The Dartmouth Mirror 5/4/16

MIR ROR 5.4.2016

LEARNING AND LAPTOPS | 4-5

DISTRACTIONS THROUGH TIME | 6

TTLG: MIRACLE OF RESILIENCE | 7

DARTMOUTH DISTRACTIONS | 8 ALISON GUH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

2// MIRROR

Editors’ Note

Happy week six, Mirror readers and happy May! It’s practically impossible to believe that 2016 is already one third over. Where has the time gone? More importantly, how has Caroline already given up on all 17 of her New Year’s resolutions?

Although the spring weather is finally here, its timing was unfortunate. As carefree as Caroline’s week five was, her week six has been conversely busy and stressful. Hayley’s midterm work has largely tapered off, thankfully, but is not entirely done. Both editors still spent too much time in the library this weekend, despite the gorgeous weather.

It was a bit ironic, then, when Hayley stumbled upon Caroline “studying” in the library this past Saturday. Hayley had already seen her co-editor passing through Baker lobby a few hours earlier, double-fisting large iced coffees and complaining about all her work.

However, when she walked over to say hello to Caroline in Novack later that day, she saw that Caroline was not studying any academic material, but was instead taking the BuzzFeed quiz “What’s Your Patronus?” Hayley laughed at her Harry Potter-obsessed co-editor as Caroline quickly switched her laptop screen with embarrassment.

As it turns out, though, Caroline was likely not the only Dartmouth student procrastinating this weekend. It seems that the busier we are, the more prone to distractions we are.

Thus, we decided to theme the Mirror this week around just that – distractions. So, read the Mirror to distract yourself from the realities of midterms, and enjoy the issue.

follow @thedmirror

04.06.16 VOL. CLXXIII NO. 74 MIRROR EDITORS HAYLEY HOVERTER & CAROLINE BERENS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF REBECCA ASOULIN PUBLISHER RACHEL DECHIARA EXECUTIVE EDITORS MAYA PODDAR

Joe Kind: A Guy

COLUMN

By Joe Kind

There I was, in a room full of mirrors.

I had known this feeling of fear was inevitable, and yet I still wasn’t totally prepared for what was to come.

No, I wasn’t in a haunted house. I don’t go inside haunted houses as a matter of principle.

I was in a hip-hop dance class.

The class is conveniently and accurately titled “Hip Hop Hustle.”

“Burn up the dance floor and burn calories, too!” the class description reads.

“There is something for those who have never danced outside of their bedroom as well as the more experienced.”

I am sure you can guess where I fall on that spectrum.

As intrigued as I was to learn some new moves to some of my favorite songs, I refused to even consider taking the class alone.

I begged several of my friends to sign up for the class with me. Even on group messaging apps, I was relentless in haranguing people to join me in my questionably athletic pursuit. It didn’t matter that my messages received zero likes and were only met with jokes or some other form of sarcasm like “wut.” or “how much hustle vs. hip hop is taught?” When I approached these rude thumbs in person, I failed to disguise my inner torturous salesman. I was convinced that this dance class would be fun and silly and kind of a good workout, but that I could not and would not go at it alone.

I had signed up for yoga classes in the winter and had enjoyed going to those classes when I could. For my last quarter on campus, I wanted to continue to push myself outside of my athletic comfort zone.

The highlights of my senior year thus far have come from the things I would have never allowed myself to do during my first

’19: “I’m getting a test for Celiac’s this week... this might be the last beer of my life.”

three years here. So why not continue in that same spirit, lest the old traditions fail?

I finally found one friend I could persuade, somehow. We had a final chat over the phone about an hour before the class we were planning to attend. All of the concerns with online registration were ignored. Our first and only goal was to just show up to the class, to see how we liked it, and if we hated it, to vow to never show up again. There was nowhere online indicating this was even a possibility, but we were seniors, and we thought we might as well.

We changed into our athletic attire and arrived 15 minutes before the start of class.

The room was empty, save for a rack of hand weights and some other clutter in the back. The lights were on and the wall of mirrors was staring at us. I can only imagine what those mirrors were thinking: “Who is this sick bro, and is that his girlfriend?”

I stared at myself incredulously. I thought back to my CrossFit classes at home and in Argentina, both explicitly lacking mirrors. Mirrors were distractions to the workout, I was told.

Before my last class in Argentina, I bought a commemorative shirt with some of my last pesos that said, “Gyms use machines, we build them.”

He must be so “whipped,” the mirrors said to me.

A few others strolled in to class, some having just gone on runs. My friend recognized some of her friends. I quickly realized that I would be the only male in the class that day.

Arriving in yoga pants and high-top converse, the instructor promptly began the class with a warm-up routine, syncopated nicely with hip-hop beats I did not recognize. We rolled our heads and upper

’18 talking about EARS major crush: “I want him to love me as much as he loves rocks.”

Alum: “The journal I edited in law school was totally b-side.”

bodies to the beat. We stretched out our legs, which would thank us later. I looked back at my friend and could not contain my nervousness.

The class continued, and my hesitations began to manifest themselves into loud and awkward chuckles. The only way I seemed to be able to get through this disaster is through laughs, hands trying to hide my craning mouth as if I was yawning in class. I meant no disrespect.

The class quickly went over the choreography taught last week to Beyoncé’s “Formation” before moving on to some Missy Elliot. I spent the next hour flailing my arms and legs in hopes that I was actually learning something. Eventually, we got into sexy moves, which I knew was inevitable. The apprehensions really kicked in then. My nervous giggles became loud laughs. My hands, again, tried to hide it as if I were yawning in front of a professor, even though I meant no disrespect.

Flash forward four weeks later. Laughs still abound in my dance class, though not without the rest of the class. I have found myself sweating more in the class, a sign of my ascension up the learning curve.

We have danced to new songs by Chris Brown and Lil Mama, current charttopper Dawin, as well as to middle-school throwbacks jams by Usher and Kelis.

Simple bodily thrusts have transformed into all-out twerks and cranks. Last week, without my friend’s comforting presence, I was introduced to “floor work,” involving a kind of forward crawl, like a sensual and slithering snake. A simple Kelis lyric, from her iconic “Milkshake,” suddenly takes on a new meaning.

The mirrors are surely watching in awe.

’18: “I like clothing choices that emphasize that I’m unique but also like, not poor.”

’18: “Sometimes I’m afraid to ask questions because they know I’m stupid but they don’t know I’m THAT stupid.”

Sam’s Little Larks

COLUMN

By Sam Van Wetter

PLAN SAM: What are you looking forward to doing in the next four weeks?

SPAN SAM: What am I looking forward to?

PLAN: Yeah, like what are you excited about before graduation?

SPAN: Excited about?

PLAN: Yeah, like what’s gonna be fun?

SPAN: Fun to wake up in sunshine to the smell of brewed coffee and a good book to read.

Excited to breathe in bright skyful of friendship, of learning and conversation and the urge to be me. Looking forward to dancing and dreaming and doing and making and jumping and swimming and canoeing. Being with people, my people, my friends in this home we have built despite

the imminent end. I can’t wait to see these tree buds open up, to turn sunshine into sprouts. I can’t wait for the river to warm, to turn lazy in the float. I can’t wait for warm shoeless nights and grass that cools to your touch.

For spreading myself over a lawn, a rooftop, a hammock, a bed and having nothing but green growth in my head. For finding a someone, another, a you to hold and be held but temporarily and true that it will change and true that this must dwindle, too, but “looking forward” doesn’t cut it and “excited about” doesn’t contain it and “what’s gonna be fun” is fun already. It’s life. It must be.

PLAN: Oh. Ok. Well are there any fun parties coming up?

SPAN: Definitely. Gatsby. Derby.

MIRROR //3

Dirtby. Pigstick. Cutter. Green Key. Graduravetion.

PLAN: Are those words?

SPAN: They’re concepts, really.

They’re the entire haphazard mess of college socializing compressed into one word.

PLAN: But they’re happening?

SPAN: Oh, yes, they’re very much happening.

PLAN: Can I get an invite?

SPAN: Probably.If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years here it’s that if you want something it’s best to do it yourself.

We can sit all day thinking of things that should be done, of the gardens we should plant and the rooms we should paint and the parties we should throw and the places we should go. But it’s dangerous, isn’t it, that concept of ‘should?’ Is it obligation or options? I argue to banish the word.

Strike me in the stomach any time I use it, so help me. Replace it with ‘must’ or ‘will’ or ‘can,’ words with a stance and intention and facilitation and completion.

Take all the ‘shoulds’ of your life and pin then down, examine them and make a decision.

Abandon the lettuce and choose a cookie. Send your mom a selfie so she knows you’re still alive and thinking of her in the sunshine life she helped you to have. Fetter not the afternoons on questions of where it is you ought to dine and whose parties you could appear at. Waste brainspace not

on the possibilities, for they are endless, unlike the finiteness of now. Move forward not against the steady march of time. Learn to breathe underwater. Take the scenic route. Be better but not because you should. Be better because it is more true to yourself and a more precise way to be just what you are.

PLAN: Um...okay. I just heard WoodstocKDE was gonna have a pretty tight guest list, so...

SPAN: Walk with authority and you won’t be questioned. A flower headband would also help.

PLAN: I feel like that’s something you can say because of who you are as a person but the real world application might be tricky.

SPAN: Could be. But that sounds like a personal problem.

PLAN: Okay?

SPAN: I like that spring is both a noun and a verb.

PLAN: Like bowl?

SPAN: And aim and harness and kiss and knit and measure.

There should be a word for that, something that is both a noun and verb.

There is a deafening cannon blast.

SPAN is knocked in the stomach.

SPAN (Winded): Ouch.

PLAN: You kind of asked for that.

SPAN: I realize.

PLAN: So you meant to say...?

SPAN: There must be a word for that. There is a word for that.

PLAN: What is it?

SPAN: I don’t know.

PLAN: It’s an actonym.

SPAN: Really?

PLAN: I don’t know. I’m just breathing under water, like you asked.

SPAN: It’s splendid. Actonyms are the space between stillness and animation, the liminality in which object becomes activity and vice versa. Spring is an actonym, then, in every sense of the sense. We are floating between thinking and doing and coming and going and making and destroying in a great fit of capability.

PLAN: Graduate is an actonym.

SPAN: Indeed it is.

PLAN: So? Are you looking forward to it?

SPAN: If graduation is Baker belltower, and I am Gile firetower, I’m looking at it from a distance, an artificial elevation and the spanneous accomplishment of going from Here to There. I’m looking at it, looking forward, but I also have complete radial awareness. I can see the hospital and Killington and so many tips of many trees. I am looking at it, looking forward, with a semblance of objectivity, an impulse to be fair and to see it for what it is. I can’t touch it until it meets my fingers. I can’t taste it if it’s not on my tongue.

So in the meantime, let’s leave it as a view.

TRENDING @ Dartmouth

SEMI

When your date tells you the theme is The Disney Channel but it’s actually The Discovery Channel.

THE WEEKEND

Pigstick, Woodstock and Mud Pit all in one day! And with most freshmen preoccupied with Parents’ Weekend, it truly is a wondrous time to be alive.

MOTHER’S DAY You probably forgot this Sunday is Mother’s Day. Consider this a friendly reminder.

COMPOSITE PHOTOS

No matter how hard you try, the house dog will always be more photogenic.

COURSE ELECTION

16X layup lists spreading faster than pink eye.

4// MIRROR

Laptops, Learning and Losing Focus STORY

By Nelly Mendoza-Mendoza

You’re sitting in your 9L, absolutely exhausted and totally unable to pay attention to the subject that your professor is lecturing about. The notes on your laptop screen begin to blur as your eyes droop.

Maybe you should check your email — that will give you something to do, to keep you from falling asleep.

You see that your friend sent you a link to a funny video of cats dancing.

Well, you have to watch that. Nobody will be able to tell you’re not paying attention — you sit in the last row, after all. The professor is too engrossed in the intricacies of game theory to notice if one of his dozens of students is a bit distracted.

We’ve all seen students like this in class, or perhaps we have been that student. It’s hard not to get distracted when using laptops in class — one moment we’re innocuously checking our email, and the next we’ve spent the whole class period online shopping. We might think our actions are inconspicuous, but as it turns out, they’re often pretty obvious — not only to the students around us, but also to our professors.

Perhaps avoiding eye contact with professors, sitting in the back of the room despite plenty of empty chairs in the front or laughing at random times during lectures are less subtle than we thought.

Education professor Michele Tine explained that our short attention spans

make it difficult to stay on task all the time, which can engender students getting easily distracted in class. Students daydream whether they are typing or writing, she explained, but the difference lies in our potential to get further distracted. If we have a computer in front of us, the possibilities are endless, but if all we have is a paper and pencil, our options are to doodle or simply go back to paying attention.

Some students have been taking notes on their computer for years and this system might work for them, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the optimal system.

“For a long time, people assumed that taking notes on your computer would be more cognitively beneficial because you can type more notes,” Tine said.

There are some benefits of taking notes on laptops; Tine pointed out that since we can type faster than what we can write, students tend to note down every single word the professor says, verbatim.

Psychology professor John Pfister said that he can often tell what a student is distracted, since he teaches statistics, a class that can sometimes be dry and serious, despite his efforts to infuse humor into his lectures.

“I teach statistics, so I can always tell when they are doing that. I’ll be talking, and I think that I am really engaged,

making a great point. I want to get something they can copy down; I am even modulating my voice. I am really hitting all my things,” Pfister said. “And there will be people on the computer, and they will be laughing out loud.”

Pfister said this is an immediate tip-off that students are not paying attention to the lecture.

“Now, I have given some great lectures in my life, but I guarantee you that I don’t make too many people laugh out loud when I give a statistics lecture,” Pfister said.

Government professor William Wohlforth expressed a different sentiment, saying that if students are clearly not paying attention it doesn’t bother him too much. He attributed this to his lengthy experience teaching.

“When you have been teaching as long as I have, you don’t necessarily freak out if you can see that a student is not clearly paying the slightest bit of attention and is looking at their computer,” Wohlforth said. “I can take it.”

When students seem to be more interested in their computers rather than the material, professors are more likely to feel that what they are doing is not sufficiently interesting or engaging. Pfister pointed out that students might not realize how many hours go into preparing just a single lecture.

Professors’ initial enthusiasm at the beginning of the term might wane if students pay more attention to their computers than to the class. As exhausting as we might consider going to class, professors have a much tougher and more cumbersome job in leading the class.

Pfister said professors can tell if a lecture is successful if students are nodding their heads and making eye contact, but they can also clearly tell when they lose interest. The latter scenario can be tough for lecturers, Pfister said, and they might lose confidence.

“You can see some of their wind go out of the sails because that’s the feedback they are getting ­— ‘Oh good, I am not very interesting’.” Pfister said.

Pfister and Wohlforth expressed differing opinions on which classroom settings are best suited to computer use. Pfister said that in seminar-style classes, computers can serve as a useful resource.

“It’s like having an additional person or additional resource available for students real time,” Pfister explained.

He said he allows but does not necessarily encourage the use of computers in seminars.

However, unlike Pfister, Wohlforth does not allow computers in seminars.

Ostensibly, students can still get distracted, which is more problematic in a class based on discussions.

MIRROR //5

“I don’t think that having all of these laptops open is conducive to the seminar setting,” Wohlforth said.

Wohlforth also said that distracting laptop use can be more unfavorable in some classroom layouts than others.

In classrooms with stadium-style seating students are more likely to see what others are doing and get distracted, whereas in flat lecture halls, other people’s screens are less visible.

If one person is reading BuzzFeed listicles or shopping for new sneakers during class, then, it is very likely that the people around will also be paying attention to that screen, whether or not they want to. Thus, many people are indirectly distracted, which can be very annoying if students are trying to pay close attention to a lecture.

Pfister said that big lecture halls tend to be the ones where students get distracted the most. He said he sees students checking Facebook, or sometimes catching up on homework for another class.

Tine explained that handwriting notes is a more effective method than typing then, as it minimizes the risk of getting distracted and leads to better information retention. She said handwriting notes sets a cap on how much we write, because we write slower than we type.

This forces our brains to listen closely and then summarize the main points, which

requires synthesizing the material. Thus, we’re actually processing the information rather than just transcribing it.

“While one might think that [longer notes] are beneficial to later learning, it ends up that having to summarize in the moment while listening to a lecture and write down what you find to be the most important in the moment has the most learning benefits,” Tine said.

Tine said that studies comparing the academic performance between students who take notes on their computer versus those who handwrite them show that the latter group had better recall of the information. She explained that we sense information we hear and see in a lecture, which causes it to move into our working memory space, which is temporary storage. In order to transfer this information to our long-term memory, we have to process it. This processing occurs when we synthesize and summarize information in order to write notes down on paper.

Thus, this forces the material to go into our long term memory, which makes it subsequently easier to retrieve in the future.

“That active processing in the moment allows for that information to be put down your long-term memory in a more organized structure,” Tine said. “Therefore, it is easier to retrieve later.”

Wohlforth also referred to similar

studies that showed students who took notes on laptops learned less effectively because trying to write a lecture verbatim slowed them down.

Alexis Castillo ‘19 also said there are certain classes in which computers are very helpful.

“There are some classes, if they are more lecture based and if they don’t have all the information of their slides, and they don’t post up their slides,” Castillo said. “I feel like I need to use a laptop because I know I won’t be able to get as much information as I need to study later on.”

Moreover, Wohlforth said that sometimes when students go into office hours and take out notes printed from their laptops, those notes are sometimes excellent.

“They pull out the notes that they took and they are unbelievably good notes. Beautiful notes. I look at those notes, and ‘My God, those notes!’” Wohlforth said. “Some students are clearly getting some benefits.”

Knowing all of this, why do students still surf around? Wohlforth attributed it to our need to communicate with others at all times of day — even during a 65-minute class.

“People feel this compulsion to communicate with other people,” Wohlforth said.

Castillo said, though, that whether or

not people get distracted by their laptops is largely dependent on whether or not students are engaged with the material at hand.

“I think laptops can be a distraction pending on how much you really enjoy a class,” Castillo said.

Pfister noted, too, a student who is on his or her laptop isn’t always distracted during class.

Ostensibly, we seem to be easily distracted by everything that technology has to offer.

Pfister attributed this to our misconstrued ability to multitask. Because of advances in technology, we think we can multitask more efficiently than we actually can. What ends up happening, Pfister said, is that we are not doing the best we can on any of these given tasks.

“There is this misshaping belief that there is this multitasking ability,” Pfister said. “Like, I can still listen to you but I can also do this online as well.”

However, at least according to Wohlforth, this isn’t something unique to our generation.

“It’s inevitable,” Wohlforth said. “If I go to a faculty meeting everyone is [doing] the same [thing].”

So next time you’re tempted to surf the web, shop, scroll through Facebook or use iMessage, perhaps you should think twice about opening up a new browser.

ALISON GUH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

6// MIRROR

Distractions Through Time

By Mary Liza and Andrew Kingsley COLUMN

You’re in your 9L. The This is Satan’s work! But like professor opens his mouth to all fads, this college thing speak and you’re already bored, will pass. Who can pay three scrolling through Yik Yak and whole bushels of wheat for Facebook with both thumbs. something so silly?

Stop it. This term will be different. You’ll pay 1861 attention. You’ll “While Hanover would In love learning. the mid be founded roughly Ooh! Snapchat!

19thNo, snap out of century, 20,000 years in the it. The Stamp all that future, the PaleoAct and Tariff students of Abomination Native Americans in the had to used to fascibattle area still had their nate you. What were happened? Ugh, distractions to deal their you wish you theolcould go back in with. Thunderstorms ogy time when there were always midweren’t distracterms. troublesome. Why is tions.

Here’s a “Oh Milly, sample the world ceiling be alone, touching each other’s little do you quesroaring and lives, making out what they will know there tion do with their careers, sucking were always spitting light?” from up to professors to get out of distractions at 1860: assignments and penetrating Dartmouth!”

“If God into the annals of literature, the Professor Finkle calls out into the loves everyone equally, some usual. It is like Athens reborn. void of screen hypnotized faces.

3/5 as equally, others just as But all empires must fall. Soon, “Did you just read my mind?” equally but will be thrown females invade with their lipstick Milly asks. lovingly into the fiery pits of and chest lumps. What are the hell for eternity, then tell me men to do? This foreign species “No, you’ve been speaking why you love God.” Little did doesn’t seem to like rapeball, aloud. It was very rude. Anythese students know they’d pin the tail on the feminist and how, why don’t we take a trip meet the fiery pits of the Civil misogyny-tag. What gives? Who down memory lane, and learn War a year later, where God’s can focus on partying when about the history of Dartmouth love was equally absent. Soon a woman keeps complaining, distractions.” class sizes shrunk and South “Please stop humping me, this is House was briefly shut down the chemistry lab. No that is not Cro-Magnon Period for obvious reasons. Nothing vodka, it is hydrochloric acid.”

While Hanover would be takes the mind away from Put on some turtlenecks and go founded roughly 20,000 years learning like fundamental huback to Smith, I say! in the future, the Paleo-Native man rights.

Americans in the area still had 2012 their distractions to deal with.

1929 You’ve heard of Y2K, the Thunderstorms were always It’s the year the troublesome. Why is the world roaring twenties “What are the men to world was ceiling roaring and spitting light? and life is one supposed to Reflections in water were sure big speakeasy. do? This foreign end. Clearly to stop any hunt. Who is the Pez and jazz species doesn’t seem the calculawater-man copying me? Hard are all the rage, tions were to like rapeball, pin to get anything done with all flapper girls wrong, but that natural beauty and all those twirl through the tail on the feminist Dec. 21, moose wandering around. the night and 2012 is sure and misogyny-tag.”

Ford T’s ruled to be the 1769 the streets. That recalculated, The sunlight pours over the is, until Black equally scary delicate pines, the grazing cows Tuesday hits. and actual and the newborn lambs. The Poverty is so end of the farmers delight in their hartedious. Studyworld.

Hard to lament, “Ughh vest, living the life of the land. ing Keynesian economics is I’m dying” as you study for That is, until a new hip trend impossible when everyone Chem 5 when you’ll actually sweeps the North like a plague. gripes about their unemployed be dying just a few weeks after Higher education! How will we father. Soup kitchen lines are finals. Professors can now spout ever concentrate on apple trees such a nuisance. Get a job, or with pride and accuracy, “It’s with all this thinking? Books?? at least some new material, not the end of the world” when You mean slaughtered sapling people. Put some bubbles back they request the class meet for pamphlets! It used to be a farmer in your champagne. Enough an X-hour because, hey, they only needed to plow his land of this wa, wa, wa and back to know when it really will end. then his wife. Now he needs to the foxtrot, am I right?

Bummer. Forget iPhones and explicate poems and find the Miley Cyrus! Impending doom hypotenuse. James Miller was 1972 distracts every son and daughter supposed to take over his father’s Good ol’ Dartmouth. The of Dartmouth this year far more flock. Now he’s a Chinese major. place for gentlemen and scholthan technology ever could.

What the hell even is China?! ars. Where young men can

Through the Looking Glass: The Mundane Miracle of Resilience TTLG

By Sadia Hassan

In Tomas Tranströmmer’s poem “The Blue House” (1997), a man stands in the woods outside of his home and sees with new eyes. It is as though he were dead and suddenly flooded with sight.

Before him, the house transforms into a child’s drawing. The timber is heavy with sorrow and joy. The garden is a new world awash with weeds. The walls and ceilings tell a story different than he remembers.

At the end of the poem, everything falls away except for a single image: a battered ship setting sail on raging seas. Each of our lives is trailed by a phantom life, he asserts, “a sister vessel which plows an entirely different route.”

In the life that runs alongside my own, I come to Dartmouth with my parent’s permission, and I leave as I came, whole and deeply proud of my accomplishments. My mother and I talk every day and no one is disowned. I travel to Kenya for a fellowship and no men from the military pull me off the bus to solicit me for sex. Each day, I travel through the country unafraid. I go to work, and I love it. A man does not walk into my room and demand I marry him. He does not assault me after. Nothing is labeled as my fault. Instead of becoming debilitated by fear and anxiety, I swell with courage. I make it to 20 unscathed.

When I return to Dartmouth, I do not become a foreign country foaming at the mouth. The nightmares do not make a meal of my small body. I wake up and feel like I belong in the world. I repeat this every day until I believe it. I speak and am heard. I speak and speak and never stop speaking. No

one assaults my friends or sends us tongue as many times as it takes death threats and the women I love to wash out the scent of uninvited are unraped. My professors undershame, but I cannot shake it. I stand about the panic attacks and panic. I did it again. I did not say the late assignments and the poems “no” enough times for it to matter.

I turn in instead of essays. They do In a fog, I walk off a train two days not believe me to be stupid or lazy later without my passport or laptop or overwhelmingly underprepared. or research. All is lost. It takes me I am not called two weeks nigger dyke, no to get home.

“There is also the slurs are written other, more dangerous Itandis winter on walls, and I I am six life we are not living: am a good girl months from who behaves well. the one where we say graduating. I My good behavdrop out of ior saves me. I rise no to the things that classes and lie to meet the swellscare us, where we are awake with ing tide of my nightmares. I less tender, more deepest desires. did it again. quiescent and deeply I study abroad, I I destroyed dance carefreely our version of afraid of our own in frat basements, the American brilliance.”

I make white Dream. friends, and In the last sometimes, they year and a invite me to their summer homes. I half, as my life swam further and take internships and work multiple further away from the ghost ship at jobs and save all of my money. sea, I became consumed by the imI am unassaulted and unassailage of water running back into the able. The president recognizes my glass that spilt it. I was convinced humanity and the humanity of that if I had just not gone to Keothers. He makes sure that every nya, not traveled through Europe, student, even the ones whose parnot protested, not trusted that a ents have no money to threaten his man would not take advantage of college, have their needs met. No me in a hotel I paid for, not lost my one is neglected. thesis research and belongings on Two years pass and I have a train two days after, not asked for time to breathe. It is senior fall help when I needed it, not taken and of course, I am doing thesis time off — if, instead, I had just research because I am whipsmart kept taking classes, processed the and have been preparing since assaults faster, told my mentors sophomore year. Three days before what was going on when it was goI go back to my parents with all ing on or stopped blaming myself of my research complete, I make for not singlehandedly changing a terrible mistake. I share a hotel my family history — things would room with a friend I trust, and he have turned out differently. takes advantage of me. I scrub my And they might have, if I were

a character in a book. What I wanted was not clarity but to reach so far back into the many lives I did not live that I unzipped my mother’s pain and my father’s pain, until they too stepped out of their lives, lithe as baby antelope. What I wanted was what every immigrant kid wants — to save their parents the torment of a difficult and disappointing life by circumventing every disaster before it reaches home.

But the lives that shadow us like lost children are not ours to claim.

What is ours to claim is all the language in our mouth and the world before us. And for black women especially, what’s ours to claim is self-forgiveness and permission to live messy, vulnerable, meandering and contested lives filled with bad decisions, healthy choices, kind folks, the space to mess up and lots and lots and lots of love. Because as much as we look to the other life to anchor us — the life in which we are thinner, more beautiful, happier and more successful — there is also the other, more dangerous life we are not living: the one where we say no to the things that scare us, where we are less tender, more quiescent and deeply afraid of our own brilliance. The lives we lead is the middle road between the two.

Two and a half months ago, I returned home only to have my home burn down in a thunderstorm. I remember mostly my mother’s shrill scream about going back for the neighbor’s children.

I remember thinking, this is not my life. This is not possible. From our neighbor’s woods, I witnessed orange flames lick around the

MIRR OR //7

flesh of our home until everything blackened to ash before me. It had never been more clear that everything was possible. Homes burn down. Friends get raped. Institutions try to convince you that your labor and productivity are the sum total of your worth. And yet, homes are rebuilt through the love and deep faith of a community which believes wholeheartedly in your deserving. Friends heal and heal and heal again. You find your words and use them to create a loving, more just world where the sum total of your worth is your humanity.

What I learned from the fire that destroyed my family’s home was that it did not destroy my family or our self worth. And that everything with the power to destroy also has the power to give new life; so we took our new lives, and we loved each other.

My refugee family’s survival, like my own at Dartmouth, was a radical act of resistance as much as it was a miracle of resilience, deep faith and the black community. What I learned from my time at Dartmouth, I learned from folks working to destroy it from the inside. My education began and ended with two questions: What are you willing to fight for and what are you willing to put forth for your own liberation? To those, I add: What do you love? What do you believe? And what sinuous want are you leaning your small body against hoping this time the rope won’t snap? Lean into it.

Lean into it again, and again until it does. And then, ditch the rope and rise to meet the swelling tide of your deepest desires.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SADIA HASSAN

8// MIRROR

Dartmouth Decibelles...or Distractions?

Before they were the Decibelles, Dartmouth’s oldest female a cappella group was called the ‘Distractions.’

PROFILE

By Carolyn Zhou

In 1972, Dartmouth began accepting women. Once women arrived on campus, they not only immersed themselves into academic life, but also got involved in activities outside of the classroom.

When they discovered that they could not join certain clubs, they created their own outlets for creativity. Jody Hill Simpson ’74 was one such trailblazer.

Since women were not allowed to join the Dartmouth Glee Club in the early ’70s, Simpson, along with another student, began Dartmouth’s first ever all female a cappella group, with the tongue-in-cheek name, “The Dartmouth Distractions.”

Ostensibly, this was a humorous name in reference to women being “distracting” to men. Today, this group is known as the Decibelles. Various members of the Decibelles from different year, including Margaret Paredez ’96, Jessie Ward ’04, Jenny Toyohara ’00, Jennifer Hole ’97, Kate McGee ‘01, Lani Curtis ‘98 and current Decibelle Tricia Yeonas ’19 commented on how important the group was in shaping their Dartmouth experiences.

One of Paredez’s favorite parts about singing for the group was the unique sense of community.

“It was like having a team without playing a sport,” she recalled.

Toyohara agreed. “That group of women functioned like a little sorority for me,” she said.

Curtis believes that it provided a calmness to Dartmouth’s fast and ever changing environment.

“With Dartmouth’s D-Plan and quarter system, Decibelles was the most consistent thing about my college experience over the course of four years,” Curtis said.

Although Paredez only joined her senior year, she felt like singing for the group was one of the highlights of her college experience.

“Everyone finds a place. There isn’t a huge competition for solos or anything like that. We find songs to fit people’s voices, not the other way around. There was diversity in voice and in culture,” Paredez said.

She noted the group gave her the opportunity to record a full-length album out of town, in the middle of winter, escaping out of Hanover for a while.

Ward echoed those sentiments, recalling her own recording experience. She described recording ‘Vintage’ (2001) during her freshman year, which was the last album the group made the old-fashioned way, on tape, at a studio in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Ward, at Dartmouth almost a decade later than Paredez, directly experienced the modernization of the recording studio.

By her senior year, when the group record-

ed another album, “Platinum,” (2004) the group made the switch to digital recording.

Ward, as musical director during her junior and senior years, was heavily involved with the production of the album.

“I loved getting into the booth and recording extra percussion tracks and harmonies to add to the richness of the sound,” she remembered.

In contrast, one of Toyohara’s strongest memories of recording the album actually wasn’t in the studio. She and a friend were driving back from a day of mixing at the studio, singing along with the recording, when a police car pulled them over for speeding. She gave the cop the tape so that he could listen to it while he recorded their information, and he let them off with only a warning.

Toyohara prefers the memories of making the album over the actual product itself.

“Interestingly, I never listen to it, because although I love hearing all those songs again, I hear the same little mistakes every time I listen. Every single little note that I knew wasn’t quite right or little blips in timing ­— that’s all I hear. I prefer the memory of it more,” she said.

The process of recording was long and difficult, especially in the late ’90s, recalled Hole; it often took around five separate eight-hour long sessions to complete a majority of the album. They also had to work around people’s D-Plans. Although album production was no easy task, it was worth it. The group at the time hired Deke Sharon, known for arranging the songs in the “Pitch Perfect” franchise and bringing a cappella to the forefront of American culture. At the time, he arranged a few songs for them for the relatively cheap price of $100 per song.

“Some of our songs at the time, like ‘King of Pain,’ were amazing arrangements with like six part harmony, really cool, but were pretty tough to pull off,” she said.

McGee felt the benefits of recording in the studio were significant.

“We also could make our songs much more professional and interesting thanks to remixing/editing and being able to have 30 vocal tracks on a recorded song, versus the 12 to 15 of us when we performed in person. So that was fun and rewarding — capturing the best versions of our voices on the recordings.

Beyond recording, The Decibelles have several trademarks and traditions that make them unique.

Ward mentioned dress up parties which seem to be in the same vein of many groups’ current use of flair: “We’d put on completely wacky and wild clothes and dance.”

According to Ward, “The Rockapellas were known for singing ‘freedom songs’ and being more diverse and feminist. After one particularly distasteful Greek-related incident, the Rocks stopped singing at frats and sororities entirely. [In contrast,] Greek shows were a big part of the Decis roster at the time. We sang at a frat or sorority almost every Wednesday night.”

During Ward’s college years, the Decibelles were known for their pop song repertoire, fun choreography and the fact that there were many blondes in their group.

In fact, they named one of their albums “Platinum” as a nod to this reputation.

Although this reputation may not remain, one tradition that has survived is the “passing the squeeze” before any concert, as Toyohara called it. Yeonas also mentioned this.

“We’re in a circle, and we link hands, and one person initiates the routine by squeezing the next person’s hands, and a pulse is sent around the circle, and then we shake our hands and feet out. It’s about loosening up, and getting pumped before a show,” Yeonas explained.

Another tradition that has faded away is the comedic mini skits the Decibelles put on during the breaks between shows.

“They were called ‘intros.’ Some of them were pretty terrible, but some of them were great,” Holes said. “The audience loved them, and I loved working on these — when they were funny! It was fun to have the chance to be comical as well as musical.”

McGee mentioned another comedic aspect of the Decibelles reputation on campus.

“Apparently our dance moves were atrocious. My husband — a ’02 Cord still makes fun of our ‘Deci-bop’ which was like bending our knees and bopping along to our songs while singing.”

Lastly, the tradition of singing the song, “Take it to the Limit” has remained. Yeonas, a freshman currently, mentioned that singing the classic is emotional, but fun.

Curtis explained the point of having a song that is passed from generation to generation.

“We also have ‘group songs’ that we pass down every year. I can get together with Decibelles of any age and sing ‘Take it to the Limit’ or ‘Southern Cross.’ They transcend time,” she said.

Ward recounted that her most emotional moment of singing for the Decibelles was singing “Take it to the Limit” for the last time at Senior Sing Out right before graduation.

“From the first few bars, I was blubbering like a hurricane. I sobbed so hard I could barely sing,” she said. “It was the end of something that was incredibly

special to me.”

Although these reputations and traditions may or may not differ greatly from how the Decibelles are now, one thing is definitely constant: the unique experience of singing for an a cappella group and becoming close to that group.

McGee’s favorite part of the group was “hav[ing] a group of women to lean on — in a non-social or non-academic context; that’s special and unique. I’m so grateful for this group that shaped my college years and who I have become today.”

Many of the alumni interviewed expressed that they still keep in touch with their fellow Decibelles.

Toyohara mentioned that she lived in Boston for a while with a Decibelle, and many Decibelles were at her wedding. Hole also has kept in touch with the group and is planning on staying with two Decibelles this summer during her family road trip.

Ward said that although the Decibelles are no longer physically together and are living in various parts of the country, social media platforms like Facebook allow them to keep in touch, at least peripherally.

The bonds of friendship are not the only things that have remained; the Decibelles love of music has persisted as well.

“My sister and my two cousins were also in all-female a cappella groups, and we occasionally perform at family weddings and parties,” said Ward when asked if she still is involved with anything musical.

Toyohara mentioned her desire to find a similar experience again.

“I actually think about doing something again all the time. I am an avid shower singer. When my boys are a little older and I can find more time, I would definitely like to find an outlet somewhere.”

Both Hole and McGee sing to their kids.

McGee said, “I sang with the Oratorio Society of New York for 10 years but stopped when career and family took over.

Now my singing amounts to nightly renditions of Darth Vader’s entrance music from ‘Star Wars’ for my four-year-old son or the soundtrack of ‘Mulan’ for my girls.”

Curtis volunteers at her sons’ school to promote music and drama education.

“These things have so much value to our souls, and not enough focus in our state-funded schools. Our kids need the arts!”

Paredez agreed with Curtis; she said that she has encouraged her children to sing at school and at church.

“It’s something that you can do your whole life. You can always keep your voice strong. It brings you joy.”

COURTESY OF JODY HILL

Many current students might not know that The Decibelles, the College’s oldest all-female a cappella group, were originally called The Dartmouth Distractions.

COURTESY OF TRICIA YEONAS