The College Hill Independent — Vol 48 Issue 8

At 6 AM on the day which we write this—Wednesday April 24—over 80 Brown students pitched tents on the Main Green, beginning a Gaza solidarity encampment. They joined colleges across the country and world protesting for divestment from Israeli apartheid and against draconian, hyper-militarized suppression of student protest from Columbia to UT Austin.

The University’s administration has sent squads of armed Brown police officers into this camp, a place of worship, learning, and communal care—the prefiguring of a ‘people’s university’—every few hours to ID everyone in sight on the grounds of “collusion,” threatening disciplinary action, including suspension.

Over the last century, the American university has shifted from an all-white, all-male elite social club to a glorified hedge fund and McKinsey incubator—what does it mean, as a paper, to commit to anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism from the heart of empire? Eight issues in, writing our final words as MEs, we wonder what a truly independent Indy would require. At minimum, to send not another cent of Brown’s $7.7 billion endowment to support Israel’s genocidal campaign in Palestine.

Only two of us are actually writing this FTE, as a beloved member of our (un)holy trinity is sleeping in a tent tonight. It seems only fitting that when the sun rises and the chants begin anew, our first morning as Senior Editors will be spent together, in solidarity.

MANAGING

Angela Lian

Arman Deendar

Kolya Shields

WEEK IN REVIEW

Cecilia Barron

Yoni Weil

ARTS

George Nickoll

Linnea Hult

EPHEMERA

Colin Orihuela

Quinn Erickson

FEATURES

Luca Suarez

Paulina Gąsiorowska

Plum Luard

LITERARY

Jane Wang

Madeline Canfield

METRO

Ashton Higgins

Keelin Gaughan

Sofia Barnett

SCIENCE + TECH

Christina Peng

Daniel Zheng

Jolie Barnard

WORLD

James Langan

Tanvi Anand

X

Claire Chasse

Joshua Koolik

Lola Simon

DEAR INDY

Solveig Asplund

SCHEMA

Lucas Galarza

Sam Stewart

BULLETIN BOARD

Emilie Guan

RL Wheeler

DEVELOPMENT TEAM

Audrey He

Avery Liu

Yunan (Olivia) He

*Our Beloved Staff

DESIGN EDITORS

Andrew Liu

Ollantay Avila

Ash Ma

COVER COORDINATORS

Julia Cheng

Sylvie Bartusek

STAFF WRITERS

Abani Neferkara

Aboud Ashhab

Angela Qian

Caleb Stutman-Shaw

Charlie Medeiros

Charlinda Banks

Corinne Leong

Coby Mulliken

David Felipe

Emily Mansfield

Emily Vesper

Gabrielle Yuan

Jenny Hu

Kalie Minor

Lucia Kan-Sperling

Maya Avelino

Martina Herman

Nadia Mazonson

Nan/Jack Dickerson

Naomi Nesmith

Nora Mathews

Riley Gramley

Saraphina Forman

Yunan (Olivia) He

COPY EDITORS /

FACT-CHECKERS

Anji Friedbauer

Audrey He

Avery Liu

Ayla Tosun

Becca Martin-Welp

Ilan Brusso

Lila Rosen

Naile Ozpolat

Samantha Ho

Yuna Shprecher

SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM

Eurie Seo

Jolie Barnard

Nat Mitchell

Yuna Shprecher

FINANCIAL COORDINATOR

Simon Yang

ILLUSTRATION

EDITORS

Izzy Roth-Dishy

Julia Cheng

DESIGNERS

Anahis Luna

Eiffel Sunga

Jolin Chen

Kay Kim

Minah Kim

Nada (Neat) Rodanant

Nor Wu

Rachel Shin

Riley Cruzcosa

Ritvik Bhadury

Sejal Gupta

Simon Yang

Tanya Qu

Yuexiao Yang

Zoe Rudolph-Larrea

Lucy Pham

ILLUSTRATORS

Abby Berwick

Aidan Choi

Alena Zhang

Angela Xu

Anna Fischler

Avery Li

Catie Witherwax

Cindy Liu

Ellie Lin

Greer Nakadegawa-Lee

Luca Suarez

Luna Tobar

Meri Sanders

Mingjia Li

Muzi Xu

Nan/Jack Dickerson

Jessica Ruan

Julianne Ho

Ren Long

Ru Kachko

Sofia Schreiber

Sylvie Bartusek

COPY CHIEF

Ben Flaumenhaft

WEB DESIGNERS

Eleanor Park

Lucy Pham

Mai-Anh Nguyen

Na Nguyen

SENIOR EDITORS

Angela Qian

Corinne Leong

Charlie Medeiros

Isaac McKenna

Jane Wang

Lily Seltz

Lucia Kan-Sperling

MISSION STATEMENT

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures. Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and self-critical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

Leak in Review

( TEXT KIAN BRAULIK

KOLYA SHIELDS

ILLUSTRATIONS IZZY ROTH-DISHY DESIGN OLLANTAY AVILA )

“This one time, my dad bought me a house in Providence, Rhode Island.”

—Ottessa

Moshfegh, “The Smoker”

(The Paris Review, 2023)

cHello leaky-loos and lazy listas, it’s your friendly neighborhood former IndieWire columnist Krankheit Bellwhistle here to suggest 5 things to leak out—I mean watch out—for when you’re renting an off-campus apartment in 02906, because 7 ate 9, baby. When I waltzed into my new apartment this fall, I met a cozy and welcoming tenant I didn’t even know was already living there slash here! That is, I noticed a gash in my ceiling the size of a gash in my ceiling, with the uncanny ability to drip rainwater profusely in conditions such as:

• Rain

• Rain and wind

• Hail

• Snow

• Intimate and thoughtful conversations

One time I woke up in my apartment and fancied myself a “Janusian figure,” “conjured by the missing signifier inherent to the symbolic Order.” That is to say, half of my body was covered in yellow rainwater due to the stunning lack of structural (phallic) integrity in my very faulty (castrated) ceiling. The thought of what I did to deserve this, only the silliest (and sexiest) of fates, inexplicably grazes my limbic system every time my ceiling blows its leak on even one flimsy portion of my Real. Answers abound as to my incurred sins impelling this ongoing incident:

• Loving too groundedly

• Winning at therapy

• Idolatry

• Smoking only in “social” “situations”

• .5-er

One time my ex came over to check out my roof leak. That is, my ex-maintenance-guy, then-current-maintenance guy, and, in between we-just-think-we’re-better-as-friends-maintenance-guy. We’ll call him Benito. Benito was just the apple to my ceiling water before the third “property” “manager” of my apartment tore us apart when he got elected Apartment Lord of PVD-RI through the democratic will of his co-operatized property subjects. Phrases Benito shared with me before he met someone during his summer UTRA in Urban Studies about the relationship between tenant organizing and ceiling integrity, and (breathe) Apartment Lord Jeremy D. Lish rended us for good include the following:

- “Where is Kolya?”

- “I’m going to call the gutter company on Tuesday, and after they check on the outside of the building, I’ll place a slab of sheet rock in the hole.

- “I’m Italian.”

You can say that again! “Where’s Kolya?” Every time my roof leaks it’s like a surprise-flavor lollipop you get only from bank tellers or the orthodontist: a surprise. That’s because guys—“maintenance” guys and just plain-old guys—have plumbed those upper-depths six ways from 4/20-Spring-Day-Pesach. But as my smart friend once said, “Brown University Health Services inserted my IUD wrong.” Which is to say that not all sheetrock prevents unwanted pregnancy, and sometimes a little yellow dribble ekes through the crevices you’re just not wanting it to e-ke eeek (record scratch) through. Get out the mason jars and watch what you metaphorize to pregnancy.

So the next time you’re touring an apartment in the Tri-state area, make sure to ask the following questions:

(1) How’s that ceiling look?

(2) What’s the ceiling up to in the rain?

(3) Fruit flies or [this could say “vegetables” or be homophobic] flies?

(4) Are there rain ghosts?

(5) How do I prepare to move into my first apartment, when it’s so temporary and so fraught? With the knowledge that I’ll probably be dealing with a landlord who doesn’t care if I drown in my apartment, let alone get dripped, doused, even dunked on at night. How do I reconcile that fact, the wetness, with the certain, homely love that I feel for my first apartment? The affection and whimsy that accompanies being able to return home to friendly faces, host a dinner party, or just light a candle without sort of… t-trembling… about my (unionized (“unionized?!” (unionized….))) “Community” “Coordinator” coming after me. And how do I get ready for the day, one millisecond later, when it’ll be all gone?

Lucky for me, I figured out how to ask good questions this year, and look forward to my new apartment, with a fire in the wall. In the meantime I’ll miss this house, and remember it always as the one I lived in when my friend got cancelled for biphobia.

KIAN BRAULIK B’24.5 is a Wild, silly Goose.

(Wiki)Leaks in Review

A collection of yet-to-be-verified or fact-checked headlines I hope to see in our future… or the Imaginary coinciding with the Real.

• Study Determines Raves Are Inherently Radical and Subversive and Have a Material Impact

• Breaking: Student Theatre Now Free to See and Free to Produce

• International Writer’s Union Announces 50-Year-Boycott on Berlin-Based Essayists

• They are Not Having More Fun Without You

• Due to Unforeseen Tax Error, Brown University Disbanded, Transformed Into Joint Makerspace and UnSchooling Community Workshop Space

Trans-Affirming Pussy Hat Patterns

• Providence Noise Band Playing the Grammys

• You Will Live the Life of a Uniqlo Model

• Poppers Shown to Enlarge and Supercharge Right Brain Activity.

• Lab Leak! Newton, Massachusetts’ Clandestine Twink Factory Finally Shuttered by FDA

• Barack Obama’s Latest Novel Not Even Shortlisted for Reece’s Book Club—Witherspoon Deems Prose “Simultaneously Prigishly Didactic and Sophomorically Unstructured, Not to Mention Insufficiently Marxian”

• Universal Nudity Codified to Combat (Fast) Fashion’s Exorbitant Environmental Impact.

• It’s True! Angela Merkel Is a (Sex) Robot in a Skinsuit

• People Will Read Your Honors Thesis

• Sophomore Twinks Were Simply Born That Way <3

• Prose Poems Outlawed (Except for the Good Ones)

• Ben Lerner Comes Out

• No Relation! Rising Art World Star With Same Last Name as Industry Giant Pure Coincidence

• Studies Show Brown Literary Arts

Undergraduate Degree Locks in Sustainable Career in Independent Publishing

• You Are Invited to the Orgy

• Good Morning—Patriarchy Was Just a Bad Dream!

• Boston Conservatory Announces Creation of the Affiliated, Endowed Smokepurpp SoundCloud Rap College

• 2025: The Stoner Lesbian Tipping Point

• Symposium Books Cashier Thought Your Book Selections (Play it as it Lays, 1000 Chairs) Were For Real Super Cool

• Flouride in Water Supply Determined

Depressant and Outlawed—Soon You Will Feel

Real Joy

• RISD Definitely Would Have Accepted Your Dual Degree Application if You Weren’t So Committed to the Radical Potential of the Liberal Arts

• It’s Not a Polycule It’s Just Fluid (and Free)

• Lacan Returns as Ghost—Says You Read and Use Him Totally Right

• It’s O.K. That Your Final Indy Article Is a Listicle.

KOLYA SHIELDS B’24 Will Lowkey Miss That Leaky House Real Bad.

A E N A E TRULY FOR IGN L GU G S

Speaking (of) America’s disembodied other

( DESIGN SEJAL GUPTA ILLUSTRATION ANNA FISCHLER )

c “We have people from places unknown… who don’t speak languages,” began Donald Trump in a speech at the Texas border town Eagle Pass last February, “We have languages coming into our country, we have nobody who even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages.” Setting aside the irony of delivering a speech on speakerless languages at the Mexican border (13% of Americans speak Spanish at home), Trump’s rhetoric raises an important question: what is a language without speakers? Or, more seriously, what is gained in presenting a language as a husk, a disembodied other, foreign not for being spoken by “foreigners” but for not being spoken at all?

Trumpisms like the “truly foreign language” are easy to dismiss. They can be seen as oxymoronic, ridiculous, rooted in fear. And still, we must take them seriously; they capture a central component of the American psyche, one that makes itself whole only by contrasting itself with a barbarian, assimilable other. The specter of the truly foreign language is not new, nor even exclusively a product of American expansionism or postwar globalization; it has haunted the nation’s imagined monolingual self from its inception.

Founding Father John Jay, in 1787, lauded the thirteen colonies as “one connected country [belonging] to one united people… speaking the same language.” To Jay, owing to their monolingualism, the mass of white colonists were poised to claim not only a political nationhood, but a linguistic one, too. The problem with that fantasy was that the colonies were not monolingual; indigenous Algonquian, African Mandé, and various European languages, like German and French, among others, were spoken throughout the nascent nation-state. A German-language press in Pennsylvania (where, at the time, a third of the population spoke German) was the first to announce the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and German street signs pervaded the mid-Atlantic. Even among the political elite, it was not a foregone conclusion that English be made the language of state; in a series of propositions intended to distance America from its “mother-country” and affirm its purported historical exceptionality, some legislators suggested that Greek or Hebrew replace English. English, this is all to say, was far from dominant.

Ultimately, neither Greek, nor Hebrew, nor even English would be named official language. And yet it was in English—not in some Franco-AngloGermano-Gullah-Algonquian creole, as some early commentators had predicted—that the U.S. Senate would conduct its proceedings, that the New York Times would print, and that virtually all interstate road signs would be written. Of course, that hegemonic English would morph and coexist alongside an ever-growing cluster of languages (Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin, to name a few); but so too would Jay’s fantasy of monolingualism, employing the specter of various “foreign languages”—the particular one depending on the historical moment—to

affirm the United States’ supposed linguistic unity.

That specter would materialize in a particularly xenophobic form in the early 20th century, when, after America’s entry into World War I, anti-German sentiment culminated in the elimination of German street names, the cessation of German language classes, and the anglicization of German last names. This was monolingualization in practice. Just ten years prior, President Theodore Roosevelt had warned that immigration might turn Americans into “dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” Roosevelt’s dichotomy—contrasting the “boarding house”/ “mosaic” model of integration with an Americanist vision of assimilation—would become a major source of ammunition for the so-called Englishonly movement in the latter half of the century.

John Tanton and S.I. Hayakawa were an unlikely duo. Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist, had cut his teeth in the 1970s promoting eugenics in organizations from the Sierra Club to Planned Parenthood, whereas Hayakawa, a Japanese American former U.S. Senator from California, had spent his academic and then political career crafting an image as a moderate Republican. However, the two found common cause in 1983 when they founded the monolingualism advocacy group, U.S. English, with the stated aim of making English the official language of the United States and preventing the country’s collapse “into noisy Babel and then chaos.” Though Tanton would be forced to resign from the group’s board just five years later when (more explicitly) racist remarks of his were leaked to the press, U.S. English would have remarkable success on the state level. In 1988, the same year as Tanton’s resignation, Arizona (a fifth of whose residents are native Spanish speakers) passed an English-only resolution; in the decades following, more than two-thirds of states would adopt similar legislation.

Tanton is so emblematic because, although in public-facing remarks he insisted his goals were strictly linguistic, in private correspondence his vision was overtly racial. In one 1993 letter, he writes, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” That is to say, fears of sociolinguistic disintegration were racialized from the start; fears of Babelization have always been fears of miscegenation, or indeed replacement.

Whence the pearl-clutching? Some of it, surely, is born of insecurity. The notion of the ‘mother tongue’ is tied intimately to questions of motherhood and fertility; fears that the United States might be failing in its duty to reproduce an English-speaking citizenship beget fears of white replacement and declining fertility rates. While contemporary identitarian movements in Europe use pride in their ‘national heritages’ to mask a paranoia that Europeans might be replaced by an

Islamic civilization that, by all the metrics important to them—fertility, religiosity, maintenance of traditional values—is actually superior, American conservatives cache their own impotence in calls to mobilize against the great, foreign other.

Imperial metropoles, when faced with migration from their respective colonies or ‘peripheries,’ have often mobilized linguistic fears in service of self-reassurance. In France, for example, the right demonizes the North African minority as an “enemy within” and consequently maligns Arabic as its own “truly foreign language.” And yet in lauded novelist Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission, which depicts a peacefully “Islamized” France, the narrativistic anxiety is not so much that Islamization will degrade French society, but rather that an “Islamic” society might be better at governing itself—at suppressing riots, maintaining patriarchy, reducing class tensions—than a “European” one. The speculative novel, set in 2022 and published in 2015 on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo shooting, received widespread attention in France amid the rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Front. A similar situation plays out in the United States, where Latin American immigrants tend to be more religious, less likely to commit crime, and more likely to have children than U.S. citizens—all qualities supposedly cherished by the American right.

Trump’s assertion that “no one” speaks the truly foreign language is, in this sense, an attempt at self-reassurance, masking the fear that the “foreigners” might actually be better at speaking and reproducing their “truly foreign language.” Enforcing monolingualism, that is to say, is as much about language as it is about power. Drawing on fantasies rooted in nostalgic European ethnonationalisms—in, say, the German Volksgemeinschaft monolingualism in the American context is constructed upon a fantasy of a pure, unfractured form of life. When Trump conjures images of schools “loaded up with people that don’t speak a word of English,” he not only admonishes the transgression of not yet having learned English, he also recalls an invented homogeneous past. The United States has never been monolingual, nor has American English ever been a unitary language.

Of course, this article is based on an intentional misreading. When Trump claims that “nobody speaks” the truly foreign language, he does not mean nobody; he means, rather, that the speakers of the truly foreign languages are nobodies—non-people, homo sacer in the words of Giorgio Agamben. In this configuration, the (non-)speakers are othered by virtue of their (non-)language, and vice versa. “Foreign languages” are, of course, spoken, just not by people who—according to Trump—matter, or even exist. America is then split along this line, those belonging to the monolingual whole on one side and those nobodies who speak nothing on the other. Taking Trump seriously, we are made to fear a future in which communication is impossible, in which language is impossible. Thus emerges the rhetoric of expulsion, deportation, and the like; if the United States is to survive as a

cohesive whole, we are told, it must expel those truly foreign languages. But one cannot expel languages, only people, and so the rhetoric of migrants “poisoning the blood of our country” is born.

When my great-grandmother, a German-speaking Jew raised in Czechoslovakia, developed dementia, it was not German to which she returned, but Czech. This was, in a sense, a foreign language for her; her hometown had a German name; her cultural traditions were German. After World War II, the Czech government expelled her hometown’s German residents—most of whom were, in fact, Christians who supported the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland— and exchanged its old name (Saaz) for a Czech name (Žatec). Almost all of the Jews, like my great-grandmother, who had fled the annexation, spoke German, were considered Germans by the post-war government, and were thus prohibited reentry. And so, though I know little about my great-grandmother’s political views of the Czechoslovak state, I figure her relationship with the Czech language was an ambivalent one at the very least.

Still, Czech occupied some hidden corridor of her mind that, even as her German and English decayed, remained unchanged. My family was baffled at this fact, that this other was so firmly implanted within her that it—more so than the identities with which we had always associated her—was what stuck with her in her final years. I see in this sort of shock the roots of the anxiety which animates all that we have discussed so far. To that end, Jacques Derrida, in Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin, writes, “I have only one language and it is not mine… My language, the only one I hear myself speak and agree to speak, is the language of the other.” The notion of possessing a language, he argues, is necessarily absurd, for the so-called mother language “is never purely natural, nor proper, nor inhabitable.” And so, even the language we consider our own is, in a sense, already the language of an other.

That conclusion is a bit terrifying. Where ought one find identity beyond one’s language, seemingly the most internal structure we have? Derrida says there are three options: the first is to cease speaking altogether—leading to “madness”—the second is to conform rigidly “to the model of the ‘average’” speaker, and the third—the one Derrida chooses for himself—is, in the words of Didier Maleuvre, to “commit oneself to the alienation or différance of language… the promise that, since language is

always elusively beyond appropriation, it therefore gestures toward… the touted Other, the outside space thanks to which language in fact speaks.”

It is hard, of course, to imagine Trump’s cadres committing themselves either to the “différance of language” or to the cessation of speech. They are left, then, with Derrida’s second path: performing total conformity to their image of an English—better yet, a (white) American—speaker. In realizing, however, that the language they claim to own has, in a rather Hegelian sense, dialectically constituted itself from the onset in opposition to—and thus depending on—an other, they panic. The truly foreign language is in a sense within them and must be expelled, for its continued presence makes their supposed conformity impossible. This is the essential point: when Trump rails against his “truly foreign languages,” he is really railing against the prosthesis of his own

origins, against the realization that the identity on which his politics rest cannot exist without the “truly foreign languages” he claims to deplore.

And so a polity that strives for homogeneity strives for its own destruction, for homogeneity is not so much a passive state as it is an active one, one that demands the continuous expulsion of the “foreign.” Perhaps then, what we must come to terms with, in Derrida’s words, is the “monastic solitude” to which monolingualism—and its exploitation by ethnonationalist projects—has already condemned us.

COBY MULLIKEN B’27 considers French the only truly foreign language.

Sight & Might

Brown University as the Surveillance State

c It is no secret that everyone on Brown’s campus is under surveillance. This surveillance varies in shape and size, from video surveillance of students’ physical person by camera, to digital surveillance of student groups’ social media by administrators.

Surveillance performed by the University is ostensibly a social contract—students at Brown must exchange some of their liberties and autonomy to gain protection from the institution, which obtains much of its power from surveillance. So what does it mean if this social contract is not necessarily as mutually beneficial as it may appear? What happens when surveillance is weaponized against the students it is allegedly designed to protect?

Surveillance apparatuses at Brown

Surveillance is a fundamental part of life at Brown. In a 2021 Brown Daily Herald column, Ph.D. candidate John Wrenn reported that Brown operates approximately 800 cameras on campus (more than one camera for every 10 undergraduate students).

Although these cameras were originally positioned primarily in public spaces such as walkways, parking lots, libraries, and study spaces, the school’s surveillance efforts have since increased, with camera surveillance now seeping into dormitories and lounges.

Brown not only possesses the ability to monitor students’ bodies through camera surveillance but can also track students’ locations through apparatuses like Duo Push and the Brown University WiFi. During the 2020-2021 academic year, at the height of on-campus COVID-19 quarantine, restrictions were placed on students’ abilities to leave campus to reduce the risk of exposure. In order to enforce this policy, Brown’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) used the authentication factor on Duo Push to track students’ IP addresses, and when students’ locations pinged from off campus, they received emails informing them of their violations of the Code of Conduct and disregard for campus safety.

“The fact that an institution has the capability to [track students] is extremely disturbing,” said Emily Vesper B’25, who was a first-year student at the time when Duo Push was utilized as a punitive device of surveillance. The sentiment Vesper expressed is reflective of a larger trend concerning the impact of surveillance apparatuses at Brown—surveillance is fear-inducing and functions in a way that terrorizes students by placing them in a position of liminality, where they are unsure of whether or not they are being watched.

According to Brown OIT’s Electronic Access Information Policy, any documents or information stored electronically by the institution gives its administrators a right to request and access the information they desire. This request must be approved by the Office of General Counsel, who must first confer with a senior Brown administrator known as a “Data Trustee.” The intellectual property that can be accessed once a request is approved includes

any “documents, spreadsheets, digital photographs, videos, communications (emails and their attachments, instant messages), voicemails, [and] logs”— this means that for the University, content stored in your Brown Google accounts is there for the taking.

Brown’s policies allow the administration to access deeply personal information, occasionally even without OIT’s oversight. Under specific circumstances, which the policy refers to as cases of “Emergency Access” where the “safety of the campus or … the life, health, or safety of any person” is threatened, the OIT’s policy makes accessing students’ personal information easier than ever—members of the University’s Presidential Cabinet can simply bypass the process of requesting access. The language of this policy is intentionally vague and gives administrators full jurisdiction over its interpretation and the implementation of disciplinary actions.

Criminalization of protest

These OIT policies have a detrimental effect on Brown students when put in the context of the administration’s criminalization of on-campus student activism.

Brown has a long history of suppressing activism on campus, primarily through punitive disciplinary responses to protests and demonstrations. In a call for need-blind admissions in 1992, over 250 Brown students were arrested for their occupation of University Hall and charged with disorderly conduct and several counts of willful trespassing. Although need-blind admissions were eventually established in 2003, this instance of the University’s criminalization of student activism has remained a stain on the institution’s legacy. Between 1992 and 2003, Brown also made a momentous shift in their surveillance policies by moving to a fully digital recording system in 2000, enormously expanding their surveillance abilities. That is to say, the criminalization of on-campus activism and surveillance of students at Brown are co-constitutive. Brown’s efforts to suppress student activism through criminalization saw a reprise beginning with the November 8 arrests of 19 Jewish students who staged a sit-in at University Hall, calling on Paxson and the Brown Corporation to review a divestment resolution immediately. A month later, on December 11, another 41 students from the emergent advocacy group called the Brown Divest Coalition were arrested for a similar demonstration. Gabriela Venegas, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who was arrested at the December sit-in and involved in the organization of both actions, articulated that protesting on campus after the University’s criminalization of student activism felt “scary because with the cameras you don’t know what you’re allowed to do.”

The oppressive nature of surveillance has loomed over student activists ever since the second sit-in. Amanda McGregor, Deputy Director for News and Editorial Development at the OIT, wrote in a message to the Indy that “Brown does not monitor students’

( TEXT EMILY MANSFIELD

DESIGN ANDREW LIU ILLUSTRATION SITONG LIU )

personal social media accounts. DPS and law enforcement partners may consider the content of a social media post if somebody reports an allegation of harassment that’s delivered through social media, and brings the post to (the) University’s attention, but students’ accounts are not monitored.” However, on January 26, 2023, over a month after the date of their arrest, the 41 BDC members received an email from the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards. This email included a detailed hourly report of the sit-in as submitted by Marguerite Joutz, Chief of Staff to President Paxson, from 9:05 am, when the students entered University Hall, to 6:00 pm, when students left after being arrested and processed inside the building. It also included attachments of screenshotted social media posts from the BDC and JFCN (Jews for Ceasefire Now) Instagram accounts, featuring close-up photographs of student activists’ uncovered faces as evidence of their planning of, and involvement in, the second sit-in at University Hall. The report hones in on student behavior and their communications with members of the administration, but fails to detail the process of arrest, when the police were called, or why the students were processed within the building. Here, the administration’s surveillance of student protestors was used to dominate and control the institutional narrative surrounding protest, in order to best serve Brown’s political position. The monitoring of student groups’ social media by the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards not only demonstrates institutional surveillance tactics but also begs the question: where is the boundary drawn in terms of the University’s jurisdiction for students’ political behavior online? And how are these boundaries informed by institutional biases?

Surveillance of student groups’ social media

During the eight-day “hunger strike for Palestine” led by Palestinian and Jewish activists this past February, members of BDC, SJP and JFCN organized programming activities for Palestinian liberation including teach-ins, art builds, and string quartet performances to showcase student solidarity with the hunger strikers and foster community within the coalition. At the same time, the Student Activities Office (SAO) began enforcing tedious, bureaucratic policies around organizing and community gathering. These policies included crack-downs on the reservation of meeting spaces two or more weeks in advance—even including fairly public ones like the Main Green— limiting rooms in which student activist groups could gather, and restricting the activities student groups could engage in within booked spaces.

While the hunger strike was ongoing, a small group of pro-Palestinian activists met in the Brown Student Radio (BSR) lounge to convene, relax, and do homework together. Wearing their keffiyehs and masks, they were approached by an employee of SAO who heard their voices and discovered their

unauthorized use of the lounge space. BSR station manager Alicia Joo said that the student activists were instructed to leave within the next 15 minutes or face academic consequences for their violation of SAO rules. However, Joo clarified that the hunger strike was the “first and only time” the students were told that they could not use the space for external, non-BSR related purposes and expressed frustration at SAO’s decision to implement arbitrary rules that had never previously been invoked.

During the hunger strike, other arbitrary policies with draconian consequences soon emerged—BDC student organizer Carla Humphris B’24 said that SAO banned the playing of string quartet music in the Leung Gallery because it was “disruptive,” even though SAO had taken no issue with a rock show that had been performed there a year prior. SAO then placed regulations on the conduct of students sitting in at the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center in solidarity with the hunger strikers by prohibiting them from sitting on the floor, taking naps, distributing medical masks, hanging banners or artwork, using microphones at registered events, inviting guest speakers (including professors), and more. SAO’s surveillance strategies not only included in-person monitoring, but also intense online scrutiny of SJP, BDC, and other groups’ registered events, which were cross-checked with actions advertised on their social media.

Although versions of these policies existed in the past, students noted that SAO’s sudden enforcement of said rules was confusing at best, and at worst, steeped in prejudice. “Bias is absolutely involved [in the]... over-policing of specific policies that would often be ignored in other contexts, or if they were open to interpretation, would be interpreted very differently in other activist groups,” Humphris said.

“In my time at Brown, I entered activist spaces via Sunrise, which is primarily environmental justice advocacy,” she continued. “Over the past year, I have become progressively more involved with divestment and Palestine-related activism and noticed… a shift in how the University treats the two different issues.”

Brown SJP member and designated point-person for contact with SAO, Eli Grossman, said that “at its core, Brown’s policies exist to ensure that administrators can maintain control over student activity at all times.”

“So, what we are really witnessing is (the University’s) bureaucratic creep into every aspect of student life, from Outing Club trips to dance performances to speaker events,” he continued. “For most students, this manifests itself in annoying requirements like more paperwork for event registration, and can sometimes even appear somewhat reasonable. However, when it comes to student protest, particularly on a charged issue, these regulations turn into a maze of policies and rules that make it incredibly difficult not to violate these regulations in some way.”

In light of Brown’s efforts to criminalize student protest, the institution’s insistence that surveillance is in the name of its students is not only disingenuous but alarming. Brown’s surveillance techniques place students in a frightening state of liminality while simultaneously emulating surveillance apparatuses of the state, which use surveillance as a tool of social domination and control. Surveillance as an instrument of oppression is nothing new to minority groups in the United States, and is viewed by surveillance scholars like Simone Browne as inseparably racialized. Racialized surveillance is an intersectionally oppressive force, and its ability to subjugate transcends identity categories, affecting many different minoritized groups across the nation, from the excessive policing of Black communities in poor urban communities to the disproportionate monitoring of Muslim communities post September 11, 2001. Since the dozens of activists attending and participating in the sit-ins and hunger strike were in poor community standing due to their previous arrests and allegations of Code of Conduct violations, the stakes of SAO’s crackdown on policy were greatly heightened. Further retribution by the institution could have severe

consequences for some of the most minoritized members of the Brown community—international students, or students with visa considerations might have their academic standing altered and their F-1 statuses revoked. And, although students on scholarship legally cannot be stripped of financial aid given by FAFSA, scholarships from external organizations do not hold the same legal protections. The charges against the 41 BDC members who were arrested for the misdemeanor of willful trespass in Rhode Island have yet to be dropped and may remain on students’ criminal records for years after they graduate.

As the movement calling for universities to divest from Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people continues to grow, the surveillance mechanisms, policing tactics, and tools of intimidation utilized by Brown University and other academic institutions across the country swell alongside it. All the while, consequences for student activists become increasingly severe at peer institutions and universities nationwide, with aggressive and brutal arrests, suspensions, and evictions of students at the hands of elite universities, profoundly jeopardizing their physical safety and their future professional opportunities. In wake of national escalation, it is crucial to recognize Brown’s intentional use of surveillance as a tool to persecute primarily Palestinian, Jewish and otherwise marginalized activists—whose identities notably inform their advocacy—as a ploy to both silence and terrorize minority groups dissenting on college campuses. Widespread institutional surveillance must be seen as a means of reproducing systems of academic and professional penalization that ensure that marginalized people who lift their voices must remain in the margins of society, simultaneously watched and unseen.

EMILY MANSFIELD ‘27 is engaging in counter-surveillance.

Divide & Conquer:

c One of my earliest memories was begging my mom for $5 in third grade so I could download “Stack the Countries” on my iTouch (if you don’t know what I am talking about, please run to the App Store). Thankfully, she obliged, and ever since then, I have been a geography junkie. I love looking at maps and understanding how different parts of the world fit together. I have spent hours scrolling around Google Maps—wandering through virtual alleys and crossing borders frozen in time. Needless to say, all my close friends know to trust me with directions.

But there is a funny paradox about maps. When given a physical (often paper) form, they remain the same pretty much until they are destroyed. But in reality, maps are constantly changing. Independence, invasions, natural phenomena, and other factors frequently alter geography. The failure to acknowledge certain adjustments can render certain maps obsolete over time: for example, only maps made after 2011 will show an independent South Sudan. Even a map from only a few years back may be missing crucial details that can void its reliability.

Digital geography tools like Google Maps avoid these issues of being untrustworthy because software engineers can just code in geographic developments, right? Wrong. Surprisingly, Big Tech does not always have our (the public’s) best interests at heart! In fact, Google Maps adjusts borders depending on where a user logs in from, to not contradict the stances of any governments. Errors in digital maps have realworld consequences: in 2010, Nicaragua and Costa Rica almost went to war after Google Maps incorrectly mapped part of Costa Rica within Nicaragua’s borders—dredging up a century’s old dispute. Given that Costa Rica actually does not have a military, this could have turned into a bloody clash between police officers and trained soldiers had the International Court of Justice not put an end to hostilities.

The modern era is dominated by the nationstate. To be a legitimate actor on the world stage, a government must have a recognized territory to rule over. Right now, there are a number of places that self-govern and claim land, yet they still lack proper international recognition. Some of these states, like Kosovo or Taiwan, are delineated on Google Maps (accessed from my American IP address), probably because they are ruled by pro-Western governments. But, many other states are absent. Here are a few places that Google Maps does not want you to know are self-governing.

Bougainville

This 3,600 square mile South Pacific island has been successively occupied by Germany, Australia, Japan, Australia again, and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Despite officially being under PNG’s control, the island is the largest and northernmost island of a separate archipelago (the Solomon Islands) to which

How Google Maps defines the boundaries of the Western gaze

it also has strong ethnic and cultural ties.

Right before PNG was granted independence from Australia in 1975, Bougainville also declared independence, to no avail.

Bougainville also possesses vast copper reserves—a central reason why PNG refuses to let the island go. The Panguna copper mine (one of the world’s largest open-cut mines) is estimated to be worth $60 billion. For decades, these resources were exploited by mainland and foreign corporations that forced locals out of their ancestral lands for mining. And, their operations at Panguna alone produced over one billion tonnes of waste, most of which was dumped into nearby rivers.

Decades of exploitation sparked a brutal civil war in 1988 that killed over 20,000 Bougainvilleans (around 10 percent of the island’s population). The war concluded in 2001 with Bougainville being promised a future referendum on independence, and drafting its own constitution to establish the Autonomous Bougainville Government in the interim.

In 2019, the referendum finally came. Ninteyeight percent of voters (with 87.4 percent turnout) preferred total independence over increased autonomy within PNG. Subsequently, PNG leaders agreed to slowly hand over powers to Bougainville to reach full independence in 2027. However, the PNG parliament still needs to accept the 2019 referendum results to officially change the constitution and grant such measures. Leaders in Bougainville expect such a move to come this year.

Locally, the future looks hopeful for Bougainville. Yet Google Maps still labels the island as an autonomous region in PNG. All other island nations in the South Pacific, and even territories of other countries, are named in bold. Bougainville, however, remains unmarked until zoomed in on very closely. To find Bougainville on a map, one must already know where it is.

The suppression of Bougainvillean sovereignty serves to uphold the continued Western interest in PNG controlling the island. This is because PNG is far more favorable to mining grants (often to Western corporations) than the anti-mining local population. Evidently, the West cares more about their profit margins than sovereignty for an island that has struggled through centuries of foreign occupation to reach this critical point.

( TEXT ASHTON HIGGINS ILLUSTRATIONS LUNA TOBAR DESIGN OLLANTAY AVILA )

Yemen

Quite simply, Yemen is two states that the West chooses to continue painting as one. For over two decades, two different states actually did occupy the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula: North and South Yemen. In 1990 the two united to form a singular “Yemen.” Almost immediately after, Houthi rebels (an Iran-backed armed group fighting on behalf of a historic clan of Shia Muslims in northwest Yemen) began fighting for independence. Years of violence ensued.

In 2014, the Houthis sparked an all-out civil war by seizing the capital, Sana’a, and expelling the Sunni Muslim government (PLC). Over the last ten years, the war has spiraled into “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world” (as stated by the EU). Yemen is currently on the brink of widespread famine and is already facing over a million expected cases of cholera. And despite support from Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and the UAE, the PLC has failed to restore its power, relegated to the southern tip and the sparsely populated eastern half of the country; the Houthis solidly control the densely populated northwest.

The UAE announced that it would remove troops from Yemen in 2019, and has grown increasingly fearful that angering the Houthis could cause retaliatory attacks against critical infrastructure. In 2021, the U.S. also ended support for offensive operations against the Houthis.

Now, some remaining leaders of the PLC—alongside leaders of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatist group—are calling for a separate, Western-backed southern state. The vice-president of the PLC and president of STC, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, recently stated that “The new reality is that the Houthis control the north and [we] govern in the south.”

Now, in the wake of genocide in Palestine, the Houthis have increased aggression across the region, sparking retaliation from the West. But U.S. officials admit that Houthi capabilities remain overwhelming, and anger towards Israel’s actions in Palestine is actually galvanizing regional support for the Houthis.

While a separate southern state may look appealing as a preservation of Western interests in Yemen, it would actually be an admission of defeat. The Houthis practically operate an entirely separate pro-Iranian state in the north, but the West refuses to concede their inability to wholly restore the PLC’s authority. Recognizing a Houthi state might further undermine Western interests in the broader Middle East proxy-conflict and cause more attacks against American and Israeli ships in the Red Sea.

This might be why Google Maps still shows a unified Yemen without any dashed lines through it to indicate contested borders. And, to further instill a sense of a peaceful and unified Yemen, Google Maps

still shows Sana’a as the capital, despite the city being under Houthi control since 2014. The STC claim Aden to be their new capital, and the city has operated as an interim capital for the PLC since 2015. Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings about the Houthis or any other actors in the region, it is undeniable that Yemen is no longer a unified state; even the most Westernaligned leaders are pleading for international recognition of two states. Below is a rough map I made to reflect the status quo in the Yemens:

Kurdistan

The Kurds are the world’s largest stateless nation, with 20 to 40 million members dispersed across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This oversight comes as the result of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which drew the modern borders of the Middle East with the notable omission of Kurdistan. Over the last two decades of American intervention in Iraq and Syria, Kurdish revolutionaries in both countries have found new hope for autonomy via close allyship with the invading Western forces.

Iraqi Kurds have been fighting for autonomy for decades. These communities faced genocide during the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein unleashed his Anfal campaign of chemical warfare against Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq. Such violence, coupled with US and UK enforced no-fly zones over the region during the Gulf Wars of the 1990s, helped facilitate the founding of a Kurdistan Regional Government in 1992, complete with presidential and parliamentary elections, and established the Provisional Constitution of the Federal Republic of Kurdistan. The new Iraqi Constitution, ratified in 2005, legitimized these separate parliamentary and judicial systems in Iraqi Kurdistan. The region currently operates as an autonomous region of Iraq, still seeking independence in the future.

Kurdish communities in northern Syria have also found success in recent years. At the outbreak of

the Syrian Civil War in 2012, the government vacated the northern regions of Syrian Kurds. These lands quickly fell under control of the largest political and military organization of Syrian Kurds, known as the Democratic Union Party (PYD). This new state, self-proclaimed Rojava (Kurdish for “west”) and ruled by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) quickly aligned with the United States to ward off the Islamic State, who were also attempting to establish their own state in the region.

However, Rojava is notable for more than just being a Western-backed state for the Kurds. The model of self-government, called ‘democratic confederalism,’ advocates for grassroots democracy, relying on local governments to inform national decisions. But this form of direct democracy goes beyond Western neo-liberal appetites, and has attracted criticism for being “communist.” Across the partitioned Kurdistan, there is a strong push for an independent, socialist Kurdistan.

However, recent invasions from Turkey (which has a strong track record of suppressing Kurdish identities) have led to the illegal occupation of northern Rojava. Erdogan has also been accused of driving out the indigenous Kurdish people in these territories, and moving in over two million Sunni Arab refugees from Turkey and Syria. Given this ongoing ethnic cleansing and violence from Turkey, recognizing the existence and legitimacy of Rojava is more urgent than ever.

While the states of neither Iraqi Kurdistan nor Rojava have international recognition, both regions operate as self-governing entities. And even if they are not ‘countries’ just yet, there is no denying that they operate as autonomous regions. However, Google Maps indicates no degree of contestation or autonomy in either region. Just as Sykes-Picot erased Kurdistan over 100 years ago, modern mapping technology still erases millions of Kurdish people from holding their rightful place on the world-stage. Since Google Maps refuses to show you where Kurds live, here is the location of Rojava and Iraqi Kurdistan within the broader ‘Kurdistan’ that remains partitioned between four countries:

‘Self-governing’ is actually quite objective: claim a territory as your own and then control it. ‘Being a country’ is clearly a different story. To be recognized as one, you not only have to operate as an independent state, you need a bunch of other states to agree that you exist and deserve the honor of ‘statehood.’ That process is inherently subjective and political.

Even though Palestine is recognized by 139 of the UN’s 193 member states, is a nonmember observer state to the UN, and is a member of the ICC, Google Maps does not label “Palestine” anywhere. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are labeled with dashed lines marking their borders, indicating they are ‘contested’ with Israel—despite the Oslo Accords setting clear borders between Israel and Palestine in the 1990s. Jerusalem is also marked as the Israeli capital, despite UNGA Resolution 181 granting the city international status. Google Maps also does not recognize Israel’s segregated road systems, instructing Palestinian users to illegally take Israeli-only roads, risking arrest.

So, while many of us might turn to maps as an objective portrayal of the world, they are really anything but. Maps are objects of political power, and even in a world where digital maps can be adjusted almost instantly to reflect geopolitical developments, they are intentionally static. Tech companies like Google care more about preserving government authority than providing people with accurate information. By logging onto Google Maps from the United States, I am force-fed a view of the world that is palatable to the American government. I am—we are all—being misinformed for the profit of a multi-billion dollar corporation and the geopolitical interests of a government living under the delusion of global unipolarity.

ASHTON HIGGINS B‘26 still plays “Stack the Countries” on airplanes since it doesn’t require WiFi.

Historian & Novelist, In So Many Words

( TEXT MADELINE CANFIELD & JANE WANG ILLUSTRATIONS LUCA SUAREZ DESIGN ASH MA )

c Both said that the party was otherwise unremarkable. Entirely so, if not for how Skye had recounted the story to their one good friend and said, in so many words, that it was the man’s fault. Jolie and Skye stood back to back in the hallway, each speaking to other people. Jolie couldn’t help her distraction as Skye began her synopsis. After three years as her roommate, Jolie could picture Skye’s posture—shoulders arched slightly toward her ears, left hand in her back pocket and the right one outstretched, gesticulating— as she spoke about how Dani’s husband Danny should be trying harder. Why didn’t he empty the dishwasher while she was sending last minute emails late at night and he had already finished grading his papers for the weekend? Why couldn’t he stock the rack with an extra roll of toilet paper before the current roll ran out completely, notice the empty box of tampons in the bathroom cabinet and remember to place a new box in his cart while on his weekly grocery runs, or even, for that matter, buy enough vegetables and protein during those shopping ventures to support their nutritional intake, if they were both so desperate to get pregnant? There was the guy friend, nodding his head vigorously in agreement. You know men, he said, so passive. Non-intuitive, functionally literal. Self-centered. Weaponized incompetence. There were always signs that the man did not read.

But wasn’t Danny trying his best? Jolie—describing the same Dani-Jolie-Skye gathering in which they’d shared the task of assuaging Dani’s panic over the status of her marriage, her lack of time, and her exhaustion, their synchronized retellings punctuated with laughs in the same beat—was reinterpreting the story with inappropriate synthesis of details. Dani, she pointed out to their other good friend Claire, was a serial micromanager. Never in the entire time Jolie had known her did Dani allow anyone but herself to do the things she needed to be done. Like, Claire, I must’ve told you this before, she said, remember the time when Danny tried to make her dinner after a long day, and Dani said no no, I want to eat the food I make? Or when Danny offered to drive her to work after she hadn’t slept and she refused? Whose fault is it really? Danny is a man, sure, but this is an interpersonal situation. They have an equal stake. Of course I’m not ‘blaming the woman,’ I just think there are multiple things at play here in terms of control. Or like the ‘prescribed’ offender. Claire’s nod in response was more hesitant. Yeah, she said, I mean you can’t really blame the woman but I see your point.

Jolie excused herself to go to the bathroom. She felt an itch behind her eyes, but no matter how many times she stretched her eyelids wide, then

squeezed them shut in the mirror, she could not make it go away. It was a psychosomatic warning, most likely, of things she’d have to live with. That’s how she knew there was something wrong with what Skye had said—her intuition. Because wasn’t it true that Dani was a remarkably difficult person to get past? Once you got her going in a conversation, there was no space left for another word, was there? It was the structurally basic, even inevitable manner with which Skye had approached the situation, or how she conveyed the story in the aftermath, that indicated they were at odds. They’d sat in Dani’s apartment sharing the chaise, Jolie perched on an arm. Across from their beleaguered friend, they periodically grasped her hands and nodded in earnest that, yes, they were acting in tandem, reassuring Dani that this was not all there ever was or would be. Had they been condemning Danny? No, they were leaving the unsaid unspoken and shelving it for another day, when they could convey to Dani, in so few words, that every action had its equal and opposite reaction. Jolie flushed the toilet to make it seem like she’d been using it. The itch turned into a tiny, repeated spasm, a glitch in the face, but there was nothing else to do so she turned the lights off and headed back out to the living room.

Skye wasn’t there; she’d gone to the kitchen for another drink without waiting for her roommate.

Later, they rode the train home together in silence, each reading a book pertaining to her respective work—Jolie, Mrs. Dalloway; Skye, Zoloft Confessional. Skye felt a strange sense of blame that she could not pinpoint the direction of. Surreptitiously, she looked over at Jolie’s page, which her friend had not turned in minutes, stuck as if some neurotransmitter had been interrupted on its way between neurons. Skye checked back every so often, but her friend’s condition remained static, reading and rereading or not reading at all. At least, it was possible that this was the case; though it was remarkable to Skye, the stuck page was not a detail that Jolie had remembered to recount. According to Skye, the unturned moment was a culminating one in the novel, in which Clarissa Dalloway confronts a story of suicide intruding upon her party, imagining that Septimus “lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain,” and that “death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them.” Why was Jolie treating the page as if it were molasses? Did she believe these sentences? That the response to a thudding in the brain was an attempt to communicate, that Dani was self-indulgent and feeding her ennui, her hysteria, with marital silence? Jolie believed in the impossibility of reaching a center—that was perhaps itself fictitious—rather than investing in the innate, and therefore real, presence of that center, which rendered us all (women, the works) exhausted, paranoid subjects in each of our respective Confessionals. This was why Skye was working fastidiously on her dissertation, accounting the history of clinical writing on psychotherapy, its abuses and interventions. And it was why Jolie’s second novel was a polyphonic story across timelines, braiding the contemporary teen mental health crisis with depression in elder generations, one in the ‘70s and another through the 2008 financial crisis. The women believed in externality, structures, and a past to be unraveled. How could Jolie think that Dani’s problems were not problems at all, but the sadnesses that stacked up on us inevitably? When the train doors opened at their stop, Jolie closed her book without looking at her friend. Skye followed suit; they disembarked.

The light in their entryway wavered as they stepped through the door. While Skye went to the bathroom to brush her teeth first, Jolie retreated to her bedroom to work on her novel. Tucked into her bed, her recently waterlogged laptop flashing myriad barred colors, she defaulted to the worn brown paperback notebook. In it were the preliminary scrawlings of her novel, before it had come into shape around a house in Queens, girls who’d had dogs

for mothers, learning how to piece together minds that spoke an affectually unindexable language and promulgated socially unintegrable behaviors in timelines that were hard, misaligned for other reasons. The better, more creative days before the story had calcified and ceased to evolve in whatever way it wanted to. Now, without a functioning computer, Jolie found herself inadvertently returning to the story’s scrawled inception, and began to re-render it: A call from Dani at 4:56pm on Friday, summoning the two of them to her home. Their arrival at 5:33pm, ushered indoors. Dani had been married for two years and had relationship problems for four, so her upset was not unexpected, though it was strange she had called them up at all. Everyone knew Danny, knew he was a nice guy, but that he could be a little passive, and overarchingly acquiescent to offers of service. It was like he expected others would be excited to do little things for him, such as fill his coffee cup. Skye had to rub Dani’s back to slow her breathing. It’s okay, she said, it’s okay. Here are the facts. You deserve the best. Danny is mostly a good guy. He can be better. He should be better for you. He should be a decent human being in that he should recognize when things are hard for you and do those things for you. That’s the whole point of having a partner. They should understand you enough to be able to see when you need help. Dani blew her nose between nods. Yes, Jolie chimed in, your workload should be fairly visible to him. It’s not fair for you to have to do everything. And Skye rubbed her back harder, saying that if Danny couldn’t intuit Dani’s feelings on just some matters then he wasn’t paying enough attention. What kind of a partner. What kind of a husband. There were codes and courtesies and compatibilities. Maybe it wasn’t guaranteed that the person you were with could read you like a book, but then maybe it wasn’t a good match. There was an understanding that a person could have with another, based on the grooves set in their minds, their ways of navigating the world, that undergirded the natural falling in of their relationship. Skye didn’t say that last part out loud, she just thought it. It would be unnecessary to stress Dani out more than she already was. It was clear, Skye might say, that there were reasons some things didn’t fit together. There were reasons why psychotherapy wasn’t a curative. Those with small, linear problems could discover the roots of their anxieties and do away with them, but true neurotics—e.g., Emmy von N., Freud’s second case study on hysteria—had maladjustments core to their character and would with ease, even delight, engage in a constant supplanting of one symptom for another. It was just a way that they couldn’t cope, couldn’t change. That was innate, that was nature. Such might have been (and Skye said might because she did not pretend to have the tools or perfect

knowledge required to diagnose whatever lay prone in front of her) the reason standing between Danny and Dani. He didn’t get it. Men never could.

Jolie paused and reread the strange, long, oddly digressive paragraph she’d written. Then she crossed out several words and replaced them with new ones, and she tore it out of the notebook and slid it into her purse to show her therapist.

After Skye finished brushing her teeth, she sought out her preferred reading perch—the kitchen counter, sitting with her thighs side-by-side and calves dangling, legs finally crossed at the ankles. Her hips wedged between toaster oven and refrigerator, anchoring her. Unlike Jolie, she could not muster the energy needed for creative output at this bleary hour of morning-night. She could only consume content that existed, dissecting its argumentation in her mind, putting pen to paper and annotating the remarkable details so that she might later interpolate them into her research. The passage she was reading in Zoloft Confessional—a work of autotheory by a recent Guggenheim fellow, a psychologist-historian—recounted the confessor’s morning routine of counting out her pills, swallowing them, performing a brief exercise regimen, and frying two eggs for a biotin-rich breakfast. “The sense of stability brought forward, anew, each day by the repetition of a healthy mean felt like wading through a dense fog to surface upon a gentle, eastern sunrise. The depression would awake each morning with the rays streaming through my window, but so too would that light be present, an invitation to meet hopelessness with these measured means of mitigation.” The lines were obvious, weren’t they? To “meet hopelessness” was to meet a mind’s imbalance—chemical, relational, political, genetic. A person’s inexorable interior—the way things were—exacerbated cruelly by the outside— the way things ought not to be. Their object of study was history; it was the body. And yet Jolie, from beneath the covers of her bed, was sending ripples into her precise underlines. Meeting hopelessness with these measured means of mitigation—Jolie was reading hopelessness as something put on and enabled, unmitigated as Dani shirked the responsibility of communication. How cloying; how imprecise and unintellectual—and politically fallacious. It was too alliterative. The sentence had too many m’s in it. She slammed the book on the counter, face down.

That was when Jolie edged into the kitchen with a nervous laugh. The notebook left in the covers, she’d emerged for a late peanut-butter-and-bananas-on-toast. She did this three or four times a week and sometimes made one for Skye too. Skye turned her book face up and smiled pleasantly, expectantly almost. Do you want one? Jolie pointed with her knife toward the open bag of sliced bread. No thank you. Skye cracked the book open again and started to fake read. This much was evident because she was

back on page one. Jolie decided to push back a little. Are you sure? she asked. Skye loved the little toasts, didn’t she, and would always get so upset when she wasn’t made one. Yeah but I just think, Skye said, you know, you’re always eating at night. You’re not going to digest food right before you go to bed. It’s going to sit in your stomach like a rock until the morning. Jolie thought Skye’s response didn’t make sense—she’d never had a problem with this before. She crossed her arms and tried one more time. You know circadian rhythms aren’t real right? We made them up. Like yes, we are subject to systems which inform our behaviors or whatever, but ultimately, we’re subject to ourselves? At this, Skye closed her book. Eyebrows slightly raised, she said, The past informs the present. Well yeah. Jolie turned back to the counter, popping the bread slice into the toaster oven. The past would inform your interest in a midnight toast.

The conversation did not end there technically, but effectively. Both women hovered around the table until bedtime, exchanging words that neither remembered on subjects they were happy to forget. What they could not brush off was the feeling, most clear and unkind, that they’d entered a fragile space of unfamiliarity, one that if acknowledged would explode into something far worse. Both women determined independently that there were two possibilities: one, that the sensation was entirely personal, hallucinatory; or two, that it was mutual, that something had come between them, and that they were no longer on the same page. As it were. It was both women’s independent decision that the best course of action was to bring the matter up with their therapists—ostensibly different people, in fact not so.

Both occupied the same indents in my leather couch, similar postures, at different times of the same day. They’d lived together so long, they said, gesticulating, under the impression that the other was writing the same book. In the light of late morning and early afternoon, each woman fixated not on their conflicting interpretations of counseling Dani, but on the way, within the moment of the story itself, they had accomplished a goal in partnership. In the therapy notes, it was highlighted as remarkable that the two had appendaged the same detail onto their retelling from the couch, a detail elided at the party— that perched on Dani’s kitchen counter was an orange prescription bottle with a freshly printed label, hard to make out from their shared seat. It could have been for either of them, and for anything, for something dealing or dealt with. But in Dani’s hysteria, her lucidity, Jolie and Skye noted it from a distance, that their friend may have looked for an answer beyond the both of them.

MADELINE CANFIELD B’24 and JANE WANG B’24 have never spoken about each other in therapy.

Miss Modular

( TEXT KOLYA SHIELDS ILLUSTRATIONS LUCA SUAREZ DESIGN ASH MA )

c Last week, a client stretched a tatted arm around to the small of his back and pulled a zipper down to his ass crack, pleading with her to reach inside, to squeeze with all her strength. She grabbed what felt like a fidget toy, a plastic ball slowly contracting until—all at once—it tore itself away from her hands to press itself against the other side of the gummy rubber enclosure, jutting out a translucent white.

/mzmodular

the door should be on your left. don’t bring anything you can’t live without.

He slid his pointer finger around her stomach like a trackpad. She felt herself fade into a mottled Scandinavian gray—studies had determined it was the most effective choice for lowering blood pressure across cultures. Her tits fuzzed over into the peaks of a sensory board. He blinked in a stupor, so she grabbed his arm, squeezing.

/mzmodular

what do you want? what do you want to want? you don’t have to know. we can figure it out together.

Once they’d figured out how to scrub the noise from the double-blind studies, it became abundantly clear that therapeutics couldn’t ignore the somos. She was a licensed practitioner of the new gold standard—well, more precisely, the licensed practitioner. It had been determined that maximal, standardized potency required a holistic approach—a network. She promised each patient her full and total presence, and, to be fair, it certainly felt like that was true.

/mzmodular

obviously, we would never want to limit healing, but not everything is medicine, is it?

But I need to know how it works. How am I supposed to submit myself to this, just based on your word? Its proven statistical efficacy? You could be ruining people’s lives and retain impressive average ratings. How do you even measure psychic dis-integration?

She asked anon9012 to remove his mask. Technically guests were allowed to dress however they wanted, but the gaze was part of the body. He was wearing an unbranded gray hoodie that appeared to be medium-pile and about 35% cotton, navy Champion sweatpants, and white Adidas sneakers which were, let’s see… fake, purchased from a currently deactivated Alibaba seller.

The appointment would have to be off the books if he stayed veiled, and that always bored her—then what was she even building towards? He said if he just understood how people got better, he’d know what he needed. She asked what he wanted, and he said to know how desire worked. She’d know, more than anyone, no?

/mzmodular

we’re missing the last 5 years of your yearly physicals and biometrics. please rectify this gap to ensure proper treatment outcomes.

For the well-educated patients, she liked to begin with free association within strict grammatical bounds, to boost their egos and prepare them for impending corporeal impotence. “He wracked his wrecked subterranean interactions for irreverent religious fascinations and surfaced with an advertising regime of exponential fascinator fascination.” Good. Now how did that feel in the body? Which appendage? Flat? “I didn’t understand how one sign could do all that, but it did, she exclaimed, claiming yonic superiority in statistically significant and proportional frames of reality.” Can we do it rhythmically? What happens if you make a clicking noise, like a mouse? “Prismatic platonic Nicaraguan renters are mostly expatriated in this post-modern milieu, excitedly proclaimed, performed, next week, the written notice rectified.” Good. Now do that, but with your hands. How could you feel that without talking?

/mzmodular

my memory banks are individually segregated, yes, if that’s what you’re asking. like all medical data, it’s totally anonymized and quantified to bolster universal well-being. you’re feeling the benefits of it right now; can’t you tell?

Of course, she remembered every single appointment, names and all. But that didn’t mean she’d tell anyone. Much to the chagrin of her next client.

She decided to start with the outside. It seemed, for most men, therapy was armament. What if we pleated those pants. What if you were wearing a wool sweater? Do you need the hood? “No. It’s not about me. Or at least, I want, I need, to know if it’s about me, if it’s right.” Fine. You want to know what I do? Here’s what I do. But you can’t just watch. Or listen. That’s not how it works. You still want to know? He nodded. She decided a tour couldn’t hurt.

/mzmodular

we’re still expanding our database to cover as many cultural backgrounds as we can—currently, we’re only able to offer experimental procedures for your demographic, or more precisely, your non-demographic, but you will not be charged for your time.

First, she showed him how she helped doctors with sterile sex lives. She was spread-eagle, but he couldn’t make out on what. Whatever she reclined upon seemed to recede from his vision even as he tried to catch a glimpse peripherally. Touch me. She turned into a video game controller. Play a game. He picked her up and pressed the triggers down. How does it feel? She had skin again. He let go, emitting a squeal. Interesting

/anon9012

Sure, it’s not not sexual, but the normal amount. Sex therapy didn’t help.

Next, firming up constitutions. He was in a cockpit, spiraling, window facing the ocean. Lights flashed. She was begging him to do something, that she simply couldn’t remember what to do and wasn’t it just so scary please save us! He looked down and instantly, instinctively knew exactly the angle to hold the joystick, carefully steadying the plane’s descent, popping aquatic landing gear, normalizing pressure in the cabin—he turned on the intercom and spoke

in a deep, measured voice he didn’t know he had, reminding the passengers his name and downplaying the technical crisis. He looked down, and the rubbery yoke was around her neck. She looked up at him, blinking eyeshadow. He let go, and the alarms blared back on.

/mzmodular

37 minutes is the recommended length of the first, diagnostic session—if it extends more than 5 minutes longer or shorter you risk taking full, individual liability.

She put him face-up, concrete mass centimeters from his nose. The gap holding his breath aloft extended into a void on every side. This one’s not rare, actually. Most people, after around 6 and a half minutes, report an overwhelming, inexplicable, and never-before-experienced sense of calm, not unlike how they’ve always imagined birth. He found himself most of all horny.

I have a discount code. SPRINGTIME.

In the last stop, she was in a beaker. Distilled, dislocated, liquefied, but it was clear it was her. One of her space gray eyes spun and contracted; it caught his gaze. He titrated her, froze her, portioned her, boiled her, compacted her, standardized her, solidified her. Frankenstein zap, she sat up, pieced together from an assortment of multicolored, multi-species mannequins. He slipped a pH test into her open mouth, where it dissolved like candy.

/mzmodular

once we near the fruition of your treatment, i will begin attenuating the dosage to ensure proper declension and regularization. don’t be surprised it’s ending; we recommend you focus on the fact it happened in the first place.

He came to in a dank pocket, the ground rippling underneath him in time with heartbeats. His feet sunk into gelatinous folds; he looked up and saw crimson interstices and a blinding white beyond. She looked down at him, gigantic. He seemed to be within her wrist. He saw her raise her other hand and a glint of silver plummeted towards him, frighteningly fast—he ducked as the needle crashed into the flesh above him, raining down white flecks of fat. He cried out, but the needle kept sewing, slowly suturing the sliver of light until he was soaked in the darkness.

KOLYA SHIELDS B’24 does not have a discount code.

/anon9012

All YW does is bits—bits of this, bits of that, indeed, even a little bit of the Indy in his final semester. He’ll try on one bit and then try on another, exchanging persona for persona, or accent for accent. On occasions I think I’ve found YW—stewing over a pot of lentils, tying his shoes on the tennis court, playing with his sister in the ocean. But when I approach he dissolves into the bit again. We fall to pieces.

I used to try to arrange these shards into a mosaic, but the parts never quite fit. No, he was never quite a chef, not a total comedian either. He’s played a lawyer and a farmer, a historian and a carpenter, a writer and a butcher, but all these roles seemed to be but a bit of a greater picture.

So I have learned to look for him in the refractions. You will find YW neither on the stage nor in the kitchen but instead hunched over in some angle between the two, staring down at all of his many characters. On the rare occasion that you may catch him there, he’ll wink back at you. You’ll realize that he’s got this whole thing figured out. And you’ll feel, for a beautiful moment, like you’re in on the greatest bit of all.

- CB

When TS goes in on something, she goes all in. When she published her first piece in the Indy, she went all in, ruminating on her relationship with her mother with a stunning restraint and command of language. When she edited for the Indy, she went all in, and we got to see her editorial intuitions—her keen ability to always grasp what the reader and writer are thinking—do for other writer’s work what they’d long been doing for her’s. When she completed a thesis in nonfiction, she went all in, writing a one hundred-something page screenplay (is there anything she can’t do?) about Asian American presence in media—which, though I haven’t yet finished, I am confident saying is nothing short of a magnum opus. If you know TS, you know anything she touches turns to gold.

And if you are so lucky, TS will decide she's in on you. If you are as lucky as me, it’ll happen when you need it most, like that horribly anxious day you move into your freshman dorm. You two might brave a cold and strange campus to take your first COVID tests, and soon realize there’s no one better to have by your side, no matter how cold or strange the next thing is. Your friendship, just like anything TS commits to, will be watered by her endless care, kindness, humor, and honesty, flourishing into something you can’t imagine the world without.

-ED SS,

- Looks sleepy everyday but make sense because he never actually slept

- Produces the miracle *vol4?_?SS part.pdf* file every Wednesday night.

- Is a liar because he will let me go home at 2 am saying “the final compilation will be easy” and then I’ll wake up seeing the email pdf was sent out at 5 am.

- Is mysteriously talented because he majors in architecture but makes designs that are better than 90% of graphic design students(oops).

- Makes the Indy look indy

Thank you SS, we love you!

- AM & AL

JK: total artist.

A few nights ago, GN and I sat on the porch and pondered the proposition that “[e]verywhere surfing has already replaced the older sports.” I don’t know if I agree, for if this were true, there might be many more GNs in our midst, and I’ve never met anyone quite like him. Like a true surfer, GN is a semi-nomad, gliding from beach to beach and from wave to wave so effortlessly you would never realize he hadn’t always been there. GN’s range of talents is vast: musician, wordsmith, riddler, modern cowboy. He emerges from the horizon in his movie star drip and tells you, with sagelike composure, a nail-biting, hair-raising, awe-striking story, one that you will never forget— that has, in fact, while you were asphyxiating from laughter, already secretly changed your world in a thousand tiny extraordinary ways. Briefly: GN’s intelligence is unyielding, his kindness unfailing, and his generosity unsurpassed. Look—there he goes again! But don’t fear, he’ll be back, and sooner than you think… and it’ll be like he never left. –LKS

- CO

I wasn’t around these parts yet, but from what I hear IM ran things for a while and hardly broke a sweat. IM is an incomparable co-conspirator, Indy retiree, and second set of eyes. With an incredible mixture of aesthetic sensibility, humble generosity, and a little bit of self-aware pretention, IM does it like no other. If future art historians ever coin the term “Lincoln Woods Imagists,” I’ll know IM was among the progenitors of the movement.

- CO

P.S. thanks for all the late night ‘post-studio’ rides…

FG wrote her senior thesis about coal mines and she is always the one holding the lantern. It swings, knocking against her leg as she holds our hands into what’s out there. She’s probably laughing, too, so the whole thing seems funny. FG is eating strawberries in Madrid and telling me about hummingbirds and her high school friend who’s a hair stylist. We navigate foreign public transportation together, then lean against a yellow wall in the sun. We hold ice cream cones and our hands turn sticky. I feel she would be good at throwing pottery. FG is the best at saying hello. It’s like windchimes, or the sky at its bluest. - DH

Welcome to the Chibi Traphouse. Here, we love fashion, music, and fun. In the Chibi Traphouse, you can forget all your problems and just be yourself. Nothing is embarrassing and there’s everything to gain. Pick your medium: language, music, or dreams? Here, we have the freedom and power to choose! Yes, you can learn a lot in the Chibi Traphouse! LKS I love you. Let’s keep mewing together 5eva, girl! -AQ

The beginning of my friendship with SA seemed too good to be true. We were in Barcelona––she for a weekend, me for a semester. Between metro rides to nowhere, glasses of tinto de verano, and conversations peppered with words like “modernism” (we were barely 21, ok!) blossomed a precious friendship. Indeed, over a year later, being friends with SA still feels too good to be true. SA is hysterical and wicked smart. She leaves you doubled over with laughter; she makes you want to read every book in the world just to tell her about it. She’s a rockstar––College Hill’s preeminent Shakespeare scholar and the most patient Swedish teacher.

Though SA has only been the voice of Dear Indy for two semesters, her voice spans generations. In other words, between the lines of her weekly musings on the Comp Lit department and the deeply embarrassing condition of having a crush in college looms the specter of 1990s-America’s prima donna Carrie Bradshaw. Though we may no longer live in an age where writing is a viable occupation, Carrie, SA reminds us, is not yet dead per se; rather, she’s now decked out in a chic pixie cut, the ability to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and just an overall, like, well-adjusted vibe.

And just like that… SA’s and my time together at Brown has come to an end. But our friendship shall live on––even (or perhaps especially) if she makes the spur-of-the-moment decision to move to Paris.

NM began her tenure on the Indy in Volume 44 as an intrepid Week in Review reporter—an antihero whose deeply real and twisted sense of humor comforted the disturbed and disturbed the comfortable: “The only ‘Queen Elizabeth’ should be ‘Queen’ing out in ‘za bath’ after a long day of sending your headshot to consulting companies!” she bravely wrote. I hopped on the NM bandwagon just before she started sexualizing M&Ms in Southern New England’s largest alt weekly (as well as other NM-defining moments, such as when she committed to her signature having bangs look, or when she fainted in Introduction to Creative Nonfiction)—and I’ve been aboard the NM express ever since. Being an NM follower can be hard work, though: it takes keeping up with someone who seems years ahead of you in her taste, her poise, and, of course, her brilliance. I may not be able to match NM’s pace, but that won’t stop me from happily following a few steps behind.

With love, - SS

P.S.: Despite much anticipation from the Indy community, it seems we never got around to doing egregious PDA in copy :/

“Week in Queen Dead,” the Indy Volume 45 Issue 1

Din vän, James L.

RC might just be the prettiest, wittiest girl you’ll ever meet down by the Providence river the night before your 19th birthday. RC is lucky. She’s as charming as she is hilarious, as clever as she is gorgeous, silly in spades. She is also unlucky, and once was dragged three feet across the Wickenden pavement by a Spin scooter with malfunctioning brakes before proceeding to crash into a street sign, which then flew into the air and hit a Mercedes Benz (allegedly). Maybe this balance explains why she is so down to earth, why her head is screwed on so tight, or why her Uggs are so tall. Her style has been described as Comfy Cozy, her artwork as dazzling, and her Econ homework as hard. When she’s not stuck in P-sets, she’s enacting the perfect soft-glam smoky-eye or gazing lustfully at Sabrina Carpenter. When she’s not doing that, she might be found working on the Indy, where her good taste, angelic patience, and rigorous text wrapping are to thank for numerous beautiful spreads. Thank you, RC, for sharing my vices, keeping my secrets, hunting for soup dumplings with me, and always being right about everything. I will be very sad to leave our home amongst your paintings and our more than anything, our disgusting shared bathroom, in which Ingmar Bergman’s Death keeps us company while we shit. - LH

One time KS told me that she liked the same music that I did. And KS bought me a coffee. And she invited me to visit her over the summer, and I got to her empty room, exhausted from walking up the hill, sweating more than I ever have. I wrapped myself in KS’s sheets, fingered her volumes on the nightstand, and held by the willow out the window, and took a nap in her bed.

Lately, someone wondered whether we’ll remember anything from college. If we don’t, KS won’t mind. What she might mind are concretized items about her, presented here non-contingently. So if not immemorial, she is right now a bullet. Fiery, insatiable, ravenous, encyclopedic. Larger-than-life. Fledgling, wise, sharp and soft. KS, I couldn’t have done this with without you. I’m grateful for the you I notice under my willow tree in Providence.

You arrive on MC’s doorstep after a blustery day, packed to the brim with acutely felt losses and disorganized observations. She lets you in and then disappears, off to respond to an email or wash a dish, the milieu of responsibilities her head can hold. A bit of time passes, in which you meditate on what you know, the small in the big: her little snacks, her rewatch of Stranger Things, gooey sarcasm, in-kitchen talent. With all the things she loves and gives time to, you might think her only option is to explode. But MC’s mind is a gorgeous sanctuary or a particle accelerator, from which the collision of events, emotions, and people arises the births of new galaxies, her full-sentence speech and her prose gilded and glittering. She is the world’s best theoretical cartographer, can take any two seas and uncover the currents connecting them in an instant. She is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object—which is to say, she is inevitable. She will finish her novel and she will publish it. More will come. She will live her life writing, thinking, and loving. She will sit in sunshine until she is tired of it and then sleep in a warm bedroom. There are so many things you wish for MC, chief among them that she will want to want all that she deserves. You pass through the aromatic kitchen when she calls you. Imagine her curled up on the couch, ready for the parlay to begin. With MC it is impossible to reach the end, so you thank god there will be years of this to come, not few in her embrace, of minds melding and promises made and kept. Please let’s keep the distance small. We will do this and, borne like a blessing, see you soon

You wouldn’t believe it, but my relationship with JW has been characterized by our constant, mutual effort to get away from each other.

If I come and try to do work with you I might not graduate.

It’s 4 a.m. and I’m developing pinkeye. Please kick me out of your house.

What are you doing in my bathroom?

For me this is, of course, a natural consequence of being in the presence of someone so singular and radiant you can’t help but cleave to them. JW buzzes with a quiet knowing. She’s a well-cut gem—somewhere north of hidden—you can turn over again and again to reveal endless facets. Getting rid of her so that you can be anything other than a euphoric, giggling mess is no easy task. With JW’s probing mind (Q: “What is the ontological difference between tampon users and pad users?” A: “Whiteness.”) and off-beat humor, to part with her is to leave the best of yourself behind.

I can log all the assets she’ll never willingly disclose to you: JW is an excellent singer. Her IQ was deemed 145 on a clinically administered test. For a short while she was beating me at chess without ever really having played, a natural as she is at everything, seeing all I couldn’t see. JW is the bravest woman I know, by which I mean she embraces the shittiest of media (Dakota Johnson’s Madame Web, a birthday Cameo by Jimmy from MILF Manor) completely without compunction. It is all incredibly endearing.

On my last day in Providence during junior year, I stopped by JW’s house to stash my junk in her basement. I had an early flight. What I’d intended to be a speedy drop-off quickly turned into hours of “playing ninja” amid musty walls, sprinting toward the doorway then collapsing on the concrete, taking the sporadic selfie, possibly mutual meowing. Because there’s one thing I forgot to mention about JW: she is a master of the art of chiseling time away, making three years by her side feel like a beautiful instant. “This must be what hell is like,” I, basement-bound, shrieked once we hit the four-hour mark, then karate-chopped JW between the ribs—or failed to due to her impeccable reflexes. Really I was thinking eternity with JW wouldn’t be so bad.

Okay, now: “De-,” Derrida reminds us, “is a prefix of negation.” As such, to describe [décrire] JL in a toetag is to enact a negation [Verneinung]. That is to say, to present the presence of JL is to also articulate his impending absence, the official severing [secare] of his name from the masthead. In this chiastic gesture, the indy turns its back to JL just as he turns his back to the paper. JL, however, is no stranger to this posterior position. Indeed, JL first entered the indy through its bowels, attending each crit during Volume 46 prior to printing his name on the masthead the following semester. Even before he was an official employee of the independent, JL has had a pervasive influence on the paper (just very spectral). During his tenure on the publication, JL left an undeniable mark (or, trace, fragment, etc.), his charm and wit rivaled only by the deftness of his writing. Of course, JL is not only a wonderful writer and editor, but is also a lovely friend. If I had the space, I would rattle off some jokes about JL and poached eggs/Quebecoise/the Olympics. But, unfortunately, I do not. So, instead, I’ll end with an apology: JL, Ik ben droevig, sono spiacente, perdóname

Right… CM

SB emerged and led me to my first carabiner because it was just as important to them as it was to me that I keep my key and my Team Jacob ornament safe on my hip. You can count on SB to always bop their head to every beat and perform on the green in a muscle tee or striped shirt with drumsticks in hand and mini drumsticks on a belt loop. SB is my brother (kinda), and my brother scares me because they’re always eating salads without dressing: just lettuce and grapes. SB’s ability to conjure interactive art always excites me because community is at the heart of all the sounds and sculptures they make; yes, there will be TJ snacks waiting for you after you’ve stomped your feet and taken a thoughtful look. SB likes to pretend to fight me, so sometimes we chase each other around my house. But just a few nights ago, SB revealed that they think I’m not so bad, asking if I would continue to reach out to them when we could no longer depend on the comfort of proximity. I almost cried, but actually, I just laughed and said, of course, I will, because to have SB around is to have the kind of brother I always wished I had.

Picture CC, walking towards you from down the block, plastic grapes at her side, iced coffee in hand. Whatever existential musings you were contemplating on your trek down Power Street are wiped away; you can’t help but grin as wide as you can.

LS-

Even though people have sometimes mistaken us for each other because we are both brunette and dress cute, LS and I are very different people. For example, LS will usually get their Dunkin egg and cheese on a croissant whereas I get it on a bagel. Despite our differences, there’s something crazy about how well we get along—LS has a way of making everything twice as fun, even things that should be boring. There is maybe nobody funnier in the world if I had to guess. An artistic visionary and a writer and historian with a mind as sharp as Eintein, LS is the whole package. In short, there’s nobody I would rather learn the craft of bespoke leather shoemaking with.

Love forever from CC <3

I’ve always known CC as a collector. CC sees the beauty and potential in everything: discarded t-shirts by the side of the road, chipped mannequin legs in the List basement trash, antique dollhouses from Facebook marketplace. I’ve seen CC transform a pile of scrap leather into hand-stitched picture frame boots, raw wool into vibrant needle-felted tapestries, a page of a humble weekly college newspaper into a work of art. I’ve realized I never truly looked until I met CC, at what’s been left behind, at the value it all holds. A moment with CC and you’ll see the whole world differently. I promise.

ED will grab his headphones and hide away, playing the midi through the night. He’ll stroll down to the riverbed and resurface with absolution. Drink with me, won’t you? Grab your notebook, a sweater, and listen to the TV fire crackle. He’ll put on some Avatar low-fi or folk that veers dangerously close to country—anything to make the writing flow and the light hang around a little longer. Remember when we ate Ivy Room pudding and got COVID? We fell two weeks after all our friends, but we were invincible for at least a little bit. You’ve made every semester feel that way, like catching snowflakes from the window of the Chaplain’s lounge and staving off finals with Harry & Meghan. From biweekly walks to the OMAC to Fox Point wanderings, library info zooms to Survivor watch parties, Brown wouldn’t be Brown without you. Thanks for being the best, Evan. Thanks for being here :)

- TS

DH put me up in her single because my roommate had COVID, then five days later she knocked on my own dorm room door at 5 a.m. for a shared space to sleep in a needed moment, and then two years later she texted me to celebrate the anniversary. By which I mean that DH is a pillar, the stone structure holding up the grand awning above our heads, a steadfast place to receive the many. But she is a pillar decked in maroon pants and half-up pigtails and an illustrious green tank top, meaning she is an artful and expressive pillar in many forms, a sculpture and a maypole and a mural, a bookshelf and a pulpit and a pair of candlesticks and the faunce steps. In three days she will ascend to a lectern to speak about vampires and geography—meaning she will partake in a reading, make performance art of writing—and as I listen to words too erudite and lovely to clasp, I will remember the latent emotion that wells up in me, patron approaching the pillar, each time I encounter her. The feeling of the asymptomatic, that DH is the place upon which I am always seeking to converge more completely than is possible, that every time I see her it is not frequent or long enough. Every conversation is an instantiation of the ephemeral. Every time I witness her is a gift, and I am grasping, again and again, to be awoken for a while longer by the knock on my door, the kind exchange at a brutal hour, another incident to inaugurate the memory.

Find CL first in a long blue slip in a basement that will soon fill with ants, her face glowy and serene. Find her again, but this time for forever, on the tail end of the street where our British accents cut the air of the Insomnia Cookies, god knows what she’s wearing now. It is an endless night where the link between where we lived yesterday and where we’ll live tomorrow grows tenuous. But to behold and be held through CL’s eyes is to understand that she is creating the world, and therefore you, anew, in spite of every one attempt to hold still. Walking with CL across an artificial desert, over a swan-addled bridge, and through a night road, you feel her presence beside you like a small godling, a water Pokémon, an impish grin in a beautiful dress. What can you say about someone who is your equal and opposite twin? Who could say ten words to calm you down in any crisis of the self? She is my best friend and my idol.

CL wades in brilliance and drinks it in dainty fistfuls. Though we joke about her mind being touched by god, in truth I am not convinced it is a joke. She feels everything, such that she sees everything, in a way that only someone who rightfully and reverently places feeling on the plane of the real can do, whose mind spins gold. Now CL is getting better at chess. What this means is that she is mastering the final frontier of interpolatory logic. Her transcendence is imminent. One day soon she will be to the world like a favorite constellation or a popular spice, on every tongue. But I want her close to me still, honest, hungry, and dancing. Each greeting a song. She is wading deeper and I am doing all I can to drink her in. –JW

AQ came out of nowhere, right out of the walls, the glass walls and the tile floors of Page Rob—suddenly a flash of movement and speech that my tired eyes & ears could hardly track. And now there’s a whole building that won’t really exist without AQ in its orbit. Two buildings and street, actually, meaning soon the walk from English class to Conmag will be strange and indistinct—so dull, without the possibility of AQ’s emergence.

AQ writes like she’s funneling loose clouds into hail, making sharp substance out of mist. And AQ gave herself to this paper with all she had. I am so lucky for the time spent in her orbit—for her insistence on proper italics, and her love of Rilo Kiley, and her way of surprising us all. AQ, you are the only one I would smoke a cigarette in Conmag with. XOXO! Bye! -LS

MA and I met through the internet, got boba 3 weeks into our freshman year, and have been inseparable since. As a lover of psychoanalysis, I desire nothing more than to let such a simple story twist, flicker, and contort from the pressure of its unsaid, to mine it for symptom and fantasy and snappy autofictive form. I refuse. Maybe MA is the no-thing I desire more than I have words for, for whom I can only express my love truly in the eternal instant of an act—cutting carrots for oxtail stew, caking each others’ boobs in bubbles, listening to Miguel. Not ‘nothing’ in her absence (which I can only bear through endless texts), but in the impossibility of drawing boundaries around her, as she flits from Palestinian detective fiction to handcrafted earl-grey pomegranate and sage gin to being without a doubt the coolest disability justice activist this school, hell, this city, has ever seen. I could describe MA for the archive—muted techwear, garnet red curls, runway cheekbones, a forever necklace that always makes me chuckle—but no image could capture her laugh in motion, how she lifts her hand to cover her mouth and shakes her head, evil eye earrings glinting and dimples scrunching (except for, maybe, the almost-life-size grad photo that proudly sits in her mother’s dining room, the star of any facetime in from the 904). But the hardest thing to put into text about MA has to be how her values suffuse and surround her like a perfume (L* L*** Bergamot, fyi), how she refuses, to the very ends of the earth and her patience, to imagine anyone irredeemable, to moralize or judge without context for a single moment. For MA, love and the unspeakable, boundless scrum of being are one—at least as long as she has a say about it. - KS

To put it bluntly, most fashionable people are assholes. Somehow, someway, even before I met her I knew that wasn’t the case for LH. It could be because she edits a comedy magazine and tells the only weed jokes I’ve ever found funny, or because someone ready to show ass in a sleek, sheer bodysuit during the coldest Spring Weekend of our lives deserves the benefit of the doubt, but to be honest, it’s probably just her laugh. Pealing across room, emanating from her regal living room wingback chair, sending her oft-bleached eyebrows up to her crimson bangs—if you’re lucky enough to know LH, you know the girl loves a giggle. LH joined the Indy her last semester, giving me the immense pleasure of having her editing acumen (and rides home from crit) all to M.E.self, and more even than that gorgeous fur-striped coat or her vocal aptitude (from Rihanna to The Cranberries), I’ve come to love her for her uncanny awareness. When I go over to LH’s house to wrap myself in fleece and cower from her roommate’s anti-seasonal-depression searchlight on the couch, even if the room is packed with gossips and gals galore, LH never fails to notice a new haircut, a flash of facial woe, or a muffled snort (vis-à-vis aforementioned gossip), yet uses this information with deeply impressive tact—let’s just say she knows when you need to spill, and when simply knowing LH knows is more than enough. - KS

It was Madonna, not Derrida, who observed in 1992 the universalizing tendency of words to “cut like a knife, cut into my life.” CM, a close reader of both figures, has most assuredly channeled this incisive energy during his time with the Indy. He’s a shrewd reader, he writes with piercing wit, and the feedback he provides––at crit in Conmag, in the Rock basement five minutes before closing, or wherever else––is always razor-sharp. Yet, unlike Madonna’s adversary, his words don’t “always attack.” He approaches life with the tender curiosity of… oh, I dunno… a baby looking into a mirror for the first time. To witness the genius of CM is to be in constant admiration. To be, in other words, left agog, that is, with one’s mouth agapé, howling in admiration, “Wow, wow, wow, wow!”

This is my first (and last) semester on the Indy. In that sense, CM, a familiar face and a formidable leader, has come before me. In mourning, Derrida reminds us (it’s ok… CM likes him!!), one must go before the other. I hesitate, however, to mourn CM’s parting with the Indy. Of course, it saddens me that this publication will be without his mustachioed charisma. But I find comfort in knowing that a ravishing life lies ahead for CM and those of us who will remain his friends in the future. future that, though not yet perceptible to CM or the rest of us, will be just very, very major. Forever in/on Transit,

- JL

When I meet AN he is a photographer, and when I part from him he is a fictionalist, and in between he is a poet. AN is scolding me for saying that I have not changed; these years, he understands better than I, are intractably formative in ways we are not powerful enough to escape, like some divinity neither one of us quite knows how to arrive at. We live on Power Street. We are almost religious, the two of us, in different directions, like when we emerge from our bedrooms at the same moment and vie for the bathroom as if its contents are a scarcity. AN, it is the end of college, but be warned, I am haranguing you at a future moment if you treat writing like it is a scarcity. He is an artist, of the raw materials that have been said to ontologize us, genes and words. If CRISPR bestows AN with the power to change molecular constitution, I want him to bypass the physics of distance for the metaphysics of poetry. I want him to perpetually rearrange strings of letters so that I may know poetry directed toward the places where we converge—the ink period at the end of the sentence, cure me of my heritable ailments, shared look across the table as he greets me, endlessly replenishing, with the word “Morning.” AN is leaving me for an adulthood in the Midwest, he is arriving to me from a childhood in the PNW and I to him from the South, he is meeting me on the East Coast, in transition, these years. He is always moving me in every direction; he is always finding me in the present.

-MC

CB writes words like stones skipped on water, circles radiating outward with concentricity, and she greets you two-fold, a smile that exceeds its face and a hand-wave that, no matter its wrist speed, always strikes you as delicate. You cannot discern which precedes the other, the greeting or the writing, which expression of her you have known first. It does not matter because each is a refraction of the other. Each is a gesture like the odd recipe instruction to combine ingredients but not to mix or whisk: CB folds you into her lifeworld. A run-in or a premeditated meeting is a spatio-temporal batter, is one that bubbles with her drawnout enunciation of your name and other serious phenomenology that she wants to remind you are like sugar—something dissolved beneath the smoothed surface of the concoction, something effervescent to enjoy. Her name is double, the full one and the abridged, the earnest and the cheeky, though again you will not be able to match signifier to signified and ascertain which is which because to do so would be to belie the point. Instead, with anticipation, you become wise by osmosis and let her greet you, in vivo or in vitro, the hand-wave or the writing on the page, and folded in by the fresh beginning you experience the everything of synthesis, a new coming into being, a birth that CB has enlightened us to choose for ourselves.

–JW and MC

( TEXT SARAPHINA FORMAN DESIGN MINAH KIM )

SCHEMA

Minesweeper Flagless Personal Record - 79.473s [[WORLD TOP 0.5%]]

Greatness can be unpredictable—you never know when a new record might come.

On the evening of 4/20, I emerged from a post-nap haze, haunted by afterimages of Minesweeper grids: skeuomorphic tiles and process-color numbers. These same images have consumed my conscious and unconscious mind since at least 2020, more like constant companions than nightmares. They are the product of instinct, or anxiety, cultivated over years of playing Expert-level games, where each tile has a 1

in 5 chance of hiding a bomb, and each number hints at the locations of dangerous tiles.

My Minesweeper obsession has affected more than just my brain: my MacBook Air’s trackpad barely functions after the 41,012 games of rapid clicking it has endured. It is a small price to pay to maintain my position within the global top 0.5% fastest games on the site, secured by my personal record of 88.547 seconds set on May 11, 2023. In the 102 wins I’ve had since, I’ve never managed to beat that mark. But destiny had other plans for me on

Saturday night, when a game I was only half sober for became my new personal record, beating the previous by 9.074 seconds. Here, we see this pivotal game broken down play by play, highlighting the key moments that secured my success as well as one that could have ended it all.

( TEXT NAT MITCHELL DESIGN NAT MITCHELL & SAM STEWART )

Last Chances:

(

TEXT SOLVEIG ASPLUND DESIGN ASH MA

Pedialyte, pacing, and Indie’s smiling because it happened

In my very first column as your dearest Indie, enlivened by the nascent semester and a brand new audience for my endless wisdom, I wrote about the opportunities a new school year might provide. Which was all very good and well, but if I can be totally honest with you, right now life is starting to feel full of lasts: this is my last column; I just paid last month’s rent to my corrupt landlord; and soon it’ll be my last time skipping Indy Crit. Fruitlessly shopping for graduation dresses that strike the right tone between I-wanteveryone-to-remember-me-as-sexy and my-grandma-is-here (shockingly, a hard balance to find), the end feels nigh, and I’m struggling to cope with it. It’s like the last supper, if Jesus knew it was the last supper, and was worried he didn’t have a job lined up for the next day.

In times like these, there’s nothing to do but what I’ve always done best— drop some killer advice. Consider it a parting gift.

DearIndy, I’m nervous about the weird transitional period after graduating, especially becauseeveryoneseemsheadedinsuch todifferentdirections.Anythoughtsonhow Sincerely,emotionallyridethisperiodout?

Scared Senior Old and wise—sort of like Gandalf, or my best friend’s late dog—I feel like I’ve got it all figured out. Last night, standing in the backyard of a random party, watching freshmen girls swarm men of middling attractiveness levels, I wished that I could tell them that these boys aren’t worth debasing themselves over. That they shouldn’t take SOC0010. Or SOC0020, for that matter. That their not-exclusive-but-pretty-much-exclusive situationship won’t end well. That befriending the Underground workers should be their top priority. That things get better. But as I leaned against the porch steps, these girls came and went, and I stayed silent.

Of course, this is the tragedy: we figure out how to do things just as they end. We get all this wisdom—and then what? We go work consulting jobs. Or go hiking for a month. (Both of which make me question if we really have anything figured out at all.) But I was thinking I could be charitable to my younger peers; throw a bread crumb, or twenty-three. So I leaned on my friends (as I always do) and asked them: if you could go back in time, what advice would you give your freshman year selves? Here’s what we got.

Dear Scared Senior,

Right now, campus feels sort of like that nursery rhyme. You know the one? This little piggy is moving back home, this little piggy is “finding themself” in Europe, this little piggy is killing time by getting a Master’s, this little piggy is selling their soul… and so on and so forth. It’s scary. And strange, to be frank. We’ve spent the last twenty or so years of our life on a strict schedule, herded like adolescent sheep from one school to the next, and what now? No more “summer break,” just “time off”? All my friends don’t live within a one mile radius? My past and present flings don’t all know each other? It feels ridiculous. Should we just give up and go to grad school?

Maybe. Probably not, if we eventually want jobs, or decent health insurance… but I digress. To answer your question of how to emotionally ride this period out, my advice, in short, is just to try your best not to worry about everyone else. We’ve got to accept that we’re not all running the same race anymore, and so whatever value there once was in pacing ourselves with our peers, is now obsolete. Why concern yourself with the guy making six figures at Goldman, if you barely passed Principles? Trust that you’ve got your own cool thing going on, and that your own race will take the time and distance it needs to.

Which is pretty similar to the advice I gave in my very first column— funny how life comes full circle, huh?

Make a friend who’ll invite you on a boat. (CO)

On that note: stop Venmo-ing millionaires.

Not everything has to be ironic.

Spend less time being self-conscious. You’re hot. Just accept it.

Soft drugs are simply not as good as the real stuff. (EA)

Attend a sports game. You won’t like it, or get it, but the bit will be funny.

Your LDR? It’s not going to work out. I’m sorry.

Don’t fall in love with the white boy you lose your virginity to.

That frat you think is important? Irrelevant.

Do a major that aligns with your passions—and is super hirable. Easy. It’s not the Ratty, it’s IBS.

Head to the beach more. It’s okay to be bad at CS. And cut it out with the Econ classes. You’re kidding yourself.

But don’t worry: it’ll all work out. (JS)

Therapy is cool. It’ll make it work out sooner.

Set boundaries with your co-dependent, semi-erotic (?) best friend.

Pedialyte… Pedialyte… oh yes…. (Indie, this Spring Weekend)

And don’t waste your time on the stuff that’s not important to you. (MJ)

(But it’s also fine to take a break.)

Don’t take anyone who calls themselves an anthropologist seriously. (JL)

Always say yes to more time with your friends. (CH)

Lists are a pretty good hack when you’re eventually a second-semester senior and want to have fun and be joyous and free… which leaves little time for your work. (Indie)

Finally, a simple one: college is pretty awesome—enjoy it.

That’s all, folks! It’s been an honor, truly.

The Bulletin

Do you have an event, action, or other information for the Providence community that you’d like to see shared on this page?

Email us at indybulletinboard@gmail.com!

04/26/24

Upcoming Actions & Community Events

PVD TGNB Community Group Meetup

Sunday 4/28 @2PM-5PM

Dexter Park, Parade St & Willow St, Providence, RI

This month’s community meetup is back at Dexter Park! PVD TGNB is a community for transgender and gender non-binary (TGNB) folks in the Rhode Island area, and the meetup is a great opportunity to meet and connect with members of the community while having snacks and drinks. Please bring a blanket or chair to sit on, and mask up and test for COVID before attending.

Healthy Intimacy After Sexual Violence Training

Tuesday 4/30 @2PM-4PM

Weaver Library, 41 Grove Ave, East Providence, RI Sojourner House is hosting a variety of workshops in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and the first of the series is “Healthy Intimacy After Sexual Violence” with clinical director Linzi Rae Matta and sexual health coordinator Caely Flynn. The workshop will focus on addressing the impacts of sexual violence and trauma, support resources for survivors, the intersectionality of culture and sexual violence, and healthy sexual intimacy for survivors. The link to register can be found in the bio of @sojournerri.

Hunting for Dye Mushrooms

Saturday 5/4 @1PM-5PM

Biodesign Makerspace at Waterman Building, 13 Waterman St, Providence, RI

Join the RISD Nature Lab and the Mushroom Hunting Foundation for a lecture and foraging session! The Mushroom Hunting Foundation will present an information lecture about using mushrooms to create textile dyes, and then attendees will visit Lincoln Woods to forage their own mushrooms. All transportation is provided. Space is limited and on a first come first serve basis—make sure to arrive early at the Biodesign Makerspace to secure your spot!

Mutual Aid* & Community Fundraisers

*Mutual aid is “survival pending revolution,” as described by the Black Panthers. Join in redistributing wealth to create an ecosystem of care in response to institutions that have failed or harmed our communities.

Angels Flash Day

Saturday 4/27 @10AM-5PM

226 Broadway, Providence, RI

This Saturday, join Angels Collective for their flash day tattoo raffle event! Each raffle entry is $2, and the prizes are $100 tattoos from a variety of tattoo artists. Raffle tickets can be bought in unlimited quantities and will be drawn throughout the day. The specific artists and respective flash sheets can be found on the page of @angels.ri. Additionally, 50% of ticket sales will go towards Haus of Codec, a nonprofit organization committed to ending transition-aged youth homelessness in Providence through arts and workforce development!

Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR) Instagram: @amornetwork

Donation page: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ amor-network

AMOR consists of an alliance of organizations dedicated to supporting Rhode Island community members from hate crimes and state-sponsored violence. Please check out the link in their Instagram bio for a list of active donation pages and petitions, including fundraising for the stillbirth medical costs for an Indigenous mother at https://givebutter.com/ care4ewul.

Arts

A Pop-up in the Gallery

Saturday 4/27 @4PM-7PM

27 Sims Avenue, 2nd floor, Providence, RI

Join Public Not Private for their weekend pop-up shop! There will be a diverse group of artists and vendors selling vintage wear, VHS tapes, vinyl records, streetwear clothing, prints, other original art, and more. Don’t miss out on the raffle and a chance to win something from all the vendors! This event is free and open to the public.

Spring Cleaning + Sip & Sew Workshop

Wednesday 5/1 @7PM-9PM

Stonewall House, 22 Benevolent St, Providence, RI

Do you have any clothes you’ve fallen out of love with? Want to refresh your wardrobe for summer?

Donate your unwanted clothes to the Queer Closet (Stonewall House, or collection bins at Hegeman Hall), then join The LGBTQ Center for a Sip & Sew Workshop! You can browse the free closet and come alter and crop any items for the perfect summer fit!

Shaping Our Stories: A Hybrid Approach to Writing the Body

Saturday 5/4 & 5/11 @12PM-2PM

400 Harris Ave, Unit E, Providence, RI

LitArtsRI’s last workshop of the spring term is a generative workshop that emphasizes using hybrid forms to create maps (including erasure techniques, photography, diagrams) of body-conscious writing. Erin Vachon, writer and editor, will be hosting the workshop, which is open to writers of all levels. The link to register can be found in the bio of @litartsri, and there is a fee of $100 (or $80 for members) to pay the teaching artists.