3-28-17

Table of Contents roosevelth Angulo

4

Sana chowdry

6

sid “Frenchi” ali

8

Hanifa Nakiryowa

10

Ricky smith

12

elliot levenson

14

marcus robinson

16

ossia dwyer

19

demetrius “D-massacre” dorsey

22

natsumi okamoto

24

pittnews.com

March 28, 2017

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Letter from the Editor

“All stories are also the stories of hands,” is a rough Spanish-to-English translation of one of my favorite quotes, from writer John Berger.

I have vivid memories of my mother, stuck in traffic, sweeping bright red nail polish across her fingernails, with her hands splayed on the car steering wheel. The sound of her fingers tapping on a keyboard was the background noise of many childhood mornings. My father’s work left his hands coarse, pockmarked with sunspots and scrapes and often browned by soil. Stories are made of hands — our own, and those of the people who influence us. Hands that point, cut, play instruments, touch and clean, Berger’s writing continues, in what seems to The Pitt News editorial team to be a simple truth: we are what we do.

That’s the inspiration for this year’s Silhouettes cover. Our subjects are pulled from Pitt’s classrooms, athletic facilities and the businesses surrounding campus. They told us about their passions — what they do, ranging from mixing beats (page 4 and page 22) to praying (page 6), and what they’ve done. Even the most regrettable ways we’ve used our hands shape who we become, as we e learn from the story on page 12. So it isn’t the perfection of our actions, but the diversity and complexity of our stories es that make this edition great.

Please pick up a copy of the Silhouettes magazine April 13 — and come to our launch party that night at 5 p.m. in Nordy’s Place — to find more stories like these. We hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we’ve enjoyed learning from the people who lived them.

From our hands to yours,

Elizabeth Lepro Editor-in-Chief

This edition was produced with the help of a grant from the university of pittsburgh’s year of diversity fund

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S

itting in his bedroom with his chin in his hand, junior Roosevelth Angulo samples short riffs from existing hip hop music, searching for the perfect loop to add to his own creation.

He uses only a few fingers to deftly navigate his laptop, a keyboard and a drum pad, silently forming the beat for a new song, letting the melody fill the space.

Surrounded by posters, flat-brimmed hats hanging from the wall and a white board above his bed detailing his goals for the rest of the soccer season, the Pitt forward has been producing music in his college room since he got here.

“It’s like putting together a puzzle, putting together all these sounds that you think — that I think — sound good,” Angulo said.

What started as a hobby — messing around with different computer programs — has become a passion for the Canadian native. Angulo is gearing up to release his first hip-hop mixtape in mid-April, thanks to the help of a group of friends he says just “popped up” in his Toronto apartment looking to kick around a soccer ball when they were young.

Though he comes up with music alone, his sound and style was forged in his community.

During the 13 or so years he lived in the 16-story apartment complex in Toronto, Angulo spent his time playing soccer with friends, battling through Xbox games with his stepbrother and chowing down on his mother’s Spanish dishes in the kitchen.

He and his group of friends began pouring after-school hours into creating an art collective — a collaborative group experimenting with different art forms — during their junior year of high school. The group’s talents range from graphic design and photography to rapping and songwriting, and they’re collectively called Rhozeland, after a park they played in as children and relaxed in as they got older.

An upcoming album — titled “8932” after two bus routes near Angulo’s childhood apartment — is the collective’s first major project, and will pay tribute to their hometown and the community they found there.

“We all wanted to get better at what we were doing, and we didn’t see any opportunities or people to teach us,” Angulo said of the community surrounding the artists in high school.

“So we decided to just start this collective and go together as artists.”

Mount Dennis, where Angulo grew up, is considered one of the most diverse urban neighborhoods in its slice of Toronto. With an average annual household income of about $50,000 CAD (about $37,371 USD) and 14 percent of the neighborhood unemployed, Angulo said, “It wasn’t the worst place in the world, but it wasn’t the best either.”

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hometown hero

Rhozeland’s most recent project includes references to the exterior of Angulo’s childhood apartment building, including the building’s nickname “Whitebricks.”

There, neighbors became family Angulo said, which was especially important for times when they experienced rifts with their actual families.

The faces of current residents dot the music videos, as well as details about the emotional difficulties people felt inside the walls of their community: dealing with the death of young parents, growing up with a father be-

Roosevelth Angulo, a Canadian soccer player on Pitt’s team, collaborates with his friends from home in an art collective that draws inspiration from their neighborhood.

Story by Lauren Rosenblatt Photo by Meghan Sunners

hind bars, navigating their way off the “wrong path.”

Through electric beats, constant loops and bright sounds, the music and its lyrics tell stories. “This is how these guys grew up, so I feel like, you know ... people should hear it and take it into consideration,” Angulo said, describing his own story as one of helping his friends rather than dwelling on his own experiences. “This is how I grew up, too. That’s why I’m proud of it.”

At 14 years old, Angulo lost his father to cancer. His father’s illness came after years of

a sporadic relationship, followed by months of making up for lost time sitting beside his hospital bed. Growing up, he would often visit his father, a former professional soccer player in Ecuador, on the field. Watching his footwork at games, Angulo knew he wanted to follow in his steps.

“I definitely looked up to him — I wanted to be just like him,” Angulo said. “I guess him and my mom didn’t get along, so that’s just the way it was. I didn’t really care, I just wanted to be with him.”

Following his father’s lead, Angulo started

playing organized soccer when he was about 12 years old and continued playing for both his high school and club teams. His high school days were filled with tossing the ball around or messing with musical tracks, aiming for goals and hit sounds. In his sophomore year, he realized it was time to focus more energy on his schoolwork to get the grades he needed to play soccer in college, the logical step to one day making it as a player in Major League Soccer.

“I was just playing as much as I could, See Angulo on page 27

pittnews.com

March 28, 2017

5

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Living

her faith

Emily Brindley Photos by Theo Schwarz

Story by

the original religious word “khumr” or the English translation “headscarf.” Chowdhry also uses the religious terms or their English translations when she refers to her full-body covering and face veil.

As far as Chowdhry knows, she’s the only one on campus who wears a face veil.

Though it makes her stand out, her choice of attire by itself doesn’t define who she is. The fact that she wears a face veil, that she sometimes has to leave class to find a quiet place for daily prayer, that she rejects the toxicity of sidelong glances and stray comments from passersby, are all signs of her daily decision to live in constant awareness of her faith.

People look at Chowdhry and assume she’s been devout all

“You have these moments where you really think about God, but other times you just live it.”

Chowdhry — a senior studying history, global studies and Arabic — is a devout Muslim. She began wearing her face veil after her 21st birthday two years ago, as a way to keep her focus on God amidst a hectic schedule including classes and an hour and a half one-way bus ride from her home in Monroeville to campus.

“I wanted to do something that would remind me of God,” Chowdhry said. “Because the headscarf is just like clothes — after a moment you don’t realize it’s on. But [the face veil] is like, ‘What is this on my face?’”

There are many Pitt students who wear headscarves — what are often called “hijabs,” although Chowdhry prefers to use

her life life, but that isn’t the case. case Chowdhry spent her early teenage years in her parent’s home country of Pakistan — though her dad emigrated when she was relatively young and she mostly considers it her mother’s homeland. She followed in the footsteps of her parents, who are practicing Muslims, and went through all the motions of religion. She has always worn a headscarf — but mostly because it saved her from wrestling with her curly hair.

All through middle school and high school, Chowdhry saw Islam not as a way of life, but as a set of obligations and rituals.

When Chowdhry began homeschooling through ninth and 10th

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grade — which is the last year of school in Pakistan — she discovered something that, unlike religion, she could immerse herself in: the internet.

She taught herself Photoshop and the basics of graphic design and digital illustration, and spent time online building friendships through the website DeviantArt. She made friends with soldiers who had been drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, with teens struggling through violence in Eastern Europe and with artists from the United States who reminded her what it was like back home.

“That’s what kind of took me out of my little bubble — that there are people around the world and everybody matters,” Chowdhry said. “I was exposed to more ideas.”

As she learned more about the world outside her own experience, Chowdhry also began searching for a religion that would ring true for her.

“I didn’t want to be Muslim [because] my parents were Muslim,” Chowdhry said.

“The last religion I actually considered was my parents’ religion.”

Chowdhry used her latest refuge, the internet, to begin her search. Wikipedia told her she couldn’t convert to Judaism, so she scribbled that off the list — only finding out later the Wikipedia post was wrong. She then considered Christianity and Catholicism in particular, but the beliefs didn’t resonate deeply enough.

During this time, when Chowdhry was 16, her mother suggested sending her to a women’s-only boarding school in Mississauga, Ontario, for a year-and-a-halflong intensive course in the history and theology theolog of the Quran.

Although Chowdhry was, at the time, Alth still primarily interested in graphic design prim and living liv on the internet, she was also struggling struggl for independence and eager to move o out of her parents’ house. Thinking of freedom, she agreed to go to Ontario. freed In line with the belief that people continue learning throughout their entire l lives, Chowdhry’ s new school included C women of all ages — once again exposing her to new perspectives and opening up the world wor she lived in. There, she began to reorganize reorgan her life and worldview.

She questioned her teachers incessantly, santly peppering them to fi fillll in the holes she found within their beliefs and challenging them to respond to stereotypes about their religion.

Why do you cover up your skin?

Why does inheritance follow the male children and exclude the female children?

What about domestic abuse?

With these questions, Chowdhry began addressing concerns about corruption and injustice within Islamic countries, which she’d been struggling with since she was about 14. In Ontario, See Chowdry on page 28

Page 7

Sana Chowdhry hunches in the corner of the stairwell on the 28th floor of the Cathedral of Learning, her backpack, lunch bag and coat sitting on the ground next to her.

A full-body covering, headscarf and face veil drape over her petite frame, leaving only her slender hands and brown eyes exposed. Every few minutes, she reaches her hand up to pull the face veil slightly down the ridge of her nose — it often rides up just a little too close to her eyes.

The stairwell is her favorite place to study, she says, because the hard surface strengthens her back and keeps it from hurting.

The veil muffles her voice slightly and obscures her facial expressions — but her eyes are kind and soft, crinkling slightly at the corners in an obscured but still noticeable smile.

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I’LL HA THE VE

“Long time, no see. How’ve you been?” Sid Ali asks a customer, his distinct French accent still heavy after almost 10 years away from Paris.

It’s a snowy Friday afternoon, and the 28-year-old stands behind the front counter in his store, nestled between old houses on the corner of Atwood and Dawson streets in Oakland.

The storefront looks daunting — there’s some graffiti on the side, and the windows are blocked by a red steel security gate — but inside, it’s cozy. A large chalkboard hangs over the deli counter, listing a variety of sandwiches and wraps, from “The Touchdown” to “The Pitt Panthers,” in sweeping script written by Ali’s friend. Handwritten signs made by students list soda prices along the refrigerators on the sides of the store.

The March evening is cold, but the man behind the counter is warm and inviting — he cracks jokes and makes conversation with each customer that walks through the barred glass door.

The student, shaking snow off her jacket, orders “The Frenchi” — a sandwich piled high with chicken and steak bearing Ali’s nickname, Frenchi, which he got from friends in high school.

As Ali sprinkles crushed neon orange nacho cheese Doritos

FREN onto the student’s hot sub, he asks about her spring break and helps her refresh the French she learned last semester — he hasn’t seen her in a while. He teaches her the word for black olives: des olives noir.

At his shop, students leave money on the counter and tell Ali they’ll come back later to pick up the change. They often pop their heads in to say hi on their way to class or give Ali a “bro handshake” and a hug. Ali isn’t just another employee at a generic convenience store — he’s a friend.

“My personality is outgoing, and I’m always like that at home and work,” Frenchi said. “When people come into Frenchi’s, I want them to be like, ‘I’m coming to see my friend. I’m coming to my spot.’”

Ali lived in Pittsburgh for two years before opening Frenchi’s in August 2015 — he wanted to be his own boss. A native of Paris, France, he moved to the United States in January 2007 — his last year of high school — to play basketball on scholarship at The

By Amanda Reed Photos by John Hamilton

CHI

Rock School, a private Christian school in Gainesville, Florida. Some friends from home who were living in Gainesville for the same program had put in a word for Ali with the coach to be recruited.

He was deemed academically eligible to receive the basketball scholarship and live with a host family in Gainesville, but once he settled there, he started questioning his decision thanks to culture shock.

“My first or second day, I went down to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror, and I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’” he said.

It took Ali four months to become fluent enough to gain the confidence to express himself and have brief, everyday conversations with people — he said he would have learned English faster

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“ Rock School practices, preventing him from getting a college basketball scholarship. Instead of returning to France to get a free education after graduating in 2007 — a luxury afforded to all French students — he moved to Cleveland to live with his brother, D.J., who had been in the States since 2004.

“You live in a city in France and then live somewhere else, so I just wanted to explore. It was too soon for me to go back to France,” he said.

In Cleveland, Ali took college courses at Cuyahoga Community College and worked at his second deli, a franchised convenience store called Hanini Market.

When the franchise opened a branch in Wilkinsburg, his boss asked Ali to set up the deli and train the workers. Seeing his hard work and his affinity for connecting with customers, he convinced Ali to move to Pittsburgh at the end of 2012 to work as a deli manager.

One year later, his boss promoted him to store manager, but he grew tired of waiting for

someone else to determine his career. He wanted to be his own boss.

“I thought, ‘Why should I do this for someone [else] when I can do this for myself?’” he said.

Deciding on a name was easy — he felt his nickname, Frenchi, symbolized the combination of French and American culture.

Even though the store is barely two years old, word-of-mouth advertising already has Ali planning to expand Frenchi’s in Cleveland and Pittsburgh in the near future.

Despite his rapidly growing customer base, Ali still talks to customers who graduated and now live all over the United States. And, although his loyal customers’ graduations bring him down, there’s never a shortage of students to befriend — and to make sandwiches for.

“I have a relationship [with the customers] for their first, second and third year, and by the fourth year they have to leave and then you

.

”

have to start all over again,” he said.

Frenchi’s is open between 14 and 17 hours a day — usually from 10 a.m. to midnight — meaning Ali spends about 90 to 100 hours a week working almost every single day in the store. The work is divided among Ali and his two student employees — though he also gets some help here and there from his friends and his brother when he travels from Cleveland to visit on the weekend.

But it’s his close bond with his customers that makes manning a small store and deli in the depths of Central Oakland uncomplicated.

“Once you love what you’re doing and you have your own personality and people love you for who you are, that’s it,” he said. “You don’t have to work hard.”

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if he didn’t have his French teammates to chat with after practice. Seeing Ali’s slow progress, his basketball coach and teachers quickly intervened.

“They told [my friends], ‘No, don’t speak to him in French to help him learn faster,’” Ali said.

His host family was also helpful in breaking down the language barrier, but not without a price — in exchange for English lessons, Ali spent countless evenings teaching their son to speak French. Later on, his host brother would read with him before bed — “like a big baby,” Ali said.

Sometimes, Ali was too tired after basketball practice to read, which his host brother — a stubborn 10-year old native Floridian — did not accept.

“It was kind of like a blackmail thing —‘If you don’t read, I’m going to call mom or dad,’” he said.

Ali came to the United States with a knee injury that worsened with time and rigorous

When people come into Frenchi’s, I want them to be like, ‘I’m coming to see my friend, I’m coming to my spot.’

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A mother, survivor and advocate

Page 10

By Jaime Viens Photos by Anna Bongardino Hanifa Nakiryowa starts her day at 3 a.m., while some students are still awake from the night before.

Nakiryowa — who is in her mid-30s and studying for her master’s degree in international studies at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs — spends three hours on homework before waking her children to get them ready for the day. She sends them off to school at 7:30 a.m., before hopping on a bus to come to campus for a full day of classes.

In many ways, she’s like any other single mother — striving to make a better life for her 7- and 10-year-old daughters than the one she left behind in Uganda. But the scars on her face tell a different story, one that explains her intense commitment to raising strong, independent women.

Nakiryowa’s deep scars spanning her cheeks, forehead and eyelids, extending down her arms, have affected not only her own life, but her children’s lives as well. “[My daughters] see how [people] stare at me. In Uganda, they had to explain so much why their mother looks the way she looks,” Nakiryowa said. “Seeing how my girls have to

struggle to live with my appearance ... It’s tough.”

In 2003, when Nakiryowa was a student at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, she met Faisal Buyinza, her lecturer at the time.

By the time of Nakiryowa’s college graduation in 2006, she and Buyinza were expecting their first child. Days after giving birth, Nakiryowa received a congratulatory text from a male friend, prompting Buyinza to bar her from the on-campus flat the two shared.

Though he soon accepted Nakiryowa back into his life, he demanded she abandon her career to care for their children. Nakiryowa, ambitious and independent in a manner considered unconventional to many in Uganda, couldn’t stand the arrangement. By early 2011, Nakiryowa fled the degrading marriage with her two daughters, seeking refuge at her brother’s house, also in Kampala.

Buyinza convinced Nakiryowa in mid-December 2011 to let him see their daughters for the first time since their departure. That night, she went to pick her girls up from the same on-campus flat the family once shared together. As she awaited her estranged

That, they know,” Nakiryowa said, explaining the family’s adherence to spirituality, without religion.

Nakiryowa founded the Center for Rehabilitation of Survivors of Acid and Burns Violence in 2012. CERESAV works with acid attack survivors in Kampala, encouraging them to unveil and providing job training and social support in an attempt to reintegrate survivors into accepting communities. “[Acid violence] generally happens in countries where women’s voices are really suppressed,” Nakiryowa explains. “It’s institutional oppression that is largely accepted ... So when it comes to acid attack, it’s a woman to blame.”

Amid her homework and advocacy work, Nakiryowa devotes herself to her family. Her face lights up as she talks about her daughters and their ardor for learning. She flashes a wide, toothy grin as she explains how her older daughter’s enthusiasm to read humbles her. Nakiryowa said she never voluntarily read until after her attack, when she began using books as motivation to pursue her passions for education and community service.

Now she finds her daughter, an hour after bedtime, refusing to put down the latest book she’s picked up.

The joyful smile her daughters inspires is not one Nakiryowa takes for granted. After her attack, half of Nakiryowa’s mouth was melted. The muscles in her lips were so contracted that it was not possible to form a smile. It took more than five years and 28

Page 11

“I told myself I have to accept who I am and let the public accept me. This is me.”

reconstructive surgeries for her lips to painlessly curve in a manner that once again reflects the humor and wonder her children bring her. So, she says, she does not smile lightly.

“I try to show them that, irrespective of my appearance, I can be as any other ordinary mother,” Nakiryowa said.

Her daughters, playful and boisterous, illustrate a scene on the whiteboard of a Hillman study room as their mother looks on, laughing. One displays a colorful polka-dotted bedroom with the two girls holding hands, the other, a pretty portrait of a young girl named Violetta. The girls’ concentration persists as Nakiryowa explains how she encourages their creativity by restricting TV usage to family time. Instead, she asks them to create other distractions as she finishes up schoolwork.

“There are days when it’s really tough and I can’t hide it from them,” Nakiryowa said. “And [the oldest] will always see it, ‘Mommy is everything okay? Did you sleep well?’”

Nakiryowa admires her daughters’ sensitivity and consideration, and, through them, finds the strength and motivation to tackle the challenges of being a single mother, a student, an advocate and a survivor.

“Regardless of [my] struggles, I am working hard to give [my daughters] a good life so they can become independent, strong women in the future,” she said. “It’s a handful, but I’m happy I’m doing it.”

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husband’s response to her knocks on the door, a man whom she could not identify walked by, kneeled to the ground to unwrap something and, before she knew what was going on, dumped a vat of acid onto her face.

She screamed in pain, blinded by the caustic chemicals — the face that had become so naturally tied to her identity, gone forever.

Moments after the attack, Nakiryowa cried out for help from the father of her children, but it took some time for him to answer the door.

When he finally responded, the two girls ran ahead to console their mother, but the youngest slipped on the acid and fell. Like her mother, she has visible scars to this day, canvassing her right side and arm.

She feels the physical and emotional repercussions of her attack daily, but she finds strength in her daughters, whose names she’s asked to withhold for privacy.

“I still go through that pain, but it still does not stop me,” Nakiryowa said. “I have two beautiful ladies that derive their strength in me. I must be a good role model for them no matter what.”

After the attack, Nakiryowa was confined to the hospital for three months. Her family reported the incident to local police, along with their suspicion that Buyinza had organized the attack as a retaliation against Nakiryowa’s flight from him. The case, however, was dropped without serious investigation, in large part because of the corruption and inefficiency that characterize the Ugandan criminal justice system. After leaving the hospital, Nakiryowa filed her own complaint to have the case reopened, but when the case finally reached court, Buyinza was released on bail — and Nakiryowa withdrew from her battle with the legal system.

By this point, disenchanted with the justice system in Uganda, all Nakiryowa wanted was to heal and start her life anew, so she picked up with her daughters and moved to the United States. Now, five and a half years later, she speaks candidly about her experience.

“You meet so many women who have been disfigured by acid attack violence, but you’ve never really seen them until you’re a part of them,” Nakiryowa said.

Before leaving Uganda, Nakiryowa found it difficult to conjure the same strength she now exudes. She grew up rooted in Muslim traditions and, as such, was expected to continue wearing her hijab after the attack. This put a pressure on Nakiryowa that felt to her like she was hiding. Wearing a hijab became difficult to deal with while simultaneously learning to accept her new appearance and teaching others to do the same.

“I was expected to cover [my face], but what am I covering? I do not have a face,” Nakiryowa said. “Each time I put on my veil I was tempted to hide. But I told myself I have to accept who I am and let the public accept me. This is me. I had to unveil.”

Nakiryowa chose her confidence and her family over her religion and now raises her children with the same resolve.

“I show them the value of knowing God and trusting God.

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WELCOME HOME STORY BY JANINE FAUST PHOTOS BY JORDAN MONDELL

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A

t exactly 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, Ricky Smith calls his boss from the security booth at Holland Hall North to let him know he made it in. Then he settles back in his chair and waits for returning residents, a welcoming smile on his face and a Pitt hat pulled proudly over his graying hair.

I know Smith only a little bit, as the nighttime security guard who greets me with a grin every time I slump in tiredly from a late night at the news office or a long night of studying at Hillman. He usually reads at least two different papers while he’s in his booth, and The Pitt News is one of them. After pointing out my articles, telling me he thinks what I’m doing is cool, maybe tossing in a joke about the weather or politics, he swipes me in with a cheery “Have a good night!”

His candor makes me feel a little bit better no matter how exhausted or stressed I am when I come back to Holland. I thought, if he does that for me, he must do it for other wired college first-years, too.

I was right.

During the first hours of his shift one chilly Monday night in March, I sat with Smith as he swiped in young women com-

ing back from study sessions, jobs and friends’ dorms, dragging their feet and rubbing their eyes.

I noticed they perked up a bit when they saw the familiar guard, his gap-toothed grin widening every time someone new trotted into the lobby. His stout, round face beamed as he told corny jokes and inquired about their days.

“Rachel! Geez, that’s a huge book. You’re blinding me with biological science!”

“Amy! What’s up! How’s band?”

A blonde woman came into the room one Monday night, boyfriend in tow. Smith grinned when he saw her, threw his arms back and spun around a bit in his chair.

“Melanie Du Bois!” he cheered. “You’ve got one of the coolest last names in this building, I think.”

Du Bois, a first-year political science major, told me Smith always rallies her spirits.

“I see him a lot because I usually come home late from Hillman, and when I walk in he’s always smiling and wants to know how I’m doing,” she said. “He helps me end my day on a good note.”

After watching him wave goodbye to a student trudging back to the elevator, I asked him what he liked best about his

career.

“The drive these young people have, and getting to watch them succeed — I love it. I like seeing good people do well, and I get to see it done here all the time,” he said.

Smith has been a nighttime security guard with U.S. Security Associates at Pitt since 2010, and has also worked at Nordenberg, Brackenridge, Litchfield Towers and Pennsylvania Hall during his time here.

“Best job I’ve ever had, hands down. Love the people,” he said. “Plus, you know, I’ve always been a fan of the University, so being immersed in the heart of it is great.”

At a young age in the early ’70s, Smith would visit the local Children’s Hospital — which used to be near Pitt’s campus — for allergy treatments. The campus, he told me, was much different than his small hometown of Ford City — 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

“The only excitement that happened there was when the stoplight would change,” he said. “When I would visit Pitt though, everything was bustling, exciting, alive. I figured, man, this is a cool place, I want to be around a place like this someday.”

Even after his Children’s Hospital visits ended, Smith remained a Pitt fan, religiously following Panthers’ football games

where he met his wife four years later. They eloped, and he moved with her to her home in Mon Valley.

“It was good to be back on a city scene again,” he said. “But unfortunately, my marriage didn’t go in the right direction.”

Smith’s voice quieted as he told me this next part, beginning to open up about the worst thing he’s ever done. His normally cheery face drooped as his eyes began to water.

“It was the summer of 1999. We were having this argument,” he started. “It was a silly argument, something trivial, but we’d been having ones like them a lot.”

He paused for a moment, took a deep breath, then continued.

“My wife was yelling loud enough for the neighbors to hear, and I wanted her to quiet down, but she wouldn’t, and I was getting angrier and angrier ... and then I handled the whole thing incorrectly.”

He blacked out for a minute, and when he came to, realized he had choked and punched her. The inexcusable act would follow both of them for the remainder of their marriage.

“When I came back to myself and saw what I did, I was a basket case. I booked it out of there immediately. Only took a minute to

grab some stuff, then moved into the basement of the building we were living in,” he told me.

Smith lived in what he refers to as “The Dungeon” for almost two months. He ate nearly nothing, save the peanut butter crackers his landlord would slip him, and slept little.

“I had my music, but I didn’t listen to it. I just went to work, came back and just laid in my makeshift bed and felt like crap,” Smith said.

It was the first time he ever had suicidal thoughts. His mood had already been dark due to the deaths of his mother and best friend

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as a teenager. He kept up with the stats while getting his associate’s degree in broadcasting at Williamsport Area Community College, and for the six years in the ‘80s he spent living in Washington, D.C., where he shuttled cars from airports, canvassed for phone banks and used his degree to get work as a sports announcer.

“God, I loved it down there,” he said, tones of nostalgia dotting his voice. “There were a ton of other black people, it was so diverse. The action reminded me of Oakland.”

Eventually, though, the rising cost of living forced him to move back to Ford City in 1991,

“I was so happy to get a job here,

earlier that year, but now he was seriously considering killing himself.

“I would walk past a railroad every day on the way to work, and I’d consider just standing there and waiting for a train to come hit me.

I was depressed as hell, and I was terrified of seeing my wife again,” Smith said.

Smith was at his lowest when he was visiting family in Ford City about a month after his transgression. Relatives had invited him to stay for the Fourth of July, and he went to clear his head. But while he was there, he got into a brawl with a white supremacist.

“I was walking to the park to see the fire-

works, when this guy calls out to me, spouting all this crap about an Aryan nation and calling me the n-word and a word for gay people that’s not complimentary,” Smith said.

“So I punched him. He hit me back so hard I thought he broke my jaw, then he slammed me down into the pavement. And I remember being angry that [he] didn’t kill me.”

He returned to The Dungeon a couple days later, still miserable. Then his wife did something which to this day he finds unbelievable.

“She peeked through the basement door, said she actually wanted to talk about what

happened,” he said. “I was a mess. I apologized like hell, bawled my eyes out. I hugged the life out of her.”

With the knowledge that his wife was willing to let him work to regain her trust, he ventured out to the first church service he’d been to in a while.

“Longest service I’d ever been to,” he said.

“I was burning with shame the whole time.

But I sensed hope within myself after that.

The faith my wife had for me and the faith the church had in me, that was enough to help me climb up out of The Dungeon.”

Unfortunately, his marriage was never

quite able to find contentment, and though he never laid a hand on her again, Smith and his wife split in 2004.

He left his job as a bus driver in 2006 and worked for the Contemporary Services Corporation as a security guard at Heinz Field and the Petersen Events Center in 2003. He’d worked briefly in the security field before, and he liked the job because he got to make small talk with visitors. And, he could hang around during Pitt athletic events — “It was a challenge, biting my tongue to keep from cheering or booing during a college game,” he said.

See Smith on page 26

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it was like coming home.”

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THIRD TIME AROUND

A New Yorker by birth, a yinzer by choice, Elliot has continuously returned to Oakland

By Ryan Zimba Photos by Julia Zhu

No matter how many times Elliott Levenson leaves Pitt, he always seems to find his way back.

Levenson first came to Pitt from New York City in 1980 as an administration of justice major, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1984. He returned 14 years after his first graduation to complete a bachelor’s degree in computer science from 1998 to 2002. This summer, he’ll don a cap and gown yet again — but this time, the cap will complement his laugh lines and salt-and-pepper hair. Levenson is working on his third degree from Pitt, a master’s degree from the School of Information Sciences.

Levenson’s father, a Pittsburgh native and 1957 Pitt graduate, taught him to be a long-distance Panthers fanatic while they lived in New York City during Levenson’s childhood.

“I was a Pitt guy even before I was a Pitt guy,” Levenson said. “I remember rooting for them in 1976, when I was about 14, when they won the [college football] national championship. Everyone was like, ‘Why are you rooting for Pitt?’”

Now, with four different decades as a student under his belt, he still loves the school, both for the parts that have remained just as he remembers them, and the ones that shift each time he comes back to campus.

When Levenson first came to Pitt, he was drawn in by Pittsburghers’ relative kindness, especially compared to the grittiness of the New York he remembers.

A 1981 police report named 1980 as the worst crime year in the history of New York City — with a record-high 1,814 homicides — 4.7 percent higher than the previous record, set just one year earlier.

“New York City was almost post-apocalyptic [in the ‘80s],” Levenson said. “There were huge housing projects that were demolished in east New York that I used to walk past every day, and it really looked like something out of ‘Mad Max.’” Levenson and his brother, Barton, grew up in the neighborhood of East New York — an especially rough area of the city. Oftentimes, they saw older teenagers beating up little kids, which he said he could never wrap his head around. “[Our neighborhood] wasn’t great,” Barton, also a Pitt graduate, said. “I, for one, got beat up a lot. Elliott saved me a couple of times.”

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, had European influences and a wide range of cultural variation — without the obstruction and isolation caused by high crime rates — which appealed to Levenson.

Levenson loved the social scene in the ‘80s. His favorite place to hang out was the Decade — a bar in South Oakland where the Garage Door Saloon currently sits — where well-known national musicians would come to perform.

“People like [Bruce] Springsteen thought it would be cool to show up at the Decade. Oakland had this crazy night life,” Levenson said.

Some of his fondest memories from Pitt come from this first stage at the school, from meeting his future wife at a Phi Delta Theta fraternity party to working as a Pitt Stadium vendor in the ‘80s. When relations between the U.S. and Iran were tense, Levenson raised money at a charity event by yelling “The Ayatollah hates Coca-Cola!” to make soda sales skyrocket.

When Levenson came back to Pitt in 1998 for a computer science degree, he was 36 years old and the Decade had closed.

He found Oakland relatively boring at the turn of the century.

Many of his other favorite places, including an arcade — where he spent time and tokens playing Pac-Man and Centipede — and the Cathedral’s ground floor, had also changed drastically. The arcade is gone and he finds the dining hall in the basement of the Cathedral — where the Chik-fil-A currently is — to have lessened in quality.

There are some facets of being an older student that might skew Levenson’s perception of campus — the William Pitt Union, he said, is nearly identical to the cool hang out he remembers from the ‘80s.

That distinction might not line up with younger students’ opinions, but some of his other time-tested observations do.

“Some traditions really haven’t changed in 30 years, like going to Primanti’s at two o’clock in the morning and hoping you could get a designated driver [to go with you],” Levenson said.

When he walks around campus now, many students think he’s a University employee. People sometimes call him “sir.” He usually plays along, not telling them he’s a student unless they ask.

He said it wasn’t always this way, remembering how he used to see students of all ages peppering campus.

See Levenson on page 28

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The Pitt news crossword 3/28/17

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MAKING SPACE UNDER THE RAINBOW STORY BY DAVID ROBINSON PHOTOS BY ANNA BONGARDINO

semi-conservative town in central Florida. He was quiet, yet likeable and popular in school, with a conservative streak imposed by the town’s norms. He eventually shed that political identity, according to Ray, his friend since grade school, who added that she did as well.

He started attending a group for LGBTQ+ community members called Alphabet Soup his junior year of high school and came out to Ray the following year. She offered to attend alongside him, which gave him motivation and a sounding board — listening to him and doling out advice as she saw fit — while he figured out who he was.

“She ironed out my bad personality traits,” Robinson said. “I was always really competitive and not really educated on gender and social justice — she was the one who taught me that.”

For months before Ray started attending with him, Robinson sat in on Alphabet Soup meetings without saying a word.

“They’d have these brown bag lunch things, and me — I was really nervous,” Robinson said. “It was a slow gradual process, but it was something I needed before going to college.”

Alphabet Soup was an intimidating process, but it was where he realized the power of safe spaces — places where people can be wholly themselves. With that experience, he felt comfortable attending Rainbow Alliance at Pitt, and soon began hanging out with other

“

forwards emails with events in the LGBTQ+ community back home.

His parents aren’t the only ones from home learning more about his life. During spring break his first year of college, he and Ray went to Lazy Moon, a local pizza place near Oviedo and one of their common hangouts in high school. He told her about his growing interest in Rainbow.

“Seeing how invested he was in Pitt’s LGBTQ+ community, he seemed to have found his place. It’s an amazing contrast between those days ... In high school, he was a very different person,” Ray said, remembering when he wore mostly athletic wear, Nike sandals and basketball shorts.

Ray recalled dragging him on a shopping trip when he bought his first pair of Sperry’s.

“He was very evasive about wanting them,” Ray said laughing. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god yes, buy them.’”

It may seem inconsequential, but fashion is one of the biggest markers of Robinson’s evolution, she said.

As president of Rainbow, Robinson’s understanding of identity and social stigmas also deepened. He grew more comfortable doing for others what Ray did for him, allowing people room and support to grow, without pushing his own experience on them.

See Robinson on page 27

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THE BIGGEST THING FOR ME IS KNOWING WHEN TO SPEAK AND WHEN NOT

members — mostly upperclassmen — in that group outside of club meetings. He said it felt like he had found his place.

By his junior year in college, Robinson had become president of Rainbow Alliance, hosting drag shows, LGBTQ+ proms, self-defense classes and a speech by openly gay NFL athlete Michael Sam. He actively embodied this leadership role, running a “safe space” event when the very term was at risk — as a response to alt-right provocateur’ Milo Yiannopoulos’ Pitt visit in March 2016. And in November 2016, Mayor Bill Peduto enlisted Robinson to serve as one of 15 students in his LGBTQIA+ Advisory Council.

Robinson wasn’t always so open, however.

During his first year in college, he ran through a list of ways to come out to his parents — baking a cake or attaching a cape to the dog spelling out his announcement — but then one day during spring break, the topic came up, and he was out with it. He expected the worst, but they reacted positively and have taken strides to understand his world.

“It’s weird for both of us,” Robinson said.

“Me, learning to open this part of me I didn’t really tell them about, and so for them to put in the work they have is really great.”

His parents keep up to date and are continuing to learn more about the community to know what his life is like — his mother often

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W

herever Marcus Robinson is on campus right now, he’s probably smiling. A vibrant grin has always been his default facial expression, says his longtime friend Arianna Ray. “He’s deeply personable, and that comes from a natural place,” Ray said.

He greets students with his signature smile from behind the information desk in the William Pitt Union lobby, where he’s sharply dressed and lacking the jaded, stressed-out demeanor typical of college students with as much responsibility as the senior neuroscience and anthropology major.

In fact, it’s Robinson’s deep personability that launched his litany of leadership roles, including his position as president of Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance last year, his current status as a member of the city’s LGBTQ+ advisory council — responsible for advising the mayor on policy related to the LGBTQ+ community in Pittsburgh — and his recent Pitt “Senior of the Year” win.

As a gay black man, Robinson is cognizant of the issues members of his intersecting communities face, and how those issues differ among people with varying identities. His compassion is in part rooted in his own journey, which gifted him with a refined empathy.

Robinson grew up in Oviedo, a small,

The Pitt News SuDoku 3/28/17 courtesy of dailysudoku.com

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GO AHEAD, YOU CAN LAUGH With honest, sometimes cringe-worthy commentary, Ossia’s carved out her place on Pitt’s comedy stage

story by Sierra Smith | photos by meghan sunners warms the crowd up. “It’s Women’s Empowerment Week, so they were like, ‘Ossia, take off your apron, dust off your typewriter and get up there.’”

As she performs, she paces across the stage, her tone dry and her volume neutral — in her stand-up, she claims to sound like a “stoned Strawberry Shortcake.”

Despite her low-key energy, the audience pays complete attention, laughing at a vocabulary lesson inspired by her small Vermont hometown. We learn that water fountains are called “bubblers,” a soft-serve ice cream cone is called a “creamie” and that Dwyer’s sheltered childhood didn’t prepare her for the fallout of saying “creamie” in front of her college peers in Pittsburgh.

The senior chemical engineering major is part of a recently developed and burgeoning comedy scene at Pitt, bolstered by weekly “collegiates and comedians” stand-

up shows in Nordy’s Place and the newly formed late night show “Pitt Tonight.” You’ll find her at both of these events, weekly — a staple of Pitt comedy and one who’s been able to find her voice in a very short period of time.

Growing up in a small town in Vermont where tourists outnumber townies a la “Dirty Dancing,” opportunities for stand-up were scarce — “I grew up pretty isolated from everything,” Dwyer said. But she’s certain that rural lifestyle, plus her mother’s British roots, had a lasting effect on her comic style.

“My mom is British, my dad is American, so … we were like the British people in a town of 500.” This British humor — which Dwyer describes as “gross” — offered a beautiful alternative to the over-exposed, prototypical New York comedian, introducing Dwyer to more unorthodox methods of comedy early on.

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n the Alumni Hall auditorium on a bustling mid-March night, the Allies of the Boulevard band grooves to their pre-show soundtrack, the air buzzing with the sort of chaos that always accompanies big premieres.

The audience shifts restlessly in their seats, waiting for the show to begin — and just a few minutes after 8 p.m., it does. Out steps Ossia Dwyer, dressed casually in jeans and a cardigan. She strolls coolly onto the stage, smirking at the rustling heads in the audience.

As the sole female in Pitt Tonight’s trio of head writers, Dwyer was slotted to kick off the “Pitt Tonight” Women’s Empowerment Week episode with a few jokes.

“What’s a woman doing up here?” she jokes to the nearly full auditorium, which begins to quiet as she

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Dwyer became interested in comedy during high school but didn’t start writing or performing until her junior year of college — just last year, in fact.

After some convincing from fellow “Pitt Tonight” head writer Joe Marchi, Dwyer started turning her wry humor into digestible one-off jokes, many of which senior Jesse Irwin rattles off in the late night show’s opening commentary.

Through her work on the show, she’s became more comfortable performing her own material.

“I don’t think I’d be doing stand-up if Jesse hadn’t created ‘Pitt Tonight,’” Dwyer said, adding that she’s generally fairly shy. “I’ve always liked comedy, but I didn’t realize you could still do it even if you aren’t the most outgoing person ...

You can be a little quirky and quiet.”

Much of Dwyer’s humor is selfdeprecating — she’s often making jokes about her style or “weird person name,” pronounced “oh-sha.”

“I always try to get the audience to feel bad for me for most of it, then do something that shows I’m also kind of a bad person,” she said, deadpan. “So you get both sides of it.”

In a November 2016 skit that she both wrote and performed called “Vote or Vomit,” Dwyer invited Councilperson Dan Gilman to participate in a quiz game based on her more shameful moments. “[Gilman] had to guess if a place in Oakland was somewhere I had vomited before or if it was somewhere you could vote,” Dwyer said with a laugh.

Jokes about bodily functions were once, admittedly, the bread-and-butter of a male-dominated field. Increasingly, though, women comedians have made progress in the industry.

Still, of the 11 current sketch comedy shows listed on IMDb — including “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight” — only two have a staff of 50 percent female writers, according to a breakdown from BitchMedia. Those two — “Inside Amy Schumer” and “Broad City” — are both shows with female leads.

“I think it’s owed a lot to ladies who, 20 and 30 years ago, really had to undergo the worst things ever. It’s still difficult for women. I’m not always seen as a comic, I’m a female comic,” Dwyer said. “You always have the

thing where you’re like, ‘Was I booked because I’m funny, or was I booked because there was no other woman on the show?’”

Though Dwyer cites Liza Treyger as a personal source of inspiration, she doesn’t dote on feminism specifically in her comedy — “You can stand up for women, but you can also do whatever you want,” she said about her ability to intertwine empowerment with grit.

Dwyer’s also a female engineer — another field dominated by men. After being reminded numerous times that engineering was typically “for boys,” Dwyer began laughing it off. “I know,” she said.

“I have eyes, I can see what classrooms look like.”

Her stand-up is honest — innocent, even, when it gets explicit. In one of her

favorite routines, Dwyer jokes about how her ideal partner would be a hand.

“I didn’t realize until I was doing it for like a month and someone thought it was a sexual thing. I was like, ‘Oh, no, people are getting the wrong impression,’” she said. “The whole thing is, I don’t want to talk to anyone, but I want the touch of a human, and then it kind of evolves to me yelling about how a hand isn’t like this guy I used to date. So it’s ridiculous and makes very little sense, but people like when you yell, too.”

Marchi, who considers Dwyer to be one of his oldest college friends, remembers breaking off from the rest of their friends early in college to have discussions about comedy. He said it’s Dwyer’s thing — and part of her charm — to take pictures at outings and show them to no

one. She stockpiles the photos and tweets them at her friends on their birthday, making sure to include the most unflattering snapshots from forgotten weekends.

“It’s enough to make you groan,” he said, laughing. Adding that as a comedian, “she very much knows who she is, she has a very clear, distinct voice.”

Dwyer sees herself doing comedy for the rest of her life, maintaining the casual persona she’s developed — which isn’t really a persona at all, it’s just her, naturally.

“I don’t think I could just stop,” Dwyer said. “I pretty much just tell the truth when I get up there, so everything is stuff that’s just happened to me that I think is funny. And if I time it right, sometimes other people think it’s funny.”

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“

I pretty much just tell the truth when I get up there ... If I time it right, sometimes other people think it’s funny.

”

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KILLIN’

the game

Aspiring hip-hop artist, Demetrius “D-Massacre” Dorsey has plans beyond partying on Fifth Ave.

Lexi Kennell John Hamilton

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by Photo by

If you were an undergrad at Pitt in 2013, Demetrius Dorsey is confident you know who he is.

Actually, Demetrius “D-Massacre” Dorsey is just flat-out confident.

The 25-year-old hip-hop artist spends his weeks sitting behind a glass pane in Lothrop Hall’s lobby, swiping in students as they trudge to their dorms after classes.

Every once in awhile, he’ll flash a friendly smile at passing students.

Four years ago — when Dorsey was bouncing between first-year residence halls as a relief guard — that smiling face told students about some of the hottest parties on campus. Donning his signature silver spiky ring and a Pitt bomber jacket, at that time, you might have recognized Dorsey from his YouTube music videos of wild Oakland

nights.

“These parties I was throwing were pretty legendary — people who went will never forget,” Dorsey said, leaning back in his chair and grinning like he has a secret.

While he’ll still flash a cocky smile and reminisce when asked, all that revelry is in the past, as Dorsey has started to focus more on his art rather than the hard-partying persona that used to accompany it.

Dorsey’s mother, Betty, said she knew early on that he was going to be a performer — the center of attention.

“He’s going to kill me for telling you this, but when he was a baby, when he could barely walk, I would put the music on and he would literally pull himself up on the

video for his track “The Best Feeling.”

Dorsey invited people all throughout the day, though he didn’t expect a big turnout — maybe 15 people or so. But he claims 300 students, mainly from Pitt, showed up to be in his video.

“It was like 10 o’clock and nobody was there and I’m thinking, ‘Damn, this is a bust,” he said, recalling the night. “And then we got a knock at the basement door and

“The cool thing was that people would come and they would not fight — cops were never busting out, it was just like real smooth. Because I had it down to like a science,” Dorsey said.

Since the initial music video, Dorsey has thrown two other raging Oakland parties — both of which started as music video shoots. When the video crews dropped the ball, Dorsey said he went ahead with the fes-

grouped to see, ‘Ok, where do I want to be musically? What’s my plan?’ You know, because I’ve been here since 2013. My goal is to expand, to go on the road, to have my music touch more than just South Oakland,” Dorsey said.

Dorsey started out as a solo artist, but he’s now part of the rap-pop group A Kid Called Gauwd with his friend Baby Byron.

The duo performed at the O’Hara Student Center Feb. 25, and will be dropping the deluxe version of “All Thanks to Drugz” — which is already a five-song mixtape on Soundcloud — in April.

“You know, the concept is just like, [how] holistic medicine kind of takes you to different consciousness and like how you see the world. The music is really psychedelic in its aesthetic,” Dorsey said.

Dorsey also draws on influences from Kanye West, NWA and fellow Pittsburgher Wiz Khalifa as he hopes to come up with “new soundscapes” and change the business after his time as a guard ends this semester.

After that, A Kid Called Gauwd will focus on getting records out and touring the country, concentrating on college towns.

And while DMassacre has plans to hit the road and leave the shadow of Cathy behind, he’ll never forget the grimy Welsford basement that gave him his start.

“I kind of see myself as a Pitt legend. I would say that. I really was a part of people’s experience here. I feel special about that,” Dorsey said. “I think I’m going to be one of those rappers that make it, that’s gonna put South O on the map.”

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table and then dance on one leg,” Betty said.

Betty said her son was always into theater, music and acting. Dorsey, a Garfield native, said he began recording and producing music when he was 14. As a teenager, Dorsey’s friend had a studio at his house where the two would mix tracks and later perform their own songs at school talent shows.

Betty said Dorsey has always been someone that you can’t really explain — someone that you have to experience.

Pitt students on campus in 2013 got the full Dorsey experience, when the first of his fabled fests took place. He began throwing parties as opportunities to film music videos — even claiming that one of his wilder nights featured kiddie pool lube wrestling.

As a relief guard for Litchfield Towers in 2013, he would frequently ask students if they wanted to be in the music videos.

“This is probably the best job you can have, particularly because it’s social. You get to talk to so many different people, especially students, and they just want to support you, no matter what you’re doing,” Dorsey said. “If you’re cool, then they down, you know?”

Back then, Dorsey built a rapport with the residents who passed by his guard booth. He wanted them to feel like someone was looking out for every student who went a little too hard on a Friday night.

“I was that guard that was super cool,” Dorsey said. “If someone was a little tipsy or if someone was like, lit, I wouldn’t make too much of a fuss. I would kind of show love.

[But] I still obeyed the rules.”

Dorsey met a fraternity brother in October 2013 — though he can’t recall which fraternity — who said he could host a party in his house on Welsford Street to film a music

“I kind of see myself as a Pitt legend . I would say that. I really was a part of people’s experience here. I feel special about that.”

tivities anyway.

But the college lifestyle wasn’t sustainable for someone trying to have a real music career, and Dorsey knew he had to get out of Oakland if he wanted to make it big. The last time Dorsey really threw down was in 2015 — since then, he’s got a more focused outlook on making a name for himself.

“This last year or two, I kind of just re-

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there’s like a line — yo, a line — around the corner and it makes like an ‘L’ [shape] all the way down to the main road.”

The video, posted in November 2013, has more than 7,000 views and follows Dorsey as he walks around the basement of a house party, posing and dancing with young people while mouthing the words to his song.

queen of the court

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Natsumi’s sweet demeanor diminishes with a racket in her hand

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Natsumi Okamoto first left her home in the urban heart of Tokyo at 14 years old.

Passport and tennis racquets in tow, she boarded a plane to travel 6,467 miles to Barcelona, Spain, leaving behind her family, friends and way of life to pursue an atypical passion: tennis.

“In Japan, it’s really hard to find tennis courts. It’s kind of unique to play tennis there,” Okamoto said. “But when I moved to Spain, there were tennis courts everywhere, the environments were so different. And it was, really, one of the best places for me to train.”

It’s true: tennis culture in Japan is at a low, according to the Japanese Tennis Association.

In 2012, only 1.2 percent of citizens reported that they played at least twice a month. Training and competition spaces have also been on a steady decline, with the amount of Japanese tennis court facilities decreasing by one-third from 1996 to 2008. Experts attribute this decline to young people’s lack of interest in organized tennis — most only want to play casually.

Not Okamoto.

So how did she get involved in such an unpopular sport? At 10 years old, she picked up a ‘70s-era comic book called “Aim for the Ace!”, featuring a spunky, tennis-playing main character named Hiromi Oka.

Story and photos by Jordan Mondell Illustration by raka sarkar The fictional girl, with a mass of wavy brown hair, glittering eyes and impossibly long legs, inspired Okamoto. Oka sports a cropped, sparkling white tennis skirt and wears a red ribbon in her hair. In the graphic novel, Oka battles mental weakness, relying on her family and friends for support she grows from a budding tennis novice to the best in the world.

Okamoto herself — described as soft-spoken by her peers — went from thumbing through that comic book in the fourth grade to playing on a Division I college tennis team.

“I just told my mom I wanted to play tennis,” Okamoto said. “I still like my decision. Even when I go home ... I am still happy that I am here.”

During her first year at Pitt, she finished the season 7-7 overall in singles and 5-18 in doubles, measuring up to members of her team who had been playing at a collegiate level longer.

Around campus, she typically sports comfortable athletic clothing, black hair falling at her shoulders, sometimes damp from a post-workout shower. She’s humble and unassuming, naturally, but when she steps on the court she becomes fierce — full Hiromi Oka mode.

Her ponytail swings behind her as she smacks the ball across the net — backhand, forehand, flat serves and slices, emulating the charisma and skill of her initial comic inspiration.

Throughout her high school career, where she played on a high-performing team, Okamoto compiled 46 double wins and 38 singles, an impressive feat. She’s also participated in numerous international competitions hosted by groups such as the International Tennis Federation, snagging three overall wins at global tournaments — two in doubles and one in singles. Even worldwide, Okamoto is an intense competitor.

She’s traveled from the high-altitude plains of Kenya, to the bustling cities of India, to the sandy beaches of Fiji, where in 2014 she wrapped up her high school career with a spot in the semifinals of the Oceania Open Junior Championships. In total, she estimates she’s journeyed to roughly 25 countries. Very few of these trips were for fun — some were for school, but most were for tennis matches, tournaments and training.

“I always had my racquets with me,” Okamoto said, adding that in Venezuela, she gained an overall doubles tournament win and experienced South American street life.

“It was a really cool experience. I saw a lot of police, and I think it was at a time when it was really dangerous,” Okamoto said. “I just really like to see all the different cultures. That’s one of the main reasons I love traveling.”

At the ES International School in Barcelona, Okamoto was one of only a few girls in her class. She mostly kept to herself, according to her former science teacher and mentor Daniel Green.

When she came to Spain in 10th grade and spoke neither English nor Spanish, she tried her best to acclimate, he said.

In order to learn the language her peers spoke, she spent time translating full paragraphs of books so she could read with the other students.

“She is an extremely hard worker, very dedicated,” Green said.

“She learned English on top of six 45-minute classes and four hours of tennis practice a day ...That first semester was hard for her.”

Okamoto is now a sophomore global management major and

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a Spanish minor — she said her love for travel and time spent in Barcelona inspired her decision to pursue the language.

While deciding on a university, Okamoto didn’t want to choose between the court and the classroom — two places she performs exceptionally well. She chose Pitt because of its focus on both athletics and academics.

Although Pittsburgh is more than 6,000 miles away from her beginnings in Japan, Okamoto says in general, she doesn’t get homesick. She finds solace in her best friends Clara Lucas, who is from Spain, and Gabriela Rezende, who is from Brazil — also members of the tennis team who have come abroad to pursue the sport.

“We have a special connection because we’re all international,” Rezende said. “We’re going through the same process.”

In the little free time they have between workouts, practices and traveling for matches, they do what most Pitt students do together: hang out in the library to study, visit the South Side to see movies and feast at local restaurants.

“Everyone, for me, is really like family,” Okamoto said.

Her parents visit America about twice a year. In between visits, they talk on the phone or use Skype to communicate as much as Okamoto’s rigorous schedule allows. Like Oka, who relied on a support system to balance out her mental process with the physical demands of being an athlete, Okamoto’s family and tennis team at Pitt has helped her manage any semblance of longing for Japan.

She isn’t sure about post-grad plans, but would like to put her business degree to use in America or abroad after graduation.

Whatever she decides to do, she’ll probably look for a challenge.

“For me, competing is life,” she said.

Smith, pg. 13 CSC’s contract in Pittsburgh ran out in 2010, but an office manager of his helped him get a job with U.S. Security Associates at Pitt.

“Man, I was so happy to get a job here,” Smith said. “It was like coming home. I loved this place as a kid, and I’ve followed the University athletically my whole life.”

He still hears old voices from The Dungeon calling to him at times — motivating his mission to put a smile on the face of every student who hands him their ID. “TV and papers, they say that suicide rates

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March 28, 2017

are off the charts for college kids, because they’re depressed and under stress,” Smith said. “I still remember when I was in that bad place, it was sheer hell. None of the students here at Pitt deserve that, so I try to make silly jokes and ask them how they’re doing, take whatever edge off they might be feeling, even if it’s only for a second.”

Smith said he hopes he’s having as big of an impact on the students here as they have on him.

“If there’s one thing they’ve taught me, it’s to keep striving, no matter what,” he said. “Seeing them work hard has inspired me to keep going, too.”

Between midnight and 1 a.m., I watched him wave at people walking out and joke around with those returning.

“Morning, Ann! Back from the library, huh?

Where’s Sara?”

“Make sure that chemistry book doesn’t explode when you open it.”

“Waiting for your friend to come down? Well, I’m waiting for Halle Berry.”

Amanda Brownsberger, an undeclared major pursuing French, told me her favorite thing about Smith is his jokes. When she comes in from getting a late-night snack, he always makes her laugh.

“Me and Ricky, we have this thing where he always changes the first part of my name to a different color when he swipes me in,” she said. “I’ll come in and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, hey Amanda Redsberger.’ It makes my night.”

In between the coming and going, he talks to me about politics, sports and his favorite TV show as a kid — “Man, I was in love with the ‘Bionic Woman.’” I get to see a picture of his younger brother — “First black valedictorian at our high school. I’m proud of him. He’d kill me for showing you this picture.”

At about 1:30 a.m., my eyelids are drooping while his are still wide open. I know he’d be happy to chat with me until his shift ends at 7 a.m., but I’ve got a lecture in seven hours, so I tell him I’d better get up to my room. I exit the booth and go around to the front of the window, where he greets me with the same smile 600 other women have each seen at least once this year. He swipes me in as usual, but before I turn to the stairwell I ask him if he’s got any plans for the future beyond this.

He ponders my question briefly, then answers that no, he doesn’t, unless maybe Halle Berry comes to town and he sweeps her off her feet. We both laugh, and then he gets serious.

“Nah, I don’t have any plans beyond this. I don’t want to,” he tells me. “Honestly, this is the best job I’ve ever had. It makes me happy. This smile here — with what teeth I got left — it’s genuine.”

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Robinson, pg. 17 “The biggest thing for me is knowing when to speak and when not [to],” Robinson said. “My experience is as a black cisgender gay man — that’s a very narrow experience.”

He plans to go to medical school and eventually open a clinic for people in the LGBTQ+ community.

“Long long term, I want to open a practice to offer health care free of stigma and bias and judgment,” Robinson said. “It’s important we validate their experience, and that I understand my place

as a doctor to give them the care they need.”

Robinson has learned quite a bit since he joined Rainbow, but reflecting back on the beginning of his journey, he lights up with a fondness for his original club, Alphabet Soup. He remembers when Ray joined him at meetings — it was then, he said, when he finally started feeling included.

“That was the moment I realized how powerful these spaces could be, and that I wanted to be a part of something like that — and it led me to being a part of Rainbow,” Robinson said. “I wanted to show that magic to someone else.”

Angulo, pg. 4 staying fit and focusing on my school work,” he said. “I knew if I didn’t have that then I couldn’t get here.”

Between studying for the SAT, working out and focusing on his nutrition, Angulo became the first member of his family to graduate high school and attend college. He was recruited to play for four schools: South Carolina University, James Madison University, Mercer University and Pitt. He chose Pittsburgh because he was hoping the city campus would most mimic the urban feel he was used to in Toronto.

Though Pittsburgh didn’t live up to expectations set by his hometown, his days at Pitt follow a similar routine to his high school patterns: mornings training with the team, afternoons in class and producing music as often as he can.

A poster of Snoop Dogg and Tupac standing beside each other hangs by his work station in his bedroom, just another symbol of how he uses other artists’ success as motivation to learn more.

Each member of Rhozeland was self-taught through the internet, mostly using YouTube videos, so Angulo lets his ear determine what his music will sound like.

“It’s one thing making the beats and having them finished and they sound the way you want them to,” Angulo said. “And it’s another thing when someone takes those beats and makes something new, which is what those rappers did [in ‘8932’]. They took the songs and took it to a whole other approach.”

With tributes to their origin, Angulo said the art collective is more than just a learning tool for him and his friends — and this album is more than just a place for him to fit the puzzle pieces together.

“It’s about finding that one thing I can build off of. It could be anything, it could be just a loop I heard or a jump pattern I made,” Angulo said.

“It’s the only way to do it, and wherever it goes is wherever it goes.”

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Levenson, pg. 14 “I was going to school with a lot of guys in their forties and fifties when I was 18, and back then, age wasn’t really a factor,” Levenson said.

“When I got started in night school, we had 18, 38, 58, and we’d all hang out together. Nobody cared.”

While he finds the experience of being around mostly young adults awkward now, his wife Holly doesn’t find it odd in the least.

“I call [Elliott] my perpetual student,” Holly said. “He loves school, he loves being on campus,

he loves the atmosphere. He’s constantly seeking and chasing new knowledge and technology.”

In Levenson’s 37-year run at Pitt, only one thing hasn’t changed at all: his love for Pitt sports and resentment of its Pennsylvania rival.

“I’ll hate Penn State until the day I die. It’s in my DNA,” Levenson said.

In his first four years as an undergraduate, Levenson went to nearly every football game, witnessing Dan Marino, Jimbo Covert and other great athletes of the time. The team was dominant back then, compiling a 39-8 record from 1980 to 1983.

The Pitt-fan blood ends with Levenson and

his wife, though. Their daughter became a Penn State supporter partly to spite her parents and partly because her cousin is a fan. The rivalry made Pitt’s most recent victory over Penn State in September one Levenson’s greatest sports memories to date.

The world of sports played host to a slew of changes for Levenson as well — for example, none of the city’s professional or major collegiate teams are playing at the same stadium as they were in 1980. The most impactful change for Levenson was the demolition of Oakland’s Pitt Stadium after the 1999 football season, which he called “an absolute tragedy.”

“Let me put it this way: If I ever hit the big lottery…one of the first things I would do is pay for a new stadium, on campus, in Oakland, for the Panthers,” Levenson said. “I wouldn’t tear the Petersen [Events] Center down, but there’s certainly a lot of other good places that could be torn down to make way for the new Pitt stadium.”

This summer, Levenson will graduate from Pitt for what he thinks will be the final time. He said that leaving will be difficult to accept, but he’ll always be a proud Panther.

“I’d always wanted to go to Pitt, so for me it’s been a great opportunity to be here,” Levenson said. “I’ll definitely be in mourning when I leave in August.”

Chowdry, pg. 6 Chowdhry learned that the sexism and violence that surrounded Islam in Pakistan — particularly for young women immediately before or during their marriages — were based on cultural, rather than religious, issues.

Although the problems still concerned her, she realized that they were a result of human failings and of misinterpretations of the Quran.

Through reading the Quran directly, she saw that the religion actually focuses not on hate or hierarchy, but on love for others and for God. It was a belief system she could get behind.

Now, Chowdhry’s entire life revolves around practicing Islam.

She does her best to eat well and to exercise, following through on an Islamic doctrine to take care of one’s body. She prays five times a day — at dawn, midday, late afternoon, sunset and once it’s dark — even if it means taking a 10-minute break from a class.

“I just live religion in a way — it’s a lifestyle,” Chowdhry said. “You have these moments where you really think about God, but other times you just live it.”

Amidst the travel ban on Muslim countries instituted by the Trump administration and stereotypes of Islam as a violent religion, Chowdhry said she has a vague recollection of being the target of racist comments. But it’s not something that sticks with her. In fact, she can’t even recall any particular instances.

“Even if I have dealt with racism, I don’t remember because for me, I guess it’s a religious concept — forgive and forget,” Chowdhry said. “I don’t remember their face, because I genuinely wish well for them.”

Most of the time, though, questions directed at Chowdhry are not based in malice, but in curiousity. In some cultures, face coverings indicate that a See Chowdry on page 29

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Chowdry, pg. 28 woman is married, so sometimes people will ask Chowdhry about her relationship status. Other times, strangers — particularly in the women’s bathroom — will ask Chowdhry why she wears a headscarf or face veil at all.

“I personally don’t mind getting questions. I’d rather have you ask me than look it [up] online,” Chowdhry said.

In part because she loves to teach and in part to serve others, Chowdhry was a teaching assistant for Amro Elaswalli’s Arabic I class during the fall semester.

Elaswalli said he was initially unsure of how his students would react to Chowdhry, particularly because of her face veil. Any concern Elaswalli might have had before Chowdhry became the teacher’s assistant for the class, however, was quelled as she began to interact with the students.

“Inside the classroom, she was very open, talking to them all the time, helping them all the time, making jokes as well,” Elaswalli said. “It was really good.”

Helping others is Chowdhry’s motivation for going to college, as she plans to become a teacher or professor after graduation.

“As a Muslim, whenever you relieve somebody of any calamity, any burden ... you’re doing your

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civic duty as a person in the community,” Chowdhry said. “For us, you’re kind of accumulating good deeds.”

Despite her previous inclination to turn to the internet for answers, and in part because of misinformation about religion that she gleaned from online sources, Chowdhry now sees the value in being an educator whenever possible.

“Before I got this new set determination to go to school to become an academic, I guess I wanted to become a professional couch potato,” Chowdhry said. “I would never get out of bed in the morning if it weren’t for, I guess you could say, my faith.”

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