...
Urban Voice, Rural India
Searching for Endless Dicks
11. Endless Dicks formed when One Dick and Two Dick wanted to play their high school’s Battle of the Bands and be the worst band there.
12. They ripped their shirts off and played a song called “Avocado Extravaganza: A Work in Two Movements.”
13. For the first movement, they hit avocados with drumsticks while screaming.
14. For the second movement, they hit the avocados rhythmically while humming the sea shanty “Friggin’ in the Riggin.”
15. They weren’t the worst band at Battle. This was partly due to One Dick’s solo acoustic set, in which he exclusively strummed an E minor chord.
Art by Crane Sarris
Are You Listening?
What kind of world would it be if everyone talked and no one listened? A dysfunctional one, to say the least. Listening is essential to understanding. Without it, words would have no purpose, communication would be lost and the world would be filled with nothing but meaningless chatter. So why is listening underrated?
Vancouver's Fog
In British Columbia, the lands are unceded and contentious. The history of forced cultural assimilation, genocide, oppression and displacement is all too fresh. The last residential boarding school closed in 1996. We are only one generation removed from the time of its activity, and the wound of that trauma still festers. Here, the extensive indigenous art and motifs that adorn popular locales such as town centers, parks, shops and the Vancouver International Airport mask the ongoing complexity of aboriginal rights, political injustices and the history of aboriginal cultural negligence. The artistic indigenous presence is substantial.
Unmasking ISIS
I am looking for an ISIS execution video, but I have no intention of witnessing its macabre conclusion. I’ve seen the stills in the news—emaciated men clad in bright orange prison garb kneeling next to black silhouettes baring knives—but I need to see a little more. I need to peer into the blackness of the masks and see if there’s anything there. More importantly, I need to figure out what’s so damn terrifying about them.
How to be Lonely
Writing for Strangers
Throughout my years of writing, both personally and academically, I have found it much harder to share my writing with friends and family than with strangers and acquaintances. To mitigate my struggle, manifest in caution and writer’s block, professors have told me to write as if I’m writing for no one.
Uncomfortable Underground
New York City in the summer is notorious for its uncomfortable heat and sticky humidity. Tourists in Midtown sag together, pushing past each other in a sweaty August frenzy. Taxi exhaust clogs the air, the sun tries hopelessly to pierce through the smog and Manhattan swelters — a tired, miserable haze. There is no reprieve beneath the sidewalk. Steamy subway platforms seem to breathe, and the metal cars push columns of air even hotter and denser than the oppressive heat in Times Square.
Obituary
Breathe In, Sing Out
Ambient sounds are shut out, like when someone flicks a switch and the lights take a second too long to turn off. I am aware of the noise, and then it is gone. Everything in my chest hardens before exploding out of my joints and my throat, and then whatever caused me such petrifying anxiety before is suddenly visible, sitting in the air around me. A bubble of nerves.
Fired Without Known Cause
Fight for a Fair Wage: Part II
The new proposed minimum wage for Colorado College staff is $11.06. If the wage supported by self-sufficiency ten years ago—$9.46—were adjusted to inflation, this would amount to $11.89, eighty-three cents below what was called for in 2003. Not only has the college not made any of the promised improvements, but it has actually made steps in the opposite direction. In 2003 Celeste put his consent in written word, “ I do accept the committee’s recommendations that the college move toward the notion of a minimum ‘self-sufficient wage’ as a starting wage for CC and Sodexho employees.” So how did this happen?
Fight for a Fair Wage: Part I
Ten years ago, the minimum staff salary at Colorado College was $6.92 per hour. A 2002 survey from Sociology Professor Jeff Livesay’s Inequality course revealed that 78 percent of the staff felt they were being inadequately compensated for their work. Approximately 50 percent of the staff reported experiencing economic hardships such as worrying about food, inability to pay for housing and an inability to afford health care. Yes, this was at CC— not such a magical bubble for some.
He Didn't "Retire"
Over dinner last month, Roberto Garcia, Colorado College’s former Director of Admissions, told me how he lost everything. This loss wasn’t a long time coming, or even mildly expected. Garcia contends that during his 25 years at CC he received consistently strong performance reviews, maintained hundreds of amicable colleagues on campus and across the country, and played a key role in selecting the current incoming class, which President Jill Tiefenthaher referred to as the “most selective and diverse” in our campus’ history. All of this abruptly ended when Garcia was terminated from CC on April 4, 2014. It marked the end of his service to the College and the beginning of his fraught journey for justice.
Art by Erin O'Neill
Race and Racism at Colorado College
Here’s the truth: At Colorado College, I’ve never been discriminated against, treated differently or even felt mildly uncomfortable because of my race.
Yet, this isn’t because CC is the paradisiacal“camp college” that we want to believe it is, a post-racial haven for progressive intellectuals where diversity is embraced. If CC was this place, then your response to my statement might be, “Of course you haven’t experienced racism—not here!” But let’s be real. The reason my declaration is true is because I look white, not because CC has achieved the harmonious racial utopia that we advertise on our brochures.