Flat Hat Magazine Fall 2020

FLAT HAT MAGAZINE

The “Spiralling” Issue CORONAVIRUS AND WILLIAMSBURG #BLACKLIVESMATTER 270 TO WIN CONVERSATIONS LONELINESS LOVE YOURSELF

volume 2

01

FLAT HAT MAGAZINE

The “Spiralling” Issue

Letter from the Editor When I sat down with my section editors in February to plan the content for this issue, I had no idea what to expect from 2020. Already, our political climate was rife with conflict from President Donald Trump’s impeachment — and the year had barely begun. Just when we all thought that the year could not become worse, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the Earth at an alarming rate — ending more than a million lives and disrupting countless others.

At the same time, the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis forced our nation to reckon with its dark past and the present realities of institutionalised racism.

In 2019, former Flat Hat Editor in Chief (and dear friend) Nia Kitchin ‘20 approached me with a vague idea for this magazine. Striking out as co-founders we decided that, first and foremost, this publication should speak to William and Mary’s culture of diversity and inclusion. I believe that we are at a great starting point and that The Flat Hat, as a whole, can work even further to foster a supportive environment for students at the College.

I’m extremely proud of what my staff have accomplished with this issue! With a starting budget of $0, very little institutional support from our parent organisation, and a general sense of existential anguish stemming from months of living under a pandemic, they were able to pull through and create something spectacular!

In deciding our theme, we had come up with “SPIRALLING TOWARDS NORMALCY.” But what is “normal?” Is “normal” even an ideal that we should aspire to go back to? If you would have asked me in April, I would have, without a doubt, said yes. But as our year SPIRALs further into chaos, I invite readers to consider what will come from our new normal. Will it be peace?

Maybe it will be justice instead. Writing about this after the tumultuous presidential election, I’m inclined to believe that better times are ahead of us.

In the relaunched print issue you can read about a diverse array of topics: the importance of solidarity in racial justice, the data behind elections in the Commonwealth, food, body positivity, and so much more. Every single person listed on the masthead is worthy of accolades for their contributions to the magazine.

I hope that you enjoy the first issue of Volume Two of Flat Hat Magazine. Welcome to the “Spiralling” Issue.

Gavin Aquin Hernández (and Chewie the Corgi) Flat Hat Magazine Editor-in-Chief

TABLE OF 3

13

We Have Tribe Pride Yes We Do

At Face Value

21

31

Coronavirus and Williamsburg

#BLACKLIVESMATTER

39

45

270 To Win

Conversation With Jeron DuHart Rodriguez

51

59

Conversation with Maggie Kirsh

Spilling the Beans

63

73

The World is My Oyster + Quarantine Cuisine

Nut is the New Milk

CONTENTS 89

97

Conversation with David Lefkowitz

TWAMPY ROAD

121

129

Study Abroad Changed Me

SNAPSHOTS

139

149

SPLIT FROM THE BUNCH

QUIRKY QUARANTINE

157

161

Do We Put Too Much Emphasis On Name Brands?

Say No To Low Rise Jeans

163

166

LOVE YOURSELF

#MASKSUP

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

WE HAVE TRIBE PRIDE, YES WE DO. WE HAVE TRIBE PRIDE, HOW ABOUT YOU? Story by William Kobos ‘24 Photos by Zachary Lutzky ‘24

Sept. 3 William & Mary announced the dissolution of 7 varsity athletic programmes. The magazine staff have talked with student athletes about their fight against the administration to save the teams.

T

hursday, Sept. 3 at the College of William and Mary initially seemed to be a perfectly normal day, aside from the typical upheavals and uncertainties of 2020. Most in-person classes were being delivered remotely, many upperclassmen had moved back to campus, and on-campus COVID-19 spread was limited.

That Thursday, Colin Grip ’21, who is a part of the track and field and cross-country teams, had just filmed a series of videos with a few of his teammates the night before to show drills to the freshmen, with whom they had yet to share a practice. That afternoon, he saw something abnormal that made him uneasy.

“I was working on a lab assignment that I had to do at 5pm.,” Grip said. “Around 3:30pm, I got a text from my coach that went out to the whole team said, ‘You’ve got a mandatory Zoom meeting in 15 minutes, here’s the link.’ So, I emailed my TA, I said, ‘Hey, I’m not going to have this project done, can I get an extension, I’m being pulled out for whatever this meeting is.’”

Conor Sokolowsky, a member of the swim team and the class of 2023 president in y, received a

similar message but was eager to be back on campus for the fall semester.

“We were excited to come back on campus,” Sokolowsky said. “We knew there most likely wouldn’t be a swim season to begin with. The freshmen already were debating gap years or not, if they wanted to use a year of eligibility. But we were prepared for whatever was going to be thrown our way.”

Collin Lillie ’21, a member of the men’s gymnastics team, had been watching with his teammates as the already-tiny number of Division I men’s programs had dwindled further as the University of Iowa announced the cutting of its men’s gymnastics program.

“We had a notification come up and it showed all the people who are in the meeting, and it said men’s gymnastics, all athletes, women’s gymnastics, all athletes, swimming, track and field, volleyball,” Lillie said. “And then I called one of my friends on the swim team, and he told me that he was in charge of their Facebook and Instagram and he had gotten removed earlier that day. And 4

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

then I have access to our social media as well and I was kicked off and everyone else on my team was kicked off too. So then I was like, OK, it’s happening.”

"Coupled with a massive influx of alumni and outside support, the gears of the opposition movement did not wait long before they began to turn.”

Ellie Henry ’22, a member of the women’s swim team, was having her classes online that morning when she first heard a rumor about the unfolding developments at Tribe Athletics.

“I remember my roommate got a call from her mom,” Henry said. “She had heard word from the alumni associations and through connections that teams would be cut. We didn’t know which teams, we didn’t know when, but we knew that teams were going to get cut. And there was rumor that there was going to be a cut for men’s and women’s swimming.”

“There were two separate calls because there were so many athletes that they couldn’t be fit into one Zoom,” Grip said. “I was on the earlier call. When I logged in, there were some of my teammates and a bunch of other people from the other teams. And Athletic Director Huge kind of started off just saying, ‘Oh, you’re so brave, I’m so proud of you as athletes. You’re so valued,’ and I just knew, this is definitely not going to end well.”

“You could see reactions of students, just hearing the news and just getting incredibly distraught, angry, and you could visibly see it,” Sokolowsky said of the call.

The sentiment among student-athletes on the call was universal.

“I remember being on the Zoom call,” Henry said, “and just feeling numb. I didn’t really know what to think.”

5

Adding to the pain of the announcement was the abrupt nature in which the news was delivered to the affected teams.

“There was no time for questions,” Grip said.

“The call immediately ended, so no one had the chance to really grasp what happened. And then Samantha Huge wasn’t even present in the second Zoom meeting. One of her associates read an identical script.”

Almost all the athletes interviewed voiced their strong disapproval of the manner in which former Athletics Director Samantha Huge broke the news to the student-athletes, particularly in her initial delivery, which came with little warning.

“She just dropped the bomb and then left,” Lillie said. “It left a very disrespectful taste in my mouth.”

“Frankly, I think they’re disrespectful and I don’t think there’s any way around that,” Grip said. “I mean, I had to miss a class, miss assignments, just to take that Zoom call that was cut short without any time for questions. And then no one heard from the athletic director after that.”

Julia Brown, captain of the women’s volleyball team, said that she was stunned by the news, as were many of her peers.

“The immediate aftermath was definitely shock,” Brown said. “We were very surprised by the news and I think that that goes for most people.”

With the news broken and the Zoom meeting closed, the athletes had to draw on their own networks and support groups to process what had just ensued.

“That day was just total chaos,” Grip said.

“Everyone was calling their parents, calling their friends, calling alumni and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened?’ And then someone made a Facebook page for current members of the team and alumni, it was a combination of current athletes up to people who graduated in the ’60s.”

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

“Our coach sent us another message and was like ‘Hey, if you guys want to hop on a Zoom call right now, we can talk about what just happened,’” men’s gymnastics team member Christian Marsh ’21 said. “We hopped on the Zoom call and we all just voiced our utter disbelief at this decision.”

“When something happens that shakes all of our worlds in the same way it was amazing to see how supportive every player was of each other, and the community that we’d built was really an important resource during that time,” Brown said.

Later that night, the impacted athletes met inperson to grieve the loss of their programs.

“After we got off the call, we were able to meet on the football field,” Henry said. “So there were a lot of us out there. And that was actually the first time that I met the freshmen. I remember just sitting there on the field for an hour, an hour and a half, getting calls from my family and my friends checking in if I was OK, I was getting calls from other athletes in the conference just letting me know that they were here behind me and supporting all of us on the tribe, in whatever endeavors we chose to do next.”

Huge released a statement, along with accompanying FAQs, on the Tribe Athletics website. According to the statement, the cuts were a part of Huge’s plans for a renewed focus on “revenue sports” such as football and basketball. In the weeks that followed, it emerged that large parts of it were lifted from a similar statement by Stanford University earlier this year.

If Sept. 3 was a day of shock and disbelief, it was not long after that the mood for many athletes shifted. Coupled with an influx of alumni and outside support, the gears of the opposition movement did not wait long to begin turning.

“After the initial shock, we were sort of able to say like, OK, let’s settle down,” Grip said. “Let’s do something about this. We’ve got enough resources here, enough manpower, so let’s find a solution.”

Luckily, members of the impacted teams did not have to wait long or search far for support and encouragement.

“I’ve gotten plenty of people reaching out from friends who run at other, different coaches, old high school teammates, people reaching out, saying, ‘This is incredible like I can’t believe what’s going on. How can I help? Send me petitions send me people to email. I’ll get my whole team to do it and I’ll tell them to email all their friends and tell them to do it,’” Lillie said. “So I think we’ve been able to reach a wide audience and get a lot of public support.”

Reaction and mobilization from the community was swift and all-encompassing in terms of outreach.

“Almost immediately afterward, we had alumni, parents, donors starting to get engaged, literally, like right away, and I feel like we were able to channel our anger and frustration into [the campaign],” Sokolowsky said.

Many athletes were encouraged by the quick action of the Tribe community in assisting the members of the affected teams.

“It’s very clear that the students at this school take ‘One Tribe, One Family’ very seriously, because as soon as the news broke, we broke it to the alumni and we all began this very intense opposition to this decision,” Marsh said.

Moreover, the response from alumni specifically meant the world to the student-athletes.

“I’ve been so impressed with the alumni support and the community support,” Henry said. “It’s just really heartwarming to see. So many people come out, even travelled, to the rallies or protests we’ve had in person.”

“Our alums were able to pull together a lot of connections to make that happen,” Sokolowsky said. “And I know a lot of swimmers that actually just graduated in 2020 were heavily involved on that front in running the social media campaigns and everything, and then beyond that we had actual current swimmers, who would write the personal statements and stuff that we posted and shared.”

6

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

A massive and multi-faceted campaign erupted from many quarters of the cut teams and the College community. The “Save the Tribe 7” social media campaign quickly gathered steam, publishing a number of testimonials and statements from current and former athletes from the affected teams. The swim and track teams also started their own initiatives and websites to seek out donor pledges and to raise awareness about their respective sports.

big unified effort. And then I also know that a lot of the alums between the sports have really conglomerated to fight this decision and to get it reversed.”

"As October nearned an end, the momentum continued to mount. The women's Track and Field team signed a public pledge not to compete until they saw their counterparts restored.”

“I think between the teams that got cut, there is a sort of bond, an unfortunate bond, but there is a bond between the seven teams, and I think the amount of support we’ve all been giving each other is really neat to see,” Henry said.

“We started the Save W&M Gym Instagram and social medias, and then a few days after that made financial committees, social media committees, and our alumni, I’d say, have been a huge help with getting resources and legal stuff figured out,” Lillie said.

A petition on Change.org, started by 2020 men’s gymnastics alumnus Colton Phillips, garnered over 22,000 signatures. For many, the seven impacted teams seemed to find fellowship in their common cause.

“All of the athletes are sharing what the other ones are posting,” Sokolowsky said. “It’s a pretty

Despite the adversity they had faced as a result of the cuts, the sense of community has been a silver lining for all of those affected by the decisions made by Tribe Athletics in these past months.

With momentum building on their side, many students turned to other things they could do in support of their fledgling reinstatement campaign. Missy Cundiff ’22, a member of the women’s swim team, made the “Save Tribe Swim Rap” video (under the name of “Lil’ Mizzy”), which has since received over 10,000 views.

Sokolowsky, meanwhile, helped to galvanise support for the reinstatement movement in the College’s Student Assembly.

“I knew I was the only student athlete in the Student Assembly Senate right now,” Sokolowsky said. “So immediately I knew that I’d have to do something with my position as soon as I heard the news, so we got a whole task force to work on this resolution together, which was incredibly successful.”

The “For the Bold” resolution, criticising Huge’s conduct and the cuts in general, garnered over 1,300 signatures from students, faculty, and alumni. This all came in advance of the September meeting of the Board of Visitors, which was widely attended by the aggrieved athletes.

9

“We all had that day circled on the calendar pretty early on, and we encouraged the whole team to show up and speak their mind if they have anything to say,” Grip said. “Before the

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

meeting, there was a rally outside made up of all the teams that were cut as well as a lot of people from around the town, a lot of other students unaffiliated so it was great to get support there.”

Many of the athletes from the cut teams shared their stories with the board and the community during the listening session, which ran over an hour longer than scheduled.

“For myself, going into it, I honestly didn’t expect to be listened to too closely,” Grip said. “I sort of viewed my two minutes at the mic as just a chance to take up their time, to let them know that people are upset and that real students are impacted by the decisions that were made.”

The Board met in its full session Sept. 25, when Student Assembly President Anthony Joseph ’21 presented the resolution. A week later, Oct. 2, Huge sent an email to all students pledging to engage with the athletes and to broaden transparency. Members of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) were told that Huge would meet with them the following Monday; that meeting was then pushed back a day. The next day, Oct. 6, College President Katherine Rowe’s office sent an email to students announcing Huge’s immediate resignation. That evening, the SAAC representatives had their meeting as scheduled with the new interim athletic director, Jeremy Martin.

“I think that it was going to happen eventually,” Henry said of Huge’s dismissal.

“It was just a matter of when and how.”

While the reaction to Huge’s departure was generally positive among the athletes, they still hoped to see more progress from the new management.

“He has to fill the role of somebody who has just lost the trust of an entire community, so it’s going to be really hard for him to rebuild it, but I think as long as he really engages the community discussion and makes movement on that front, it might work out,” Sokolowsky said.

The cautious optimism of the student-athletes will remain until Martin can prove himself to the community.

“I would like to see change,” Marsh said. “I don’t want them to pretend to listen to us and then have nothing change from that. I think that there are extremely valid cases for reinstating each and every single one of the teams they’ve cut, and I think that they need to listen to us.”

Marsh, who as a member of SAAC met with Martin on his first day, was not without concerns.

“He made sure to say that they were committed to having an open dialogue, but I personally did not get the impression that either he or the athletic administration desire to reinstate the teams, which is incredibly disheartening,” Marsh said.

In the weeks that followed, Martin held meetings with the individual teams. Meanwhile, the Title IX lawsuit threatened on behalf of the women’s teams proceeded, parallel to the developments on campus. The suit ultimately resulted in a settlement requiring that the College reinstate the three cut women’s teams. Student-athletes on the suspended women’s teams were informed of their reinstatement Oct. 19, less than two weeks after the departmental leadership change.

“The announcement of our reinstatement has brought on a range of different reactions, and it varies from person to person,” said Brown.

“There is some relief, excitement, and also a lot of sympathy for the teams who have not been reinstated. It’s hard to see anyone going through this especially after we have just been through the same thing.”

Many of the other athletes also welcomed the changes, while maintaining their interest in reinstating the men’s teams.

“During the call, Jeremy Martin gave us the space to process the information, while responding to questions and other comments we had throughout the call,” Henry said.

10

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

was October neared its end, the momentum continued to mount. The women’s track and field team signed a public pledge not to compete until they saw their counterparts restored.

And then, two weeks and three days after the announcement of the women’s reinstatements, a sweeping announcement came from the president’s office: all cut programs would be reinstated, including the men’s teams, through at least the 2021-22 academic year. Yet, the specter of program cuts still looms. Fundraising targets have been issued to the teams that had sought out reinstatement through donor pledges, and Martin’s final report maintains that “the status quo is unsustainable with respect to finances and mission.”

The long-term future of Tribe Athletics remains uncertain, but for now, despite all the uncertainties that this year has brought, the student-athletes of the seven teams can keep training.

“This was a very stark difference from what we experienced earlier this semester on Sep. 3. There is still so much left up in the air. I won’t consider our team fully reinstated until the men’s team is also reinstated. After all, we are one team, one tribe.”

“We’re still cheering for each other,” Sokolowsky said. “It’s loud on deck, and it’s inspiring. Honestly, when I’m in the pool, I don’t even remember the cuts. The thought hasn’t crossed my mind. You’re just in your own bubble in there. It’s really nice, it’s a great escape.”

Martin stressed the importance of gender equity in the calculations surrounding the final decisions for the men’s teams in the two livestreamed Q&A sessions that he conducted toward the end of October. This assertion caused some consternation among the athletes.

Martin wrote in his final recommendations that the school would reach a decision on the future of Tribe Athletics, encompassing both gender equity and financial sustainability, by next fall. In the meantime, the students seem to have the same optimism that they had throughout their ordeal.

“Since Jeremy Martin took over as interim AD, it has been communicated to the track and field team that Title IX compliance is the primary reason we were cut in the first place,” Grip said. “This is just more proof to us that the administration is either not telling the truth about why they decided to cut the teams or didn’t bother checking to see if their action would even solve their problem. I am very happy for the women who have been reinstated, they absolutely deserve it, but this also proves to me that the reasoning for cutting the men’s programs can’t be trusted.”

“We are some of the brightest individuals in the country and I am entirely confident in our ability to find creative solutions to this issue,” Marsh said.

11

Flat Hat Magazine • Insight

AT FACE VALUE EXPLORING CAMPUS LANDMARKS

Story by JR Herman ‘24 Photos by Zach Lutzky ‘24 Photos by Jamie Holt ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

Follow staff writer JR Herman along her written, historical tour of campus throughout the ages. Campus has been both updated and restored over time due to time and disasters, and there are layers to its history. Keep reading about your favourite places to visit on your family vacation to Colonial Williamsburg or the most common backgrounds for graduation photos.

M

any of us, at one time or another, have been faced with the task of explaining the history of the College of William and Mary’s buildings during visits from friends and family. Because of this, having an understanding of campus history is beneficial — none of us want to awkwardly search Wikipedia for what many would assume is campus “common knowledge.” The College’s history is, of course, also fascinating in its own right — though, admittedly, it can also at times be overwhelming. So, for those who are either too afraid to ask, too busy to research themselves, or just want the SparkNotes version, I compiled a list of what I believe to be the most important historical tidbits on campus landmarks. To compile these brief histories, I utilised multiple sources, including Encyclopedia Britannica for information regarding early Virginia history, the College’s website, Tribe Trek and Earl Gregg Swem Library’s Digital Archives, for information specific to the College.

The Sir Christopher Wren Building is the campus’s most iconic building, and there is a reason why — not only is it the oldest continuously-used academic building in the United States, but it’s also the oldest surviving academic building. When construction of the Wren Building began in 1695, Virginia’s capital was Jamestown; Williamsburg technically did not even exist.

The area known as Williamsburg today was founded in 1632, but was known only 15

as “Middle Plantation” until 1699. That year, “Middle Plantation” became the new capital of Virginia and was rebranded as Williamsburg. It is hard to imagine that when the Wren Building was first built, Colonial Williamsburg as we imagine it today did not yet exist.

In 1695, there were no merchant shops, apprentice buildings or inns in Middle Plantation. Buildings were far and few between — even the Governor’s Palace didn’t exist yet. Construction on the Governor’s Palace didn’t begin until almost a decade later. Instead, the Wren Building, the largest building in the area at the time, served as the government’s headquarters for several years. Sadly, like many buildings in Williamsburg, it suffered from several fires, with the first occurring in 1705, just five years after construction finished. Devastating fires also occurred in 1859 and 1862. Luckily, however, the Wren Building was rebuilt and restored to its original likeness following these tragedies.

Interestingly, from its creation until 1931, the building was known only as “the College.”

It gets its modern name from the presumed architect. Under the Wren Chapel lies the crypt, the burial place of the royal governor Norborne Berkeley, Sir John Randolph and members of his family, most notably his son, Peyton Randolph, first president of the Continental Congress, as well as other well-known Virginians. The underground

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

steam tunnels are forbidden for students to enter due to safety concerns, but they allegedly connect to the crypts. A number of rumours have circulated throughout the decades about both the purpose of the tunnels and students’ attempts to explore them.. Some claim the passageways were used by members of secret societies, while others suggest they were used by fraternity members to enter the crypt and steal bones.

"Devastating fires also occurred in both 1859 and 1862. Luckily, however, the Wren Building was rebuilt and restored to its original appearance folowing these tragedies. Interestingly, from its creation until 1931, the building was known only as 'the College.'”

The Brafferton, built in 1723, is the College’s second-oldest building and sits immediately adjacent to the Wren Building on Old Campus. It originally housed the Indian School outlined in the College’s charter.

Native American students learned English, math, writing and Christian doctrine. The Indian Schoolclosed by the Revolutionary War. Of all three original buildings on campus, the Brafferton was the only one not to fall victim to fire — though much of the building was torn apart for firewood during the Civil war. During the 1930 restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, the Brafferton was rebuilt. While the Indian School was originally intended as a tool to obtain Native American allies and convert Native Americans to Christianity, the Brafferton has recently undergone an important spiritual transformation. Spearheaded by the Brafferton Legacy Group, the goal is to recognise the Indian School’s past

and legacy. Cherokee, Pamunkey and Chickahominy alumni of the College, as well as Native American archaeologists, took part in the excavation and rededication of the Brafferton from 2011 to 2013. A blessing of the ground led by these Native American alumni honoured the former students of the Indian School. The building currently houses the offices of the College President Katherine Rowe and College Provost Peggy Agouris.

The President’s House is the first college president’s house in the United States, and it has been home to all but one of the College’s 28 presidents. Construction began in 1732, and the President’s House played a role in the Revolutionary War. The British forced the College’s president to leave in order to set up British headquarters in the building. Later in the war, the President’s House burned down, with the remaining parts of it used as a makeshift hospital for French allies wounded at Yorktown. Over the decades, the President’s House was rebuilt, but it was damaged by several other fires. In 17

1931, as part of the Rockefeller restoration, it was restored to its current state, though further renovations have taken place since to modernise the house with modern comforts like air conditioning. College presidents have hosted a wide range of famous individuals, including six presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Tyler, Wilson and Eisenhower), as well as the Marquis de Lafayette (the famous French general who partook in the American Revolution), and Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Prince Charles.

"The Sunken Garden, colloquially referred to as the 'Sunken Gardens,' was built as a result of Roosevelt's New Deal programmes during Great Depression.”

The bronze statue of Lord Botetourt can be found in the Wren Courtyard in front of the Wren Building and besides the President’s House. Lord Botetourt, or Norborne

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

Berkeley, was governor of Virginia from 1768 to 1770. His original statue was displayed at the Capitol but was eventually purchased by the College and displayed in the College Yard, until its removal and relocation to Earl Gregg Swem Library, due to concerns about possible damage from the elements.

The replica statue that today stands in front of the Sir Christopher Wren Building was created by an alumnus of the College and installed in 1993, for the 300-year anniversary of the College’s chartering.

The Sunken Garden, colloquially referred to as the “Sunken Gardens,” was built as a result of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programmes during the Great Depression. Original plans to construct the Sunken Garden were thought to be too expensive, and the plans were delayed until 1935, when a Civilian Conservation Corps camp was assigned to the College.

"Lake Matoaka was originally known as Archer's Hope Swamp but was later renamed Lake Matoaka in honour of Pochahontas.”

The Crim Dell Bridge is considered one of the most scenic parts of campus by many, and it serves as a great photography spot.

While Crim Dell is technically the name of the pond, over the years the term has merged with that of the bridge. Interestingly, Swem Library was originally planned to be built on the land that now is Crim Dell, but luckily, those plans were shelved.

Lake Matoaka was originally known as Archer’s Hope Swamp but was later renamed Lake Matoaka in honour of Pocahontas. For decades, swimming and fishing in the lake were allowed, but concerns about poor water quality from sewage spills and algal blooms closed the lake to such activities in the 1980s.. Aquatic animals such as fish,

lampreys and turtles can be found there.

Swem opened in 1966 and is the College’s third library. The Wren Building initially housed the original campus library, and the College’s first separate library building stood in what is now Tucker Hall. The current library was named for Earl Gregg Swem, who served as a librarian at the College for decades. One of the Archbishops of Canterbury and Louis XVI both contributed books to the College’s collection in the 1700s.

Additional historical tidbits and fun facts: Although 1693 was the year the College’s charter was granted by the Crown,, plans for the institution go back as far as 1619.

The College was the first school in the United States that was established by royal charter. The College is the birthplace of the country’s first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa.

The fraternity set the precedent for Greek life with its use of Greek letters in 1776.

The College is also said to be home to the first formal garden in the New World, as well as the first school in the United States to develop an honor code, institute a law school and teach modern languages, all of which first began in 1779. While the College is the country’s second-oldest college after Harvard University, the College claims to be the oldest public university in the United States with the introduction of its law school in 1779. Two other schools, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Georgia, also claim to be the first public university in the country. Virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion University all originally began as divisions of the College before becoming their own institutions.

Hopefully, this exploration of the College’s history helps us both shed light on some of the major events in the College’s history and helps us appreciate campus landmarks amid a chaotic semester.

20

CORONAVIRUS AND WILLIAMSBURG

Story by Daisy Garner ‘21 Graphic by Gavin Aquin ‘22 Graphic by Maggie More ‘20

Photos by Zach Lutzky ‘24 Photos by Jamie Holt ‘22 Photos by Rebecca Klinger ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

The city of Williamsburg depends on revenue brought in by tourist industries. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the outlook bleak as the winter months approach.

The city’s leaders look for new ways to navigate limitations on outdoor gathering presented by cold weather and governmental restrictions.

If you take a stroll down Duke of Gloucester Street, things will almost feel like they did last year. Tourists wander aimlessly around Colonial Williamsburg’s brick-laid paths with Kilwins ice cream in one hand and tourism brochures in the other. Quickly, however, you’ll find that Williamsburg’s tourists look a little different this year.

Now, many of them walk down CW’s crowded streets, masked-up to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which has paralysed the world since March. As the United States enters a third wave of infections, masks serve as a grim reminder of the eight million cases and two million deaths the world has seen this year from this novel virus. At a fraction of these numbers, the City of Williamsburg has had 210 cases and eight deaths so far. However, the new normal of maskclad people on the Duke of Gloucester Street only tells part of Williamsburg’s battle with the virus. From City Council’s small business grants to tourist industry employees concerned about losing their jobs, Williamsburg is bracing for the continued financial impact that the pandemic has caused.

Like many cities, data indicate that businesses in Williamsburg have taken quite the hit from decreased revenue because of the pandemic. In a recent presentation to Williamsburg’s City Council, revealed that overnight visitation had decreased by 11 percent in July 2020, nearly eliminating the revenue for Williamsburg’s lodging establishment, in addition to other tourism businesses and restaurants being affected by decreased sales.

As a result of this trend, one of the City’s primary approaches has been providing financial assistance to local businesses and lodging establishments. Williamsburg was able to pursue this objective after receiving $2.6 million dollars in CARES Act funding, which arrived in two installments of about $1.3 million each. What Williamsburg did with the money was up to them, but it had two conditions: it must be related to COVID-19 relief, and it must be expended by Dec. 31st.

May 1st, Williamsburg launched its COVID-19 Business Grant Program, which closed on August 31st and funded 110 businesses.

In July, Williamsburg started the CARES Act Community Block Grant, funding 57 businesses, with 30 applications still in the pipeline to receive potential funding. Oct. 8th, the City Council considered a Tourism Industry COVID-19 Relief Grant Program. For the latter agenda item,the tourism industry businesses are expected to be awarded grants by Dec. 1st.

To qualify for grants, businesses must meet certain criteria, including being physically located in Williamsburg, having a Williamsburg business licence, being currently open and current on all taxes and payments to the city. If a business has a balance due, businesses can satisfy the balance with a grant award. Not all operations in the tourist sector can apply for a grant, however. For example, timeshares are not eligible. Similarly, there are additional requirements for restaurants and lodging establishments applying for a grant.

Restaurants must have a narrative description of their COVID-19 resiliency efforts and 22

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

lodging establishments must have a threeyear business plan showing how they will continue their operations in the future.

initiatives, including buying new chairs and tables to put in Merchants Square for outdoor dining and establishing financial assistance for outdoor-only events.

"The goal with the new campaign According to Rogers, Williamsburg’s response is to still bring tourists to Williamsburg, but to shift marketing to COVID-19 has stemmed from collaboration between the College, the Colonial efforts to help do this safely.”

Caleb Rogers ’20, a recent College of William and Mary graduate who serves on city council, explained how the CARES Act money assisted in the City’s economic relief response.

“I think we’ve done a very good job of empowering local business,” Rogers said.

“That is, almost immediately right after March 11th, our Economic Development Office was regularly reaching out to businesses through all of their networks online and in-person asking them to track all of the losses that they had and asking them to reach out if they needed extra business assistance. And then, once we were given extra CARES Act funding, we were able to assist some of these organisations to the best of our ability. … Restaurants and lodging are some of our biggest business sectors here in Williamsburg, it’s really a parteducation, part-tourism driven town so we want to make sure that that hospitality sector is empowered.”

Rogers also explained how exactly the CARES Act funding was allocated through the grants.

“One of the ways we just recently did this with our second round of CARES Act funding — this $1.3 million — is establish two different grant funds,” Rogers said. “One of them is for lodging and one is for restaurants and they allow these organisations to apply for restaurants up to $5,000 in funding, but lodging more funding from $7,500 to $15,000, depending on how many rooms they have.”

In addition to grants for businesses, the City’s CARES Act funds have gone to several other 23

Williamsburg Foundation, and the Williamsburg local government. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, for example, provided assistance to the community by donating meals and working with human services to help provide housing to housing-challenged people.

“They were donating meals upon meals, I mean literally thousands of meals, to Meals on Wheels for regular delivery to homeless people or families living in hotels regularly throughout those first months of the pandemic,” Rogers said. “… They were also assisting the City with some of the housing of housing challenged individuals in the Governor’s Inn, which is an old motel that is unused right now but is being used by some city assistance.”

Williamsburg has pursued unique approaches to tourism this year, since the industry typically significantly drives the local economy.

Williamsburg’s tourism council, which is presided upon by the city council, shifted Williamsburg’s tourism message to a new campaign: “Life. At your own pace.” The goal with the new campaign is to still bring tourists to Williamsburg, but to shift marketing efforts to help do this safely. For example, a lot of the models on Colonial Williamsburg’s tourist campaigns now wear masks in their advertisement photos.

“If people are wanting to travel, travelling to one of the nation’s biggest outdoor living museums is a good place to do so,” Rogers said.

Although many tourist destinations and facilities are currently open, they are making

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

cuts where possible, including employment.

Chris Wolinski ’19 remains furloughed from his part-time IT job at Busch Gardens. He received about a two-week notice from Busch Gardens that he was going to be furloughed, and while it is an uncomfortable situation, Wolinski said that being furloughed was better than the alternative — getting fired.

“Everyone’s hurting pretty bad and at least they’re doing the responsible thing where they’re maintaining people furloughed, they’re not really letting people go,” Wolinski said.

Busch Gardens is currently in the process of bringing back their full-time employees.

"The masks, required or encouraged, have changed the face for Colonial Williamsburg.”

safety measures, like installing more hand sanitiser stations around the park, and keeping a six-foot distance between parties.

But these measures, along with operating at limited capacity, create persistent concerns.

“Because of the way they’re doing lines, where you have to maintain a distance between everybody, that’s also caused them a couple problems,” Wolinski said. “Since they are also still limited by the capacity, they’re also still not able to have the entire park open because of that, so they’ve been limited and they’re just working with whatever they have.”

However, Wolinski is not sure what the future holds for Busch Gardens.

“They have been trying to get their full time staff back on the clock instead of the parttime or seasonal people just because this is their primary livelihood,” Wolinski said.

“Like Disney has recently said, all of these employees that are furloughed, we have to let you guys go,” Wolinski said. “So I know they’re at least doing right on the employees part for now, but there is only so much wiggle room they have.”

Like many tourism-related businesses in Williamsburg, Busch Gardens is implementing

Similarly, Emily Slack ’22 has a job in Merchants Square. Although she was worried

25

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

about losing her job due to the pandemic, Slack and some of her friends who also work in Williamsburg were able to go back midMay. Although internal safety measures were implemented at her job, adherence to face mask policies proved problematic.

Under Virginia’s current executive order effective May 29, people are required to wear face masks inside public facilities.

Slack recounted how, unfortunately, a sizeable amount of patrons, particularly tourists coming into the store from Colonial Williamsburg, would enter without wearing masks.

“Until there was the official sign out put up by the Virginia Health Department, people wouldn’t really follow that, which was a little stressful, made things a little bit more scary,” Slack said. “There has been a lot, just from what I’ve experienced working and being a local, there’s a lot of people still coming in for tourist activity, there’s a lot people still coming in who don’t think this is as serious as it, which is concerning. If Williamsburg was just another ‘small town,’ I don’t think we would have that issue as much, but because there is such a draw for tourism because of the College and Colonial Williamsburg it definitely makes things a little more stressful because there’s that aspect of the economy we’re looking at. Most of my friends are employed at some tourist-related job.”

Slack believes that now that tourists are coming in, most of whom she believes come from outside Virginia, the new concern is having them follow the rules.

“Now that we are getting people coming in, how do we know that they’re going to do what the state of Virginia asks or that what individuals are asking them?” Slack said.

Slack noticed that when College students started returning to campus in mid-August, she saw more people wearing masks in

Williamsburg. However, she believes these were mostly students consistently wearing masks.

Similarly, when asked about what Williamsburg could have done better in their COVID-19 response, Rogers said that maskwearing could have been better. The streets near Duke of Gloucester Street are publicly owned, so it could not have been made a mask-required space. Rogers also said the city could have been more proactive in putting up signage about mask wearing.

The masks, required or encouraged, have changed the face of Colonial Williamsburg.

To Slack, seeing the colonial reenactors wearing their masks as they engage with tourists is among one of the most illustrative examples of how life has changed since the pandemic began earlier this year.

"This fall, Williamsburg's tourist industry will be more open than it was this summer. During the initial lockdown in March and April, many tourist activities and events were suspended or cancelled.”

“It is really interesting, it’s kind of surreal.

Because it’s that really weird mix of modern and historical,” Slack said.

To make these masks, some of them are made using the same fabric that is used to create the colonial costumes.

“They might be representing someone who has been dead for 300 years, but they still need the mask,” Slack said. “And they all match their outfits, it’s really coordinated.”

This fall, Williamsburg’s tourist industry will be more open than it was this summer.

During the initial lockdown in March and April, many tourist activities and events were suspended or cancelled. For example, the Humane Society’s annual Fido Fest was 26

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

cancelled, and Busch Gardens was closed for a period of time. However, this fall, Busch Gardens will still be having its Halloween festival this year, Colonial Heritage’s Harvest Festival will still be happening, and the Liberty Ice Pavilion in Colonial Williamsburg is still planned to open in November.

"The future of Williamsburg, like many towns across the United States, remains unclear as the city prepares to navigate the virus during the winter season.”

But future closings and shutdowns are possible if COVID-19 cases increase in Williamsburg and the Hampton Roads area more broadly, and according to Rogers, the city might need another round of CARES Act grant funding.

Rogers also noted how in the coming months,

people will be more indoors more often with a highly transmissible virus.

“What does that mean for William and Mary, which has done a great job so far, in my opinion, of keeping its students safe, and keeping them on campus and keeping their classes to the best of their ability running. What does this mean for William and Mary as an institution, what does this mean for the City of Williamsburg and its employees in the Municipal Office? I’m not sure,” Rogers said.

The future of Williamsburg, like many towns across the United States, remains unclear as the city prepares to navigate the virus during the winter season.

#BLACKLIVESMATTER

CAN INTERSECTIONALITY SAVE US? Story by Nina Raneses ‘22 Photos by Zach Lutzky ‘24

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

Students at the College of William and Mary are demanding action from the College’s administration instead of continuous empty sentiments. They have dedicated their Saturdays to fight for recognition and change. Various organisations across campus have also stood up for intersectionality for their causes in conjunction with #BLM.

W

ithin the backdrop of an already anxiety-filled year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effects, the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin, has further shed light on the marginalisation of minority groups in this country, especially Black Americans. Growing research and evidence finds that Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to contract the coronavirus, and mounting evidence posits that Black Americans are more likely to be killed by the police. While movements such as Black Lives Matter have advocated for the remediation of these issues in the past, it seems that these conversations have taken place on a much larger scale since Floyd’s death.

While a national reckoning on systemic racism has been long overdue, we cannot overstate the emotional toll that Black Americans are facing while simultaneously doing the work to educate and open up to their non-Black peers.

At colleges and universities across the country, especially at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) with difficult pasts like the College of William and Mary, Black students feel the brunt like no other. Of course, all college students continue to navigate unprecedented and difficult interruptions to their learning environments.

Still, Black students are doing so while being forced to continually examine their place in an institution that has historically mistreated them and caused them much harm.

“I think what people should know is that

generational trauma and generational grief are real, and that right now it’s so psychologically difficult for marginalised groups — COVID, on top of the election, on top of BLM, and then you want me to write that paper and give it to you by 11:59?” I.A.*, a co-president for Rainbow Coalition, one of the College’s LGBTQ+ student organisations, said. “I really, really implore people to be empathetic and compassionate.”

The College’s various student groups, as well as individual students, have addressed and advocated for Black Lives Matter since the movement’s inception seven years ago.

However, as has been the case in a number of colleges and universities across the country, William and Mary’s involvement in Black Lives Matter is a microcosm of the national conversation. To what extent and at what speed change is affected varies greatly by the institution, however.

The College’s marginalised students, organising both within their student groups and on their own, feel that this change is not happening fast enough, even with the supposed heightened awareness of such issues within the community.

As a result, students are using resources within their organisations to implore their peers and the administration to do better by the Black community at William and Mary, with attention paid to all of the intersections in which Black students exist and identify with. It seems that, more so than at any point in the College’s history with the Black Lives Matter movement, group solidarity and collaboration have become key 32

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

principles of organisers’ strategies.

In early October, Loni Wright ‘21, co-president of the Black Student Organisation, and Keyyatta Bonds ‘21 co-authored an 18-page document entitled “An Open Letter to Recognised Student Organisations.” In it, they closely examine numerous issues with regards to diversity and inclusion in William and Mary’s student organisations, exploring issues from classism and accessibility to tokenism and accountability while providing detailed policy recommendations for each topic. Created as a way to ensure more diverse and inclusive spaces on campus, Wright and Bonds see this document as required reading for student organisations looking for answers in the wake of a national outcry for change.

and data collecting. Multicultural organisations (MCOs) and recognised student organisations (RSOs) received surveys that were created specifically for their category of organisation, and over 100 student organisations’ responses were analysed. RSOs were asked to self-reflect in terms of diversity and inclusion and ask any questions they wanted to be answered, while MCOs were asked to evaluate the performances of RSOs in these categories. Data collection and aggregation was meticulous but crucial, as Wright’s and Bonds’s findings ultimately led the open letter to materialise in the way it did.

Initially planned to be an FAQ encompassing all of the questions submitted, a disparity between RSOs’ perception of themselves in terms of diversity and inclusion and the evaluation of MCOs was notably large.

The document’s creation is the culmination of intensive planning, strategising, surveying,

“To me [an FAQ] was more, ‘Oh, if you have a question, maybe take a look,’” Wright said. “It

doesn’t acknowledge that there is a problem. It’s just an ‘in case.’ Whereas an open letter is more of a ‘There’s a problem. We all know there’s a problem. We need to fix this.’ And this isn’t how you fix this, it’s your guide to beginning that process.”

Their survey data presented a large discrepancy between how inclusive RSOs believed they were and the reality that they were not, based on indicators such as collaborations with cultural and identity-based organisations or diversity within executive boards. The survey responses showed that 76.5 per cent of RSOs surveyed had never collaborated with an MCO or identitycentered organisation (like those centered around sexual orientation, religion, and other beliefs). Less than half of RSOs surveyed had ever held a public forum or conversation related to diversity.

Wright acknowledged that a number of groups showed dedication and critical self-reflection in their responses, but overall, the discrepancy compelled them to create a document of

required reading rather than one of suggestion.

“Instead of ‘this is a helpful guide,’ it was more of a ‘read this!’” she said.

The work of Black students, specifically Black women, cannot be overlooked. Wright and Bonds, as well as I.A. and a number of other student organisers and activists, have continued to pour time and effort into these initiatives that constantly remind them of the injustice they face themselves. They do so while balancing their personal lives and educational and extracurricular commitments as well. While these student activists agree that this work is crucial, the emotional and mental toll is inevitable. It is here that the concept of solidarity plays such an important role in how the Black Lives Matter movement at William and Mary moves forward.

“Solidarity looks like collaboration,” Bonds said. “Knowing what an organisation stands for, knowing what you want to see and collaborate with them for, talking with an organisation and asking ‘What are our values? Where do they 34

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

intersect? What event can we present to the campus?’ even though you are on different parts of the spectrum in the campus community entirely.”

Along with collaboration, Wright and Bonds also cite accountability and presence as important aspects of solidarity.

“If you look at the letter, it also includes having that reporting process for discriminatory action,” Wright said. “Not just saying ‘We will denounce this and these practices,’ but also ‘We will do something about it. We will not stay silent.’

Because I think that does just as much harm. It doesn’t matter if you say ‘Oh, we don’t believe in that,’ if you don’t do something to help stop it. If you let something happen before your eyes, you might as well be participating in it.”

MCOs that exist as spaces for marginalised students, but are not necessarily centered around Black experiences, have found ways to incorporate collaboration, accountability, and presence into their programming and communication.

The Solidarity Series is a series of informational sessions meant to engage and educate the campus community on a number of topics related to systemic racism in the United States with emphasis on the roles that the Asian American community has played in its history. A collaboration between the Filipino American Student Association (FASA), Asian American Student Initiative (AASI), and the Center for Student Diversity (CSD), the Solidarity Series has covered topics such as the model minority concept, affirmative action, colourism, institutionalised racism and non-white students’sense of belonging at a PWI. “There was this reaction, I think out of everyone, but specifically out of some of our members that there was a necessary conversation to have on campus,” Sidney Miralao ‘21, who is the treasurer on the FASA executive board, said.

35

“Something that’s talked a lot about is Asian Americans and their complicity in racism and anti-Blackness. We felt that on this campus, which is a PWI, there is a clear divide between white students and students of colour sometimes, and because of this we felt there was a conversation that needed to be led by students because we felt like the administration’s response to Black Lives Matter, especially their initial one, was pretty inadequate and not really addressing the institution’s role or the broader implications.”

As an MCO, FASA has tried to break with the expectations of culture-centered student organisations to remain apolitical. In fact, they’ve made as many efforts as they can to advocate for issues that affect Filipino Americans as well as their marginalised peers, especially with regards to Black Lives Matter.

“I think a lot of multicultural organisations sometimes say ‘we’re apolitical, we’re nonpartisan, and we are just purely social organisations, so we don’t really get involved with stuff like this,’” Saniya Han ‘23, FASA public relations co-chair said. “But we wanted to be loud. We wanted to show support. We wanted to show solidarity. We wanted to do more and not just be performative. We wanted to take action.”

Cultural or political affiliations aside, many Asian American students at the College have acknowledged Asian American complicity in antiBlackness and have tried to counter these past injustices.

“One of the first things that came up in our discussions was standing in solidarity with the Black community and doing what we can,” Jamelah Jacob ‘21, APIA studies chair for the Asian American Student Initiative (AASI), said. “I think something that really stood out from these early conversations is that we recognise that as non-black POC was needed to take a step back and not co-opt any spaces or overstep,

overshare, anything like that, so we had to be really deliberate in terms of what we wanted to do in terms of activism and direction.”

Within the solidarity movement of non-Black student organisations is the component of accountability as well. While MCOs and other identity organisations have shown their support by standing up for Black students, they are having tough conversations about anti-Blackness within their communities. MCOs recognise that they represent marginalised and minority groups on campus while simultaneously acknowledging their privilege of being nonBlack POC. Every community has its own antiBlackness and privilege issues, and each MCO has addressed these matters in their own ways.

“A long-term goal of ours is creating a culture within our organisation to be able to talk to one another about difficult subjects,” said Alexia Kaelber ‘21, LASU co-president. “One of the conversations we had is what abolishment and defunding of the police look like and being able to educate one another about the true origins of the police force, what that means, and why abolishment might be the best option,

especially for the Black community. We’ve had these difficult conversations with our members.”

Sept. 25, the Instagram account dear.wm, which receives and shares anonymous accounts of discrimination of all forms at the College, posted an anonymous student’s discontent with the white Hispanic/Latine community on campus. While the post did not address the Latin American Student Union (LASU) directly, the organisation felt obligated to respond and reaffirm their commitment to their marginalised members and actively being anti-racist.

“We scheduled three meetings back-to-back.

We wanted to make sure everyone understood that this was not ok,” Megumi Matsuda-Rivero ‘22, vice president of LASU, said. “We felt like we had an obligation to respond even though we’re not the only Latinx [sic.] organisation on campus, and we can’t speak for every Latinx [sic.] individual, but as a part of that community, we felt the need to respond.”

The LASU executive board wanted to ensure that their organisation was a safe space for all Latine community members at the College.

36

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

“It’s a major goal of ours to be inclusive, and it sucks to know that people haven’t had the ideal experience that we would want them to have,” Kaelber said. “I’ve had such a great experience [with LASU] that I would only want other people to have that as well.”

Another MCO striving to have these difficult conversations is the South Asian Student Association (SASA). The SASA executive board had initially planned to use the national moment to integrate conversations of solidarity and inclusion through discussions of the caste system, among others, which led to their coopting of the Solidarity Series. They held a twopart series in collaboration with AASI and FASA to discuss the caste system and its relation to the South Asian community and anti-Blackness.

“You can’t celebrate your culture without also addressing the bad things, you know?” Sreya Mallipeddi ‘23, a SASA public relations co-chair, said. “I don’t think it’s fair to say, ‘Oh, we just want to celebrate our heritage’ especially if your heritage is violent and especially if your heritage has this history of oppression. You can’t just ignore that.”

any of the events we have, the lectures that we have, the speakers that we bring in.”

With regard to bringing in voices, I.A. emphasised the importance and the impact that diversity can have in the campus community. She believes that ultimately, decisions like these are what will affect change in the community one day.

“I never see — or very rarely see — Black people in positions of power,” she said. “Imagine that you literally do not see teachers that have looked like you, professors that have looked like you, you don’t see people on television who talk about important things look like you, you don’t see anyone in movies or in the classroom or in government that look like you. The only time that you do is when you see representation that is violent. You see Black bodies, African children in pictures that your friends took on a mission trip they went on.”

In addition to solidarity, she adds that at the most basic level, diversity in leadership can allow a marginalised student to enjoy a sense of belonging that they might not have ever had the privilege to experience before. Sometimes, this sense of belonging can make all of the difference in a college student’s experience. This culture change could eventually lead to more significant changes that Black students and their allies advocate for on campus. It is this shared sense of belonging and commitment to solidarity that has allowed all of these organisations to come together to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ultimately, the reality is that while the College is a PWI, it is still home to a great number of diverse community members at every intersection of race, ethnicity, gender identity, and cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. As a result, the solidarity movement cannot move forward without considering the overlap that exists between all of these factors. The coalition that has formed around MCOs and other identity organisations at the College is promising, “Imagine how liberating it would be if you were but it must also consider the importance of in a cool social organisation that you liked and intersectionality in all of its efforts. someone on the executive board looked like you and had experiences like yours,” I.A. said “The way that intersectionality changes the work “I really want to highlight the actual feeling of that I do is that I take everything personally,” I.A. belonging that can come from knowing someone said. “When there’s an omission of BIPOC in the that shares your experience, this really important room, or programming lacks diverse speakers, we experience, is in a position of power and leading don’t have LGBTQ+ voices. I am constantly trying things. That is so, so important.” to see how we can bring more diverse voices into 37

270 TO WIN

WHERE DO WE STAND? Story and Data by Ethan Brown ‘21

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

Virginia is known as a purple state, or a battleground state, when it comes to politics. However, recent elections have shown consistent patterns of favor of the Democratic Party. This year’s election turned out no different, with Virginia staying decidedly blue.

S

hortly before noon on Saturday, Nov. 7, former Vice President Joe Biden was named president-elect following his victory in Pennsylvania. He defeated incumbent President Donald Trump after a dramatic campaign that unfolded amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and national reckonings for racial justice. Biden and his running mate, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, won the presidential race after performing strongly in the oft-mentioned “blue wall” states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — which fell to Trump in his surprise victory four years ago. Pending final certification at the time of writing, the Biden-Harris ticket is also poised to flip Georgia, states that hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since the 20th century.

Before the race was called, millions of Americans spent election week lasering in on precinct-level maps of essential swing states across the country, doting over vote batches coming out of Maricopa County, Arizona and staring at absentee ballot totals in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Just two presidential elections ago, Virginia occupied this crucial spot in American politics, as eyes would turn to close contests in the suburban counties of Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun on a perennial basis.

Now, the commonwealth is hardly on the periphery of the American election-watching

public. In 2020, Virginia shed its early-2010s reputation as a ‘battleground’ state and voted handily for Biden by a whopping 10 points, while simultaneously supporting incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner in a landslide victory. Of Virginia’s seven Democratic congressional representatives, all won re-election. Most notably, Reps. Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger secured second terms in Washington, D.C. despite facing stiff challenges from Republican candidates in conservative-leaning districts.

Seemingly overnight, Virginia has become a reliably blue state, mirroring the electoral patterns of similarly diverse and suburban states like Colorado and Nevada thousands of miles away. The Flat Hat Magazine sought to contextualise the commonwealth’s recent leftward trend by analyzing how the state’s different regions and demographics are creating a political environment ripe for Democratic success.

Virginia’s political evolution is a shockingly new phenomenon to outsiders and residents alike. Before the 2008 presidential election, Virginia had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson carried the state in a national landslide.

After Mr Johnson’s rout, Virginia switched back to supporting Republican presidential nominees for almost four decades. The commonwealth’s uninterrupted Republican 40

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

streak from 1968 to 2004 perfectly aligns with the track records of nine other states — Utah, South Dakota, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Idaho, and Alaska — all of which voted overwhelmingly for Mr Trump last week.

While the partisan makeup of Virginia’s congressional delegations and statewide legislative assembly fluctuated during the latter half of the 20th century, Virginia entered the 2000s with exclusively Republican statewide office holders, including the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and both US senators. The 2000 presidential election, while extremely close in the national popular vote and Electoral College, was a blowout in Virginia — Texas Governor George Bush beat Vice President Al Gore by more than eight points, solidifying the commonwealth as a bastion of conservatism.

41

"Virginia's rapid leftward movement since the 2008 election is emblematic of an evolutionary shift within the Democratic Party."

Everything was different after 2008.

Insurgent Illinois Sen. Barack Obama flipped Virginia back into the Democratic column with an impressive six-point margin and won the state in 2012 by a slightly-reduced four points. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prevailed in Virginia by more than five points even as she lost several Democratic strongholds in the upper Midwest, foreshadowing Democratic successes in the 2017 and 2019 statewide elections and setting the stage for Mr Biden’s staggering 10-point victory last week.

Virginia’s rapid leftward movement since the 2008 election is emblematic of an

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

evolutionary shift within the Democratic Party. Massive gains among well-educated suburbanites, coupled with steadfast support from communities of colour, have uplifted center-left candidates across the country since Obama set the stage for success more than a decade ago — and there’s no better place to see these trends actualised than in the commonwealth.

The Democratic Party’s success in Virginia stems from its strength in three principal regions: Northern Virginia, suburban Richmond, and Hampton Roads. In Northern Virginia, Biden ran up the score by racking huge margins in the counties of Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William, securing nearly 70 per cent of the vote in Fairfax, which according to US Census estimates is now home to almost 14 per cent of the state’s population. He also did strongly in the suburban counties of Chesterfield and

Henrico immediately outside Richmond and overperformed Clinton’s margins in Tidewater Virginia, notably flipping James City County, which envelops the City of Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary.

Biden also improved the Democratic ticket’s vote share even in counties it lost, as seen in the “vote swing” map tracking changes in vote share from the 2016 presidential election. Every county coloured in blue reported a higher vote share for the BidenHarris ticket than for the Clinton-Kaine ticket four years ago, demonstrating Biden’s appeal in eastern Virginia and among the state’s suburban and exurban cores.

Notably, Democrats continued to lose ground in western Virginia following Clinton’s dismal performance in rural counties bordering West Virginia in 2016. While Biden and Democrats 42

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

up and down the ballot have enjoyed vast success in the state’s three most populous regions, they face existential struggles in the commonwealth’s westernmost regions, though decreasing populations in these areas limit the in luence they play in statewide politics.

"Every county coloured in blue reported a higher vote share for the Biden-Harris ticket than for the Clinton-Kaine ticket four years ago."

306

Joe Biden Democrat

43

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam won his statewide election in 2017 with a similar strategy to Clinton and Biden: focus on the state’s suburban regions in the east, particularly by running up the score in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area. Tracking vote swing in counties between the 2009 gubernatorial race and Northam’s victory in 2017 shows this tactic in action, as Democrats prioritised their efforts in the east while hemorrhaging support in rural, mountainous Virginia.

Flat Hat Magazine • Local

Shifting demographic and geographical concentrations of power in Virginia will make it difficult for Republicans to regain strength in the state, unless they can credibly draw suburban, well-educated voters out of the Democratic fold and back into the red. Most political junkies can hardly stomach the thought after emerging from a contentious and competitive general election season, but in just 12 months, Virginia voters will elect a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and 100 delegates to the General

Assembly’s lower chamber. If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans change their agenda and messaging before November 2021, Virginia’s blue trend line shows no sign of stopping any time soon.

Images courtesy of Associated Press, the White House. Electoral data courtesy of Associated Press. Accurate as of Nov.13.

232

Donald Trump Republican

44

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

A CONVERSATION WITH JERON DUHART RODRIGUEZ Story by Linda Li ‘24

I knew Jeron DuHart ’21 would be a fun person to interview from the moment I saw his Gmail profile picture. The spiky hairdo, white crop top and flamboyant posture reminiscent of Salt Bae all had me very much looking forward to picking his brain over Zoom. He did not disappoint. His enthusiasm and confidence reflected his journey at the College of William and Mary, which has been filled with bumps along the way but is reaching close to a triumphant destination—for Jeron, a double major in computer science and business analytics with a passion for singing and dancing, his choices are myriad.

Once I asked the first question, I basically took a backseat and let Jeron do all the talking. “I’m sorry that I ramble. I’m a big rambler.” Jeron’s vibrant yet chaotic upbringing, coupled with his intersectional identity, has given him plenty of food for thought. In turn, he has lots to say about his role at a predominantly white and wealthy institution like the College. As you read on, you will learn that rather than conform to the crowd, Jeron DuHart stuck to his true self and made a name for himself as a carefree, multi-faceted and introspective figure among his peers. The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

Linda Li: So right off the bat, what does it feel like to be a gay, Afro-Latino man in this day and age?

Jeron DuHart: I honestly think it’s interesting — it is difficult, I would say. I do not think that people recognise the issues, the actual personal issues [and] why it’s so difficult, how people act in reference towards me, being a gay Black man, is something that I do not think you will recognise as much if that makes sense. In today’s day and age, it also depends on where you’re located. So I’m in Puerto Rico for this semester, which is super, super exciting. It’s definitely easier in some instances here than it has been for most of my life when I

was just in Virginia. I guess it’s [also] interesting just because of the fact that we’re not necessarily represented in the media. The only time that you ever see any Black gay man in the media, their entire character is about them being a Black gay man, which is totally understandable — my main identifying factor for myself is the fact that I’m gay.

It’s just unfortunate because most of the roles that you see displayed are like, oh, here’s your side character. He’s Black and gay, ooh, knock both of those out of the category. I also think it’s difficult with George Floyd. Just the amount of regression that the United States has done as a country within the past four years under Trump’s presidency, we have a lot of nerve now. Two or three months 46

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

ago, I was at a protest in Williamsburg, and there were only about 12 or 13 of us. At that protest, there was this group of white men without masks that were screaming in our faces, not willing to have any sort of discussion at all. I think that’s a really good example of the way that a lot of conservatives have a certain ideal against people who are Black or LGBTQ, that’s like I’m not trying to have a discussion, you just need to see that you’re wrong — which is so unfortunate because I was born this way. Knowing that I was born this way, it can’t be something negative. I’m so proud of myself, and I’m so happy to be gay. It’s a very difficult life, but I’m stronger from it.

LL: Yeah, I read your profile in The Flat Hat last year. You said you had a pretty rough freshman year and it was difficult to find your community.

Could you elaborate on how you transitioned from your diverse high school to a relatively homogeneous campus like the College?

JD: Going from that very diverse school to a predominantly white, upper-middle class was a huge difference when I first got here. I realised that I wasn’t necessarily integrating myself into the Black community as I should, all my friends were white because that was just everybody around me. There were only two other Black people in my freshman hall. There were so many times LL: Have you always been proud of your where I felt like I literally couldn’t breathe because intersectional identity? What has the process I was the only person darker than the wall in any been? building. I couldn’t necessarily be my true self. As soon as I got into the school, I auditioned for an a JD: Honestly, no. I’m half-Black, half-Puerto cappella group. That’s how I got my main group of Rican, [so] I was raised religious. I’m a Seventh friends at first, but I dealt with a huge amount of Day Adventist, which is kind of a small sect of microaggressions — and that was not something Christianity that goes to church on Saturdays. exclusive to a cappella. But because I spent most My parents met in the military, so being in a of my time there, I guess that is where I had dealt strict traditional household, you guessed it: I was with most of them. People don’t recognise what homophobic until I was 14, 15 and then I went it’s like to not have as much money or how to to an art school. Interestingly enough, my dad speak in terms of your own situation. We used to two years ago was like, “Oh, sometimes I regret have this be-all and end-all [where] if you couldn’t sending you to that school.” And I was like, sight read [read and sing at the same time], you “because I learned who I was? So sad. Oh my wouldn’t make it into [an a cappella] group. That’s God, that’s tragic.” Anyway. I wasn’t necessarily not necessarily fair, because a lot of people — a lot outwardly homophobic, but I definitely wasn’t all of POCs — come from lower-income schools and for it. And then I realised I had been doing sketch neighbourhoods where you don’t necessarily have shit since middle school. But I was like, “oh, I was that kind of expensive choir that can teach you just releasing sexual tension with fellow male how to look at a piece of paper and learn how to friends — still a heterosexual!” [The art high school] sing. was where I got to know myself a lot more. You could be anything that you wanted to be, nobody LL: How do you think William and Mary can cared, and everybody celebrated you. I realised I better support marginalised communities, was bisexual when I was 15. And then once I got to especially with COVID-19 restrictions? college, I realised I’m definitely more male leaning, I’m definitely gonna end up with a man. I definitely JD: With the COVID restrictions it’s definitely would say coming into the person that I am today, more difficult. I think that there should be some that was by the grace of William and Mary to an form of required education on the backgrounds of extent. I’m definitely in a way better place than I minorities that needs to be like Intro to Africana was before — but it took a lot of time.

Studies — there are so many cultural programs that William and Mary offers. We have all these 47

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

Gen Ed requirements like COLL 200 and NQR or whatever, you need to have a lot of those classes, [but] I did not learn anything important from those.

The real things that I really need to know about are like how to be a decent human being and what it means to be somebody that’s not like me. In terms of what William and Mary can do, it needs to have mandated education on how to change your views and be a more inclusive person in general. It has to be required because people are not going to do it.

People are too busy. We’re all too busy.

primarily older, most likely white people that are kind of trying to throw [around] like, “Oh, this seems like it’ll work. This should work. This might work.” When there have been multiple requests and half of what a protest is about is you removing a bunch of Confederate statues, your fix-all is to spend more money on a memorial to slaves on the same campus that celebrates people who owned said slaves. Clearly, you’re trying to brush over the problem. It seems like such a cop out.

LL: What are your thoughts on the Lemon Project?

LL: If you could go back to any point in your college career, would you change anything about your experience?

JD: So I don’t know everything about the Lemon Project. I would say it is clear to me that the William and Mary administration consists of

JD: I would, yes. I started going to the gym in February. I didn’t realise how much physical fitness and taking care of my health helped me mentally. I

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

was so much more comfortable with myself. After I was taking care of myself on a regular basis, being active really put me in a much better headspace than I was before. So, if there’s anything I could change, I guess being more active and being more fit and taking care of myself earlier. Also, I guess something I would change is maybe taking a class on how to be confrontational. I’m still not great with it. There have been so many times where I’ve been spoken over or just disrespected, but I was too scared, and I didn’t feel comfortable enough to say anything about it. I wish I had done more of that sooner.

LL: How would you try to have better conversations in the future?

JD: It kind of comes back to getting out of my comfort zone and being willing to confront somebody about some things. I definitely have noticed even nowadays, there’s still a lot of microaggressions. And the amount of continuous hype that “Save the Tribe 7” has gotten from a multitude of people on campus when Black Lives Matter has been prevalent for months — I want to speak on that. I understand that people might not feel comfortable, but it is your place to [speak on those things] because, at this point, the whole reason why we’re talking about this is because this is an injustice in society as a whole. That means that every single one of us is responsible to at least try harder to understand how to be more inclusive, how to be more diverse, how to change the system so that it’s equitable for all, not just equal for all—so we’re all on the actual same playing field. Something that I definitely want to have more conversations about is where do you think your place is in reference to calling out problematic behavior, spreading awareness, things of these sorts, or with people as to why they felt so passionately. I’ve seen a lot of you who aren’t even student athletes be very, very passionate about “Save the Tribe sports” as well as the fact that the protests themselves have been headed by a lot of student athletes and now we have all the teams coming together. That kind of energy could also be put into Black Lives Matter. I totally understand — 49

sports, your livelihood, your history, how your life journey has been in reference to your sports. But when it comes to you graduating and the world that we live in for the rest of our lives, the colour of your skin plays way more of an important role than the sport that you play. So yeah, I want to have more conversations making sure Black Lives Matter wasn’t just a trend that happened at the start of quarantine. We need to fix this. And we’re not going to shut up until it gets fixed.

LL: Powerful words.

JD: Thank you.

LL: Okay, full disclosure: I stalked your Instagram yesterday, and your outfits are really cute. How has your sense of style changed over time?

JD: Oh, my God. This is another thing I think happened to me going to the gym. I felt so much more confident. And even now that I don’t go to the gym, I still like to put on these little shorts, you know? Even when I was in high school, I’d always love to be the kind of guy who can rock a crop top — that was always a dream for me.

During my senior year of high school, I bought my first pair of short shorts. And I was like, dang, my legs look nice in this. Even though I dealt with a lot of homophobia at my house and everything, my mom made sure to raise me knowing that I have to love me, regardless of if nobody else in the world loved me. I don’t know how she did it, but I do. You know, I’ll sit there and cry about how lazy I’ve been, and how much I’m not doing and how I’m a shitty person at times. But I know for a fact that I genuinely care for myself. That is something I continually reminded myself whenever anybody would ridicule me for what I was wearing.

Then as I started delving into it, of course, I got some hate. But I think that people vibe with the fact that I was expressing myself more than the hate I would receive. And so whenever anybody would give me any hate, I was like, “I’m sorry. Is that toxic masculinity? Is that misogyny I hear?

Your problem? Why did you feel the need to say that?” Whenever anybody would bring up any

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

sort of comment on what I was wearing, I would always come back because it makes me angry [that] that’s where it stems from. Because gender is literally a social construct. There is no reason as to why because I have a penis, I have to do all these things. It’s one of those things where when you look at it, there is no real reason for gender at all.

So why do I have to follow it? I don’t; I’m gonna look cute.

rocking it. I can do that.” I think that’s the main driver as to why I wear what I wear so confidently.

There’s no room for wavering on confidence.

LL: What’s the twampiest thing you’ve ever done?

Courtesy images Jeron DuHart Rodriguez

JD: What does it even mean to be a twamp? Let’s see. I would honestly say when I’m on campus, I spend more time doing the stereotypical onLL: I really respect that. campus things than most people. Oh my god, the amount of times I’ve streaked the Sunken Garden JD: Thank you. I mean, there are times when I is problematic. Any sort of tradition that William don’t feel very confident. At least for me, if there’s and Mary has crafted, I’ve tried it multiple times. this 11 or 12-year-old that already knows they’re Yeah, the twampiest thing I’ve ever done is if you going to be a little non-binary, I want them to know tell me that something’s twampy, I’m probably that it’s possible. I want them to be able to look at gonna do it, you know? me and be like, “Oh shit, he’s doing that and he’s

A CONVERSATION WITH MAGGIE KIRSH Story by Ellie Kurlander ‘24

While speaking with Professor Maggie Kirsh over Zoom, it became clear to me that a career as a historian and an educator was tailor-made for her.

Kirsh is the visiting assistant professor of Judaic Studies at the College of William and Mary, whose passion for knowledge has led her on globetrotting adventures. Her love of history, the arts and keeping stories from the past alive leaves each of her students enriched with critical thought about the significance of Jewish identity, remembrance and empathy.

While some of the topics we discussed were difficult, Kirsh answered each question with thoughtfulness and eloquence by including her personal experiences into the narrative. The following discussion has been edited for clarity.

Ellie Kurlander: Aside from your long and accomplished career as a historian, scholar, and educator, I’d love to know more about your experiences growing up, particularly in a Jewish household. Do you have any funny or memorable stories you’d like to share?

Maggie Kirsh: I’ve always loved school. I was the sort of kid who would play school on the weekends for fun. We had a playhouse in my backyard and my friends would come over to play school. I didn’t care if I was the teacher or the student, I just enjoyed being in that environment. I also grew up close to my grandparents who lived in Virginia Beach, and as the only grandchild I was very spoiled. I was particularly close with my grandmother and on my weekend visits she and I would sit out on the back porch and play school together.

As I got older, I became interested in history, 51

particularly my family’s history. My grandfather was a World War II veteran, but he didn’t speak a lot about the war. It wasn’t until the film “Saving Private Ryan” came out that he started talking about it but, even then, it took a bit of prodding. Aside from playing school, one of my favourite things to do when I went over to their house was pull out old photographs, newspaper clippings and books to see what kind of stories I could jog from them. That was probably my early historian in training.

It was interesting to hear the stories that my grandfather told, but as I got older, I was also aware of the stories that he chose not to tell.

There was silence around those things and those are questions that continue to intrigue me as a historian and a scholar today.

EK: How did your passion for history evolve as you began your journey into higher education as a William and Mary student?

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

MK: When I got to William and Mary, I was convinced that I wanted to major in history.

It wasn’t until my junior year though that I discovered the religious studies department and I instantly fell in love with the classes.

One day I was in office hours with Marc Lee Raphael, who recently retired from the College. I was asking about grad school and where I should apply to get a master’s in Jewish studies and he asked me, “Why don’t you just get your PhD?” That wasn’t something that had occurred to me and I was a little taken aback, but the more we talked about it, the more excited I got. There’s a one year master’s programme in Judaic studies at Oxford University so I applied there and right after graduating from William and Mary, I attended the programme. From there, I went on to get a PhD in Modern European Jewish history at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

EK: I’d love to know more about your time at Oxford. What was life like living in the UK? MK: It was definitely stressful. Oxford is a very high-stress environment and it was very intensive. You’re covering in a one-year period, enough material for two years in the United States, so I did very little other than studying and reading. Professor Raphael is very good at food recommendations and knew the best restaurants to eat at, so I did eat very well. I also made some incredibly close friendships with people from the programme, who I continue to keep in touch with to this day. There’s a lot of bonding that happens when you’re in an intensive programme like that.

Overall, it was exhilarating, exhausting and overwhelming. Coming from William and Mary 52

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

— Oxford is a much more formal atmosphere, which took some adjustment. The programme based in Judaic studies was located in a rural farming community called Yarnton on the outskirts of Oxford. There was a sheep farm across from the dorm where I lived and there was a large picturesque manor house where we would have classes. The atmosphere was amazing. When you go too stressed, you could put on your wellies and go visit the sheep.

It was one of my hardest years as a student and not necessarily rewarding in the ways I expected it to be, but I wouldn’t change my time there for anything. I realised, if I could make it through that, then I could do anything.

EK: One thing that I’ve really loved about being here in Williamsburg is that whenever school gets too stressful, I can just go into Colonial Williamsburg and watch the sheep.

Something about it just kind of grounds you and all of my stress goes away, so I can definitely see where you’re coming from.

In your William and Mary bio, you mention how one of your favourite teaching experiences was when you served as a tour guide for a journey through Jewish Poland. Could you speak more about that experience?

MK: Before moving to Williamsburg, my family and I attended a synagogue called Temple Micah in Washington, D.C. The synagogue was planning a trip to Poland and when I found out about it, I told my rabbi, Danny Zemel, how much I had loved my visits to Poland in the past. This transitioned to him asking, “Well, why don’t you come along and be our tour guide?” The trip was incredible and somewhere that I hope to travel to again.

The members of the congregation that went ranged from 18 to 70 years old, so it was a very different experience compared to teaching in a classroom. It was rewarding to put together a programme where I hoped the participants would learn more about not only the Holocaust

but about the richness of Jewish history in Poland before the Holocaust. I also wanted to show the renewal of Jewish life that has been happening in Poland since then.

When we got the itinerary, the very first stop was a trip to Treblinka, which was one of the death camps and one of the last places we went to was Auschwitz Birkenau. There’s this heavy emphasis on Holocaust suffering, and as a Holocaust historian that’s something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. But that’s not the whole story, and I think it does a great disservice to European Jewish history to focus solely on the Holocaust without also explaining what that world was like before the Holocaust.

EK: How did that experience in Poland help you develop your teaching style when you began teaching at the university level?

MK: One of the things I did for that tour group was assign lots of suggested reading.

Every day of the trip, I assigned a reading associated with the site we visited. We would look at poetry that was written on a certain street in the Warsaw ghetto while standing on that street. I think that interdisciplinary nature is something that I carry over into my classes here at William and Mary. I’m trained as a historian, but I always include poetry, music and short stories into my classes as well. It’s incredibly powerful to be at those places and if I can’t take my students there in person, then you have to get more creative about conveying that landscape in the classroom.

When I teach my class about the Holocaust, one of the assignments that I’ve given students in place of a final exam is to pick a site that’s connected to Holocaust history and to get to know it. I ask them to think about what that place was like before the Holocaust touched it.

What kind of Jewish communities lived there before? What was their relationship like with non-Jews in the region? What happened during the Holocaust in that spot? What does it look 54

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

like today, and how can we reconcile what happened in the past with the landscape that exists today? And what kinds of stories are being told in those places through tour groups, memorials or museums. Is that story getting told, and if so, who is telling it? What versions of that story are getting silenced? So those are questions I continue to think about, and I think are really relatable to students attending William and Mary. Some of those stories get told and some don’t.

EK: Your point about which stories get shared is a good segue into speaking more about Holocaust education as a whole.

During a recent nation-wide survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, it was discovered that more than one in 10 participants surveyed did not recall ever having heard the word “Holocaust” before and among those surveyed, Gen Z and Millennials had the least amount of knowledge. As a member of Gen Z who has grown up in a Jewish household, this surprised me but also concerned me.

What do you believe the long-term impact of decreasing Holocaust knowledge will be?

MK: It’s hard to say. It certainly is distressing, and it’s somewhat surprising for educators because we did have this intense period in the 1990s, for example, when the Holocaust Museum was built in Washington, D.C. We also had films like “Schindler’s List” and “Life is Beautiful” that were connecting moviegoing audiences with Holocaust history. There was research done that even talked about “Holocaust fatigue” because we may be overexposing students to Holocaust education.

One of my mentors from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Simone Schweber, has published extensively about Holocaust education. So, I don’t think it’s from lack of trying.

I don’t know what the long-term implications of that will be. One of the things that I caution my 55

students against particularly in the Holocaust courses that I teach, is that there’s this thinking that we hope to be true, that if you study the Holocaust, and you keep that memory alive, then it won’t happen again. You hear the chant “never again” a lot and we teach the past to the present so that this won’t occur again, but it’s not that simple. We do a disservice to ourselves if we have that approach.

The same year that the Holocaust museum opened its doors, we had a genocide raging in Rwanda. That part of history hasn’t been overcome. I think that it’s a little disheartening and goes against this happy narrative of “if only we can teach people about the past then it won’t happen in the future” but the reality is much more complicated. Just knowing about the Holocaust isn’t enough, and that statistic that you presented, shows that we don’t even have the basic history. Now that someone knows about that history of genocide, the question then becomes, “So what are you going to do? How is it going to change how you move about in this world?” It does have this domino effect, once we learn about this genocide that happened in the 1940s. I believe it makes a person more sensitive and aware of other injustices and hopefully encourages them to become more empathetic and involved citizens.

"Anti-Jewish Thought is something that has been around for an incredibly long time. It changes its nature from generation to generation, so it doesn't always sound the same, but it is the same."

EK: Going off that point you made about Holocaust education potentially leading to higher rates of empathy, how do you think the decreasing amount of Holocaust knowledge today is contributing to rising rates of anti-Semitism throughout the world?

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

MK: Some scholars have called it “the longest hatred.” Anti-Jewish thought is something that has been around for an incredibly long time. It changes its nature from generation to generation, so it doesn’t always sound the same, but it is the same. For example, if you look at European Jewish history, it’s not until the 19th century that we see the rise in the word anti-Semitism. There’s an emphasis on the hatred of Jews as members of a so-called “race” instead of hatred of Jews as members of a religion. During the 20th century, Jews are not identifying themselves as members of a race, but anti-Semites are.

So, there’s this hyper-intensive focus on Jews as a race from the 19th century and into the 20th century. You don’t necessarily hear that racial language used so bluntly anymore but a lot of those stereotypes continue to persist today. It’s largely based on a lack of education and knowing about Judaism and Jewish identity. Whenever we’re living in an unstable time, it’s easy to play on people’s fears, and to use that fear as a point of connection. I believe that’s what we’re seeing now. The pattern is not new and it’s an incredibly difficult pattern to break. When I was a kid in elementary school and we were learning about history, there was this sense that it’s always getting better, that in every generation things are improving, and at some point, that narrative gets broken and you realise that there is a lot that we have not overcome yet.

EK: I’m glad that you brought up this tactic of fear that many hate groups use to disenfranchise Jewish people because that hits very close to home, particularly in Virginia. During the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, white supremacists were seen chanting “Jews will not replace us” among other anti-Semitic rhetoric. What was your reaction to reading about, and watching footage of the protests? Are we seeing an increased emboldening of hate groups, particularly against Jews?

MK: We’re certainly seeing these whitesupremacist groups being increasingly emboldened in their rhetoric. Again, this rhetoric and this thought has always existed, so it’s not that this is new, but I think it’s becoming more socially accepted in a lot of circles to say things that in previous generations had not been displayed as blatantly. Part of this is thanks to the internet and social media.

It’s easier to get that message out to bigger groups of people. It doesn’t seem like they’re so much on the margins anymore and it seems to be moving more mainstream. When I heard those things, it was obviously horrifying to be hearing them so close to home. I can only speak from my experience, but it’s been easier in the past as an American Jew to not feel as much of the hatred. In Europe for example, when I go into a synagogue there are armed security guards. Your bags are going to get x-rayed and searched. That’s not been part of my experience where I’ve worshipped and where I’ve lived in the United States. I think it 56

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

[Charlottesville] was a rude awakening that the implications of that rhetoric are not as far away as we have been lulled into believing.

A few years ago, I was in Scotland for a conference and afterwards my mom and I went to attend a synagogue service for Shabbat.

I found what time services were from the internet, so we took a cab out there, but they were alarmed when we knocked on the door.

The reason it had been so hard to find service times was because they don’t widely advertise that information. To attend services, you are supposed to RSVP in advance with your ID, so they can confirm who you are before you worship with them. That was something that hadn’t been part of my American Jewish experience. Anti-Semitism has always existed in America, but it’s been a very different relationship between Jews and the state in the US compared to Europe. It’s unsettling, but not surprising.

EK: Like you mentioned, it was definitely an awakening where I thought to myself “wow, this really hasn’t gone away as much as we would have hoped and expected.”

I know you spoke a lot about this idea of “Holocaust fatigue” within classrooms but do you believe that contemporary anti-Semitism is getting enough acknowledgement in the mainstream media and within the activist community?

MK: I do think that the number of antiSemitic incidents is certainly up in our country and I don’t necessarily believe that all of those events are getting a lot of coverage.

It takes a bit of digging, but you can find lots of examples of anti-Semitic graffiti and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. The examples are there, but it’s not always going to land on the front page. We’re also living in a very turbulent time in our country and there’s a lot of other things that are happening now that are also competing for these headlines.

It’s probably not getting as much coverage as 57

you would think or expect, but I think given our country’s emphasis right now on Black Lives Matter it’s understandable that the stories have shifted in terms of what we’re talking about.

We still hear about these instances of antiSemitism, but it’s very quiet and very subtle some of the time.

EK: I’m sure you’ll have an interesting perspective on this topic as an educator on a college campus, but I would love to talk about anti-Semitism within a collegiate environment as well. Obviously, there’s a strong activist community on college campuses and American Jewish students — regardless of their opinions on Zionism — have been targeted and harassed on campuses for presenting as outwardly Jewish and have been tasked to essentially choose a position. How might students open up a healthy dialogue surrounding this topic in such a way that does not cross into antiSemetic rhetoric?

"Given our country's emphasis right now on Black Lives Matter it's understanble that the stories have shifted in terms of what we're talking about. We still hear about these instances of anti-Semitism, but it's very quiet and very subtle some of the time."

MK: It’s a very loaded topic, and I think that debate is most successful when happening in small-scale circles where there’s this relationship of trust and this willingness to listen. It’s hard because people have incredibly strong feelings about this either way. On the other hand, I feel there is a lot of misunderstanding and it’s very easy to sort people on to one side or the other, but there’s also a lot of grey area in-between as well.

You can be very supportive of the idea that a Jewish homeland should exist and call yourself

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

a Zionist in that regard, and in the same breath, you can also be incredibly critical of the state of Israel. The best way that I’ve personally been engaged in with this topic has occurred in a very personal and small-scale group. When people are willingly engaged and are active listeners while also allowing their own voice and perspective to be heard, I believe that’s when we can best achieve a common ground.

"There is this inherent worth in every human being that you encounter. It's important to acknowledge that, particularly if you're engaged in these difficult conversations."

EK: I think you are spot on with your response and how we should approach these difficult conversations. I thought it was important to include that question for potential readers who are very involved in the activist community on campus and who do want to open up healthy lines of dialogue.

MK: When you go and sit down with MK: When you go and sit down with someone over coffee, you begin to look beyond the ideology and the label you’ve developed for that person by getting to know their perspective as an individual. I have a friend who’s a rabbi in Washington, DC and I remember her telling me about this conference that she went to. There were going to be difficult topics that were discussed and everybody’s name badge around the table had their name and then the phrase “B’Tzelem Elohim” which means, “In the Image of God.” This served as a reminder that as you come to the table, you must maintain the idea that there is holiness in all people. If you can keep that in mind as you’re talking with someone with whom you might disagree with, it helps passions such as hatred not overtake you. That’s a principle that hopefully anyone can try to apply even if they’re not religious.

There is this inherent worth in every human being that you encounter. It’s important to acknowledge that, particularly if you’re engaged in these difficult conversations.

EK: Thank you so much for that perspective.

I think engaging in dialogue, as we are now, is the key to understanding the views of others in a healthy and productive manner.

I think we’ll move on now to the tail end of this discussion. What’s the main message you want readers to take away from this article?

MK: In terms of being a Judaic studies professor in 2020, I think one of the cool things about any religious or thought system, particularly one as old as Judaism is that there’s nothing new under the sun — everything has happened before. You can either see that as devastating and depressing or you can see it as a way to build up hope, and I think it helps to do the latter. What can we learn from other people who have dealt with great adversity before? How have they coped and what did their resistance look like? Where did they get their resilience from? In what ways will we be able to emulate some of that and learn from those lessons of the past? In a lot of ways, it is a dark and upsetting time in our nation’s history. The injustice has always been there, but it’s been incredibly visible and palpable these days. It’s easy to be overcome with despair or even become numb since there’s so much hurt in the world, but obviously those are incredibly dangerous responses.

There’s a lot in Jewish thought that teaches about persistence and resilience. There’s a legend that over a prayer house in the Warsaw ghetto, there was a slogan that said, “Jews don’t despair.” That doesn’t mean that you can’t be overwhelmed sometimes, but then the next day you’ve got to get up and do something about it. One of the best ways to do that is to get out and connect with the community. I believe that’s one of the fundamental values of Judaism. At Mount 58

Flat Hat Magazine • Features

Sinai when the Israelites were about to make this covenant with God, and in the Torah, the Israelites answered as one. There’s a lot of commentary related to this story from Exodus.

One of the teachings that comes from it is that you can’t take on a project that massive unless you’re all united as a community. There are certain prayers that you can’t say unless you have a minimum number of people. When you’re mourning, there are traditions that force you to get out into your community and be surrounded by people because when you are grieving is what your soul needs. Those truths from the past are helpful today.

That’s what’s getting me through these days, by finding ways to connect with the community even though it’s incredibly difficult with social distancing. But we’ve also done really difficult things before and we’ve found ways to work through that situation. And we’ll do it because we don’t have any other choice and we have to keep moving forward.

EK: To bring the conversation back full circle, and speaking again about your career as a historian and an educator, do you have any final pieces of advice for students at the College who wish to pursue a career in your same field?

MK: Academia is tough. The job market right now is difficult and it’s probably not going to get better any time soon. I don’t say that to be all doom and gloom, but I would encourage students to be flexible. If you’re going to pursue a master’s or PhD, then you’ve got to really love that material and be willing to give a significant number of years to that programme. You should also know that at the end of those few years, you may not land the kind of employment that you are hoping for, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a worthwhile undertaking. You just have to be flexible about what it is you might want to do with a PhD in religious studies. You shouldn’t see those years as lost years if your job doesn’t 59

end up being what you hoped it would be.

The years that I was in grad school, I created amazing relationships with people from all over the world. Many of my closest friends don’t live on the same continent as me and they have enriched my life in immeasurable ways.

The languages that I have been able to learn, the conferences that I have gone to and this constant exchange of ideas makes the struggle worthwhile. If you go into this process with specific expectations, you have to learn how to adapt and create your own path. So, if it’s something you want to do, you have to make sure that you enjoy the journey along the way, even if the end result is not always how we might picture it being.

EK: I think that’s the fun part of life, just going through the journey of realising what you’re passionate about and how your contributions can fit into greater society.

It’s exciting. No one’s journey is linear, and there’s never a clear-cut answer or endresult.

MK: Right. There never is and it can be maddening and frustrating, but also kind of liberating. You get to understand what that certain degree means to you and what kinds of things you want to do with it. The relationships you build, the languages you learn and the critical thinking skills you develop are all invaluable. It’s exciting to think about the many different ways you can use those skills to build a life for yourself at the end of the day.

Images courtesy of Maggie Kirsh.

SPILLING\THE BEANS

Story by Caroline Katz ‘21 Photos by Rebecca Klinger ‘22 Photos by Matt Lowrie ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Over the past few years, William and Mary students have seen many coffee spots come and go, open, close, and change management. As a student and coffee snob, I’m always on the lookout for high-quality coffee and new, comfortable work spaces. Though Aromas seems to be the go-to place for coffee and studying, here are some other places worth checking out:

Illy CaffE Illy Caffè is not a typical American coffee shop.

The idea of the café is to model an Italian coffee bar. Sometimes I wonder if the emphasis on its Italianness is almost overdone, serving as justification for the relatively high prices.

Regardless, the setup does somewhat resemble an Italian coffee bar, minus the fact that no one actually stands to drink their espresso at the bar as they would in Italy. Illy Caffè’s espresso machine is a top-of-the-line Italian-made La Marzocco. This attention to quality espresso comes through in their drinks. Their pastry and food selection pairs well with their coffee drinks.

A must-try at Illy is their affogato — espresso brewed over gelato of your choice — hazelnut being the right one. The lack of natural lighting and metal chairs aren’t ideal for studying, though some students do set up camp here.

Address: 435 W Duke of Gloucester Street I recommend: An affogato with hazelnut gelato and a bombolone or savoury spinach & feta pastry

Tipsy beans

Another restaurant with great coffee to try is Tipsy Beans. They serve a variety of unique, espresso-based drinks, currently offering 18 flavoured lattes, from the popular Pumpkin Spice to Grasshopper, a minty drink. Tipsy Beans also has an extensive and varied food menu worth checking out. Unlike any other place I’ve encountered in Williamsburg, they use a Victoria Arduino, another quality, Italian-made espresso machine. This modern, hip café opened last year just before Illy Caffé. Like Illy, Tipsy Beans is not a study spot. Though it is not quite within walking distance of William & Mary’s campus, it is definitely worth a visit (or more) to get well-made lattes and food.

Address: 1430 High Street Suite 709B I recommend: A grasshopper latte and an avocado toast

61

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Blue talon bistro Just a one-minute walk from Illy Caffè is the Blue Talon Bistro. Most students know it as a restaurant to visit when their parents are in town, or where hot chocolate is given out for free when the first snow of the season falls. What most don’t know is that the restaurant offers delicious, reasonably priced coffee. The espresso they brew is also from the Italian brand Illy, giving it a bit of European flair. A must-try at Blue Talon is their foamy cappuccino. It’s much closer to the Italian cappuccino than to the American, watered-down and flavourless version. Though this is definitely not a place to study, it is an elegant spot to get good coffee if you’re not in a rush.

Address: 420 Prince George Street I recommend: A capuccino and a chocolate noisette

Column 15 An up-and-coming coffee company that is focused on the experience of quality coffee more than any of the aforementioned places is Column 15. It is owned and operated by recent William and Mary graduates whose slogan is “the science of good coffee.” Though espresso drinks are now available in their pop-up location, it is not their main focus. Nitro Cold Brew is their best product, which is nitrogen-infused, cold-brewed coffee served through a tap, similarly to beer. This results in high caffeine content, but also the coffee is foamy, smooth and sweetened by the process of nitrogen infusion.

Column 15 also roasts a variety of coffees that you can buy, in addition to growlers filled with readymade cold brew.

Address: 701 K Merrimac Trail I recommend: a nitro cold brew

Though Williamsburg is by no means a New York, Milan, or Seattle, it is also not a coffee dead zone. I encourage you to visit some of these places for yourself, as they take the craft of coffee making seriously enough to warrant a visit.

62

Story and Photos by Linda Li ‘24

THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

63

Quarantine cooking gave me something to cling to when our understanding of normality flew out the window.

I

f there was one marginally positive thing that came out of this chaotic year for me, it would be learning how to cook. Like many other freshmen at the College, my senior year of high school ended with a flop: classes moved online, normal get-togethers were cancelled, I had very few cares left in the world, and with international travel restrictions in place, my hopes for a smooth transition to college were all but dashed.

As city after city in China succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic, it slowly occurred to me that I’d have a lot of time on my hands and very little motivation for anything else.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reason why I started cooking during quarantine: I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to roll up my sleeves and manoeuver the wok. After all, my mom had been urging me for months to acquire the skill of feeding myself. I was embarrassed to admit that I had never cooked a proper dish up until February this year.

I had previously characterised cooking as a chore, as something people begrudgingly took on simply because there was nobody around to cook for them. As such, I always stopped short of attempting a recipe or even watching my parents cook step by

step in the kitchen. I wished to avoid bearing adult responsibilities as much as possible.

On one nondescript night in quarantine, I came across a recipe for noodles.

No, not the Americanised MSG-laden “chow mein” with overcooked beef and broccoli chunks so gigantic you struggle to swallow. It was a classic Shanghai dish with slender, golden noodles in a lightly salted broth topped with soft, chewy greens and a crispy over-easy egg. Since then, I’ve become hooked on all noodles — udon, vermicelli, ramen, egg noodles, you name it. Garlic has likewise become an indispensable ingredient in my life.

But I’m not writing this essay just to say I learned how to cook. In fact, I’m a pretty terrible cook who doesn’t have the patience to learn proper knife-wielding techniques or any of the nuances that go into Chinese dishes — which is the main cuisine I dabble in. When COVID-19 brought on an onslaught of frustration and regret, I threw myself into the process of cooking to distract my mind from an uncertain future, relishing in my inexperience, clumsiness and naivety.

Instead of moping about the house and guessing what ICE’s next move might be due to my international student

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

status, I much preferred to contemplate what I would whip up for breakfast the next day.

“Contemplate” might sound out of place in this context, but I’m hardly exaggerating. Thanks to the internet, the sheer number of options I could choose from made it infinitely more difficult to settle on one idea. Should I make a shrimp or sausage omelette? Sprinkled with Havarti cheese or mozzarella? What about the Peruvian avocados that I had neglected? Why are human appetites so small?

Half the time I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in the kitchen. My slicing motions are mechanical and imprecise. I frequently burn my chicken breast. I notoriously over-salt everything. I hate cutting up pineapples and tomatoes. I will never believe a YouTuber who claims a recipe only takes 10 minutes. I even felt ashamed to claim Chinese heritage after making soggy fried rice.

Yet I couldn’t stop.

My parents didn’t let my amateurishness in the kitchen go unmentioned. “You’re wasting my ingredients,” scolded my mom on a weekly basis.

“What is that?” my dad asked quizzically. Their less-than-encouraging comments hardly fazed me. On the contrary, their lack of faith pushed me to keep cooking, to keep messing up until I had a dish I could confidently bring to a potluck.

I don’t strive to make fancy dishes either. The

most complicated dish I ever made was probably the time I ordered buttered naan from an Indian restaurant to complement some curry chicken.

Sticking to the basics allows me to eat a delicious meal even on a time crunch, and you can make enhancements however you please, such as swapping out an ingredient or mixing different sauces — a term I use very broadly. I’m continually blown away by the vast assortment of dips, barbecue sauces, soy sauces, chilli sauces, miso packs, hoisin sauces, and oyster-flavoured sauces available in supermarkets.

I threw myself into cooking so much that it sometimes took priority over high-school Zoom classes — but I’m not reckless enough to skip college classes. I’d bring my laptop into the kitchen and talk about “The Handmaid’s Tale” with my literature class while dicing up bell peppers at 8:30 in the morning. And I almost never paid attention to the first ten minutes of US History because I was busy adding the final touches to my lunch. The sense of accomplishment derived from making a hearty meal made remote learning that much more tolerable.

I couldn’t control the coronavirus’s trajectory and much less my ability to be on campus, but knowing that I finally took up a tiny slice of adulting assuaged my fears and, quite frankly, made me feel good about myself.

Now at the half-way point of a (remote) college semester on steroids, I have to admit that I’ve gotten quite lazy — I cook less, and I cook the same thing every time. When I do cook, however, I feel extremely at peace as I momentarily forget about projects, quizzes, and club responsibilities.

The other day as I waited for my ramen to boil, I looked out the window and saw the most beautiful azure blue sky. It felt like the Before Time. I was reminded that life is not completely meaningless. Now more than ever, we shouldn’t be taking things for granted. No matter where you are, I hope you find your anchor, something that brings stability and delight.

65

67

Story by Mollie Bowman ‘24 Contributions by Matthew Kortan ‘22 Graphics by Tara Vasanth ‘23 Graphics by Angela Vasishta ‘21

QUARANTINE CUISINE

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Between the Buns: A Pork Love Story (PORK DUMPLINGS)

T

he first step to finding a recipe during quarantine: check the fridge. It is daunting to go to the grocery store during a global pandemic — but it’s equally likely that you are too lazy to go to the store because you’re still in your pyjamas from last night, even though it is 3:00pm the next day.

I have noticed a trend in quarantine activity among the people I have met here at William and Mary. Many — myself included — took the extra time over quarantine to not only explore cooking, but also to work on their dietary health. This led me to bake a few different gluten- and dairy-free desserts, because no quarantine is complete without an absurd amount of baking.

I had never tried my hand at cooking any Asian food more complex than fried rice before, so I was ecstatic to make dumplings from scratch. Yes, I made the dough and kneaded it, filled it, and steamed it. Yes it took forever, and yes it was totally worth it. My dumplings were not beauties, but the sticky, swollen, yeast dough was a delicacy.

Instructions

1. To start dough, add starter ingredients in a small bowl. Stir together and let sit for 30 minutes until it foams.

2. Mix starter with other dough ingredients except flour. Stir together well and then slowly start to add flour. Once all the flour is added, bring the dough together in a ball.

3. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is very soft, about 10 minutes. If the dough is ever very sticky, knead in more flour.

4. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl to rise until it triples, about 2.5-3 hours.

5. Meanwhile, make the sauce and filling. For the sauce, just mix together ingredients and chill until needed.

6. For the filling, mince scallions, ginger, and cilantro very fine. Then stir with other filling ingredients and set aside until needed.

7. To make dumplings, punch dough and then cut it into quarters. Working with one quarter at

Ingredients

Makes 48 servings Starter 2 tbsp active dry yeast 1 tbsp sugar 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 cup water Dough 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup water 1 tsp kosher salt 1/4 cup sugar 2 tbsp veggitable oil Filling 1 lb ground pork 4 scallions, chopped 3 in fresh ginger, peeled & minced 3 tbsp cilantro, chopped 1 tbsp soy sauce 1 tsp sesame oil Sauce 1/2 cup soy sauce 2 tsp sesame oil 2 tsp chili garlic sauce 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

a time, stretch it out and flour it lightly. Then cut the dough into 12 pieces. It’s okay if they’re not perfectly even.

8. Working with one piece at a time, add about a tablespoon of filling to the middle of the dough and then fold the ends up and over the filling. Twist the top of the dough so it sticks together.

9. Once you have 12 dumplings done, let them rest for 20-30 minutes before steaming them.

10. Add the dumplings to a bamboo steamer, leaving some space between each dumpling to prevent them from sticking together, and steam them over a pot or wok until they are cooked through, about 18 minutes. To make sure the dumplings don’t stick to the steamer, lightly oil the steamer or lay down some lettuce leaves in the bottom of the steaming racks.

11. Let the dumplings cool briefly when they come out of the steamer and then serve them immediately with the sauce. Serve with mustard.

68

WHAT CAME FIRST, THE CHICKEN OR THE SALAD?

T

his scrumptious delight is easy to prepare — even in a dorm room — and pairs wonderfully with an array of different dressings, toppings, etc. With just a touch of creativity, you can easily cover all the major food groups in this single dish. Also, it is easily adaptable to accommodate just about any dietary restriction you could dream up.

Versatility is the name of the game when it comes to meal prep. Especially when the dish in question can be made to share, like a salad.

Anyway, here is one of many recipes I found online that looked particularly appetising.

Ingridients:

Makes 6 servings 2 cups cooked chicken, Chopped 1/2 cup mayonnaise 1 celery stalk, chopped 1 green onion, diced 1 tsp dijon mustard 1/2 tsp seasond salt Pepper to taste 1 tsp fresh dill (optional)

Instructions:

1. Combine all ingredients into a small bowl, mix well 2. Season with salt and pepper to taste 3. Serve as a sandwhich or over a salad

69

Chicken: • • • •

Use leftovers from last night’s dinner or leftover rotisserie chicken or grilled chicken.

To Make Chicken for chicken salad I like to use either poached chicken or baked chicken breasts or thighs.

You can use canned chicken in a pinch but of course fresh is best when possible.

Ensure the chicken is cooled and shred or chop the chicken into bite sized pieces.

Add-ins: •

As this is a classic chicken salad recipe, I’ve kept the additions to a minimum. Celery for crunch, green onions for flavour.

• This recipe can be made with a variety of nuts, veggies, and fruit for added flavour and texture.

• Chicken salad with grapes, avocado or dried cranberries is a favourite. Pecans or almonds pair well with this recipe.

Dressing: •

Mayonnaise is the base of this recipe and it’s simply seasoned.

• You can get creative and substitute some of the mayo for ranch dressing or your favourite salad dressing recipe.

• Create an Avocado Chicken Salad by replacing some of the mayonnaise with mashed avocado.

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

A

ALL’S WOOL THAT ENDS WOOL (LAVENDER LAMB KEBAB)

s Hannibal Lector once famously queried: “you think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs?” Well, forget Catherine. This is a much tastier way to make those lambs stop screaming (unless you’re Dr. Lector). This tender and succulent selection of meat falls right off the bone, and is perfect for pairing with veggies on a kebab.

This is the perfect recipe to keep in your back pocket for that postquarantine cookout we’re all so desperately looking forward to.

Ingridients:

Makes 6 servings 1/2 cup dried organic lavender buds 4 large cloves of garlic 3/4 cup Olive oil 1 tsp red pepper flakes 1 tbsp fresh rosemary 1 tbsp fresh thyme 1 tbsp honey 1 tbsp citrus zest (grapefruit, lemon, orange or lime ) 1 tbsp kosher salt 1 tbsp cracked black pepper 4 lbs lamb pieces/cubes or 3-4 lamb chops per person, depending on the size 4 large rosemary branches, stripped except for the top few fronds

Instructions:

1. Combine everything but the lamb and additional rosemary branches in the blender or food processor and puree untill it becomes a paste 2. Smear it all over the lamb, put in a baggie and let marinate at least 1 day up to 3, smoosh the bag around, turn it upside down each time you go in the fridge (or every few times if you are especially snacky) 3. Poke a hole through each piece of lamb with a skewer, them thread the lamb on to a sturdy rosemary branch, If you try to just poke the rosemary through the lamb they could break, which can be disappointing.

4. Grill over medium/high heat to your desired temp, I prefer medium rare. If making Chops you can lay a rosemary branch over them as the grill to get the same smoky greenness. I cook it until the internal temp reaches 130-135.

5. If weather does not permit you to cook outside, preheat grill pan or cast iron pan , add drop of olive oil & whole rosemary sprig, sear lamb on each side till brown and them finish in the oven.

6. Serve with tiny steamed new potatoes sprinkled with chives and baby peas with mint, tarragon and cream.

70

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

BEAN LIVING ON THE EDGE (BLACK BEAN BURGER) Instructions: 1. In a food processor, add the garlic and jalapeño then pulse until finely chopped.

Add 1 can of the drained and rinsed black beans (reserve 2 tablespoons of the liquid from the can). Pulse for about 10-15 seconds, until the beans are somewhat mushy. Transfer mixture to a large bowl.

2. In small bowl, add the reserved bean liquid, 1 tablespoon flour and the tomato paste. Whisk until smooth.

3. To the large bowl with the beans, add the remaining can of black beans, cumin, oregano, and salt. Stir everything together until combined. Pour in the breadcrumbs and corn then continue to stir until well combined. If mixture is too wet, add more flour.

4. Using your hands, form the mixture into round patties roughly 1/3 cup in size. Add them to a lightly greased skillet over medium heat and cook for about 5 minutes on each side, until light golden brown. Serve warm on a toasted bun with sriracha mayo, mashed avocado, red onion, and/or any other desired toppings.

71

Ingredients:

Makes 6 servings 2 jalapeños, cored and roughly chopped 3 garlic cloves 2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, rinsed with 2 tablespoons bean liquid reserved 2 tbsp tomato paste 1 tbsp chickpea flour 2 tsp ground cumin 2 tsp oregano 1 tsp salt 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs 1/2 cup corn 6 whole grain buns for serving (plus desired toppings)

A SYNONYM FOR CINNAMON ROLLS

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Ingredients:

Makes 12 servings Dough 1 cup warm water 1 tbsp instant dry yeast 2 tbsp white sugar 3 tbsp canola oil 1 egg 1 tsp salt 3 cups all-purpose flour Filling 1 cup brown sugar, packed 2 tbsp cinnamon 1/4 cup canola oil Glaze 1 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar 2 tbsp water or nut milk, warm

Instructions: 1. Pour warm water, yeast and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer. Let sit for a few minutes until the yeast is activated.

2. Add oil, egg, salt, and flour. Knead using the dough hook until the dough is smooth but sticky.

3. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and put in a warm place. Let it rise until it’s doubled in size.

4. Chill for about half an hour making it easier to roll out.

5. Punch the dough down. Then remove and place it on a lightly floured surface and roll the dough out into a large rectangle.

6. In a mixing bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.

7. Lightly pour the oil on the dough, and brush it out. Then sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture over it as evenly as possible.

8. From the longer side, roll the dough tightly. Then cut the roll into 12 pieces, and place the pieces in a parchment paper lined 9×13 baking pan.

9. Cover with a damp towel and put in a warm place. Let it rise until it is about double in size.

10. Preheat your oven to 350°F. When it is fully heated, place the pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until it begins to brown slightly.

Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool.

11. Combine the confectioners’ sugar and water and mix until you have a nice, thick, smooth glaze. If it is too thick, add more water a 1/4 teaspoon at a time until you achieve the desired consistency.

12. When the cinnamon rolls are completely cool, spoon the glaze over the rolls. Best served room temperature.

72

NUT IS THE NEW MILK We’re not tolerating lactose anymore Story by Matthew Kortan ‘22

Story by Alyssa Slovin ‘22

Media by Rebecca Klinger ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

What’s more Gen-Z than our obsession with hating lactose? But what is the correct replacement for the dreaded cow-milk? Creative Directors Matthew Kortan and Alyssa Slovin undertook a “scientific” experiment and tried several milk-substitutes so that you wouldn’t have to! Digital Director Rebecca Klinger shot the accompanying video which is linked at the end. Much like peanut butter and jelly, this article is best experienced in conjunction with the video.

R

ise and shine folks! It’s the dawn of a new day and we’d love for you to join us for a hearty breakfast. So, what’ll it be to drink? Oh, milk you say? Boy have we got the surprise for you! Four surprises, in fact! That’s right, this article is your one-stop-shop for all things lactose-free milk. Haven’t you heard? Lactose milk is so played out in 2020. The cows ought to take a paid vacation — Santa struggles with gas and bloating, and babies will drink whatever you put in their bottle no matter what. Not to mention, some of us were simply born with the innate sense that there exists a higher authority within the alternative milk options and will stop at nothing until the truth is discovered. Others among us simply believe that traditional milk is disgusting and foul.

No matter your issue with dairy milk, joining us on our quest to separate the contenders from the pretenders when it comes to lactose-free milk is bound to do you more good than harm. We promise. Bottoms up!

Fairlife Lactose-free 2% Milk Alyssa: This was actually a milk that I already owned for making coffee in my dorm room from my roommate’s Keurig, and I accidentally bought lactose free instead of my usual, regular cow’s milk. However, since I had only added a few splashes into some coffee, I actually had no idea what this milk tasted like alone. I expected it to taste like a waterier milk, since that’s what I’ve heard from others, but I cannot say that was my experience. As soon as I tried it, it felt off. I have a weird thing where I don’t like to sip milk and then come back to it a couple minutes later. I have to chug it, otherwise it tastes strange to me. And this milk at first sip tasted like second sip milk to me.

This may or may not be due to the fact that this milk was close to expiration … but I doubt it. This experiment was truly scientific, and no one can convince me otherwise.

Would I drink this milk again? It tasted absolutely fine in my coffee, but alone, no, I would not by choice. However, it was good enough, and I actually rebought it for Keurig purposes.

Score: 5.5/10

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Fairlife Lactose-free 2% Milk Matthew: This milk fell under the double edged sword of being the first milk I tried. All things considered, it held up pretty well. I feel the same way about this as I do diet soda: it tastes close enough to the real thing, so why not go with the healthier option? Although in the cases of soda and milk, the “real thing” also tastes like garbage in my humble opinion. But should the ungodly scenario arise that I need to consume milk again, I wouldn’t be opposed to Fairlife LactoseFree 2% being the choice.

You sacrifice some of the creaminess of regular lactose milk, but what you lose in flavour you earn back in texture. If nothing else, it goes

down smooth, like what a whiskey spokesman wants you to believe about his/her product.

For that reason, I think this milk works best as an addition to cereal or coffee above the other samples we tried.

With that said, this milk is nothing to write home about. Yet here I am writing about it. Dear mom, if you happen to read this before your next trip to the grocery store, please don’t read too much into it.

Score: 6/10

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Publix vanilla almond milk Alyssa: The idea of vanilla milk has always grossed me out, but after just one sip, I completely understood the hype behind it. I hate vanilla-scented products, such as candles or lotions, and for some reason, I thought that the sweetness would give me a headache like those overly aromatic items. However, the vanilla is a way to make non-dairy milks taste much more cow-like, likely due to the sugar from the lactose that these milks are lacking. I am not typically someone who likes something overly sweet, but it wasn’t too rich to turn me away. I’m curious how this milk would taste for anything besides straight milk consumption, which I don’t typically do, but the taste was definitely the most enjoyable out of this bunch.

However, I cannot, in good conscience, completely ignore that out of all non-dairy milks, almond milk is not very sustainable for the environment due to the outrageous amount of water that goes into growing almonds. Part of the reason for alternative milks is environmentalism, and I think this review would be sorely one-sided if neither of us mentioned that unfortunate reality that comes along with this milk substitute.

I would definitely drink this milk again, but I am also hesitant to use it for cereal, coffee, or cookie-dunking.

Score: 8/10

Matthew: It was obvious as soon as the cool eggshellcoloured liquid met my thirsting lips that the vanilla was doing the heavy lifting here. Still, this was a damn good milk. I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, but the sweetner effectively enhanced the glorious vanilla flavour, but didn’t overwhelm the solution with richness. The 8 grams of C6H12O6 captures the perfect sugar concentration. Simple and sweet. They say 8 is a lucky number for a reason, I suppose. To be blunt, this is the heroin of milk. It’s hard to get enough, and that might become dangerous.

I’ve used this stuff in cereal, added it to pasta, and hell I’ve even fed it to a cat. It passes every test with flying colours. So much so that I would even consider bathing in it just to carry the seductive scent of vanilla with me wherever I go.

But heed my warning: vanilla almond milk consumption is a slippery slope. It’s very easy to subconsciously skip past your stomach’s sugar threshold. Your stomach will feel too full. You will feel hungover. It will not be worth it. But as they say, a little goes a long way and everything in moderation. One more thing: the sweetness of this product will make it easy to forget that it does indeed, like all things on this feeble and finite earth, come to an end, just like you and me.

Sure, it didn’t come from a cow’s udder, but hell even the apples in the Garden of Eden went bad after a while. Just keep your eye on the nutrition facts and expiration date, and you’ll live happily ever after.

Score: 9/10

"Vanilla almond milk consumption is a slippery slope. It's very easy to subconsciously skip past your stomach's sugar threshold.

Your stomach will feel too full. You will feel hungover."

76

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Califia Farms Coconut Milk Alyssa: Okay, this one was bad. Our editor-in-chief warned us of the viscous texture of this milk, but nothing could have prepared us for the undesirable taste or how strangely watered down it was. As you may be able to tell from the title of this section, we accidentally bought the wrong coconut milk, and that’s on us. Unsweetened and mixed with water?

It never had a chance. I apologise to all of the coconut milk stans, but this coconut milk in particular was the worst thing that I have consumed in a while, and I regularly go to Sadler Center for meals.

Please, never bring me this milk again. I would only ever drink it if there was a glass of coconut milk on a table and either Matthew or I had to finish it to save the world. I won’t rate it a 0, mostly to spare those coco-nut milk lovers I mentioned previously.

Score: 2/10

Matthew: What the hell is this? Some kind of practical joke?

I had a dog named Coconut as a kid who I loved very much. And this twisted, vile, abomination nearly ruined every pleasant memory I had with my fuzzy little pal. This is not okay with me. The head engineer at Califia farms needs to be placed under citizen’s arrest for allowing this forsaken substance to rest inconspicuously among edible products at the grocery store. After drinking this, I felt like washing it down with a little bleach or maybe a scrumptious pus-filled pimple. That would have gotten the abhorrent taste out of my mouth.

Hey FBI, here’s an idea for you! Waterboarding an interrogation subject is so played-out these days.

So 1984. Instead, try Califia Farms Coconut Milkboarding them instead. The heinous taste in their mouth will really get them talking. On second thought, maybe this isn’t the greatest idea. After getting a lick of this milk, it’s entirely possible the suspect will prefer death to having this dirty, rotten liquid ripple down their oesophagus again. That’s how I felt after one little sip, and I wasn’t being tortured. Or was I? Score: -666/10

Flat Hat Magazine • Food + Drink

Califia Farms OAT Milk Alyssa: If you watched the video, you may have heard me describe this one with the simple words, “my only description is: oats.” That may not have been very helpful for your viewing, but “oats” was literally the only thing that came to my mind while drinking this milk. While some of these non-milks tried to be dairy milk, oat milk was only trying to be itself. I respect that originality, in both the colour and the flavour. Although it was not my favourite, I could definitely see myself adjusting to oat milk over time if need be. I am also curious to try different brands of oat milk because I have heard that some people are brand specific with their oat milk, raving about Oatly brand.

I’d definitely be willing to test the difference in my future endeavours.

I’m going to rank this milk pretty decently because, although it was weird, I was intrigued by the overwhelming oat flavour.

Score: 6.5/10

Matthew: Don’t try to ride your bike through this stuff or you’ll get stuck. But it didn’t taste bad. To me, Califia Farms Oat Milk is the most convincing piece of evidence to date that extraterrestrial life has indeed visited planet earth. This stuff is just bizarre. It makes me wonder, what exactly is going on behind the scenes at Califia Farms? Internal security stronghold? A secret society set upon bringing about a new world order through lactose alternatives? Area 51? We’ll probably never know.

This is where I’m hung up. What happens when you add this to oatmeal? Does it compound and strengthen until it eventually materialises as some kind of granular chia pet?

Upon reflecting on my experience tasting this milk in the days that have passed since, I think the answer has only become more murky. Some omnipotent being probably exists out there and harmoniously flows between all things. Until the day comes that this divine spirit whispers in my ear, I don’t suspect I’ll ever truly comprehend what happened on the fateful day that I tasted oat milk in the forest.

Or maybe the omnipotent being is the milk itself. Or maybe I just need to talk to a therapist about all this milk.

Score: 4.5/10

We thank you for tagging along on this mission to save the soul — or maybe just the stomach — of humanity. If you fancy yourself a visual learner and wish to lay your own two eyes upon the crisp, sometimes white milk, we encourage you to check out our video, directed by Rebecca Klinger, where we translate these words into action. Scan the QR Code to the right or check out the Digital section of our website to watch now. You know you want to!

80

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

WHAT WE LISTENED TO THIS YEAR

Sometimes all you want to listen to is Camp Rock’s soundtrack on repeat. Other times, only new music can fill the void in your life. Here are the 2020 hits that consumed the minds of Flat Hat Magazine staff during isolation.

Courtesy of Halsey

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Manic by Halsey On January 17th 2020, Halsey released another album titled Manic, very different from her previous works. In her new album, Halsey opens up about herself and lets herself become vulnerable, writing about finally finding her identity and learning to love herself.

This album specifically called out to me mainly because I had just left a really messy relationship.

I felt absolutely worthless, but her music made me believe that I wasn’t. Her words empowered me and others to realise their own self-worth is not decided by some guy or girl.

Here are my number three songs from her album: Coming in number three is “3am.” This song is upbeat and has a fast tempo, somewhat similar to her previous angrier albums. However, this song doesn’t express rage towards a specific person or hierarchy. It’s about herself. She’s sick of staying up late and drinking away her sorrows, then proceeding to call people to make herself feel less alone. She knows she has a problem, and she’s begging for help to break this habit in her lyrics. Also, it represents others when we too try to scream for help, but often can’t find the right way to do it and try to find other outlets to express our pain.

My second suggestion on the album for you to listen to is “killing boys.” It starts off with the words from a movie “Jennifer’s Body.” The movie

Story by Katherine Vanbourgondien ‘24 is about a girl becoming possessed by a demon and then proceeding to kill off her male classmates.

Right after the dialogue, the song picks up and Halsey begins to sing. This expresses anger towards all men, yes, but now it’s more about her becoming independent. Halsey says she doesn’t want to feel sad anymore. Her new plan is to get revenge by becoming her own person. In a way, she calls to all the girls who had their own hearts broken by a boy. Halsey tells everyone listening that we don’t need them anymore. And she couldn’t be more right.

My number one pick from this album is the song “More.” I loved this song because of the pure rawness of her voice as she expresses her desire for something she can’t have. It wasn’t until I looked up what the song was about though that made me realise why she expresses such vulnerability. The song is for her stillborn child. Halsey expresses the desire for a child she lost and so desperately wants.

Instead of saddening us though, it gives us hope.

She gives us hope that one day we will be loved.

It doesn’t have to be now, but one day, we’ll find someone we’ll love unconditionally. We just have to be patient and not be afraid to try again.

Overall, this album just expresses how Halsey has finally found herself without a romantic partner by her side. She’s strong enough to stand on her own, and she wants her listeners to know that we are as well.

82

Courtesy of Rina Sawayama

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

SAWAYAMA by Rina Sawayama I wish Rina Sawayama and I could be best friends.

That’s the first thought that appeared in my head when I first started listening to the Japanese-British singer/ songwriter’s hit single, “XS,” off of her self-titled debut album SAWAYAMA. Over quarantine, I was hopping between different Airbnbs. Between all of the moving and the chaotic news cycle, it’s safe to say that not much stayed constant — which altogether was a disorienting process.

In a time that I, like many, turned to music for answers and consolation, SAWAYAMA more than provided what I was searching for.

SAWAYAMA was the perfect quarantine album, in the sense that it helped satisfy both feelings of nostalgia and longing for life after the pandemic. Track-by-track, Rina Sawayama engages the listener to think about self-identity, society, capitalism, past relationships — all relevant topics at any point in time, but arguably even more important in a time of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty.

According to Sawayama herself, this self-titled work is her most personal. Two tracks address family instability issues, intergenerational trauma, and navigating life as the daughter of Japanese immigrants living in the United Kingdom. We are immediately introduced to this side of Saywama’s life in the album’s introductory track, “Dynasty.”

The whole album is both experimental and heavily influenced by early 2000s sounds — with “Dynasty” serving nu-metal vibes reminiscent of everyone’s favourite goth rock band, Evanescence. While “Dynasty” doesn’t set the tone for the album in its entirety, it gives us the chance to see how deep of a dive Sawayama is willing to take into her personal life and inner thoughts.

In SAWAYAMA, you can listen to Rina Sawayama’s multifaceted musical prowess. She tackles R&B, synth-pop, nu-metal, and more with ease. And much like her music, she demonstrates how Asian women are not a monolith.

83

Story by Nina Raneses ‘22

On her breakout single “XS,” she is a conscious consumer wary of the increasingly materialistic world around her — demonstrated through a bubblegum pop track that’s met by metal guitar stabs in between lines. In “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys),” Rina is uber-confident to the degree that raises a middle finger to gender norms (even dressing in drag for the track’s music video) while an infectious club beat fills the background. In this way, it is incredibly liberating to see Asian women in pop using their art to defy stereotypes in the ways that Rina Sawayama has. This is most prominently shown in the heavy metal track “STFU!” which tackles Asian stereotypes in the most riveting in-your-face way possible (yelling “shut the fuck up” over metal guitar for almost three minutes).

It is so refreshing to have an artist like Rina Sawayama to look up to, but even more so for the ways that she explores her identity through song. For me, the album’s standout track is “Akasaka Sad,” which tackles Sawayama’s double identity — feeling like an outsider in the two places she calls home, the United Kingdom and Japan. “Akasaka Sad” is where the East meets West. The production uses a synth background layered on samples of sounds from Sawayama’s Tokyo hotel room and even features a line of her singing Japanese.

The reason I’ve been so obsessed with both Rina Sawayama and her newest album is that she unapologetically shows her Asian and immigrant identities in her art. I am an Asian girl who loves pop music, but a lot of the time, it doesn’t feel like pop music loves Asian girls or Asian-ness, at least for the right reasons. When you add in self-isolation and the growing anti-Asian sentiment the pandemic has brought on, it becomes difficult to grapple with the reality of one’s identity. I have this album to thank for helping me through it all.

Courtesy of Fiona Apple

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple We all have that one artist that we turn to when we need a good cry, a scream into our pillow, or an opportunity to just hang out in our “feels” for a bit. I think that I speak for everyone when I say that the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine drew us to those emotions more than ever before. It just so happened that my artist of choice decided to drop her first album in eight years on an April morning just over one month into quarantine, when isolation and uncertainty were beginning to close in.

This artist is none other than Fiona Apple, an established singer-songwriter, lyricist, classically trained pianist, and poet. You may be familiar with her single “Criminal” and chart-topping album Tidal, which were released in 1996 when she was just 17 years old. Apple is known for her low, raspy, and raw alto voice, which soars next to her piano-driven, often jazzy melodies, while her lyrics tell brutally honest tales of struggles with mental health, abuse, and so much more. Those familiar with Apple know that she’s never been one for conventional music, with each album tackling new topics and experimenting with new sounds.

Apple’s 2020 album Fetch The Bolt Cutters is incontrovertibly her most innovative album yet, both in its instrumentation and lyrics. Its title, which Apple explained in an interview with NPR means to “Fetch your tool of liberation. Set yourself free,” unintentionally resonated on an entirely different level with an audience stuck at home, learning to adapt to a new normal, and itching for freedom from quarantine. This theme of liberation is apparent in all thirteen of the resentful, impassioned album’s tracks. To me, the phrase “fetch the bolt cutters” was a call for emotional

Story by Mary Beth Bauermann ‘24

release from the anxiety surrounding uncertainty.

Headphones in, volume cranked, I absorbed the 51 minutes of passionate, cathartic music that Fiona Apple gave us in one sitting. And wow, was it a lot to take in.

One song that particularly struck me was “Relay,” a percussion-driven track that opens with pattering drums, gradually building in momentum and power while Apple repeatedly sings the refrain before falling into a new, syncopated rhythm for the middle section. One interesting aspect of this track is its utilisation of both traditional percussion instruments and household objects to create intriguing rhythmic patterns.

Though it’s been five months since I heard it for the first time, I continue to find myself circling back to Fetch The Bolt Cutters for Apple’s moving lyrics and music. Every time I listen to the album, I find a new phrase of earworm-y musical brilliance or a compelling lyric worthy of meditation that piques my interest. While writing this article, I fell for the final refrain of “Cosmonauts”, which features Apple repeatedly shrieking “started off!”, draining every ounce of emotion out of two words that you would never have guessed could carry so much weight.

Give “Cosmonauts” a listen the next time you’re in need of a good-old scream into the void and let me know how you feel. Fetch The Bolt Cutters isn’t just the quintessential quarantine album. Rather, it’s an album that speaks to the hidden voice that resides within each of us day in, day out. It wants to see the light of day. A good first step? Fetch the bolt cutters.

84

Courtesy of Aliie X

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Cape God by Allie X I never got to see Allie X in concert. Once upon a time, in a land before coronavirus, I had intended to drive down to Los Angeles and maybe catch her live. Alas, my melancholy surrounding the impossibility of such an action is matched by the ethereal and tragic world conjured by the Canadian singer in her 2020 album Cape God. Named after the 2015 HBO documentary Heroin, Cape Cod USA, the Torontonian-turnedAngelena seeks to portray a hyper-dysfunctional East Coast life. This is only fair after her dystopian take on her move to Los Angeles in her fourth EP Super Sunset.

Allie X begins the album with the enigmatically named “Fresh Laundry.” I’ll admit that I have no idea what this song is trying to convey other than a desire for order and possibly fresh laundry. However, the beat is catchy, so I’m okay with the fact that the meaning has gone completely over my head. “Fresh Laundry” neatly segues into my favourite song of the album: “Devil I Know.” The title tells you all that you need in order to understand the message of the song — Allie X is battling with her own demons. The musical climax of the track comes about two minutes into the song during her second refrain: “I can pretend that I’m just praying now, but I’m only on my knees / I could scream, “somebody help me out,” but the wicked one is me.” I get chills every time.

The tone of the album changes with the next few songs. Up on the queue is “Regulars,” a sarcastic track about inclusion — or more accurately, the fact that 85

Allie X feels like an outsider looking in. In an interview with Apple Music, she talks about her difficulties fitting in and pleasing people in the music industry, but also with her struggles of feeling unattractive in high school.

After “Regulars” comes “Sarah Come Home.” Though Allie X wrote this song as a joke after her songwriter Sarah Hudson cancelled on her, this song can definitely be interpreted as longing for a lost friend. It’s slightly comical just how jovial this song is, but that’s Allie X for you.

Ah yes, the single for this album. “Rings a Bell” is a strange song that I don’t quite know how to make sense of. It seems nostalgic, yet it also longs for the future. The upbeat percussion of this song is to die for.

This is definitely one of those songs that I can listen to for hours. In an “AskMeAnything” on Reddit, Allie X explains that “June Gloom” is about contracting a chronic illness as a child and being forced to watch her peers live their lives while she stayed at home.

“June gloom in my room / These days, I like to stay inside / Watching the kids get high,” clearly Allie X struggles with the fact that she didn’t get to have the adolescence that her peers had — but she’s also using sarcasm to process it.

“Love Me Wrong” builds on the years’ long friendship between Allie X and South African singer Troye Sivan.

Though I will admit that I’m not a fan of Sivan’s — possibly due to an incident at VidCon 2014 where I was stampeded by a group of his fans all wearing TRXYE

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Story by Gavin Aquin ‘22 sweatshirts — this is such a great collaboration. The song is emotionally raw and hits all of the heartstrings.

The transition between that song and “Super Duper Party People” is definitely jarring. If Allie X wanted to portray dysfunctional life in a fictional New England town, then this is the track right here.

I could talk for hours about “Susie Save Your Love,” but I’ll spare everyone the details. In a collab with indie singer Mitski — the very same Mitski that graced the College with her presence in 2019 — the duo sing about the frustration of being in love with a best friend who’s dating someone you don’t like. It’s messy, it’s raw, it’s emotional and it was definitely worth Mitski breaking her tradition of not being a featured artist in other people’s songs. I have heard people say that this song is the “gay friendzone anthem” that no one knew was needed. I’m inclined to agree.

Returning to the motif of social exclusion, “Life of the Party” details Allie X’s struggle with being inebriated to the point where she feels like she is being let into social groups at parties, only to realise that she is actually being made fun of. Throughout the song, Allie X talks about being taken advantage of and being exposed to the disingenuity of others. This song is definitely a lot deeper than the upbeat fast-paced track leads one to believe.

addiction in Massachusetts, it is immediately apparent that the song “Madam X” alludes to heroin. The slowest track on the album, “Madam X” immediately makes reference to the rush of being high. “Madam X / Take my money, my self-respect / When you come around, nothing hurts / Madam X / You full me up with your emptiness / And it’s the first thing I’ve ever felt.” It’s definitely gloomy and ethereal, while being respectful to the plight of those addicted to opioids.

The title “Madam X” may itself be a reference to the 19th century painting by John Singer Sargent of a French socialite in a black dress, known for being scandalous due to its sexualising implications — possibly referencing the dangerous allure of heroin.

The final track, “Learning in Public” is a lot more upbeat, talking about Allie X’s experience with selfreflection of her past actions. Through the song, Allie X discusses learning from all that she has gone through in life and coming out on the other side better for it.

All in all, Cape God is a worthy successor to Allie X’s previous albums and EPs: CollXtion I, CollXtion II, and Super Sunset. Every single album that she has released is worth a gander for those that are curious. Allie X has been pioneering with pop and experimenting with different sounds. If you’re tired of cookie-cutter nonsense, maybe give her some of your attention.

Unless you forgot that Allie X was inspired to write this album after watching a documentary about drug 86

Courtesy of Harry Styles

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Fine Line by Harry Styles It’s summer 2015, August to be exact, in the scorching Baltimore sun, within the walls of M&T Bank Stadium thousands of people wait for One Direction to take the stage. I was one of those lucky people who was given floor seats to see the iconic men— Louis, Harry, Niall, and Liam (you are missed, Zayn) — and I could not wait to get my groove on. During this life-changing experience, Harry Styles did his infamous spit take with some of his spit landing on my own forehead. Since that day I was baptised— reborn if you will — a new woman. Harry’s second solo studio album Fine Line is his spit landing on the foreheads of the entire population, their own baptism. Beginning to end, this album is a beautiful piece of art, sung by a beautiful soul carrying a beautiful message.

“Golden” is the first song on the tracklist. Styles himself said it is a great song to remind you of driving around Malibu. I agree, it is the perfect song for driving down the PCH in a convertible with wind flowing through your hair. The music is upbeat and exciting, but the lyrics carry a deeper meaning about a relationship between two people perfect for each other but at the wrong time.

The second song on the album is “Watermelon Sugar,” a song about being in the midst of the euphoria stage of a blooming relationship. This is also a very exciting song that is perfect to jam out to, remind you of the summertime, and great to play to make you feel like everything is okay.

Next up is “Adore You” which is easily the most successful song off of the album. This is one of my 87

favourites that is also about a new relationship and adoring your partner, if you will. Or maybe it’s just about a fish. Nonetheless, a cute song that always puts a smile on my face and can cheer you up in less than a second.

“Lights Up” was the first single released from the album.

It was a perfect choice to introduce us to this new era of Harry Styles. A song about self-acceptance and being in a good place with yourself, it set the tone for the album overall about being okay with who you are. It was a completely different sound from his first album, and it did take me a second to get used to, but it is a banger nonetheless and did not leave me disappointed.

Following the pop vibes of the first four songs is “Cherry.” This song is great at displaying the emotions following a relationship where your former partner has moved on and is seemingly doing better. Jealousy is what sticks out the most, being upset that you couldn’t make them as happy as they deserve but wanting them to be happy even if it’s at the hands of someone else. It’s a powerfully emotional song that even includes a voice memo of Styles’s ex. “Falling” is next which is actually a song that Harry said he wrote in just about 20 minutes.

After listening to this song, which straight up is great to cry to, it’s incredible it only took that long. It has big sad vibes filled with raw emotion and I feel it is a great song to follow “Cherry” to kick you when you’re already down.

These two songs are important for other reasons because they show it’s okay to be vulnerable, it’s healthy to address and process your emotions, and music is a great outlet for when you don’t know when or where to start.

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Story by Sabrina El Shanti ‘22 “To Be So Lonely” brightens the mood a little bit. The message is sort of like you either want to be with this person or you don’t want anything to do with them. It’s addressing that you know you’re not perfect, that you have your issues and living with the consequences as a result of that. The beat is killer and is my second favourite off the album. Next up is “She,” a universal favourite.

I have seen many different interpretations of this song and I think it’s amazing that songs can have different meanings for different people — a love that got away, Styles being in touch with his feminine side, or someone random you saw on your way to work. I have listened to this song many times with the different interpretations in mind and the song truly sounds different if you think of it with a different point of view. Musically, it is dark and mysterious, includes a stellar guitar solo, and gives off the sense of ‘70s classic rock. One of the most unique songs on the album is “Sunflower, Vol. 6.” This entire song is unpredictable both lyrically and musically. I really haven’t heard a song similar to it. Being infatuated with your partner and enjoying all the small things of a relationship whether it’s brushing your teeth or sharing an innocent kiss in the kitchen, but never getting bored of them and wanting to know everything about them is what makes this song so cute, adorable even.

“Canyon Moon” is one of those songs that you can’t help but smile and snap your fingers to. It features a bit of whistling which adds to the overall happiness of this song and makes you want to join in. It helps you think of a happier time and prompts a sense of optimism when dealing with an uncertain future. It definitely is

underrated, and the album would simply be incomplete without it. Following that is “Treat People with Kindness,” a song named after Styles’s most popular phrase and an overall important thing to keep in mind. It talks about being happy with yourself and living in a world where we all can be kind to one another despite the situations that arise. A friend described it better than I could when she said, “it sounds like it belongs at the end of a kids movie” and I wholeheartedly agree.

Fine Line is what you’d hope would end this cultural reset of an album. It crescendos and reaches a climax that involves string instruments and a repeating line of “we’ll be alright” that is so powerful I get chills every time. This song deals with being in a relationship with both parties knowing they shouldn’t be together. They try and hold on for as long as they can by brushing off their problems and focusing on mending their relationship through other outlets. They both, however, remain unsatisfied and distant. I’ll say it again, this song is powerful for the impact the music gives the listener, how you can hear the emotion in Styles’s voice, and how genuine it feels.

Overall, I believe Fine Line deserves to be in everyone’s music library because there is a song for everyone. It gives us an insight into Styles’s mind, and I appreciate his vulnerability and him being comfortable sharing his emotions with the world. This album is great to catalyse some self-reflecting and is a piece of art that will transcend time for generations to come.

88

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID LEFKOWITZ Story by Ellie Voorhis ‘22 David Lefkowitz ’22 is one of the oddest people I have ever met, in the best way possible. I can confidently say this because I have had the privilege of knowing him since high school. David relentlessly pursues his ambitions — whether they be creating a disturbingly accurate puppet of our ninth grade teacher or writing unique music with complex instrumentals and lyrics. His latest album, “Greatest” “Hits,” perfectly encapsulates both his talent and wit.

After catching up over kayaking at Lake Matoaka, we settled down for a distanced discussion in the middle of the abandoned amphitheater.

Listening to David speak reminded me why I am so honoured to call him a friend. While I would never say it to his face, his passion and energy inspires me. The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.

Ellie Voorhis: What made you want to become a musician? Did you have a “Whoa I want to do that” moment or was it more of a gradual thing?

David Lefkowitz: So I started playing mandolin when I was 9, mostly because my dad read a newspaper article about a girl who was good at mandolin and was like “Yo, you should play mandolin.” I had never heard of it, but I started taking lessons from this guy at a local guitar store, and then when I was about to turn 13, I switched over to guitar cause my favourite part of mandolin was always the chords. So I switched over to my mom’s old guitar from college and I don’t know, I liked it. I liked that one a lot more pretty quickly. I didn’t sing at all, I just played the songs she gave me, didn’t listen to a lot of music, certainly didn’t care about writing music and then it was right before my high school freshman orientation. I was 13 years old and my mom and I were in a Lowe’s parking lot listening

to a CD of The Best of Bob Dylan my guitar teacher gave me, and I was like “shoot if they let that guy sing, they’ll probably let me sing, right?

I could do that.” And it sort of all spun out from there.

EV: Is that when you started writing music?

DL: I started trying when I was 13, I started finishing songs when I was 14. And even 14 through 17, I still have those notebooks, I wrote a lot of songs. Not a lot of them are still in the repertoire. There is one deep in the internet on SoundCloud somewhere, but I still play a lot of songs I wrote when I was 18 which is kind of a weird thing to think about.

EV: How do you think your music has evolved since then?

DL: I know a lot more about music now because I’m a music major. Even my guitar playing has 90

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

changed a lot. Between when I released my first EP, which was right after right after graduation, and the end of my freshman year here, I developed some sort of a guitar style.

Nothing groundbreaking, just there’s a way I play guitar that I think is very much like my thing now, just the way I fingerpick and that has developed over time too.

EV: I know there’s a divide between guitarists over the value of theory. How has being a music major impacted your music?

DL: I mean the stylistic thing was less a product of a music major-dom and more just my playing and what I was playing. But certainly, in songwriting, it’s played a big role.

Just actually knowing how chords fit together more than just the basics has been really big.

Understanding music has opened a sort of a new dimension to it. I’m glad I didn’t know it when I was teaching myself to write songs, but now that I’ve kind of got a handle on that, it’s fun taking that left turn, so I’m glad I waited. Well, I didn’t wait. I just couldn’t figure it out and now I have a professor. I’m glad I’m learning it now, but I’m glad I didn’t learn sooner at the same time.

a fourth-century monk. There’s a line in there that’s “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

EV: How would you describe your music to someone?

DL: The thing that seems to have proven true the most has been “your dad would love it.” I don’t think it’s that sad, but I’ve been told it’s sad. It’s dad folk, you know. There are a lot of jokes in the songs that I’m still waiting for people to catch. There is a song that my friend pointed out is like a folk diss-track in a way. it’s not actually a diss track, but the opening verse to the song is “Once I was a child, it’s true. Ignorant in heart and mind. The difference, dear, between me and you, is I have left that life behind” which I think is funny. She was like “That’s a diss track” and I was like “Oh no.”

EV: What made you release your first album, “Greatest” “Hits” on Spotify over quarantine?

EV: You’re also a religious studies major, does that impact your music too?

DL: A lot of my friends were bugging me about putting my songs up on Spotify so they could put them on playlists. It has been really nice because people just understand Spotify a little better. I like Bandcamp a lot better than Spotify, but Spotify is much easier to convince people to actually listen to, which is why I did a compilation kind of thing. Heavy air quotes on the “Greatest” “Hits.”

DL: Definitely the lyrics. I think there are definitely songs where you can hear it. I have quotes embedded in certain songs. I’ve gotten to read a lot of very cool stuff as a result of being a religious studies major and what you read is going to influence a lot of what you write — especially the poetic stuff because I’m reading a lot of the oldest poetry in the world so it’s pretty cool. There are songs where you can hear lines from the Bible or the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads. The whole song Francis of Assisi is basically my religious studies song. Francis of Assisi was

It was partially for that reason and partially because I didn’t want to pay to put four EPs up.

I finally had the money to do it from working over at Old Navy that I was like I’m going to do it now. It was less quarantine and more of the fact that I was working full time and could spend 100 bucks to do it, because I’m not making that back anytime soon. You get 0.3 cents a stream. I have this idea of sneaking into Swem at some point and pulling up Spotify on all the computers and just looping the album. Swem computers don’t have speakers so no one would know, it’s just running in the background but racking up the streams. I could make upwards of five dollars doing that.

91

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

EV: Do you have a favourite song from the album?

DL: I think lyrically I’m proudest of “Death of Me” and I’m really really happy with how the actual recording for “Harvest Moon Light” came out. Something I would like to do more of is producing and recording other folks. I don’t know if the media center is open.

EV: Are there any specific lyrics in “Death of Me” that you’re most proud of?

DL: All of the verses have a certain turn of phrase that I’m just kind of proud of. The third verse has “Time is not for lovers it only clips their wings and dawn is just a dirge that all the brokenhearted sing.” Then the fourth verse is “Don’t worry about tomorrow, just think about today, what makes a ring worth anything is nothing gold can stay” The lines that I end up liking the most, I like what I’m saying in them but I also like the way they sound coming out of my mouth. Those, I think, are perfect examples because it has like a little bit of embedded rhyme and of alliteration. That was one where I came up with that and I was like “Nice!”

EV: Out of all the aspects of creating music — songwriting, singing, recording, producing — DL: The album art — EV: What’s the hardest part for you?

DL: I think recording is hard because it’s just kind of gruelling at times. You can go in and work for hours and nothing works. There have been times I would walk into Swem with six different songs, like maybe I’ll record this, maybe I’ll record that and I just couldn’t get anything. I would’ve been there for like five hours and I left with nothing. But when it clicks, it really clicks. The nice thing about doing it alone and playing the type of music I play is when it was really working I recorded “Death of Me,” the redo of “Someday, Honey” and “So Spins the Earth” all in the same four-hour stretch.

93

Then I went back at a different time and I added some stuff to it and made it sound nice. When it works it works, but when it doesn’t it sucks.

EV: Is Swem the main place you make your music?

DL: There is one EP called “So Spins the Earth” ‘ that was recorded in Swem with digital equipment, and I worked to make it sound nice sonically. ’Cause Swem has really nice software and gear. If you record in Swem you have access to thousands of dollars worth of stuff: the software, gear and microphones. It took me a while to learn how to use it all. But that was only the one, and that came out in late February. All the other ones pretty much have been recorded on this little four-track cassette recorder I have.

It does not sound amazing but I really like the way it sounds. I like the simplicity of it and the limitation of it. Two EPs have been recorded on that and a Walmart karaoke microphone, and you can hear it.

EV: Do you prefer those recordings or the ones with Swem’s thousands of dollars of equipment?

DL: I don’t know if I prefer one, they’re just very different. I’m really proud of what I ended up with, having done the Swem thing. I’d like to do that again at some point, but at the same time I like the immediacy of the cassette, it’s very, what you’re hearing is what you’re getting. It doesn’t hide anything, you can’t edit, you’re just limited.

You have to be good to sound good. I don’t know if I do, but what you’re hearing is what was happening into the microphone which I like. It’s harder but it’s a lot of fun so I don’t know.

EV: Is there anywhere on campus that inspires your writing, or what inspires it in general?

DL: If I knew I think I’d be a lot more prolific.

There are very specific instances I can think of, like “The Hand That Signs” was written on the Sunken Garden on this unseasonably warm

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

February day. “Death of Me” was funny, I was writing it in my head as I was walking to Botetourt from my radio show at like 11 o’clock at night freshman year. I kept repeating it to myself so I wouldn’t forget and I got three verses in and stopped and pulled off the trail and typed it on my phone so I wouldn’t forget. Then it was like 3am in Dinwiddie and the walls were so thin and I was just playing and singing so quietly into my voice memos so I wouldn’t forget it. It’s different for all of them, but I definitely have very specific memories tied to very specific places.

"Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” is a triumph of songwriting and I will stand by that. She wrote it when she was 17, the melody is amazing.

It is like a perfect pop-rock song.

There’s this cool guitar line that comes in at like a minute and 45 seconds in the left earbud that is just so cool. I can talk for hours about Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.”

I remember when I needed to practice for Homebrews and I didn’t wanna go all the way from Botetourt to Ewell, but I couldn’t practice in Botetourt because it was too late at night. I would go out to the Keck Lab, like the BoteDock, and I would play there. It was very spooky, because it would be midnight and I didn’t have a light, so it was me in the dark playing and singing at top volume. But you know, whatever works. I serenaded a couple of deer around those months.

EV: Is there any reason for that in particular?

EV: If you could pick anywhere to do a performance, where would it be?

DL: The abandoned amphitheatre is probably number one. It was sad, I actually had a lot of gigs of various sizes lined up for the second-half spring semester that didn’t end up happening. I was gonna be playing guitar in someone’s Meridian show and Chi O-Rodeo. I got paid for a gig recently for the first time and that was huge.

EV: What gig?

DL: I played outside of LOKAL Café and there’s a tip jar so I’m at like nine dollars in tips because the wine moms dropped me a five-dollar bill.

EV: Go wine moms!

DL: Go wine moms! But yeah, they actually paid me which is nuts. This is the first time I’ve got paid to play in front of people. I didn’t really play in front of people until I went to college though.

DL: The big thing in college was just who I would be playing for. I love my parents and they’re very supportive of my music but the idea of playing at Sam Ash and my parents and these people I’ve known for years being there just felt weird to me. Not scary, just kinda wrong. But then playing here felt a lot more natural and I think I was able to start doing it early enough that it felt natural, I think I couldn’t start now.

EV: Have you had a favourite venue or you’ve done?

DL: The Meridian has my heart fully. I’ve gotten to play all sorts of different types of things there in different types of settings. I’ve gotten to play there with my band, I’ve gotten to play there solo, I’ve gotten to play there in a duo with my friend Josie. Also, when AMP does the Returner’s Brew’s on Sadler Terrace that’s always really fun.

EV: That’s so exciting. Do you do more solo work or band stuff nowadays?

DL: It’s mostly solo stuff, the band is really fun too, but we’re all just busy and there are five of us. And now my amp is locked in the Meridian and I’m gonna need to contact Williamsburg PD to get it back, so I haven’t really been playing much electric. Now I’m playing bass in Natalie Rowland’s band, Future Bigfoot, which is really 94

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

fun. I don’t really play bass but I enjoy playing bass cause I just get to sit back and watch everyone else and just sort of focus on what I’m playing.

EV: Okay, I must know: what’s your hottest musical take?

DL: Ooh Okay. I’m gonna give you two — one is that the first Matchbox Twenty album is actually very good. The second is that Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” is a triumph of songwriting and I will stand by that. She wrote it when she was 17; the melody is amazing.

It is like a perfect pop-rock song. There’s this cool guitar line that comes in at like a minute and 45 seconds in the left earbud that is just so cool. I can talk for hours about Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” Damnit. I know that’s gonna be the pull quote from the interview. “I could talk

for hours about Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” — David Lefkowitz.”

EV: Are there any musicians at the College that you really enjoy?

DL: Natalie Rowland — awesome singersongwriter, super cool person. One of the only people who makes me enjoy ukulele. Ben Heath — the best drummer in the world. Josie Adolf —amazing bass player, pretty good housemate. Also, Emma Shahin, Corey Bridges, and Brigid Cyan.

Courtesy images David Lefkowitz

want more flat hat magazine? follow us

@flathatmagazine

@flathatmagazine

@flathatmagazine

@flathatmagazine

Twampy Road

The History of Album Art Story by Matthew Kortan ‘22 Photos by Rebecca Klinger ‘22 Gorilla Modelled by Drew Kittredge ‘24

Banana Modelled by Alyssa Slovin ‘22 Dinosaur Modelled by Ellie Kurlander ‘24 Bobo the Clown Modelled by Kennedy Hess ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

A naked baby, the combusting Hindeburg, a metrosexual man riding a purple motorcycle, a rotten banana, and four guys with mop-top haircuts all walk into a bar.

What could go wrong???? ever judge an album by its cover. Wait a minute, that’s not how the saying goes. So, when it comes to literature, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, right? Got it. So why can’t we say the same about music?

Years ago, the music industry made itself at home behind enemy lines. That is to say, if “visual art” is married to drawing, colour, sculpture, etc., then music is the mistress. How else could you explain MTV to an invading alien race? Sure, music at its core is all about creating sonic sensations that satisfy the soul. But let’s be honest, sometimes what you see leaves a greater impact than what you hear — no matter the context. This is why an old roommate of mine took me for an infant defiler after I left a copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind on my desk. This is why referring to Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You as a “stripped-down” LP as a quirky little quip works despite the lack of acoustics on the record.

N

So long as it stays within a square, an artist can say pretty much whatever they want to on their album … before anyone hears their song. Take My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless for example.

On the cover is an odd-angled photograph of a guitar that is so heavily filtered, discoloured, and altered that it becomes something else entirely.

The viewer might not recognise the image as a guitar upon first glance, but they recognise it is something ethereal. Much like the album that defined the shoegaze genre itself, it is a radiant, delicate, blissfully confused sonic wonder. When you feel warmed by the fuzz-distortion and reverb emanating through the cardboard sleeve or Spotify screen before you even press play, the authority of the album cover has announced its resounding presence.

But enough references to the ‘90s.. Just about 99

every aspect of the current state of music raises the question: how in the hell did it come to this?

Album covers are no exception. If Twenty One Pilots think their colour schemes make them cryptic and unique, they’ve obviously never heard of the Beatles, which is coincidentally where our story sprouts. But we’re not here to talk about the white album. No, in fact in terms of sleeve design, another Beatles classic, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is the polar opposite of its successor. Come to think of it, this album’s cover was entirely unlike anything that came before it as well — Beatles or beyond. It was the landmark release that has defined the terms of cover art as we know them today.

Before Sgt. Pepper’s release in 1967, album covers were fairly tame. Vinyl records were slipped into brown paper fittings that served more to protect the album than to characterise it. However, music is a commodity, and in the late 1930s record companies started to think of its packaging as a blank canvas. “Album art” is born, and it immediately takes off. The public eats the colourful new covers up. The idea of having a tangible vestige of an album’s creator to take home was an enchanting novelty. It’s similar to how every thirteen year old felt scrolling through Niall Horan’s Instagram page — before the great One Direction iconoclasm of 2016, of course.

Naturally, “personality shots” (i.e. physical photographs of the band’s members) became the most popular embellishment in the early days of sleeve decoration. Then they got boring fast.

Lots of smiling white faces, three-piece suits, and snapping fingers — looking at you, Buddy Holly.

Kudos to Elvis Presley for introducing all the lovely ladies outside the record store window to the primal ecstasy of rock’n’roll in 1956 by thinly veiling his polarising “Elvis Pelvis” grayscale

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

photo behind a colourful funhouse font (the Clash would later repurpose Presley’s self-titled debut for the cover of London Calling). And as it turns out, four lads from Liverpool were listening and looking on as well.

As the god-like repertoire of the Fab Four grew to unheralded proportions during the early-tomid ‘60s, so too did their commercial value. They satirically titled their fourth album “Beatles for Sale,” after all. With every new release, this band generated seismic shifts across the entire musical landscape, and with the release of Sgt. Pepper, this idea of a band’s unrivaled status as the pulse of all pop-culture manifested itself upon an album cover like never before. With this cover, the Beatles found a way to yet again raise the bar and set themselves apart from their peers. A cover so iconic, it almost didn’t even matter that one of the most legendary pieces of music ever recorded was on the inside.

Deification isn’t free, though. At the time, Sgt. Pepper’s cover was the most expensive ever produced.. The band’s four members stand stoically in their brightly coloured, old-school military garb. Behind them, an ensemble of faces, presumably the band’s interests and influences.

Among this cast of characters are child stars, prize fighters, intellectual gurus, and even fellow musicians — including younger portraits of the Beatles themselves. The album immediately engages the observer who tries to identify each of the 58 cultural icons featured on the cover. The cast of characters was handpicked

by the albums designers Peter Blake and Jaan Haworth, along with band members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.

The cultural cross-section includes the likes of Karl Marx, Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe, Oscar Wilde, and Sonny Liston, to name a few.

Additionally, the cover also features portraits of the Beatles in their younger years. The existential commentary within this work runs deep, as the band deconstructs the arbitrary nature of social distinction, challenges the past, and sets out to dictate the future. Not to mention, it’s a whole lot of fun to look at. It was also the first album to include song lyrics on the outside packaging, using the back cover as a place for listeners to either sing along or further ponder the intellectual merit of the project.

After Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, critics and casual fans alike could not shut up about the controversial cover. Recording artists no longer viewed the record sleeve as merely a marketing tool. The Beatles proved that the aesthetic component of music speaks just as loudly as the music itself in an artistic sense. And in the late ’60s and early ’70s musical content started to become increasingly expressive of sentimental ideas, moving away from more shallow pop songs about love when drugabusive culture permeated the mainstream – another movement in which the Beatles took the lead. Prolific poetic lyricists as well, like Bob Dylan, were responsible for making music more emotionally personable. As a result, album covers became visual symbols of identity for fans.

100

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Merchandisers provided them the opportunity to literally wear their heart on their sleeve as album art tee shirts rose to popularity.

Enter post-punk pioneers, Joy Division. This band’s run was short lived; they formed after attending an infamous Sex Pistols gig in Manchester in 1976. Four years and just two fulllength albums later, they were gone following the suicide of singer Ian Curtis. The surviving members would go on to form the legendary synth-pop group New Order, who boast some solid album covers in their own catalogue. But the band had already been immortalised, thanks to their debut effort with Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures. Tonally, the album played around with using the bass as lead melodic guitar — creating a droning despondency that would come to define the post-punk genre. Six-strings were sprinkled in where necessary to elevate

101

the composition and pay homage to the punky punch of the album’s ultimate influences. Four decades later, fans of Unknown Pleasures are haunted by Curtis’ ghastly croons.

What really resonates about the album today though is all those damn shirts. Hell, I’m wearing one right now while I write about it. During the recording of Unknown Pleasures, the band struggled over how they wanted to design the sleeve. Naturally, they turned to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy for inspiration. This is where they struck gold in an image of the first recorded radio waves from a pulsar circa 1919.

The fragile lines rise, fall, and overlap to form what almost looks like a cluster of twodimensional mountains crawling over each other to get off the page. Erratic, yet natural; factory records’ resident designer Peter Saville

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

w

“What really resonates about the album today though is all those damn shirts. Hell, I’m wearing one right now while I write about it. During the recording of Unknown Pleasures, the band struggled over how they wanted to design the sleeve. Naturally, they turned to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy for inspiration.”

simply inverted the colours to feature a black background and white lines, and the rest is history. This eerie image somehow still feels like the closest we’ll ever come to understanding the truth behind the music inside and by extension the complexities of a young man in Curtis, who’s will to live we can hear fleeting with every line.

It didn’t happen immediately, but the legend of Joy Division and the memory of Curtis gradually accumulated popularity — alongside New Order’s music — throughout the ’80s. By the latter half of the decade the stage was set, thanks to a surging fashion trend known as the graphic band tee. Unknown Pleasures shirts, simply black crew-neck tees featuring the album’s artwork, were gone as soon as they hit the shelves. A new batch was printed, but that didn’t last long either. As the years went on, the sales figures proved to be no fluke. The success of the shirts has catapulted the status of the album it depicts into an entirely new realm. Designer brands such as Raf Simons and Supreme each released Joy Division themed collections in the early 2000s. Now, most fans of late ’70s post-punk, even during the post-punk revival at the turn of the century, typically wouldn’t wear designer clothes. It didn’t matter, these collections still sold in staggering numbers across all demographics.

Joy Division produced a critically acclaimed masterpiece within post-punk. But let’s be honest, post-punk is but one of many semiobsolete subgenres of rock, with a modest following at best. The shirts shouldn’t be so popular given Joy Division’s fanbase, yet they are. Why? Simply put, the album cover is cool.

From the most devout followers of Joy Division to those that have never even heard of the band and everything in between, I have seen them

all don the fabled shirts. For fans, it’s a matter self-identification. For others, it’s simply an edgy congregation of scribble-scrabbled lines that evokes the “too cool to care” attitude; this is alternative culture 101. The unifying factor is that Unknown Pleasures is uniquely minimalistic in sound and especially in style. It says so much without showing much more than a few horizontal lines bent out of shape in black and white. The shirt is a mystery and those wearing it are begging to have it solved, to feel different or interesting, even if they don’t listen to the music.

They are literally covering themselves in bareboned brilliance without cheapening the legacy of the record itself. In truth, the album cover and the music itself are mirror images of one another: imaginative, ground-breaking, enigmatic. It is a perfect example of symbiosis between sonic and visual art, so who cares if a buck or two is to be made from fake fans on the side?

In certain cases, an album — or even an entire band — might owe its stardom to the design on a record’s sleeve, even if it isn’t mutually beneficial. Such is the case of The Velvet Underground & Nico. This self-titled, collaborative output didn’t sell many copies in its day. But it is now considered one of the most influential albums ever made. In fact, it is rumored that among the few that did purchase this album upon its release in 1967, all were inspired to start a band of their own. I’m willing to bet, though, that of those lucky few that did stumble upon this record in its heyday, most of them were only convinced to buy it because they recognised the image on the sleeve.

It began with a bang, sort of. New York icon and godfather of pop art Andy Warhol needed an act for his Exploding Plastic Inevitable: a 102

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

w

When I first showed this album to my sister her response was unforgettable: “that jackass really made an album?”

series of drug-induced mergers of all things art.

Although Jim Morrison of the Doors frequented these events, a mainstream act would not suffice.

Warhol wanted something really weird. Were you surprised? Anyway, he eventually settled on a little-known local avant-garde group known as The Velvet Underground, fronted by Lou Reed and stylistically driven by the classically trained John Cale. Between 1966 and 1967, the Velvets played to the ears of Warhol’s New York elite until they finally decided to record an album.

Studio time was expensive in the late ’60s, and The Velvet Underground were strapped for cash. Naturally, they asked the rich and famous artist by whom they were employed to fund the project. Vehemently, Warhol agreed — he had grown to like his in-house band — but not without conditions. First, he recruited German model Nico to join the band as a female vocalist alongside Reed, despite Reed’s wishes. Second, Warhol wanted to design the cover. To this, there were no objections. Welcome to using album art as a marketing tool: exhibit A. However, the record was made and released to relatively little fanfare. The album’s cover was another story. Like Unknown Pleasures, The Velvet Underground & Nico’s sleeve featured a minimalist design: white background with the image of a rotting banana front and center, in Warhol’s signature style. To complete the setup the name “Andy Warhol” is scripted along the lower right-hand corner. Nowhere on the front cover do the name of the band or the album appear. When I first showed this album to my sister her response was unforgettable: “that jackass really made an album?” The back and inside covers show a little more gratitude to those that actually produced the album with black and white photographs of band members in the studio … as well as a picture of Warhol looking through a tambourine front and center, for good measure.

103

The banana became one of Warhol’s most recognised works. Meanwhile, the fledgling Velvet Underground struggled for mainstream recognition. After the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico, Reed and company parted with both Nico and Warhol. They had made enough to fund a second album, and chose to do so without the authoritative presence of the larger-than-life artist. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable came to an end. Meanwhile, the Velvets recorded three more albums before disbanding in 1970, each of which are today considered masterful in their own right, albeit to a slightly lesser degree than their debut under Warhol.

I have a shirt for this album too, and I must say it is quite the conversation starter. Obviously, it is called pop art for a reason. While it took nearly 30 years for The Velvet Underground & Nico to attain the notoriety it deserves among rock critics, it still has not escaped the colossal shadow of the image that graces its cover. Even with their revolutionary sound that fused Avant Garde with ’60s rock’n’roll, essentially inventing alternative rock as we know it in all forms in the process (yes, they were that influential), The Velvet Underground & Nico is still colloquially referred to as “The Banana album” or “The Andy Warhol album” signaling the power visual art can hold over music if it is allowed to go unchecked.

The band thought they could deploy Warhol’s massive wealth and influence to promote their project. Instead, the reverse happened, and Warhol was able to propel his own artistic vision into an entirely new medium and appeal to a different industry, using The Velvet Underground as a sort of ploy. Still, it’s hard to imagine the band would have ever caught on with the mainstream without Warhol, and it’s impossible even now to untie the legacies of the two artists, for better or for worse. While they might not have carried equal weight in propelling one

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

another to recognition, the visual and sonic components of The Velvet Underground & Nico proudly stand the test of time together as a prime example of awe-inspiring artistic expression across multiple media wrapped up within a single project: exactly how Warhol planned his Exploding Plastic Inevitable to turn out, I’m sure.

But enough about antiquated albums, right?

You’ve got a point, so let me bring you up to speed. The rise of digital media didn’t quite overhaul the visual side of music in the same way it changed the primary audible mode of consumption for music time and time again.

People didn’t trudge to a record store to pick up physical copies anymore, but still most downloading and streaming platforms put cover designs front and center. In fact, when Apple launched Apple music in 2015, a big point of emphasis in creating the interface layout was the album cover. The company made sure these images couldn’t be avoided. They are huge, clear, and centrally located. Spotify have already been using a similar layout for years, and still

do today. Thanks to the vast libraries of such platforms, users can access and interact with large quantities of album covers at the touch of a button. It isn’t necessarily tangible, but the potential for observation and securitization of designs is unprecedented.

Speaking of design, it too has seen immense change in the years since Unknown Pleasures was released in 1979. In the ’80s there was everything from Bruce Springsteen’s ass in a pair of frayed blue jeans to Michael Jackson’s oft-parodied lean and crisp white suit on the seismic Thriller. You name it, some ’80s album probably has it on the cover. Oh, and there were a lot of flowers. Then in the ’90s, things became rather grotesque and downright weird. See the demented, bulbous eyeballoids on Pixies’ Trompe Le Monde or the self-immolation of a Vietnamese monk on Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled for reference. During this decade, abstraction became the norm, and sleeve designs saw heavy experimentation with computer generated images. The results were about what you’d expect. A little unsettling but still somehow tells

104

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

you everything you need to know about ’90s pop culture. The cover and similarly off-putting music video for Eiffel 65’s single “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” are a perfect example. Those little blue aliens are something to behold.

Clearly change has been the only constant over the extensive history of album art, and the 21st century has been no exception. But it’s not quite what you’d expect. As soon as the postpunk revival and pop-punk surge of the early aughts took their dying breaths, rock and its subsidiaries’ days atop the heap were numbered.

Hip hop had been on the rise since the late ’80s, and its merger with dance pop proved to be the fatal blow of that good ole time rock’n’roll.

This coup d’état atop the charts was not without consequence for album covers. In the last decade or two, we’ve seen a return to the preSgt. Pepper “personality covers,” but with a modern twist. While self-indulgence has always been embedded in hit music, there seems to be 105

a boatsful nature innate to hip-hop and pop that rock hasn’t really been able to replicate. Nice try, hair metal. In other words, music of the 21st century has made it cool to like what you see in the mirror once again. And that’s good news if you happen to be incredibly photogenic like Taylor Swift or the Weekend. Why dig through a dusty old encyclopedia for hours on end looking for a cover shot when you can just snap a selfie and call it a day? But these are not your standard Buddy Holly snoozer sleeves of old either.

Photoshop saves the day! Just take a look at Lady Gaga’s screeching off-coloured bust between the handlebars of a shimmering chopper on Born This Way to get the idea. A personality cover that actually has personality … who would have thought? Not Buddy Holly.

Not everything is as self-centered as it seems though. Because artists of today fully grasp the concept that they themselves are not the personality addressed in the music. Let’s examine

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. There are plenty of personalities on that cover, none of which are Lamar himself. The reason the grayscale portrait upon the White House lawn works so well is because Lamar is embracing the fact that the story of To Pimp a Butterfly is not his alone to tell (yes, I know the lyrics to the lead single i, that’s beside the point). With this cover Lamar effortlessly anoints himself the voice of a generation. The group depicted on the cover demands a word with those who dare to slap on a pair of headphones and listen. You can sure as hell count me in.

When I was home over the summer, I overheard a conversation between two friends. One proclaimed to the other that he’d read an article hypothesising that every single unique song melody will have theoretically been recorded in one way or another by the year 2030. I haven’t the slightest idea how on Earth one would go about quantifying such a metric, but it got me thinking: could we really be running out of music? This is the stuff that keeps me up at night. Anyway, true or untrue, I can at least console myself in the idea that even if all the music sounds the same, nothing can hinder the evolution of album art. Experimenting with new mediums, forays into abstract concepts, or simply reimagining the classics; with every new album drop comes something new — at least on the sleeve. “Never judge a book or album by its cover,” we’ve heard it all before. Maybe the appropriate thing to say should be “never judge a cover by its album,” because each one sure seems to have a hell of a lot to say for itself.

Album art courtesy of: Harvest Records - Capitol Music Group Qwest Records Warner Music Group RCA Records Verve Records

106

Flat Hat Magazine • Culture

SPIRALLING Flat Hat Magazine staff all came together to make a comprehensive playlist of what we listened to while struggling to stay afloat and/ or twiddling our thumbs at home. Check out our playlist entitled “SPIRALLING TOWARDS NORMALCY,” by scanning the Spotify code below or clicking the link on our website.

107

Flat Hat Magazine • Culture

“Kyoto” by Phoebe Bridgers Nothing captures the essence of 2020 more than Phoebe Bridgers debuting her song “Kyoto” from her bathtub on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. The song’s upbeat instrumentals are contrasted by lyrics that capture the loneliness and isolation one feels when beginning a new journey. While Bridgers is recounting her time traveling abroad, her message still applies to anyone who is struggling to cope with their emotions in lockdown. So whenever you get the urge to sit in a bathtub and be lonely in 2020, this is the song for you.

— Ellie Kurlander ’24 “Susie Save Your Love” by Allie X and Mitski A song about unrequited same-sex love in 2020; feels a bit on the nose, doesn’t it? Yes, but Allie X’s and Mitski’s silky smooth voices make this track come to life, rendering it a certifiable must-listen. Maybe it’s just me, but with the quarantine forcing my return to my hometown, catching up with old friends has also meant catching up with old feelings. This song is basically four minutes of “too relatable.” If you know, you know.

— Gavin Aquin ’22 “Cooped Up” by Tedadore This song is straight up about 2020.

Tedadore’s debut song as a solo artist. Just listen to it. You’ll understand.

— Rebecca Klinger ’22 “Physical” by Dua Lipa Dua Lipa released the song of the year in January! How long ago was that now?

Was it 9 months? 12? 14? Time is an abstraction. Regardless, this synth-pop bop immediately transports me to an ’80s

inspired dreamworld. An entrancing doubleentendre, Lipa’s repeated chants of “Let’s Get Physical” remind me of the fact that the quarantine has made me miss the physical touch of other human beings — while also capturing that quirky zeitgeist of everyone wanting to stay fit during the lockdowns. Is this on my night time run playlist? Certainly.

— Gavin Aquin ’22 “Swamp Cat King” by Bennett Wales and the Relief When nonessential businesses started closing their doors and toilet paper was nowhere to be found, a lot of us were sitting at home watching the show Tiger King on Netflix. The show’s release was perfectly timed for most of the US to be sitting at home, bored enough to watch as each episode was wilder than the previous. This song is representative of early quarantine, referencing Joe Exotic’s rise to fame, and the push to release him from prison which all comes together when Bennett Wales starts repeating “All hail the Swamp Cat King.”

During the initial push to support local businesses, Bennett Wales and the Relief, a local act from my hometown of Virginia Beach, released this song. The combination of blues and rock is reminiscent of more optimistic times, when all that seemed to matter was if Carol Baskin really killed her first husband.

— Rebecca Klinger ’22 “Supalonely” by Benee This was a dependable bop of early quarantine. Waking up to another day of Zoom classes with not a friend or acquaintance in sight made this song extremely fitting, since it’s exclusively about the sensations of being alone in moments of personal crisis. Sound familiar to anyone?

— Ethan Brown ’20 108

Flat Hat Magazine • Culture

certain senator-from-Vermont’s exclusion from the ballots this election season? You’re St Vincent is an iconic musician who everyone in luck. Allow me to introduce you to your should give a listen to, and this song gives an power-chord pacifier, your electric elixir, your intimate portrayal of anxiety and dissociation, next dip into the Green Mountain state’s set in the dramatic scene of a highway car wealth of spoils after you polish off that pint accident. For my moments of pure angst and of Ben & Jerry’s. woe this spring, “Marrow” was the perfect — Matthew Kortan ’22 soundtrack, enabling me to pretend I was stumbling around in the Arizona desert rather “Heart of Glass” by Miley Cyrus than stuck in a suburban townhouse.

— Ethan Brown ’20 Miley Cyrus’ live cover of “Heart of Glass”

by Blondie at the iHeartRadio Festival serves “Love It If We Made It” by The 1975 as a highlight in the dumpster fire which is 2020. Cyrus’ raspy yet melodic voice hooks To not include “Love It If We Made It” in an listeners from beginning to end. In the essence-of-2020 playlist would be a tragic midst of college midterms, a contentious disservice to The 1975. Two years after presidential election and a raging pandemic, the British indie band released the single, this cover offers 3:35 minutes of pure, this protest tune is perhaps the single best unadulterated escapism. attempt in the 21st century at encapsulating — Ellie Kurlander ’24 how America gradually lost its mind. Those listening in 2020 will feel an acute sense of “Lonely” by Chloe x Halle deja vu from the very beginning: “Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men “It don’t have to be lonely being alone.” / Start with misdemeanors and we’ll make God, Chloe x Halle — that’s a relief. a business out of them.” The song is a “Ungodly Hour,” the R&B duo’s second poignant laundry list of problems mostly album, has been a commercial success associated with the US in the past few for hits like “Do it” and “Forgive Me.” decades, although it mentions global events However, this track stands out as a selftoo, like the Syrian Civil War. There’s simply isolation anthem. Best played on full blast too much to unpack in the lyrics so I’ll just at “three in the morning, stayed up,” this highlight some of the most defining and song is an ode to those of us (ALL of us) relevant parts: “Oh, fuck your feelings / Truth whose loneliness began to eat away at their is only hearsay / We’re just left to decay”; sanity and sleep schedule. Thankfully, Chloe “Modernity has failed us / And I’d love it if x Halle acknowledge and comfort us with we made it”; “I moved on her like a bitch / their soothing vocals and the reminder that Excited to be indicted”; “The war has been none of us have to brave life’s challenges — incited and guess what, you’re all invited.” especially this year’s — alone.

Yeah, it’s a doozy.

— Nina Raneses ’22 -— Linda Li ’24 “Hoax” by Taylor Swift “Peachfuzz” by boys cruise The surprise drop of Folklore was definitely Have you or a loved one suffered from one of the very few great things about 2020. stomach splintering agitation or nauseating “Hoax” is the closing song of the album, and societal contempt — with a dash of it carries a somber vibe fitting to the year of agoraphobia for good measure — over a the global pandemic. The chorus provides a “Marrow” by St Vincent

109

Flat Hat Magazine • Culture

relatable few lines of clinging on to hope and hoping for the light at the end of the tunnel yet to be seen. 2021 will be here soon and it’ll be better because at least it’s not 2020, right?

— Sabrina El Shanti ’22 “Delete Forever” by Grimes As someone who has followed her musical and artistic journey since 2012 with the release of “Visions,” I am familiar with Grime’s penchant and skill for channelling personal pain into her art. “Delete Forever” is her latest manifestation. Instead of being accompanied by experimental production, heavy synth, and autotune in Grimes’ normal fashion, “Delete Forever” is stripped down in comparison to her other work. The track is her way of coping with the loss of six friends in opiate-related deaths, and has been my way of attempting to stomach the mass loss of life we’ve encountered this year.

— Nina Raneses ’22 “Imposters” (“Little by Little”) by The Fratellis “You wear your mask, I wear mine,” the opening line, feels a bit on the nose for a song about 2020, except these lyrics were written in 2016. I’m not entirely convinced that The Fratellis aren’t time travelers as the song repeats the phrase “Little by Little” which is how most of us are getting through these times. The title is evocative of the game Among Us, though once again the song came first. It still amazes me every time I hear this song that it came out four years ago; nevertheless, it embodies current events as we find normalcy in these strange times, little by little.

— Rebecca Klinger ’22 “New Normal” by Caroline Polacheck Aptly put in a Youtube comment under this song, Caroline Polachek “had foreseen the

future after the pandemic and made a song about it” with “New Normal.” Coming off her 2019 album Pang, everything about this track’s production and lyrics scream 2020 despite being released a year prior.

Production-wise, it is 2020-esque in the sense that you are led to believe it’ll be one thing when it turns out to be something else completely. Lyric-wise, a number of lines resonate with pandemic-era life, (“it’s house arrest, no stopping for dinner …”) but I also laugh at the possibility that Polachek predicted Zoom’s 2020 world domination: “Now, what is this? Microphone working, I hear myself, the cameras are rolling… and there’s the cue.”

— Nina Raneses ’22 “Forever” by Charli XCX The pop universe hath no Quarantine Queen™ like Charli XCX. In just 39 days, she employed the efforts of her loyal fans, the Angels, to help her create an entire album while in isolation — aptly titled How I’m Feeling Now. The album and its debut single, “Forever,” are the perfect embodiment of the pandemic’s effects on our personal relationships and our new outlook on life. The song’s heavy synth intro, complemented by Charli’s enchanting vocals, perfectly demonstrate the wide spectrum of emotions we’ve all experienced over quarantine.

— Nina Raneses ’22 “Fine Line” by Harry Styles Turning on Harry Styles’s song “Fine Line” is like stumbling into a spiral of symphonous sound. It makes me feel like I am surrounded by the music, and songs with that magical quality are always my favourite. Styles repeatedly chants, “we’ll be alright,” seemingly into the void, possibly as a message of positivity or as one of hope, which reflects our current state of uncertainty and confusion.

— Alyssa Slovin ’22 110

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

WHAT WE WATCHED IN 2020

The Flat Hat Magazine staff are being honest — they spent a large portion of their time in isolation watching TV programmes and movies. Read through their top selections of 2020, get comfortable on the couch, and spiral along with them.

Courtesy of Netflix

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Outer Banks (season 1) Netflix’s new teen drama series Outer Banks provides an enticing and anticipating story for all viewers, especially for those who love adventure, mystery, and the beach. This series does a wonderful job in recreating a nostalgic feel of several other ’80s-inspired movies and TV shows, but with a modern twist.

Set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this show follows the adventures of four best friends as they attempt to discover historic treasure believed to be located in the place they call home. However, there is much more to the Outer Banks than it seems — including treasure hunting, socioeconomic clashes, and illegal activities. The protagonists of the show are the Pogues, who live on the side of the island where everyone spends their time working blue-collar jobs and helping their families keep their businesses afloat.

Outer Banks is narrated by the leader of the teen Pogues, John B (Chase Stokes), a sixteen-year-old boy living on his own after the disappearance of his father, a man who is obsessed with discovering the Royal Merchant, a sunken ship containing $400 million in British gold. As John B tries to find the remains of the Royal Merchant — and hopefully his father — he is accompanied and assisted by his best friends, JJ (Rudy Pankow), Pope (Jonathan Daviss), and Kiara (Madison Bailey). The group of friends work together in order to solve the mystery of the Royal Merchant and the disappearance of John B’s father while simultaneously evading the police and the newcomers on the island who are also in search of the treasure.

As the search for the gold ensues, members of the Kooks become involved in the race to find the Royal Merchant. The Kooks are rich members of the community who typically spend their summers

Story by Dina Phipps ‘22

vacationing in the Outer Banks and live in the stereotypical mansions seen on social media during high school beach weeks. The young Kooks and Pogues have a rivalry that is at times playful and other times bitterly vicious. The most notable Kook is Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline), Kiara’s former best friend and so-called Kook princess, who attempts to entangle herself with John B and the Pogues on their quest to find the $400 million of gold. Along with Sarah comes her super-preppy and status-oriented boyfriend, Topper (Austin North), who cannot seem to understand Sarah’s newfound interest in the Pogues.

However, with the interference of the Kooks, the Pogues have to deal with drug dealers, hitmen, and other illegal activities in their fight to find the Royal Merchant and stay alive. Even more exciting about this series is that it features College of William and Mary alumnus Charles Esten ’87, who is known for his roles as Deacon Claybourne in the ABC/CMT drama Nashville, and — most notably to myself as an avid Disney Channel fan — Ross Morgan in the hit Disney Channel sitcom Jessie. In Outer Banks, Esten plays the role of Ward Cameron, Sarah’s father and John B’s employer, who is another important character and a driving force in the show’s narrative.

If you are a fan of treasure-hunting adventures, mysterious disappearances, and plot twists that continue to surprise you, then Netflix’s Outer Banks is definitely the show for you. Also, what better way to spend the next few months in possible quarantine than binge-watching this adventurous tale when it’s too cold to actually go to the beach?

112

Courtesy of ABC

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

The Bachelor (season 24) In the 24 seasons of The Bachelor, only one man has remained with his final rose pick. Despite this, the show typically does a good job of making it seem as though there are actual long-term stakes in the game. After all, what prize is greater than love? Yet, this season’s overproduction and star Peter Weber’s general incompetence led to an emotional journey that I can only describe as riding a rollercoaster while tranquilised. While the producers threw constant twists and turns, I just sat there numb. Yet, for some reason, I was unable to leave.

Peter Weber seems to be a genuinely sweet, moderately confused man. Unfortunately, his kindness allowed him to be constantly persuaded by the women. He sent Alayah home after someone doubted whether she was there for the ever-soelusive “right reasons.” In the next episode, she returned to crash a group date. Peter allowed this to happen and listened intently as she trashed the other contestants. He then rewarded this behaviour with a rose. That is until the women found out.

After an insurrection that echoed the fury and passion of the French Revolution, Peter decided not only to revoke the rose but to send Alayah home the same night.

In a perfect world, that would be the only blunder I would have to write about. However, this was only a dent in Peter’s jar of mistakes. One of his final three picks was Victoria F, a former White Lives Matter model and gaslighting expert. In general, he kept the most volatile women and cut off those 113

Story by Ellie Voorhis ‘22

who were not immediately ready to pour their souls out to him.

While I live for the drama, it is excessive when done aggressively and just for the sake of more drama.

Great reality TV is guided by an invisible hand.

When the performer for someone’s one-on-one date is their ex-boyfriend, it’s hard not to see the puppeteer’s strings in motion. Another miraculous moment was when the producers “accidentally” booked only one hotel room for the remaining women during fantasy suite week. What a horrible coincidence that the women had to live together while they took turns having the opportunity to spend a private night with Peter!

The season ended with Peter proposing to Hannah Ann, despite not being over Madison, or even former-Bachelorette Hannah Brown. For some reason, this did not go well. Peter then called off the proposal and attempted to win Madison back.

To his credit, this worked for approximately one full day until his mother found out on live TV and berated the couple. Things immediately ended, as destiny demanded they do. Now he is in a happy relationship with Kelley, a woman he eliminated in the final four.

In a way, this season of The Bachelor was a metaphor for life: often pointless, but vaguely enjoyable. While watching the show was a waste of my time, I cannot really regret it. What productive thing would I have even done anyway?

Courtesy of Netflix

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Eurovision Finally! For years upon years I have spent the months leading up to Eurovision perpetually confusing my peers with references to the famed competition. Whether it’s telling my friends that they’re receiving nul points from moi or my incessant need to break into song to ABBA’s “Waterloo,” Loreen’s “Euphoria,” or even Netta’s “Toy” when my iTunes shuffle lands on them — the looks of horror that I’ve received from the inhabitants of this continent have reminded me that people just don’t know what Eurovision is. Thanks to Will Ferrell and the corporate opportunists at Netflix, those days have come and gone.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga picks up with Lars Erickssong (Ferrell) and Sígrit Ericksdottír (Rachel McAdams), two Icelandic underperformers from the small village of Húsavík. Inspired by ABBA’s victory in 1974 for Sweden, Erickssong and Ericksdottír spend decades working towards their goal of winning the contest until through a series of unfortunate and improbable events — involving elves, government corruption, Demi Lovato, and explosions — Fire Saga are chosen to represent Iceland in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Upon their arrival in the UK, they are introduced to two of their rival contestants: Russian pop star Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens) and Greek diva-goddess Mita (Melissanthi Mahut). Because this wouldn’t be a classic rom-com without the presence of a messy love-square between these characters, naturally funny business occurs. The “will-they-won’t-they” dynamic between the sexually tonedeaf Lars and the timid Sígrit (who might or might not be related because #JustIcelandProblems) can be annoying at times, but luckily Lemtov’s entrance dynamic duo helps to resolve that plot point by the end of the film.

Story by Gavin Aquin ‘22 Rather than opine upon the messy duo’s performances — you really need to watch the film if you want to appreciate just how quirky those are — I instead would like to acknowledge the unsung hero of this film: Dan Stevens. Stevens’ portrayal of Lemtov is simply superb.

Stevens could portray a literal wastebin on the side of the freeway and he would do it with such grace and talent that he’d be deserving of a BAFTA. On the other hand, “Jaja Ding Dong” is probably the only song that you’re going to remember from the film’s original soundtrack. This sexually-charged folk song is so catchy that you’ll start feeling a kindred connection to Olaf, the Húsavík resident who compels Lars and Sígrit to sing the song multiple times in Húsavík’s sole bar.

Is this film perfect? No. Will you understand all of the references if you aren’t a Eurovision fan? Most definitely you will not — but Ferrell, our fellow countryman, knows this. Anytime that you see the American tourists in the film asking for the nearest Starbucks or if the Eurovision Song Contest is similar to The Voice, you are being acknowledged for your cultural insularity — and that’s OK. Just sit down, relax, and enjoy the flamboyant catastrophe that is Fire Saga. Then pop online and start looking at Eurovision songs. The gate is wide open, and you’re invited into the fandom.

If after all this, you need to gleam a moral from this story — I have two for you. America ruins everything it touches, and ABBA have the supernatural power to make all dreams come true. If you’re beyond ABBA’s help, then maybe it’s time to pray to the elves.

114

Courtesy of Disney

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

The Mandalorian (season 1) Winter is great for many things, cooler weather, the end of the semester, and especially the premiere of the new Star Wars space-western The Mandalorian on Disney+. This show had big shoes to fill in the Star Wars universe. The series is a lot more than the adorable baby Yoda, who has taken my heart and my money (you can ask my Tervis cup and shirt about that), and, spoiler alert, actually isn’t baby Yoda. The Mandalorian has a lot of standout characters with an interesting storyline that leaves you wanting more after every episode. This show checks off all the boxes of making it successfully binge-worthy.

The Mandalorian takes place a few years after the fall of the Galactic Empire, which occurs in between Episodes VI and VII of the Star Wars timeline. It focuses on the bounty hunter lifestyle of a Mandalorian, appropriately nicknamed “Mando.”

After being commissioned to retrieve a mysterious target, which ends up being “The Child” aka baby Yoda, Mando struggles with a constant internal battle between doing what is expected of his work and doing what is right. He eventually turns to living life on the run with baby Yoda and you get to join them on the various adventures and challenges they face along the way. Throughout the season, Mando learns more about himself and the world that he lives in, a classic character development sequence and I’m a sucker for those.

There are a lot of incredible action sequences to remind you of the movies, sans lightsabers, although the stormtroopers do have slightly better aim this time around. While most of these fight scenes were action packed and visually appealing, they left you on the edge of your seat eagerly awaiting the outcome of the conflict. My favourite characters of The Mandalorian so far are Greef Karga and Cara 115

Story by Sabrina El Shanti ‘22

Dune. Other than being portrayed by the iconic Carl Weathers, Karga was a standout of the show. He is charismatic and works with Mando by supplying him information on various bounty targets, and later in the season has his own “come to Jesus” moment where he realises why Mando is doing the things he does.

Karga is usually there to provide the voice of what is expected, which builds on the internal struggle Mando is already dealing with. Dune is an all-out girl boss. She is ready to kick some butt when necessary and is a former fighter for the rebel alliance. Her and Mando have a special relationship because they are often put in situations where trust is all you have.

They come together to work as a team a few times and end up being the dynamic duo you never thought you needed.

The Mandalorian is masterfully created and never reveals too much to give the end away too soon.

Disney didn’t even begin production of baby Yodas until after the premiere to limit the risk of spoilers. It has a great blend of action, backstory, and development throughout the season and I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of season two. If you are into Star Wars even just a tiny bit, I highly recommend giving The Mandalorian a watch. It’s a nice break from the trilogies and an entirely new area for Star Wars to explore. I am excited to see how this series pans out now that the introduction period is over, and it looks like the future is very promising. If you need me, I’ll be rewatching the show for details I missed the first time around while sipping water out of my baby Yoda cup and getting ready for the next season. I cannot recommend this show enough.

Courtesy of Netflix

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

You (season 2) Hey there, you. I think you need to watch this TV show I’ve been enjoying for the last two seasons. It’s called You, maybe you’ve heard of it, and it started out on Lifetime before Netflix picked it up. It’s based on a series of books, and the author is Caroline Kepnes.

Joe Goldberg is the main character. He’s everything that Hollywood and female audiences eat up: he’s an attractive man who manages a bookstore — what’s hotter than a man who reads? — and he oozes with charm. However, that’s not where his character development stops. Instead of finding a nice girl and spending time with her to learn everything about her, he learns it all by himself through stalking her both online and in person while watching through her windows. His love interest’s name is Beck. He finds her weaknesses and her flaws and uses them to his advantage. Instead of helping her solve her problems, he solves them for her by murdering those who he decides are threatening her success.

The show is from his perspective, and thus it challenges viewers to disagree with his actions. Of course, Joe is a terrible person. He is a serial killer and a sociopath. But he rationalises his actions in his own head as justifiable in order to save Beck, and the audience receives those rationalizations as fact through his narration and the visuals of the scene. He is an extremely unreliable narrator. He teaches viewers to hate characters who are against him, even though their intentions are a lot more ethical than his. Together, these factors challenge viewers to see through the charm and everything they are taught to trust, which makes every episode an internal struggle.

You infuses romantic elements into its psychological thriller storyline, which makes every episode unique,

Story by Alyssa Slovin ‘22 shocking, and engaging. What I love most about the show is how focused the story’s progression is on the characters themselves, instead of purely on the plot.

Of course, it matters what happens and when, but more importantly, viewers follow Joe’s loss of control.

He starts out calm and turns out very desperate — and that’s just in the first season.

Whenever I watch the show, I catch myself feeling sympathy for Joe and getting angry with other characters. It’s a trap the author and the producers intended in order to make me question why I trust certain figures more than others. There’s bias, since I’m hearing the story from Joe himself, but he does not resemble what the media portrays as the typical criminal. Instead, men like him play love interests in romcoms for the whole family to enjoy, and the shift in dynamics really wakes me up as a viewer to question everything and learn along the way.

I cannot say too much about the plot, especially in terms of the second season, without giving too much away, but I can say it is addictive. My roommate and I watched the entire second season in a day because she was visiting for about twenty-four hours over winter break and we just could not wait for the semester to resume to watch it together. Was it overwhelming and a lot to process? Yes. Was it a beautiful train wreck from which we couldn’t look away? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes. Season three is set to come out sometime in 2021, depending on COVID-19 delays. I highly recommend that you watch You before its release so you can join in on the hype as the new season premieres on Netflix and it inevitably trends on Twitter. You don’t want to regret it, do you?

116

Courtesy of NBC

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (season 1) Story by Mary Beth Bauermann ‘24 Quarantine gave us ample time to binge-watch our favorite shows on Netflix, Hulu, and the twenty-thousand other streaming services that are out there today. It feels like everyone was talking about Tiger King or re-watching The Office for the twelfth time, but what about good, old-fashioned cable TV? During quarantine, I came to realise that there’s nothing quite like spending a week looking forward to a new episode of your favorite show, even more so when you have nothing to do in between that time.

The pilot introduces Zoey, played by actress Jane Levy, as a young woman working in the male-dominated tech industry and explains the acquisition of her musical superpower, setting the scene for the rest of the first season. Zoey gains the ability to hear the feelings of those around her through song. This first episode features an elaborate song and dance number, choreographed by the impeccable Mandy Moore, in which a very confused Zoey watches a crowd of strangers dance down the streets, singing “Help!” by The Beatles, and at the conclusion of the song, go right back to business as usual as if they hadn’t just created their own version of the “Twist and Shout” scene from Ferris Bueller. From that moment on, the Beatlemaniac, dancer, and musical theatre fan in me was hooked.

In contrast to the undeniable appeal of song and dance, the show also tugs at the heart strings through storylines that grapple with illness, relationships, grief, and much more. The main storyline centers around Zoey’s family’s struggle as her father suffers from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a rare neurological condition from which the father of the show’s writer also suffered. Supporting Zoey as she comes to terms with her father’s condition and her newfound powers are a cast of endearing characters, including Zoey’s best friend and coworker, Max (Skyler Astin), her neighbour, Moe (Alex Newell), 117

and her boss, Joan (Lauren Graham).

New episodes aired every Sunday night, which I watched enthusiastically with my mom before jumping back into another hectic week of my senior year of high school, dominated by AP test prep and college decisions. Watching Zoey’s became the thing that I looked forward to all week. The fifth episode aired on March 8th and little did I know that it would be the last episode before the weight of COVID-19 uncertainty settled over the world. If watching Zoey’s wasn’t already the highlight of my week, it definitely took on that role by the sixth episode, which aired just two days after what would be the last time I set foot in my high school. In this episode, Max sings a terrific, heartfelt rendition of everyone’s favourite Scottish rock hit, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers. During that scene, I sang my heart out along with Max with the biggest smile beaming across my face and for a moment, the rest of the world faded away.

And so I continued living for Sunday nights, looking forward to being sucked into Zoey’s world, watching her attempts to use her musical, mind-reading powers to help others and of course, watch beautifully choreographed performances of pop classics.

Season One features pop singalong favourites ranging from the likes of Billy Joel and The Rolling Stones to the Beastie Boys, Destiny’s Child, and Salt-N-Pepa.

We’ve all had a moment in our lives that’s made us want to break into song and dance, right? Our favourite songs make us feel good. They have the power to transport us to anywhere or anytime we desire. Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist was my escape from the world that I could rely on every Sunday night until the last episode aired in early May. In June, it was renewed for a second season and I’m ecstatic for more Sunday night adventures into Zoey’s endearing, musical world.

Courtesy of Disney

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

High School Musical: the Musical: the Series Story by Rebecca Klinger ‘22 (season 1) I grew up in the High School Musical era of Disney, I had a HSM sing-along board game, I even had HSM pajamas. So when I heard that Disney was making a High School Musical spin-off show, I was both excited and worried. I decided not to read any reviews of the show before watching it, and create my own opinions after bingeing it before my seven-day free Disney+ trial ended.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (HSMTMTS) is set at East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, the school in which the original movies occurred. The plot starts when the drama department gets a new teacher, Miss Jenn (Kate Reinders), who acted in the original movie and sets it as that year’s musical. The show follows the drama students of East High in navigating relationships, competing for roles, and dealing with troubles at home. The main character, Nini Salazar (Olivia Rodrigo), spends most of this season struggling between her new boyfriend, E.J. (Matt Cornett), and her ex, Ricky (Joshua Bassett), who is trying to win her back. I would first like to say that the show isn’t bad; I watched it for the first with little issues, and I even cared a little bit about the drama. That being said, the second time I watched this through, I realised that Disney did such a DisneyTM thing by focusing on Nini and the problems she seems to create for herself, all while leaving behind her talented, woman-of-colour best friend, Kourtney (Dara Reneé).

We meet Kourtney in the pilot episode, but from the start she plays a supporting role for Nini and her issues.

It isn’t until the fourth episode that we get a stronger focus on Kourtney, when she joins the costume crew

of the musical. Even when she does get this spotlight, she is still just put on an underrecognised crew in the theater department. Kourtney is along for the ride with Nini’s problems, and the focus never shifts to her and her issues, or even highlights her as a real person.

This show feels like a realistic musical. These are theater kids. Nini wrote a song to tell Ricky she loved him when they first dated (Ricky later wrote Nini a song to win her back). At Nini and Kourtney’s girls’ night, Kourtney sings for the first time at karaoke.

At this point in the show, I really wanted to see more Kourtney, and I was hoping this night would launch her deeper character arc. Spoiler alert: this did not happen.

As the theater department gets closer to opening night, a lot of things start to go wrong. I’m super upset that Kourtney didn’t even get a chance to sing in front of more than the drama department and parking lot behind the karaoke bar. The rest of the production was a total mess, Ricky walksaway and makes E.J. go on as Troy, then comes back, Big Red (Larry Saperstein) keeps screwing up at the soundboard, and much of the show doesn’t go as planned.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed watching this show. I would definitely recommend watching this to people who just need a quick distraction from the world, but in finishing the season, you will gain very little. Season 2 does not have a set release date due to a pause in production, but I will be watching it for the drama, even if the show is Beauty and the Beast and has nothing to do with its namesake.

118

Courtesy of Adult Swim

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Rick and Morty (season 4) With half the episodes airing in late 2019 and the other half airing two months into quarantine, Season 4 of Rick and Morty was … interesting, to say the least. After a disappointing third season, I did not have high hopes for the latest season. Before I go on — I am aware of the points of contention towards Season 3: some think it was amazing, and others (like myself) felt it lacked the characteristically memorable side characters and mindboggling plots of the two previous seasons. Although the return of Evil Morty in “The Ricklantis Mixup” made up for what was otherwise a boring and lackluster third season, I still didn’t have too high of an expectation for the fourth season. Most importantly, I just didn’t want any more Pickle Rick, or to hear “Szechuan Sauce” incorrectly pronounced for the umpteenth time (it’s sichwahn). Luckily, there wasn’t.

Right off the bat, it was clear to me that Season 4 would be a clean slate for the Smith family dynamics. Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, the show’s creators, seemed to have had finished filling their appetite on toying around with more complicated relationships in Season 3: Beth and Jerry’s divorce, Rick’s rise and fall on the Smith family totem pole, family therapy, and a strained father-daughter relationship. It’s possible the weaving of these subplots into the overall arc of Season 3 provided a bulk of the fodder for the episodes at the expense of “classic” Rick and Morty adventures. But, by the time Season 4 rolled around, we saw a flipped image: Beth and Jerry were back together, and Rick wedged into a less domineering position. At any rate, the creators had cleared the table, leaving more elbow room to scheme up zany adventures between the two main characters without all the emotional familial baggage.

119

So, what happened in Season 4? The first two episodes “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat” and “The Old Man and the Seat” were hands-down amazing. We saw the reintroduction of iconic side characters like Mr. Meeseeks and Gearhead, as well as the incorporation of social commentary on topics ranging from political correctness to the rise of the far right. We also got a glimpse into the psychology of Rick Sanchez’s loneliness and stubbornness. The start of Season 4 seemed promising.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the next three episodes: “One Crew over the Crewcoo’s Morty,” “Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty,” and “Rattlestar Ricklactica.” They threw me back into my post-Season 3 disillusionment. They seemed wildly unlike the first two seasons of Rick and Morty I was accustomed to, and were jarring to watch. The first episode, colloquially called the “Heist” episode, was pretty fast-paced to begin with, but it unbelievably started picking up speed towards the end. By the time the climax neared, I couldn’t even follow a single word Rick and the Heist-o-Tron were exchanging in their half-insane harangues about double-crossing each other. However, I will say that the episode makes up for the difficult-to-follow plot by reintroducing Mr. (now Professor) Poopybutthole and starring Elon Musk as Elon Tusk (which is just Musk with tusks). I agree these characters enhanced this episode and thus it deserves a higher rating than the next two.

Watching “Claw and Hoarder” was the first time I felt sick while watching Rick and Morty. And that’s saying a lot for the sometimes harrowingly inappropriate adult animated show. I will say no more.

Flat Hat Magazine • Music + Culture

Story by Ashley Huang ‘24 As for “Rattlestar Ricklactica?” That episode was just snakes hissing at each other for the entire episode. At this juncture, I felt disappointed to see Season 4 playing out so similarly to Season 3.

But by the time May 2020 rolled around, I was itching for more content. Being stuck in quarantine for two months straight, I was willing to overlook my prior disillusionment. And I’m glad I did. The latter half of Season 4 was leaps and bounds stronger than the first half, and it restored my full faith in the creative juices of Roiland, Harmon, and the team. By far the two most memorable episodes of the second half are “Promortyus” and “The Vat of Acid Episode.”

What stood out most to me in “Promortyus” was the charmingly healthy relationship between Rick and Morty.

While simultaneously committing mass genocide on the population of facehuggers on planet Glorzo in their homemade spaceship, Rick opened up to his grandson and apologised for being so harsh on him. Morty reassured him and validated his struggles: “I just wish you’d open up to me sometimes, I’m your partner.”

It was heartwarming to see, and I hope this character development is continued into the next season.

But the following episode, “The Vat of Acid Episode,” by far stole the show in the entire season. Dubbed an instant classic, it had the perfect mix of a heartwarming romance between Morty and a girl, Jerry’s inane mediocrity ruining things yet again, mind-bendingly dark plot twists, and delves deeper into Rick’s god-complex.

“The Vat of Acid Episode” has certainly made my list of “episodes that drop your jaw on the floor until the end

credits begin rolling.” Among my list are both Evil Morty episodes, “Rick Potion #9” (when the duo accidently Cronenburgs dimension C-137 and bail to a new reality), and my personal favourite “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” (wherein Rick’s car battery is a microverse containing a world of intelligent life that toils to power his car). It’s that good.

Of course, no TV show review is complete without mention of the season finale. But surprisingly, the Season 4 finale wasn’t all that memorable to me. The plot really centered around the return of Beth Smith’s clone, Tammy and Phoenix Person, but not much more than that. This was surprising given all the hype that had accumulated around the return of Tammy and Phoenix Person. Rick put it best when he remarked, “She died the way she lived. Overserialised.” The episode felt more bare-bones than the others because of what I suspect is the lack of Morty in the main plot. Because the A-plot primarily centered around the quality of Rick’s relationship (or lack thereof) with his friend Phoneix Person and daughter, it took a different direction that left the viewer lacking a traditional sense of closure. I suppose this sets us up for an entirely novel dynamic between the characters in Season 5. What will happen? Will Rick try to change his ways after losing his best friend? Will he be completely snuffed out of the Smith family, now that there are two Beths who equally hate the way he’s treated them? And what about Evil Morty? All these questions and more will be circulating in my mind between now and the (probably) two-plus year gap until Season 5.

All I can say is, fingers crossed there won’t be a return of Pickle Rick.

120

STUDY ABROAD CHANGED ME AND THEN I GOT DEPORTED

Story and Photos by Anna Boustany '21

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

W

hen I came to Amman, Jordan on December 28, 2019, the first thing I could think about was that this was going to be the first new year I would spend without my family. New Year’s Eve is my favourite holiday, and toasting it from a rooftop in Amman was not the same as spending all day making and eating as much food as humanly possible. Still, it couldn’t dim the excitement of beginning a new decade in a new place surrounded by unknown possibilities.

I couldn’t have predicted that my best friend’s programme in Italy would end early due to COVID-19, nor that my programme, so initially threatened by the US-Iran conflict that the US embassy recommended US citizens stay indoors for three days straight, would make it to March relatively unscathed. Of course, the middle of March was chaos for me just as much as anybody else. As countries closed their borders, and flights were cancelled, my family and I cancelled travel plans in the middle of my exam. I was one of the lucky ones, given that I bought my flight home from Jordan before the announcement of Jordan’s border closures. I secured my seat on the last direct flight to the US, while friends around me scrambled to find 40-50 hour flights home to somewhere, anywhere in their home countries.

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

When I first began brainstorming this article, I was still in Jordan (yes, it’s been a very long time in the making). Since my programme was a third-party programme, and I knew practically no one in the country, Jordan was a test of my independence. I thought I would fail, if we’re being honest. I have never been very good at doing things on my own. I will walk my bike in the opposite direction I need to go for a few extra moments with a friend, and I have waited to pursue opportunities and

experiences until I can go with others. The extrovert in me is fine with this. Jordan was different. While I made wonderful friends, who I am so grateful for, we all had different schedules, different lives, different timelines.

I wasn’t going to leave Jordan without seeing Petra, and so I booked a bus ticket just for me. I would never have gone on a three-hour bus ride to hike all day in America. But half of my friends were in Egypt, and the other half busy with studying.

124

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

I made a friend on the bus. (I am alltoo willing to gab with my seatmates on buses and planes, and have made many a friend there). The weather in Petra could not have been more beautiful, and the red-rock city is gorgeous. I hiked at my own pace, took my time, and ate Twix bars as fuel with no judgement. Reaching the monastery at the end of my hike, I walked to a sign pointing to “the most beautiful view in the world.”

It was the most awe-inspiring place I’ve ever been, and a part of me was sad that I had no one to share it with.

But after a moment of reflection, and a picture taken of me by a fellow tourist, I realised that the view was the most beautiful in the world regardless of who was there. I was just lucky to be there, in the moment.

Also, shout out to Zain, my fantastic cell-provider, who allowed me to facetime my parents on my hike, and make sure all of my Instagram followers knew just how cool I was by posting from the top of the hike.

When I left Jordan, in a haze of anxiety and speed-packing, I felt ready for whatever senior year and beyond would throw at me. I could live on my own, find meaning on my own, deal with my issues, connect to friends. And then I got thrown back into middle school. Like hopefully all of you, my family and I took quarantining seriously (and still take social distancing and wearing masks seriously! Don’t spread COVID!).

I went from making all of my own decisions, to seeing on my immediate family. Even a social distanced walk at the park required coordination with my parents’ cars and permission, to make sure it was not putting my family at risk. My job this summer was entirely virtual, and my senior year has begun like no other.

2020 for me has been an incredible juxtaposition. I am incredibly privileged in so many ways. I got to study abroad. My family and I have been safe and healthy throughout the pandemic. I lost a bit of travel time and a lot of independence, so in the grand scheme, I know I am lucky. But it is still hard, to lose that readiness for a life after college. I felt so ready to search for jobs, to live wherever. (Please hire me, I promise I’m very talented and cool!) Now I’m working on making it through each day, and finding meaning in a new world.

Leaving Jordan was one of the most stressful weekends of my life. I have never been in a place where I might truly get stuck. In America, I can drive anywhere, and I am fortunate enough that abroad, my American passport and savings

127

account are enough to get me home in an emergency. That alone showcases my privilege.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve dealt with a higher base level of anxiety than I have ever had previously, and had to learn entirely new wellness techniques and coping mechanisms.

This is nothing new to you, as I’m sure the global pandemic has increased stress across the globe. But I am lucky, in that I had three extra months of practice connecting with all my friends virtually, and attending meetings virtually. I even knew what Zoom was last summer from my job with IT last summer.

I was lucky to get to study abroad. To lean into the cliché, study abroad changed me. And so did COVID, both in ways that I could never have expected, for the better and for the worse.

snapshots students in the age of COronavirus

This body of work really grew out of my love for photojournalism and its ability to represent individuals and help tell their stories. I had already signed up for an independent study for this semester and had a completely different proposal for it in mind, one that simply could not be accomplished with COVID restrictions. So naturally, as many of us have had to do during this time, I adapted. Watching the news and talking to coworkers at my part-time summer job, I realised just how much college students were being left out of the COVID conversation. When we were included, it was just placing the blame on us or generalising our experiences into “well, they just have to do online courses now, that’s all,” when in fact many of us had been severely affected. We lost opportunities for internships and jobs, some lost their housing situations, others were financially struggling — I could go on for days about how we have been impacted by this and nobody was recognising it. I was frustrated, angry, and overwhelmed by the situation and felt my voice wasn’t being heard, a feeling I’m sure many of my peers can relate to. Rather than accept this defeat, I decided to give students a platform to express their emotions and experiences. If you’re interested in being a part of future iterations of this project, reach out to jtholt@email.wm.edu. The following interviews have been abridged and edited for clarity. Full interviews can be found at www.jamieholt.com.

Story and Photos by Jamie Holt ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Name: Daniel Miller Hometown: Arlington, VA Year: Junior Major: Government and Public Health Q: What was your reaction when the school announced like, “Hey, you’re not coming back to campus this spring?”

A: So okay, I have a really weird story. It actually happened in March. Okay, so I came home.

First I was like “I’m invincible,” which was kind of stupid. On Thursday I woke up. I felt short of breath, and I developed a slight fever and a light cough throughout the day. On Friday I woke up, coughing and fever were gone, but I still had a shorter breath. And I had two asthma attacks that evening. I went to the ER, they gave me bla bla bla I came home, I was feeling better. This is like the middle of the night and I had another asthma attack. They gave me an inhaler in the ER so I did that and fell back asleep. Woke up on my couch. My symptoms just got worse. Shorter breath, body aches, fatigue,diarrhoea, headache, you name it — I had it. Um, so on that Sunday, I was sleeping all the time. And that Sunday, my dad woke me up in the late afternoon for dinner. I really hadn’t eaten anything that day, so he woke me up. And I was completely out of it. I did not remember what I ate for breakfast that morning. I did not remember what I ate the night before. And then when I tried to get out of bed to go to a table where I could eat something, I’m so lightheaded he had to help me to the table. Um, and then so I went to the shower thinking, you know, maybe it’ll help, you know, my lungs and just help me in general. My dad stood outside the door of my bathroom when I was having a shower because I was still lightheaded. Later that went away, but I still had all the other symptoms. And I had another asthma attack, so I went back to the hospital. This time, they refused to give me treatment because they were scared that if I had corona I would spread it. So I got tested.

The first time I went, they told me three to five business days. So I was thinking sometime in the 131

next week I didn’t get anything and was told seven to ten business days. Two weeks went by nothing. So I actually got a news story through the local news, ABC and eventually the doctors called like twelve business days in and basically said they had gotten my test back. It was negative based on the symptoms I presented and based on my sickness we think you had coronavirus at that time, since those swabs are only 70 per cent sensitive. They thought I was just a false negative. So I’m still, you know, in isolation for a long time, basically. So I went back to the hospital that Sunday, they refused to give me treatment, because they did tons of tests on me and I was there for like, four hours.

And then, and then when everything came back negative, every other test came back negative, they’re like, we’re gonna admit you since we need to figure out what’s wrong with you. And then like, an hour later, they came back. And they’re like, you know, we’re not admitting you because you don’t meet the new standard for coronavirus to be admitted. That Monday things didn’t really improve. Monday night breathing was so hard, it hurt to breathe and I couldn’t fall asleep, I couldn’t lay down. So I had a complete restless night. And then Tuesday, I tele met with my doctor, my regular doctor, and she put me on another inhaler. And she sent me to an urgent care and it was so new that nobody knew what the effects of this territory would be on the virus. So basically went to the urgent care and they’re like, um, you know, here’s the airway. If you don’t feel better within a day, go to a hospital in Virginia. So luckily, the steroids worked, I began to feel better. Five days later, I went off and had a few other asthma attacks and like another four or five days passed and finally my asthma attacks were gone, But I had a headache and fatigue for at least another week or two after.

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Name: Cèline Zalamea Hometown: Basking Ridge, NJ Year: Junior Major: Neuroscience and Applied Mathematics Q: Generally, how did your summer quarantine go?

A: It was difficult for me because I usually take the summers to travel, like, I’m so blessed to be a very avid traveller and be able to have the means to do that. So I had a bunch of European travels scheduled for the summer. And so those all fell apart. So that was really disappointing.

So I was kind of like, “kay, well, I no longer have like, internships because those were all going to be in Europe.” And so I was like, well, what do I do with my life now? So I ended up like doing online classes, which ended up being so much money because I’m out of state. I was like, “Damn, this is a lot,” but yeah, I didn’t pick up a job or anything. I mean, mainly I was studying. I had like one internship but it was very low key, not very difficult or anything. So it definitely felt like a low key summer which I’m sure everyone felt that way. But as someone who loves to be constantly doing something, I felt like I could be doing something more productive.

Q: Where in Europe were you planning on travelling?

A: I always go to Vienna every year because that’s my favourite city. And it just means a lot to me. And then I was going to go to Italy as well and probably around Italy and Switzerland because I grew up there and things like that.

Q: So you’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, but like, throughout this time, have you had any major or even minor physical or mental health concerns with everything going on?

A: Yeah, definitely. At the beginning, the first like two to three months, were the hardest months of my life literally. I just felt so out of

place, and like, didn’t really know what my place was. Just like, in general, in my community, because I’m used to being the person who’s active in the community and doing things in my organisations and stuff. And I did not have anything to do and was just like, “Okay, what am I contributing to this world at this point?”

So that was difficult, but on the other hand, it genuinely showed me who my closest friends were. And now that all those circles are a lot tighter. It definitely shows like, who’s really there for you. Who are your priorities and things like that.

Q: How are you feeling about the future?

You know, some people are very optimistic that this is gonna wrap up in two months, and everything’s gonna go back to normal.

And some people think this isn’t ever going to go back fully normal. How are you feeling?

Optimistic? Are you feeling nervous, anxious, a combination of all of it?

A: It’s really weird, because I feel like two months ago, or even three months ago, when all this started, people were like, wearing masks everywhere and this going to be the new normal. And like, you don’t hear people saying that anymore. Because it literally is normal.

And you don’t think about that stuff anymore.

Like we have just adapted to it, whether or not we are like acknowledging that. And I can see this staying this way for a decently long time.

Whether that be for another year or two, I think that we should ease into things. And I’m very optimistic that things will go back to normal. But I don’t think that it will be for a decent amount of time, just because this is something that affects the whole world. And we still haven’t gotten the cases down to what we’d hoped they would be. But I think if people just keep things up that it’ll be back to normal.

134

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Name: Rachel Akers Hometown: Williamsburg, VA Year: Senior Major: Neuroscience, Biochemistry and Public Health Q: So kind of right off the bat, you know, spring break. Where were you, what was your situation?

A: So it’s hard to explain without like, digging super into my personal stuff, but I don’t go to my parents very often. So um, I kind of live on campus permanently, like Williamsburg is my home, which really sucks. But anyways, I was living on campus junior year at Dawson. And I remember getting the news. I hadn’t gone anywhere for spring break, because I didn’t have anywhere to go. I work at Riverside Doctors Hospital in the emergency department. So you know, it was kind of just a normal spring break for me. I was working a lot, studying a lot, and being like, ‘Well, my friends are posting beach photos. This is pretty lame.’ But I got the call or the email or whatever and I was like, ‘Alright, I guess I should probably move out of my dorm into my boyfriend’s house’ because he had an off campus house in Williamsburg. So, yeah, that’s where I went.

Q: Gotcha. So was that where you went for the entirety of quarantine?

A: Yeah, that’s where I went until his lease ended in June. And once I got to that, I found a one month sublease at an off campus house on Indian Springs. And then I moved into my own year lease off North Henry Street. Yeah, so that was really stressful. Like constantly moving around sucks. Moving and packing up.

Q: So I guess on the same kind of trail, at first there was, ‘oh, we’re just pushing it back a week.’ Everybody’s like, ‘oh, extra spring break.’

And then, you know, we get the email that we had gone fully remote and we’re not coming back to campus at all. What was your reaction?

A: Oh, I mean, I hate to sound like a conspiracy 135

theorist, or like a doomsday prepper, but I just think staying back home was pretty obvious to see.

Q: So how did your summer quarantine go postclasses?

A: It was really stressful because we had this very short period of time to adapt from very much in person using like EEGs to measure brain asymmetry and food neophobia. We ended up doing a great study that focused on validating questionnaires, so it was largely online. There was a lot of really interesting data collection, but ultimately, I do feel like my research was curtailed

by COVID-19 which really sucks, but we’re trying to get it back on track maybe next semester, but I mean, I don’t think that’s gonna happen either. So then I was also studying for the MCAT that summer.

I think the fine line is like staying busy and being productive versus like, thinking that you’re being busy and just you know, burning yourself out for no reason.

Q: During this period and now, have you had any physical or mental health concerns for yourself and/or for other people?

A: We see all these patients who have like very acute conditions and, you know, pages of past medical history, and it’s very contradicting stuff like hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, all this like, they have like deep brain stimulators implanted, they have pacemakers, they have to be intubated multiple times. And you know, when you keep seeing these people come from the same place, and it’s like, ‘possible Covid positive’ you’re like, ‘okay, well, great. They’re gonna die.’ Well, I mean, it’s annoying that college students don’t take it as seriously as they should. Right? Because it’s not good. Anyways, back to my original point, which was I’ve seen a lot of physical stuff that definitely could have been avoided from COVID-19.

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Name: Jack Thomas Hometown: Vienna, VA Year: Junior Major: Public Policy and Economics Q: So I’m gonna take you back to the spring. You know, the COVID: it’s kind of on the radar, but not really here in Virginia yet. Where were you for spring break? Did you stay here? Did you travel?

Did you go home?

A: I went home to Vienna and was actually kind of anticipating not coming back.

Q: So were you in Vienna for pretty much this entire summer then?

A: I was, yeah. I was originally slated to go to Beijing. And so I pretty early on, like January, February, I was like, I don’t think I’m gonna go.

So yeah, I just hung out, took online classes, and stayed in my house with my parents and my brother.

Q: Did you pick up any quarantine hobbies? I feel like everybody either started baking sourdough or something. So did you pick up any hobbies?

A: I saw the sourdough craze going around, but I’m not the biggest baker. Actually, over spring break one of my projects was to help my parents clean out the house. So we got rid of a lot of like, a lot of junk. One of which was a bread maker we hadn’t used in like 20 years. And so two to like three weeks later, I see everyone making bread was and was like, ‘wow’. That was quite the experience. So I actually picked up cooking. I just tried a lot of new recipes I found online. I got pretty good at crème brulée which is something I never thought I would try. Yeah, just something to like, keep learning I guess. It’s really good to just try new stuff.

Q: So this is one of those questions like, tell me as much or as little as you want to. Have you had any physical or mental health concerns either for yourself or other people?

A: I definitely missed being able to like, play sports with friends. I love playing Frisbee. So like, that took a toll on my physical health just because I wasn’t working out as much, understandably, being in quarantine. But I’d said the other biggest thing was I had like a couple of really good friends who are immunosuppressed. And so like, not being able to necessarily hang out with them over the summer was kind of a bummer. I think because in the early spring, when classes went online, it was kind of this vague thing, COVID was, so I didn’t really anticipate the social effects maybe as much as I should have.

And so kind of like an initial shock for me was being like, “Oh, like, I can’t hang out with people I’ve hung out with for the past, like 15 plus years.” Yeah.

Q: So you mentioned your opportunity in Beijing for the summer on the same kind of thread, like something as serious as something like that, or even just as simple as missing hanging out with your friends, what are some opportunities you’ve lost because of COVID? A: Yeah that was something I was really looking forward to, going to Beijing, because I’d never been to Asia before. And I had taken Chinese for four semesters before that. And so it started as just kind of like the need to fill my foreign language requirement class, but turned into something I really enjoyed. So it was less about losing like the actual trip itself and more about like, “Ih, me and my Chinese learning experiences like over Zoom are final,” not exactly how I saw it going. And I recognize that like that’s a very bland you know, like of all the things that happened due to COVID, but I’d much much rather have that than anything serious. But I was really looking forward to that opportunity to really be in a place where I was really unfamiliar. I’m a tall white guy. So being in China was really new for me, in terms of how much I stand out, but I was really looking forward to that just being very vulnerable in a new place.

138

SPLIT FROM

THE BUNCH

Story and Photos by Olivia McCarthy ’23 Photos by Zachary Lutzky ‘24

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Due to the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, I took this past semester off and have been working and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hiking and photography have helped me to combat the loneliness and lack of direction that I’ve been feeling, so I decided to combine the two and do a photo series to try to describe my feelings. I decided to take self portraits early on, but it wasn’t until banana suits came up in a conversation with a friend that I decided to incorporate them. The stark yellow would stand out against its surroundings and the uncanny image of a walking banana in the mountains just felt right. So began my journey as a lost banana, just trying to find my way home.

141

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

142

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

With everything that’s been going on, at times it almost feels as if things can’t get any worse. This project started as something to laugh at, something to fill the void while my friends went back their lives at school, but as I spent each day alone, the void felt like it was only growing larger. The only thing that seemed to alleviate it was putting the suit on and taking pictures, even with people staring at me like, well, a person running around in the mountains wearing a banana suit. Everything else that I had going on in my life — from work, to living with my parents, to the pandemic, to the goings-on of the current administration of the American government — was exhausting the little energy I possessed.

I had reached a breaking point, or a turning point, or both. I no longer cared what people thought of me, if dressing up in a banana suit and taking pictures was going to make me feel better, then that was what I was going to do.

143

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

A lot of my time has been spent trying to get away from everything: from work, from responsibility, from my emotions, from the house.

I’ve been feeling trapped, and running away to the mountains was a breath of fresh air in my otherwise stagnant life. The vast range made me feel both small, like a Who living on the speck on Horton’s flower, and free, like a five-finger discount Chiquita banana from Dollar General. I spent a lot of time wanting to break free from the present situation, wishing I could just fly away from it all. Even if I wasn’t sure whether or not I would be able to more permanently get away in the future, in that moment I felt as if the tether that bound me to everything had loosened a bit.

144

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

145

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

I may not know what the future holds, but I hope it’s something like this. We may not be able to stack on top one another like before, we may have to keep wearing masks and grow on separate parts of the tree, but we are together.

Even though my return pictured here was brief, I know that in the future it will be a more concrete — or should I say bricked — homecoming.

In the end, all of us are going through this together, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Me and my fellow bananas are going to run into 2021 with our stems to the sky.

146

QUIRKY QUARANTINE

Lessons from a freshman

Story and Photos by JR Herman ‘24

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Remote staff writer JR Herman has spent the last seven+ months quarantining in her house, and she’s still sane enough to tell the tale. Continue reading to explore the ins and outs of her quirky quarantine life, as well as how it has changed her for the better.

ver the past seven months, not counting daily walks in my neighbourhood, I’ve ventured out into the world four times, the first time to pick up my senior yearbook, the second and third times to go to a dress fitting (ironically, for a graduation which ended up getting cancelled), and the fourth time to pick up my high school diploma, drive-thru style. It has certainly been an odd experience staying home for over half a year, especially since I’m a very social person, but it’s something that I’ve somewhat gotten used to — I hate wearing a mask, so I usually prefer to just stay home.

O

The COVID quarantine life has changed me, but not in a bad way — first off, it’s given me the rare opportunity to do things I never had the time to do. Before COVID, I was always rushing around, going to school, participating in weekend activities, or going out to eat, but once the lockdown began in March, I realised I had so much more time on my hands. I started gardening, spending more time outside taking walks, watching TV series that friends had recommended to me but never had time to watch, and even learned how to cook and put on makeup like a pro, thanks to hours of YouTube tutorials. I even decided to start learning Egyptian hieroglyphs over the summer … because why not? Even more importantly than allowing me to take up new hobbies and learn new skills and life hacks, quarantine has taught me a new lifestyle, one which I believe will continue to impact my life, even after the pandemic ends and life returns to some semblance of (non-masking wearing) normalcy. My COVID quarantine journey has had five major parts (so far).

151

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Part 1—Resilience (chipped nail polish): Early in the pandemic, there were times when I didn’t know how I could survive staying at home any longer. My path to resilience, strangely, began with nail polish. The weekend before school ended and lockdowns were implemented, I got my nails painted. A month later, in April, the rest of my high school senior year had just been cancelled, and I realised I wouldn’t be able to see my friends for the foreseeable future. Prom was cancelled; graduation was in jeopardy — everything I had looked forward to was going down the drain, and rapidly. I was tired of Zooming, COVID cases were increasing every day, and it looked like quarantine would be lasting months, not weeks. I was sick of being home and sick of seeing people only online; I was pretty much sick of everything. Then I looked down and saw my nail polish had started to chip. I don’t even wear nail polish often, and when I do wear it, I never care when it starts to chip. But that time, it was different.

"This wasn't a typical graduation, so why should I have to dress traditionally?”

152

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

The nail polish served as a reminder of the pre-COVID world, and I was clinging to the last vestiges of normalcy I had, in between depressing Zoom classes. I couldn’t stand what the chipping represented — my life (and the world) was falling apart; I couldn’t have my nail polish fall apart too, so I repainted my nails. I kept messing up, and it took an embarrassingly long time, but when I was done, my nails were completely blue. Although it certainly wasn’t a good paint job by any means, it served an important purpose for me; I felt more in control of my life. I realised that when things in my life metaphorically chipped, I could metaphorically repaint (or at least try to). Things would be OK, even if the paint job wasn’t perfect. The next time my nails started to chip, I didn’t mind. I had the confidence that I could handle the world’s insanity (even with chipped nails).

"I would have been too afraid to break the mould, even if I wanted to - I would have shown up to the drive-thru wearing a white dress” Part 2—Acceptance (c’est la vie): Perhaps the most important step in my quarantine journey was learning to accept the unexpected, which admittedly sounds sort of cheesy, but for me, was extremely important. I’ve always been a Type-A planner.

I’ve never liked last-minute changes, and yet, as all of us know, COVID is one of the ultimate plan wreckers. I had written down the date for graduation in my planner, over a year in advance, and pre-pandemic, every day after school I would cross off the corresponding square in my calendar, in order to count down until the big day.

153

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Graduation was the one event that mattered to me most — in my mind, it was like a magical day of closure, the culmination of 12 years with my friends at a school I had attended since first grade. Like all graduating seniors, I wanted to see everyone one last time, take pictures, walk across the stage to get my diploma, and party afterwards. It would be our last hurrah before college and all of the changes that would come before we went our separate ways.

If I had known in December last year that we would not have a graduation, I would have been devastated. But the day of July 26, when the “graduation is cancelled” email arrived an hour and a half before graduation was supposed to happen (and after I had already spent two hours putting on makeup), I casually told my parents, “Yeah, so they just cancelled graduation,” as if it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. To be honest, it wasn’t just an act. I was surprised and annoyed (or, as I told my friends, “super salty”), but surprisingly, I wasn’t that upset — graduation no longer seemed as big of a deal as it had been to me. I knew I had survived five and a half months at home, and so many previous plans had already been made and broken. Life went on. So life would continue to go on, with or without graduation.

"Quarantine has also allowed me to become a much more 'chill' person.

I used to get more stressed about things than I do now, but I've really learned to 'go with the flow' and not take things too seriously.”

154

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Part 3—Improvising, Adapting, and Embracing Self (sometimes a “who cares” attitude helps): Even though we didn’t get the ceremony we were supposed to have, I was determined to make it memorable. After all, it would be my fourth appearance into the world since March, and I wanted to capitalise on it. While some members of the senior GroupMe were crying and/or ranting about the last-minute cancellation, I texted saying I was going to show up to the drive-thru diploma pickup wearing a bathing suit.

This wasn’t a traditional graduation, so why should I have to dress traditionally?

155

I wanted a graduation to remember, and graduating in a bathing suit sounded pretty wild and memorable (and it worked with the winged eyeliner I spent so much time putting on), so I did it. It was a decision I made on a whim, but it made graduation funnier and more enjoyable for me. It was also a very freeing experience, one which I would not have had the confidence to pull off pre-quarantine. Pre-quarantine, I cared much more about what people thought of me. I would have been too afraid to break the mould, even if I wanted to — I would have shown up to the drive-thru wearing a white dress. But because of quarantine, I’ve been by myself much more than I ever have been, and as a result, I’ve become more comfortable with being myself; I’m not afraid of being judged or criticised for embracing my quirky ideas.

Flat Hat Magazine • Narratives

Part 4—Appreciation (from friends to fajitas): Due to quarantine, I have a much greater appreciation for the little things in life. I never thought I’d go seven months without seeing friends (in person), walking down the hallways, or going to the library. These were just normal, everyday activities, so I never appreciated them like I should have. I haven’t eaten fajitas, shoe-string fries or perhaps most importantly, crêpes, since March.

I definitely took these everyday joys for granted, and now having gone without for so long, I know when I have them again, I’ll truly savour every bite, just like how I’ll appreciate every moment when I see my friends again, in person (or, in some cases, in person for the first time). Greater appreciation for my friends has also encouraged me to be a better friend myself — I’m much more comfortable opening up to friends in texts as well as phone calls (something which I never did pre-quarantine).

Part 5—Inner Peace (ditching the stress): Quarantine has also allowed me to become a much more “chill” person. I used to get more stressed about things than I do now, but I’ve really learned to “go with the flow” and not take things too seriously. I’ve managed to survive/ thrive staying home for seven months. With that achievement under my belt, I feel like I can pretty much do anything the world has to throw at me.

156

DO WE PUT TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON NAME BRANDS? Story by Grace Olsen ‘23 Photo by Rebecca Klinger ‘22 Model Loni Wright ‘21

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

Luxury goods are all around us these days. Whether it’s the newest Apple iPhone 12 Pro, a Canada Goose Jacket, or a Louis Vuitton scarf — a brand name will catch everyone’s attention. But how did it get this way? Staff Writer Grace Olsen explores the intersection between fashion and art and endeavours to answer the question: Do we put too much emphasis on name brands?

T

wo summers ago, I visited New York City alone for the first time. I had just graduated high school and so my parents thought that it was finally time to let me go explore the city on my own.

Among my destinations was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, better known as the Met. That year, the spring exhibition, and the Met Gala, centered around the theme “camp.”

No one really knew what “camp” meant but everyone loved seeing their favorite designers produce exotic designs for celebrities to wear on the red carpet. Some of these outfits would make it into the exhibit itself for millions to walk by and gawk at.

Of course, now people know what camp is.

But before they did, they had to just call it “art.” Name-brand designer companies had produced some of the strangest pieces anyone had ever seen. Enormous, wearable flamingos, funky colour block and way too much tulle. But people loved it.

The prestige of these luxury companies is driven by historical significance and, not always, notable designs.

The esteem of a brand comes from a company’s symbolic and functional values.

The functional value is derived from the attributes of a brand that other brands cannot offer. Because fashion is an art, functional value is the unique experience 159

the designer encapsulates in a design that impacts the consumer deepest.

On the other hand, the symbolic value is a merit specified to the brand by the consumer.

With great symbolic value, a brand is the epitome of desire. The prestige of a designer line and the acquisition of a designer piece is a symbol of monetary affluence and success.

A brand is only as valuable as the symbols associated with it.

175 years ago, luxury house brand Loewe was established in Spain. The brand was curated and developed by a group of craftsmen and a singular merchant, Enrique Loewe. Loewe quickly grew to prominence in the region and catered to customers like the late Queen Ena. Loewe was not alone in its endeavours to dress the Queen. The clever, covetable designs of the company are among some of the oldest luxury designs of the world.

What set Loewe apart, however, was Enrique Loewe’s desire to capture the zeitgeist of his label in the designs of Loewe. As he captured the spirit of the age, the prominent members of society took notice. The brand fit the aesthetic of the time and it was desirable.

Few brands hold the same level of historical significance as Loewe. Roughly a dozen luxury name brands stick out among the others. They are rooted in tradition and consistently provide classic, unique and out-of-the-box ideas.

Like Loewe, Louis Vuitton has long led the world of fashion. The brand has also used the

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

same classic design on its products since its beginning. The signature “LV” printed across various leather goods is a status symbol and is an emblem of renowned value. The print can be recognised by virtually anyone and costs a fortune.

However, the symbols established by the brand are easily replicable and for that reason, have begun to deteriorate in prestige.

“Dupes” or duplicates of Louis Vuitton and other luxury goods can be found all over the internet. Many of these dupes could easily pass as the authentic brand. The rise in popularity of dupes has proved crushing to the industry as more and more “regular” people begin to acquire the brand’s goods.

these costumes were one of a kind. No man on earth would be able to replicate the beauty of the pieces. This is where the symbolic function of a brand skyrockets.

High-profile features and unique designs have paved the way for designer name-brand success and have made them deserving of the immense value behind the name. Fast fashion name brands on the other hand do not deserve the clout.

"At the end of their sales period, Louis Vuitton burn or destroy any unsold goods in order to avoid price deflation.

Louis Vuitton never mark their items on sale or clearance and prefer demolition to dismantling prices."

At the end of their sales period, Louis Vuitton burn or destroy any unsold goods in order to avoid price deflation. Louis Vuitton never mark their items on sale or clearance and prefer Brands like American Eagle and Banana demolition to dismantling prices.

Republic have long decked the wardrobes of teens and young adults around the globe.

So, does Louis Vuitton still hold the same These brands are dominant to generic value it did before? Maybe. The monetary Walmart or Target products but still do not value of their products remains the same, have the same glitz as a designer brand. The despite the arrival of fairly accurate dupes. hype for these brands is a waste.

On the other hand, the symbolic value is beginning to deteriorate as more and more People associate these types of name brands people begin to tote around LV stamped with quality. That simply is untrue. Comparing the materials tag on the inside of generic and luggage and bags. non-luxury name brand items, the quality is Most long-lived, designer-name brands are virtually identical. The products are produced forms of art. The designer collections channel in the same location, with the same materials and same quality of labour. The only difference the inner genius of the company’s lead is the logo in the front or the tag in the back. designers and are showcased at some of the To make things simple, they are overrated and finest exhibits around the world. not worth it.

“Camp: Notes on Fashion” was a highly So, the next time shopping, consider the quixotic display of fashion as an art back following: what value does it hold, is there any at the Met Gala in 2019. The outfits worn historical significance and what will this do by esteemed guests made their way to the that other goods cannot? A brand deserving “Camp” exhibit in the Met and stayed for of its name will answer those questions and a year. Many of the costumes came from go on to create more. Where did the idea for notable designers like Gucci and Chanel.

Unlike a typical design from these companies, the design come from? How did they do it?

160

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

SAY NO TO LOW RISE JEANS

Story by Alyssa Slovin ‘22 Photo by Rebecca Klinger ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

Even Britney couldn’t pull them off.

T

he first time I ever thought about high-rise jeans was in the middle of my freshman year of high school, in 2014, during a lecture about DNA in my biology class. My teacher stopped the class to announce that high-rise jeans were ugly and didn’t flatter anyone’s body type. At the time, I just accepted that information as fact. She should know, shouldn’t she? She had seen trends come and go.

And then it occurred to me that she was my biology teacher, not a fashion expert.

Looking back, low-rise jeans are such a strange concept for women’s pants. In this article, I’ll be focusing on women’s pants because the main difference in men’s pants comes down to personal preference, since men’s bodies are more straight up-and-down: it just comes down to how long a man wants his legs to look and if he wants to tuck-in his shirt. For women, the waistband of low-rise jeans comes up to somewhere in the mid-to-low region of the hip bone, which is such an unflattering place to hit on a woman’s body. These jeans cut off any shape a woman may have, whether she is curvy or not. If she is curvier, the low-rise jeans would create a horizontal line right in the middle of her hips, which would ruin the line she should be trying to highlight.

And if a woman is less curvy, low-rise jeans ruin any illusions and make her look even more boxy. This is not to say that women need to make sure their jeans sell them as attractive merchandise, or that flattery should be the number one priority. It just doesn’t make sense to hop onto an ugly trend. Also, when celebrities like Britney Spears used to flaunt their low-rise jeans, they were always extremely low, which made daily activities such as bending and sitting down much more difficult than they needed to be.

Now, of course, no one really wears low-rise jeans.

It was a trend of the early 2000s, a time when likely few people reading this magazine article were even cognizant of their fashion choices. Some people think that they could come back in style this year, but I choose to think that society has reached a point where we know what suits our body types and what

does not. Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I can tell you right now that low-rise jeans’ comeback should never happen at all for everyone’s own good.

Besides, wearing “ugly” clothes, such as chunky sneakers and puffer jackets, has been in fashion recently, so by that logic, maybe we should just call low-rise jeans “pretty” to ensure they never return.

The real question is the debate between mid-rise and high-rise jeans. Mid-rise jeans come up higher on the hip bone than low-rise, and high-rise jeans come up even higher still above the hip bone, usually around the belly button. Mid-rise is the “ol’ reliable” staple that has always been around, while high-rise is the newcomer in town, challenging baby boomers as to whether they want to give into a millennial trend or be doomed to stylistically inferior pants for the rest of their lives.

There’s nothing wrong with mid-rise jeans, and they definitely have their positives. They come up high enough so the wearer can tuck in their shirt, and they are more comfortable due to the extra material.

However, they leave me wanting more. High-rise jeans take a simple clothing staple and make them fashionable. They jazz up an outfit without having to put in more effort than it takes to simply put on the pants. A standard outfit of a t-shirt and jeans suddenly looks like a fashion statement with the addition of the higher waistband. It shows thought.

High-rise jeans come up to what is usually the smallest part of a woman’s torso, which makes the pants more flattering for women of all shapes and sizes. Also, since the jeans come up higher than a normal pair of jeans, they make women’s legs look longer.

Trends come and go, and high-rise jeans have definitely had their place in the spotlight for several years now, which could be a signal that it’s almost time for them to disappear for a while. Maybe during this time next year, no one will even touch their high-rise jeans, claiming that they shorten the torso too much or that they cover too much butt.

Whenever that happens, just remember how good we all had it in our high-rise jeans.

162

LOVE YOURSELF

#BODYPOSITIVITY Story and Photos by Allyson Lowe ‘24

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

"In short, all bodies are good bodies." t times, our identities are limited to our bodies. People often remember us by our shape instead of our names, remembering us as “that big girl” or “that skinny guy.”

It is hurtful because body dissatisfaction is immensely common. Personally, prior to this year, being reminded of my body was extremely discomforting. I wanted to hide it and refused to acknowledge it, but then quarantine happened.

A

Quarantine left me isolated with my body, which was, in every sense of the word, a nightmare for a 17-year-old girl. I continuously faced myself in the mirror, much to my chagrin, but I gradually grew to appreciate my body for what it is. Freckles, acne, scars, stretch marks — all became normalised, and, though I still struggle with my outward appearance, I do not hate it.

Body positivity is a movement that presents a girl like me an opportunity to feel good about myself, and it can do the same for you. Rather than emphasising change, like losing or gaining weight, appearing smaller or taller, it wants to celebrate you as you are. It is a social movement that grants people the platform to love themselves unrepentantly.

In short, all bodies are good bodies.

This has been my mantra recently, and I have been experimenting with clothing. As a plussized individual, I am supposed to abide by a list of rules where clothes are concerned. No horizontal stripes, for fear they would make me appear bigger, no bright patterns to attract attention to myself, meaning I should always dress darkly for a “slimming” effect. Others likely faced similar obstacles; for instance, I remember girls in middle school wanting so desperately to wear the oh-so adult kitten heels to the middle school dance, but they “couldn’t” because they were “too” tall. Boys, too, shied away from t-shirts that emphasised their arms

since they “didn’t have the muscles for it.”

There is not an adjective available that can justify telling a person they cannot wear an article of clothing. No one is “too” or “not enough” of anything to present themselves in a way they find beautiful. Our bodies are good and deserving to be decorated with how we see fit. I love tie-dye, a — shocking — bright pattern, and I wear tie-dye tees regularly. Now, I tuck my t-shirts into my denim skirt, which unashamedly reveals the stomach I was told for so long to hide. You should wear that outfit you feel vulnerable in because that insecurity will fade, and in its place will emerge confidence and a sense of power.

Being kind to yourself is difficult. Obstacles stand in the way, such as the images the media broadcasts. While there is more diversity now than ever, popular media still does not entirely accept different body types. We are almost punished for variation, being told to conceal or change ourselves to comply with societal standards that are, oftentimes, unachievable.

While now incorporating a range of body types, popular media still panders to the message of change. Happiness is equated with looking different, pushing the narrative that changing that one little thing will unlock this new life, the “life you were intended to lead.” How you are now is the way you were meant to be.

Body positivity primarily focuses on caring for your body as it is presently, so take care of yourself. Begin a daily ritual that makes you feel good. For me, that’s washing my face every morning and night, and taking a walk. Everyone needs to take time for themselves, especially in the age of “Zoom university.” Computer fatigue is real, and facing a computer for a considerable amount of time can bring forth feelings of incompleteness and laziness. My weight has always been a topic of conversation, where 164

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

others find it necessary to comment on my dietary habits or the size of jeans being double digits. Initially, when quarantine began, I was sensitive about my weight because I was not as active as I had been previously.

Being confined to a space naturally results in weight gain, but I felt I was just another fat girl who was succumbing to her bad, fat habits. That wasn’t true, though. I had not developed any “fat” habits but was just feeling the effect of a national pandemic, and because I have been told my body is wrong, I thought I was wrong for not being as active. This was not being kind to my body and internalizing

negative emotions about it; I felt it was “bad” for adjusting to a new lifestyle, where my movement was limited to the house and my workplace.

In the wake of quarantine, it is important to remind yourselves of this, too. Be nice to yourselves, your bodies and foster personal growth. If you haven’t already, give body positivity a chance. Appreciate yourself for your natural beauty and celebrate the body you were given. Every line and curve is beautiful, and though I can only speak from my experience as a plus-sized woman, embracing myself as I am improved my mental and physical health.

#MasksUp Photos by Rebecca Klinger ‘22

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

169

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

170

Models: Sarah Zidlicky ‘24, Sam Gruber ‘24, Jan Blackmon ‘22, Thanh Pham ‘22, Keith Lee ‘24, Riley Moffatt ‘24, Matt Siroty ‘23, Ella Schotz ‘23, Spencer Langley ‘21 173

Flat Hat Magazine • Style

THE KATZ OUT OF THE BAG CAROLINE KATZ (2017-2021) IN MEMORIAM. SHE DIDN’T DIE, SHE JUST GRADUATED.

Thank you for always being there for a coffee outing, an outfit check, a vlog update, and everything else in between. I am so excited to see what you’ll do next. Keep shining and happy graduation!! I’m so proud of you Miss Katz!!

- Carmen Honker To my old-time William and Mary pal, it’s been an honour. There are few better people (or cooler Katz) to be coincidentially connected to in seemingly every single way by at-most three degrees of separation. Between Drawing and Colour, mutual friends/roomates, or this magazine; it feels inevitable that I’ll stumble into your coffee shop someday in the future and we’ll get all chummy over a cup of earl grey. Until that day comes, I salute you.

- Matthew Kortan Caroline, you will be gone but not forgotten. When we met, you were just Carmen’s quirky roommate. Also thanks to Carmen, we got fake married — or so I’ve been told. Though our sham matrimony has been a failure, it has been really fun getting to know you through ROCKET Digital, this magazine, and of course the elusive Brazil class and the accompanying shenanigans-filled group chat. Speaking of digital, you have singlehandedly pioneered the social media presence of this magazine, and for that you are worthy of praise. I literally cannot wait to spend € 12 on coffee at your future café and to possibly buy clothes from your line.

Godspeed my Brazilian-Argentine queen. I’m rooting for you!

- Gavin Aquin Caroline, thank you for having a TikTok popular enough for my comment about being too lazy to renew my Brazilian passport to garner more likes than any video I have ever posted. I’m so glad that Gavin bullied us into being Digital coDirectors. You have done such a good job with social media! Throwback to our days in Drawing and Colour, before we knew each other but I would just speak loud enough that from across the room that you would be included in all our conversations. Who would’ve thought that we’d be where we are today? I may be upset that you stole Gavin’s heart from me, but I’ll get over it. I loved working with you this year and I’m excited to see what your future holds.

- Rebecca Klinger

f l a t h a t m a g a z i n e . c o m

CONTRIBUTORS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Gavin Aquin Hernández ‘22 CREATIVE DIRECTION Matthew Kortan ‘22 Alyssa Slovin ‘22 DIGITAL DIRECTION Caroline Katz ‘21 Rebecca Klinger ‘22 MANAGING EDITOR Ethan Brown ‘21 DEPUTY EDITOR Anna Boustany ‘21 BUSINESS MANAGER Katie Kauppi ‘23 COPY CHIEFS Christian Borio ‘22 Nina Raneses ‘22 GENERAL STAFF Mary Beth Bauermann ‘24 Mollie Bowman ‘24 Sabrina El Shanti ‘22 Daisy Garner ‘21 JR Herman ‘24 Jamie Holt ‘22 Ashley Huang ‘24 Ellie Kurlander ‘24 Will Kobos ‘24 Linda Li ‘24 Allyson Lowe ‘24 Zach Lutzky ‘24 Olivia McCarthy ‘23 Maggie More ‘20 Grace Olsen ‘23 Dina Phipps ‘22 Katherine Vanbourgondien ‘24 Tara Vasanth ‘23 Angela Vasishta ‘21 Ellie Voorhis ‘22

Š Flat Hat Magazine 2020. All rights reserved.