TUFTS OBSERVER VOL. CXXXVI
ISSUE 3
MATTER
table of contents MATTER: Molecules do not hold the monopoly on matter— don’t get stuck on cement slabs, pie crusts, or top soil. Remember: the stuff of imagination carries weight, too.
FINDING YOUR FIT
2 - feature
By Jordan Lauf and Myisha Majumder
VOICES
OPINION
ARTS & CULTURE
5 - KADDISH FOR BLAZE BERNSTEIN
8 - A History of every thing
10 - statements on stage
By Ben Kesslen
By Emmett Pinsky
By Henry Jani
POETRY & PROSE
INSET
POETRY & PROSE
12 - nuclear
13 - what’s the matter?
17 - memorial drive
By Issay Matsumoto
Collaborative
By May Hong
CAMPUS
OPINION
NEWS
18 - STRENGTH IN REMEMBERANCE
21 - this is not a drill
24 - SPATIAL AWARENESS
By Riva Dhamala
By Carissa Fleury
By Sonya Bhatia and Vivian Tam
ARTS & CULTURE 26 - BLACK PANTHER By Jonathan Innocent and Jordan Anthony Elijah Barnes
MARCH 5, 2018 Volume CXXXVI, Issue 3 Tufts observer, since 1895 Tufts’ student magazine CONTRIBUTORS Rebecca Tang / William Liu / Tati Doyle / Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert / Joseph Tsuboi
STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Carissa Fleury MANAGING EDITOR: Emmett Pinsky CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Kyle Scott PRODUCTION MANAGER: Chase Conley FEATURES: Jordan Lauf / NEWS: Sonya Bhatia, Vivian Tam / OPINION: Britt, Gabriela Bonfiglio / ARTS & CULTURE: Henry Jani, Chris Paulino / CAMPUS: Riva Dhamala, Lena Novins-Montague / POETRY & PROSE: Merissa Jaye, Priyanka Padidam / VOICES: Alexandra Strong, Juliana Vega / COLUMNS: Myisha Majumder, Sivi Satchi / COLUMNISTS: Trina Sanyal, Georgia Oldham, / PHOTO DIRECTOR: Abigail Barton / PHOTO: Roxanne Zhang / LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER: Jordan Delawder / ART DIRECTOR: Annie Roome / LEAD ARTIST: Nicole Cohen / MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR: Kayden Mimmack / MULTIMEDIA TEAM: Deanna Baris, Dennis Kim, Peter Lam, Emily Lin, Hans Tercek / VIDEO DIRECTOR: Aaron Watts / VIDEO: Emai Lai / PODCAST DIRECTOR: Izzy Rosenbaum / PODCAST TEAM: Daniella Faura, Malaika Gabra / PUBLICITY DIRECTORS: Alyssa Bourne-Peters, Ashley Miller / PUBLICITY TEAM: Ellie Mcintosh, Sarah Park, Amy Tong, Nasrin Lin / STAFF WRITERS: Ben Kesslen, Jonathan Innocent, Issay Matsumoto / DESIGNERS: Kareal Amenumey, Niamh Doyle, Daniel Jelcic, Kira Lauring, Erica Levy, Zahra Morgan, Priya Skelly LEAD COPY EDITOR: Owen Cheung / COPY EDITORS: Jesse Ryan, Jennifer Han, Ruthie Block, Anita Lam, Ryan Albanesi, Brittany Regas
Feature
Finding your F.I.T.
How pre-orientation groups are working to become more accessible By Myisha Majumder and Jordan Lauf
2 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
ART BY NICOLE COHEN
Feature
E
very September, over 1,000 Tufts first years flood campus, with open hearts and minds, hoping to connect with fellow new Jumbos. While freshman orientations are a common feature at most colleges, Tufts also has a unique addition—the Pre-Orientation, or Pre-O. PreOs grant new students the opportunity to connect with classmates even before orientation begins in a smaller, less overwhelming setting through a variety of different groups—like First-Year Orientation CommUnity Service (FOCUS), Tufts Wilderness Orientation (TWO), Conversation Action Faith and Education (CAFE), and more. Unfortunately, while Pre-Os can be a major part of developing meaningful connections early on for students, it comes with the danger of isolating those who do not participate in Pre-O. The first few weeks of freshman year usually come with awkward, repetitive introductions, and one question in particular: Did you do Pre-O? For many, the decision not to do Pre-O stemmed from reasons like wanting to spend more time with family, or not wanting to force themselves to make friends. For others, though, the decision to not participate in a preorientation was tied to identity. Students and administrators involved in leadership of Pre-Orientation groups have been working recently to make these programs more welcoming and accessible for a wide variety of students of marginalized identities. The influx in Pre-O participation has been fairly recent, with the large jumps occurring between 2014-15 and 2015-16 according to the assistant director for Pre-O programs, Christa Ricker. But Pre-O isn’t a new concept—in fact, TWO has been around for 31 years. Currently, a nearly proportional percentage of White students, international students, and students of color participate in Pre-Orientation programs. Ricker shares that for the class of 2017, 64 percent of students who identify as White participate in Pre-O, 64 percent of students who identify as an ethnicity other than White (including multiracial), and 66 percent of international students participate. This is the result of intentional work on the part of administrative leaders involved in Pre-O programs to reach
out to marginalized communities in order to assure students from various identities that they have a place in a Pre-Orientation program. “The last few years we have increased the number of students coming from low socio-economic backgrounds, by providing more financial assistance and doing more outreach,” she shares. Though costs of doing a Pre-Orientation program can be prohibitive for some students, Ricker shares that financial aid packages have been largely successful. While the Pre-Orientation website states that program costs can vary from $0-$400, Ricker shares that 65 percent of students who were given the opportunity to attend a
Students and administrators involved in leadership of preorientation groups have been working recently to make these programs more welcoming and accessible for a wide variety of students of marginalized identities. Pre-O at a cost of $200 (which is 50 percent of the maximum cost) participate. Ricker also states that all Pre-O’s, with the exception of Students’ Quest for Unity in the African Diaspora (SQUAD), are entirely participant funded, which means funding comes entirely from students’ program payments, with no additional budget from the University. Yet even in this model, administrators have managed to find a way to continue to make Pre-Os accessible for low-income students. “Over the last few years we have successfully worked to increase the number of students offered discounts, as well as lower the cost to them,” Ricker says. “Students who are given a cost of less than $100 are sent a personal email from me.”
However, the program costs do not always represent the entirety of the expenses that participation in a Pre-Orientation program often requires. TWO in particular has an intensive and expensive packing list, including pricey items such as a large internal or external frame backpacking pack, sleeping bags and pads, and hiking boots. While the TWO site indicates the presence of a Gear Lending Program for students with financial aid, students may be uncomfortable or embarrassed to lend gear amongst peers who purchased new equipment. The website also specifies that students who do not come equipped with these items will not be allowed to participate in the program. While Tufts emphasizes allowing students to participate in Pre-O regardless of financial status, other issues of identity come into play. In 2016, with the introduction of SQUAD, there was an obvious increase in the percentage of Black students participating in a Pre-Orientation group. But while the groups of students participating in Pre-Orientation groups might be increasingly diverse, without an equally representative staff, students of marginalized identities might not feel comfortable participating in a program, or feel properly supported throughout the duration of their Pre-Orientation experience. Student Pre-Orientation coordinators have recently been working to combat this problem by making a conscious effort to recruit staff members that reflect the makeup of student participants themselves. “Both for the support staff and leader hiring process we considered how our applicants identities would contribute to the program, experience of first-years, and the TWO community,” TWO support staff coordinator Harper Wise shares over email about the work he is doing to ensure the diversity of TWO staff, alongside TWO staff coordinator Doo-yun Her. “And it’s really exciting that the TWO 2018 staff is more diverse than ever before.” And Pre-Orientations geared specifically towards providing a community for students of marginalized identities can be an effective tool in facilitating a transition to life at Tufts. Alejandro Baez, a Tufts first-year and the recently elected MARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 3
Feature First Generation Community TCU Senator, participated in both Bridge to Liberal Arts Success at Tufts (BLAST) and Global Orientation (GO). BLAST, a residential six-week program that incoming students participate in the summer prior to coming to Tufts, is unique in that it aims to assist in creating a smoother transition for students who may be the first in their family to attend college or come from under-resourced high schools. Baez shares that “Students [in BLAST] are grouped with a cohort and they end up taking two summer courses. Various workshops and group bonding activities occur throughout the program which were incredible helpful in bringing students together.” While BLAST doesn’t necessarily qualify as a Pre-O, it still serves the purpose of allowing first-generation college students to bond with one another over shared experiences and get acclimated before the rest of the class enters. “BLAST ultimately made my transition to college a lot more manageable,” Baez shares over email. “Coupled with the amazing support system I gained, I’m feeling happier and more at home here at Tufts due to BLAST.” Kella Merlain-Moffatt, a Tufts sophomore who participated in SQUAD, felt similarly that her Pre-Orientation experience helped her find a sense of community before entering a predominately White institution. “The ability to be surrounded by people who I identified with and who looked like me early on was really important and I am grateful that I was able to
4 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
form some relationships before school was in full swing,” she shares over email. “…I knew I would be operating in White spaces for all 4 years, in classes, during O-week, in dorms and I just wanted a week of Blackness and understanding more about what it meant to be Black on Tufts campus.” Merlain-Moffatt is now a peer leader at the Africana Center, and her experience demonstrates that PreOrientation groups geared specifically towards providing a sense of community for marginalized groups on campus can be incredibly effective. There are two new Pre-O programs that will arrive Fall 2018, which will likely even further increase student participation in Pre-Orientation programs. Building Engagement and Access for Students at Tufts, or BEAST, is a new program based out of the Office of Student Success and Advising. According to Ricker, the program will be geared towards “students who identify as first-generation or of low-economic status,” hopefully increasing the demographic diversity of those who participate in the time-honored Tufts Pre-O tradition. There will also be a new art-based orientation, which explores the arts curriculums both at the Medford campus and the SMFA Fenway campus. Ricker shares that the new program “will orient students to Tufts by way of utilizing both the Medford and SMFA campuses, and give incoming students the opportunity to explore and create art. Both programs will follow the traditional model of student coordinators and
student leaders facilitating the experience for the first-year and transfer students.” Yet there is still the fact that despite good-faith efforts to make Pre-Orientation groups welcoming and accessible to all incoming students, not everyone who wants to do a Pre-O can participate. Ricker expresses excitement about the potential of a mandatory Pre-O, given the fact that it’s shown to have “positive and lasting effects on a student’s college career,” and that over 900 incoming students participated in Pre-O in 2016 and 2017. She also noted, however, that a mandatory Pre-O would come with challenges. “For starters we would need to shift from being participant funded to being university funded, which would cost hundreds of thousands each year, and would also really need to include more full-time staff… we would [also] need to look at how [Pre-O] flows into orientation, and the ways the two could be more intertwined than they are now,” she says. “We would need to look further at our program curriculum and make sure that students are getting consistent experiences, while also retaining the uniqueness each program offers.” Though a mandatory Pre-O might take years to implement, it might provide a solution to the gap that exists between those students who don’t participate and those who do, and finally make Pre-Orientation a fully accessible and universal Tufts experience. “I get really excited thinking about it,” Ricker says, “but I know there would be a lot of work to do.”
VOICES
I
n January of 2018, Blaze Bernstein was murdered. Samuel Woodward killed him. Samuel is a neo-Nazi. He belongs to Atomwaffen Division, a US White nationalist group whose members have been responsible for five killings in the US since 2017. Samuel killed Blaze because Blaze was queer and Jewish, and claimed he “tried to kiss him.” Blaze and Samuel went to high school together in Orange County, California, one of two states in the country where murderers can no longer claim a “gay panic defense.” Samuel stabbed Blaze more than 20 times and threw Blaze in a shallow grave that he dug in a public park. A couple weeks later, Blaze would have returned to the University of Pennsylvania. There, he worked on two campus publications, was always cooking,
kaddish for and loved to write. He would have been starting the second semester of his sophomore year. My second semester sophomore year, I caught unreciprocated feelings for not one, but two seniors; I skipped too many of my “Queer Pop” classes; I edited the arts and culture section of the Observer; I downloaded Grindr for the first time; I discovered the research topic that later morphed into my senior thesis; I shaved my head at 1:00 a.m. in the Arts Haus bathroom; I got my job at Tufts Recycles; I started brewing kombucha that everyone was too scared to try; I accidentally overslept my career center appointment; I said “Damn Daniel” way too many times; I refused to stay for Matt and Kim’s Spring Fling performance; I got norovirus; I
blaze bernstein
By Ben Kesslen
MARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 5
VOICES
forgot to wish my mom a Happy Mother’s Day. When I first heard of Blaze’s murder, my immediate reaction was to go to his Facebook page. I wanted to see what he was like. If I died and someone saw my Facebook profile, they would probably have a pretty decent sense of who I was. I thought the same might apply to Blaze. I looked through Blaze’s cover photos and found a picture that I can’t get out of my mind: Blaze is in what looks like a CVS or Walgreens, posing for a mirror selfie his friend is taking in the security camera monitor. He is holding a box of Key Lime La Croix. It turns out La Croix was Blaze’s favorite drink, and it was served at his memorial service a couple weeks ago. It sounds trivial, but I can’t stop thinking about this picture. Anyone who knows me knows that, like Blaze, I am queer and Jewish, and I love seltzer—I drink it so often that I am worried about my enamel eroding. Because I love seltzer, I know that Key Lime La Croix was the company’s first new flavor in a while, and its release was much anticipated. I keep thinking about this image. Blaze and his friend aren’t carrying anything else. It seems they went to CVS just to buy a case of Key Lime La Croix; they wanted to try it. The picture is 6 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
sweet and silly and exactly the type of thing I would do. I felt Blaze’s murder in inexplicable ways. I found myself crying while reading articles about his life. I called my mom and told her I loved her. I started wondering how I would be remembered if I were murdered by a neo-Nazi. I imagined which of my classmates might quietly be Nazis, which park I would be buried in, which causes people might donate to in my name. I wondered who would come to my funeral, who would take all my books, if someone would remember to cancel my Spotify subscription. I drove around Somerville and Medford searching for Key Lime La Croix—I hadn’t tried it yet. But after I couldn’t find it in Stop & Shop or Whole Foods, I gave up. I wondered if Blaze and I would be friends, if he watched “Grace and Frankie,” if he also found himself utterly befuddled by gender, if he listened to Troye Sivan, if he and I would have ever crossed paths. I wondered how to mourn someone I had never met, but who felt like my spitting image—a feeling new to me because people who look like me aren’t often murdered for simply existing. I messaged my rabbi on Facebook. I said the Mourner’s Kaddish. Mourning Blaze feels complicated when violence and death are omnipresent in 2018. Violence against queer and trans
people is on the rise—particularly for trans women of color. Georgia Tech Police shot and killed Scout Schultz, a non-binary and intersex student, while Scout was having a mental health crisis. People around the country are being denied access to life-saving healthcare, their heat is being turned off by their landlord as temperatures drop below freezing, their access to basic necessities like clean drinking water is constantly at risk. Parents are being detained and deported by an increasingly militarized ICE, innocent people remain incarcerated because they can’t make bail—the list goes on. On campus, I’m being told the biggest dangers are safe spaces and PC culture, yet there was a 258 percent increase in White Supremacist propaganda on college campuses between 2016 and 2017 and I don’t know a single student who died from a trigger warning. And then I found myself searching for Key Lime La Croix on a Saturday afternoon. Because all of a sudden, my material safety felt threatened—Blaze could have been me. It’s not that I had a sudden realization of privilege, that until Blaze’s death I didn’t recognize the structural and interpersonal ways I benefit from a complicated web of systems of oppression. Rather, his death made the violence feel close. For many queer and trans people, this violence is not new or shocking— Blaze’s death would be another to add to the ever-growing list of queer and trans people who have lost their lives to hate-based violence. And for Jewish people, many of us felt this type of Antisemitism was only something we heard in our grandparents’ stories. My dad asked me recently, “Are you more afraid to be gay or Jewish?” I didn’t know how to respond, but I could have told him that I now have a document saved in Google Drive entitled “My Will.” The first line reads, “If I die at the hands of a neo-Nazi…” It’s hard not to feel powerless when faced with this type of violence, like there was nothing I could do, like
VOICES this violence would forever continue, like my realization meant little in the face of seemingly insurmountable brutality. My rabbi messaged me back on Facebook. We met up and he asked me to take him to a place in the library where I felt a particular attachment or a visceral memory. I brought him to a stack in the back-left corner of the basement of Tisch—the HQ70s in the Dewey Decimal System. It was here, my freshman year, that I discovered that there are books all about queer Jewish people, where I read authors like Sarah Schulman and learned about people like Magnus Hirschfield. In the HQ70s I felt seen in a new and liberating way. For so long I had felt like there was nobody like me, like there were no other Blaze’s or Ben’s. My rabbi and I pored over books, we swapped stories and family histories, we talked about Judaism and gender and queerness and where they all intersect. I left the library and realized that I had been mourning. Recognizing that maybe the best way I could honor Blaze was by being Jewish and queer; by telling everyone I know that according to some of the earliest interpretations of
the Torah, Adam and Eve were never assigned genders; that Judaism is a religion that doesn’t demand answers or binaries, but rather asks us to sit in the inescapable messiness of life that we’re all subject to; that twilight is holy in Judaism because it forces you to stand not knowing exactly where you are (Is it day or night? Is it Monday or Tuesday?); that so much of Judaism is queer when we live under Christian hegemony; that to be Jewish means to fight deeply for what you care about, while still finding joy in the life you have. To be Jewish means to wrestle with catastrophe, to know it deep in your history, your lineage, your past, and your present. To be queer means something similar. What is remarkable about both is that they help us forge a path forward. To honor Blaze, I could drink Key Lime La Croix, think of him, and work to imagine a world greater, queerer, and more rooted in Jewish values than we now know.
To be Jewish means to wrestle with catastrophe, to know it deep in your history, your lineage, your past, and your present. To be queer means something similar. What is remarkable about both is that they help us forge a path forward.
MARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 7
A History
of
everything
By Emmett Pinsky
8 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
A
few weekends ago I took a 24-hour trip to New York, and as my Megabus hurtled down 9th Ave, a billboard caught my eye—only because there was nearly nothing on it. It read “Item #022: Capri Pants” in some Arial-adjacent font, along with a picture of—you guessed it— capri pants. White background, no logo, nothing. Over the weekend I kept seeing more and more of these cryptic billboards: Item #050: Hoodie, Item #104: Turtleneck, Item #019: Bucket Hat. I asked the friend I was visiting if she knew anything about the cryptic-maybevery-high-fashion billboards. She did. They’re advertisements for an exhibition at the MOMA called “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” that was on display between October 2017 and January of this year. According to the MOMA website, the show presents “111 items of clothing and accessories that have had a strong impact on the world in the 20th and 21st centuries.” The MOMA’s exhibition is not the first-time historians and cultural critics have used objects as an entry point for understanding specific historical moments, socio-cultural shifts, or individual lives. In 2013, then-Director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor released the book A History of the World in 100 Objects, which, true to its name, considers world history
ART BY EMMETT PINSKY
opinion
spanning over two million years through the lens of individual artifacts of all sorts. From stone hand axes to credit cards, the objects seem to speak through MacGregor’s narrative voice. Some objects—coins, vases, and thrones—tell stories of power, others—statuettes, paintings—speak of sex, but all of them share one thing: tangibility, matter, pure object-ness. The list of things I know about my grandmother, Barbara, is short. I know her name, her mother’s name, and I know the sad way that she died. To say that these three facts encapsulate the relationship I have with her, though, would be incorrect. My grandmother made pottery—so much pottery my family doesn’t know what to do with it all. She had a huge studio, all sun-bleached and beech wood and sky-lit, that I’d visit on my trips to Los Angeles to see my grandpa, Jack. I don’t think anyone had really touched much of what was in that studio since she died in 1986. And for that, I’m glad. The pottery she made—bowls, mugs, and vases glazed with slate grey, sweet lilacs, and deep blues too beautiful to admit—constituted Barbara herself in my childhood mind. Without any memories with her, Barbara became a book in my own head titled something like: A History of Barbara Kirsch Pinsky in 100 Ceramic Bowls. To study the history of a place, time, or person through objects offers a unique set of advantages and liabilities when it comes to historical interpretation and extrapolation. Studying individual artifacts is a type of of micro-historical approach, meaning it is concerned with a specific story, person, or place, rather than the sweeping and often generalized narratives of nations, war, and cultural trends that students might see in most history textbooks. Approaching the past through objects and artifacts is, I think, an essential and singular experience that allows us to engage with the past with a level of intimacy that is hard to achieve with primary sources like census data, marriage records, and death certificates—all of which of my grandmother’s I recently found, all of which make me feel, if anything, further from her. For texts like this—legal, written, governmental—can only give us a limited type of knowledge about the past. I’m in a research seminar this semester called Family Histories, taught by Professor Kendra Field. In class, we discuss both the benefits and consequences of using different types of historical evidence. In her research, Professor Field focuses on folklore, oral histories, and other types of storytelling that have been ignored or discounted in traditional historical analysis. I think objects and artifacts occupy a similar space as folklore in
terms of their relationship to what we think of as historical truth. One potential liability of approaching history through the interpretation of objects, says Professor Field, might be that there is “more room for your imagination to fill in the gaps, which means you’re relying more on your old biases.” In this way, reading history through objects would create an echo chamber for your own preconceived notions about the person, place, or era whose truth you’re hoping to uncover. On the other hand, though, this space for imagination might be exactly what traditional historical analysis is lacking. If there will always be facts and nuances about the past unbeknownst to us, what is the harm in making an educated and imaginative guess? Professor Field adds that this kind of historical interpretation is crucial, especially for “people who either weren’t writing, whose writings didn’t survive, or who were engaged more in oral tradition.” So, we consider statuettes, coins, hoodies, and pottery to move us toward an understanding of a life that might have otherwise been erased from historical narrative, from collective memory. I often wonder what a stranger would think of me just by looking at the objects in my room. I’ve kept journals since middle school, and used to think of those writings as the epitome of my tendency toward compulsive self-documentation. Now, though, I’m not so sure. The tangible archive of my life includes my journals, but also expands to include my yellow lamp, collages made by my dad, at least seven green jackets, and three postcards always almost falling off my wall that read: POTTERY SALE / BARBARA PINSKY / DEC 2ND 1977, 8:00 PM / 4023 IRVING PLACE / CULVER CITY, CA. There is something about existing in space with an object, orienting your body toward it and feeling that someone else has looked at it in the same way, that cannot be felt from looking at census data, textbooks, or screenshots. Today, it’s easy to keep tidy accounts of our lives in folders and drives and timelines all tucked away in a cloud somewhere we can’t touch. Let me be clear: I’m not saying we shouldn’t document our lives online, or that there is no value to the folder on my own desktop called “screenshots lmao 2017-18,” because there is. I hope, though, that we will continue to curate archives of our lives offline and outside the metrics of university records or government data. Make books, stitch quilts, and plaster your walls with traces of places you’ve been. Let objects speak their histories, whether in the MOMA or in your living room.
MARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 9
Arts & Culture
Statements on Stage
Social comentary aND ACTIVISM in Tufts Drama By Henry Jani
O
ne could say that the Tufts Drama Department is blossoming this spring semester. Student groups and the drama department combined are offering an expansive lineup of shows over the next months, from the recent Tony-award winning play Red to a remastered Shakespearian comedy. But the extensive range of shows is not the only thing to notice. “I think at my time at Tufts, there’s been a very concerted effort to prioritize stories written by or about POC...people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups,” said senior Kristin Reeves. Her sentiment is reflected in many of the featured productions—shows like Fires in the Mirror and Dutchman consider the issues of racism in America, while classics like Fefu and Her Friends provide feminist commentaries. Critical plays like these challenge viewers to question their realities and, as Tufts Visiting Artist and Director Bridget O’Leary puts it, “sit in discomfort and be in dialogue with the work.” Drama Department Chair Heather Nathans is currently teaching a course called “Race, Gender and Ethnicity on the American Stage.” She explained that the class analyzes various texts with “important opportunities to examine stereotypes as the product of a series of choices, asking how those choices get re-made, re-circulated, or subverted by traditionally marginalized communities as an act of resistance.” The syllabus includes many monumental plays and musicals like Hamilton, Indecent, An Octoroon, and Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, that interact with topics such as race, queerness, and indi10 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
geneity. Nathans believes that one of the most powerful aspects of theater, which is examined through this course, is its ability to draw audiences together and foster a sense of community. “It’s not necessarily a community that has to be in total agreement with each other, but it’s a group of individuals who join together in the space of a performance to explore an idea. That’s an incredibly powerful forum for bringing forward complex questions about race, ethnicity, and identity,” she said. O’Leary is enacting these principles in her direction of Fires in the Mirror. She recounted skimming through her bookshelves—full of various play scripts—and coming across this piece she had encountered years ago. “I remembered the play being so good, but wondered if it had become dated over the past 25 years,” O’Leary said. “I was floored to see how present it still feels.” Written by playwright Anna Deavere Smith in 1992, Fires in the Mirror weaves together a series of various monologues from the viewpoints of over 20 different characters involved in the Crown Heights riot of 1991. Already strained interactions between Black and Orthodox Jewish community members came to a fever pitch after two Guyanese children, Gavin and Angela Kato, were struck by a car in Chabad leader Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s motorcade. The children’s serious injuries, and Gavin Kato’s eventual death, spurred a series of violent events, mostly targeted at Jewish residents in the area. O’Leary hopes that her iteration of this show will challenge viewers to examine personal biases and preconceived
Arts & Culture W truths. She notes, “In the case of the Crown Heights riot, everyone had a different experience and version of what they thought was fact. Viewers will notice this and hopefully ask more questions in their own lives instead of just relying on impulses.” Both Nathans and O’Leary, in this sense, see theater as an organic art form that constantly asks audiences to consider information instead of passively ingesting it. “Theater, at its core in Greek society, was designed to bring together citizens. It engages people to create a shared experience, and as a theater artist, I have a civic responsibility to offer spaces where people can think and change their minds.” Nathans also points out that theater and activism are often intertwined, such as abolitionist movements being catalyzed by shows like The Escape, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Neighbor Jackwood. Compared to many other mediums, viewers must grapple with the issues at hand in a particular play or musical. This necessity to engage helps champion theater’s reputation as an activist tool. Dutchman, a senior capstone show written by Amiri Baraka, centers on themes of discrimination, the bystander effect, and the concept of community. “The play is about a Black man, Clay, and a White woman named Lula,” explains director Kristin Reeves. Lula ends up stabbing Clay in a subway car full of people, with no one intervening. Reeves hopes that the audience, by watching this character being murdered without stopping the bloodshed, will realize their complicity in racial violence through the bystander effect. Senior James Williamson, who plays Clay, chose this text for his senior acting capstone because “Baraka’s words are intense and gut-wrenching, but most importantly, they ring true for many Black individuals. Clay’s tolerance of Lula’s aggression, his reluctance to match her, and his efforts to diffuse the frequent bouts of tension are tactics of survival.” Williamson attributes Dutchman’s ability to galvanize social change because of how authentically it discusses topics of violence and oppression. “Stories that unabashedly go about [displaying the evils of humanity] promote thought and can lead to change. That is why they will always exist and will always be effective, whether it be Dutchman or
ART BY LAURA WOLFE
any future stories that seek to tell these narratives,” he noted. Fefu and Her Friends hits close to home, focusing on a group of women living in early 20th century New England. Assistant Director Rosa Stern Pait explains that the characters are friends spending an afternoon at one of their homes, preparing for a charity presentation while also discussing their lives and thoughts on society. “I love this play because all the women are real,” said Stern Pait. “They speak naturally, act naturally, and slide between intense emotional truth and friendly antics as naturally as any group of friends does.” Firstyear Paige Walker, playing Emma, was also attracted to this play because of the manner in which it conveys the human condition. “All these characters are just saying aloud the thoughts we may not even know we’ve had, and I hope that allows people to engage in similar conversations after seeing the piece.” Stern Pait notes how Fefu and Her Friends interacts with feelings of being trapped in the expectations of one’s gender identity. “Every character expresses this trappedness in a different way—leaning into what traps her, trying to understand what traps her, or trying to trap the thing that traps her,” she said. Audiences can witness the challenges and confines ascribed to certain genders by watching characters engaging in these dialogues. Walker adds that “Fundamentally, I think Fefu champions women by telling their stories through their eyes… I think that the fact that there isn’t a man in the show allows the characters, as well as us as a cast, to really talk about womanhood in a raw and uncensored way.” Fires in The Mirror, Dutchman, and Fefu and Her Friends were all written by distinctive playwrights, utilizing diverse characters, and telling narratives that sometimes seem worlds apart. But, as these students and professors have explained, each show fiercely confronts unjust realities and invites audiences to critically examine themselves and society. “Theatre is living and breathing,” O’Leary reminds us. It is innately human and, as such, shows audiences how to become better citizens, activists, and individuals.
MARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 11
Feature prosE
I have learned work over thousands of years, across miles of seawater, from Yokohama farmers and Shikoku fishermen, Tokyo rickshaw pullers-turned powerful lawyers, artists and technocratic computer scientists. Work maintains stability, while dynamically shaping forms. I. Work equals force times distance, a movement with intensity, a transfer of energy from one place or form to another. This was one equation my father taught me at night at the kitchen counter. He always made sure I understood them before I said goodnight. In 1984, my father left Tokyo afternoons spent sneaking into bars and hacking arcade games for American boarding school. 可愛い子には旅をさせよ. “Send your cute child on a journey,” the proverb goes. Speaking shaky English, he was one of few Asian students at a predominantly White institution. He built his mind like dominoes — one touch set the entire apparatus into motion. He didn’t make friends, opting to hide behind cold metal library bookshelves where he learned to balance variables and bury a language alive. This work built a big grey house with a red door. Inside it, a father, a mother, a son and daughter. Four vertices with 360 degrees to share between us. A stable configuration. II. Homeostasis refers to the processes that maintain a living form’s function. Quietly, over years of death, living forms have accumulated methods to ensure survival and fitness. This is the chaotic work of harmony. Born to two artists, my mother learned to draw friends, animals and landscapes until she reached art school in Tokyo. Her art concerned itself with human forms, the balance between morphology, colors and medium. My mother learned an intimate knowledge of the body, its proportions, movement, drama, utilities; this knowledge required work. My mother has drawn thousands of nude figures. They are bright, healthy, rigidly maintained and functional. But motherhood stole the brush; she stopped painting and drawing many years ago. Now most of her compositions are stored in the basement at home; some are kept thousands of miles away, discolored and forgotten. This work built a big grey house with a red door. Inside it, a father, a mother, a son and daughter. Four vertices with 360 degrees to share between us. A stable configuration.
12 Tufts TuftsObserver Observer March March5,5,2018 2018
ART BY REBECCA TANG
PHOTO BY ROXANNE ZHANG
PHOTOS BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT, TOP RIGHT BY WILLIAM LIU
WHAT’S THE MATTER? PHOTO BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT
PHOTOS BY BRITT (LEFT), NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT (RIGHT)
Feature Poetry
Memorial Drive by May Hong
High up, swigging bottles we stole from that bar off Xingguo Road spilling from at least 100 stories, tall tales of love and loss and opportunity With our legs dangling over the edge, the city, an endless fabric of a sequin shawl sprawled out far beneath our feet As if the world was shaken and all the constellations fell to the ground, As if we were shaken and out poured some liquid reminiscent of gin sparkling and younger dreams. Cambridge, here, does not glitter at night. There’s a plaque in Central Square next to a sewer that says: DON’T DUMP Drains to Charles River. But every time I pass I misread it as DON’T JUMP Peripheral gleam on a dim street. Memorial Drive is a poignant walk at night. The Boston side has fallen face first into the water Quivering Someone once told me to “conquer inanimate objects” but how when I can’t even grasp them I rush to the edge Halt sharp and sway before the black water and daffodils.
PHOTOS BY TATI DOYLE
MARCH MARCH 5, 2018 5, 2018Tufts Tufts Observer Observer17 17
CAMPUS
STRENGTH IN REMEMBRANCE By Riva Dhamala
18 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
campus
Our parents hid Their history from us They swallowed Their pain They didn’t want us to lose our way In bitterness or anger –Ann Muto, “Questions”
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSEPH TSUBOI
O
n February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and issued Executive Order 9066. This order led to the forced removal and incarceration of around 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, simply for having the “face of the enemy.” It did not matter that two-thirds of those who were incarcerated were American-born, most having never visited Japan. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor made all Japanese in America suspect, or “enemy alien.” Japanese American adults, children, and elderly were forcibly removed from their homes, jobs, communities, and lives, and were sent to one of ten concentration camps located in isolated areas of the country. For the crime of being Japanese, they were presumed guilty and held without charge for four years. On February 21, 2018, Tufts’ Japanese Culture Club (JCC*) and Tufts’ United for Immigrant Justice (UIJ) came together to host a Day of Remembrance Event to speak about Order 9066’s influence on families, communities, and the United States as a whole. The event began with a screening of the documentary “Resistance at Tule Lake.” The documentary tells a counternarrative of Japanese Americans who refused to “prove their loyalty” to the United States by accepting or performing acts of forced assimilation. They defied the government by refusing to swear unconditional loyalty to the US, as the country was holding them against their will for no crime at all. Following the screening, students from JCC* and UIJ led a panel connecting past and present immigration and incarceration stories. For decades, an unmistakable silence existed surrounding the topic of Japanese American incarceration in the United States during World War II. Non-Japanese Americans were more than willing to forget their acts of racism and hypocrisy, but this silence existed both externally and internally. Within Japanese American culture, there is the saying shikata ga nai, or, “it cannot be helped.” Joseph Tsuboi, a panelist from JCC*, noted that, “Incarceration told an entire ethnic population that simply being Japanese was not American, thus wrong, thus disloyal. It told the survivors of incarceration and the children of those survivors that we are not going to talk about this, we must keep moving,
shikata ga nai.” Tsuboi looks to his father, a third-generation Japanese American, as a testament to this mindset. Growing up, his father never spoke to him in Japanese, only English, and didn’t talk to him about the history of Japanese American incarceration. In many ways, he used to think his father upheld a “model minority myth,” but now, Tsuboi understands that it is not that simple. His father was not intentionally trying to rid himself of Japanese cultural practices, but rather trying his best to heal and make his parents’ lives a little easier. Tsuboi added, “There was shame and sadness surrounding the incarceration era, and I have to show some empathy for this generation’s motivation to push past the pain.” Though Tsuboi has come to recognize the complex meaning of silence and its role in survival, he also recognizes that in order to ask dominant American society to recognize this history, it is necessary to push past these silences. Anna Kimura, another panelist from JCC*, echoed these sentiments as she spoke about how the dominant narrative is always discouraging people of color from telling their stories. She argued that “we need to work against that [discouragement], push back in even our own minds.” Kimura emphasized that if the United States does not recognize the impact of what occurred 76 years ago, people will not see the full extent of what is going on today. The United States has held the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized country in the world since 2002. Today, the vast majority of those incarcerated are Black and Latinx, revealing how some of the rhetoric used against Japanese Americans is still present today, except now, the racial target is different. Alejandra, a panelist from UIJ, drew parallels from the Japanese American incarceration stories to her own immigration story as an undocumented immigrant. She said, “My story is not about the same physical incarceration that Japanese Americans faced during World War II, but it is about a psychological one, a psychological incarceration that I have no control over. [My incarceration is] to an immigration system that is broken and to this country that refuses to acknowledge my humanity.” Alejandro, another panelist from UIJ, spoke about how he has often been dehumanMARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 19
CAMPUS
ized because of his undocumented status. “To some people I am nothing more than a stereotype and a harrowing statistic that is decreasing the quality of American life. To others I am an exploited workforce.” In order to survive, Alejandro felt that he had to stay silent about his undocumented status. He told people that he was born in the United States and abandoned “[his] rich heritage, history, and blood that flowed inside [him] for another day of false protection.” He felt like a prisoner in his own skin. But in order to confront this oppression, he has had to learn to be more critical about his silence and work towards breaking it. Ana, another panelist with UIJ, shared that she wouldn’t have been able to share her story at the event if it weren’t for those who spoke up and told their stories before her. Seeing other people’s courage “inspired [her] to do the same and liberated that part of [herself] that for so long was silenced.” Alejandro added that “the stories that we tell humanize us and ultimately act as a form of resistance. Storytelling is integral to our movement as it goes against preconceived narratives that have been constructed to attack us.” In bringing together groups such as JCC* and UIJ, the Day of Remembrance Event not only embraces Japanese American history but also works to build solidarity among different marginalized groups. Hanh Nguyen, an event attendee who is a member of the Vietnamese Student Council (VSC), was thankful for the event’s role in filling the gaps in her mainstream education. She further spoke about the importance of storytelling “to identify what we are fighting against, what we are fighting for, and how to take action.” Natasha Khwaja, an event attendee who is co-chair of South Asian Perspectives and Conversations (SAPAC), spoke about the power of cross-collaboration between spaces for people of color. “Too often, we like to isolate ourselves—which is important be20 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
cause it is a way to build community from within, strength from within—but I think given our sociopolitical climate right now, it’s more effective and powerful to focus on solidarity.” Khwaja elaborated that along with the experience of undocumented immigrants, Japanese Americans’ history of oppression is also similar to what Muslim Americans are experiencing today under the guise of the “war on terror,” especially with the recent “Muslim Ban.” She felt strongly that sharing stories and retaining those memories are important to helping
us realize that we are not alone. Through creating communities that are committed to confronting oppression in all forms, we can better work towards dismantling the social, political, cultural, and economic structures that exploit and alienate us. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSEPH TSUBOI
opinion
complicating the false missle alert in hawai’i
this is not a drill
By Carissa Fleury On January 13, 2018, at 8:07 a.m. local time, a message popped up on the television, radio, and phone screens of the residents of Hawai’i. The alert read “Emergency Alert: Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound to Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter. This Is Not a Drill.” 38 minutes later, residents received a second message, informing them that the first was a false alarm. In the 38 minutes between the two messages, we can imagine the range of emotions the residents across the islands felt: confusion, fear, panic, mourning. Shana Merrifield, who is from Hawai’i and whose family still lives there, recalls the moments after she heard about the
false alarm: “I remember waking up and looking at my phone like usual, when I did a double take and noticed a ‘Missile Warning’ message on my phone and a missed call from my dad. My heart froze and I immediately called my parents, I didn’t even really have time to think about it.” She continues, “It’s crazy that we live in an age where I legitimately have to worry about my parents dying within a 20-minute period of someone launching a missile, let alone having to think about how I would say goodbye to loved ones in a time like that.” This false alarm makes me think of the ways in which settler colonialism plays a
part in the everyday life of Hawai’ians today. Settler colonialism is a form of seizing and claiming land in order to replace the original residents, cultures, and social structures of a land with a new population of settlers. Since European settlers began interfering in Hawai’ian affairs in 1778, they have attempted to acquire land and displace native peoples through forced relocation, land theft, and genocide. In his article “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Patrick Wolfe writes about “the logic of elimination,” which “is premised on the securing—and obtaining and maintaining—of territory. This logic certainly requires the elimination of the MARCH 5, 2018 Tufts Observer 21
opinion
The 2018 false alarm exists as an extension o holds residents in constant fear of annihilati Hawaii exists, in many ways, within a continued
owners of that territory.” The 2018 false alarm exists as an extension of the process of settler colonialism as it holds residents in constant fear of annihilation by colonial forces around them. This incident is not isolated; the history of Hawai’ian land is, in many ways, a history of trauma. In the first 100 years after contact with European settlers, the Native Hawai’ian population dropped by 90 percent—from over 400,000 in the 1770s to only 53,900 citizens by 1876—due to exposure to illnesses (primarily smallpox) by European invaders and murder at the hands of settlers. The Kingdom of Hawai’i was an independent and sovereign land until 1893, when the ruling monarchy was forcibly removed by American and European imperialists and landholders, and White settlers enacted a coup d’état against Queen Liliuokalani on the island of Oahu. The January 13, 2018 event underscores and reminds us of this history, and the violent present realities of living in the midst of the settler colonial nation-state that is the US. Following Liliuokalani’s overthrow, American settlers living across the islands rewrote the Hawai’ian constitution, disenfranchising Native Hawai’ians. Though Liliuokalani attempted to restore power, she was placed under house arrest by the US military. Shortly following, Hawai’i was forcibly annexed by the United States of America in 1898 and became the Territory of Hawai’i. In addition, Congress banned the teaching of the native Hawai’ian language, and the active practice of Native Hawai’ian culture. In 1959, the islands were officially made a “state” of the United States. Merrifield adds important nuance to this history: “I’m disappointed by the lack of solidarity between Asian/Asian Americans and Native Hawai’ians, especially given the history of how we got here. Asians were brought to Hawai’i for labor, and were intentionally used against Native
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Hawai’ians by White plantation owners to keep them stratified in lower positions.” Merrifield, who is not Native Hawai’ian but moved there in high school, ruminates on how this history of Hawai’i’s colonization was not taught to her in her high school. “Even in high school I barely learned the history of Hawai’i, and it makes me upset to think about how ridiculous it is that we were forced to debate whether the Hawai’i was ’annexed’ or ‘overthrown.’ The US government forcibly stole the crown, and to this day directly contributes to the increasing poverty and oppression against indigenous [Hawai’ian] people.” Since contact, Hawai’i has remained a land occupied by violent outsiders, and has become increasingly militarized. By percentage, Hawai’i is the most militarized state in the nation. The Pentagon’s largest command post is headquartered near Naval Station Pearl Harbor, and the Department of Defense’s “major concentration is on the island of Oahu, where there are over 100 separate military installations...covering about 25 percent of Oahu’s land.” Most of the land that these military bases are built on were never purchased by the US government, but instead seized under presidential executive orders. The Pentagon controls more than 250,000 acres—over 6 percent—of the land mass in Hawai’i, adding up to more acreage for the military than in 36 of the 49 mainland states. “I was only in Hawai’i for three years in high school, but I remember being really surprised by how many White military men there were. Their presence is literally everywhere. Not only do they have a strong physical hold on the island, but they act like they own the place and don’t stop to think about the implications of militarization in Hawai’i,” Merrifield shares. She continues, “They definitely have a bad rep among locals because a lot of them act belligerent and entitled… I’ve heard of military people getting upset about how locals
treat them, and it’s crazy to me that they don’t stop to think about why. I have met so many more military people than I have indigenous Hawai’ians—that says a lot about the demographics of the islands.” Claire Devaney, who lives in Hawai’i and is half-Chinese and half-White, echoes this erasure of Indigenous Hawai’ian presence: “I definitely notice the erasure of indigenous people because there are so few fullHawai’ians left in Honolulu. It’s upsetting to see that people who were once such a large presence on the island have been subjugated to a very minimal community.” We have to consider: in a place that is so highly militarized, how did this false alarm happen? What was the process for sending out an alert? According to Professor J. Kehaulani Kauanui, there are many, many checks and obstacles that an operator must face before sounding a missile alert. Could this alarm have been purposeful, a way of reminding residents that they are in fact, not in control of their own lives, but instead live under the rule of the military (and who the military defines as its “allies” or “enemies”)? What happens when we view this alert as a culmination of Donald Trump’s simultaneous threats of nuclear war and frequent racism against Black and Brown people? Who is most vulnerable to his whims, which are perhaps a less mature manifestation of the whims of past imperialist US presidents? Resistance to settler colonial control of both Hawai’ian land and dominant sociopolitical ideologies is consistent, yet perpetually silenced. On February 26, 2016, a convention of Native Hawai’ians made history when they announced they had written a constitution for an independent Hawai’ian nation. A delegation of 100 Native Hawai’ian representatives approved the constitution, as well as a declaration of sovereignty. The beginning of the constitution, or “aha,” reads, “The legislature finds that the State has never explicitly acknowledged that Native Hawai’ians are
ART BY BRITT
n of this settler colonial logic, which ation by colonial forces around them. ued colonized space.
opinon
the only indigenous, aboriginal, maoli population of Hawai’i. Native Hawai’ians are the indigenous, native people of the Hawai’ian archipelago and are a distinctly native community.” Though the constitution cannot go into effect without a ratified vote by all Native Hawai’ians, this moment highlights an important movement. The United States is a violent imperialist nation—one that was built on genocide, murder, land theft, enslavement, and countless other brutalities. However, oppressed peoples continue to resist in the face of the continued violent ideologies of the United States; this convention was just one of many resistance movements across the Hawai’ian Islands—the largest being the grassroots sovereignty movement. The sovereignty movement generally views the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and Hawai’i’s annexation as illegal, and members of the movement have attributed problems plaguing Native Hawai’ian communities—including high percentages of homelessness, poverty, economic marginalization, and the erosion of native traditions—to the lack of native governance and political self-determination. The response by the Hawai’ian government to the false missile alarm included the dismissal of the employee who sent out the alert, as well as the resignation of Vern T. Miyagi, the Hawai’i Emergency Management Agencies top official. Congressional leadership in Hawai’i issued an apology, and have begun to introduce bills “that would call for major changes in alerting the public should a missile attack actually happen.” However, as we have seen time and time again, these responses are mere band-aid solutions. They do not solve the deeply entrenched violences that have affected Native Hawai’ian communities since the days of early colonization. They do not solve the perpetual and increased military presence on the islands that continues to displace families and create communities that live under constant fear of destruction. They do not solve the erasure of Native Hawai’ian culture and peoples. Sovereignty is only the beginning of a solution to these issues. Reparations are only the beginnings of solutions to these issues—but these are the minimum requirements that the colonial state owes to Native Hawai’ian residents for over 100 years of occupation and colonization. Decolonization is about land, and true decolonization cannot occur without the return of land to its native peoples. Electronic road signs in Hawai’i on January 13 read, “MISSILE ALERT IN ERROR, THERE IS NO THREAT.” However, the US has yet to return land, and its massive military presence looms. And until land is returned, there will continue to be a threat.
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Feature
T
s pa t I a l awa r e n e s s By Sonya Bhatia and Vivian Tam
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his October, with the beginning of the 2019 fiscal year, NASA may face changes to its funding. The current budget proposal would allocate $19.9 billion toward NASA, an increase of $370 million from 2018. Although this increase would prioritize manned missions to the moon, the budget also includes plans to completely defund the International Space Station by 2025, to cut a space telescope mission, to cut Earth-observing satellites, and to eliminate NASA’s Office of Education. Reflected in the budget changes is the vision of Space Policy Directive One. According to a White House memorandum, the main goal of Space Policy Directive One is “the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.” In addition, this policy is clear in its language about prioritizing the use of commercial partners in the funding of space exploration. This policy marks a departure from the Obama administration’s goals for space exploration, which cut back from cislunar missions—missions between the Earth and the Moon—and believed in “Marsfirst,” which called for astronauts to arrive on Mars by the 2030s. However, the aim for manned missions to the Moon is not a new push. Trump, following the tradition of past Republican administrations such as the Bush administration, is concentrating on cislunar space, with a focus towards the inclusion of privatization, especially lowEarth orbit missions. The determination to move forward with manned exploration of the Moon and beyond seems like a valiant goal. However, to fund these missions, several other existing programs must be cut. These program changes inhibit the previous progress made by NASA. As Tufts Physics and Astronomy Professor Ken Olum says, “These programs require decades of sustained effort to come up with this kind of mission, so it doesn’t do much good for people who don’t know what they’re talking about to come in and say, ‘Well stop doing this, do this instead.’” While Space Policy Directive One reflects the current administration’s priorities toward broader space exploration, there are further cuts to the budget that
News
directly impact the study of Earth’s climate. Five Earth science missions that would be eliminated include the Orbiting Carbon Observatory Three; the Deep Space Climate Observatory; the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem; the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder; and the Radiation Budget Instrument. These Earth science related missions have a range of tasks, including observing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measuring climate systems’ responses to certain variables, and calculating emitted thermal radiation. Through these missions, researchers could gain insight into longand-short-term climate trends. Tufts Associate Professor of Astronomy Danilo Marchesini connects the elimination of these programs to the Trump administration’s resistance towards climate change. For him, these missions are necessary to be able “to understand the delicate way that you interact with the atmosphere which probably is one of the most important players in how our climate works,” adding that, “given the current global warming, we need to know what are the drivers that control our climate.” He cautions that cutting the programs without adequate research and consensus from those in the field will be “risking to cause more damage, [rather] than trying to fix what the problem is.” Marchesini finds the cutting of the programs “unacceptable,” a decision that makes him, “question the amount of rational thinking skills of those who are proposing the cuts.” One of the proposals that is receiving the biggest outcries from experts in the field is the cancellation of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission, a next-generation telescope that could observe deep space in infrared and carries a coronagraph which is an instrument that blocks out the sun to access clearer images of nearby objects. Marchesini highlights three main reasons for the importance of WFIRST. First, it would allow for the study of poorly understood dark energy, which is “70 percent of the content of the universe today.” He also adds that WFIRST, “would advance our understanding of exoplanets and represent the first step toward the discovery of a habitable Earth-like planet orbiting a
ART BY ANNIE ROOME AND ERICA LEVY
nearby star.” Lastly, he comments that it was, “representing an extraordinary facility for astrophysics survey.” By eliminating WFIRST, the Trump administration has disregarded one of the most significant priorities for astronomers. In a 2010 National Research Council survey of science priorities for the next decade, US astronomers ranked WFIRST as their top space related mission. Harvard Astronomy Professor Xingang Chen comments, “The project WFIRST is the top priority of the authoritative US decadal survey… For [the] Trump administration to make such decisions, panel studies of the same quality and scope should be done. Otherwise, such decisions would be immature and childish.” The money instead would go towards missions to the Moon. Specifically, it would support NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft development with missions that would send astronauts back to the Moon by 2023, and the construction of the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway, where astronauts could work in accessible proximity to the Moon’s surface. Another aspect to the budget is the government defunding of the International Space Station (ISS). The White House aims to implement plans to turn the ISS over to the private sector and has already requested $150 million for a transition plan so that companies “could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform.” According to an Eos article, the US government currently spends around half of its spaceflight budget, $3 to $4 billion, on the ISS. If approved, according to Professor Marchesini, the ISS budget from the US government would be zero by 2025. He has reservations about the defunding, saying that, “by potentially determining the end of the ISS, because of significant removal of supporting funding, the proposed NASA budget would push humankind closer to Earth […] rather than projecting outward. This decision seems contradicting the overall new change in the NASA mission of space exploration by going back to the Moon, going to Mars, and beyond.” The current budget proposal also includes cutting NASA’s education program, which would save $100 million. The
Trump administration attempted to do this last year but failed without the support of Congress. According to NASA’s website, there are three key values for the education program: to strengthen the future of the workforce, to attract students to STEM related disciplines, and to keep the public engaged and informed about NASA’s endeavors. Goals for the program include “increasing participation by underrepresented and underserved communities, expanding e-Education, and expanding NASA’s participation with the informal education community.” Marchesini finds NASA’s Office of Education invaluable, with its purpose “to enable […] younger generations to dream big and if the young generation are dreaming big, then really everything is possible.” He emphasizes that hurting the education of future generations is “actually the single most damaging act that any administration can do.” The proposed budget remains just that—proposed. Currently, there is much bipartisan debate and disagreement around the bill, making its final form unclear. The House and Senate still have to come to a consensus on the specific numbers and make their own amendments to the budget affecting NASA. There is a long road ahead for the budget before the final version is confirmed by 2019. Olum remains hopeful, speculating that “what Congress passes, if anything, could be very different.” In the end, the problem of the proposed budget changes is not the push for space exploration. Rather, it is the programs sacrificed that will cause the most damage to our space endeavors, if passed as is. Marchesini highlights the necessity of these programs. “These are priceless programs that were ongoing at NASA that now are being cut. And I say priceless because they have enabled transformative discoveries that have shaped how humankind places itself within our own solar system, our own Milky Way, and the Universe in general, and they have enabled the sharing of these amazing discoveries with everybody.”
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Black panther:
Porn, Propaganda...Protest? By Jonathan Innocent and Jordan Anthony Elijah Barnes 26 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
Arts & Culture
A warning: We should always be wary of White acceptance and, further, the mainstream cultural and critical acceptance of our art and our expression as Black people. When we see Black Panther and, deservedly so, it becomes a huge success, it’s necessary for us to remember: it is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is a part of Marvel Studios, which is itself a smaller franchise within Walt Disney Studios - an American mass media institution that has historically perpetuated racist and stereotypical narratives, messages, and imagery, effectively shaping mainstream understandings of Blackness. With that in mind, we are always going to be wary of Black Panther. While we are incredibly proud and rejoiceful of this blockbuster superhero film that was directed by a 31 year-old Black man from Oakland, California, and features an all-star cast of Black folk from all parts of the globe, we still feel the need to ask a difficult question of ourselves. How much is this film meant to be a narcotic—a cinematic opiate that plays on our desire for Black visual representation while cheaply borrowing, and ultimately bastardizing African continental and Afro-Diasporic narratives?
V
ibranium is the central matter of this film. It is what makes Wakanda special. It is the source of Wakanda’s strength. It powers their technologies, their health, their advancements, their structure, their power, their mystique. Without Vibranium, we would never see the heartshaped herb, whose powers are responsible for the strength of the Black Panther. Though it is extraterrestrial matter, Vibranium is also Earth-matter; it has an intimate relationship with Wakanda, quite like the relationship between the heart and body. The Wakandans—specifically Shuri, King T’Challa’s sister—learned how to work together with Vibranium; it’s a symbiotic relationship. Vibranium is akin to oil reserves, diamond mines, and uranium deposits; it’s a (super)natural resource that can transform human activity. Therefore, it’s one that has been exploited by Ulysses Klaue, an arms dealer, and by Captain America as the material for his shield. Wakanda is hamstrung by its fear of consumption by the White world. Vibranium is at once Wakanda’s greatest asset and its weakest link, and as a result of its fear of the outside world’s desire for its precious metal, Wakanda hides its true nature for generations.
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
Wakanda can be viewed as America’s isolationist wet dream; it has effectively sequestered itself underneath a protective, invisible shield while horrors befall those around it. Wakanda is a projection of White America’s feverish desire to absolve itself of its insurmountable culpability while relating itself to the racialized other—the cool, the exciting, the risqué, the sexy and alluring. That’s not a knock on the film—rendered through the lens of an American camera, the film lives in the world of American cultural consumption. And in some levels, Black Panther is culturally consumptive pornography for White Americans; through the arc of the film, White audiences are able to both imagine themselves as allies to a powerful, hard-to-get Black nation, and reaffirm their own position of discursive supremacy. The final, post-credit UN scene featuring King T’Challa preaching a message of strength in ‘unity’ is the culmination of that fetishistic imagination, where White America can poignantly insert itself, in the form of the CIA’s Agent Ross, into the fantasy it financed. The fact of that scene’s existence—that it survived multiple stages of editing and filtering, that it ended the film, and that it spoke sardonically to a powerful, white institution—speaks to the film’s performative palatability. Even in the Blackest blockbuster film since Moonlight, White consumers are still those to whom one must make themselves accessible. Though the UN scene depicts the old White diplomats as hubristic and bumbling, the film editors’ decision to assert Wakanda’s legitimacy on such a stage further acquiesced to a White assumption of normative objectivity. This depiction of legitimacy lives in stark contrast to the politics of the soundtrack, which was executive produced by Kendrick Lamar, and the characterization of Killmonger as the lead villain. Having a soundtrack is a particularly Black thing. Imagine Shaft without it’s legendary soundtrack, or Spike Lee’s entire body of work without his carefully and craftily curated playlists, as recent as the Netflix series “She’s Gotta Have It.” We walk to music, we move to music. We breath to music, we live to music. The film’s soundtrack and score both focus on a presentation of Blackness-as-Africanness, yet the soundtrack, through its American roots, sonic duality, and macabre subject matter (“if that nigga want me dead, I can’t let that nigga breathe”), relates itself to a conception of Blackness that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the hulls of slave ships.
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Arts & culture
If the film’s score, composed by Ludwig Göransson, a White Swedish composer and record producer, is meant to immerse viewers in the refined and dramatic evocations of Afro-Diasporic soundscapes, complete with a massive, 132-piece orchestra, then the soundtrack is meant to bring you back to the reality of diaspora, of a people’s traumatic bifurcation. The soundtrack, which was co-created largely by Top Dawg Entertainment collaborator Sounwave, is duality writ musical at times, mixing the sultry ballet of Jorja Smith and SZA’s voices with the sulfuric rasp of Ab-Soul and Vince Staples. The soundtrack presents a contradictory elucidation upon Blackness to the film’s score, thus it fills in the blanks present within much of the film’s perspective. Given the film’s obsession with the dual perspectives of the Black-African T’Challa and the Black-American Killmonger, the resonant quality of the soundtrack complicates the qualities, be they written, suggested, or omitted, of the characters themselves, especially Killmonger. The first shot introducing Killmonger immediately paints him as a Black American Urbanite—and at the very least, not Black-African. He stands with his back to the camera, rocking a hefty distressed jean jacket, baggy black cargo pants, and goldrimmed glasses. His clothes, his prideful stance, and his stylish locs immediately juxtapose him to his surroundings—the highly curated “West African” section of a museum. However, upon closer inspection, his appearance is akin to the many of the artifacts in the museum—of obscure African origin, of inflated aesthetic importance, and, most painful of all, placeless. His first scene culminates in the poisoning of a White woman museum curator, who is at once heavily guarded, yet unknowingly susceptible to the contents of her drink.
28 Tufts Observer March 5, 2018
Killmonger then proceeds to spends most of the film inflicting physical harm directly upon Black Women, with only the exceptions being the moments he disposes of Klaue, Zuri, and T’Challa. Killmonger’s consistent antipathy is further complicated by his parentage and their presentation, or lack thereof, within the film. His father, N’Jobu, was a Wakandan ‘war-dog’ (spy), who becomes radical in response to White Supremacy’s poisoning, imprisonment, and persecution of Black people in Oakland, California, ultimately deciding that the rest of the Black world deserves the power Wakanda has to offer. Not only is N’Jobu killed all-too-swiftly by his own brother, given only a herb-induced moment to share his last words with his son, but Killmonger’s Black-American mother remains invisible for the entirety of the film. As the film’s sole Black-American main character, Killmonger is the film’s only opportunity to illustrate most potently its conceptions of Blackness as it exists in an American context. But who really is this dude? After N’Jobu died, did he go to an orphanage? Who took him in? Who raised him? Why is he so mad at Black Women? His mother’s filmic invisibility turns Killmonger’s pursuit of Wakanda into the pursuit of a mother, of a motherland—a womb, a place to regenerate, to return to his natural state of Africanness. Killmonger fails, but not as much as Wakanda fails him. The film fails him, perhaps in an even more ironic and realistic manner than Wakanda does. His scripted approach is flawed; he shirks tradition and practicality by burning the heart-shaped herb, and he alienates his kinfolk by ruthlessly and hastily usurping the throne. Thus, he dies, pulling a spear from his chest, exclaiming: “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the
ships, because they knew death was better than bondage.” Here, the film engages the Black tradition of doublespeak. Killmonger’s words work like the songs sung in the dead of night by enslaved Africans. He is imploring us to free ourselves, by any means necessary. His exaltation works as both a rallying cry and an interrogation— sure, we can feel righteous indignation when confronted with Killmonger’s final words. But are we really ‘bout it? If bondage is better than death, then a follow-up question becomes: What is our definition of bondage? Is it only what we are taught of as “chattel slavery?” Killmonger’s words implore us to inquire as to the nature of our freedom. What kind of freedom works for you? Partial, or whole?
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Return native lands