The independent student newspaper at Goucher College

Category archive

Opinion

Unanswered Questions: Opinion

by
Image Source: Pexels

As a first-year student, my initial experience of Goucher’s campus felt almost idyllic,  with its nature trails, amazing food (at least I think so), and kind, engaging professors. However, it didn’t take long for the pristine little bubble of perfection I had built to burst,  leaving me wondering, “What did I get myself into?” 

The day of the vigil hosted in solidarity of Palestine I was astonished because I  gleaned that some faculty at Goucher were told to work from home. Based on rumors and what I had read from the Quindecim about last year’s protest, informing faculty to avoid campus seemed a bit extreme. If they believed their safety was at risk, why didn’t the entire campus get a notice to stay home? Do the students of this campus endanger the well-being of faculty? Did the safety of the faculty matter more than the safety of the students?  By talking to the leaders of the vigil, I got the sense they wanted to spread awareness of the genocide in Palestine and Goucher’s involvement in censorship of students. Nothing in their words made me think they wanted to instill fear or unravel the safety of this campus.  

I admire the effort it took for the vigil coordinators to bring it to life. Not only had they attracted a decently sized audience, but they had also filled the time with well-thought-out speeches, poems, and anecdotes. I am sure I don’t stand alone in deciding to attend college because of my ambitions to contribute to a more just society. I believe Goucher should foster the passion and dedication that students already have to bring awareness to pressing issues. Scrolling through Goucher’s websites I stumbled upon the progressive history of Goucher as a women’s college. At its heart, Goucher has always embraced change, and its students embody similar sentiments. For this reason, I am perplexed by the administration’s efforts to thwart activism. If we truly aim to continue Goucher’s forward-thinking legacy, we must support instead of oppressing efforts to address pressing issues of our time.  

-Cadita Attipoe, Concerned Student of the Class of 2028

One Year On: Reflections of the Events of October Seventh

by
Image Source: The Jerusalem Post


As we celebrate the Jewish New Year, we must remember October 7th, 2023, which was a devastating day for all: Israelis, Palestinians, and those in the Arab and Jewish diaspora. The event simultaneously marked the largest single-day massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It also marks the ongoing massacre and violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Since October 7th, Antisemitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise everywhere, especially in the U.S. The following stories are coming from the Jewish community at Goucher. I tried to contact Jewish students from a non-Hillel standpoint, but they sadly never got back to me. 

For myself, I remember the total shock to my core. I also recall feeling distressed because I have family in Israel and was worried about their safety and those of the hostages. I still am. In the following weeks, I constantly contacted one of my cousins to ensure they were alive and well. Like many Jewish people, I suffered from Antisemitism. No one wanted to work with or collaborate with the only Jewish organization on campus, Hillel, due to the conflict. It was hard for me because Hillel has given me so much. I have met and made wonderful lifelong friends at Hillel. I also got leadership experience from Hillel. For me, Hillel isn’t just an organization but a community. I know it may seem challenging; All grief is valid, but we shouldn’t hurt one another using it.  We’ve had so much lost; bring the hostages home!

When Rachel Haggard, a political science major, learned about the tragic events that took place in Israel on October 7th, she thought back to a trip she took with her high school to Israel just 18 months prior. “I remember visiting a town in the south, close to the border with Gaza, called Sderot. I hope all the incredible people I met during that trip were safe.” One year later, Rachel is still heartbroken that one hundred and one innocent people are still being held hostage, and families in Gaza are still suffering. She continues to pray for the release of the remaining hostages and an end to hostilities in the region.

The last reflection is from Tova Vacknin, a junior studying psychology and minoring in studio art. “It’s been a year, a year since Hamas terrorists invaded communities, homes, and a music festival by means of land, air, and sea to kill as many people as they possibly could. A year since homes were destroyed, people displaced, and hostages taken. A year since unsuspecting dancing people from all walks of life suddenly heard screams, gunshots, and the sounds of their friends dying beside them, knowing they would be next. A year since I got the news from my family that they had to hide from gunmen and run for their lives, barely making it out alive. A year of war, a year of violence, a year of suffering. It has been a year since October 7th, but we carry it with us every day. The echoes of the screams from October 7th will never quiet until we realize that human life matters more than destroying it.” Tova finishes our interview by saying, “מחזירים אותם הביתה עכשיו,” which means bring them home now!

By Sara Begelman, ’26

Goucher Students’ “Vigil for Palestine” Makes Waves

by


Vigil for Palestine attendees holding distributed posters. Photo by Sam Rose.

The gray, damp, weather reflected the somber gathering of students and faculty in front of the Mary Fisher Dining Hall on Friday, September 27th.

On the week of September 23rd, two emails were sent out to the undergraduate student body, faculty, and staff. The first email, sent on Wednesday, September 25th  was sent by the Office of Equity and Inclusive Excellence. It informed the student body about the policy surrounding posters and printed material, as well as the updated Campus Demonstration Policy, which the email stated was “reviewed this summer with student input.”

The second communication was sent by President Kent Devereaux, entitled “Goucher College and Free Speech,” reiterated the sentiments expressed in the previously mentioned email. It informed recipients that Goucher College “has a fundamental right to limit the time, place, and manner of demonstrations of free speech,” and that students who fail to follow these policies will face the consequences outlined in the Student Code of Conduct.

These emails set the expectations for the advertised “Vigil for Palestine,” the first organized student activist demonstration since the semester began. The Office of Equity and Inclusive Excellence’s email reported that the flyers for the event had been removed for not meeting the policy’s requirements. Despite this, flyers remained in some harder-to-spot locations around campus, and the Goucher Liberation Collective group advertised the vigil through their Instagram page.

The first slide of this aforementioned Instagram post was identical to the physical fliers that had been posted and removed. The second slide, which was visible online and in less widely circulated fliers, provided further detail and cause for the assembly. “Goucher college and Hillel International normalize this colonial and imperialist violence by hosting exchanges with Israeli students, without giving context to the state of Israel’s history of colonization and crimes against humanity in the Middle East,” a portion of the text read. 

Goucher Hillel sent out an email on September 11th, which informed Hillel members that on the 27th, the same day of the Vigil for Palestine, Goucher Hillel would be hosting visiting students from Sapir College, an Israeli public college.

At 1:00pm, around thirty students, professors, and faculty joined in a circle right outside the dining hall entrance, unfurling a banner bearing the Palestinian flag. The organizers of the event made use of an amplifier and microphone to address the crowd. The first speaker referred back to last year’s display of student activism, a series of posters put up by an artist with the pseudonym Decades and Oceans. The posters had been removed, but the remaining ones were passed out among the crowd, and students were encouraged to display them in their personal dorm window, where the Campus Demonstration Policy does not have sovereignty.

A member of the Goucher Liberation Collective, who organized the vigil, identified herself as Elise. She acknowledged over the microphone that the event does actively violate the campus demonstration, but claimed that the Collective publicized their contact information, gave five days of prior notice about the demonstration, and gave the college as means to contact the organizers directly. “It’s been difficult for me to live as if everything is normal,” Elise stated, explaining the necessity of the vigil to her.

Several speakers who did not identify themselves by name took to the microphone as well. One student discussed their Palestinian family history, and how they had not felt accepted as a Palestinian student at Goucher. “Once I joined the encampment, I found my people.”

Another student objected to the supposed “entirely false and cruel narrative about student protestors” that they felt the administration created following during the spring semester, and spoke out against the language that was being used in communications by President Devereaux, as well as by Goucher Hillel.

“They try to frame our opposition to war crimes as an act of ideological extremism,” said one speaker. “You cannot be neutral on the genocide of Palestinians.”

Identifying themselves as an alum from the class of 2024, another demonstrator read several selections of poetry. Among these selections was “The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine,” by Marcellus Williams, who was executed just days prior for a crime with no concrete forensic evidence linking him as the perpetrator. Another piece read was “Oh Rascal Children of Gaza,” by Khaled Juma.

The vigil remained in front of Mary Fisher Dining Hall, and did not relocate or enter any of the buildings. This was in contrast to the alleged preparations that Goucher employees were told to take, specifically workers who were normally stationed in Dorsey Center and Mary Fisher. Offices such as the Office of Admissions were accessible only by approved OneCards. 

One IT employee from the class of 2025, who chose to remain anonymous for the sake of their continued employment, spoke about the communication they had received prior to the vigil. “We got a message on [Microsoft] Teams saying that we were not to work in Dorsey Center today, and that we were supposed to work in the Ath.” 

Another IT employee from the class of 2025, anonymous for the same justification, detailed the student employees’ reaction to the announcement. “All staff are working from home because of a so-called demonstration,” the employee said. “When we found out about this, pretty much all of the student workers were laughing about it.”

After the speakers had finished, the names of deceased Palestinian families, killed by Israel’s offensive attacks, were read aloud for five minutes. This list started with adults, and finished with children and infants, including victims under one year old. “[Reading them] would take days to finish,” said the student reading the names, disputing the possibility of reading a full list of the deceased in Gaza. Candles were passed around the circle, though due to the inclement weather conditions, they were not lit.

Some individuals observed from outside the circle, or stood to the side. Thirty minutes into the vigil, a moment of silence began. This silence was shortly broken by Professor Zahi Khamis, professor-in-practice of the Arabic Studies department, who had been only observing until then. 

Requesting to end the silence, Professor Khamis informed the crowd that he is Palestinian, and that the work of the student activists is meaningful to him. “I want to honor you and ask you to keep doing what you are doing,” he said, “Without that, the genocide will go on to no end.” Professor Khamis concluded only with, “I love you all.”

Following the conclusion of the vigil and the conclusion of the week, no further communication was sent out concerning the Campus Demonstration Policy, or concerning free speech at Goucher.

By Sam Rose ’26

Erroneous Emails: Opinion

by

The past few weeks we have been bombarded by emails. I would like to give some context to two emails, one sent from Isabelle Moreno-Lopez, our Interim VP for Equity & Inclusive Excellence, and one from our president Kent Deveraux, both regarding our tenacious policies regarding posters and demonstrations.

Some context before the context: The Office of Equity and Exclusive Excellence is currently in a state of transition after our previous VP for Inclusive Excellence, Jasmine Lee, left Goucher over the summer. In the interim, Isabelle Moreno-Lopez has stepped up to be our VP for Inclusive Excellence while we find a viable replacement. Isabelle is the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Students and also led the Policy Committee over the summer.

 Our Policy Committee is a committee consisting of many members of administration, and this summer there were two student representatives, Christian Houck, Vice President of the SGA, and I. I joined specifically in order to stop student’s posters from requiring a stamp to be put up, and to try and update our controversial demonstration policy. This took us all summer to do, it wasn’t until the very last Policy Committee meeting that we officially discussed both these policies due to the bureaucratic nature of this committee. Last note, the Policy for Posting Printed Materials was drafted with student input first by SGA after a town hall meeting last semester and was rewritten by Isabelle-Moreno-Lopez for the committee. 

From Isabelle,

“As you might have already heard, there is a call for a demonstration on Friday. The flyers were removed when they were reported for not including Goucher contact information, and for not being placed on bulletin boards. Please make sure to follow the Policy for Posting Printing Materials on the Goucher Towson Campus which was written with student input…Demonstrations can be scheduled following the Campus Demonstration Policy, which was also reviewed this summer with student input.”

This was in reference to the vigil held on Friday, September 27th by members of our community. While this was not done with permission of the administration and to call this a demonstration may not be correct. See Sam Rose’s article in this edition for more in depth details.

The Poster Policy referenced above gives FMS the ability to remove posters from unauthorized locations if, and only if, they determine them to be a fire hazard. Goucher FMS seems to think that posters posted on the metal poles outside Mary Fisher are a fire hazard, which is ridiculous. The part about not including Goucher contact information is more substantial however. In an email to the policy committee from Dean Smith, he stated that “For security purposes and to ensure all information sharing is protected, sending sensitive student or community related information to non-Goucher email addresses compromises the integrity of our community.” Therefore, allowing only non-Goucher contact information on posters is out of the question, but requiring every poster to have contact information, especially when it is unnecessary, could be up for debate.

From Kent Deveraux,

“Over the summer we worked very diligently, and with extensive student input, to incorporate any such limits in our updated Campus Demonstration Policy and the new Policy for Posting Printed Materials.”

I would like to speak specifically on the value both of these emails put on student input. In the original draft of the Poster Policy, Chrisitan and I had to defend our thoughts fiercely, tooth and nail, in order to represent the students’ voices. To her credit however,  when Isabelle rewrote the policy for the committee meeting, it included many things that the students wanted, most importantly not needing a stamp to put up a flier. Yet, the policy as it stands still allows student’s posters to be taken down from popular posting spots because they are ludicrously deemed to be a fire hazard. I am unsure if the administration is willing to value student input especially in light of the following.

After the policy committee approves the policy, compromises and all, it gets submitted to the President’s Cabinet for approval, where they apparently have the ability to change the policy however they want. 

Once the Poster Policy was submitted to the president’s cabinet, they decided to add wordage on handing out flyers, which included requiring a student who wants to hand out a pamphlet, piece of paper, to submit their “name, ID and Goucher email; (2) date of the event request; (3) location (Athenaeum-outside or lobby, Mary Fisher Lobby, Van Meter Highway, Welsh Patio); (4) start and end time; (5) set up and clean up time; (6) purpose for tabling; and (7) number of tables and chairs.” This wordage is treating handing out flyers as a demonstration, as these are the same requirements for requesting a demonstration. 

This salient section was added without informing the policy committee, nor the students who made this policy. The students had no say in one of the most controversial segments of this new policy. How can you value student input, when you deliberately subvert the student’s voices in this important issue?

As to the Demonstration Policy, we reviewed the policy but did not have time to thoroughly defend the student’s issues with the policy. We were told that the president’s cabinet had to send out an email saying the Demonstration Policy was reviewed with student input over the summer. This email was sent out on August 20th from the president, saying “I am pleased to report that our Policy Committee revised our demonstration, social media, and poster distribution polices with input from three student leaders who volunteered to serve on the committee over the summer. I am confident that these updated policies which will be posted within the week will better reflect the aspirations and values of our campus community.” 

We approved the Demonstration Policy with reservations, without many substantial changes, so that the president could send out an email saying thus. It was only approved so the President could send that email, not because the students would be satisfied with the changes made and I am not too certain that the updated Demonstration Policy actually better reflects the student’s values.

In our Policy on Policies, it states that “Any member of the college community may make a recommendation to develop or update a policy. These recommendations should be submitted for approval to policies@goucher.edu.” I encourage any member of this community to reach out to Policies if they feel that any policy sucks or does not reflect the climate on this campus. This of course should not be your only action, policies only change so much, but making sure these people hear your voice, and hear everyone’s voice, is an important step in changing this Goucher community for the better.

A bulletin board, one of the few approved locations to post flyers on campus.

By Jimy Kuhn ’27

Barred From Campus: An Interview with Parsa Sheikholeslami

by
Image Source: Goucher Campus Master Plan

Note from the editor-in-chief:

This article had been previously taken down at the request of the interviewee–there was disagreement surrounding the representation of events. Instead of publishing a shortened version of the interview, we have decided to publish the original interview in its entirety, edited only for readability and clarity.

Sincerely,
The Quindecim

—

So Jimy told me about what happened with you, I was hoping that with this interview I could sort of start off with you just giving your general account, and then we can move on to follow-up questions. 
Do you have any reservations going into this? Or anything that you need me to know? Not necessarily on the record. 

No, not really. 

In that case, go, unless you want me to start giving you questions.

Yeah. So, I guess I can give you sort of the- well, one question I have is “How much do you know, like just right off the bat?”

I actually have a bunch of notes here. I know that you were a student and that you graduated; and that afterwards you were banned from being on campus. I know that you, I believe, were banned, but the reason cited was for entering the dining hall through the wrong door? It was mentioned that you had been followed by campus security, and am I getting anything wrong here? 


No, not really, but I was not followed by campus security, but I can get into that. 

I mean, I have a gist of it, but I’d rather go into this with the expectation of, because in a way you’re speaking to me, I can’t just say what happened; it needs to be in your own words, if that makes sense.

I started at Goucher in 2017 and so I walked in May of 2023 and I officially had a couple of credits left that I was taking. So officially fall of 2023 was my last semester. And the reason it took so long is because I’m originally from Iran–an international student. There were multiple interruptions with the Muslim ban, and like for COVID. I was just in Iran for two and a half years, unable to even take online classes, because the application Zoom is blocked in Iran. So anyways, Fall 2023, I came back and I had two credits left to take, and I initially had a housing arrangement off campus. 


I was basically like a commuter. And then that arrangement did not work out. And I was staying with this person, this older lady who lives near Goucher and whom I knew through a network of people–these details don’t really matter. Anyways, her house got bed bugs basically, and I couldn’t stay there. 
So I came back and I spoke with Lindy Bobbit, who at the time was the director of Res Life, and who has since resigned. She was like, “Okay, we can figure out a housing arrangement for you on campus.” And so that’s what she did. She gave me a room in Welsh and so I started living there. 


This was in 2023?

 Yeah, this was in the fall semester of 2023. And so I started living on campus, going to my classes and I was also involved in some activism for Palestine on campus. 
And then out of nowhere one night, I locked myself out of my room. It was a weekend night and it was later, so the protocol is to call either Res Life or Campus Safety if Res Life is closed. 

So I called campus safety and they sent an officer uh his name is Officer [Officer 1], And I think we can keep his name out of the records, just because according to my understanding, he was just following what his supervisor was telling him, right? He is also like, an immigrant, it’s very obvious English is not his first language. So he comes to let me into my room and he does. 
I go in and I show him my OneCard as I’m supposed to, and he leaves. I close the door, he leaves. Two seconds later, he comes knocking on my door and he says, “You’re not allowed to be here. My supervisor told me that your name is not showing up” or something and, you know,  he was struggling to fully make it clear what was going on, again because English is not his first language. 

So we both came to the agreement that it would be best that I go to Campus Safety and talk to his supervisor. 
So I grab my keys that I had left in the room last time and I go with him taking up his safety and there’s someone like his supervisor is this new campus safety officer called Officer [Officer 2]. She’s a white woman and a lot of people have talked to me about her before. Like her reputation precedes her. 


She’s new, people talk about how she’s irrationally strict and making things more difficult. I go in and I recognize her and she says “Yeah, I can’t let you into the room because your name is not showing up on our records.”

And I’m like, “Well, there’s a mistake. I’ve been living here for the past few months, or weeks.” 


It doesn’t matter to her. It doesn’t matter what I say. She’s just like, “I can’t let you in.” 

And I’m like “Well, if this was in my room, how would I have a key to it?”

And she’s like “I don’t know, someone could have given you the key.”

I’m like, “Well, I have access to Welsh.” 

And she says, “I don’t know, you might have a class there.” 
And that’s not how this works, and she’s new so she doesn’t know that. The one classroom in Welsh doesn’t need OneCard access.  So it just doesn’t matter what I’m saying, she just doesn’t care and she’s like “I can’t let you in.”


And I at some point I sort of say, “Well, you don’t need to let me in, I can just let myself in and I have the key now. And, also you kind of already let me in.” So she was like, “Oops.”  But then I was like “lady, it’s okay. 
I live here.” I keep explaining to her, but she doesn’t care. so I’m like, “Okay, so what do you want me to do?”

 She’s like, “We have to hear from someone from Res Life. 
So you have to contact them and have them tell us that you live here.”

And I’m like, “Well, is this happening?” I don’t know when exactly but it’s later on a weekend night. 

 After hours?

 I don’t know if it’s after hours,  it might be 10, 11?  I don’t know. It might be later. I just know that Res Life wasn’t open,  it wasn’t during their working hours. 
So anyways, then I’m like “well it’s a weekend night, I don’t have anyone’s number, I would have to email them and I don’t know when they’re going to get back to me. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

 She’s like, “Well, you could just wait here in the office.”

And I’m like, “No, I’m just going to go and let myself in my room and you can’t physically restrain me from leaving. And I’ll contact Res Life  and they’ll get back to you at their earliest convenience.”


And so she’s like, “Okay.”

 And it’s like a very civil conversation. We come to an agreement, I leave. 
I do end up emailing Res Life, and they do end up resolving that situation. I don’t know the timeline of this, though, because something else happened that semester and I don’t know if it happened before or after it got resolved with Res  Life, right? So, this other thing that happened that semester was that my friend and I were off campus, my friend is also a Goucher student and at the time was an RA. And we were coming back to campus again. 
It was a late weekend night and I was driving in my car, we come to the gate and we buzz, I buzz my OneCard. It doesn’t work. So I use hers and it still doesn’t work. 
So I’m like “There has to be a problem with the system.”

So the officer who’s there at the gate comes out and asks for a name. And so I give my name and I’m like, “Parsa Sheikholeslami.” He writes it down, goes in, [and] calls somebody, I’m assuming the main office. Comes back out, says “You’re not allowed to be on campus.” 
So to me this is an escalation from “we can’t let you into this room because it doesn’t say that you live here” versus “You’re not allowed on campus,” as if I’m on some kind of a list and am some kind of criminal, right? And so I’m very confused. It’s pouring rain, I mean, thankfully we’re in the car. 
I don’t know what to do. 

And Lindy Bobitt had just resigned. I think this was a Saturday or Sunday night, the Friday right before was her last day of being the director of Res Life. And I have Lindy’s number, so I called her and I’m assuming nothing has prompted this. Even through my activism for Palestine, I haven’t had any interactions with campus safety. I haven’t received warnings of any kind with regard to my activism for Palestine or anything else, no disciplinary action, nothing that comes close to it. 
So to me, the only explanation is that interaction with Officer [Officer 1]. So I call Lindy Bobbitt and I’m like “Lindy, this is happening. They’re telling me I’m not allowed on campus. 
I think this has to do with the night of lock-out.”

I think my name is not showing up in the system because I changed my status from a commuter to boarding halfway through the semester. So she is like, “Okay, let me call them.”

So, she calls campus safety. Meanwhile, my friend and I are just out there and it takes a while, and then Lindy calls me back and she’s like “Parsa, they are not even accepting what I’m saying. I told them that you’re a student there and that you live there, and they’re saying that they need special permission for you.”

So she was like “I don’t know what this means, and I feel like I might not actually be able to help you.”

This is the director of Res Life, you know, like this is insane. So as Lindy and I are speaking at this point, my friend and I have been out there for like close to 45 minutes, if not an hour. 
So then Lindy is considering calling Aarika Camp. She’s just brainstorming with me on the phone to see what she has to do and she doesn’t know. And as Lindy and I are talking, the officer who’s there at the gate signals to me to come in, and he takes my name and my friend’s name on a piece of paper and lets us in. I’m assuming that that was an individual decision on behalf of that officer, he was just like, oh, these poor kids, like come on, go in, you know? 
Because it didn’t seem like [he] got a call.

It was just like come on, I’ let you in. So, we went in and I called Lindy. I was like “Hey, it just got resolved, I don’t know [how], but we’re in.”

So she’s like “Okay, I’m glad.”

And, like I said, eventually I resolved the issue fully with Res Life and you my name not showing up in the system got taken care of. So this is everything that happens while I’m a student in Goucher College and before I enter any dining call through a back door, this is like fully happening out of nowhere. 

Again, not even related to my activism. 

I’m assuming if it’s after the activism, is this in late November? 

Yes, Again, I don’t know the exact timeline. 
So I finish my degree and then I leave campus. I’m living in Baltimore during winter break, and after winter break is over, spring semester is my first semester officially as an alum.  And so within the first two to three weeks, multiple things happened that were an extension of everything that had happened last semester with regards to campus safety, but also elevated and definitely alarming. 


One was when I was on campus one weekend, it was a Sunday because of a close friend of mine who was at the time a student at Goucher. She was the president of G.I.S.A., Goucher International Student Association, and there was a program happening that weekend for G.I.S.A. in the Atheneum, in the Batza room. 
It was a soccer thing, and so I went there to support my friend in her program but also to see a bunch of these international students that I’m friends with who were going to be there. So Batza room is a public room where you’re allowed to go there as an alum, but even as someone who’s not associated with the college. 


So I go and my friend has to grab a bunch of snacks for this event that Karen Sykes, the international student advisor, has left in her office in Van Meter [Hall]. So I walked with my friend to go there and grab the snacks, and when we make it to Van Meter, we have to call Campus Safety because the building is locked because it’s the weekend. So they dispatch an officer to open the door and the officer is Officer [Officer 1], but it is the same guy from the night of the lockout. 
And when he comes, my friend and I are standing in the vestibule area and officer [Officer 1] comes in, he looks me up and down and he says, “You’re not allowed to be here.”

And I’m like, “What do you mean?”

Before I’m even able to ask a question, I see him say into his walkie-talkie, “Parsa is here.”

Okay. So he knows my name. 
He knows me by face and again, all very alarming. And he’s like, “You’re the guy from Welsh.”

I’m like, “Yes.”

He’s like, okay, “Where are you living now?”

I’m like, “Well, I graduated, I’m an alum, I’m living on campus.” 

He’s like, “Okay, I can’t let you into the building.”

That’s what it sounds like to me. So at that point, what I’m interpreting is, because I’m an alumni [sic], I’m no longer a student, he can’t let me into the building. 
So I’m like, “okay”, and I immediately step outside very respectfully and I wait, and he escorts my friend up to Karen’s office and they come back. When they come back down, and they’re coming out, I see, first of all my friend’s face is horrified, and then he comes out and very assertively he says, “You have to leave the premises immediately, or else we’re going to call the police.”

I’m like, “I think there has been a misunderstanding, if you wouldn’t mind, we can walk to the Campus Safety office together and I need to talk to someone, I want to see if there has been a misunderstanding and if he still wants to call the police at that time you can. 
So I’m trying to remain calm and collected. My friend is telling me “Parsa, just leave.”

I’m like, no, like this is I didn’t do anything wrong. 
And so we go to campus safety and Officer [Officer 2] is on call. Again. It’s like the two of them are like a pair or something. 
Like they’re always up on call together. So I go in, and I’m very assertive because to me whatever level of ineptitude led to all of the headache and misunderstandings from last semester has now reached new levels, because to threaten, to involve the police out of absolutely nowhere is not okay, so at this point I’m upset and I’m remaining respectful, but I’m very assertive. So I walk in there and I’m like, “I was just told that I can’t be here.” 


And as soon as Officer [Officer 2] sort of sees how assertive I am, she kind of goes back into her shell a little bit. So she’s kind of losing her words. She’s eating, she’s like, “You know you’re just not allowed to be in the academic building.” 


And I’m like, “I understand that. And as soon as [Officer 1] told me that I left, I stepped out, but he then came back and threatened to call the police. And the police have been threatened to be involved, I need to know what’s going on.”

And she just was making no sense. She was like, “I don’t know anything about that. I’m going to speak with my supervisor and we’ll get back to you within 24 to 48 hours,”  [or] something like that. 

And I was just like “Lady, you guys just threaten to call the cops on me. 
I need to have some answers.” Basically, she just asked me a bunch of questions. “Are you an alum?”

“Yes.”

“Well, okay, alumni are allowed to be on campus as long as you’re in public spaces.”

I was like, “I am allowed to be in the library then.”

She’s like, “Yes.”

“Am I allowed to be on campus right now?”

She’s like “Yes.” So then that’s how it ends. So, we talk a little bit and we come to the conclusion that I’m allowed to be on campus. 


Did you get any hint of a reason why?

No. So then I left, and I went to my friend’s event, in the Batza room. 
So that’s one thing that happened within the first few weeks of spring semester. The second thing that happened is that another friend of mine who, again, is a current student at the time and an RA, got contacted by her supervisor with an email that said, hey, see something concerning has been going on on your floor, and so we need to have a chat. 

And you know, “let’s meet tomorrow morning” or something. 
And so my and also this is when Res Life is going through a transition, right? Because the previous director resigned, there’s a new director, everything is changing, and word on the street is that this new director is more strict. So everybody’s kind of watching their back, you know. 
And so when my friend gets this email, she’s very scared because she knows she hasn’t done anything wrong you know, but that has not been enough in the past to absolve people. Some people have gotten fired, for example. So she’s very stressed when she gets that, you know, the whole day she’s so stressed that she leaves campus and spends the day with another friend off campus. 
And then the next morning, when it’s time for a meeting, she goes and her supervisor Corey says, “is Parsa living with you?’ 

That was the point of the meeting, and she was just like, “What? 
That’s like that’s what you called me in here for? No, he’s not living with me.”

And he says these are also things that my friend [Resident Assistant] quoted and she’s willing to also testify–these are things that came out of Corey’s mouth. First he threatened, he was like, “If you’re lying, you can lose your job over this. You have to tell the truth.” 


And she kept saying “No, I’m telling you the truth.” He kept insisting, he was like “A lot of people have been coming to me from the administration and all of their stories are lining up that Parsa is living here. and you have to be careful because a lot of people have their eyes on you,” so she was just so confused. 

She was like, “Well, Parsa is an alum first of all, he’s a friend of ours. This is his first semester as an alum. He’s an international student, so he visits us, but he always sticks to the visiting rule. And he has a car. He sometimes drives us places, so we hang out, but he’s not living here.”

So then he was like, “Okay, whatever.” So after these two incidents and particularly, the meeting with Corey happened first, and then the police thing happened. 

So the meeting you just described happened before the incident where you weren’t allowed on campus? 


Yeah. 
I remember when the police incident happened, where they threatened to involve the police, that’s when I was like “I’ve had enough.” I sent an email to a bunch of people. I included a bunch of people in that email because it’s like, at this point it’s like campus safety, but also Res Life. It’s different offices overlapping, and there seems to be either a big misunderstanding or this is intentional. They can’t prove if it’s my activism, for example, that it was me. 
So they’re trying to sort of scare me out of being on campus or I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. You know, these are just assumptions. 


I want to include people from all these different offices because if it is a misunderstanding, it has to get resolved in the same room. So I forward the email to Erik Thompson, Tiffany Justice, Jasmine Lee, Juan from CREI at the time, John from Res Life, I forget his last name, the new director of Res Life. And who else? I think that’s it. And I think Aarika Camp. I say “Hey, some very concerning things have been going on. I need to meet with you all if it’s a misunderstanding to clear it once and for all.” 

So then it takes a few weeks. Jasmine kind of takes the lead in terms of gathering people. 
And it takes a few weeks, but eventually, I meet with a group of people that consists of Jasmine Lee, Erik Thompson, Tiffany Justice, and Michelle Ewing from alumni affairs. And so, we have that meeting and that meeting is held at my request so that I can explain to them my experiences and bring to their attention because it’s alarming and it’s a failure quite frankly of so many different sectors of this college, particularly campus safety. So we have the meeting and I explain everything I just told you very clearly, I tell them what’s been going on, and there’s a mixture of sentiments. 

On the one hand, everybody is sorry and they’re, expressing that they’re going to try to hold people accountable and they’re that they’re going to, you know, put accountability measures in place. 
But then there’s also this other sentiment where, for example, at some point Michelle starts sort of lecturing me and she’s like, “You know, Parsa, navigating this transition from being a student to an alumni can be a difficult thing.”

And when she’s saying that, part of me is just like, “This is not about me, not knowing how to navigate this transition. I’m not doing anything different than other alumni. I’m just visiting campus every once in a while, you know, and seeing my friends. This is like an alarming failure of this institution for involving the police without any basis whatsoever and being so irresponsible with that. 
Towards an international student, which is also an important piece and so there was just like moments where I felt like the point was being missed, and the same thing with Jasmine, at some point she was like, just for my sake, she sort of posed the question to the group and particularly I think to Tiffany and Erik, “Where are alumni allowed to be, and where are they not allowed to be?”

Michelle actually initially started to answer, but she failed because she didn’t really know the rules and then Tiffany started to say, “They can be in public spaces like the library or the dining hall, but they can’t be going to dorms, they have to be accompanied by a student.” And so that happens, right? And then at another point during the meeting, I raised the point, I said to Tiffany, I was like, does any of this have to do with my activism for Palestine? 
Is this directly somehow tied to that?”

And then Tiffany said, “Parsa, as you know, you have been involved in some activism, so a lot of people around here know you” And then I also explained to them this and other experiences that I had again during the spring semester. This is sort of separate from everything else that’s happened to me, but I included it because it reflected similarly, a failure on behalf of the institution. 


And so that experience is that I was on campus with the current student and we were headed to the student market to get some stacks and go somewhere. And in the area in front of the student market where there’s a bunch of chairs and tables, was an event being held by Speak Out Now. It was an off campus entity and it was like a poster making for a Palestine event. They have these kinds of things. They come on campus and sometimes they hand out pamphlets or something about socialism or about climate change, stuff like very harmful- harmless things. 


Be careful!

Yeah, very harmless, yeah. I guess harmful in the institution’s eye, but, so I happen to know the person who was the organizer from off campus events. 
So as we’re going to the studio, I guess as we’re coming back from the student market, I just stand in front of her and we have like a five minute conversation, small talk.  And my current student is standing next to me as this happens. We have a five minute chat, leave, that’s it. [We] don’t participate in the event, nothing, and then my friend gets an email from Erica Gardner a few days later that says “You have been spotted at this event that’s been organized by an off campus entity, you should know that they don’t have permits to have events on campus. While you’re not in trouble as a student, we just wanted to let you know that these are the ways one can go about getting a permit if they want to have an event.”

And so yes, they’re not in trouble, but that obviously is a threat, that’s what that email is doing. And so I brought up this story because I was saying that it feels very ‘Big Brother’ on campus. Who is watching?

We were just there for five minutes. How would they know we were there? How do they know the names of all the students, and then to go the extra mile of actually reaching out and actually threatening these students?

So when I bring up this story, Tiffany Justice says “Parsa if you feel like you’re being watched on campus, it’s because you are.” 

This in the meeting with all the other folks from Admin?

Yeah, yeah. 
And both her and Jasmine were talking about this as if it’s a positive thing. They were like, “Yes, you are being watched. However, it’s for your own sake. 
It’s because, after COVID and with all of the stuff that’s going on nationally, with colleges and protests and whatever, we just want to make sure that we know what you guys are doing so that we can protect you.”

That’s the narrative they’re going with. So, I was just very confused by that meeting, because they were all sorry and they all said that accountability measures would be put in place. But also they were asking questions and making comments that made it seem like they don’t really get it. 
That they put at least some of this on me. Anyway, then that meeting ends and then Jasmine sends me an email after that meeting as like a recap, right? And I have that receipt. 
Actually, let me quickly pull it up. 

So Jasmine sends an email, you can read the whole thing when I send it to you, but I’ll just read you the important part. 
It’s basically like “As we discussed while visiting guests are not allowed in locked buildings, prohibited spaces or residential halls without being accompanied. You absolutely have the right to visit campus, connect with friends, participate in programs, attend events, and the like.”

So this is important, the rest of the email’s like, we’re gonna do this, about them taking accountability. 
So a week after this meeting, I get an email from Tiffany Justice that says “You’re barred.”

It’s like this whole disclaimer that says “If you’re on campus, we have the right to call the cops, blah, blah, blah.” It’s very official, scary. And I emailed her and I’m like, “Why did I get barred?”

And she says “Because you violated a school policy”, and she just wouldn’t . So I’m like “What was right, like what school policy did I violate?” And she’s like “You entered the dining hall through a back door that says do not enter.” 


Oh, so you like this isn’t a specific incident?

This was just the reason given.

Do you remember, can you go back in your mind palace or whatever, and think of the one time you did that or it’s just like, that’s the thing every kid does here?

I mean, everybody does that, being honest with yourself, yeah. Everybody does that, and I’ve done that multiple times, have never received a single warning, verbal, written, anything like that. 

Did they say any other reasons?

No, this is the only reason. And so, I met Jasmine. I sent her an email and said, “Jasmine, I need to meet with you.” Jasmine was just going away for something. So she quickly filled me in and I was like, “Have you been updated?”

And she’s like, “No, I don’t know what’s going on.”

And I said, “I just got barred.”

And so Jasmine is shocked and she literally is like, what? You know, she’s just in the Zoom meeting, and I can see her facial expressions. And multiple things also to note is that this email was sent to me on the first day of Ramadan. The email from Tiffany, the barring notice. 

Were there campus celebrations for that that you were expected to attend? 

No, but as a Muslim student, it’s just like it’s like receiving that email on Christmas. So anyway, then I was talking to Jasmine and I explained to her all of this. I was like “So they’re sending me an email that bars me from campus because I entered a dining hall, on the first day of Ramadan”, and Jasmine was so taken aback by all of this information that she-and I’m quoting, she said, “Parsa, this is icky.”

She just seemed very frustrated and sad for me. 
And then she said, “I suggest you reach out to Tiffany and talk to her to see if there’s a way you can get unbarred, or something.”I requested to meet with Tiffany, I did, I again explained to her the whole situation, and I also said “Everybody enters the dining hall through the back door. 
So to me, this is unequal enforcement of a policy and that’s discrimination that’s discriminatory.”

To which Tiffany said, “No, if you and I are both speeding on the highway and I get pulled over and you don’t, that’s not discrimination. I was the one who just happened to get caught.”

I’m assuming Tiffany is White? 

She’s not. She’s a black woman. 
That’s what’s insane to me; that and the fact that she used this specific example. I’m like, “Are you trying to sound like you’ve been sitting under a rock?” So, Tiffany has a very rules are rules attitude about it. 
And so I’m like, “So what can I do to get it unbarred?” 

She said, “You have to write a letter to me.”

So I say, okay, and I’m like, “How long does it take for this to be processed, and for me to hear back from you?”

And she said “Usually, around two weeks.” 


And I’m like, “Okay, there are multiple events coming up,” At that point the Eid celebration was coming up and the International Festival, or something. So I was like, “Is there any way you can expedite this process so that if I am going to get unbarred, I can actually make it to as many of these events where my friends are going to be, these are important events for me as well.”

She was like, “I’ll see. Try to send a letter as soon as possible, and I’ll see what I can do.”

So I send her the letter the next day and I just never hear back from her and she just never responded until the end of the semester, and at the end of the semester there was just one email that said “We’re still 

processing your request, like you’ll hear back from us soon, blah, blah, blah.” 




Was that at the beginning of this summer? 

Yeah. 
So anyway, so then basically from the time I got barred, I tried multiple times to talk to people. I called Kent’s office twice and at some point her(sic.) secretary took my information and she [said] “We’re going to get back to you.”

I was like, “I want to meet with him online.” 
And they’re like, “Okay, we’ll set it up.” And I never heard back. I tried contacting Erik Thompson, he didn’t respond either. 

Erik Thompson in the meeting that you mentioned earlier with all the folks? 

Yeah. 
And it’s interesting because, in the fall of 2023, Jasmine was new, right? It was I think her first time fully working. And she understood very quickly that there was a lack of trust between the student body and the administration. 
The students didn’t trust anybody and she was coming in and she was trying to do good, and nobody trusted her merely because she was part of the administration. There was a time when I was sort of in this circle of most the administrators and and faculty, and she was expressing this. And I spoke to it and I said “Yes, you’re right. 
That’s that’s a correct observation. But, the way to go about this is to earn people’s trusts, because there’s a good reason that it’s not there.”

And so during that semester, obviously the administration messed up every time with regards to Palestine. 
It just didn’t matter what the context was, whether it was a community hearing or [Pause], it didn’t matter. It was just like every time the emails that Kent sent, every time they responded to a protester, an art installation, everything was just amiss. Right. 
And so as someone who was like part of that group of students who was speaking to this issue, I kept engaging with the administration. I showed up every time Jasmine had something set up. I showed up, and Erik happened to be there as well, and I engaged with him, too. 
I mean, these are people that are hated by people like me, to the point where they don’t even want to talk to them. They don’t they don’t respect them enough to actually engage with them. 


You’re saying this is a trend you saw among other protesters?

I don’t speak for everybody, but I do think there’s a lack of trust. Yeah, absolutely. 
There’s a lack of trust. And I think that me continuing to show up and continuing to engage with them was something that stood out for them so much so that they both commented on it, like Jasmine multiple times said “Parsa, thank you for continuing to show up.”

Erik, multiple times, “Thank you so much, I really enjoy the fact that you are willing to engage.” or something like that. 
And then when I got barred, it was like Erik didn’t respond to me at all. So then for the Eid celebration, my friends got me un-barred for one day, just so I could attend. They didn’t tell me this. 
They surprised me because my grandfather also happened to pass away right before the celebration, I was really going through it. And so they basically went to anyone they could think of, like the whole day. They went to Karen Sykes. They went to Maeba Jonas, to Aarika, to the [Encampment], Justin Smith, Tiffany Justice, Erik Thompson. 
They went at everybody and everybody said “No.”

They went to Jasmine and then finally they saw Kent walking around somewhere on Van Meter, and they ran after him and cornered him and basically begged him to unbar me for the day. Then he sort of reluctantly did so. 
And then when they asked him they were like “So how is Parsa dangerous? To the safety of this campus?”

He said “He is stealing food from current students.” 


Because I entered the dining hall through the back door and didn’t pay.  Then Kent said to my friends and he has said to multiple other people in multiple other instances that I’ll get to, “He was warned multiple times.” even though I wasn’t warned even once.  

Kent said that you were warned?

Yeah. And so then basically after trying multiple times to contact these people and not hearing back, I sent another long email to Jasmine that I will send to you. And I titled it An Invitation to Dialogue because that’s what Jasmine always talks about is dialogue, right? And I wrote a lengthy email and I described, I said “Listen, if I enter the dining hall through the back door, it’s because I’m food insecure, I just graduated. 
I’m an international student and there’s so much food waste at that dining hall. I have friends who work at the food recovery network and even they’re even overwhelmed by how much food waste there is. So the fact that you’re claiming that I’m stealing food from current students,  I just don’t understand it, like it’s beyond comprehensible.” 
And also the fact that like Kent has said “Parsa has been warned multiple times,” even though I haven’t been.

Anyways, let me actually also find [this] because I think this is an important piece of this. Yes, and this is at a time when also Israel bombed a city in Iran. That’s a city that’s close to where my family lives. I included that in my email as well. 


And I was basically like, “I’m an international student. Since I’m tied on money and unemployed, I don’t have anywhere to go during the day I spend most of my time alone in my apartment listening to the news. Did you hear Israel carried out a strike in Iran a few days ago in Isfahan about eight hours from my city? We often went there on road trips good food, mesmerizing architecture, thankfully the strike didn’t hit the city itself, only the outskirts where the military bases are. My family recently moved to the outskirts of Shirazs. 
Today I thought about how an air strike would destroy everything. My father is a photographer and our house is filled with family albums and it’s terrifying to imagine that I wouldn’t even have a photo left behind if something happened.”

So I was trying to make that very like real in terms of what it’s like to be barred from campus and to be cut off from my only community and fully isolated while I’m going through this and so Jasmine sent an email. First of all, she did a 180. 


In this email, she suddenly was like, well, Parsa, during that meeting that we all had together with Jasmine and Erik and Michelle, you promised you would [pause]. Let me read her exactly. Let me quote her. 
“You agreed to abide by all college policies when visiting campus and explicitly named that you understood the consequences of any following actions.” She was like “You agreed and you didn’t follow through, so this is fair.”

So, she’s doing a 180 and she’s also mischaracterizing what happened during our meeting. She’s making it sound like that meeting was my first warning. 
It wasn’t. That meeting was held at my request and the only thing that was said, even though it was kind of inappropriate in the context of what I was describing, was, “where are you allowed to go?” And [the dining hall]  I’m allowed to go there. 
It’s a public space, and so the fact that she’s mischaracterizing to say you agreed to abide by all college policies is again incomprehensible, I don’t understand why she’s doing it. 

She’s changed her stance. And then at the end of that sort of email, that long email when she basically completely sides with the administration, she says “In the meantime, as an alum, transitioning into life outside of campus can often be challenging. I love Baltimore, and if there are ways I can help people to build a stronger community and make necessary connections in the broader Baltimore metro area. Please let me know. 
I’d be happy to help.”

I’m like, “I’m describing to you the isolation that I’m experiencing and not only are you siding with the administration and lying basically about what happened, but you’re also-I don’t know.” It was just very weird. So I’ll send you all these receipts. 
And so, that was sort of my last attempt to go through the system. And so I just stopped talking to anyone from the administration at that point. The students who were at the encampment included my unbarring as part of their requests from the administration. 


And we were approaching the end of the semester, and more and more events were happening that had to do with my community with my friends, like their graduation ceremonies and Baccalaureate,  their art shows, all this stuff, and to me it would be absolutely useless if the if they unbarred me after everything had happened, because they will not be held accountable, because anytime you want to hold them accountable, they’ll say, “Well, we unbarred him”, but all the harm will be done anyways. And so the students at the encampment brought this up to Kent Devereaux, and one time they were in a meeting behind closed doors with Kent and Jasmine and they were talking about me and Kent said, again, “Parsa was warned multiple times”, and Jasmine had to correct him and say “No, he actually wasn’t warned” and and all of this again points to deep failure. Kent Devereaux is making what, like 300, 400 thousand dollars a year, doesn’t have to pay rent, and he is accusing me of stealing food, and then he’s making $400,000 a year and he’s not even fact checking? 

He’s going around saying he’s been warned multiple times to justify the amount of harm that’s been done to me and he hasn’t even done basic fact [checking]. 
He’s not even doing his job. He’s getting paid so much and then simultaneously accusing me of stealing food, which is, again, absurd to me. It’s shameless, it’s beyond absurd. And he just kept going back and forth on his word. 
He kept promising the encampment students to reach out to me multiple times and he didn’t. Then finally his secretary reached out to me and said, “Kent wants to meet with you.”

And I said “At this point I would only meet with him if it’s open-door, like if other people are allowed to join. Because there needs to be some transparency.” 
And then she said “No.” 

That’s also around the same time that I heard back from Tiffany, who said “We’ll be in touch with you soon”, because I think everybody was sort of talking to each other and the goal of it was for Kent to then come and talk to me. So then, and that’s what the second email from the secretary was. But the encampment students had not only said that I got unbarred, but they also wanted a public apology. Not just for me, but for the way all, you know, BIPOC students, minority students are being treated on campus. 
And we never received anything like that from the administration. Yeah,basically for the last like two days I sent many notes to Tiffany Justice and I said, “Hey listen, [the] last two days I was in-”

Like two days ago? 

No, back at the last two of Baccalaureate and graduation. 
I sent an email to Tiffany and I said, “Can I just get a two-day exemption again so that I can attend these ceremonies and then you won’t hear from me?”

And so she granted me those and I was able to attend those ceremonies, but it was very strict. It was starting at 9am on this day and ending at 3 pm, so right after the ceremony was over, I was barred again. I would have to have that meeting with Kent. Again behind closed doors where he won’t be taking any accountability I’m assuming. Because he hasn’t, even during his negotiations with the encampment students, there were multiple times when he promised something and broke that promise and there was absolutely no accountability–Broke the promise in terms of the timeline of when he would reach out to me of what he would say, it was all just a mess, and he at some point actually used my unbarring to leverage against the encampment student’s requests, so it’s like a bunch of other requests from the students were pending, so they really haven’t heard from them, and like the administration had offered to meet them halfway, even though they hadn’t basically even taken a step forward. 

And they were like, “We’re not going to unbar Parsa until you guys also agree to all of these other things that we’ve offered,” using my unbarring as a leveraging thing when at that point, like it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. 


I did have one question that I want to ask you. You probably don’t get Goucher’s emails anymore, but they recently, and I will pull it up, they recently changed their protest policy, their demonstration policy so that students could only get barred if they exposed a threat to campus, and they removed a clause about it being due to violations of policy. I wanted to know if you were aware of that, and if you had any comment on it. 

I was not, but the truth of the matter is the problem with Goucher is, yes, part of the problem is the policies themselves need to be refined. 
The other problem is that this place is so chaotic that nobody actually follows protocol. I mean, the fact that like when I got barred, Tiffany said, you know, if you and I both speed and I just get pulled over, blah blah, implying that no warning is even needed. I just got caught so I’m getting barred now. 
Jasmine implying that our meeting was the warning implies oh, you received one warning, right? And then Kent said you received multiple warnings so based on all of this, it’s like how many warnings then is it protocol to receive before somebody gets barred? Is it no warnings? 
one warning or multiple warnings? Why are you not all on the same page? 

The fact that this is disproportionate to the crime, like to the dining hall from the back door means I have to be isolated from my community. 
If they cared about accountability, if they cared about protocol, at this point Kent Devereaux would have apologized publicly and acknowledged what happened. In full transparency, I want the board members to know what happened to me. I want every person in faculty and staff to know what happened to me. It’s no joke, like honestly like I’m an international student, so I’m not even as culturally fluent as an American would be, but even I know like on the streets if you are experiencing something with a person of color, like if they, for example, the pickpocket or something, right? 
You’re not supposed to call the cops unless your life is directly threatened, because if you involve the police in this country, whether a person of color is not going to come out of it alive.

 Now I know I’m not black, I’m still a person of color and immigrant Muslim, and also the trauma that we all carry from that, and the fact that Campus Safety did this. This is in some uninformed staff member. 
This is the entity that is responsible for enhancing a sense of security on campus. What happened to me has completely destroyed a sense of security for other students, too, because they understand how there is no process here. You know, and at any point, they can be caught up in something and there is also then no accountability. 


Do you think that, and I’m not trying to feed words into your mouth, but do you think there’s a specific reason why you were- I mean, you mentioned being Muslim and being in the meetings or are you aware of a specific reason that you were targeted for the barring? 


 I honestly don’t know. I mean, maybe it was my activism, maybe it is a combination of things. Maybe it’s just ineptitude, but even ineptitude itself is such a big problem at this level. That it doesn’t excuse it. 
But I do think it was probably my involvement with activism. That’s probably my best guess. 

Do you, again I’m trying not to put words into your mouth, but I want to get an answer. In the meeting with the various administrators they mentioned accountability, and you keep mentioning that they talk about accountability. Do you think that that was in any way genuine or do you think that was a way to get you off their back or a way to brush you off? 


Even if they didn’t mean that, the way it played out was that these were meaningless. Because there I didn’t receive anything afterwards about accountability. 
If anything, honestly, you know, I remember that when I was talking to to them and I brought up something about Officer [Officer 2] and how her reputation precedes her, Jasmine said, do you know if any of your friends who told you about her actually went through the official structures to file a complaint or something? And I said no, and the thing that is so ironic here is if I had never had that meeting, I wouldn’t have gotten barred. So, me going through the official channels to file a complaint became like bait. They used that meeting as bait against me to say well, we told you not to violate any policies which again is not what happened. They had to mischaracterize that to even use it as bait, but they did, and they have all the power and no accountability so they can do that and get away with it. They used it to say “Oh, we warned you and you violated it anyways, so now we’re going to bar you and it’s going to be justified.”

So, not only was there no accountability, but it actually caused me more harm than if I had just kept my mouth shut. And then they complain about why students don’t go through the official channels if they experience some sort of harm. 



Taming Adaptation: Tips from an Under-qualified Fan

by
The Percy Jackson TV show. Image Credit: Disney

Growing up Demi-God

Think of a story, any story that you love to revisit over and over. The one that you return to when you need to fill your belly. Now imagine someone gave you thousands of dollars and told you to remake it. Your demands; make it better, yet the same. Adaptation is a tricky beast to train, often so large and looming that creators lose their purpose in the fight, winding up with a great, big pile of confusion. There are so many elements to consider and keep in place. When setting out to adapt material successfully, you must first arm yourself with a goal. Ask the right questions to find your version of the story. Why are you retelling the story? What are the most important elements of the original story? What type of original medium are you adapting? What medium are you using to adapt, and how can you use that medium to your advantage?

Percy Jackson is a series that I read for the first time when I was around 7 years old. I had already watched the movie which had come out earlier in the year and found it pretty entertaining. A mild echo of the magic I felt watching Harry Potter for the first time. Afterwards, I decided to visit the written story. It was different from the movie; better, in my humble opinion. The point of view was relatable, engaging, and funny. The story was fantastical and made me feel like I was in the shoes of a hero, and had the ability to walk in them. After one read-through, I was hooked, getting that high reread after reread. Finding myself in the prose. I connected deeply with the character of Annabeth, as a witty, tomboyish girl with ADHD. I found her to be all the things that I loved the most about myself, helping me to decide what traits to lean into as I grew. 

 By the end of the year, I had reread the whole series at least 3 times. I felt like a wiz kid for Greek mythology (we all knew that one fan) and it was one of the first times I felt I got respect from adults for my knowledge on something; which was hard to get as a kid, and even harder to get as a young girl. I played mock capture the flag with my brother in my backyard, swinging foam swords. I made spit-filled sound effects with my mouth as I imagined myself as the child of the two main characters, controlling water like Percy, waves crashing down on imagined enemies. My brother and I would huddle, as if in the middle of a football game, figuring out a strategy before running out to battle, like Annabeth. In my formative years, I needed material like this to shape my self worth. I felt that I could be these heroes; I could be respected for my intellect; and my actions could be led by my care for my friends and my bravery.

And then I became an expert movie critic. I had long conversations with the other 10 year olds on the validity of the movie adaptation. How they had “messed up” the casting, story, and characters. I followed the publishing of new books in the universe, reading and rereading the Heroes of Olympus spinoff series as they were published. I watched delightedly, as the material matured with me. At the same time, I grew a deep seeded hatred for the movie and how it had stunted the ability to adapt the rest of the series faithfully. I was brutal in my love for the original material.

So, when the TV series was announced a little more than ten years later, my 17 year old self was ecstatic. I very quickly relapsed and read the entirety of both the original series and the spin off series, a total of 10 books. I imagined how I would adapt these stories, images of scenes flashing behind my eyes as if on a TV screen. What parts of the story would I keep and highlight? Which parts of the story made it so engaging for me? Which parts of the story could be left to the books? How might I characterize other characters whose point of views we don’t get in the original? Would I add a flashback where in the book there is exposition?  

It’s in the habit of a fan to imagine how the material should be in an adaptation. Especially because the source material is usually something that fans hold dear to their heart as an early edition to their collections of art they love that they have accumulated. For fans who have nostalgia attached to a story, often, the source material may have influenced how they decided to shape themselves and their interests, and their preference in art making. Because an adaptor is challenged to change the essence of the art in some way more personal to them, it can directly contrast with the things other fans were attached to in the original material and their expectations for how they would personally retell the story. These expectations and attachments are the biggest challenge an adaptor has to contend with.

Meet the Beast

In my view, the first thing you must understand as a creator to navigate adapting material is to set a goal for your story. Your goal must answer the question of why you are even retelling the story in the first place. In the case of Percy Jackson, I would say that the goal in adapting the books is to tell a faithful remake (redeeming the movies) which captures the magic of the original story and allows for the story to grow with the audience as it once grew with the readers. But that’s easier said than done. So how do you turn that goal into a reality? You must first gain a deeper understanding of the original material. You must love the source material in order to make something loved out of it. You must ask the questions: What are the essential elements of the story? What are the expectations and attachments of the fans of the original material? What is the central message? Who are the characters, really? Why is it so well loved? What can be delved into deeper, changed, made better? 

A personal favorite recent adaptation is The Last of Us. Released about a year before the percy jackson series premiere, the video game adaptation excited many fans about the potential of the future of good adaptations. The writers of The Last of Us knew that the best way to answer these questions is to do so using your new medium and your new team of creators to your advantage. Have long discussions within the writers room as fans of the source material. Use the opportunity for conversation and building creativity to ask each other those questions, and listen and analyze each other’s answers. Having a team of diverse writers who are fans of the source material, and working on an adaptation, is like having a built-in tap to the fanbase. It can help you figure out what elements made the original so good, and how you can replicate those specific elements. Diversity and the simple addition of more minds to the conversation can help form ideas of how to make the material relatable to more people. Additionally, having more writers can help to find and address any weaknesses or errors in the original material that can be resolved. As you write, If any element, any scene of your adaptation does not add anything to help address one or multiple of our questions, then that scene needs to be rewritten. 

Of course, adaptation, and the addition of new ideas comes with change, the oh so ever dreaded change. A whole writer’s room of opinions on what the answers to those questions are for them. (how much i would have loved to be a part of it) As a fan, I can say that in some ways you do want a direct transference of everything in the book, but in others, I want something new to chew on, it can’t be exactly the same. Calming the nerves of fans when an adaptation is announced is made easier by having the writer of the original series in your corner to give good faith to your choices, and advising from the perspective of an expert creative for the story.  

This is something both the Percy Jackson series and The Last of Us series benefitted from. Additionally, having the original creator as part of the writing team is an excellent opportunity for them to make changes with hindsight. 

With an adaptation, you aren’t just tasked with telling the same story, you are tasked to tell it better. With the time that you have to capture the audience, you can delve deeper into themes, characters, and ideas from the source material. You can set things up that you know will gain significance with the story. You can use the writer’s room input to see where each individual’s interest in the story leads them in themes, characters, and storylines.

 Use that to your advantage to surprise the people already familiar with the story, and to make something original. However,  when you make changes to the story you have to keep in mind what you are gaining, and what you are losing. With so little time you have to condense the source material. Don’t get me wrong, condensing of the material does not mean chopping bits off of the story. It means that in a shorter amount of time or with less exposition, you have to maintain tone, the central theme, essential story elements, and the characters.

In The Last of Us, the creator uses the opportunity to retell his story in TV format to merge an extra material release of the game into the main story by giving it a whole episode, adding extra context to the original story. The writers of the show understood that with the change to TV, they wanted to focus more on the monstrosity of humanity than the fungal zombies that permeate the world. It’s in line with the storytelling of the game, where the hardest hitting moments are not in the action sequences where you mow down zombies with a rifle. The game hits the deepest emotionally when it focuses on interactions between humans fighting for their lives and it asks the moral questions that arise from those situations. The TV show uses the zombies sparingly, making it all the more impactful and terrifying when they do show up. By editing out a lot of the gameplay, the show also gives the audience more time spent in certain settings and scenes on storytelling, where you may have in the video game had less time with the characters in cutscenes or walked through as a character without much story interaction.

The television show writers changed details to make it hurt even more (in the best ways). Like making Sam and Henry’s relationship deeper and more vulnerable by making Sam deaf and younger, and more reliant on Henry for communication and protection. Additionally, the show ventures into making the material more diverse by more explicitly stating the homosexuality of two beloved characters from the original, Ellie and Bill. Through the show, the universe gets expanded. The audience gets to see the facial expressions and the backstories of the characters. The show pushes harder on themes of fighting for another person. We see the vastness of the desperation that has overtaken the world, and we see new people with new perspectives within the context of this fight and desperation for survival. It makes the storytelling more complex, more evocative, and more real.

With changes to the story, you’ll get pushback, from the tiniest detail to the larger themes. For The Last of Us it was harassment of cast members due to perceived physical differences from their characters, rage at the “woke-ness,” of depicting a LGBTQ+ character, and longing for the action and the violence of the gameplay. The fan outrage at casting seems to be a common theme that keeps popping up with each new adaptation getting announced, the complaint being similar to that of complaints about adaptations in general. “Keep everything how it is, or how I imagined it to be.” 

One example of this that keeps me eternally amused is the outrage that happened online after the casting was announced for Rue in The Hunger Games in 2013 as a young black girl, only for many to find out they had missed multiple lines in the book specifically describing the character as black. But the vile that these primarily young people of color face at the announcement of what should be a momentous achievement in their careers, continues to spew in 2023, turning their achievements into inexcusable trauma.

(Speaking of fan outrage, a short note on the racism that met the casting of Annabeth)

When I saw the casting of Annabeth, in truth, I was a little disappointed. I grew up reading the books where Annabeth is specifically described as a blond, white girl. I am perfectly interchangeable to Annabeth with that description. I found the portrayal of a blonde with ADHD and dyslexia who is fierce, funny, athletic, capable, and wise, highly refreshing. I found people fitting my outward appearance were often portrayed in the media as incapable and stupid. She was specifically written to war against the “dumb blond,” idea. That being said, upon brief reflection, I quickly came to a couple conclusions. First, that I have my Annabeth from the books still, the TV show doesn’t erase it. Secondly, since the book’s release I have seen so many more strong wise characters who look like me. Thirdly, and most importantly, young black women haven’t seen enough. The TV show portrayal still pushes against misogyny and how it teaches people to see women and girls as less capable; but now it also fights a larger fight against how racism teaches people to see people (especially young women) who are black as less capable of greatness or intelligence. I found with this edition of Annabeth, another layer was added to her character as a young black woman. Annabeth being black or white has no real change on her character or what it represents, except to deepen the conversation around societal views of young girls’ intelligence. 

 However, I have a note of caution for the creators. In the books it’s understood that Annabeth is mature for her age and typically takes on more of a leadership role. But with the change of race, there is also an implication of the effect of the social adultification of black girls on Annabeth. I found it interesting how the change of race can deepen the themes and storytelling for this facet of Annabeth’s character. It’s unclear how intentional the addressing of this racial undertone is in the first season, but I am hopeful that it will be addressed further as the show continues to be released. 

In the last conversation between Annabeth and Percy this season she says, “is there something I’m supposed to do?” He smiles and responds, “Just, be a kid.” The more intentionally the writers consider Annabeth’s race, the more impactful these character interactions can be. The change in race can actually serve to help more kids with their daily struggles, and to show more kids that they can be heroes no matter where they come from. The best way to do this going forward is to make sure that colorblind casting does not lead to colorblind storytelling. 

Journeying On

Upon reflection, there are quite a few things that I would have changed about the TV show had I been given creative control. Namely, I think the show could have done more to answer the question, What medium are you using to adapt, and how can you use that medium to your advantage?  This is something The Last of Us does extremely successfully. In a movie, the creators are challenged to take content from one form and squeeze it into a set amount of time and movie pacing. 

While a TV show’s run time often mirrors the format of the original media. For example, one can split up book events into chapters or video games into levels. A TV show can follow this pacing per episode. Using the extra amount of screen time in a TV show format, The Last of Us were able to use full episodes to go further in depth on characters and show us flashbacks and divergent point of views. When I heard Percy Jackson was going to be a TV show, I was ecstatic. The way the chapters in the books all ended on mini cliffhangers, the characters encounter a kind of monster-a-week format, and you grow up with the characters as you consume the story, it was all perfectly suited towards a TV show adaptation.

But when I watched the first season of the Percy Jackson show, my biggest complaint became the overall length of the season. I found the pacing of the story to be off in places, and I think with more run time or episodes they could really find their footing and delve deeper into the story. This was especially apparent in moments when the characters depart exposition in their past that could have easily been a flashback. When The Last of Us started their writing process, they created an understanding between how the TV and video game storytelling would be different based on the medium. They decided that the main difference would be the fact that you would be without the gameplay of the video game, so they either have to merge gameplay and storytelling moments into one scene or just get rid of the action that the gameplay brings.

I would identify for Percy Jackson the main advantage in this adaptation to TV would be the opportunity to step out of the point of view of Percy as the narrator in the books. I think if they had identified and worked towards showing the perspectives of more characters in the world, the show could improve in terms of its expansion of the story. I worry if they maintain the same run time or episode amount for the next season they will have a problem on their hands as the books only get longer and more mature. 

While watching the first four episodes, I kept getting caught up in my head about what I wish they would have done and what I would have done in their place. I found myself liking the episodes but feeling a little disappointed. If this was you watching the show, I highly suggest a rewatch.  When I rewatched the first four episodes before continuing onto episode five, the block of expectation was dissolved and I felt the thrill of the story. With adaptation or spinoffs, I always find that love on second sight can happen. I connected to the characters more the second time through, appreciating the minutiae of writing and acting that made them themselves. 

I saw how the creators had managed to use the medium to their advantage with the monster-a-week feel. I saw how they used the adaptation as an opportunity to flesh out the motives of the villain early on (which Riordan hadn’t thought of before writing the last book). We see Sally Jackson a bit more outside of Percy’s eyes in this show, spending a lot more time with her and showing how complex her feelings are. The writers changed scenes to make sure the themes taken away from certain challenges the characters go through are consistent. Like how at the thrill ride of love, in the book, it’s a scene where Percy sees Annabeth’s weakness for the first time in her fear of spiders, Percy learns a story that puts the gods in a bad light, and they learn to trust each other in the moment of action.

 In the TV series, there’s a bit more depth, with Percy and Annabeth fighting to sacrifice themselves for the quest, Percy puts his full trust in Annabeth to complete the quest without him and expresses his belief that she is the more capable of the two of them. Additionally, in this scene, they meet Hephaestus and learn that the Gods have layers, some don’t want to be bad, which becomes an important theme as the story progresses and Percy’s perspective of the Gods as good and bad shifts. By making informed choices about what to change, the series is able to expand on the original material and be more intentional in which themes to focus on setting up.

 The TV series set their goals and answered their questions. Rick says in the behind the scenes documentary, they wanted “viewers all over the world can look at this show and say, ‘I could be Annabeth Chase, or Grover,’ and to see, you can be a hero no matter what you look like, no matter what your personal challenges are, no matter where you come from.”  Above all, the most important thing that I wanted from watching the series was to experience the magic that lived within my tiny body when I read the books the first time, and every time after that. The creators of the show knew that the story, in essence, was made as a father telling a bedtime story to comfort his son who was struggling with learning differences and let him know that he could do great things. And when the screen went black, the music began, and I heard Percy’s voice- his real voice, begin the opening monologue of the book “Look, I didn’t want to be a half blood, being a half-blood is dangerous, most of the time it gets you killed in painful nasty ways.” I felt the energy buzz beneath my skin, like a kid again, with youth in my limbs. I imagine myself small, receiving a comforting hug after a bedtime story.  

By Kathryn Ice-Johnson, ’25

Banned Buddy-Swipes: Buffoonery

by

Early this semester, a sign was placed in Mary Fisher Dining Hall and in the Student Market alerting students that meal swipes are meant only to be used for the student who is swiping. This meant that swiping a meal for someone else, like buying a meal for your friend, which was commonly called buddy swiping, was not allowed anymore. It’s not entirely correct to say it was not allowed anymore, it was never technically allowed but it was never enforced. Due to the nature of our contract with Bon Appetit, and our Housing and Dining Policy, this change could last for several years. 

In an email to members of our administration regarding this, I stated the following: 

“I think this is ridiculous. Students pay for their meals and get a certain number of swipes to do whatever they please with. This is why it’s okay for me to use a meal swipe to go up to the dining hall and just get a cup of coffee or even nothing at all just to chat with friends. If a student decides they want to use their own meal swipe to swipe for another student, that is their own decision, we are adults! We pay for our meal swipes and should be allowed to use them as we see fit. Furthermore, this allows students to help other students if they get themselves in a pickle. Allowing students to use our meal swipes to help another student in need strengthens our community and helps everyone feel like we actually care about one another on this campus. Prohibiting this seems just the opposite.” 

In response, members of administration informed me that we would not be able to change this until next year or possibly several years, expertly sidestepping my remarks about how this damages our community on campus, An email from President Kent Deveraux in response said that “The contract with Bon Appetit is a long-term, multi-year engagement that was negotiated prior to my arrival and is not up for renewal for years.” 

Further in that same email from President Deveraux, he states that this recent enforcement stems from “several incidents we had last year where some students who had purchased unlimited meal plans abused those plans by using them to swipe in other students as well. That’s like going to an ‘all you can eat buffet’ — a uniquely ‘only in America’ concept I might add — and paying one price for one person and then having all your friends eat for free. That clearly is, to use Jimy’s characterization, ridiculous.”

An obvious solution would be to not allow people with unlimited meal swipes to swipe for other people. But this would be difficult as our current system apparently can not tell if someone has an unlimited meal plan or not, according to David Friedlich, the General Manager from Bon Appetit. 

Another solution is to have built in buddy swipes in our meal plans, which President Deveaux also addressed in the email, with an odd stipulation, “Of course, nothing prevents us from doing what some colleges have done and negotiating with Bon Appetit to see if we can incorporate a set number of guest passes (say 5 or 6) into every meal plan that students can use to treat friends or family members, not students, who may be visiting.” Why would we not be able to use these guest swipes on fellow students? That seems to be counterintuitive to our community principles, which state that “We, the students, staff, and faculty of the Goucher community, support one another even as we recognize our differences.” 

Not allowing us to support one another in such a simple way, telling your friend ‘this one’s on me’, is yet another way Goucher fails to support community building on campus.

By Jimy Kuhn ’27

You might be interested in

A New Queer Horror Novel for the Fall: Compound Fracture

by

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White is one of the most unhinged horror novels that you will ever read. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and deem it as a must-read for this coming fall. 

When a young socialist trans teen comes out to his parents, Miles Abnernathy escapes to a party with stolen photographic evidence that the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the mining “accident” that resulted in injuring his dad and the death of others. Miles is determined to finally fix the blood feud that plagues Twist Creek, West Virginia. 

Photo of Compound Fracture on a table outside in the shade. Image Credit: Merryn Overbeck. 

This blood feud traces back to a hundred years ago when Miles’ great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, started a miners rebellion that was soon ended by a public execution by the hands of law enforcement. Miles becomes the feuds’ latest victim when the sheriff’s son and his friends follow him in the woods and almost beat him to death. 

When Miles wakes up in the hospital, he is met by a ghost who is a soot-covered man who he has never seen before, and Sheriff Davies who is threatening him into silence. Miles refuses and murders one of the boys who hurt him, which leads him to learn about other people in Twist Creek who also want Davies out of his seat. 

Miles is a wonderful protagonist who is going through an intense journey of self-discovery while also fighting for his life. There are so many layers to his character that are explored thoroughly and thoughtfully. Every character in this story has so much depth and is very dynamic.  

Andrew Joseph White writes about cycles of violence and complex family dynamics. He is not afraid to write about politics and the nuances that come with it. This book will have you at the edge of your seat, and there is an even balance of horror and thriller. 

If you have loved his previous works, or are just looking for a good thriller/horror novel for the upcoming fall season, be sure to check out Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White.

By Merryn Overbeck, ‘28

Anti-zionism vs. Antisemitism: A Bystander’s Inquiry & Where Goucher Falls

by

* Disclaimer: The Quindecim editorial team has made a rare exemption to allow this writer to publish without their full name, due to fear of academic retaliation and safety concerns, but has verified their status as a student. This piece was published as a student’s op-ed submission. The Quindecim is a space for all students within the Goucher community to express their views and beliefs. These pieces are released in the name of journalistic integrity and not in an attempt to antagonize or reflect the institution of Goucher as a whole.

By A.R.

When I go to class or get together with friends to study, I always seem to hear a comment or joke about the recent Pro-Palestinian actions happening across campus and the resulting discontent from Israel supporters. At first, I thought these comments came from a place of misunderstanding, but as the months progressed, I have come to realize that a majority of the campus–myself included, at one point–do not actually feel the cognitive need to differentiate between history and nuance versus propaganda and semantic wars. 

We all know our campus as “liberal” and left-leaning, but in today’s age of social media and doxxing, no one seems to care to offer an opinion or analysis of what they see and hear. I get it: as a neurodivergent individual, I know that backlash and scrutiny sucks. It’s human nature. Yet, as I have seen the Palestine-Israel war dominate every form of media imaginable and seep into our campus culture, I have realized it’s impossible to avoid learning. Out of genuine interest and a general lack of education (thanks, American public schools), I have spent the last few months reading, watching, and absorbing every resource I could get my hands on before I could conclude an opinion on the topic. 

This is what I have found and have concluded. I implore all of my peers and professors, administrators and alumni, Campus Safety and (the lovely) environmental technicians, or anyone who is/was involved with Goucher College to do the same. Whether you can sense it or not, our world is at an inevitable turning point. If you are human, the happenings of the world do concern you. You can no longer feign ignorance or “lack of free time”–I’m looking at you, student athletes. You make up 51% of our student population and can definitely use your bus rides to away games or daily YouTube-during-lunch time to learn. 

The first glaring area I needed to research was the word “Zionism.” It was (and is) a word that permeates the signs of our student protestors and dots headlines across my Twitter timeline. According to Merriam-Webster, Zionism is “an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel.” 

Now, I was raised in a non-denominational Christian household, so the history of Israel and its importance to the Abrahamic religions is not lost on me. However, the overwhelming Evangelical (a Christian denomination) support for Israel seems to be based not on the support for a Jewish nation state, but more on the land’s prophetic significance and corporate interests. It’s no secret that right-wing/conservative politicians (who often identify as Evangelical) have large investments in and contributions from security and defense companies (with the sector being the largest donator in the 2022 election cycle, behind the retired wealthy elite). With billions in profits in the security and defense industry, any type of military conflict that the United States is even tangentially involved in means profits out the wazoo for companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and other defense contractors. And, of course, their stockholders and the politicians they donate to. 

This all seemed quite weird to me–I have my own knowledge and experience of Evangelicals being scummy and self-serving, but this seemed a step beyond that. While trying to dig deeper into the corporate interests in the Middle East/Israel and Palestine, I stumbled across an article written by James Baldwin for The Nation in the late 70s. Titled “Open Letter to the Born Again,” he writes,

The state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests…The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.

Now, if there is one thing I believe we can agree on, it is that European colonialism served the purpose of 1) corporate interests and profit and 2) (violent) Christian advancement. Despite the West’s belief (or, rather, propaganda) that European colonialism ended before the 20th/21st centuries, the Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan was erected following World War I, “giving” the land of Palestine to Britain. As far as I know, “Giving land” is when a family member bequeaths their house and/ or land to their loved one(s) in their will, NOT when you transfer a nation with people and culture and history to the will of one of the most infamous colonial powers. Winston Churchill–the British prime minister that helped establish Jewish immigration into their occupied Palestine and Transjordan–was a known racist, and viewed Palestinian Arabs (and people of color in general) as “inferior,” even stating that the Indigenous Peoples in America and Australia displaced by colonization were being replaced with “a higher grade race.” Like many other European leaders at the time, Churchill believed that the establishment of a Jewish nation state via the Zionism project would remove Jews from the European continent altogether.

Read that last sentence again.

European/Western support of Zionism was not for the freedom and safety of the Jewish people. It was to remove them from the continent. Even after the defeat of the Third Reich. Their support of Zionism was–and is–profoundly anti-semitic.

After this disheartening path of research, I began to realize what Zionism was intended to be. Zionism in its creation was to remove Jews from the existence of White individuals in a manner not as violent and disruptive as the Holocaust. It removes the blame from the White man.

But, of course, like any theory or movement, Zionism has evolved. I do believe it is still inherently rooted in anti-semitism: ⅓ of Holocaust survivors in Israel reportedly live in poverty while nearly 20,000 survivors see none of the bureaucratic aid promised to them (while Israeli government representatives liken themselves to these very same survivors in the media to gain sympathy for their cause). I believe that Zionism as we perceive it today includes Islamophobia, colonialism, and capitalism. Of course, the horrors of October 7th should never happen to any person or peoples; that goes without saying. Yet the Palestinian people have faced countless acts similar to and worse than Oct. 7th every day since. As of February of this year the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 30,000 lives lost since Oct. 7th, not including the bodies that still remain buried under rubble created by Israel’s attacks. Some Israeli citizens routinely mock Palestinians through caricatures of Arab cultures posted across social media. The U.S. and Israel have reportedly been coordinating a possible offshore oil drilling operation on Gaza’s coast. 

A common retort I have seen across comment threads and forums during my research is that Israel is a safe space for Jewish people. Every person with a conscience believes that Jews should feel safe and also deserve to live happy, healthy, and free lives. However, the need for this to be secluded to the single area that is Israel yields the idea that the planet is inherently anti-semitic and unsafe for Jews. If Western nations so adamantly support Zionism as an ideology, are they not admitting that their own countries are inherently anti-semitic and unsafe for Jews to live in?

As the protest over Alumni Weekend occurred, I saw bright pastel posters (that also did not abide by the Demonstration and Poster policies, yet were not taken down like Pro-Palestine materials have), reading “Plz stop being antisemitic w/ ur activism plz.” I would like to contest this claim: after hearing the protesters’ chants from my dorm room and seeing their posters and banners in Sam Rose’s article, none of the activism seemed remotely anti-semitic at all; in fact, there seemed to be no mention of Jews at all. The protestors have stuck to their calls from last semester: they want the administration to recognize what is happening and stop ignoring the student population. While many of my friends and peers are resistant to becoming involved, the general viewpoint seems to be for the freedom of Palestine and for the administration to speak up against Zionism.

Goucher’s student and professor population is not anti-semitic, it is anti-Zionist. We want justice, safety, and liberation for all.

So, my friends and peers: I implore you to read. To watch, to listen, to tune in. It is the least you can do as a human.

You might be interested in

Civil Advocacy at Goucher College

by

By: Natalie Voorhees

*This article is a student submission from COM 142 News and Reporting with Dr. David Zurawik*

It all started when I came across this. 

This is a photo I took of a sign displayed proudly outside the Dorsey Center describing the ways that Goucher students and staff were involved in the fight for the women’s vote in the early 1900s. We are proud, as we should be, of our alumni for being on the right side of history. Among all the recent protests and demonstrations – and the school’s disappointing response to them – seeing this sign made me wonder if it was always a struggle against the administration for students to advocate for their beliefs.

Goucher has been around a long time. The school was founded in 1885 as the Woman’s College of Baltimore, was female-only until 1986, and was officially named Goucher College in 1910, which was also the year that the student newspaper (then called the Goucher Weekly) was established. Any significant event or development that you can think of in the US occurring after the year 1910, Goucher has seen it. 

For example, in February of 2017, a group of Goucher students left campus at 4:30 in the morning, and spent 9 hours in Washington D.C. protesting with the Women’s March. Students at this time were also involved in protests for various other causes in both D.C. and Baltimore, attended local lectures on topics surrounding Black History Month, and spoke out about self expression policies on campus. But one piece from this period that really stuck with me was from March 31, 2017, entitled “The Psychology of Climate Change” which dissects the bizarre tendency people have to ignore the science of climate change despite its legitimacy. Not only was this piece expertly written and researched, but it also forces the reader to confront their own behaviors and environmental consciousness, as well as raising important questions for how faculty and students of a college like Goucher can actively be a part of a global solution. 

But we can also look back a bit further. During the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s, Goucher College students were involved in all kinds of forms of civil protests and demonstrations, including but not limited to: marching in Baltimore, attending peace conferences, hosting speakers on the subject, writing opinion pieces, and general advocacy in the public forum. But my favorite piece that I read from this time was from May 8th, 1964 called “Commitments to the Civil Rights Movement in Quiet Deeds Besides Demonstrations,” which described the NSM Project. The NSM (Northern Student Movement) had members from many colleges who were involved in the fight for equality, and typically did so, as with many other movements, through large scale actions and demonstrations. 

However, one of its less obvious undertakings was a tutoring service for black students in Baltimore where students from Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College would tutor kids in various subjects. The tutors would also provide textbooks for the children that didn’t have any, and frequently paid for them out of their own pocket. In addition, there was a similar service for New York students called the Harlem Project that Goucher students also volunteered for. The article also detailed how a couple years prior to its publication (about 1961) one of the first few black women was admitted to the school. Her classmates had her back by contributing to the desegregation of Towson eating places. A sociology student polled local residents to see if they would still frequent their favorite eateries if they were desegregated. The results were an overwhelming 98% affirmative, and this proved to be the most effective in helping their cause. 

To all readers, I hope that knowing that students of this institution in the past were so outspoken, compassionate, and forward thinking brings you the same comfort it does me. If you want to see more, I highly recommend looking at the archives of the student newspaper. Self expression is absolutely essential to democracy as well as to progressivism on any college campus, which is very evident from our school’s long history of activism. 

To consider all this, and the positive societal change it brought on, it is astounding that posters now need a stamp of approval to be hung, or that limitations on demonstrations would only be increased in response to student activism. Fervent protest and advocacy for the reform of our system may seem dangerous to some minds, but it is infinitely more dangerous if young people don’t have strong opinions on the world we’re going to inherit. So to all who are protesting genocide, climate change, or any other cause you feel strongly about, I implore you – as any of our alumni would – to never stop. 

You might be interested in

1 2 3 … 12
Go to Top