Issue 2 Fall 2020

TUFTS OBSERVER II. BALANCE VOL CXLI

14 CREATIVE INSET

BY ERICA LEVY

16 I FEEL IT IN RAISED HEARTBEATS OPINION • BY SONYA BHATIA

2 SWABBING TO SUCCESS

FEATURE • BY KYLIE JOST-PRICE AND MAHIKA KHOSLA

6 DRIVEN OUT: COVID-19 & THE CRISIS OF EVICTION NEWS • BY CAROLINE BLANTON

8 KEEPING THE FAITH

CAMPUS • BY MYLES PLATT

10 FOR NAYA

ARTS & CULTURE • BY BRITTANY REGAS

18 ON LOVE AND LEAVING

VOICES • BY CAROLINE DEPALMA

20 MODERN LIVING

CAMPUS • BY ROSA STERN PAIT

22 ORGANIZING FOR CHOICE NEWS • BY EMILY THOMPSON

24 MAKING SPACE: THE FIGHT FOR ANTI-RACISM IN ART GALLERIES ARTS & CULTURE • BY ISABEL GENN

12 MOVING MEDITATION

26 THE FALSE COMMITMENT OF THE AMERICAN (LIBERAL) LEFT

13 FOOTSTEPS

28 THE TIME BEFORE, NOW, AFTER

PROSE • BY KATHERINE WANG

POETRY • BY GIANNA SHIN

2 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

OPINION • BY VINAY ARUN

VOICES • BY MYISHA MAJUMDER

BALANCE

STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Myisha Majumder MANAGING EDITOR: Akbota Saudabayeva CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Brigid Cawley Richard Nakatsuka FEATURE EDITORS: Evan Sciancalepore Cana Tagawa NEWS EDITORS: Caroline Blanton Anita Lam

I’ve been treading water for years now. Writing papers in cursive. Picking up fresh milk from the store. Brushing my hair. I taste the toothache of it all, the swollen cheek. And my heart swells in symphony. I walk around Somerville and see the trees stroke the apple-crisp sky. I hear the sound of bugs sleeping, the sound of fall’s splitting wood. I lick at the ghost of buckwheat on my lips. All that happened yesteryear rushes into me like a kiss on the forehead. Like all the love in the world. And all that might happen tomorrow peeks behind the clouds like cold sunbeams.

ART DIRECTOR: Laura Wolfe LEAD ARTIST: Kelly Tan

ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Wyoma Chudasama Ethan Lipson OPINION EDITORS: Mira Dwyer Mahika Khosla CAMPUS EDITORS: Melanie Litwin Josie Wagner POETRY & PROSE EDITOR: Alice Hickson VOICES EDITORS: Rachel Dong Ryan Kim CREATIVE INSET EDITOR: Erica Levy COLUMN EDITORS: Gloria Revanche Juliana Vega del Castillo

LEAD COPY EDITOR: Brittany Regas MULTIMEDIA DIRECTORS: Madeleine Oh Esther Tzau PODCAST DIRECTOR: Ethan Lipson PUBLICITY DIRECTORS: Paula Gil Ordoñez-Gomez Eve Ogdon STAFF WRITERS: Sonya Bhatia Rabiya Ismail Sabah Lokhandwala Aroha Mackay Issay Matsumoto Unnathy Nellutla Myles Platt Lee Romaker Siddhant Talwar Amanda Westlake

COPY EDITORS: Claudia Aibel Chloe Courtney-Bohl Grace van Deelen Mahdi Ibrahim Unnathy Nellutla Ethan Yan COLUMNISTS: Sabrina Cabarcos Samantha Park Juliette Wu DESIGNERS: Evelyn Abramowitz Kate Bowers Janie Ingrassia Joanna Kleszczewski Camille Shimshak Brenna Trollinger Sofia Pretell

EDITOR EMERITUS: Owen Cheung CONTRIBUTORS: Aishwarya Amarnath Aidan Chang Caroline DePalma Isabel Genn Kylie Jost-Price Rosa Stern Pait Gianna Shin Emily Thompson Katherine Wang

MULTIMEDIA: Florence Almeda Ben Bortner Alex Liu Mijael Maratuech Seminario Unnathy Nellutla Justin Wang Silvia Wang

Through film, animation, music composition and production, and coding, Multimedia presents the ZOOM project! Designed to mimic the iconic Zoom format, take a glimpse into an immersive and interactive graphic about what balances us.

DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 3

FEATURE

SWABBING TO SUCCESS

TUFTS’S COVID-19 TESTING REGIME AND THE GREATER COMMUNITY

By Kylie Jost-Price and Mahika Khosla

2 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

FEATURE

I

n response to demands made by Somerville and Medford residents, Tufts has expanded its testing resources to its neighboring communities after many weeks of successful mass testing. Starting October 13, Tufts has agreed to provide free COVID-19 testing for abutters of Medford and Somerville. Every week, up to 300 tests will be available for residents of these neighborhoods, excluding those under the age of 18.

Though this recent expansion of Tufts testing for surrounding areas appeases many city officials, prioritizing the opening of Tufts before local K-12 schools represents a larger pattern occurring nationally, as reported in the New York Times. Without adequate testing protocols, local parents, like Hendrik Gideonse of Medford, hesitate to send their children to school. And the alternative is less than desirable: “My five-year-old is in kindergarten, and her experience with starting school is that it’s five hours of Zoom for a kindergartner. It’s not developmentally appropriate.”

As the schools in these neighborhoods, including Tufts’ Eliot-Pearson Children’s School, are reopening in the near future, there must be testing readily available for students and faculty. Tufts, given its recent achievements in slowing the spread of COVID-19 on campus and its mission to help the communities of Somerville and Medford, has the resources to help make this a reality.

Tufts has almost reached the halfway point of this semester, and Tufts’ COVID-19 rates remain low, with a transmission rate of 0.01 percent in the last seven days as of October 10. Tufts Community Union President Sarah Wiener said in a written interview, “I think it is truly incredible that we currently have no student cases on the Medford campus. I am really proud of how diligent students are being about getting tested, not having parties, and by and large wearing masks.”

The surveillance/routine testing center for bi-weekly testing is located at 62R Talbot Ave in Somerville, while the Diagnostic Testing Center for symptomatic testing is at 51 Winthrop Street in Medford. Jason McClellan, senior director of Auxiliary Services, said via email that samples from 62R Talbot are collected and sent to the Broad Institute for

DESIGN BY SOFIA PRETELL, ART BY AIDAN CHANG

diagnosis three times a day, and once a day from 51 Winthrop.

The Broad Institute is conducting the campus-wide testing and is charging Tufts, along with other higher education institutions, significantly less than other labs. With the Broad Institute’s reduced rate for universities, each COVID-19 test costs $25, while other private labs charge up to $150 per test.

Jim Hurley, Tufts’ treasurer and vice president of finance, wrote in an email that Tufts estimated that “the testing program, including both the Broad [Institute] testing and the support costs of [externally provided] EMTs, etc., will cost about $11 million this semester.”

According to Michelle Bowdler, executive director of Health and Wellness at Tufts, EMT workers from local state provider Brewster Ambulance Service administer approximately 18,000 tests each week across Tufts’ four campuses. She said in an email interview that Tufts, along with the Broad Institute, has “implemented a comprehensive COVID-19 dry swab testing program… creating nuanced models that serve the urban, suburban, and rural communities where the four campuses are located.”

Specifically for the Tufts Medford campus, McClellan explained that the testing sites were chosen through “a throughput analysis based on the estimated number of tests performed weekly combined with estimated testing time (from arrival onsite to exiting the site). Then, we looked for locations that would allow adequate space for flow and test observation while allowing individuals to be socially distant.”

However, while the program has been successful, its means of operation lack transparency and it misses out on potential opportunities.

The Tufts administration has remained publicly ambiguous regarding where the funding and resources for the testing program have come from and what the impact has been on our local communities. The administration has a history of being ambivalent when questioned about annual funding and budgeting processes. The Tufts administration has remained relatively silent despite Medford and Somerville residents’ scrutiny

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 3

FEATURE

of Tufts’ reopening campus as it prioritizes economic interests over the community’s safety. Barring a few town hall meetings prior to the beginning of the semester, the administration failed to answer fundamental questions about the reopening plan.

The Tufts administration has remained publicly ambiguous regarding where the funding and resources for the testing program have come from.

Hurley explained that Tufts is spending approximately $30 million this year to cover all aspects of the Tufts reopening plan. This includes COVID-19 testing, the construction of the “mods,” personal protective equipment (PPE), changes in dining and delivery services, and technology accommodations. Tufts is using its $983 million operating budget to fund its reopening plan: “The budget was not expanded, rather, these costs were accommodated by reductions in spending. The various actions we took to balance the budget [were] salary and discretionary spending freezes, hiring moratorium, executive compensation reduction, vacation

4 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

carry forward cap, slowdown of capital projects, and school and central unit spending reductions.”

Many Medford and Somerville residents suggest that Tufts, as a wealthy institution, has a responsibility to extend its resources to vulnerable local communities, given that the opening of the University poses a significant risk to the surrounding Medford and Somerville residents. Gideonse, speaking from his experience as both a Tufts alumnus and a long-time member of Our Revolution Medford, a grassroots organization working to advance progressive policies in Medford, emphasized the lack of care Tufts has for the community in an email interview: “What we need from Tufts is…to treat Medford more like home and less like a ‘host community.’”

In addition to the recent rollout of free COVID-19 testing for abutters, Tufts has conducted research on pooled swab testing. As many kindergarten and primary school students are going on their seventh month of strictly remote learning, the call to return to inperson school was another catalyst for the pooled swab study to take place.

The study is examining the assumption that testing swabs in batches will be more cost-effective for K-12 schools, like those in Medford and Somerville, that are reopening under extremely tight budgets. This testing technique will allow for students to be tested efficiently at a much lower price in large numbers.

This is especially relevant to neighboring K-12 public schools, which are some of the communities most heavily impacted by the pandemic. Many of these districts do not have the financial resources to fully support their students.

Director of Tufts Literacy Corps Cynthia Krug felt this strain given the organization’s close work with younger students in the Medford and Somerville communities. “There are children in both [the Medford and Somerville] communities who do not have computers at home,” said Krug over email, referring to students in the now online TLC tutoring programs.

“I suspect some of these kids are falling through the cracks…even given the best efforts by the school districts.”

For some local parents, the pooled swab testing study should only be the beginning for Tufts’ involvement in the community. “We want Tufts to help pay to test our children…I personally would feel OK sending my own children to hybrid classes if our children were tested on the same schedule as Tufts students.” Gideonse sug-

“What we need from Tufts is to treat Medford more like home and less like a ‘host community.’”

FEATURE

gested Tufts could use its lower rate with the Broad Institute to provide testing to local children at a lower cost.

The return of students to school should not be inhibited by a lack of testing, when their learning at such a young, developmental age is more important than it is for college-aged students. College students can more easily attend their classes remotely, as described in an email interview with Professor Calvin Gidney III of the Department of Child Studies and Human Development. Gidney emphasized the importance of learning away from the screen for developing children, recounting the different modes in which young children are known to learn: physical/kinesthetic, aural/oral, visual, tactile, etc.

“Remote learning through platforms like Zoom is not well-suited for this type of multi-sensory, multimodal learning,” Gidney said. “Young children have difficulty concentrating only on what is going on on a computer screen, and will be more easily distracted by the people and things

DESIGN BY SOFIA PRETELL, ART BY AIDAN CHANG

Neighboring K-12 public schools are some of the communities most heavily impacted by the pandemic, many not having the financial resources to fully support their students.

about what it would take to roll out this kind of a program at scale in school districts.”

Still, the response to the study from surrounding communities has been mixed. Some residents are supportive of the goal of the research, but the degree of Tufts’ aid in the reopening of its neighboring schools is still being questioned.

“We absolutely support any and all real efforts that Tufts makes to help its host cities,” Gideonse said.“Tufts has an unfortunate habit of gifting the surrounding communities with programs that are neither very helpful or important to residents.”

in their immediate environments than are older children and adolescents.”

“Ultimately, we want to help school districts to be able to operate safely by creating a more affordable way for them to monitor the health of their students and personnel,” said Patrick Collins, executive director of Public Relations at the University, in an email interview.

Now that the study has concluded, Collins explained that the University was “successful in demonstrating that pooled testing does in fact work,” and that it looked “forward to making the results known as soon as possible so [the University] can think

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 5

NEWS

T

DRIVEN OUT:

COVID-19 & THE CRISIS OF EVICTION

By Caroline Blanton

6 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

he Massachusetts state legislature passed a COVID-19 eviction moratorium in mid-April that froze all five stages of evictions for commercial real estate, residential real estate, and foreclosures. The legislation was intended to stay in effect for either 45 days after the governor’s declared state of emergency ended or 120 days total, whichever came first. On July 21, when the moratorium was set to end but the pandemic was far from over, the order was extended through October 17, 2020. As the new deadline approaches, many residents face uncertainty surrounding their housing security in the months to come.

The Massachusetts orders constituted some of the strongest protections for renters during the pandemic.

However, without further action on rental debt, Director of Housing Advocacy at Community Action Agency Somerville Ashley Tienken believes that Massachusetts will see a surge of evictions soon after the state of emergency ends. The current orders in Massachusetts do not prohibit landlords from raising rent when renewing leases during the pandemic. Combined with the lack of an explicit grace period to repay back rent that accrues during the pandemic, Tienken argued that this will leave many tenants vulnerable to eviction when the moratorium expires.

Furthermore, medical professionals from across the country have publicly voiced concerns that the eviction crisis will exacerbate the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency. In early August, 26 US medical associations authored a letter to Congress urging them to provide housing resources and protections in any future COVID relief packages. “As leaders in the health sector,” the letter explained, “we understand that now, more than ever, housing is health.”

According to research from Opportunity Starts at Home and other housing justice organizations, health outcomes have always been closely tied to housing security.

Quality, affordable housing can prevent long-term health problems and increase favorable health outcomes, while unaffordable and unstable housing often perpetuates existing health disparities and balloons healthcare costs. The National Housing Conference & Children’s Health Watch reported that “young children in families who live in unstable housing are 20% more likely to be hospitalized than those who do not worry about frequent moves or have anxiety over rent.”

NEWS

Profesor Penn Loh, a senior lecturer and the director of the Master of Public Policy Program at Tufts’ Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, emphasized that the pandemic has revealed the ways in which the country’s health, housing, and economic crises are intertwined: “We can look at the housing crisis as a market failure, or we can look at it as a product of a system that is working exactly the way it was designed. When we treat housing as a commodity to trade and not as a human right, we end up reproducing structural inequities like gentrification, displacement, and overcrowding, which endanger the health and safety of our most vulnerable communities—especially during a pandemic.”

While the protections for tenants and landlords in Massachusetts are strong, MA’s existing homeless population is one such community that remains uniquely vulnerable to the negative effects of the pandemic. According to the Boston Globe, the virus has “produced a surge of people living on the streets with many homeless people choosing to avoid the cramped quarters of shelters, where, in some cases, more than a third of the guests tested positive for the virus last spring.” The decreased capacity of shelters and addiction recovery centers, combined with the release of many incarcerated people during the pandemic, has led to an influx of residents with nowhere to go and limited access to care during a global health crisis.

In terms of immediate assistance for this vulnerable population, Tienken believes that Governor Baker should not only extend the moratorium until at least January 31, but also put a stop to rent increases for the duration of the pandemic. “A lot of our residents have not paid rent since March,” Tienken explained.

“A wave of evictions once the moratorium ends would lead to overcrowding in the already maxed-out shelter system and could potentially cause an outbreak in COVID cases.”

A recent study conducted by Boston University’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that even the comprehensive legal protections for tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic are still not airtight enough to prevent loopholes: “At least 70 illegal eviction cases were filed in Massachusetts Housing Court this spring, including 50 violating the national ban that blocked displacing renters in most federally subsidized properties.” Even if

DESIGN AND ART BY JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI

these cases are dismissed, many housing providers will categorically deny anyone who has been sued for eviction, potentially leaving former residents trapped in a cycle of homelessness. The study also states that landlords have utilized “self-help eviction techniques” like threatening to change locks or alert immigration officials in order to scare tenants into paying or leaving.

As the author of the highly acclaimed book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Michael Desmond, wrote for the New York Times, “Eviction solves nothing. Landlords don’t need to resort to the threat of eviction to get paid…There is no discernible difference in rent collection rates between states with eviction moratoriums still in place and those whose moratoriums have expired.

Eviction is not a solution to landlords’ fundamental problem of maintaining rental income. Rent relief is.” If the US wants to recover fully from the pandemic, Desmond argues, the country must do more to protect tenants’ rights and help families keep their homes long after eviction moratoriums and other temporary measures end.

One possible long-term solution, according to Loh, is the popularization of community land trusts.

Community land trusts are local non-profit organizations designed to ensure community stewardship of the land. Instead of government ownership of a community asset, like a public housing complex, a community land trust can own that property and decide how best to lease it out to meet community needs, while also preventing gentrification-induced displacement or foreclosure due to economic downturn. According to Loh, community land trusts are one way to “make governance of land decentralized, democratic, and locally controlled.”

This idea is not new to the greater Boston area— the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative is the oldest community land trust in the area and began in the 1980s. DSNI owns 30 acres of land and has built over 200 units of permanently affordable housing.

Today, DSNI acts as a blueprint for community land trusts to come, ones that could potentially meet the pressing needs of thousands of people still displaced and unprotected during and after the current global health crisis. “We’ve been dealing with a housing crisis for 20 years,” Loh said. “We’re at an inflection point, but there is still more work to be done.”

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 7

CAMPUS

KEEPING THE FAITH:

HOW THE TUFTS COMMUNITY IS NAVIGATING RELIGION AMIDST A CRISIS

by Myles Platt

By Myles Platt

W

here is the church, where is the steeple, and most importantly, where are the people?

The pandemic has brought new challenges to the Tufts University Chaplaincy: while many services have switched to Zoom, various branches of the chaplaincy are also working to adapt to the new climate in other creative ways.

The Community of Faith Exploration and Engagement (COFFEE) is “a forum for any students who are interested to become involved in religious, philosophical, interfaith, and inter-belief conversation, learning, and action.” During a typical semester, COFFEE would congest the lobby of Goddard Chapel, providing baked treats, hot chocolate, tea, and of course, coffee. This year there will be no coffee from COFFEE; nevertheless, the community is thriving. “[W]e recently hosted the Fall 2020 GIM on Zoom and were happy to welcome many new faces from students studying on and off-campus this semester,” said Jane Romp, COFFEE’s current president, over email. “The topic of our meeting was ‘Faith during the time of COVID-19,’ which allowed all of us to chat about the challenges we have faced so far. The Zoom format worked out very well for us, but we did miss the cozy atmosphere of Goddard Chapel.”

8 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

Romp added, “A few [students] mentioned that the switch to a virtual worship format has led them to become less involved in their faith.” However, COFFEE is planning on arranging small in-person gatherings later in the semester to help invigorate interest.

As a result of the pandemic, the Protestant community has started virtual worship and reflection. According to Tufts Protestant Chaplain Reverend Dan Bell, students have been very adaptive to the situation. One of the Protestant community’s latest projects has been creating goodie bags for incoming students containing popcorn and hot chocolate, as well as some religious items. “They hope this will help new students feel more included and welcomed into the community,” he said over email.

Originally, Reverend Bell was disheartened by the current circumstances and expressed concern about feelings of isolation. “Lately, I am feeling more confident that we are dealing with this unprecedented situation as best as we can, and I have been inspired by the ways that students continue to care for themselves and one another,” Bell said. He believes that the advent of technology will “enhance what we offer in the future in terms of reaching new people, being more creative in our

worship, and strengthening our communities in-person and online.”

The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t the first obstacle collectively suffered by the world. Bell added, “Human beings are resilient creatures, even if we are often lacking in wisdom! So I trust that, by God’s grace, we will make it through these challenging times and come out stronger as a result.”

In a university-wide effort to increase religious inclusion and meet the spiritual needs of students and faculty, the Tufts Chaplaincy hired two new community associates who serve as spiritual advisors.

Dr. Preeta Banerjee, the new Hindu advisor at Tufts, wrote over email that “[t] he beauty and the challenge of the Hindu community is that we hold all the spectrum of practice from cultural to philosophical to spiritual to religious and everything in between.” When asked how things have changed as a result of the pandemic, she responded by saying that it has helped many contemplate the fundamental question of, “Who am I?” Banerjee added, “We find we are more than the labels given to us and identities we carry with us into the world. In this exploration, we become seekers and that can be very emotional, especially for Hindus…We are beginning to find ourselves anew…opening, questioning, curious, contemporizing and

CAMPUS

working through the trauma to leave behind what no longer serves.”

Tufts also recruited Azmera Hammouri-Davis as the newly-created Africana Spirituality Advisor this fall. HammouriDavis shared over email that African spirituality is “about honoring one’s ancestors and celebrating the human experience by utilizing song and dance to cultivate a deep resolve, fortitude and hope amid life’s deepest challenges, particularly with historical racism and structural violence.” In light of nationwide protests, HammouriDavis is excited to collaborate with the Africana Center’s virtual conversation series Speaking Facts: Nothing but the Tea with hopes to reconcile understanding of current events and spark compassion.

Hammouri-Davis commended the efforts by the Chaplaincy to nurture peacebuilding across differences in identity, and was thankful to be a part of those efforts.

“With the global rise in consciousness for the importance of honoring Black life, comes the need for accountability and steadfast patience as we all work to understand what it means to chart a new way forward. As such, for many, our core beliefs may be called into question, may be re-interrogated, or reaffirmed,” she said.

Faizah Wulandana is a sophomore resident of the Muslim House and communications chair of the Muslim Students Association. The MSA has hosted a plethora of events so far this year, including virtual bake nights, Zoom guest speakers, and socially-distanced outdoor picnics.

Wulandana said over email, “Our chaplain, Imam Abdul-Malik, is also hosting a weekly class on theology over Zoom, and the nice thing is that Muslims from outside the Tufts community can also join.”

Wulandana is a devoted member of the Muslim community. This semester, she has been participating in online courses held by various Islamic organizations. Participating in Tufts classes from the comfort of her dorm has allowed her to practice

salat, or daily prayer, with more flexibility. “As an introvert, I feel like I have more time to myself with the current situation, and it’s been important for my spiritual health since I have a lot of time to reflect,” she emphasized.

Jacob Brenner, a sophomore living in the Bayit, is Hillel’s co-coordinator of conservative minyan, meaning he organizes weekly congregations for public prayer.

Though his work has mostly consisted of Zoom sessions, he hopes to get outside and in-person safely. Brenner stated that “having to…[meet] on Zoom is tough.” However, he added, “I’m glad that [Judaism] is here, as an anchor, especially this year knowing that there is a community.”

It is clear that Hillel has made latkes from potatoes given the state of affairs.

Rabbi Naftali Brawer, the Jewish chaplain and executive director of Hillel, said over email that “[Hillel is] a warm, welcoming pluralistic Jewish space where students can celebrate everything Jewish.” The community is no longer able to host large Shabbat dinners or in-person prayer services, but creativity has led to the formation of new services and possibilities. Friday night multi-course takeout meals are the new normal. In addition, Hillel has started providing students with socially-distanced seating and the shpiel mobile, a food bike that offers cookies and refreshments.

Chabad, a Jewish community with a more Orthodox focus, offers the same warmth and camaraderie as Hillel at a

DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER, ART BY LAURA WOLFE

much smaller scale. On Fridays, Rabbi Tzvi Backman and his wife prepare multicourse meals for students, and are continuing to do so in the form of takeout.

Emily Bigioni, a sophomore and Chabad’s treasurer, noted that Chabad is “literally the rabbi and his family,” giving it “a very homey atmosphere.” Lately, Chabad has been holding Zoom sessions before Friday night Shabbos begins, offering virtual challah bread-making and inspiration from the rabbi.

“The inability to gather has taken a toll on a lot of people,” Bigioni said.

Though she is not pleased with all of the changes, she is appreciative of the regulations put in place. Bigioni added, “Everyone is settling into a groove, either with Chabad or Hillel, or some other way of connecting to Judaism, settling into a new way of living and managing. Living in the Bayit gives more of a solid community to fall back on because we are able to do things together. It eases the difficulty of being able to practice religion.”

Nowadays, students are seemingly forced to choose safety over sanctity.

However, from the safety of one’s room, students have the ability to pray whenever they want. Students are no longer confined by the walls of a temple, as more and more people are congregating outdoors, albeit farther apart from each other than usual. The places of worship may be closed, but the hearts of those willing to pray are open.

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 9

ARTS & CULTURE

f r naya

By Brittany Regas

Author’s note: This article is a follow-up to a piece I wrote for the Observer during the spring of 2019 entitled “Confessions of a Former Gleek,” in which I discussed Glee’s Brittany and Santana (Brittana) and how Glee and its fandom shaped my own coming-out journey. ow should I mourn someone that I did not even know? Naya Rivera, the talented actress who played Santana Lopez on Glee, tragically passed away this summer in a boating accident. Words can-

H

10 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

not express how grateful I am for Naya and how sad I am that she is no longer with us, but in writing this article I hope to process my grief.

The casual observer of Glee would not know this, but Naya was one of the primary (if not the primary) reasons that the creators of Glee decided to develop Brittany and Santana as a couple starting in its second season. In the first season, Brittany and Santana are introduced as minor characters, cheerleaders who are best

friends and sidekicks to head cheerleader Quinn Fabray. Brittana as a romantic pairing originated halfway through Season One, with a pair of throwaway lines that the writers did not intend to follow up on.

During a phone conversation with some members of the Glee club in episode 1x13, “Sectionals,” Santana says, “Sex is not dating.” Brittany responds, “If it were, Santana and I would be dating.”

This confirmation that Brittany and Santana were canonically sleeping together

ARTS & CULTURE

sent lesbian fans of the show into a frenzy.

In 2009, when “Sectionals” aired, queer women characters on TV were few and far between, and these throwaway lines were enough to convince lesbian fans that Brittany and Santana were secretly in love.

Fans began pressing the writers and producers of the show to develop their relationship, mostly through flooding social media, especially Twitter. They organized on lesbian sites like Autostraddle and AfterEllen, but the Glee creators would not have listened to the fans without encouragement from Naya. In an interview, Naya discussed her role in the development of Brittana: “It started off as this funny little thing, like ‘oh yeah [Santana] just randomly hooks up with her friend Brittany.’ But I was kind of encouraging [the writers] to make it more serious and not play around with it ‘cause there are people out there that it’s not a joke to. It’s their real lives.”

In a time when queer fans’ demands for media representation were largely ignored by the entertainment industry, Naya listened to us. She understood that Glee, which from its first episode was committed to the representation of gay men, owed its lesbian fans representation too. She understood that we, the lesbian fans, could not ignore the implications of Brittany and Santana sleeping together, and that every small morsel of representation in the barren TV landscape of 2009 was important to us. She was a true ally.

Santana Lopez was a groundbreaking character not only because she was one of the few queer women on TV at the time, but also because she was one of TV’s first major queer Latina characters.

Naya Rivera was Afro-Latina and got her start in the TV industry as a child actress with roles on Black sitcoms including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. However, the Glee creators chose to emphasize Naya’s Latina heritage. According to GLAAD, during the 2011-2012 season, Santana was one of two queer Latina series regulars on cable television. “I just remember seeing Santana and being mesmerized by her…I

never saw a [H]ispanic queer in the media, Santana was the first,” said junior Alyssa Vargas-Levine. “Being a queer Latina, that representation not only made me feel valid but also extremely loved.”

Glee introduced us to several members of Santana’s family, and in a Season Three episode, Santana comes out to her conservative abuela, who rejects her. Junior Isabella Getgey spoke about her reaction to this scene: “To see a queer woman claiming her sexuality instead of keeping it hidden…was really intense. The scene still makes me tear up a little bit because of how similar it was to my experience coming out to my parents. While my parents eventually came around and accepted my sexuality, the fear of rejection was still there, like it is for every queer child anywhere.” In Glee’s final season, Santana’s abuela comes to accept her granddaughter’s queerness and attends her wedding to Brittany.

Naya portrayed Santana with a nuance, care, and grace that transcended Glee’s often abysmal writing. When I was struggling to accept my sexuality at the ages of 13 and 14, Santana and Naya were my heroes. As I wrote in “Confessions,” Santana showed me that I was not alone, and that there were other people out there experiencing the same struggle that I was.

When she came out to her abuela with the words, “I love girls the way that I’m supposed to feel about boys,” Santana showed me how to be brave. And Naya showed me how to fight for what is right, how to stand up for people whose voices are not being heard.

I have been a part of the online lesbian community since my Glee days. On July 8, 2020, the news broke that Naya Rivera had gone missing at a lake in California, and my social media feeds blew up. On Twitter, on Tumblr, and on other social media sites, queer fans were writing messages to Naya telling her how she had changed their lives and writing messages to each other to offer support. One Twitter user wrote, “I will always have a part of Naya Rivera with me. She was a long-standing ally who took pride in the work she did that made young

DESIGN BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ, ART BY KELLY TAN AND EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ

lesbians, like me, feel whole and real.” A Tumblr user named Michaun wrote, “[M]y heart hurts for [my fellow Brittana fans] right now but I look forward to standing up beside you and holding up Naya’s legacy…[I] love you all.” Five years after Glee ended, we were all united in hoping and praying that Naya would somehow return safely to us. On July 13, Naya’s body was found, on the anniversary of the day Glee cast member Cory Monteith passed away in 2013.

It is always difficult to know how to properly grieve a celebrity. I did not really know Naya, but from interviews that I have watched, from videos I have seen on social media, and from the words of her friends and family, I know that she was funny, brave, and a natural leader. From watching her for six years on Glee, I know that she had a beautiful, expressive voice, and that she was a deeply talented actress who could move effortlessly between Santana’s vicious comedic monologues and her truthful dramatic moments. I knew Naya well enough to love her, and she was my hero. She showed the rest of the world that she was a hero when, in the final moments of her life, she saved the life of her fouryear-old son.

To my fellow fans, I am thankful that Naya brought us together, and that we can mourn her together. I see my pain reflected in your pain, my love for her reflected in your love.

To Naya’s friends and family, I recognize that the grief I feel about Naya is incomparable to the grief you feel. Thank you for sharing with us your memories of Naya. I hope that you can take some comfort in knowing how many people Naya helped, and how many people continue to love her.

To Naya, thank you. Thank you for the compassion and kindness you showed to my community, thank you for fighting for us, thank you for making us laugh and cry along with Santana. We will never forget you. Rest in power.

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 11

PROSE

Moving Meditation

By Katherine Wang

I’m feeling unexpectedly sad here at Carl Schurz Park. We’re sitting on benches in front of the railing. The water’s fins are poking up and down, up and down. East River, Atlantic Ocean. I’m thinking about everything this city has given and taken from me this year. My legs are bare in front of me, carrying bruises like a map of collisions. I see, time and again, how hard it is to leave a place. A child is playing with rock crumbs that adult eyes confuse for the ground. Dog collars jangle. I’m mesmerized by the vocabulary of water. Mesmerized by the range of its choreography. Mesmerized by the three-quarter mozzarella moon. Speedboats carve the water surface into two marbled sheets. I hardly remember the winter. Somehow the things I thought I’d never forgive have been softened or reworked or forgotten. The water is sloppy and sharp, parting and pushing. I’m telling Ella how I like to meditate by closing my eyes and picking out all of the impossible sounds I can decipher.

12 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

POETRY

footsteps

By Gianna Shin

raindrops peel themselves

from the bottom of your boots then launch through the air and back onto your ankles, notice

the way cigarettes

fit so exactly into the

gaps of the sidewalk

all lined up like ants limp autumn leaves paper

mache on the sidewalk you

are careful not to rip the delicate fibers you dance between them you’re

watching closely, you are sure to

tread lightly the rhythm of your

footsteps keeping time

with the strangers

marching beside you grazing your path as you avoid the cracks

filled with cigarettes

DESIGN AND ART BY JANIE INGRASSIA

you decide the world is whole in its smallest parts.

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 13

Do you feel b

alanced?

1. “TEA TIME,” JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI, OIL PAINT. 2. EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ, PHOTOGRAPHY.

Not yet, but soon.

DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE

OPINION

OPINION

ITHEFEEL IT IN RAISED HEARTBEATS DYSREGULATION AND DAMAGE OF WHITE SUPREMACY ON THE BODY

By Sonya Bhatia Content warning: racial trauma, slavery

S

omerville and Medford mayors declared racism a public health crisis on June 21, 2020, which is a step in the right direction—and long overdue—but it is not enough. It focuses on the defunding and demilitarization of police, which is necessary, but it does not acknowledge how the system of white supremacy deeply damages physical bodies of color. To heal BIPOC, institutions and people must additionally reflect upon how white supremacy is housed within and damages the biological system, the basic unit of function. If rudimentary health is left damaged, how can one expect to dismantle the larger system of white supremacy in the US? When talking about white supremacy, what is often missed is white-bodied supremacy. White supremacy endures in all of our bodies, a parasitic creature that manifests violent damages to the body, especially and insidiously so to bodies of color. I want to clarify that there is no biological basis behind race; it is a social, political, and historical construction. However, it is a construction that has real consequences, one of those being how it affects the body.

DESIGN JOHN DOE, ART19, BY2020 JANE DOE 16 TUFTSBYOBSERVER OCTOBER

I identify as Indian, and also acknowledge I have racial advantages as a South Asian American. But I have felt white supremacy embodied; as a person of color, I have noticed it in raised heartbeats and noticeable tension in my shoulders when I am in new, white-dominated spaces. The way our somatic well-being is impacted by the United States’ racist system looks and feels different for everyone; it is important to realize the intersections of health and white supremacy.

White supremacy is in conversation with the survival modes of our brain and bodies, causing biological dysregulation.

The vagus nerve carries information between the brain and internal organs and serves as the connection between mind and body. It wanders throughout the body, and by its widespread nature, the vagus nerve controls the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” system.

To achieve this, the vagus nerve slows heart and breathing rates and essentially calms the body. However, the vagus nerve can also withdraw its functions, and by doing so, increases the heart rate and activates the sympathetic nervous system, our “flight and fight” system. In the study Mul-

tiple Pathways Linking Racism to Health Outcomes, racist events and the constant threat of racism interrupt the vagus nerve’s normal, parasympathetic function, and chronically disturbs the physiological activity of the body through this dysregulation.

Audre Lorde wrote in her poem “Afterimages,” reflecting upon the murder of Emmett Till, that “my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock; tied to the ghost of a black boy.” As a Black woman mourning the loss of Till, she felt the violence of white supremacy as hollowness and exhaustion in her body. I also call upon and feel grateful for the words of Resmaa Menakem, whose thoughts and practices made me more aware of embodied white supremacy. In his book My Grandmother’s Hands, he explicitly stated, “White body supremacy doesn’t live just in our thinking brains. It lives and breathes in our bodies.”

These examples and notions are experienced uniquely by all of us in different modes, depending on where our identities lie in the US’ racial power structure.

However, in the capitalist logic of the US, one can be unaware of embodied white supremacy because of practices in which we are often detached from our bodies.

2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 17

OPINION

OPINION

WE CAN BE CONDITIONED TO TREAT OUR BODIES AS OBJECTS OR EVEN OBSTACLES, RATHER THAN VESSELS OF WISDOM AND HEALING. We can be conditioned to treat our bodies as objects or even obstacles, rather than vessels of wisdom and healing. I am from a white-majority, Republican county where 70 percent of the population voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

The days following the election, I felt my breathing quicken and had more panicked moments, with my mind and heart racing.

Instead of tuning into my body’s reactions, I told myself to put my “mind over body” and resume my daily activities. However, my body needed me to slow down, breathe, and process.

All people in the United States have embodied white supremacy, but I focus on the accumulated, historical damage and trauma done to bodies of color, particularly to Black and indigenous populations. The body is a tool of insight, and we must take time to intimately listen to it. I have started to notice my body language, how I cross my arms, bring my legs as inward as possible when I sit, and slouch my posture, as if I am trying to make myself physically smaller as a person of color. In an interview with Karunavirus, Menakem said, “Bodies of culture are uncomfortable every day.”

Racism damages the body through many other biological mechanisms too, like accumulated chronic stress. The cardiovascular reactivity hypothesis postulates that a relationship exists between cardiovascular responses and exposure to stress.

DESIGN CAMILLEOCTOBER SHIMSHAK, 16 TUFTSBYOBSERVER 19, 2020ART BY KELLY TAN

NPR reports that a study of Black women reported having constant low-grade fevers in response to racially instigated chronic stress. Chronic stress can also lead to hypertension and heart disease. Through the expectation and internalization of racism, the body’s new, resting “normal,” or homeostasis, operates at higher levels of stress, and it becomes harder for the body to respond to new stimuli.

White-bodied supremacy breeds trauma that is intimate, violent, and intergenerational. The US was built on colonialism and slavery, which have caused systematic violence, death, and abuse to Black and indigenous populations. The traumatic history is embedded in ancestral DNA, passed down and inherited for many generations.

Psycom reported that trauma can make a “chemical mark” on our genes through epigenetic changes, affecting the very process during which genes are translated into proteins. As Menakem wrote, “Our very bodies house the unhealed dissonance and trauma of our ancestors.”

Structural and historical racism create and maintain intergenerational trauma that has physiological consequences, which demonstrates that white supremacy is embodied. The body’s immediate response to trauma is disconnection from the body as a coping strategy. The continual experience of racism, both in present life and through past generations, creates a hypervigilance and hyper-awareness in which

one feels unsafe in their own body. The body’s response is autonomic and frantic, and can be interpreted as shutting down, reverting to whatever survival instincts it has in its toolbox.

In addition to institutional acknowledgment that white supremacy damages the body, we have to take our own journeys to address the trauma it causes. Notice the way your body reacts just reading about racism and white supremacy in this article.

Where does tension and discomfort lie in your body? Is it a tightness in the chest, a certain pain, or maybe a gut feeling or instinctual emotion? For folks of color, be gentle with yourself and make sure to focus on breaths to activate the vagus nerves’ effects on the parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) system; for white folks, acknowledge and interrogate these bodily instincts.

I would also highly recommend reading My Grandmother’s Hands as a guide on how to recognize and work through whitebodied supremacy. This article shares snapshots of how white supremacy sits in the body and damages bodies of color in the context of the United States.

To truly be an advocate for justice and liberation, one must look within the body first to heal. As Menakem wrote, “Healing from White-body Supremacy begins with your body—but it does not end there…As we engage in collective action, we need to do so with settled bodies.”

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 17

VOICES

ON LOVE AND LEAVING I was alone, standing in the middle of the driveway, suddenly terrified.

The summer was ending and I thought I’d be ready. Somehow, I was still entirely unprepared to watch my best friend Emily say goodbye to my dog, give me a hug, and leave me standing there—still dressed for the beach—watching her car disappear up the hill and realizing that in some twisted way, the best-case scenario put our next hug in December.

I was going inside, trying to be distracted by packing my things.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone to school without her. I made a soft attempt at convincing myself that the distance wouldn’t matter. That my days of having less-than-adequate communication skills were behind me. That we made it through months of pandemic isolation, and now that I was leaving for college, it would be no different. Instead, I found myself thinking back to the many relationships that had flourished and then faded during my time in high school. First Jess, then Melanie, and Morgan— just to name a few. And finally, Erin, a lifelong best friend whom I didn’t see for two years after she moved to a different high school.

The first person I called when I got into Tufts wasn’t Erin, but my best friend from high school, Emily. The pictures I had hanging all over the walls of my room were no longer of me and Erin in Justice swimsuits; they were now of lakeside and somewherein-the-woods photoshoots with Emily. But now she was driving away from me up the hill, and I was being dragged into the fear that I might lose her too.

I was upstairs, taking pictures off the walls and putting them in a box to bring to Somerville.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who were in these pictures and those who weren’t. Those pictures featured every kind of relationship my life has ever had: orchestra stand partners, carpool passengers, lab partners, cafeteria-lunch-table friends, swim lane buddies, lunch-in-the-music-room friends when the cafeteria was too full, and even the occasional “mutual best friend” on Snapchat. Many of those relationships had ended, all for reasons 18 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

By Carolina DePalma

much less significant than me moving across state lines to take classes and eat my lunches with new people.

I was a kid with a lot of growing up to do, and so were they.

I didn’t think there was any point in fighting it when that growth carried us in different directions. Besides, if holding on to a lost friendship meant staying the person I was at 15, I thought it best to let go. For each connection that was lost, there was one that was not. But I was terrified that, one day, even the people that stayed would be replaced by the next new people I took photos with, continuing this dreaded, yet welcomed cycle of growing close to some and leaving others in the past.

I had so much left to do, and I was hot, and I was tired, and my hair smelled like the lake. The dog was downstairs, still whining at the long-gone taillights of Emily’s car. I wasn’t done packing yet, and I had my first college lecture in two days. I convinced myself that being ready for school was the most important thing to be worried about then, but that felt like a lie more than anything else.

I was in my room, staring at walls that were suddenly emptier than they had been in 18 years.

I was thinking that sometimes things just end, and there’s nothing I could’ve done about it. Other times, there was so much more I should’ve done. I should’ve texted Erin months before my mom arranged for her to spend the night at my house because her mom had to go back to New York. I was so nervous because this was my former best friend, but there had just been silence for so long. I had convinced myself that it was just how things had to be from there on out. But if I had just made an effort at some point before that night, maybe we wouldn’t still be catching up on two years worth of missed stories, crushes, and life-changing revelations.

That friendship had faded, and we had somehow pieced it back together until it felt almost like nothing had ever pulled it apart in the first place. But it took so much time away and a bit of luck for that to happen. That had never happened with anyone else, so what was the difference? What had we done that felt impossible with everybody else?

VOICES

I was in the car now, driving north and out of Connecticut.

I was thinking about the night Erin spent at my house. We took the dog for a walk and traded months worth of stories from our different schools. They were wildly different from each other, my stories and hers. It took some adjusting to, at least on my end.

For years, we had lived the same life; I had to teach myself that we could be part of each others’ lives without them being the same.

We’re still trading stories today, so I think I must be doing something right.

In the car, I was finally realizing that relationships take work.

What’s more, they take words. In my four years of high school, my homework was always on time, and my essays were always over the word count, so I should be no stranger to work nor to words. But in those four years, I let so many things end. I let so many things turn into silence, all because I thought I didn’t have a choice. Life went on, and new people became a part of it while old ones disappeared. During high school, I hadn’t really noticed.

I was always focused on the new people, not realizing I would regret not putting in the work to keep the old ones around. But now that everything else in my life was changing, I felt like I didn’t need any new people—I liked my old ones. My bedroom walls at home seemed empty now that the photos of their laughing faces were in the car with me, moving onto new things in new places.

DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, ART BY AISHWARYA AMARNATH

I am alone in my new room, thinking about how many times I sat at home wishing I could get here faster.

I went on a walk today, all the way to the little bookstore in Porter Square. There was a line out front, so I didn’t end up going in, but the whole way there and halfway back, I was on the phone with Emily. We talked about the election and Taylor Swift’s cookie recipe that she promised we would make when I came home. It was easy talking to her, saying excited hellos to her mom and her brother, and defending their dog’s right to eat a worm in the backyard if he wants to. I’m not sure why I was ever so afraid of losing this.

In my new room, there are 100 photographs taped to the walls. Sometimes, I hear one sliding to the ground as I’m trying to fall asleep, and every morning I tape it back up in a losing battle that I’m sure I’ll never win. While I’m here, I will take more pictures, adding them to the higher corners of each wall until there isn’t a single white cinderblock left visible. Later, I will take them all down and move on to a new room with even more blank space on the walls, ready for people both new and old, and I will fit as much love as I possibly can within the four growing walls of my life.

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 19

CAMPUS

This article consists of two separate interviews. Student A tested positive for COVID-19, while Student B was in isolation due to close contact. These interviews were edited for length and clarity.

C

an you tell me a little bit about what happened and how you ended up in isolation?

MOD MODERN L I V I N G:

T U F T S EXPERIENCES IN ISOLATION

By Rosa Stern Pait 20 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

A: I went on a family trip with one friend to Cape Cod and while we were on that trip we got news that a bunch of my friends’ housemates had just tested positive because one of them was just with his girlfriend, who tested positive through a bunch of her friends—and it’s kind of crazy how far removed I ended up being from that actual source…My friend’s actually came up positive and my first one was negative, but because I was very exposed they kept me in the investigation unit of The Mods, so it’s separate from all the other kids that had tested positive. I stayed a day there and then went back home, because my Tufts test came up negative again…I had to wait three more days until my next test even though I had some slight symptoms and knew I was kind of feeling off, and then my next one came up positive and I ended up back in The Mods for 10 days.

B: I had to go to South Dakota for a family funeral…then I got back and I tested twice and I was negative, and then on a Tuesday morning my sister texted in our family group chat and was like “I just got a positive test result for COVID.” What was the process like, between finding out that you needed to be quarantined and moving into The Mods?

A: I was given about 90 minutes… to grab all [my] essential belongings and bring it over to The Mods.

B: So I was originally just gonna be quarantined in my house off-campus…

And then Tufts Health Services called me two hours later and was like “Actually, we really think you should go to The Mods, cause you had such direct exposure. And [they were] like, 50/50 if you get it, so it would be really nice if you went to The Mods”…So it was technically my choice.

CAMPUS

Do you feel like your health was well taken care of while you were in The Mods?

A: Yeah. At around 10ish every morning, medical staff would come in and take your vitals and check in on you. And they were very responsive to any issues that people had.

B: Someone told me that the EMTs are supposed to check on you once a day and take your temperature. That was not every day. I would go through multiple days where I would just not see a single person or really communicate.

But…the nurse practitioner would message me on the portal and check up on me every few days…But I also feel like if I felt really bad, I don’t think they would have known.

Did you have a way that you could have communicated with them if you had started feeling sick?

B: Not really. I was very confused as to what it was going to be like because no one I know [had] been there. I needle felted six fucking pumpkins.

Did you feel academically supported?

A: In a funny way, it was the nicest work environment I’ve had at Tufts because it felt like you had your own personal room with air conditioning that was as comfortable as can be…there are very few distractions, so I was definitely focused.

B: I definitely had a way harder time focusing…All the days just kind of blended together. I forgot to go to one of my classes for no reason. I just did not think that it was a Tuesday.

Did you tell your professors that you were in isolation?

B: They told me to call TUPD if I started getting symptoms enough that I should be going to the hospital.

A: I just didn’t feel like it was necessary cause all of my classes are online.

Except one time during an early class we were doing introductions…and the medical staff came in—

How many people were all together?

Oh my god.

A: In our friend group, I think there were five of us, but there were I think three or four other kids at the same time that were there, so it was eight or nine of us.

A: —and knocked on my door, literally as…it was my turn giving an introduction, and I was like “Professor, can you move on to someone else, I will absolutely explain what you’re about to see…” and she was like “okay,” confused, like “go do what you gotta do,”” and then she was like “yeah so, going back to [you],” and I was like “yeah, I’m in The Mods, that was the medical staff taking my vitals, I’m glad you guys got to see that.”

Were you by yourself the whole time?

B: Yes…A few of my friends stopped by, and then we talked like 20 feet apart…And I talked to one kid with COVID, from a very far distance.

Did you do or bring anything fun to pass the time?

A: Just went into the lounge and hung out and talked…just being together felt good…right when I got there I still hadn’t entered The Mods yet and I was still unloading things from my car and I saw a golf ball and a putter in my car, and the main hallway, which is really really really long, we used that as a long mini golf hole and we would try and putt it from one side to the other without hitting the walls and stuff like that.

How did you feel emotionally while you were there?

A: I’m definitely lucky that I had some people I knew that were also there. Obviously it’s a disappointment and especially because it was leading up to classes so it’s a pretty stressful time…But I think I lucked out, I wasn’t heartbroken or freaking out as much as one might be…We were pleased with Tufts…[since] they made it as liveable as possible for the circumstances.

B: Oh, I definitely did not love it.

It was really easy, [but] after my first 24 hours I was like, “Damn, I really miss my

DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER, ART BY KELLY TAN

housemates or just seeing or interacting with people even on a very baseline level.”

Did your feelings [about living in The Mods] ever change over time?

A: There were some days I was just pretty drained and tired and then it made me…wish I could be outside or do something.

B: Near day six and seven, I was like, “I cannot wait to leave.” ‘Cause it was terrible.

Lowkey, because…you can go outside, but it’s also weird; students will pass, and…I felt ashamed, [but] I didn’t go to a party or get exposed to COVID for doing something reckless.

Was there any follow-up after you went home?

A: There was an email saying that you’re officially released and you can move your stuff…and that for the next 90 days we aren’t going to be tested by Tufts.

Is that because they know that once you have it you can’t get it again?

A: We all started researching it after… it can’t be active in our systems as carriers for the next 90 days, so it’s definitely saving money to not [test us].

Now knowing more about what can happen if you test positive, do you feel like there’s anything people at Tufts should know?

A: Even if you feel like you have a small close-knit group and those are the only people that you’re okay seeing, if one person in your group sees someone else and they happen to be positive, it can ripple very quickly.

Do you feel like your perspective on COVID safety has changed since you were in The Mods?

B: Oh, I don’t think so. I do think that you can also get COVID even when you are just being really safe. I talked to someone else in The Mods and they were like, “I literally don’t see anyone outside of my house except when I go to class like once a week.” And that’s how he got COVID. OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 21

NEWS

ORGANIZING FOR CHOICE: THE ACTIVISTS FIGHTING FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE

F

By Emily Thompson

ollowing the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed, Democrats across the country mobilized to avoid losing her seat to a conservative justice nominated by President Trump. In Massachusetts, the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund (PPAF) began doubling down on their endorsement work, focusing on educating voters and promoting what they call their “ROE Act Champions”: lawmakers who have shown a deep commitment to passing the ROE Act. This bill, proposed in the state legislature, would codify reproductive freedom into state law, improve access to abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, and update medically inaccurate language embedded in current laws.

The legislation would also establish coverage for abortion care for people without health insurance and end requirements that minors who do not have parental consent must receive permission from a judge to access abortions.

Fueling this advocacy work is a team of organizers and activists who have dedicated their lives to protecting reproductive rights. Kaitlyn Solares started working at PPAF as their communications coordinator this past March, spending most of her days in virtual meetings, building their digital presence, and assisting with general press responsibilities. Solares said over email that “as someone with a uterus, [the ROE Act] matters to me, and as a young queer person and someone with immigrant family members, two communities that typically lack access to abortion care, it feels particularly personal.” A study done in 2019 by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that socioeconomic, racial, and cultural factors all contributed to inequitable outcomes in the field of reproductive healthcare.

“At the end of the day,” Solares said, “I’m trying to ensure as many people as possible are informed about what the bill does and are contacting their lawmakers frequently, asking them to pass it.”

22 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

NEWS

Tufts students Aly Haver and Aneri Parikh are doing the work on campus that Solares has implemented statewide.

The pair are the co-presidents of Tufts Students for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), a pro-choice campus organization fighting for reproductive rights through political advocacy and community engagement. Parikh noted over email that “reproductive rights are one of the most pressing issues of the past few years.” A self-described progressive and feminist, Haver said over email, “I’m a woman in this country who takes a birth control pill every morning, but reproductive rights would be personal to me regardless. It should be personal to everyone. My mom is a doctor, and my family has money. If Roe v. Wade were overturned and I wanted an abortion, I could still get one. That wouldn’t be the case for a lot of people, and it already isn’t the case for a lot of people now.” The culmination of threats against access to reproductive care throughout the Trump administration is what continues to drive Haver and Parikh in their advocacy at Tufts.

Due to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Haver and Parikh argued that reproductive rights must be protected at the state level through legislation like the ROE Act. Tufts NARAL has already begun phone banking and contacting state house politicians to urge them to support the bill, and the group plans to mail out 200 postcards to Massachusetts voters next week. On campus, the group wrote and passed “A Resolution to Expand Reproductive Health Services of Tufts’ Medford Campus” through the TCU Senate, establishing the Safe Sex Reps program and changing the Tufts websites to include gender-neutral language in 2017.

Currently, Tufts NARAL is pushing to make emergency contraception, such as Plan B and ella, free on campus, as well as offering information about reproductive health services at Tufts available to firstyears during orientation.

DESIGN AND ART BY JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI

In addition to facilitating their campus network of pro-choice activists, the statewide chapter of NARAL also emphasizes the importance of policy action. Following the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, the group responded with calls to expand abortion access at the state level. Making the ROE Act a top priority, they organized alongside the Massachusetts chapter of Planned Parenthood in June 2019 to bring pro-choice supporters to the State House for a hearing on the legislation. Calla Walsh, a student activist who works with Solares, was one of many in the sea of volunteers gathered at the State House to support the people who were testifying in favor of the ROE Act. Walsh recalled “waiting in line to get into the hearing room with all these people wearing red shirts [that read] abortion is murder. It’s intense when you’re directly next to this huge group of people who you feel are opposing your bodily autonomy.”

With COVID-19 creating a barrier to inperson advocacy, Walsh has turned to digital organizing when advocating for the ROE Act, despite an increase in attacks from pro-life supporters on Twitter. Following the passing of Justice Ginsburg, Walsh watched as hundreds of posts about the implications of another Supreme Court vacancy flooded her social media timeline. In response, she sent a personal message to each profile with an email template made by PPAF that connected voters to their representatives. Although she thinks that it is important for people to post on social media to raise awareness, Walsh is looking for tangible action, such as urging elected officials to pass the ROE Act, as a tribute to the legacy of Justice Ginsburg.

In the opinions of these organizers, protecting abortion access through Roe v. Wade is the minimum—the ROE Act is needed to reinforce and strengthen reproductive rights on the state level. Disappointed that little progress has been made on the bill, Walsh argued that it is more urgent than ever to take action now, with a new Supreme Court appointee hanging in the balance. “The stakes of reproductive rights advocacy have always been high,” Haver said. “I want to live in a country where people own their bodies.”

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 23

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ARTS & CULTURE

I

t is no secret that art galleries and museums have been historically accessible only to white people. The feminist female art group Guerilla Girls has been devoted to fighting sexism and racism in the art world since 1985. One of their pieces reads, “Only 4 commercial galleries in N.Y. show black women. Only 1 shows more than 1.” Although this was written decades ago, it is a sobering reminder of

24 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

the fight for anti-racism in art galleries

By Isabel Genn

who is typically allowed into the gallery space. It is a space that continues to be dominated by and directed at white individuals. However, the current climate of anti-racist change is forcing the art world to address its own representational shortcomings. The question becomes, how can artists and curators alike ensure that artwork is anti-racist and presented in a way that doesn’t come across as tokenism or as

an educational tool to serve the needs of a white audience?

Christina Knight, an assistant professor of visual studies at Haverford College, echoed this uncertainty in her field during her speech as a panelist at the October 2 conference Toward an Anti-Racist Art History hosted by the Society for Contemporary Art Historians. The panelists commented on scholarship’s move toward a

ARTS & CULTURE

greater awakening and reimagining of the discipline. On Knight’s part, she believes deeply in the necessity of empowering everyday, local people to be the architects of change, especially since the pathway is unclear. Knight asked, “How can we find ways to train a kind of view sensitive to [imbalanced] power dynamics and that seeks to address it?” She offered the idea that the study of the visual should center marginalized perspectives.

An attempt at discovering the answers to these questions can be seen within Tufts.

The Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) Curator of Exhibitions and Programs, Abigail Satinsky, discussed the many hurdles behind making the galleries at both the Medford and SMFA campuses welcoming and accessible to all, especially with an entirely white exhibition staff. In an email, Satinsky stated, “We at the Tufts University Art Galleries are in the process of taking concrete steps for structural change towards being an anti-racist institution.” This includes the creation of a student advisory group “to ensure student voice, feedback and outreach on campus,” as well as a joint faculty and community advisory board.

Satinsky added, “[W]e are conducting a university-wide audit of all artworks on view in public spaces and in our collection to ensure that representation on campus includes both BIPOC subjects and works

by BIPOC artists.”

When asked about the measures curators specifically can take to make gallery spaces more welcoming to a wider audience, she replied that within the scope of one’s curatorial vision, it is essential to work with the artist to ensure that the vision is meaningful to them as well. There must be a deep and rich relationship with the artist, rather than just extracting the material as the curator sees fit.

Looking towards the future, Satinsky expressed excitement about a number of new initiatives that underscore TUAG’s current commitment to making the galleries an “accessible and known space” and working with the duality of being both a publicly and internally faced institution.

DESIGN AND ART BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ

Currently, she is co-curating an exhibit that will run from January – April 2022 on both the SMFA and Medford campuses entitled “Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities,” which will feature a number of contemporary Central American artists who will be invited to help shape the scope and structure of the exhibition’s narrative. Satinsky described the exhibit as focusing “on the seminal 1980s activist organization, Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America, and its legacy in the present.”

The goal, in Satinsky’s words, is “[a]sking critical questions as to what artists can do in solidarity and in response to struggles happening across the world, this exhibition will focus on collaborations, dialogue and direct solidarity between North American and Central American artists.”

TUAG is also in the process of developing a land acknowledgement to hold itself accountable for the legacy of settler colonialism tied up on Tufts’ land. This will include developing various programs to ensure that the land acknowledgement is not an empty gesture. Community partnerships will exist within each project to ensure that exhibitions are a meaningful tool for all and not just befitting a whitewashed narrative. This is a change that can be seen as directly responding to criticism that TUAG faced for a lack of community input on a fall 2019 exhibit entitled “BAM” by the artist Sanford Biggers. Some students felt, as demonstrated by the Tufts Observer opinion piece, “Make Space for Black Joy,” that the exhibit came across as showing a one-sided depiction of Black pain and trauma with no mention of Black joy.

Similar to the discourse occurring within gallery spaces, conversation has opened in the Art History discipline acknowledging the lack of representation in an effort to work towards change. Ellen Y. Tani, an art historian, curator, and critic based in Washington, DC, acknowledged at the Toward an Anti-Racist Art History conference that her field is “still understanding how to show works of artists without collapsing [their] interpretations

about racial identification in ways that actually uphold some of the racial and racist systems.” Encouragingly, she viewed the evolving realm of art history as a new set of opportunities to engage with objects in order to incite a new type of discomfort.

This artistic discomfort will force viewers to acknowledge their own privileges and biases.

In regards to the field of architecture, Ana Maria León, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, spoke about grappling with the discipline’s tradition of tokenism—that is, naming buildings after a figure or event and then moving on. Like in art, architects must pivot away from just checking the boxes of diversity without seeking to include those whom they are trying to honor.

This year, after the murder of George Floyd, a number of architectural historians including León, as well as art historians, architects, and urbanists resumed work on a reading list called SPACE/RACE, a digital resource originally curated in response to the 2017 white supremecist rally in Charlottesville. In a statement at the beginning of their resource document, the collaborators wrote, “We have assembled a series of readings on how race and racism are constructed with spatial means, and on how in turn space can be shaped by racism.”

They have also created a similar project focused on the interactions between art and gender, entitled SPACE/GENDER, as well as a project on art and the body entitled SPACE/BODY. These comprehensive lists are available for the public to use as tools to learn how to reclaim art and make safe, welcoming spaces for people of color.

New initiatives across artistic disciplines, like community input, close artist collaborations, university-wide audits, and continued reflection, are necessary steps in the right direction toward a radical change in the art world. Such progressive measures within galleries and academia can potentially provide the long-needed space for an anti-racist consumption of art.

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 25

OPINION

NT OF THE FALSE COMMITMENT OF ) LEFT THE AMERICAN (LIBERAL) LEFT NT OF THE FALSE COMMITMENT OF ) LEFT THE AMERICAN (LIBERAL) LEFT NT OF THE FALSE COMMITMENT OF ) LEFT THE AMERICAN (LIBERAL) LEFT

By Vinay Arun “Our problem is not how to get into imperial power: our problem is how to withdraw from the imperial system and construct a viable system of our own.”

- Ayi Kwei Armah

F

ive months ago marked the inception of historic international unrest against institutional anti-Black violence. Despite being an especially incendiary moment in the history of the resistance of Black and brown people in America, the fire has been nearly extinguished in the States.

It’s entirely unsurprising due to the strength of the American state. Militarization with aid from white Americans eager to use their fundamental “right” of whiteness was quick to occupy, murder, incarcerate, and surveil resistance.

As for the immediate growth of the anti-racist economy following the unrest, commodification, performativism, and aestheticization swallowed the hope for liberation. Bail funds were replaced by cute infographics and pictures of Nancy Pelosi wearing kente cloth. Mainstream ignition of the ideology of abolition was replaced 26 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

by the farthest thing from it: the heavily leveraged voting complex.

There is no other way to spell it out: commitment to presidential electoralism, or the political assistance of mainstream American presidential candidates and their backing financial bodies, remains the pesticide for the growth of a populist American left. With a nativist savior of the white working class on one side and a corporate war-hawk champion of white liberals on the other, what remains for the Black and brown people suffering at the hands of electoralism domestically and abroad?

American electoralism is manipulative in its mechanisms of sustenance. As the electoral system in America typically makes clear every four years, the watereddown “liberalization” of concepts originally formed from radical leftist politics serves to provide a relief to voters attempting to vote ideologically “left.” Such is the case with identity politics, co-opted from the late 20th century Black radical feminist group the Combahee River Collective and repackaged in the candidates of the Democratic Party. This is represented in figures

such as Kamala Harris, the half-Black, half-Tamilian vice presidential candidate, formerly a state prosecutor involved in scandals of vicious state repression. Identity politics did not originate for the placement of “multiculturalism” at the state’s disposal; instead, it serves as a means towards abolition and creation.

Electoral politics’ manipulation and dilution of originally radical politics always serves to cover up the main foundation of the nation’s inordinate wealth hoarding: war and occupation. American exceptionalism operates under both the DNC and RNC management through the ongoing American imperialist project and bipartisan-supported foreign policy. What is “lesser of two evils’’ about Joe Biden, a man who, when Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2002, was a champion of the Iraq War, which left over a million Iraqi citizens dead and an entire region of the world decimated? Even in terms of domestic policy, in the midst of growing popularity for the sentiment of “Defund the Police,” what is “lesser of two evils” about a man who insists that

OPINION

he wants to “add $300 million to their local budgets?” What is “lesser of two evils” about a man who co-authored the largest crime bill in the history of the United States in 1994?

That’s only the tip of the iceberg.

What about recent bipartisan support of violent American foreign policy regarding Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Palestine, Bolivia, and countless other countries? Barack Obama’s extension of the use of drone bombings on foreign civilians when Joe Biden was vice president? To exhaustively discuss bipartisan maintenance of American extractive murder would be beside the point. For voters attempting to adhere to a principle of “anti-racism,” acting as an authority for white supremacist war crimes worthy of being tried at the Hague, as Joe Biden has been, should be an immediate deal-breaker for a presidential election.

Despite the short-lived mainstream attention given to concepts of resistance developed from the Black Radical Tradition, the common discussion seems to have fused into America’s supposed “surge” into fascism as proxied by Donald Trump. The truth of the state and its history, as should be clear to all who use terms such as “systemic,” is that fascistic violence through means of land possession, mass murder, incarceration, privatization, and extractive war is the inherent logic of America and its drive for wealth accumulation. To stand in defense of Joe Biden, or any national-stage American politician, is to reject the nature of this structure. As Frantz Fanon, antiimperialist and Pan-Africanist psychiatrist and revolutionary, wrote in his essay “Racism and Culture,” “The truth is that the rigor of the system made the daily affirmation of a superiority superfluous.” Or as George Jackson more clearly defined: “understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved…”

There exists an idealistic prediction from American liberals in support of Joe Biden concerning a “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party “pushing Biden to the left” if he were to become president.

What is more clear as evidence of this notion’s incredulity than the DNC’s role in manipulating primary elections in favor of the opposing candidate to Bernie Sanders for two successive elections? How about Nancy Pelosi’s corporate fixation or the numerous bipartisan attacks on Ilhan

themselves—democracy for whom?

So what is the commitment the American left must adhere to?

Kinship must be broken; kinship must be lost. As Professor Christina Sharpe, scholar of Black Studies at York University, explains, “Kinship relations structure the nation” and thus a growing American left must “[r]end the fabric of the kinship narrative.”

This includes kinship to the American empire.

Leave your infographic sharing, RBG tributes, and exultant endorsements behind. The empire’s maintenance results in the subjection of nonwhite people to the empire’s logic.

The preservation of the state—especially through Biden, whose political career has lasted 47 years, all of them spent on furthering the extension of the carceral police state, corporatism, and warmongering— coexists with the maintenance of aggression by America in all forms.

Replace the optics with the only allyship that considerably matters: material support. Sustaining local organizing through mutual aid funds, bail funds, and abolitionist groups is the clearest manner of solidarity. Some groups to consider supporting in the Somerville/Boston area include, but are not limited to: Tufts Mutual Aid, Solidarity Supply Distro, Black and Pink Boston, Mutual Aid Medford & Somerville (MAMAS), Freedom Fighters Coalition, Deeper Than Water, Solidarity Against Hate Boston, Massachusetts Bail Fund, and the Boston Area Liberation Medics.

The commitment of an American left must be to the people—not to politicians, electors, or the countless state apparatuses that sustain the very structural conditions that are assimilated into liberalized rhetoric for the purpose of votes. As writer and prophetess Audre Lorde aptly affirmed, “[T]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

“The dramatized idolatry of figures of the state, whether it be Barack Obama, Ruth BaderGinsburg or Hillary Clinton are both a cognitive “THE DRAMATIZED IDOLATRY OF FIGURES OF THE STATE, WHETHER IT BE BARACK OBAMA, RUTH BADERGINSBURG OR HILLARY CLINTON ARE BOTH A COGNITIVE RELIEF FOR WHITENESS AND A GENERAL ATTEMPT TO CLING ONTO EMPIRE.”

relief for whiteness and a general attempt to cling onto empire.”

DESIGN BY CAMILLE SHIMSHAK

Omar following her criticism of IsraeliAmerican allyship?

The dramatized idolatry of figures of the state, whether it be Barack Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or Hillary Clinton, is both a cognitive relief for whiteness and a general attempt to cling onto empire.

Despite what professional diversity and condescension-training specialist Robin DiAngelo will tell you in her recently bestselling book White Fragility, there is no method based in the empire’s politics that will rid the true intention of the government. Voters keen on restoring a “lost democracy” through Joe Biden need to ask

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 27

VOICES

THE TIME BEFORE, NOW, AFTER

By Myisha Majumder

Content warning: mention of suicide Tugging at a straw in a cup of bitter cold brew on a brisk fall day, a simmer pot gently humming in the background—this is the last place I would’ve expected to see myself at the peak of 21. A wellmaintained trail reaches an end, with a cloudy tightrope ahead.

Yet, I have choices—I have alternate realities.

When I think back to dark Massachusetts suburbia, peering up at the looming pine trees, zooming through windy roads, intrusive thoughts come to mind. The ability—the power—held in being able to go off course. I could veer right into that boulder, or down a road less traveled.

Do you remember the time before? Traveling on endless train tracks, looking for meaning, for purpose? Do you remember the time before? When even the thought of tomorrow seemed unattainable?

I think I was a happy kid. Sometimes, you go back in time to figure out when you became an actual sensible human being, rather than a cute-looking blob, dependent on your parents for everything.

Bapi and Mamoni say I was always quiet—maybe in a creepy way, a contrast with my sister Mumu’s boisterous mannerisms.

In my baby photos, I’m usually smiling with no teeth, or stoic, but frequently attached to my grandma Nanu’s hip. In the grainy images of our family trip to Europe, there I am in Versailles, all bones and no meat, fast asleep in my stroller. Again, in the Louvre. Unbothered by these great feats of architecture and structural design, or the fact my parents had saved up enough money to take all of us and my Nanu on an overseas extravaganza.

Nowadays, Bapi mentions how Mumu’s journey towards buying her first house at 30 years old, a beautiful Victorian mansion in a bustling suburb of Massachusetts, contrasts with my parents’ own journey. Uprooted from their apartment in Cambridge to the flat lands of Cincinnati, Mamoni and Bapi had to include all of their major appliances in their home loan, because most of their savings had gone into the down payment. Bapi’s eyes sparkle with mischief reflecting even further back in his youth, to coming to the United States with $200 and a scholarship to the University of Maine.

When I talk to my parents about these moments, huddled over a crowded dining table, I know that these are landmarks in their lives. Turning points that, if they had ignored, or gone another way, I may not have been born. Sometimes, I fantasize about if my dad had taken that job at the University of California, Los Angeles. I would’ve grown up with an entirely different accent and probably as a peppy contrast to my brooding New Englander.

I would’ve preferred the sea spray at the beach over the musky smell of the woods. But how different would I really have been?

28 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 19, 2020

VOICES

I was a happy kid, but I think something changed along the way.

The time after childhood, yet before adulthood. Now, I think, this is the time before.

Times of trauma in my immigrant family were met with the all-too-common reactions: zipped lips and solemn expressions, words exchanged through glances and a hand on the shoulder.

Bapi and Mamoni always said I was too sensitive as a child. I’m not that different today, but I think the characterization of too sensitive undermines the power behind vulnerability. And when I think about placing that heart in trauma throughout adolescence, that memory of the happy kid becomes a distant memory.

I morphed into a blurry, indistinct being during those years.

I’ve always sought comfort in the time before as I’ve known it, full of vivid memories of an idealistic childhood. But now the time before has shifted. As I grow into adulthood and the time after, I can taste the bitter, thrilling fear of independence, and I can no longer romanticize through tangible snapshots.

The time before begins with trauma; not with the seemingly peaceful childhood, or before that, with my parents’ story. The time before is littered with memories of the usual teenage angst and One Direction fanfiction on Wattpad. But it’s also full of hospitals that leave permanent goosebumps, silent screams into a pillow in the moonlight—the time before has left scars on my body and in my being. The time before made me question my purpose, in a frightening way that differs from my ongoing existential crisis today.

It is defined by rough edges, nothing that Mamoni’s hands can successfully smooth over with wrapping paper, then gather and tie together with a velvet bow.

The equation makes sense in my mathematical brain, one I’ve trained myself to understand. The time before is a recipe—not one written in Mamoni’s gentle cursive in old lined notebooks, but one reserved in my head. The recipe is messy, complicated, and cluttered with suicidal ideation. Moments from the time before are like dominos that ricochet in the empty corners of my mind.

DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, ART BY ERICA LEVY AND KELLY TAN

I omit things because I’m scared of misremembering—or maybe, I just didn’t experience that at all. I’m told by therapists that this is a common side effect of what happened during the time before, although I’m not sure that makes me feel any better. I’m also told by therapists that this is the reason, perhaps, I overcompensate by pushing my intellectual limits in trying to remember it all now in the present moment—the time now. Just in case.

The time before is the time of great shift—my transitional period into understanding myself and the world. And while I try to document this part of my life, I find myself walking in circles in fear of misremembering. The time before is the most important for me to recall, to draw upon, as I attempt to transition into the long awaited phase of the time after. Yet, the time before exists in a liminal space—there, I continue to grapple with reality.

In the time before, I was lost, more so than I am now. The intrusive thoughts come and go more gracefully, but now they sit in my soul for a while, no longer like a heavy stone on my chest, but one I would rather take a pickaxe and gently pry at.

I’ve begun to understand the time before in relative perspective to the time now. But the time after is a blank canvas, unable to be rooted in reality of the past or the present, because it is simply an imagination.

The time after, I hope, is full of tangible memories. I’ve lived longer in these bones than the me of the time before could have imagined. The time after should be full of laughter, happy tears, encompassed in the woods of the Catskills. The time after is the simmer pot I care for meticulously on the stove, full of tart orange rinds, sweet hand picked apples, strong cinnamon sticks, and bitter cloves.

OCTOBER 19, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 29