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(10/08/20 10:00am)
TikTok has captured the zeitgeist of Gen Z, becoming both a platform for displaying their particular brand of chaotic humor and a locus for activism and advocacy. It also can’t stay out of the news — and not merely because President Trump’s executive orders threatened its very existence in the United States.
But what about the rest of TikTok users — those who haven’t accrued millions of followers? Turns out, that describes most MiddKids.
Becca Hochman-Fisher ’23, a social media veteran, has 6,000 followers on TikTok, while Liza Obel-Omia ’23 is an unabashed TikTok enthusiast who’s “nowhere near famous,” as she puts it. Leora Segal ’23 is another avid TikTok user, though she keeps her videos private.
As both creators and consumers of TikTok videos, these three users painted very different pictures of how the app is received on campus. Hochman-Fisher deemed filming on campus difficult. “I don’t really shoot in public places usually, and most of the time, if I do, I do it super covertly,” she told The Campus. “I don’t think this is a TikTok campus.”
Obel-Omia sees it differently. “This is a pretty big TikTok campus,” she said in an interview with The Campus. “I’m not really shy about making them in front of people. It’s also fun because other people from school see that I'm on campus, and it’s like, ‘Oh, we have a shared connection.’”
Segal offered one explanation for these disparate views, pointing to how TikTok culture is constantly shifting. “When I first started using TikTok, it was viewed as taboo, but the stigma has changed a lot since so many people were using it during quarantine,” she said.
It’s this diversity of styles and opinions that Obel-Omia loves most about the app. “I really like that everyone can use it,” she said. According to Obel-Omia, while Tik-Tok’s ancestor Vine “was just one medium for funny people,” TikTok allows for a range of creative expression through fashion, music and visual art.
All three TikTokers agree that the experience of each user is insulated and personal. “What surprised me — and this was intentional on the part of ByteDance — was how well-fit the content was,” Hochman-Fisher said, referencing TikTok’s parent company, and the infamous ‘For-You Page’ algorithm, which curates content for users. Obel-Omia agreed. “One of my favorite things about it is that everything I see on there is related to me or makes me think about things that happen in my own life,” she said.
Segal saw the TikTok algorithm as a way of exploring individuality among friends, as she and her friends compared personal interests and algorithms, noticing the differences among the content they saw and enjoyed.
For Middlebury students and TikTok users everywhere, the app offers a collective experience that remains deeply personalized.
Still, there are some TikTokers that make it onto everybody’s phone. Hochman-Fisher attributes the mainstream fame achieved by today’s TikTok stars as merely another step in the normalization of internet celebrity, arguing that there has been a steady trend of YouTubers and overall internet personalities breaking into mainstream media.
However, Obel-Omia ascribed fame on the platform to something different altogether. “You have to look a certain way to blow up on TikTok,” she said. “A lot of it is humor, but I do think it's superficial people who are getting fame.”
For the college’s quiet TikTok users, maybe fame isn’t the real goal. As Segal said, “I really do think TikTok has brought the world together in a way that other social media platforms have not.”
(02/13/20 11:04am)
“Happiness can also scar,” warns Franca, a central character in this year’s J-Term Musical, “The Light in the Piazza.” For all its intense romanticism, the musical unflinchingly presented the perils of young love and the challenges of such a relationship across a wide cultural divide. The daring performance charts the rocky love story of a vulnerable American woman, Clara, and Fabrizio, an Italian man she meets while on vacation. Complicating the story, however, is the equally turbulent relationship between Clara and her protective mother, Margaret, whose charming Southern twang hides a tragic secret.
Director Douglas Anderson, Musical Director Carol Christensen and Orchestra Leader Mary Jane Austin harnessed the talents of an immensely skilled cast, crew and orchestra. The production, which ran from Jan. 24 to 27, also received guidance from the musical’s composer, Adam Guettel. The resulting show filled the stage with imagination, wit and grace. While the set itself was beautifully spare — its central figures an unreadable clock face and a coy, silent cherub statue — the performance was rather the opposite, dedicated to vivid displays of joy and despair, often in rapid succession. A play described by the New York Times as having “the most intensely romantic score since ‘West Side Story,’” the musical had Middlebury audience members swooning in their seats. Michael Koutelos ’20 gave a standout performance as Fabrizio, wrenching hearts as he declares his eternal love for Clara (Charlotte Katz ’21) in song after song, line after line. Over half the cast, including Koutelos, delivered their lines in Italian, drawing the audience across the Atlantic and into the heart of Italy. Student actor Antonio Antonelli ’23, a native speaker of Italian, found the experience “freeing and fun” considering the “musicality” of the language. Most impressive was the cast’s immense ability to convey truths through the universal language of emotion.
According to Anderson, the musical’s score is “one of the most complex ever written for the Broadway stage,” thus making it “an enormous challenge for student singers.” Still, every singer on stage, not to mention the full orchestra, rose to the challenge, each contributing a heartfelt and meaningful performance. Madison Middleton ’22 delivered an incredibly nuanced bid as Margaret, capable of conveying both the bulk of the musical’s witty quips and the anguish of a protective mother. The main conflict of the musical, in fact, arises from Margaret’s disapproval of her daughter’s relationship with Fabrizio due to some unnamed but immense worry. Eventually, Margaret reveals the source of her anxiety: as a child, Clara experienced a tragic accident that left her mentally handicapped, and, as Margaret believes, forever incapable of loving or being truly loved. To make matters worse, Fabrizio’s long-suffering sister-in-law Franca (Sofie Leathers ’22) demonstrates the dangers of marriage as she watches her adulterous husband, played wonderfully by Antonelli, betray her again and again. Despite the inauspicious signs, Fabrizio and Clara are undaunted by the warnings of Margaret and Franca, their hearts drawn ever closer until, chastened, Margaret concedes to the marriage.
Now in its fifteenth year, the J-Term collaboration between Town Hall Theater and Middlebury College extends beyond the stage and into the far reaches of the town. “The heart of the J-Term show is the interaction between college students and people from the local community and the audience is very much a part of that,” Anderson said. Indeed, the musical resonated well with audience member Anita Borlak ’23, who remarked that it was “truly a charming love story.” Ultimately, “The Light in the Piazza” is a powerful confirmation of love and everyone’s right to experience it.
(10/10/19 10:02am)
Dr. Ofelia Zepeda’s visit to the college on Thursday, Oct. 3 provided an opportunity for students to learn about the vital work of indigenous language educators during a talk entitled “Indigenous Language Teaching, Revitalization and Maintenance in the International Year of Indigenous Languages.” To begin her talk, Zepeda thanked listeners for their presence in her first language of Tohono O’odham, a Native American language from southwestern United States, before speaking in English for the rest of the presentation.
Zepeda is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award and a Regents’ Professor of Linguistics and Native American studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, not far from the Tohono O’odham lands where she grew up. Associate Professor of Anthropology Marybeth Nevins, who organized the event, introduced Zepeda as “a linguist, a poet, a literary editor, a teacher, a language policy expert and a builder of indigenous language infrastructure.”
This infrastructure, as Nevins elaborated, includes her authorship of “the only pedagogical grammar of Tohono O’odham, a text that she still teaches regularly.” As an integral scholar in the field of linguistics and Indigenous Language education, Nevins said the Linguistics Program was “deeply honored to have her.”
This year in particular is important for Zepeda’s field. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) dedicated 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL). Zepeda outlined UNESCO’s goals for the year, which, as she stated, are “to raise awareness of indigenous languages, to mobilize stakeholders, to mobilize resources, and to preserve and promote indigenous languages.”
Zepeda delved specifically into the work being done at the University of Arizona, specifically at the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI), an organization she co-founded in 1978 and continues to direct today. At AILDI, indigenous language educators, linguists, poets and writers develop curricula and skills they then bring back to their communities in order to promote language learning. Zepeda structured her talk around her organization’s work in Arizona, illustrating AILDI’s impact on maintaining the legacy of indigenous languages and meeting the objectives that IYIL set out.
[pullquote speaker="Dr. Ofelia Zepeda" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Language revitalization is a lifetime commitment.[/pullquote]
To support and promote indigenous languages, for example, her organization provides its students with “culturally relevant” curricula and tools that they themselves design for their own communities, such as a digital mapping program that provides context for certain cultural sites.
AILDI also recognizes the need for “teachers who carry cultural knowledge with them,” and thus includes indigenous elders as an integral part of instruction. To mobilize resources and stakeholders, Zepeda added that AILDI seeks to understand the needs of each student, recognizing that they come from diverse backgrounds with different language circumstances.
This diversity in language endangerment was an important nuance that Zepeda discussed, stating that not all language communities are the same or are experiencing the same level of language attrition. She announced that “language revitalization is a lifetime commitment,” often without praise, and that all people, even non-speakers, are an important part of the effort. She ended her speech with a note on the English language, urging listeners to rethink the “role and value” we all place on this language, and to understand that there are other languages in our state, country and world.
“They’re all here,” Zepeda said, “and they all need to be valued.”
(10/03/19 10:03am)
The Fall Faculty Forum is an academic event hosted every year during Fall Family Weekend. Featuring faculty research and innovation, the forum consists of different panels centered around themes of exploration where professors can present their projects to students, parents and members of the community.