See SPANISH PANEL

NISG October Updates

NI STAFF

From Homecoming to the launch of the Our Tomorrow campaign, Northern Iowa Student Government (NISG) has had a busy and productive month of October. A brief summary of what NISG has accomplished this past month is included below.

Our Tomorrow Campaign Launch

The Our Tomorrow campaign was officially launched at the beginning of October in order to raise money for various renovations around campus and student success. 70% of the $250 million campaign has already been raised.

Groovy Homecoming Celebrations

NISG participated in UNI’s grooviest Homecoming to date by running in the Amazing Race hosted by CATS, (somehow placing third even after Chief Justice Parker Daniels hurled up two of his energy drinks), and handed out sweet treats under the Campanile to students, as well as walked in the Homecoming Parade.

SPANISH PANEL

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Furthermore, Jerónimo and Dobrila added that through this panel, the teaching program at UNI, specifically Spanish teaching, will get better because of the connections with alumni and current students creating a larger community of learning and different experiences.

Many students, alumni and professors assisted this event, and many others had the opportunity to join through Zoom.

There were four panelists with different experiences with Spanish teaching, which brought different points of views in teaching Spanish to the current students. During the session of the event, Professor Jerónimo asked questions to the panel-

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NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | NORTHERNIOWAN.COM | VOLUME 119, ISSUE 23

New Board of Regent Member

NISG members met with new Board of Regents member JC Risewick who was appointed by Gov. Reynolds on June 21, 2022. NISG representatives discussed the needs of students, including increased mental health resources and reduced tuition costs with Risewick.

New NISG Members

NISG welcomed a new Director of Athletic Affairs, Jaylie Hicklin, and a new Associate Justice, Danny Stewart.

Student Organization Funding Requests Approved by NISG:

Phi Kappa Alpha Alpha Sigma Tau Morgan’s Message Panther Soccer Prowlers Make the Change Asian Student Union Tau Chi Criminology Club Entrepreneur Club Women’s Rugby Club

Resolutions Passed Recognizing:

Latine Heritage Month Indiginous People’s Day National Transfer Student Week International Open Access Week

COURTESY/UNI

Elena Dobrila, an advisor and professor in the language department at UNI, commended the panel for helping more students fully understand the Spanish teaching major. ists and other students also asked questions about their unique experiences of teaching in different placements and schools including their success and challenges that the profession could bring.

COURTESY/TWITTER

NISG ended up taking third place in the Traditions Challenge Amazing Race during the week leading up to Homecoming. Aside from participating in campus festivities, the student govenment has been busy approving funding for student organizations, passing resolutions to recognize important weeks and more.

Open Board of Directors Positions

NISG is looking for applicants for the following positions. If interested, apply at nisg.uni.edu under the applications tab. Director of Alumni Relations Director of Accessibility Services Director of LGBTQ+ Affairs Cedar Falls City Council Liaison Director of Graduate Life Director of Civic Engagement

Open Senate Seats

NISG is also looking for Senators to apply for Senate seats. The Senate is part of the

COURTESY/UNI

Spanish Professor Heather Jeronimo organized the panel hoping to educate others about Spanish teaching through the celebration of former students and their accomplishments.

Professor Jerónimo hopes that this event happens every year so that current students learn more about the different opportunities that they can have with this program once they graduate. initiatives like extended mental health services, lobbying efforts at the State Capitol, and even niche projects like clothing drives.

Apply at nisg.uni.edu under the applications tab.

Legislative Branch of NISG and makes up the largest branch of student government. The Senate gives students the opportunity to make meaningful change on UNI’s campus for years to come. Previous Senators have implemented

COURTESY/TWITTER

NISG President Leila Masinovic and Vice President Micaiah Krutsinger gather by the Campanile during the Our Tomorrow campaign celebration in early October.

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NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | NORTHERNIOWAN.COM | VOLUME 119, ISSUE 23 Disclaimer: The following opinion articles featured do not reflect the opinion of the Northern Iowan newspaper or staff as a whole.

Mermaids can be Black

Disney’s decision to cast a Black actress as Ariel has sparked online outrage following the release of the live-action trailer

NKASA BOLUMBU

Opinion Columnist

Ariel is one of my favorite Disney princesses. I admire her curiosity and the lengths she would go to satiate it. She’s young, free-spirited and free-minded. She took a calculated risk for a love that had been in the making since she first saved her prince’s life. She helped defeat Ursula, the witch who took her voice. She united the land and the sea by reconciling with her father and being proud of who she is and who she wants to be. She really resonated with a lot of young kids—kids of all colors, not just white redheads. Now, this mermaid princess, who’s literally from a different world and doesn’t (hopefully) express the same racism that has existed in our country for centuries and still exists today, shouldn’t be played by a Black actress. Is Disney playing the diversity game? Yes. Have we been seeing a recent trend of recasting white-cast characters with people of color? Yes. Has the racism our country claims to have passed stopped? No. Case in point: online racism is being disguised as genuine criticism for the upcoming movie “The Little Mermaid.”

The iconic redhead mermaid will be played by Halle Bailey. Bailey is arguably one of the most talented vocalists of Generation Z. She’s half of the R&B group Chole x Halle. The sister duo has been doing cover songs on their YouTube channel, Chloe x Halle, since the 2010s. They were recurring characters on ABC’s “Grownish,” and their ethnic vocals on the albums “Ungodly Hour” (2020) and “The Kids Are Alright” (2018) have been killing the music industry. She’s also a Black woman.

From the #notmyariel page on CBR.com, Director Rob Marshall states, “After an extensive search, it was abundantly clear that [Bailey] possesses that rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence and substance – plus a glorious singing voice – all intrinsic qualities necessary to play this iconic role.” She was chosen as Ariel for a reason. Her being Black is what it is. This isn’t “affirmative action” or just a diversity check needing to be filled out for Disney’s yearly quota. They are signed and mentored by Beyonce herself! She truly has the voice. Bailey’s acting is another matter, but the main qualification for being Ariel is having that voice that even Ursula can’t resist stealing. She’s the real deal and the director for the film certainly agrees.

People felt so righteous in their need to correct the wrongs against them that there’s a Twitter post of someone using artificial intelligence on the teaser trailer to make her look like the 1989 Ariel. They made Bailey white. A real Black woman was reimagined as white. It’s like putting bleach cream to strip off all the Blackness down to her nose structure too. Might as well make her have blue eyes too. If they did this all with a blank background, that’d be no problem. The issue is that Bailey, who is Black, was literally whitewashed. Instead of just getting rid of her all together, they erased her blackness and used it as a template for their ideal Ariel. In 2019 the #notmyariel went around from older people who just can’t relate to a 16-year-old love-stricken mermaid unless she’s white. Bailey can be #notyourariel but she’s not playing this role just for older generations to feel nostalgic. It’s for the newer generation and Disney recycling the classics.

“The Little Mermaid” teaser trailer that was released earlier this fall received over 1.5 million dislikes on the Disney YouTube channel. Even though the dislike count for all YouTube videos is hidden, people went out of their way to make their hatred visible. Remember, this is all for a 1 minute and 24 second clip with 10–20 seconds of singing near the end, and she only appears on screen for about 30 seconds. The mere presence of her blackness in the first second of the trailer was enough for haters.

There are some criticisms that I do agree with. Hollywood is not more diverse because of a change of heart. They want more people of color to watch their media, and in order to do that, one must cast more people of color. Inauthentic representation, which means that Disney is recycling stories with casts that are more representative of our times today.

Mermaids exist in all types of cultures around the globe. Contrary to popular belief, many Black cultures have mermaid lore. “The Little Mermaid,” for example, could use stories from Haiti and their mermaids known as Mami Wata’s. Matt Walsh, a popular and outspoken conservative, argued that, scientifically, mermaids live deep under the sea, where they get little sun, so they’d be pale and therefore couldn’t be Black. Scientifically, we’ve yet to prove mermaids’ existence. And Black people can have albinism, be pale or have light skin while remaining Black. Realistically, a mermaid can be anything since they’re not real.

If they were to remake more live-action movies, I wouldn’t cast anyone who doesn’t look like Merida, Mulan or Princess Tiana if they kept their settings and cultures the same. Merida is Scottish, Mulan is Chinese and Tiana is a Black woman who’s experiencing unjust racism, though she has what it takes to buy her dream restaurant. All of these cultures are central to their stories. It would be dishonorable to simply change all of their races while keeping them in the same story because their cultures and how they were raised in them will be different for someone who isn’t a part of them.

However, the themes of discrimination, wanting to find your own destiny and fight for your own hand in marriage, and learning to work hard but also relax and be open to change are themes that exist outside of race. You can make stories that are similar in theme and nature to the original, even in the same setting, but still make sure that the new characters are true to themselves. Even though Disney’s Ariel is loosely based on a Danish story, it is not about Danish culture or people. If Disney had wanted to, they could have made the original film rich in culture just like “Frozen” is rich with Norwegian and Sami culture.

Racist criticism directed at non-white actors is not a new phenomenon in the mainstream. Often times, non-white actors are labeled as “woke” simply when this kind of casting happens. It’s ironic that they’re labeled as “woke” for being non-white and playing a White character. Wokeness is now attributed to one’s skin instead of what they actually believe. Zendaya, who is a biracial Black woman, received lots of hate for playing the famous “MJ,” also known as Mary Jane Watson, in the new “Spiderman” movies in 2016. Idris Elba got hate for playing Heimdall in the “Thor” film franchise. It’s nothing new. It seems like it only gets worse every year. The racist derogatory memes and stereotypes only increase in frequency.

Race-switching is a twoedged sword, and I understand people’s concerns when they see people they’ve always known to be white played by non-white actors. We are not a colorblind society, nor are we anywhere close to a post-racial society. I don’t believe that Blackwashing is the same as whitewashing since that deals with the anti-Blackness aspect of Blackness on the street. The race-switching isn’t a true representation because no new stories will be told. It’s recycling old material that will work since their original animated movies are an easy formula for success.

The people making these racist critiques also forget that non-white actors have played many White characters in musicals and on Broadway outside of the mainstream entertainment media. In 1997’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s film “Cinderella,” Brandy Norwood played Cinderella alongside Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother. The prince was played by the Asian actor Paolo Montalban, who had a white father and Black mother.

This type of casting doesn’t need to make “scientific” sense in its setting because the world that the characters were in is diverse and race wasn’t an issue. It’s fantasy – an escape from the real world problems we face. In 2019, the actress for “Moana,” Auli’i Cravalho, played Ariel in “The Little Mermaid Musical.” Even Keke Palmer, whose name is now seeing mainstream love with her role in Jordan Peele’s movie “Nope,” is sending love. She played, in her words, the Black Cinderella on broadway. The interesting thing about Ariel, Cinderella and characters like them is that their whiteness is not a big part of their story.

TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

The casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s live action “The Little Mermaid” has garnered backlash from online communities implying that Ariel cannot be Black.  See MERMAIDS, page 5

NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | NORTHERNIOWAN.COM | VOLUME 119, ISSUE 23 Experiences of International Students

NI ARCHIVES

In the Maucker Union there are currently flags displayed in the center commons in celebration of International Education Week.

CAROLINE CHRISTENSEN

Staff Writer

UNI hosts students from countries all over the world. Oftentimes, coming to UNI is an international students’ first time experiencing the United States.

“We are very interested to know what it’s like to live in America because we’ve only seen it in movies,” Gavik Kuruppu, an international student from Sri Lanka said. “America is one of the best of the countries in the world, and everyone knows about it. So learning about, seeing it in movies, reading about it, and then finally coming here and living it is what we want. The more friends we make the more able we are to get that experience. So teach us what it is like, and share your experiences.”

Many international students also may experience a few culture shocks as they transition to life in America. Nneoma Nnaji, an international student from Nigeria, experienced a shock regarding how people dress.

“People here dress very informal to classes,” Nnaji said. “My first shock was seeing someone wear pajamas to class. I think my other shock was professors allowing you to eat in class because they don’t do that back home, so that was exciting.”

Semyon Drozdetckii, an international student from Russia, noted there are many similarities between Russia and America, but he has noticed little differences like the direction of doors locks. He also notes the different dispositions of people in Iowa versus Russia.

“People in Iowa are really nice,” Drozdetckii said. “Much nicer than the people in Russia. But in Russia people will usually say what they think of you and sometimes that is necessary.”

On top of cultural differences, international students often experience American food for the first time. Pancakes are a food mentioned by several international students to be one of their favorite foods they have tried in America.

“I was told there is a National Pancake Day and some small towns across Iowa have a day dedicated towards pancake day, and they spend the day making pancakes,” Kuruppu said. “That was something that really got me excited because I love myself a good stack of pancakes.”

Nnaji also mentioned her love for pancakes.

“All I heard in Nigeria before coming here was burgers, burgers, burgers,” Nnaji said. I’m sorry but it’s overhyped. My favorite food is ribs and pancakes. I’d never really had pancakes back home, but I tried it here and I loved it.”

International Education Week, starting Nov. 14 and ending Nov. 18, will allow international students to showcase their culture, country and chat with the campus community about their experiences.Kuruppu is most looking forward to the Taste of Culture event Nov. 15 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., where he will make curry for his booth showcasing Sri Lanka.

Drozdetckii is also looking forward to the Taste of Culture event.

“It’s a really nice chance to expand your knowledge about other people’s culture,” Drozdetckii said.

Nnaji is excited for International Karaoke and Dance from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 16, as she has been asked to dance at the event.

For a full calendar of events of International Education Week, visit internationalengagement.uni. edu.