Tufts Observer
VOLUME CXXXIV, ISSUE 2
February 20, 2017
Changing Approaches The Representation of How the Immigration in Admissions Black Arts on Campus Ban Has Impacted Tufts Page 2
Page 6
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Patterns Issue
Tufts Observer The Tufts Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to indepth 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
February 20, 2017 Volume CXXXIV, Issue 2 Tufts Observer, Since 1895 Tufts’ Student Magazine
The Patterns Issue This week, we’re considering how patterns appear and reappear over time. What are patterns we have seen in our lifetimes? We’re thinking about the ways in which the present echoes the past as we look toward an uncertain future.
Staff
Feature Ben Kesslen
Editor in Chief
News Alexandra Benjamin Misha Linnehan
Managing Editor
Opinion Liza Leonard Jamie Moore
Creative Director
Arts & Culture Susan Kaufman Will Norris
Art Directors
Campus Dana Guth Emma Pinsky
Claire Selvin
Sahar Roodehchi Chase Conley
Rachel Cunningham Annie Roome
Multimedia Director Greta Jochem
Photo Director Lily Herzan
Lead Copy Editor Eve Feldberg
Lead Artist Jake Rochford
Voices Julia Doyle Poetry & Prose Carissa Fleury Web Julia Press MT Snyder Columns Henry Jani Photo Kyle Scott Conrad Young
Contributors Lilia Aronoff-Aspaturian, Judy Chen, Dora Finkelstein, Leili Ghaemi, Merissa Jaye, Jamie Neikrie, Bahar Ostadan, Sage Scanlon-Perez, Cyrus Veyssi
Design Abigail Barton Matt Beckshaw Benson Cheng Josh Goodman Kira Lauring Lily Pisano Hannah Vigran Interactive Deanna Barris Cathy Cowell Hannah Freedman Sibonay Koo Kayden Mimmack Justin Sullivan Video Anastasia Antonova Evie Bellew Aaron Watts Publicity Alyssa Bourne-Peters Yumi Casagrande Michael Dunkelman Alexis Walker
Staff Writers Sam Crozier Yaa Kankam-Nantwi Lena Novins-Montague Layla Rao Katie Saviano Grace Segers Alexis Tatore Wilson Wong Copy Editors Nicole Cohen Owen Cheung Nasrin Lin Christopher Paulino Alexandra Strong Fact Checkers Erin Berja Sivi Satchithanadan Editor Emeritus Carly Olson
Contents
5
Prose
13
Inset
20
Voices
Full Remission
A Tale of Two Tehrans 1/17/17: Entry 5
Ben Kesslen
Leili Ghaemi & Bahar Ostadan
FEATURE
2
Quirky No More
Claire Selvin ARTS & CULTURE
6
Black Representation in Campus Art Yaa Kankam-Nantwi
OPINION
8
A Space That Wasn’t Made for Me Cyrus Veyssi
CAMPUS
10 After the Order Will Norris
Sage Scanlon-Perez
NEWS
18 The Politics of Language
Learning
Katie Saviano ARTS & CULTURE
22 Return of the 80s Lilia Aronoff-Aspaturian OPINION
24 The Resistance Playbook Jamie Neikrie POETRY
26 Raíces Christopher Paulino
POETRY
17 Phases of Venus Merissa Jaye
28 Missed Connections COVER BY CHASE CONLEY
FEATURE
Feature
Quirky
More No Shifting Priorities in Tufts Admissions
By Claire Selvin
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PHOTOS BY ALEXANDRA BENJAMIN
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O
n January 18, the New York Times published an article titled “Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60. Find Yours.” As it happens, Tufts ranked 10 out of 38 selective colleges with more students (18.6 percent) from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent (11.8 percent), socioeconomically speaking. These figures reflected the makeup of the class of 2013. At the same time, the University’s admission rate shrinks every year. The admission rate during the 2009-2010 academic year was 27 percent. By the 2011-2012 academic year, this number decreased to 22 percent, and by 2014 only 19 percent of applicants earned spots in the class of 2017. Indeed, the Tufts Daily reported that the class of 2019 held the “lowest acceptance rate in university history” at 16 percent. The class of 2020’s official profile reveals, unsurprisingly, a new record-low admit rate at 14 percent. This same profile, however, does not reveal any information regarding socioeconomic demographics within the incoming class. Though the Tufts admissions website says that the University “is proud to meet 100 percent of the full demonstrated need of all admitted students” by means of student loans, grants, scholarships, work study, and ROTC, Tufts is not a need-blind institution. A prospective student’s ability to pay tuition is a consideration in the admissions process. Moreover, performance on standardized tests, often dependent upon costly preparation in the form of tutoring services, also influences an applicant’s chances, and therefore advantages wealthy students in the application process. Simultaneously, Tufts Student Action (TSA) is working to halt tuition hikes for the 2017-2018 school year. Shockingly, tuition for the 2003-2004 academic year was $38,269 (including room and board); tuition has risen every year since, and the current tuition is $68,200 (also including room and board). Taken together, these statistics raise questions about what the Tufts student body will look like in years to come. An increasingly competitive applicant pool coupled with an admissions process that doesn’t favor applicants from working or middle class backgrounds leaves many stu-
dents wondering whether the University is working to fix the problems laid out by the New York Times—problems that are tangible in the campus culture. What cost is Tufts willing to pay for prestige and nearIvy status? Karen Richardson, Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management, said that Tufts is ever more competitive partly due to rising numbers of qualified applicants each admissions cycle. Compared to the 15,042 applicants in 2010, Tufts Admissions received 18,419 in 2014. The class of 2020 was selected from 20,223 applicants, and roughly 21,000 applied this spring. “At the same time, we have intentionally chosen to maintain the current size of the student body,” Richardson said. “So, just by sheer numbers, it follows that the admit rate will be lower. That said, over the past several years we’ve also seen that the number of applicants who are highly prepared is growing steadily. As a result, we have to say ‘no’ to more students who fit the academic profile well and who would be great students here, but for whom we just don’t have the room. That’s not something we boast about—rather, we have to make some very difficult decisions, and we never take pride in having to say no to a student.” In addressing the striking wealth inequality within the University, Richardson discussed a four-year fundraising campaign led by President Anthony Monaco that raised $95 million for scholarships and “enabled the University to budget a record $19.278 million in needbased grants for the undergraduate class of 2020.” “As for the New York Times story, as an institution that is committed to inclusion, diversity, and equity, we care deeply about the gap identified by the study. We strive to make a Tufts education possible for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. We are proud to be one of a small number of universities committed to meeting the demonstrated financial need of all undergraduate students…We recognize that there is much to do to make a Tufts education more accessible,” Richardson explained. To this point, the New York Times article also revealed that “at elite colleges, the share of students from the bottom 40
percent has remained mostly flat for a decade.” It will likely take more than four years of fundraising to rectify institutional inequalities on campus. Some student tour guides recognize both patterns and changes in the prospective students visiting campus. Sophomore Charlie Zhen, who has been a tour guide since he was a first-year, noted that his tour groups are consistently and “overwhelmingly” White. “I haven’t really noticed much of an increase of people of color on tours. Though, I think Tufts is moving towards trying to achieve racial diversity at the cost of socioeconomic diversity, and I think those numbers are reflected in the class of 2020,” he said. Not much has changed, however, in terms of racial diversity at Tufts over the past few years. In the fall of 2013, 55.8 percent of all undergraduates in the School of Arts and Sciences were White, and in the fall of 2014, that number rose to 56.8 percent. About 67 percent of all undergraduates in the School of Arts and Sciences in the fall of 2015 were White. The official profile of the class of 2020 shows that 33 percent of first-years are American students of color. Of the 1,340 members of the class, 133 are first generation college students and 145 are international students. This profile does not reveal a total percentage for incoming White students. Junior Nihaarika Sharma, also a tour guide since her first year at Tufts, worked as a full-time tour guide this past summer. She echoed Zhen’s observations about tour demographics, and she also discussed a shift she has seen in the kinds of questions posed by students on her tours. “My tours have always been very predominantly White. They have been filled with, from appearance, upper middle class or upper class people. I think when I got started I got a lot more questions from prospective students on my tours about student life, about what it’s like to do extracurriculars on campus. And I feel like a lot of my questions have shifted to, ‘what was your SAT score?’, ‘what is this professor like?’, ‘what is this department like?’ Obviously, I can’t generalize if that has to do with how Tufts admissions markets itself or because it’s getting more competitive so now students are more concerned with their chances of getting in. I’m not sure February 20, 2017
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what it is, but that’s definitely a difference I have found,” Sharma said. Junior Avery Spratt, who has been a tour guide since her sophomore year, also commented on the types of students she finds on her tours. She said that she definitely feels a shift in who attends her tours and who, ultimately, enrolls at Tufts. “Not in my direct experience with admissions but in my experience seeing how the student body has changed recently, it seems like admissions is looking for something different. It seems like, for example, more students are interested in Greek life, whereas my freshman year it didn’t seem like everyone was getting involved…I think there is a very consistent change in who’s here,” Spratt explained. Spratt’s comments are supported by the fact that student involvement in Greek life has risen from 13 percent in 2013 to 24 per-
cent in 2016, according to the Tufts Daily. There exists a sense, among some students, that the student body is simultaneously stagnant in terms of racial and socioeconomic diversity, and undergoing a shift in sensibility and personality type. In addition, the institution itself seems to be facing an identity crisis of sorts. Sharma said that the messaging at information sessions—led by members of the admissions department— has changed since she began tour guiding. “[When I started tour guiding] it was more like, ‘Tufts is this friendly school where students will fit in and be accepted,’ and I feel like the information session I went to over the summer was all about Tufts’ research grants, the kinds of professors we have, the kinds of cool research we’re doing, and it’s less about being a place of acceptance for everyone. I don’t think it was necessarily super intentional, but there’s definitely a shift in showing Tufts as this big, reputable institution rather than 4
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just a place for students. That’s what I’ve noticed with several people in the admissions office—they were all kind of emphasizing the same thing,” Sharma said. Richardson, however, believes Tufts falls somewhere in between a small liberal arts college and larger research institutions. She said that Tufts considers its peer institutions to exist on both sides of this spectrum. “We sit in an interesting place because we are part of NESCAC and tend to have a smaller liberal arts college feel,” she said. “But, at the same time, we are a top tier student-centered research university. So, we do see overlap in applications
silly in a lot of ways and they don’t want us to look like we’re a school full of really odd people.” She continued to explain that she believed admissions would like to project that “Tufts students are serious but passionate about what they do,” she said. Spratt, on the other hand, believes that Tufts Admissions seeks to bolster its applicant pool and sense of inclusivity in the discontinuation of its use of “quirky.” “They want it to be inclusive and if you don’t feel like a ‘quirky’ person they want you to feel like you still have a place here at Tufts. I think it’s an effort to make Tufts more appealing to every applicant. I think they want it to be represented
What cost is Tufts willing to pay for prestige and near-Ivy status?
with both NESCAC schools and major research universities.” In a similar vein, Tufts admissions has dropped its “quirky” branding strategy and opted for “passionate” as the word to characterize the Tufts student body, according to Zhen. “They basically said that quirky had a bad connotation and wasn’t part of the Tufts brand that they were trying to market. I think passionate just has better connotations in their minds,” Zhen said. Sharma added that the admissions team discourages the use of “quirky” on tours because it detracts from the University’s desired rigor and seriousness. “They’re very strict on ‘don’t use the word quirky on your tour,’ I guess because they think it gives Tufts this image of being this weird school and we’re supposed to be in line academically with Ivy Leagues. I think the word ‘quirky’ makes Tufts look
as ‘we have a lot of diverse interests’—they don’t want it to be like ‘we’re weird, and if you’re not weird then don’t bother.’ My first training, they were like, ‘Don’t say quirky, don’t try and make it seem weird.’ I didn’t like that. I think quirky is an appropriate term to use to represent Tufts’ student body.” Spratt continued, “I feel like there’s a lot in admissions that tour guides are not a part of. There feels like there’s some kind of shifting of priorities going on.” The focus on lowering the acceptance rate does not lend itself to increasing socioeconomic diversity. There seems to be dissonance between what Tufts purports to value and the steps, or lack thereof, it takes to foster palpable change within the student population. Perhaps, as colleges and universities vie to become increasingly exclusive, Tufts might muddle its priorities and lose its unique character in the process.
FEATURE
Prose
Full Remission By Ben Kesslen the tumors in my father’s body made him softer. i remember seeing him cry at a restaurant because his sisters sent a bottle of wine to the table and they live in colorado and we were in new york and he missed them. he said when he gets chemo it feels like the medicine is burning through his veins. he aches everywhere after, deeply. i watch him walk from the car to the bagel store that i like and he doesn’t. i think the bagels there are perfect but he thinks they are too large and dense and they never have the whole wheat options he wants. he is the one who is sick but he lets me choose where we get breakfast. in his walk i see that his hips are hurting. he calls me when everything seems to be going to shit and this time i cry. i forget to ask how he is feeling but it doesn’t matter because he wants to listen. i watch him drink a bai 5 antioxidant drink and i say, “isn’t it a little late for that?” he doesn’t get what i mean at first but once he does we both laugh. he says he needs a book to read so i buy him howard zinn’s “a people’s history.” we often fight about this country and i thought this might change his mind. i go home for thanksgiving break and see it on his nightstand. he says sometimes it is hard for him to concentrate and read after treatment but he is committed to finishing it. i rant about astrology at the dinner table and how my cancer sun makes sense in conjunction with my scorpio ascendant. he, a capricorn, says, “i guess i’m a cancer now, too.” i knock on the door after it took me 8 hours on the bus to get from boston to new jersey in what should be a 4.5 hour trip but always takes much longer. he doesn’t know i’m coming home for yom kippur. i ring the doorbell because he didn’t hear the knock. when he sees me he breaks down, and so do i. the next day my family goes to temple but he and i stay home because he is too immune deficient to be in crowds and he doesn’t want to hear the rabbi say his name during the mi shebeirach. we sit together in silence and read. when he goes upstairs to get something i run into the kitchen and grab pretzels that i quickly scarf down and return to my seat pretending like i had been there the whole time. i’m supposed to be fasting. i know he isn’t going to die but he keeps dying in my dreams and i don’t want to be hungry in my last memory with him. he tells me he wants to get a dog when it is all over. he says we’re gonna name it “chemo.”
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
February 20, 2017
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Arts & Culture
Black Representation in Campus Art By Yaa Kankam-Nantwi
T
hough these past few weeks have been rife with stories of turmoil and resistance, Beyoncé Knowles kicked off Black History Month with an announcement of the imminent arrival of not one, but two more Carters, and a beautiful photoset to show for it. Shortly after, the world was blessed with new music from Sampha, Syd, and SZA to soundtrack Black Twitter’s eruptive celebration. Of course, these events did not magically clear the clouds of anxiety that the current political climate has hung over many of our heads, but they did shed some light on the avenues for Black joy that still exist. After all, when is a “good time” to be Black and joyous when so often comfort is predicated on forgetting our identities? Many of us have taken to the streets, classrooms, and social media to voice our concerns surrounding Trump’s administration and moreover, systems of injustice and oppression. And much like the aforementioned musicians, others have turned to the arts and creative expression to forge the world they want to see. It is in this vein that the Black Theatre Troupe and Caribbean Dance Team were established at Tufts.
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This January, sophomore Melanie Horton and junior James Austyn Williamson revived Tufts’ Black Theater Troupe. Inspired by their time in Professor Monica Ndounou’s Black Theater Workshop class last spring, Horton and Williamson created an artistic space on campus where they would not have to leave their identities at the door. Tufts’ Caribbean Dance Team was created in the fall with a similar impetus and intent, the newest addition to the growing community of predominantly Black dance groups that also includes African Dance Collective, ENVY step team, and Blackout step team. Unlike Caribbean Dance Team, Black Theater Troupe has historically existed on campus, although according to Horton, “it just hasn’t been sustainable. Student leaders either study abroad or graduate and things fall through, so it’s come through Tufts in cycles.” For this reason, membership dwindled and eventually the troupe became inactive, until now. Both Horton and Williamson were involved in last year’s production of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, an experience Horton considers a
contribution to her eagerness to carve out room for more productions that center the Black experience. Citing the only two Black theater productions at Tufts, Gem of the Ocean in 2016 and For Colored Girls in 2010, Horton emphasized that it wasn’t so much the content that they felt was lacking, but the platform. “We both really felt that the drama department and a lot of performance groups on campus can feel very exclusive to people of color. What does it mean to enter a space where you should be discovering yourself as a performer but feel like there aren’t enough interesting roles because of your race?” Staying true to the rich history and diversity of Black storytelling and oration, Black Theater Troupe hopes to organize various workshops that will culminate in an end of year showcase to the power of performance. A long history of Black student arts groups on Tufts’ campus precedes the Black Theater Troupe and Caribbean Dance Team. Art, in this sense, is not only a way of communicating a story, but also a means of forging community. Ranging from the formerly published Black Literature Journal, Onyx, to the recently aired
ART BY NICOLE COHEN
Arts & Culture
TUTV docuseries, Roots, Black students have long been pushing against dominant images of Tufts to center their truths. For example, on any given day, you could ask anyone procrastinating in the Capen House lounge what their favorite a capella S-Factor/Essence song or SWAT Spoken Word performance is, and their face would probably light up with one too many memories of screaming loudly with friends in the front row of Goddard Chapel and Hotung Café. These groups recreate the sights, sounds, and feelings that a lot of Black students as-
sociate with “home” and cannot find elsewhere on campus. Tufts’ Caribbean Dance Team hopes to continue this pattern. Started by senior Antonia George and sophomores Anjalique Knight and Christihanna Morrison, the Caribbean Dance Team is disrupting notions of apolitical dance by centering identity and culture in its art. According to George, the “lack of Black dance on this campus” and history of erasure in other dance groups underlined the need for a place that serves the interests of those who grew up dancing in Black homes, but may not necessarily have “formal” dance training. “Caribbean dance incorporates different people and different styles. We don’t want to be competition-focused,” George said. “It’s also a community for those who have danced mostly for fun.” Echoing similar sentiments, senior Fehintola Abioye of ENVY, Tufts’ women’s step team, said, “It’s not intentional, but I really do think it’s important that ENVY is all POC and predominantly Black women because at an institution like this, it is so easy to get whitewashed.” ENVY co-captains Menbere Kebede and Nadeerah Lamour also spoke to this by stressing the importance of the community that dance allows for, as well as the art itself. Given the history of policing Black bodies, dance in particular provides an opportunity to turn the body into an instrument of communication. By this principle, it is more something to be remembered than learned. Noting this inextricable link between
Black history and rhythm, George alluded to the beauty of harnessing this power, stating, “I think it’s important to have Black spaces built on the tradition of different Black dances across the diaspora. And it’s especially important at places like Tufts, where there are definitely people who have had access to all sorts of training and think that they have [more of] a say on what it means to be a dancer.” What with being constantly inundated with discouraging headlines and policies, it is easy to feel as though we are not doing enough to carry the world on our shoulders. Not only is this an impossible burden for one to bear, but it also does not allow for us to find acts of resistance in our everyday existence. Sometimes, even just managing to find happiness is radical in itself. Thus, through community and performance, groups like Caribbean Dance Team and Black Theater Troupe are unapologetically creating necessary spaces that celebrate the arts inclusively, and inadvertently, the people in them, too. Furthermore, creating tradition in this way is an essential part of memorializing Black students’ histories and experiences on this campus for years to come. For instance, despite not having tangible records, ENVY still does their signature step routine nicknamed “the Jonathan,” and S-Factor will always perform “One More Time,” and in turn, so will the students who come next, carrying their legacies. As George puts it, “It’s fun, but it’s also important.”
Art, in this sense, is not only a way of communicating a story, but also a means of forging community.
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FEATURE
Opinion
A Space That Wasn’t Made for Me By Cyrus Veyssi I am solely speaking about my experience as a queer, Persian man. I do not claim to understand or hope to speak for anybody else but myself. My experiences have been socialized by the immediate environment in which I was raised, and I fully realize how I have historically been complicit and involved in some of the systems and organizations that I criticize in this piece. My effort to improve as a person and to hold myself accountable for my actions is one that is not devoid of mistakes.
D
uring recess one day in middle school, one of the coolest kids in my class, an attractive White male, asked me who some of my favorite singers were. Anxious to make a good impression, I thought of the Whitest shit I could come up with to please him: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kurt Cobain, and Dave Matthews Band. I think I threw in Lil Wayne as well, because I have found that many White boys love reaffirming their “hipness” by admiring and “identifying” with Black rappers. I grew up in a predominantly White, affluent neighborhood and attended a “prestigious” prep school in the greater Boston area. I quickly learned to value White activities like theater and tennis, both of which I really enjoyed, but all the while felt excluded from socially. I began to consider White, muscular men with rigid jawlines and blue eyes to be the epitome of attraction and beauty, shaping the way I began to look at myself in the mir8
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ror, and later contributing to the ways that I would begin to modify my body. At the same time, my experiences assimilating to various aspects of White culture seemed to juxtapose with my identity as an Iranian-American. My parents emigrated from Iran to France and finally settled in Brookline, MA. I grew up in a house with Persian art, poetry, and music. I ate homecooked Persian food every night, spoke Farsi with my family, and celebrated being Iranian by attempting to recognize the social implications that I thought being Iranian would mean. Growing up, I always imagined that I would experience a universal bond with other Persians. I believed that the experiences we seemed to face as a community would transcend our often divisive, intersectional identities; however, I didn’t recognize how difficult it would be to navigate my Persian-ness as a queer man. I didn’t want to acknowledge the deeply rooted masculinity and patriarchal structure embedded within Persian culture that doesn’t give space to those with divergent and non-normative identities—specifically, queerness. Identifying as gay, then eventually developing my sexuality to fit my own definition of queer, became an aspect of my identity that began to deteriorate the bond that I had tried to sustain between the Iranian community and myself. Once I began to realize how difficult it would be to find any space where my queerness and race could interact, I began to feel a deep sense of resentment towards myself. Never feeling
quite Persian enough became a recurring sentiment at events, vacations, and dinners with my extended family. I found that my queerness seemed to dissuade my desire to “feel” Iranian by participating in the hypermasculine activities and homophobic discourse that is rampant within many Persian social contexts that I have experienced. As I sought to develop my identity further in college, something about associating myself as brown and not specifically as Persian began to muddle my identity and prevent me from characterizing my experiences as separate or unique. I don’t know what it feels like to be Latino. I do not identify as South Asian, nor do I consider myself an Arab—and so to experience struggle through the lens of an identity that cannot be located has made me feel that my brownness will not, and cannot, find a space to exist freely. Whether it is being misidentified or having my racial identity questioned, I have developed an uncomfortable relationship with claiming, accepting, and embracing being Iranian. Whenever people used to ask about my ethnicity, I always responded by saying, “I’m Iranian.” Recently, however, I have begun to use the ethnic origin of my identity as a signifier of the unique culture that I ascribe myself with. Identifying and introducing myself as Persian marks an important and unique ethnic exclamation that has reaffirmed my desire to separate myself from other Middle Eastern and Arab cultures. (Contrary to popular belief, Persians are not ethnically Arab.)
FEATURE
Opinion
Growing up and hearing Iran described as a threatening or evil country also made me uncomfortable publically identifying as Iranian. The inability for people in this country to disassociate Iran’s government from its people created this self-destructive pattern for me to constantly prove myself as a good Iranian, or disassociate from my racial background altogether. Today, I still find it terribly difficult navigating being Iranian given the current immigration ban that Trump’s administration has brought forth. Beyond the fallacy that the nations listed in the ban have contributed to acts of terror in the US (not a single one has), I also find it disheartening to hear Iran constantly being referred to under a false pretense of danger, terror, and otherness. Despite the many “diverse” spaces at Tufts that foster important discussions for people of color, queer and trans folk, and women of color, I have found that, in order to join or feel welcomed into these dialogues or spaces, I have had to compromise aspects of my Persian-ness or succumb to adopting a generalized Middle Eastern identity in order to engage in discussions. I think that the socially conscious and active community at Tufts, which claims to create an inclusive space for marginalized individuals, tends to fall short in understanding or acknowledging the nuances of certain intersectional identities that exist on this campus, mine being one of many. I grew up speaking Farsi, and the food that I have always eaten at home is so specific to Iran that I’m disheartened when our culture is generalized and placed within the socio-cultural landscape of others within the Middle Eastern region. Obviously, I am not angry or even shocked that people don’t know much about Iranian culture. It is rather the disregard or almost a sense of entitlement that many people on this campus feel when trying to locate my identity that puts me off. Surprisingly, people who major in American Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology have been among those who have asked me things like how spicy I like my food or if I know how to make homemade hummus. Iranian food is not spicy at all, and we don’t make or eat hummus unless we go out to restaurants. Many times when White social justice activists on this campus ask me how
ART BY CYRUS VEYSSI
to create more inclusive spaces for POC, I find that I want to respond by saying, “Stop trying to speak on behalf of identities that you don’t understand. Stop trying to locate us to fit into your social justice narrative or use us as a token to investigate intersectionality when you’re blindly unaware of the fundamental differences among our cultures.” For example, not identifying as a Middle Eastern gay man but rather as a Persian queer man is often read as commendable or “interesting” by socially active folks at Tufts, but rarely incorporated
Stop trying to speak on behalf of identities that you don’t understand. into important discussions or dialogues about queer POC on campus. The socially unaware, uninvolved, and generally conservative White population at Tufts is truly, however, the largest demographic of individuals who have contributed to my anxieties, anger, and frustration. Whether it’s the toxic White gays at previous Rainbow House parties who have commented on and fetishized my “exotic” appearance, or White girls who love to tokenize my foreign queerness, you have all failed to recognize your internalized racism and homophobia. From the one frat brother who spat on me and my friend outside of a frat house window next to Moe’s my freshman year, to the multiple athletes who have physically pushed and verbally assaulted me at campus events, you have reminded me that regardless of how hard I try to make myself palatable to you, I am still a Persian faggot. Despite all of this, however, I am constantly reminded of how privileged and lucky I truly am. My parents worked hard to put me through private school and then a liberal arts education, and I am forever grateful to them for the sacrifices they have
made for me. My family has given me the space to explore my identities and embrace me for wanting to hold onto or discard certain aspects of both. Many queer Persians, however, do not experience the same socio-economic security, access to education, and support that I have, and I recognize how fortunate I am to even be able to speak up and feel safe to talk about this on a platform where my thoughts can hopefully be validated. Luckily, I have been able to surround myself by some incredible Persian individuals on this campus who strive to include the intersections of my queerness and Iranian identity into a dialogue, giving me a platform to exist comfortably. Given the current socio-political climate of this country, I have found an immense amount of strength and desire to make our identities as Persian known. My unequivocal love for Persians is the strongest it has ever been. No ban on earth could prevent us from succeeding wherever we go, and I hope that people at Tufts and those within my close circle of friends will seek to learn more about Iran’s immensely influential history, culture, and society before calling themselves allies. For me to not speak up after three and a half years of having people speak for me would further detract from the importance of celebrating my overlapping, yet individually valid, identities. Tufts, especially in its attempts to create or foster a space for inclusiveness, does not incorporate the nuances of socio-cultural and ethnic identities into a space that unidentifiable individuals can claim. To the handful of professors and sociology majors that see my identities as unique and different, I’m appreciative of you. To the greater socially “active” and “progressive” White activists, women, and queer folk on campus, practice what you preach. Don’t think that individuals like me are not constantly trying to make ourselves palatable to you either. And finally, to the ex-lovers, friends, and professors who have pushed me into a space where self-hatred and discomfort have permeated the past 15 years of my life, I look back on my experiences with you not as moments when I wasn’t strong enough to speak up against you, but rather as a time when I just didn’t know where to locate that strength. February 20, 2017
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Campus
After the Order Tufts community members respond to the Trump administration’s Islamophobia By Will Norris
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n Thursday, February 9, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to uphold the freeze of President Trump’s temporary ban on the immigration of refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries to the United States. The order’s legality is being deliberated, and what happens next remains to be seen: the case may reach the Supreme Court, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Trump is also considering “just filing a brand-new order.” Whatever the fate of the present ban may be, the Trump administration has made its intentions clear. For students and faculty at Tufts with roots in Muslimmajority countries, the Trump administration’s unmistakable anti-Muslim agenda is cause for alarm, casting doubt over their futures in this country. According to the Tufts administration, the order originally applied to as many as 73 international students, faculty, and researchers from the seven targeted countries—Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen—at Tufts on visas and 10
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green cards. All who were abroad have returned safely to the US since the ban first took effect. The final member of the Tufts community to return was Mehdi Harandi, a visiting researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who was welcomed at the airport when he arrived in Boston on February 3. “It felt absolutely surreal,” said junior Neeki Parsa, an American citizen of Iranian heritage, describing first hearing about the ban. “The fear sunk in a little bit after that. Throughout the day I was talking to my brothers and my cousins, and their fear kind of permeated into me.” “I think the first thought I had [after learning of the ban] was ‘I’m going to walk across the podium for graduation completely alone,’” said senior Leili Ghaemi, a citizen of Iran and Canada. “And then I was like, ‘Oh shit, I can’t go for spring break with everyone.’” She said the implications of such a ban for her professional life after college didn’t immediately register. “Right now I’ve already started shifting my focus to jobs in Europe,” she said. “I think that’s
going to be the biggest impact: after graduation I might leave here and just wave bye for some significant amount of time to the US, which is crazy.” An Iranian PhD candidate who wished to remain anonymous fears he won’t be able to find a job here if the assignment of H1B visas, which are given to foreign workers in “specialty occupations,” is suspended. “What makes [it] worse is that I cannot travel outside of US for job interviews while I’m finishing my PhD here,” he said. If he finished his PhD at a university in Europe or Canada, he added, “it [would] be hard for my advisor to continue working on the projects I am involved [in] here, and he may lose funding because of that.” Islamophobia has long been a fact of life for many Muslim Americans, but a president advocating something like this ban is uniquely alarming, explained Kamran Rastegar, the Director of the Arabic program at Tufts. He has been forced to think about the future of his family in a way he never has before. “[My wife and I] both come from a background where we PHOTO COURTESY OF TUFTS UNIVERSITY
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Leili Ghaemi
realize that stable situations can change very quickly,” he said. “Sometimes people who don’t move quickly enough and [see] the dangers can get caught up and be targeted.” Rastegar was born in the US but lived in Iran until he was 13 years old, when his family was forced to flee the country. “Those are new experiences, new feelings for me personally as an American,” he added. Senior Parissa Alerasool, a dual USIran citizen, described Trump’s order as “a slap in the face. It makes us feel like second class citizens.” Most of the students who commented described it as an often crippling source of anxiety and distraction from school. “I have to stop, take deep breaths,” said Parsa. “Sometimes I’m overcome with emotion. That’s been especially hard in the first few weeks of his administration.” Despite the temporary restraining order (TRO), the normal bureaucratic mechanisms of immigration law remain unreliable after abruptly grinding to a halt under the ban. Rastegar expressed concern for a friend who moved to the United States from Syria several years ago with a regular immigration visa that will soon expire, leaving her with two options: leave the country or reside here illegally. “The concerning thing is that even absent an [executive order], the administration can PHOTOS BY CYRUS VEYSSI
do a lot simply with bureaucratic adjustments to make life difficult for people like her—extending times for visa reviews, increasing requirements,” along with other impediments, he said. Parsa said a cousin with an Iranian citizenship was planning on moving to the US in “a month or two” and was beginning to get her documentation in order when the ban derailed the process. Yet, even if she is permitted to enter the country, “The only question now is whether she feels comfortable coming under Trump’s administration, given that her own immediate family all lives in Iran,” said Parsa. “If she got a green card and
“I’m afraid the administration can and already has put into place [...] a range of policies that allow for interrogation, harassment, detention and expulsion.”
place […] a range of policies that allow for interrogation, harassment, detention and expulsion (the latter only in the case of non-citizens) of individuals based solely on the discretion of local agents, with little review or recourse,” he explained. Many Muslims are rightly hesitant to test their luck at the border given the threat of mistreatment, and the Tufts administration has continued to advise international members of the community from the seven countries against travelling outside the United States. Since its release, the federal government’s statements regarding the ban have been contradictory and confusing, and Tufts Muslim Chaplain Celene Ibrahim said there is “concern that the current administration will go further in implementing policies that unnecessarily target law-abiding Muslims.” Prasant Desai, an immigration lawyer hired by Tufts for counsel on the immigration order, said at a forum on February 3 that there is “no indication that the government has any plan” to deport Muslim immigrants. Nonetheless, students interviewed by the Observer said it’s hard not to fear the worst. “Even if the ban is overturned, with the current perspective of the new president, I am worried that he would deport every citizen of those seven countries in [the] case that Neeki Parsa
was safe here, and another ban was issued or relations got worse, she’d have a lot to worry about.” Reports of airport security disregarding the TRO and the Trump administration’s overt contempt for the judicial system have “sown a lot of terror, confusion, and consternation,” said Rastegar. Border security guards already have wide latitude with the reasonable suspicion standard for those entering the country; even if the order itself is overturned, “I’m afraid the administration can and already has put into February 20, 2017
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a terrorist attack happens in the US,” said the anonymous PhD candidate. Parsa said that the unpredictability of the Trump administration is terrifying. “Sometimes I’ll have a wild thought—what if scenarios,” Parsa said. “And I’ll say it out loud around a friend, like, ‘You don’t think Trump would do xyz to Iranians?’ And I’ll look at them and they’ll be silent because I know they can’t tell me he wouldn’t. I know no one can make a prediction in good faith on what he will or won’t do.” No previous administration has taken such a heavy-handed and blatantly Islamophobic stance on immigration, but the way many of the Muslim students and faculty describe it, suspicion and contempt of Muslims at the highest levels of government is nothing new. Trump wrote in a statement that “the seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror,” referring to House Resolution 158, which limited access to visa waivers for immigrants who had traveled to the same seven countries subject to Trump’s current ban. Obama signed it into law in 2015. “It’s hard to speak ill of the past because the present is so bad,” said Rastegar, “but when Trump says ‘my policies are just furthering of Obama’s, or being serious about what Obama was doing,’ [he’s] not entirely lying.” Obama could have vetoed that bill but chose not to, said Rastegar, “so there’s a hole in the dam, as it were, and now it’s broken up into a bigger stream.” Obama often spoke against Islamophobia in his two terms in office, but a report by Human Rights Watch found that FBI stings have routinely targeted Muslim-American communities and that “human rights violations often occur at every stage of a terrorism prosecution, from investigation through trial and sentencing” in the years since 9/11. Obama also drastically expanded the use of unmanned aerial drones to conduct strikes in non-combat zones throughout the Middle East and Africa, often under equally questionable legal pretenses. The result, in no small part, is a deep mistrust of Muslims in segments of the population. Sophomore Muna Mohamed, who grew up in a Somali community in Lewiston, Maine, said she was surprised “at the [immigration ban], but not at the 12
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sentiment” underlying it. As a Black Muslim living in Maine, one of the Whitest states in America, Mohamed has faced prejudice her whole life. She recalled an episode from her youth when a man threw a pig’s head in her mosque. “If anything, my experiences growing up have equipped me to handle these situations, which is why I probably won’t respond in a ‘Can you believe this happened?!’ way,” she said. People who didn’t grow up “with that additional bigotry” may be reacting more strongly than she is. “People say, ‘This isn’t
Trump has brought the country’s simmering Islamophobia to a boil by validating anti-Muslim prejudice.
our America.’ But this is what America’s always been to me.” Trump has brought the country’s simmering Islamophobia to a boil by validating anti-Muslim prejudice. “People are definitely emboldened by the Trump presidency,” said sophomore Sara Arman, an American citizen of Somali and Yemeni heritage. “And it got to the point where, the other day, I was on the Red Line and this guy came up to me and started questioning me about my religion and scarf.” She said no one intervened, despite her obvious discomfort. Such instances have become more frequent, she added: they used to be “months or years apart.” Mohamed agreed. “My sister will tell me stories all the time of old White men at Starbucks telling her
to go back to her country,” she said. “That has peaked a lot more, just because part of Maine was really red over the last election. When I go back to Maine it’s always been like that, but now it’s worse.” Ghaemi said she has never been particularly aware of politics in the past, but described news of the ban as a wake-up call. “Everything that’s gone on in 2016—I realized how shut off I was,” said Ghaemi. “Since this has happened I’ve been very much keeping track of everything—not just this ban but everything that’s been going on.” Though she has long been politically engaged, said Parsa, the threat posed by Trump’s presidency may affect her plans for after college. “This definitely complicates my vision of the future,” she said. She now may take time off before applying to medical school, as she’d planned to do, in order to focus on politics. Arman, who currently works at the Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center in Boston, echoed that sentiment. “When I thought about what I want to do with my degree, I wanted to go into diplomacy or something like that, but now I feel like I need to do something much more real and maybe continue working at the [Center],” she said, where she’s “working with people who are directly affected by this.” The new administration’s hostility toward Muslims is gravely concerning, said Mohamed, but to simply despair is counterproductive. “Knowing all the stuff we’ve already been through, we will get through it because we always have,” she said. “If anything it’ll fuel me even more.” Thousands packed into Copley Square in Boston to protest the immigration order on January 29 following demonstrations at numerous airports across the country the night before. “Going to these protests and seeing how everyone’s reacting—it kind of gives me hope for this country,” said Alerasool. Rastegar said he found recent displays of solidarity encouraging. “That’s the countervailing feeling that there’s this really strong basis for an alternative to the future that the administration seems to be trying to foretell,” he said. He suspects Trump’s administration probably didn’t expect the resistance to consolidate the way it has. “They’ve gotten pushback and they’re learning a lesson. The fight is on, and I don’t think they have all the cards.”
February 20, 2017
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The past couple months I’ve been feeling uncharacteristically unreactive, uncommitted—to injustice, to tragedy, to anything really. Sometimes I feel like a college-educated woman more consumed with her split ends than genocide. I have all the paper, none of the words—all of the ink, none of the responses. Atrocities are swiped aside quicker than Tinder matches. But frequency should not suggest normalcy. There is no “re-sensitize me” button. America cultivated my thinking and Iran nurtured my feeling. The sweet spot between my home and my homeland is sacred—and under attack. Empathy is free, you know—but the consequences of apathy are costly.
I feel like I have finally woken up. I was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to Vancouver, Canada with my parents at the age of eight. Since then, my family became split throughout the world and so began my nomadic life. I carry a dichotomy of Eastern and Western cultures, perspectives, and ways of life. I am a Third Culture Kid, a Canadian, an Iranian, the child of selfless and hardworking immigrants. My background has rendered me into an adaptable and global citizen. But now...Now, I feel alone, violated, scared, angry, and ashamed. I could write in detail about how unfair it is that I am (currently) not able to show my parents the life I live in Boston as they are Canadian-Iranian, have the privilege of their presence at my graduation, or travel out of USA with the assurance of my reentry. What have I done to deserve this? Is being born in Iran a crime? Do you, reader, even know anything about Iran? But no, I want to talk about shame. I am ashamed at myself for not feeling these sentiments as severely for my peers who have suffered, for the innocent people of the world pained daily, for all those who have been wronged for the bigoted favor and idiocy of others. Why did I not stand up and scream for them, as much as I did the past two days for myself and others in my situation? I should have been just as frantic. I want to reiterate the concept of empathy, of understanding and compassion. It is necessary, now more than ever, to go out of our comfort zones and try our hardest to feel the terrors that others are facing. I am awake now, and I can’t sleep.
ART BY ANNIE ROOME AND RACHEL CUNNINGHAM
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Poetry
1. through me, you first fell into the flat heat of florence summer. I held you in the mornings and late afternoons. Your father studied physics and the theories of vibrating strings. Behind his booming sonatas, I became like the hills, that silent surrounding.
2. I was seventeen in the lemon grove with you, I remember warm grass and looking up at the web of branches above you, the movement of celestial bodies all dim light on my back .
3. When I was six we walked and walked and walked in the evenings and you told me about Kepler and Copernicus and the details of planetary rotations. You drew diagrams of a heliocentric universe in the dirt. You said that I was born of sinful fornication so no one would marry me. So I take the veil. Rename myself Sister Maria Celeste.
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
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B
etween the years 1995 and 2013, the number of students at Tufts learning the Arabic language increased eightfold. In 1995, 25 students at Tufts were enrolled in Arabic language courses. In 2002, there were 50 and by 2013, there were 199 students. This reflects a nationwide trend charted by the Modern Language Association’s language enrollment database. In 1995, 4,444 students in the United States were studying Arabic, which more than doubled to 10,584 in 2002. By 2013, there were 32,286 students of Arabic nationwide. The first Arabic class at Tufts was taught in the spring of 1986 through the Experimental College. Until 2001, the Arabic program had remained small, with only one professor teaching. There was no department. Rather, the program was housed through Modern Languages, a precursor to the current language depart-
and the University began to stress the necessity of language study in an increasingly globalized world. After 9/11, interest in Arabic surged at Tufts, as did funding for Arabic language opportunities. The University quickly hired its first assistant professor of Arabic in 2002. Professor Amira El-Zein then expanded the program, and the Arabic major was established in 2009 after the current Director of the Arabic Program, Kamran Rastegar, was hired. “9/11 was unquestionably the major catalyst to the expansion of the [Tufts] Arabic Program,” Arabic language Professor Rana Abdul-Aziz recalled. “And a similar dynamic played out around the country.” Abdul-Aziz believes that Arabic has remained in the spotlight since 9/11 because of the continued post-Arab Spring regional turmoil and the fight against ISIS. In her opinion, “Arabic is no longer just
“The Middle East is a region that we as Americans are tied to in very violent and complicated ways throughout history, and the violence has tried to undermine the beauty of the Arabic-speaking world.” ments. Classes were small, consisting of two to four students each, and a significant portion of the program was conducted through independent study. “The Ex-College has always been an incubator,” said Ex-College Director Howard Woolf. “We have always tried to be responsive to student interest.” Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, Portuguese, and Arabic all started as Ex-College courses, and later migrated into their respective language departments as interest increased 18
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relevant because of the political and economic significance of the Middle East, but is also relevant here in the US.” According to a Pew Research Center study, Arabic is the fastest growing language spoken at home in the US, with the number of people ages five and older who speak Arabic at home growing by 29 percent between 2010 and 2014 to 1.1 million. This is largely due to the increased number of Arab immigrants in the US, as well as its growing Muslim population.
Abdul-Aziz has seen the reasons that students have chosen to study Arabic at Tufts change as the program grew. “Initially, student motivation was very pragmatic—we had a lot of students who were interested in working in the US government in fields such as translation, security, and media analysis,” she remarked. However, these reasons have broadened over the years, as students have come to use Arabic in a wide range of fields, including education, law, the NGO and non-profit sector, refugee resettlement, and public health. The majority of students enrolled in the program at Tufts are International Relations majors fulfilling their language requirement. For sophomore Eva Kahan, her curiosity about Arabic started with her interest in Hebrew and the history of Semitic languages. However, her reasons for studying Arabic have changed throughout her enrollment in the Tufts program. “Through my study, I started getting more interested in international relations, international security, and conflict resolution,” she said. Kahan realized that her continued study of Arabic and ability to speak the language would allow her to learn more about her developing interests in a deeper and more nuanced way. Senior Neha Bhatia was initially drawn to Arabic because she knew little about the region and culture. “I found that the Middle East is a region that we as Americans are tied to in very violent and complicated ways throughout history, and this violence has tried to undermine the beauty of the Arabic-speaking world that is lost on a lot of the Western world. Being in Jordan only reinforced my love of speaking Arabic and growing to understand the intricacies of Jordanian dialect which are so reflective of such a vibrant and beautiful culture,” she said. ART BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM
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The Politics of Language Learning By Katie Saviano While the Arabic program has expanded significantly, other language programs, such as Japanese, have seen stable enrollment. Charles Inouye, Director of the International Literary and Visual Studies program, believes that this is because, generally, Japanese is not a language that most people study for purely political reasons. In his opinion, “Japanese is not tied to economics or politics, but rather, tied to culture,” he said. For senior Chelsea Hayashi, her reasons for studying Japanese are personal. “I spoke [Japanese] fluently as a child and went to Japanese school every Saturday, but as I grew up I started distancing from it, and started to lose it. By the time I reached high school, I realized how badly I wanted to relearn and reclaim Japanese,” she said. In an interview with the Observer, Gabriella Safran, the Director of the Slavic Department at Stanford University, said there are three or four main motivations for studying Russian that she has seen. These motivations are foreign relations, high culture, linguistic interests, and for heritage speakers. Oftentimes, it can be a combination of factors. In the United States, interest in the study of non-European languages such as Russian and Arabic can be traced back to political themes in United States foreign policy. US security concerns have often resulted in government funding for language learning in order to bolster cultural and regional understanding. Government funded programs such as Boren and the Critical Language Scholarship reward students for studying languages that the US deems critical for its foreign policy.
According to Professor Safran, enrollment in Russian studies at Stanford has risen in the last year. She has mixed feelings on the reasons for this uptick of interest, admitting that “we’re feeling strange that [Putin] is good for our enrollments.” Professor Abdul-Aziz expressed concern about the decreased interest in the study of humanities subjects overall within higher education. “This will impact foreign language learning and we have already begun seeing the impact on language study here at Tufts,” she said. Professor Safran expressed a similar sentiment. “Until 2008, we felt like everything in the humanities was suffering except for languages and that foreign languages were immune because they were useful…With 2008, we started to see a downturn, even with the foreign languages,” she said. Indeed, statistics from the Modern Language Association show that language enrollment in the United States dropped 6.7 percent between 2009 and 2013. According to classics Professor Susan Setnik, this is often tied to monetary circumstances. “Unfortunately, funding for the humanities (including languages) has been declining since the recession in the 1990s. When funding is reduced, schools are forced to make choices,” she said. Abdul-Aziz agreed. “With federal funding opportunities such as Fulbright and Critical Language Scholarships already pared over the last year, if this trend continues or accelerates under the Trump administration, this could negatively impact how many students choose to tackle a
challenging language like Arabic,” AbdulAziz explained. Inouye also worries about the potential effects of Donald Trump’s presidency on languages and international diplomacy. “Trump has stirred up a lot of discussion about the world and Americans’ relationships with other places,” he said. Inouye sees the US as a nation torn between the poles of an isolationist tendency on one hand, compared with a strong desire to maintain and improve its foreign relations on the other. He expects that the harder the Trump administration pushes towards isolationism, the more there will be a pushback from those citizens committed to fostering a diverse, global community. “With Trump, it’s hard to tell what the overall effect will be,” he noted. “Will it be less interest in the world, or the contrary? Will [his presidency] make us more aware of the world and the need to understand it?” Regardless of the effects of the presidency and current political climate, students at Tufts remain committed to the value of language learning and the subsequent cultural understanding with which it provides them. For this reason, Inouye noted, language learning opportunities remain important to many as a defining feature of the Tufts liberal arts education. “You come to Tufts because Tufts is the place in the US where international education is a priority. Students realize the value of language learning,” he said.
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1/17/17: Entry 5 By Sage Scanlon-Perez
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think all caregivers are given the knowledge that their children are going to break their hearts. It is not spelled out in any new-age parenting book, not even whispered by aunts at a party. It’s just known. While all caregivers have this information, I think of my own mother as I write this. I was the angelic parasite that spent nine months feeding on my mother, and I will continue to tax every ounce of her strength ’till death do us part. So is the tale of children. For every nine times the little devils yell, “I hate you”, or embarrass you, or any other form of torment, there will be something that makes it all better. All it takes is a macaroni art-piece, a head cradled on a shoulder, or a small innocent smile to make it all worthwhile. A caregiver’s heart probably breaks twice a day, maybe just once for the more experienced or those with lower standards. But there are a few cases that stand apart, instances in which their heart is not broken but shattered. I remember this time quite clearly. *** The time I shattered my mother’s heart: It was summer, the kind of late August day that dulls your mind. Minutes pass by concentrating on the progression of sweat trickling down your back. Even at high noon the day is quiet, the cars moving in slow motion. As an eight-year-old yet to appreciate the beauty in tanning, who had already gone through my stack of library books, these days suffocated me. I melted on the couch, shoulders grazing the floor. My eyes were the only part of me moving, they traced my moma’s movements. She darted this way and that, her hands busy, her mind busy, she never stopped moving. I saw the Salvadoran flag
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blowing in the wake of her constant movements. Billowing proudly it screamed its presence, screamed “different!” Just eight years old, and I recognized that my mom was different. I tiptoed the line between defending her and aggravating those differences. When a passing car yelled, “Go home wetbacks” at us, it was my hand that reached over and pushed down on the horn, my eyes that shot lasers at the disappearing truck. But the flipside of defending was pushing, pushing with all my might— the dance of the first generation. “But all my friends stay up this late, yes this show is appropriate…” She usually abided by my wishes, maybe because my desires reflected her successful assimilation. But probably because, although I was gifted her coloring and features, I had adopted the quick-lipped stubbornness of my surroundings. My soil was fertilized with independence. Tucked into my understanding of our balance, was the whisper of what I did not know. These whispers were long, they filled the night as she huddled over calling cards her Spanish creeping in the shadows, words highlighted by the moonlight, “La guerra, desaparecido…” Her secret past kept me guessing at the things I didn’t understand, couldn’t fathom. Her gaze fell on my upside-down figure. Her mouth moved, too quickly, words spilling out hanging in the air around me. They sat there, sinking onto my body pushing me deeper into the couch. Her eyes beseeched me, but my tongue was heavy, my eyes defiant, I wasn’t gonna move. Please she said, her hands grew busy in the silence, filling the void with movements, straightening, cleaning— everything in super speed. Didn’t she know the world was slow today? She had to go pick
PHOTO BY SAGE SCANLON-PEREZ
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up my brother, school starts earlier for older kids. I had no desire to sit in the hot car, my thighs sticking to the seat—not today. Today I would sit on the couch, sweat streaming like a river down my back, today I would not move. She continued to move, a fly buzzing around the room, why would it not leave me in peace? Leave me to melt. Sage, please, she said from the other room and still I remained silent, noncompliant, unmoving. We need to leave in five, we’ll get ice cream on the way, please we just need to go. Still I remained. My actions cloaked in the red, white, and blue of my flag. My confidence boosted with my ability to say no, to shut her down. It was no longer about moving, but winning. She came closer, stood over me. Her words slipping with their desperation, please she begged. It would only take a second. Here we were at the front lines, a border separated us, we stood on opposite sides of a deep ravine of beliefs, ideas, experiences. Standing at only 4’11”, her figure cast a pitiful shadow, hunched and small under my gaze. Her flag hung limply in her shadow. Sprawled on the couch, I was soaring, I said, no. She stepped back, taking the defeat. She said she would return soon, that I was to stay inside, that she would be back very soon. With the murmur of the engine growing more faint, propelled forward by my win, I came alive. The world was no longer trudging along, in fact everything was moving quickly. What could I do with this freedom, this special parcel of time? It hit me, wouldn’t it be fun to hide in the back yard, to be missing when she returned? I sprung into action, running down the stairs and into the safety of the backyard. I crawled in next to the largest Sage bush, tucking myself in its embrace. Giggling under the leaves. This was fun because my mom had felt people disappear before. My mom knew what it was like to come home and have someone never return. In her country those were acts of war, but this was fun! Because I would make myself found. I delighted myself by imagining her expression when I made myself found, oh
the relief! She would cherish me ever more knowing that I am not missing, I am here. I watched the ants climb diligently around me, one after the other. The air no longer felt light; the sun was being pulled down, shadows throwing themselves dramatically across the lawn. My river of sweat ran dry, and I shivered in my new space. Noises picked up around me as everywhere living things prepared for the night, the family next door came home and the sounds of cooking began. The birds returned to their nest, the ants kept marching as I sat huddled, waiting. Until suddenly, a wild animal screamed into the night. A sound so wrought with terror I couldn’t understand it. It pierced the air, sending the ants running, the birds echoing its scream. And in the echo I finally understood its cry. It was crying my name. The foreign noise came closer and in my fear I tucked myself further into the brush. Shrinking back in terror I watched through the leaves as the thing, my moma—a blur of embroidery—searched, screaming for me. The streams started before I processed they were my tears. The guttural noises of my own creation rose above me, a white flag signaling my defeat. The animal, my moma, saw its feeble wave; she turned away from my form and slowly walked back up to the house. With her went the light of the day. The family next door buckled down for dinner. The birds cuddled their young, bats appeared flying low as I howled my distress to the sliver of the appearing moon. Stars appeared, they lit my way as I dragged my heaving soul back up to the house. Inside it was light, the clear smell of allnatural cleaning products heavy in the air. She stood with her back to me, broom in hand. Everything was sparkling, all evidence of the day disinfected and straightened under her steady hand. Mothballs, dirt, tears, a hair-tie, and shards of her heart lay in a pile at her feet, ready to be swept into the trash. Collected by the trash truck the following day. *** How do you love someone after you shatter their heart? How do they love you?
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Arts & Culture
Return of the MFA Juxtaposes Past and Present
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By Lilia Aronoff-Aspaturian
content warning: sexual assault
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he film Ms. 45 opens in a design studio in New York City, with color-blocked dresses hanging on the lithe model in the shot, and along the walls. The bright pinks, turquoises, and purples immediately set the time frame: the 1980s. The camera pans deeper inside the studio, and follows three female seamstresses out the door and into their metropolis. They are wearing slouchy, oversized blazers and bootcut jeans, sauntering down the street as men shout for their attention, hurling unwanted compliments and jeers. The Film Department at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA) screened Ms. 45 on Friday, February 3 as the second installment of their 2017 “On the Fringe” film series, which showcases an American cult film from the 1980s each month. Katherine Irving, Manager and Assistant Programmer of Film and Video at the MFA, said that the idea behind the series came from four people in the MFA film department, all of whom grew up in the 80s and 90s and were feeling nostalgic for the films of their childhoods. “The films are full of tangible special effects: puppets, slime, miniatures, stop motion,” Irving said. “For us, these movies are the most fun.” While Irving and the MFA Film Department revived the 80s in this series as a result of nostalgia for their past, its resurgence means something different for younger generations. Young adults and teenagers who were not alive in the 80s romanticize its culture and art. Films like Ms. 45 came from a place of unrest and unhappiness, but younger generations see it as an aesthetic, as something to commodify, market, and post on Instagram.
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Fashion houses like Balmain have not just referenced but entirely borrowed styles from 80s fashion, like shoulder pads and wide, waist-cinching belts. It is difficult to walk into any popular clothing store today and not see a denim jacket prominently displayed. The trends of the 80s are returning, and people are loving it. The 2016 Netflix release of Stranger Things, a project by the Duffer Brothers, was praised by audiences and critics alike, and heralded for its nostalgia and sharp references to 80s popular culture. “Balancing style and substance is always challenging for a series like Stranger Things, but the show is perfectly calibrated,” wrote Joshua Alston of The A.V. Club. “It feels like watching a show produced during the era in which it’s set, but with the craft of today’s prestige television.” While the films are stylistically appealing, they also touch on a number of serious issues from the past that have continued into the present day. Ms. 45 follows main character Thana (Greek for the feminine “death”), a non-speaking seamstress, who goes on a killing spree around New York after being sexually assaulted. Armed with a .45 caliber pistol stolen from her attacker, she seeks revenge against the men of New York who ogle her and assume consent from her silence. Produced during the second wave feminist movement, the feminist revenge flick attempts to reconcile two perspectives on the debate around hypersexual depictions of women in media. “Pro-sex” feminists viewed sexualized female characters as celebrating sexual liberation and autonomy, while “anti-porn” feminists insisted that these characters were products of male objectification. Irving described the way Ferrara balances
ART BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM
Arts & Culture
these two attitudes in Ms. 45. “On one hand, Thana is a desirable protagonist who revels in her own sexuality, using lipstick like war paint and leather pants as armor. On the other hand, Ms. 45 addresses the problem of female objectification with scenes of street harassment unfolding through Thana’s eyes,” Irving said. Though today the feminist movement is far and beyond the second wave, it remains a prominent conversation in politics, academia, and now also in commercial advertising. The question remains of how to have agency over one’s own body while being objectified by the male gaze. How is it possible to feel fully autonomous when a majority-male government continues to pass laws and sign executive orders that make reproductive rights unreachable, and sexual assault the fault of the victim? Pretending to be part of a past era, particularly through active engagement with film, offers an escape from the current political world events. Sophomore Cody Eaton, who attended the screening of Ms. 45, explained that his engagement with current popular culture stems from a need to escape an almost constant flow of troubling news. “Engrossing myself in art is quite therapeutic and alleviates the stress of the present, even if it is a direct cultural response to said events,” he said. The next film in the MFA series is John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing, a thriller about alien life attacking researchers in Antarctica. The alien is a shape-shifter, assimilating and impersonating anything it touches. The Thing was a box-office flop, garnering movie reviews that called it unbearable and uninspired. In 1982, Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote in his review of the film, “There may be a metaphor in all this, but I doubt it.” In spite of these reviews, the film gained a cult following and affected viewers with its unsettling and thought-provoking nature. It, along with other 80s science-fiction films such as Blade Runner (1982) and They Live (1988), used themes of paranoia, isolation, and confusion to comment on anxieties of non-human impostors who pass for “one of us.” In the vein of these dystopian films, the fear of the end of ‘life as we know it’ has not yet disappeared from the American public’s psyche. Though film may not distract audience members from their anxieties and fears surrounding the political climate, it, like most art, can supplement meaning and understanding to feelings of outrage. Every day since the election—and even before— art in various forms emerged in response to the current political climate. From Trump paintings made of menstrual blood, to the collaboration album “Our First 100 Days,” artists are using their personal experience not just in protest, but also
to connect with people struggling alongside them. “[Art] ties in the emotion of countless unaccounted-for individuals that don’t have direct power over the economic or social issues that impact them personally,” Eaton said. “It allows me to feel what other people are feeling, to some extent.” The resurgence of 80s trends, and specifically the movies in the MFA series, offer audiences a form of escapism and also reflect the sociopolitical climate of the time they were made. “The 80s were an era of political conservatism, and these films feel like a reaction to that. They represent this urgent desire to break free of conservative ideology and Hollywood conventions. The films weave together punk, futuristic, and desert imagery to create a brand new aesthetic,” said Irving. The films are political and are from an epoch that, though idealized in the minds of younger generations, was troubled in similar ways to our current time. An overwhelming feeling after the past election and inauguration has been that the country is regressing to the policies and ideas of times past. Nonetheless, Irving and her team hope that the film series will provide audiences with what she hoped for from the start: an escape. “Frankly, we could all do with some levity and catharsis these days,” she said. “Sometimes you just need to sit in a dark room and laugh or scream
February 20, 2017
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FEATURE
Opinion
A
mericans are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore. They have taken to the streets to protest a corrupt system and a government they view as antithetical to fundamental American values. In the White House, they see an illegitimate president who is presiding over one of the most troubling times in American history. They are marching and chanting, calling and mailing, rebelling and resisting. They intend to make their voice heard. The date is April 15, 2009, the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow” is the number one song in the country, and the Tea Party has just been born. The post-recession era was an especially fertile time for grassroots movements, providing a case study that sheds light on how to effectively resist in the current Trump era. Out of the Great Recession and the election of Barack Obama emerged the Tea Party and Occupy movements, each intent on driving the country in a different direction. Today, the radical conservative ideology espoused by the Tea Party has become institutionalized, represented at all levels of government. The Tea Party, at its core, was a coalition of rural White Americans who distrusted government, opposed trade, sought the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and espoused nationalist, xenophobic, and White nationalist ideologies. Sound familiar? In contrast, the Occupy movement, which worked to highlight and halt the corrupt practices of Wall Street—as well as the fundamental flaws of the capitalist system—has largely faded from political and cultural relevance. Its lasting legacy has been a renewed focus on wealth inequality and the introduction of “the one percent” into the national lexicon, as well as a few regulations on the banking industry. But even this legacy is being erased. Roughly
a week ago, President Trump issued an executive order signaling his intent to repeal Obama-era checks on risky Wall Street practices and weaken Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Protection Bureau, an agency tasked with regulating consumerbank interactions. How did Tea Party ideology reach the mainstream so quickly, while Occupy policies have mostly fallen out of favor? While there are a number of lessons to learn from the protests of 2010 and 2011, the most important one may be to start small. The Tea Party movement began online, sparked by Rick Santelli’s fiery speech on the floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It exploded onto the scene on April 15, 2009 with taxday protests that drew somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people. But even after this large demonstration, the movement’s focus was always limited in scale. It was reactionary, rather than proactive, standing in opposition to specific policies such as the Affordable Care Act and proposed immigration reform. The Tea Party recognized that American politics operate on a very specific incentive structure, one in which representatives are accountable only to their constituents. With this tenet in mind, the Tea Party focused on the local level, identifying weak state and Congressional candidates. They organized voters within those candidates’ districts to attend Town Hall events and open forums, flood the phone lines, and capitalize on any public appearance by the representative. They made sure that any opposition to
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their agenda would make a representative’s job and life much more difficult. A coherent resistance strategy means always remembering who the target is. The Tea Party challenged moderate Republicans—inspiring ire from the GOP—but their chief opponent was always President Obama. Every phone call, every protest, every letter was crafted specifically to obstruct President Obama’s agenda by diverting and impeding his efforts. They distorted the facts around the Affordable Care Act, taking a conservative healthcare policy and turning it into the unpopular “Obamacare” that is on the verge of repeal today. The Tea Party was able to remain relatively cohesive because it was united in its opposition to the first Black president. Occupy Wall Street was also a reaction, formed in response to the banking and financial practices that created the Great Recession. But from the moment it began, Occupy was broad, disjointed, and unruly. We Are The 99%, a Tumblr page espousing the movement’s priorities, included this statement: “We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.” What were the political priorities here? They were calling for housing, banking, wage, healthcare, and general economic reform, but goals were unspecific and there was a lack of clear leadership. Who was the target? Initially, the Occupy movement’s chief opponent was Wall Street, but banking institutions are not publicly accountable (unless you believe their shareholders have
By Jamie Neikrie
FEATURE
Opinion
power, which you shouldn’t), nor is the banking industry the most direct way to address many of the other grievances listed in the movement’s mission statement. In addition, the Occupy movement was an inherently liberal movement that was effectively demonizing and undermining a liberal president, a move that earned them little support from the Obama administration or Democratic members of Congress. In recent history, it is Black Lives Matter that has most successfully operated a localized movement. BLM is also a reactionary movement, driven by centuries of subjugation and sparked by the killings of unarmed Black people at the hands of the police. It has clear targets—the police, the criminal justice system—with demonstrable policy prescriptions—the Movement for Black Lives platform includes universal voter registration and ending the privatization of police forces and prisons. Its organizing structure exists primarily at the local level, focusing on community change in areas like Ferguson, Baton Rouge, and Baltimore. Another strategy that elevated the Tea Party was its decision to select leaders and champions of the movement. The Tea Party movement went national on February 4, 2010, hosting the first Tea Party Convention nearly a year after the initial protests. Despite experiencing its own challenges—internal factions, allegations of racism—the Convention cemented the Tea Party as a national movement with a coherent agenda. Sarah Palin’s keynote address fomented her as the de facto leader of the movement. Leaders, even ones as unruly as Palin, have the potential to guide and hone a movement. Two weeks after the Convention, Palin called for Tea Party activists to abandon third party rhetoric and attempt to work within the Republican Party. This became a very important distinction between the Tea Party and the Occupy movements. Liberal movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter have shown an uneasiness with selecting leaders. Can you name the leaders of the Occupy movement? While Micah White is identified as the movement’s co-creator, Occupy intentionally adopted a nonhierarchical process that
PHOTO BY DORA FINKELSTEIN
emphasized consensus building as a prerequisite to any decision. The same is true of Black Lives Matter, which has emphasized community over leadership. Chelsea Fuller, director of the Advancement Project—a California-based BLM chapter—said that BLM protests are spontaneous, rather than organized by one person or body. “ We don’t get [people] onto the streets, they get themselves onto the street,” Fuller said. This strategy creates a more inclusive environment: one in which no single voice is elevated above the movement’s collective voice. But a nonhierarchical strategy sacrifices cohesion and direction. The Tea Party’s success may demonstrate that the benefits of clear leadership outweigh the costs. The last strategy that the Tea Party utilized was arguably their most crucial, and the strategy liberal movements are wariest of adopting. The Tea Party—in part thanks to its leadership—made the conscious effort to work within the formal structures of American politics. Liberals on the coasts often argue that their candidates are already liberal, and occupy a seat that is safe for a Democrat. The Tea Party avoided this problem by challenging moderate Republicans in the primary, flanking them from the right. At first, this strategy was unsuccessful, as was demonstrated in the 2009 upstate New York congressional race, where Tea Party candidate Doug Hoffman ousted moderate Dede Scozzafava in the primary only to lose in the general election. But this didn’t stop the Tea Party. Less than a year later, during the 2010 Senate race, they helped secure the election of Tufts graduate Scott Brown (A81) to represent Massachusetts. At this point, as The Economist put it, the Tea Party had become “America’s most vibrant political force.” Today, the Tea Party caucus includes four members of Senate and 48 members of the House of Representatives, while its rhetoric and ideology have become the core of the GOP platform. For very good reason, BLM and Occupy saw government as part of the problem rather than the solution. The Occupy movement viewed politicians as Wall Street stooges and perpetrators of the capitalist system, while the Black Lives Matter movement sees a politi-
cal system that has historically oppressed and ignored Black voices. While these sentiments are understandable, they significantly limit the ability of a movement to create change. The Tea Party demonstrated that movements are most successful when they use grassroots support to influence the institutional level. This is the argument Occupy founder Micah White makes in his new book, The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution. “One of the things that I think [Occupy] tested—that we found out not to be true—is this idea that you can basically build the ideal society, the ideal microcosm, that you don’t need to become the ones in power,” said White. “Now we are realizing, no, actually, sovereignty can only be achieved through winning wars and winning elections.” The takeaways are numerous. The Tea Party was successful because it adopted a localized approach, selected leaders that honed the movement’s mission, and utilized both a bottom-up and top-down strategy. Is the Black Lives Matter movement prepared to become more of an institutional political force by running their own candidates, even if some might view this as tacit approval of the government that has in many ways created and perpetuated the oppression of Black Americans? Is Black Lives Matter or a movement potentially spurred by the Women’s March prepared to choose leaders to represent them, even if this elevates certain voices above others? And are liberals prepared to adopt strategies of obstruction, even if they perpetuate political polarization and lower Democrats to the Republicans’ level? These are fundamental dilemmas. But if liberals can reconcile their distrust of institutional change, they may find the key not only to resistance, but to progress.
February 20, 2017
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FEATURE
Poetry
Raíces By Christopher Paulino content warning: sexual assault Heat and humidity, “Oppressive.” Welcomed as they soothe my weary bones, Wake in my blood the song of my ancestors, On my father’s side, Africans dragged through the Caribbean On their way to build this country from scratch. On my mother’s side, Spaniards raping the women of the island of Puerto Rico, Mestizos, “mixed,” as though passively And years ago, merengue y bomba combinaron Y el latido de mi corazon nació. But the heat and humidity, “Oppressive.” I have been to the motherland, No passport necessary, Property of the U.S. but different laws And a much higher poverty rate. Castillas of the men who took everything Still standing, still beautiful. Flamboyan trees with deep red flowers like the one my grandmother’s ashes were spread under. Salt in the air, rain in the forest, Turquoise oceans with white sand beaches, the shriek of coquis, Pain and suffering palpable And a fire that will not be put out.
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FEATURE
Poetry
I have never been to the fatherland, Never walked the streets of Santo Domingo, where my father was born, Only watched him struggle to become a citizen, Studying U.S. history with me when I was ten and he was forty, A man who had lived in the United States for over thirty years, Who taught himself English, sin acento, Who went away to trade school on his own, No place to stay, and only 500 dollars in his pocket for the year, Who came back to care for his sick mother. Who lost his father still in the DR, His father whom I never got to meet. But the heat and humidity, “Oppressive.” I was ten before I understood that my family, my history, was not white. I was thirteen before I understood that my father was black. It was not until high school that I understood my bloodline was just that— Bloody. It was not until even later that I realized the ache in my belly Was for a language, for a culture, for places forsaken Simply out of necessity. Simply out of survival. But the heat and humidity, “Oppressive.” Despite the music in me it conducts.
February 20, 2017
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MISSED C NNECTIONS The Missing Variable You’ve been in several math classes and a club event with me, and we always make intense eye contact. You have dark hair, round eyes. I’m always dozing in class but still being foolish enough to sit in the front row. I also have dark hair, round eyes.
Snow Day Sighting You were the boy in a dark green puffer walking backwards in the snow on 2/9. Your resilience, the way you leaned into the wind, the way your backwards hat dangled at a jaunty tilt. I was the dark figure watching you longingly from behind Dewick’s glass windows.
No Rezervations It was the first week back from school. I was walking into the Rez. We bumped into each other, made eye contact for a weirdly long amount of time (my friends thought that we knew each other already). You have brown hair, I think you wore glasses? I was and am the woman with the half-up curly hair and blue eyes who was probably wearing corduroy pants and a backpack with bears on it.
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Tufts Observer
February 20, 2017
ART BY LILY PISANO
PHOTO BY JUDY CHEN
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