November 2015 by Counterpoint Magazine

COUNTERPOINT the wellesley college journal of campus life november 2015 volume 44 issue 3

Cover image: VictoriaYan Uren â&#x20AC;&#x2122;17 (vuren@wellesley.edu)

E D I TO R I A L S TA F F Hanna DayTenerowicz ’16 Cecilia Nowell ’16

Editors-in-Chief

Staff Editors

Olivia Funderburg ’18 Chloe Williamson ’16 Kathryn Sweatman ’17 Anne Meyers ’17 Gabrielle Van Tassel ’16

New Editors Bindu Nicholson ’16 Lara Brennan ’18 Rachele Byrd ’18 Parul Koul ’19

Karen Lew ’18 Samantha English ’19 Roz Rea ’19

D E S I G N S TA F F Art Director Layout Editors

Jayne yan ’16 Midori Yang ’19 Roz Rea ’19 Maggie Rivers ’19

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

Hannah Davelman ’16 Cynthia Chen ’18

C O N T R I BU TO R S Emma Stelter ’16, Victoria yan uren ’17, Francesca Korte ’18

TRUSTEES Oset Babur ’15, Alison Lanier ’15, Matt Burns MIT ’05, Kristina Costa ’09, Brian Dunagan MIT ’03, Kara Hadge ’08, Edward Summers MIT ’08

SUBMISSIONS Counterpoint invites all members of the Wellesley community to submit articles, letters, and art. Email submissions to cnowell@wellesley.edu and hdaytene@ wellesley.edu. Counterpoint encourages cooperation between writers and editors but reserves the right to edit all submissions for length and clarity.

SUBSCRIPTIONS One year’s subscription: $25. Send checks and mailing address to:

Counterpoint, Wellesley College 106 Central Street Wellesley, MA. 02481

COUNTERPOINT THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE JOURNAL OF CAMPUS LIFE NOVEMBER 2015 Volume 44 / Issue 3

POLITICS VICTORIA YAN UREN

EMMA STELTER

REGARDING DRONES: A LETTER TO WELLESLEY PARIS, ETC.

M E N TA L H E A LT H ANONYMOUS

SPINNING

FRANCESCA KORTE

HELLO DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND

A R T S & C U LT U R E CECILIA NOWELL

WRITE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

CAMPUS LIFE COUNTERPOINT STAFF

CROSSWORD: HARVEST

COUNTERPOINT STAFF

MONTHLY POLL: MAKEUP

POLITICS

REGARDING DRONES:

a letter to wellesley BY VICTORIA YAN UREN

e knew about them, thennot in detail, of course, but we had an idea. They flew around without pilots, dropped bombs wherever they pleased. Did Obama have anything to do with it? I guess so, but-“hope,” right? We knew what the military did was probably not ethical, but whose ethics could we judge by? It’s not like we were given any. The CNN of my childhood covered a Bush government. Those were the headlines that taught me how to read. (I have one clear memory of a time before the Iraq War-it is of doing up my Mary Janes, which had “YEAR 2000” written across their straps in rhinestones. Such is the paucity.) Is there an argument for moral lethargy as the defining quality of our generation? Maybe, and if so, some irrelevant geezer has probably already made it. My point here, though, is not

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to say that we are at blame. Only that we grew up amidst permissible cruelty, state sanctioned mass murder, and that we admit: if not moral corrosion, what else is there we could expect? The Western world that I grew up with was one that had already lost its

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familiarity with the term “air raid.” For those of us whose homes were not also, or primarily, warzones there is no tangible measure for comparing our lives with those subject to drone strikes today in Yemen, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Somalia-for comparing our lives with those of the approximate four hundred and fifty adult civilians (not including children-a wild guess made without official data, the uncertainty of which should be already worrying) who are dead in a single day because of strikes like these. Because we do not share that common experience, we read about drone strikes in the New York Times, or on Twitter, or on our Facebook feeds, and we do not launch first into seeing the terror. We forget. It is natural. But I don’t think we can let ourselves forget anymore. I know it is not possible for me. After reading The Intercept’s “Drone Papers,” gifted by

Image: seamlessterritory.org

an anonymous source and published in mid-October, I am rid of illusions about my own irresponsibility, about having some excuse to forget. The drone program enacted under the Obama administration is a program that allows for the murder of innocent civilians-many of which are children-by naming them “Enemies Killed In Action,” or EKIA. This is a program that contributes actively, each day, to the most despicable degradation of our American judicial system by allowing for the assassination of individuals and denying their legal right to indictment or trial. (Probable cause, in these cases, takes the bare form of crumbs: cell phone metadata.) This program treats the law like a suggestion, to be adhered to only when it is “convenient.” This is a program that wages a war hemorrhaging real, human blood, because not only does it pigheadedly kill rather than capture targets who could otherwise provide valuable information, it also gives those uncommitted to conflict a reason to hate “the West,” a threat against which to fight back. One has a hard time imagining the families of hundreds of children accidentally slaughtered finding much reason to believe in the goodwill of the United States. And the great trouble with this program is that, with the aforementioned moral transgressions, it still makes no requests for us to forgive it-it does not even admit to guilt. We have allowed it to be so.

that in silence I will not be innocent. None of us will exonerate ourselves. As California attorney general Kamala Harris (the first African-American, Asian-American, and woman attorney general of the state) reminded us, “All of the most substantial movements in this country started with or have been championed by students.” Those words are a promise, and they are a challenge. Wellesley has taken on similar ones before. If our student body did not believe in its power, there would be no Ethos, no WAAM SLAM, no 20/20. The history of this campus is in part the history of students who chose to believe they had a voice, even when so many things worked to assure them that they didn’t. What can we do now? We can read, get educated. Then we can speak up, because ours is a voice that counts. We need to start having this conversation.

Sometimes I indulge the idea that I have no power. Not really. It’s a seductive notion, believing in that dissolution of responsibility. Seductive most of all because it allows amnesia; I forget (if only temporarily) that I am, ultimately, complicit. The “Drone Papers” force me to give that up. I know

Victoria Uren ’17 (vuren@wellesley.edu) is busy aiming high and not playing the boys’ game (a redundancy).

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POLITICS

PARIS, ETC.

B Y E M M A S T E LT E R

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I know personally tells me. Even if I’m in the same city, three arrondissements over. In news commentaries looking back on the events of this last week—in Paris, Beirut, and Baghdad—there’s a phrase I keep reading over and over: selective solidarity. The world selected Paris and neglected Baghdad and Beirut. Social media became a sea of tricolor flags and Eiffel Towers, with symbols of Lebanon and Iraq nowhere to be seen. Photos of the American flag flown in Paris after 9/11 were paired with photos of New York City lit up in blue, white, and red. Selective solidarity. “It’s not just Paris.” It’s hard not to feel the current of anger in those words. For me, it’s hard to read them and feel anything more than exhaustion. Make no mistake: the media has a problem with unequal coverage. It is a problem that news organizations disproportionately report on violence in the western world while ignoring tragedy elsewhere. It is a problem that France’s tragedy has been talked about more these last few days than Lebanon’s, Iraq’s. It is a problem that Paris got a safe check-in option from Facebook and Beirut did not. There is a problem with the narrative that normalizes and desensitizes us to violence in places in conflict without giving them fuller representation. But there also needs to be a way to approach the problem in times like these that does not invalidate our grief. There are—and this is truly terrible— so many acts of mass violence in this world, that I sometimes wonder if I do need to be selective about what I mourn about. Just as I am unwilling to allow France’s tragedy to overshadow

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my critical thinking, I am incapable of weeping for every bystander murdered, every crowded square bombed. I would cease to function. I would cease to be of use. I hear about a suicide bombing, a mass shooting. These are terrible events. But when they happen, I read the news headlines. And then I keep moving. I believe in expressing solidarity for the world and confronting the problem of unequal coverage. I believe that we as individuals are responsible for being active and critical consumers of media. But I have little sympathy for those angered by messages of solidarity for France. No, it isn’t just Paris. It’s Beirut. It’s Baghdad. But mourning for those killed in Paris and talking about western-centric reporting should not be mutually exclusive. In these next few days, weeks, months, I hope we will think about the fact that everyone who has spoken up about these tragedies—whether their Facebook picture sports a tricolor filter, whether they’ve made donations to the Red Cross, whether they’ve spoken in solidarity for those suffering in Beirut or Baghdad— has felt the weight of these events, and felt the need to at least say something about them. Let’s not forget: these expressions of solidarity are neither misplaced nor ill-intended. Our support for any one place should not have to tear down our support for any other. Let’s listen to each other and talk about the problems. Let’s acknowledge the suffering that has taken place and continues to take place. But let us not belittle each other’s grief. We are better than that. Emma Stelter ’16 (estlter@wellesley.edu) is tired.

Images: http://vid.alarabiya.net/, tumblr.com

his happened to me twice. One day last January I walked out of the Hôtel Citadines on the left bank in Paris. I saw the news headline on the flat screen TV in the lobby. I read the words “attentat terroriste.” It didn’t register. I walked to the Metro and rode to the Tuileries stop, with every intention of going to the Musée d’Orsay, where our guide, Lucille, was giving a tour. When I checked my phone for the time, I saw an email from our program director, written in English, asking us all to check in with her as soon as possible. I texted my parents that I was OK, and returned to the hotel. On Friday, November 13, I checked Facebook before getting on the 5:00 Exchange Bus. I saw the news headline. It didn’t register. On the bus, I closed my eyes and put in my headphones—I get motion sick easily. I sat through stopand-go traffic, took an exceptionally long T-ride, and walked for twenty minutes to an event at the residence of the French Consul in Boston—to which I was disastrously late—and consequently missed the minute of silence. It wasn’t until I was heading back to Harvard Square that I saw a text from my dad: “Terrorist attack in Paris. Over 100 dead.” It registered. I am desensitized to stories about violence in the media. That much is obvious. News stories appear in my Facebook feed, and for me there’s an absence of feeling. Maybe it’s fueled by denial; maybe it’s some kind of twisted self-preservation. It’s easy to post solidarity messages after the fact, but the bottom line is, I can look at a headline and not register its significance for hours—until someone

Spinning

MENTAL HEALTH

Trigger warnings: emotional abuse, verbal abuse, anxiety

pin. You know you want to. Spin. Come on now, spin. I look at the floor of my dorm room. It is a sort of fake-hardwood, ugly against my feet. I should have bought a rug before moving in. Maybe then my toes wouldn’t be so dirty from swirling like a top. You shouldn’t be doing this. Stop. You know you shouldn’t be doing this. The homework is forgotten on my blue sheets that I cover, cover, cover my covers with, fearing the mess my feet might make on the pristine white blanket after. I put the music on too loudly. I spin. And I forget. ————— Sometimes, the most interesting things are the things you don’t say. My memories are few and far between but the things I do remember are in silence. Dull noise.

BY ANONYMOUS

Earbuds in, hiding out what could come in. I am a talkative person but I never say things. I can’t say things because I am afraid of what the effect might be. I am the spokesperson for self-censorship and I am not scared of hiding. I am scared of almost everything else. Especially my mind. Because, what I do remember is anxious-ticking and screaming voices that weren’t mine and tears that were. I am ashamed of my past, but mostly because I did nothing to stop it. I didn’t say anything. I never do. ————— The purple room is loud. Too loud. I hide my eyes under the lavender flowers of my quilt. I keep my eyes on my book instead of keeping my ears on the noise. “You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain—” His words are too much. I do not hear

them but I watch his face. Too red. From the yelling. I cannot read anymore. She is sitting on my bed. He leaves and comes back and rants and leaves and comes backs and threatens more and leaves. She lays down on top of the flowers. We’ll move to Grandma’s house, she whispers through the tears. I used to spin just like you, you know. I used to dance to the Grateful Dead, get that sort of high. I used to do it too. You must know I can’t do this anymore. We’ll go. I used to be like you. In the morning, he kisses the part of my head that isn’t hidden by the blanket and goes to work. She drops me off at her sister’s and goes to court. I read the ending of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. All was well. I wish I could believe that. ————— My brother threw up in the car not long after they split up. We were with Dad for a Wednesday visit, the new normal. He is not good under crisis normally, but then especially, as he had no job and no apartment to take a sick

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I have received a text like this every week since I started college. I am bad at responding; I like to tell him this is because I have so many readings and I’m just so busy with my activities and I’m sorry. (Recently, he filed a court case page 8

against my mother because I made the choice to spend my night after senior prom at her house. Instead of talking to me, he has accused her of violating his parental time. For her sake, I do my best to keep him feeling like a parent.) When he comes to visit in October, he is all smiles and all impressed and all too glad to compliment me (and himself ). He loves that I go to such a prestigious school. He loves that I’m doing well in math. He loves that I look so much like him. I am all smiles too. I like my classes, I like my roommate. Sometimes, the most interesting things are the things you don’t say. (I wonder what he would say if he knew I came to Boston because it is a plane ride away from him. I wonder what he would think if he knew I chose a women’s college because he has made me afraid of men. Probably that it is my mother’s fault.) ————— The orange sign on our door. The brown eyes. The fingers around my wrist. It is from the city. He called them. He tells Freddy, our workman, that he has

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notified the police that he is doing illegal work on our house. Because my mother did not get him a permit. No one gets a permit in Chicago to do work. But he likes to meddle. He likes to control. He likes to make her life more complicated. You would think after three years, he’d have better things to do. They are hers. Gramma doesn’t usually talk about these things. She’d like to act like they aren’t happening. She’d like to say that her son is normal. But now I want to go to family therapy. And now I am going too far. You are betraying your father. You are hurting my baby. And I love you, but if you hurt my baby, I will come after you. Yelling is not abuse. You need to grow up. Her eyes are mean for the first time in my life. They are his. He just yelled in the car again, this time about a Taylor Swift concert that she bought tickets for me for my birthday. The concert is during his parental time. She has taken advantage of him, obviously. Except that she bought the tickets before he picked his summer

Image: tumblr.com

child to. He called my mom. She did not answer. There was traffic. He was yelling. I was in the front seat. He knew she went to work out when he took us kids, so he called the exercise place she usually went to. Look for a fat, ugly bitch with earbuds. I can’t fucking believe she’s not answering her phone. She’s such a selfish bitch. When we finally found Mom, I went home with her and my brother, feigning illness myself. We still lived in the old house. I stood in the front door and cried on her still-sweaty shoulder. I was twelve and already taller than her. I wish I had not felt so small. ————— Good morning! Hope you are having a great week. Miss you. Love, Daddy.

break with us. When he pulls up in front her house so my brother can get his video game, telling him to be quick because I don’t want to be at this goddamn house long, I try to open the door. I try to leave, for once in my life. But he pulls me back, tightly. No. You are with me. You have to be with me. This is my time. You are with me. I never left that car. The orange sign on our door. The brown eyes. The fingers around my wrist. ————— The scrawny, ignorant boy from my sophomore math class is talking again. Unsurprisingly. Ugh, why do I have to deal with him in two classes? I try to tune him out as I usually do, staring longingly at the clock next to the Monet posters and tissue paper snowflakes that line my art classroom. Soon, I tell myself, soon the bell will ring and you won’t have to listen to him anymore, soon— “I mean, but verbal abuse isn’t really, like, abuse. It’s not the same thing as hitting someone and stuff like that. Like, people who claim they are dealing with verbal abuse just can’t deal with their problems and get over themselves.” Silence. I hesitantly raise my hand and softly explain that verbal abuse affects a lot of people and can be just as damaging as physical abuse and that it is, in fact, a real thing. The teacher nods and thanks me, moving to conversation along to a lesscontroversial topic. The boy’s dark brown eyes meet mine. He scoffs. I want to take the jar of pencils in front of me and throw it at the pristine, artwork lined walls. I want to ask him why he doesn’t think about his words before he speaks, why he doesn’t think about anyone but himself, why won’t he listen to other people, why won’t he stop, God, Dad, why won’t you stop— Silence. I breathe in. It’s not his fault.

This high school freshman does not understand. He’s just a boy and not a man. He is not him. Pursing my lips, I turn back to the clock and watch the hands move round the circle once more. ————— my symptoms (and then some) ibs. ocd tendencies. overanalyzing things. constantly anxious. broken out. manic highs and depressive lows. security blankets. irrational fears. (telling the same story over and over. living inside a circle. thinking my friend hates me for one silly comment. spinning. spinning. spinning.) I wrote this three weeks into college after two friends (of three weeks) told me I should go talk to a therapist. I don’t. I am not homesick—this isn’t new. I am sick of home. I am mad that I am still this same person making lists of all the things that are wrong with her. Because I am not the one who should be doing that. ————— Somewhere, at a wedding lost in time, my mother is sipping wine and talking to a man she has just met. She knows the groom from high school; he knows the groom from his first college. They are flirting. They are making intellectual conversation in a place of polite small talk. They are beginning. I wonder if she knows that one day she will have a daughter. I doubt it has crossed her mind. She is a scholar, not a mother; she is a groupie, not a parent. She goes to concerts and drinks and spins and spins and spins to the music. I love you but Jesus loves you the best and I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight. In a few months, she will be in a hotel

and he will be manic. She will have a feeling in her chest that there is something wrong, like she has picked up someone else’s glass at a party. But she doesn’t have a choice anymore because she has already starting drinking it and now the glass is hers. She doesn’t have a choice anymore, because there is something in her womb. And she is Catholic. And he is there. I love you but Jesus loves you the best and I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight. I wish I could go back and tell her to skip the wedding. Go to the Grateful Dead, I’d say. Go see your mom, your sister. Go somewhere and play the music and dance and forget that you ever thought of going. Don’t fall into the circle with a couple drops of wine and a few winks of the eye. You won’t ever stop spinning. I love you but Jesus loves you the best and I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight. They are married. The baby is born. I was the end of the lullaby. ————— I try not to spin as much as I used to. When it all gets to be too much here at Wellesley, I push the earbuds in and up the volume too loud, retreating back into old habits. I know I shouldn’t. I know I should ask for help. I just don’t think I’m ready yet. I am still too often a walking anxiety disorder. I am still the girl who never says anything. I often think that what my mother said that night, now almost seven years ago, is right: she once was just like me. Innocent and afraid and voiceless in her situation, she spun. She stayed married. She rotated back and forth in the never-ending cycle. But somehow, she still broke out. And so will I. For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the Editors-inChief (hdaytene@wellesley.edu or cnowell@ wellesley.edu).

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MENTAL HEALTH

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

write this from my bed in Claflin Hall. I recently suffered a blow to the head that resulted in a concussion. It happened on Saturday. Today, it is Thursday. Per the request of health services, my brain is on “total cognitive rest,” but my mind has yet to stop racing. I feel claustrophobic. I am trapped within the confines of my being, of my residence hall, and of the Wellesley bubble. I ache to claw myself out. I want to scream a scream so shrill that it will pierce each layer that tethers me to myself and to this place. I would if I weren’t paralyzed. Captivity presents the perfect opportunity for introspection and, despite my intermittent headaches, nausea, and dizziness, I can confidently say that I have never reflected more clearly on my life at Wellesley than I have in the past several days. I feel exhausted and anxious and fearful, but these feelings aren’t new. In reality, they have lingered for quite some time. Being bed ridden was simply the impetus for their shift to the forefront of my mind. Alone and in the dark, I have

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dug deep within myself to find the source of these suffocating feelings. When I unearthed their deeply embedded roots, I found myself at first-year orientation in Alumnae Hall. The entire Class of 2018 was present. President Bottomly was speaking: “Look around this room. The people you see are not your competition. They are the people with whom you will collaborate.” In my brief two-and-a-half semesters at Wellesley College, I have realized her words to be true, but in a way that is slightly different from how she originally presented them. My classmates aren’t my competition because I do not think I am equipped to compete with them. I am a fraud. If you asked me to tell you why I was accepted to Wellesley, I wouldn’t be able to. I don’t know why I was. The ways in which I thought myself to be unique prior to college (and what I believed were qualities that separated me from other applicants) are, in actuality, characteristics belonging to every Wellesley student I have encountered. To my credit, I didn’t realize my fraudulence

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until after having arrived on campus and meeting my peers. That is when it registered in my mind that my life before college had deceived me. My high school self worked hard to build a reputation as a leader in my community because I felt I had something to prove. I believed I was bigger than my small town, and by high school’s end, I was proud of the image and future I had created for myself. In my graduating class of 180 students, I was a bright, shining light. It was fantastical of me to think that would carry over into the next phase of my life. Since being at Wellesley, my light has dimmed so much so that it is almost as nonexistent as the light of the room from which I am currently writing. At Wellesley, the ways in which I once thought myself to be profound are irrelevant. For if everyone is profound, nobody is. So here I am. Each moment I lay in my bed staring into nothingness, the weight of everything I am missing—classes, practices, exams—bears down on me a bit more. My chest crunches and caves under its burden. I find it ironic that I have

Image: tumblr.com

BY FRANCESCA KORTE

stumbled upon all this free time and yet I am powerless to take advantage of it in the way any normal Wellesley student would: by doing work. As it is, I am barely able to keep up with the day-to-day demands of being a student-athlete here. I frequently feel like I am drowning and I fight hard to keep my head above the water. My fear is that this concussion will be the thing that drags me under the surface for good. I don’t trust that once my brain has recovered, my body will be strong enough

at some subconscious level, I was more aware of my mediocrity than I was willing to admit. I am beginning to come to terms with the notion that maybe it wasn’t my academic standing, extracurricular involvements, or glowing recommendation letters that got me accepted to Wellesley. Those things were, without a doubt, important to be a competitive candidate, but not the ultimate one. Rather, it was my fervent, innate desire to test the boundaries of my mental and physical limits. In

In the light of this November afternoon walking along Lake Waban, I feel content, but not because my looming feelings have dissipated. They still strain me, but instead of rejecting their existence, I welcome them. I allow myself to feel them, comforted by the sentiment that I might not be the only person at Wellesley to deal with such emotions. To my Wellesley sibs, we are constantly told that we are “women who will,” and we are—women who, in the face of severe

to tread for as hard and long as would be necessary to keep myself afloat. Here’s the warped truth in all of this: despite the density of the feelings I am experiencing, I adore Wellesley. It’s cliché, but it is the perfect school for me. I feel as certain in admitting that as I do in admitting my inadequacy as a student here. I applied to this institution Early Decision for a reason that has only since hitting my head become evident to me. Perhaps,

my time here, I’ve done that. This bubble has challenged me academically, athletically, and socially in ways that have been frustrating and intimidating and new. But, challenge is good. Challenge is why I chose Wellesley. Challenge carves room for self-growth and I know have grown a lot since coming here. I finish this reflection after having gone outside for the first time since my diagnosis. My head is nearly recovered.

self-doubt and twisted self-perception, will persevere. We give every fraction of our being to this place and this community, and maybe in the end, that’s good enough. Keep treading.

Francesca Korte ’18 (fkorte@wellesley.edu) encourages others to listen to the sound of silence.

counterpoint / november 2015

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ARTS & CULTURE

WRITE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hat would she do? Those words were my continuous mantra as I wandered the streets of this unfamiliar city looking for my hostel. I had been hopping onto flights and trains for most of the day, but now that I had arrived, the reality of my situation hit me. I was in a new country. I was tired and hungry, definitely ready to find my room for the night. And I was alone. I had flown into Rome that morning with a friend for our study-abroad program’s spring break, but had decided that I wanted to spend a few days exploring Florence first. Since my friend couldn’t join me, I purchased a train ticket by myself as soon as we landed and jumped on the next train to Florence. The fact that I didn’t actually know anyone in Florence didn’t hit me until I had already reserved my hostel bed and headed on my way. I had cavalierly whispered to myself not to worry and to instead follow in the footsteps of my favorite fictional female travelers. I told myself that if Rose, Alanna, Jo, and Amadia could travel boldly and fearlessly, so could I. I've been a big reader since I was a kid, long before I started traveling. I grew up on stories of exploration—Edith Pattou’s East, Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and even books that I wrote for myself. I devoured stories that encouraged readers to seek out the new and sometimes scary. As I grew older and began formally studying literature, travel narratives like The Epic of Gilgamesh and Don Quixote joined the collection of stories that guided my understanding of travel. I looked to literature, as many people do, as a guide for how to face my own adventures. I still do. What I've noticed over time though is that there are very few stories of explorapage 12

tion written for and by women. Though I was fortunate to have young adult books like East and Tamora Pierce’s Alanna stories which modeled and encouraged female bravery and discovery, I never found similar books in high school or college literature courses. I found books about women, even books where women traveled, but never books where women traveled purely for their own self-discovery. As a young woman, I had done plenty of camping and backpacking, but I had never left the U.S., and I had certainly never traveled on my own. So, when I stepped off my plane in Spain for my semester abroad—in a new country for the first time ever—and then off my train in Florence for my first week traveling alone, I was terrified. I had desperately searched for stories to guide my way, but when it became clear that there was only a small canon of

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female travel narratives, I had to do what I had done as a kid: make my own story. The first long piece of fiction I ever wrote was about a young girl who discovered her twin sister at summer camp and found that her long-lost parents were secretly the former king and queen of the capital planet in her galaxy. It was something of a mix between The Parent Trap and Star Wars. The book, titled Amadia after the female protagonist, was the first long piece of writing I ever completed— and I poured myself into it for years, drafting outlines for and excerpts from the other two books that I planned to write in the trilogy and designing intricate plans of the capital’s palace and the locations of each of the galaxy’s planets. I worked on drafts of Amadia throughout my youth, imagining myself into a different universe and throwing myself into the creative process of becoming a writer. The comfort that I found while writing came from the creative act, but also from the sense of bravery that I felt in telling stories. As a quiet and shy child, I struggled to put words together when speaking, but never when writing. The written word let me express myself in a way that not only made me feel comfortable, but also strong. As I struggled through the nerves that came with growing up, I knew that I could always write. And so, I imagined myself into stories and universes where I could be an alien princess fighting for intergalactic peace—in these stories of adventure and courage, I saw myself and imagined that I might someday be like the characters I looked up to. Through my writing, I created a braver, more courageous version of myself. So, as I left the United States for the first time, and set out on adventures by myself, I again wrote my own stories. In

Image: tumblr.com, Victoria Yan Uren ’17 (vuren@wellesley.edu)

BY CECILIA NOWELL

the years since my childhood and Amadia, I had turned from writing fiction to personal memoirs, and found the same kind of intangible yet real comfort that came from seeing and expressing myself through writing. With fiction, I had been able to imagine myself into different stories and places, but with non-fiction I was able to tell my own stories. I could write myself not just as someone who idolized brave characters, but who actually was one. Yet, even as I wanted to create a genre of courage and independence for myself, I was weighed down by the fear of considering what it really meant to be a woman traveling alone. As I watched the Tuscan countryside flash by on my train ride to Florence, my nervous brain considered all the possible things that could happen to a woman alone in a foreign country. I could get pickpocketed. I could get lost and, not knowing the language, not know how to get myself un-lost. I could even—and this what-if hovered over my head after years of being a woman and being told not to make any bad choices—be sexually assaulted. One of the articles I've read and reread most over the last year, as I have started traveling abroad and alone, is a piece from The American Reader by Vanessa Veselka called "Green Screen: The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why it Matters." In her article, Veselka—a former hitchhiker—talks about how the lack of female exploration literature has made women vulnerable by making the few known stories of women on the road about danger, death, and rape. Stories of women travelers are not stories of adventure, but rather stories of tragedy—as Veselka writes, "As a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker, my survival depended upon other people’s ability to envision a possible future for me. Without a Melvillean or Kerouacian framework, or at least some kind of narrative to spell out a potential beyond death, none of my resourcefulness or curiosity was

recognizable, and therefore I was unrecognizable." Because narratives of women adventurers are so rare, there is little language or precedence for telling female stories of exploration—and there is even less language for telling stories of women’s fulfilling adventures. Months later, returned from study abroad, I cracked open a copy of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild in hopes of finding a successful female travel story. And I did. In Wild, I found Strayed grappling with her own personal demons and learning how to travel through the wilderness, but there was no fear preventing her from undertaking her journey—she exuded only

stubborn courage. Yet, Strayed acknowledged the same narrative of fear as Veselka and noted, "I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me." Just as Strayed decided to tell herself a story of safety, strength, and bravery, so have I started to tell myself stories not of fear, but of courage. Though my own stories are certainly far from Odysseus’s quest or Kerouac's wanderings, I write them down in hopes that, just maybe, they contribute something to the narrative of what it means to be a woman exploring the world and trying to find herself. And I so desperately hope that others write their stories down too—forget that everyone else is doing it and it feels cliché, make that study abroad blog. More people should know that women are capable of traveling and traveling alone. Without individual stories, there is no language for female travelers like Veselka to use in describing their experiences; there are only stories of fear. But, if we jot down our stories, and create a genre where women can be hitchhikers, backpackers, wanderers, travelers, train-hoppers, and plane-jumpers, then we can create a world where being a woman on the road isn’t quite as scary. With these stories, we can imagine a world where a woman steps off of a train in Florence, sees every museum and sight that she had longed to see, and discovers that she is in fact capable of going it alone—and learning so much about herself in the process.

Cecilia Nowell ’16 (cnowell@wellesley. edu) has a National Geographic collection dating back to 1973 and hopes more female adventurers will be included in it in the future. counterpoint / november 2015

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CAMPUS LIFE

ACROSS 2. During this Jewish festival participants build huts and eat special seasonal meals in celebration of the end of the harvest season 6. This devious plant causes the majority of autumnal allergies 7. This South Indian harvest festival gets its name from its traditional rice dish 9. An autumnal tradition celebrated each year in Munich, Germany and in Glory (formerly known as Mann) Hall 11. The Christmas Season “officially” begins when this figure passes by during the Thanksgiving Day Parade 16. This leafy green was grown by students and sold at El Table this semester 18. This hormone increases in both men and women during the fall, leading to an increase in the number of children conceived during this season 21. This vegetable was originally used for Jack O’ Lanterns before Irish immigrants in the United States began using pumpkins 22. A Japanese harvest festival meaning “Celebrations of the First Taste” 23. Also called autumnal depression, the acronym of this disorder reminds us of how those who miss the sunlight must feel in the fall 24. A way of preserving harvested crops 25. Your friendly, local, student-run, organic farm 26. This astronomical event marks the end of fall and the beginning of winter 27. The three zodiac signs of autumn include Libra, Scorpio, and _________ 29. U.S. site of the first Thanksgiving, today a popular Massachusetts tourist destination 30. Geomagnetic storms double in frequency during the fall, which has led scientists to dub this time of the year “ _______ Season” 31. Early Britons celebrated this harvest festival with baked bread and corn dolls

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counterpoint / november 2015

DOWN 1. According to Greek mythology, autumn begins when this goddess returns to the underworld and her heartbroken mother allows all the earth’s crops to die 3. Researchers at the University of Chicago have discovered that babies born during the fall are the most likely to the age of __________ 4. This company sponsors New York City’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 5. Now celebrated by Celtic neopagans, this traditional Gaelic festival marks the end of the harvest season 8. This celestial sight appears when the full moon is closest to the autumn equinox and was known to help farmers finish harvesting their crops before the invention of artificial lighting 10. In season between October and February, kids usually turn their nose up at this veggie 12. Although Wellesley students are typically harvesting midterms during the fall, they can also partake in ________ ________ at local orchards 13. This astronomical event marks the beginning of fall 14. A Chinese, Vietnamese and Taiwanese harvest festival where celebrators eat moon cakes among other activities 15. An Igbo harvest festival where celebrators mock famine and invite a good harvest to come in the next year 17. Also called a horn of plenty, this symbol plays a part in The Hunger Games 19. Branches from this tree are collected and woven together during Swaziland’s harvest festival 20. Indonesian rice goddess celebrated with bamboo temples and rice dolls during the harvest season 27. Meaning “summer’s end,” this Pagan holiday marks the beginning of winter 28. Called “the three sisters” by indigenous American farmers: Corn, beans, and ________

CROSSWORD:

Image: sharefaith.com

Harvest

counterpoint / november 2015

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MONTHLY POLL: MAKEUP

A student wanted to know about Wellesley’s makeup habits and how they might affect feminine presentation on campus, so Counterpoint asked you what kinds of makeup you wear, and how often you wear them. 658 people responded telling us all about their makeup routines! Here’s what you said:

123

169

217

149

223

168

164

103

144

163

231

120

649

644

647

653

354

168

112

341

156

118

237

236

159

193

236

194

656

MOST AMUSING ANSWERS: “blood of my enemies,” “tears mostly,” and “is mayonnaise an instrument?”