The University of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper
THE DIAMONDBACK Involvement Guide
3 Terp Lions 4 AAPI Literature Club
6 First-Gen Student Association
Founded 1910, independent since 1971.
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Apurva Mahajan
3150 S. Campus Dining Hall, College Park, Md., 20742 (301) 314-8200
https://dbknews.com/contact-us/
FULLY UPDATED AND EDITED BY:
Adam Hudacek
ADVERTISING: ads@dbknews.com (301) 276-5770
ORIGINAL TEXT BY:
Matt Kauffman
Talia Macchi
Emely Miranda-Aguilar
Maxine Poe-Jensen
COPY EDITED BY:
Apurva Mahajan
Olivia Borgula
Lizzy Alspach
Natalie Jakubiak
Zachary Intrater
THE DIAMONDBACK:
Job openings: https://dbknews.com/jobs/ Newsletter: https://ter.ps/DBKNL
DESIGNED BY:
Rebecca Safra Oliver Mack
FRONT COVER PHOTO BY: Neelay Sachdeva
FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: BACK COVER PHOTO BY:
Sam Cohen
The Maryland Latin Dance Club hosts a class for students to learn from dance instructor Juan Aristy in the Grand Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union on Feb. 20, 2023. (Cam Andrews/The Diamondback)
Terp Lions dance club roars with creativity, technical prowess
By Maxine Poe-Jensen | Diversionsreporter
Twice a week, members of the University of Maryland’s Terp Lions practice making a massive, two-part lion costume gilded with thick eyelashes and ivory teeth come alive with intricate, precise movements.
Junior fire protection engineering major Brian Chen, who had performed lion dancing for more than 10 years before coming to this university, founded the university’s only lion dancing club in 2023 after he learned there were no options for him to continue.
Lion dancing originally started in the Guangdong Province in China as a practice to scare away evil spirits and has been integrated into diaspora communities in the United States since, according to the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project.
One dancer controls the head while another manages the tail, as others play a rhythmic beat with drums, a gong, cymbals and a woodblock. The lion sways and marches perfectly in sync with the music.
“The drum has to follow the lion, the lion has to follow the drums at the same time,” Chen
said. “Everything branches off from there. You have to learn to think in the context of another.”
The club performs at campus events for Asian cultural organizations, including the Chinese Student Association’s Lunar Banquet, the Taiwanese Student Association’s Night Market and the Vietnamese Student Association’s Family Night. The group has also taken the stage at annual campuswide events such as Maryland Day and Student Entertainment Events’ Homecoming Carnival.
Terp Lions’ dances must be polished, well-rehearsed, and performance-ready for highly publicized events. Lehana Daniel, a new club member, said learning lion dancing was surprisingly not daunting — she just showed up to practice after attending a few shows.
“Lion dance is very nuanced, but I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to learn.” Daniel, a freshman enrolled in letters and sciences, said. “It’s very beginner friendly.”
When watching the intricate dances, it’s hard to believe they’re beginner friendly. The performers, dressed in simple black tops and
stylish red pants, focus on the lion dance’s precise choreography.
Though, precise timing doesn’t mean the dancing does not allow for artistic creativity. In fact, it’s the opposite. Sophomore accounting major Sheila Li said she intentionally wanted to be the lion’s head.
“I think I’ve tried every part of lion dancing,” Li said. “I’ve found that I like being in the head more because it’s very energetic and expressive.”
And it is certainly an expressive job. The lion’s head accentuates the features of a real lion, with comically long eyelashes, a wide, toothy mouth and entrancing spiral eyes. As the head of the lion, Li makes the eyelashes blink, opens and closes the mouth and moves the head itself.
Junior public health major Elliot Zang handles the back half’s stunts. Though the audience may overlook this portion, the tail is the cornerstone of the tricks that the lion executes in a performance, he said.
Zang said he’s often the tail by necessity, as some difficult tricks require strength, such as picking the person in the front up.
“I spend four hours every week getting a crick in my back,” Zang laughed. “Just jokes. These are my good best friends.”
Li had always admired lion dancing before college but never had the chance to try the niche art form growing up, she said. She was excited to see a lion dancing club in her freshman year, and has made many friends since joining, she added.
Chen hopes to expand the lion dancing community as a whole through the club, which serves as a launching point for people into the dance form.
“It’s a very, really, really niche activity that I feel isn’t that much explored among our generation,” Chen said. “This is a really new thing that we’re trying to build, basically just introduce people and help expand the community here.”
UMD literature club highlights Asian American and Pacific Islander stories
Tiger mom. Math whiz. Model minority.
All of these Asian stereotypes — spoon-fed to us by books and movies — have shaped the way we view Asian American culture. But in recent years, a shift from being seen as “nerdy” or “weird” to edgy and hip, has caused Asian culture to quietly fold itself into our pop culture.
The University of Maryland’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature and Media Club aims to keep this momentum going and rewrite people’s understanding of the Asian American experience.
Senior English and marketing major Julie Cha founded the club toward the end of her sophomore year, due to the lack of diverse representation of Asian American literature among this university’s English department.
“There’s so much more than just immigrant experiences. There’s so much more than growing up in a tiger mom household. There’s so much more than being a model citizen,” Cha said.
She hopes to expand awareness of the diversity throughout Asian literature and highlight Asian authors who provide unique experiences to combat
By Maxine Poe-Jensen I Diversionsreporter
the perception of the stereotypical Asian American.
“I think AAPI lit is really a tool for modern literature, because it allows perspectives and stories that might not have been heard otherwise, to come to the forefront and flourish,” said junior environmental science and technology major Sarim Zafar.
Asian literature is often written, packaged and commodified nicely for the timid reader who wants to “branch out” from their regular reading. For most authors, this looks like passing off white-centric stories disguised behind the Vietnam or Korean War, such as Kristen Hannah’s “The Women” or Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.”
For readers, this is a comfortable, safe distance from which to read about Asian culture, with a familiar and recognizable buffer between them and foreignness. The AAPI Literature and Media Club seeks to actively rewrite this overdone story.
Zafar said the club helped him to look beyond the Western canon of literature and read stories in which glimpses of his own voice can be reflected back from the pages.
“AAPI lit allows an alternative perspective … that’s
not fully dwelled on in a lot of mainstream literary spaces,” Zafar said.
In the club, the members discuss books that deviate from what you would think of as traditional Asian literature. The Asian immigrant or the Asian soldier story is one that has been written over and over again, endlessly forcing the Asian character to perform the same tricks for a reader who demands to be entertained by the “otherness” of their story.
I have read countless novels and watched countless movies where I’m excited to see Asian representation, only to be disappointed when the character has no real depth.
The club’s book of the month was “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang, a satirical novel that deals with the issues of performative diversity within the publishing industry, a very apt pick for a book club that tackles the commodification of Asian American voices.
The novel isn’t your average Joy Luck Club, but instead a sharp, punchy and sometimes bitter look at fake diversity in the literary world.
Story continued on page 5.
AAPI Literature club continued:
“People kind of assume a more studious, academia-based recognition of Asians,” Cha said. “It’s super important to showcase that there is a whole other side [of Asian Americans] that … not only exists, but that has been suppressed, especially in Western media,” Cha said.
Club member Matthew Gu, a sophomore computer science and English major, praised the pick of “Yellowface,” noting that the book has a meta aspect to it.
“[Yellowface] doesn’t really explore an Asian American perspective in the traditional sense, where a protagonist is Asian American. But it still comments a lot about what it means to be Asian American in the
publishing industry,” Gu said.
The AAPI Literature and Media Club doesn’t take the road that you expect, instead challenging its members to look at what Asian American literature really means as the uncomfortable question of Asian American identity hits home for the members.
UMD first-generation students club hopes to provide community, resources for families
By Talia Macchi | Staff writer
The University of Maryland’s First-Generation Student Association has expanded its activities and outreach this semester to support students who are the first in their family to attend a four-year college in the United States.
The First-Generation Student Association — a student leadership organization within this university’s Honors College — focuses on helping students in their transition into both the Honors College and this university as a whole, according to Angelina Hermosilla Roman, the group’s president.
“The support systems are very different. The home lives are very different and it’s just some things that are perceived to be common sense are often not,” Roman said. “[First-generation] students struggle in a way that is very unique to them.”
The club holds about one or two events each month and provides first-generation students at this university with social, professional and academic programming, the sophomore information systems and operations management and business analytics major explained.
Roman said the organization also releases a monthly newsletter to highlight resources available to members, including financial aid and scholarship opportunities.
Chantelle Smith, the group’s founder and staff advisor and the Honors College’s assistant director of recruitment, started gauging interest for the club during the fall 2023 semester and held the first meeting for those interested that winter. Before its creation, there was no centralized area where first-generation students could go for support, according to Smith.
Smith, who was a first-generation student herself, said it can be difficult for a student to navigate higher-education institutions when their family is unaware of the academic atmosphere of a university.
Angelica Reyes, a first-generation student at this university, said she felt “overwhelmed” with the academic environment when she first entered college, as she lacked support from her parents.
Reyes joined the organization after receiving an email about it through the Honors College, the junior middle school math and science education major said
The community has helped guide her through the challenges of being a first-generation student and integrate herself into the university community, Reyes said.
“Everyone has different experiences being first-generation, but the one thing that bonds everyone together is the fact that we are all experiencing this for the first time without having the support of parents,” she said.
Sophomore government and politics major Carlos Sanchez said he joined the organization because he believes the first-generation student community on campus is not that strong.
The group is an “amazing avenue” to connect with other students and clubs on campus, Sanchez noted. The organization works with clubs of different racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds to expand members’ connections, Sanchez said.
“Having those other connections too that aren’t just the club really allows [first-generation] students to know what’s offered on campus and what might be really relevant to them,” Sanchez said.
Junior family science major Emily Nava said they appreciate the organization’s guidance in explaining university procedures to her parents, especially when it comes to paying tuition.
“College in general and the system within it is just so confusing … so being able to connect with other people and see how they have done it and how I could do it, has helped a lot,” Nava said.
Moving forward, Smith encouraged first-generation students to join the group, noting that some students are often hesitant to seek help.
“If a resource is available to you, take it. Don’t look at it as another obligation, because those resources are supposed to be trying to help you take things off your plate, not add to the burdens.” Smith said.
Angelina Hermosilla Roman, president of the First-Generation Student Association, poses for a portrait outside of Chincoteague Hall on Nov. 20, 2024. (Giuseppe LoPiccolo/The Diamondback)
Zine Club relaunch invites students to create, connect through design
By Emely Miranda-Aguilar I Diversionsreporter
Zines — pronounced like “magazine” — are the history books of counterculture, inviting students for decades to experiment with clippings, texts and art.
Students at the University of Maryland can design their own eclectic booklets at Zine Club, which lecturer Max Barnewitz relaunched at a meeting earlier this month in Tawes Hall with the help of the English department’s BookLab.
BookLab previously ran a Zine Club before the pandemic, but was unable to continue the club afterward, Barnewitz said.
Zines have historically been a form of self-expression. Barnewitz said zines can be artistically inclined, comics, scientific or informative — it is what the maker makes it.
“[Zines] are, I think, generally described as selfpublished works of a small print size,” Barnewitz said. “They’re more dedicated to sharing ideas, sharing things that you’re interested in.”
Barnewitz, also a University Honors collegiate fellow, received a masters of fine arts degree in comics, coordinated zine festivals and continued their research on comics and zines at this university.
Barnewitz and BookLab provide students with collage
materials, magazines and art supplies. Immediately, students at the meeting jumped into action and started to share their ideas with each other.
“[It’s important] to have people come together to create together,” junior geology major Charlie McFadden said. “It’s important for group creation, as well as individual.”
McFadden was looking for arts and writing clubs to get involved with before he found Zine Club. McFadden said he enjoys mixed media creation and was glad for the friendly atmosphere.
At the meeting, McFadden created an oceanic lifethemed collage with cutouts from National Geographic magazines. McFadden is drawn to images of seascapes and wanted to show his interest in art and the ocean together in his collage, he said.
Jamie Thurmond, a freshman technology and information design major, found the club’s atmosphere to be pleasant, and liked the community of people interested in zines.
“What really makes a club, and also what really makes a zine is this community,” Thurmond said. “Being able to hear other people’s stories [and] perspectives, but
also being able to see their zines is pretty cool.”
Thurmond began working on the cover for a zine during the club meeting, but said she was unsure of the route to take her work, considering a more comedic route.
For a long time, Thurmond made copies of books, soon developing an interest in alternative comics that led her to zine culture.
Barnewitz said the club’s goal will emerge as time goes on, but they hope to build a community where students learn to make zines and connect with their artistic side.
“I think regardless of whether students are pursuing the arts as their major, the arts can help you process your own experiences and also make connections with other people,” Barnewitz said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Max Barnewitz is a collegiate fellow in this university’s Honors College. Barnewitz is a University Honors fellow. This story has been updated.
Maryland Filmmakers’ fall film festival spotlights UMD student talent
By Matt Kauffman I Diversionsreporter
Ten short films by student directors, actors, producers and cinematographers premiered Dec. 3 at the Maryland Filmmakers Fall Film Festival, showcasing student talent at the Hoff Theater.
At the beginning of the semester, the club’s leadership greenlit several films to be shown at the festival, said club president Ilana Maiman, a senior cinema and media studies major. In addition to films produced by members of the club, the filmmakers accepted admissions for projects from outside students about a month before the festival.
The event showcased a wide variety in both thematic content and film style. Comedy, horror, drama and even documentaries and music videos were all present — something which Maiman attributed to the differences in creativity among the creators.
“We’re not super hands-on,” she said. “We’re mostly just like, ‘here’s a group of people who all want to make stuff. You’re a director, go make stuff.’”
Maiman also directed and starred in her own film, an experimental horror short titled Lovesick, featuring lots of fake blood and Maiman eating a teddy bear. She referred to this as her favorite moment from the film.
In her role as president, Maiman assists
club directors with their projects in whatever capacity is needed, such as editing scripts to make them feasible for production.
“She helped dial back scenes and props … [while] keeping the essence of the story,” said Zoe Price, a junior cinema and media studies major working on a project for the spring.
“She’s basically my organizer, because I’m very inexperienced and very unorganized.”
Kenneth Klepsig, a sophomore government and politics and psychology major, directed Color Your Night, in which he sought to represent neurodivergent college students.
Klepsig’s approach differed heavily from the short film he made last year — a 17-minute long comedy — pivoting this semester to a shorter drama. He said the film is inspired by his personal experience as a neurodivergent student as well as I Saw the TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun and a video game called Persona 3.
“The biggest issue that a lot of directors face, that they don’t expect, is time crunch,” he said of the obstacles he faced during production. “Writing takes a long time, especially to get your script to a point you’re comfortable with.”
The film largely takes place in a party scene, which draws out the internal and visible
anxiety faced by the lead character. Klepsig had to plan and operate quickly to use the apartment set and manage all the extras to get his shots.
Klepsig also assistant directed My Best Friend Maria with a filmmaker from another club at this university, Veritas Short Films. Their horror short follows the misguided attempt of a grieving teenager to resurrect her deceased best friend. The style was starkly different from Klepsig’s other featured short, as this one was shot entirely in black and white with vivid, haunting images.
Obsessed, produced by senior criminology and criminal justice and cinema and media studies major Jack-Brittan Powell, stood out as the lone documentary. The film provided an intimate look at obsessive-compulsive disorder through man on the street interviews and in-depth, sit-down conversations with people afflicted with the condition.
The event was closed out by a music video for AJR’s “Inertia,” directed and starred in by Dylan Speiser, a senior computer engineering major.
“We always have a really solid variety,” Maiman said. “It’s one of the strengths of the club.”
Hoff Theater in Stamp Student Union on Oct. 28, 2021. (Julia Nikhinson/The Diamondback)
