The Dartmouth Mirror 10/4/17

MIR ROR 10.4.2017

GOOD DORM KEEPING | 2

HOME AWAY FROM HOME | 3

THE AGENCY OF HOME | 4-5 TANYA SHAH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

2 //MIRR OR

Editors’ Note

Good Dorm-Keeping STORY

ELIZA MCDONOUGH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

May is a senior and has experienced a grand total of 0.5 Homecomings.

During her freshman year, she was self-poisoned by her Foco meal (a hearty plate of garlic with a side of stir fry) and slept through the preliminary festivities in her Fahey dorm, before running around the bonfire in a tutu, oozing garlic and melancholy. She studied abroad during her sophomore and junior falls and experienced Homecoming vicariously through her best bud Lauren, who, in a “surprisingly wholesome” remark, recalled standing around the bonfire in the pouring rain, overwhelmed with joy when hundreds had gathered to celebrate the tradition despite the inclement weather. (While the blazing pile of wood in the center of the Green was enough to keep the crowd warm, Lauren noted that her alcohol blanket — the result of consuming half a bag of Franzia, in typical sophomore fashion — also helped.) Annette remembers seeing a classmate successfully touch the fire her freshman year. And intrepid editor Ray Lu ’18, when asked his thoughts on the Homecoming bonfire tradition, replied: “It’s straight fiya.”

In preparation for the events this week, the Mirror editors have curated an issue around the theme of homecoming, featuring stories on the politics of family leave, the impact of recent DACA legislation on campus, the ways students create homey interior spaces and the sounds of home that can be heard through sound installation art. Whether its your first or your last, we hope you have a wild, wonderful and safe Homecoming. Enjoy the issue!

By Farid Djamalov

Whether your dorm is in the remote areas of the River cluster or in the dead center of campus, in its skeletal state it is nondescript from any other dorm. It is incumbent on the resident to bring their room to life. However, when it comes to dorm decor, a clear dichotomy in attitudes exists at Dartmouth. As trend-conscious students vigorously scour online stores for items that replicate their Pinterest posts, others opt for functional over ornamental, purchasing the bare minimum at their local retailers.

Ashlyn Morris ’21 said that she spent the last three weeks of her summer sifting through different websites in order to purchase room furnishings.

“I browsed websites like Urban Outfitters to find cute pillows and lights that would be in line with my personality,” she said.

In retrospect, however, Morris realizes that she had to acquiesce at times in her room design because she did not want her roommate’s decor to clash with her own.

“A flow in style must be maintained in order to ensure unity within the room,” she said.

On the other side of the spectrum lies Colin Fennelly ’21, who happens to live in the same building as Morris.

“I didn’t give much thought [to my room decor] as I thought planning out my year was more important than decorating my room,” Fennelly said.

Some would be reluctant to dispense with room planning, acknowledging the indirect benefits that branch out from this seemingly frivolous act.

Morris emphasized how a person’s room can reflect who they are.

“Individualizing your room helps you preserve your identity and

prevents you from getting lost in the campus’ big herd of sheep,” she said.

“After all, your room is where you come back to sleep every night.”

Now the question is, how does one individualize a dorm room in a way that makes them call it — instinctively and happily — a home?

Many may balk at the idea of decorating their rooms once budget becomes part of the equation. Nonetheless, one need not necessarily invest in a futon or any other furniture to vivify a room.

There are numerous ways to spruce up a dorm inexpensively through small additions.

Jamie Ma ’20 has an eye for style: Ma is a budding Instagram blogger with the username “dartmouthflair,” which features individual styles of various Dartmouth community members. Ma offered advice on how to make a room feel like home.

“Use any kind of light, but not the ceiling light,” she said. “The lights in the dorm are so artificial and feel like prison. You don’t need Christmas lights, but get anything to avoid using that that harsh ceiling light.”

One can also enliven their room with plants procured at Robert’s Flowers. From succulents and cacti sitting on the ledge of a window or a single luscious, leafy statement piece graciously sitting on your desk, plants will imbue the cold, barren dorm rooms with life.

“Something that I have always loved but not been able to maintain is a plant,” Ma said. “If you can do it, it’s something you can watch grow. Also, I feel like it mirrors how you’re doing in terms of taking care of yourself. In the winter time, when it’s cold and there’s no green outside, it’s especially nice to have plants.”

Caring for dorm plants also instills a sense of responsibility and

routine.

“By watering [plants] regularly, the diligence seeps through your day-to-day life as you are motivated to keep your head above water in terms of schoolwork,” Rijul Garg ’21 said.

Another way to individualize a room is by putting up posters reflective of the inhabitant’s identity.

Turiya Adkins ’20 hails from Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in a bohemian atmosphere. She plasters art laden with meaning onto her walls. The works embody her values and remind her of home.

“All my posters have stories and mean something,” she said. “Being able to walk into my room and see the things that aren’t particularly from home but remind me of home makes me happy.”

She gave a quick tour of her room: a New York City map that came in a vinyl album, Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s “The Virgin” from the poster store in town, a Frida Kahlo self-portrait that Adkins said embodies her values and aspirations and a still from Steve McQueen’s “Ashes.”

Garg warns that posters with shallow quotes should be avoided.

“Tacky quotes become such an unnecessary addition to the room, as they do not convey anything about the people,” she said. “They’re just platitudes that have been overused.”

Nonetheless, throughout the whole dorm decor process, what is most important is that you stay faithful to who you are.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the wide selection for dorm decor and create an eclectic room which doesn’t do justice to your identity,” Morris said. “You must always remember, your room is a projection of your identity, and you are the artist narrating the picture.”

follow @thedmirror 10.4.17 VOL. CLXXIV NO. 121 MIRROR EDITORS LAUREN BUDD ANNETTE DENEKAS MAY MANSOUR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RAY LU PUBLISHER PHILIP RASANSKY EXECUTIVE EDITOR KOURTNEY KAWANO PHOTO EDITORS ELIZA MCDONOUGH HOLLYE SWINEHART TIFFANY ZHAI

COURTESY OF NATALIE DAMERON

Dorm decorations, such as posters, pictures and furniture, can reflect the resident’s personality.

MIRROR //3

Home Away From Home: Dartmouth Homestays Abroad STORY

By Annie Farrell

Studying abroad is often synonymous with leaving home, but for Dartmouth students who choose to participate in a Language Study Abroad program, studying abroad can actually mean switching out one home for another. On most LSA and LSA+ programs, students are housed by a local family in order to gain a better understanding of the country’s language and culture. These families’ houses become a Dartmouth student’s home away from home for an entire term.

Host families that participate in the homestay program range in size and dynamics. Julianna Werffeli ’18 became one surrogate daughter to an older couple who housed her and a Panamanian teenager at their home in Toulouse, France. On the other hand, Karla Rosas ’20 was added as a member to an already large, traditional Moroccan family on her Arabic LSA+ in Rabat, Morocco.

Activities with the host family are not always mandatory, though many students look back fondly on the time spent with their hosts. Most notably, students associate the pleasant times of their homestay experiences to be family dinners.

“The food was a definite highlight,” Werffeli said. “My host mom made everything from scratch. Her family owned a restaurant when she was younger so she was very good at cooking. There were always at least three cheese options, and we would have wine with every meal.”

Being dairy-free, Sara Topic ’18 was worried about eating in a country in which butter and cheese are main staples. However, her French host mother always made sure Topic could eat a hearty dinner, substituting coconut milk and soy creamer in meals that contained dairy.

“My host mom really went out of her way to accommodate me,” Topic said. “It was a sacrifice [the family] was making. I appreciated it.”

“Accommodating” is a common word used to describe host families.

Natalie Chertoff ’18, who also studied in Toulouse, was not allowed to do the dishes, but she insisted on clearing her place after every meal. Rosas remembers having to insist on turning on her own shower.

“They would do everything for me,” Rosas said. “They would always ensure that I was comfortable. That was definitely an adjustment for me, but I know other [students] really enjoyed [being spoiled]. I was thankful for it.”

Rules on a homestay are similar to rules at home: Be respectful, and be on time for curfew. Host parents worry just as much as real ones. Werffeli made a point to always return by curfew — especially on Fridays, when her host mom would stay awake until

she came home — as she went back and forth between home, school and ultimate frisbee practice.

The commute from home to class is different for every homestay student.

For Rosas, a quick two-minute walk was the extent of her journey to school.

However, Werffeli had to take a more convoluted route.

“I had to walk down the street, take a bus to the subway and then take a subway to the school,” she said. “It was a fair commute, about 40 minutes.”

Classes on an LSA+ are intense.

Students earn three distributive credits from an LSA+ program: one foreign language, one literature and one Western or non-Western culture, depending on the language being studied. The LSA+ programs also sponsor excursions in the region to further learning outside of the classroom setting.

Learning outside of the classroom is usually largely supplemented by the host family. Interactions with natives of the country are mostly limited to the host family because LSA+ classes consist of only Dartmouth students. Rosas was surrounded by Moroccans speaking the common dialect “Darija,” which is Arabic sans vowels, but her host mom insisted on speaking to her in classical Arabic to better Rosas’ language skills. Chertoff also attributes her improvements in French to her homestay.

Not all homestays are guaranteed to help a student improve in a language, however. Topic’s host family dynamic prevented her from constantly being immersed in French conversation.

“My host parents both worked so I was on my own a lot,” she said. “A lot of host parents are stay-athome so they would make [their students] breakfast and lunch. My host parents would either leave me lunch or leave me money to buy lunch. The only meal I had with them was dinner. My language didn’t improve as much as other people who were constantly interacting with their host family.”

Staying in touch with one’s host family is very common after a homestay.

Topic never thought she would see her small-town host parents again after her stay, but they recently visited Hanover to have lunch with her and some of the past students they have hosted. Rosas’ family pleads with her through Facebook to come visit again. Upon her departure, her host

sister cried and her host mother gifted her with a turquoise necklace, a precious family heirloom.

“I didn’t really think I had made that much of an impression on them because they have a different student every year,” Rosas said. “I was really

shocked.”

Takeaways from a homestay are not always as material as a turquoise necklace. Students often come back with a new outlook on life and home.

“I definitely learned to be more independent,” Topic said. “I learned

to rely on myself. I learned I was strong enough when I was super sick and then stayed for the rest of the program, even though all I wanted to do was go home and see my mom.

[My homestay] definitely made me stronger as a person.”

COURTESY OF KARLA ROSAS

For some students, eating meals with family is a typical occurrence while on the Arabic Language Study Abroad.

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The Agency of Home: The Impact of D STORY Every Dartmouth term is different.

Not just in the cocktail of classes we take or in the people who zip in and out of our lives. Within the insanity of our intermingling D-Plans, every 10 weeks brings a completely unique combination of people to campus. From one term to the next, what one may argue makes Dartmouth special — the people — is never the same. Yet while life here sometimes feels fleeting at best, we

MAY MANSOUR/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

nonetheless learn to find home within the never-changing architectural landscape.

Home comes to be the memories echoed in the alcoves of Sanborn Library, the ghosts of small talk past on First Floor Berry or the wisps of a conversation that mark a corner of the Green your own. It’s individual, unique and self-defined within these common and unchanging spaces we share.

This weekend, scores of alumni will make the pilgrimage back to the Green, beckoned forward by an awaiting celebration of their achievements and a not-so-little tinge of nostalgia for the good old days of where they once called home.

Like the Dartmouth student who steps of f the Coach after an offter m, they too will find comfort once again in the thought of what once was in the buildings and landmarks that are still here. Their own self-definitions of home at Dartmouth will be resurrected as they stand among u p p e rc l a s s m e n around a bonfire af lame in tradition and an orientation t ow a rd a n e w class. Yet for some students, the ability to shape what home means at Dartmouth is shadowed by the fact that home is often contingent upon things out of their control.

When President Donald Trump’s a d m i n i s t r at i o n announced the repeal of the Deferred Action fo r C h i l d h o o d Arrivals program last month, undocumented students at Dartmouth were plunged into a more visceral state of uncertainty.

Although DACA was precarious

in and of itself, requiring recipients to renew their eligibility every two years at a cost of $495, it nonetheless offered a brief reprieve from the threat of deportation and subsequently an opportunity to settle into the norms of student life here in Hanover.

Study abroad terms, undergraduate research — hallmarks of the Dartmouth experience trumpeted in our glossy brochures and on admission tours — accrue a greater possibility for undocumented students who are DACA recipients.

As Oscar Ruben Cornejo ’17 remarks, the minute form of legal immigration status that DACA offers makes even traveling to Hanover, an otherwise benign experience, easier.

“DACA made it seem like you belonged because you were able to legally be part of the institutions and be part of what other Dartmouth students are normally part of,” Cornejo said. “Working, working with a professor, traveling, those basic things become almost paths of belonging,.”

For Barbara Olachea Lopez Portillo ’19 — a DACA recipient — being able to legally work in this country has somewhat normalized her experience at Dartmouth.

“It’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re not just like everybody else, because you can work,” she said.

Even so, Olachea went on to say that despite these benefits, being undocumented at Dartmouth brings more insidious consequences. As the only person in her family who has legal work status, she has come to take on the burden of financially supporting herself while pursuing her interests as a full-time student at Dartmouth.

For Valentina Garcia Gonzalez ’19, who moved to northern Atlanta with her family at the age of six from Uruguay, differences in citizenship or immigration status sometimes lead to moments of self-doubt that are undeniably made possible by the starkly meritocratic tones that resound across the green.

“At Dartmouth you compare yourself a lot with other people’s success, and that’s what, unfortunately, I do a lot as well,” she said. “But I have to remind myself that it’s not my fault. I can’t do much.”

Cornejo, Garcia Gonzalez and Olachea have all been involved with the non-partisan student advocacy g roup Dartmouth Coalition for Immig ration Refor m, Equality and DREAMers. Co-founded by Cornejo in early 2014, CoFIRED supports undocumented students on campus and in the United States by gathering resources — legal, financial, medical or otherwise — to ensure that these students have just as much of an opportunity to thrive as any other.

Cornejo, who graduated from Dartmouth this spring, immigrated with his family to the northern suburbs of Chicago from Mexico at the age of five and is now working toward a Ph.D in sociology back in his home city at Northwestern University. Almost four years after he co-founded CoFIRED with Eduardo Misael Najera Ortega ’14, Cornejo reflected back on the changes that he has seen reverberate across campus and within the undocumented student community

By Kaijin

during his time at Dartmouth.

In the wider Dartmouth population, he felt the attitudes toward undocumented students shift as conversations opened up about this often looked-over fragment of the student body. CoFIRED has worked in the past few years to actively destigmatize undocumented immigrants in the United States. Perhaps their most significant move to date is successfully petitioning the Library of Congress to shift from using the pejorative term “illegal alien,” to the more neutral “undocumented immigrant” and “noncitizen.”

By the beginning of his senior year, CoFIRED was running at full throttle, and he saw undocumented first-year students arriving on campus with a marked determination to take advantage of the school’s resources, despite the limitations of their immigration status.

“By my senior year, there were several students who were automatically asking in the first couple weeks, how do they go studying abroad with DACA,” he said. “That was a completely different conversation that we were having.”

He points to the cohesion in the undocumented student population and immigration allies that CoFIRED brought about as a reason for this newfound optimism and open-mindedness on campus.

“In the beginning, it was just us, the people who were willing to come together,” Cornejo said. “Then at the end, it feels like we have a community. It feels like we have a representative voice.”

CoFIRED is now going through a period of change, as current board members evaluate the organization’s role in fostering a community that is inclusive of not only DACA recipients — often referred to as “DREAMers” — but also of those outside the purview of the program. Jesus Franco ’20, who is currently co-director of CoFIRED, wishes to sew together rifts in the undocumented immigrant community that have been widened by the exceptionalist undertones of immigration policy. To reflect a greater sense of inclusivity, CoFIRED recently moved to change the organization’s name to Coalition for Immigration Reform and Equality at Dartmouth.

“We came together as a board and realized that the DREAMers narrative doesn’t really encompass our goals,” he said. “We’re here to help everybody, any immigrant, for those who do and do not qualify for DACA.” Franco was born and grew up in a community of predominantly undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, California and views the “good immigrant” discourse that gave rise to DACA with a heavily critical eye.

Painted as the innocent and talented, the DACA-eligible had to jump through a series of hoops to prove that they were squeaky clean, educated and had the potential to be highly productive in the U.S. economy. After Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of the DACA program on Sept.

5, 2017, former President Barack Obama shared his thoughts on Facebook.

“Today, that shadow has been cast over

MIRROR //5

DACA Legislation on Campus

ng Janice Chen

some of our best and brightest young people the exception of fiscal support from WISE once again,” Obama wrote. “To target these and the help of community volunteers, young people is wrong — because they have Barta runs WANN by herself and provides done nothing wrong. It is self-defeating — legal services to immigrants — from because they want to start new businesses, refugees seeking asylum to undocumented staff our labs, serve in our military, and immigrants who are victims of domestic otherwise contribute to the country we love.” violence or human trafficking.

Franco argues that the kind of rhetoric In her work, Barta sees a strong correlation that glorifies DREAMers as diligent, between undocumented immigration status well-behaved and essentially the collateral and vulnerability to domestic violence. The damage of their parents’ wrongdoings sets precarious existence of undocumented up a false binary between the 800,000 immigrants in the U.S. makes these people DACA recipients and the other 10.2 million more inclined to seek stability through undocumented immigrants in the United relationships with citizens, who in some States. cases abuse the power granted to them by “When you have a good immigrant, that way of legal status. means you have bad immigrants,” he said. “The lack of immigration status becomes In light of the “ideal immigrant,” a way in which the abuser keeps the person narrative, Garcia Gonzalez does not believe subservient to them,” Barta explained. that her own hard work and achievements In order to create a more integrated has meant that she is uniquely deserving of support network for vulnerable immigrants DACA’s benefits. Rather, the benefits she has in the Upper Valley, WANN of fer s received under DACA are a testament to an community education for healthcare unjust favoring of people like her who are facilities, libraries and schools in order to more palatable to the American public. She increase awareness of immigrant needs. is a high-achieving student at an Ivy League Through various training programs, staff institution. She speaks unaccented English at local facilities like Dartmouth-Hitchcock and describes herself as “white-passing,” Medical Center learn to recognize the an advantage that allows her to slip more people who might benefit from a legal easily into the higher rungs of American consultation with Barta. beauty standards.

“I want our “T hat does not community make me better than organizations, as someone who is they’re working darker than me, who “When students are thinking with these might have an accent, about Homecoming, alumni individuals in who might not have a other capacities high school education coming back to this place that . . . I want them because they had to they themselves called home, to under stand work,” she said. that there’s I n h i s c r i t i q u e it’s important to think about potential,” she o f l i b e r a l how students are able to make said. m u l t i c u l t u r a l i s m , this a home when they can’t In the past Slovenian philosopher y e a r, B a r t a Slavoj Žižek coined the feel at home in this country.” has observed term “decaffeinated an increase Other” to describe in community those who experience -JESUS FRANCO ’20 support for comparatively less her work at resistance in the WA N N, w i t h sphere of liberal many volunteers politics — the “African and east European choosing to contribute their time and sportsmen, Asian doctors, Indian software resources to immigrant families in need. programmers.” Those that are lauded as “There’s a heightened awareness in the productive, model citizens serve as tokens communities in general, and so people of tolerance, while people who deviate more are really wanting to reach out and really significantly from dominant norms are left wanting to help and be involved,” she said. to fend for themselves against unforgiving Despite this added support, Barta sees immigration policy. the volatility of the current political climate Žižek wrote, “What is increasingly reflected in the fear her clients feel. As emerging as the central human right in the only legal service provider in Grafton late-capitalist societies is the right not to County, it sometimes feels like the services be harassed, which is the right to be kept of WANN can only stretch so thin. at a safe distance from others.”

“There’s not much you can do besides try If Cor nejo, Garcia Gonzalez and to move a case along as fast as you possibly Olachea in some ways represent the can, which is really frustrating,” she said. decaffeinated and palatable immigrant, the “You feel a little bit helpless.”

Upper Valley is home to many who get the Garcia Gonzalez stresses that the even shorter end of the stick. undocumented immigrant population is Faculty member at The Dartmouth composed of a smattering of heterogeneous Institute Kate Barta works with low-income stories and demographics and does not foreign-born individuals in the Upper hail exclusively from Central and South Valley through the nonprofit organization American countries. Currently, it is estimated Welcoming All Nationalities Network. With that at least 15 percent of undocumented

immigrants come from Asian countries, most from India, China and the Philippines.

Nonetheless, uncertainty about the future is something that underlies the undocumented experience across the country and at Dartmouth.

As CoFIRED moves into u n c h a r t e d ter ritories after the repeal of DAC A , Fr a n c o questions how home can ever be possible for those whose lives are made increasingly unstable with the f luctuations i n i m m i g r at i o n policy.

“DACA wasn’t perfect, but it was s o m e t h i n g t h at I would defend, I would defend to my core,” he said. “That I don’t believe should have been taken away, but should have been improved.

It’s kind of sad that we have to move in this backwards way.”

Fo r p e o p l e like Franco, who a r e t h e m s e l ve s U.S. citizens by b i r t h r i g h t , bu t whose close friends and community members are undocumented immigrants, home becomes fraught with complexity.

Perched on the doubleedged sword of privilege and i n s u r m o u n t a bl e empathy for his loved ones, the stability his citizenship offers him is only blurred by the continuous denial of home for the people around him.

“It still continues to be a lot harder for me to really call this country a place of home when so many people I love are being told that this isn’t their home,” he said.

When we stand around the bonfire to welcome home the Class of 2021 this Friday, who will be left out? As the lingering heat

MAY MANSOUR/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

of the gravel dissipates on Saturday morning, who will still be at odds with the idea of home at Dartmouth?

“When students are thinking about Homecoming, alumni coming back to this place that they themselves called home, it’s important to think about how students are able to make this a home when they can’t feel at home in this country,” Franco said.

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Sounds of Home STORY

By Numaira Khan

Three weeks ago, during my first week at Dartmouth, I realized I needed a study space. Anything would do, so I blindly followed my friends to the Kresge Physical Sciences Library, located on the third floor of Fairchild Hall. We came across a beautiful golden pendulum that immediately captivated me and my friends. Only after a few minutes in the lowermost floor of Fairchild Hall did anyone stop and comment on the peculiar rumbling in the background.

We immediately dismissed it, assuming it was probably just how the acoustics work. Within the following weeks, I returned to Fairchild Hall, making it my home whenever I absolutely needed to get an assignment done. Later, I found out that the rumbling my friends and I had first noticed, and I had grown accustomed to, was in fact a sound art installation: “Transmission,” by Danish artist and composer Jacob Kirkegaard.

Since age six, Kirkegaard has been fascinated with recording. Years later, at age 19, Kirkegaard made a more deliberate decision to record his surroundings and make sound

compositions out of them.

“I moved away from the idea of music making and [started] thinking of it as sound, or sculpturing with sound,” he said.

Kirkegaard’s sound compositions range anywhere from the melting of glaciers in Greenland to the abandoned spaces of the infamous nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine. As opposed to traditional paintings and drawings or visual art, Kirkegaard finds sound art appealing because the medium lends itself to subjectivity.

“The visual sense is more objective ... what you see is concrete,” Kirkegaard said. “If you look at something, you know it’s in front of you. It’s not behind you, necessarily. Whereas sound can come from everywhere.”

To Kirkegaard, sound can tell us something about the world or ourselves on a different level — subjective, maybe — that can add to our fuller comprehension of things. As an artist, Kirkegaard tries to “refrain from saying you have to feel this or that — or to look for answers — but just to explore a field

and sort of create this sonic entrance into something.”

Through sound art, Kirkegaard appeals to a listener in a unique way specific to an individual, revealing something complex about the listener’s surroundings and who that listener is on a personal level.

At Dartmouth, Kirkegaard was commissioned to install his sound art piece, “Transmission.” Choosing the atrium in Fairchild as the location for his composition, he created a space where the sounds shift and alter depending on where you are in this tower-like structure. The 90-minute composition features ambient resonant seismic vibrations of rock structures located in Utah and Arizona. Many of these rock structures are considered sacred sites by Native Americans of the region, including the Hopi, Kaibab Paiute, Navajo, San Juan Southern Paiute, White Mesa Ute and Zuni tribes.

To many a Dartmouth student, including myself, Fairchild has become a home of sorts. Some spend countless nights stargazing in the atrium, others

find the perfect nook to lay out all of their study materials and finally write that paper. With his creation of an immersive sound piece in “Transmission,” Kirkegaard has changed that original idea of home in a subtle but impactful way.

When creating “Transmission,” Kirkegaard kept in mind that Fairchild belongs to the students and professors who inhabit it. He didn’t want to “intrude” with his sound recordings, but he did want to “show [us] something else.”

Sincetheadditionof “Transmission,” the low rumblings of Native American rock structures have become integral to my idea of studying in Fairchild — my idea of studying at home.

To several other students at Dartmouth, “Transmission” is an entirely separate manifestation of home.

The College we all hold dear to our hearts was originally founded as a means of educating local Native Americans.

Despite those claims, Dartmouth focused primarily on graduating white Americans, making it a difficult

environment for Native Americans to legitimately thrive. Since then, the College has improved its relationship with the Native American community.

That being said, for some Native American students on campus, this is a difficult and complex history to grapple with when thinking about Dartmouth.

“Transmission” is an installation that for some, could be perceived deeply tied to Native American tradition. Having such art at Dartmouth not only acknowledges the College’s past but respects Native American tradition and cements it into the landscape of the campus.

In the words of Kirkegaard, “Transmission” sonically connects the present and the past.

“Listening to the sounds of these arches is the sound of the past but are also the sounds that have been used for thousands of years by people who are still there,” Kirkegaard said. “It’s a sound that you can still hear.”

To have these sounds on campus, connecting our history to the contemporary, is for many what defines a home.

‘COVER Stories’: A Q&A with Professor Terry Osborne STORY

By Skyler Kuczaboski

Environmental studies professor Terry Osborne focuses on the spiritual connections between Americans and the natural world as well as Earth’s current environmental degradation. He teaches the first-year seminar, “COVER Stories: Community Building & the Environment.” The community-based course explores the construction of community as we know it through storytelling and writing. Students work with a local organization called COVER, which gives urgent home repair for members of the Upper Valley.

Tell me about the first time you saw a connection between activism and community.

TO: To me, the connection is about environmental activism. So, is it possible to be able to work on behalf of what we call the environment by doing work with human communities? Normally with environmental activism, you think about working with non-human communities, either on behalf of land or formations of land or ecosystems or on behalf of other creatures.

I think that what Americans have often done is divide environmental concern into the thought that all you can do to be an environmentalist is to work on behalf of non-human communities.

I think the purpose of the course to begin with was to get all of us to understand that actually there’s a way to work on behalf of the environment that is also simultaneously working with human communities and to see humans as part

of the environment as well. To be able to see how communities are formed and to be able to participate in that formation in sustaining that community is also an act of environmental action.

This course is a way to enact that, to have students ask the question when you work with COVER home repair when you’re replacing a roof on someone’s house, building an accessibility ramp or doing a weatherization project. Can you imagine yourself actually working on behalf of the environment? I think that’s the toughest question that students have to face. It’s also often very hard for them to see the social utility of participating in the activities that we participate in and working with homeowners. But my contention is philosophically that they are all part of the same effort. And the only thing that has made it not a part of the same effort is how we’ve construed the environment to mean having not to do with humans, and I think that’s a very problematic assumption. So that’s the connection that the course raises: Can you be an environmental actor by working on behalf of human communities?

How did this course idea come to you?

TO: About a decade ago, I realized that I could no longer teach about environmental issues in the way that I have been teaching before. And I realized that Dartmouth students are amazing thinkers, and you all can think about the environment in incredible

ways. You can think your way through environmental issues in incredibly sophisticated ways.

But what it seemed to me was missing was the intuitive, the instinctive, the emotional and the psychological intimacy with those issues. You could have intellectual intimacy, but you couldn’t have those other intimacies; couldn’t know them that well. So, I made a commitment to myself and ultimately to the students I would teach that I would try to at least introduce them to those different kinds of learning, that different kind of knowledge intimacy by getting students out into the community.

So that’s how it started — trying to build courses that had that interaction between environmental work and community work. Sometimes they’re one in the same.

COVER home repair would not identify itself as an environmental organization. They’re not opposed to [the content], but that’s just not how they conceive of themselves. However, they’re absolutely involved in their mission, which is about building community. So I just put together different courses in which there were different ways for students to go out into the community and worked to not study the community but to work on behalf and offer a service to the community and to the organizations. That’s how the study got across: being a student and being a community servant, working on behalf of those organizations, seeing what that was like and how that helped

you understand or make more confusing the ideas that were introduced in class.

That’s how we got started, to try to make more to give students a better understanding of the issues through the physical embodiment in the activities that the ideas were involved in.

What are some memorable experiences you have involving preparing for the class or watching students out in the community?

TO: This won’t seem quite as dramatic now because these kinds of classes have existed here for quite a long time. Now there are many that are doing this, but the first time that I offered COVER stories, we went out to work on a COVER work site. Sometimes it’s not that far away from Hanover or campus, yet sometimes people’s living conditions are dramatically different than what students had ever known and certainly different from what students see around here within walking distance of campus.

The first time students came back from a work site, they were so enthusiastic and fired up. They said, “We have to tell them about what we’ve seen; we have to tell them about how people are living, we all have to get involved, we have to do something!” I’ve seen variations of that throughout the years. I’ve seen disillusionment, I’ve seen excitement, I’ve seen disappointment, I’ve seen curiosity, I’ve seen confusion. I’ve seen all those things, which is great, but that initial response the first year they offered

it, I thought to myself, “Oh, this is really interesting, this is great.” There was this collective response, “We have to tell you what’s outside of Dartmouth because you don’t know! And we’ve just seen it, and we all have to get involved and become members of this community and participate and help everyone live more productive lives!” All of that.

I’ll never forget that moment because I thought to myself, “This is exactly the kind of response that education should have.” There was this visceral, deep, emotional response to what they had just experienced. We call that experiential-learning now, or community based learning, but that’s part of the hope of what experiential learning will do. That was certainly a memorable occasion from our first trip on the first work site in the first year of the class. Other memorable experiences for me personally have been working with all these organizations. I spent a lot of time with the organizations beyond from what the students spend. The other months out of the year outside the course, I’m working with those organizations to plan the following year’s projects and to debrief with them on how the projects from previous years went and to make sure they’re getting what they want. That’s the most important thing to me, that the organizations get something from the interactions with the students.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

MIRR OR //7

Working From Home: Family Leave and Parental Dynamics STORY

By Maria Harrast

Based on the Family Medical Leave Act, qualifying American parents must be allowed 12 weeks of jobprotected leave to care for a newborn.

Considering the average maternity leave is 17.7 weeks in advanced nations, American working parents are already at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the industrialized world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Add in the fact that every other advanced country mandates paid maternity leave, and one can’t help but wonder why the U.S. lags so far behind.

The problem lies in priorities.

Giavanna Munafo, a senior lecturer in the women’s, gender and sexuality studies program, believes that the federal government simply does not prioritize parental leave policies.

“The federal government doesn’t strong-arm businesses and other entities into absorbing the costs that would be involved in making mandated paid parental leave possible,” Munafo said.

“The government hasn’t made it a priority; it’s not as important as other things to people who end up making those decisions.”

When paid parental leave policies are in place, studies show positive results, such as an increase in parents who are more likely to return to work.

For example, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki reported for the Wall Street Journal that the rate at which new moms left Google fell by 50 percent when the company increased the

duration of paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks. Another study from the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University found that women who utilized New Jersey’s paid-family-leave policy were much more likely to be working nine to 12 months after childbirth compared to women who did not go on paid leave.

Despite the higher likelihood of parents returning to work after paid parental leave, many businesses will not change their policies because they believe maximum output equates to maximum success, and a parent on leave may not actively contribute to this output. Sociology professor Katherine Lin said that companies should look beyond this objective output when considering offering paid parental leave.

“Paid parental leave leads to questions, like, ‘Would businesses have to drastically restructure their finances in order to allow employees to take time off? What does this mean for the productivity of the company?’”

Lin said. “You see research about how offering paid leave can ensure continuity of your employees, or they can up employee satisfaction, or they decrease the likelihood of burnout [. . .] but the ingrained idea that employees must give maximum output to be of value to the company is hard to overcome.”

Often, the decision to go on unpaid leave relates to job status. Most Americans do not work at companies

that offer extended paid parental leave, so their circumstances differ drastically from those that do. In fact, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, only about 12 percent of large American companies offer paid parental leave, meaning the majority of working parents must consider the consequences of unpaid leave.

“Jobsareclassed,”Linsaid.“Working men and women in professional jobs versus working men and women in nonprofessional jobs — service industry jobs, retail jobs — have access to very different kinds of resources to help them make their decision.”

In the Hanover community, anyone eligible for employee benefits at the College has the option to enroll their children at the Dartmouth College Child Care Center. Munafo used the DCCCC’s services when she was raising her son. The DCCCC can provide up to 86 children from the ages of eight weeks to six years old. Fees are assessed based on family income.

Jeff Robbins, director of the DCCCC, said that although raising a child is an exciting time, it can also be a financial burden.

“Raising young children is a developmental stage for families,” Robbins said. “Good child care is expensive, and families of young children have lots of strain on their family resources. There is just about enough child care available in the community for people who are looking for child care, but there’s a huge lack

of affordable high-quality child care in the country.”

Lack of affordable child care is a considerable problem for many families, and some working parents may decide to leave their jobs to stay at home and raise their children instead.

When making the choice between continuing work or becoming a stayat-home parent, Lin believes that the decision is substantially influenced by factors outside of the parents’ control.

“What we think of as a choice oftentimes isn’t a choice at all to the mothers and fathers who are making these decisions,” Lin said. “They’re presented with a few set of options, and frequently, these options are constrained by whatever policy they have access to but also the cultural norms of the job that they’re in, the unspoken understanding they have with their boss, the unspoken understanding they have with their colleagues.”

In recent years, there has been a shift in the typical view of the stay-athome parent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of stay-at-home mothers has decreased significantly, from 49 percent to 29 percent between 1967 and 2012.

Meanwhile, the percentage of stayat-home fathers has increased from 10 percent to 16 percent between 1989 and 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.

Lin said that sociology research offers two arguments for the rise in

stay-at-home fathers. One argument states that this increase represents a new masculinity and demand for fathers to be active parents, which shows a shift in gender ideology, while the other is that the rise is due to job loss or periods of unemployment, in which a father with a working wife can look for jobs at home while also taking care of the children, showing a shift in economic resources.

“The average pathway for men is still long-term career attachment for the majority of their adult working lives, but we’re starting to see a bit of an increase in variation due to some of these other mechanisms, whether it is an economic restructuring or a shift in gender ideologies,” Lin said.

When a parent is contemplating whether or not to leave their occupational career to become a stay-at-home parent, Lin believes it is important to fully explore all possible paths.

“Only when you know the full range of options can you really consider what you’re doing as a choice,” Lin said.

“Otherwise, you’re just strong-armed into working — when you really want to be with your toddler — and that makes for a really hard adulthood.

You’ve got to buck that cultural trend.

It is certainly within your right as a worker to ask about what kinds of leave you have access to, what are the official rules, but also to get allies, to form a network and to figure out what other people have done before you.”

was completed and first presented to the College. A 1955 article published in The Dartmouth speaks to this connection: “Over the years the [Homecoming] program has ranged from a serious assembly in Webster Hall to a football rally outside. At present a mean between the reflective mood of Dartmouth Night and the spirit of football weekend is incorporated in the program.”

The bonfire is another staple of the Homecoming celebration. One article written in 1962, the first one to ever refer to Dartmouth Night as “Home-coming Day,” reads: “The bonfire rally will feature cheers, torches, mare fireworks, and band music by the College Band.”

Just a few years later, one woman reported that “Dartmouth’s snake danced around the fire whooping and stamping like savages. But the fire was even wilder. It demanded respect and as the searing heat waves poured forth the crowd retreated and retreated.” This is

not totally dissimilar to the event today, though many members of the crowd race to touch the fire rather than retreat from it.

In fact, in 1999 the dean of the College addressed a letter to the students that said: “The Homecoming celebration has s o m e t i m e s b e e n m a r re d by inappropriate behavior during the building of the bonfire and the so-called ‘freshman sweep,’ which resulted in injuries to students and destruction of property. … At the bonfire, students may not touch the fire or climb the structure for obvious reasons.”

Despite the many and varied interpretations of its proceedings and its unique sentiments, one sentiment regarding Homecoming still reigns true. As John Henry Bartlett, Class of 1894, once wrote: “All tell a tale of weird old days, / Which helped to mold us some, maybe, / To smooth some rough in our crude ways, / Though counting naught on our degree.”

Homecoming Through the Ages STORY

By Julia O’Sullivan

When students think of Homecoming today, a certain stockpile of images appears. These images include, but are not limited to, enjoying a full social calendar of events and basement debauchery, running around the famous bonfire and, for a select few, racing up to touch the fire with the pride of their class riding high on their simultaneously cold and sweaty shoulders.

The tradition dates back to the Dartmouth presidency of William Jewett Tucker, the ninth president of the College, who first took office in 1893. Long before its modern moniker, the earliest signs of “Homecoming” resided in an exercise known as “Rhetoricals,” a weekly meeting of the entire student body. This meeting, held in the Old Chapel of Dartmouth Hall, was described by Tucker in 1919 as “a rare opportunity of indoctrinating undergraduates into the permanent duties and responsibilities of the college

fellowship.”

But soon the college population grew too large for the small, smoky chamber of the Old Chapel, and in September 1895, “Rhetoricals” was replaced with a new campus event: “Dartmouth Night.” This was a night for all students, past and present, to gather together and relay the importance and history of the College. An 1896 issue of the Congressional Record and New Hampshire Jour nal read: “Trustees, faculty, students, and invited alumni gather in old Dartmouth Hall early in the college year to devote an evening to the traditions and glory of Dartmouth, and to stimulate pride in her achievements, and strengthen the purpose that the present and the future of the college shall be worthy of its past.”

Programming from the 1904 Dartmouth Night includes a procession escorting the Earl of Dartmouth from the Hanover Inn to the College Church, prayers,

hymns, a historical address, a Dartmouth College Glee Club performance on Alumni Athletic Field and a banquet at College Hall.

The on-campus gathering mainly consisted of singing, cheering and expressions of general enthusiasm at the sight of Dartmouth’s most successful alumni.

In less formal proceedings, 30 years later the 1934 “Song Sheet for Dartmouth Night” includes a song called “Eleazar Wheelock [founder of the College] Will be Turning in His Grave,” and another song’s lyrics reads: “Oh, Eleazar Wheelock was a very pious man: / [. . .] With a Gradus as Parnassum, A Bible and a drum, / and five hundred gallons of New England rum.” The chorus continues: “Fill the bowl! Fill the bowl! / And drink to Eleazar.”

Perhaps the most central component of the modern tradition is the Homecoming football game.

However, this was not the case until 1923, when Memorial Field

8// MIRROR

A Home in Time PHOTO

By Ishaan Jajodia

Morning Milk in Switzerland COLUMN

By Laura Jeliazkov

We all build up a collection of homes as we progress through life, but: what if I was to argue that that collection was composed of every space that our body has ever occupied?

For it is true — all of our waking life we spend in this one body. And wherever we stand, wherever we sit down at a dinner table, wherever we tuck ourselves in, we are still in that body. We exist in those spaces. Even if temporarily, we inhabit those spaces. We become a part of those spaces, and they become a part of us.

What if I was to argue that our surroundings are always familiar ones — because of the way in which we view them? It does not matter at what we may be looking — we always see through our own eyes. We interpret a frame colored by our own lives, our own experience, our own pasts and our own souls. … The view is through a lens distinct to us.

I have passed through many different places.

A collection of hostel bunk beds, attic rooms, mattresses and dirt-ground under starry skies gathers in my memories. I think of them all as my homes, because, however temporarily, I inhabited these spaces. I was of myself, within them. Even the roads in-between — the seat on the train, the road under my sneakers, the view from the window of the bus — become a part of the collection. My existence within them is fleeting, yes, but there you have the punch line: It is the continuous line of all of these various settings that composes the overarching setting of home.

We reside permanently on whatever trajectory it is that we are following through life. It remains our home no matter how the physical surroundings manifest.

I only found home when I left it. I set out to make the world larger — and it only became all the smaller. The world became smaller … and my home became larger. My self-existence expanded with, and into, each new location. It was such freeing growth. I was not tied to anyone or anyplace but myself and what was coming next.

I came to see that there is something to be made of everything; I came to see, then, that everything is what you make of it.

What if I was to argue that, in opening our eyes to this possibility, the eyes are turned not only farther outward but also more greatly inward.

When we are at home within ourselves, we better understand our relative positioning in the space around us. And when this is the case, we are best able to draw the most from that space.

And so I came home from Europe to the same sensation as I had stepping out the doors of the train station in Zagreb, Croatia, in the dark, silent cocoon of early morning. The same light appears in my eyes when I say “hello” to my sister as when I shook hands for the first time with a woman in Sweden who was to become a very good friend of mine. And I stepped back onto the Dartmouth campus after two and a half years with the same anticipation as was with me when I would step into the barn for the morning milking in Switzerland.

SAMANTHA BURACK/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF