TUFTS OBSERVER
NOVEMBER 9, 2015
VOLUME CXXVXV, ISSUE 4
SPEAKING AMERICAN (PAGE 2)
SPEAKING BACK TO DEATH IN BLACK BREATH (PAGE 6)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BABY TALK (PAGE 22)
#language
Staff editor-in-chief Katharine Pong managing editor Moira Lavelle creative director Chelsea Newman news Claire Selvin Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert opinion Ben Kesslen Jamie Moore
November 9, 2015 Tufts Observer, since 1895
Volume CXXVXV, Issue 4 Tufts’ Student Magazine
TABLE OF CONTENTS
arts & culture Xander Landen Carly Olson campus Julia Doyle Gabby Bonfiglio tech & innovation Dana Guth Tess Ross-Callahan poetry & prose Aishvarya Arora photography director Alison Graham photography editor Menglan Chen art director Eva Strauss assistant art director Rachel Cunningham
CHELSEA NEWMAN
FEATURE “Speak American” by Sahar Roodehchi
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NARRATIVE Speaking Back to Death in Black Breath by Jonathan Jacob Moore
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lead artists Tess Dennison Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert
OPINION Burning Your Dictionary: Translation as a Life Process
lead copy editor Liza Leonard
by Lauren Samuel
copy editors Will Hodge Emily Ng Maya Pace Emma Pinsky Lauren Samuel
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POETRY Ruminations 2
publicity director Yumi Casagrande
by Patrick McVee
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publicity assistants Ashley Miller Kyle Scott
NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT
web editors Greta Jochem Lily Hartzell
NEWS Forging a New Media by Henry Jani
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ARTS & CULTURE Presidential Brands: The Anatomy of Political Logos by Isabelle Levenson
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ARTS & CULTURE Censorship in the Wild West DANNY GARFIELD
PHOTO INSET Language
by Sarah Nechamkin
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design team Kayden Mimmack Chase Conley Lynette Bian Zoe Baghdoyan Franny Kamio Astrid Weng Conrad Young Alexandra Benjamin
Contributors Danny Garfield Sylvie Grenier Adriana Guardans-Godo Abigail Lord Nora Nord Jake Rochford Minyi Tan
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Theme
PROSE Spoon Fed
In this issue, we explore how language allows us to express ourselves, shape interpersonal relationships, and construct or decontruct narratives. We consider what outlets we use to speak, who gets to use them, and how individuals can harness words to build power and create positive change.
by Moira Lavelle
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OPINION Zines: Niche Counterculture for Campus Expression by Jake Rochford
CHELSEA NEWMAN
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TECH & INNOVATION Baby Talk
by Tess Ross-Callahan
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POLICE BLOTTER
by Moira Lavelle
28 JAKE ROCHFORD
The Tufts Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to in-depth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century. Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, creative writing, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and culture. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to effect positive change.
@tuftsobserver
www.tuftsobserver.org COVER BY CHELSEA NEWMAN
FEATURE
“
SPEAK AMERICAN THE
PROBLEM WITH
”
ENGLISH’S NATIONAL DOMINATION By Sahar Roodehchi
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FEATURE
“T
his is America—learn English.” Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon thing to hear in the United States. Though the US does not have an official language, knowledge of English is an unwritten rule. Immigrants to the US are expected to assimilate into American culture, which means learning English as quickly as possible. For many children, such forced assimilation can come at the cost to their primary ethnic language and thus a central aspect of their connection to a community. On the other hand, motivation for Americans to learn foreign languages is lacking. By deprioritizing languages that are not English, we marginalize the communities to which they are central. It is clear is that we need to have a conversation about language in America. As a second-generation IranianAmerican, I grew up in a predominantly Farsi-speaking household. Farsi was my twin brother’s and my first language. My mother says that my first word was shab bekheir, the Farsi word for “goodnight.” However, upon my brother’s and my entering preschool, teachers told my parents that they needed to begin speaking in English with us in our home. They were worried that, though we spoke English, our English was not as strong as our peers’. From that day on, my parents adopted English as our household de facto language. Our English skills improved rapidly, and my brother and I entered elementary school with the necessary level of language mastery. This came at the cost, however, of losing our fluency in Farsi as well as much of our cultural connection to Iran. We no longer speak Farsi in our household.
My experience is not an altogether unfamiliar one in the United States. Psychologist Wallace Lambert calls it “subtractive bilingualism”: an individual loses their primary language, or their heritage language, as a result of learning a second language. In fact, subtractive bilingualism often occurs when children of nonnative English speakers attend preschool, as educational and societal pressures tell them that they need to adopt English as their primary language in order to survive. A 1991 Stanford study on subtractive bilingualism in the US found that children who enter school with primary fluency in a language other than English “quickly discover that the key to acceptance is English, and…learn it so they can take part in the social life of the classroom… All too often, English becomes their language of choice long before they know it well enough to express themselves fully in that language, and they use it both in school and at home.” According to the same study, it even occurs in families where the parents speak little to no English and comes at a serious cost to parent-child relationships. In my family, I was lucky that my parents have a steady understanding of English, so my relationship with my parents was not sacrificed in my efforts to “fit in.” All the same, I remember vividly my brother’s and my attempts to discourage my parents from speaking Farsi in public, for fear of standing out too much. My multicultural and multilingual background made me feel like an outsider in a nation where English is key. Having to deny that multicultural and multilingual background, however,
has made me feel alienated from a heritage culture that should feel like home. The pressure for perceived outsiders in America to learn English is immense. A Pew research study conducted in September 2015 found that 76 percent of Americans believed that adult immigrants must learn English to succeed. Additionally, 59 percent believed that recent immigrants were not learning English fast enough. When immigrants to America are subjected to this “adapt or fail” mentality, the pressure to Americanize is enormous and being “American” inherently means conforming to the normative English-speaking culture. Thus, it is not surprising when a study shows that 25 percent of children who grow up in potentially bilingual households do not become bilingual, implying the frequency with which subtractive bilingualism occurs and leaves children speaking only English. Many argue that English is the most important language for young people growing up in America to learn. While it is true that English is entrenched in American society and incomparably useful in daily life, other languages have deeply important cultural and personal values. Furthermore, knowing another language in addition to English has significant developmental advantages. Tufts Child Development Professor Jayanthi Mistry, who studies how children navigate multiple cultural worlds, told the Tufts Observer, “Developing and maintaining dual (or multiple) cultural and bilingual identities is usually associated with positive psychosocial and academic outcomes.” She added, “However, sometimes the process of developing and maintaining bi-
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cultural identities can be particularly challenging and then the outcomes are not quite so positive. The implications of the research in general are clear: when children and adolescents are supported in the development of bicultural and bilingual identities, these fluid, dynamic identities can be effective strengths and assets that undergird other areas of development.” Learning a language and finding the balance between that language and English can have profound benefits. However, being able to receive those benefits largely depends on the circumstances in which the learner is placed and the support they receive from their environment. An English-focused environment that disregards the importance of other languages, then, has an adverse impact on identity development in young children. A child who loses a language loses a lot more than a vocabulary—they lose a connection to an entire culture and history, as well as to a sense of identity. It makes sense, then, that bilingual young Americans use their heritage language as a way to get closer to their culture, though they may feel alienated or removed from it. A recent survey of UCLA students found that bilingual college students would like to study their home language at university to discover more about their heritage culture and linguistic roots and to communicate better with relatives. Knowledge of a second language becomes inherently linked to cultural identity and relationships. This cultural value of languages is largely lost in the English-dominated conversation about languages. American attitudes towards knowing other languages indicate that foreign languages are seen as “nice” but altogether unnecessary. For example,
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Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is fluent in both English and Spanish. He uses Spanish to connect with his Hispanic supporters, once conducting an entire interview in Spanish on Telemundo. But some of his Republican counterparts saw this negatively. Sarah Palin commented that, while she admired Bush’s bilingualism, “[When] you’re here, let’s speak American.” “Speaking American” has become more and more important over the past 50 years. Though the nation lacks an official language, 31 states have mandated English as their official language, meaning that all official government business within these states must be conducted in English. Not only does this further establish English’s place as culturally dominant, but it also sends the message that power lies in the English language. Public school systems can also enforce this message. California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have all approved ballot measures to end bilingual programs and replace them with English-only policies. Such policies often conflate assimilating to American culture with dropping cultural practices altogether. This denies children of immigrants and non-native English speakers the opportunity to maintain and connect with both of their cultures simultaneously. Monolingual education has implications for large numbers of Americans; 12 million school-age children nationwide speak a second language in the home and students of color outnumber non-Hispanic white students in the public school system. It is clear that bilingual education is crucial to creating a comprehensive and inclusive education for all students. The American education system must find a balance between English and
heritage languages in order to prevent future cases of subtractive bilingualism and to encourage a multilingual and multicultural community. A much-needed education policy that has been called for is a SpanishEnglish bilingual education program. As 8.5 of the aforementioned 12 million school-age children speak Spanish in the home, education programs need to support the growing Hispanic student population. In the past, after the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, these programs focused on improving English and used Spanish to help facilitate English learning, rather than focusing equally upon both languages. A more effective system that has been suggested is one in which a day’s courses are taught in both languages, creating a natural balance and dispelling the need for a separate second language course. Furthermore, educators are advocating for an education system in which teachers take advantage of the language skills students already have and implement them into their teaching. Though the heritage language may be learned and practiced at home, schools still play a role in cultivating those languages. By responding to the ethnic makeup of the community and offering classes and resources in those languages, schools can naturally promote student bilingualism. It is important to look at how America’s current environment regarding languages affects native English speakers as well. America is far behind in regards to knowledge of languages other than English. According to a 2006 study, 25 percent of Americans self-reported speaking a language other than English and only 43 percent of these said they can speak that language “very well.”
FEATURE
The focus on the English language deprioritizes foreign languages in not only American culture but also American education. Whereas European countries require students to begin learning a second language at ages as young as six, there is no nationwide mandate for foreign language education in US. Students often take foreign language courses, but rarely leave these classes with working proficiency. In fact, only seven percent of Americans in the aforementioned study who said they knew a second language “very well” reported learning their second language in school. The motivation to learn a language other than English in a global economy where English is the lingua franca of trade and politics is lacking. Though there are countless benefits to learning a second language, cognitive and cultural alike, English’s status as an “international language” seems to take away the necessity. When American students do decide to learn a second language, the decision is often an economical one, as students are encouraged to sign up for languages most suited to finding a job. Amelia Friedman, who began the Student Language Exchange nonprofit to encourage college students to learn languages, claimed in an article for The Atlantic that a “language du jour” mentality exists for learning languag-
es in America. Americans respond to political and economic emergencies by learning relevant languages, such as Slavic languages during the Cold War and Middle Eastern languages for the “War on Terror.” However, when the motivation to know a foreign language is reduced to such a superficial
By deprioritizing languages that are not English, we marginalize communities to which they are central.
reason as being marketable in the job economy, it come at a serious cost to understanding of the depth and culture that the language comes from. Thus, the nationwide conversation about languages needs to shift from its
current “Speaking American” mentality to understanding the importance of fostering many different languages. This problem is seen most clearly when looking at what is lost to the dominance of the English language. The US Department of Education recently issued a report regarding Native Americans in the school system and worked with Native American youth and tribal leaders to come up with a list of recommendations. One recommendation was to support Native American languages for the “preservation and revitalization of Native languages and the worldviews embedded in them.” The possible extinction of these languages has roots in the violent genocide of Native Americans hundreds of years before. The pushing aside of indigenous and foreign languages in the United States works as an extension of imperialism, as English proves dominant and asserts that dominance time and time again. Rather than encouraging the homogenizing idea of the “American melting pot,” space must be made in American education for the wide number of languages already here. The “adapt or fail” mentality only fails our community insofar that it rejects the possibility of multicultural communities coexisting while all equally American. “Speaking American” should not mean speaking English, but should instead reflect the diverse communities of the nation from which it takes its name. O
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SPEAKING BACK TO DEATH IN BLACK BREATH By Jonathan Jacob Moore
“To be a Negro in this country is really… never to be looked at… What they do see when they do look at you is what they have invested you with… all the agony, and pain, and the danger, and the passion, and the torment—you know, sin, death, and hell— of which everyone in this country is terrified.” – James Baldwin “Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel… He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months… He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.” – John Eligon, The New York Times
I
recall vividly the night that Michael Brown’s killer walked free. It was a Monday and I was behind on reading for class. My head was full of faces and quotes and autopsy drawings. I watched the decision delivered to the world live, that no charges would be filed against the cop, that again no harm would come to the man that took another Black life, again. Again, I bowed my head, unsure of who or what I was mourning. Again, I had few words to compose myself or hold anyone else with. I went to bed late, having helped
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plaster the campus with flyers of Michael Brown’s brown face, his eyes demanding answers. I had none. I woke up to a text from my oldest baby brother, Manny—the same 15 yearold teddy-bear who had until this morning never texted me, out of concern that he would be “bothering me” or have nothing important to say. I rolled over in bed, crusty-eyed and half-conscious, to read his words: “I love you, Jon Jon.” I thought about my Facebook statuses from the night before and my spilt sorrow that must have looked to him like remnants of his big brother. I felt like the remnants of his big brother. I felt so small. I thought about his youth and his smile and how he, nearly 5’10”, could lift my 5’4” body into the air and give me piggyback rides into the kitchen when dinner was ready. I thought about Michael Brown’s body, an uncovered specimen, made martyr man-child in the hellish heat of August…how he would never eat, give a piggyback ride, never smile again. I heard my brother’s words, again. “I love you, Jon Jon.” I cried in bed for 10 minutes that morning. Rest assured, my tears are not headline-worthy, nor is my brother’s fear. Or my mother’s fear. Or my father’s fear. The New York Times is not invested in any articulation of fear that assaults the status quo. The
status quo is Black bodies on pavement, in morgues, in the ground, in cells, in peril. The myth of a mass media that engages in radical truth-telling isn’t just pretend, it’s propagandist. Black children sitting in front of TV sets, soaking in mug shots and pseudo-mug shots and dash cam videos, have attended more family funerals than they have relatives. The tears of Black children are not made visible for the masses until they are profitable—say, a hurricane in New Orleans kills thousands or a shootout in Chicago takes parents away in the night. These are the certainties I will not argue. This is where I begin. Much of what I say here has been said, again and again, elsewhere, online, in press, in poetry, in art, in conversations between families in their living rooms. I offer this as a tribute to Black people whose humanity, character, and personality are assaulted in the public imagination as swiftly as their bodies, immediately after they take their last breath, close their eyes for the last time. The legacy of this quotidian terror is multifarious, sometimes manic, always menacing. Bearing intimate witness to Black death in a Black body does not imply a desire or ability to always, or ever, articulate that witness in an intelligible or audible tongue. But it is this truth, one replete with tears and shouts and si-
NARRATIVE
The reimagining of reality is not a media conspiracy—it is its one and only function. lences hugs and shaky hands that I reflect on here—what the media’s reimagining, moral rectification, and reproduction of the murder of Black people, and the language employed in this process, has taught me about my own life and deaths. I. The marquee said Black man and I read another one. Says no weapon found yet and the case is still open and the casket is not a manila folder in a faded green cabinet. The casket comes after the commercial break. “Stay tuned for more from our sponsors.” Last November—less than four months after Michael Brown was slain in Ferguson, Missouri—Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy was shot to death by a White cop in Cleveland, Ohio while playing with a pellet gun. Tamir was initially referred to as a “young man” or “Black male” in news reports. Much emphasis
ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT
would be put on his height, 5’7”. The responding cop shot Tamir within two seconds of arriving on the scene, later telling a colleague he had “no choice.” Reporters questioned what Tamir’s home life was like, eager to paint the child’s broken body as product of a broken home, not a bullet. I would read few articles that detailed the autopsy, showing a single gunshot into the left side of Tamir’s 12-year-old abdomen that moved through his intestines, lodging itself into the right side of his pelvis. A boy hemorrhaged to death on the Cleveland sidewalk with a cop’s bullet in him and the press ran articles that reported Tamir’s parents were against violence towards the police, as if their son had been hugged to death by the cop. In the minds of those crafting these narratives around his death, those with the power to control what images and words would be used in recounting how his body would fall in broad daylight, Tamir was far from a child or anything loosely comparable. His death, it would be said, was unfortunate but inevitable. The officer “had no choice.” He shouldn’t have been playing with a pellet gun. He shouldn’t have been playing around, period. He was tall. He “looked grown.” He shouldn’t have been a child. He shouldn’t have been Black. He shouldn’t have been. And now, he wasn’t.
The media made him out to be what he now never would: a grown man. I have two brothers that were near Tamir’s age when he was stolen, one the exact same age. I cried when I saw his smiling face fly across my Facebook timeline. I am sitting in Dewick and my appetite for ice cream has subsided. In my skin, in this place, at this time, I have come to terms with seeing things where they should not be—the faces of young Black boys in obituary pages, for example. I have come to terms with the moral rectification that takes place in the airwaves and online when Black children are slain by White hands when the whole world is watching. I have come to disbelieve the mantra, “Seeing is believing.” I have a rage that I am convinced breaks my skin out—makes it harder to get out of bed and go to class, sometimes, too. I text my brothers more often, now. There is no place for a Black child to be—I try to carve out space with my pen and these text messages. II. And now we’re back to our regularly scheduled propaganda. Protestors burn cop cars and cops
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Today, I find inspiration in the bending of language to belittle already broken spines, seeking vengeance on every headline and pulled quote that tells stories of shadows that got what they deserved for lurking, for breathing, for being, Black. burn bodies buried. Bullet is the first burn of many. On April 7, 2015, Walter Scott, a 50 year-old Black man, was pulled over in North Charleston, South Carolina by a police officer for a broken taillight. Scott, who was aware of a warrant for his arrest due to his owing child support payments, fled on foot. The police officer involved then proceeded to tase Scott and fire eight bullets into his back, killing him. As luck would have it, an uninvolved bystander recorded the shooting on a cell phone camera, also capturing the cop plant his stun gun on the body of the slain Scott, whom he later claimed gained control of the stun gun and threatened him, forcing him to fire off the rounds. The video was watched millions of times online and shown across cable news networks worldwide. While this video led to the arrest of the officer, his arrest did not prevent the media from reimagining the events leading up to what was, according to the video, a brutal murder fueled by adrenaline and a compulsion to demonstrate mortal au-
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thority. On Fox News’ Fox & Friends, host Geraldo Rivera responded to the video of Scott’s murder by praising the release of the officer’s dashboard camera footage, which he said gave “context to the event… however horrific and tragic and outrageous the shooting in the back is, it shows that it started as a righteous traffic stop.” He went on to describe Scott’s understandably nervous behavior as “hinky and edgy” and stressed that there was, in fact, a broken taillight on Scott’s car, as if to justify the slaying by grounding the initial contact in the fact that this began as a “routine” traffic stop. I learn that “routine” is Amerikan News Media for “White Supremacist.” In this same report, he calls Scott, at different points in the video, a “victim” and a “perpetrator”—the same man shot eight times in the back while he fled, posing no physical threat to the officer. For Geraldo, seeing was not believing. The reimagining of reality is not a media conspiracy— it is its one and only function. Everything is subjective under subjugation. I am learning that the fungible frames of Black people will have weapons planted on their bodies before their tombstones, their first graveside bouquet. I am learning that I commit sin by breathing and I am guilty as all hell. The proximity to
it scares me but I am gleefully guilty of my breath. III. What can be said of the body that falls before it is strung up. Is it a lynching or liquidation of assets? The humanization of White murderers takes place alongside the vilification of the slain. On April 12, 2015, The New York Times published an article entitled, “After 8 Shots in North Charleston, Michael Slager Becomes an Officer Scorned.” The piece begins with the following sentence about Walter Scott’s killer: “Michael T. Slager played cops and robbers as a boy in the Virginia woods, volunteered as an emergency medical technician after high school and earned an associate degree in criminal justice while working full time as a patrolman.” The headline photo from this article is one of Slager’s mother, hands clasped as in prayer. The article describes Slager as both a “shy loner who struggled to adjust to his broken home” and a “child of divorce.”
NARRATIVE
In the months after Scott’s murder, I come to understand the quote from James Baldwin with which I opened. I come to comprehend that sight is the worst metaphor for a people whose lives have been built on looking directly into the sun. I learn that dash cam videos are not solutions to the destruction of Black bodies—a tradition this nation has yet to learn to live without. I learn this in English, in headline, in panel question, in caption, but not in vain. I will not forget this time. IV. Close your eyes and count to ten. Black child, don’t you look like him? Raise your hands 400 counts watch noose chain become a mouth. I raise up the white-silver cells of my teeth the prisoners: wilting words march out single-file-scared.
It got to the point where I would eulogize my breakfast and non-existent pets—the omnipresence of death cultivating in me a grim poetic practice. I do not apologize to myself for this. Today, I find inspiration in the bending of language to belittle already broken spines, seeking vengeance on every headline and pulled quote that tells stories of shadows that got what they deserved for lurking, for breathing, for being, Black. I am being taught new ways to tell the story of my body without falsely confessing to my own murder, without admitting culpability for its condition. But sometimes I am guilty. The ironic price of “being woke” to the constant thievery of bodies like mine is a nagging restlessness—I unearth comfort by reflecting on the immortality of poetry, a relationship with words not hell-bent on destroying me without my permission. I am sometimes betrayed and I am okay with that. I sometimes find myself floating face down in a pool of my own uncertainty and I am okay with that. I am sitting in Eaton Lab staring at the screen and I want to end this with some grand observation of language and the scars its has left on my throat. Instead, I find a shaky peace of my own when I speak on death in my Black breath like I know it but it doesn’t know
me yet. It’s 1 a.m. and I know that I will trust myself more in the morning than I do now. I rest my tongue…tuck it tightly inside my still conscious cranium. I see Black children writing their futures into existence with crayons and toothy grins. This is my tradition. V. Raise the dead to wish them well on their way. Don Lemon juice in the cut stings salty sweet songs of cyclicality the White boy that got Burger King for killing them his way. Speak on it.
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Translation as a Life Process By Lauren Samuel 10
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DICTIONARY
BURNING YOUR
OPINION
L
ast week, during a class presentation, the art director of a magazine referred to herself as a “translator.” By shuffling through heaps of content, fostering connections between artists, and commissioning assignments, she helps readers imagine realities they would not typically encounter. Through art and creative processes she focuses on articulating the essence of the world around us. Her reference to this work as translation was the first time I acknowledged that the act of “translating” could be applied to more than foreign languages. And it was only through recognizing the arduous, spiritual process of linguistic translation that I was able to begin to extend this mentality to other realms. My superficial understanding of linguistic translation has been limited to the “act of translating” from dictionary to dictionary, or the world’s most infamous translator: Google. It wasn’t until I read a review of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, which referred to the translation by Natasha Wimmer as a “stupendous labour of love,” that I began to acknowledge the beautiful and imaginative spirit found in the act of (good) translation. In an interview with The Quarterly Conversation, Wimmer describes the difficulty of translating Bolaño’s writing style: “One of the main challenges of the translation was getting the rhythm of Bolaño’s sentences right. He is never predictable and can be intentionally awkward, and sometimes it was hard to strike the right balance in English—I often felt an urge to smooth over ungainly constructions, but restrained myself, then realized in reading them that they were perfectly calibrated.” This difficulty is both subtle and enormous. The act of translating slang, tone, and mood from one language to another is a work of art. While perhaps it is not as organic as what we traditionally call “art”—paintings, literature, photographs, sculpture, symphonies—translation requires an extraordinary amount of creativity and imagination. It requires more than
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OPINION
just the default setting of reading—it is not about synthesis, but about vibe, aura, and, as Wimmer notes, calibration. These components are often hard to grasp, but a translator undergoes this process in order to recreate these abstract components into a new, palpable form. Novelist and philosopher William H. Gass says that to translate effectively, one must “transread.” He describes this as “reading of…the most essential kind,” in which “what we get when we’re done is…a reading enriched by the process of arriving at it.” This process of arriving at it is no small feat, and Gass is critical of translators who seek to be original and infuse their voice onto the text rather than to be “right.” To have a right translation means focusing on the artist, the writer, and why they made the choices they made. It is undoubtedly an extension of our imagination. It is a process of empathy. It is not about taking the physical entity of a poem or a novel from point A to point B, but about listening: hearing the poem’s past, present, and future in relation to the artist. But can’t this process of translation be channeled beyond the realms of language? Doesn’t the art director’s work—which is an attempt to capture the aura of our time through text and art—also require this creative, patient mentality? Can we extend this even farther? I think the answer is yes. In an article focusing on empathy, writer Rebecca Solnit discusses how to translate feelings between humans. As a response to the indifference with which we treat those suffering, near and far—think of the callous way we skim through global tragedies as we peruse social media—Solnit advocates for this same creative process of translation. Referring to “kindness” as an imaginative shift of seeing the world she writes, “We think of kindness as an emotional quality, but it’s also an act of imagination, of extending yourself beyond yourself, of feeling what you do not feel innately by invoking it.” Through imagination, we can extend even further, beyond human connections,
to translating the world around us. And by attempting to grasp its essence—the intangible parts—we can start to dispel our constructions and our norms for creative alternatives. This may sound like a colossal task, but it’s actually not too sudden a shift because we are all already translators. Think about it: do we not ingest thousands of images, messages, and experiences each day? Is not our experience of life a continuous act of translation? The shift, then, is not in becoming a translator; it’s in becoming a good one. And, if good translation really is this imaginative, empathetic act, then it seems we ought to channel that same spirit into how we live our daily lives.
Through imagination, we can extend even farther, beyond human connections, to translating the world around us. Too often, I am apathetic about what I witness each day. It’s miraculous that we have so many senses to experience the world, but too often I choose the default path. I choose to be a Merriam Webster’s French-to-English pocket dictionary, or a student half-assing her Spanish homework with Google Translate, rather than the Wimmers and the Gasses. I operate under the notion that this is all how it ought to be, taking everything I experience at face value. And, even in those instances when I do seek to translate what is around me, I easily fall into Gass’ greatest fear: imposing my voice on what I have not yet tried to deeply understand. Imagination is an alternative. To be creative when processing the world is to
examine and empathize with all we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. It is rejecting that anything is inevitable, or that anything is “normal.” What we know to be war today will be different tomorrow. No two schools in America are the same, though they may share similarities. There is no evidence that humans are “inherently” greedy. The harder process is then asking the questions of the unknown: What could war become? How can we make relevant education policies for differing communities? Are humans inherently anything? Though we may not know the perfect answers, it’s a good start. Imagination allows us to reject the status quo, plunges us into this unknown, and shows us that that’s not such a bad place to be—at least it’s home to endless possibilities. This way of life is laborious. It’s more than a paradigm shift; it’s realizing there is no known paradigm, so everything falls into this unknown. And, even if we cannot verbalize what we find out there—in that intangible space that Wimmer and Gass and so many types of translators seek to express—it’s okay, because at least we have entered inside, beyond the self-imposed boundaries of a manufactured world that benefits from lazy acceptance. “Our translations will make a batch of botches, but it will not matter, crush them into a ball and toss them to the trash. Their real value will have been received. The translating reader reads the inside of the verse, and sees, like the physician, either its evident health or its hidden disease.” Gass may be talking about text, but his message is clear. Our lives will amount to messy translations, but the outcome is not the focus—we are all dispensable. Instead, what is significant is what an attentive, imaginative process can reveal. If the art of life, like the art of translation, is in the process, then we should choose to live like good translators: discerning enough to know what assumptions to forgo, passionate enough to find out what may have been here all along.
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POETRY
RUMINATIONS 2 By Patrick McVee
“Um.... iced mint tea?” A request so unpleasantly electric: a cattle fence brushes against my arm and shocks through chest and forehead. Somehow pronouns rearrange to fit first person: “She” becomes wielder of my shame “they” become abstractions of Patrick-focused judgement even though nobody gives a damn about “it,” my tool of self-humiliation—in this case, the cup in my hand overfilled with iced tea splashing onto the floor. I set down my bag and hurry to grab a napkin. How bizarre I must look, fluttering around the room like a nervous butterfly. I wish I had brown-grey wings to camouflage myself with the ground. No, no. Again. If I must be a butterfly and no longer a boy, let me be a blue morpho.
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ART BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM
NORA NORD
bilita mpash (Bantu) - a blissful state where all is forgiven and forgotten. - dhvani (Sanskrit) - an echo; an allusion.
ABIGAIL LORD
jmxpivlrabnqgtuhakgdefcswoy
madrugada (Portuguese) the small hours of the night.
mistimanchachi (Quechua) an irrational fear, e.g. fear of a light rain.
mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan) a look shared between two people at a moment of tacit, mutual understanding.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ALISON GRAHAM, SYLVIE GRENIER, DANNY GA
NY GARFIELD, ASHLEY MILLER, SYLVIE GRENIER, DANNY GARFIELD
森林浴 - shinrin-yoku (Japanese) -
forest bathing.
тоска - toska (Russian) a melancholic yearning that numbs daily life.
浮世絵 -
ukiyo (Japanese) the floating world.
MINYI TAN
зачем - zachem (Russian) - a subconscious drive to find the purpose rather than the reason. cобытие - sobytie (Russian) - many different processes of being happening together.
MINYI TAN
PROSE
SPOON FED By Moira Lavelle
I was there holding a coffee just like someone always had been. Thinking about cycles and motorcycles, recycling my feelings back at the Cycladic Museum, realizing nothing is new. I take my coffee like my mother takes her coffee and probably like her mother but who’s to know. The spoon between my teeth reminded me of your teeth and the tiny little gap that you can whistle through. And about Spoon Theory where we each only have so many spoons but our exchange rates are vastly different. And my teeth are crooked now but it only bothers me when I dream about it, which I do often. But I can’t imagine… My teeth have been cemented and shaved and pulled and shoved and polished to the point where they would not recognize themselves. I have served as a poster child for the power of corrective teething programs. When they find my skull years from now they will look at my teeth as post-Cycladic, postindustrial, post-modern. The Cycladic Museum had an exhibit on death but I try not to be exhibitionist. Still I walked among all these tiny offerings shaped like tiny humans and they stared back at me from behind their glass and their historical labels. I looked back at them like what if humans used to look like this? What if our features used to be blurrier and our arms too long and our heads too big and our skin made out of stone? It is miles away but I want to go to my dining hall and steal every fucking spoon so my mother can stop stirring her coffee with knives and forks and straws. It is a world of plenty for spoons there and I want to make earrings and necklaces and chainmail out of spoons, to build a castle out of spoons the way I used to think the Tooth Fairy made a castle out of teeth. Because I keep finding spoons in my pockets and shoes and pillowcases the way I used to find baby teeth.
ART BY CHELSEA NEWMAN
November 9, 2015
Tufts Observer
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OPINION
MAGA ZINES
Niche Counterculture for Campus Expresssion By Jake Rochford
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ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD
OPINION
M
y first intimate moment was at Middlesex County Summer Camp, but, be forewarned, it was less than explicit. As an odd 13-yearold with a less-than-daily shower schedule (I was a kid!), I wanted to find somewhere to fit in. I was halfway between the older-kid cabin and the younger, middle school-kid cabin. Because I wasn’t so suave with my friend-making, I flocked quickly to the only people who I could make sense of—the counselors. I started talking with a dark-haired, freckly counselor named Acadia. She shared my music taste and, during arts & crafts, drew tattoos on her hands using magic markers. We soon started sharing notes with each other—but not typical scrunched up messages. We delivered small parcels every couple of days thick with cut-out pictures, receipts, torn pages, and found objects, riddled with poems and thoughts scrawled in pen. I had finally found a way to talk creatively and secretly with someone and I loved it. I would spend hours finding little mementos around the camp grounds for her to enjoy while she would reveal to me her behindthe-scenes counselor adventures. We made a routine of this and, even now, after years without camp and with only the sporadic Facebook message shared between us since then, I still have those three or four parcels saved in my room. I still wonder why those cheap little envelopes meant so much. They were intimate, funny, handmade—they weren’t created for any reason other than to share thoughts and connect. They were exactly the kind of communication that led me throughout high school to obsess over the culture of zine circulation. Zines are cheap little booklets, often handmade in small batches. They had their start in niche science fiction communities as early as the 1920s, but truly gained prominence in the ‘80s when punk culture adopted zines as their main method of communication. Zines gained their popularity mostly through music. Publications like Punk, Sniffin’ Glue, and Maximum Rock & Roll were more than just punk-band propaganda—they directly catalyzed and documented several major music scenes across the country. Political
movements, artistic communities, science fiction fan discussions, and poetry junkies have also all had legacies in the ‘80s and ‘90s through small-circulation fanzines, and now they still live on in scarce alternative bookstores and small groups. I first found zines online as artist portfolios and I’ve been fascinated ever since. I have scrolled through tons of pages of zines, covering topics from radical feminism to the adventures of a man attempting to wash dishes in all 50 states. Zines are zany, funny, informative, even politically revealing. No other medium has such raw thought and energy. They are the same intimate, opinionated collections of multimedia that I savored so much at summer camp. Since coming to campus, I have realized the place zines could have at Tufts. In a community where opinions are passionately shared and formulated, zines could find a beloved new home on our publications’ shelves. And, it seems, they already have. Underground publications are not new for Tufts—remnants of now defunct studentrun zines still remain. El Tit, a satirical zine making fun of media that’s “happy to openly mock all people from all walks of life,” ran last year as one of Tufts’ only small-circulation publications. It was funny, provocative, and mostly femalecentric. Not to say that other Tufts publications can’t meet those criteria, but El Tit was, pardon the pun, a titular publication last year. It was fun, casual, yet still had a personal feeling of no rules and a lot of expression. The Tufts Disorientation Guide— which was distributed around campus and can be found online—recently released their 2015 edition. According to their website, the guide “hope[s] it provides some alternative perspectives to understanding the history and present [of Tufts].” However, even as the writer of this article and as a first-year student, I wasn’t aware of the Guide until writing my second draft of this article. I can also assume that most first-years won’t be searching for an underground, informal guide to their school. But it shouldn’t take detective-level work to find them. As part of our campus, zines have been and still could be an essential tool for expression. A series of zines could have a
stronger influence on the smaller community it reaches. Instead of hundreds of partially-invested viewers, a zine could grab a dozen fully-invested soon-to-be activists. This dozen might be curious enough to pick up the pamphlet, interested enough to inspect its contents, and—most significantly—resonate more with the emotions of the writer. Modern zines could be the prose piece that inspires an activist or the manifesto that launches a movement. Or, they could just be 20 drawings of androids. Either way—they’d be noticed.
As part of our campus, zines have been and still could be an essential tool for expression. Online sharing is ubiquitous—however, most Internet platforms for communication are ephemeral. The Internet, in every way that it’s amazing (I’m looking at you, Netflix), still can’t offer the personalization and the lure of physical media. Unlike a shared link to a blog post or article online, zines can’t be as easily glossed over. Everyone walking to and from the campus center, Tisch Library, Olin, and the Rez will notice odd little pamphlet stacks in their periphery. Plus, zines fit into college student psychology—they’re free, easy to make, and share opinions personally and physically within the Tufts sphere. So great, they could work. But why invest the time and energy into smallcirculation paper books? Well, you tell me. I certainly enjoyed the phenomenon between my counselor and me. I’m sure the punks, feminists, and poetry junkies of the 80s enjoyed their discussions even if they didn’t reach out beyond their sphere of interested fanatics. I’m sure you, your squad, club, collective, or even political party could find joy in personalized discussion through cheap, handmade booklets. So, with zines in your head and all the tools to make them at your disposal, what would you fill a 15-page booklet with? November 9, 2015
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NEWS
FORGING A NEW MEDIA Twitter is changing who controls the news By Henry Jani
L
ast month, Ahmed Mohamed’s name was all over America. His controversial arrest over a homemade clock that administrators falsely assumed was a bomb sparked discussion and outrage about Islamophobia in his Texas high school. #IStandWithAhmed quickly became a trending hashtag on Twitter as people around the world expressed their support for the teenager. Three days later, he was invited by President Obama himself to visit the White House. A picture of the two hugging revived the story last week, garnering thousands of retweets, favorites, and follow-up stories. The spread of Mohamed’s story exemplifies how Twitter’s ephemeral, interactive, and personal nature is threatening traditional media outlets that have traditionally appealed more to mass audiences. Twitter’s most revolutionary aspect in media consumption is its egalitarian nature—everyday people are news sources with millions of followers. The mobilization of Twitter users who empathized with Mohamed’s struggle and addressed blatant racism within American culture was instrumental in publicizing Mohamed’s story. Furthermore, the platform enabled Mohamed to have his own voice: his account, created
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shortly after his story rose to prominence, currently has over 100 thousand followers. His ability to take control of his media presence is evidence of Twitter’s unique accessibility. Melissa Wang (A ’15), who worked with Twitter during her internships with HubSpot, offered insight into this phenomenon: “Twitter is a channel through which grassroots social movements can breed and grow and thrive. A simple catchy hashtag can become a rallying cry for millions across the globe, and the evolution is quite fascinating to watch—and to take part in.” Because anyone and everyone on the site may contribute to spreading or discussing a news item, these same people can quickly move on to the next big story. The constantly updating feed that is Twitter contributes to the ephemerality of the very conversations that take hold on the platform. Mohamed’s story continuously circulated during his arrest and the public response to it. Yet, most people probably do not know that Ahmed Mohamed and his family are currently emigrating from the United States to Qatar in response to their ordeal in Texas. The rate at which the story developed was paralleled by its disappearance from the media. On Twitter, this kind of rapid rise and fall from attention happens
every day. The October 31st crash of a Russian airliner saw an immediate popularity in #PlaneCrash across Twitter, but quickly stagnated after terrorism began to be ruled out as a likely source of the tragedy. Such examples of viral news stories raise questions about how Twitter is competing with mainstream media outlets. Professor Julie Dobrow, Co-Director of the Film and Media Studies program, commented, “Social media in all of its current and evolving forms has affected news by enabling more people to participate in the conversations… by alerting people in ever faster and more personal ways to things that are happening. And news organizations have struggled to keep up.” User-integrated platforms become hugely beneficial for Twitter’s role in media consumption. A study by the University of Edinburgh highlighted specific instances where Twitter held a far greater power in quickly spreading news topics and facilitating conversations than televised journalistic reporting. Major natural disasters, sporting news, and terrorist attacks tend to dominate on Twitter. Meanwhile, traditional media garnered more attention amongst more nuanced topics, such as international economic relations and diplomatic issues. A pattern becomes
NEWS
ICON BY FACTOR[E] DESIGN INITIATIVE AND CONRAD YOUNG
Twitter’s popularity is largely due to its format and the general direction of media trends today. direction of media trends today: shorter, faster, better. In a world in which people are constantly bombarded with new information and countless options for consuming and organizing content, Twitter seems to be the best fit for all of these elements. The question of its true effectiveness as a sole provider of information still stands, considering how often it is incorporated with traditional media platforms. Perhaps, then, the state of media is not directly entering a strictly technological, sentence-or-less format; instead, it is the mixture of new and old. Shorter and longer. Interactive and dissociated. Integrated, but never again the same. O
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tion of how users are able to dictate news and cultural trends through their social media presence. “It’s our generation’s classics or masterpieces. I remember a tweet about a joke from 2011 that is often retweeted today—its fast-paced elements are still funny and have lasted to the present.” Ellen DeGeneres’s Oscars selfie, which is the most retweeted image on Twitter of all time, is a clear example of a Twitter-driven story with lasting mass appeal. A recent interview with Bradley Cooper on her show saw a spike in retweets of the image nearly a year and a half after the original tweet was published. Dobrow explains how this hybridity of media outlets can affect how news is absorbed: “When tweets get picked up by other venues, both social media and traditional broadcast and print, their reach is extended.” It seems, then, that mainstream media can only be beneficial for Twitter. Its ability to serve as a personalized, interactive news medium engages vast usership, and intersections with other media only help in disseminating popular tweets. Does this mean that Twitter is limited without the help of these traditional media outlets? Wang pushed back on this notion, stating, “Publications may be delivering news in just 140-character bursts, but [it allows for] news outlets to share their full, indepth articles through Twitter, and journalists can provide speedy, on-the-ground coverage of breaking news through live Tweets. That way, the word gets out as fast as possible.” Twitter’s unique position allows for the best of both worlds: a highly self-reliant platform that can also easily integrate with other news entities. Twitter’s popularity is largely due to its format and the general
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November 9, 2015
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apparent: the more straightforward and time-sensitive a story is, the more likely it will thrive on Twitter. A parallel, then, becomes apparent between Twitter and these stories: succinctness. Twitter users are restricted to sharing their information in 140 characters or fewer. Such a limitation means that stories being reported may be somehow skewed. Despite this, Nic Serhan, a junior at Tufts who is familiar with Twitter through his work as a consultant, explained that Twitter’s format makes him trust what he sees more often than not. “I like the aspect of tweets needing to be short. There’s something challenging about getting a message across in 140 characters, so it makes whatever is being reported upon even better and more impactful.” Wang also argued that Twitter’s simplistic structure has its benefits. Within the marketing world, she notes, “Companies use Twitter not simply to sell products and notify followers of promotions, but to add personality to their brands and to build brand loyalty. By noting metrics like retweets, follower counts, and click throughs, marketers can then use actual data to judge brand reach.” Furthermore, Twitter’s influence is affecting how the 2016 presidential nominees run their campaigns. Dobrow stated, “There’s a lot of talk about whether the Republicans can do a better job of utilizing social media to get out their base in voting, or whether this is something where Democrats still have an advantage.” Democrats efficaciously use Twitter to appeal to the youth vote. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, whose socialist platform is strongly backed by young liberals, typically garners four times as many favorites on tweets than leading Republican Donald Trump, despite Trump’s over 3 million more followers. Arguably, Democrats have been more successful in making themselves visible and active on the platform. Serhan offered an anecdotal explana-
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ARTS & CULTURE
CENSORSHIP IN By Sarah Nechamkin
F
orty-three years ago, comedian George Carlin performed a stand-up routine calling out the seven words society fears most. “Words. You know the seven, don’t you? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.” Carlin’s routine struck a chord across the nation, not only for its shock value, but also for its biting critique of the paradigms that dictate our culture. And ironically, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Supreme Court, Carlin’s deliberate use of the “seven dirty words” made the material in his routine “indecent.” But consumers of pop culture today seem to be more accustomed to the profane and inappropriate. In a time when Miley Cyrus can be seen essentially imitating sex on live television, and provocative shows like Family Guy and South Park, with their cursing and sex-
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ual themes, are shown on major broadcast networks, it can be hard to recall the days when offensive behavior was equated with Elvis’ rocking pelvis or a bowling ball-bellied Lucy Ricardo saying that, yes, she was pregnant. Given that we are now more accustomed to programming that pushes boundaries, it’s no surprise that, according to the conservative censorship advocacy group, Parents Television Council (PTC), the use of profanity on primetime broadcast entertainment is only increasing. The group released a report in late 2010 titled “Habitat for Profanity,” which noted that the use of profane language on TV programming increased 69.3 percent from 2005 to 2010. The PTC concluded that contemporary television is too offensive for children and society at large, and they are continuing to push for stricter profanity censorship standards. Though controversial, the FCC’s standards are accepted by major broadcast networks such as CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC, and the CW. Cable networks also
usually abide by these regulations to avoid offending audiences and advertisers alike. Experts say the FCC’s standards encourage some networks to selfcensor beyond even what is necessary. “It’s legally permissible for stations to air uncut R-rated movies after 10 p.m.—or to have Letterman and Leno dropping F-bombs. But you never see or hear that material from broadcasters because of the relationships and expectations we’ve built with our audiences over decades,” said Dennis Wharton, Executive VP of the National Association of Broadcasters, in the Washington Post. But while the FCC maintains tight regulations that influence mainstream TV networks, many people today don’t even watch their shows on TV. With a new way to consume entertainment, content is becoming less controllable. Pay-to-watch streaming networks like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video are a virtual wild west and are not bound by any of these regulations. At a time when it’s easier to access graphic content than ever before, many are questioning the ef-
ARTS & CULTURE
THE WILD WEST ficacy of censorship and wondering if it even serves a purpose anymore. Experts say that on the Internet, unregulated content is ubiquitous and almost impossible to regulate. “Some people say we should be putting a ratings
genitalia with intellectual rigor, it may seem illogical that the word “fuck” is still enough to send TV networks to court. But some TV networks are unaffected by the constraints of censorship. Free from the pressures of advertisers, HBO
Many are questioning the efficacy of censorship and wondering if it even serves a purpose anymore. system on websites. There are thousands of new sites that go up every day—how would anybody possibly have the bandwidth to rate websites?” said Tufts professor Julie Dobrow, whose research focuses on the effect of media on children. On Netflix, anything is fair game, from Frank Underwood’s ruthless asides in House of Cards to the myriad of sex scenes in Orange is the New Black. When viewers can open their laptops and watch Piper curse out prison guards or discuss
is known to produce some of the most racy—and critically acclaimed—content on television. The network has no Standards and Practices department, allowing it to air programs like Sex and the City, The Sopranos, The Wire, and Game of Thrones—shows where boundarypushing material affirms the channel’s original tagline: “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.” Dobrow believes that censorship models as they exist are not as sustainable. “There are so many different plat-
ART BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM
forms that are out there now, and there’s no doubt that the potential for children to be exposed to more stuff is much greater. For that reason, I think there is a cause not for censorship, but for media literacy,” she said. She suggested that for parents, teaching media literacy might be the only way to address material that is difficult to shield from children. Instead of covering their kids’ ears, an increasing amount of today’s parents are willing to talk about why and how a word is considered “dirty.” Dobrow said that medialiterate youth will be able to understand the reasons behind the profane and graphic content on popular TV, which is a better alternative to being temporarily protected from it. Today, censorship regulations like the FCC’s aim to provide this protection and perpetuate the notion of TV as a utopia. But now that Carlin’s “heavy seven” are only a click away, who knows how much longer we can keep America’s most vulgar words from creeping in at primetime. O
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ARTS & CULTURE
PRESIDENTIAL BRANDS The anatomy of political logos By Isabelle Levenson
I
n 2008, Obama’s presidential campaign created a blue “O”—a single letter set against a white background, crossed by waving red stripes. The “O” made its way onto car bumpers and t-shirts, and was blasted throughout the social media sphere. It became a tool to rally supporters, encourage donations, and develop excitement for the campaign. In one succinct symbol, Obama was able to create a memorable trademark and convey his message of “change” to the United States. But before Obama, political logos didn’t matter. “If you look at…the ‘90s and even the early 2000s, you would see that there was very little attention actually given to branding of political campaigns. If people had their big name and then a billowing flag next to it in some form, then that would’ve been sufficient,” said Sagi Haviv, partner and designer at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, a design firm known for creating brand identities for high-profile clients such as National Geographic, Mobil, and NBC. Haviv said that since the success of Obama’s logo, branded identities have become an essential part of presidential candidates’ ability to appeal to
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their audience and cement themselves in the minds of voters. With the 2016 presidential race underway, political candidates on both sides have defined themselves with distinct logos. Ben Ostrower, creative director of Wide Eye Creative, a digital studio known recently for its creation of Bernie Sanders’ logo, said that now people are
Campaign logos are often designed with the goal of masking or compensating for candidates’ political weaknesses thinking about campaign branding more than they ever have before. “This is the first time that especially young people consider the design of the website and the design of the logo as an extension of the campaign… It’s an opportunity to
make a statement about what your campaign stands for and who you are.” When it comes to designing political logos, Ostrower believes that a candidate needs to be treated the same as a product. “You have to be looking for what their strengths are, how they are recognized already as a brand, and their vulnerabilities and weaknesses that need to be compensated for,” he said. To get a sense of how they should brand a candidate, Ostrower’s firm creates a questionnaire for campaign staffers with questions ranging from the “obvious” to the “absurd.” Ostrower joked about a specific question on the form: “If your campaign was a car, what car would it be?” He said that firms don’t always answer the question in a way that is helpful for the designers. “Too many folks say, ‘Oh, I’m a Tesla,’ which is a really easy answer… It’s only when folks come back with an answer like, ‘We’re a beat up Ford F150 caked in mud,’ that it feels helpful for us in terms of understanding how [a campaign perceives itself].” But experts say that political logos aren’t only inspired by the abstract. According to Ostrower, designers often work to make these political images reflect a candidate’s physicality. “If you look at it carefully enough with enough
ARTS & CULTURE
abstraction, the logo and the brand that is created mirror their face and the ways their face is structured,” Ostrower said. Campaign logos are also often designed with the goal of masking or compensating for candidates’ political weaknesses. Haviv noted the strategic absence of Jeb Bush’s last name in his logo and his use of the exclamation point, which attempts to create a sense of excitement around a candidate who is often critiqued for his blandness.“Knowing what we know now about what’s been happening over the last few months with the low energy comments [surrounding Bush], I think that it jumps at you as… not a natural representation of the candidate,” said Haviv. He also noted the strategic simplicity of Clinton’s logo. The campaign avoids using the candidate’s last name and instead uses an “H” icon. Haviv said this is an attempt to distance herself from her husband and his legacy. “The idea of making a sort of emblem or icon or symbol out of the first letter of her name is actually very smart strategically in order to act as more of a symbol for a movement and not remind us of the ‘90s.” Bernie Sanders’ logo was also designed as an attempt to mask his political fragility. Ostrower, whose firm created the logo, said the nationalistic imagery in Sanders’ logo was created to soften his reputation as a radical democratic socialist. Ostrower said as a candidate, Sanders’ views set him apart enough already and that he needed to be portrayed as “an entirely legitimate, completely realistic candidate” in his logo. The logo relies on traditional nationalistic imagery. “We did use stars and stripes, but we did it conscientiously. We didn’t do it blindly… We didn’t want it to be weird; we didn’t want it to be different; we didn’t want it to be apart. We wanted it to feel like a really obvious campaign logo.” Haviv and Ostrower noted that in addition to the images used in po-
litical logos, the fonts chosen are also influenced by candidates’ messages and beliefs. Haviv noted that Trump’s buildings use his name in serif typography—a more traditional, elegant typography—whereas his campaign uses bold, sans serif typography. Haviv observed that Trump’s campaign font is modern—“more of a look to the future”—and that its width and boldness go along with his self-presentation as a strong leader. Ostrower added that it’s one of the few logos in all caps, demonstrating confidence and strength. The typography in Rubio’s logo is a complete contrast to the boldness of Trump’s. Both of the designers agreed that the all-lowercase lettering of Marco Rubio’s logo was a smart choice for the candidate, who is currently trying to brand himself as the “young guy in the race.” Haviv believed that it was not only attractive from a design standpoint, but was also “appropriate for a guy who wants to claim the mantle of the next generation.” Ostrower commented that the Rubio campaign has been positioning itself as “the startup campaign,” and remarked that their inspiration was likely drawn from many social media products or tech companies. Facebook and Twitter have logos with all-lowercase type that, according to Ostrower, are meant to say, “we’re user-friendly and relatable.” Despite all of the content and messaging that can be gleaned from a simple icon, it is unlikely that a logo will change your vote. But Ostrower remained somewhat optimistic about the impact of visual political branding. “I would argue that if Hillary Clinton is not the next president, no one will identify that it’s because of her logo or her website, but it sure as hell helped.” O
The 2016 Logo Lineup
November 9, 2015
Tufts Observer
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TECH & INNOVATION
BABY TALK: Addressing the “Word Gap”
By Tess Ross-Callahan
A
woman on the academic quad is talking to her baby. “Look at the trees, Nathan!” she trills, pointing at the stacks of gold and red leaves collecting on the grass. “So pretty. Mommy loves fall because of pumpkins, cozy sweaters, and the pretty leaves! Mommy also loves dressing Nathan up on Halloween…” The child stares back, round-eyed, and gurgles. On the surface, this is a commonplace interaction. New parents appear to lose their minds after having children, engaging in endless, one-sided conversations about nothing. To the outside observer, these interactions range from cute to baffling to irritating, but they are actually crucial. In reality, as this woman is talking, her baby is performing high-level deductions inside his head. He learns the names of things: the name of a leaf, the name of a culturally significant holiday—even his own name. But beyond that, he is learning how the rise and fall of intonation can express meaning. He is learning the difference between singulars and plurals. He is learning about subject-verb agreement and 26
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expressions of emotion. His task, grasping the endlessly complex twists and turns of his first language, is an unbelievably challenging one. Like any scientist, the more evidence he has to work with, the easier it is for him to make these discoveries. In other words: the more he hears, the quicker he learns. This is true for all children. “I think that we need to stop and consider what we know when we know the meaning of a word,” said Calvin Gidney, a Child Development and Linguistics professor at Tufts. “A word is a linguistic representation of a concept and so, the more words a child knows, the more concepts she has. Moreover, the more concepts that a person has, the richer her mental representations of the world, and the greater her ability to use language to analyze and describe the world.” The problem is, not all children are given as much evidence to work with as others. In 1995, two scientists spent two and a half years observing a sample of 42 Kansas families interacting with their children. They recorded the style of interaction, the children’s vocabulary, and the sheer number of words the child was exposed to on an everyday basis. They
found that children from low-income households heard, on average, 30 million fewer words than their middle-income counterparts by age four. This gap, they concluded, leaves low-income children less ready to enter kindergarten, less able to express complex emotions, and less ready to begin learning to read. If this is the case, then the muchdiscussed educational opportunity gap in education begins before school does. Once educators and policymakers learned about the 30-million-word gap, it became clear that college access programs and SAT tutoring would not be enough to boost the college acceptances and test scores of low-income kids. In order to design effective interventions, they had to get to the root of the problem. The first barrier to lower-income children’s development is that the US does not have publically funded prekindergarten programs. Instead, with some variation based on quality and location, pre-K generally costs between $4,460 and $13,158 per year. That means that families who can foot that bill can send their children to environments with constant, developmentally-appropriate stimulation while ART BY ADRIANA GUARDANS-GODO
TECH & INNOVATION
the parents are at work. For families who cannot afford that, childcare while working becomes a challenging problem: some parents will have extended family members provide care, try to bring their children to work with them, or even resort to missing work to keep their kids safe during the day. While some of these options certainly have benefits, they generally result in less verbal stimulation for the child, and the early exposure to education sets some kids ahead of others. When asked about the value of early education access, Gidney described himself as “an enthusiastic advocate for universal pre-K.” This is not just because the US is the last developed country to make this policy, but because Gidney believes it “would go a long way towards addressing some of the early educational disparities that research has discovered.” Additionally, there appears to be a disparity, on average, between the number of words that higher and lower income parents speak to their children. One reason for that difference could simply be that parents with more money have more time to spend with their children; when a mom is working three jobs, she may simply not get a chance to talk to her kids between sleeping, cooking, and going to work every day. It’s also possible that the circumstance of poverty itself contributes to this effect. As Margaret Talbot theorizes in her New Yorker article “The Talking Cure,” “When daily life is stressful and uncertain and dispiriting, it can be difficult to summon up the patience and the playfulness for an open-ended conversation with a small, persistent, possibly whiny child.” For innovators trying to close the socalled “word gap,” there are two key areas of intervention: providing quality educational opportunities to all young children, and encouraging a shift in the way that children interact with their very first educators—their parents. For presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, this intervention takes the form of an organization called “Too Small to Fail,” sponsored by the Clinton Foundation, that focuses on informing caretakers how to best interact with children to stimulate learning and development. For example, the organization has started the #TalkingIsTeaching challenge in which parents and families can follow the organizers on Twitter for tips
about engaging their children in conversation and can share their child’s progress via social media. Other programs, like the Thirty Million Words Initiative, also take a parentfocused approach. They equip the child in question with a word-counting device and inform caretakers about ways to have developmentally engaging conversation. For example, when reading aloud to a child, it’s important—and not necessarily intuitive—to stop and point to the pictures. “What’s this?” a caregiver might say. “It’s round and fuzzy and green—it’s a tennis ball. Look at all the tennis balls! How many? One, two, three…” As parents begin to implement these techniques, the TMW employees record and provide them with feedback about the child’s progress. These programs and many others—such as The Road Map Project and Providence Talks—are all run by powerful educators and thinkers, who have some demonstrated levels of success in their innovative strategies to close the opportu-
As we fight to close the opportunity gap, it seems unbelievable that this simple thing could help: talking to babies. nity gap. However, their work is not free of problems and controversies. In fact, some researchers disagree with the premise that the word gap is as much of a problem as it is said to be. The first problem is that counting words is not the same as measuring the quality of conversation or interaction. A parent who is screaming at their child, for example, will receive more word “points” than a parent and child pair who are napping together on the couch. It also doesn’t take experiential learning into account, despite the fact that exploration, according to Gidney, is often the best way to learn. “I believe that young children’s direct experiences with the real world
provide some of the best learning opportunities for the development of a rich vocabulary,” he said. “All of us learn new vocabulary best when it is relevant to our lived experiences. Children are no different from the rest of us in this respect.” A mere word count says little about quality and less about retainment. Even worse, the “gaps” of ability that children demonstrate upon entering kindergarten are only the gaps that the school chooses to test. Since teaching in America is a profession that’s 82 percent white, the skills taught and tested in classrooms are likely to be made by and for white people, intentionally or not. To amplify the problem, the high-stakes tests our kids take are in English, regardless of whether English is the language spoken at home. Additionally, low-income children are at a disadvantage because of factors outside of linguistic exposure: they are restricted by limited opportunities for quality health care, nutrition, and even prenatal care. Finally, the entire idea that low-income families don’t talk to their children smacks of, as Susan Blum writes in her article “Selling the Language Gap,” the same kind of “blame-the-victim approach to language and poverty [that has been occurring] for at least half a century.” To suggest that lowincome parents need coaching is to suggest that they are doing something wrong, and that a white standard of success should be taught to them as the “right” way forward for their children. Still, from a neurological perspective, children exposed to more words at a young age learn more in the long term. Like all questions of educational inequity, the way forward is murky, tangled with questions of what is right and what is fair. As we fight to close the opportunity gap by building charter schools, designing new tests, and crafting new curricula, it seems unbelievable that this simple thing could help: talking to babies. And as educational reform builds as a hotbutton topic in the upcoming election, it will be interesting to see if the candidates remember to look past school uniforms and screen time to remember that learning—and inequality—start from the day we are born. O November 9, 2015
Tufts Observer
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POLICE BLOTTER
Police Blotter
By Moira Lavelle
A Pane-ful Visit
Friday, October 2nd, 6:15pm
Officers were dispatched to Carmichael Hall after reports that there was someone calling for help. They were met in the hallway by someone who said that their mother, who was visiting, had closed her hand in the window and couldn’t get it out. TUPD assisted the mother in opening the window. The mother was fine, did not want any further medical attention, and accepted an ice pack.
Bathroom Blockade
Saturday, October 24th, 3:00am
A Hill Hall RA called about a resident locked in a bathroom stall. The RA had entered the restroom late at night and noticed an intoxicated student making no moves to exit. The RA knocked on the bathroom stall several times to no response. The heroic RA was reportedly able to open the stall door by reaching the door latch over the wall from the stall next door. The intoxicated student was given medical attention.
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Tufts Observer
November 9, 2015
RILEY ARONSON
TUFTS OBSERVER SINCE 1895 www.tuftsobserver.org observer@tufts.edu @tuftsobserver
please recycle