Silhouettes Magazine

Table of Contents ricky smith

3

Natsumi okamoto

5

jahari mercer

7

Sid “frenchi” ali

9

julia fernandes

11

the merante family

13

Hanifa nakiryowa

15

demetrius “d-massacre” dorsey

17

andrew lotz

19

rasul Adams

21

Sana chowdry

23

dana och

25

aya shehata

27

ossia dwyer

29

marcus robinson

31

jack stauber

33

alejandro morales

35

roosevelth angulo

37

ayushi dwivedi

38

elliotT levenson

39

catherine crevecour

41

From our hands to yours

“All stories are also the stories of hands,” is one of my favorite quotes, by the 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 part of the inspiration for this magazine. 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 to praying — and what they’ve done. Even the most regrettable ways we’ve used our hands shape who we become, as we learn from the first story in this magazine. So it isn’t the perfection of our actions, but the diversity and complexity of our stories that make this edition great.

It took a number of hands to put this inaugural magazine together, from the writers, to the photographers, to the page designers and copy editors. Many of us were new to this, but what we’ve laid out over the course of the next 40 pages is a true labor of love. We’re so proud to be part of this community and all of its moving parts, from the leaders who strive to make Pitt inclusive to the local grocers in Oakland’s center, and this magazine is as much a product of passion as the subjects who’ve inspired it.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.

Elizabeth Lepro

The Pitt News editor-in-chief In my four years as a Pathfinder here at Pitt, there’s a quote often used by the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid that I would also use as my — admittedly cliché — description of my time at Pitt.

“It all comes together here.”

As I reflect on experiences and people that I’ve met throughout college, I realize now that this quote — used to bring us all here in the first place — speaks to the way our campus thrives on the stories, backgrounds and qualities that make us different from one another.

This collaboration was something that Student Government Board wanted to see happen as a final send-off for the events and conversations that took place this year. We hope you enjoy the hard work of the best writers this campus has, and we hope you’re touched by the work put in by so many hands over the course of the semester.

While the official Year of Diversity may be ending, we hope that this project and the ensuing effects on readers will last well into the years after it’s done.

Hail to Pitt,

Sydney Harper

Student Government Board executive vice president

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

welcome home story by janine faust photos by jordan mondell

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.

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 firstyears, 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 coming 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.

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

“Amy! What’s up! How’s band?”

A blond 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:“He helps me end my day on a good note.”

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 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, 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 early in 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.

“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 earlier that

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

Smith got a job as a bus driver shortly thereafter, which he said also helped boost his confidence.

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 PNC Park, Heinz Field and the Petersen Events Center starting in 2003.

He’d worked briefly in the security field before in the mid-90s, and was happy to return to the work.

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.

CSC’s contract in Pittsburgh ran out in 2010,

“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: “Waiting for your friend to come down?” he says to one woman. “Well, I’m waiting for Halle Berry.”

Amanda Brownsberger, an undeclared major pursuing French, told me her favorite thing about Smith is his jokes.

“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

“I was so happy to get a job here,

it was like coming home.” 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,” Smith said.

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

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

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 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.

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 1:30 a.m., he’s got another six hours in his shift, but I’ve got to go. 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. Before I turn to the stairwell I ask him if he’s got any plans for the future beyond this.

No, he says, 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.”

4

queen of the court Natsumi’s sweet demeanor diminishes with a racket in her hand

Story and photos by Jordan Mondell Illustration by raka sarkar 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 number 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.

Okamoto is a competitor. 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. The fictional girl, with a mass of wavy brown hair, glittering eyes and impossibly long legs, inspired Okamoto. Oka sports a cropped, sparkling

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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 as 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 opponent.

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 semi-finals 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.

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 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

pow! 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.

jahari mercer:

Bridging the gaps

by Kelichi Urama Photos by John Hamilton While Jahari Mercer was sitting with a group of resident assistants and members of the Resident Student Association on the Cathedral lawn last August, Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner approached him.

The conversational atmosphere shifted as the students shook hands with Bonner, who was just leaving the “Tipping Point” alcohol safety event they’d been working. Before he left, Bonner pointed to Mercer and said, “I recommended you for something. I want you to serve on this committee that’s being put together for diversity.”

Mercer, a stocky 19-year-old whose almond-shaped eyes close when he smiles, remembers the way the group turned to congratulate him.

“All of my friends are really excited because I got this position,” Mercer, currently a sophomore, said. “And I’m trippin’ out because — me? He knows me, of all people?”

The Year of Diversity, which Provost Patricia E. Beeson announced last April, is part of an initiative introduced by a Senate Council task force to make Pitt a more welcoming and inclusive campus. A committee of 21 faculty members, including co-chairs Waverly Duck, an assistant professor of sociology, and Kacey Marra, an associate professor of plastic surgery and bioengineering manage the programming. Mercer is one of four stu-

dent leaders who serve on the committee.

The group meets monthly to review grant proposals from members of Pitt’s community for a variety of lectures, artist appearances and plays geared toward representation. As a student leader, Mercer is able to speak firsthand with administrators and provide a student’s perspective on issues directly pertaining to minority communities — his focus has largely been on diversifying Pitt’s admissions process.

Pitt’s campus is nearly 70 percent white, with roughly 1,300 students in the 2017 headcount identifying as black or African American.

“It’s great that we have the Year of Diversity, but at the same time, we have milestones we need to achieve,” Mercer said. “We need to pour money into creating more diverse spaces and admitting more diverse students. And we need to continue to fund programs on campus that increase diversity on campus, because it’s not easy for student organizations to get money.”

While the nomination was a shock to Mercer, to others, it was almost expected.

The Washington, D.C.-native and mechanical engineering major has taken every opportunity to integrate himself in the Pitt community since the moment he arrived as a first-year student in 2015.

He came to Pitt as part of Swanson School of Engineering’s Pitt Excel program, a group that focuses on recruiting engineer undergraduates from underrepresented populations. The program eased his transition to campus life by allowing him to move into the dorms two weeks early and take preliminary math and physics courses.

Once school started, he joined a litany of groups including the Black Action Society and African Student Organization, became the advocacy chair for the RSA at the Forbes residence hall and joined the National Society of Black Engineers, where he now serves as the group’s business diversity chair.

It was through these initial organizations that he learned what the full scope of leadership entails.

As advocacy chair, he was effectively the go-between for students in his dorm and the administration. He brought students’’ concerns about water leaks and insect infestations to Panther Central, sometimes unable to get a response that would satisfy his first-years. That role was a lesson in compromise, he said.

“It can be a challenge trying to communicate an issue to people that you feel is pressing but then understanding the reality that there may be something prohibiting [the administration] from taking action,” Mercer said.

For example, he said, students often requested that the University change the hall’s dryer machines to be able to run for less than 60 minutes at a time. Since replacing the machines was not financially feasible, he instead encouraged students to coordinate with hallmates to switch out their loads halfway through.

Through organizations such as BAS and NSBE, Mercer was able to think about how the racial and cultural divisions at Pitt. He felt stuck between two “realms” of diversity: that of being a black student at Pitt and that of being a black engineer at Pitt.

His classes, he said, show the biggest discrepancy. In his Africana Studies class, he’s surrounded by people of a number of different races, but he doesn’t see the same diversity in his major classes.

“I’ll go to my engineering class, and 95 percent of the class is white, and the other 5 percent is black,” Mercer said. “And I know those 5 percent of people that are black in the class.”

By the end of his first year, he felt a pressing desire to act as a bridge between other marginalized students and

“itpeople . seemed like

” needed a voice. .

the administration.

A wave of police shootings involving unarmed black victims, coupled with then-presidential candidate Trump’s contentious campaign, disturbed him — a feeling he found resonating with others.

“It seemed like people needed a voice and an outlet for what they were saying and how they were feeling, and I wanted to be that voice,” he said.

He made a point to attend meetings and events held by other organizations, such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and different LGBTQ+ groups on campus.

“It was important that when people saw me in these positions of leadership, they knew I was accessible, they knew who I was and they knew that I was advocating for them,” Mercer said.

Now, he is working on creating a new student organization called Students for Social Justice with nine other students and Sherdina Harper, the coordinator of Cross Cultural and Leadership Development Programming.

The idea for the group came after Pitt’s Social Justice Symposium Jan. 19, where Mercer and other students read monologues highlighting issues of diversity and privilege. Mercer’s monologue underscored the need for a more diverse admissions process, an issue on which he has continuously focused on throughout his time on the Year of Diversity Committee.

As Pitt marks the end of its first official “Year of Diversity,” Mercer is looking ahead to what he hopes will be a continuation of the tough conversations students and faculty have had this year. If the year’s effects begin dissolving, Mercer will almost certainly be one of the people pushing issues of inclusion back into the spotlight.

“I’m excited to see if people’s concern for diversity continues after this year,” he said. “I think it will, because I think in everybody’s mind, they don’t want this to be a oneyear thing.”

8

By Amanda Reed Photos by John Hamilton

I’ll HA ve the

fren

“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-yearold 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 high school nick-

chi

name.

As Ali sprinkles crushed nacho cheese Doritos 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 noires.

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. They’re not interacting with a nameless employee at a convenience store, they’re stopping in to catch up with the man behind the counter.

“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 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.

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

“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,

“ remembering the difficulties of adjusting to a new culture and language as a high school student.

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 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 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

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.’ .

”

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.

“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.”

findithe nggood

by Elizabeth Lepro Photos by Elaina Zachos Consider Julia Fernandes a holistic Carrie Bradshaw.

Like the “Sex and the City” character, Fernandes relays her life events via a Wordpress blog, sprinkling in bits of advice to an online community in which she’s both found and fostered support.

Unlike the fictional Bradshaw, Fernandes isn’t doling out relationship advice or delving into the intimate details of her sex life — she’s laying bare the struggles of a college student with a chronic illness.

One day in mid-January, she types: “I’m a firm believer that the universe deals us the exact cards that we need in order to grow, learn about ourselves and become better people.”

The senior applied developmental psychology major has Ulcerative Colitis, a bowel

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disease similar to Crohn’s that develops due to inflammation in the digestive tract.

Fernandes refers to the illness by way of an old allegory: the “mean teacher” — the stern kind you abhor in grade school. You suffer, but, eventually, you learn from the pain.

“In however many years, or however many months, I’m going to look back and say, ‘My illness … has taught me so much,’” she said, sitting at the desk in her room in late March, an essential oil diffuser releasing puffs of peppermint-scented air every few seconds.

Fernandes, a Massachusetts native from outside of Boston, is chatty and bubbly. She comes across as incredibly put together — someone who’s not likely to roll into class late in sweatpants. And she is a productive person,

methodically pre-packing lunches for her internship at the Education Law Center Downtown, keeping a meticulous planner, finding ways to venture out of the country whenever possible — to Guatemala, South Africa, Portugal.

In fact, it was her propensity for traveling that doctors believe led to her UC. While in Guatemala just before she began college, Fernandes was sick in the hospital for weeks, dehydrated and nauseous.

Her doctors think she might have picked up a toxic bacteria on that trip that festered in her gut and later led to UC. Whatever the cause — her one-time sickness abroad quickly turned into months of agony.

That’s when Fernandes really got to know her “mean teacher” in the fall of 2015, her junior year at Pitt. She

couldn’t nail down which foods exactly were triggering the horrific abdominal pain, migraines and digestive issues she was experiencing daily. Often her ailments relegated her to bed when she should have been in class.

Fernandes spent much of her 2016 winter break — a Christmas vacation in Portugal, where she was visiting her father’s family — crying from the pain late into the night with her mother by her side.

“As much as I try to, like, keep my cool about everything there are times when I’ve been in a flare for like for two and a half months and I’m just so sick and so weak,” she said. “There’s a way that I’ve really felt betrayed by my own body.”

There’s a connection between the mind and the gut, she says. Her worries perpetuated her flares, which in turn left her reeling in anxiety.

Finally, her home-based gastroenterologist in Boston, whom she’d gone to see shortly before leaving for Portugal after months of testing, poking and prodding from other health professionals, called with a firm diagnosis.

Soon after, she and her mother met with a new doctor — the first had suggested there was nothing Fernandes could change about her diet to help her condition, so she stopping seeing him. This new physician started suggesting pharmaceutical treatments to reduce inflammation: steroids, immunosuppressant medications, infusions.

Both Fernandes and her mother — who Fernandes refers to as “a total badass” — shook their heads.

“That was my moment to prove myself to the doctors,” she said, her eyes widening even months later as if she were trodding into battle against Western medicine.

“I was like, give me one month and if I don’t succeed at getting better on my own … then I’ll do my infusions and injections.”

Desperate to avoid a life of IV bruises and doctors’ visits, Fernandes met with a holistic nutritionist — someone who specializes in healthy and organic food as close to natural, read: unprocessed, as possible. The nutritionist was baffled by the gastroenterologists’ answer, too. She set to work determining a diet that would balance out Fer-

nandes’ life.

“I was able to make really big changes to my diet, which also meant really big changes to my lifestyle,” Fernandes said. She worked on shifting her attitude, too. Every morning in January, she opened her eyes and

repeated, “You’re going to get better, you’re going to get better, you’re going to get better,” again and again, until she believed it.

Today is a Tuesday afternoon in March, and Fernandes is having a “mini flare,” though she’s always prepared for a bigger one. She’s cleanly dressed, in a white long sleeve shirt with a puffy black vest over top, tapping her nails on the refrigerator door while she sifts through its contents.

Pushing her black glasses up her nose and flinging a tress of auburn hair behind her shoulder, Fernandes lays asparagus out on a tinfoil-swathed cookie sheet.

She’ll pair it with baked chicken but nix the garlic mustard sauce she would typically drizzle on top.

The list of foods she can’t eat during a flare — gluten, raw vegetables, anything with skin still on, anything high in fiber, dairy, anything greasy, anything high in fat, any processed sugar, beans, legumes, red meat — is more extensive than the list of foods she can ingest without consequence. She never eats gluten. Chicken is a flare/noflare staple, and homemade chicken soup, she says, is great for the digestive tract.

Fernandes also offers these recipes on her blog, “the happy gut diaries,” and on her Instagram by the same name. She often can’t drink alcohol or caffeine — a diet as good as a death sentence for many college students. But the community she’s found online has been essential in reducing feelings of isolation brought on by an illness that often means skipping out on social events like bar-hopping or grabbing lunch.

“When I go on Instagram or when I blog about something, I think I’m trying to reach people that are either in the beginning stages of what’s happening to them, or trying to help somebody else,” she said, recalling a time when she desperately searched the web for answers to questions no one around her could understand.

Right now, she’s emailing back and forth with a woman who’s just been diagnosed with a chronic illness: “My advice to her is to first of all take it day by day and also know that you’re not the only one going through this.”

Let’s call Fernandes an optimist, someone with a relentless faith in the idea that the universe wants her well.

Of course, she’s found people willing to push the universe along — she sees her holistic nutritionist when she needs support, visits a Shiatsu practitioner one to two times per month during a flare and still makes appointments with her naturopath doctor and gastroenterologist.

Her translucent blue pill box is stuffed with large, grainy yellow and brown supplements for every day of the week.

Fernandes is self-aware. She acknowledges the lifestyle she leads isn’t manageable for everyone, time- and money-wise. And, she’s quick to note, more traditional

treatments do help others with a variety of illnesses, physical and mental. It just isn’t for her.

“I think I’m trying to just reach people and say, ‘This is my experience, everybody has a different experience, but this is mine,’” she said.

She’s even sought the advice of a psychic upon recommendation from her mother — “the family psychic,” she says, laughing. “[The psychic] said, ‘You think you’re going to have a colostomy bag on your wedding day,’” Fernandes emphasizes the shock she felt when a stranger correctly identified one of her most private — albeit specific — fears. “[The psychic] said, ‘You have to stop thinking like that, you have to start picturing what you want your life to look like.’”

Now, Fernandes paints inspirational quotes in watercolors, sticks motivational notes to her mirror, reads and rereads autoimmune wellness books — one of which contains a “manifesto” with 20 holistic principles to live by.

Number 20: Vibrant health is a lifelong journey.

In mid-December, shortly after Fernandes had blogged with bad news about her worsening condition, she writes about a manifestation box she’s made, filled with affirmations about her health: “I believe I will get better. I believe I have control over my body … I choose to only visualize what I WANT my health to look like instead of worry about what it COULD look like.”

On her posts, her sign-offs vary. Sometimes, she keeps it simple: “Happy healing, Jules”

dinner with the merantes

A family of grocers makes Oakland a home

By James Evan Bowen-Gaddy and Amber Montgomery Photos by Stephen Caruso

When a car crashed into Groceria Merante on a warm December day in 2015, the whole front of the store needed to be remodeled — but the only food item that suffered was a solitary tomato.

It’s certainly fitting for the daughters of a 1950s Italian immigrant who kept his seven children fed with the most standard of Italian foods: red sauce and pasta.

A few years later, the small shop — firmly rooted on the corner of Bates Street and McKee Place in Oakland — is back to normal, the squat storefront crowded with vibrant neon posters and vegetables stacked up behind the windows. The streets of Oakland are fairly empty on a warm Saturday morning in March. Only a few cars drive down the road, and barely any students walk the streets at 8 a.m.

But the inside of Groceria Merante is teeming with energy — a heartbeat in the center of Oakland.

“I was just saying this on the way in: I love going to work on Saturday morn-

13

ings,” Filomena, one of the two sisters who own the store, says. It shows. Filomena and her younger sister, Julie, are in lively spirits, their demeanors no different on an early weekend morning than on a Tuesday afternoon.

No uniforms are necessary in the shop. Julie and Filomena wear T-shirts and jeans, their distinctive Italian features — dark hair, tan skin — mirroring each other.

Behind the deli, Filomena can be in her “own little world.” Julie hangs out up front where she recommends sauces or cooking tips before to customers as they check out, but her speciality is vegetables — a proclivity that inspired the nickname “the produce princess.” Salvatore, or Uncle Sal, sits outside on the stoop with his miniature dog, Dino.

Filomena, petite with short, untamed hair, wears reading glasses atop her head to keep the more disobedient strands off her face. A hearty laugh cuts her raspy voice as she responds to Julie’s interjections into the conversation.

“Oh yeah, I was Daddy’s favorite,” Julie chimes

in about her six brothers and sisters as she squeezes past Filomena in the aisle.

“He was just worn down by [child] number five,” Filomena, the third-oldest in the family, replies.

There are no chairs, so customers lean against the glass of the deli waiting for their lunches. Not that there’s any room for seating — shoppers squeeze by the refrigerators of fresh produce and antipasta and stand on tiptoes to reach shelves of sauces.

People flit by all around Filomena, perfectly comfortable planted in the middle of the rush.

Construction workers stop in to grab coffee while some early-rising students grab Saturday morning groceries. A few others pop in to say hello to the sisters, kissing them on the cheek as if they’re related.

For the Merantes, everything in life is about family, community and their homeland in Calabria, Italy. The sisters first opened the store in 1979, but their history in the grocery business

stretches back longer.

Their grandfather, Nonno Pasquale, began the grocery tradition in 1930s Oakland with a shop on Childs Street. Bouncing back and forth between his home in Petone, Italy, and Pittsburgh, Pasquale raised three boys: Italo, Salvatore and Antonio. Italo — Filomena and Julie’s dad — and Salvatore immigrated to Pittsburgh in the 1950s and used what they’d learned from their father to open up their own shop on Frazier Street, “Merante Brothers.”

The family was one ripple in a wave of Italian immigration to the city that began in the late 1800s. The U.S. Census recorded just shy of 800 Italian-born residents in Pennsylvania in 1870. By 1900, that number grew to more than 66,000 Italians living in the state. Pitt dedicated the Italian Nationality Room in 1949, marking the contributions the Italian community already made in Pittsburgh.

Oakland was filled with Italian families at the time, and the store was as much a centerpiece for the Merante children as it was for the neighborhood.

Filomena said her father garnered so much respect between the ‘50s and ‘70s that their customer base spanned generations.

“He was always a very honest business worker,” she says. “He carried a lot a people when times were hard and they didn’t have very much money.”

Both the Merante parents, Italo and Philomena, have passed. But the family legacy continues: If you see a young man at the cashier or behind the deli

“Your family is the homeland of your heart”

counter, it’s likely to be one of Filomena’s or Julie’s sons or nephews.

“We don’t know if they’ll carry it on. Right now, we’ve got a good group.

But who knows how long it’ll last...we’ll have to see,” Filomena says about the younger generation. Regardless, the family traditions will go on just the same.

Every Sunday night consists of big family get-togethers. The main event is, naturally, a dinner the whole family prepares. Depending on the day, the dining room of Filomena’s home — her mother’s old house in the suburbs of the South Hills, where most of the family now lives — is made up for close to 20 people, and the cooking begins Friday night.

“It’s always pasta,” she says. “It’s a treat when we eat something different.

We eat such common Italian, that if we have something different like brisket, we all jump out of our seats.”

The family often makes trips back to Italy, visiting relatives and their father’s village whenever they get the chance. What Filomena loves most about the country is the relaxed way of life.

“Their style of life, they love to live,” she says with a warm smile. “They appreciate it. They sit down to eat, they don’t eat on the fly. A lot of big cities close for that lunch pocket from 12 to whenever. They value their time.”

Unfortunately, that lifestyle is a hard one to replicate in the States, according to Filomena.

“It’s so hard to do [here]. It really is. I wish everybody would, I wish everybody could go to Italy, practice [living that way] and then come back and do it. It would be a lot healthier, probably,” she said. “If we could, it would be a beautiful thing.”

Still, the dull ache of longing for another country is softened by the family’s bond right here in Oakland.

Pointing to an old Merante family cookbook, Filomena reads aloud a favorite adage of hers.

“La familiga e’la patria del cuore,” it says — “Your family is the homeland of your heart.”

The clan offers stability to the ever-transforming bustle of Oakland — its streets rife with college students at night, hosting raucous parties that the Merantes never minded while they lived here, the mornings filled with bleary-eyed young adults swiping coffee as they run late to class.

Oakland has changed over their lifetimes, the family admits, but they’ve welcomed the student population with the same warmth you might expect them to offer a visitor in their homes.

“She always gets teary-eyed during graduation. She’ll start crying,” Filomena says about her sister. “It’s nice to see you guys grow, just how we raised our kids.”

14

A mother, survivor and advocate

By Jaime Viens Photos by Anna Bongardino

15

In many ways, Hanifa Nakiryowa is 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.

She wakes up at 3 a.m. and wakes her girls at 6 a.m. for breakfast. At 7:30 a.m., they’re off to school. By then, Nakiryowa has already spent three hours on homework for the master’s degree in international studies she’s pursuing at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Like many other single parents in their mid-30s, Nakiryowa has an intense commitment to raising strong, independent women. But the lines on her face tells a deeper story.

Scars — spanning Nakiryowa’s cheeks, forehead and eyelids, extending down her arms — have affected her children’s lives as well as her own. “[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.”

Tough. A simple way to explain a story that required a strength from Nakiryowa beyond mere grit. In 2003, when Nakiryowa was a student at Mak-

erere 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 a jealous 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. In early 2011, she fled the degrading marriage with her two daughters — whose names she chooses not to share for their own safety and privacy — 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 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 prosecution dropped the case, however, 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. The pressure made Nakiryowa feel like she was hiding. Wearing a hijab made learning to accept her new appearance, and teaching others to do the same, difficult.

“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.”

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

Nakiryowa raises her children with the same resolve faith once allowed her — but none of the oppression. Ultimately, she’s disavowed strict religion.

“I show them the value of knowing God and trusting God. That, they know,” Nakiryowa said, explaining the family’s adherence to spirituality in general.

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.

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 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 one day in late March 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?’”

Through them, she 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.”

Killin’

the game

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

Lexi Kennell John Hamilton

by Photo by

17

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

Betty said her son was always into theater, music and acting — anything to be the center of attention. 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 you can’t really explain — you just have to meet him.

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 rap-

port 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

calling the night. “And then we got a knock at the basement door and 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

sustainable for someone trying to have a real music career, and Dorsey knew he had to get out of Oakland if he wants to advance. 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 regrouped 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 rappop 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 fivesong 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 dabbles with “new soundscapes.”

After his time as a guard ends, A Kid Called Gauwd will focus on getting records out and touring the country, concentrating on college towns.

And while D-Massacre 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.”

“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.”

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 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, re-

words to his song.

“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 festivities anyway.

But the college lifestyle wasn’t

18

on a throne of his own Andrew is a nerd, by his own definition.

But his passions bring him to life — something he’s full of.

by Max Datner Photo by Theo Schwarz

W

hen you walk into Andrew Lotz’s office on the fourth floor of Wesley W. Posvar Hall, you’ll first notice the golden Hufflepuff banner hanging from his ceiling.

Or, maybe your eyes will be drawn to the two-inch by two-inch paintings of famous world dictators, hanging near the bookshelf stocked end to end with graphic novels.

The most significant relic in the room, however, is easier to miss: a slightly worn copy of George R. R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones.” The novel sparked not only HBO’s most-watched series but one of Pitt’s most popular political science courses, which Lotz created and teaches himself.

Compared to his rather bland office in Thackeray Hall, where Lotz works as assistant dean of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, the Posvar room seems to be the place where the political science professor can let his mind explode all over the walls.

Tall and broad-shouldered, Lotz — a self-defined nerd with a penchant for Judge Dredd comics, pulp fiction mysteries and “The Walking Dead” — sits at his desk twirling a tuft of red hair. When he’s holding office hours as assistant dean, he dons a black suit accentuated by a pair of bright red Converse sneakers.

A perpetual grin and hearty laugh make it clear that Lotz’s office hours are less a chore than an expression of genuine interest in his students and his job, which allows him to connect pop culture to politics — a passion that has guided his academic career and buoyed him through several hardships.

And hardships hit him hard in 2009. Right in the middle of work on his dissertation, Lotz agreed to get a divorce and was diagnosed with cancer all in the span of one week.

“It [was] the most stressful possible things in the world,” he said.

His marriage just wasn’t working, and the relationship was impeding on his progress in school. At the same time, a red patch started to swell on his right cheek, and he wondered if something was wrong.

“My ex had done all of these insane — she had these crazy ideas,” he said. “At one point, she was convinced...like there’s some real disease that’s vampirism.”

One day, while meeting friends at Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar on the South Side,

Lotz received a call from his doctor, who confirmed — to his relief — that he was not a vampire. He was in fact suffering from cutaneous Tcell lymphoma, a rare form of blood cancer that affects the skin.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said, laughing as he turned the memory on its head. “I plan on being around for a long time — because I’m stubborn.”

Lotz powered through early cancer treatments to complete his dissertation, though getting used to living with the disease was not easy.

CTCL is a chronic disease that primarily affects the skin and makes up about 15 percent of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnoses in the United States. The cancer occurs when white blood cells multiply so rapidly that they form tumors. While it’s typically not dangerous on its own, CTCL poses the risk of spreading to other organs.

Treatment for CTCL can range from skinbased therapies, such as gels, to more intense options including light therapy and radiation.

The condition is typical found in adults between the ages of 50 and 60, so Lotz — who is now only 38 — remembers his first meeting with a CTCL support group. Everyone in the room was older than him.

“I just felt out of place, and it was just weird.

You’re stuck thinking like, ‘What am I? What happened? Why this?’” he said.

Lotz’s most useful strategy for getting through frequent hospital trips and new treatment plans was exactly what you’d expect from the ardent academic: He started carrying a book with him.

He dug into some old reading material to find new inspiration. In grad school, Lotz discovered Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s essay “The Solitude of Self,” which he describes as the “positive nihilism” of a dying, alienated woman. “You have to own your life. Why live someone else’s life?” Lotz concluded as a result of Stanton’s writing.

Behind his Posvar desk on a sunny Friday afternoon, Lotz is propelled by a jovial energy that seems out of place as he recalls adjusting to life with cancer.

He throws out one of his best adages: “You live through every disease except the one you die to!”

A sense of humor is helpful considering that Lotz is frequently subjected to new treatments, including self-administered interferon shots — which contain a naturally occurring protein that aids the immune system — and constant blood work.

Though he says his youth and build make him strong enough to handle the treatments, they have caused him extreme fatigue while teaching.

At points, he’s had to hold on to something in the classroom for stability.

“I had to tell [my classes] ... if I’m ever down, it’s not for any lack of enthusiasm for you, it’s where I’m at,” he said. Classes help him handle the side effects, though: “I can disappear up here,” he said, tapping his forehead.

Lotz’s capacity for intellectual escapism was fostered at a young age.

Growing up in a right-leaning, politically-vocal household in Sioux City, Iowa, his political awakening came in the seventh and eighth grade, years that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first U.S. war in Iraq.

As an undergraduate at Hope College in Michigan, Lotz created his own English literature major in utopian and dystopian novels.

After graduation, he spent a year unloading and loading supply trucks at a Save-A-Lot grocery store in Michigan. Lotz landed at Pitt as a graduate student in political science, his second undergraduate major and has been here ever since.

Given that he teaches about some of history’s most oppressive regimes — Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, to name two — Lotz confidently believes in the human ability to adjust to terrible situations. It’s why when people say they don’t know what they would do in his position, he replies, “You’d do just fine.”

“I think that’s the thing you learn about cancer or any serious disease,” he said. “We get by.

We’re amazing creatures.”

Lotz seems to be doing “just fine” himself. In addition to his positions as a professor, adviser and assistant dean, he exercises, writes under a pen name for a gaming website, attends roller derbies and is filming a silent movie — all part of his “live big” philosophy.

The only evidence of his ongoing treatment appears in dark purple ovals on his forearms where medicine dyes his skin in hairless patches.

He will live with the disease for the foreseeable future, so while it hasn’t become easier, he’s gotten better at dealing with it.

“It is what it is,” Lotz said. “ I’ll be done with that [treatment], and they’ll say, ‘That didn’t work, so well, we’ll try the next thing,’ and then you know, eventually I’ll just die, and I’ll be good!”

He lets out a big laugh.

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An island in the sun

By Caroline Bourque | Photos by elaina zachos In mid-October of his first year at Pitt, Rasul Adams saw an opportunity to break into the social world of college life he had been avoiding — and he decided to take it.

After walking around campus, classes and his residence hall in almost complete silence for weeks, still reeling from the culture shock of emigrating from the Caribbean, Rasul decided it was time to make friends. When he saw two guys from his dorm watching one of his favorite shows, “The Walking Dead,” he joined them and struck up a conversation.

“I just kind of saw it there, and I thought, ‘Maybe I should,’” Rasul said.

“This was my opportunity, and I took it, and I feel good about that.”

Rasul spent the first 18 years of his life on the island of St. Croix, and his adjustment to Pitt this past fall wasn’t easy, especially since he hasn’t been able to find another Caribbean student here. He’s soft-spoken — a self-described homebody who first viewed his fellow students as a sea of strangers.

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“I almost have to shield certain things so I don’t get overexposed,” Rasul said.

Rasul feels plagued by the weight of cultural dissonance. He often finds himself switching off his native Crucian dialect, which is familiar only to those from the Caribbean. Finding a community has been rough. He’s technically not an international student, since St. Croix is a U.S. territory, and while he’s attended a few meetings of the Black Action Society — and fully supports its initiatives — he can’t always identify with its members.

“I’m not trying to rescind the fact that I’m black, but at the same time, I feel like I’m more Afro-Caribbean than I am African American,” Rasul said.

In St. Croix, with a 76 percent black population, Rasul never felt out of place based on the color of his skin. He had Latino friends, as well as some Asians who had come from the Phillipines. They shared a set of values that Rasul describes as distinctly Caribbean, hard to pin down completely unless you’re part of it.

"There's that cultural divide that nobody can cross unless you're from the caribbean."

“Here, I feel as distant as I am with my white friends as I am with my black friends. ‘Cause no matter what color you are, you’re not from the Caribbean. You’re from the States,” Rasul said. “And there’s that cultural divide that nobody can cross unless you’re from the Caribbean.”

Yet, Rasul left behind the comfort of St. Croix, its endless sunshine and vibrant greenery lining clear blue water, to pursue an education in the States. His decision aligns with a cultural trend much larger than himself.

His generation, a would-be new wave of people to join the workforce, is fleeing the island’s current state of economic decline. The unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in February — more dire than ever before. In locals’ place, former tourists are deciding to relocate to St. Croix, precisely for the prototypical tourist visage they can find among the clear water and white sand beaches.

“The more people that we bring here, and the more people that fall in love with it, the more people stay instead of going and coming back,” Rasul said. “The system defeated itself.”

He recalls a time when he visited the home of a private school friend whose family had relocated to St. Croix from the States. His two-story house, atypical of the local bungalow-style homes, was perched in the hills, complete with an in-ground

pool beside it.

“You’re basically trying to recreate where you were in the States, but you’re not living the ‘island life,’” he said. “Like, people [from the island] don’t have pools — you go to the ocean.”

This Americanization, as Rasul describes it, is visible on other parts of the island, too. Recently, a construction crew cleared an entire field, previously untouched and scattered with tropical flora, for a Home Depot. Elsewhere, there are plans to put in a Walmart, which will stand in stark contrast to the centuries-old historic town center where many local shops are being run out of business.

“There’s a clear separation between people who’ve grown up there and were raised there and people who moved there,” Rasul said.

Yet Rasul longs for the home he remembers.

He misses his mother’s cooking: saltfish paired with provisions and a Caribbean dish called fungi, made with okra and cornmeal. He misses the house his father built from the foundation up with a couple of his carpenter friends.

Most of all, Rasul misses the community he grew up with where nearly everyone he passed on the street knew his name and greeted him warmly.

Now, half of his friends are scattered in universities across the United States, and the rest, who he

sees only on rare trips home, are back in St. Croix.

But — like the majority of his friends from St. Croix — Rasul came to the States seeking opportunities beyond the island’s edges.

“Greener pastures is the best way to put it,” he said, employing an idiom that seems ironic given the paradise he left behind.

As spring approaches and Rasul begins to close out his first year at Pitt, he acknowledges that he’s come a long way from the timid guy who wouldn’t leave his dorm room. Slowly but surely, Rasul has made strides in crossing the cultural divide that seemed to paralyze him his first month in Pittsburgh. He’s even making more friends in his dorm, Forbes Hall.

Some of them even remind him of people back home on the island, like Walt, who is “burly yet goofy,” as Rasul puts it.

He plans to pursue a major in neuroscience, keeping with a lifelong fascination with the brain, and maybe go to medical school after he earns his degree. Rasul’s only wish for the end of these four years is to eliminate the uncertainty he currently fosters for his future and career.

“I needed to stop shielding myself from growing up,” he said. “Being home, I wouldn’t be able to branch out to do the things I need to do.”

Living

her faith Emily Brindley Photos by Theo Schwarz

Story by

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.

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 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?’”

For reference: Headscarves are often called “hijabs” but Chowdhry prefers to use 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 — “jilbab” — and face veil — most often called “niqab.” Though there are many Pitt students who wear headscarves, Chowdhry has never seen another student on campus wearing a face veil.

Chowdhry was born in the Pittsburgh area of Natrona Heights, but spent her early teenage years in her parents’ home country of Pakistan. After leaving Pakistan, Chowdhry lived in Canada and then moved back to Pennsylvania. She and her family now live in Monroeville.

Growing up, Chowdhry followed the example set by her parents, who are practicing Muslims, and went through all the motions of religion. She has always worn a headscarf, for example — but mostly because it saved her from wrestling with her curly hair.

Through middle school and high school, Chowdhry saw Islam not as a way of life, but as a set of obligations and rituals. In part, this was because Islam and its religious trappings had always been a part of Chowdhry’s life.

But when Chowdhry was 14 years old, she began to notice and worry about the corruption and injustice within majority Muslim countries — some of which she saw around her in Pakistan. She believed many of the stereotypes about Islam as a sexist religion, and wrote it off as something she didn’t want to be involved in.

When Chowdhry began homeschooling through ninth and 10th grade — which is the last year of school in Pakistan — she

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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 built friendships with people from as far as Israel and Eastern Europe through the website DeviantArt. “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

theology of the Quran.

Although Chowdhry was, at the time, still primarily interested in graphic design and living on the internet, she was also struggling for independence and eager to move out of her parents’ house. Thinking of freedom, she agreed to go to Ontario. During her time in Ontario, Chowdhry began to reorganize her life and worldview.

She questioned her teachers incessantly.

Why do you cover up your skin?

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

What about domestic abuse?

In Ontario, Chowdhry’s teachers began to answer

Through reading the Quran directly, she saw 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 woman is married, so even though she is not married, people will sometimes 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.

Helping others, in line with the Quran’s teachings, is Chowdhry’s motivation for going to college, and she plans to become a teacher or professor after graduation. Chowdhry was also a teaching assistant for Arabic I during the fall semester.

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

“You have these moments where you really think about God, but other times you just live it.” 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 yearand-a-half-long intensive course in the history and

her questions, and she 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 they were a result of human failings and misinterpretations of the Quran — not failings of Islam.

“I went [to Ontario] genuinely because I wanted to learn, because growing up, you hear stuff about religion,” Chowdhry said. “I was Muslim, but I still [believed] everything that people said, I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s a racist, sexist religion.’”

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a visit with doc och

Mixing the scholarly with the spooky, Dana challenges the norm

BY STEVE ROTSTEIN PHOTOS BY WENHAO WU

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Here’s the exact moment a too-young Dana Och got hooked on horror: She had found her way around her mother’s “no scary movies” rule while her family watched “The Exorcist” on TV. “I was laying on a couch with my back to the film on television, and I watched it through a mirror,” Och said. “It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Now, with an office decked out like a mini Halloween store, a Ph.D. in literature and a film certificate, Och is dedicated to the terrifying and the obscure — right down to Irish cinema and postcolonial zombie comedies.

Sporting a dark blond pixie cut and blue jeans, Och exudes an aura more indie punk-rock performer than Ph.D. Sure, her office houses the obligatory stacks of books and papers you’d find in any professor’s workspace, but about 90 percent of the room is pop culture memorabilia.

The walls are plastered with posters of classic horror flicks from “Frankenstein” to “Night of the Living Dead.”

Toy zombies outfitted in Penguins and Steelers gear line the shelves. And her desk is littered with figurines, including one of her favorite movie characters, the Bride of Frankenstein — Och likes her because she never kills anyone and rocks a tall, bushy mass of white-streaked hair.

All of these different traits fuse into one personality — that of a vibrant and passionate professor with a knack for connecting with her students and a love for all things media.

“The field that I’m in, it fits me,” she says, mimicking the “floor is lava” game as she crouches on her rolling computer chair with her right leg tucked under her chin.

Her passions burgeoned in her childhood and adolescence, where her family’s tendency to gather around watching films like “The Exorcist” was typical.

Och’s parents divorced when she was two, and she moved with her mother from her childhood home in Rochester, Pennsylvania, to Owensboro, Kentucky. Och spent nearly all of her time with her mother’s side of the family,

watching and acting out scenes from movies with her two older sisters and older brother, her mother, aunt, uncle, Na-Na and Pap-Pap. Och’s sister Kerry, who is two years older, said her love of movies and horror comes from those late nights staying up with the family. The sisters would sneak downstairs to watch slashers while the rest of the family was asleep.

“In some ways, it made us closer,” Kerry said. “We would scare ourselves, so we would all huddle together. We used to freak ourselves out. We’d be playing outside, and as soon as it started to get dark out, our imaginations would run wild. We would think Freddy or Jason were in the woods, and they were going to come take us.”

Och spent her middle and high school years in Owensboro, where music took over as the dominant form of media in her life. She dove into the punk/indie scene, discovering bands like The Pixies and Violent Femmes, and played the clarinet in her school band until her senior year — before she quit because she hated the uniform.

Och enrolled at Pitt in 1992, where she would spend the next 25 years of her life.

Like many other Pitt students, she started out living in Sutherland Hall the first year it opened before venturing out into the apartments of South Oakland. As a sophomore, she moved to York Way — a little alleyway off Louisa Street between Atwood Street and Meyran Avenue — which is where she met her future husband, Chris Cannon.

“He lived next door to me and played in a band,” Och said. “That’s the most romantic story you’ve ever heard, right?”

The two have been together ever since, even though they’ve only been married for about five years. Och doesn’t keep track of their anniversaries, and when they got married, she kept her name. That way, she doesn’t have to scrap her perfectly-themed nickname: Doc Och. Och started out as a biology and English literature major, originally intending to become a psychoanalyst. But by the time she finished with her undergrad degree, she knew she wanted to teach. She also knew she loved cinema, but didn’t know there was a way for her to do both.

When Och got to graduate school, though, she had to take a required film class for students pursuing a master’s degree in her field — after which she realized she was on the wrong track all along. So she switched to film and received her Ph.D. in literature with a certificate in film studies in 2006.

“I grew up watching movies all the time and watching television all the time, but I didn’t study them,” Och said. “Whenever I switched, it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life because I was so well-versed in cinema and television that I knew a lot, even though I didn’t actually study film in undergrad.”

In Och’s 9 a.m. film comedy class, students aren’t scrolling through their phones or rubbing their eyes trying to stay awake.

As she strolls into the classroom at 8:55 and puts down her belongings, she notices one student has decided to take the seat closest to her desk despite numerous open seats at a more comfortable distance.

“Wow, you’re really up close today,” Och says, in her characteristically emphatic voice.

“I need to feel the knowledge,” the student replies.

Och obliges, making sure he and the rest of his classmates receive her undivided attention for the entirety of the nearly four-hour class period. She doesn’t even look away from the class to jot keywords down on the chalkboard — resulting in somewhat scribbly but still-legible material.

Och refers to her teaching as a “student-based learning style.” Rather than reading from a textbook or glossing over PowerPoint slides, she sparks discussion among her students. Maybe it’s the buried psychoanalyst in her, looking for ways to lead people to their own conclusions.

“My teaching is, rather than me telling everybody what to think, I like to flip it and have the students try and work through and figure out media and media landscapes themselves,” she said. “I always say, ‘I know what I think. I’m curious what you think,” It’s not only students who learn from Och — it’s her colleagues as well. Och has worked closely with fellow film professor Ali Patterson since 2011 on numerous projects at Pitt. The two serve on the undergraduate curriculum committee where they help consider how Pitt classes are serving students.

Patterson said she still goes to Och for help when she’s struggling to connect with students on a certain topic or looking for new ways to engage them.

“If I have a class that hasn’t gone precisely the way I wanted it to go, I’ll talk it through with her. We’ll do kind of a post-mortem on a class, and she’ll provide feedback and insight,” Patterson said. “She’s really great at asking questions in ways

“I know what I think, I’m curious what you think.” that connect her with students and invite responses, and I think sometimes my questions can seem convoluted to students.”

The films and literature Och enjoys studying don’t usually pop up in academia, amid more conceptually traditional topics of study — Shakespeare, “Pride and Prejudice” and Alfred Hitchcock films, for instance — but that’s the way Och likes it: nontraditional.

“We a lot of times have the idea that philosophy and theory are these really difficult things that are only for the elite,” Och said. “I don’t believe that at all. I believe that we all should be thinking.”

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S N O I T S E U Q T H G I R E H Considine n T e e l y G K y Photos b ASKIN n Marx

by Brando

W

hen Mount Laurel Hartford School in southern New Jersey celebrated its students’ heritages by encouraging they wear their culture’s traditional clothing to class, 11-year-old Aya Ahmed Shehata opted instead to don her usual attire, Aeropostale or American Eagle.

Shehata, now a sophomore at Pitt, remembers struggling with the ways her culture and religion — her family is Muslim and Egyptian-American — set her apart from the other kids in her class. She couldn’t understand why her family didn’t send Christmas cards like her classmates’ and she was embarrassed by her father’s thick accent when he visited her at school.

“When I was younger, I was almost ashamed of my religion and my culture, and the fact that I was so different from everyone else that I went to school with because I was in a predominantly white, privileged area,” Shehata

said.

Growing up in Mount Laurel, New Jersey — a suburb of Philadelphia — she was trying to understand the depths of her differences while navigating the trials of American preteen girlhood.

“A big part of my childhood growing up was that battle of ‘Am I American? Am I Egyptian? Am I both?” She often asked herself. “Does my culture play a role in my day to day activities? How can I create that balance?’”

Middle school Shehata was so distraught at the idea of being an outcast that she would walk in the opposite direction if she saw a friend from school in public while she was wearing a hijab, coming from or going to the mosque.

“I think my parents could see that I was struggling with my identity but it wasn’t in the way that they wanted me to, it wasn’t the way that I should have been struggling,” Shehata said. “It was more me trying to hide my culture and my iden-

tity and I was trying to conform with the norms.”

What she should have been grappling with were questions of her faith.

“Faith is something you have to convince yourself of,” Shehata said. “Otherwise, you’re just blindly believing and that’s not what our faith teaches. Our religion is all about asking questions and trying to figure out why the rulings are the way they are and convince yourself of that.”

When Shehata was in the sixth grade, her parents — both physicians — decided to send her to NoorUl-Iman, an Islamic school in central New Jersey.

Shehata spent her time there learning the importance of investigating her religion for herself and researching the teachings of the Quran in order to understand Islam fully.

Now, the psychology and sociology major worries less about whether or not she stands out and focuses instead on the ways she can impact her

community — through her faith and feminism.

Shehata is passionate about dispelling the myth that Islam is an inherently sexist religion. Growing up in a Muslim household, where empowering girls is a priority, her mother made sure she had the strength and tools to pursue her ambitions. One of her fondest childhood memories is singing along to Destiny’s Child songs in the car with her mother.

Last semester, she helped create the Female Empowerment Movement, a burgeoning student organization committed to uplifting young women on campus on an individual basis.

“The way we started it was we had each girl talk about what she was passionate about, and based on that she would create an event. So personally, my thing was intersectionality and feminism,” Shehata said.

So far, FEM has hosted events that deal with topics of women’s health, mental health and intersectionality.

Shehata coordinated the Remarkable Women Intersectionality Panel, where she spoke to students, along with prominent women in Pittsburgh including Betty Cruz, who works closely with Mayor Bill Peduto to develop citywide initiatives, and Kathy Humphrey, Pitt senior vice chancellor.

Her desire to get involved with FEM stemmed from working as a mentor with the Strong Women, Strong Girls program, something she got involved with to pass on the strength and encouragement her mother instilled in her.

“If a girl feels that she can do something, she can,” Shehata said. “I don’t think I would have been the person that I am today, reaching out for opportunities and grabbing opportunities if I didn’t have that kind of backing from my mom.”

“

Shehata saw FEM as an opportunity to be a representative of her faith outside of her involvement with the Muslim Student Association — for which she is the female social chair — and to show that Islam supports strong women.

Excitedly adjusting the frames of her glasses, she points out that many of the great Islamic scholars were women, specifically referencing Aisha — one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad — whom she characterizes as being “brave and feisty.” Aisha was not only a scholar who routinely questioned religious teach-

That’s what’s going to last... the impact you are making directly. ings, but also a soldier, fighting on the front lines during the early days of Islam.

It’s important to Shehata that those unfamiliar with Islam are comfortable asking questions since — for many people — she is the first Muslim person they actually know. She said that while she can tell many are afraid to say something wrong or offensive, they’re still approaching the subject with the right intentions.

She listens to inquisitions about Islam or her feminist ideals while nodding her tilted head in encouragement with her hands folded. In her responses, she speaks rapidly and emphatically, her hands keeping pace with her words exuding the passion and knowledge she has for the topic — pausing only to adjust her frames in concentration.

Shehata also organizes events for the MSA — some as small as a Halloween mixer for old and new members, and some as large as the candlelight vigil held in honor of the six men killed in the mosque shooting in Quebec earlier this year. As the volunteer coordinator for the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh’s Food Pantry, Shehata helps provide food and groceries to those in need in the greater Pittsburgh area.

“That’s a big part of Islam, wherever you go you have to leave a good impression and we see ourselves as representatives of the faith,” Shehata said. “That’s always been my mantra, that’s how my parents raised me, giving back to people who are in need.”

In early February, a woman walked into the Islamic Center who immediately caught Shehata’s eye. The volunteers were packing up the remaining groceries at the end of distribution while the woman tiptoed around the room visibly upset.

Shehata approached her to ask if she needed any help. With tears in her eyes, she explained how she was taking care of her granddaughter because her son was unable to and said she needed food. She admitted to being embarrassed having to come to the food pantry and ask.

Shehata walked the woman directly to the pantry and made her a box, going over the usual limits that the volunteers are allowed to give each person. Before taking her box, the woman gave Shehata a hug.

“I remember at the time I was considering taking a step back from the work just because I had a pretty big course load,” she said. “As soon as that woman gave me that hug I immediately regained that purpose that I needed.”

As a pre-med student, Shehata’s semesters are always demanding but she believes that it’s important to separate herself from the demands of University life.

“That’s what’s going to last, not the grades you are going to get, but the impact you are making directly is what’s most important and what we all sometimes overlook,” she said.

Her struggles no longer revolve around trying to fit in. Rather, Shehata, who plans to be a doctor, purposefully pushes her role as a proud Muslim woman in a STEM field. “[I’m] creating that comfort for coming generations that I don’t have to be a man to be a doctor and I don’t have to be a man to be an engineer, and I can be just as successful,” she said. “I’m struggling definitely but I feel like that struggle is going to end up paying off in the end.”

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 hen Ossia Dwyer steps on stage, people pay attention.

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

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

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tral — in a voice she jokingly compares to a “stoned Strawberry Shortcake.” Despite her low-key energy, the audience pays complete attention, laughing as Dwyer jokes about being a “lady.” She’s dressed casually in jeans and a light blue blouse but with a hint of a smirk always playing on her lips.

We learn from a vocabulary lesson inspired by her small Vermont hometown that water fountains are called “bubblers,” a softserve 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 each week at both of these events — 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 standup 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.

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 using her judgement to select the oneoff jokes 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 standup 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 breadand-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 — somehow 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 birthdays, making sure to include the most unflattering snapshots from forgotten weekends.

“It’s enough to make you groan,” he said. 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.”

I pretty much just tell the truth when I get up there.

“

”

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making space under the rainbow story by DaviD robinson photos by anna bongarDino

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.

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As a gay black man, Robinson is cognizant of the issues members of his intersecting communities face, and how those problems differ among people with varying identities.

Prior to coming out he had no one to look up to who he felt represented him.

“How I am doesn’t match what I’m seeing,” Robinson said. “I’m not Neil Patrick Harris, but I like men, so where do I fit in?”

His compassion is in part rooted in his own journey, which gifted him with a refined empathy.

Robinson grew up in Oviedo, a small, 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 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 wasn’t sure what to expect, 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 mom often forwards emails with events in the LGBTQ+ community back home.

During that same spring break, Robinson 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

the biggest thing for me is knowing when to speak and when not

“

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 and Alphabet Soup did for him, allowing people room and support to grow, without pushing his own experience on them.

“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 evolved since joining 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, 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.”

jack stauber gets weird by henry glitz Photos by emily hower

hat’s been inspiring Jack Stauber lately?

“There’s a track on [his new] album coming out about calling my mom, telling her I got mugged and I need money to buy candy bars — desperately,” the junior marketing major says with a grin as he walks down a snowy Fifth Avenue.

Stauber pauses before letting out an unruly laugh. He describes a love song he wrote later that same day dedicated to Verne Troyer — the actor famous for playing Mini-Me in the “Austin Powers” movies.

“I made probably four really goofy

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songs that day,” Stauber said.

The 21-year-old creative whirlwind isn’t messing around about staying firmly outside the box. In fact, as he tackles music, movies and live performance, he seems to wear his distinctly scatterbrained process proudly on his sleeve.

“I take goofing off very seriously,” he said, in an abruptly dour tone.

Stauber’s idea of “goofing off ” likely doesn’t mirror the procrastination tactics of other college students. On a typical Wednesday morning, the marketing major wakes up at 4 or 5 a.m. and starts playing music.

“And I would do that for probably

about eight hours straight,” he added. “I get pretty obsessed.”

Three months of concentrating his creative powers — his bedroom strewn with sheets of lyrics, offhand doodles and musical notations — or meddling with an old keytar in the harshly-lit basement of his West Oakland house seem to be paying off.

Stauber released his third and most recent solo album “Pop Food” on March 25.

The album, available on Bandcamp, doesn’t restrict itself to any one specific style or feeling as it moves from lo-fi indie to synths with an almost 1980s aesthetic, electric guitar and twinkling

melodic riffs sandwiched between snare. Instead, it seems to mirror the artist’s obsession with creating and his fondness for the weird.

The result is simultaneously serious and playfully self-deprecating — digestible, but an obvious labor of love.

“I tried to make it as accessible as possible,” Stauber said. He dismissed his prior two records, which have a more distinctly raw sound, as overly-introverted attempts at finding an authentic creative outlet. Producing LPs is part of a musical obsession that stretches back to high school and before — and one in which his increasing confidence and uncanny personal style finds its roots.

Hailing from McKean, Pennsylvania — a tiny borough in Erie County — Stauber channeled his passion in high school through any and every creative venture he could find.

He complemented his participation in school musicals and performances singing jazz with a band he and his friends formed called “Joose” that began playing in Erie’s rudimentary live music scene.

Stauber credits the music community there — particularly a venue called Basement Transmissions, where he’s performed more than 100 times — with shaping his personal and musical styles and setting his expectations for live music performance.

“Erie is one hell of a scene — actual dancing, conversation between songs,” Stauber said, adding that the transition from Erie’s more intimate atmosphere to the larger musical landscape in Pittsburgh was difficult at first.

After transferring from Pitt’s Bradford campus last year to Oakland, it took a while for Stauber and his new group project, a band

called “Zaki,” to find a home in Pittsburgh’s music community.

Stauber’s high-energy personality didn’t initially fit well with the more competitive, almost anonymous atmosphere that he said came with moving to a larger city.

“I like a jovial scene,” he said.

“It was so quiet here at first, just ‘cause I didn’t know anybody.”

Starting with basement shows, Stauber and his bandmates — Pitt students David Pirozzi, Sean O’Connor and Stephen Kraus and

Dating isn’t too far off from the feeling Stauber and his bandmates give off in live performances — which the junior musician claims should be largely about connecting with the people around you.

Playing at an Ophelia Street basement show in March, the singer seemed just as interested in entertaining his bandmates as the audience. Looping the cord loosely around his neck, he handed off the microphone to Pirozzi to sing a verse before untangling himself

“I tak e goof ing of very s f erious ly.” recent graduate Jesse Descutner — chatted and charmed their way up to the ground floor in a matter of no time at all.

Last month, Zaki performed at the Mr. Roboto Project artspace in Bloomfield. The band is also set to open at the Brillobox later this month for Norwegian Arms, a freak folk group Stauber counts as one of his main inspirations from high school.

“All the boys in that band are, just, socialites,” Stauber said. “Being in a band is like the closest relationship to a group of people you can have — it’s practically dating.”

and suddenly disappearing among the audience’s legs.

Without warning or explanation, he took off his sweater and shirt and stuck a long piece of tape across his chest in an act of mock solemnity. He doesn’t have much of an explanation for the tape — but the performance would be incomplete without an element of spontaneity, he said.

Recounting Stauber’s on-stage idiosyncrasies, Pirozzi likens Stauber to a spark plug for the band’s members and their audience.

“Jack brings an energy,” Pirozzi

said. “I just want to get animated when performing next to him.”

Stauber tries to keep the energy up just as much when playing shows alone. While he doesn’t prefer one over the other, he says that solo performance has a potential for both a greater expressive range and more jitters than performing in a group.

“It’s definitely a lot more difficult to go up there by yourself,” Stauber said. “There’s a lot of free range when you can just hold a microphone and be a complete weirdo with your entire body.”

Donning an oversized sweater, unkempt long blond hair, a tentative grin and dark sunglasses hiding the upper half of his face, Stauber combines a synthesizer and a looper with his own voice at his shows to create songs on the spot for the audience. The performance would be incomplete without an element of spontaneity, he said.

Stauber’s creative urge isn’t limited to music. He is also planning on graduating with a certificate in digital media and a minor in studio arts and says that video is just as central an interest for him as music.

He’s made music videos to accompany a few of the songs on “Pop Food,” and produced a short film called “Shream” for what he said was an “outrageous” film festival in Erie.

Despite this lengthy artistic resume, Stauber — with his buzzing, goofy demeanor and ability to charm an audience member in the back row of a muggy, dimly lit basement — doesn’t match the brooding stereotype of the consummate creator. That’s just yet another trope he’s proud to subvert.

“A lot of people think if you’re being honest, you have to be serious,” Stauber said, “but you don’t.”

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crubbing in

Alejandro Morales starts his weekdays at about 3:45 a.m.

He hits snooze on his phone, then heads to the bathroom to splash water on his face. If he’s got a few extra minutes, he can down some almonds with a glass of milk or water before driving to the hospital.

The orthopaedic surgeon splits his time between patients at one of the eight University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospitals he’s stationed at each month. He usually ends his day near 10 p.m., getting less than five hours of sleep each night, skipping meals and foregoing coffee — though he does keep chocolate peanut butter Clif Builder’s protein bars stashed in the pocket of his UPMC windbreaker.

“All of our patients, we want them to be eating healthy, we want them to have good nutrients because their wounds will heal better,” Morales, 26, said. “In the back of my head, it’s ‘I haven’t had breakfast, I haven’t had lunch, it’s 5 p.m.’”

Morales, a tall, medium-built man with cropped dark hair and brown eyes to match, became a medical intern in Pitt’s six-year research track last March. But his story starts in 1989 in suburban Madison, New Jersey. His parents, Arquimedes Morales and Estela Restrepo, then in their late 20s, had just moved to the United States from a mountain town in Colombia. The next year, Morales was born.

“It’s a regular kind of story that most immigrant families have,” Morales said. “They thought it’d be a good idea to come over here and do the whole ‘hope for a good life,’ ‘American Dream’ kind of thing.”

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Slacker to surgeon, Alejandro’s found his focus stabilizing others

Story and photoS by Elaina ZachoS

The eldest of two boys, Morales was a “difficult child” growing up.

He was unmotivated, dressed in oversized clothing and cruised with a wayward crowd. He wasn’t a social deviant, but with grades in the C to D range, he was prepared to drop out of high school with no plans for college. Morales liked Madison, it was typically immigrant-friendly, but 80 percent of the residents were white, and his background made him stand out.

Take one summer night when he was 14. Morales was walking to his friend’s house to watch a movie when a police car rushed up to him, nearly clipping him. The officer inside called for backup and barrelled out.

“They just started putting their hands on me, patting me down. And then all of a sudden, he started asking me where I was from,” Morales said.

Morales was confused and said he was a local. But the cop didn’t buy it. “Your name’s Alejandro,” he said.

wanted to support him in college. The conversations started piling up, and their consistent discussions about his classes made Morales realize he actually liked math and science.

He embraced his suppressed interests and chose to study medicine.

“I really just kind of buckled down. I remember actually taking textbooks home and actually sitting there and opening up these huge textbooks and just reading them until 1, 2 in the morning,” Morales said.

With sudden drive, Morales decided to become an EMT. At 18, he was spending 60 hours working on an ambulance each week.

His first time out on a run, Morales and about three other EMTs responded to an accident. They arrived at the scene to find a family’s car knotted around and crushed by a tree, with firefighters rescuing the father from the vehicle. Sirens were sounding and lights were flashing.

The once unfocused, jaded teenager, was completely calm despite the chaos around him.

“You know you have a job to do: you have to stabilize this patient.

“If you don’t slow down, you’re going to miss something.”

The officer parked his blacked-out SUV in front of the teenager and threw on his high beams. Morales later learned that there were people in the vehicle who claimed the teenager had robbed them and tried to steal their car. The officer took Morales to the police station and contacted his parents.

“It was 100 percent demoralizing,” he said. He is still foggy on his charge.

Morales went to court over the next few months. His judge gave him an ultimatum: The incident would be erased from Morales’ record if he went to the Morris County Juvenile Detention Center for a day. Fed up, Morales obliged.

At the center, corrections officers made Morales surrender his possessions for an orange jumpsuit and flimsy sandals. He said goodbye to his parents. Morales had to announce himself wherever he went. The officers handcuffed him and toured him through the premises, ordering him to look straight ahead, to walk in a straight line.

“It wasn’t enlightening — it wasn’t scared straight,” Morales said.

“Just seeing a police officer after that really made me nervous.”

Morales was ready to drop out by sophomore year of high school. His guidance counselor laid out his options: If he wanted to go to college, he would have to look local. The prospects weren’t exciting.

But Morales’ family wanted him to succeed, academically and professionally. If he stopped acting careless and put effort into school, they

Things have to slow down because if you don’t slow down you’re going to miss something. You’re kind of methodical about how you do it,” Morales said. “And I think that’s really the only way to do medicine.”

He continued the job until his senior year of college and started at Pitt’s School of Medicine in 2012. Now, as an orthopaedic surgeon, his long days are still packed with patients, but he’s shifted his focus from emergency care to outcomes in medicine. In orthopaedic surgery, he can treat patients with a single problem, like a broken leg, and help piece them back together, setting up a rehabilitation plan and scheduling office visits.

“If you can help them regain their mobility, you’re essentially restoring their independence,” Morales said. “That was so satisfying [to see].”

Morales recently got engaged, to Maylene Xie, who is also a 26-yearold doctor. From Madison to Pittsburgh, Morales has worked to find balance in his life, even if not in his diet.

“As a child and teenager growing up, you’re very influenced by your surroundings,” Morales said. “I think disadvantaged people — minorities, especially — are victims to ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ when it comes to having role models in our society.

“I want to be someone that anyone can look at and say, ‘Hey, I know him, we both grew up with a similar background. I can become a doctor, too.’”

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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 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 midApril, 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.

Angulo spent 13 years at a 6-story apartment complex in Toronto, where he played soccer with friends, battled through Xbox games with his stepbrother and chowed down on his mother’s Spanish dishes.

When they grew beyond the playground, he and his group of friends began pouring after-school hours into creating an art collective — a collaborative group that experiments 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

hometown hero

Roosevelth, a Canadian soccer player on Pitt’s team, collaborates with his friends from home in an art collective Story by Lauren Rosenblatt that draws inspiration from Photo by Meghan Sunners their neighborhood.

found there.

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.”

“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.”

Rhozeland’s most recent project includes references to the exterior of Angulo’s childhood apartment building, including the building’s nick-

37

name “Whitebricks.”

There, neighbors became family Angulo said, which was especially important for times when they experienced rifts within 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 behind bars, navigating their way off the “wrong path.”

Through electric beats, constant loops and bright sounds, the music and its lyrics tell the stories of a neighborhood.

“This is how these guys grew up, so I feel like, you know ... people should hear it and take it into consideration,” Angulo said. “This is how I grew up, too. That’s why I’m proud of it.”

Angulo said his story is one of helping his friends rather than dwelling on his own experiences — but 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 dad, a former professional soccer player in Ecuador, on the field. Watching his footwork at games, Angulo knew he wanted to follow in his steps.

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.

“I was just playing as much as I could, staying fit and focusing on my school work,” he said. “I knew if I didn’t have that then I couldn’t get here.”

Angulo became the first member of his family to graduate high school and attend college. 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.

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

With tributes to their common 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.”

A whole different planet

By Zoe Pawliczek Photo by Kyleen Considine When Ayushi Dwivedi bought staples at Rite Aid during her first year at Pitt, she was surprised to learn they didn’t fit inside the stapler she brought from home.

Such a simple inconvenience, but a sign of all the little, unexpected differences that would combine to make the Indian international student’s first year at Pitt an adventure in unfamiliarity.

“When I come here, it’s a whole different planet,” she said. “[It’s] almost like sitting in a rocket ship and flying somewhere else.”

Despite the liveliness of Bangalore — her home city and the capital of India’s tech industry — Dwivedi led a studious childhood, spending her free time driving through the countryside with her family and attending cricket matches. Unlike her friends, she wasn’t fascinated with interested in Western culture, instead listening to ‘60s and ‘70s Bollywood hits and watching Bollywood films for entertainment.

So when she stepped off the 30-hour plane ride for her first-year orientation at Pitt, she faced more than just the transition from high school to college: She would be eating food she never encountered in India, going to football games instead of rugby matches and living nine-and-a-half hours ahead of her family.

“In my head, it wasn’t like ‘Oh, I’m going to America or some other land.’ I’m going to college because that’s the next logical step in my education, and so is everybody else around me,’” she said. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

She chose Pitt for its urban environment, topranked biology and neuroscience departments and efforts to promote inclusivity and diversity while nurturing international talent.

After tackling the initial surprises life in the States had to offer, including adjusting to cycling on the “wrong” side of the road and making “nice to meet you” — a colloquialism rarely heard in Indian conversation — a part of her muscle memory, Dwivedi adjusted to life as an American college student.

“I think the reason that I’m still here after four years and didn’t freak out and go home is probably because I came in with zero expectations and zero assumptions,” Dwivedi said. “I always saw more what I had in common with other people than what differences I had.”

Four years later, the once tentative newcomer was nominated for Pitt’s Senior of the Year award.

She didn’t win — but her resume will probably survive regardless.

As vice president of the Pitt Arts student advisory board, Outside the Classroom Curriculum honorary brand ambassador, co-recruitment chair for the Career Development Society for Young Professionals and assistant scenic designer for Pitt Stages’ upcoming production of “Peter and the Starcatcher,” Dwivedi is taking full advantage of her time at Pitt.

“What I’m doing here, I could never do in India,” Dwivedi said. “The education system is very different. The whole point of coming here and investing so much money into my education was to hopefully settle down here.”

Whereas in India she would have had to choose a profession to pursue by age 17, she said she was drawn toward the American system of choosing a major and narrowing down her career path as college played out.

Dwivedi said she is fortunate that her father — whom she calls her best friend — was able to pay for her education. Her mother showed support by encouraging her to maintain elements of the way she was raised, such as maintaining her vegetarian diet and not falling victim to celebrity hero worship in America.

“Because the Indian family culture is a lot about constantly parenting your child, just letting go and letting your child grow is not a thing,” Dwivedi said.

“My mom and dad are pretty much opposites in that regard, but it makes for a great balance, which is why me coming here was such a big deal.”

Although Dwivedi began eating chicken this year due to nutritional needs, she has upheld her mother’s other advice. In her four years on campus, she

has only been to one concert, featuring University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Masala — a singing group consisting of American-born Indians that performs a capella mashups of American and Indian music.

“Even today, my playlist is pretty much all Bollywood songs,” Dwivedi said.

Her taste in music was one of the cultural differences between her and her American floormates as a first-year student, a gap that first-year resident assistant Galen Hughes helped her bridge by hosting floor activities and explaining the politics of living with a roommate and in a dorm.

Now, she holds similar positions to advise and guide students: She was a resident assistant for the Global Village Living Learning Community her sophomore year and a Freshman Programs teaching assistant for the past three fall semesters.

“Everything I do is centered around empowering fellow Pitt students, and so whatever I could do to enhance, that attracted me,” Dwivedi said.

She is set to graduate with a double degree in neuroscience and theater arts and plans to pursue her masters of science in health care policy and management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College.

Hit with the possibility of Trump’s administration interfering with Visa laws and the half-tuition scholarship she received from Pitt’s next-door neighbor, she finalized her CMU acceptance quickly.

“I know the city — I don’t need another culture shock, or city shock,” Dwivedi said. “I’m all set to be here for another two years.”

In a nod to Dean Kenyon Bonner’s “lift as you climb” philosophy, Dwivedi said this element of turning back and lending a helping hand to fellow Pitt students is at the “center of [her] whole resume at Pitt.”

“What Pitt has done for me and what they continue to do for me is so humbling,” she said. “I want to make sure I’m doing my part in whatever small way I can to give back to that.”

38

ThiRd Time aRound

A New Yorker by birth, a y inzer by choice, ElliotT has continuously returned to Oakl and

By Ryan Zimba Photos by Julia Zhu Despite growing up surrounded by New York City’s championship teams, Elliott Levenson’s father taught him to be a long-distance Panthers fanatic before he stepped foot on campus.

“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 his old alma mater, both for the parts that have remained just as he remembers them, and the ones that shift each time he comes back to campus.

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.

Levenson served in the U.S. Army from 1981 to 2011, which took him all over the world — including Bosnia and Iraq in the mid-to-late 2000s — but he’s always considered the University his home.

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.

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. He went so far as to call the Big Apple “almost post-apocalyptic” right before he left for school in the early ‘80s.

“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 said.

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.

That transferred over into the night life, which Levenson found invigorating. His favorite place to hang out was the Decade — a bar in South

Oakland where the Garage Door Saloon currently sits — where wellknown national musicians would come to perform.

“People like [Bruce] Springsteen thought it would be cool to show up at the Decade,” Levenson said.

Some of his fondest memories from Pitt come from this first stage at the school in the ‘80s, from meeting his future wife at a Phi Delta Theta fraternity party to working as a Pitt Stadium vendor. 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.

But what stands out the most about the early years of Reagan for Levenson wasn’t drama in the Middle East but on the gridiron.

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.

By the time Levenson returned to his alma mater in 1998, Marino was on his way out of the NFL, and computers were taking over the economy.

So, the then 36 year old started on a computer science degree.

While Levenson could take pride in Marino’s then record 61,361 yard passing, Oakland’s social life had declined since he first graduated. The Decade had closed, an arcade where he spent time and tokens playing PacMan and Centipede was no longer there and the dining hall in the Cathedral’s ground floor had lost some of it’s quality.

And Pitt football’s old home atop Cardiac Hill, Pitt Stadium — where Pitt had played in its 1976 national championship winning season — was about to shutter as well after the 1999 football season. Levenson called it “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.”

Though Levenson might miss vintage Atari and five minute game day jaunts to the field, some things about campus still impress him like the

“i was a pitt guy even before i was a pitt guy” William Pitt Union, which 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.

“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.”

Through it all, one of the most difficult parts for Levenson has been balancing school, work and family. Living in Pittsburgh, he has kept working a full-time job while being a part-time

student. According to him, he doesn’t have too much time outside of those responsibilities.

“Other than family time with my wife and daughter, you literally have to cut out almost all of your other interests,” Levenson said. “About the only thing I had time left for is working out and running, and I even do that [only] when I get little opportunities.”

This summer, Levenson will graduate from Pitt for what he thinks will be the final time. He said that leaving will be akin to “mourning.” But one thing will not have changed over the entire 37-year run — his disdain for Pitt’s cross-state rival.

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

40

An advocate with grace Story by Salina preSSimone typical weekday for Crevecoeur will likely start with a long but worthwhile morning ritual: contemplating and experimenting inside her wardrobe.

She’ll slip on a chic scarf or clasp on a bold necklace, dab and reapply various lipstick shades and maybe top off the look with a trench coat when it’s raining to achieve her signature “urban preppy” look.

But don’t let her long lashes and polished, classic look fool you — Crevecoeur’s got running shoes on, literally.

The sneakers she slips on under her many skirts and dress outfits not only complete her style — they serve as a metaphor for her on-the-ground advocacy. Essentially, there’s no time for fancy footwear when you’re tackling one of Pittsburgh’s biggest infrastructural issues.

When residents in Flint, Michigan, were being hospitalized for the lead in their water in April 2014, Crevecoeur was more than 400 miles away, following the news ardently. She became even more driven to investigate the issue further when she was exposed to a strikingly similar affliction in the Pittsburgh water system.

Pittsburgh lead issues were brought to light in April 2016 when the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection ordered the PWSA to test its water for lead. The results came back at 22 parts per billion, well over the 15 parts per billion action level required by federal law. Now, PWSA is determining the best way to efficiently replace the pipes, balancing fiscal responsibilities and residents’ health concerns.

“Pittsburgh’s a pretty old industrial city, and because of that, there are typically just more environmental concerns, especially regarding water and air quality,” she said.

“And Pittsburgh is where I go to school, so I figured it would be a perfect place to look into those issues, because they coincide with what I’m studying in classes anyway.”

She plans to take her interests further researching Pittsburgh’s water system during a gap year before law school.

Tracking lead-ridden water isn’t the only initiative she’s waded into. As a Pittsburgh

A

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photoS by evan meng

Department of City Planning intern in the summer of 2015, Crevecoeur helped implement a survey program in various neighborhoods about Public Step maintenance and repair. On campus, she works to promote paperless student ticketing at athletic events and enhance recycling education and awareness through the group “Paw Prints.”

The initiative formed as a part of a sustainability course and includes five other students working on promoting long-term sustainability practices on campus.

She’s always been drawn to service — it’s a family tradition.

In 2010, her family established a foundation called CChange in response to the earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010. Since then, she has been inspired to forge a connection to cultural diversity and advocacy in her own life.

“Charity work in general is important to me because I think I’ve lived a pretty blessed life, and I know people even within my family are not fortunate like I’ve been, so I think it’s just important to give back,” Crevecoeur, who has a Haitian background, said.

Leaving her small, rural Pennsylvania hometown of Duncansville where there were few people who shared her heritage, Crevecoeur was eager to become involved in promoting Caribbean and Latin American culture at Pitt.

She joined the Caribbean and Latin American Student Association (CLASA) in her first year at Pitt. Now, as a junior and one of the club’s public relations chairs, she can be found posting flyers, planning meetings and preparing for some of the organization’s largest events, like the “Pitt in Jamaica” event where the club brings the Caribbean island’s dance, cuisine and culture to students on campus.

“In a few years, [the CChange foundation] kind of diminished, so it was cool to be involved in charity here that served Caribbean and Latin American communities,” she said.

As an environmental studies major pursuing a creative writing certificate, as well as a prospective law student, Crevecoeur focuses her coursework on sustainability and the law in relation to environmental issues.

She’s also a resident assistant this year, which has allowed her a microcosm of a community within which she can work.

“The RA roles allow for advocacy in a lot of different ways on a kind of smaller scale,” she said. “I’m able to kind of introduce things that maybe [students are] not always aware of and talk about things that they’re not always aware of relating to the world and diversity.”

Despite her intense involvement on and off campus, Crevecoeur manages to carry herself with a cool presence and genuine smile.

“She is involved in everything, and you would never know.” Celia Millard, a friend of Crevecoeur, said. “She’s always just happy-go-lucky, talks to everybody, becomes friends with everybody naturally. She just lights up a room, really.”

Crevecoeur’s always got a pair of headphones positioned around her neck and accredits some of this composure to the soothing wind instrument music of various Icelandic composers that she listens to between classes.

Crevecoeur has been dancing since she was 4 years old and carried her love of movement and choreography to Pitt through her involvement in the Pitt Dance Ensemble. It’s the same mantra that she carries for dance that underlies her day-to-day life.

“If I’ve prepared as much as I can, when it comes to exams and applications, there’s only so much I can do, and if I know that I’ve done it, then it’s out of my hands,” she said.

Her open mindset has steered her to new opportunities with dance at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, internships with the city of Pittsburgh and the Public Relations Institute of Australia — and has expanded her overall impact on campus. In her first year at Pitt, she channeled her inner “Sasha Fierce,” gave herself an internal pep talk and showed off a dance she had choreographed herself for the Pitt Dance Ensemble’s informal October show. Only one spectator was in the audience, but Crevecoeur continued to dance it out, smiling through the whole number.

“Even if you mess up, you have to roll with it,” she said.

“You improv it out because you just have to leave it all on the dance floor.”

All credits to...

The lovely, incredible visual staff at The Pitt News.

Cover design: Jordan Mondell & John Hamilton Inside layout design: Emily Hower & Jordan Mondell Photo editors: John Hamilton & Meghan Sunners Copy chiefs: Sierra Smith & Alexandria Stryker Editorial staff: Lauren Rosenblatt Elizabeth Lepro James Evan Bowen-Gaddy Stephen Caruso Ashwini Sivaganesh Amanda Reed Emily Brindley Matt Moret ZoĂŤ Hannah These profiles can also be found online at Pittnewsprofiles.com Web design: Matt Choi And to the University of Pittsburgh, for funding from its Year of Diversity grant.

Thank you.