September 2016 by Counterpoint Magazine

COUNTERPOINT the wellesley college journal of campus life september 2016 volume 46 issue 1

Welcome back, and welcome home. We are so excited to begin a new year of Counterpoint. Now more than ever, we believe that student publications are essential to college culture. Publications allow us to start discourse and raise awareness, to display artwork and relay wisdom. Counterpoint exists for you, as a space where you can—and should—share your voice, your stories, your opinions, your hopes. We encourage you to be brave and submit your narratives, and whether you choose to remain anonymous or not we are humbled to be able to publish your work. This year we aim to be collaborative, creative, and community-oriented. Like in years past, we will work to publish all submissions we receive, and we hope to especially prioritize voices of those from historically marginalized groups. As the “journal of campus life,” we aim to share work that highlights the diversity of students that walk our campus each day. Last year the magazine established an “Identity” section; we encourage you to write about an aspect or two of your identity, complex and interesting as we know you are, and let Wellesley students learn a little more about someone who is different from themselves. We love this magazine dearly, and we hope you do too. We are always looking for ways to better reach an audience or meet the needs of our community, so if there’s something we can do for you, we want to know about it. As always, this is your space. We wish you the best of luck as you embark on a new academic year, whether it be your first or your last. Subversively yours, Charlotte Yu ’17 and Olivia Funderburg ’18

Images: Olivia Funderburg ’18 (cover), Samantha English ’19 (left)

Dearest Reader,

E D I TO R I A L S TA F F Charlotte Yu ’17 Olivia Funderburg ’18

Editors-inChief

Allyson Larcom ’17

Managing Editor

Roz Rea ’19

Features Editor Staff Editors

Katie Sweatman ’17 Urvashi Singh ’17 Lara Brennan ’18 Natassja Haught ’18 Samantha English ’19 Kelechi Alfred-Igbokwe ’19 Lydia MacKay ’19 Tiffani Ren ’19 Cseca Gazzolo ’20

D E S I G N S TA F F Natassja Haught ’18 Midori Yang ’19 Roz Rea ’19 Jessica Maciuch ’20 Trishna Mohite ’20

Layout Editors

B U S I N E S S S TA F F Treasurer

COUNTERPOINT

THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE JOURNAL OF CAMPUS LIFE SEPTEMBER 2016 Volume 46 / Issue 1

CAMPUS LIFE WELLESLEY CRUSHES

AN OPEN LETTER FROM WELLESLEY CRUSHES

RACHELE BYRD

SUMMERTIME SADNESS

ANONYMOUS

PAWS FOR THOUGHT: DOGS ON WELLESLEY’S CAMPUS

A R T S & C U LT U R E CSECA GAZZOLO

WHAT IS DEAD MAY NEVER DIE: A CASE FOR THE HUMANITIES

IDENTITY

Kelechi Alfred-Igbokwe ’19

C O N T R I BU TO R S

Rachele Byrd ’18, Samantha English ’19, Sabrina Cadiz ’20, Cseca Gazzolo ’20

TRUSTEES Hanna Day-Tenerowicz ’16, Cecilia Nowell ’16, Oset Babur ’15, Alison Lanier ’15, Kristina Costa ’09, Kara Hadge ’08, Edward Summers MIT ’08, Matt Burns MIT ’05, Brian Dunagan MIT ’03

SUBMISSIONS The views expressed in Counterpoint do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff. Counterpoint invites all members of the Wellesley community to submit articles, letters, and art. Email submissions to ofunderb@wellesley.edu and cyu3@wellesley. edu. Counterpoint encourages cooperation between writers and editors but reserves the right to edit all submissions for length and clarity.

SAMANTHA ENGLISH

WHERE THAT CHERRY BLOSSOM TREE USED TO BE

M E N TA L H E A LT H SABRINA CADIZ

A BATTLE WITH BODY A BATTLE WITH MIND

ANONYMOUS

RETURNING AS A FIRST-YEAR

F E AT U R E S COUNTERPOINT STAFF

CROSSWORD: ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ WOMEN

COUNTERPOINT STAFF

POLL: POKÉMON GO

CAMPUS LIFE

Content warning: racism, transphobia

hanks to so many of our submitters, being a Wellesley Crushes moderator can be an incredibly uplifting experience. Seeing a recipient comment on their post, saying how much better a submission made their day, never fails to make us smile. There are certain things, however, that can make you want to quit. We feel it is important to relay some of the incidents we have encountered. The following are all questions we have found ourselves doing our best to answer: What do we do when someone refers to a student of Asian descent as a “Chinadoll”? What do we do when a crush focuses almost exclusively on the color of a black student’s skin? What do we do when a crush misgenders or deadnames someone? Why the hell is our email being used for someone’s AirBnb account? Where is the line between racial fetishization and observation or appreciation? What do we do when a crush is X-rated? What do we do with our large platform when tragedy strikes? Is this harassment? Should we file an honor code violation?

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When we changed our profile photo from one of Hillary Clinton to one of Chirlane McCray, we did not expect to have racist insults hurled into our messages. We did not anticipate being called traitors, bigots, and Trump supporters (a combination that is rather redundant). When we dedicated the days following the murders of Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott to #youmatter, we did not sign up for a series of crushes dedicated to non-black students tagged #AllLivesMatter. We did not have a prepared response to a message from an angry alum lamenting our lost respect for America. We have a shared Google folder with drafts of two separate statements on individual events that we eventually decided not to publish. Though some of these instances occurred anonymously on Yik Yak or through our email, a good number of them were messaged directly from students’ Facebook accounts. Some of them were even sent by our friends. We don’t focus on our own troubles with this to court your pity, but to highlight how we are so caught off guard every single time something like this

counterpoint / september 2016

occurs. We thought Wellesley students, though not perfect, were better than this. We realize everyone else probably thinks the same, and those optimistic thoughts are halting progress from being made. We don’t have the answers, but we do know conversations need to be had regarding all of the -isms many of us assume don’t run deep here: racism, cissexism, classism, ableism, and a host of others. Wellesley is an amazing place. Let’s take the lead from Ethos: we need to talk about these problems and show up to important events so every one of us can feel loved here. We’ll be there, trying to wait to check our phones and post our awe of the event organizers. With all our love and hope for the future, Your Wellesley Crushes mod team <3 Wellesley Crushes loves you and when you help spread the love. They’re just a message away at facebook.com/WellesleyCrushes.

Images: Wellesley Crushes, Wellesley College Archives (left), shemazing.net (right)

AN OPEN LETTER FROM WELLESLEY CRUSHES

s s e n d a S e m i t r e m um

RAC

(OFF-)CAMPUS LIFE

E HEL

t’s June 27th and unfortunately I have yet to find a job. So far this summer hasn’t lived up to what I thought it was going to be. I thought I would have a job, be going places every weekend, be working on my writing, and be reading every day. And that was only the back-up plan. I really thought I would find an internship at a publishing house, learn about editing and proposals and get excited about the future I’m starting to want for myself. And going to Wellesley, you get excited because everyone else around you is trying and/ or doing the same. It’s inspiring, and it’s hella intimidating. Because what happens when you don’t get any of the internships you applied for? What happens when you run out of time and all of a sudden it’s June and you don’t have an internship or a job? And how do you reconcile that with the fact that all of your friends are doing things, learning things, traveling to new places, taking classes? It seems like everyone is doing something except for you, and it’s not like it’s for lack of trying. It’s June 27th and I’ve been dealing with the imposter syndrome that follows you after the school year is over. I don’t hear it talked about a lot. There are always the worries that surface on Yik Yak at the end of the semester, but I’ve never really thought about how it carries into the summertime. There’s this feeling of inadequacy, but also this feeling of being left behind. Everyone is taking steps to advance themselves to the places they want to be, and you’re sitting on your couch, looking for a job and not having any luck doing so. You’re not making money to save, you’re not at an internship

BYR

getting better at your chosen craft, and you get this feeling that all of your friends are leaving you in the dust, because only someone who wasn’t ready to be an adult—who was goofing off and not being serious about their future—would spend the summer between their sophomore and junior year doing nothing. It’s June 27th and I’ve been beating myself up for the past month for not “doing what I’m supposed to do” but I’ve realized that just because I don’t have a job or an internship doesn’t mean that I can’t continue to better myself. I’m not letting myself off off the hook for dropping the the ball, because jobs and internships are important. They get you where you need to go. But, if you’re like me, and for whatever reason the summer just doesn’t work out the way you thought it was going to, you still have to make the best of it. It’s June 27th and I’m focusing on what I can do. I won’t give up looking for a job, but while I wait I don’t have to wallow. I can work on my writing without being at an internship; I can focus on myself and what I want to do better next semester. I can binge some television, and I can also explore the things I didn’t have time for during the semester. I can finally read for enjoyment again. I can reread my old favorites, maybe write reviews to get a feeling for what that

might be like as a job. I can use this next month as a big ol’ self-care month, and do things that will keep me in the mindset to keep reaching for what I want. And while I focus on myself, I can enjoy watching my friends explore the world, learn new things at their jobs and internships, or maybe even do what I’m doing and focus on bettering themselves in ways that may not involve those things. It’s June 27th and I’m feeling a lot better than I was feeling at the beginning of the summer. Wellesley is hard, and summers can be harder, in a way. But just know that even if your summer plans don’t turn out exactly how you thought they would, everything you do, and everything you accomplish is still valid, and still important. You are not an imposter. You’re figuring things out one day at a time just like the rest of us are.

Rachele Byrd ’18 (rbyrd@wellesley.edu) hates the song “Summertime Sadness.”

counterpoint / september 2016

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pa ws For Thought: CAMPUS LIFE

ast April, I was forced to make a very difficult life decision. To say it was the most important decision of my life would be a dramatic overstatement, but I nonetheless left my Stone Center appointment in tears, and it took me around two weeks to finally make up my mind. The choice was this: do I apply to get a dog, or don’t I? Like a lot of people at Wellesley, I am an anxious wreck, and I often need to be forced to relax. I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety as well as a specific phobia and PMDD. I currently don’t take any medications for my anxiety, partially because I’m still a little afraid of medications and want to use them as a last resort, and partially because I often convince myself that I can live with my anxiety the way it is. Part of keeping medication as a last resort involves trying alternative treatments first, which is half of why my therapist suggested getting a dog. The other half of this suggestion came from my admission that, despite the

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Dogs on Wellesley’s Campus

fact that being home with my family is often deeply stressful and just as anxietyprovoking as the Wellesley environment, I find that my anxiety lessens when I go home because my parents have dogs. As with any major decision, I took it up with a very important council: my friends. Their responses (and reasoning behind said responses) ranged wildly, from, “You shouldn’t get a dog because I’m not a dog person, and if you got one I would have to hang out with it sometimes,” to, “You should put your own mental health before anyone else’s needs, and it shouldn’t matter what any of us say.” I ultimately decided not to get a dog, but that decision was a difficult one involving many factors, and I still secondguess myself all the time. I know for an absolute fact that my mental health and life satisfaction would improve drastically if I had a dog, but I also know that for other people who may be living in my res hall or for the dog that would have to live in a tiny Wellesley dorm room, that may not be the case.

counterpoint / september 2016

In the end, I decided no, I wouldn’t get a dog. Many people on our campus have decided yes, and in doing so, have put their hallmates with allergies, phobias, or even a simple dislike of dogs in a really hard position. Your next-door neighbor doesn’t have the right to veto your dog, nor should they. They also shouldn’t have to live in a situation that makes them sick or unhappy. Both you and the person down your hall who doesn’t like dogs should be able to take care of yourselves. You see the problem. My first year here at Wellesley, emotional support dogs on campus were certainly here, but not very common. Over the past couple years, I’ve watched the phenomenon explode. There are currently at least two or three dogs I’ve seen in my res hall alone. It all makes for a very sticky situation that could be far less sticky with some simple actions on Wellesley’s part, starting with the Stone Center. Any dog, cat, bird, lizard, fish, etc. can qualify for emotional support under the Stone Center’s current

Images: novilaw.com, commons.wikimedia.org

BY ANONYMOUS

policy. The Stone Center needs to institute some kind of vetting process to make sure that the animal that’s coming onto this campus is actually going to be providing the service it’s here to provide, and that can be as easy as not allowing animals under a certain age or instituting a temperament test before approving an animal. A five-month-old puppy, for example, by its very nature cannot make a good emotional support dog. Hell, even at a year old most dogs have too much energy and too little training to be wellsuited to life in a dorm, and they’ll take out that energy in some pretty annoying ways without someone constantly there to watch and instruct them. A hound that’s going to howl day and night, chew up all the furniture, or lash out in frustration isn’t going to be all that great at providing emotional support for an anxious or depressed student; instead, that animal is going to turn into another source of stress. Another simple step Wellesley could take is designating a single dorm on campus as an “animal dorm,” so that people with reasons to avoid animals won’t be forced to live in the same building as one. That way, too, people with animals know they’re living in an environment where the people in their hall are, at the very least, indifferent towards their pet. That way, my friend who doesn’t want to be forced to hang out with a dog doesn’t have to be. In the end, nobody should have to make a choice between their own health and happiness and the health and happiness of others. There’s also the issue of making sure the health and happiness of any dogs brought onto campus is accounted for. Just because someone might benefit from the company of a dog doesn’t always

mean that they should have one. With the Stone Center’s current standards for obtaining an emotional assistance animal being as lax as they are, they hardly take into account whether or not the person getting said animal is capable of taking care of it. This particular issue has resulted in disastrous outcomes on our campus already. Just because a dog would improve my life doesn’t mean said dog’s life would

be improved by me, and it’s inhumane to expect almost any dog to live a happy and fulfilling life in a tiny dorm room. Besides that, dogs take a lot of work—walking, bathing, emotional energy—and a lot of resources—so much food—and if someone isn’t able to provide that, then frankly, they shouldn’t be allowed to have a dog, regardless of how happy it may make them. End of discussion. Everything I’ve just said could apply to any kind of emotional assistance animal, even though I’ve been talking specifically about dogs. If your rat, cat, or turtle provides help with your disability or support for your mental illness, you

should be able to have access to that animal without putting other people or your animal at risk. I should never have had to choose between living with my anxiety the way it is or putting others in a bad situation; that resource should be available to me without me having to make such a tough call. There needs to be a better framework and support network in place for people with animals on this campus. Service and support animals are just one part of a larger conversation we need to be having about accessibility at Wellesley, which has historically been one of the institution’s failings. From not having ramps into many buildings, to our Health Services being underfunded, to a psychiatrist on staff who’s proven herself to be a danger to students and yet keeps her job year after year, accessibility at Wellesley is not what it should be. This is something we as a student body need to work to address. In the meantime, the unfortunate reality is that Wellesley needs to tamp down on how many animals it’s allowing on campus. There are just too many problems at hand and not enough control over them or plans to fix them for this pattern of growth to be sustainable. In the long term, however, I hope to see standards put in place to make sure people can have access to the things that will make them happy without putting so many others at risk. I should be able to have my dog and walk her, too. And I don’t think that’s too much to ask. For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the Editors-InChief (ofunderb@wellesley.edu or cyu3@ wellesley.edu).

counterpoint / september 2016

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ARTS & CULTURE

What is Dead May Never Die:

ou are lost in the woods. The trees are thick around you, mutant shrubbery closing in like a great green trash compactor. A brook babbles feebly in the distance, east—no, west—of the oak on which you lean.

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A voice beckons from the clouds, as steely and foreboding as the sky from which it echoes. “Take one,” it warns, before three small objects come tumbling from the heavens to rest at your feet: a copy of Dante’s Inferno, your middle school recorder, and a water purifier. Which do you choose? If you are a rational human being who wants to get out of these woods alive, you would select the latter. Sure, the book might be an

counterpoint / september 2016

interesting read, and relearning the recorder would pass some time, but what is all this without clean water? Dehydration can lead to headaches, heat exhaustion, death… and suppose you were to begrudgingly sip some of that brown muck from the pitiful creek. Untreated water can carry bacteria that would make your next few hours a living hell. So yes, you should choose the water purifier. When we find ourselves in the most desperate of situations,

Image: The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David (1793)

BY CSECA GAZZOLO

A Case for the Humanities without the basic necessities we might take for granted, our instinct is to survive. Our earliest ancestors had the same instincts, and they gave us miraculous inventions that, thousands of years later, have dramatically prolonged our lifespans: the spear, the wheel, the hearth. Accompanying these lifesaving tools were cultural shifts. Even in a time when preparing a meal could consume an entire day, people still longed for a resolution to their evenings, a gathering of the clan before the long night. Thus came the advent of the humanities. People told stories by the fire and painted mammoths on cave walls; they played drums made with stretched hide as their friends danced around them, calling to the heavens. These practices were not essential to life. But they made life worth living. Fast forward fifteen thousand years and here we are, doing calculus homework on a twelve-inch monitor that holds the collective knowledge of roughly eight billion people. Freshly minted Ph.D.s dream of curing cancer, or finding an AIDS vaccination, or ending global warming. They want to stop the things that stop our lives. Because even fifteen thousand years later, we still just need to survive. We begin to see the dichotomy blooming: the sciences and the humanities. STEM and everything else. The useful and the useless. Social sciences fall somewhere in between, straddling the two worlds that are, for no discernible

reason, at odds with one another. The popular television show The Big Bang Theory features brilliant physicists who have no time for the humanities (one of the characters scoffs at a fellow scientist dating a professor of French literature) while outdated jokes about English majors serving fries circulate on unsavory message boards. The world is divided. Once upon a time, I was a vehement defender of the humanities and their place in our lives. Anyone who questioned their relevance was met with a glare as I rattled off all the brilliant writers and philosophers who changed our world. Once I made a fourteen-slide PowerPoint to prove to a friend that, yes, Words Are Important. Now? Now, I have a very different attitude. I have made my peace with the idea that my greatest loves—Vergil, Sappho, Shakespeare—did relatively little to advance our evolution as a species. They did not increase our longevity or have any direct impact on our survival. If you were considering humans from a purely biological standpoint, you could say the humanities are useless. So why are they still around? Why do we read Hamlet and Julius Caesar centuries later? Because we can. It sounds so simple—indeed, simple things often ring most true: unlike our primal ancestors, we no longer need to focus on survival every moment of the day. We can enjoy our lives; we can make them worth living. Science and technology are means to an end: we pump out vaccines and medicine

so we can live longer lives—so that we can take in more of those precious stories. Chaucer and Confucius are not useless. If they were—if they had no impact on our lives whatsoever—they would not have survived. Culture must undergo the unforgiving process of evolution, just like us. The novels and poems and paintings and films that we catalog in our brain’s filing drawers are important—sacred, even. But they are not essential. Neither are half of Wellesley’s departments, and neither is this article! So why am I wasting ten hours of my life to crank this out? Because I love it. The Greek word katharsis means to release strong, repressed emotion, thereby gaining a sense of relief. The ancients knew that crying, and crying a lot, was good for the soul. It cleanses you. Writing is my katharsis, a page on which I can regurgitate a collection of random thoughts and say it is my kind of beautiful. No, a good story cannot purify water or tell you the best way to get out of the woods. It cannot save your life. But it has been around for a while, and people seem to enjoy it… so why not keep it? Cseca Gazzolo ’20 (fgazzolo@wellesley. edu) loves Latin poetry, true crime novels and folk music. After spending a month in the Wyoming wilderness last summer, she truly understands the importance of water purifiers.

counterpoint / september 2016

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IDENTITY

Where That Cherry Blossom Tree Used To Be

Baker Street is bright blue and falling apart. The three levels are lopsided and the concrete steps are dusted with a layer of dirt. The building may not be up to code and it desperately needs to be cleaned, but there’s a simple charm to it, a sort of cheeriness that old colorful houses create for me in their unremembered nostalgia. I stare up past its beautiful disrepair to the topmost window, at which Mom is currently pointing. “That one was mine,” she exclaims, pulling out her iPhone. She’s sweaty but smiley with a kind of prettiness I’ve never seen before, a sweet contentment that is unfamiliar. “Get on the steps, I’m going to take your picture.” We’ve been in California for less than three hours. I’m ten days from nineteen and I haven’t been to San Francisco since I was six. After thirteen years of absence, only a few snippets of memory remain for me: a brightly lit Mexican restaurant and the banner of Happy Days Preschool and that time I nearly drowned in Judy Scudder’s pool. I had been begging Mom to take me back on her yearly visits since I was twelve, but I gave up when we started paying for college tuition. Mom was the one who decided I needed to go back now. It’s your birthday present, she told me. A mother-daughter trip. I jump onto the steps and put on a smile as she struggles with her camera. Lovely Victorians line the uphill street like multicolored bakery cakes. It really is a beautiful city, I think, gazing down the street just as a middle-aged man sticks his head around the corner. His ancient stare has an overly personal feel to it that page 10

screams “this is my house.” He gives us a confused look that almost seems angry, and I’m suddenly nervous. Ugh, no, I knew this was a bad idea. I start to move my left foot down to the next step, ready for the guy to start yelling at us to get off

his property, when Mom points at him. “Do you live here?” she asks, a halfgrin on her face. The guy walks up quite close to her, staring deeply into her face. Oh no. My nervousness quickly hikes up into fullblown anxiety that this creepy-looking man has to be an axe murderer—and I better start screaming now before Mom gets killed in broad daylight—but before I can even open my mouth, he bursts into a huge smile. “You’re my neighbor!” he exclaims in a heavy French accent, sticking out his hand to shake Mom’s. “You’re my neighbor, oh my god!”

counterpoint / september 2016

His name is Tristan, I learn, and he moved into the building twenty years ago, a year before Mom moved out. He is about as worn and jolly as the house is. His blue shirt and flowy tan pants look like something out of a George Clooney beach movie, except that they are greasestained and rumpled. He’s gray-stubbled and salt-and-pepper-haired and unshaven in a way that probably makes him look older than he actually is. Despite his messy appearance, his enthusiasm is infectious. It seems like this is the most exciting thing ever for him, that his old twentysomething neighbor who got knocked up and married and had a little baby is now forty-something and has brought her own twenty-something daughter back to visit. He begins to exuberantly tell Mom the history of the house since she left. He explains how the old owner had died and how her nephews had decided to add apartments to the basement and how the contractor they hired almost destroyed the foundation of the house next door. How he had lived for a few months with a hole in his ceiling and how he had stayed in his apartment even when the house wasn’t connected to the ground. How the construction had to be taken over by the city and how the place got sold. How he stays under rent control while the basement apartments went up to $1500 a room and how he kept the top floor with garage for under $1000. He talks for nearly thirty minutes before asking if we want to see the apartment. “Yes,” Mom and I say at the same time. I’m in an amused awe, she’s in an odd half-heaven, and suddenly, we are following this middle-aged motorcyclist

Images: Samantha English ’19

BY SAMANTHA ENGLISH

up the back steps. How did this happen? I think, shaking my head and smirking. The apartment is filthy, covered with old documents and grime, but its structure is exquisite. Tristan shows us a computer monitor that’s probably older than me, a hole in the bookshelf that leads to the attic, and the tiled front stairs in front of Mom’s apartment. As he takes us to the front door, he tells us of finding an unopened letter from Italy written in the 1980s and tracking down its intended recipient only a few blocks away. He stands in the entryway and tells us how “fucking stupid” it is that the old door was taken away. “That’s my fault, actually,” Mom speaks up. I turn my enthralled gaze from the man I don’t know to the woman I think I do. She suddenly launches into her first fully formed story of the day, one about a night spent out, a door that lacked a lock, a disturbing guy knocking on her apartment door, and a landlady who threw out the original door for a new one. The story isn’t striking, but this moment somehow is. I had known for awhile, as all children at some point learn, that my mother had a life before she had me and that my mother was someone else before she was my mother, but I had never had the chance to step into the life that she once lived until now. I feel a sort of sadness, standing there, the only one in the room who doesn’t remember this past. Here I am, I think, literally living in her history. We are in San Francisco for a full week, and event after event feels like a misplaced memory for me. I walk the streets of the Mission District that morph as you walk down them, avenues which change from a style of colorful authenticity to a gentrified upscale to alleys on alleys of wall art commenting on what happened between the blocks. I go to Baker Beach, the location of my favorite baby picture, and witness the foggy bridge I could only remember through photographs. I eat

my favorite dinner, Scudder Pasta, with Judy and John Scudder, my mother’s best friends, and feel as if they know me like one knows a niece, even though I haven’t seen them for thirteen years. I visit the three homes I lived in and stand in the shadows of my childhood for old photograph recreations. The Sunset House used to be yellow. The window on Seventeenth Avenue doesn’t look as big as I thought it would. Isn’t that where that cherry blossom tree used to be? Place after place, walk after walk, I feel as if I see my mother change

before my eyes into someone I do not recognize. She used to be this person, this content Californian who taught at Catholic school and rode the bus and read literature in parks across the city. Even more so, though, I see who she is and who I am and what we could have been had we never moved to Chicago. I would have been a San Francisco girl. I would have ridden this bus to the Haight to buy books at The Booksmith. I would have had my first cup of coffee here. Mom and I would have gone to this dance class together. John and Judy would be my surrogate uncle and aunt in an even

stronger way. I could have become this person, but would I really have been any different? Would I truly like this person better than the person I am? When I bring up my comments to Mom, she shrugs. “Well, we can’t change the past, can we?” “Of course not, that’s not what I’m saying,” I argue, switching from staring out the bus to looking at her. “I just...I feel like I belong here, even though I didn’t grow up here.” “You were born here,” she replies. “You can still come back.” I turn back to the bus window and look outside at the independent shops and pastel homes surrounding me. As the city blurs past me in a watercolor rush, I recall a conversation about a memoir with my mother years ago, a memoir that partially takes place in this very city. We had sat at the dinner table, me in frustration, her in amusement, as I explained my exasperation with students in my sophomore English class. “Why don’t they get that it’s an autobiography?” I say in anger, staring at the school-issued copy of The Woman Warrior. “Because they don’t understand the idea that the story of your life is the story you want to tell,” she laughs. “They don’t understand that what Kingston is arguing is that your story can be your mother’s story, or your grandmother’s story, or the stories you were told as a child. Your story is more than just what you remember.” I smile out the bus window. My story is more than my memories, I think, watching San Francisco pass by and knowing suddenly that I will be coming back— sooner rather than later. And my story isn’t anywhere near over yet. Samantha English ’19 (senglis2@wellesley. edu) loves San Francisco, Philz Coffee, Maxine Hong Kingston, baby photos, and over-analyzing her own story (among others).

counterpoint / september 2016

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Image: http://weheartit.com/entry/251904242

MENTAL HEALTH

a battle with BODY a battle with MIND BY SABRINA CADIZ Content warning: eating disorder

used to live on the scale in my bathroom. Every morning, I’d cautiously balance myself upon it with one foot, trying to trick the needle into giving me the lowest number possible. I would alternate between tiptoeing on it

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and keeping my feet on the very edge, my heels still on the ground. I desperately wanted it to lie to me. And with terror, as the stress of my personal life waxed and waned, I watched it rise and fall, rise and fall, with all the trepidation one might have while watching a horror flick. That, often enough, was exactly what

counterpoint / september 2016

issues concerning my weight felt like: a balancing act, a circus performance that I could barely maintain. Back when I didn’t have social media accounts, things were different. Middle school especially was a nightmare. Every summer, I had the same plan: what people my age now refer to as ‘glo-ing

up.’ I wanted to lose weight, which was a fairly common and even realistic goal. I also wanted to become blonde, straight, and white, which was… well, slightly less achievable. It took me until seventh grade to start taking care of my health. I still didn’t have Facebook, Twitter, or even Instagram; seeing my skinny classmates was enough to convince me that something—or, rather, everything was inherently wrong with my body. Photoshop wasn’t the culprit, this time—it was just youth, good genes, and a speedy metabolism that I had never possessed. So, determined as ever, I took one of my mother’s old exercise tapes and did basic cardio every single day in the living room for three months. And to my surprise, it worked. I began to feel my developing muscles flex as I traipsed around my apartment. I’d stare at myself in the mirror, gently feeling the visible bones in my face for what felt like hours on end. I’d spend moments before falling asleep feeling my ribs pulling at my skin, poking out from their blanket of blubber. I couldn’t help but marvel at myself– I’d never actually succeeded at losing so much weight before. I felt beautiful, self-made, and revitalized. It was nothing short of a revelation. Still, I couldn’t help feeling I hadn’t done enough, just yet—that I had more weight to shave off, that I’d be even more beautiful if I lost a good forty pounds more. Or sixty. Or even eighty, I reasoned, pulling at my thick Latina hips and the little bubble of fat still left on each of my arms. I still caught myself looking over at others’ thighs and calves, noticing how

flawless they seemed. Mine still rubbed when I walked, still had stains of white and brown lightning bolts. My Spanx were still my best friend. My success, day by day, felt more and more bittersweet. I still felt like a project, something to be fixed rather than someone to be celebrated. Around this time, I started experimenting with social media, dipping my proverbial toe in the waters of the millennial craze I had so often heard about. I began posting selfies of myself on Tumblr, obsessing over tiny details like the sharpness of my chin—did I have a chubby heart-shaped face or a naturally oblong one? What were my best angles? Did I look fat, still? And, on my more negative days, I’d simply wonder: would I ever stop looking fat? Kind comments meant next to nothing for me. I still felt chubby and unaccomplished, and spent my days scrolling down #thinspo photos trying to motivate myself to lose as much as I could. A couple of years after Tumblr grew too tedious to manage, I made a Twitter account, convinced that maybe I could sharpen up my writing skills by sending out my nonsensical thoughts to all who would listen. I wasn’t even thinking about my body, or my weight, or exercise for once, but on the other facets of my life, like my love for writing and my interest in film and television. Twitter has never been known for selfies, really, although there are plenty there to find. Most accounts focus on what others have to say, first and foremost. They value thought over appearance without discounting one for the other—and I found a deep, evolving

admiration for that kind of approach to social media and to life. I’d find selfies of others that would prove to revolutionize my idea of beauty and of ways to be beautiful. With those photographs of others, I began to see a kind of beauty in myself that would prove indispensable to my understanding of my self-worth. Yeah, I wasn’t thin. I wasn’t white, or blonde, or straight—but I no longer wanted to be. Those words and “beautiful” didn’t mean the same thing in the slightest. And with that, I was free. This does not mean that I wake up every morning, turn to my mirror, and think “Why, hello there, gorgeous!” This does not mean that on bad days, I don’t see myself in reflective surfaces and cringe. It’s a process, and one that I may never complete. That’s okay. What this new life has meant for me is that I am no longer as judgmental as I once was, in regard to both others and myself. I’ve stopped counting calories and denying myself pizza and ice cream. I still run and exercise, but only when I want to. I no longer have to live on the balancing beam—turns out, I was on the ground the whole time. It’s a new kind of liberation that I’d never imagined for myself, and I can’t get enough of it. More importantly, I can’t get enough of myself, in all my authentic, honest-living glory. And that, if I do say so myself, is a good place to be.

Sabrina Cadiz ’20 (scadiz2@wellesley.edu) sometimes enjoys a victory scoop on Sundae Sunday.

counterpoint / september 2016

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MENTAL HEALTH

Returning as a First-Year BY ANONYMOUS Content warning: anxiety, depression

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with the rest of the first-years. I’ve sent an email and I’m awaiting a response. I am also unsure of where I fit in with my main org. On the one hand, I’ve kept in touch with a lot of the people, so it feels like coming home. On the other hand, I want to fit in as a normal first-year, so I do not want to seem too comfortable with them. One phenomenal aspect of Wellesley is how wonderful the people on campus are. I ended up panicking while in my writing class the other day and one of my classmates pulled me out and made sure I was okay. In allowing myself to lean on other people, I am realizing how none of us always know what to do and that that is okay. Being back, while difficult, is also somewhat surreal. Wellesley seems exactly the same, yet totally new. It’s like the world moved four inches to the left when I wasn’t looking. I’m exploring and stretching into different places than I did last time. I feel much bolder and more open to trying new things. I’m in a different dorm. I’m still an introvert but I’m definitely more social. I spend less time in my room.

counterpoint / september 2016

All my classes are different. People keep coming up to me and saying “Hi, it’s great to see you again!!” or “I’m so glad you’re back!” Dean Tenser is no longer Dean of First-Year Students but Dean Playter is also very nice. I’m a different person than I was before. I’m more laid back than I used to be. I have more realistic expectations for myself. I know I won’t be perfect and never fall apart; I’ve already had one meltdown this year where I found myself crying uncontrollably for a little while. But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle this journey. I can be strong and still have moments of weakness. I am here. I am brave. I am strong. I can do this. I’m facing the depression and anxiety head-on, and I can handle anything Wellesley throws at me. I am a woman who will. For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the EditorsIn-Chief (ofunderb@wellesley.edu, cyu3@ wellesley.edu).

Images: http://orig09.deviantart.net (left), Samantha English ’19 (right)

am a member of the class of 2020. That makes me a first-year. But, I am also a student returning from leave. I initially started at Wellesley as a member of the class of 2019. A month into the year, I had to leave due to my anxiety and depression. I was at the point where I was having multiple panic attacks a day and missing class. I started having panic attacks in high school. I managed my anxiety well enough the summer after graduation, so I thought I would be okay in college. I was very wrong. I found myself curled up in balls under tables and outside of classrooms, unable to force myself to go to class due to my fear that I wasn’t as good or as smart as all the other impressive students here. Cue a year of extremely hard work through therapy and different combinations of medications, as well as a community college class (which was a great confidence boost). Now I’m back at Wellesley. In a way, coming to the same college a second time made my transition much easier. I knew where buildings were and how things like the dining halls worked. But there were still difficulties. I had to send a lot of emails. Things like: “Do I need to take the QR exam again?” or, “Do I need a new One Card?” The answers, by the way, are no and sort of. I was told I should just submit a new picture and get a new One Card. In actuality, I needed to go see campus po before it would work and my old one actually functioned just fine. There are a lot of other (relatively) small difficulties like that one. I deal with them and move on. But it’s a constantly annoying process. As I write this, I’m unable to register for any PE classes

Counterpoint wishes to congratulate Dr. Paula Johnson on her inauguration as Wellesley College’s 14th president. We hope your presidency is vaguely subversive!

CROSSWORD

all the president’s women

ACROSS 4. A favorite snack of President Johnson, goes well with pita chips 5. President Johnson stated in a Q&A that the one piece of advice she would give to Wellesley students is “To be _____” 11. Two Wellesley presidents taught here before coming to Wellesley 16. The name of the reading room in Clapp that houses printers and portraits of many a college president 18. Inauguration Day 20. How many presidents are named Helen? 21. Number of buildings on campus named after presidents 23. Sports 24. Eponym of an important study spot on campus 28. President Johnson’s favorite color 29. President Johnson came to us by way of ______ 30. Served as the director of the women’s navy during WWII while still president of the college 31. Two of these are named after former Wellesley presidents DOWN 1. President Johnson grew up in this part of 9 down

2. Number of Wellesley presidents who attended Wellesley 3. President Johnson’s favorite television show 6. Wellesley’s first president 7. Elected president of Wellesley at just 26 years old, this famed academic’s ashes are now interred at the Chapel. 8. President Johnson’s favorite type of tea 9. President Johnson grew up in _______ 10. Wellesley’s version of the West Wing 12. This US Senator will be speaking at President Johnson’s inauguration 13. A Halloween tradition at the President’s House 14. The nickname of Wellesley’s recently retired president 15. If you hazard a walk up to the Quad in winter, you may be familiar with this college president 17. President Johnson is the founding executive director of this women’s health and gender biology center 19. Full of antioxidants and President Johnson’s fruit of choice 22. President Johnson’s Hogwarts house 25. President Johnson had these birds as pets as a child 26. According to Wellesley Magazine “Right from the start, Wellesley felt like ____” for President Johnson 27. But what does the H. stand for? counterpoint / september 2016

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pokémon go

M O N T H LY P O L L :

In an effort to stay #relevant, this month we asked you what Pokémon Go team you joined over the summer. Over 600 of you responded and here’s what you said. Unsurprisingly, we weren’t that relevant as it turns out that most of Wellesley doesn’t even play this game...

316 163 90 47

OTHER RESPONSES:

Other Responses

I don’t even play this game...

Instinct

Valor

Mystic

Team Pokemon No • Prepare for trouble! Make it double! To protect the world from devastation! To unite all peoples within our nation! To denounce the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the stars above! Jessie! James! Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light! Surrender now, or prepare to fight! (Meowth! That’s right!) • Played the game briefly but quickly got self-conscious about playing it whenever there were people around. Sadly don’t have a team. • Played but did not make it to level five • I wanted to play this game but I never got around to it... partly because my phone didn’t have enough memory • i play for the queers • I haven’t played since I saw a Dratini and the app mysteriously shut off when I tried to catch it. • I have a sex life