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Why Zumba?

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Instructor Moe de La Viez leading Zumba. Photo Credit: Rob Ferrell.

Peering through the 60 students drenched in sweat and the steamed-up mirrors of the multipurpose room in the Sports & Recreation Center, you will find Moe de La Viez at the front of the room, swaying to the beat of Shakira’s “Waka Waka” as she instructs the cool down of her semiweekly Zumba class.

De La Viez, a senior production and design interdisciplinary major, first started teaching Zumba at Goucher in August of last year, not really knowing what to expect. “Part of me didn’t really expect a lot of people to be there or for me to even be that good at it. It’s hard to get Goucher students to do things so I expected the worst,” de La Viez said.

There exists a widely held belief that Goucher culture is one of being uninvolved and lackadaisical. “So many events are just so under-attended,” said sophomore Natalie Simendinger. She thought back on an event she went to last semester held by the music club, at which several non-Goucher bands came to campus to perform, including a band from New Jersey, and “less than 15 people showed up,” Simendinger recalled. This is just one example of countless under-attended events at Goucher. “I’ve heard that nobody shows up to sports games either, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never gone to one,” Simendinger said.

So, expecting the worst, de La Viez was pleasantly surprised when 25 students showed up to her first class back in September of 2018. As the semester continued, this number grew. “It just became more popular and like midway through the semester I maxed at having 60 people!” de La Viez said. “I have at least 15 people who come to every class, and most classes have new people too. It’s awesome.”

The regulars who attend de La Viez’s class have an inside look into how she accomplished the amazing feat of getting 60 Goucher students to attend something, breaking the stereotype of the indolent nature of Goucher culture. Derek Borowsky, a first-year, tries to attend every class, describing Zumba as a combination of dance, cardio, and stress relief.

“I enjoy the music and the fun environment,” Borowsky said. “While it is definitely a workout, I don’t go there to be active. I primarily go to have fun and let go of some stress.”

Borowsky believes the class has reached such outstanding attendance records because it has so much to offer, including community, fun, dance, a chance to unwind, and good music. “Most people find at least one of those ideas appealing, so while we all might go for different reasons, a lot of people really love it.” Borowsky said.

Sophomore Amelia Meier, another Zumba regular, describes the class as upbeat, casual, fun, and chill. “The combinations are hard, but so fun. It gets your heart beat up, the room gets steamy and everyone is all smiles by the end.” Meier said. “Also, it’s so dang fun, and such a great workout!”

Meier also attributes the class’s success to the instructor, Moe. “Moe is amazing; she keeps things interesting in the class by changing which routines we do.” Meier said. “Having Moe as a teacher makes the class even better.”

De La Viez first discovered her interest in Zumba when she started taking classes at her local gym after graduating high school. She got certified as a Zumba instructor over the summer and wants to instruct Zumba after graduating Goucher. She hopped on board with Goucher Recreation this semester to launch her Zumba club.

So –– what exactly is Zumba?

Zumba is an hour long, Latin-inspired, high-intensity dance and fitness class. It was created the mid-1990s by Beto Perez, a Colombian celebrity fitness trainer who forgot to bring his aerobics music to class one day and decided to improvise using the Latin music he had in his car.

In 2001, Perez brought Zumba to the United States and partnered with Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion, creating Zumba Fitness, LLC, thus starting a world-wide craze. By 2015, there were over 14 million Zumba students in 186 countries.

Zumba uses music that comes from Latin dance, including cumbia, salsa, merengue, mambo, flamenco, chachacha, reggaeton, samba, hip hop music, and tango. Each song in the class has a repeated set of movements, including lots of squats, lunges, and hip movement. The repetition allows the participates to pick up on the choreography, regardless of their previous dance experience. In a single Zumba class, a person can burn up to 600 calories.

Students of all years, experiences, and fitness levels gather on Wednesdays at 5:15 p.m. and Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. for de La Viez’s Zumba class.

The low pressure, fun, and communal nature of Zumba contributes to its popularity over other, more intimidating, fitness classes that Goucher Recreation offers, such as High Intensity Interval Training, Weightlifting Basics, or GopherSHRED.

For college students, swamped with classes, work, clubs, etc., it is easy for fitness to fall by the wayside. Because of the lack of time, intimidation of the athlete-filled SRC, or just pure hatred of cardio, many students aren’t getting the exercise needed to fuel active minds. Zumba can be a great entryway into fitness.

“I know a lot of people are nervous to work out in the weight room, or others, like myself, may not like traditional methods of cardio like running,” de La Viez said. “Zumba doesn’t feel like cardio, so it rocks! You still sweat like hell though. It’s a fun workout and people get really into it.”

De La Viez’s Zumba class, with all odds stacked against it, managed to attract up to 60 students at a time, and de La Viez wants it to continue to grow.

Club Chat: Veritas – Philosophy Club

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This week, I got the chance to talk to Veritas – Goucher’s philosophy club. I spoke with Dustin Taylor (‘18) President of Veritas and Antonia Pettit (‘20) Treasurer of the organization.

What are the goals of your organization?
DT: We have two goals. The primary one is that each year we organize and host an undergraduate philosophy conference. We rent out a space, and take philosophy paper submissions from undergraduate students on campus and other schools. There are eight papers presented and people get to ask questions. Students and professors from other schools participate. Then we usually have a keynote speaker at the very end – usually an established professor from another school- who lectures on a topic of their choosing. The conference is the type of experience that will help you if you want to go into academia later on.
Our second goal is to give undergraduate students a more relaxed place to talk about philosophy. We share readings and articles and we get the chance to riff off of each other.

AP: And it’s not just for Philosophy majors. The department here is excellent, but it is a smaller program, so having students from other departments engage with us is really important, especially through the conference.

DT: There’s a lot of things professors might touch on in class, and we decide to talk about it some more. For instance, our professor Margret Grebowicz did an interview with Playboy a few years ago where she talked about the philosophy of kink and BDSM. We were able to have a conversation about that in a place with less pressure to “be right” or impress.

AP: We’ve definitely set up a culture where you can have a philosophical conversation without having a professor judging what you are doing, or having the pressure of writing a paper about it or something like that. It’s all about being able to have those open, free flowing conversations.

How long has the club been going on?
DT: I don’t know about the club, but this will be our 15th conference, so at least 15 years.

What have you done in past conferences?
DT: There’s not an overarching theme in each conference, since we get so many different papers. Our keynote speaker will often end up imposing a theme, which is often about politics; whatever the mainstream political discourse is.
[This year] is Daniel Smith from Perdue. He specializes in cybernetic theory and Gilles Deleuze, who is a French postmodern philosopher.

Is the conference open to the public?
DT: Anyone that wants to come can come. You don’t need to RSVP. All day, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. We provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner – free of charge.

AP: It’s in Buchner. April 7th, on a Saturday.

Why should people choose to spend time with your club?
AP: Because Veritas is so infrequent, it’s not the biggest time commitment. And the conference is only one day, so if you can make that commitment, you can get a lot out of the club.

DT: I think that every department or form of intellectualism is a type of applied philosophy. I think it offers people a chance to think about things on a level that they might not always get to.

Any plans for the future?
DT: Our philosophy of Science fiction class last year would throw movie nights where we would meet as a class and talk about the movie. That’s something I plan to do at least once this semester with Veritas. Invite the club, department, anybody who wants to come.

AP: With me going forward with the club, I definitely want to create more of a structure, and figure out an exact plan of when meetings can happen throughout the semester. It’s hard to do, everyone’s busy and philosophy isn’t the first thing on a lot of people’s minds, but it’s still something that could be valuable to a lot of people.

And that’s that for this installment of club chat! Interested in having your organization featured in the next issue of the Q? Email me at firut001@mail.goucher.edu for your chance to be in the next edition!

Featured image: Goucher’s Philosophy Club, Veritas, will host their 15th annual conference Photo Credit: Goucher College

Environmental Clubs Create Coalition

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On Tuesday March 27th, a group of student leaders met to discuss the future of environmental action on Goucher’s campus. The group, currently named the Goucher Green Coalition (GGC), hopes to enact greater positive change through increased connectivity and communication among environmental clubs on campus. Because some of the clubs involved rely heavily on volunteers, such as Food Recovery Network, one goal of GGC will be to create a network through which clubs can ask for volunteers. The coalition also hopes to organize its own events, such as an Earth Day Campus Clean up on April 18th, and a Call-A-Thon for students to contact their representatives.

Rachel Grosso, ’18, was inspired to organize the coalition after attending the first annual Baltimore Student Environmental Conference, which brought together student leaders of environmental organizations from colleges and universities in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins and Loyola University both have an umbrella group that coordinates collaboration among environmental clubs, and this organizational structure inspired Grosso to start something similar at Goucher. Grosso noted that since Goucher Energy Action Revolution club, or GEAR, dissolved 3 or 4 years ago, Goucher has not had a “strong environmental presence,” which is something she hopes to change. As this is her final semester at Goucher, however, the continuance of GGC will rely on other students.

To form the group, Grosso made a list of people she had spoken with at the conference and looked for related clubs on the club page on Goucher’s website. As she began talking about her plan, more students became interested who were not already involved in a particular environmental group.

In this first meeting, which only lasted a half hour, the GGC discussed their purpose, vision, and concrete goals. Most of the meeting was spent discussing a petition to hire a new sustainability coordinator, but club leaders also made announcements about what they are working on.

Food Recovery Network (FRN) leader Allie Sklarew, ’17, stated that FRN will be hosting a Move Out for Hunger event at the end of the semester. This event encourages students to donate any leftover non-perishable food they have in their dorm rooms to be delivered to food banks, homeless shelters, and/or other organizations fighting hunger.

In a similar vein, Brett Rapkin-Citrenbaum, ’17, announced plans organize the “free store” at the end of the semester. A large project, the end-of-the-semester Free Store involves maintaining an on-campus space where students can bring items that they no longer want or need (clothing, books, electronics, etc.). The items brought to the Free Store can then be taken up by other students, or, if they remain in the “store” at the very end of the semester, be delivered to Goodwill. While there is a Free Store throughout the semester located on the top floor of Mary Fisher between Hooper and Dulaney, the Free Store at the end of the semester is much larger.

Because this Free Store project only operates at the end of the semester, unlike FRN, there is no consistent pool of student volunteers to pull from. For this reason, the Free Store exemplifies exactly the kind of project for which an organization like the Goucher Green Coalition can be helpful.

The Goucher Green Coalition had their second meeting on Monday, April 2nd.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the Goucher Green Coalition, contact Rachel Grosso at ragro001@mail.goucher.edu. And if you’d like to volunteer to help with the end-of-the-semester Free Store, contact Brett Rapkin-Citrenbaum, at brrap002@mail.goucher.edu.

Featured Image: The Second Meeting of Goucher Green Coalition. Photo Credit: Rachel Grosso

Club Chat: Anime Club

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Some clubs are about working up a sweat, and some are about creating new things. This week, let’s look at an organization that’s all about relaxing and hanging out with people who share the same kind of interests: Goucher’s own Anime and Animation Club. I talked to Katelyn Pringle (‘18) president and founder.

What is your club’s general purpose?

We want to bring together anime and animation enthusiasts on campus, so we can discuss current trends, recommend stuff to each other, and sometimes go out and attend conventions to try and support the industry.

How do you work structurally?

At the beginning of every year, everyone gets to make three suggestions, and we put them into a drawing pile. So it’s completely random. Every meeting we watch two anime – not counting the one we follow throughout the semester- and one cartoon. Last week we watched the very first episode of Tom and Jerry.

We meet on Sundays at noon. It’s usually an after brunch deal. We meet in Ath 322.

What gave you the idea too start the club?

When I was in high school, I was president of the anime club. I thought there was going to be one here- and there was- but it was disbanded. I decided I could be the president – I did it before.

What are your plans this coming semester?

We are watching a show throughout the semester: Mononoke, which is a horror anthology. It’s really cool! It’s got some great, trippy animation. We are also going to go to Universal FanCon, which is a Baltimore convention in April. I was hoping to have one last movie screening, but I’m not sure if that will happen. We had one last semester, it was for the cartoon network mini series Over the Garden Wall.

Why should people join?

There’s a lot of different organizations on campus: about doing good things and making the world a better place, and that’s great and fantastic, but sometimes you just want to watch some cartoons. And sometimes you just want to meet other people who watch them too. Have you ever met an anime fan? They’re insane: we need each other.

And that’s that for this installment of club chat! Interested in having your organization featured in the next issue of the Q? Email me at firut001@mail.goucher.edu for your chance to be in the next edition!

Feature Image Credit: Google Images

Goucher Model U.N. Attends Harvard Conference

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Wake up! It’s 5:50 am and my alarm rings. My roommate just sleeps through it but I am on a mission. I shower, pack my suits and bowties, then head over to the Welsh kitchen. There I meet my team, my brothers and sisters in arms representing Mongolia at the Harvard Model United Nations conference. At Welsh, Alex, the club president, is making us crêpes with nutella, the breakfast of champions. We head off to the airport and fly to Boston.
After checking in at the hotel, a quick twenty-minute walk from the conference, we headed out to get burgers. While sitting with my fellow “Mongolian” delegates, we briefly discussed what was going to occur. This was the first time many of our team members’ participated in Model UN and even fewer of us had been to the Harvard conference before, so we had no idea what we were getting into. After realizing we had stayed in the burger joint too long, we ran a few blocks to get to the opening session on time.
We were struck by the sheer size of the conference. Close to three thousand students from over sixty countries were present. There we sat in the Grand Ballroom, ready to be awakened with a sense of passion, not for one’s country, but for humanity. People flew in from Venezuela, China, the Netherlands, Ghana, Peru, and many other countries. The previous US ambassador to Austria took the stage. She gave a rousing speech and a call to action to look beyond the dilemmas facing each individual nation, and to look at how we as a global community can work together to uplift us all. Then committee started.

This was the first time many of our team members’ participated in Model UN and even fewer of us had been to the Harvard conference before, so we had no idea what we were getting into. Credit: Google Images

I walked into a room of seventy people and immediately began schmoozing to see who would be my potential allies and enemies. The topic, violience against LGBTQ indivuals, was chosen. From there, representatives from various nations began speaking about how their country has attempted to solve the problem. Everyone wrote frantic notes to see who would support their ideas in a resolution. Writing resolutions is the key because these pieces of paper mimic real UN resolutions which push national governments in certain directions. Resolutions most of the time do not convey any hard power but they essentially are used to pressure nations towards moving in specific directions.
Things really started to pick up as we discussed ideas about education programs, better policing, hotlines, as well as many others. The meetings spilled into breakfast coffee runs where we were all frantically arguing and writing, making sure that our nation’s interests were represented. After three full days of arguing and negotiating it all came down to a vote.
There were four groups of countries each writing their own resolution, and I was working on two seperate ones, thinking that the two would merge. Instead of the two obvious mergers they instead merged with another resolution that I had no previous connection to, and I then became the ally of the only two opposing resolutions on the floor. The resolutions also had exactly half the amount of votes, one less for them to pass, and only one could pass. Realizing the difficulty of my situation as the ally of both resolutions, I was able to extract concessions from both sides in an attempt to get the best deal for Mongolia. When we entered the voting procedure on the resolutions, to determine which one would pass and which fail, I decided that, in the best interest of the Mongolian people, we would vote against both resolutions. Things got crazy in the immediate aftermath of my destruction of the committee. It was a hard decision to betray my allies. I did openly lie to both sides about my support, just to make sure they would not try to win votes from others. The end result was three days of negotiations and deal making only to be torpedoed by me because the coalitions did not meet my demands.
These experiences can only be offered in Model UN. The politicking and deal making will excite any thrill seeker, not to mention the social aspects as well. There was a delegate dance, with international music, an international bazaar, and a casino night. Model UN is more than just pretending to be a diplomat from some random far flung nation, it’s an eye opening experience and a great chance to meet people one would normally never have the chance to meet. Meeting Venezuelans who were protesting against their corrupt president, meeting Chinese students and learning about their educational system — these opportunities are only offered at Model UN.
Goucher’s Model UN club is also planning on attending a local conference at Gettysburg College soon and we are open having to new and adventurous delegates.

DAVID KAHANA

Club Chat: Fashion Club

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Goucher has a reputation for being a creative place, and for this installment of Club Chat, I talked to Elisabeth Wagner, ‘18, a co-president of Goucher’s fashion club.

Fashion Club hopes to “give students the opportunity to express themselves creatively through the means of fashion.” Photo Credit: Google Images

Q: What is your Club’s general purpose?
A: [The purpose] is to give students the opportunity to express themselves creatively through the means of fashion. Whether that’s sewing, embroidering, silk-screen printing we wanted to be able to give the ability and freedom to any student that came to us with a creative idea that they wanted to execute. We just got a bunch of silk-screen printing stuff, we have embroidery stuff, we have a few sewing machines…

Q: How does your club work structurally? Do you have meetings? A: Are you more event based?
We are trying to figure out a weekly meeting time, we don’t have a set meeting time yet.

Q: What gave you the idea to start the club?
A: I felt like they didn’t have anything fashion-oriented at Goucher. That’s something I’m interested in, and something I want to work professionally in. It was actually my friend who came up with the idea, and we got on top of it, and got funding for it.

Q: What are your plans this coming semester?
A: We have a few ideas! We just thought of something, where we want to give students the opportunity to donate old denim: pants, jackets, shorts… and let us rework it. We haven’t totally fleshed out whether it’s going to be free of cost, or if it will be a couple of dollars that will go into funding ourselves.

I wanted to do a fashion zine, since Goucher doesn’t have that and I think it’s a good way to explore personal expression and style on campus, which is obviously something that’s very prevalent and loud and I think that a lot of people at Goucher are very expressive. I think it would be nice to give them a platform recognizing it.

Q: Why should people participate in your club out of all the other options out there?
A: It’s a low stress environment to express yourself, and have the means to create different pieces. It’s about giving people the freedom of expression, and the means to do it.

And that’s that for this installment of club chat! Interested in having your organization featured in the next issue of the Q? Email me at firut001@mail.goucher.edu for your chance to be in the next edition!

First Baltimore Student Environmental Conference

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Students from Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame of Maryland, Loyola University Maryland, and Goucher met at Loyola University for the first annual Baltimore Student Environmental Conference.

On Saturday, February 25, the first annual Baltimore Student Environmental Conference was held at Loyola University. This conference brought together leaders from environmental clubs from Goucher College, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame of Maryland, and Loyola University Maryland. It was organized by the Loyola Environmental Action Club in order to encourage the colleges to work together and to share the struggles they have experienced around organizing for greater sustainability at each of their schools. Two Goucher clubs were represented at the conference: Eco Team, represented by Katherine Elicker and Beekeeping Club, represented by Virginia Turpin. There were 17 students in total in attendance, with students representing the Notre Dame environmental club, Johns Hopkins’ Students for Environmental Action (SEA), and the Loyola Environmental Action Club (EAC).
Club representatives from other universities discussed their environmental initiatives, such as making composting feasible, banning plastic bottles and bags on campus, and fundraising for local environmental groups. Several student groups are working on starting gardens, similar to Ag Co-op here at Goucher. A club at Johns Hopkins, Refuel our Future, has been working towards the college divesting from fossil fuels for six years. Johns Hopkins’ SEA is also planning a student fashion show centered around sustainability. These clubs also are working to engage with the intersections that exist between environmentalism and other areas, such as feminism.
Inspired by the conference, Goucher students proposed that all the environmental groups on campus come together in order to coordinate their efforts under an umbrella of club leaders, using a model similar to the model used at Johns Hopkins and Loyola.

SOPHIA HANCOCK

Club Chat – Economic Education Club

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Naked economics by Charles Wheelan. Photo Credit: Google Images

Even at a small school like Goucher, there can be dozens of clubs active at any given time. Every semester, organizations are created and disbanded in the blink of an eye. How is someone supposed to keep track of it all?
I’m here to help! Club Chat is an issue by issue profile of an active club on campus. From long established to newcomers, Club Chat will give you an in-depth glimpse into an organization so you can figure out if it’s the right fit for you.
This week we will look at Economic Education club, formed this semester. I spoke with club President Surbhi (‘19) for more details.

Q: What is your Club’s general purpose?
A: We go to Goucher, and it’s very politically liberal. And there are a lot of things brought up in economic classes that aren’t brought up in the liberal community. It’s little things, like, what is bitcoin? Or talking about the new tax law–what is good about it? What is bad about it? Trade treaties–are they good? Are they bad? What I want to do is start a conversation and have an educated seminar; this is why they [tax laws, trade treaties] might be hated, but they aren’t the worst things in the world. There is a middle ground, and a lot of the things you enjoy are because of these capitalist things that you might not realize.

Q: How does your club work structurally? Do you have meetings? Are you more event based?
A: More of an event based club. I attended a conference with the Foundation for Economic Education while I was interning for the Charles Koch Foundation and it was very good! I did the entrepreneurial track, and we learned so much about how to do your taxes, how to have a passive income…
We learned a lot of these things that I wished was talked about more by Goucher students. I have contacts through this organization for people who can come talk. We’ll sort of do a weekly meeting, where we will have a webinar where someone can talk to us online. We’ll also have actual events, and sometime at the end of the semester we would like to have a debate.

Q: What gave you the idea to start the club?
A: Basically I just wanted to do a few events, like talking about bitcoin. I’ve had bitcoin since it was like ten dollars, I’ve made about two to three thousand dollars on it, and I have a lot of bitcoin left: I paid tuition with what I gained from bitcoin. That’s what I wanted to do. There are options that you might not know about: investment banking, which checking account or banking account is best for you…

Q: Why should people participate in your club out of all the other options out there?
A: For their own development. All of these things that I’ve learned in classes in seminars I thought were very valuable things. Basic financial empowerment, knowing what’s happening with tax laws and economics outside of the college can be so helpful when you’re going out into the job market. These are things that might not necessarily be taught at the college, but they can be helpful when deciding what job to get or how to progress in their jobs.

Q: Anything else people should know?
A: This is not a propaganda club—free market or otherwise. A lot of things we’ll talk about are things like why is Planned Parenthood good economically, or why immigration is good economically. I’m definitely going to have a speaker come in to talk about how amazing immigration is. Those are liberal issues – so it’s not a partisan club like “you love free markets or you don’t show up”. These are things in economics and they aren’t black and white—so let’s explore it. It’s purely educational, there’s no motive to turn people to capitalists or republicans.

Interested in having your organization featured in the next issue of the Q? Email me at firut001@mail.goucher.edu for your chance to be in the next edition of club chat.

Goucher Abuzz With Recent Honey Extraction

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The Beekeeping Club extracted more than 20 pound of honey earlier this semester. Photo credit: Mitchell Moran-Kaplan

It’s not every day you see a swarm of bodies, swaddled in what look to be white fencing suits, huddled outside your campus library. These bodies move quietly, slowly; thick gloves cover their hands and large screened masks hide their faces like fencers prepared to compete. But they aren’t fencers, they’re beekeepers. Their gloved hands work delicately to inspect their hives. Clumps of honeycomb stick to the frames of the hive boxes where masses of bees swirl. The beekeepers lift these frames out of the decoratively blue and yellow painted boxes for a clear inspection of the hive’s health.

This is Goucher College’s Beekeeping Club. Co-presidents Olivia Baud and Virginia Turpin started the club in 2015 with the help of English faculty member, Marjorie Pryse. “We have been very lucky because the administration is very supportive of us and allows us to have them [the bees]. Not all colleges are down with bees,” Turpin explained.

The club started off this academic year strong with its first ever honey extraction. The campus was abuzz with the news as honey-craving students, staff, and faculty members reached out to get their hands on a jar. “They delivered the first jars to President Bowen, Vice President Coker, Professor Kicklighter, and Matt Harmin – all of whom had been very supportive of the club in one way or another,” Pryse explained.

The club currently has four hives. At the beginning of this past summer, they added special honey storage boxes, called honey supers, to the two healthiest hives that would be most likely to produce an excess of honey. The excess honey would be stored in the honey super, which could then be removed from the hive box to extract the honey while still leaving enough for the hive to survive. During an inspection in late summer, the club leaders determined that there was enough honey collected in one honey super for an extraction to take place.

“So what we do is we take out the frames with honey. We take a really big knife – looks like a butter knife – and we cut the top of the comb to let the honey flow out,” Fiona Rutgers, the club’s treasurer, explained. “We then put it in an extractor, which is like a centrifuge that can fit frames, and we run that which lets the honey flow out, which we collect at the bottom of the extractor. We put the honey through a filter, and voila! The finished product!”

The extraction took place at Marjorie’s house, about fifteen minutes away from campus. The honey super, which is separate from the rest of the hive containing larvae, was removed from the hive and transported to Marjorie’s garage without disturbing or transporting any bees. The extraction needed to take place off campus due to the current campus construction that limits the  calm and spacious atmosphere necessary for an extraction. The club leaders, along with one active club member, were able to join Marjorie for the extraction. The process was live-streamed in a Facebook video for the rest of the club members and Goucher’s community to experience.

“We did the extraction, and that was very exciting because that was kind of the goal, the objective Virginia and I had from the start.” Baud said. “It was like, if we get to do an extraction, that will mean we have succeeded in some ways in establishing and maintaining this club. So that was a really momentous event for us.”

Baud, Turpin, and Pryse first bonded over their interest in beekeeping in the fall of 2015. “One of my objectives, coming into Goucher, was actually starting a beekeeping club.” Baud explains, “It was my sophomore or junior year of high school that I read a book by Sue Monk Kidd called The Secret Life of Bees. And the way it portrayed beekeeping and bees in the book really enchanted me.” Her interest connected with Turpin’s when they met in a biology class at Goucher. Their biology professor, Dr. Cynthia Kicklighter, then got them in touch with Marjorie Pryse.

“The Club…benefits from an energetic board of officers. They have generated significant response among students, always ‘sell out’ hive inspection opportunities, and have been very creative in expanding the kinds of activities the Club generates for its members.” Pryse said.

Pryse, Baud, and Turpin spent the 2015-2016 academic year meeting with campus members from Facilities, Public Safety, and the Office of Finance. They needed to decide where to place the hives on campus. “We wanted a site that would both benefit the bees and also – even more importantly – protect students and the general public,” Pryse explained. Furthermore, the club needed to find a space that could provide ample sun; access to forage, which consists of plants and wildflowers that produce pollen and nectar; and proximity to water. “We eventually chose the current site-outside the wall of the Athenaeum that faces the rain garden and loop road- because it met all our requirements. In addition, the apiary stands close to the Co-op Garden, and it is ideal to have synergy between bees and vegetable gardens.”

By spring 2016, the first two hives were established and the Beekeeping Club gained momentum. “We had an event with club members…we wanted to make it a kind of Goucher pride type of event so we painted the boxes blue and yellow.” Baud said. That first semester the club had over 80 people signed up for its email list, and a growing number of students wanting to take part in hive inspections.

Hive inspections are limited by the amount of protective gear the club has. “We used to have only six suits. But we just got some new equipment!” Baud explained. “We base it [hive inspections] around the protective equipment because we absolutely cannot let people go in without some sort of protection. That’s just legally smart to do that.” Each member of an inspection needs to be completely covered with a suit, gloves, and a veil. There are even elastic bands that tighten around the suit’s pant legs to securely protect the entire body.

Inspections are done every two weeks or so, depending on the season. The hives are largely left alone in the winter months to avoid disturbing the bees in the cold weather. When inspections do take place, Baud explained, “the first thing you want to look for is disease, and usually that’s pretty noticeable.” The beekeepers also look at general hive wellbeing involving the larvae and honey production.

Club members take turns inspecting the hive. Photo credit: Mitchell Moran-Kaplan

Turpin said, “We do need at least one person with some amount of expert knowledge to lead the sessions. For us, that’s Marjorie Pryse. It would be very hard to do this without her help.”

Baud explained, “Marjorie, she’s so modest…but she’s been a huge help for the club. And in all honesty I don’t know if we would’ve come this far if it weren’t for her support.”

Pryse became a beekeeper before she came to Goucher in Fall 2015. “I kept bees in Ithaca, New York, for about six years under the mentorship of a local master beekeeper and working with an area beekeeping club.” From her past experiences, Pryse was able to provide some of the preliminary equipment when the club first started at Goucher, and furthermore has continued to offer her knowledge and guidance to the club members.

“I have never before had as much fun keeping bees as I do now, keeping bees with student beekeepers. It is such a delight to watch the Club introduce newbies to bees and to watch the more experienced members become increasingly comfortable and knowledgeable working with these insects that so many people unfortunately have learned to fear,” Pryse said.

Goucher’s Beekeeping Club is a member of the Maryland Beekeeper’s Association, through which the club was able to purchase some of its hives and connect to a larger beekeeping community. According to Bee Culture Magazine, most colleges and universities that keep bees tend to be larger state schools where the bees are kept in various entomology departments or research labs. The University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology has a Honey Bee Lab, through which they can conduct apiculture research.

Baud explained, “I think there is something to be said about how disconnected we are from nature and from things like honeybees because we aren’t used to being exposed them in our present, modern world.” Goucher’s campus is unique with its spacious greenery. It also has a community of administrators, staff, and students who support, or at the very least tolerate, beekeepers promoting awareness of bees by actually maintaining hives on campus. With the recent honey extraction, the community has even more of a reason to support the bees and their dedicated keepers.

“The Club…extracted more than 20 pounds of honey,” Pryse said. 20 pounds didn’t meet the demand on campus, so club leaders designed a raffle system for the distribution process.

“A big concern for the club was finding a way to distribute honey in the most equitable way,” Rutgers said. “The raffle was a way for us to give everyone a chance to buy.” Community members had the opportunity to email the club to enter their names into the raffle. From there, the club used an algorithmic-based website to randomly select the winners. There were 22 jars in total that were sold through this process, at ten dollars a jar.

Before the jars were ready for distribution, labels had to be made. “We decided to open up a label-drawing contest and decided that the winner would receive a jar of honey,” Baud said. She, Turpin, and Rutgers all privately ranked their top three choices of the submissions they received. Luckily, they all agreed on their final choice, a design created by student, Erin Ertunga. The honey distribution just took place this week.

With the club’s success over its first two years, Baud has long-term visions for the club’s role on campus, including providing awareness to campus members that honeybees should not be feared. “My hope is that people who don’t feel comfortable around bees, that we’ll be able to reach out to those people, and they don’t even have to participate, but get them to witness a hive inspection. Because I think even just getting to witness one can really help dissipate the irrational fear of honeybees.”

The Roots of Change: Students Learn to Mobilize

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About four weeks ago, on Tuesday, September 5th, the Trump administration announced that it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (also known as DACA). The program granted work permits and deferrals from deportation, renewable every two years, for immigrants brought into the US as children or teenagers before mid-2007. The political move to end DACA soon took the internet by storm, with DACA recipients (also known as DREAMers) and proponents pressuring political figures on the left and right to respond to what they deemed to be a discriminatory act. I was browsing through my Facebook feed that Tuesday afternoon when a particular video alerted me to the political unrest: student-led walkouts at Denver high-schools were occurring in real-time in my home state of Colorado. Little did I know that only a few buildings away, other Goucher students were viewing the same video. “I didn’t know much about DACA. It was a Tuesday afternoon and I was sitting with all of my friends at Alice’s and then all of my friends were talking about the walk-out in Denver,” said Sarojini Schutt ‘18, a Peace Studies major. After researching DACA and the Trump administration’s decision, Schutt and her friends were inspired to act.

In response to threats to DACA, students took matters into their own hands, tabling on Van Meter and urging other students to call their representatives. Photo Credit: Usha Kaul

First, her friend Sabrina Nayar ‘18 sent out an informal invitation through the Facebook class pages to meet at Alice’s patio. “It started out with just 7 people but then people walked in,” Schutt said of the meeting. At first, students were calling for a walk-out the following day, but this particular method of mobilization was put into question by a few individuals at the table. Eventually, the group decided to call Robert Ferrell, a Goucher Communications staff member, regarded as a campus mentor and activist, for advice. “Rob brought out the point that if we do walk out now, people are going to associate it with Black Lives Matter (BLM),” Schutt told me. In 2015, in addition to leading a walk-out, Goucher students had led a die-in in front of academic buildings. Goucher had changed the listing of its address from “Baltimore” to “Towson” shortly after the Baltimore uprisings began, an act which many black students on campus saw as an affront to the BLM cause. The die-in made an impression on both administration and students alike. Pro-DACA mobilizers began to realized the importance of historical context when choosing appropriate methods of protest.

Goucher students led a die-in in front of academic buildings in 2015, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Photo Credit: Rob Ferrell

Students gathered together that afternoon realized that they themselves were not DREAMers, and that fighting for the program as allies carried different implications. “It was almost like [by walking-out] we would be appropriating [DREAMers]’ protest,” Schutt said. Important questions such as, “what is the proper way to respond to this event?,” “what is the most effective way of protesting?,” and “what message do we want to send?” had to be discussed. “We talked about intent vs impact, and the implications of our actions–like what [DREAMers] actually need and what that looks like,” Schutt told me. After more than three hours of conversation, Goucher students, cycling in and out of the meeting space, conceptualized a new plan for mobilization. “Our plan was to table and kind of disrupt the flow of Van Meter Highway,” Schutt told me.

Sabrina Nayer, ‘18, encourages her fellow students to take some time to learn about DACA. Photo Credit: Usha Kaul

In the next few days, volunteers tabled in front of the main entrance of the Athenaeum, urging students to call their representatives. The way in which these students had decided to take matters into their own hands impressed me, and it reminded me of similar instances of student-led mobilization on campus. Over the course of my three years at Goucher, I had already witnessed students pushing for new student work policy reform. The semester before my first year, students led protests in response to police brutality against black Americans like Freddie Gray. Goucher has a legacy of students coming together on their own to stand up for what is important to them.

Yet, while I admired the ways my peers had organized the pro-DACA tabling all on their own, I noticed that many students avoid eye contact with the protesters and hastily walk past, which led me to question the success of the movement. Were they achieving the goals that they had set out to achieve? Brett Rapbaum, ‘20, while a pro-DACA student mobilizer herself, noticed some faux-pas in the way the movement attempted to create change. “It was like 10 people at the table at once, and it was a lot of first years who weren’t even aware of what DACA was,” she told me. While fruitful reflection and discussion had set the stage for the movement, it had been carried out by a decentralized group of people. Since no leadership structure existed, there was no system of accountability for misinformation, or consensus on proper tabling methods. “I heard lot of mega-phony type stuff, just like, ‘You can’t spare 2 minutes? Really?’,” Rapbaum said. As a Student Leader for Civic Action, Rapbaum has learned to avoid blaming people for not knowing something that they’ve never been taught. What she saw in some of the pro-DACA tabling was intimidation, not only of busy students who “wanted to be involved but couldn’t be in that moment,” but also of people who could have been informed about DACA and its importance. “It created enemies where they didn’t have to exist,” she explained. While she noted that the tabling did attract and motivate many students to action, she saw the movement’s tactics as effective in the short term but not so much in the long term. “This is an issue that’s going to be present for several months, and it’s dangerous to have something that’s sparked right away and then fizzles out,” she told me. “This is a long haul marathon, not a sprint.”

This is an endemic problem at Goucher. Student mobilization on campus often carries huge shock value and can spark very specific, short-term changes, but when it comes to long-term change, Goucher movements are faced with a variety of problems. About a year ago, students mobilized against a ‘New Student Work Policy’ announced in June – with great success. Yet the reason for its success was precisely predicated on its short-term goal: to revoke a policy that would restrict salaries for many students, particularly those who were international and/or of low-income. Ahmed Ibrahim ‘19 was one of the leaders of the movement. “I was very worried about what was going to happen with me staying on campus and working to meet the amount I needed to get my education. I knew people who worked on-campus and off-campus. This policy is going to screw them over. So what can we do about it?” Just like the pro-DACA mobilizers, Ibrahim met with other students working on campus over the summer who would be affected by the new policy. Some, like James Williams ‘19, had past experience affecting change, and they formed a core group of leaders. Williams helped the group form an incremental plan where their grievances would be expressed in increasingly visible and confrontational ways until the policy was revoked.

The group established some ground rules for their movement, such as complete transparency with students and administration. Most of the developments had occurred over the summer, so many students, particularly the incoming class, were out of the loop. Ibrahim informed students about the new policy by confronting people on Van Meter or in common rooms. Then, he and the rest of the group met with staff such as Karen Sykes and Luz Burgos-López.“[Their] summary was like yeah I hear you, but we can’t do anything about it because it was a joint decision by Goucher admin.” They took the next step. Williams sent out emails to administrators like Brian Coker and even José Bowen. “They responded. They were like, ‘yeah, we should have a discussion about it.’ Then it was a back and forth, like bargaining about it,” Ibrahim said. They pushed harder, directly confronting administrators like Leslie Lewis, LaJerne Cornish, and Emily Pearl during Student Employment Day. Administrators responded by suggesting an appeals process and encouraging student input.

Subsequently, the group used Facebook and tabling on Van Meter to collect signatures from students, staff, and faculty. Around 600 to 700 people signed their petition. The group then told administration that they would be meeting in the Athenaeum to engage in a more involved discussion about the policy with their peers. “I remember there were 7 us and then 35 people who joined,” Ibrahim told me. “We made a list of grievances on a board and took a picture, and we reflected on an appropriate course of action.” Here his story began to echo Schutt’s description of organizing the Pro-DACA movement. What was clearly different about Ibrahim’s account, however, was that an identifiable structure existed throughout the process. He and the rest of the core group leading the movement were able to convince administrators to convene with 10 to 12 students at a town hall meeting. “The agreement was ‘yes, we’re going to repeal the policy, but we’re also going to work with administration on a new policy’,” Ibrahim stated. Over the course of the next semester, student workers were able to create the more equitable work policy that exists today.

To be sure, the pro-DACA movement had its own successes. Schutt, Rapbaum, and a number of other mobilizers were able to identify key resources on campus that helped them inform and empower a large number of Goucher students. For example, they knew to go to CREI (Center for Race, Equity, and Identity), which supplied them with many of the flyers and print-outs that they handed out. They also coordinated with OSE (Office of Student Engagement), which provided additional information on DACA during common hour. Finally, they were able to identify key spaces for organizing and mobilizing more students. “We met in the P-Selz lobby, which is just like a really accessible space. It’s big, and there’s a projector that all students can use. We were able to send out mass emails, and also we were able to post on the Facebook pages about stuff,” Rapbaum told me. Some mobilizers even convinced a professor to bring their class to the DACA information table.

The Emergency Trump Task Force (ETTF), which formed out of the pro-DACA movement, created a Hurricane Relief Fund for victims of the recent hurricanes. Photo Credit: Usha Kaul

Yet, just as quickly as it had appeared, the pro-DACA movement melted away. As was seen with the movement against the New Student Work Policy, students from disparate groups tend to coalesce around certain issues, but not for long. Had the New Student Work Policy movement sought to change an economic policy beyond Goucher’s campus, it would have encountered many of the same problems that the pro-DACA movement faced. Goucher students thus lack the structure necessary to make the long-term changes they seek. Some, like Williams, have taken notice of this missing puzzle piece. “Ideally, we should have gotten more of a campus conversation about [mobilizing], because student activism stuff seems to pop up and go away really quickly,” he told me. The Goucher Leadership Council, a group of nominated student leaders, could have assumed the role of shaping a student network, but as Williams pointed out to me, it became more of an important ‘therapy space’ for leaders who are stretched thin. Having helped found the Radical Student Union (RSU), Williams hopes to achieve radical change on campus, but acknowledges the difficulties in doing so. “Some people start out and really start to spread agency of who’s going to do [the organizing]. But what ends up happening is, there’s so many people that have people in their pockets and nobody really knows who’s in charge, so the movement dissipates,” he explained. RSU members hold different views of what constitutes ‘radical change’, so the group hasn’t been able to agree on an effective system for student mobilization. That being said, the group has been working on building community. “Student mobilization needs to look like something where students come together – and clubs are dying, or if not dying, living in a silent-ish way,” Williams said.

 

Ridwan Ladwal, ‘20, behind the table for the Hurricane Relief Fund, organized by ETTF. Photo Credit: Usha Kaul

One group that has emerged out of Goucher’s past activism may be planting the seeds for the kind of consolidation Williams envisions. The Emergency Trump Task Force (ETTF) formed out of the pro-DACA movement when Usha Kaul ‘17 and seven other students decided that DACA’s revocation was only one of many Trump administration decisions that needed to be confronted. Zahir Mammadzada ‘21, one of the seven, questioned the effectiveness of shock-value protests. “Protests are effective to some point. Pressuring government bodies is more effective because shutting your mind off doesn’t really legally change anything.” Kaul chimed in, “often times I feel like people don’t understand the issue completely when protesting. They often just join the mass.” To Mammadzada and Kaul, ETTF serves as a pre-existing support structure of activists who will help table and inform when mobilized. When Kaul decided to create the Hurricane Relief Fund, she knew where to go. “We’re really pushing the whole ‘education and understanding the issue’ concept. We know that we can’t fix world problems 100%, but in order to move forward we need to educate people about the issues we’re facing,” she told me. Mammadzada added, “You’ve got to start somewhere!” Admittedly, ETTF’s political objectives are unlikely to draw in all of the Goucher student body. However, the group serves as a starting model for pulling the campus together, a process which, if ever completed, would empower students more than ever before.

 

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