The Stony Brook Press

Letter from the the Editor

B By Antonio Mochmann

The air was moist and heavy when I walked into the Press office for the first time this semester. A week prior, still at home, Aman sent me a text saying mold had infiltrated the Press office. It was August and I was already dreading the responsibilities to come in the fall semester. I decided to tuck this information away until I would eventually see it with my own eyes. I knew I was in store for a rude awakening — about not only discovering mold in the office, but also fully grasping the workload of completing my very first print issue as newly appointed Executive Editor.

White spores sprinkled the office’s black couches like powdered sugar. I panned around the room to realize the mold had extended its reach to the chairs and even a camera bag, tucked away behind a metal cabinet. My fall responsibilities hit me like a truck. For a few weeks, we were unable to log into our website, update our staff page or publish any pieces — on top of having to deal with a moldy office. I knew it was time to get serious — meaning no more watching movies on TikTok in 157 parts, unfortunately.

It was easy to blame delays in magazine production and publishing on this setback, as we were without an office for two weeks while it was rigorously sanitized. Of course, our start was rocky, but I didn’t exactly intend on publishing our annual Songs of The Summer project while Christmas lights were hung up. Thinking about my seemingly interminable to-do list, I often found myself in a state of anxious immobility. So, I took a step back and came to terms with things taking longer than I had hoped.

Late Wednesday nights with editors filling the office with brilliant story pitches and belly laughs reminded me of our accomplishments thus far. It fills me with pride to see the newly appointed executive board as well as the section, copy and graphics editors step up in their roles. This magazine is a passion project and it comes to life with the dedication and care our editors and writers put in. This issue is yet another testament to this.

As we move onto the next issue, I’m confident that we will continue to put out work we are proud to share. With a talented and dedicated staff, magazine production is a lot less daunting. Not even a moldy office — God forbid it happen again — will keep us from working tirelessly. There will always be more work to do, but I think that we’ve reached a point where we can reward ourselves with watching a few low-quality movie clips on TikTok — or perhaps in full, on a TV, like God intended.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2024

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Antonio Mochmann

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At the 94th Academy Awards in 2022, the live-action actresses of the Disney princesses announced the winner of Best Animated Film.

“All these characters hold such a special place in our hearts because animated lms make up some of our most formative movie experiences as kids,” The Little Mermaid actress Halle Bailey began.

“So many kids watch these movies over and over, over and over again,” Cinderella actress Lily James said, slightly exasperated.

“I see some parents who know exactly what we’re talking about,” Aladdin actress Naomi Scott said, addressing the audience.

It’s one thing to read lines on a camera or create dynamic sets for a live-action lm, but the medium of animation does both, and then some. Every single frame is drawn from scratch, from the character and their movements to the world around them. Despite having immense storytelling potential, animation often gets the short end of the stick. Even as the princess actresses brought these classics to life, they seemingly infantilized animated movies.

This attitude is o ensive not only to the viewers of these lms, but to their creators as well. Even with the immense amount of e ort that goes into making animated movies, the genre is often reduced to mindless content made for kids. Most animated movies are given a G or PG rating which are child and family appropriate, respectively. While this may imply animated movies are childish, ironically, many animated movies today are lled with death.

Whether it is the parents of the protagonist dying in the rst few minutes in Frozen or the epic nale where the villain succumbs to a fatal fate like in The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Princess and the Frog, it is somewhat of an oxymoron to call animated movies “childish,” as they often deal with

serious topics. These movies are not outliers; there are videos dedicated to Disney’s “body count,” which counts how many characters have died in Disney movies. While these lms may be magical or fantastical in plot, the moral truths of death and life covered in them often stir conversations about mortality.

“Despite the fact that we would love to have people or animals or our loved ones forever, death is inevitable,” explained Bonnie Nickels, co-writer of the study End-of-Life in Disney and Pixar Films: An Opportunity for Engaging in Di cult Conversation. “We can use these lms as opportunities to introduce our young viewers and our young children to this idea.”

To Nickels, these movies can create a dialogue between parents and children about dying and even model coping methods. “The fact that it’s a common feature in these lms, kind of reiterates this idea that it’s common in life.”

Death is not easy to deal with or understand regardless of age. For children, there are fundamental concepts that go into the understanding of death that coincide with their stages of development.

“There are four things you see kids kind of navigate through and think about death. It’s really around 7 years old that kids start to have this concrete understanding of what death means,” said Dr. Amanda Oliva, a clinical psychologist at the Mind Body Clinical Re-

search Center of Stony Brook University Hospital. “It doesn’t mean by age seven they understand everything, but overall there’s a developmental stage that happens at that age.”

The rst component of understanding death is understanding inevitability — as much as we try to outrun it, every living thing will eventually die. Despite being a universal idea, it still invokes fear in children and adults alike.

The second is nality or irreversibility. There is no coming back from death. Once someone dies, we must live with their absence. Causality, the third, is why people die — what leads up to someone dying whether they are killed or succumb to old age or disease. Children may struggle to understand this concept and studies have suggested some blame themselves. Lastly, functionality is understanding that the body on a biological level no longer functions — it’s distinguishing that they can no longer breathe, talk or move compared to their living counterparts.

Children of all ages may handle or struggle with each topic regarding death, depending on their development and what they have experienced.

“A lot of times kids have this magical thinking that death means that someone is away for a while, but they’ll come back or that something magical can happen to bring this person back,” Oliva explained.

However, the magic within animated movies can distort the reality of death, be it healing tears or the power of love, which is why it is so important that these conversations with children happen so they can help clarify rather than confuse.

“In this culture, actually, we are not so good at teaching about death,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine. “We tend to be avoidant in the name of supposedly being protective. But I think a lot of the avoidance

comes out of anxiety about teaching our children about death.”

Nickels argues it is important for parents to guide their children at an acceptable age through this complex topic of death and to not shy away from these conversations.

“Developmentally, we stick with what is appropriate for the child at their age,” Nickels said. “But as they do get more intuitive, and they’re seeing this stu happen, and they’re starting to have gain or re ection and an awareness of life beyond themselves, and seeing what’s happening in these movies and applying it, you know, like, oh, ‘their grandmother died,’ then we can start to open up that door of conversation, right?”

Nickels suggests using gentle language in order to make a positive conversation experience. By asking questions such as “What do you think happened?” or “What do you think?” a parent could see what sort of understanding of death their child has.

“I’m engaging in perception checking. And if I can gain a perception of their thought process, then I can use that information to then respond to,” Nickels added.

As watching movies can be a shared experience between parent and child, children may turn to their parents to ask questions. Death is a di cult topic for people of any age, but these conversations stemming from animated movies can bring solace to not just children, but adults.

“Death is scary,” Saltz said. “And probably the number one fear that every human has is mortality. If you and your family believe that there is an afterlife, then that might be something you talk with your child about. It’s true that eventually everything dies. But then, their soul goes to heaven. And you know, that’s a beautiful place or whatever it might be, that can be very comforting, actually, to a child, to anybody really.”

Despite the mystery behind death and what happens after, the conversation must be honest and transparent so as to not confuse or obscure a child’s understanding of mortality.

“They need to trust you. They need to believe that you’re telling them what you know,” Saltz continued.

That is why animated movies have the power to present death in productive ways for all viewers, children and

their parents alike, to not just think, but talk about their emotions. The fact that these movies are marketed to children is even more meaningful.

The once cocky Puss with nine lives who would laugh at death must now grapple with the anxiety that he is down to his last life. Puss never took any of his deaths seriously — seeing himself as an invincible and infallible hero. However, Puss is immobilized by fear that at any moment he could die and lose everything he loves all while running from a villainous physical manifestation of death.

Coco o ers a unique cultural interpretation of death. Celebrated primarily in Mexico, the movie takes place on Day of the Dead or el Día de los Muertos — a holiday that honors those who are deceased. Coco explores what the afterlife may look like as the living main character Miguel travels to the Land of the Dead. Rather than focusing on someone’s death, the movie emphasizes the importance of remembering people. The movie puts emphasis on the cultural traditions of ofrendas, or altars, where deceased relatives are honored and can visit their families during the Day of the Dead.

As a result, her emotions, portrayed in the movie as sentient beings in her head, struggle to cope. The emotion Joy strives to make Riley happy at all times and prevents the other emotions from a ecting how the tween feels during this tumultuous time. It elucidates how important it is to be in touch with all our emotions and that it is okay to have feelings of sadness, anger and fear towards change and loss of loved ones.

ermo Del Toro won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Pinocchio. In his speech, he declared, “Animation is cinema, animation is not a genre and animation is ready to be taken to the next step.”

In order to “Keep animation in the conversation,” as Del Toro explained, viewers must give animated movies a chance. While many of these movies are made for child viewers, their themes apply to everyone. In fact, the most important gain from any movie is empathy towards one another.

In this movie, the protagonist Riley encounters a di erent type of loss — loss of normalcy and childhood. Riley moves across the country away from her friends and the life she built.

Guillermo del Toro’s rendition of Pinocchio perfectly encapsulates all of the components of understanding death. Geppetto struggles with the loss of his son and in order to cope, he creates Pinocchio. When Pinocchio is brought to life, he cannot die. Viewers can see what causes Pinocchio to die at various points in the lm whether shot, hit by a car or sacri cing himself. Each time he encounters a manifestation of Death who informs Pinocchio that he will never be a real boy because real boys are mortal. Before he can ask a question, he is resurrected.

Despite Pinocchio believing himself to be “the luckiest boy in the world” for being able to die and come back, Death sees it as a terrible burden. Pinocchio’s immortality is in contrast to the universality and nality of the eventual death of those around him and she thinks he will be “eternally su ering”. Death here is a peacekeeper maintaining order in life. She explains that “The one thing that makes life precious, you see, is how brief it is.” It speaks to what makes death so important — life.

At the 95th Academy Awards, Guill-

“Empathy is gained through experience, through witnessing events and living through them,” Nickels explained. “And the fact that when you watch and you cry, and you are emotionally involved, you are emotionally invested into the characters in that storyline into their life.” g

The vibrant art community in Moscow, Idaho, has long been a de ning characteristic of the city. For more than seven years, the small town had reported no murders. Known for its quaint charm and peaceful atmosphere, Moscow seemed an unlikely setting for the gruesome murders that unfolded in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022.

Four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in an o -campus house — two of whom were childhood best friends, two of whom were dating. In an instant, the futures of four young college students were tragically cut short. Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — were seen spending a Saturday night out near the university campus before returning to the house Sunday morning. Two other roommates, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, were also at the house when the attack happened but were unharmed.

For 47 days, the community waited. The community criticized law enforcement o cials for their lack of transparency and for sending mixed messages about the case. Hours after the victims’ bodies were discovered,

the public was informed that the Moscow police department “does not believe there is an ongoing community risk.” But that changed the following day when Moscow Police Chief James Fry said at a news conference Nov. 16, 2022: “We cannot say there is no threat to the community.” This shift in narrative raised questions about why, after a quadruple homicide had just occurred, the police department initially suggested that there was no clear threat to the community, leaving people with a false sense of security.

Speculations intensi ed in the absence of a motive. Fear roamed the quiet streets of the once idyllic community, born not only out of the grisly acts themselves but also out of the unknown. Stemming from unpredictability, there’s an intangibility to the fear of the unknown that makes it all the more nerve-wracking. Who is responsible? Will it happen again? Who’s next? This kind of fear festers in the mind, cultivating paranoia and distrust. Old neighbors and friends begin to appear as possible perpetrators. With each passing day bringing with it a mounting sense of dread, the victims’ families were left increasingly frustrated with the case’s painfully slow progress.

Suddenly, an arrest was made. After weeks of extensive police investigation, Bryan Kohberger was apprehended in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30, 2022.

Unsealed court documents detail that night’s events and which pieces of information led to the arrest. Despite

the ruthlessness of the murders, police found no signs of forced entry or damage inside the home. Autopsies performed on the bodies pointed to defensive wounds but indicated no signs of sexual assault.

According to the court documents, Mortensen was sleeping on the second oor — the same oor as Kernodle and Chapin — before she was awoken at 4 a.m. by what sounded like Goncalves in her upstairs bedroom playing with her pet dog. Mortensen later thought she heard Goncalves saying something to the e ect of, “there’s someone here.” Investigators believe the noise could’ve come from Kernodle, as her phone indicated she was on TikTok at this time.

Mortensen opened her door three times within a short period. Once, after she heard the comment about someone being in the house. The second was when she heard what sounded like crying coming from Kernodle’s room and a male voice saying, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you.” A neighbor’s security camera picked up voices or whimpering, a loud thud and a dog barking numerous times beginning at around 4:17 a.m.

When Mortensen opened her door for the third time, she saw a gure clad in black clothing and a mask walking toward her. She described the person as 5’10” or taller, male and athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The man walked past her — seemingly without seeing her — toward the back sliding glass door. Investigators suspect this was when the murderer left the scene. Mortensen stood in a “frozen shock phase” and then locked herself in her room.

At six feet tall and 185 pounds with bushy eyebrows, Kohberger’s physical description is consistent with Mortensen’s account.

Accordant with Mortensen’s testimonies was the discovery of a diamond-patterned shoe print found outside of her bedroom. The only other evidence at the scene was a tan leather knife sheath on Mogen’s bed, with a single source of male DNA left on the button snap of the sheath.

Camera footage in the neighborhood indicated numerous sightings of a white Hyundai Elantra without a front license plate that night. The Moscow Police Department noticed the car drove o on a road leading to Pullman, Washington, a nearby college town. Subsequently, investigators accessed video footage from the Washington State University campus and saw the vehicle at approximately 5:25 a.m. A query of white Elantras registered at WSU found a car owned by Bryan Kohberger. His car was registered in Pennsylvania, a state that does not require a front license plate to be displayed.

But out of all the evidence, possibly the most damning is Kohberger’s cell phone records.

At approximately 2:47 a.m., Kohberger’s phone stopped reporting to cellular towers and was not reported again until two hours later. Investigators believe this was an attempt to conceal his location by turning o his phone. The movements of his phone were then found to be consistent with the movements of the white Elantra observed on the security cameras in Pullman.

The phone records also show that his phone had been in the area of the residence at least 12 times before Nov. 13, 2022. All these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours.

A Ph.D. student in criminology at WSU at the time of the murders, Kohberger previously studied psychology and criminology at DeSales University. During his time as a master’s student at DeSales, Kohberger was approved for a research project that sought to understand how emotions and psychological traits in uence decision-making when committing a crime. More specifically, he was researching the thoughts and feelings of ex-convicts during their most recent o ense that led to a conviction. Kohberger posted a Reddit survey on subreddits r/ExCons and r/prisons with a throwaway account in search

of participants for this project. One of his questions asked, “After committing the crime, what were you thinking and feeling?” Another read, “After arriving, what steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target (i.e., person or object)? Please detail your thoughts and feelings.”

Assuming Kohberger is the murderer, I wonder if his obsession with studying criminology was a cause or an effect. Maybe the Idaho killings served as a disturbing real-life assessment of his ability to commit a heinous crime and evade punishment. And given Kohberger’s education in criminology, why was the crime carried out in such a careless manner? Why would someone with Kohberger’s knowledge of crime drive his own car, carry a phone and leave behind the murder weapon sheath with his DNA on it?

Charged with four counts of rst-degree murder and one count of felony burglary, prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty.

Because of the moral and legal complexities involved in capital punishment cases, the trial has been delayed far longer than expected. The irreversible nature of capital punishment underscores the gravity of any mistakes that could be made during legal proceedings. As we approach the trial date, we can expect discussions about the death penalty to become even more intense.

The judge previously presiding over the case, John C. Judge, wrote in a ruling that Kohberger’s lawyers tried to throw out the grand jury indictment, alleging that the prosecution did not properly withhold evidence from the public, and that the grand jury was biased and that the evidence was inad-

missible and insu cient. The judge argued that there was no evidence of grand juror bias or prosecutorial misconduct and that there was enough admissible evidence to believe that Kohberger committed the crimes. Kohberger’s defense team challenged this ruling in the Idaho Supreme Court but had the appeal denied again.

Although Kohberger’s lawyers failed to throw out the grand jury indictment, they successfully argued for a change of venue for the trial. On Sept. 12, Idaho’s State Supreme Court announced the decision to move the trial itself to Boise. Some 300 miles away from Moscow, the ruling was made to avoid a biased petit jury. Chief Justice G. Richard Bevan wrote, “While the issue of extensive, sensationalized coverage is not unique to Latah County, it is potentially more impactful given the volume of coverage coupled with the smaller population.” With the trial set for August 2025, the prolonged delay has left many questioning the continued wait for the victims’ families, who anxiously anticipate closure from this trial.

In the uncertainty surrounding the case’s verdict, several crucial pieces of evidence surface as determining factors that could sway the outcome. First and foremost is Mortensen’s eyewitness testimony. Considering the time that’s passed, both the prosecution and defense will scrutinize the credibility and reliability of her testimony. Secondly, the DNA sample found on the sheath of the suspected murder weapon adds another layer of complexity to the case. Depending on the validity of the forensic analysis of the DNA sample, the sheath could either implicate Kohberger’s guilt or innocence. And perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence in determining the case’s out-

come lies in the cell phone records. In an age where digital technology permeates every aspect of daily life, cell phone records can o er insights into an individual’s activities leading up to and following an alleged crime.

As the community continues to grapple with the horrifying tragedy that claimed the lives of Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in their o -campus home, it’s important to acknowledge that Bryan Kohberger’s family are victims in their own right. Facing an unending burden of guilt and wrestling with feelings of responsibility for their son’s actions, they too are mourning. They grieve for their son, who while still alive, is forever altered in the eyes of the world due to his alleged involvement.

Why did this particular case become

so sensationalized in the rst place? A part of it may stem from the victims’ social media presence. Their accounts’ images and videos showed that they were ordinary college students eager to begin their lives. The whole case is shrouded in mysteries yet simultaneously feels relatable—as if it could happen to my roommates and I, or to anyone. Crime disrupts our perception of a secure and rational world, even more so when it occurs in a place meant for education. The juxtaposition between murder and a traditionally safe environment forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about our vulnerability. With a newfound wariness, I catch myself looking over my shoulders more often, realizing that the world can be so unpredictable. Amid profound loss, questions persist, with the hope that answers emerge from the trial. g

On Oct. 10, Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, Head of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories called the people of Gaza, “human animals [that] must be treated as such.” As the war progresses, the Gazans’ prospects of a peaceful life have been dashed by the brutal force exercised by the Israeli government. There is disregard for Palestinian life because Israeli leadership does not view them as equally human. The following pieces seek to supplant Alian’s dehumanizing rhetoric.

“You need to read A Grief Observed,” my professor says as he slides the novels from class into his navy blue briefcase. The small seminar room is empty now, the afternoon light has dimmed nearly into dusk. I have been writing a paper about su ering, spirituality and medical care. He is sure that the short, four-sectioned essay will be essential to my writing.

C.S. Lewis, theologian and author of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote A Grief Observed about the loss of his wife, referred throughout the text simply as H. Her death left a catastrophic and dis guring absence in Lewis’ life, leading him to fundamental questions about the nature of life itself. If God was supposedly good, why did loss hurt so much?

I have been writing about grief in a variety of forms for a couple of months now. It started with a series of elegies for another class on poetic structures. According to that class, the structure of a poem consists of how it moves — in subject, setting, tone or whatever else. A poem begins in one place, then there is a turn, which brings it somewhere new. Some common forms are self-explanatory in the patterns of their movement: circular, dream-to-waking, metaphor-to-meaning.

In my nal project for that class, I wrote 15 poems on one common theme: my relationship with Arabic. The poems explored the sounds of the Quran, which I memorized but didn’t understand as a child, the Arabic of my name and the names of my schoolmates and the Arab writers who shaped my relationship with the world.

One of my poems was titled “Elegy for Edward Said”. It borrowed from the language of Mahmoud Darwish, the acclaimed national poet of Palestine, who honored the life and death of his friend and cultural critic in a poem titled “Tibaq”. In that poem, Darwish wrote that Said worked in English but dreamed in Arabic — a language through which

Heaven and Jerusalem conversed.

An elegy is a poem about loss or mourning. There are three types of archetypal elegiac structures: grief to consolation, grief to a refusal of consolation and grief to a deeper grief. The elegy need not necessarily be about the death of an individual, but it is concerned with how grief moves us or, more precisely, what it moves us toward.

My elegy moved from grief to a deeper grief. Said’s work transformed how Muslims and other imperial subjects are considered in literature and discourse, and his death signaled another transformation. While grading my nal project, my teacher left a comment in the margin of the poem: “Write more elegies.” So I did. Over the next few months I wrote more than 40 pages of them. Then, I started writing about grief in my academic papers.

In my personal life, I feel like I’ve grieved a lot — the loss of loved ones, the shed innocence of growing up, the ache of spoiled relationships, the violence of the trauma we inherit, the violence we perpetuate. But grief also feels like something that connects me to others — to the people I hurt, those that hurt me, but also people at a distance, those I know nothing else about. If we’ve all felt grief — and certainly everyone has, in some form at least — then it must be something that can bring us together; it can allow us to recognize what we share.

A Grief Observed is a quick nd in the library stacks: a small, sand-colored book. The pages are weathered and written over. Stars scatter the margins and a couple lines on each page were underlined. I turn to a large section that was circled with a barely intelligible scribble to its right:

“Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the eld you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your…grand

enterprise. To make an organism, which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal.’ To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be lled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god.’”

II.

A week later, I’m sitting in The Press o ce when my friend Ali walks in. It’s 1 p.m. Light lters through the small window onto the desk, where my laptop is closed and piled with the books from my classes that I’m cycling through because I refuse to sit with any one text for too long. He tells me he has an idea for a project about the violent language leveraged against Palestinians.

Ghassan Alian, an Israeli o cial, called the people of Gaza “human animals.” Ali explained how he wanted to reclaim that con guration. By imagining an expansive “we” — one that connects Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and their advocates — identi cation with the “animal” can be seen as an expression of a collective human ingenuity and resilience.

Alian’s language sought to dehumanize Palestinians, but that kind of violent rhetoric is not new. The Guardian reported that, “In a committee of the Israeli parliament in 1983, General Rafael Eitan boasted of his triumphs on the West Bank. ‘All the Arabs will be able to do is scuttle around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.’”

Re ecting on post-Oct. 7 language, Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and the editor of the Palestine Chronicle, compared Eitan’s assertion to the line from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, the station attributed for inciting hatred toward the Tutsi people of Rwanda: “[Tutsis] are cockroaches. We will kill you.”

To call a people “cockroaches,” then and now, is to evoke lth and overabundance. It constructs a license to

kill and seeks to legitimize occupation and state-sanctioned violence. The more recent war in Gaza is a dramatic escalation of a long-standing con ict. Still, more people have died in Gaza since Oct. 7 than make up the entire student body of Stony Brook University.

Edward Said, the aforementioned academic born in Jerusalem under the British Mandate for Palestine, wrote extensively about this kind of rhetoric. He came to the United States, by way of his American father, to complete his schooling. Eventually, he became a professor of literature at Columbia University with groundbreaking contributions to post-colonial studies.

In “Permission to Narrate,” Said contextu-

alizes Eitan’s comparison of Gazans to cockroaches with the rhetoric of Israel during that era. The essay explores how Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was, in part, a response to the existential threat of Palestinian existence, which weaved a narrative of self-determination that threatened Israel’s rule. Said wrote, “to destroy Palestinian nationalism and institutions in Lebanon would make it easier to destroy them on the West Bank and in Gaza.”

Further, Said wrote, “Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain and circulate them.” The vision of Palestinians as terrorists, monsters and animals — as consolidated and perpetuated by gures like Eitan — were “anti-narrative,” reducing Pales-

tinian existence to an antithesis of Western values.

Violence on the level of narrative and language enables political and military violence. The facts of those atrocities committed against Palestinians, historically and now, need a narrative. The idea of a homeland that Palestinians have historically belonged to and may one day have access to again is an example of such a narrative, but it’s vehemently opposed by Israel’s own national narratives. Eitan’s drugged cockroaches in a bottle, to follow his line of thinking, shouldn’t have a homeland to go back to. In other words, he’s erasing their story, obliterating their histories.

The quote from Lewis echoes in my head;

it feels like a necessary counter-narrative. We are — all of us — human animals. We are creatures ailing toward divinity — trying to make something out of the experiment of existence. We lose and feel, tragically, that loss; we wonder if we can even go on.

III.

I’m sitting in my professor’s o ce when I’m given another book to read. The morning is gray and unseasonably warm, and the room smells like stale co ee. He hands me a worn copy of Culture and Imperialism, one of Said’s most well-known books of criticism. “Just give it back to me at some point,” he says.

As I walk back to The Press o ce again, I’m thinking about the kindnesses of my professors. Literature has always felt important to me because it’s interested in excavating those narratives that Said described as contextualizing the facts of life. But the literal o ces of literature are spaces where books are traded, where language is duly interrogated for the role it plays in shaping the world — it’s a space I feel I belong.

I turn on the light in the o ce and take o my bag, placing my new book on the long table by the window. I check my phone and see a poem plastered repeatedly on my timeline: “If I Must Die”. I scroll far enough to nd a related news article.

On Dec. 7, Refaat Alareer, a professor of

comparative literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed in an airstrike. During his life he was heralded for sharing the narratives of Gazans, especially young writers as collected in Gaza Writes Back. Following Alareer’s death, people shared his last poem, which he had posted online himself. It opens:

If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings

The language is straightforward, matter of fact. Death is an expected reality, and the speaker is asking for simple things: to be talked about, to let his life have utility in a nal request.

That request is clari ed in the following lines, becoming an image impressed upon the reader:

(make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his esh not even to himself—

sees the kite, my kite you made, ying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love

The speaker’s nal request is to have a kite made. Even in death, the speaker is looking to the humanity of others, wondering how he may bring them relief. The child, by merely being in Gaza, is endangered by insinuations of violence: the blaze, the fact that love is something that must be brought back, the poverty invoked when a dead man’s belongings may be sold for something as commonplace as a kite. Despite the specter of violence — re, death, absence — there is also divinity in the poem — heaven, an angel, love. And the poem, despite everything, ends with optimism:

If I must die

let it bring hope let it be a tale

The poem is hopeful that love will return: that a story can change something.

At rst glance, “If I Must Die” appears to be a circular poem — beginning and ending with the request that the speaker’s death be made a narrative. The turns of the poem, then, are the movement away from, and then back to, that request. What is emphasized by this structure is the cyclical nature of life itself; it universalizes nd-

ing meaning in the narrative of one’s life.

While a circular structure makes sense visually, it leaves me feeling unsettled. This reading implies the image of the poem doesn’t alter its movement; it just brings us back to the start. I want to believe in grief’s capacity to change us, and in the poem’s capacity to illustrate how grief does its work. I want the kite to be a kind of revelation; I want the speaker’s insistence of it to matter, for it to alter the poem’s course.

Consider the poem’s elegiac structure. The occasion of the poem — the speaker’s death — eventually turns toward that “child, somewhere in Gaza.” This subject that appears suddenly in the poem becomes its arresting image. A boy, waiting for his father, sees a kite “and thinks for a moment an angel is there.” Grief lies both in the speaker’s death and the father’s, but then the poem turns toward this image of sky and ight. The imbuing of divinity in this image orients the reader toward hope.

Though the rst line is repeated, in its later instance the request is not desperate but evocative. The poem takes grief — death, absence, violence — and nds a way toward consolation by turning to the child. The poem is hopeful: it lets grief guide it.

The image of the kite makes the reader look up, following the child’s gaze. Through this gesture, we reckon — like Lewis in A Grief Observed—with a cosmic in delity that the world that made us has also forsaken us. But like Lewis, Alareer nds grace in grief. It is the experience of loss which makes hope, in its appearance at the very end, a triumph.

Nearly three months after Alareer was killed, the writer Huda Sobah would make a similar observation about kites in the

skies above Gaza. Sobah, a 19-year-old Palestinian currently displaced in Rafah, describes nding solace in the sight of kites after 143 days of war in her “Dispatch from Gaza”. For her, they represent the resilience of the children in Rafah:

“Each morning, as the rst rays of sunlight pierce through the darkness, I nd myself drawn to the window, searching for that familiar sight. And when I see them—those vibrant kites painted against the backdrop of the azure sky—my heart swells with a sense of hope that de es the despair that threatens to consume us.”

IV.

In 2014, Reyhany Jabbari, a 26-year-old Iranian woman, was hanged for defending herself against a man who tried to rape her. Before her sentence, Jabbari recorded a heartfelt message to her mother detailing what happened and asked of her mother one request—that her organs be donated. Faced with brutal injustice, Jabbari’s voice is calm. “Dear soft-hearted Sholeh, in the other world it is you and me who are the accusers and others who are the accused,” she said.

In “Heritage,” a poem from the collection Calling A Wolf A Wolf, Kaveh Akbar mourns and retells her story. Contending with the grief of witnessing such tragedy, he attempts to amplify her voice—careful to not erase her language but build from it. He writes:

you weren’t even killing the roaches in your cell that you would take them up by their antennae and ick them through the bars into a courtyard where you could see men hammering long planks of cypress into gallows

In the face of outrageous tragedy, we are capable of transcendent compassion. Jabbari’s only wish from her last letter was that her death be used to save someone else’s life.

When I think about Eitan’s comment — “All the Arabs will be able to do is scuttle around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle” — I think of Jabbari in her cell. She was kind even to the roaches, giving them the freedom she had been robbed of. In the quiet, intimate space of her prison cell, Jabbari railed against the notion that any group of people should be denied their stories.

Jabbari wasn’t Arab, but I think grief connects her to this story. We are — all of us — human animals: people just trying to survive and tell stories of our survival. We nd grace only accidentally — in the grief of loss, in a kite amidst rubble, in a roach in the prison cell.

I’m sitting in a dimly lit room for a co eehouse reading. It’s been months since I rst read A Grief Observed, and it’s been a few days since I returned Culture and Imperialism. A law student from my Arabic class reads a story about a boy mourning the death of his younger brother. I have tears welling up when he nishes and sits back down next to me. “I didn’t know you could write like that,” I tell him.

The next time I see him, I have my copy of Akbar’s collection ready to hand over. It’s not that I think there’s a lesson he’d learn from that book, but his grief reminded me of Akbar’s — something about the way their words hung over me the rst time I heard them. It’s like his grief is familiar, like it lets me see him clearly. “I have a book for you,” I say.

I wish pieces did not need to be written, nor cries needed to be heard; I wish Muslims could know peace and not need to bother using their voices, nor believe their voices to be Palestinians’ last hope. But it’s been made clear to me that as long as you stand in opposition to Israel’s violence, you are reduced to an animal trying to survive. You are an owl, forced to be wise and knowledgeable in all parts and nuances of the situation. You are a gazelle, forced to be vigilant of what you say and how it can be perceived. You are a lion, forced to protect your community. You are a black sheep, alienated from your Jewish community because of your critiques on Zionism. To the Israeli government and American leadership, you are not equal in worth.

On Oct. 10, Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, Head of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories said, “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” These words of collective punishment, and the indiscriminate bombing at the expense of Palestinian lives and homes made it clear his target extended further than just Hamas. The Israeli government makes the position that they see the people of Palestine as beneath them apparent. This mindset expands further to the American conscience, where any Muslims or Arabs in the Middle East are so far removed that their killing en masse does not seem real. Their deaths are so commonplace that it has become normal to see such high numbers. Demonstra-

tors calling for a cease re or more regard for civilian life are sco ed at by congresspeople. House representative Tom Suozzi of New York’s 3rd Congressional District recently won his race on the position that congressional members calling for limiting U.S. aid to Israel were “clueless” and “just not educated about the issues.”

The Israeli government and their supporters dehumanize and infantilize those in opposition to their campaign of violence. To them, Palestinians are not worth the e ort to be evacuated when hospitals and refugee camps are bombed. Demonstrators are “uneducated” when they call for a cease re or say the actions of Israel are genocidal. Most American voters that are not Muslim or directly a ected are unfazed in the face of tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza, with President Joe Biden keeping support from his base and his approval ratings only increasing in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks.

I was disgusted when rst hearing Alian’s quote and came to realize it astutely explains the behavior of the Israeli government. The indiscriminate massacre of civilians, shelling of hospitals and corralling of people, only to bomb them after, can only evoke the imagery of a slaughterhouse. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview that strengthening Hamas will provide a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority and decrease pressure toward Palestinian statehood, his intention to make the Palestinian issue a perpetual one was clear. If you support Palestinians, you will only be seen as

an animal. Your words and movements will never be taken seriously. Yet again, these dehumanizing sentiments echo.

For months, I stayed silent on the issue. I let it pass in Press meetings, let people grow tired of talking about it and seeing it. I saw protesters’ identities revealed on trucks at Harvard University, which called them antisemites and blacklisted them from jobs. I heard of three students shot for wearing ke yehs and speaking Arabic. I convinced myself this was the reason I must stay silent: for my safety and for my future. My parents told me this was not my issue, and that this was too dangerous to take up. The speakers at the mosque would call for silent prayers, and nothing more. Yet it ate at me. I fervently watched videos explaining the situation, the history and the arguments. I am a Muslim, an editor at The Press and a writer. Is it not my responsibility to write? Do I not have an obligation to it?

Yet each time I tried writing about the Palestinian cause, I froze. I stopped after each sentence, not wanting to say something I don’t fully mean. “Can you write well enough for people to take you seriously? Will you materially change anything with the words you say? Does what you say matter to anyone?” These insecurities have been recurring since October 2023. However much I care, or talk or stay silent, the killing will continue; the people will die in silence. Post squares on Instagram and boycott Starbucks, but in the end, my people and my cause will begin and end in a history textbook. Does it matter where

I stand in my nal days if my words have changed nothing?

I never truly understood the value of poetic language, for speaking in ways that brought words to life, until last summer, when I read Pierce Brown’s Golden Son. While initially a standard sci- novel about a dystopian world, the author develops his story through poetic dialogue. One of the main antagonists, Karnus au Bellona, speaks to the main character, Darrow, about his motivations and why he continues to ght: “Pride is just a shout into the wind…I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind — how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” If we allow it, our actions are worth nothing. The debilitating nature of these mass killings is by design. If every day the Israeli government kills, killing becomes the norm. When they decide to kill a few hundred less today, they want us to be thankful. They will desensitize us until we become numb to the pain these people see everyday. Like predators to a gazelle, they will instill in us an ever-present fear. Fear that our words will not translate to action; fear that our vote is worthless; fear that in this individual world, we are alone. They are correct only if we allow them to be. If we allow them, we will die, and our people will die. But we will have our shout in the wind. g

In April 2023, Stony Brook University (SBU) was appointed the anchor institution for the New York Climate Exchange. Located on Governor’s Island in New York City, The Exchange will be a “ rst-ofits-kind” international center geared toward researching and developing solutions to urban climate issues, as well as furthering work, education and training opportunities in the environmental eld for New Yorkers. Being the anchor institution means that most of The Exchange’s research will be conducted in collaboration with SBU, and that it will most likely have a more authoritative role in the organization’s decision making.

The Exchange’s website states that the project is committed to environmental justice by improving “discriminatory practices of the past” and acknowledging the damage that climate change does speci cally to “low-income communities and communities of color.” However, none of the partner coalitions or social organizations

under The Exchange have been identi ed as Indigenous or Indigenous-afliated.

Because of strong conservation efforts promoted by Indigenous communities, many have called for a “braiding” of science and Indigenous knowledge to foster advancements in the elds of environmental science and ecology. Through the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in these areas, there is hope that conservation e orts will be stronger and more on par with scienti c developments.

Indigenous communities have demonstrated resilience and adaptation in the face of climate change. Embedded in Indigenous cultural practices is the observation and protection of their land due to the deep spiritual connections they have with the environments they inhabit. As a result, they hold a vast amount of knowledge and experience with the lands they occupy.

Yet, Indigenous communities are of-

ten more vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change than the general population. These communities are also more likely to su er from poverty, creating the perfect storm for them to be highly subjected to the negative consequences of climate change.

Climate change causes uctuating temperatures, rising sea levels and ocean acidi cation. Because of these, Indigenous communities have not only lost territory, but have also experienced smaller harvests and lowered produce quality. This leaves them with no choice but to combat these issues as they continue to disrupt and threaten the Indigenous way of life.

“In our research, we nd that changes in temperature and temperature variability are associated with changes in the risk of mortality, cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease,” said Mahdieh Danesh Yazdi, assistant professor in public health at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. Yazdi researches the e ects of air pollution

and climate change on human health and epigenetics — how DNA expression can be altered through your environment and behaviors.

Long Island has no shortage of Indigenous peoples — 14 Indigenous communities have lived or continue to live on the Island. One community that has taken matters into their own hands is the Shinnecock Nation — also known as “people of the shore” — who reside in Southampton, just 40 miles away from SBU’s main campus. Shinnecock kelp farmers are addressing the ocean acidi cation happening right in front of their homes.

As a “playground for the rich and famous,” the Hamptons was wealthy New Yorkers’ prime escape in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The region’s crumbling water sanitation infrastructure hit a “breaking point” and couldn’t keep up with the large in ux of people. This breaking point caused leakage and spills of excess nitrogen, which entered the surrounding bodies of water. Excess nitrogen in waterways can cause overgrowth of algae and other aquatic plants, leading them to suck up the oxygen in the water and block sunlight from reaching other organisms. This acidi es the water, leaving it undrinkable and un-

inhabitable for marine life.

The Shinnecock community, whose members rely on this water, started planting kelp to help mitigate the effects of pollution, rapid development and climate change on their water. Kelp, a large brown species of seaweed, has proven to be e ective in mitigating ocean acidi cation. Since they started growing and planting kelp, there has been an increase in the populations of scallops, clams, sea horses and other species.

“Given the importance of the marine ecosystem to many communities

economically, socially, and culturally, harm to the ecosystem may also result in adverse mental health outcomes,” Yazdi said.

Shavonne Smith, environmental director of the Shinnecock Nation, added to this idea when she spoke to Agence France-Presse: “If you’re talking about taking a people that are so dependent on the water – for spiritual health, recreational and sustenance – and now moving them farther inland, you’re talking about a very huge, stressful, emotional, dynamic shift in who we are,”

Kelsey Leonard — the Canada research chair in Indigenous waters, climate and sustainability at the University of Waterloo and a citizen of the Shinnecock Nation — thinks that the meaning of Shinnecock, “people of the shore,” is prophetic.

“I think our ancestors had a vision in calling us that. That we had a duty and a responsibility to care for that shore,” she said. “What you see us doing today … is in fact a key pillar of how we see ourselves living up to our responsibilities as Shinnecock people. It’s inherent and innate to who we are.”

The Shinnecock Nation is one of the many Indigenous communities pre-

communities. The report further recommended environmental initiatives make an “explicit consideration of the views, perspectives and rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.” In addition, according to a study published in Nature, “territories of the world’s 370 million Indigenous peoples cover only 24% of land worldwide, but contain 80% of the world’s biodiversity.”

Indigenous communities have demonstrated their ability to adapt to and resist climate change with low-cost, e ective solutions. This provides the opportunity for institutions to work with these communities to enhance these ideas, and make them e ective on a larger scale. The Exchange has a unique opportunity to collaborate with their next-door neighbors and create revolutionary climate change solutions. The gap between scientists and Indigenous communities needs to be narrowed – and The Exchange can do it.

“I think it behooves organizations and entities like the New York Climate Exchange to include Indigenous peoples because that is now the status quo,” Leonard said. “Not doing so is sort of putting you behind the eight-ball. You’re not operating o of

serving the land they reside on, as well as reversing the damage incurred from climate change. The preservation and conservation e orts put forth by Indigenous communities far supersedes those of non-Indigenous communities. A 2019 report compiled by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services demonstrated that 75% of the terrestrial environment and about 66% of the marine environment have been “signi cantly altered” by human activity. However, this damage has been less severe in areas held or managed by Indigenous

the best available science to make informed decisions … you’re operating at a de cit.”

The lack of Indigenous knowledge as part of The Exchange is ironic considering that SBU’s main campus resides on the land of the Setauket tribe, who were forcibly displaced. A land acknowledgment message sits at the bottom of the university’s website, stating that the university a rms “[I] ndigenous sovereignty, history, and experience.” However, when it comes to climate justice, Indigenous voices are cast aside. g

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel is at war on Gaza. In January, after months of nonstop bombardment, the International Court of Justice ruled Israel’s attacks as a plausible genocide.

But you wouldn’t know any of this if you listened to Stony Brook University’s (SBU) administration.

SBU’s former President Maurie McInnis has released ve statements since Oct. 7. She has used vague language alluding to a “con ict” between Isra-

el and Gaza. She condemned antisemitism, but mentioned Islamophobia as an afterthought. The last time McInnis issued a public statement discussing the situation was on Dec. 11, 2023, following the congressional testimonies of Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania’s presidents. McInnis’ statement condemned calls for the genocide of Jewish people, but didn’t mention Palestinians — instead she said, “any other group.”

The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees has been sharing situation reports nearly every single day since Oct. 7. According to the most recent report, more than 75% of the population in the Gaza Strip has been displaced following Israel’s intense and constant attacks. “More than 1 million women and girls in Gaza

have almost no food, no access to safe water, latrines, washrooms or sanitary pads, with diseases spreading amid inhumane living conditions,” the report stated.

“How much longer must we endure this wretched plight?” an 80-year-old refugee from Northern Gaza said in a report published on Feb. 21. “How much longer will our lives be de ned by perpetual uncertainty and relentless specter of death?”

Journalists in Gaza have been massacred on the frontlines while attempting to publicize the reality of the ongoing Israeli attacks. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 90 Palestinian journalists have been killed since Oct. 7. Photographer and journalist Motaz Azaiza has over 18 million followers on his Instagram pro le in which he has reported gruesome accounts of the death and destruction caused by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Azaiza evacuated Gaza after 107 days of watching friends, family and loved ones being killed by the relentless bombing.

While SBU’s administration remains silent, student-led groups are the loudest voice supporting Palestinians on campus. SB4Palestine is a coalition of students that has done work like organizing protests, creating educational resources and holding memorials for the Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. Yet despite their pivotal work, the university has not yet recognized them as an o cial club. Senior Namal Fiaz is the organization’s president and one of the founding members. “Last semester, my friends and I started from scratch,” Fiaz said. “We realized that if we don’t organize on campus, nothing is going to be done.”

SB4Palestine has since grown, with almost 2,000 followers on Instagram, and each of their demonstrations are attended not only by dozens of students, but also by several professors and faculty members.

Fiaz and other members of SB4Palestine are also organizers of a SUNYwide initiative for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) under the national BDS movement. The national movement, founded in 2005, brings awareness to Israel’s persistent violations of international law. Almost 20 years later, the BDS movement remains steadfast in its mission to ght for the rights of Palestinians and end Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

On Feb. 23, SUNY BDS organizers received a cease-and-desist letter from SUNY lawyers for the organization’s connection to the SUNY trademark. A New York Post article called the group “rogue” and “left unchecked to spew its hatred.” To avoid further connection with the SUNY system, the organization’s website now displays that the “SUNY” in SUNY BDS stands for “Stop Unbearable Neoliberal Yuppies.”

“If we’re getting this kind of censorship that means we’re doing something right,” Fiaz said. “I’m not afraid of the intimidation tactics that come from the Stony Brook administration or New York State.”

The goal of SUNY BDS is for all 64 SUNY campuses to boycott businesses economically connected to Israel and to ultimately push schools to completely divest from Israel altogether. According to their website, an example of SUNY’s ties to Israel includes a partnership between Stony Brook and IBM, a company that contributes to Israel’s military.

“SUNY BDS was started by a bunch of organizers from here at Stony Brook, the University at Albany and the University at Bu alo,” Fiaz said. “We’ve slowly expanded from those three schools to 50 of them, which is amazing. This is the most urgent thing we can do right now, to make sure that our tuition mon-

ey stops going toward genocide. We divested during South African apartheid, and we will divest again. I know it.”

On April 18, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) voted 15-6 — with 3 other voters abstaining — to pass a resolution to “Advocate for the Implementation of a BDS Plan in Solidarity with Palestinian Human Rights” — a huge step toward SBU ending its ties with Israel’s occupation in Gaza. In an Instagram post, SB4Palestine stated, “The ght isn’t over, we are here for the long haul. We will free Palestine within our lifetime!”

Similar to the work that SB4Palestine is doing now, SBU students were equally as passionate about divesting from South African apartheid. In 1985, the SUNY Board of Trustees approved a resolution in a 9-4 vote to divest all of SUNY’s funds from South African assets. An article from the League of Revolutionary Struggle archives describes how students organized rallies and sitins in the administration building to demand divestment.

Pro-Palestine student groups across the U.S. have not been supported by university administrations. Instead, these groups have been faced with Islamophobia, censorship and blatant, violent hate crimes on their own campuses.

On Jan. 19, students holding a pro-Palestine rally at Columbia University were attacked and sprayed with a chemical weapon, known as skunk or skunk water, by two individuals. Al Jazeera reported in 2021 that skunk was developed as a crowd control weapon by an Israeli company called Odortec. It has been used on Palestinians in the West Bank by the IDF, and it causes side e ects like intense nausea, vomiting and skin irritation.

“We know some of the people who were a ected,” Fiaz said. “They see their attackers on campus every single day. The administration has done absolutely nothing about it. The students that were skunk-sprayed faced side effects for weeks after that. The admin-

istration at Columbia is turning a blind eye.”

Recently, more than 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators at Columbia University were arrested after the university President Minouche Sha k called upon the New York Police Department (NYPD) against Columbia’s own students. NYPD removed the protestors engaging in a peaceful movement in the lawn of the campus, which organizers called a Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

According to the Columbia Spectator,

NYPD arrived in full riot gear, forcibly carried demonstrators and loaded them onto correctional facilities buses in the “largest instance of mass arrests to be made on campus since 1968” — when students protested against the Vietnam War.

The rampant suppression and the weaponizing of police forces against students continues to escalate across universities, resulting in arrests and suspension. Several universities like Columbia have banned pro-Palestine

groups on their campuses. While the Stony Brook administration has not gone that route, students have instead faced censorship.

On Feb. 22, SB4Palestine held a demonstration to call for the termination of SBU’s contract with Starbucks. They held a banner in the Melville Library and the Union that read, “Union Busting Is A Crime”— referencing Starbucks’ mistreatment of employees who have spoken up for Palestine.

In an Instagram post, SB4Palestine stated that Starbucks has vili ed the Starbucks Workers United group after Starbucks sued Workers United for trademark infringement after the organization made a pro-Palestine post on social media.

“Immediately in the Union, some of the administrators came out,” Fiaz said. “They were trying to get us out of there, they said that we couldn’t be there and that it was against school guidelines. We had the student code pulled up and cited it immediately. Eventually they left us alone.”

Within the student code, the university has a Public Assembly Policy. There are restrictions that allow the university to interfere if the assembly disrupts a university activity, jeopardizes the safety of others or obstructs movement in a building — holding a banner does not apply to any of those

restrictions.

At every protest and demonstration, there is an overwhelming presence of police o cers lling the area. On March 26, the police presence escalated, and nine protestors were arrested during a peaceful movement.

The protestors entered the public lobby of the administration building, led a few pro-Palestinian chants and then engaged in a quiet sit-in demonstration. UPD o cers quickly surrounded the students and Rick Gatteau, the vice president for student a airs, and announced that the students had ve minutes to leave or else they would be subject to arrest on the basis of “disruption.”

Gatteau sent an email statement four hours after the arrests were made, stating that the arrests were “necessary.” He used hypocritical language priding the university on free speech. Several campus organizations, including USG, have called for the charges to be dropped. On April 4, USG passed a resolution to “Demand Protection of Students’ Rights to Free Speech and Peaceful Protest.” The university has not commented on it yet.

“It’s all a reminder that, as students, we need to know our rights and we need to know that we are protected under the First Amendment

and the student code to have peaceful demonstrations,” Fiaz said. “What the administration is doing here and at a lot of other SUNY schools is a direct violation of the First Amendment. Censorship of this magnitude is only occurring because of our unwavering support for the Palestinian cause.” Despite the e orts of the university to silence students, groups like SB4Palestine and organizations all across the globe continue to ght for Palestine. They continue to spread the message of the more than 34,000 Palestinians who have been killed and can no longer ght for themselves. To quote from the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in December, “If I must die, you must live to tell my story.” g

How do you make someone care about something? One might o er statistics of su ering.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 41,600 Palestinians have reportedly been killed, many of them women and children, and 96,600 injured in the year of war beginning on Oct. 7, 2023. Nine in 10 people across the Gaza Strip, at least 1.9 million individuals, were displaced according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Yet the war continues, and these gures continue to rise.

Priscilla Wathington, a poet and humanitarian worker based in the San Francisco Bay Area, says that poetry counters harmful narratives and discourses aimed at Palestinians, especially in spaces where facts and data fail to garner empathy. While she doesn’t want to mythologize the capabilities of poetry, she says it pushes on people who are not receptive to facts that contradict their beliefs.

“You can give them table after table of data, and it’s not very convincing to a lot of people,” Wathington said. “The human encounter, the shaking of hands

or the looking into someone’s eyes — it means more.”

Wathington was born in the United States, but raised in Jerusalem with a Palestinian mother and a white American father. She is currently studying for a Masters of Fine Arts at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and has previously worked for Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), Norwegian Refugee Council and the Arab American Action Network.

As managing editor for DCIP, where she worked for six years, Wathington sought to create change in children’s human rights in Palestine through the curation of writing and research, videography and photography, multimedia materials and UN petitions and meetings. While she has held many di erent roles, her focus on language connects her work for non-governmental organizations to her poetry.

“[Both] are asking questions about what kinds of change are possible through language, through storytelling, through discourse, care, work and through consciousness,” Wathington explained. In her work as a poet, she says that the pressure for Palestinians

to be silent is constant in the U.S.

“I absolutely feel that pressure in every, every institution that I’m a part of,” Wathington said. “Whether it is stated, or whether it is communicated by people, sometimes in positions of power, whispering that they support me, but not publicly.”

The marginalization of Palestinian writers has created a hostile environment among American literary institutions. Many literary magazines and organizations, such as the 92nd Street Y (92NY), Poetry Foundation, Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, PEN America and Guernica Magazine, are facing scrutiny for their negative relationships with Palestinian writers and advocates or for their silence regarding Israel’s war in Gaza.

On Oct. 20, 2023, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen posted on Instagram that 92NY canceled a reading for his book, A Man of Two Faces. In a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson for 92NY clari ed that the event was postponed, citing the author’s stance on Israel and the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. In a post uploaded the day after the event, Nguyen argued that “their language was ‘postponement,’

but no reason was given, no other date was o ered and I was never asked. So, in e ect, cancellation.”

As a result, Nguyen, with the help of a ected sta from the 92NY event, hosted an alternative gathering at McNally Jackson at Seaport, an independent bookstore in Manhattan, where he spoke openly about the crucial role of art in times of crisis.

“Art is silenced in times of war and division because some people only want to see the world as us vs. them,” Nguyen said in the post. “But art is one of the things that can keep our minds and hearts open; that can help us see beyond the hatred of war; that can make us understand that we cannot be divided into the human versus the inhuman because we are, all of us, inhuman and human at the same time.”

92NY is a cultural and community center that has connected people through arts, entertainment and conversation for more than 150 years. The center identi es itself as a proudly Jewish organization that has “harnessed the power of arts and ideas to enrich, enlighten and change lives, and the power of community to repair the world.” 92NY did not respond to requests for comment regarding Nguyen’s experience.

Literary organizations have faced sta resignations, refusals to submit or publish work and open letters calling for institutional reform as a result of these kinds of strained relationships with writers in support of Palestine. The cancellation of Nguyen’s event sparked outcry amongst community members and participants of 92NY’s programming. Critics and writers — including Christian Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, Dionne Brand, Paisley Rekdal and Andrea Long Chu — canceled their participation in 92NY’s events. On Nov. 2, 2023, a group of writers crafted and signed an open letter to the 92nd Street Y that urged “the Y to recommit to its core values of intellectual pluralism and free speech before it does irreparable harm to its reputation and legacy.”

Sarah Ghazal Ali shared similar sentiments in her letter of resignation as the editor-in-chief of the online literary journal Palette Poetry. “As writers, our medium is language, and our work is in pursuit of clarity,” Ali said. “Silence in this case obfuscates, condones and implicitly bolsters the project of settler colonialism. To choose silence and passivity is to choose a side, and it is the side of the oppressor.” Ali cited the company’s neutrality regarding the occupation of Palestine as her reason for resigning. Saba Keramati and Sarah Ca-

var—editors of Frontier Poetry, a related magazine — built o Ali’s statement in their resignations.

More than 2,000 poets and writers, including Ali and Keramati, have pledged to boycott the Poetry Foundation and its literary magazine, Poetry, for its silence. The publication was founded in 1912 and has become one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English language. On Nov. 3, 2023, an open letter penned by poets Noor Hindi, Summer Farah, Omar Sakr and George Abraham expressed disappointment with the board of the Poetry Foundation and the editors of Poetry for their recent instance of prejudiced silencing.

The authors cited an incident of censorship re ective of a larger institutional failure to uphold its commitment to diversity. “Joshua Gutterman Tranen’s review of Sam Sax’s collection ‘PIG,’ which engages with anti-Zionist politics — Joshua’s and Sam’s — was ‘shelved’ inde nitely by Poetry magazine on Oct. 8, 2023, because the magazine doesn’t want to be seen as ‘picking a side’ in the genocide unfolding in Gaza,” they said in the open letter.

On March 26, the Poetry Foundation published a statement responding to the letter after the boycott was lifted by organizers. It maintained that while

it is not its role to make institutional statements about geopolitical crises, the Foundation can provide a platform for poets impacted by those crises. It also committed to re-evaluating its investment policy and improving transparency with the members of the poetry community. The authors of the letter lifting the boycott played a signi cant role in pushing the Foundation to interrogate and adjust its position through discussions with leadership. They also recognize that this issue is larger than one institution.

“All cultural and arts bodies must do away with the fantasy notion of neutrality in the midst of catastrophic violence,” the authors wrote. “Instead of protecting artists and championing free speech … too many organizations are choosing the side of silence, they are looking away, and in so doing [are] enacting a profound moral cowardice.”

PEN America — a constituent of PEN International that stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression — has also received criticism for its relationship with Palestinian writers and advocacy. On Feb. 8, an open letter signed by more than 600 writers, including Wathington, condemned the institution for its relative silence on the unfolding genocide in Gaza, its platforming of cease re opponent Mayim Bialik and its forcible removal of Randa Jarrar for

protesting at a PEN Out Loud event. In another letter penned March 13, writers withdrew from the PEN World Voices Festival because of PEN America’s continued silence that contradicts their commitment to free speech and the struggle against repression.

In a letter to the PEN America Community published March 20, PEN America rea rmed its organizational principles, speci cally its commitment to o ering a space for dialogue on divisive issues. The organization also defended its recognition of the war in Gaza and support of Palestinian writers. They invited the signatories of the open letter to meet with PEN America leadership, called for an immediate cease re in Palestine, planned to host a public event on literary and artistic responses to the war and expanded their nancial support to Palestinian writers through a $100,000 contribution to the Netherlands-based PEN Emergency Fund for distribution to Palestinian writers.

Despite their letter, PEN America announced the cancellation of their 2024 awards and World Voices festival on April 26 because of the withdrawal

of authors. The awards would have given $350,000 in literary prizes to writers and translators, and the festival — which was rst announced in 2005 by Salman Rushdie to amplify essential dialogue — celebrates international literature and writers. The cancellation came after another open letter critiqued the language of PEN America’s statements and their slow and limited course of action, revealing their “complicity in normalizing genocide.”

“We do not believe that we have remained silent on the war. Over the past year, PEN America has is-

sued more than 60 statements on the war and its repercussions for writers, journalists and free expression, including on US campuses. We have clearly voiced our concerns for the impact of the war on writers, artists, and other cultural gures, and the destruction of cultural and educational institutions in Gaza,” Summer Lopez, chief program o cer of Free Expression Programs at PEN America told The Press. “Our 2023 Freedom to Write Index — one of our organization’s signature publications, which includes a global count of writers in prison — included Israel among the top 10 list of countries that have jailed writers for their expression, with 14 new cases of Palestinian writers detained as part of the crackdown on free

expression that followed the Oct. 7 attacks.”

As a free expression organization, PEN America respects the rights of writers to act on their conscience and personal convictions, and they invite writers to engage with their work on Israel and Gaza. “We also remain committed to open discourse and to fostering dialogue among those who disagree on even the most contentious of issues, in accordance with the PEN Charter, which calls on us to ensure that literature remains ‘common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals,” Lopez said.

For writers seeking to uplift Palestinians in the media, submission and publication has become a di cult processbecausesomeinstitutions are hostile to speech critical of Israel. Editors and writers working within these literary institutions have revealed the faults in the literary scene across the country. Their work in critiquing these institutions often builds on Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a Palestinian-ledmovementinspiredbytheSouth African anti-apartheid movement. BDS upholds that Israel maintains a regime of occupation over the Palestinian people through international support.

Through boycotts of cultural and academic institutions, one of several facets of BDS’s strategy, the activism of writers and editors can be seen to dismantle the occupation and colonization of Arab lands.

Novelist Isabella Hammad connects her withdrawal from the PEN World Voices Festival to the silencing of student protesters across the country in an essay for The New York Review of Books. She wrote that PEN America “had failed to o er support to Palestinian writers and journalists at risk of being killed in Gaza and the West Bank … and it had condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in clear violation of its own mandate to protect free speech.”

than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained on US campuses for demanding accountability from their institutions, including that universities disclose their nancial investments, divest from companies associated with war pro teering and reinvest into Palestinian studies and scholarships for Palestinian students. Hammad’s essay draws a comparison between institutional responses to Palestinian artists and their responses to student protesters, which both focus on free speech. She wrote, “This focus

on the speech used to support Palestinian rights does more than obscure the context in which protesters are speaking; it also obscures the reality about which they speak.”

At Stony Brook University, 22 students, two faculty members and ve others were arrested shortly after midnight on May 2 for their involvement with the encampment on Staller Steps. During an earlier protest March 26 involving a sit-in demonstration at the Administration Building, seven students, one

alumnus and one community member were arrested for disrupting operations by assembling in a public building and refusing to disperse.

The next day, March 27, a student, Zubair, confronted Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Operations Hedieh Yazdanseta, noting what he described as the hypocrisy of her support of the student’s protest organizing in lieu of her allowing for their arrest at a peaceful demonstration. “You know what she told us, ‘You don’t want to do this. Think about your future,’” he told

sta and other protesters in the Administration Building, including Yazdanseta. “Think about the 13,000 dead Palestinian children. How dare you? You’re an adult, I am 19 years old; why am I the one standing here?”

Regarding the May arrests, SBU ofcials said that peaceful demonstration escalated to include intimidation and harassment, the erection of tents were in violation of the university’s stated policy and demonstrators rejected o ers to meet with administrators to de-escalate growing tensions. Similarly, the students demonstrating March 26 were arrested after violating the Code of Student Responsibility and policies associated with the rules of public order.

“Protests and demonstrations cannot be allowed to disrupt the academic environment, create safety issues or violate long-standing university guidelines regarding time, place and manner. When necessary we will take appropriate action to enforce these rules to ensure that all campus voices can be heard, not just the loudest or the most disruptive,” o cials told The Press. “Occupying a public space like the Staller Steps that other members of the community have reserved and unfairly denying them the very thing they demand for themselves, the right to be heard, is unacceptable.”

Hammad wrote that when those in opposition to the rhetoric of protesters claim it endangers free speech they rarely address the material conditions and context of that speech. “The context here is a quantity of ammunition dropped on Gaza that is equivalent to more than three times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A high

proportion of those bombs were U.S.made and supplied. Those bombs were not made of language, and they certainly were not metaphors,” she wrote.

At a University Senate meeting May 6, former President Maurie McInnis claimed that while the university administration did not want to arrest demonstrators they felt it was necessary in order to clear the Staller Steps for use by other student groups.

During the University Senate meeting, Shobana Shankar, an associate professor of history, asked, “What evidence was there that the protest on Wednesday night would interfere with the Hillel event that wasn’t until the next morning?” McInnis responded that they wanted to choose a time when the clearing of steps would happen to allow for setup the following morning, and that there would have been criticism of any time they chose.

In June, prosecutors and attorneys o ered adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, meaning those individuals can agree that in six months all charges will be dropped as long as they are not arrested in the interim. Still, the university administration’s precarious language surrounding protesters and demonstrations mark a continuation of the concerns articulated by Hammad and others.

On Aug. 14, Interim President Richard McCormick sent an email to the Stony Brook community with guidelines for keepingthecampussafeduringdemonstrations. He emphasized that the university will enforce rules in a way that is viewpoint neutral. He also highlighted a section of their guide for demonstrations, which says “open expression

is an essential part of how the university ful lls its role in society, but it does not extend to events and activities that impede university functions and operations.” His statement marks a continuation in the administration’s view that students may only protest in ways that are non-disruptive, a view that clashes with both the core values of the BDS movement and the history of student activism in the U.S.

Just like the reminders of disciplinary action issued to students for protesting, writers face professional pressure for their activism. Poet and memoirist Javier Zamora, while resolute in the duty of writers to oppose violent and dehumanizing language used against Palestinians, recognizes the precarity of voicing support. “People’s jobs [are] at stake for merely saying that they disagree with genocide,” Zamora said. Zamora explained he is strangely privileged in his activism. Because of the success of his book, he does not rely on a liation with a university. His critiques of Israel’s violent campaign in Gaza are not undercut by any institutional ties to Zionist companies. Still, he says this shouldn’t hold people back from voicing support for Palestinians. He condemned literary institutions’ silence on the violence in Palestine. “I think we’re seeing the hypocrisy of a lot of these organizations,” Zamora said. “As a writer from a marginalized community, I could tell you that I’ve always felt the hypocrisy of institutions.”

As a poet who has been published in several literary journals, Wathington shares this recognition of some institutions’ failure to uplift marginalized communities. In her experience, there

were so few places that published Palestinian work in the past that she would publish with any organization that took her work. With her experience and growth as a writer, she has come to ask more complex questions about institutions’ past commitments and publication values, and she is working on ways to avoid tokenization in literary spaces.

“Because Palestinian voices are being allowed into many spaces, [we now] have to consider: is there a certain kind of Palestinian voice that’s being allowed in, a certain kind of poem?”

“There is a very big di erence between my experience here in the Bay Area and Mosab Abu Toha’s experience of eeing Gaza,” Wathington said, emphasizing the plurality and diversity of Palestinian voices. “It’s really important that we don’t sort of glaze over that, or talk for or instead of other people.”

Despite her weariness of institutional attitudes toward Palestinian work, she also remains hopeful. “I think we’re in a moment where it’s starting to change,” she said. “I am seeing people speaking out much more readily, much more comfortably on Palestinian rights.” As an intern working as part of the Students of Color/LGBTQ+ community group at Warren Wilson, Wathington says she feels “a beautiful turning of the tide.” She is building the kind of diverse, inclusive space she wants to see and be a part of.

The tides are beginning to turn at SBU, too. On Sept. 19, “Voices from Gaza and the West Bank: Healthcare in Crisis” brought together faculty, students and community members for a discussion of medical issues posed by the war in Gaza. The event was a collaboration between more than 15 community non-pro t organizations, multiple departments and centers at Stony Brook, including the Asian American Institute of Research, the Center for Changing Systems of Power and the departments of Africana Studies, Sociology and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Theeventfeaturedthreespeakerspresenting their professional experiences and a medical evacuee who shared her experience leaving Gaza for treatment. This included Dr. Syed Sayeed, a plastic surgeon who presented his volunteer work in Gaza through MedGlobal and the absence of medical care to people in Gaza, especially children whose medical evacuations have been blocked by Israeli policies. Tom Lewendon, a Berlin based photographer, also shared his work capturing the children of Gaza from his recent trip. Additionally,SteveSosebee,co-founderofthePalestine Children’s Relief Fund, explained how HEAL Palestine, a non-pro t organization he founded in January helped coordinate medical evacuations to address humanitarian needs in Gaza.

Sara Bseiso, an 18-year-old girl born and raised in the Rimal neighborhood

in Gaza, was the last to speak at the event. “My life before the war was normal,” said Sara Bseiso, an 18-year-old girl born and raised in the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza, who was the last to speak at the event. “I had just started my last year of school and was thinking about what I wanted in the future.” Bseiso went on to describe the deaths of her two brothers, her own burn injuries and her long struggle to receive proper medical treatment.

Bseiso described being at home with her family when “suddenly everything went black.” She couldn’t walk because her feet were burning, and her 15-yearold brother Ahmed was killed immediately. Her father took her out of the re, but ve days later her 8-year-old brother Mohammed also died. Bseiso was there for 90 days without proper medical support for her severe burns before being moved to an out-of-service hospital.

Bseiso then traveled with her sister Seham from Rimal in Gaza City to the south. She called it “a journey of death” because the Israel Defense Forces were in the areas surrounding them. She and her sister stayed at the crossing border for 17 days before being moved to the U.S. on Feb. 6. She was in the intensive care burn unit for three months and is currently doing traditional therapy three times a week. She told her story to a nearly full auditorium, nearly everyone rising to their feet in applause

when she was done, some in tears.

Manisha Desai, director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power, explained that events like this “engage knowledge outside the academy to be in dialogue with knowledge in the academy so that we can have a more reciprocal, mutual understanding.” This is in line with the Center’s mission to further epistemic, aesthetic and social justice locally and globally. By bringing in voices that aren’t normally heard, the Center seeks to advance how the university approaches education, research and policy.

Abena Asare, an associate profes-

sor of Africana studies and history involved in hosting the event who was one of the May arrestees at SBU, said that they faced institutional challenges in the run-up to their evening panel. This included the removal of A-frame easels and posters set up in the Health Science Center Atrium and a series of meetings with administrators who scrutinized the event. They also received comments that suggested they may be unable to use the MART Auditorium, which undermined their capacity to host the event safely for all attending members, Asare said.

SBU denied these claims: “This symposium was subjected to the same standards as any other event held on campus. Throughout the planning process, we were in communication with the organizers to manage logistics and address potential safety concerns in the days leading up to the event. Publicity and use of the MART, which is a shared clinical area, were permitted once clari cations regarding sponsors, food use and attendance were explained,” ocials told The Press.

That the event ran at all marks a shift in the campus environment. Desai, a sociologist who focuses on social movements, says “change seldom happens

text in which it’s happening, for example the nationwide college protests and the various responses across di erent types of academic institutions.

According to Desai, the con uence of collective actors in sustained action and local and larger contexts must align before change can occur. Discursive changes, for example how administrators talk about a subject like protesting, may shift quickly, but institutional practices are more entrenched. “When we think about transformation, it’s always a long term process,” she said.

Wathington’s poetry o ers a unique perspective on both the experience of

at the individual level, which doesn’t mean that individuals who are particularly gifted as artists and musicians may not have an impact, but they can’t really change institutions. For institutions to change, you really need collective action over a sustained period of time.”

“Things also depend not just on the actors and the collective actors but also the institutional context in which they work,” Desai said. She described how administrative actions are shaped both by the local context, like being within Stony Brook, and also the larger con-

Palestinian life and the distant administrative perceptions of it. Her chapbook, Paper & Stick, explores how ocial documents like laws, archival texts and military orders obscure the lives of Palestinians, especially children. While she had a positive experience publishing with Tram Editions, her work charts the complex relationship between Palestinians and literary, academic and governmental institutions.

Her poem “Grant Proposal for Your Emergency” considers how international institutions must contend with global power structures and how in-

dividuals push against those domineering dynamics. “People in a lot of countries are stuck in these positions of asking the West to fund their life, as the West makes a sort of military playground or proxy war situation out of their homeland, and they are then in a position of asking for money, for work, for opportunities.”

For Wathington, “poetry is a way to start asking questions about how we know what we know.” In refusing to platform Palestinian writers and advocates, many American literary institutions are failing to counter the dehumanizing rhetoric that justi es and hides violence and occupation. Instead, they recirculate language that perpetuates complicity.

“Poetry feels really urgent to me, because it feels like a way out of those closed circuits,” Wathington said.

In many ways, the failure of institutions to respond to the atrocities in Gaza is not merely a failure of rhetoric. The speech of those who stand with Palestine—in poems, statements

and demonstrations—has been consistently overlooked. Yet the persistent e orts of writers and organizers are pushing institutions to reconcile them. Statistics, stories and demonstrations alone can’t transform an institution overnight, but together, in solidarity and community, they chart a path toward change. g

Adire need to make friends ruled my life as a freshman in high school. I was uprooted due to a cross-country move from New York to Texas two years prior. I carried over a few friends from middle school, but every new class was full of kids I’d never seen before. I was spiraling in a sea of more than 1,000 students that had no idea who I was.

Abulletinboardhungonthewallofthe ninth grade hall, peppered with multicolored papers advertising the school’s various clubs and after-school activities. I stared at it longingly, searching for somewhere I would t. I tried every persona on for size. I started by playing cello in chamber orchestra , but I ultimately got bored of the same exercises and a conductor who wasn’t fond of me. I was on both the volleyball and basketball teams, but intense coaches drove me to hate the sports and switch to tennis. I even was a theater kid for a few years, which, unfortunately, never truly leaves you. Still after all of this, nothing seemed to t me right. Every activity was disingenuously putting on a costume of a character that I didn’t identify with.

Walking by the bulletin board one day, a ier stuck out from the rest. It was one I had never seen before. The Marcus-Lewisville-Flower Mound High School Rodeo Team, a

mouthful of a name that consisted of the three high schools that made up the district, was looking for new members. I already had some experience riding horses and took weekly lessons at my town’s equestrian center, so my interest was piqued. Though I mainly took lessons in the English style of riding, full of proper posture and jumping horses over fences, I began to develop a fascination with what the rodeo-driven world of Western riding would be like.

Now yes, I did live in Texas, but, for the most part, it wasn’t the stereotypical Texas most people think of. It wasn’t the rootin’, tootin’ Texas depicted in movies, lled with cowboys sporting 10-gallon hats with a sole straw of hay pinched between their teeth. No, I lived in Flower Mound, an overdeveloped concrete wonderland of a suburb, ooded with nondescript strip malls and drive-thrus for every food imaginable, situated just under an hour north of Dallas. Highways stacked over each other to reach inconceivable heights. Honestly, I’d always felt like my hometown of Stony Brookwasmore country than Flower Mound. That is, until I joined the rodeo team.

The rodeo girls starkly contrasted my usual peers in class. They wore Miss Me jeans with back pockets so bedazzled and gaudy that they

would make scratching noises when they sat down on the bleachers in the arena stands. Their Justin boots were dirty and perfectly worn in, paired with sparkly spurs that clanked with every step. On practice nights, they would usually wear their long hair in a braid, tucked underneath a baseball cap. The cap stayed on when they rode their horses, and no helmets were to be found.

Not being born into a rodeo life, I did not come with the same preinstalled software that allowed them to ride with such fearlessness. There were very few times I was ever on a horse without my helmet, as dorky as it looked compared to everyone else. They didn’t care about being safe. They only cared about being the fastest. They zoomed across the dirt arena, and dust ew behind them and onto those in the stands. It was badass. They casually had con dence with every turn. They were gods to me.

Over the next few months, I became closer with the group. I started going to a di erent barn, one that few of the girls took lessons and boarded their horses at. At that barn, I met Doc, an older, kind-eyed palomino with pale yellow fur that shed to reveal a toasted golden coat in the summer months. I quickly bonded with him, and he became my horse soon after that. Doc was slow. I was told he was bred for a discipline called Western pleasure, which valued form over speed. Still, we attempted the speedier rodeo events. Even though I was likely the slowest there, my teammates didn’t mind and gladly accepted me as part of the group.

There was comfort in the camaraderie of rodeo. I got my own bronzed belt buckle and pair of bedazzled jeans and walked proudly through the halls of Flower Mound High School, muddy cowboy boots and all. I would wear my custom rodeo hoodie almost every day, like I was a member of an exclusive club. The blue seal of the North Texas High School Rodeo Association marked me on the back of the hoodie, with a message on the front that read, “Kickin’ up the dust,” a nod to the sport’s emphasis on speed.

After years of feeling like I never felt like I truly belonged to anything, this team gave me a sort of identity that helped me survive the years of high school. I excitedly served as the team’s secretary in sophomore year, helping organize events and practices, but

mainly taking attendance. Membership duties also included hosting one rodeo competition a year as a team for the entire North Texas High School Rodeo Association. Not only were the students required to work the event, but their parents were too. The division of duties for the event were a bit gendered — women took care of concessions, and men worked the events. Though I was a bit o ended, I was relieved because working the rodeo chutes was quite frightening to me.

My dad still recalls a moment during his event — calf roping. As the gates were open to let the roper and calf out of the chutes, a leather strap from the mechanism ew back at him, with a trajectory aimed directly for his eye. The only reason he came out of that situation unscathed was his cowboy hat, which he begrudgingly put on before heading out. The whip perfectly ricocheted o the brim of the hat. What once was a stereotype of Texas was what kept him safe. That was the day he learned one of the many uses for those cowboy hats — besides looking pretty cool.

Though we participated in a multitude of rodeo events like goat tying, calf roping and pole bending, barrel racing was our focus. Three barrels, the kind typically used to hold feed, are arranged in a clover shape, approximately 90 to 100 feet apart. The point is to go as fast as possible through the course, circling each barrel without knocking it over.

A rider speeds out the gate, with their horse running as fast as they can. Then at a turn, one hand drops to the horn of the saddle to keep balance. The most important part comes after making it around the third barrel. “Kick! Kick! Kick!” onlookers shout from behind the fence, voices sore from the volume of their hollers. Riders kick so hard in the nal moments that they practically y above the horse. It was like their lives depended on this moment. The horse makes it to the nish in a ash, with only a dust cloud left behind. Impressive times at the professional level clocked in around 15 seconds. Teammates hit times close to 14 seconds. I don’t think I ever hit under 20 seconds.

At a play day, a casual, just-for-fun rodeo, I felt like I was having one of my best runs yet. In the moments heading from the second barrel to the third, I realized I was losing control. When I pulled the reins to make the nal turn, my horse, Doc, didn’t turn. He kept running forward and started to buck. I completely ipped over him, my body ying through the air until I hit the hard ground — hard — and landed with my knuckle in my eye socket. I came out of the fall mainly unharmed, except for a gnarly black eye that I had to go to school with the next day.

Thefallchangedmyperspectiveabout riding. Others on the team were ready, almost eager, to put their lives on the line for the sport. I vividly remember a picture that one of them posted on In-

stagram. The caption read something like, “If I die in the saddle, just know I died happy.” That was not how I felt at all. Getting thrown scared me, and my 14-year-old self reeled at the thought of losing my life to horseback riding. I felt like there was a lot more I wanted to do. I stayed a member of the team, but I decided to take a step back. I pivoted from barrel racing to Western pleasure, the discipline I was told Doc was ideal for. Slowed down, controlled gaits were preferred, and Doc ourished in that discipline. I worked at the barn where I boarded my horse for most of my remaining time in high school. I chose to simply enjoy my time with the horses instead of pushing myself like the others did.

While I was in my senior year, my family was making plans to move back to New York once I graduated. It was impossible to t Doc into those plans. I wound up giving him to one of those badass barrel racers I met through rodeo team, someone who became a close con dant for me throughout high school. The rope attached to Doc’s halter was handed over to her. I gave her a hug. I gave a nal big hug to the horse that showed me to trust myself. As our truck pulled away from the barn, I turned and looked through the back window through tears and an aching pain in my stomach and throat, until Doc became too small to see anymore. g

One of Saturn’s moons has been keeping a deep secret — but not anymore. Researchers at the Paris Observatory have discovered Mimas, Saturn’s smallest and innermost major moon, is entirely covered by an ocean. The ocean is hidden under 20 to 30 kilometers of ice according to a study published in Nature, a scienti c journal. Researchers estimate the ocean to be around 25 million years old, which is fairly young compared to the rest of the solar system. Studying a younger ocean would provide scientists the opportunity to understand the internal processes and interactions between water and rock on satellites and understand other evolutionary processes behind satellite formation.

Researchers have been interested in Saturn and its 146 moons for a long time: Mimas was rst spotted in 1789 by English astronomer William Herschel. What used to be a speck in as-

tronomers’ telescopes is now full-sized and clear thanks to the help of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. Cassini’s production was a joint e ort between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Cassini, launched in 1997, provided data on Saturn and its rings and moons for 13 years until the spacecraft crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere because it ran out of fuel. Despite the spacecraft’s unfortunate ending, researchers had a gold mine of data at their disposal, and were able to delve into the geophysical makeup of Mimas and draw new conclusions about its terrain and subsurface ocean.

Mimas is often nicknamed the “Death Star” due to its gray and white exterior —whichresemblestheStarWarsspace station. Dr. Valéry Lainey, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory and one of

the authors of the study, was excited by his team’s discovery.

“We already had the feeling that Mimas could be a very di erent moon, not rigid and cold as it looked like,” Lainey said. “We were very optimistic … and now, we can really claim this as a global ocean.”

Oceans on moons are nothing new to scientists. In fact, some of the moons orbiting Jupiter, Uranus and Neptunes are suspected of having ocean landscapes, creating potentially habitable environments for microbial life.

“These oceans that we’re nding on worlds in the solar system … have the same conditions that formed life on Earth, and maybe what we call habitable environments,” Bonnie J. Buratti, a

senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not associated with the study, said. Buratti is also the deputy project scientist for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, a mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, which also has a global ocean suspected of containing life. But if researchers are already aware of oceans on distant moons, what makes Mimas di erent?

Mimas is 115,000 miles away from Saturn and completes its orbit around the planet in just 22 hours and 36 minutes. Because of its proximity to Saturn, Mimas is expected to have a higher internal temperature than the rest of Saturn’s moons due to tidal heating. This heating occurs when the strong gravitational pull of a massive planet pulls on the orbits of its surrounding satellites and stretches them. This creates internal friction that generates massive amounts of heat. Still, Mimas has 20 to 30 kilometers of ice on its surface. This is perplexing to researchers. Mimas should be geologically active and scorching hot, but instead, it is frozen over with ice.

Compare this to Enceladus, another one of Saturn’s moons that is 148,000 miles away from it. Because it is farther from Saturn, Enceladus is expected to experience lower tidal heating — but this is not the case. Researchers have observed geysers on Enceladus spewing hot water. “Trying to gure out why Mimas doesn’t look geologically active is odd. These are two objects that you’d think would behave in the opposite way they’re behaving,” Matthew Hedman, an associate professor of physics at the University of Idaho who was not a part

of the study, said. Hedman studies the structure, composition and dynamics of Saturn’s various rings, and he is also involved in the Europa Clipper Mission. Lainey believes the reason for Mimas’ icy exterior is simple: heat from Mimas’ core has not dissipated enough to melt the thick layer of ice at the top, which is why there have not been observations of geological activity. While the inside of Mimas remains hot, space’s subzero temperatures are keeping the outside layers frozen. “Space is extremely cold,” Lainey said. “This friction will provide heating inside Mimas. The core is getting warmer and the part of the ice that is more tight with the core also gets melted, and this is how [Mimas] will start to melt from the interior, creating this ocean.”

But that’s not the moon’s only oddity. Researchers have observed the roundness of Mimas’ orbit and found that it was very eccentric, or non-circular. This poses another question. Oceans are supposed to “stabilize” a satellite’s orbit by making them more circular. So how could there be an ocean on a moon with an eccentric orbit? The authors of the study reasoned that the ocean was formed recently.

“If this ocean was around for a long time, the eccentricity would have collapsed back to zero,” Hedman said. “It’s not zero, it’s big.” Mimas’ eccentricity might be due to multiple factors, such as its unequal distribution of mass, or Saturn’s powerful gravity tugging on its orbit. Some scientists think there is more to the story.

“Maybe something is going on inside Saturn that we don’t fully understand that is pumping up Mimas’ eccentricity,” Hedman said. “There’s a lot going on with the satellite and ring system that doesn’t quite make sense yet.”

Other researchers believe that there has not been enough research on Mimas yet to con rm or deny the claims of its ocean. “It’s harder to study the inner moon[s] because the spacecraft has to get pretty close to Saturn,” Buratti said. “Maybe we haven’t been close enough.”

Despite some uncertainties, researchers are interested in determining the geological makeup and evolutionary history of these icy moons. Researchers like Hedman are excited that there is still so much work to be done regarding the four outer planets and their satellites. “We’ve got pieces of the idea but it hasn’t formed into a coherent picture,” Hedman said. “It’s exciting because it means there’s stu to actively learn.”

Lainey hopes that his team’s discoveries will persuade other scientists to look deeper than the surface of satellites that may not appear to have life. “An object can look like a completely dead object, [but] it does not necessarily mean that you don’t have habitability inside,” Lainey said. “I’m sure [Mimas] also might motivate further analyses of solar system objects that don’t look habitable.” g

What do the last ve winners of the NBA’s MVP award have in common? They’re all foreign-born.

Giannis Antetokounmpo from Greece, Nikola Joki ć from Serbia and Joel Embiid from Cameroon have dominated the MVP awards for the past ve years. The 2023-24 MVP race is no di erent, as Joki ć , Shai Gilgeous-Alexander from Canada and Luka Don čić from Slovenia were announced as the nalists for the award. Despite this, the NBA held just two international games during the 2023-24 regular season — not including Toronto Raptors’ home games.

One may expect the NBA’s organizers to select its elite, foreign stars — like MVPs Embiid or Antetokounmpo — to headline the two international games.

They did not.

If not estab- lished foreign players, wouldn’t it make the most sense for the league to pick a young and emerging, international star to ll the arena?

Someone like the San Antonio Spurs’ rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama from France or the Utah Jazz’s All-Star Lauri Markkanen from Finland. This was not the case.

Instead, the NBA chose the Atlanta

Hawks to face o against the Orlando Magic in Mexico City on Nov. 9, 2023, and the Cleveland Cavaliers to face the Brooklyn Nets in Paris on Jan. 11, 2024. Only eight of the 41 active players across these four teams come from abroad. While the Magic have Franz Wagner, a promising edgling out of Germany, the only foreign-born All-Star in either of these games was Australian Ben Simmons of the Nets — his latest selection in 2021.

Last year in a 12-country survey by Ampere, people were asked what their favorite sports competition was. The NBA ranked third, behind the Premier League and FIFA World Cup. International games deserve to be a spectacle, and there are many fans globally who want to watch them. These games need to stand out, and — if they do — they will entice more global viewers than any other regular-season game. But changes must be made. This begins with choosing the right teams: fans want erce matchups between rstclass teams and premier players. For example, a matchup between European MVP candidates Joki ć of the Denver Nuggets and Don č i ć of the Dallas Mavericks.

If it wants to cultivate greater publicity, the NBA also needs to start precisely scheduling its international games. The game in Paris was only the third regular-season game ever held in the city. Yet, the game was played on a Thursday.

How does the NBA administration expect people to truly care about international games when half of the world is at work or school when they start? International games on weekends give people something to look forward to

during their busy week, making these games a larger spectacle.

However, these administrators wouldn’t need to focus on scheduling and matchups as closely if they instead focused on a broader solution: scheduling more games. In a league brimming with foreign talent, there are no excuses why out of the 1,230 regular-season games, only two are played internationally.

On the opening night of the 2023-24 season, 27.7% of NBA players were born abroad. The MLB, a league comparable in terms of revenue and viewership, had a 28.5% international player base for the 2023 season and has a similar projection for the 2024 season. Despite the resemblances, the MLB has taken more strides to connect to its overseas audience.

By the end of the rst week of its season, the MLB will have hosted the same amount of international games as the NBA did in total. Excluding the Toronto Blue Jays’ home games, the MLB has eight international games scheduled for its 2024 regular season. The league kicked o its regular season with a twogame showdown between state rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, at the Gocheok SkyDome in Seoul, South Korea.

Japanese sensation and two-time MVP Shohei Ohtani spearheaded the Dodgers while the electrifying, Dominican All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr. of the Padres put on a show for fans to gawk at. Matchups like this draw crowds physically, alluring fans into the stadium, but they also attract people to tune in and watch across the globe. Back in 2019, the MLB chose the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox to bring their century-long rivalry to London, England, netting the highest-rated regular-season game for the season.

The NBA needs to schedule international games between teams with a historical rivalry of the same caliber as the Dodgers and Padres. Games between rivals have an element of con ict that produces viewer numbers incomparable to an average game. The NBA’s highest-viewed regular-season games for the 2022-23 season all involved teams that had past con icts with each other such as the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies. The two teams competed in a dramatic sixgame series in the playo s the year prior, an entertaining string of games. Their rematch on Christmas day in 2022 drew in 4.74 million viewers, the second most viewed game of the entire season. However, the NBA is doing the opposite and schedules its only two international

games to be non-rival teams. Its ignorance is glaring, and the result may be boring, potentially dispelling viewers. Incredibly, this isn’t as bad as it gets for the association. The NBA has about 4.5 times the number of games compared to the NFL, 1,230 to 272. The percentage of NFL players born internationally pales in comparison to the NBA — with only 82 of its 1696 total players born overseas, a measly 5%. Basketball is a sport played by both men and women with hundreds of leagues globally. American football primarily involves North American men, with the total number of leagues being vastly overshadowed in comparison to the number of basketball leagues.

It would be embarrassing if the NFL had more international games than the NBA. There is no way the NBA would let that happen, right? The NFL had more than double the number of international games than the NBA during its 202324 season with ve total held — three in England and two in Germany. NFL games occurring weekly does help with scheduling, however, this is not much of an excuse.

Besides growing the viewer base, international games bene t the athletes as well. The Cavaliers’ and Nets’ players were each given three days o before and after their game in Paris to allow ample time for players to adjust to France’s time zone. This gives the teams a small break during their season to rest and recover outside of the All-Star break. Because of this, international games are win-win scenarios: players get time to visit a city abroad and explore while fans can attend an NBA game without ying across the globe.

“Obviously, spreading the game of basketball is a huge opportunity for us as well,” Caris LeVert, the Cavaliers’ forward, said in an interview with Tommy Wild of Cavs Insider. “Playing a game out here in Paris is a blessing for us. So, super excited about it.”

The NBA has a wide-open layup regarding international scheduling: Instead of making the obvious choice of scheduling more international games that are more compelling for fans, it sits still as it falls behind its competitors. g

On Nov. 9, 2023, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) strike o cially ended after months of protesting for better wages, streaming residuals and restrictions on the use of arti cial intelligence.

In the last month of negotiations, con icting reports gave the impression that the strike could extend into 2024. It was hard to tell if there was an end in sight, as the heads of the studios representing the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) repeatedly pulled away from negotiations. Though sources claimed this was due to the studios’ unwillingness to compromise on terms, their true intentions remained unclear until today.

Sources close to the AMPTP have revealed that the studios planned to release what they called “The Big Movie”. The lm was to include a massive crossover between movie franchises that seemingly have no connection with one another. Characters Spider-Man, Iron Man and Thor would team up with Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, Fast and Furious’ Dominic Toretto, Transformers’ Optimus Prime and many others to ght an unknown evil.

The studios claim that they fought for the use of AI to digitally recreate the faces of actors in an e ort to make this movie. The script would be written entirely by AI, and actors that could not appear — physically or morally — to reprise their roles in the movie would be digitally replaced.

Though the script for the movie was never completed, drafts of scenes have leaked and circulated online. In one scene, Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible, played by Tom Cruise, attempts to steal the In nity Gauntlet — as seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — from Russian operatives. He stops in his tracks when he is confronted by Maverick from the Top Gun movies and Nick Morton from The Mummy, both also played by Tom Cruise. Another scene attempts to recreate the nal ght scene in Avengers: Endgame, when Captain America is joined by his team from across the galaxy to ght against an enemy.

“I can’t do this alone,” says Ethan Hunt. He falls to his knees, defeated. “My scientology powers are spread too thin!”

“Don’t worry,” says the Terminator over an earpiece. “We’re here to help!”

From the skies, a DeLorean ies into the scene and lands behind Hunt. The Terminator exits the car followed by Marty McFly from Back to the Future, Agents K and J from Men In Black and the Ghostbusters, who ride atop the DeLorean. The Big Bad Guy laughs with his army of goons.

“We’ll never lose,” the Big Bad Guy exclaims in a devilish, raspy voice. “Tom Cruise will surely have an existential crisis!” His army’s laughter suddenly dies down. “Oh. He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, commented on The Big Movie in an interview with The Press. “This is what they took from you,” Iger said. “The characters you love were going to be seen together on the big screen. I’ve always been about the fans and what they want to see.”

He revealed the Big Movie idea rst dawned on him while watching his grandson play with his action gures. “Iron Man alongside a Bugs Bunny McDonalds collectable ghting against a big red truck. And I thought to myself, ‘That doesn’t make any sense, how would those characters come into contact? How does the big truck ght back?’ But then it dawned on me. It doesn’t need to make sense for it to grab people’s attention.”

He claimed that, as long as people’s favorite characters interacted, a coherent plot was secondary in the goal of making money. “Besides, The Big Movie will make plenty of sense after a few rounds of ChatGPT.”

Despite his ambitions, the internet seems to disagree. The phrase “The Big Flop” was trending on X — a testament to the state of the industry and the disconnect studios have with their audiences. Numerous users claimed that they would actively boycott the industry if such a movie were to exist.

X user BigGuy wrote in a post, “Why do studios seem to think cameos and bringing in characters just for their faces is what makes people watch their movies? Was the Flash movie not enough of a signal that that just won’t sell?”

SAG-AFTRA has since responded to plans to make The Big Movie. In a statement, they said simply, “Trust us. We would not let you see that garbage.” g