Spartan Daily Vol. 161 No. 25

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Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Volume 161 No. 25 SERVING SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934

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BRANDON NICOLAS | SPARTAN DAILY

Students walk along San José State University's Seventh Street Plaza during the annual Block Party on Tuesday morning to celebrate the Homecoming football game.

Spartans party on Seventh Street

By Brandon Nicolas SENIOR STAFF WRITER

San José State University’s Student Involvement hosted its fifth annual Block Party to celebrate homecoming week, featuring food trucks, homecoming shirts and entertainment booths along Seventh Street Plaza on Tuesday afternoon.

Student Involvement is a division of Student Affairs that aims to provide inclusive community engagement for students, according to its website.

Event stations such as an airbrush tattoo station, a video game truck, a 360-degree photo booth, inflatable basketball hoops and soccer darts were set up along Seventh Street for students to participate in.

Jess Prudent, campus programming coordinator for Student Affairs and head of the Block Party committee, said the homecoming committee is a large cross-campus committee dedicated to providing events to celebrate the homecoming week.

“The Block Party is one of the kickoffs to the homecoming week,” Prudent said. “The goal is to have a street fair kind of fest.”

Prudent said Student Involvement has historically led homecoming events with the help from the International Student and Scholar Services and the Student Union.

BRANDON NICOLAS | SPARTAN DAILY

Students wait in line in front of a food truck during the Seventh Street Block Party event on Tuesday.

International Student and Scholar Services is an organization that supports international students and scholars, while contributing to the growth of SJSU’s global community and inclusivity on campus, according to its website.

“The energy here today is cool and people seem to be enjoying themselves,” said business analytics junior Malique Knox.

“The downside is that the lines are long.”

All of the booths at the Block Party required students to scan a QR code with the SJSU

app known as SJSU|SAMMY. Prudent said students are expected to check in through the SAMMY app because the data collected during these events, in turn, allow Student Involvement to continue to receive funding for future events.

Nutritional science junior Emma Collett said she noticed tables being set up and invited her friend to wait in line for Luv’s Brownies, a desert food truck parked in front of the Student Wellness Center.

“The brownies are really good,” Collett said. “I did not expect

them to be that good, but they were gourmet.”

Collett said despite there being long lines for the food trucks, the wait time was shorter than she expected. She said she looked forward to checking out the 360 photo booth and wanted to take pictures with her friends.

“Everything seems organized and everything is free, which makes it even better,” she said.

Business analytics junior Allyson Guan is a student leadership ambassador with Student Involvement and was in charge of advertising the

event on social media.

“I would post on the Student Involvement SJSU Instagram,” Guan said. “Just doing a bit of marketing and promoting for what’s going on on Seventh Street.”

Public health junior Christian Bamba said he heard about the Block Party through an SJSU Instagram post. After checking in at one of the two shirt giveaway and information booths, he said he waited in line for both tacos and brownies.

“I like the energy here today,” Bamba said. “Everybody is out, having a good time and chatting.”

Bamba said he looked forward to getting an airbrush tattoo and exploring more of what the Block Party has to offer.

“I appreciate the free food, especially for students,” said Sabrina Macias, speech pathology graduate. “It’s very helpful because sometimes you don’t pack a lunch in the morning.”

She said the food and event tables were a needed break from studying for midterms.

Nutritional science junior Emma Ayala said she received an airbrush tattoo of a rose on her forearm and ate tacos from El Halal Amigos food truck.

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Community talks migration through exhibit

By Melany Gutierrez

on the Move: 250,000 Years of Human Migration” exhibit, according to an SJSU webpage.

Julia Curry Rodríguez, San “World on the Move” explores José State Chicana/Chicano humanity’s migration journey studies professor, presented a including why people migrate, public lecture called “Immigrants what they undergo during and Refugees Negotiating Public migration and their life after Spaces” at the Martin Luther migrating, according to a website King Jr. Library on Tuesday. by the San José Public Library.

Curry’s special guest lecture Curry said migration occurs was one of the many events when people leave their organized around the “World homelands in search of new STAFF WRITER

opportunities or when they are trying to escape humanitarian, economic, political or climaterelated crises.

Anamika Megwalu, interim associate dean for students and faculty who helped organize the event, said “World on the Move” is a traveling exhibit sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Anthropological Association and the Smithsonian Center for

Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Megwalu said the San José Public Library is one of the 15 libraries in the United States selected to display the exhibit.

The exhibit is currently located on the third floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library and will be closing on Oct. 20.

Curry said she was delighted to be asked to be a guest speaker because immigration has always been a significant topic in both

her academic and personal life.

She said she migrated to the United States with her mother and sister in the 1960s when she was seven-years-old.

Curry said she has dedicated her life to studying immigration in higher education institutions to help defend immigrants and their children.

“Immigration is something MIGRATION | Page 2

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NEWS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2023

City Council addresses traffic issues

By Julia Chie STAFF WRITER

At the most recent city council meeting, San José City Council Members discussed organizing street closures and traffic diversions, transportation safety improvements and emergency interim housing programs on Tuesday afternoon.

Street Closures and Traffic Diversions Cinco de Mayo “has drawn large crowds in the downtown and foothill corridors. As with any large event, particularly one drawing a large volume of vehicular traffic, the impact on the City in prior years has been considerable,” according to the item’s Memorandum.

The recommendation is to accept the San José Police Department’s plan for large crowd events that include street closures and traffic diversions, according to the memorandum.

Chief of Police Anthony Mata and two other officers in the traffic enforcement unit, presented a verbal report on their community outreach plan.

“Outreach will include community stakeholders, neighborhood associations, business associations, council offices and the media,” Mata said. “Specifically provided information in different languages, both Spanish and Vietnamese.”

District 8 City Councilmember Domingo Candelas said the willingness to jump in and improve a process is important.

“Much like the highway closures that are happening on the 20th and 21st on Highway 87, our community needs to know that’s going to be happening to better prepare for that,” Candelas said.

Candelas said the sheer amount of people in a vicinity is a lot of the reason why road closures are important, not just particular events.

JULIA CHIE | SPARTAN DAILY

City Councilmembers discuss a housing grant proposal during a City Council meeting on Tuesday afternoon in City Hall Council Chambers.

Catalyze SV engages community members, developers and city leaders to create sustainable places for Silicon Valley according to their website.

It was recommended to accept local and state-granted funds appropriated from the Budget Act of 2022, Assembly Bill 178 for this project, according to the City Council Meeting Amended Agenda.

The council plans to negotiate and execute a grant fund transfer agreement of no more than $10 million with California Department of Transportation, according to the same source. Molina said she was grateful for the council’s consideration on the project and prioritizing safety, particularly in East San José.

East San José Corridor Safety She said she had the opportunity Improvement Project to come and visit with some of the students in San José this year.

Rocio Molina, interim deputy “They were particularly director of Catalyze SV, said concerned about some of the big through zoom that she would like dangers related to, as I’m sure the community to be more walkable. you’ve heard as well, White Road,

the walkability of their community,” Molina said. “Their passion for the topic was inspiring.”

She said she encouraged the council, the departments and VTA to continue to think about the community as valued partners.

“Think about these voices and the insight they have into what’s going to be most impactful in implementing these priorities, and what’s going to make the most difference for the safety of their communities,” Molina said.

for a new building and parking area, according to the memorandum.

Deputy City Manager Omar Passons said the purpose of the ordinance is to provide the council with a cost benefit analysis that the staff had prepared since a previous city council meeting in June of this year.

According to the memorandum, “the 2023 homeless census revealed an overall decrease of 4.7% in San José’s population experiencing homelessness as well as a 10.7% decrease in unsheltered Via del Oro Mobile Quick homelessness – to 4,411 from 4,975 Build Shelter in 2022,” because of the city and County of Santa Clara investing in The Planning Commission voted this issue. unanimously for the City Council The movement would let to “adopt a resolution adopting the staff negotiate a lease for the Via Bellarmine College Preparatory del Oro site and a Project Master Plan Update Project” and a Delivery Agreement for 150 beds mitigation monitoring and reporting for Mobile Quick Build Housing plan, according to its Memorandum. with Dignity Moves and Swinerton The commission will also approve Construction. rezoning a site and the relocation or Jillian Archibald, who has removal of old buildings and trees been unhoused for many years

MIGRATION Continued from page 1 that has truly been a part of my life for over 40 years,” Curry said.

She said people often associate migration with economic struggle, which is not always the case.

“There are crises involving violations of human rights or economic crises, where governments and wealthy individuals don’t develop jobs to incentivize people to stay or don’t give them access to education,” Curry said.

Curry said throughout her career, she has specifically studied immigration in relation to women and children and what role they play in it and how they are affected by it.

She said women have always had active roles in the immigration pathway, even though they often stay in their home country.

Curry said their impact came in the form of contact and communication, like sending letters to their loved ones migrating to the United States.

“They were affected and they were active agents,” Curry said. “That's really important because we have always thought of women as individuals who are left behind, who awaited the money from the migrants that left.”

Curry said another role women played in the immigration pathway was using money they received from loved ones to build up, support and sustain their family back home.

She also said it is important to recognize the difficult decisions

IRENE ADELINE MILANEZ | SPARTAN DAILY

Julia Curry, Chicana/Chicano studies professor, gives a presentation at the event on Tuesday afternoon.

immigrant women often have to make, including leaving their children behind.

“When men leave, nobody asks them, ‘Why are you abandoning your children?’ ” Curry said. “When women leave, women ask themselves and they tell themselves, because women are conditioned through patriarchal culture, to be aware that their responsibility is not just the financial sustenance of their children, but the emotional sustenance of children. They have to care.”

Curry said motherhood is something that is not acknowledged or discussed enough in conversations about immigration.

She said motherhood in migration is not always planned and can sometimes be the result of rape, and can greatly shift the experience that women and children have during and after migration.

Curry said it’s an even more complex issue when you consider the life of underaged immigrants coming to and living in the U.S. “Immigrant children or the immigrant experience is something that scholars have referred to as ‘Being lost in no man's land,’ not from there, not from here,” Curry said. “These scholars argued that they [children of immigrants] were both there and here simultaneously.”

Natasha Lowell, acting senior librarian for San José Public Library, said she believes the unique experience of immigrants who move to America and how relatable and relevant it can be to others is why this event is so important.

“Many of us are children of immigrants, and I think it's just important for our community to learn about this since it touches every one of us,” Lowell said.

Preston Rudy, assistant

sociology professor and event attendee, said he believes immigration will always be an important topic to bring into classrooms, especially when it might resonate with students.

“We have lots of students that have immigrant experiences in their family history,” Rudy said.

“We have quite a few students, some who I’ve worked closely with, who are undocumented and part of DACA who can relate to this experience.”

Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, specifically those who arrived at a young age under the circumstance of migration being beyond their control, according to an article by the Anti-Defamation League.

Curry said migrating can be very dangerous, rigorous and unpredictable and not everyone is able to make it through the hardship.

said she currently lives on Great Oaks Boulevard.

“I was told I would get housing by my HomeFirst worker, but it never happened because my ID and Social Security card were stolen,” Archibald said. “My case manager never came back to help me replace the documents, so I lost hope.”

Archibald said she now works with a volunteer, and got her documents replaced, but still has not heard back from her case worker.

“This is not a unique experience, but you, the city, keep giving these nonprofits the contracts. I can only hope (they) do a better job,” Archibald said.

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However, she said the promise of human rights and safety awaiting immigrants in the U.S. is the biggest draw to migrate.

“They want to survive,” Curry said. “They want the best for themselves and their family members. If they can survive, maybe just maybe they can share that with others who they’ve left behind.”

Curry also said the decision to migrate is something that should not be taken lightly because it’s a difficult decision to leave the comfort of home.

“It’s a difficult decision, leaving your homeland, leaving what I refer to as the familiar,” Curry said. “The way my air smells, the food I can eat, the sounds of my neighborhood.

All of that is normative to me.

It's normative to them. So they take those memories with them.

And they migrate back to their communities through their imagination, which is truly a part of that human survival.”

Anamika Megwalu, interim associate dean for students and faculty and organizer of the event, said the biggest takeaway she hopes people get from the lecture is that people moving to other places is not a recent phenomena and it's something to look at with sympathy.

“We have too look at immigrants through the eyes of compassion and humanity,” Megwalu said.

“All they [immigrants] need is a place where their hopes and dreams can come true.”

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2023

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PLAY ANALYSIS

VANESSA REAL | SPARTAN DAILY

In the play ‘Gloria,’ Ani, played by Tiana Portnov (left), tells Gloria, played by Yasmeen Abuayed (right), that the character Dean had fun at Gloria’s party.

‘Gloria’ explores toxic workplace STAFF WRITER

Trigger Warning: The following talks about gun violence, suicide and other dark themes.

Mouths open wide from shock, stomach cramps from laughing too hard and gasps filled Hal Todd Studio Theater in moments of terror during, “Gloria,” a San José State-run production.

“Gloria” written by American playwright Branden JacobsJenkins, and categorized as a comic-drama play, according to the official San José State production’s calendar, takes a “harsh and unflinching look at workplace toxicity and dysfunction.”

The play begins with a group of ambitious editorial assistants

for New York’s biggest magazine company. Every character works in cubicles, argues and makes jokes with one another.

The three main editorial assistants, Ani, Dean and Kendra, make small talk and gossip about Gloria, another worker in the office, after she hosted a party at her house that not many from the office attended.

When the audience is first introduced to Gloria, characters Dean and Kendra are not on set. Gloria enters the stage with an uneasy stage presence as she gives Ani cold responses about the party and how it went.

While the audience is watching the team have a conversation, a loud gunshot fills the theater.

Moments after chaos unfolds on stage, Ani and Miles are

killed and Gloria takes her own life, sparing only Dean’s life.

Economics f reshman Yasmeen Abuayed, who played the role of Gloria, said she felt quite uncomfortable having to wield the gun.

“It makes me feel bad and weird, so I can’t imagine what it is like for the audience,” Abuayed said. “Even when I was rehearsing it until now, the feeling is still there, and I still don’t like it.”

The rest of the play shows the mental and physical aftermath of surviving the shooting, and how the survivors were affected.

Theater arts senior Alice J. Lee, who played Kendra, said there were multiple reasons why she wanted to audition for “Gloria.”

“This story takes on a very serious topic of how social

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SUDOKU PUZZLE Complete the grid so that every row, column and 3x3 box contains every digit from 1 to 9 inclusively.

CROSSWORD PUZZLE 1

media portrays serious issues such as shootings around the world,” Lee said. “This play also has very dynamic fun characters to play, so that also attracted me.”

The ending takes place in a Los Angeles television producing company who wants to make a show about the shooting, which made headline news.

The LA television company wanted to create a show about the shooting after Nan, one of the characters who survived the shooting, wrote her own story of how the incident affected her.

Theater arts senior James Perry, who plays Loren, said he wasn’t too affected by the theme of gun violence.

“My character is not directly involved in that particular scene, so for me it wasn’t that bad,” Perry said. “I did have to do a

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1. Certain superior's title 6. 41st on a noted list 10. Old foolish person 14. Flintstone's boss 15. Victor over Connors, 1975 16. Opulent 17. Nest up high 18. Boilermaker part 19. Miss Kett of old comics 20. It counts votes 23. They may be ringing 24. Army outfit 25. Browned in butter (Var.) 29. "Yuck!"

31. Semicircular recess 32. They take sides 38. You may vote in it 41. Vote checkers 42. Second highest in a family of instruments 43. Govt. health watchdog 44. Picture puzzle 46. Follow 50. Love, Spanish-style 52. Cause of some confusion in 2000 59. Anthropoids 60. "It must have been something ___"

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JOKIN’ AROUND Where does Napoleon keep his armies?

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little character research because he changed in the second act due to possible PTSD.” Watching these television producers become excited over Nan’s story created a disturbing and uneasy mood for the audience.

The message was that anything traumatic can be turned into entertainment, and for these television producers, the horrific events were nothing but a theatrical-adjacent inconvenience that they could make money on.

In his sleevies.

By Vanessa Real

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67. First U.S.-born saint DOWN 1. Posthaste, briefly 2. ___ cheese dressing (Var.) 3. Storm start 4. Relating to the ear 5. Subdued chuckle 6. Storybook elephant 7. Kind of manual 8. Unload 9. Mainz mister 10. Limpid 11. Go one better than 12. Prefix with arthritis 13. "Amadeus" choreographer 21. Bounder 22. Set of values 25. Spice rack member 26. The very top 27. Md. institution 28. Abound 29. WWW addresses

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30. Co. that merged to become Verizon 32. Petition 33. ___ Lingus (Irish airline) 34. Hunting target, perhaps 35. Is unwell 36. "___ creature was stirring ..."

37. Kind of leopard or goose 39. Tin soldier's prop 40. Common connection 44. Paragon of patience 45. Basra natives 46. Aspen lifts 47. 100 paise 48. Shed ___ (show sympathy or sadness) 49. Informal response to "Who's there?"

50. It may have a cross to bear 51. "I don't believe you!"

53. Diana of "The Avengers" 54. Casino game 55. Crescent-shaped figure 56. It may get the brush-off 57. Popular cookie 58. Cousin of a gull

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R A MP A G A T E T A F T O D O R L E M O N A L L Y M A J O R B L O O D G R O U P P R O N E S L U R E X E T I E D R U T S E C O N D R A T E M O V I E I R A D A R E P R O N G T A R O A G E N T S T A G A T O M S O T T O E N E R O MA N O N E H U N D R E D N O R S T O A I MP U C L A S C H W A F O U R T H I N A S E R I E S F U M E I D E A L O L P E Y E A S D O W R Y N O T A

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2023

EP REVIEW

Boygenius ties loose ends with ‘The Rest’

By Bojana Cvijic

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

Indie supergroup boygenius, made up of singer-songwriters Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, has released their follow up EP to their critically acclaimed debut album “The Record,” titled “The Rest,” a project released on Friday.

The EP is made up of four originally unreleased secret songs the group revealed on different tour dates.

“The Rest,” feels like a tribute to the group and its friendship with the work they’ve done together, with callbacks to each of their own respective solo works and their work as a group together.

Filled with references to the cosmos, boygenius does the work of bringing an otherworldly and ethereal spirit to issues that feel opposite to one another.

The EP reasserts boygenius’ triumph year of 2023, capping off their tour with a surprise release of songs that add a deeper look into their previous release for fans.

GRAPHIC BY ALEXIA FREDERICKSON

“Black Hole” part of.

At a live in-store performance in Long Beach, Julien Baker said inspiration for the song came from co-member Lucy Dacus when she read about black holes creating stars, rather than destroying them.

The song is a callback to the track “Not Strong Enough” from “The Record.”

“Black hole opened in the kitchen / Every clock’s a different time / It would only take the energy to fix it / I don’t know why I am” The song is a symbol for not being emotionally strong enough for your partner, to not be able to take on the dealings of a relationship and for not being able to be the partner you want to be.

“Black Hole,” however, shows the potential in creating something deep with someone else.

“You can see the stars, the ones / The headlines said this morning / Were being spat out / By what we thought / Was just destroying everything for good.”

I love when artists reference their past work, making connections you wouldn’t see or hear otherwise, coming full circle with their songs.

It’s a perfect start to the otherwise short EP, calling to the cosmos to help figure out our lives and relationships. An apt way to connect us back to the vast universe we’re all a

of the time, freaks me out.

As I listened to the lyrics I “Afraid of Heights” couldn’t help but think of the time I jumped off a cliff into All of the songs Lucy Dacus cold lake water at the insistence is the lead for are the ones I of my friends. think of as the highlights of all While I made it in, I definitely of boygenius’ work. couldn’t help but think how After we hope for potential scary the feeling of jumping in “Black Hole,” Dacus takes on into something you don’t fully a more skeptical and cautious trust. approach.

“I’ve never smoked a cigarette “I know that I fucked up when / I wanna live a vibrant life / But

moon and space in “Voyager,” named after the spacecraft Voyager 1, which took the most iconic photo of the Earth in “Pale Blue Dot.” “Walkin’ alone in the city / Makes me feel like a man on the moon / Every small step I took was so easy / But I never imagined a dot quite as pale or as blue / You took it from me, but I would’ve given it to you.”

The “Pale Blue Dot” is in

Dacus is a writer to her core. She knows how to use her lyrics to catch and grab your attention while your mind gets lost in the melody of the song.

I / Told you I’m afraid of heights / It made you wanna test my courage / You made me climb a cliff at night / You wanted me to jump and I declined / You called me a coward, I replied / ‘I don’t wanna live forever / But I don’t wanna die tonight.’ ” Dacus explained at the same live-performance in Long Beach that the song was about friends who think they’re radical, but ultimately are just reckless and trying to ruin their lives.

This song made me feel good in the sense that I’ve always been a low-key scaredy cat.

Taking risks sometimes, most

ep review

Artist: boygenius Release Date: Oct. 13, 2023 Genre: indie, folk

ABOUT

EDITORIAL STAFF

The Spartan Daily prides itself on being the San Jose State community’s top news source. New issues are published every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday throughout the academic year and online content updated daily.

The Spartan Daily is written and published

by San Jose State students as an expression of their First Amendment rights.

Reader feedback may be submitted as letters to the editor or online comments.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR MATTHEW GONZALEZ

“The Rest” Rating:

MANAGING EDITOR JILLIAN DARNELL PRODUCTION EDITOR ALICIA ALVAREZ NEWS EDITOR IRENE ADELINE MILANEZ ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR ALINA TA A&E EDITOR ALEXIA FREDERICKSON SPORTS EDITOR MAT BEJARANO

I wanna die a boring death / I know I was a disappointment / Know you wanted me to take a risk / Not everybody gets the chance to live / A life that isn’t dangerous.”

Dacus is a writer to her core.

She knows how to use her lyrics to catch and grab your attention while your mind gets lost in the melody of the song.

Her lyrics pull you back up to the surface to make sure you’re hearing what she’s telling you.

Still, even with her cautious approach in her writing, the song still reminds you of hope.

“When the black water ate you up / Like a sugar cube in a teacup / I got the point you were makin’ / When I held my breath ‘til you came up.”

reference to astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who insisted NASA commission the photo of Earth taken by Voyager 1, according to the Planetary Society.

The lyrics call back to her 2020 song “Moon Song,” where she sings about how she would do anything for her partner, even the impossible task of giving them to the moon.

Bridgers, just like the rest of boygenius, is a master of callbacks and references, sprinkling in allegories of time and space.

They remind us that while our problems may seem huge to us, in the infinity of the universe, it’s nothing but a pale blue dot. “powers”

“Voyager” I love when Phoebe Bridgers sings about the moon.

A recurring theme in her music, Bridgers utilizes the

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR BOJANA CVIJIC OUTREACH EDITOR CHRISTINE TRAN PHOTO EDITOR ALEXIA FREDERICKSON COPY EDITOR GILLIAN BROWN SENIOR STAFF WRITERS BRANDON NICOLAS NATHAN CANILAO STAFF WRITERS DYLAN NEWMAN NAVIN KRISHNAN NIKITA BANKAR MELANY GUTIERREZ JULIA CHIE ANGEL SANTIAGO VANESSA REAL

AALIYAH ROMAN FERNANDO CARMONA JACOB CHAVEZ MAYA BENMOKHTAR ILLUSTRATORS JOANNA CHAVEZ TRACY ESCOBEDO PRODUCTION CHIEF MIKE CORPOS NEWS ADVISER RICHARD CRAIG

Julien Baker leads the trio in the ending track, using tropes from comic books and various scientific reactions as more allegories to her own origin

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story.

“How did it start? Did I fall into a nuclear reactor? / Crawl out with acid skin or somethin’ worse / A hostile alien ambassador? / Or am I simply another of the universe’s failed experiments?”

Get ready to get existential when you listen to Julien Baker, because it definitely had me sitting in bed pondering my existence in the universe.

Baker invokes the unknown forces of the universe that rule our lives.

If our planet wasn’t the perfect amount of distance from the sun, if our atmosphere wasn’t just right or if we were an inch closer to the sun, would we be here? Worrying about the daily issues of life?

“The tail of a comet burned up in an instant, the destruction of matter / There’s no object to be seen in the supercollider / Just a light in the tunnel and whatever gets scattered / Life flashin’ before the eye of whatever comes after / The force of our impact, the fission / The hum of our contact, the sound of our collisions” It’s a stark reminder that the universe we live in can be a metaphor for transformation and moving forward - which is really part of the metaphysics of the universe, it brought us to Earth and somehow, keeps us here in a brief moment.

We as humans are capable of profound transformation and growth. Perhaps we ourselves are metaphor of the change the universe constantly is, chaotically bringing about above us with every blink we take. boygenius reminds us of the relationship between ourselves and the universe that surrounds us.

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EDITORIAL POLICY Columns are the opinion of individual writers and not that of the Spartan Daily. Editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Editorial Board, which is made up of student editors.

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OPINION

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2023

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Being a ‘no sabo’ kid isn’t a crime Alicia Alvarez PRODUCTION EDITOR

I’m so tired of hearing people belittle others for not knowing their ancestral language. It seems everyone just forgets that colonization and migration are a thing.

I’ve watched the same community that failed to teach us shame countless women for not speaking Spanish. Family members, peers and even celebrities are beaten down with cruel comments and savage jesting because they don’t speak a language that was never taught to them.

Most of Latin America has already won its wars for independence, so leave the language policing to the dead conquistadors.

According to the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary, a conquistador is a leader of a Spaniard conquest.

Not speaking Spanish feels similar to a certain scarlet letter, announcing our shame to an entire population. Being a “no sabo” kid is like having a misspelled tattoo on your forehead, no one will ever let you forget it.

A “no sabo” kid refers to someone who does not speak Spanish, according to a May 23, 2022 article from Refinery29.

This toxic ideology once again presented itself, now on the world stage.

A short video of four celebrities, Anya TaylorJoy, Jenna Ortega, Rachel Zegler, and Rosalía, taken at Dior fashion show on Sept. 26 caused a frenzy on social media, once again throwing the “no sabo kid” label around.

In the video, Taylor-Joy introduced her husband to Rosalía and Ortega in Spanish, with Ortega responding back in English.

Taylor-Joy, Ortega and Zegler all have some sort of Latin heritage, but

Taylor-Joy is the only one who speaks Spanish, according to a Sept. 29 article from Vogue.

What is both hilarious and distraughtly terrifying is that Zegler wasn’t even involved in the dialogue, simply existing in the background chatting with Jennifer Lawrence, but she was still dragged into the criticism according to the same article.

X and TikTok users began their vicious attack on the two Latinas that didn’t speak Spanish, saying that the whitest one, Taylor-Joy, was more of a Latina than Ortega and Zegler.

Skin color has nothing to do with being Latina.

Taylor-Joy, who is half Argentinian according to the Vogue article, is pale and white passing, but that does not make her ability to speak Spanish surprising.

make you Filipino, so why should speaking Spanish be a benchmark for a true Latino?

If Tejano queen Selena Quintanilla can be a Mexican icon without speaking the language, nothing is stopping a kid who doesn’t know the difference between estar and ser from being considered Latin.

Around 24% of Latinos said that they could only speak conversational Spanish, if any at all. Third and higher-generation Latinos speak even less Spanish, according to the same article.

If speaking Spanish is the standard for being considered Latino or Hispanic, we should be scared. The two groups are apparently dying out due to our own bias and hatred toward our monolingual counterparts.

Funny, it looks like the

ability to speak a language that is foreign to them is disgusting. All this ideology does is further separate Latinos from cultures that are already struggling.

Further insult to injury is that Spanish is not the only language spoken in Latin countries.

“There are also myriad indigenous languages that survived this violent history (of colonization) and are still spoken throughout South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean,” Degadillo wrote in her article.

Expecting all Latinos to speak Spanish is unrealistic and erases centuries of culture that thrived before colonization.

This idiotic label only deters and isolates those who don’t already know the Spanish language even

for not speaking Spanish when I was a child, but the judgment was always there. The subtle jabs from them were enough to make me feel like a worthless idiot every time my grandfather told me “te quiero.”

The hypocrisy is what enraged me though. How dare my community judge me when not only did they never offer a crumb of effort to teach me the language, but go as far as to humiliate me every time I tried to learn.

My ex-boyfriend was the worst in this, constantly calling me a fake Mexican because my pronunciation was subpar and I couldn’t conjugate a verb properly. Neither could he actually, so I don’t know where that judgment came from.

It’s disheartening to see this toxic ideology on a massive scale, further

If Tejano queen Selena Quintanilla can be a Mexican icon without speaking the language, nothing is stopping a kid who doesn’t know the difference between estar and ser from being considered Latin.

Maintaining the ideology that all Latinos have stereotypical features such as dark hair and tanned skin similar to Zegler and Ortega perpetuates harmful stereotypes and alienates Latinos that do not fit into such a small box.

Speaking Spanish is not as common as many think when it comes to Hispanic and Latino culture in the United States. About 54% of Hispanics that don’t speak Spanish have been shamed for it, according to a Sept. 20 article by the Pew Research Center.

Speaking your native language doesn’t make your identity more or less valid. Speaking Mandarin doesn’t make you Chinese, speaking Tagalog doesn’t

conquistadors did win in the end, since we’re turning against our own people like they hoped.

Jacqueline Delgadillo, who wrote an article on this topic for Refinery29, summed up the issue of taunting people for their lack of fluency in a perfect way.

“Language proficiency is another form of gatekeeping Latinidad,” Delgadillo wrote in her article.

According to Oxford Reference, Latinidad refers to an overall sense of Latin identity.

The idea that a person is lesser and has no right to claim their heritage based solely on their

more.

I was terrified to actually learn the language because of how I was treated by my own community. I had resigned myself to relying on a translator for the rest of my life for years before I moved to San José for college.

When I was a child, I sat in my grandfather’s living room every year with the same wellpracticed smile and nod while words I could barely comprehend flew by me.

I had to stumble through asking family members to help translate for me, half expecting to be met with the disappointed glare some of my elders always responded with.

My family didn’t outwardly criticize me

reminding those unlucky enough to be born into a family that won’t teach them Spanish that they will never be enough.

Instead of our community recognizing that the resources to learn aren’t as available as we may think, we instead belittle each other into remaining silent.

I resorted to relying on my Spanish classes in middle and high school.

I marched into the overcrowded classroom every day to listen to a non-Latino teach me the most useless words.

I took four years of these hellish classes, passing with flying colors in all them while barely being able to understand a sentence. I asked my family to help me with

these classes, to practice speaking Spanish with me since they were all fluent. All I ever got was a response back in English every time I asked “como estas?”

My family, like many others, fell into the cycle of criticism without reflection. I even found myself falling into it when I finally began to understand my native language.

The hours-long hangouts with my cousin and aunt taught me the basics of Spanish, and I quickly picked up the language after my first year studying in San José. I was so proud to finally understand my grandfather when he spoke to me, but that pride morphed into judgment.

I found myself judging people around me who had Latin last names but didn’t respond to my little quips in Spanish. I finally realized that I was turning into another bystander perpetuating this harmful cycle when I was slammed back into reality.

I realized I could barely understand one of my dance teachers, he spoke too fast and the Spanish words blended together once again, just as they did when I was a child.

I never judged someone again after that.

Everyone is on their own journey with learning a new language. With the American education system being in the state it is in currently, we can only rely on our community members to teach us.

I desperately hope that my community, our community, begins to treat our language as what it is: something that can connect us, instead of yet another border.

I no longer identify as a “no sabo” kid.

I am and forever will be an “estoy aprendiendo” kid, and I’ll wear that badge with pride.

Follow Alicia on X (formerly Twitter) @alicialvarez02

GRAPHIC BY ALICIA ALVAREZ