Hilltopics | University Honors Program | Volume 13 Issue 5 | February 2017
Remembering Dr. Dennis Simon by Brandon Bub
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t’s 2008 and I’m 16 years old, actively following a presidential campaign for the first time in my life. Orthodox opinion at my Catholic high school is that this is a race between a baby-murdering communist and a tax-cutting vanguard of the status quo. I’m engrossing myself in AP United States History, memorizing the names of all the presidents and their failed opponents because that’s my idea of a fun afternoon and Quiz Bowl is the closest thing to a sport in which I’ll ever participate. The week before the election, you come to my school to give a guest lecture on campaign message and advertisements. You show me a treasure trove of old commercials: I Like Ike, Morning in America, and the Daisy ad, among others. Their messages range from messianic to apocalyptic. For one of the first times in my life as a student, I begin to discern patterns in American political history. Obama wins the election and my classmates are sore for days, but my interest, like the atomic bomb in the Daisy ad, has only begun to mushroom.
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t’s 2011 and I’ve just gone to my advisor to declare my political science major (second to my study of literature and prior to my study of history). I check the course catalog and see an available Honors section of a class for my American political studies distribution: The Politics of Change in America. Per the syllabus: “The purpose of this course is to document major changes and reform efforts in American politics and to demonstrate that ‘political and social change’ can be explained and understood in a systematic and rigorous manner.” It says that the focus will be on America since the year 1950. The description is all I needed to be sold on the course; I enroll and convince a few friends in the department to sign up with me. Imagine my surprise when I walk in on the first day of class and see the man who had taught me all about campaign advertisements three years prior. My term paper is on the evolution of format and issues discussed in televised presidential debates; it was hardly groundbreaking, but an excuse to use the rhetorical analysis I’d been practicing in English class. You give me an A (emphasis on the
“giving” part of that transaction).
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t’s 2012 and I’m in the latter part of my sophomore year. Your other major class, The Politics of the Civil Rights Movement, is being offered this semester, and includes a week-long travel component over Spring Break. The Honors Program has announced they will help fund the trip, so it’s an opportunity I can’t pass up. We read the memoir of Melba Beals, who was one of the first students to integrate Little Rock Central High School and had to be escorted to school by the National Guard each day. We hear a guest lecture from R. Gerald Turner, SMU’s president, about his time as chancellor at Ole Miss spent dealing with the school’s racist and exclusionary legacy with Greek life. We take a bus across the American South and break bread with some of the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement: Joanne Bland, who survived the Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Julian Bond, one of the former presidents of the NAACP, and Robert Graetz, a reverend who marched alongside MLK. Graetz brings the entire room to tears when he makes an impassioned plea for gay rights and tells us about his gay son, who was “God’s greatest gift” to him. We stand in the driveway where Medgar Evers was assassinated, hold hands as we march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and stand in the halls of the 16th Street Baptist Church where a bombing killed four little girls in 1963. I had been a student of history for years now, but this pilgrimage is what made me recognize why we study history. We study it to understand and bring sense to a world whose indifference to us defies our sensibilities, to see how nearly every issue facing us today has deep (but always visible) roots, to remember the legacies of the heroes that inspire us, and to get better, every day, no matter how many inadvertent steps backward we take.
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t’s 2014 and I’ve just gotten my first job out of college teaching high school American history. I stand in front of the classroom on the first day and think to myself, “If there’s an emergency in this building, they’re all going to look at me to tell them what to do next.” I’ve spent weeks putting together lesson plans that I generally throw out the day of each class for fear that they’re not good enough. I’m constantly afraid one of the kids is going to ask me to describe the Defenestration Prague and I’m going to give them a blank stare (never mind that they can’t even pronounce the word “defenestration” yet). How did you make this job seem so easy when it’s the
hardest thing I’ve ever had to do up to this point? When I make it to the twentieth century in my class, I comb through my laptop to find copies of your old PowerPoint presentations. I decide to use them in lecture, but I always make sure to credit you. At least that’s one set of presentations I know I can’t screw up.
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t’s 2016 and we’re in the midst of the most acrimonious presidential campaign that’s occurred in my short life (though history suggests there were plenty that were far more divisive in centuries past). My department is hosting a day of guest lectures to engage students in the political process, and my boss asks me if I know anyone who could be a good presenter. I immediately think of you. You’ve been sick recently and I’m uncertain whether or not you’ll feel up to attending, but you pull through. When I ask my students which guest speaker they enjoyed hearing the most, they nearly unanimously said it was you. I hope you were able to convince yet another young student to take a political science class in college.
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t’s 2017 and I’ve just heard my first grad school acceptances. After years of discernment, I’ve decided it’s time for me to pursue further studies in the field of American politics, and I’ve applied to several PhD programs. You wrote my recommendation letter; did I ever get a chance to thank you for it? I’m stuck between UCLA and UNC right now, and I won’t be able to make a decision until I find time to visit both of them next month. It’s a little scary to think about the challenges ahead: reacquainting myself with stats, learning to code, spending all day in the library combing through primary sources again. I won’t know if I’m ready until I actually get started. But I know the work is going to be worth it if it allows me to even attempt to make the same contributions to the academy that you did. Thanks so much for teaching me and instilling the value of teaching into my life. Dr. Dennis Simon, you are missed, and your inspirational influence will be forever appreciated.
Special thanks to the Tower Center for the Photograph In Memoriam: Dr. Dennis Simon
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Yet Another Crossroads: The Refugee Crisis by Alec Mason
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
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hese are the hallowed words that have greeted immigrants and refugees alike to the hopeful land of America for over a century. Despite this welcoming message that Lady Liberty broadcasts out to the sea, the American populace tends to prefer sending suspicious glares and hateful policy towards people who have given everything to come here. The ubiquity of fear-based politics has transformed the country that was built by immigrants, refugees, and religious minorities into a society that turns its back on those who most need its help.
Fear of the unknown has driven many groups of people away from America while giving power to those who feed upon it. From Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, to the American rejection of Jewish refugees escaping the German Nazi regime, to Donald Trump’s rejection of Muslim refugees and immigrants today, politics in the United States has historically been heavily influenced by fear. But just as rejecting persecuted Jewish refugees led to a death toll of around eleven million in the twentieth century, denying refugees, building walls, and persecuting minorities will never be ethical or effective.
Refugees come to the United States to seek normalcy (or “normality”). Compared to people caught in these conflicts, Americans are in a position of privilege. Americans are able to wake up in a place
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where death is not a constant threat. They are able to provide a future for their families. They are able to live in a society where their identity will not lead to persecution. To let fear of the unknown decide the fate of those seeking refuge is an injustice beyond compare. Donald Trump ran a campaign that fed upon this hate and fear. His rhetoric preyed upon the most vulnerable humans for the benefit of his own hunger for power. He painted diverse groups of people with a broad and harmful brush. Refugees are terrorists in disguise. Immigrants steal jobs from “real Americans.” Muslims hate Christianity and freedom. These generalizations are not only untrue, they are direct results of thinly-veiled bigotry.
Trump’s politics of fear led him to put in place one of the most inhumane orders in recent American history: the travel and refugee ban. This order can only be explained by a widespread lack of empathy in the president and his supporters. Families were kept apart, innocent people were detained for days, and the order even kept an Iranian girl from receiving emergency medical treatment in America. This hastily implemented policy caused a widespread humanitarian crisis that could have been easily avoided. Osama AlOlabi is an SMU student who was kept apart from his family for a long period of time at DFW International Airport on the day the order was implemented. His family is of Syrian nationality, but they have lived in Saudi Arabia for almost two decades. When asked for his opinion on the current debate over Trump’s ban, he stated that he
wishes for people “to put themselves in our shoes.” He went on to say that “it is already not easy to live outside your country away from your family, and now not being able to see them is just devastating.” For those who base their support for the ban on fear of terrorism, he stated that people “should not judge the many based on the actions of a few.” As painful as it is to use a cliché in a situation like this, I must say that our society is at yet another crossroads in its history. Will we be remembered as
a nation that saved a multitude of lives by offering refuge to those in need, despite the risks we might incur? Or will we be remembered for standing by in silence as innocent lives were taken because we were too scared to make sacrifices?
History is watching, where do you stand?
Meryl Woke Me Up by Naomi Samuel
it’s funny how you see destruction of words of truth of people on your tv and it seems so…distant and you never question your own freedom. You never once fathom what it would be like to die for it here freedom is oxygen we don’t think about it even as we watch the world drown And now, that the floods that were once so far away and the monsters that unleash them have arrived I have found myself askingWhat is going to happen to freedom? Would I die for mine? Will I have to? …and I tap on the glass asking to be set free from this nightmare but it seems no one is listening but they do watch as I beg of them to let me out of this television.
N.S.
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Filtering the noise by Camille Aucoin
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list of things I never pictured myself doing: lying on a bed with a stranger, staring up at an amoeba-shaped screen on the ceiling, and watching a slow-motion video of people and plants underwater. Such was the experience at The New Museum’s featured exhibit: Pixel Forest by Pipilotti Rist. The unnerving soundtrack accompanying the video further added to my discomfort, confusion, and honestly, boredom.
Two days later, when I heard a familiar unnerving song coming from my New York City roommate’s laptop, I was reminded how different my tastes in art were from hers.
in Central Park, and, of course, art, art, and more art.
I’ve always had a thing for art history. In the fourth grade I competed in UIL Art Smart, essentially “how many paintings and painters can you identify?” Walking through the galleries of The Met, I was in heaven. I spent hours looking at pieces from ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, Africa, Mesoamerica, Greece, and more.
It turns out some of my friends were less than impressed by 2,000-year-old vases and portraits of broody aristocrats. “Eh,” was one of the most common phrases I heard used to describe my favorite museum, The Met Cloisters, a small branch of The Met focused on medieval European art. For them, it was too steeped in history, too stagnant, and too boring.
The face of art is changing. Art is no longer just a DaVinci hanging on a wall; it can be immersive, interacI spent two weeks exploring New York City’s art tive, and full of a wide variety of mediums. Many of the scene through the Honors travel course ASAG 3350. museums we visited in New York featured unorthodox, We met with our professor three times; the rest of avant-garde, and even unsettling exhibits. One of my our time was spent running up and down Broadway, least favorite exhibits was simply a Samsung refrigtaking the wrong metro train, dancing in the snow erator sitting in a room with speakers that poured a
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ing. I don’t personally want to see more refrigerator exhibits in the future, but if that piece has value to someone, who am I to devalue it?
monotonic, robotic voice into the room describing the inner feelings of the appliance. The artist claimed that he always wondered what it was like to be a refrigerator so one day he huffed Freon just to get a taste of refrigerator life.
Art has always involved a certain private relationship between the work and the viewer. It is in these intimate moments viewing a piece that we place value on art. Perhaps our professor’s most wise words to us during our trip were essentially this: find something beautiful in the noise. The world has always been filled with noise, and it is up to us to personally find beauty in that noise. In New York, I heard no noise wandering through the hallways of The Met. As art continues to evolve over my lifetime, I look forward to seeing how my views toward art will evolve as well. Art has never been stagnant, and it is this ever-changing collection of paint, ceramic, marble, cloth, pixels, sound bites, and more that will always inspire us to find beauty in the world.
These kinds of exhibits really just confused me. Some students in the class, however, loved them. Some students loved the design aspects of some exhibits we visited. Some appreciated large installation pieces. Some particularly enjoyed the immersive cinematic exhibits we saw.
Art has been taking a new direction for much of the last century. It is constantly evolving into something new and exciting and always employs new mediums as they become available. But have we lost something with our now severe lack of traditional landscapes and portraits, decorative vases, or marble sculptures? Has the introduction of new media including video, photography, and other technologies made the art of today less valuable?
I spent a great portion of my time in New York considering what makes art valuable. For me, history plays a role in a piece’s value. For others, the value of a piece comes from the emotions it evokes within them. Others find value from the technique or effort required to create a piece. Despite how much it costs to insure the priceless Woman in Gold (“Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” by Gustav Klimt) at the Neue Galerie, you really can’t objectively place a value on a piece of art.
So how do we decide if the new direction of art is a good one or not? We keep creating and we keep view-
Photos by Camille Aucoin
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Of Mammals and Memory by Alex Bush
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f you close your eyes and think of the most untouched, pristine habitat in the world, what comes to mind? Do you think of the forests of Borneo? The deserts of Africa? The dark depths of the oceans? Can you imagine anywhere in the world that has been completely unaltered by humans? Unchopped? Unburned? Untouched? Unfortunately, with the advent of anthropogenic CO2, no habitat in the world remains truly pristine. Even the most undisturbed reaches in the Amazon or the forests of Borneo have already experienced roughly 0.7 degrees Celsius of warming (NASA Earth Observatory). Nowhere in the world can escape these climactic changes. Since the ocean absorbs roughly 48% of all CO2 emissions, even in the most remote depths, the ocean’s chemistry is changing (Sabine et al. ‘The Oceanic Sink for CO2’ 2004). Roughly half (54%) of all trees that existed before the Agricultural Revolution have been chopped down (Crowther et al. ‘Mapping Tree Density at a Global Scale’ 2015), changing the planet’s ability to process all of the carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere.
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proximately 20 years (Carlson & Population Resource Bureau: ‘Population Bulletin, 2009’). During that time, many ecological changes can take place. Species go extinct, the climate warms, weather patterns change, trees get chopped down, and wild animal populations decline. All of these things have generally been exacerbated with each generation (Papworth et al. ‘Evidence for Shifting Baseline Syndrome in Conservation’ 2009). Far more importantly, however, people tend to forget what life was like before the change. When the weather gets warmer or there is a severe drought in Texas, it may be bizarre or unique to those who have lived in the region for 80+ years and remember a time when the weather was cooler or the droughts less severe. But once these people are gone, and as more and more of these events are experienced, younger people living in Texas will begin to accept frequent droughts as “normal,” and, consequently, their actions may not be as desperate to ameliorate the situation as those of the people who know that circumstances were once better.
s each successive generation dies or forgets about how conditions used to be, there is less and less recognition of change.
Consider the following: what do you consider “natural” or “pristine?” If I told you that giant elephant-like mammals are “natural” to the Americas, would you call me crazy? What about horses? Giant groundsloths in Australia? In fact, there were once camel-like creatures living alongside massive armadillos and elephants in the Americas. However, circumstantial evidence suggests that upon the arrival of Homo sapiens ca. 12,000 B.C.E., these species went extinct, bringing about major ecological upheaval in the Americas (Janzen & Martin ‘The Fruit the Gomphotheres Ate’ 1982). What’s at stake here? These species have been extinct for thousands of years. Most modern humans don’t consider a lack of megafauna “unnatural” in the Americas. While there are attempts to reintroduce species of similar taxa into the areas that no longer contain such herbivores, these are typically small movements. So much time has elapsed since these extinctions that the ecosystems have already adapted. To answer that question, we must look to how people behave. The average human “generation” lasts ap-
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As each successive generation dies or forgets about how conditions used to be, there is less and less recognition of change. The altered state becomes the norm and is accepted as “natural.” For example, we are used to living in a world without elephants in Panama and giant sloths in Australia. After all, no one lived through that time. Why should we act to correct those problems then? Forests that no longer have species that may have been considered essential are viewed as “pristine” and “virgin.” The same goes for deforestation and overhunting. Wolves, lions, jaguars—all of these animals used to be far more prevalent and once roamed the regions where cities now stand. Forests once consisted of more than twice the number of individuals they now contain. The steps we take to fix these problems are not always taken in the right direction. For example, you may sometimes hear that forests are re-growing in some places in the tropics. While this may be true, these sites are simply not the same as old-growth, un-chopped forest. Barlow et al. (2007) demonstrated, alongside numerous other authors, that chopped and re-grown forest simply cannot compare to “pristine” old-growth in terms
of the number of species or their interaction stability. This means that conservation efforts focused on trying to undo damage already wrought face a much harder challenge in terms of rebuilding ecosystems than do those efforts trying to maintain what is already there.
the wooly mammoth will at most be a biological novelty rather than an ecological necessity. This is partly due to the time that has passed, but also has much to do with the fact that no one remembers wooly mammoths and what they were like.
As unlogged forests disappear, fewer and fewer people will know and experience their awesome, spectacular beauty. They will accept secondary, re-grown forest as equal to that of old-growth. The generations who remember what the world was like with more forest land, calmer weather, and greater animal populations are dying off. Without them, the public imagination loses its baseline for what was once standard. The consequence of this leads to conservation efforts gradually accepting more and more radical changes over time. Most people accept that bringing back
Thus conservation efforts lose much of their muster without the persistence of memory to keep them alive. This means that conservation efforts are running against the clock. Not only the clock of ecological disaster due to extinction, climate change, increased disease exposure, atmospheric ozone depletion, dead zones in the ocean, overhunting, overfishing, erosion, floods, heat waves, droughts, or ecosystem collapse, but also against the human memory. The memory of truly better times, lost like the trees.
The Significance and Legacy of the Women’s March by Karen Guan
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he day after Donald Trump was sworn into the highest office in the United States was one of the most inspiring days of my life thanks to the efforts of strong and relentless women all over the world. Though I had already predicted that the Women’s March would be a widely attended event, I’d clearly underestimated the drive and resilience of the women who would go on to organize marches nationwide in a time when it seemed as if the future for women’s rights was in jeopardy.
I vividly recall how I felt when I learned of the Washington D.C. Women’s March planned for the day after the presidential inauguration. I was elated to hear of
such an event, mainly because it was a rare bit of positive news amidst the seemingly endless negativity spouting from the media. However, disappointment immediately kicked in because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to D.C. from Dallas with the spring semester starting at SMU two days after the march. Anyone who has been awake during what may have been the most contentious presidential election cycle in all of American history should be cognizant of President Donald Trump’s blistering rhetoric against women and many other historically marginalized populations throughout his campaign. It was appalling to hear searing, unabashed misogyny from a man running for an honorable public po-
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sition. What was even more shocking was the fact that Trump actually denied the true intention and effect of his caustic remarks, instead insisting women are “phenomenal” and that “nobody has more respect for women than [himself].” The tirade of outrageous, degrading comments (and tweets, because Trump) continued, and The Donald went on to become the 45th President of the United States.
Though it was a historic day, the history shouldn’t stop there. In the days following the marches, the original organizers released a plan of action, “10 Actions for the first 100 Days,” to foster continued activism. The plan of action is critical in ensuring the perpetuity of the Women’s March. If we discontinue our efforts now, the original success will lose its historical value, and all of the previous efforts will have been for nothing.
Trump’s victory was met with a plethora of emotions, from exhilaration to crippling anxiety. The only commonality amongst everyone was the surprise and shock of the unprecedented victory, from both sides. Efforts were attempted to lighten the stiff atmosphere, and my eleven-year-old brother even half-jokingly suggested that we “hitchhike to Guatemala.” (Thanks, but no thanks.)
The main purpose of the Women’s March was to serve as an outlet to promote female empowerment in a degrading age. However, on a larger scale, the Women’s March acted as a platform for individuals to protest the systemic discrimination rampant in societies all around the world. The Women’s March was an opportunity to disallow the normalization of hate speech in the national conversation. Additionally, the Women’s March unintentionally became an emblem of hope and progress set against a background of negativity. Though its explicit purpose was to unite people for the promotion of women’s rights, the march has become symbolic in nature. Now the Women’s March can be ascribed to the growing global human rights movement, all of which began from grassroots efforts.
Though Trump’s unexpected victory was viewed by many hough Trump’s unexpected as an enormous setback for women’s rights and a host of victory was viewed by many other human rights issues, his election did not have to as an enormous setback for mean the end of progress and the fight for equality. Reelwomen’s rights and a host of ing from the shock, women’s rights activists began to orgaother human rights issues, nize, create Facebook pages, and partner with national orhis election did not have to ganizations such as Planned Parenthood. Their tireless mean the end of progress Seeing millions of women (and efforts proved to be effective, men!) in Dallas and all around as the Women’s March was and the fight for equality. the world unite for female emtransformed from a local, powerment has pushed me to grassroots effort to an internaincrease my involvement with tional movement that would highlight various human women’s issues on campus and at SMU. Women’s Inrights causes such as LGBT+ rights and racial equality. terest Network, of which I am a proud member and leader, is working harder than ever to give women on campus greater opportunities to make an impact. Originally planned for Washington D.C., the grassOther organizations around the country, such as roots movement spread across the globe with marchPlanned Parenthood, are also vamping up their efforts es planned from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Antarctica. to keep women’s rights in the national conversation. The millions in attendance at sister marches around the world highlighted the interconnectedness of women’s, and on a larger scale, human rights issues. SeeWhen I think of the Women’s March now, and of all ing thousands of women (and men!) in attendance at the dedicated people who organized and fought to the march in downtown Dallas and the hundreds of make their voices heard, I am reminded that the presmarches worldwide reminded me of the power of unity, idency is only four years, but unity can last forever. as well as the far-reaching impact of grassroots efforts. What began with a few women in a few cities quickly transformed into a global human rights movement, with cries of “love trumps hate” continually heard.
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Discourse is the new English by Amanda Oh
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hat is the purpose of language then, if not to communicate in a way that another person will understand?”
I must admit-- I didn’t have an immediate answer to that one. I had playfully critiqued my friend’s practice of using nouns as verbs in a way that I saw as an affront to the English language, and he replied, half-jokingly to hide his embarrassment, with that surprisingly thoughtful question. The habit I refer to is strange, but I am sure you have heard it before. Turning nouns into verbs means that instead of saying “I’m going to do art,” one might say, incorrectly, “I’m going to art,” or even worse, “I feel like arting.”
I stuck my nose up at such contortions. He said that my legalistic perspective lacked understanding of the fluidity of language. “Just as words have gone obsolete and new words are added to the dictionary every year, just as words take on new meanings and new cultural contexts,” he continued, “so do grammar, syntax, and colloquialism constantly morph the English language.” His point was that the new-style colloquialism that bizarrely converted nouns into verbs was part of the natural progression of language, and the natural progression was something to be embraced. I understood what my friend meant
when he used a noun as a verb, so who was I to say that the rules of English were sacred and unalterable?
That conversation was two years ago.
Here at SMU, one part of the University Curriculum is called “Discernment and Discourse.” When I first encountered this class, I thought it would be a lot like AP Literature and AP Language. I expected canonic British literature and Greco-Roman epic poems and 20th century American rhetorical prose and, in general, the stuff that most students dislike. I think I expected English as I knew it. I ended up being very wrong. I may not have realized it before coming to college, but discourse is not necessarily the same thing as English. Discourse involves English and English involves discourse, but they are distinct in important ways. Depending on one’s career, the two disciplines will highlight themselves differently. English is an academic subject: retrospective and rule-based; English calls for handbooks on writing and handbooks for citations. Discourse is communication, which finds purpose not in what the speaker or writer says but in what the listener or reader hears. English means publishing papers in distinguished journals; discourse means writing an effective email to your colleague.
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But there’s another part of discourse that describes the everyday interaction we engage in: the lively group chat, the conversations we have over a meal, the way we express ourselves online. This day-today discourse is just as important as the academic writing we do for papers or lab reports because while our academic lives are governed by academic rules, our social lives are governed by social rules, and the social etiquette of language is constantly evolving. Both written and spoken English have adapted over the past millennium, morphing and borrowing words from other languages and manufacturing words to keep up with changes in technology and innovation. “Texas” finds its roots in the Caddo word tejas, “algebra” was adapted from the Arabic word al-jabr, “tweet” found a new definition with the rise of the social media platform Twitter, and “swag” was a term invented by thirteen-year-old American teenage boys. I make fun of it, but it certainly has its place in the English language, especially after its addition to the Oxford English Dictionary along with “Youtuber” and “yolo,” and with Merriam-Webster adding “binge-watch,” “NSFW,” “photobomb,” and “throw shade.” They may not have been official English words before their introduction into the dictionary, but they were certainly part of our discourse. Discourse is about communication, and these words communicated something between a speaker and listener before they were ever considered officially English. In this way, discourse is the precursor of
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the future, since this “something” was an idea that couldn’t be verbalized adequately given the available language. The fact that the words became widely used showed that a significant number of people felt the same important gap in lexicon, paving the way for a new term to bridge the discrepancy between language and thought.
So I go back to my friend’s original question: Why was I so critical about the new fad, “verbing,” if it was a communicable way of speaking that exemplified the ever-changing character of language? At the time I held on to the belief that English was a static system, governed by correctness, and evaluated from an objective standpoint. That was incorrect of me. If parlance evolves with the people, then it achieves its purpose. It has even been argued that limited word choice limits thoughts, so the natural addition of new words allows for new thoughts and an expanded marketplace of ideas. Neither English nor discourse are better than the other, but using English as a meter for worthiness of language ignores the value of realistic discourse. Sometimes the formalistic black box threatens to inhibit language adapting to culture, time period, and tongue. The concept I didn’t understand two years ago was that language that was created for people, not people for language.
Letter from the Editor by Terisha Kolencherry
Dear Reader, I played myself. Somehow I have managed to become the Editor in Chief of this small, but prestigious publication. Do not be fooled though, I have no idea what I’m doing. In fact, no matter how many times Camille has told me the only way I could mess Hilltopics up is by physically burning down Clements Hall, I am wholeheartedly convinced that I am the chosen one. You might not know this, but I am currently engaged in battle with this tiny little voice in my head that tells me I’m special: I will be the one person in the 12-year history of this publication to, quite simply, f*** it up. I know, I know. Editors in Chief aren’t supposed to curse and this letter should be poignant and flowing with intellectual insight, but quite frankly, I’m all tired out. I’ve written too many scholarly essays in too many classes for me to try and do it for this space. Plus, it wouldn’t be true to the spirit of Hilltopics to try to be someone I’m not. At its heart, Hilltopics has always been a refuge for “weirdos” who have ideas and opinions and want to tell the world about them. We’re here to serve an intellectual community by putting out articles about topics our writers find important. Our aim is to educate, provoke, and engage people in a way they might not have experienced before. For us as a team, right now is the beginning of a new chapter. Our former Editor in Chief, Kenny Martin, has stepped down in order to pursue a semester abroad in Cambridge. He’s done such a great job the past year and I hope to continue to improve on his work. There’s inherently a chance for failure in this transitionary time, and like any other person going through a change, I’m freaking out on behalf of the staff. I’ve bamboozled them too; they don’t realize I have no idea what’s going to happen this semester.
by finding new ways to navigate it or by fighting to change our status quo. This semester we’re embracing what’s already good about Hilltopics, but also changing so we can be better. Our website editor, Alec Mason, has done a wonderful job revamping our website. We’re looking forward to offering more content online. Hilltopics will be sponsoring events to engage the SMU community in discussions about topics we cover in our issues. In the coming weeks, we also hope to launch a new podcast discussing a variety of pertinent topics in an entertaining platform. I know that we will succeed. Each issue is the product of weeks of dedication and passion for this publication from people who are ridiculously committed to making Hilltopics work. No matter what that voice says, there’s no way I could mess this up simply because Hilltopics doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the Honors community and the people from that community who have stepped up to carry it on. I’m honored to be able to serve those people and I’m brimming with gratitude for this opportunity. That being said, it is my utmost pleasure to present this issue of Hilltopics. Read it, share it, and keep your fingers crossed. After all, I’ve still got a long way to go. Cheers, Terisha Kolencherry Editor In Chief
Many college students can identify with this idea of finessing one’s way through situations. Much to the chagrin of our professors, we’ve finessed our way through essays and projects ever since we learned how to spell procrastination. However, this idea of getting by can also apply to when we find ourselves in a new normal. For some it’s an adjustment to a new era of immigration policy, for others it’s the death of a loved one or a new addition to the family. Some people are getting used to being a part of Greek life, some are getting used to new positions or new majors. In some situations we survive by embracing our new normal, in others we persevere
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Staff and Contributors Executives
Editor in Chief............. Terisha Kolencherry Tech and Layout Editor.... Stejara Dinulescu Copy Editor......................Abby Hawthorne Online Editor...............................Alec Mason Social Media................Destiny Rose Murphy
Camille Aucoin Alex Bush Amanda Oh
Writers
Alec Mason Karen Guan
Guest Writers Brandon Bub
Naomi Samuel
Images
Cover............................ Stejara Dinulescu Inside....Camille Aucoin & Stejara Dinulescu Comic.................................... Andrew Oh Photo of Dr. Simon................ Tower Center Find us online at: hilltopicssmu.wordpress.com Or on Facebook: SMU Hilltopics
Special thanks to Dr. David Doyle, Sally Spaniolo, and Susan Harris.