Yale Daily News Magazine October 2022

MASTHEAD

Magazine Editor in Chief

Marie Sanford

Managing Editors

Abigail Sylvor Greenberg

Oliver Guinan

Associate Editors

Ana Padilla Castellanos

Isa Dominguez

Sarah Feng Zack Hauptman

Samhitha Josyula Margot Lee Dante Motley Idone Rhodes

Creative Director

Catherine Kwon

Magazine Design Editors

Nicole Ahsan Yuenning Chang Chloe Edwards Christy Lau Clarissa Tan Isaac Yu

Photography Editors

Gavin Guerette

Yasmine Halmane

Tenzin Jorden

Tim Tai Giri Viswanathan

Illustration Editors

Jessai Flores

Ariane de Gennaro

Copy Editors

Josie Jahng Maya Melnik

Hailey O’Conner

Patrick SebaRaj

Editor in Chief & President

Lucy Hodgman

Publisher

Olivia Zhang

Cover Illustration by Cate Roser

THE OCTOBER 2022 ISSUE

Hi Mag Fam, Goodbyes are hard.

Last week, I had my last board meeting as editor in chief of the YDN Magazine. It was an open board meeting with many writers popping in and out of the newsroom for nal edits. In what has already become a lasting memory for me, I was working with Isabella Zou, the 2020-2021 Mag EIC, on her personal essay, “ e Pole Climb,” while Abigail Sylvor Green berg, an outgoing ME and the incoming 2022-2023 Mag EIC, sat across the table making nal revisions on Noah Humphrey’s religious commentary, “To the Preacher.” As the rest of the 2021-2022 board ltered upstairs to attend the meeting, Isa and I stayed back — both to nish discussing her piece and also to re ect and reminisce.

Like Isa, YDN Mag has been one of my most meaningful Yale experiences, from sta writ ing to being an associate editor to nally assuming the role of editor in chief with my amazing partner-in-crime Claire Lee. Along with long nights proo ng content in the tworoom, Claire and I spent a lot of time thinking about the culture we wanted to cra as EICs. We implemented social activities such as our cross campus print sales to help our sta of 30-strong bond. e night before print sales our board and sta would gather in the YDN basement with glitter glue, scissors, newspaper scraps, googly eyes, etc. to hand-make me mentos that would go towards printing the Mag. Everyone would very politely bop along to my shu ing Liked Songs while determinedly cutting away at pieces of construction paper — in e ect buying into our vision, for which I could not be more grateful.

But producing the Magazine has always been a collaborative labor of love, as we could not produce a publication without the YDN’s amazing Photo, Illustrations, Copy and Produc tion & Design editors. However, this issue is special, as it’s our rst time having a designat ed creative director, the imitable Catherine Kwon, who has already done much in terms of creating Mag’s new visual aesthetic. is heightened focus on production will help propel Mag into the already emergent digital media culture that is rapidly transforming news rooms around the country. But more importantly, it has been my utmost pleasure to work closely on my last issue with such a kind, attentive soul and a competent and innovative designer.

is issue is all about leaving it all on the eld, as my mom says. is is the rst issue in the current volume of YDN Mag that has a humor piece, Hannah Mark’s brilliant, “In venting (H)Anna(h),” and an opinion piece, Loren Bass-Sanford’s incisive critique of Yale’s Music Department. Gavin Guerrette’s beautiful photo essay, “Coming Home,” explores his changing relationship to his home, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a er a year of grappling with Yale’s unthinkable wealth. Caleb Dunson’s comprehensive pro le of Christopher D. Betts follows Betts’ journey as a Black, queer artist from elementary school to now directing the Je Recommended production of “Dreamgirls” at Paramount Aurora eater in Aurora, IL. And Tyler Jager, in “Tenant Chemistry,” follows Connecticut Tenants Union organizers and local residents ardently ghting for their housing rights against exploitative landlords such as Pike and Ocean Management.

I am so proud of the stories shared in this issue of Mag. I hope they inspire you to question the status quo and remind you that your livelihood is worth ghting for. As I am reminded again and again during my senior fall: Nothing lasts forever; all bets are o

A Tight Squeeze: An Interrogation of Yale’s Music Major

BY Loren Bass Sanford

Afew weeks ago, I attended Flow in’, a conference that was hosted at Yale in honor of Dr. Farah Jasmine Gri n and her critical work on Black fem inist jazz and literary studies. It was prob ably one of the best things to ever happen to me. I met Dr. Gri n and many of my academic and cultural heroes, including Dr. Angela Y. Davis. e conference felt more like a family reunion than an ac ademic conference. Most importantly, I le with the triumph of knowing that it was possible for me to seriously study the music that I love — African American popular music — in its fullest capacity.

is conference did not focus on music or African American history in isolation. Rather, it centered on the inextricable link between Black feminism and African American music, history and literature. It was the rst space I had been in where I didn’t have to study music and culture separately. Music wasn’t an abstraction that existed in a vacuum, but a medium that embodied all parts of my identity, my sense of self and my family and our history.

Seeing people at the conference talking about the signi cance of Black popular mu sics — discussing the likes of Patti Labelle, Whitney Houston and Billie Holiday — was at once validating and infuriating because it made realize me the extent to which this mu sic had been either devalued or completely omitted from my music education at Yale.

Re ecting on my experiences made me wonder about the experiences of oth er music lovers on campus. ere are so many talented musicians here — from a cappella singers and Yale Symphony Or chestra players to students who produce and perform their own music. How many students shared my experience? How many students would love to study mu sic but don’t see their interests re ected in the department? How many students have an unawakened love for music that may never be brought to life because of the narrow scope of the music curriculum?

e music major is divided into four groups: Music eory; Creative Practic es, which consist of performance, compo sition and lessons; Western Art Musics,

which is everything that would be collo quially called “classical music”; and World & Popular Musics. Unlike a conservato ry like Juilliard, where students focus al most exclusively on music performance, Yale’s music program follows a liberal arts curriculum that requires students to take two intermediate courses and one ad vanced course in each group. e major’s website states that “Yale’s music major is a general music program that combines studies in composition, conducting, eth nomusicology, music history, music tech nology, music theory, and performance.”

e experiences of myself and my peers, how ever, cast doubt on whether this claim is true. Amara Mgbeike ’22, who uses she/her pro nouns, is a vocalist and guitar player who came to Yale with a background in Gospel music. She was eager to explore Gospel music and learn about music production and writing vocal arrangements. Caleb Crayton ’22, who uses he/him pronouns, came to Yale with extensive experience writing and producing hip-hop beats for himself and his friends in a home studio

setup. He and Mgbeike both began re leasing and performing their own music while at Yale and have continued to pur sue music professionally since graduating. Crayton hopes to pursue music full time.

When I asked Crayton if he ever considered majoring or double-majoring in music, he said that he considered it out of a love for music, but that his pas sion wasn’t in music theory, composition or classical music. ese disciplines, he said, are “more so what the mu sic major prepares you for unless you try to go at it on your own.”

Mgbeike said that most of her deci sion to not major or double-major in music was due to family concern about the viability of a music degree. However, those considerations aside, when I asked her if she could have seen

a place for herself in the music ma jor, she said, “I really have to say no.”

“ e course listings each semester didn’t have a lot of variety. Sometimes there’s one cool class or two, but the majority of what I’d have to take probably wouldn’t have excited me,” she said. “I’m so grateful for the extracurricular things that allowed me to be involved in music so I didn’t have to major in music and take class es I didn’t want to take.”

Mgbeike and Crayton’s rst encounters with the music major were in the fall of 2018, the year that a recon guration of the major went into e ect. In the previous structure of the major, Western clas sical music dominated the curriculum — sev en of the 16 credits were required courses that focused on Western classical music. e newly con gured mu sic major was supposed to provide more

exibility and decenter the Western can on through changes such as eliminating required courses and creating the group structure that allows students to have more choice in which classes they take.

It takes time for some of the impact of these changes to be felt, so it’s possible that aspects of the major have since im proved. I talked to Sage Friedman ’25, a sophomore considering majoring in mu sic. Friedman, who uses she/her pronouns, is a classically trained opera singer, but her true passion relates to music history and ethnomusicology, the study of music in its social and cultural contexts. She has a deep love for Caribbean music and the music of Haitian immigrants and is consid ering double-majoring in American Stud ies. During her rst year, she took “Com mercial & Pop Music eory,” a recent course added to the curriculum in the fall of 2020, as well as a class called “Western Philosophy in Four Operas,” which she de scribed as her “bread and butter.” She was so thrilled that she was exposed to things like “music history, ethnomusicology and all of these ways to study music as subject.”

How many students have an unawakened love for music that may never be brought to life because of the narrow scope of the music curriculum?

ough initially excited by those classes, Friedman has since developed concerns about how she will be able to further her course of study in the department. In oth er words, she’s feeling similarly to Mg beike — there might be one or two classes in her area of interest, but the majority of the department doesn’t really have a place for her. She told me she would be meeting with the director of undergraduate studies of the Music Department in the days a er our conversation to address her concerns.

“Now I’m here, having taken two music courses, and I’m like, ‘Okay, where is this going?’” Friedman told me. “ ere are kids sitting next to me in these music classes who are classically trained musicians of 10 years. ey know what this looks like for them, but my path is much less clear. I’m not a theorist or composer, and I’m not nec essarily a performer, so I’m worried I’ll have to squeeze myself into this shoe that doesn’t t to continue doing the thing that I love.”

When Friedman told me all of this, I jok ingly asked her how she got into my brain. We had never met before this conversa tion, yet she articulated my exact experi ence with the music major in a way that I had never been able to. I had been feel ing constrained by what felt like a narrow range of musical study and thus feeling less passionate about music as a whole.

Coming into college, I knew that I wanted to leave with a degree in mu sic because I wanted it to be part of my professional life. I knew I did not want to focus on performance or theory, so I settled on composition and began the four-semester-long composition se quence, even though my passion has never been for composing. At times my friends saw my dissatisfaction and sug gested I stop pursuing the composition track. What else would I do? I would re spond. e senior project options are a composition, a musical theater compo sition, a senior recital or a senior essay. I could have done the senior essay, but there weren’t enough relevant courses to undergird the writing and research I was interested in, African Ameri can popular music. us, I continued walking around with that too-tight shoe, even when it gave me blisters.

My experience in the music major is espe cially jarring when compared to my expe rience as an Ethnicity, Race and Migration major, also known as ER&M. ough my interests in ER&M would traditionally

are added in here and there — as Mgbeike noted — for the sake of diversifying the course o erings, but there is no structur al interrogation of who the major serves.

Sarkar is a classically trained pianist and composer whose work has received na tional and international recognition. ey decided against majoring or double-major ing in music because of the dominance of western classical music in the music major that resulted from this diversity approach.

fall under the African American Studies Department, the ER&M Program rec ognizes that a lot of African American studies topics overlap with ethnicity, race and migration. erefore, there are a lot of ER&M courses that re ect that over lap. In other words, I don’t feel like I have to leave the ER&M Department to sub stantially study various topics related to ethnicity, race and migration. Why is this not the case with the Music Department? Why do I have to go outside of the Music Department to substantially study music that is not of the western classical tradition?

While it was a rming to hear I’m not alone, I hated listening to Friedman echo the same problem. I’m glad that she has such a strong sense of what she wants to study and is tak ing the steps to make sure she is supported academically, but she shouldn’t have to do all of that heavy li ing. None of us should have to “go at it on our own,” as Crayton noted, if we want to deviate from the tra ditional path. No one should have to come into college knowing exactly what they want and be ready to ght tooth and nail to get it.

e fact that students are slipping through the cracks or feeling con ned within the major is indicative of a larger problem with the structure of the major, which lies in what Avik Sarkar ’23, who uses any pro nouns, calls its “diversity approach.” In this model, classes that focus on music outside of the Western classical music tradition

She noted that in this context, classes that don’t focus on Western classical can “only matter as additives.” is is why stu dents like Friedman, Mgbeike, Crayton and I did not — and have not — felt as though there’s a place for us in the music major. e music that we consider wor thy of serious study functions more as a way to enrich the education of students studying Western classical music than as a topic for any student to focus on, as if the music we love is an a erthought.

is is evident in the way the major still re quires students to interact with the West ern tradition for the majority of their study. Until last year’s introduction of the popular music theory sequence, almost all of the classes that ful lled the music theory re quirement were based in the Western clas sical tradition. e only classes that ful ll the intermediate level of the Western classi cal music history requirement are the same three history classes that used to be re quired for the major. In other words, there’s still a de facto requirement that all music majors take two of those western classical music history classes. Lastly, there are con sistently only three or four classes o ered in the World and Popular Musics catego ry — for comparison, the Creative Prac tices category usually has een classes.

On a smaller scale, the diversity approach results in feelings of alienation and lacklus ter support for students who want to study or create music that is not of the Western classical tradition. Sarkar gave this account from his semester in Composition Seminar I:

“I wanted to write something that was in uenced by Indian classical music, which has a very highly complicated system of notation, counterpoint, rhythm and meter,

“I’m not a theorist or composer, and I’m not necessarily a performer, so I’m worried I’ll have to squeeze myself into this shoe that doesn’t t to continue doing the thing that I love.”

but there was no one to guide me through that. I was completely on my own. All any one wanted to talk about was that I was bringing in a diverse perspective. at to me is a problem with the diversity ap proach because it’s like, ‘We need to inte grate non-Western in uences into West ern music,’ but that leads to people only regarding this music as exotic and other.”

Mgbeike had a similar anecdote about her time in Composition Seminar I: “When I took Composition Seminar, I was trying to make something more jazzy than the rest of my classmates, so I kind of felt out of place. I wondered if that feeling would have subsided at all had I continued with the major. During my rst year, I was feeling like everyone was better than me or more advanced than me because they were doing something di erent from me.”

ese are the stakes of the diversity ap proach. Music lovers either see the over whelming dominance of Western classical music in the major and feel completely shut out, or they continue walking through the major with blisters on their feet, al ways feeling implicitly less than or exoti cized and exhausted from having to learn about the music they love without support.

Immediately following my conversation with Sarkar, I interviewed Dr. Fredara Had ley, an ethnomusicologist who specializes in African American popular music, who gave me some context that even further highlights the problems with Yale’s diversi ty approach. Dr. Hadley, who uses she/her pronouns, went to Florida A&M Universi ty, received her Ph.D. at Indiana University, and has taught at Oberlin College and Con servatory and e Juilliard School, both of which are conservatories where the over whelming majority of students study West ern classical music performance. When I asked her where her ethnomusicology courses t into the conservatory curriculum, she said many of her classes are electives.

“Conservatory students are required to take courses in Western classical music history, and there are always electives that they have le over. O entimes ethnomu sicology courses are among the electives they can take a er they’ve completed their classical music history requirements. At

Oberlin, students could use these courses to ful ll a cultural diversity requirement.”

While Yale’s Music Department does not solely focus on performance, the struc ture of the major is very similar to that of the conservatory structure Dr. Hadley described: Western classical music dom inates the curriculum and a few courses are o ered in other types of music to act as supplements to the classical music educa tion. e problem here is that Yale’s Music Department is explicitly not a conservatory. It’s also the Music Department, not the de partment of Western classical music or the Western-classical-music-and-a-few-oth er-types-of-music department. Dr. Hadley herself noted that departments like Yale’s are meant to be more exible than conser vatories, so one would think there’d be a much more expansive study of music in our department. But instead, as Fried man noted, the department is “boxing itself in and sti ing what could be a really vibrant and much more popular ma jor.” She continued, ““We all interact with music so di erently, it’s one of the most versatile forms of media you can engage with. I think the lack of versatil ity in the department is disheartening.”

I talked to the DUS — Dr. Anna Za yaruznaya, who specializes in music of the Middle ages and Renaissance — about a place to start with potential changes. I rst asked about cross-listing music-relat ed classes taught in other departments as a way to start, since hiring new music faculty would be a lengthy process. e list below shows some of the music-related classes that have been o ered in other departments since the recon guration of the music major but were not cross-listed with the music major.

• CSGH 370 e Media of Sound: Ex perimental Approaches to Sound De sign (Fall 2022)

• CSBF 370 Hip-Hop Music and Culture (Fall 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2019)

• ENGL 423 Writing about the Perform ing Arts (Spring 2022, 2021, 2020)

• RLST 156 Buddhism & Hip-Hop (Fall 2021)

• FILM 338 International Movie Musical (Fall 2021)

• CSDC 330 e Art and Business of Songwriting (Spring 2021)

• AFAM 190/AMST 204 Protest Music and the Black Radical Tradition (Fall 2020)

• AMST 034 Country Music in America (Spring 2021)

• AMST 357 e Times of Bob Dylan (Spring 2020 but was canceled)

• CSBR 301 Music and Cinema: A His tory (Fall 2019)

• CSDC 300 Composing for Film & Me dia: Art, Innovation, and Commerce (2019)

• ENGL 350 Literary Sound Studies (Fall 2019, Spr 21 canceled)

• AMST 354 Music and Resistance in the United States (Fall 2018)

I also asked about the in clusion of the so-called “gen eral interest and introduc tory classes” that are taught in the Music Department but cannot cur rently be counted towards the major. Many of these are rst-year seminars like Music 081: “Race and Place in British New Wave, K-Pop, and Beyond,” Music 031: “Mu sic of Protest, & Propaganda” and Music 087: “Music, Memes and Digital Culture.” Some are introductory courses like Music 145: “Music in Japan,” Music 185: “Ameri can Musical eater History,” and even the class Friedman loved, Music 137: “Western Philosophy in Four Operas.” e exclusion of these classes from the major is a bit ludi crous to me — imagine taking one of these classes as a rst-year student or someone who’s interested in the major only to nd out those classes can’t count towards the ful llment of the requirements and the rest of the major looks nothing like those classes.

Professor Zayaruznaya, who uses she/her pronouns, said her “goal is never to gate keep” and that she would always be open to allowing classes to count for the major when individual students ask. She also

No one should have to come into college knowing exactly what they want and be ready to ght tooth and nail to get it.

agreed that some of the music-related classes from other departments should be cross-listed with music, noting that sometimes the department just doesn’t know that those classes are being taught.

While this is certainly nice to hear, it places the burden of getting credits counted toward the major on the stu dent and does not structurally change the prioritization of Western music. If the department made a more centralized e ort to include these classes in the ma jor that would be much more impactful. It’s the di erence between sure, we’ll al low that class to count towards the ful llment of this requirement in this one case and these concepts are important components of the study of music. Let’s make sure that is re ected in our course o erings. is requires both an interro gation or expansion of what is consid ered to be important to music education and an examination of the course o er ings to determine if the di erent types of music represented are actually getting

a matter of Western classical music being so disproportionately centered in the department to the extent that it’s di cult to study any other type of music substantively. It’s a matter of the curriculum being designed with a “typical” student in mind when, in reality, there should be no typical. While incorporating some of the classes I mentioned would be a great start, I dream of the vibrant music major that Friedman talked about.

What if the Music Department was a multicultural hub for the study of music? What if you could walk in and hear the sounds of someone learning how to DJ, a classically trained pianist preparing for a performance, and a classroom of students analyzing a Be yoncé album? What if the Music De partment was a place where a person’s love for music, no matter the form, could blossom instead of wilting from malnourishment? What if the Music Department could be reimagined so that students like myself, Crayton, Mgbeike, Friedman and Sarkar aren’t le behind or forced to squeeze into shoes that don’t t in order to pursue our love of music?

an equal amount of focus. at is what is missing in the Music Department.

In the last part of our discussion, I told Professor Zayaruznaya that this piece is not necessarily about me shaking my st at the Music Department. I just want so much more. I want my study of music to be as expansive as my love for music, and I want the same for all music lovers. It’s also not about getting rid of Western classical music — all of the students I spoke with value the many skills they’ve learned from studying that canon. It’s

What if you could walk in and hear the sounds of someone learning how to DJ, a classically trained pianist preparing for a performance, and a classroom of students analyzing a Beyoncé album?

INVENTING (H)ANNA(H)

by Hannah Mark

Over the summer, it seemed that every person on my Instagram feed was off on a glamorous study-abroad trip to Europe or doing research at a world-class university. Meanwhile, my sum mer activities included watching TikTok in my childhood bedroom and working a job where I came in contact with an ungodly vol ume of urine specimens. It prom ised to be a long, lonely and contemplative three months.

To combat the isolation, I start ed watching “Inventing Anna.” The show follows the true story of a plucky journalist named Vivi an Kent as she investigates a fake German Heiress named Anna Delvey who hoodwinked the New York elite. Anna — or rather, “In venting Anna” — changed my life. Anna’s character spoke to my soul. She had impeccable fashion sense, goddess-like networking capabilities, a deliciously dramat ic circle of friends, a really weird accent and a propen sity for engaging

in semi-illegal activities. She was who I dreamed of becoming. The only downside to my fascination with Anna was that I developed a deeply unfeminist urge to mar ry rich and spend my days being disgustingly wealthy.

With this in mind, I shifted my adoration to a more ethical character: Vivian Kent, the re porter who investigates Anna. With her razor sharp wit and in tense stare, Vivian Kent secured forbidden interviews, delved into intrigues and asked tough questions, scribbling everything into her super chic notebook.

Soon, I was lost in visions of a dazzling journalistic career. Instead of thinking about the bedpans I was scrubbing, I imagined the steamy, fantasti cal realm of a newsroom, the thrill of rubbing shoulders with celebrities, the jolt of adrena line incurred by a rapidly ap proaching deadline. I dreamed of living on sporadic paychecks while searching frantically

for the next big story. True, the desire to be a starving reporter is probably just as troublesome as the desire to be really rich, but at least it’s not unfeminist.

As I watched episode after epi sode of “Inventing Anna,” I saw both Vivian and Anna taking risks. They made moves. They knew what they wanted. They weren’t content to let things stay the way they were; they wanted big changes. They got what they wanted.

I began to reevaluate my own position, my own boring sum mer: What did I want?

Then it came to me. I wanted my life to be like Anna and Vivian.

In order to do this, I had to take a few steps.

STEP 1.

Find the Next Big Story

For Vivian Kent, living in a busy city, the Next Big Story could be around practically any corner. Finding a story in my small town was a bit more challenging.

But then the only nursing home in my small town decided to close its doors, outraging residents and community members. Here it was, dropped into my lap, the Next Big Story. Now, I just

STEP 3. Leverage All Connections

I cold-emailed the editor of a local newspaper with my story pitch. I mentioned Yale immediately and said I was basically a pro because of all those YDN reporter trainings.

I even sent a writing sample — and prayed he wouldn’t realize it was a human interest piece and not real, hard-hitting journalism.

but one false move, and I would be outed as an imposter.

Then I remembered something Anna used to say: “You look poor.” Anna was right. If I wanted to be successful, if I wanted to be a real journalist, I needed to …

STEP 4 .

Dress for the Part

The slight issue with that plan: my journalism experience is limited to being a lifelong NPR nerd and taking approximately six report er training sessions at the YDN building. Fortunately, Vivian Kent showed me the real key to being a successful journalist …

STEP 2. Get a Cool Notebook

I went to the dollar store and bought a spiral-bound red notebook. Fueled by dollar store chips — which, by the way, are now $1.25, thanks, in

path to journalistic excellence was basically guaranteed by my new red notebook, I decided to

It sounds bold but hear me out. Along with some other max ims learned year, includ ing “milk the hell out of the alumni network” and “a buttery buck saved is a but tery buck that can be exploited for lots of free grilled cheese,” I dis covered that name-dropping Yale often grants me access to things

like writing a breaking news story about a nursing home closure.

And sure enough, the editor said he was delighted to work with me on the story. He even offered in ad vance to pay me for my article.

That’s when I realized I was in over my head. Pay me? What if it turned out the article I was theoretical ly going to write was complete garbage? I felt like Anna Delvey, sweet-talking her way onto a pri vate jet without paying for it. The

Thankfully, in smalltown Montana, the pace of fashion trends is always a few years behind, so an anti-wrinkle blouse from the clearance rack at TJ Maxx ba sically counts as de signer. Wrinkle free and ready to write, I proceeded to knock on doors and visit facilities and call old ladies who went to my church.

After gathering all the informa tion I needed, via lots of Google searches and Facebook stalking, it was the moment of truth. Was my journalist act enough to actually write the Next Big Story?

“HERE IT WAS, DROPPED INTO MY LAP, THE NEXT BIG STORY.”

Anna Delvey faced a moment of truth too. The huge bank loan she was trying to se cure — so that her fake socialite life could be real — fell through. Then, stranded in Moroc co without a func tioning credit card, she was nearly jailed for not paying her astronomical bills. Just like Anna in Morocco, my next task was to …

STEP 5 . Panic

I panicked about interviewing tech niques. Who was I, thinking that binge watching nine episodes of a me how to secure an exclusive in terview, crack people open and capitalize on their secrets?!

I panicked about the fact that 50 percent of my sources knew me, my parents and my grandparents held me when I was still in diapers and if I said anything that made the sources look bad, my life would be miserable forever.

I panicked about impending dead lines. In the show, Vivian Kent is

motivated to write her story by the

considered this form of motivation, but decided it wasn’t feasible for me.

Eventually, though, it was time to …

STEP 6. Do It

I relistened to my interview tapes, I reviewed notes, I fact-checked jar with minty water — very VIP — and forced myself to sit at the desk until I had a passable draft. Then I wrote the article.

And lo, it was published! On the front page! And there was my name in print underneath it, just like a real journalist! Vivian Kent would be proud of my article, and Anna Delvey would be proud that I absolutely and completely im provised my way through it.

After I wrote the article, I went to the mystical news room I thought it would be. It was a 100-year old shag-carpet ed building with a staff of exactly three people. I read some previ ous editions of the paper and realized the editor I “hood winked” was actu ally writing 90 per cent of the articles himself. Maybe he just let me write the article because he was tired of doing all the reporting alone.

In any case, Anna Delvey and Vivan Kent taught me that you can get a lot of things just by asking for them. Take a page out of An na’s book and steal a jet. Or buy a cool red note book. Or some thing like that. With a little imagina tion, you too can reinvent yourself.

“VIVIAN KENT WOULD BE PROUD OF MY ARTICLE, AND ANNA DELVEY WOULD BE PROUD THAT I ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY IMPROVISED MY WAY THROUGH IT.”

Saturday morning I consider being an English major

BY ARIEL KIM

Something like that, I gesticulate. It’s not like I’m all that into medieval literature. I’m not about to analyze “Beowulf” for the 14th time. e mouth of the MCDB major sitting opposite me at the dining hall grins.

It’s outdated, you know? e idea that you’re supposed to choose between your passions and nancial stability. I choose both, I say. e right side of my lips pinch together. My facial expressions have always been uneven like that.

It’s outdated, I repeat into the phone that evening, my IKEA lamp perched overhead. Umma rambles

// Ariane de Gennaro

on the other end of the phone, something about how cousin Lana interned at all these major lm agen cies but now she’s working at a furniture startup. About how Jin-woo from across the street is a computer sci ence major now. How Un cle Park sold his start-up for $100 million, how Yale is the past and Stanford is the future and “you shouldn’t have rejected Stanford for a humanities school.”

You don’t know the job market as well as I do, I lie. For Umma, I produce soothing placebos of million-dollar book deals and million-dollar movie deals. How humanities majors might not have the best starting salary but “that doesn’t mean we don’t have an upwards trajectory.”

“Act as if,” preaches the reddit thread r/thelawofattraction. Or, fake it till you make it. On Sunday I talk to Sara about the eventfulness of my summer as if it were a continuous strand of string rather than thumbtacks

scattered across a corkboard.

I don’t mention that the cork board was one-half existential ism and one-half nearly-crash ing-Dad’s-hon da-while-par allel-parking. I imbue constella tions of meaning into this web-de velopment in ternship or this trip to see my childhood friend. I don’t say that my employer asked for nine iterations of the homepage and that visiting Jocelyn was a mu tual therapy session.

Sunday a ernoon I’m training as a peer mental health coun selor and the counselee scenar io I’m supposed to act out goes something like “you’re a sec ond-semester sophomore with crip pling loneli ness and are considering self-harm.”

I’ve never considered self-harm, I think, somewhat pleased by this realization, but by the end

of the scenario I am crying. For a second I was convinced that was real, the instructor remarks. I laugh. No, no, no, I wave my hands. Not at all.

Monday morning I’m tucked into my chair-desk watching Professor Leitus draw a story diagram on the board. Fiction is realism, he remarks. We read stories, not because we want to watch the knight slay the drag on, but because stories sneak around somewhere near the truth. I like writing because I can fold myself inside the word ction. Oh, it’s just ction, I’d say. It’s not like I mean any of it.

Monday evening I lean on a beanbag and stare at the draw ings on my wall. I wonder if be ing a writer just means that I’m monetizing entries in my diary.

I wonder if that would be so bad.

I go on Student Information Ser vices, click “de clare English.” I can always undo it later, I say into the phone. Umma, it’s not like law school is going anywhere.

"It’s outdated, you know? The idea that you’re supposed to choose between your passions and f inancial stability. I choose both, I say."

“Humanities majors might not have the best starting salary but “that doesn’t mean we don’t have an upwards trajectory.”

BY CALEB DUNSON

Christopher Betts has a great memory. He remembers the names of his elemen

ed in (“Cinderella,” when he was seven),

production he saw (“Wicked,” on July 19, 2006) and all 30 shows from a theater fes tival he attended in South Africa in 2017. He shares all of these memories during an interview, done via Zoom from his New York City apartment. Betts is an NYU and Yale Drama graduate and the director of the Paramount Theater production of

his hair, worn in thick twists, as he thinks, and he often pauses between phrases for long stretches, tilting his head toward the sky and letting his mind search for the exact word he wants to use. He backtracks and corrects himself as he tells stories, deter mined to convey what he’s thinking in me ticulous fashion. It’s the same attention to detail he puts into his work, which he sees

When Betts was in preschool he joined a performance his grandmother, a kindergar ten teacher, was putting on with her class. He practiced and got dressed up for the performance, but Betts said, “When we got to the theater I was like, ‘I don’t want to do it…’ So then she was like, ‘Okay.’ She was like, ‘All right, you could just sit in the audi ence.’” So he did. He saw his grandmother’s he views as an “omen from the universe that I should be a director not an actor.”

Betts’ grandmother Frankie, much like him, was a creative. Though she couldn’t

craft the career in the arts that she wanted –– largely, as Betts says, because it was dif

do so –– she found ways to share her love for the arts with Christopher. “My grand

way of my making theater… that wasn’t informed by her.” The performances she put on with her Chicago Public Schools students — the pains to which she went to make those performances look beautiful — stuck with Betts. “The one thing I can say about all of the plays I’ve done is that they looked good… and I know that I get that from my grandmother.”

Betts’ work strives to “give Black people [a] sense of joy and exuberance.” To Betts, that means making sure that his produc tions look good because “there’s been so many centuries of black people… not be ing elevated in as much beauty and excel lence as we have.” Betts’ shows burst with color; the lights make the brown skin of his actors sparkle on stage. They convey the richness of Black life, undergirded by the belief that “being able to see representa

tity.” That belief, and that goal, are rooted in his childhood relationship with theater.

As he went through middle school, Betts was bullied. During that time, he turned to theater as a respite. “So many of my ear liest memories are related to theater be cause it was such a sanctuary for me. And I think that it was the thing that helped me keep going. It was the thing that helped me know that everything was worth it.” When not doing theater, he found other ways to express his burgeoning creativity. In third grade, he set up a pretend swap meet in his family’s apartment and tried to convince his family members to buy what he was selling. He delved into fairytales and fantasy books, which he says “gave me hope that my life could be more than what I was born into.”

But what truly resonated with him was a collection of VHS tapes, created by the Encyclopedia Britannica, that showed car toon fairy tales performed in different cul tural contexts around the world. The tapes

a European telling of the story, and the last two parts were the same story told from the perspective of non-European coun

to seeing non-white people in whimsical and fantastic circumstances, and that creat ed a hunger for more.” Those fairytales si multaneously made him feel that life could be more interesting than what it was and highlighted the absence of non-white peo ple in fantastical narratives. That absence of visibility felt personal for him because, as Betts said, “There’s a connection between not feeling seen as a person and being in formed that there are stories all over the world that aren’t being seen.” Betts had felt reduced to invisibility in middle school,

“I needed a drastic change because I felt that the capitalist model for theater was going to eat me alive. And I knew that I wasn’t going to like the art I made, I wasn’t going to like myself.”

“Betts’ shows convey the richness of Black life, undergirded by the belief that “being able to see representations of ourselves…

dredness in the lack of representation, and it made me feel empowered to do some thing about it.” It was the beginning “of a quest to try and create more stories like those because the visibility of those stories also created more visibility for me.” This link between identity and art, and the work to reconcile the two, have framed much of the tension that characterizes Betts’ work.

It was Betts’ high school theater teacher that told him to consider pursuing an act ing career. From that day, Betts took the ater seriously, and he decided to go to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to get his

for him. “I gave up my whole life to go to NYU,” Betts said. “I gave up everything I knew about life, and everyone that I loved was so far away.” That, in addition to nav igating a new environment surrounded by classmates that were “fucking rich” made college a profound challenge for him. But the central frustration was that of not be ing able to fully express himself in theater. “When I was in college, gay boys needed to be able to play straight. And I did not want to do that. I found theater because I wanted to express sides of myself that I was taught were not beautiful, that were shameful and that need to be put away… so I started to fall out of love with theater because, well, what was the point? I wasn’t in it.” Betts hated the shows picked to be performed out of his studio that year, so he had one of two options: take a role in a show he didn’t like, or direct his own. He chose the latter.

The show was called “Carrie” and it told the story of a teenage girl struggling with bullying. Betts chose the show largely because he felt a connection to the main character’s experience. “I remember I was so focused, and I was so excited, and I had so much energy… people could call me at three o’clock in the morning to talk about “Carrie,” and I would be like, ‘Yes, I’m up,’ because it meant that much to me. And I remember looking at all the design and re search images and walking into tech, and seeing the set and seeing the actors and costumes and being like, oh my god, 1000 people are about to see my perspective on this story that meant so much to me as a child.” This was the moment for Betts — wherein he had the opportunity to be vulnerable with his audience through his work — that reignited his joy for theater.

Now Betts views directing as a profoundly

I direct something I’m literally taking my mind and my imagination and putting it in front of people and saying, ‘This is the way that I think, would you like to see?,’ and I don’t know how to be more vulnerable than that.” It’s a step forward on the jour ney toward complete self-expression that in hindsight seems straightforward to Betts.

Straight out of college and living in New would allow him to keep a roof over his head and pursue his newfound passion for directing. So he took several assistant positions, working under actors like Phyli cia Rashad and helping on projects like “Moonlight.” His plan was to work his way up the ranks and eventually turn those as sistant positions into director positions. But things began to stagnate. While Betts was getting opportunities that many would

dream of, he wasn’t getting chances to work on his own projects. The positions he was taking weren’t bridging the gap between wanting to be a professional di rector and being a professional director.

Betts characterized that gap as ambiguous and frustrating. “I knew what I wanted to do,” he said. “I knew that that was what I was supposed to be doing. But I didn’t know how to get there. That’s depressing. When you’re an actor, you can show up, you can go to 1000 auditions, but when you’re a director, it’s much more of a chick en and egg of how to establish yourself.” Giving everything to the roles that he was in, Betts began to burn out. “I needed a drastic change because I felt that the capi talist model for theater was going to eat me alive. And I knew that I wasn’t going to like the art I made, I wasn’t going to like myself.”

In search of a new experience, Betts ap plied to the Taymor World Theater Fellow ship. Getting the fellowship would give him an opportunity to travel to several countries to explore their approaches to art. Though he said it was a long shot, he won the fel lowship. From 2017 through 2018, Betts traveled to South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Morocco. Finding himself in a new environment, Betts began to see what it looked like for theater to be a commu nal act, not just one that employs profes

Many of the performers he watched had other jobs and used theater as a means of self-expression. The celebration and rever ence of it all, the love of art for art’s sake, was compelling to him. “[It was] refreshing to be in the presence of artists who felt that their stories mattered, and who knew their audience, and who knew that they could share in community their stories and also be affected by other stories.”Grounded by

“When I was in college, gay boys needed to be able to play straight. And I did not want to do that. I found theater because I wanted to express sides of myself that I was taught were not beautiful, that were shameful and that need to be put away… so I started to fall out of love with theater because, well, what was the point? I wasn’t in it.”

this experience, Betts ventured to Yale to get his Masters in Fine Arts. “I felt that I could either assistant and associate direct my way into the position that I wanted to be in as a director or I could make a per sonal investment,” Betts said of his choice. The opportunity to build his portfolio and get the backing of an elite degree made the decision simple for Betts. His experi ence in the MFA program was colored by the pandemic, as he lost opportunities to put together shows and work in person, but he still found his time at Yale valuable.

One of his most meaningful experiences was directing “Choir Boy” at the Yale Rep ertory Theater. Originally, Phylicia Rashad was slated to direct the production, and Betts sought to work alongside her as an assistant director. He relished the oppor tunity to work alongside Rashad again, so

James Bundy, the Dean of the Yale School of Drama, and asked to be put on the mu sical. Soon thereafter, Rashad was tapped to be the next Dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts, leaving the director’s

to direct at the Rep, an opportunity which

reminder from the university to keep it up.”

More than that, directing “Choir Boy” gave him the chance to pay forward a the ater experience that was once so resonant for him. In an interview for the Yale Rep ertory Theater about “Choir Boy,” Betts

stage in Tarell McCraney’s Marcus, call ing it “ the most humanizing experience I had in the theater” and expressing a hope that “Choir Boy” could be that for some one else. “I hope that Black queer youth see [“Choir Boy”], and see their place in the work… and they know that the world would not turn without them,” said Betts.

moment, Betts was moved by the prospect of having created an experience that those girls will carry with them, an experience that might inspire them to pursue the arts. His time back in Chicago has also led him back to some of the very people that shaped his view of the stage. The artistic director for “Dreamgirls,” Jim Corti, directed one of

shared this with Corti after Corti hired him. “He had no idea 14 years ago that he would direct a show, and that he would [eventual ly] be hiring someone who saw that show” all these years later. For Betts, their recon nection was a testament to the ability of theater to leave marks on people’s lives.

cal’s author, Tarell McCraney, a good friend of Betts’ for whom he was an assistant in years past. The production, according to

Today, Betts is working on several new projects. Among them is the production “Dreamgirls,” running at the Paramount Theater in Aurora, Ill. Betts has spoken about what returning to his hometown means to him in an interview with the Au rora Beacon-News, highlighting how he is now in a position to carry forward his grandmother’s legacy and share the gift of art that was once given to him. Speak ing with me, he shared a story of seeing four young Black girls sitting in front of him

When asked how he thinks about his lega cy, Betts leaned away from the discussion of awards and accolades. Instead, he framed the question as one of process, practice and progress. His goal for right now is “daring to be seen,” and his hope is that his work

“By showing up bravely and authentically, as who I am, I allow people to see me. And by allowing people to see me, I know that will inspire others to be seen as well.”

// PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER D BETTS

To the Preacher Noah

Your own past drowns in Bible passages and screams out sin in front of a crowd

wrap wounds of

who are you without

trauma and ask forgiveness.

pulpit,

crazed gospel and hapless sacrilege?

see headlines and false teachers scheming in their megachurches.

In the shadows, faith

In the light, they exile them from

to batter scarred women.

False

use

to bribe the public,

in

–

who are you behind

set sail on the Arc but jump ship like

care?

them about their Trinity,

them if

has a key, Ask them if they have committed these sins — then I am ready for hate

//Jessai Flores

COMING HOME

by Gavin Guerrette

Ispent countless hours this sum mer exploring the area around my home. My friends and I would wan der, talk, listen to music and take pictures together. It was a simple and rewarding way to keep busy and en tertained throughout the summer. It also provided a new way for me to observe my home, Pottstown, Penn sylvania. e little suburban world I grew up in, surrounded by the dead and discarded remnants of Ameri can industry, had always seemed so painfully mundane to me. Home felt like a place from which to escape — there had to be bigger cities and more intellectual vitality elsewhere. But, as summer crawled by and I continued to work and take pictures, I came to

thoroughly appreciate the authentici ty, the almost vulgar honesty, that life at home brought me.

About halfway through this past summer, I bought a 35mm manual SLR camera for $30 at a yardsale. In well over my head, with little prior knowledge of photography, I had to learn the process behind lm photog raphy in order to make use of my new camera. Equipped with a phone cam era for the better half of my life, I was used to the spray-and-pray method of photography – take as many pic tures as you need until you get it right and delete all the rest. Shooting lm manually, however, forced me to slow down, take one or two well composed shots of a given subject, and move on.

A typical roll of 35mm lm has either 24 or 36 exposures on it. With each exposure (i.e. photo that I want to take) I have to manually adjust the shutter speed and aperture settings on my camera based on readings from a light meter, as well as focus the im age. Each shot requires its own series of considerations based on lighting, composition and the type of lm I’m shooting on. Once I’ve used every ex posure on a given roll of lm, I have to get it developed and scanned, a pro cess that can take up to two or three weeks. is delayed grati cation to see how an image turns out has made me particularly concerned with the quality of my photos — every detail has to be correct to justify everything

that goes into taking and seeing a sin gle photo.

In an e ort to elevate the quality of my photography, I began to inten sify the attention I gave to my home town and allowed myself to see beauty where I had before felt disdain. I be came singularly concerned with cap turing the essence of home through my photos — the pace of life, the charm of its people, its rich industri al history now replaced by econom ic stagnation and our proximity to nature. Rather than taking photos of everyone and everything in a docu mentary style, I narrowed down my subject matter, focusing primarily on architectural studies of abandoned in dustry and street photography.

My architectural studies gave me the opportunity to explore with my friends and to feel wonder at some thing I was once embarrassed of. No town proudly admits that it is a shell of what it once was, struggling to pro vide for its residents as job prospects grow farther and farther away from home. For the longest time it felt easier to look past these steel husks and the harsh realities they contained, shi ing my gaze outward towards bigger cit ies and better opportunities. As I ex plored these spaces with friends, how ever, their history began to unfold and fascinate us — the fact that sprawling industrial complexes where countless people spent much of their lives work ing could become abandoned within a generation, and then drowned in overgrowth and gra ti soon a er, gave us a resounding sense of tem porality. With my camera in hand, I felt that I could draw art, but also anthropological insight, from these places, capturing their state following

abandonment, focusing primarily on the ways in which nature attempts to reclaim itself from industry as well as the ways in which individuals leave their marks on these spaces. In the act of photography, I captured these spac es in a particular moment in time, where the nuances of these miniature histories formed the basis of what I found to be so beautiful about them.

I also took a particular interest in street photography over the summer. Walking the streets of Pottstown with a camera completely recontextualized my view of the town. It gave heart to a place that felt so lifeless; it person alized a place I thought I could just leave behind. e primacy of authen ticity over aesthetic purpose necessi tated by street photography vitalized my subjects, who were Pottstown resi dents going about their everyday lives.

rough the lens of my camera, I was able to better grasp the appeal of not only my hometown but also its resi dents, whose lives embody a sense of sincerity which I feel Yale lacks.

At Yale it feels like our language is shrouded in euphemism and mock concern for the events of the world as we ponder this or that from our neo-gothic castles, sleeping com fortably on the promise that we’ll be successful enough that none of these things will a ect us. At home, however, I was grounded by my friends, coworkers and family into a real world, a world where detach ments permitted by wealth and oth er forms of privilege that are all too common at Yale simply don’t exist.

I spent the summer working in construction alongside my father, do ing manual labor which trivialized so much of my experience at Yale. is

university produces a thinking class of individuals, who might only ever be theoretically concerned with what goes into making a building, but a er digging the trenches myself, spending days in the beating sun, and looking down at my dirty calloused hands at the end of each day, the intellectual chatter of Yale felt so silly.

I know that part of me wanted to spend my summer at home working construction and taking photos for how distinctly non-Yale it was, with no prospects for academic or profes sional advancement and certainly no soul-searching abroad in Europe. Per haps I chose to do so to be able to lord it over those Yale students who could stomach the opulence of the rst year dinner, but I’d like to think I did it for a more idealistic reason: before the ac ademic and professional pressures of Yale start to close in, I wanted a nal chance to internalize the parts of my self that I won’t allow the university, or anything else, to touch.

With the memories of the place that I am leaving behind, Yale has become a strange new home for me. At the periphery of wealth and power and desperately holding on to the shreds of my idealism, these photos are keepsakes of a place which I hope to keep within me as I pass through life. Contained within them is an embrace of the vulgarity of truth, a dedication to find the beauty of everyday life and a refutation of the cynicism of the bottom dollar. While in them selves they are photos, they con tain a world that I took into the palm of my hand and examined gently, finding a place which I am sad to leave behind.

erica road

Miranda Wollen

I wake up unwashed with two rubber bands on my wrist, extras for you in case yours break and you go back to picking away at yourself. You drive us to the next town. You pack no bags.

Erica Road is lined with foliage, the kind you don’t see on the east coast this time of year. As the clouds part over the bay, we sing like God is coming home with us.

You bump the car too hard into the curb in a t of frustration. e front-right wheel well skitters on the pavement. My anger is just enamel. You keep scraping me.

You tell me you want seven children; that I am special, if not important; that everything is God; that I am a safe love, a good love, if not a great one. I paint your sentences onto smaller birds, the migrating kind.

Still, I keep house: I think of buying yellow tulips and sending mail back home. I walk the slow, careful paths around your neighborhood until I grow so sick of them I cannot speak.

Two nights, we go out to dinner. You wear both of your good dress shirts. One is bright red. I wear all white. I’ve planned on doing so. is way, when I retell the story I might seem sacri cial, prepared — innocuous.

We drive to the airport. It’s the rst rainy day since I’ve been here, six days beyond my welcome. My hand cramps when you grasp it, a so ness withering in my lap. I won’t move away.

From the car, you watch me try to leave you.

I waste four minutes at a broken ticket machine. Only when I relent, turning back to your negative, do you sit up in the driver’s seat and recede into the foggy line of piecemeal natives.

Once, in the spring, it rained all day and you held me as I shivered and I wished more than anything to t into you for as long as I could.

//catherine kwon

BY Alexandra Belluck Hollow

People are hollow like ghosts, and the whole world is hollow, and I can’t get over that lurk ing sadness. Most days I wake up thinking about Mom. You have no idea what it feels like to be a shadow.

On the rst day of college, my mom unboxed the tea kettle she bought for my suite. Every night since then, I’ve made myself chamomile tea before bed. From the start of the tea-mak ing process, I am soothed. e kettle whispers so white noise. en, its screaming whistle announces that the water is boiling…

“Hey, how are you?”

“Fine. Good. How are you?”

On the outside, that’s what I reply.

People are hollow like ghosts, and the whole world is hollow, and I can’t get over that lurk ing sadness. Most days I wake up thinking about Mom. You have no idea what it feels like to be a shadow.

I want to scream this truth.

Being hollow means feeling constricted and feeling empty. Being hollow means having skin and a body and not knowing what’s in side. Being hollow means becoming so used to hiding your pain that you can’t look within anymore — because if you look within, then you’ll discover something that you can’t show to other people.

Hollowness looks like me scratching a pen on pa per, trying to bring my mom back into existence. e pen runs out of ink, and I press harder. I’m making grooves; I press harder, and the ink stops owing. She doesn’t come back.

I choke down my despair. None of my friends will understand. It’s not their fault that they can’t make me feel any less alone.

I sit in class as a shell. I get up and go outside to cry because I can’t face the rst line again. I can’t bear to analyze Camus’ line. “Today, Mother died.”

…But when I get home, I will make myself tea. Warm steam will caress my face: the mist will transport me back to that very rst cup.

But tonight — ere’s no bubbling. e water is cold. I plug it in and plug it in many times. Nothing happens. e light doesn’t turn on. I sink to my knees and stare at the kettle. I’m willing the water to boil. I can make it boil with my mind if I stare hard enough. e water will boil. It has to boil. If it doesn’t boil I don’t know what I’ll do. It has to boil right now. I cast a spell and make a wish. I pray, I pray, I pray. e water doesn’t boil. It’s all falling apart.

I reassure myself that, when I make my green tea in the morning, the water will be hot. Tomorrow will be better. It’ll be boiling.

I don’t sleep well. I wake up to make tea as the sun is coming up. I press the button, expecting the gentle hum. Carmen, my roommate, dri s into the common room.

“ e kettle is not working,” I say. I crack my knuck les and shake my head in disbelief. Carmen runs into her room and grabs her own tea kettle. “Here, try this one.” I snatch it out of her hands. A so “thank you” escapes my lips. It’s not better; noth ing’s ne, screams inside.

Carmen’s tea kettle makes a disquieting hissing sound. I don’t like the water, which is scalding. e water from the kettle my mom gave me was some how always the perfect temperature. I ll the mug to over owing, and burning liquid spills over the lip and onto my hand. I wince from the physical pain of the welt forming on my hand, and the in visible shock of grief.

A week later, my dad shows up for Parents’ Week end. He knows about the kettle, so he comes with a brand new one. He buys me the fanciest kettle. It’s one of the retro looking ones. e kind that makes me wonder how a basic kitchen appliance can somehow project style. I like the way the chrome gleams on this new one and the way that the out side feels smooth to my touch. e fact that it’s my favorite color, lilac.

We plug it in, and I make tea. e room is too qui et. Why doesn’t the kettle cry out to me? How will I know when the water’s boiling? Even when the ket tle is full, it sounds hollow.

A faint beeping sound alerts us that the tea is ready. My dad pours me a cup. I hold the mug to my chin, waiting for the steam to li me. We sit and catch up and try not to talk about the biggest absence. e whole world is hollow. Mom is dead.

Tenant Chemistry

BY TYLER JAGER

In late August, 2021, in an eight-sid ed gazebo at the corner of New Hav en’s Edgewood Park, 41-year-old Alex Speiser joined a new organizing drive in what he described as a “leap of faith.” It was early evening, humid, and the weather was soupy. Speiser, a high school English teach er in Darien, Connecticut, walked from his home through New Haven’s Westville neighborhood, where he was due to meet three tenant organizers. ey belonged to the Central Connecticut branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, and they intended to prepare a half-dozen novices, Speiser included, for a “deep canvass.” In stead of a pitch to join a cause, the organiz ers wanted to knock doors, hear residents’ anger about poor housing conditions, and identify potential leaders among the ten ants who could join future organizing ef forts. “We tried some role-play by acting out scenarios between tenants and can vassers,” one of the organizers, Luke Mel onakos-Harrison, recalled later. “I think we’ve re ned our talking points since then.”

Speiser, who o en pairs tortoise-shell eye glasses with a plaid shirt and jeans, avoided get-out-the-vote e orts in the past, feeling that the easy sells of preachy politicos too

closely resembled snake oil. e listening approach seemed more respectful and less intimidating. He was surprised by the in timacy of the Westville door-knocking. “I could hear the fear of those answering their doors, sometimes not even opening them, or opening just a crack,” he said. Some tenants in his rst building were willing to share stories of rent hikes and mainte nance delays. In other units, though, all he could do was peek through the dark door slits leading to darker hallways, punctuated by ickering lights and the in termittent beeping of expired re alarms.

He suspected that people hid the truth when they said, “Oh, everything’s ne.”

at rst gathering in Edgewood Park led to a weekly canvassing routine, and that routine represented the “embryonic stages,” in Speiser’s words, of a full- edged Con necticut Tenants’ Union (CTTU), which is the only statewide ‘tenant union’ in Amer ica at present. A loose coalition of renters’ associations, individual tenants, and erst while labor organizers, the CTTU is part of a broader movement to shi power from landlords to tenants caught in the squeeze of American housing, through ‘tenant unions,’ which have emerged in more than

GAVIN GUERrETTE

a few U.S. cities since 2020. Renters who be long to the union “demand stronger rights for stronger rights for tenants; an end to displacement, landlord harassment, and eviction; and democratic control of our housing,” according to the group’s website.

Even among other tenant unions, the CTTU stands out for its willingness to embrace heterodoxy. eirs is a process of constant experimentation, mixing po litical lobbying with digital media savvy, avoiding the pitfalls of risky rent strikes, taking advantage of public hearings and under-resourced city agencies. Most cen tral to their cause, though, is e orts to form community between neighbors in dilapi dated apartments—classes of renters who, despite living down the hallway or across the street as tenants of the region’s sever al mega-landlords, have o en never met.

Speiser describes himself as a once “typi cal liberal Democrat” who shi ed course a er Sen. Bernie Sanders’ rst presidential run in 2016. In the a ermath of that cam paign, he is convinced that the tenant union o ers one alternative vision for grassroots politics—especially since he’s met Mel onakos-Harrison, whose friendship has

With unorthodox advocacy and organizing tools, the Connecticut Tenants Union is paving the way for a national movement to shift the power balance of American housing. But can they build the community necessary to succeed?

proven especially fruitful for experiment ing. “One year ago, I knocked on my rst door,” Speiser told me. “I would never have guessed I’d be here, still doing this, today.”

can’t be replicated as easily as switching one credit card company for another. To lose that intimacy, against your consent— notwithstanding the scarring e ect of an eviction notice, or late payment, on your credit score—can potentially mean los ing your health, your humanity, your life.

new home, the case management didn’t stop: landlord neglect, and routinely dis mal public housing conditions, were the root problem. “You wouldn’t believe how many of these houses had bedbugs,” he said.

In 2020, in the wake of national eviction moratoriums, shutdowns of utilities and maintenance o ces, and calls to cancel rent, new “tenant unions” formed in Boston, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Washington, D.C., and notably, New Haven, to protect renters. In New Haven’s metropolitan area, where low- and middle-income residents su ered from poorly maintained housing stock long before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the demand for change was particularly acute.

e attraction of a tenant union is simi lar to a labor union, at least in theory. To gether, tenants provide a collective power that individual attempts to address hous ing concerns can scarcely match. Col lective bargaining can also mean lever age over one’s landlord, if tenant union members were willing to withhold some degree of rent in exchange for demands.

Yet di erences between labor and tenant power can make the latter far more precari ous. Tenants can’t appeal to a federal agency for registration and protection of a union in the way that employees can, through the National Labor Relations Board, a er an election to unionize. In most U.S. munic ipalities, city governments and landlords have no obligation to recognize a renter’s association—and rent strikes can be rem edied in some states, depending on their eviction and retaliation laws, by replacing the unruliest tenants with others who are quietly willing to pay. e biggest di erence may be that tenants in a building, by paying rent, are consumers of a good rather than workers employed to produce that good. In that sense, they have more in common with the consumer protection organizations that serve as watchdogs over banking and cred it, consumer privacy, or food inspections.

Rent, of course, is no mere bank withdraw al or food inspection. e intimacy of home

In July, 2018, Greta Blau, a six-year tenant in an apartment complex named Sera monte Estates in Hamden, began to docu ment numerous health and safety hazards in her building: toxic black mold, ood ed basements, and front doors that didn’t lock. Blau, who is y-four, has asthma and received treatment for breast cancer last spring. She noti ed a Hamden health maintenance inspector, Ryan Currier, about the hazards in June, 2021. Currier told her to inform Northpoint, the owner of the complex. Mold and water damage continued to appear, Blau told me, in units where families with young children lived.

“We were trying to g ure out how to do this when I started reading about one of the Brook lyn tenant unions,” Blau’s husband, Paul Boudreau, recalled. e couple reached out to Justin Farmer, one of Hamden’s city council ors and a member of Central Connecticut’s DSA, with the idea of forming a similar organization. Farm er connected them to Melonakos-Harrison.

Before his involvement in tenant organizing, Luke Melonakos-Har rison M.Div ‘23 was an outreach worker for unsheltered indi viduals in San Diego, California. e posi tion consisted of “trying to put Band-Aids on the gaping wounds of our society—of chronic street homelessness,” he said. He recalled that, once he found his clients a

Redirecting his attention toward preven tion before case management, Melana kos-Harrison joined what later became the Connecticut Tenants’ Union in late 2020. At that point, the organization was a mere outgrowth of Central Connecticut DSA’s housing justice working group. At the time, the prospect of a broader, state-wide tenant union seemed “a daunting task,” he said, giv en that no examples of such a group existed.

But interest was rising. In March, 2021, one organizer, Alex Kolokotronis GSAS ‘23, who studies political theory, put together a history lesson tracing a century of activ ism in New York’s urban housing districts on the Connecti cut DSA’s Youtube channel. In America, Kolokotronis noted, tenant unions were at least as old as ten ement housing itself. e former result ed from the latter’s overcrowding, as ris ing rents and poor health conditions in New York’s im migrant-dominated tenements spurred radical political or ganizing in the early twentieth century. (“We are asking you not to hire rooms in that house,” res idents of the Lower East Side wrote in 1904 on a sidewalk card, in Yiddish and English, during a general rent strike led by young Jewish women. “We want to put a stop to it once and for all. Keep away.”)

By January of the next year, the renters at Seramonte Estates, led by Blau and Bou

Most central to their cause, though, is efforts to form community between neigh bors in dilapidated apartments — classes of renters who, despite living down the hallway or across the street as tenants of the region’s several mega-landlords, have often never met.

dreau, began to organize. In February, they hosted their rst canvass. While the temperature was freezing, Blau said, “It was really surprising, because I liked it.” Many of the residents were isolated in the complex, and “it was amazing to talk to somebody who’s so alone. Today, mem bership in the union at Seramonte Es tates encompasses more than 250 tenants.

media and public o cials to poor housing conditions—or at least, they were during an eviction moratorium dating to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once those moratoriums ended, the costs for tenants who participated in a strike grew: eviction, an a ected credit report, a lawsuit from their landlord to obtain the le over rent.

public hearing, a er a tenant les a com plaint. While a complaint is under con sideration, the Commission can choose to suspend payments or freeze a tenant’s rent to its former amount before the increase.

For a DSA-born alliance of graduate stu dents, labor organizers, and low-income renters, the rekindled interest in tenant unions around the country—as well as local independent e orts like those of Ser amonte Estates—o ered sources of insight. e Connecticut organizers invited a speaker from the Greater Boston Ten ants Union to compare strategies and provide training. ey consulted a thirty-page handbook entitled “No Job, No Rent: Ten Months of Organiz ing the Tenant Strug gle,” created by Stomp Out Slumlords, a D.C. tenant union and advo cacy group that formed in 2018. e handbook bemoaned “the rituals of liberal NGO politics,” celebrating instead a “ca pacity for direct action” and change driven from below— capacities that also appealed to tenant organizations across Connecticut.

e handbook’s assumption that more rad ical, grassroots, tenant unions would clash with other NGOs was perhaps unsurpris ing, given its origins; Stomp Out Slumlords themselves le the D.C. Tenants Union in September, 2020, due to creative di erenc es. Yet their strategy of going it alone was risky, particularly when rent strikes were involved. On the one hand, strikes in D.C. were successful in bringing the attention of

e Connecticut organizers suspected that New Haven could present a smooth er route. In D.C., “you couldn’t just call up your Alder like you can in New Haven and set up a meeting,” Melanakos-Harrison said. “Here, there’s thirty of them in a small little town.” With fewer de grees of separation between Alders, tenants, and city agencies, more avenues and le vers of power were available to tenant organizers— nes, court lings, and calls for great er regulatory funding. Once the Connecticut eviction mora torium expired in June, 2021, the union would need any insti tutional leverage that it could nd.

Building that leverage would mean target ing two institutions: the Livable City Ini tiative (LCI), and Connecticut’s Fair Rent Commissions, which are present in New Haven and some surrounding towns. LCI, New Haven’s housing code enforcement agency, provided tenants an avenue for l ing individual complaints about housing codes and conditions—although timely response and enforcement was another story. e Fair Rent Commission, formed in 1984 to “control and eliminate excessive rental charges on residential housing,” ac cording to the city’s website, can initiate a

e CTTU sees both agencies, with respect to their funding, personnel, and legal pow ers, as potential levers that can shi pow er into tenants’ favor when grievances or rent increases arise. Melonakos-Harrison thought the Fair Rent Commission was par ticularly under-utilized: in 2020, the Com mission nally hired another employee in what was previously a one-person o ce.

As I spoke to more organizers, another dif ference of New Haven struck me besides the city’s size: the structure of the proper ty market was distinct from larger cities too. Extractive landlords are abundant in New York and Los Angeles, but those cit ies are large enough that no one (or two, or three) property owners can corner the market quite like they can in New Haven. For the past decade, housing in Connecti cut’s third-largest city has been dominated by three competing rms: Ocean, Pike, and Mandy Management. As the Independent reported this March, Mandy Management a liates purchased 558 apartments in New Haven in 2021; Ocean Management at tempted to sell 399. Rentals in New Haven are a seller’s market, even as many prop erties are labeled as “distressed” housing stock. Low- and middle-income residents, regardless of industry or employment, have little choice but to rent from them.

At rst, CTTU membership followed the directions in the “No Job, No Rent” hand book: let tenants take the lead rst, and form a union later. By ling individual LCI violations and Fair Rent Commission com plaints at the same time, tenants would ex perience (they hoped) the social chemistry necessary to form a new union, a liated with CTTU but nonetheless independent. An early victory at Windsor Housing Au thority, in central Connecticut, seemed to con rm the approach. Residents of the building, which largely constituted low-in come housing for seniors and persons with

In New Haven’s metropolitan area, where low- and middle-income residents su ered from poorly maintained housing stock long before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the demand for change was particularly acute.

disabilities, met with CTTU organizers during a fair rent hearing in Hartford. e residents of Windsor Housing Authority had begun to form a union as early as Jan uary. By May 2021, with the help of CTTU, the Windsor tenants accomplished one pos itive change: the contract of the complex’s executive director, whom they blamed for poor maintenance, was terminated.

CTTU’s advocacy in other arenas also bore signi cant legislative fruit, boosting morale.

On May 27, 2021, a bill to protect the right to counsel in housing courts’ eviction cases in Connecticut, passed both houses of the state’s legislature and arrived on the Gov ernor’s desk. e CTTU had advocated for its passage for ve months. “We were sort of riding high on that victory and wanting to get in more grass roots organizing and face-building work and real, you know, bread-and-butter or ganizing in terms of building working class institutions,” Melon akos-Harrison said.

Eventually, though, the strategy of tak ing action before forming a union or ganization fell apart.

“ e reasons tenants don’t want to submit complaints as individuals are extremely reasonable and rational,” Melanakos-Har rison explained. “Your landlord will know exactly who you are. And if you just call LCI on your own and request inspections, your landlord knows that you did that.” At the Fair Rent Commission in New Hav en or Hamden, a tenant who individually led a complaint would have to face their landlord—or more likely, their landlord’s attorney—alone, and contest the claim. “People intuitively understood how risky that was for their housing situation,” Melanakos-Harrison said. Retaliation did not have to consist of eviction to be risky: it could mean renewed harassment, neglect to attend to repair and mainte nance, or even failure to renew a lease.

Igniting the social solidarity necessary to form a union, the organizers realized, re quired a spark—this time, in the form of CTTU itself. eir second experiment took place at Quinnipiac Gardens, a nine-build ing mid-century complex in New Haven’s northeasternmost corner, cut o from the rest of the city by the Quinnipiac and Mill rivers. Tenants complained of water dam age, black mold, and broken appliances, and demanded repairs done in apartments.

In August, 2021, the CTTU organized ten members into “a direct action” at Pike In ternational’s headquarters, on Howe Street across the river. ey were armed with a pe tition: x the mold and water, and put an end to irregular rent increases. Most of all, they wanted a document in hand, their own copy of the report that an inspection occurred.

to return to the “No Job, No Rent” hand book with suggestions for improvement.

e union’s experimentation o en took an aesthetic turn. e two “Ts” in the CTTU logo lean inward, creating the illusion within the logo’s center of a gabled house. On their website, the CTTU o ers visi tors an array of colorful designer tees and tote bags. One t-shirt reads “Evict Your Landlord!” above a rainbow encompass ing New Haven; another, depicting a redeyed mug surrounded by insects, dons the caption, “We’re Taking Back the Hive!” Melonakos-Harrison drew my attention to the motifs of buzzing, swarming ani mals throughout the design: thousands of bees, bats, and wasps. “Landlords have capital,” he said. “We have people power.”

e union also pivoted to the city for re course, facilitating the arrival of the Livable Cities Initiative director, Arlevia Samuel, to inspect poor conditions in the cinder-block properties. Eventually the city dedicated a weekly inspector to Quinnipiac Gardens, at a predictable day and time. As the move ment bled into November, the union won tenants the right to receive their own reg ular inspection reports, instead of phoning a number that may never get a callback.

“We’ve just been experimenting with so many di erent things this year,” Melana kos-Harrison said. Experimentation le him more con dent than recalcitrant: he observed that “we aren’t following the Stop Slumlords model as much as I thought we would.” By this summer, he was ready

On September 6, the CTTU shared some welcome news on its Twitter account: the New Haven Board of Alders had passed an ordinance to formally recognize would-be tenant unions, provided that a majority of renters voted in sup port of them. e rule meant that, in Fair Rent Commission proceedings, unions could represent themselves, cooperate in investigations of unfair rent increases, and testify on behalf of their members.

For Blau’s union, the examples set in New Haven inspired similar tactics in Hamden. In a September 15 hearing over Zoom, the city of Hamden hosted its rst Fair Rent Commission meeting to hear complaints about unfair rent increases. All the com plainants at the hearing were tenants at Seramonte Estates. Blau, Melonakos-Har rison, and other CTTU a liates attended; they would testify on behalf of the tenants.

e rst tenant to speak, Sameed Iqbal,

//Tyler Jager

lived in a ve-bedroom apartment with wife, brother, and aging parents. He said he faced a rent hike from $2,000 to $3,500, a 75% increase. Soon a erward, Kirk West fall, the attorney representing Northpoint, Seramonte’s property manager, request ed to delay the meeting’s conclusion un til October, claiming he needed more time to prepare. e delay could mean that Iqbal and the complainants would be liable for September’s increased rent.

“Can I ask a question, please?” Blau inter jected. “We’ve been trying to get the man agement to speak with us since July. Or even before that, I think, June? So that’s been months, and honestly, I don’t think that’s a good reason for a continuance. I also think that we could go forward tonight with our statements, and that we adjourn another day for Mr. Westfall to do his part.” She went on.

“My question is, which rents are not going to get raised? Everybody’s? Are they going to continue raising everybody else’s rent?”

“Well, the Fair Rent Commission only has jurisdiction over people who le complaints,” Conte Robinson, a mem ber of the Hamden Commission, said.

“I understand that. We have a lot of other complaints,” said Blau.

“Well, you may have, but the Fair Rent Commission can only deal with the com plaints that are before them,” said Robinson.

“We have complaints before the Fair Rent Commission, is what I’m trying to say,” said Blau.

e Commission allowed three of the tenant complainants to testify that night; Melon akos-Harrison served as a Spanish inter preter for one of them. Westfall’s request to delay the determinations was granted, so long as tenants would be spared from rent

den, where members of the CTTU’s Sera monte Estates branch, including Blau, were gathered at an intersection in front of the city’s Memorial Town Hall. e Seramonte tenants hoped to attract local support for their usual causes of towing nes and toxic mold, especially from the most prominent invitées: three members of the city council and a State Representative. ey also want ed to champion a tenants’ rights ordinance that would follow New Haven’s lead and formally recognize tenant unions in the town’s municipal law, allowing the union to interact with attorneys in Fair Rent Com mission procedures. Passing cars honked in support as attendees brandished card board signs and leaned others on wooden posts along the Hall’s marble walls to illus trate their grievances (“No More Predato ry Towing!” “QVHD, Inspect the Mold!”).

Blau took the stand, a red megaphone in her right hand. Her voice didn’t quaver. “We are asking our govern ment to prioritize hous ing as a human right,” she said. “We deserve to have strong roots in our community just like homeowners!” e crowd cheered. State Representative Robyn Porter took the stage, and the mood shi ed. Attendees watched, silent with anticipation, while CTTU organizers itted from new comer to newcomer, collecting signatures.

“I’ve heard people say ‘pay your rent,’” Por ter said. “But I want to ask people: if you were living in chronic conditions that the tenants at Seramonte are living in, would you be paying your rent?” “NO!” the ten ants yelled. She closed by giving the au dience what they waited for: a personal statement of support for legislation that the Connecticut legislature would consider “in 2023 when we go back in January to ad

‘What do we want,’ you say, ‘rent control’!”

“What do we want?”

“Rent control!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

I approached Blau toward the end of the rally. We sat on the concrete steps to Me morial Town Hall. Her dark sunglasses, with purple rims and green striped sides, covered a third of her face, which was otherwise framed by grey, tousled hair.

She wiped her eyes underneath the sunglass es, which stayed on. “We’re being evicted,” she said. “Or at least, they’re trying.” e tat too on her right arm, exposed from carrying the megaphone, was an in nity gure eight.

According to court lings, in July, several months a er Blau and her husband formed the Seramonte tenant union, the couple re ceived a “notice to quit”—an eviction notice—from a limited liability company a liated with Northpoint Management, which owns Seramonte Estates. e LLC claimed the right to evict the couple, on account that they represented a “serious nuisance,” in two counts against Blau and one count against Boudreau. ey found counsel in the New Haven Legal Assis tance Association, who represented them in a housing court appearance in August.

e lawsuit was not Seramonte’s rst in volving the couple. In a separate case that began in June, Boudreau sued the Sera monte Estates LLC for negligence a er he sustained serious injuries during a fall in

“Really, you have to have people outside your community backing you up.”

walking across the lot, according to court lings. ( e eviction notice arrived less than a month a er Boudreau led his lawsuit.) Both legal cases are ongoing.

Blau wasn’t always sure whether residence at Seramonte Estates was worth the ght, between her asthma and the basement’s black mold and the threats from North point Management. In the past month, though, she has decided to stay put in Hamden, with Boudreau. e organiza tion she put in motion represented too much, and too late, to let go now. I asked her whether the apartment felt like home to her, and she said, “I close my eyes and pretend it’s just a house in the woods.”

She attributed her steadfastness in part to CTTU’s support for their nascent union force. “Luke [Melonakos-Har rison] has been our…” she trailed o , as a tear escaped the protection of her sunglasses. She gestured at the late Sep tember air, beginning to chill around us. “Really, you have to have people out side your community backing you up.”

Ocean Management had no intention of renewing any of their leases. If the ten ants wished to stay, the company want ed them to pay a sti increase to their rent—and to pay month-to-month, with no guarantee of whether the next month at 311 Blake Street would be their last.

e landlord’s plan was to “buy this place up, renovate, turn it into a much more gentri ed apartment complex, and attract people who could pay those kinds of pric es,” as one tenant, Jessica Stamp, put it. A six-year renter at Blake Street with deepset eyes and yaway brown hair, Stamp paid $950 a month for her single-bedroom under Roger Simon, the former owner. She was oored to hear the new prices Ocean proposed a er renovations—up to $1,895 a month, high for anywhere in New Hav en. When she and the other tenants dis covered that they risked losing their leas es, they decided to form a tenant union.

erty owners. e latter fact was conve nient because the New Haven ordinance would only recognize a tenant union that included 10 or more units of apartments with the same owner, a description that t Ocean. ( e company has been found culpable of 27 criminal housing viola tions in New Haven since this spring.)

e union leaders from each party agreed to host a joint gathering on Blake Street’s home turf, to o er their proposed al liance to broader membership for ap proval. DSA organizers arrived early to 311 Blake Street, bringing chocolate chip cookies, Dunkin’ Donuts and nut pastries from Pistachio, a nearby café: a plastic table reception of hors d’oeuvres.

At Elizabeth Apartments, a four-build ing, 70-unit complex in the Beaver Hills neighborhood of New Haven, the CTTU has launched its most recent experiment in tenant protection. e trouble began on January 1st, 2022, when sheets of paper appeared on the front door of each unit in Elizabeth Apartments, indicating that Farnam Realty Group, a local real estate rm, would take over the building’s rent als and leasing. At the time, Farnham was responsible for maintaining properties owned by Ocean Management, a major property owner in New Haven, which had purchased the Elizabeth Apartments complex through a limited liability com pany (LLC) for $9.2 million. By April, Ocean Management began managing the building directly, and renamed it a er its street address, 311 Blake Street. At that point, the tenants were informed that

In July, they requested a meeting with the Ocean property manager and an at torney to discuss the change to their leases. ey also had concerns about Blake Street’s dangerous construction and maintenance practices. Despite the master plan to renovate, which involved painting every possible exit to apartment oors at the same time, e ectively trap ping tenants inside their homes, the man agement had no plan to x long-stand ing mice infestation, toxic mold, and rotting wood in the oors and windows.

A er the meeting, Sarah Giovanniello ‘16, a representative of the union—now termed the “Blake Street Tenants’ Union,” with a nod to Ocean’s renaming—con tacted the CTTU with a proposal for partnership. To the Blake Street tenants, the CTTU represented a crucial resource for strategy and organizing tips. To the CTTU organizers, their drive showed promise: the tenants had started their union independently, and their landlord was Ocean Management, one of New Haven’s largest and most proli c prop

Speiser brought carrots and pretzel chips. His CTTU responsibilities had thus far consisted of canvassing. e Blake Street visit, just a ten-minute walk from his rst canvass on that day in Edgewood Park, would be the rst new union meet ing he attended: he didn’t know what to expect. Organizers from the CTTU and the Central Connecticut DSA intermin gled, arranging fold-up tables and chairs in a grassy clearing tucked behind one of the complex’s four brick buildings.

Stamp brought a fold-up chair of her own. She was wearing ip- ops, exposing toes that she had managed to paint turquoise without leaving behind a single chip. A science teacher at a nearby technical high school, Stamp normally exuded the con dence of someone whose “crazy skills” in managing a classroom translated well to the rap-sheet minutiae of union or ganizing. Headed into the meeting, she was feeling uncharacteristically anxious. She hadn’t been told the location until the last minute, and worried that “they weren’t actually doing what they said they were gonna be doing—standing up for us and ghting for these things for us.”

DSA and CTTU organizers could leave 311 Blake Street the next day, but Jacob Pap, the Blake Street property manager,

could dangle a month-to-month rent ing arrangement and prospects of a renewed lease over her head. Would the union have a plan for those conse quences? Jessica Stamp was unwilling to risk diving into con ict without one.

Outside, the DSA organizers gathered in a semicircle before a three-piece poster board. Illustrated on the canvas was a pyramid of social class— “City Government, Mayor, and Board of Al ders” on top, “TENANTS,” represent ed as an army of stick gures lining the bottom—akin to the famous 1911 political cartoon, “Pyramid of a Capi talist System.” Instead of that cartoon’s straightforward hierarchy, though, the CTTU poster was suggestive of the union’s multi-levered, experimental approach. Included within the pyramid were the hard policy levers: making complaints to the Livable City Initiative and Fair Rent Commissions. Encircling the sides were harder-to-quantify social factors: ‘reputation’, ‘media attention,’ ‘existing social networks.’ ( ey may as well have added their t-shirt sales.)

A veteran DSA orga nizer, Mark Firla, ex plained that the tenants could have help writ ing a new lease for themselves, and pro posing it to the Ocean managers. He had sought help in the matter from Yale Law School’s Je rome N. Frank Legal Services Orga nization, which provides pro-bono legal support for public interest cases.

e plan sounded a little half-baked to Jessica Stamp. She had no reservations about piping up: “What are we doing? I feel like we’re oundering here.” e

union’s lease-writing activities, she point ed out, could be a red line for Pap and the Ocean Management leadership, who had the potential to outgun the tenant organiz ers. Shmuel Aizenberg, the principal of the L.L.C. that purchased Elizabeth Apartments, had personally attended the July meeting with Pap; there, he’d boasted to the tenants about the millions in investments on hand to support the Blake Street renovations. Stamp went on to describe her concerns about the union’s leaderless structure—not unrelated to her accidental exclusion from the emailed-out details of the meeting.

For a moment, Firla turned a little red, but he seemed to regain his footing as he paused to consider that the woman in the folding chair facing him might have made a good point. “We are recognizing a union here,” he said, gentle but rm. Declaring as much could come with protection, with New Haven’s new tenant union ordinance.

A er the DSA group nished making their appeal, Melonakos-Harrison and Speis er approached the canvas. ey explained their history with CTTU, o ering a li

the need was obvious, and CTTU orga nizers were cunningly persuasive. A er the meeting, she said, “all these people were trying to talk to me and I felt like I was being recruited, and it turns out I was.” Stamp now describes herself as the “front man” of the Blake Street union, e-mailing weekly missives of the union’s next course of action. Once the a ernoon light in Oc tober began to wane, she o ered to host union meetings in her apartment instead of among the overgrown bushes outside.

Most recently, Stamp has spearheaded a new tactic: encouraging tenants to leave strategic Google Maps reviews that docu mented Blake Street’s poor conditions to hold Aizenberg and Pap accountable. So far, they have le four reviews, all with one star. e trick was to aim for speci c results. Two days a er Stamp posted about a broken toilet that had been sitting in the parking lot for four months—“I shouldn’t have to live like this,” she wrote—the toilet, among other subjects of complaint, disappeared.

Stamp’s daily ritual a er arriving home from teaching used to be simple: isolate and recuperate. But a er joining CTTU, she rel ished the chance to chat. “Last Saturday, I knocked on every single door in the apart ment complex. I probably talked to about 25 people,” she said. “I can’t have a week end day of just being an isolated hermit. I mean, I like talking to people. I like feeling useful. I like seeing people’s needs get met.”

ation with the broader union and taking the temperature of the dozen-plus gath ered tenants. Melonakos-Harrison’s voice rose in pitch, for dramatic e ect: “Do you want to join a union of Ocean Tenants?”

e vote was a unanimous yes. Stamp was “in,” although she wasn’t sure about tak ing a leading role in the new union. Yet

Her evolution re ected the hopes of CTTU as a whole, which were rarely rewarded with unambiguous success. But they were also far from unfounded. On October 19, a er hearing further testimony, including from Melonakos-Harrison, the Hamden Fair Rent Commission voted to freeze rent increases for three of the Seramonte tenants who led complaints in September. In the wake of the decision, Greta Blau re ected on the psy chological relief, a er the toll of so much ne glect. “It gets very depressing a er a while,” she said. “And nally someone’s like, ‘here’s a way to do this together,’ and then you feel less alone.”

Crickets

For Aaron

Did some Googling:

e crickets we hate are two hundred million years older than we are and they invented music By “we” I mean everyone who ever lived a er crickets which is everyone who ever lived

When we can’t sleep at night, that’s because crickets are singing, and by singing I mean fucking, I mean, they’re doing both, or what I mean is the singing precedes the fucking and by fucking I mean fucking a lot, because crickets are polygamous which means they get more action than we do, and by “we” I mean me because it is rude to drag everyone who ever lived into one’s personal problems

ere are hundreds of cricket species on each continent except Antarctica sorry Antarctica and some of them are extinct sorry crickets

Sometimes crickets pretend to be other things, like leaves which I do too I mean, pretend in a general sense, not pretend to be a leaf Sometimes crickets pretend to be dead which I do not do anymore

If I were a cricket I would always be able to say what I mean as there wouldn’t be much to say Sorry crickets

Two hundred million years of singing and leaves and sometimes going extinct

When I can’t sleep at night it is because I forgot to respect my elders When I can’t sleep at night it is because crickets are dragging me into their personal problems When I can’t sleep at night it is because I wish that I were alone on a planet of bugs that I had also invented music and could not speak that I had never heard of everyone who ever lived

CATE ROSER

F E N C E L I N E S

ELISHEVLYNE ELIASON

My parents recently moved to a suburb about an hour away from the city where I grew up. I had mixed feelings on the matter — disappointment that I’d now be that much further from the friends I already barely get to see; happiness that my little sisters would now have a front yard to run around and play in; skepticism that a county with “Blue Lives Mat

American dream. But I’ve always felt like one of the best ways to better understand something — be that a feeling, belief, person, or place — is to scrutinize it with my lens.

One afternoon, I went on a walk through the neighbor hood and on my way up one of the hills, the fences around some properties caught my eye. In particular, I was captivated by the juncture where the pickets all aligned and formed into a sort of mountain range. It was as though the fences were cutting into the hills and dirt, carving out their own landscape, making (as the cliche goes) a house into a home. I maintained most of the visual integrity of my immade was the coloring of the sky. I graded it from a softer candied almost, like a sweet whose satisfaction is quick ly followed by sickness. I am beginning to think that this, perhaps, is what it means to “make it.” I am beginning to sweetness to never unlearn its sorrow, yet for the sorrow to never snuff out the joy.

The

Pole Climb

BY isabella zou

The pole seared into my right shin as I hung four feet in the air. Sweat de veloped between my death-grips and the stainless steel. Hold on. Hold on. My knuckles started shivering when — A knee shoved under my butt. My bones sang. I wrapped my left leg around and gripped the pole into my crotch. “Yup. Now twist your hips this way,” Judy said. I shifted right ward, digging my left inner thigh into the pole. It instantly started to burn. “Now let go with your hands.”

In a breathless blur, I was con torted, one inch of inner thigh bear ing the weight of my whole body. As I squeezed all my muscles togeth er, I dimly glimpsed myself in the wall-length mirrors, my body slow ly spinning like a rotisserie chicken. “Yeah!” Judy said. I peeled off the pole and collapsed to my feet. ded at me encouragingly, shaking her dyed-red pixie cut and lavish lashes. Judy Jovanelly was 63. She was short and lean, and her abs bulged between her gray sports bra and blue briefs. I was 21, and my muscles wanted to crawl into bed and die. “Now, do it on the other side all by yourself,” she said.

She cheerfully turned to the four other women in class that day, who were spread out among the room’s nine twelve-foot-tall poles, climbing in and out of their pole sits like squirrels. I looked at the pole, sighed, and put up my left shin.

I grew up doing ballet, which means I grew up punishing my body. In my earliest memories, I’m holding onto a barre, looking at myself in the wall-length mirrors, my head barely peeking above my hands. “Tailbones down!” the teacher snaps. Standing with my heels together, I squeeze my butt as hard as I can to wrench my thighs outward from each other. I’m supposed to rotate my legs like a Bar bie doll so my feet make a 180 degree

ible enough, and they stop way short. I look at them in the mirror and keep gripping, burning, getting nowhere.

I spent twelve years — over half my life — in these gray studios staring at my body in the mirror and criticizing it, looking for its inadequacies, trying to muscle them away. At any moment, I was doing a million things wrong, my

My religious education also dis ciplined my body. My Chinese evan gelical church taught me to treat my body as suspect and its temptations as dangerous. I was taught to cover my body and resist it and be better than it. When I was in elementary school, I got in trouble for giving my male friend a piggyback ride at church. I was sup posed to give people side hugs only (boobs are treacherous). At church camp in high school, I caught a vol leyball and got dress-coded because my green t-shirt showed my belly but ton. Over the years, I learned a theol

for lust and sin. My body and what it wanted were dark forces that would lead my God-seeking soul astray.

When I got to college, I stopped doing ballet and looked for different ways of moving that weren’t about imposing external standards on my body, but instead were about follow ing what my body wants. Last summer,

Beyonce’s voice strutted our fourinch stilettos across the room and we whipped our hair in the dark. Back on campus, the low hum of Giveon’s voice

I started swaying, weaving from side to side, tracing my hands up my torso and around my hair, grazing my neck

to the side, willing my shin to my ear. It can be at least two inches higher. I’m arching my back with my arm above my head. My chest can be more lift ed. Neck longer, tailbone lower, butt tighter and knees straighter. My peers had thin, perfect bodies and well-oiled joints. Being skinny and beautiful like them was not only my teenage-girl de sire, but also my artistic duty. As time passed, I watched in horror as my body rounded out, my thighs thickened. I ate less, forced my toes to 180 de grees even though it tore my knees, and let the hatred from staring at my ugly body drive my leg a little higher.

and felt a rush through my entire body.

I wanted more. And the Insta gram algorithm provided. I watched video after video of women making gorgeous shapes with their bodies on a pole, whether in their living room or in a studio. I wanted to try that. I wondered what my body could do.

After the intro class, where we learned basic ways to hold the pole — the cup grip, the handshake grip — it was time for the real stuff. Judy

ISABELLA ZOU

started off our Beginner 1 class with a sequence of tricep and bicep push ups. Then we moved into planks and stretches. I slid into my middle splits. Judy looked at me and barked, “Tits and pressed my chest and cheek

After we warmed up, we learned how to do a “peekaboo” (what it sounds like, but with your knees), a “wide slide” (sliding your back down the pole, legs spread), and a fan kick (sitting down and arcing your legs through the air).

Then, it was time to start learning the building blocks of climbing the pole. First, upper body drills: pole holds.

“Do we know what our lats are?”

Judy asked the group. There was a sec ond of silence. She shrugged off her crop top, revealing a strappy sports bra,

and put her arms up in a V. She pulled her shoulder blades down, and her back erupted into a landscape of ridges. She relaxed, then did it again. “Lats!”

Following her instructions, I placed my sternum against the pole, and grabbed the pole at my hairline. I wrapped my other arm around it and pulled down my lats as hard as I could.

As we repeated the motion, she ex plained that the pole hold is a major component of the basic pole climb, and proper placement is key. When you’re up in the air, if your arms are too high or too low, you’ll lose strength and fall.

Up next, lower body drills: pole squats. I positioned one foot in front and one foot behind the pole, held the pole with both hands, rose up on my tippy toes, gripped the pole with my “knee

pocket” (the soft spot between your knees, below the bone) and squatted down. That wasn’t too bad, I thought.

Judy walked up to me and grabbed my right knee. It separated from the pole. “Uh-uh,” she said. She shouldn’t be able to do that: I wasn’t squeezing hard enough. If I were 6 feet in the air, I would’ve fallen on my ass.

“I am a technician,” she told the class. “I will beat technique ‘til it’s dead. Or you’re dead.”

Before she started pole, Judy had been dancing all her life and teaching for most of it. She started training in tap, ballet and jazz in mom-and-pop dance studios in Ansonia, Connecti cut, when she was three. After college, she worked as a secretary for Georgia

// ISABELLA ZOU

her career there, all while still teaching dance classes in small studios on the side and dancing in regional theater productions. From 1988 to 1992, she worked full-time as a dancer on a cruise ship, performing “jazz adagio” with a partner who would lift, spin and toss her.

When she came back to Connecti cut, she paused dancing and started a family. But soon she resumed taking classes and became a “gym rat.” One day in 2008, when she was 50, her friend stumbled across a pole dancing class for women over forty and invited Judy to come along. She went — and she loved it. It worked her muscles in a dif ferent way than the gym, and it was fun.

The studio offered only twelve weeks of introductory material. Judy and her friend advanced to the point a “chopper,” where your legs hover in a side split like helicopter blades. But they weren’t ready to stop. They decided to continue training them selves through YouTube videos. Her friend installed a pole on the third desktop computer was on the second upstairs, forget what they’d seen, run back down again, rewatch the video,

It got absurd. They searched for alternatives, but all the studios with more advanced classes were at least an hour’s drive away. So they decided to build their own. They put an ad on Craigslist, found a pole dance instructor, and took the tiles out of the ceiling of a oneroom studio in Trumbull. Seven months after they opened in 2010, she was watching a student who was supposed to be “advanced” go upside down and almost fall on her head. She thought to herself, why not create a structured curriculum that provided a foundation for dancing safely? This was an inno vation at the time, when most aspiring pole dancers were learning from on

line videos, or at open-level classes.

Judy and another student, a gymnast with a degree in exercise science, built a program designed to give a solid technical foundation, so someone can then “take the move ment in whatever direction makes their little heart sing.” (Did anyone ever accuse her of starting a kind of cult? I ask. No, she laughs, and in fact it inspired other regional studios to adopt their own level-based models.)

Judy started teaching too. The studio moved to a bigger space in Mil ford and grew to between 30 and 50 regulars, most of them women in their 20s and 30s. She loves teaching. “My favorite thing is watching them come in with Bambi legs and Bambi eyes, and then seeing them in two or three months do the most gorgeous spin or lift.”

Judy was training, compet ing and improving consistently, but when she turned 52, things changed. “Menopause did me dirty, girl,” she

ing up from osteoarthritis and wear and tear from her incorrect dance training (I told her my knee cartilage could relate). She gained weight.

And something changed in her body chemistry—her skin no longer stuck to the chrome poles that competi tions and some dance studios use.

In 2019, she had a hip replace ment and a knee replacement, which gave her some mo bility back. With a criticism towards her body that felt famil iar to me, she went on Weight Watch ers to lose weight.

She started taking classes again. “The more I was able to slim down, the more positive I felt. The more positive that I felt, the more amenable I was to trying things.”

Throughout COVID, she came

in twice a week with her daughter, who had become an instructor, and worked on basic elements: climbing, shit.” Eventually, she got stronger than she’d ever been. She could do moves that she couldn’t before her surgeries.

When I asked her about being an older pole dancer, she rattled off the names of some famous, internationally ranked pole dancers: Greta Pontarelli, who’s 71, and Mary Caryl, who’s 68, both of whom found pole in their late 50s and have used it to reconnect with their bodies and explore their capacities.

Last December, Judy had her oth er hip replaced. But the surgeon used a different method (a “posterior ap proach”) that cut a major tendon. He’d said that most people don’t notice the difference, but she sure did. “It’s a pain in the ass. Literally.” She was in physi cal therapy until May and didn’t touch pole dancing at all. She’s slowly, slowly working at it now, building up an ex ercise regimen, including pole squats, fan kicks, hollow body holds, and L-sits. She follows what her aging, healing body needs day by day. And she plans to keep dancing until she literally can’t.

Pole opens one avenue for peo ple to claim and display their bod ies how they want. For Judy, that’s strictly non-sexual. She loves watch ing sexy-style pole. It looks like the danc er is “slow fucking” someone, and it’s gor geous — “Gorgeous!” It’s just not for her. She’s also not into the trend among other studios that she calls the “woo-woo” space — “your femininity and your psyche and your this and your that and your energies and your chakras.”

The New Age-y stuff rubs her the wrong way. Instead, she’s in it strictly for the physical challenge, keeping her ag

She’s in it strictly for the physical challenge, keeping her aging body feeling strong and in shape.

ing body feeling strong and in shape.

she said. “I don’t prefer to do it in a gym, I’d rather do it dancing pole. And I want to have fun. I wanna laugh. Fun, fun, fun. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh.”

But while Judy avoids “sexi ness,” I crave the moments in class where I look seductively at myself slid ing my asscheeks down the pole. Or when I let my Balanchine-disciplined

one’s thigh. I feel hot. I feel powerful. My belly button’s yawning, my boobs are bouncing, and if you were watch ing me you’d be unable to resist.

exploded in popularity in America, and soon “Little Egypt” carnival shows were traveling around the nation, fea turing “hoochie coochie” dancers — women who were Middle-Eastern, or who costumed themselves as such. They began using the wooden tent poles as a prop, gyrating and grinding on them to thrill their male audiences. Eventually, sensual pole danc ing moved from tents to bars. By the 1920s, it was featured in burlesque shows, spicing up sets of comedy and minstrelsy. Pole dancing became a mainstay at striptease clubs, where “exotic” dancers would give clients lap dances and manipulate stage poles, or sometimes even dance on tables that had poles attached to them. Today, pole dancing is a key part of many strippers’ performances.

been criticized for trying to dis tance itself from strippers. In the 2015 #notastripper movement,

tures of themselves dancing and argued that pole is clean exercise, not dirty sex work. There are on going efforts to make pole danc ing an Olympic sport, continuing a logic where competition is sanitary since dancers are performing for judges instead of men’s money. At

aesthetics of sexual movement, and even continues the legacy of words like “exotic,” which comes from a long history of fetishizing Middle Eastern and “far Eastern” wom en like me because we’re foreign. They’re still using language and metrics originally made for men.

Feminists have long been up in arms about whether sensual perfor mance can be empowering. Some have argued that erotic dance makes women into sex objects for male pleasure, while others see erotic dancers as free agents whose sex ual expression expowers them— even when they’re pleasuring men.

One thing is for certain: Pole dance in America has always had to do with race and sex. In 1893, a Syr ian woman named Farida Mazar Spyropoulos per formed a sensual belly dance at the Chicago World’s Fair to a song made up by the white male Amer ican theater man ager — later poli tician — in charge of the exhibit. It was a smash. Legend has it that Mark Twain had a near-fatal heart attack watching her perform. The dance style

In 1994, a Canadian stripper named Fawnia Mondey opened the started teaching pole dancing to non-strippers. Since then, pole studios have opened around the world, mar keting pole dancing as a form of rec reation and exercise, absent of sex or work. An entire pole sport competing network has also cropped up, in cluding Pole Sport Organization and the US Pole Dance Federation, found ed in 2011 and 2014 respective ly. PSO’s compe tition categories include dramatic, entertainment, “exotic,” which their website says “celebrates sen sual movement and concepts.” They’re evaluat

So when I’m sexy dancing, do I feel hot because I’m conforming to men’s desire for exotic bodies? Does my body escape my Christian repression and ballet discipline only to move into another arena of be ing seen, constructed, and made to please? I’m not performing to men — in fact, I’m paying $20 a class to pole dance without being watched by men — but I worry that the plea sure I get from watching myself is conditioned. At the same time, sex ual movement feels inherent in my body, and I just feel good. When I’m doing L-sits and pole holds, pole re not only to sensually move, but also to be reminded of the brute physi cality of my body. I’m inhabiting my self, regardless of who’s watching.

Twice a year, the studio hosts a showcase, where all the Girl Spot dancers who are going to compete in the biannual Pole Sport Organi zation competition perform their routines for their friends and family.

When I’m doing L-sits and pole holds, pole reduces me to esh. It’s an opportunity not only to sensually move, but also to be reminded of the brute physicality of my body. I’m inhabiting myself, regardless of who’s watching.

This one would be the last before Ju dy’s retirement. I arrived just on time and paid the $10 entrance fee. The pole room was dark and pulsing with seductive music; the 60 or so people crammed around the room’s perim eter chatted loudly over the heavy basslines. I waved at Judy and scoot ed up to a corner at the front, right at the feet of a couple middle-aged women and next to a dad holding his two elementary school-aged kids.

The next hour was a blur of bare

another homegrown instructor, intro duced each performer. They repre sented a range of bodies and back grounds: thinner, thicker, Asian, white, Black, masculine, feminine. Some had danced all their lives, some just start ed months ago. As each performed, Judy watched intently from the side.

climbed the stationary pole dressed as a wolf and leaned out to claw at her Little Red Riding Hood friend. At one point, she contorted her body into a knot around the pole. Holding onto one foot, she tried to grab the other foot but missed. I looked at Judy — she was leaning forward, hands clutched in front of her chest, her eyes laser focused.

back and clapped little rapid claps, lips forming a “woo!” as the room roared.

Judy has told me that she feels like a mother hen to the community. Her Instagram handle is @polemamact. People get married, have kids, make

from home here. “I’ve been the facil itator of a lot of good shit,” she said.

The community does need liter al buying in — classes are $20 to $25 each. It’s about overhead, Judy said — paying the instructors, paying for rent and maintenance. The customer base she’s targeting isn’t necessarily “a broke-ass college student,” she said, but someone with disposable income.

But for those who can afford en trance to the community (I’ve spent

$80 so far), it’s beautiful. Dancing pole, I feel hot, and that feels good. Judy feels strong, and that feels good. We all acutely feel our mus cles and bones, and that feels good. No matter their skill level or body type, the dancers were having fun. Marisa went last. She started in 2018, with zero previous dance or gymnastics training, and now is at The Girls Spot’s advanced level and teach es Pole 1 and 2 classes. She started moving to the throbbing bass of “Hu man” by Sevdaliza. Soon, she was holding herself sideways on the pole, with one leg threaded between her arms so she was in a full split. The light caressed her slowly spinning body.

She was gorgeous.

Near the end, I decided to give the pole climb another go. I set my shin, gripped on, stood, inchwormed up— then grabbed the pole with my feet and pushed back into the original position.

I got it.

above the ground, the pole rock-sol id between my legs and hands. My muscles were singing, and I felt trium phant. Instinctively, I looked for Judy, but she was focusing on someone else across the room. I looked at myself in the mirror, and my body looked strong

I stayed for one, two, three more burn ing seconds before I let go and slid back down.

In my last Beginner 1 class with

that pole conditioning had been pre paring us for: the pole climb. I propped my right shin up, took a deep breath and threw my left calf around the pole, so I hung between my hands and my (tightly squeezed!) knee pocket. I dug in with my shins, and stood up so my whole body was glued to the pole, fore arms pressing into my face. (“Put your hoo-hah on the pole!” Judy yelled.)

The next step was to let go of my legs and crunch my knees up like a vertical inchworm. I tensed my back and arms, willed every muscle in me to

Ugh.

I went to a plastic bin on the side, sprayed rubbing alcohol onto a paper towel, rubbed it up and down the pole to remove my sweat. I tried it again— and slipped again. One of my class mates tossed me a bottle of Dry Hands liquid chalk to smear on my hands. Judy put on a rock ballad, and we started freestyling. My hands quickly sweat through the powder and slicked the pole, and I kept trying to attack

// ISABELLA ZOU

ARIANE DE GENNARO