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(05/06/21 9:56am)
To kick off Midd MAY-hem, a long weekend of festivities and celebrations, Middlebury Queers and Allies hosted a drag show. While it was originally planned to be on Battell Beach, the rain forced the show’s dancing and duck-walking to Wilson Hall. Not at all deterred by the change in plans, performers took the stage before a small but captivated audience.
This isn’t the first time this year that the performers had to deal with a change in circumstances. Like drag artists across the country, Middlebury’s own performers have had to navigate pandemic performances and explore new ways of doing drag.
“When I’m performing in a non-Covid environment, I take songs I identify with lyrically and am able to pour my emotions out through them, but during a Covid semester, I’m trying to take myself in new directions fashion-wise and music-wise,” said Miss Ogyny (Donovan Compton ’23). “I wouldn’t say I’m a dancer, but now that the emphasis is no longer on lip syncing, I’m trying to adapt.”
In the spirit of adapting, Miss Ogyny performed two Japanese pop songs, Supercell’s “The World is Mine” and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s “Cherrybonbon.” Inspired by Harajuku streetwear and Lolita fashion, they wore a baby pink dress with white frills and baby pink Mary Janes to match. On stage, they looked entirely in their element, clicking their heels and dipping in a way that revealed their cute, pink panda underwear. They admit that they “may or may not be a weeb,” to which fellow drag artist and Queers and Allies board member Ripper Hymen (Devon Hunt ’23) lovingly cuts in with a sarcastic “noooooo.”
For Hymen, drag is a powerful form of self expression and empowerment. “When I choose a [song to] lip sync, I think [about] what song makes me feel my gender and gives me a god complex,” they said. “It’s like how can I put every TikTok cosplayer and queer-coded supervillain to shame. There’s a lot of My Chemical Romance in there,” they joked.
The best part of the Queers and Allies drag shows is the absolute pure love shared between the board members, performers and the audience. From spectators, there’s a lot of whooping and hollering, snapping and “yassssssssss”-ing, but you can tell that even on the practical side of things, there’s a lot of support. Off stage, Compton and Hunt are great friends and joke about their very opposite aesthetics (Ripper Hymen has a very punk, all black couture while Miss Ogyny is straight from an episode of “Winx Club”). In this way, they compliment each other: Middlebury’s own Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamo.
When host Expo Marker (M Stiffler ’23) first walked on stage, the audience knew it was going to be a good show. With a Sharpie penis on one leg and several doodles on the other, they brought out a fun queer energy that’s often missing at Middlebury. For their lip sync, they chose Lil Dicky’s “Hannibal Interlude,” a perfect song to begin the night of queer debauchery ahead.
There were moments at Friday’s drag show that made viewers laugh, holler, “YASSSS” and even tear up a little bit. When Francis Shiner ’23 began singing Mitski’s “Class of 2013” while stripping off various layers of clothing as a commentary on gender expression and acceptance, the audience sat stone-still, moved by the passion in their voice. It was a reminder that this night of celebration comes with a long fight for queer and trans liberation attached to it.
The jubilation of any drag show is also a celebration of defiance and obstinacy in the face of those who think we in the queer community “don’t” or “shouldn’t” exist. Queers and allies and their performers filled up Wilson Hall with a powerful reminder that queer and trans people are a vivacious and important force on Middlebury’s campus. Despite our trials and tribulations, we are here, and that is something worth celebrating.
(08/26/20 4:38am)
“What talents do you have that help set people free?” Roodharvens Joseph ’22 and his sister Gaïana Joseph asked themselves when they established their nonprofit, Fuel The People. For them, the answer was cooking. Driven by the belief that healthy food is the fuel for the revolution and called to action by the protests for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless others, the siblings prepared over 450 meals in their Yonkers home to hand out on the streets to hungry New York City protesters. After seeing the immediate impact they made on their first day of handing out meals, they knew they had to continue to feed the people — and Fuel The People was born.
“Every effort of resistance had a support system,” Roodharvens Joseph said. “Throughout every revolution, there have been people contributing whatever they can toward the cause. For Fuel The People, it’s food, water and essentials.”
Fuel The People emphasizes the importance of access to healthy food for the liberation and prosperity of Black communities. In their mission statement, they write “Black people need healthy food to live healthy lives and to continue being happy, to continue loving each other and finally to be our best selves for ourselves and for each of our respective communities.”
Not only does Fuel The People aim to feed protestors on the front lines, they also look to make a long term difference by creating pathways to healthy food for Black communities — communities that are disproportionately affected by food deserts because of a history of redlining and racist government policies.
Fuel The People estimates that it has provided around 6,000 meals since first hitting the streets on June 2. Since that first day in their Yonkers kitchen, they’ve also teamed up with Allegra Massaro and her brother Lorenzo Massaro to establish a chapter in Washington, D.C. Roodharvens Joseph is currently Chief Technology Officer and Volunteer Coordinator. He’s happy he can use his passion and knowledge for food, sociology and computer science to help power the movement.
In the short time since its development, Fuel The People has garnered a significant amount of attention and support. They’ve been featured by several social media platforms, including First We Feast, Taste, the Tasting Table, Punch, Saveur, Food52, Afar, Cherrybombe and more. They’ve collaborated with 15 BIPOC-owned restaurants in both Washington D.C. and New York City. The organization has plans for more collaborations in the future.
“My sister and I hustled, posted asking for donations for this simple project but then it blew up,” Roodharvens Joseph said. “In 48 hours we raised four thousand dollars so at that point we knew more had to be done.”
The siblings went on to manifest their vision of a well-fed movement and a healthy, liberated community. While Fuel The People has already accomplished a lot, their work is far from finished.
“We are always looking for donations and volunteers. The more people we have going through the crowd handing out supplies, the more outreach. So the more hands the merrier,” Roodharvens Joseph said.
Then he flashed back to their early days, back to the first protest with just himself, his sister and their two friends trying to hand out 450 sandwiches.
“It was so hectic trying to get all of that food out. We ended up distributing food until 7:20 p.m. in front of Trump Tower. Mind you curfew was at eight.”
Fuel The People has big plans for the future but emphasizes the importance of sponsorships and donations to making their mission a reality. After all, the siblings believe that the revolution is far from over and that the conversation around equal access to healthy food has just begun. On August 28th, they plan on bringing Fuel The People to Al Sharpton’s March on Washington. They’ve partnered with the National Action Network and hope to raise $30,000 to feed over 10,000 protestors.
Their website reads, “The fight for liberation and justice goes beyond protests, and we must remember that Black joy and prosperity are also worth fighting for. ”
While Roodharvens Joseph and his co-founders continue their work, individuals can contribute to their efforts through either donating or signing up to volunteer on their website.
(04/22/20 9:59am)
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” he whispered.
It was Saturday, the night before I left. His room looked exactly like it always did at the end of a long week: a desk covered in mugs filled with half-eaten oatmeal, a pile of clothes on the rocking chair, an overstuffed trash bin. He’s generally a tidy person so this would usually distress him, but tonight we ignore it. Instead, we focus on the fairy lights strung to his ceiling, the smell of eucalyptus from the humidifier and the way Middlebury actually feels kind of peaceful with no one around.
We’re lying by the window, holding each other like it’s the end because it sort of is. Even though we’re both sophomores, we’ve both committed to a full year of studying abroad. I’m from Brooklyn. He’s from Turkey, 5,000 miles away. It’s unlikely that we’ll see each other until our senior years. We both knew this was coming eventually, but it was always abstract, something to worry about later.
We met in the Abernathy Room. I was sitting on one red couch, he was on the other. I didn’t notice him, too busy working on my “broke brooklyn b!tch!” blog that I was sure was going to be a huge success, when he sauntered up to me, looking like a quirky side-character on a Netflix show.
“Helloooo, I’m Ege,” he chimed.
Intrigued by this strange, gentle boy with his long lashes and direct manner, I closed my laptop.
“Hi, I’m Regina,” I said, smiling.
As it turned out, we not only lived in the same building, but he had class with one of my Posse-mates and knew my roommate and so on and so on. Before we knew it, we became best friends, kissed drunk, started dating, blah blah blah. You’ve seen a rom-com; you know how the story goes.
Still, I never saw it coming. Ege just wasn’t the kind of person I saw myself falling in love with. He listened to indie music, read historical nonfiction by choice and opened Wikipedia on the toilet instead of Instagram. I, on the other hand, am literally falling asleep just writing those things. I never thought we’d last as long as we have.
Then this fall, our relationship took a step forward in a much more serious direction. After an especially depleting, slightly traumatizing summer, I came back to start my sophomore year not with the energy of a peppy freshman, ready to take on the world, but as a tired and scared 20-year-old. Our first week back for Res Life training I tried to break up with him, convinced that I was too broken to continue a serious relationship. He refused.
“I want to be there for you,” Ege said.
I cried into his shoulder and he held me in that moment the way he would continue to hold me for the next few months as I lost my home, my cat, my sense of security in the world. He held my hand walking to therapy and emotionally held me when I needed it most.
On the day Middlebury announced we would be sent home, I was thinking about how my spring semester was off to a shockingly bright start after so many hard months. How fortunate I was for all the people that helped me start feeling like myself again — Ege being a very big part of that.
This was supposed to be our spring, our few months of peace before saying goodbye. I wanted to give him these months of peace, of “happy college couple” time, but I couldn’t. What makes me love him even more is that he never wanted or expected any of that from me.
The morning after our last night, he helped me carry all my poorly-packed boxes to my aunt’s Honda. I was going to New York and he was going to stay on campus, at least until something better came along or he had to go home. Seconds before my aunt pulled up, we were sitting on my windowsill recounting the things we loved about the other. His eyes were teary, the same gentle boy I met over a year ago on the red couch in Axinn.
He helped me load the last of my boxes and we hugged, too shy to kiss goodbye under the watchful eye of my Catholic aunt. But he managed to hand me one thing before we drove off: Zucchini, the stuffed cat he had given me for my 21st birthday after I was forced to give my real one away. I held onto one little paw as the packed car pulled away, watching Ege from the window for as long as I could. He stood there the whole time, watching the distance grow between us.
Regina Fontanelli ’22 is an Opinions editor for The Campus.
(03/12/20 10:04am)
In August, 1994 Emily Bernard was almost fatally stabbed in a coffee shop near her university. It was a few days before her birthday and she sat down at her college town’s coffee shop to write a paper for a class in the American Studies Program at Yale. It was a regular night until a balding man (who she describes as ‘Gallagher’-esque) took out a hunting knife and proceeded to stab her and six other people in what one news outlet described as a “blood bath.” Yet, Bernard can’t seem to find anger at the man. Despite the trauma it brought her and the medical issues she had to endure later on, she tells her therapist that it “wasn’t personal,” because she knew the man who stabbed her was not in his right mind.
I’m saying all this to tell you that Bernard is a generous person, because I think understanding that is important to understanding her talk. If you’ve read the introduction to her book, “Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine,” or even her author bio on the jacket, you know Bernard is most interested in “looking at ‘blackness at its border, where it meets whiteness, in fear and hope, in anguish and love.’” She’s dedicated much of her adult life to studying Carl Van Vechten, a white man who played a critical role in supporting the Harlem Renaissance. In her slideshow, she includes a picture he took of his dear friend Zora Neale Hurston, reciting a joke of hers about Van Vechten — “If Carl was a people instead of a person, I could then say, these are my people.”
Bernard is someone who believes in friendship, in its powers and in its ability to incur change.
Yet, as much as she believes in the power and ability of friendship, she also believes in its limitations. Bernard strongly believes that it is not the responsibility of people of color to educate white people.
Bernard, in response to a question posed by Lynn Travnikova ’20, pointed out the importance of self-care under our current regime. “We have to really take care of ourselves the best we can,” she said. “That’s the most important thing.”
It can feel confusing to reconcile her advice: too often in conversations around interracial friendships people of color are burdened with the feeling that they are responsible for their white friends’ re-education on race-related issues. Self-care and restoration tend to be painfully neglected. But Bernard is not arguing for one or the other. She’s doing something else, acknowledging this oft-forgotten grey area where friendships can simultaneously be helpful, but also not anyone’s job.
[pullquote speaker="Emily Bernard" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I believe in the power of intimacy and in the tender contract of conversation. I believe they have the potential to transform us. Racism is systemic and institutional, but people invent systems that create and inhabit institutions.[/pullquote]
Emily Bernard is a person who can forgive someone who stabbed her, who can laugh at her white friend’s ignorance (as she shared in her talk and her book), and is someone who really, really believes in the power of interacial friendships. While I think that’s beautiful for her, I don’t think that’s right or beautiful for everybody. As individual humans, we’re inherently going to have different responses to the confusing and heart wrenching drama we find ourselves and our country to be locked in. From workshopping with Bernard beforehand, seeing the thoughtful way she approached each of us, as individuals, I have a feeling she would feel the same way.
Bernard’s speech was not about declaring a ‘right way’ or invalidating the tactics of others. In the introduction to her book, she writes that she was looking to “contribute to the American racial drama” in a way that was true to life as she lived it. Her talk, like her book, is her truth. She was opening a door without closing any behind her.
(12/06/18 10:57am)
“Men on Boats,” written by Jaclyn Backhaus, is the topsy-turvy tale of explorer John Powell and his zany crew as they chart the undiscovered territory of the American West. Based on Powell’s recording of the expedition, the play stays true to history in all ways but one — Powell and his crewmen are all played by female actors.
The young actors take the stage with all the bravado of the Anglo-Saxon men they play, jutting their hips out and broadening their shoulders. The virility they demonstrate is well-complemented by the muted yellows and browns of their costumes, their chapped leather cowboy boots and worn suspenders. Like many other old men, these explorers do not prioritize fashion.
Lead actress Katie Marshall ’21 gives a convincing performance as Chief Powell, the crew’s one-armed commander. Her face is never vacant, always brewing with thought or vigor beneath its surface. Her portrayal of Powell as a reflective, passionate captain centers her team. As Powell, she is able to obliterate all the insecurities of her increasingly worried crew.
Powell’s relationship to her team, specifically to Dunn, played by Madeline Ciocci ’20, is a major highlight of the show. The dynamic between the two of them is complicated but quirky, quickly transitioning from them tenderly naming cliffs at sunset to hotly debating the leadership of the expedition. Dunn has no qualms about expressing that he could lead the team more efficiently. Despite these tensions and a few small tantrums, the two still bond like brothers, parting ways with the grief and concern specifically reserved for loved ones.
The play is a first of its kind, written for 10 21st-century female actors to play 10 male colonizers. Backhaus, in an interview with Playwrights Horizons, an Off-Broadway theater company based in New York, said her inspiration for writing the show was to see “a show with characters I’d never get to play herself.” In a country where the majority of stories are told by and reserved for cisgender white men, Backhaus wanted to stir up change.
Middlebury’s production succeeds partially in accomplishing Backhaus’ goal. In her interview, Backhaus put an emphasis on racial diversity as well as gender diversity, which seemed to be lacking in the college’s production. It could be due to the school’s demographics, but is no less disconcerting.
This is not to say the show “failed” or should be discarded in any regard. It was an enjoyable 100 minutes filled with camaraderie and anticipation. It was humorous and knew how to hit its satirical moments. In one scene, Powell seeks the help of Native American chief Tsauwiat, played by Coralie Tyler ’20. In a conversation between the two, Powell slows and exaggerates his speech to be understood by the perfectly-fluent Tsauwiat. Tsauwiat is less than impressed by this and the audience laughs alongside him in looking down on the European conquestors.
Overall, “Men on Boats” was a theater experience worth having. Its quick-as-a-whip dialogue critiquing imperial conquest and its light-hearted approach to toxic masculinity work together to give us a chance to laugh at typically noxious American history — a rather difficult feat. For the young female actors who got to explore the wild, wild Anglo-Saxon West, the experience was beyond satisfactory.
“I think it’s very interesting politically to put traditionally non-male bodies in a story of conquest,” said Becca Berlind ’21 who played navigator Andrew Hall. “Because the script is trying to do that, it’s shaped a little bit differently, just discovering those moments was really fun.”