the story takes priority. But he learned [more] Spanish and he did it justice,” Santos says.

But the problem at hand is larger than colorconscious casting. It’s also about assumed whiteness — unless otherwise specified on call-back sheets, characters are thought of as white. To exacerbate this problem, actors are divided into two broad categories: white and non-white. This blunt dichotomy risks normalizing whiteness and othering everyone else. Even though Santos had no issue with Mahesh’s

COLOR BLOCKED | DANCE FLOOR

casting, she faces the same dilemma every time she walks into an audition room.

“Sometimes you’re just categorised as nonwhite. I’m a Latina, and I’m told to play a Middle Eastern person. I have to ask myself, is that okay and appropriate?

It becomes about how I look versus what I actually am,” she says.

Despite its intentions, color-conscious casting runs into this problem when diversity is more of a buzzword than a reality.

Santos sighs as she admits, “It’s really rough.

We can talk about how problematic it is; but also ... what else can they do?”

The roots of the problem don’t just lie in the lack of people of color auditioning but also the material selected and written for them.

With the conversation focused on casting, play selection ends up ignored as another factor in representation of actors of color on the stage.

Mahesh now makes it a point to audition with monologues written

by Indian playwrights because he wants to show students that people like him exist in the canon of theatre. “By putting their names in your head ... maybe that room of directors will use these people one day,” he says.

By this simple act of resistance, Mahesh asserts his identity and forces writers and directors to “look at me as an Indian person, not in spite of the way I look but because of it.”

Winter 2019 | 31

Familiar faces One Black writer finds a connection in service staff rather than the students and faculty.

I

WRITTEN BY SALINA TSEGAI | DESIGNED BY SARAH FERNANDEZ | ILLUSTRATED BY AUDREY VALBUENA

remember walking to Plex one night and being greeted by my aunt, who sat in a corner booth. I ordered a bowl of stir-fried rice that her coworker generously overflowed with noodles and asked about her daughters and how her back is doing.

She told me that her second daughter is still very picky with men and that her back hasn't felt right since the school year began.

Before her 30-minute break ended, she asked how I was doing, and I told her how hard the quarter had been.

She reminded me that I can do it. Our dinners, albeit short, feel like home.

I only feel this comfort when around someone who knows my experiences as a person of color on this campus.

Both of my parents work in the service industry — my dad is a taxi driver and my mother is a parking lot cashier. People who look like me dominate the industry, and sharing a racial identity with service workers allows for a connection and sense of mutual respect.

I expected Northwestern students to share my admiration for service workers, but this wasn’t as common as I hoped.

To grasp this disconnect, it’s necessary to address the racial and economic disparities that exist between Northwestern’s service workers and its students.

Compass Group employees make,

32 | Winter 2019

on average, $29,000 per year. The students they serve tend to be much wealthier: In 2014, 14 percent of Northwestern students represented the country’s top one percent (a family income of over $630,000). Only 3.7 percent of students came from families representing the bottom 20 percent income of about $20,000, according to the New York Times.

“There are a lot of rich people here ... They never had to think about service workers or what it’s like being poor,” Sharmain Siddiqui says. Siddiqui works with Students Organizing for Labor Rights (SOLR) to advocate for campus workers’ rights.

Students often view swiping into dining halls as a transaction instead of a human interaction, says second year Haku Blaisdell, rendering Northwestern's socio-economic divisions especially obvious.

“I think that is rooted in the way that we, as a society, see workers as disposable instead of as human beings,” Siddiqui adds.

Still, some employees form positive relationships with students. My aunt, Sowainesh, works for Northwestern Dining Services. The Compass Group transition has been hectic, she says, because Elder being closed for renovation crowds other dining halls.

Moments with students make the job worth it, Sowainesh says.

“I talk to them like they’re my kids,” she says. “I love them.”

Still, Sowainesh says her wage is lower than desired. Fortunately, SOLR works to protect employees from low wages and general workplace discrimination. During the January 30th extreme weather, SOLR petitioned the University to let workers stay home without dipping into sick days. They also raised $2,000 to cover transportation costs for those who trekked in.

Clear racial differences add to economic disparities between the workers and students. As of fall 2017, about 47 percent of Northwestern students identified as white. In comparison, only about 16.2 percent of American service workers were white, according to a 2017 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

There is little minority representation in the student body, especially in contrast with the service worker population. Only 6 percent of the student body is Black and 12.5 percent is Latinx, whereas Black and Latinx representation doubles among service workers.

Haku Blaisdell says her identity as a woman of Filipino and indigenous Hawaiian background fosters a bond between her and the Northwestern staff.

“As a person of color … I feel comfortable [around them],” Blaisdell says.

Being a minority determines the reality of my Northwestern experience. I'll always be proud to share significant parts of my identity with individuals as diligent and warm as service workers.

Still, I’ll always struggle to feel valued on this campus when seeing myself most in the overlooked and underappreciated staff. Their work is indispensable to our community: they sell us desperately needed Norris meals, clear our messes and provide stability among the NU chaos.

WHAT THE

HEALTH? Students struggle to navigate the healthcare system with minimal support.

mbrelyn Rodriguez can only remember one instance when she went to the doctor because she was ill. Her entire family was incredibly sick with what they thought was strep throat and needed a doctor to prescribe them antibiotics. They would go years without seeing the dentist; she remembers her mother trying to repair a lost filling with temporary sealant bought at the drugstore as opposed to seeking care. Due to fear of out-of-pocket costs, her family sought medical attention only when it was a real emergency. Otherwise, they had to “suck it up.”

Before coming to Northwestern, Rodriguez was on insurance through her father’s job, but it was insufficient for her healthcare needs. Now that she is a first year at Northwestern, Rodriguez is one of

ILLUSTRATIONS BY AUDREY VALBUENA & SARAH ZHANG

A

WRITTEN BY MAGGIE GALLOWAY DESIGNED BY AUDREY VALBUENA

FEATURES | What the health?

roughly 2,200 undergraduate students on the Northwestern University Student Health Insurance Plan (NUSHIP). Since enrolling in NU-SHIP, she has gotten a skin tag removed and a prescription for acne medication, services she would have considered out of the question on her old insurance.

Rodriguez, along with 668 other students, receives grant assistance for NU-SHIP through financial aid.

Compared to her old coverage, she feels grateful to have NU-SHIP. “I feel like even if I’m sick, I can go to the doctor, [even] if I just have a cold, which is a crazy phenomenon for me,” she says.

Not all students are as lucky as Rodriguez. Many do not have insurance as good as NU-SHIP, and some do not feel they can seek care while at Northwestern because of the costs. While there is grant assistance available for NU-SHIP, it isn’t publicized effectively enough to reach all the students who need it. Without quality insurance and knowledge of an alternative, some students are left feeling wholly responsible for their own health and with nowhere to turn.

“ I feel like even if I’m sick,

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Imani Harris worked three jobs over the summer to save for emergencies while at school. She encountered one within her first months on campus: her CAESAR account was frozen in November because she didn’t have all her required immunizations.

She scrambled to find a way to get the vaccine without having to pay the $230 out-of-pocket fee at Searle.

Imani, a Medill first year from Detroit, is insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan through her mother’s job. Her insurance only covers services provided through her primary care physician in Detroit and she does not have in-network providers locally.

Imani spent hours playing phone tag with her health insurance office and primary care physician. “It was kind of like, ‘Oh, this isn’t our problem, call this office,’ and then they’d be like, ‘This isn’t our problem, call this office,’” she says. It was “heartbreaking” to feel like none of these people cared and that she was alone in figuring it out. She ended up getting the vaccine at Searle and paid the fee from her savings. She

34 | Winter 2019

which is a crazy phenomenon for me.”

I can go to the doctor, [even] if I just have a cold,

worries that if she has a medical emergency it will financially impact her for the rest of her time at Northwestern, cutting into money spent on textbooks or activities with friends. “The money that I have, is all the money that I have,” she says.

Northwestern requires students to have insurance that meets a list of specific criteria, including in-network providers in the Evanston area. If their private insurance does not meet that criteria, they are signed up for NU-SHIP by default, and their student account is charged the hefty annual premium of $3,950.

Many students only know NUSHIP from the emails they receive in the summer asking to confirm or waive their coverage.

However, some out-of-state students fall through the cracks.

Imani is one of several students whose insurance doesn’t meet the University’s requirements and are paying the price for it. “I would probably have to think that I was … near death or be very, very hurt to go to Searle,” Imani says. “I don’t really want to have to worry about the bill.” Because of Imani’s financial situation, she is eligible for free health insurance through financial aid. But it was unclear to her if that was an option.

After submitting the paperwork for her meningitis vaccine, she visited the Office of Student Health Insurance to check if her insurance met the requirements or if she had been automatically charged for NU-SHIP. They told her that she had submitted proof of insurance for the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan plan and so was not on NU-SHIP. They never mentioned that it didn’t meet the school’s requirements.

The Office of Student Health Insurance relies mostly on selfreported information when it comes to whether students’ insurance meets Northwestern’s requirements. Kourtney Cockrell is the Director of Student Enrichment Services (SES), an office that works to support first-generation and low-income

What the health? | FEATURES

BI LL

She worries that if she had a medical emergency it would financially impact her for the rest of her time at Northwestern, cutting into money spent on textbooks or activities with friends.

Northwestern students. She says that because students self-report, problems arise when students think they have local coverage when, in fact, they don’t. “Sometimes the student and the parents are answering it incorrectly not on purpose, but [because] they don’t know,” she says.

Some insurance plans that do not meet Northwestern’s requirements are easy to flag.

Others are much harder to identify. For example, out-of-state Medicaid plans, a federal and state-run insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans. are not accepted by Northwestern.

However, many of these plans are run through private insurers and are labeled like a private plan, making it much harder to pick out. “There’s only so much that we can do because you’re talking ten thousand students,” says Pam Tackett, Student Insurance Program Interim Manager in the Office of Student Health Insurance. “We do try to make sure that they’re all covered, but there are some that are going to slip through.” Tackett says her office is currently looking into having an outside company audit students’ insurance waivers.

Meanwhile, insufficient publicity surrounding NU-SHIP grant assistance is keeping some students in the dark who would otherwise qualify. Rodriguez’s insurance plan did not meet Northwestern’s requirements, and she was frantic about what to do, considering her family could not afford the $3,950 premium. She didn’t always know financial aid for NU-SHIP was an option and went through a difficult process to find out.

“I was freaking out about it, and then it was the day it was due, and I called Financial Aid and I was just like, ‘Hey, I don’t know what to do about this, and I don’t have $4,000 to just pay for it,’” she says. They took a look at her financial aid reward and told her that she could probably qualify for financial aid for NU-SHIP. Until that moment, she hadn’t known that was an option. She filled out the application, and it was quickly accepted. She then got the immunizations, with no out-of-pocket cost, and the hold was removed from her account. In terms of publicity, Cockrell says, “It is an iterative process, and I think we’re improving every year.”

Brian Drabik, Senior Associate Director in the Office of Undergraduate Financial Aid, says that for the past two years his office has sent out emails over the summer to students who qualify for NU-SHIP assistance — students whose annual expected family contribution is $10,000 or less.

Students who didn’t fill out the necessary forms after the first email were then sent another. In the Purple Prep book, the health insurance section briefly mentions that “Pell-Grant eligible students may be able to obtain funding to cover the insurance premium.” It also encourages students to contact Financial Aid for more information.

Winter 2019 | 35

FEATURES | What the health?

This increase in communication has led to 156 more students receiving some form of grant assistance this year compared to the 2017-2018 school year. “We do a lot of outreach,” Drabik says, “so I think you’d be hard–pressed to find someone that is in that range that doesn’t have the assistance.”

That said, it seems that these methods of advertisement haven’t been enough. While some students found health insurance assistance easily, others who meet the qualifications, like Imani, don’t remember any mention of health insurance assistance or had a difficult time finding out how to apply, like Brett Mayfield, a first year QuestBridge scholar, from Welch, Oklahoma.

Mayfield first discovered the option through an email with “a very small clause at the bottom.” He says the email didn’t explain how to apply. Through a group chat with other QuestBridge scholars, Mayfield found the health insurance aid request application “deep in the internet.” Since students self-report if their insurance meets Northwestern’s requirements and there are holes in the existing audit process, the Office of Student Health Insurance may not know the number of students who should be receiving NU-SHIP through financial aid but instead are living without quality access to care.

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In comparison to many public and some private insurance plans, NU-SHIP is good health insurance. The annual deductible (the amount paid before insurance begins covering costs) is $250 per policy year. In contrast, the average deductible for individuals with Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans gained during the 2018 Open Enrollment Period was $4,578. Under NU-SHIP, many services like routine physical exams, preventative care immunizations and STI counseling visits are fully covered with in-network providers, meaning there are no out-of-pocket costs.

Under NU-SHIP, mental health counseling visits are a maximum of a $20 co-pay (a flat fee that you pay out of pocket) when referred by CAPS. Generic preferred prescription drugs are only a $10 copay per monthly refill. With many ACA plans, prescription and mental health co-pays are only applicable after you’ve met the deductible. This means you would be paying most costs completely out-of-pocket until you’ve paid $4,578 in a policy year.

Chayda Harding is a Weinberg first year from New York City. She is currently on NU-SHIP through financial aid, but before coming to Northwestern was on Medicaid. The prescription medication that she takes now would have cost $1,300 per month on Medicaid because it wouldn’t cover the most recent version. With NU-SHIP she only pays $60 per month for her medication even though it is a non-preferred brand name prescription drug.

36 | Winter 2019

“I think this is probably one of the most critical issues impacting our students.

Because if your physical and mental health is not taken care of, how can you do anything else? So we’ve got to get this right.”

- Kourtney Cockrell

- - - - - - - - - - - Many students interviewed feel they don’t fully understand their insurance, even if they have to pay their own costs.

They observed a privilege gap at Northwestern when it came to health insurance and awareness surrounding the health care costs.

Even when taking matters into their own hands they run into issues getting the answers they need. “I’ve called every number on the back of the [insurance] card, including directly to my doctor’s office, and they absolutely never answer,” Imani says.

Mark Prins, a student health insurance advocate in the Office of Student Health Insurance, says many students have never had to understand their insurance before coming to college. “We do run across students who just have never had to deal with it, because their parents don’t want to add … the burden of learning how to read an EOB [Explanation of Benefits] and understand what a deductible and coinsurance is. [Their parents are] like, ‘I’ll just take care of it,’” he says.

Rodriguez’s parents would often ask her to read their policies and help them understand. Even now, Rodriguez helps her family navigate their private insurance while she is on NU-SHIP. “Coming from my parents who don’t really understand the system, I had to kind of understand that for them,” she says. Prins also says that part of the reason they have students report their own insurance information is to push them to learn about their own insurance.

LaTesha Harris is a Medill third year and QuestBridge scholar from Waco, Texas. Like Imani, she doesn’t have insurance with in-network providers locally and doesn’t feel comfortable seeking care while at Northwestern due to the costs. When she was sick recently, her friends told her to visit a doctor but she didn’t know how to tell them that she

couldn’t afford it. “They just weren’t understanding why I was so hesitant to go. And they just weren’t listening to me. It’s just really frustrating because I can’t just be like, ‘I am terrified to go to the doctor because I won’t have money to pay for any surprise fees,” she says.

LaTesha has encountered professors who require a doctor’s note in order to make up work. She feels that practice is classist and ableist because “not feeling well manifests itself in different ways for everyone,” and “if you have to go to the doctor every single time that you don’t feel well enough to go to class, it’s just ridiculous … because that racks up unnecessary bills.”

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For many students, this is the first time they encounter the intricacies of health care, as well as the impacts of the national health care debate on their lives. Imani is frustrated by those who believe health care is a privilege, not a right, especially if they have never had to survive without quality health insurance or live uninsured.

“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, just pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Just go get a job.’ But it’s not that easy. Health care is expensive as hell,” Imani says.

If federal officials dismantle the ACA, Cockrell says that there could be downstream effects on Northwestern students. “We are already seeing students getting through that eligibility requirement because they have this named insurance that appears to be private, but it’s really not. So if they dismantle ACA, it would be even worse.

You’d have all of these horrible providers providing really minimal coverage, which means that then when you actually need your health insurance, there’d be no resources,” Cockrell says.

As for post-graduation plans, many students have no idea what they will do in terms of insurance. NU-SHIP covers students through the summer after graduation, but then they are on their own. “If we are doing our jobs as educators, then we’re getting students either into graduate school, or jobs that will provide insurance,” Cockrell says. If students don’t find a job, many say they will go back to being on their parents’ insurance plans until they are 26 or go without

What the health? | FEATURES

insurance altogether. “I actually think about [what to do for health insurance after graduation] all the time. I’m so totally terrified,” LaTesha says.

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It’s clear that, while Northwestern does a lot right in regards to health insurance, it still has very far to go. “There has to be a better way to do things,” Imani says. “Nothing is clear to me.” The Office of Student Health Insurance recognizes this confusion, and Prins says it is looking into holding more workshops this year to help students better understand their insurance.

Cockrell has advocated for having all students who meet a certain financial threshold receive automatic coverage by NU-SHIP through financial aid. However, Drabik says this option is not as viable as it seems. “In theory, it sounds like a very generous and smart thing to do, just throw the money on and cover everybody,” he says. “However, there are students who miss the deadline who have insurance. So what we’re doing is we’re paying for something that’s already covered. So we really want to make sure they’ve gone through all of the steps that they need to so that we’re not paying for something that they don’t need.”

Regardless, access to quality health care remains a pressing concern. “I think this is probably one of the most critical issues impacting our students,” Cockrell says. “Because if your physical and mental health is not taken care of, how can you do anything else?

So we’ve got to get this right.”

If you have any questions about NU-SHIP or insurance in general, you should reach out to the office of Student Health Insurance. In addition, if your expected family contribution is $10,000 or less you should contact Undergraduate Financial Aid to see if you qualify for NUSHIP grant assistance. Lastly, students who have burdensome costs of any kind should contact SES and inquire about the Student Emergency and Essential Needs (SEEN) Fund.

Winter 2019 | 37

How organizers on campus define their work – and themselves.

“I just won’t feel like I can do anything as a person if I’m not working against the system that I know is actively waging war against myself and my communities. I would just feel futile. It’s like punching at air.”

- Jessica Ogwumike

BO LD

38 | Winter 2019

WRITTEN, DESIGNED & PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKITA AMIR

pictured | Jessica Ogwumike

“People think activism is this very sexy thing, but it’s really not. It’s just talking to people, building relationships and getting people to see that they have power … It’s going to meetings and trying to struggle together. Making sure that no one is being left behind.”

-Seri Lee

“I’m just going to do this because it’s what’s right.

I don’t need to talk about politics to be an activist. I can be political in my action and be bold.”

-Tamara Kissoon Winter 2018 | 39

“I think it means doing what you know is right. Even if it’s hard or even it makes you uncomfortable or puts you in a position of questioning how you’re hurting other people.”

“I think it should boil down to uplifting the most oppressed people.”

- Eliza Gonring

40 | Winter 2019

“Activism means being in community with people.

Sharing the same vision of the world that you do.

To me, it’s really about giving up privilege. Also empathy and a praxis of love and forgiveness and solidarity building and always being intersectional and not just in a buzzword way.”

- Sharmain Siddiqui

“Because like at the end of the day, it’s about the love that you have for your people, and obviously, it can be a lot of energy and labor when it’s added on to academics and other things … [but] it’s through doing this that I’ve been able to find a lot of happiness.”

- Isabella Ko Winter 2018 | 41

not pictured | Jessica Ogwumike

42 | Winter 2019

“These are my communities. These are the people who support me and see me. These are the people who make me feel most powerful.�

- Jessica Ogwumike

Winter 2018 | 43

Talking to your partner about finances is awkward.

Here’s why it is — and why it doesn’t have to be.

WRITTEN BY EMMA KUMER DESIGNED & ILLUSTRATED BY SARAH ZHANG

s she waits for the hotel Wi-Fi to connect, Laura’s* eyes drift to her shoes. In the three months since she landed in Havana, her blue Converse have adopted a dull gray color from the treks to convenience stores for water, the climbs up 13 floors when the elevator stops working and the journeys to the random hotel lobby she visits every few days for spotty internet access.

A

When Laura finally gets a bar of service, she opens the email app, scrolls past spam and searches for Jason’s* name. Even though they’ve been dating for seven months, she’s barely heard from him since going abroad.

“I would expect there to be something there and there wasn’t always,” Laura remembers. “I wrote these really long emails … and he just … didn’t respond.”

She knows part of his silence has to do with the unreliable connection, but

she detects an emotional disconnect as well. Before she’d left for the summer, Laura shared difficult news: Northwestern adjusted her financial aid package, raising her expected family contribution for tuition to $20,000.

“I was really concerned about whether I’d be able to come back to school,” she says. “I remember talking to [Jason] about it, and he just disappeared. He wouldn’t talk about it. He was obviously concerned, but he didn’t know how to tell me.”

And so, this past June, she left for a foreign country with shaky connections to short-

term internet access and a long-term boyfriend. Sitting in the Hotel Presidente lobby every few days, Laura realized something painful: money is one of the hardest subjects to talk about with a partner, especially when dating someone from a different social class, but having those conversations can make or break a relationship.

An Invisible Division Northwestern is home to students from every rung of the social class ladder, though just eight percent of students come from the bottom 40 percent of household income, according

to the New York Times. We may be pushed to mingle with people from different financial backgrounds, but on a college campus, wealth — or lack thereof — is not always obvious.

“At Northwestern, you have students who are from multiple generations of wealth sitting next to people who are first-generation college students from a very blue-collar family,” says Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon, a couples therapist at the Family Institute at Northwestern.

“But if you just look at them, they look the same. College campuses sometimes make socio-economic differences look a little bit invisible.”

As well as coaching couples, Dr. Solomon teaches Northwestern’s famous Marriage 101 class, which shares enough lifechanging advice to give Russian Lit a run for its rubles. Assignments include asking other students on dates and interviewing couples.

Solomon says that, in a nutshell, the class proves that the way we are

raised creates a blueprint for our connections later in life. “[It’s about] helping people understand that your early experiences become the pair of glasses through which you experience intimate partnership,” she says.

These early experiences are colored by our religion and traditions, but also by the neighborhoods we grew up in, the schools we attended, and the allowance our parents gave us — or didn’t. A 2014 survey by Wells Fargo found that 44 percent of Americans view personal finance as the most challenging topic of discussion, beating out death and politics. Ironically, for a society that is obsessed with money, we really hate talking about it.

“Race, faith and other differences tend to be salient and talked about a little more readily than socio-economic difference,” Solomon says.

“But [money] shapes so much around expectation around how you spend time, around worldview.”

Because it reaches all corners of our perception, money is the leading cause of stress in relationships.

Even though it’s the most

Money Talks | FEATURES

common reason couples get divorced, 40 percent don’t discuss financial management before getting married, according to experts. This might seem far away, since most of us aren’t looking for marriage at this stage of life, but we still seek a deep connection with our partners.

Anna* arrived at Northwestern with this kind of connection with her longdistance boyfriend, Nathan.* The couple met through mutual friends in an upperclass Kansas suburb. Nathan drove a BMW, got $400 a week in allowance and went to a private school that cost $40,000 a year. Anna knew Nathan came from money, but she would never dare to ask his parents’ salary or inquire the price of his house, which sat across the street from a country club golf course.

“I waited a long time to talk about money,” Anna remembers. “I didn’t know what to do. It’s a very uncomfortable conversation to have. I think I waited until a year and a half in to say we needed to level out, monetarily.”

The final straw was an unpurchased plane ticket.

Nathan asked Anna to come on his family trip to Europe, but he didn’t offer to cover the cost of tickets. Though

FEATURES | Money Talks

she technically had enough money saved, Anna didn’t want to throw her entire summer’s earnings toward one whirlwind week in Croatia. That’s what she told Nathan, but it’s not what he heard. “He thought I just didn’t want to go,” Anna says.

“He refused to believe me.”

According to Anna, Nathan couldn’t dissociate her commitment to him with her commitment to the Europe trip. “It was embarrassing,” she remembers. “But it was also frustrating that this boy had never experienced monetary troubles in his life and refused to acknowledge that they existed for other people.”

Anna and Nathan eventually broke up, and though their last fight wasn’t explicitly about money, their economic tensions were never quite resolved.

Nationwide, it’s common to get monetary assistance from family. According to a poll of over 1,000 U.S. adults with children aged 18 or older, three out of four parents help college students pay debts and living expenses, including rent, utilities and cell phone bills.

However, we don’t always like to admit it. “Sometimes inherited wealth can become a source of shame,” Solomon says. “Like, ‘I have this, but I didn’t earn it myself.’”

Recognizing Jason’s shame convinced Laura that it wasn’t just their relationship with each other that was causing rifts — it was also their relationship with money. If Jason had been more forthcoming, the couple may have had an open conversation about how their differing financial strata were affecting their relationship.

The Paradoxical Shame of Privilege In the months before she left for Cuba, Laura slowly uncovered clues about Jason’s financial background.

At first, she knew only that he came from an affluent suburb. Then, she started to hear the way he scoffed at other people from his high school, desperate to differentiate himself from their overt displays of wealth.

It was in that moment that it all clicked: Jason wasn’t just uncomfortable about money, he was embarrassed by his privilege.

This phenomenon isn’t an anomaly, especially at a school with a majority upper-class student body.

Unwilling to be defined by their parents’ bank accounts, affluent students sometimes downplay their socioeconomic status, according to Solomon. But this can mean hiding a part of your life from your partner, and ultimately, it can cause problems in relationships beyond the money itself.

46 | Winter 2019

It was in that moment that it all clicked: Jason wasn’t just uncomfortable about money, he was embarrassed by his privilege.

On the other end of the spectrum, Weinberg third year Tony is a firm believer in open conversations. He’s a candid fast-talker who doesn’t try to hide aspects of his personality; within only a few minutes of meeting him, he shares that he’s been dating his boyfriend Connor for eight months. Tony says he made a point to talk about money from day one.

“When I started bringing up money right away, it was a culture shock,” Tony recalls. “[Connor] never had somebody make fun of him for being rich before. It was weird and uncomfortable at first, but that’s just because he never talked about money growing up.”

But it isn’t in Tony’s personality to let that kind of silence simmer.

He continued to mention money jokingly until Connor stopped freezing up.

“He recently told me, that for the first five weeks we were together, he felt really awkward when I’d say things like that,” Tony says. “I think talking about money, even in the form of jokes, and having an open communication about it was really helpful for both of us.”

When he says “open,” he means “not being afraid to bring it up, ever.” Professor Solomon adds that it’s important not to judge your partner for their upbringing, since fear of judgment is the origin of privilege shame in the first place.

“Understanding your own story and your own pain points around money and privilege is super important because you’re going to play it out with your intimate partner no matter who they are,” she says. “Every one of us has a story about money and a relationship to money.

What we carry inside of us feels like the good, right, normal thing, but we need to be humble and curious.”

As a student with limited spending money, Tony is used to cutting some corners when he eats out.

“I’ll go to a restaurant and I’ll order my meal with water. No drink, no dessert, no appetizers or anything,” he says. “[Connor] will order a drink, an appetizer, and a main thing.”

Instead of paying the bill without questioning Connor’s choices, Tony made a joke about the disparity. The two got into a conversation about the way they were raised.

Connor admitted that he didn’t look at the prices when choosing what to get; Tony realized that this was not a good or bad tendency. It was just different.

The Pretty Woman Hypothesis In the 1990 rom-com Pretty Woman, there’s an iconic scene that depicts a curly-haired Vivian, played

by Julia Roberts, entering a high-end boutique only to be turned down because of her skin-tight cutout dress and thigh-high boots. In a later scene, Vivian returns, this time decked in a designer dress with shopping bags from high-end stores dripping from her arms.

She shames the workers for refusing to assist her the day before, then turns on her heel and storms away.

The difference between these two scenes is more than just an added layer of expensive clothing.

Underwritten by a limitless Mastercard from her lover — and wealthy businessman — Edward, Vivian acquired a new confidence.

This climactic moment epitomizes everything we want money to be: it can make us sophisticated, happy and superior to anyone who’s ever mocked us. We view Edward as the love interest who raised Vivian out of relative poverty, like our capitalist Prince Charming.

While this movie is a cultural timepiece, the message it sends sets a poor example for anyone

venturing into a mixedcollar relationship. To buy into the myth of Pretty Woman is to buy into the idea that true love is “saving” someone by providing them with financial stability. In reality, Edward’s support is an example of how saviorism creates an unbalanced power dynamic. Couples sometimes struggle with understanding their feelings when it seems like the partner with more money is paying for more dinners or buying more expensive presents. In the shadow of popular cultural tropes like Pretty Woman, we can feel uncomfortable being either Vivian or Edward.

In Anna’s experience, it’s important to make your partner feel as if their economic status is not something to escape.

“You don’t want to embarrass the other person.

You can’t just come out and be like, ‘I’m being really conscientious of the fact that you have no money and I have more money than you,’” Anna says. “You have to be more conscientious of the other person’s experience and how they’ve lived their life different than yours.”

But the glamorization of money is inescapable.

Movies like Dirty Dancing, The Notebook and even Shrek further romanticize dating someone of another social class, sending a message that true love transcends material situations to prevail in the end. It’s a narrative dating back to Shakespeare plays that fetishize the thrill of going against societal norms to let love conquer. It’s a story arc so common in media that it’s become synonymous with love.

As someone who made her own money, Anna didn’t want Nathan to support her. Whenever he offered to pick up the bill at expensive restaurants, she pushed to split it. They started alternating paying on dates, even though she didn’t have

the funds to sustain that type of lifestyle.

“We would go to nice restaurants and eat out every meal, just because that’s what he did,” she says. “I was buying every single meal with him and hemorrhaging money when I definitely had food at home.”

She didn’t want to admit that she couldn’t afford their excessive dates, though, because she knew he’d just pay for her. Anna, and many others in her situation, felt a creeping sense of guilt because of her financial dependence.

This was amplified when giving gifts, since the spending amount was never exactly even. “[Nathan] always got me expensive jewelry for our anniversaries, but I’m not the kind of girl who wears jewelry,” Anna said. “I felt like he was just sort of throwing money at me, which didn’t seem as thoughtful.”

Her gift to him was socks printed with her face on them. She spent a lot of time thinking about something he would appreciate and find humorous, but when they exchanged gifts, he didn’t seem as excited as she would have hoped.

“It took a long time for him to understand the differences in money because, for him, it was something that, if you ran out, you could just reaccumilate,” Anna remembers. “For a lot of people, I feel like it takes a long time for them to understand how different peoples’ lives work.”

After dating for two years, Nathan and Anna broke up this fall. In her more recent relationships, the script occasionally flips.

Sometimes, Anna’s the one with more money. Her last boyfriend sometimes poked fun at her North Face parka and Apple Watch, but, because she had been in his position before, she knew not to be offended. “[In my last relationship,] I was in a very different

Money Talks | FEATURES

Even though it’s the most common reason couples get divorced, 40 percent don’t discuss financial management before getting married, according to experts.

position. I knew that I was the one with more money, and I never wanted to treat him the way I was treated,” Anna says. “I was very careful to talk about it with him and only do things that he was comfortable spending on. And I never, ever tried to suggest expensive things because I was trying to be better than [Nathan] was to me.”

Money Talks Whether it’s Tony and Connor debating an appetizer, Anna and Nathan discussing flights to Croatia, or Laura and Jason dancing around the subject of financial aid, we all have one thing in common:

people struggle to talk about money because they don’t want it to characterize who they are and how they are perceived by others. But when couples are open about their respective financial statuses, they at least have a chance to work through how money has influenced and continues to influence their lives. There exists a paradox of money in relationships: if you don’t talk about money because you don’t want it to define you, the avoidance of the topic will inevitably define the relationship.

“As couples move toward getting married or having a really serious commitment, couples sometimes resist talking [about money] because it seems antithetical to romance,” Solomon says.

“But what’s more antithetical to romance is, ‘I married you, I didn’t know you had six figures worth of debt’...

That’s really unromantic.”

There are strong, communicative couples all over Northwestern’s campus.

But for Laura and Jason, they were never able to work out their differences. Eventually, they broke up. The decision came down to a lot of factors, but Laura couldn’t deny that the socio-economic rift created a lot of challenges in their relationship.

They’d been broken up for a month before Laura learned one of the reasons that Jason had been so uncomfortable about money. It turns out, his mother had been laid off from her high-paying job, and his father’s career was also in jeopardy. She and Jason had dated for two and a half years. That whole time, he’d never told her.

“I wish I would have been less afraid of asking [about money],” Laura says. “I was always too afraid to ask because he didn’t want to talk about it. But I know, going forward, that it’s a lot more important to have a clear picture of what’s going on.” *Names changed to preserve anonymity.

Winter 2018 | 47

#ANDTRANSFERS WRITTEN BY ANDRES CORREA | DESIGNED BY AINE DOUGHERTY

uando das tu palabra, das tu palabra.”

When you give your word, you give your word.

This is a saying that my dad always told me growing up.

As I pushed the last box into the back of my family’s packed Honda Odyssey, my dad reminded me of the promise I had made.

He offered me una torta con huevos y frijoles. I took the torta from his hand and placed it in my bookbag with no intention of eating it. My nerves held my appetite hostage that entire morning.

The moment my mom took her foot off the brake and switched it to the accelerator, I knew that I was making a mistake.

As we crossed state lines, my dad shuffled through Selena, Luis Miguel and Marc Anthony. I erased all the negative thoughts from my mind, each escaping through the small crack in the driver’s side door into vast cornfields of the rural Midwest.

However, six hours was not enough time to wipe out the feeling. As the car pulled up to Campus Drive that Labor Day weekend, I knew I had traveled 400 miles in the

C

“

Alyssa Hiraoka transferred from U.C. Berkeley.

48 | Winter 2019

The college experience you won’t find in the brochures.

wrong direction.

Pero, había dado mi palabra, y estaba listo para cumplirla.

But, I had given my word, and I was ready to honor it.

Many students enter college fresh out of high school. Other than some community college students, most enter with the intention of graduating from the same school they matriculated into. But this isn’t always the case.

The narrative of transfer students is non-traditional and often overlooked.

Northwestern is one of several top universities across the country accepting more transfers than ever. According to the University’s common data set, Northwestern accepted 50 transfer students in the fall of 2017. Joining a growing community of transfers already on campus, this group was the largest class of transfer students yet. This cohort came from all over the country, each carrying their own reasons for transferring.

meaningful connections if I am leaving to begin with?”

Cimarusti says. “That sort of contributed to this overall sense of alienation from the culture.”

Similar to Cimarusti, while my body was physically present at St. Olaf College, my mind was miles away, envisioning how my life would be different at a new school.

On a Saturday morning in early December, three months after I moved in, I realized I could no longer handle the chronic feeling of displacement.

In high school, I was named a POSSE scholar, granting me a full-tuition scholarship that sends select groups of 10 students to colleges across the country. I was convinced it was the only opportunity I would ever receive to go to college. With this scholarship, I could eliminate any financial anxieties my parents had and be guaranteed a college education. I acted purely on economic practicality and told myself that I could adapt and grow to love whatever school gave me the most money.

However, the instant

Luke Cimarusti transferred from the University of Washington Seattle.

I signed the early decision form, I knew I had made a mistake. But the fear of being blacklisted from other colleges, combined with the guilt of taking a scholarship that could have aided someone else, was enough to convince me to stick it out for as long as possible.

For weeks, I had avoided the moment when I would have to tell my mom about my decision to transfer. Just the thought of adding another financial burden on my parents paralyzed me. I paced back and forth in my dorm, becoming more anxious the longer the phone rang.

“I don’t think I want to be here anymore,” I said when she finally picked up. Those nine words

hurt.

Like most moms, she already knew. She was simply waiting for my phone call.

“En esta vida no más hay una,” she told me.

“Your dad and I will do whatever it takes to support you.”

For the first time, I asked myself what I wanted. I could finally breathe.

While my friends spent their fall semester joining student government, cultural clubs and going on weekend trips to the Mall of America, I spent my free time in the library researching as many colleges as possible.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKITA AMIR

“I remember it was one of the only times that I saw my mom cry — when she was telling me, ‘Yeah, we probably can’t afford for you to go to Bowdoin,’” says Luke Cimarusti, a third year in Weinberg. As he pushes a strand of his long blond hair behind his ear, he recalls this once-painful memory with a tone of acceptance, healing and closure. “She wanted to give me everything, so bless her heart.”

Despite being accepted into his dream school, Bowdoin College, he had received no financial aid.

For that reason, he was forced to attend a 31,000student public state school, which was far from the intimate college experience he had hoped for.

This trend continued with every school he got into. While his friends committed to their dream schools, his list dwindled down quickly.

He was left with only two options: the University of Washington-Seattle or the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He chose the former.

“As I was putting ‘yes’ to matriculating into the school, I was like, ‘I am going to transfer out of there,’” Cimarusti says.

Despite setting his mind on transferring, he says he gave it a chance.

If he was going to survive the year at UW-Seattle, it would be better to do it with friends.

Cimarusti met a tight -knit group of people at a queer bingo night in the fall.

However, within a month of knowing them, he says he realized he didn’t like them.

Despite having friends, he was not happy.

“Why try and make

#andtransfers | FEATURES

Winter 2019 | 49

FEATURES | #andtransfers

Nate Friedle transferred from DePaul University.

Nadia Ennab transferred from University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.

I barely knew how to apply to college the first time, and now I had to do it all over again. I spent the month of January writing personal statements and supplemental essays, requesting transcripts from both my college and high school.

The transfer application process is an isolating one.

With so little information and statistics out there, it requires spending hours on sites like College Confidential, Transferology and even YouTube to figure out where to go next, all the while juggling a full course load, part-time jobs and extracurriculars.

The lonely experience is an undertaking many transfers keep to themselves for months.

“I didn’t tell anyone except the teachers whose letters I needed, and I felt very secretive,” says McCormick second year Nate Friedle. “People would have treated me differently.”

Friedle is a film junkie turned civil engineer.

He spent his freshman year 15 miles away from Northwestern at DePaul University. On any given day after class, he would spend several hours watching films. It was his way of staying detached from the school and making it easier to eventually leave.

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Northwestern was always in the picture. He says it was one of his top schools, and even when he didn’t get in the first time, he didn’t lose hope.

Friedle was prepared to apply again. However, his determination to go to Northwestern affected his experience at DePaul.

“If you know you kind of don’t belong to a school, you don’t assimilate into that school,” Friedle says.

“I had my mind made up that I didn’t want to be there, so I didn’t allow myself to enjoy it.”

While Friedle didn’t let himself integrate into his former school, third year transfer Alyssa Hiraoka spent two years trying to make University of California, Berkeley a home.

Yet being fully integrated only made the decision to transfer more painful.

Before moving to Berkeley, Hiraoka went to Bed, Bath & Beyond several times to make sure her bedding matched all the decorations in her room. She hung up posters from museums she had visited throughout her life.

Despite her attempts to blend into Berkeley, she still felt out of place.

She joined a sorority, the club water polo team, intramural sports, a consulting club and student government. She even joined a hip-hop dance group, despite not knowing how to dance.

But none of these groups felt like a community, and the taxing culture of Berkeley created a toxic environment for Hiraoka.

Within the first couple of months she began sleeping less, studying more and trying to find the perfect internship.

“You have these little robots that bring around Soylent to people, and you can order it off your phone,” she says. “People don’t shower, so when you are taking exams it just smells bad in the room.”

Her second year, she decided to live with her closest friend. They had

taken on the whirlwind of general chemistry together and both struggled to make Berkeley home. When it came to deciding their housing plans for the next year, it was a natural fit for them to room together.

But in November, one of her other roommates told her that her closest friend had been stealing from them. For several months, she had taken clothing, makeup and even a Tiffany & Co. necklace from their rooms.

“I was just like, ‘You know what? I just need a fresh start,’” Hiraoka says. “I need to go somewhere else, have the opportunity to make some new friends and go to a place that’s not so intense or toxic.”

She scoured the Northwestern Facebook page for a roommate, thinking she could move past her experience.

However, her ability to trust another person to live with was ruined. She decided not to take the chance and opted to live in a single.

Despite being more than 2,000 miles away from home, the California native has taken advantage of her fresh start. She took a step back from the old mindset that pushed her to focus solely on her academics and career.

Instead, she signed up for organizations that fulfilled her interests. But starting over as a third year is not easy.

“I am living with all first years, and it’s pretty difficult to get to know people,” Hiraoka says.

“Most people have been in classes with each other for two years already.”

Starting from scratch was not easy for me.

While I was a second year academically, I felt like a first year in every other aspect. Though the environment was familiar to me, the fastpaced quarter system, culture of overproduction, involvement in extracurriculars and work experience caught me off guard.

The large lecture hall on the second floor of Fisk was crowded with people one October morning during my first quarter at Northwestern. I had just been handed my

after another. It was not until I went to CAPS that I realized I was suffering from panic attacks.

That first quarter at Northwestern, I barely passed my first round of midterms, dropped a class and ended up changing my major. What I hoped would be a good start to my college experience took a turn for the worse.

For many transfers, adjusting to Northwestern can be overwhelming. It takes patience and time to find one’s place in established social groups and the academic culture of Northwestern.

“If you know you don't belong to a school, you don’t assimiliate ... I had my mind made up that I didn't want to be there, so I didn't allow myself to enjoy it.”

Nate Friedle, McCormick second year

first statistics quiz when my neck started to burn.

Each breath was a shard in my chest. The pull-out desk felt like it was closing in; I was swimming in claustrophobia up to my neck. The sounds of tapping pencils and fingers on calculator keys grew deafening.

Trying not to make a scene, I walked out of the lecture room with a barely finished quiz. An hour later, I had another exam to take. My mind was still wired, but I was too exhausted for my neck to burn, my breath to fall short and my limbs to shake. This is how my body reacted during every exam I took that quarter, failing each one

Medill fourth year Maddy Ashmun, a transfer from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says Wildcat Welcome brought her both dread and excitement.

No transfer wants to participate in ice breakers, hear about campus resources for a second time and sit through eight days of programming.

She says when she arrived at Northwestern, transfer students seemed to exude a too-cool-forschool energy. But it’s the only way to meet new people and get to know Northwestern.

“It’s a weird thing because it’s like, I know how to eat in a dining hall, but I don’t know where

#andtransfers | FEATURES

the dining halls are here,” Ashmun says.

“It’s a weird mix of thinking you know how to do things but also realizing that you definitely don’t.”

While acclimating to Northwestern’s culture, many transfers look to get involved in the campus community through the hundreds of organizations on campus.

Many groups, however, focus on recruiting first years, as they are more likely to spend four years at Northwestern.

Growing up in New Jersey, Ashmun spent her teenage years in and out of New York City attending concert after concert.

Her love for indie music inspired her to get involved in event planning. Prior to Northwestern, she spent most of her first year on UNC’s concert and activities committee. She naturally wanted to continue this work at Northwestern.

During her first month, Ashmun and another transfer friend from the University of WisconsinMadison worked on their applications together.

However, neither their previous experience nor their impressive skills with booking live music events were enough to secure them a spot on Mayfest or A&O Productions.

“I came in worrying about that a little bit because I had just put Northwestern on kind of a pedestal,” Ashmun says.

“When I got rejected from those clubs, it’s like, ‘Shit, maybe I am not good enough for this.’”

From the sticks of Ohio to the big city of Chicago, Andre Baronov — a third year transfer in the School of Communication —

Winter 2019 | 51

FEATURES | #andtransfers

of the institutional help he was provided once here. He said there is hypocrisy in having so many resources while not helping transfers navigate Northwestern.

One of the major reasons Baronov transferred to Northwestern was to follow his passion for film. When he received a callback from a student production organization last fall, he was flattered and excited to do what he loves.

He arrived early and rehearsed his lines before taking the stage.

During his audition, he realized his competitor was absent, so it appeared the part was his. So, when he got the email that his competitor got the part over him, it left him bitter.

He later learned that the other auditionee was dating the director of the production. This was only one of 30 organizations that rejected Baronov.

Nevertheless, Baronov found success elsewhere, like satirical newspapers and film sets.

“They are touting Stephen Colbert, who [was] another third year transfer,” Baronov says.

“I felt there was a certain disconnect in what we are saying to transfers as they apply and how we are treating them here.”

As Northwestern’s transfer population steadily increases, the University seeks to better both the academic and social transitions. Josh McKenzie, Associate Director for New Student and Family Programs (NSFP) and Director of First-Year Experience, says his office has identified opportunities to provide a more supportive experience.

52 | Winter 2019

“There are always comments and frustrations about how wildly frustrating things are or unclear the University seems,” McKenzie says.

“Some transfers may feel like they are placed on the back burner or not supported like your incoming first year cohort.”

While NSFP prepares for a larger transfer population during Wildcat Welcome, there are little to no resources available to support them after that week. In their first quarter, McCormick third year Luke Choe and School of Communication third year David Eng struggled to adjust to Northwestern and recognized a lack of community among transfers. To bridge this gap, they helped create the Transfer Student Organization (TSO) last fall to try to change the way transfers are viewed on campus.

They created a mentorship program in which incoming transfers are paired with another transfer student at Northwestern who is familiar with campus.

There are currently over 130 transfers participating in the program.

“We wanted a place where transfers could meet each other [to build] a stronger community at the start of their transition into their second college,” Eng says.

In addition to their mentorship program, the organization is looking to create more resources for transfers all across the country. The group is trying to make the transition easier by providing information on the process.

Nadia Ennab, a fourth

year in Weinberg, runs TSO’s public relations.

She says this year the group spent most of their time establishing a campus presence.

Though she grew up in Evanston, Ennab spent her first two years of college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She says adjusting to Northwestern’s preprofessional atmosphere can take a long time.

“When you are in a culture where everybody is cultivating their own brand, time really is important,” she says.

Ennab recognizes the pressure to fit into this culture, and entering into it two years late only makes developing her professional image more challenging.

Andre Baronov transferred from the College of Wooster in Ohio.

It’s been almost three and a half years since I found out I received a full tuition scholarship to a school that was wrong for me. While I’m grateful I decided to transfer, it has been a bittersweet experience. Sometimes I still wish I had gotten it right the first time. I made a decision based on the fear that my financial situation would hinder me from having a college experience at all. But now, I realize there were always options beyond what I was led to believe were possible. Now, that fear has evolved. What could I have achieved if I hadn’t lost so much time?

What would college look like if I wasn’t constantly playing catch up?

“No hay que vivir la vida con miedo.”

This is the saying my dad repeats to me now.

“You can’t live your life with fear.”

hangover 55 Morty 2020 58 Joy? Sparked.

60 Stripped down 63 Spring quarter horoscopes Winter 2019 | 53

54 | Winter 2019

Morty

2020 It just makes cents.

WRITTEN BY SOFIA RUBIN DESIGNED BY SARAH ZHANG ILLUSTRATED BY RACHEL HAWLEY

vanston, IL – The rumors have been confirmed. Today, Morton Schapiro, President of Northwestern University, announced his plan to campaign for a second, nearly-as-coveted presidential position. The declaration comes as no surprise to members of the Northwestern community, acquainted as they are with Schapiro’s desire for domination. Nothing seems to stop the little man.

E

“I admire Morty’s courage, his stamina in the face of adversity,” remarks Northwestern University Provost Jonathan Holloway. “It takes a lot of heart to run for such a prestigious position. I admire Morty’s heart. And his face. And his hair. And the way his eyes sparkle ever so slightly as he looks off gently into the distance.” After finishing, he pauses, a single tear running down his left cheek.

Schapiro also announced CEO and billionaire Pat Ryan as his running mate. Ryan is recognized around the Evanston area for his copious donations to the Northwestern campus, the most notable of which funded the university’s infamous Ryan Fieldhouse. In an interesting turn of events, Schapiro’s presidential campaign is to be subsidized almost entirely by Ryan. Schapiro’s slogan, “Dollar signs are in our DNA,” stems from a popular saying he instituted at Northwestern. He hopes to use his status as a former economics professor and author of numerous economicsbased literary works to boost his approval rating, seeing as Americans care about nothing if not money.

A number of student groups have already pledged their support to Schapiro, calling him “the white man’s Gwyneth Paltrow” and “President of [their] hearts.” One particular group, aptly named “Shorties for Morty,” issued a statement saying, “Morty is Bernie but better. Both are small, white, just over middleaged, Ashkenazi … Bernie stands for socialists, but Morty stands for capitalists.” This seems to ring true especially among sorority members on Northwestern’s campus, who withdrew their Bernie bids upon learning that the younger, cuter Schapiro was rushing the presidency.

Winter 2019 | 55

Party crashers They told us to take a lap.

So, we went to three different Illinois universities to see if their parties are as lit as ours.

WRITTEN BY LEANNA RICE DESIGNED BY AINE DOUGHERTY

magine: you and your friends are all dressed to the nines and ready to go out on a Friday night. Where do you go?

You’ve been to countless sweaty Northwestern basement parties.

You’ve downed Four Lokos in Bobb and then thrown up in the communal bathroom sink.

You’ve Ubered all the way to the Deuce just to find out it’s dead and then ended up at IHOP. You might find yourself asking, what else is out there?

I’ve asked myself this question throughout my time at Northwestern. I wanted to experience something different.

I wondered what other Illinois schools’ parties were like. So, in my investigation for NBN, I turned to Tinder matches and old acquaintances to help me find the best parties at three different schools with wildly different reputations.

I

*Ratings out of 5.

High: A 30-year-old doctor bought me a drink (an actual doctor!).

Low: Sleeping on the floor, underneath a table, at a hackathon while computer science majors judged me.

University of Chicago Music: 2 Drinks: 4 Atmosphere: 2 Located in Hyde Park on the South Side of the city, the University of Chicago is notorious for being “where fun goes to die.”

This reputation wasn’t going to stop me from finding a party, though. I was confident I’d be able to finesse something.

After nagging countless UChicago students on Tinder, however, my search was fruitless.

Discouraged and frustrated, I finally decided to bite the bullet and venture there on a Saturday night with no idea what to expect. My friend told me there was a weekendlong hackathon happening on campus, so I went there to pregame. You heard that right.

Dressed in ripped jeans with a leather jacket and armed with a mixed drink inside a Contigo travel coffee mug, I did something I never imagined myself doing. Surrounded by budding computer scientists tirelessly coding their fingers away, I chugged a vodka Sprite.

After trying unsuccessfully to convince some other hackathon attendees to join us, my friend and I ventured out. We went to Woodlawn Tap, better known by UChicago students as Jimmy’s.

Only a short Uber ride away, it was a small, quaint pub with a bit of floor space but mostly filled with tables for people to sit and talk. The atmosphere was calm and sophisticated, a quiet gathering place for friends.

No one at this bar was dancing, singing or being rowdy. No one was shouting or throwing up in the bathroom. There was a certain elegance to the place. It felt cozy and inviting, certainly not wild like some of the other schools’ parties.

Jimmy’s is a great place to hang out with friends for a drink and a long conversation. I would direct those looking for a crazier, more college-esque party elsewhere, though, as the UChicago parties are often closed to outsiders, requiring a school ID at the door.

ILLUSTRATED BY RACHEL HAWLEY

56 | Winter 2019

Party crashers | HANGOVER

Despite not speaking since age 15, my ex-best friend from high school invited me to her friend’s party at DePaul University.

Located in Lincoln Park, DePaul is known for its hipster, artsy, freespirited crowd, and that’s exactly the vibe I got from this small offcampus apartment party.

When I arrived at 12:45 a.m., the party was winding down, but the small living room was still filled with people talking, smoking and dancing under multi-colored disco lights. A fully-stocked DJ booth was set up in the front of the room, and various aspiring DJs gathered there periodically to play upbeat, funky music throughout the night. Abstract artwork and string lights lined the walls.

With no proper drinks in sight, people combined random beverages and made do with concoctions like rum mixed with cheap beer. As the party wound down, people were still half-heartedly playing beer pong, lounging on the couch and talking in the kitchen. It was a very friendly atmosphere, as even though I knew only one person at this very small party, I was greeted with open arms. I would highly recommend attending a DePaul party if you’re looking for some chill, mellow vibes. You might even meet the hipster DJ boyfriend of your dreams!

DePaul University Music: 5 Drinks: 2 Atmosphere: 4

University of Illinois Urbana — Champaign Music: 3 Drinks: 5 Atmosphere: 4

High: A guy gave me three drinks because he had to go home to take care of his drunk friend.

As the Princeton Review’s #1 party school in 2016, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign (UIUC) has quite the legacy to live up to. Though a hefty three-hour commute from Northwestern, I’d argue that the long drive is worth it.

I mean, you can’t find a raging party scene in the middle of cornfields just anywhere.

My UIUC excursion led me to Kam’s, one of the most iconic bars on campus. All bars at UIUC are strictly 19-and-over, so most students prefer them over frat parties. They are also conveniently located around campus, within walking distance from most dorms and apartments. As the night fired up, the ripped-jean and tube top-wearing girls (myself included) lined the sidewalks, seemingly immune to the bitter cold of winter.

Entering Kam’s was like stepping into another world.

High: Seeing a girl who used to bully me on Ask.fm in high school.

Low: Throwing up on the side of the road at 5:30 a.m. the next day.

Outside were hardworking students rushing around with their backpacks. Once inside, bar patrons were welcomed in warmly by Cascada’s “Everytime We Touch” blaring through the speakers, with the bass so loud the floor shook. Twinkling lights and the rowdy banter of intoxicated young adults continue to draw you in. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dirt and spilled drinks, creating a slippery paste. Loud, unshaven men lined the bar and ordered eight drinks at a time, and crowds of girls huddled together, talking and taking drunk Snapchat stories.

The atmosphere was lighthearted and fun and made you want to dance the whole night away to the tune of unnecessarily strong $3 drinks.

If you’re looking for a good time — and a long time, UIUC’s bars are the way to go.

Low: Trying to use the bathroom sink and the entire sink coming out of the ground.

Winter 2019 | 57

Keep: 10-pound disco ball.

Toss: 10th edition textbook.

WRITTEN BY AUDREY DEBRUINE DESIGNED BY SARAH ZHANG

t the end of winter break, I was trying to fit all my clothes around a 10-pound disco ball in my suitcase when I texted a friend in exasperation, complaining that I had too much stuff. “Do the Marie Kondo folding method,” she advised sagely. Having no idea what she meant, I Googled it.

It’s early winter quarter, my classes are harder than I’d anticipated and I’m feeling desperately behind in my job search. As usual, my room is horrifically messy: piles of clothes on the floor, Tupperware and mugs on my dresser, desk unusable (I’ve never met someone in college with a messier room than mine).

When NBN needed a writer to try out Marie Kondo’s decluttering method, I pounced. Here was the accountability I needed to do something I’d never managed to do before: clean my room and keep it that way. And with other aspects of my life feeling out of my control, this was a tangible way to get some back.

Eventually, I got off the waitlist for Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and quickly devoured it. My take: skip the Netflix show, read the book. It’s inspiring and filled with wisdom, such as “treat your socks with respect,” and “if you are a woman, try wearing something elegant as nightwear.”

The overarching principle of Kondo’s method is simple: keep your possessions that spark joy and get rid of everything else. She breaks up the process into five steps: clothes first, then books, paper, komono (miscellany) and finally, sentimental items. Upon finishing the book, I felt prepared to tackle my space.

Not surprisingly, I had way too many clothes. All the stuff I inexplicably bought from the

A

58 | Winter 2019

statistics major (they weren’t).

Finally, I approached my sentimental belongings — photos, cards, gifts and souvenirs I’ve acquired over the past three-and-ahalf years. As an emotionally unstable senior, this was a taxing experience, but in a good way. I finally bought a photo album and debated throwing away the picture of me and my high school boyfriend at graduation. I really don’t like him anymore, but decided it needed to stay for the historical record.

In the end, I actually think Marie Kondo enabled me to be my sloppy self, but in a more tolerable way. I will miss my big biweekly cleaning sessions as a procrastination tool, but I am grateful that the path from my bed to my dresser is no longer impassable.

As for the disco ball, it survived the flight from California and now hangs in the entryway to my room. If anyone out there also happens to find a disco ball in their parents’ storage unit, I do not advise attempting to bring it to campus. Instead, I recommend looking out for mine on the Free & For Sale Facebook group in June.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY AINE DOUGHERTY

Joy? Sparked.

Gap freshman year? Not joysparking. Neither were the dozen Northwestern shirts I managed to hang onto, the matching purple hat, gloves and scarf my grandmother got me as a gift to wear to tailgates or the jeans that fit me fall quarter my first year and haven’t since.

To Kondo’s detriment, I did keep my tattered pajamas despite her admonition that “the worst thing you can do is to wear a sloppy sweatsuit.”

Books were an easy category. The first one to go was Gary Saul Morson’s Hidden in Plain Sight: Narrative and Creative Potentials in ‘War and Peace.’

I got a C in Slavic Studies 310 because I skipped most classes to hammock on the Lakefill, and I don’t regret it.

But, I also don’t need to be reminded every time I look at my bookshelf. I kind of cheated by piling up the rest of my old textbooks and sticking them under my bed, but I figure I’ll have to deal with them by graduation.

Tackling paper meant recycling the notebooks that I would realistically never open again. This included AP Stats notes from high school that I thought might be helpful as a

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Winter 2019 | 59

Stripped A people of color Burlesque show empowers members to find their “own kind of sexy.”

down

WRITTEN, DESIGNED & PHOTOGRAPHED BY SAKKE OVERLUND

60 | Winter 2019

Stripped down | HANGOVER

ff

I got into burlesque “ because I saw the B.

Burlesque show last year, and it was amazing.

I wanted to be a part of something that would push me to grow.

There aren’t many spaces like this that are dedicated to specifically empowering people of color, so the opportunity to be a part of something like this means a lot to me. Just the whole process of going through something that is initially uncomfortable, and watching others do the same, helped me overcome my own insecurities.

”

OMAR

CAREY

Winter 2019 | 61

HANGOVER | Stripped down

LAUREN ADAMS B. Burlesque has “ been super supportive, and everyone’s really come together. It was a lot of people I didn’t really know that well before, and now we’re all just like kicking it in our underwear.

My favorite thing we learned was how to maximize the movement of a twerk when you’re on your knees. I guess I call it a straddle twerk.

”

62 | Winter 2019

BRITTANY HENRY Burlesque is a great “space because it’s so

intimate. I’m not afraid to be myself in this space. I was a stagehand last year, and I knew I wanted to do it this year. I was nervous before. I’m nervous now.

I’ll probably be nervous up until the final beat of my perfomance, but I’ve learned to just embrace my body and not be afraid.

”

LEANA LINDSAY

I think B. Burlesque “was created to give

space to bodies that aren’t normally celebrated, so it allowed people to kinda just do what they want. It’s made for people of color, so it became a space that wasn’t really available to people of color in ‘normal’ burlesque.

”

NNENNA NWAGBO

a super senior, and “II’m remember freshman year watching (at that time the only Burlesque show) and being like, ‘hopefully one day when I’m a senior, I’ll have the confidence to do it.’ I think its finding your own kind of sexy, trying not to feel so awkward in my own brand of sexy because not everything is one dimensional sexy, and just trying to find what reflects best for me.

”

Aries March 21 - April 19

Ready to be reborn this spring, Aries?

Maybe it’s time to bring out your workout sneakers. Been wanting to join the Evanston TITLE Boxing Club? Do it. Don’t have the money?

Do it anyway! You’re impulsive, Aries, and we love your fiery spirit.

Cancer June 21 - July 22

It’s time to KonMari the shit out of your life, Cancer. We know throwing away your ex’s napkin from Sherbucks is going to make you shed some tears. But let’s be honest, you also cried when the Oscars took out the editing category (don’t worry, it’s back). No more crying about last quarter; it’s time to spark some joy.

Libra Sep. 23 - Oct. 22

So you’ve been dealing with who you’re going to room with next year, Libra.

But your non-confrontational nature won’t get you out of this one. This spring, learn to follow your gut (because you know you’re always right). Whether it’s deciding your MOD pizza order or your major, as Shia LaBeouf said, “Just do it.”

Capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan. 19

Try something different this spring, Capricorn.

We know you love sending When2Meets to plan your Chicago trips with your friends three months in advance, but it’s time to try going with the flow. Instead, hit up your crush from Design Your Life the day of and go to the lakefill completely impromptu.

Taurus April 20 - May 20

You splurged too much this quarter, Taurus.

You bought those $100 Pete Davidson tickets AND top-shelf Trader Joe’s wine for the polar vortex. You love being bougie sometimes. But in the spring, it’s time to lay off the stubbornness and save some cash.

Leo July 23 - Aug. 22

Shhh. That’s what you need to practice next quarter, Leo. Shut the fuck up and stop interrupting people in your next group project. Instead, focus your independent and fierce energies on your next meeting with NU Career Advancement. But, at the end of the day, you’re going to do you, so do your thing, Leo.

Scorpio Oct. 23 - Nov. 21

You have to let go of the past, Scorpio. We get it: you two had a connection at that Dial-Up party and drank jungle juice all night. But getting left on read is a sign; it’s time to stop monitoring every song they listen to on Spotify. This spring, channel your intense love into your grades.

Aquarius Jan. 20 - Feb. 18

Stop shopping during class, Aquarius. You’re already spacey to begin with, do you really need another excuse not to pay attention? Focus your energies on sharing your opinions in discussion section and prepping for the 10 midterms you’ll inevitably have in week six.

WRITTEN & DESIGNED BY THE STARS | INTERPRETED BY NBN STAFF

Gemini May 21 - June 20

Spring quarter is your time to be less flaky, Gemini. If you keep saying yes to Facebook events and ditching last minute, no one will trust you with Willie the Wildcat’s true identity. If you care less about what others think of you, you’ll be better off when you’re going off at Dillo.

Virgo Aug. 23 - Sep. 22

You need to slow down this spring, Virgo.

Spring is the time to be messy. We know you have three internships, two part-time jobs, six classes, lead five clubs and are the mother of an extensive succulent collection. But, it’s time to take a breather and go a little too wild in that random basement on Garnett.

Sagittarius Nov. 22 - Dec. 21

Don’t overbook yourself this spring, Sagittarius.

Your Google calendar must be wild. You’re the life of the party, because you say what everyone’s thinking. Instead of switching parties as often as you change your mind, try sticking to one or two. Make sure to tell your friends we’re sick of hearing “Mo Bamba,” too.

Pisces Feb. 19 - March 20

It’s time to start playing “New Rules” by Dua Lipa, Pisces. Clean up those dirty dishes on your bed, and stop sobbing about your break-up. Channel those tears into keeping your space clean and your Fashion Nova ‘fit looking snatched.

Next time you run into your ex at Norris, they’ll be the one listening

Winter 2019 | 63

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