I don’t need to mention that I have been stressed. I have been doing a lot of work, but I won’t pretend that I haven’t been spending some time procrastinating; that is to be completely expected. But this is crunch time and I’m working through weekends and being grumpy as a result of that. I need to relax, I need some spontaneous, fun activities and this is why this blog has been written. As students, and as student leaders, we frequently talk about the stress culture at Bryn Mawr, we play about “misery poker” where we trade stories about our hardest classes and  the longest time spent without sleep. But as students we also need reminders that it’s alright – that it’s GOOD – to spend time off campus with friends, having a good time, and maybe watching a movie.

ALTERNATIVE TITLE FOR THIS ARTICLE: Various Reasons Why Blowing Off Work & Seeing a Movie with Friends Is a Good Idea.

This is the shortest and snappiest I could get it to be, which is why it is not this post’s real title.

thanks bart.

Last night, my friends and I went to see the new Melissa McCarthy movie The Boss. It was a slightly ridiculous movie with lots of antics and gaffes and laughs. I had an excellent time. My friend NM and I were also drawn into the popcorn combo that provided us with two large drinks and a large popcorn and we were almost completely destroyed by it.

the amount of popcorn we “had” to eat was overwhelming

The popcorn was part of the problem. The drinks that made me leave to use the restroom twice were another issue.

I’m not saying The Boss was a perfect movie. Like I said, if you’re looking for an extensive and well-developed plot, it won’t be here. If you’re looking for a fun movie you can watch while chomping on a ridiculous amount of popcorn and laughing too loud, you’ll be in for a good time. This movie has a great amount of female roles, most certainly passes the Bechdel test, and made me choke on said popcorn (twice!) while watching it. So basically, I was laughing so hard I almost died. How is that for a compliment?

As convenient as it is to have the Bryn Mawr Film Institute so close to the school, most of the movies there are incredibly niche and indie. I’ve seen some great movies there (like a couple of weeks ago, Hello, My Name is Doris). But I am still grateful for the movie theatre in Wayne that provides the mainstream movies that the BMFI doesn’t provide, which is where I went to see The Boss.

And speaking of…

This movie viewing was a few weeks back now, but I saw this movie during a midweek lull. We had been working in a cafe in town almost all day, and so we ended our Bryn Mawr town venture (yeah, it’s a venture when you leave the dining halls) and decided to go to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute for a movie. And I’m glad to say that it was really good choice. Thanks to KV’s parents who recommended that we see it 😂. It’s a movie about growing up, and growing older, and it talks about mental illness and sisterhood and I don’t know, I’ve glad I got to see it with two great people. I think the experience of seeing these movies with people make them half the fun. The things we laugh at, the different jokes we catch, seeing your friend sneak in mango and sticky rice (???) into the theatre and try to eat it in the dark. Such good times.

A movie so good I saw it twice, once while on spring break in New Orleans and another time here at the Wayne cinema. I tried not to oversell it when I saw it the second time, but she liked it so it was all good. Also, my friend and I totally cried when we first saw it, just as fair warning. An animated movie that’s funny and thought-provoking and works for adults and for kids. How great is that? Also, the cast of Zootopia is incredible and Idris Elba is in it and Shakira is a singing Gazelle, so what are we all waiting for?

this is a bunny stampede, all eager to see Zootopia

This blog isn’t supposed to be a review of the movies I’ve seen, because I’m doing a bad job of reviewing it, and I don’t like reviewing things and please see the trailers and/or check the Rotten Tomatoes ratings? But I mostly wanted to write about the therapeutic act of realizing that you have work to do, and that you will get to them, but by setting a goal. I saw a movie last night, so I am currently working in a library today. I finished a reading response earlier, so now I am allowed to write this article. Reward yourself. But please don’t choke on your popcorn.

* – The title of this article is also a title of an article I’ve had to read for several of my film classes. It’s by Hugo Munsterberg and basically means that this title is an inside joke for me and the other film people. This is for YOU, you cheeky bunch!

This week has been a struggle. I’m sorry, I know that’s a very defeatist attitude to start a blog post, but it’s what I’ve been feeling and if you follow my twitter here you’ll see that I have been slowly losing my mind. (Ayyyy, check out that trans-social media marketing there.)

It’s April, and there isn’t really a lot to be excited about since, this morning, I walked all the way down from my room in the third floor, reached the ground floor and then went up and wore my heavier winter jacket. It’s 2 degrees Celsius. I wouldn’t mind the April showers at this point! At least then it’ll be nice and muggy-warm instead of wind that makes you feel like you’re about to fly off to a faraway land that leads to the magical land of Oz. It’s very windy and I don’t like it is what I am basically trying to point out here.

But there have been other things that have been marking the end of my time here. My last East vs. West party, the last Major Recognized party in Bryn Mawr College. I remember my freshman year the theme was Superheroes vs. …. something? Supervillians? I can’t remember. All I know is that I wore a Superman shirt, and I danced with friends on a ledge behind the DJ table on East. Good times, good memories, good shirt that I borrowed from Alizeh.

It is April, and it’s the last month before my theses are due, before this mountain of stress and anxiety is slightly deflated, and I feel a curious mix of nostalgia and sadness and weird superiority. I want to sit in the library, where I now live, gather all the children around me, and start every conversation by staring off into the distance and then saying: “You should cherish your time here, because [insert poignant advice].” I have no real poignant advice to give, that’s why that’s added there as a placeholder.

I don’t feel wiser. Not really. I feel more tired. But I can’t deny that I have grown and changed and progressed so much through my time here at Bryn Mawr. I’ve met so many people who have influenced me and changed me for the better. For good or worse and everything in between, it has all been a good experience. Before this week, I haven’t really felt like a senior. I mean, I definitely knew it was my last year, and that I was writing and thesis, and that I Was Leaving, but I thought that there had to be more feelings coming with it.

Lo and behold, during the Anthropology Spring Tea, I stood up in front of a group of my fellow seniors, with professors and students of all different class years in front of me, and explained what my thesis was about, as I have seen three generations of seniors do before me in various disciplines. That was a Feeling. It forced me to but my research into words, made me consider why I was an Anthropology major, what I wanted to do with it after I graduated and really, one of the more important questions: why was this research important to me in the first place?

And I got to eat lots of cheese and cupcakes, just as an added bonus.

Later that day, I attended the Senior Dinner with Bryn Mawr’s President Kim Cassidy at her house. Again, that’s something that I have seen my senior friends preparing to attend for several years, and it felt really great to attend and feel how cyclical this all was, that I am doing it this year, and the junior class will be doing it the year after me, and Bryn Mawr will continue with the senior class standing in their rooms deciding what to wear 30 minutes before they attend. Or maybe that’s just me. I attended with my friends, and we got to eat great food, and mingle with KCass and feel like Adults having a Night Out. And then we walked back to campus, a perhaps 10 minute walk to my dorm, and dress in sweatpants and head to the library and I felt a little changed, I won’t lie. I had attended Anthropology Senior Conference earlier that day, was going to meet with my English thesis advisor the next day, and had a plan and an organized way to look at my thesis. It was a good adult day, where I could tell I was almost crossing over to the real world, and I saw that I fit in, and I wasn’t as scared.

I guess this blog post comes as one of the first in a series of goodbyes I’m going to have to make throughout the end of this year, to friends, professors, people who have helped me, maybe more than they know.

Aw shucks, now I’m getting sappy on the Internet.

This post is coming following the Steven Salaita talk, which discussed academic freedom. If anyone isn’t familiar with who Salaita is, a quick refresher here is a good idea, but I will say that his background is not incredibly important to what I’ve written, but that it might help you to know where I am coming from.

Steven Salaita discusses academic freedom in regards to his own case. He talks about how placing punishment in the hands of people who are administratively above us, that by placing problems within the hands of the administration, to discuss what does and does not constitute a fireable offense, is wrong. It is harmful to all of us, to be part of that oppressive system and that, in the end, essentially, it will only serve to kick us in the ass.

This blog post was going to be very different when I was sitting in Carpenter listening to him talk. I was going to talk about freedom of speech and how it has affected my time here at Bryn Mawr. I wanted to discuss the fact that when I first told my mother that I participated in the student march we had last year, that my mother asked me to be safe, and wary. That I’ve voluntarily started a new Twitter account because I thought my previous one would be rather inflammatory if I ever wanted to be employed in the US. I, too, you see, had some thoughts about the Gaza attacks that may not have endeared me to a lot of the systems of power. There are multiple incidents that I had wanted to discuss in that blog post, and maybe still will. But, the more I thought about what Steven Salaita had to say, the more I kept thinking about the systems of power and what they gain from concealing people’s views and keeping them hidden. What these perpetrators gain from that is keeping everyone mildly sedated, quiet, and no one is quite sure if they’re allowed to speak up or not.

I agree with Salaita on multiple fronts. However, I am also a member of what continually feels like an administration-run board that infringes on others’ freedoms. Here, I am speaking about my personal position on the Bryn Mawr Honor Board.

A bit of my own background: I decided to be a member of the honor board for multiple reasons. Some are superficial. For example, I wanted to be a member of the Student Governance Association. I have held positions in clubs for the past few years and, while I did not want to be a part of a club again, I still wanted to be part of a student body–I have always enjoyed that aspect of my Bryn Mawr experience. I also wanted to understand the honor code a little more. I had my own personal views about it, I had my own not-so-great experiences with it, and I wanted to explore them through my position on the honor board.

I did become a member of the honor board for the 2015-2016 academic school year. Since then, I have become increasingly disappointed and disillusioned with honor board proceedings, and more importantly, with the idea of confrontation (which I will elaborate on further in this article). Honor board hearings are closed, the events that occur during those hearings are not discussed outside the hearings and not with anyone who is not present in those hearings. That, to me, is counterintuitive. Sometimes, a hearing occurs because we want to right a wrong, we want to fix something that may have impacted several students. The secrecy prevents that. I understand the need for confidentiality and protecting the students’ right to privacy. But if a student is removed from a leadership position due to their hearing, if they are forced to drop a class, or are expelled… then the cat’s out of the bag isn’t it? The honor board hearing is only serving its own self importance. The honor board, instead of dispelling fear, which we as members sometimes discuss with the community, holding events in order to get people more comfortable with the honor code and honor board process, in fact operates on the fear of the honor board. How is the honor code upheld? By fearing the consequences. By fearing the hearings. The honor code needs us to be scared of the honor code, which has become an administrative-run institution of its own.

The other problem, which Salaita brings up, is elitism, which can also be translated into inaccessibility. There was an honor board resolution in this year’s plenary that drew a lot of “controversy”. The honor board was trying to pass the following Resolution 2 on the 2016 Spring Plenary, entitled “Waiving the Requirement of Minutes in Honor Board Hearings”. During the following debate, many things became clear: a) that people did not understand how the honor board operates, which I also understand, because the reason I wanted to join the honor board in the first place is because I myself did not understand it, and b) that people did not understand the honor code either, that there are parts of it that are muddled and confusing and un-transparent, on purpose, which is part of its charm, or so we think. However, that muddiness makes it even less accessible to students, to faculty, and more importantly, to the people who run into an conflict with the honor code, the people who get the scary emails to “please go see their deans”, the people who get the email that their grades have been withheld for this semester for no reason. There are things that I have heard during some honor board hearings that have made me beyond uncomfortable, from people who were serving as members of the “judging” process, things that I feel I cannot share here because of that fear of betraying confidentiality that has been ingrained in me.

During Plenary, there were people (who were opposed to passing the resolution) who openly said, “I’ve never read the honor code, but [such and such] are my thoughts on how it should be changed”. I do not need to point out that this is not a very good way to start a discussion nor is it a very good way to instigate change on campus. And that is part of the problem that the honor code runs into: people don’t really care about it. The honor code is a mythical part of our campus, it is part of what Bryn Mawr has been built on and it is such an entrenched aspect of our campus that we don’t think about what it really means and how it affects our school. The Honor Code is deeply rooted in Bryn Mawr, and we ignore  what it stands for. We’ve have stopped considering how it affects student self governance when we have deans on the board, and when we have more faculty during an honor board meetings than students. When, due to the differences in station, students feel understandably nervous to voice their thoughts in front of professors. Because while, theoretically, we are all level during an honor board hearing, there are still differences in station, in position, that will lead us to think that a professor or a dean probably has a better idea than we do, that they are the proper authority.

During his talk, Salaita draws similarities between an American colonial history, and how he believes that part of the reason he was fired, is because of issues within the department that he is in, as a Native studies scholar, and that tensions already brewing. If you draw similarities between that American colonial history, and to the many issues students have with Bryn Mawr’s own history, and how we grapple with it, we can add the honor code and self governance, both of which we consider pillars of Bryn Mawr that have (almost) been a part of the college since it started, as part of the reason that we, as students, do not feel completely safe nor welcome at school. We cannot always state our mind, or talk to our friends, because there is a mythical, ever-present ~ honor code ~ that prevents it. This honor code is full of inaccessible language, hard to determine, and with an invisible line that you’re never quite sure if you’re crossing.

But I am jumping ahead of myself here! The first step of an honor board hearing is confrontation, a core tenet of the honor code as well as of Bryn Mawr. We’ve heard it all: confrontation is not scary, it is a core part of your Bryn Mawr experience, and that nothing would get settled unless we confront others and instigate that change. That is all well and true, in theory. In action, confrontation is a dreaded part of anybody’s experience at Bryn Mawr, and even when it is done, it is barely done right. We’ve had experiences where “confrontation” has been done through someone calling public safety rather than asking a student next door to stop smoking, or when someone goes to their HA to talk to their roommate rather than talking to them, or, or, or. This is a small campus and I am sure everyone has their own confrontation mishaps. And that’s natural! It IS intimidating to talk to people, especially if it is a big group of people and ask them to stop doing something. That is true, but that is what Bryn Mawr asks of you. We expect people to come into Bryn Mawr already having the skills that some students, seniors who are leaving school in a few months, still don’t possess. The fact is, not everyone is comfortable with confrontation, not everyone is ready for it, and our assumption that people will be comfortable with confrontation at Bryn Mawr is both ridiculous and untrue.

Confrontation is scary and intimidating. You feel like you’re burning bridges with people. If you have anxiety, that anxiety doubles and then it triples. We are asked to treat people like an adult as soon as they step foot on campus, we ask them to be able to confront and we ask them to be able to articulate, forgetting how sincerely classist and elitist that idea is, forgetting that there are different classes, whether socio-economic classes, or class years, that seem to carry more weight, and make the balances tilt in another’s favor, especially when you’re thinking of confronting that party.

I hope that my arguments, at times, made sense. In truth, I don’t know where I stand when it comes to the honor board/code. I am both for it, and against it. I both think that it is necessary, and that it requires a lot of reframing and reforming before it is ready again. That’s how I stand with so much of what occurs on campus. When it comes to WTF Week, when it comes to discussions about trigger warnings and safety, I wish there was more change happenings and that more of it was being led by students who were equally a part of administrative proceedings. And I wish, so much, that the fact that people will have different ideas is respected in Bryn Mawr (it is not, do not tell me it is) and that people who struggle with framing ideas, who do not have the same language that is seemingly expected from someone in order to be able to carry a discussion (an elitist idea) is abolished.

Please post your thoughts because I would love to hear them.

Today was the Community Day of Learning, which is in its second year. Posters were everywhere, and we’ve been getting emails about it for some time.

found in the canaday library elevator

The topic of today’s Community Day of Learning was class, while last year’s topic was race. As can be seen in these social issues, they so very often interact with each other, and do not exist in vacuums. In today’s sessions, the topic of race came up, and how it interacts with class, how student’s statuses as international students or first generation immigrants interact with their class, how their education affects their social mobility. All of these (in)visible topics that are present but unspoken were brought up today.

I will start by saying that, unfortunately, last semester’s Community Day of Learning was held on a Wednesday which is a day I usually devoted to my internship in the Philadelphia. So last year I was not able to attend. But today, I was really excited to be able to experience CDL and see what will be presented. I heard lots of good things last year from people who attended the sessions, and I was very much looking forward to attending them for myself.

It was a rainy cloudy, day today, and SJ18’s top was a wonderfully bright breathe of fresh air in this weather. The colors also matched the CDL posters so basically she is the most prepared person ever.

The first session I attended was in Park 243, in the Session II block of time.

It was an interactive workshop, and there was time after each activity to reflect and talk about we discussed as a smaller group, as well as thoughts in response to what other students said. It was a large discussion that kept moving in different and new directions. We did activities and then we came together and discussed them. Everyone in the group had such insights and interesting views that they shared. Most of the people in that room were people of color, and I think it made it a lot easier to speak about our personal experiences in that group, seeing as the people who were around us did mostly share the same experiences with colorism in their communities.

It was a unifying, disheartening shared experienced that most of us found, that in all of our societies, whether in Indian, Nigerian, Korean, Mexican, Italian, Kuwaiti societies, Whiteness was at the top, and was best and other colors were seen as lesser than. And it was like that in the United States as well, if you’ll read earlier novels, where girls were warned to stay inside, as it’s only the laborers and the lower class who had darker skin. Which is why a student mentioned how funny it was to her grandmother, that Americans actually try to achieve a tan.

Medoza Ameen ’16 and Esther Chiang ’14

It was interesting to see the dynamic of having domestic students, international students, graduate students and staff in the same room, having similar discussions, and voicing their thoughts and where they themselves are coming from. It made for a varied discussion where people from different backgrounds had a lot to build up on.

Following this session, I moved on to a more formal panel called Class in a Global Context in Carpenter B25.

This session, like the earlier session, started with people introducing themselves as well as saying why they were attending this session, what interested them in it, etc. B, a librarian in the college, and I first discussed what our own class backgrounds were, and what got us interested in attending this session. I said, as an international student, I was interested in what others had to say about class in their countries and how that affects their time at Bryn Mawr because I, and everyone, remain affected by our backgrounds and where we had our beginnings. B said that he had attended the last Community Day of Learning and, in speaking to international students during that event, regained an interest in learning more about their time at Bryn Mawr.

Each student spoke about their background, and their personal experiences with class in their background. Some people provided statistics and most people combined that with just speaking about their personal experiences, and personal stories, of them growing up in their countries.

It was also interested how connected the two sessions I attended ended up being. In AR’19’s presentation about growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, she talked about how the class structure in Trinidad and Tobago was influenced by color. In AK’18’s presentation about class in India, she mentioned the caste system, saying “its hard to talk about class in India without talking about caste”, a phrase that is almost a verbatim quote from another student in the Fair and Lovely session.

I am very glad I got to be present for the Community Day of Learning today. Discussion and awareness is the first step to dismantling the situations in our societies, but it is an important first step.

This Saturday, I joined the Asian Student Association and the Association of International Students as they held a Lunar New Year celebratory brunch at Sang Kee, a restaurant in Philadelphia.

The brunch was excellent. There was so much great food, and both the restaurant and the club were so accommodating to people who were vegetarian or vegan which was really nice of them. We ate with other members of the Bryn Mawr community, had a reserved section all to ourselves and cheered when the food came.

And boy, did they deliver.

The food. There was supposed to be a joke somewhere in there.

Placed on a fancy contraption that moved the food to different ends of the table, we had spring rolls, duck, fried rice, and actually so. much. more.

see if you can spot a fellow bmcbanter blogger!

The brunch was lots of fun and, in tradition with the celebration of Chinese New Year, at the end of the dinner, we were each awarded with a red envelope…

consisting of a coupon for $5 off our next purchase at the restaurant 😀

Some people thought that signaled the end of the lunch and left… but those who did made a mistake since the best was saved for last (well not the best – everything was so good).

Dessert is so great, it is my reward for eating healthy food

After that, we had a couple minutes to walk around in the city, well, mostly Chinatown since it was really too cold, and we had too little time to venture elsewhere. My friends and I ended up at Tea Do, a place that serves great bubble tea.

the only full one on the table belonged to KV’16 who wasn’t there and that’s the only reason it was left alone.

We drank our tea, had a game of Jenga where we made up a few rules, left our mark in that restaurant and we then got on the bus and headed back to Bryn Mawr!

But that would not be the end of my ~culture saturday~

That same night was the SAS Culture Show!

The performances were wonderful and moving and beautiful, everyone’s clothes were so gorgeous, and the music was wonderful, as was seeing all the friends from the Philadelphia area who came to check out the performances.

Thanks to the affinity groups for a great weekend!

On January 29th 2016, a group of people from the Bryn Mawr community, the Tri-College community, the general Philadelphia region, gathered in Aelwyd, the religious house on Cambrian Row, to have a conversation about islamophobia.

The attendants varied in age, from students of the undergraduate community, to staff members, to members of the graduate school. People were there for different reasons, and among our smaller groups, we discussed some of those reasons.

Some people, like me, said they were personally affected by islamophobia, and wanted to see what other people’s views on it were, what some solutions we had to offer would be. Some people could see how a certain presidential candidate’s rhetoric was affecting their Muslim friends and their friends of color. Some were allies. Others were people who also come from other marginalized communities and wanted to share their insight. There were people who worked in religious life groups and people who did not. It was a good, varied group of people who attended, and the conversations I overheard and were later revealed to the larger circle, spoke of that level of diversity present in the room.

The format of the conversation was relaxed. People mused, people formed thoughts while speaking, and while nothing concrete happened: we didn’t eradicate islamophobia in America, and I’d hazard a guess and say not everyone left feeling completely changed BUT as a student, I got to see that there were people who are trying to make an effort. We got non-Muslims who said that they did not think that ‘ending’ islamophobia in the United States rested solely on us as Muslims, that islamophobia is inherently white supremacy in action and that they, too, should take the lead in shutting down islamophobia comments. I got to see that there are people, friends in fact!, who are planning on writing books and literature with more Muslim characters to increase representation and Muslim presence in other communities. I got to see that administrators care, and they want our input on how to show that they care, how to start a conversation with a Muslim student who might be upset or concerned. Or whether it is appropriate to do that.

And I am so glad that people of other communities were present. So often it feels whenever a marginalized group speaks, they are speaking into the void. Our voices reverberate and come back, aimed at us, and we feel like the only people listening to us are other Muslims. Seeing how many people were present this Friday afternoon was excellent, and everyone who was there, who made time to share and reflect, everyone who spoke into the circle or who just talked to their neighbors, is very sincerely thanked.

It is difficult for me to state what was said in the meeting, both because we did speak in abstract terms and did move amongst different conversations very fluidly, but also because I want to respect the thoughts and voices of the people who spoke today, and who expressed their opinions under the assumption that they were entering a safe space where they could share their thoughts without fear. And so, with that said, after obtaining her permission, I would like to add some of the final thoughts said in the conversation today.

Professor Manar Darwish, an Arabic professor, symbolically ended the conversation with a verse of the quran which says:

 “يا أيها الناس إنا خلقناكم من ذكر وأُنثى وجعلناكم شعوباً وقبائل لتعارفوا إن أكرمكم عند اللّه أتقاكم إن اللّه عليم خبير”

Quran, 49:13, Soorat Al Hujurat

Which, translated into English, says, “O people! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all-Knowing, all-Aware.”

Stay safe, be kind, and know one another <3