March09

CounterpointTHE WELLESLEY COLLEGE

JOURNAL OF CAMPUS LIFEVOLUME 32 / ISSUE 2MARCH 2009

[also inside: wellesley’s pro-life org speaks out, girl talk de-scends upon wellesley, how to thesaurusize your essays,

counterinsurgency in afghanistan]

To Flush or not to Flush?Is Wellesley’s sustainability campaign reaching its limits?p5

Dishonorable ConductWhy the Honor Code doesn’t always workp4

TAKE PHOTOS. DRAW CARTOONS.

WRITE ARTICLES.

HAVE AN IDEA?

WE’LL

RUN WITH IT.

CounterpointThe Wellesley College Journal of Campus LifeMarch 2009Volume 32 / Issue 2

c a m p u s l i f e

r e g u l a r s4 /etcJULIA

GALL

18 Last Page

c o u n t e r p o i n t 3

a r t s & c u l t u r e

He’s just not that into you.

ROSIE ROSEBROCK

5JAMI-LINWILLIAMS

Th esaurusize!OLIVIA KINGSLEY

7Making your vernacular something spectacular

Mellow Yellow When will sustainability reach its limits?

E D I TO R I A L S TA F F

B U S I N ES S S TA F F

T R U S T E ES

S TA F F W R I T E R S

D ES I G N S TA F F

CO NTR IB UTO RS

S U B M I S S I O N S

S U B S C R I PT I O N S

Editors in Chief Marion Johnson ’09Sarika Narula ‘11

Layout Editors Hailey Huget ’10

Artistic Director May Chen ’10

E.B. Bartels ’10, Alexandra Cahill ‘11, Anthea Ch-eung ‘12, Veronica Cole ’09, Kristina Costa ’09, MaCherie Edwards ’11, Marion Johnson ’09, Ami Li ’10, Sarika Narula ’11

Katie Blair ‘11, May Chen ’10, Carlotta Chenoweth ‘09, Julia Gall ‘12, Betsy Grether ‘11, Rayla Heide ’10, Johanna Hudgens ’09, Olivia Kingsley ‘11, Cammie Lewis ’09, Alex Olivier ‘11, Elizabeth Pan ’11, Anna Prendella ’11, Jane Repetti ’09, Rosie Rosebrock ‘10, Victoria Royal ‘11, Nora Salem ‘09, Caroline Sun ’11, Christina Tran ’11, Jessi Trimble ‘09, Shu-Yen Wei ’11, Jami-Lin Williams ‘11

Matt Burns MIT ’05, Kristina Costa ‘09, Brian Du-nagan MIT ’03, Kara Hadge WC ’08, Edward Sum-mers MIT ’08

Counterpoint welcomes all submissions of articles and letters. Email submissions to counterpointmail@fi rstclass.wellesley.edu. Counterpoint encourages cooperation be-tween writers and editors but reserves the right to edit all submissions for length and clarity.

One year’s subscription: $25. Send checks and mailing address to:Counterpoint, Wellesley College

106 Central StreetWellesley, MA. 02481

Counterpoint is funded in part by the Wellesley Senate. Wellesley College is not responsible for the content of Counterpoint. Counterpoint thanks its departmental sponsors at Wellesley: Economics, Russian, Th eatre Studies, and the Newhouse Center for the Humanities.

Business Manager MaCherie Edwards ’11

Managing Editor Alexandra Cahill ’11

Copy Editor Veronica Cole ’09

Webmaster deCourcy O’Grady ‘11

p o l i t i c s15 Boots on the Ground

Tackling counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

KRISTINA COSTA

Dishonorable conduct

8 Girl Talk descends on WellesleySweat and laptops prove an entertaining mix

HANNAHALLEN

Wellesley for LifeFARAHAHMED

17An underrepresented minority

Layout Staff Caroline Sun ‘11Myriam Kuusipalo ‘12

Jessica Chia ‘12

10 Perceiving Space as ArtA new exhibition opens at the Davis Museum

SARIKANARULA

12 Dispatches from Russia Housewifery 101

EB BARTELS

c o u n t e r p o i n t4

Julia Gall ‘12 ([email protected]) is never leaving her room unlocked again.

/ E T C

Dishonorable Conduct

Perhaps you are not always aware of it, but hovering above your head is an invisible set of guidelines. Th ose

guidelines follow you throughout your four years at Wellesley College, and shape your role in the Wellesley community. It’s the reason why professors give take-home quizzes, and the reason why students will leave their rooms unlocked or why bikes can be found lying around on campus. We treasure our Honor Code, and take pride in the fact that we are civil enough to work effi ciently within our college community. Th e Wellesley Honor Code states:

As a Wellesley College student, I will act with honesty, integrity, and respect. In mak-ing this commitment, I am accountable to the community and dedicate myself to a life of honor.

It sounds like something you could possibly fi nd in a samurai movie. Even

better, though, is the fact that the Honor Code actually works. In fact, as students, we follow these morals so well that we are lulled into a false sense of security. Th e Wellesley bubble begins to close in, and when something out of the ordinary happens we snap and overreact, especially when the issue involves theft.

My fi rst clash with reality happened this past semester. I arrived to Wellesley College and was quickly seduced by the values of the Honor Code, enthralled with the sense of freedom I now felt I had. However, I quickly came to terms with my own naivete when my phone was stolen. Twice. Th e fi rst time my phone was taken I was shocked, but that shock quickly turned to confusion when my phone was found in the box where Post Secrets were submitted; to this day I still wonder whether the individual was at-

tempting to be clever with their Post Secret, or whether it was all a fl uke. Th e second time my phone disappeared was during fi nals. Th e phone magically resur-faced after Wintersession, after I had got-ten a new phone. Gee, thanks.

I am defi nitely not the only one who experienced failures of the Honor Code fi rsthand. Th e girls on my fl oor came to terms with the fact that somebody felt it necessary to use everyone else’s toiletry items, including my roommate’s tooth-brush. One of my friends was devastated that somebody had stolen her bike and left it covered in smashed berries. Stolen food from shared fridges is also a common problem.

While students should be able to enjoy the freedoms that come with the Honor Code, they should still be made aware of one major fl aw: human nature. Wellesley students are by no means perfect. Some people just can’t resist passing up the op-portunity to grab a phone or a bike that’s not locked. People get hungry and will raid the fridge, regardless of whose food is in there. Other people just really need to brush their teeth. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and not everyone will be thinking of the Honor Code when seeking to fulfi ll their needs.

To best protect yourself from fl aws in the system, for one moment pretend that you are in the real world, and do what you would do in the real world. In the real world, you would lock your room, chain down your bike, and protect all of your other precious items. My cell phone and I are now glued to the hip. A good way to protect theft of food is to hide it in a bag (thieves are less likely steal your food if they can’t see what it is). You can also have fun and get creative with labels. Popular labels that tend to work well are “Do not eat, Kim Bottomly’s food” or “Do not eat, I have mono.” If somebody is stealing your shampoo, next time slip in some dye. Th e person walking around the next few days with ridiculous-looking blue hair is your culprit.

Illustration/Julia Gall ‘12

{ b y j u l i a g a l l }

Why the Honor Code doesn’t always work

C A M P U S L I F E

To Flush or Not to Flush?

Why we will never really “Go Green”

{ b y j a m i - l i n w i l l i a m s }

For most Wellesley students, and indeed most Americans, water is a resource we rarely take the oppor-

tunity to consider. It turns out that the average American uses anywhere from 80 to 100 gallons of water each day (just think about how many gallons that is over the course of a year, a lifetime). We don’t simply use it, but we expect certain things of it. We expect that it will be clean and cold when we’re thirsty. We expect it to be steaming and at high pressure when we take twenty-minute showers each

day. We expect it to erase any evidence of our having ever used the toilet. As we go about our day, thirst quenched and hands squeaking clean, we are never faced with the reality of where that water comes from or just how much of it we’re using. In these post-Inconvenient Truth days, where “green” is more of a trend than an actual sustainability campaign, it seems everyone is looking for the next way conserve. But are we really ready to make the sacrifi ces necessary to make a real diff erence in the course of our planet’s future, or is this all

a big show?Take for example the fi rst fl oor of Da-

vis hall, which, like all residence halls, had its semi-annual mandatory fl oor meeting at the beginning of the semester. Unlike the other halls, however, fi rst fl oor Davis had an unprecedented item to vote on: whether or not to establish a bathroom policy of “If it’s yellow, let it mellow,” otherwise known as “Selective Flushing.” Tracy Bindel ‘11 spearheaded the propos-al and urged her fellow residents to think about the impact such a policy could have – each individual could potentially save about 25 gallons a day – as well as the problems associated with water availabil-ity and quality around the world.

Th e idea was roundly slain, leaving residents with mixed emotions. Some students, who were particularly troubled by what they claim was a smell so foul coming from urine-containing toilets that it prevented the completion of morning tooth-brushing, are quite pleased with the result. Others say the idea was a bright one, but nonetheless doomed from the start.

For starters, the vote was carried out in the same fashion as a ”pet vote” (which, if you recall, kicks Fido out of the dorm if one person is not in favor) out of concern for the fact that the policy would “aff ect everyone on the fl oor.” Th us, if just one resident voted it down, the idea would not stand. It became clear from the mo-ment the item was brought up for discus-sion that there would be more than just one no-vote, as tension and opposition surfaced. Th e idea was watered down, if you will, to a much less comprehensive one – instead of allowing the option to let the yellow mellow in every stall, residents delegated the (nearly inaccessible) stall be-hind the bathroom door for less frequent fl ushing, and suggested that a tally or log be kept of just how often such fl ush-ing occurred. Despite the facts recited to them about the worldwide water short-age and the harmlessness of sterile urine in a toilet, the residents of fi rst fl oor Da-vis quickly voted down this controversial measure.

Th is raises several concerns, the fi rst


Sta

ff ill

ustra

tion

/ May

Che

n ’1

0


Jami-Lin Williams ‘11 ([email protected]) always fl ushes it down when it’s brown.

and foremost being: why are we so un-comfortable with our own pee? After all, we have been making it our whole lives. Th is question is, of course, fol-lowed closely by: why are these girls producing such stinky urine? (Maybe they should drink a little more water instead of using so much of it to fl ush.) In all seriousness, it is worrisome that one would be so disturbed by the sight of her own urine; that must make be-ing a human a rather problematic exis-tence. Moreover, the fact that this idea was dismissed so quickly even despite its relevance to environmental concerns and other sustainability campaigns on campus shows that in our so-called commitment to preserving the planet, we’re only willing to go just so far. Sure, we’ll recycle our Diet Coke cans – in 2007 Wellesley recycled 366,785 pounds of solid material – and com-plain if the bin is too full, but we are simply unwilling to scrimp on water.

Now, it may seem like a few kids fl ushing selectively isn’t going to have a terribly signifi cant impact on the course of Earth’s history. True. But in a place like Wellesley or any college where so much is already done for us or over our heads, this may be one of the only mea-ger ways for us to contribute to sustain-ability and pay respect to the millions of people around the world who either lack access to water or are seriously ill because they water that they do have access to is unsanitary. Another little-know fact is that Wellesley relies on its on it’s own well system and water treatment plant, making water conser-vation a top priority for the college. If that’s not incentive enough, on last year’s Sustainability Report Card from the Endowment Institution, Wellesley received a grade of B-. Since when were we okay with a B-?

how does Community make you feel?

COMMUNITY HORROR STORIES

a Counterpoint party

tell us at

Friday, March 13Punch’s Alley9pm-12am


C A M P U S L I F E

Th esaurusize!How to make your vernacular

into something spectacular

{ b y o l i v i a k i n g s l e y }

Olivia Kingsley ([email protected]) is the safest place in 30 Rock.

Wellesley College students, known for their spirited com-petitive nature, constantly

yearn for a failsafe path to summa cum laude. While enough coff ee and Red Bull can imbue any college student with the prolifi cacy of Isaac Asimov and the stam-ina of Madonna, there is yet another se-cret to overturning the grade distribution. Most students are vaguely familiar with the power of the “synonym” element of Microsoft Word. A simple right click on any word brings you to an assortment of possible substitutions. Here, my friends, in this oft-overlooked feature, lies your silver bullet.

As an English major, I usually keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy as I write my (past) midnight masterpieces. A the-saurus, I fi nd, engages my extended vo-cabulary and keeps the paper interesting. Th e dictionary helps for those astonishing (and rare!) instances when my extensive knowledge of the English language is tried.

One night—excuse me—morning last fall, while seized close in the claws of “Th e Rape of the Lock” and “Th e Spectator,” I stumbled upon a discovery that is likely to comprise my raison d’être. In a burst of desperate procrastination, I put the Mi-crosoft Offi ce thesaurus to work on an en-tire sentence. Suddenly, a rather wretched, sleep-deprived jumble of words, “Gentle winds are pleasant but lack weight, an apt description of the attributes writers like Addison often ascribed to women dur-ing the period,” became this scintillating insight:

“Placid blustery weathers be pleasur-able on the contrary be defi cient in cre-

dence, a just what the doctor ordered report of the aspects journalists in the vein of Addison over and over again rec-ognized to women at some stage in the epoch” (Kingsley 3).

I was at a crossroads—nay!—a shop-ping center in my academic career. I could continue to write using the usual cant of college writers, with “however” in all its resplendent prominence, or I could turn my papers into palavers. Th e choice was simple. I thesaurusized my entire essay.

When I got the paper back two weeks later, my professor’s comments were as follows: “Complex sentence structure. Creative use of 16th century aphorisms. A.”

At least, that’s what he said after I the-saurusized his comments. Who even knew the letter A is another word for D?

Th ere are a few guidelines for proper thesaurusization, for, after all, as the un-cle in Spiderman said, “Amid illustrious dominance arrives illustrious trustwor-thiness.” After you change the sentence, it is unnecessary to look up any of the new words you have selected. If you recall reading it at some point in college, it is fair game to use it beyond any preposition you prefer.

Besides elevating your language to Shakespearean eloquence, thesaurusiza-tion carries the added benefi t of extending your paper to the august expanse of a doc-toral thesis. Your professors are likely to appreciate the speed with which you will complete the dissertation that took them fi ve years to write! It may even call into their minds that hallowed descriptor—dare I say it—prodigy, and just in time for your internship recommendations.

Nevertheless, my true goal, like ev-ery English major, is to write the Great American Novel. Naturally, my incred-ible talents are best suited to an epic tale closely mirroring my own life story. After a few thesaurusizations, whether it is or is not actually Oliver Twist will be an in-consequential problem. As a testament to the effi cacy of thesaurusization, I have in-cluded select quotes from famous literary works and replaced (almost) each word within them with actual suggestions from Microsoft Word’s “Synonym” feature. Th e results speak for themselves.

1. I beg your pardon? calamitous mis-demeanor commencing sentimental roots pounce, come again? may possibly con-frontations grow on or after trifl ing stuff .

2. Keep your head above water, or else not keep your head above water,--that be the inquiry:--whether it be additionally righteous in the psyche to have a medi-cal condition the lobs and rockets of con-temptible kismet or to obtain missiles not in favor of the deep of scrapes, and by contra bring to an end them?”

3. Good looks be legitimacy, legitima-cy good looks…

4. It be an exactness across the world accredited, so as to a on its own chap in tenure of a good quality affl uence is re-quired to be hankering after a consort.

1a. “What dire Off ence from am’rous Causes springs, / What mighty Contests rise from trivial Th ings.”

–Alexander Pope, “Th e Rape of the Lock”

2a. “To be, or not to be,--that is the question:--whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suff er the slings and arrows of outra-geous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?” –William Shakespeare, Hamlet

3a. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…” –John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

4a. “It is a truth universally acknowl-edged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” –Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

A R T S & C U L T U R E

Girl Talk


{ b y h a n n a h a l l e n }

For those of you who thought it nec-essary to “pre-game” for the Girl Talk concert, congratulations: you

probably missed out on the most antici-pated concert at Wellesley so far this year, and because your faculties were not so hindered that you knew you just had to

be at the front of the stage, you probably succeeded in crushing more than a few of your peers. On the other hand, Girl Talk a.k.a. Greg Gillis did bring the game you were prepared for.

Th e event itself ran so smoothly the ticketing controversy and subsequent

spitfi re posts on Community slander-ing of the Schneider Board of Governers (SBOG) were almost forgotten. Once again, the “every-man-for-himself ” forum that is Community proved to narrow the minds of Wellesley students, who later at-tempted to make up for their bad-mouth-ing with a 8-person-“THANK YOU SBOG” thread, dwarfed in comparison to the innumerable threads and posts bash-ing the eff ectiveness of the organization. In fact, many people who were unable to get tickets in either the fi rst or the sec-ond round distribution and were faithful enough to show up to the concert any-way, were admitted at the door, taking the places of those who forfeited their tickets by not showing up by 9:30. Also, nearing the end of the night, the police stopped guarding the elevator in the back of the campus center, a possibility for a more stealthy entrance.

Between 9:00 and approximately 9:30, the members of SBOG were able to get their revenge upon the potential SBOG-bashers in attendance, threatening that our promised mp3 maestro would be withheld if we remained on the stage, a legitimate threat considering Harvard’s own Girl Talk concert was canceled twen-ty minutes into the production. While there were the sneaky few who managed once or twice to cross over the stage cen-tered in Tishman Commons, making the rounds to all their groups of friends, the crowd remained technically obedient. Th ey were nonetheless relentless in their collective pushing to get to the front of the stage. When Girl Talk signaled to the group, throwing a handful of confetti in the air, people struggled en masse onto the stage, which should have collapsed. Th e stage became less of a novelty as the night went on. Th ough a persistent few remained upon the stage, crowded around the console at all times, it was easy enough to fi nd your way through the crowd. Th is is not to say, however, that SBOG mem-bers were not monitoring who was on the stage with their black megaphones.

Girl Talk’s art could be called com-pletely unoriginal. While assuredly not a

Mashup chic meets Wellesley

Greg Gillis d.b.a. Girl Talk performs in Tishman.


Hannah Allen ‘12 ([email protected]) got a caricature of her on a skateboard.

musician, he seems comfortable with the status of performer, relying on anything, even stripping off his layers of clothing to keep up the antics of his show. At the Wellesley show, Girl Talk’s own disrobing proved incentive for others to follow his lead; by the end of the night I was sur-rounded by at least ten people equally undressed as Gillis. I must say, though, he was the only one who retained his class with this type of behavior. Th ough I can off er no rational explanation for this, I would equate it with him being not tra-ditionally attractive, but hot-as-hell at the

same time.Th erein lies Girl Talk’s charm: he is

able to take the latest and greatest off the top-ten charts from over the last decade and a half, throw in a few classics, and come away with a form of entertainment passably innovative, and a thoroughly broad fan base to boot. People can have their cake and eat it too – trashy hits with a mask of indie sweetness.

After his show, Gillis stuck around for people to take sweet pictures with him (to be uploaded just minutes later on Face-book, of course). More frightened by the

bestial picture-taking occurring around me than of Gillis himself, it took all the courage I had to approach him, asking if he had anything to share with the Welles-ley community. His sweaty hand took hold of mine, and he asked, “Do you have a question?” “Just anything,” I replied. To this he said, “For anyone who didn’t watch the Super Bowl, the Steelers won.”

Phot

os /

Dar

yl S

elen

’10

No shoes, no shirt, no problem: Greg Gillis performs for Wellesley students in Tishman Commons.


Perceiving Space in ArtTh e fi rst in the new Artist-as-Curator

series opens at the Davis Museum

{ b y s a r i k a n a r u l a }

What is art, and how does the viewer play a role in the art he or she is viewing? Th e new

exhibition at the Davis Museum and Cul-tural Center, “Perceiving Space in Art,” does not intend to answer these questions; rather, it poses them to the viewer and provides her the tools to look critically at and enjoy art. Th is entire exhibition, which includes pieces from around the world, experiments with diff erent kinds of space—landscapes, physical space in

the museum, and the viewer-to-art rela-tionship, inviting the viewer into the role of examining the space and depth of the painting (both literally and fi guratively). “Perceiving Space as Art” also forces the viewer to examine her role in the broader “space” of the world as it is. Th e newest ad-dition to the permanent collection of the Davis Museum is a thought-provoking, unique display of a variety of art which examines a rare aspect of the viewer’s rela-tion to art.

One of the fi rst paintings to greet you as you arrive at the exhibition is a pastoral landscape which places the viewer above a valley, looking down to watch peasants building a bridge. Th e scene is carefully planned, down to the precise detailing of the leaves on the trees. Right next to it is a painting of a religious procession which lacks the meticulous design of its neighbor but manages to convey a diff erent sense of space—the viewer is more intimately in the painting, close to the procession itself, rendering details irrelevant to the feeling the painting wants to convey.

Th e next step is bringing the viewer into the painting—which the next piece in the exhibit manages successfully. Th is painting depicts the Virgin and Child against the night sky, but the painting’s frame extends outwards, eff ectively draw-ing the viewer into the life of the paint-ing, as if she is viewing the scene through a doorway. Th e scene of the Virgin and Child is touching, but also public—not only is the viewer drawn into the scene but there are angels surrounding them. Th e space of the painting, while ex-perimenting with the relationship to the viewer, also deals with diff erent spiritual landscapes—the scene in the painting introduces the diff erent spaces of heaven and earth as well as makes the viewer con-spicuous of the space he or she inhabits. Completely diff erent from these rather traditional paintings is a spray-painted canvas by Jules Olitski. While the main color painted is red, there are also smat-terings of other colors—blue, green, and brown—in various areas of the canvas. Th is melding of colors attempts to escape the physical bounds of the art it comprises and when stepping back from the canvas, the painting seems to move like a wave, creating the illusion of depth, that the painting simply sinks into the wall like a bottomless pit.

Painting, however, is not the only medium through which the exhibition experiments with space. Th e exhibition displays photography, sculptures, and aspects of moving art, such as a lobster mobile. Some of the pieces seem to be


Bartolomeo Coriolano’s Sleeping Cupid woodcut now on display at the Davis Museum.

simple optical illusions, but optical illu-sions themselves are solely about space and depth, while the gallery transforms those illusions into art.

Another addition to the permanent collection involves a move that many museums are starting to incorporate into their exhibitions: having artists curate ex-hibitions. Th e “Artist as Curator” exhibi-tion at the Davis is the work of artist Kiki Smith, a New York City-based artist. Her exhibitions displays a plethora of vessels from the Museum’s permanent collection of all shapes, sizes, and uses, from many time periods. She exhibits all sorts of pieces, from transient paper snowfl akes, which are actually her own pieces, to a stack of cracked cups to small, delicate glass vessels of diff erent hues (these latter from the Museum’s collection). A vessel of a lamb appeals to the viewer, its limbs tied together in a helpless display of the sac-rifi cial animal, demonstrating how even the cruelest images are transformed into aesthetics.

Luckily, these provocative exhibi-tions have been installed as part of the permanent collection of the Davis Mu-seum. Temporary installations include Border, a war documentary by Michal Rovner which examines diff erent versions of truth, as well as the personal relation-ship between Rovner and an army com-mander whom he interviews in the fi lm. Another temporary exhibition installed is Prints in an Age of Artistry: Selections from a Private Collection of 16th - & 17th - Century Italian Prints, on loan from an anonymous collector in Boston. All the new exhibitions displayed off er a fresh interpretation of art that cause you to re-examine the pieces in a unique way. Or you can just stand back and enjoy the aes-thetics. Either way, these exhibitions are not something you want to miss.

Sarika Narula ([email protected]) thinks that ‘catch the fondler’ should replace hoop-rolling as a yearly tradition.


Upcoming Events at the Davis Museum

Lecture: Eleanor DelormeTuesday March 31, 5 pm

Collins CinemaJewelry as Art

Artist Talk: Andrew RafteryTuesday March17, 12:30-1:30 pm

Davis MuseumPrints in an Age of Artistry

Lecture: Eleanor DelormeTuesday April 28, 5 pm

Collins CinemaTh e Arts of the Table

Wednesday Free ToursWednesdays, February 11-June 14, 1

pmDavis Museum

Teacher Workshop: Printmaker Andrew Raftery

Wednesday March 18, 4-6 pmDavis Museum

Jewett Reception: Dual ActionOpening Reception Wednesday March 18, 5 – 7:30 pm; on view March 2 – 26

Jewett Art Center Gallery

Davis After Dark: CarnevaleWednesday April 1, 5:30-8 pm

Davis Museum

Gallery Talk: Sue Welsh ReedWednesday April 8, 12:30-1:30 pm

Levine Gallery

Toga PartyWednesday April 15, Time TBD

Davis Museum

Davis Museum Literary Series: Henri Cole

Wednesday April 22, 6 pmCollins Cinema

Spring 2009 Opening

Reception

Wednesday March 11, 6-8 pm

Cherubino Alberti’s Winged Figure Holding a Tablet.



Turning into a Russian Housewife?

{ b y e . b . b a r t e l s }

Things I haven’t been doing since my return to Russia at the begin-ning of February: going to muse-

ums or doing anything touristy, that’s for sure.

As I said last month, you spend so much time preparing for the fi rst time you go abroad. You prepare yourself for the culture shock, the homesickness, all that. And then, subconsciously or not, you still

prepare yourself for your departure from your country, returning home. But what happens when you go back? Maybe it is because most students only go away for a semester, but the Offi ce of International Studies certainly did not prepare me for that strange phenomenon at all.

Initially I was worried that return-ing after a brief vacation at home would be brutal. I was certain that all I would

see in Russia at the beginning of second semester were the things I didn’t like in comparison to all the people and things I had just seen at home that I love so much. I feared another long torturous period of readjustment would follow, getting back into the swing of things again just in time to leave in June.

Well, maybe I am just an unattached sociopath, but I found my transition back into my life in St. Petersburg quite pain-less. Arriving at the Pulkovo airport was a relief after a long, complicated return fl ight after visiting a friend in Kraków on the way back. Speaking Russian with people at the airport came back naturally and comfortably, the Stalinist architecture driving up Moskovsky street was like see-ing home again.

Despite this easy transition, what I did not realize was that coming back for a sec-ond semester is entirely diff erent than a fi rst semester experience. As I was in St. Petersburg starting in June, I had the summer to adjust, and by the end of fall I defi nitely felt as though I was something like living here: having a daily routine, not needing to look at my map anymore to get around, having most of the met-ro memorized, not even thinking twice about asking someone for directions or an item in a store, walking around without that unshakable tourist paranoia…

But that feeling was intensifi ed upon coming back and immediately getting thrown into a ritualistic, normal, aver-age kind of daily life pattern. Sure, there are still touristy kinds of things I want to do before I leave -- I haven’t been to the Nabokov Museum yet, I’ve only been to the Hermitage once in the whole time I’ve been here (shhh, it’s a horrible secret of mine) -- but I want to do these things no longer with that urgency of feeling I have a limited amount of time, not a trip that is running out anymore, but just my average, daily life in which I want to fi t in things like that. I think about go-ing to those museums now in the same way I thought about how I really ought to get myself into the Museum of Fine Arts during the weekend, or check out some photo show in Waltham. Living on

Where a woman belongs.


my own this semester in an apartment with another American girl (a Reed Col-lege graduate named Lauren, currently in St. Petersburg on a Fulbright) defi nitely contributes to that -- things like grocery shopping; paying the phone bill; and hav-ing people over to sit around, drink wine, and watch Flight of the Conchords are all things I do in my regular life at home, in the U.S. Th ese tiny little things all add up and really make me feel as though I legiti-mately live in St. Petersburg now.

Th e leading factor that contributes to this feeling is my introduction to the fi eld of cooking. I was born of a non-cook who only learned how to bake a good chicken out of pure necessity. My dad tells the story that when he fi rst went over to my mother’s apartment when she was in grad school all she had in her refrigerator was nail polish and strawberries. Interestingly, this non-cook was born of a pretty damn good cook, but a cook who hasn’t cooked a meal for something that wasn’t a holiday or a special occasion since 1980. When you’re seventy-fi ve, you do what you want, and if that means eating at Legal Seafood’s, so be it.

Up until this point in my life, I’ve al-ways been living in some kind of situation

where food as been provided for me: my mother unenthusiastically making dinner all through high school, the mandatory meal plan at Wellesley, my Russian host family keeping me full for the past seven months. Even summers when I’d be stay-ing in my house on my own, I would fi nd ways for others to feed me – a date at a Th ai place with my then-boyfriend, fi nd-ing my way to my grandmother’s house. When left to my own devices, cereal is usually the name of my game.

I realized, though, before moving into this apartment, that fi ve months of cereal three times a day was going to get old pretty fast, especially as Russians aren’t re-ally into an enormous variety of delicious, dry, cold cereals such as Shredded Wheat or Fruit Loops. Th e only two kinds of ce-real that Lauren and I are able to locate in the grocery store down the street are Honey Nut Cheerios (tasting just ever so slightly off in their non-American-manu-factured state) and Nestle Fitness cereal, both of which are delicious, but of which we have already eaten two boxes in just our fi rst week of living together.

Th is was not going to cut it. Lucky for me, Lauren is not only a very talented cook but seems to enjoy it (something

I am shocked to see, as so few people I know in my life show this phenomenon -- excluding my dad, who does enjoy cook-ing, but rarely engages in the task as he is “too messy in the kitchen” according to certain family members). In my time back in Petersburg, Lauren has already made me chili on Valentine’s Day, banana bread to welcome me home, eggplant curry the other night when friends were over, chicken teriyaki before we went to a party on Friday, homemade tomato soap with real tomatoes and no cans, oatmeal with ginger and nutmeg on Saturday morning before my art class, and probably about sixty other delicious things I am forget-ting. Our system involves a lot of Lauren cooking and me cleaning, which I am per-fectly content with as she is keeping me well fed.

But! Th e point of this semester was not to fi nd another host mom to feed me! (Th ough that is how we’ve starting refer-ring to Lauren.) I need and want to learn this basic life skill, at least to be able to throw together a decent chicken and some broccoli or something like my mom, and not survive purely on pinkish milk and Lucky Charms.

And! I am proud to say, I have started

Phot

os /

E.B.

Bar

tels

‘10

A carefully prepared breakfast.


to learn how to cook. I actually even (kind of… maybe…) enjoy it. I have started small and slow: eggs and pasta are good beginners. It is fairly diffi cult to screw up either, and I have mastered a few varia-tions including scrambled eggs with on-ions, ham and pepper and macaroni and cheese “Russian style” (when you simply lazily melt the cheese on top of the pasta – soon I’ll try it American style where I’ll actually attempt some sort of an Annie’s-esque cheese sauce). I was even able to make some kind of fried rice with the su-pervision of a couple of friends.

I had no idea that I could ever enjoy this process. I was certain I had inherited the gene that loves take out. But in the morning there is something unbelievably satisfying about waking up and going through the following thought process:

Q. What do I feel like eating?A. Hmm… how about eggs. Over

easy.Q. How many?A. I think two would be perfect. And a

nice piece of bread.Q. Do you want them now or after

you shower?A. Mmm… now. Th en I’ll shower.And then, having established that, I

go to the refrigerator, get the eggs, make exactly two eggs and one piece of bread, eat it, and take a shower. I have never had so much control over what I have been eating before, and I really enjoy it. For the fi rst time not relying on the whim of who-ever is being so kind to keep me well fed, I could become a picky eater again like I

was back in the day if I really wanted. In-stead though, I think the opposite is going to happen. It’s kind of a creative process, this cooking thing, especially when you have two college/post-college girls living together on student budgets. You look in the cabinet and fi gure out what you can make out of stale bread, cheese, three cherry tomatoes, arugula and some pep-per. Open-faced sandwich melts? Sure, sounds great.

What is especially interesting and en-tertaining to me is when Lauren and I want to make something that is not at all Russian in any way, shape or form, and trying to concoct it out of the Russian versions of the ingredients in the produkti that we fi nd. For example, for Lauren’s Valentine’s Day chili, canned beans don’t exist so much in Russian -- not canned beans as we know them. So Lauren bought hard beans, soaked them in water, and then threw them into the chili, fi guring they’d cook with the rest of the ingredi-ents. We learned soon after that it’s prob-ably better to boil the beans a little bit fi rst before adding them in if you don’t want too much of a crunch, but we’re fi guring things out as we go. My biggest planned cooking challenge is going to be creating some kind of version of my grandmother’s famous Italian red sauce for pasta out of

E.B. Bartels ‘10 ([email protected]) enjoys being a girl.

whatever I can fi nd in the grocery store. Somehow I don’t think they sell that par-ticular brand of Pastene canned tomatoes that come in those big yellow jars.

Stopping and realizing what I am thinking, and how much I am enjoying this small, newly discovered thrill of cook-ing, I feel as if Russia really has turned me into a completely diff erent person. It is interesting to see how what one takes out of a study abroad experience is absolutely never what one expects to learn going into it. A love of cooking? I never thought I would fi nd that anywhere, let alone in Russia, a country full of mayonnaise sal-ads and beets. Take me out of Wellesley for nine months and throw me into one of the most sexist countries in the world and look what happens. It seems that my homey little second semester life in St. Pe-tersburg is going to make me some kind of domestic.

Images by EB Bartels, Russian housewife /Counterpoint overseas correspondent.

P O L I T I C S

Boots on the GroundTh e unconventional wisdom of the Army’s

Human Terrain Program

For months, U.S. forces in Afghani-stan have been waiting for reinforce-ments that seem unlikely to come.

All NATO allied forces have suff ered in-creased casualties in recent months—U.S. deaths alone have increased at least three-fold in the fi rst two months of 2009. Th e Taliban continues to grow in strength and numbers in Afghanistan as well as across the border in Pakistan, where they have begun to exercise control over the Swat valley, a previously-peaceful inland prov-ince just 100 miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. And on November 4, 2008, Paula Loyd ’95, an anthropolo-gist and Army Reservist who served in Afghanistan fi rst with her Reserves battal-ion and later as a member of the Human Terrain Program, was doused in cooking oil and set on fi re while interviewing a vil-lager in southern Afghanistan.

Loyd died of her injuries in a Texas hospital on January 7. Minutes after she was attacked, another researcher in the program, Don Ayala, shot and killed the man who had attacked her. And the Hu-man Terrain Program, an innovative at-tempt by the Armed Forces to use social science researchers as part of their coun-terinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq, has come under increased scrutiny since Loyd’s death. Loyd’s involvement in the Human Terrain Program invites us to consider a pair of linked questions—fi rst, what it is about the nature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that requires the creation of a program like HTP; and second, whether the objections of various social scientists, and particularly anthro-pologists, are legitimate.

“You can’t really do anthropology in a group of people with guns,” the Boston Globe quotes Loyd’s senior thesis advisor, Sally Engle Merry, now of New York Uni-versity, as saying. Shortly after the HTP was launched in 2007, the American An-thropological Association declared that the program violated their rules of eth-ics. And since a series of articles covering Loyd’s death have appeared in newspapers nationwide, including the Globe and the Washington Post, the blogosphere has ex-ploded with further criticisms of the pro-gram—and, in some cases, of the coverage of Loyd’s death.

Proving once and for all that blogs are to the Internet as hand-lettered card-board sandwich boards are to raving street prophets is Maximilian Forte, an assis-tant professor at Concordia University in Quebec. Forte’s blog, Open Anthro-pology, was quoted in the Globe’s cover-age of Loyd’s death. A quick perusal of the website shows that the quote pulled by the Globe—“[Abdul] Salam [the man who set Loyd on fi re] got murdered in his own country by foreign occupiers. Try, just as an experiment, to see things from that angle for a moment.”—is perhaps the most measured comment proff ered by Forte on Loyd’s case (if one ignores the “murdered…by foreign occupiers” com-ment, of course). Forte refers to Loyd as a “young, pedigreed blonde cheerleader” and as “something between a girl scout [sic], a nurse, and a Peace Corps volunteer,” and refers to the coverage of Loyd’s death as “the Paula Loyd infomercial.” Of course, since the post is fi led with Forte’s self-created “colonialism/imperialism,” “elit-

ism,” and “hegemony” tags, the snide and somewhat misogynistic tone is perhaps unsurprising.

Th e concerns of the American Anthro-pology Association are not quite as fi re-and-brimstone mad as Forte’s. Anthro-pologists and other social scientists have been misused by the military in the past, notably in Vietnam and Latin America. Project Camelot was a social science re-search project undertaken by the Army in 1964. Camelot’s stated goal was to use social science research methods to iden-tify the causes of violent rebellion and to identify measures that may be taken by established governments to prevent coups d’etats. At the time, social scientists ex-pressed concerns that the research may be used to prevent organized rebellions, particularly those staged by leftist groups in Latin America, and the program came under such intense criticism that it was eventually discontinued.

However, I would argue that anthro-pologists are wrong to view the Human Terrain Program with as much apprehen-sion—and, as in Forte’s case, open hos-tility—as they have been. Unlike Project Camelot or Vietnam’s Phoenix Program (often derisively referred to as an “assas-sination campaign”), the Human Ter-rain Program is using largely nonviolent means to implement a successful counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghani-stan and to counteract the attempts by in-surgent groups to destabilize the fl edgling governments of both nations. Montgom-ery McFate, the program’s senior social science adviser, said in a 2007 New York Times article that she was “frequently ac-cused of militarizing anthropology,” but that they were “really anthropologizing the military.”

If McFate’s assessment is correct, then the Human Terrain Program will be per-haps the most revolutionary military program to come out of the dual U.S. involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Th e failures suff ered in Iraq and Afghani-stan by U.S. and NATO forces have been largely the result of the disastrous combi-nation of neoconservative political goals and traditional military tactics. Th e neo-conservative theory that military force

{ b y k r i s t i n a c o s t a }


could be used to overthrow corrupt and abusive governments and that, moreover, the United States, then in a position of unquestionable cultural, military, and economic supremacy, had something akin to a moral duty to undertake such operations led us to the edge of the twin slippery slopes of Iraq and Afghanistan; the military’s long-standing reluctance to adopt new strategies pushed us over.

Militaries are not, by their nature, eas-ily changeable creatures. Th ey are orga-nizations with long and storied histories, with traditions whose precedents have the reach of centuries, and with bureaucra-cies of such a scale as to boggle the mind. When warfare was primarily concerned with large-scale troop movements and fi xed-piece battles, the bureaucratic de-sign of the military was eff ective, if not ideal. Counterinsurgency, however, re-quires a diff erent set of skills, a diff erent mode of thinking, and perhaps even a dif-ferent organizational structure. It is in the nature of counterinsurgency to be fl uid and dynamic, to be able to quickly pro-cess changing information and respond accordingly.

It is in this aspect of a small war sce-nario—gathering, processing, and inter-preting information—where the skills of a social scientist are invaluable. Misunder-standing the local culture on a fundamen-tal level has been problematic throughout the entire history of small wars, beginning with the Boer War at the end of the 19th century. (A second and equally persistent problem—the fact that large powers go-ing into small wars never seem to have suffi cient maps or, moreover, to believe that they need them—has not been en-tirely alleviated by satellite technology.) Such misunderstandings can set military progress back by months, if not years, and, more importantly, can vastly increase the net amount of human suff ering.

Tracy, a Human Terrain Team member reference by the Times, has had enormous success in alleviating the civilian hardship caused by war. In Afghanistan, during a drive in summer 2007 called Operation Khyber, Tracy and her team identifi ed a high concentration of widows in a south-ern Afghan village. “[Th e widows’] lack of

income created fi nancial pressure on their sons to provide for their families,” writes the Times, “a burden that could drive the young men to join well-paid insurgents. Citing Tracy’s advice, American offi cers developed a job training program for the widows.” Another anthropologist inter-preted the beheading of a tribal elder in another district as a calculated move on the part of the local Taliban to divide the Zadran, a large and infl uential tribe.

However, it is in the nature of coun-terinsurgency that many operations must remain little known; widely disseminat-ing tactics and information to the public does not preclude insurgents from gain-ing knowledge of those tactics and using that knowledge against the military. It is this secrecy, coupled, apparently, with the presence of fi rearms, which the American Anthropological Association fi nds trou-bling. Th e Globe quotes Sally Engle Merry as saying, “On the one hand, I think Pau-la was absolutely right to give the military a way to understand the lives of Afghans better. On the other hand, what happens to the information you gather? Who owns it? How is it being used?”

Merry’s concerns—along with those of her fellow social scientists—amount to a lot of academic hand-wringing. A simple way to think about the ethics of the Hu-man Terrain Program may be as follows: Th e Taliban is increasingly powerful in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When last they were powerful, the result was a string of human rights abuses and the reduction of Afghanistan’s cultural treasures to heaps of rubble and dust, not to mention the complete collapse of the economy and infrastructure. Th e initial NATO mili-tary operation in Afghanistan succeeded in undermining the Taliban’s power base, and improvements were observed for sev-eral years. However, because of myriad, complicated factors, the Taliban is again resurgent. Th e use of brute military force against known Taliban targets is a mixed bag—on the one hand, the targets are usu-ally taken out; on the other hand, airstrikes can have high rates of civilian casualties. Th e increasingly unstable economic and social atmosphere of Afghanistan is driving many more Afghans into joining the Tali-

ban. Social scientists have the tools at their disposal to assess the causes that factor into Afghans’ choice to join the Taliban, and can make recommendations to eliminate those causal factors. One might therefore argue that it is not merely good military strategy but sound common sense that so-cial scientists use their training to lead to a net decrease in human suff ering.

Beyond the goals of the Human Terrain Program, however, the U.S. military faces additional problems in its likely future as a force devoted, at least partially, to the wag-ing of small wars. It is nigh impossible to maintain public support for a small war, as should be apparent from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Th e public cannot follow the military’s progress in a quasi-orderly fashion, with fronts, attacks, and counterat-tacks, as in World War II and Korea, and the fi ghting is not over in a matter of weeks, as in the fi rst Gulf War. Initiatives like the Human Terrain Program may help on this front, as well—success stories like those of the Times’ Tracy and of Paula Loyd may serve to encourage the public in the mili-tary’s success in improving Afghans’ quality of life through nonviolent means, as well as impress upon the Armed Forces brass that the biggest bunker-busters and most agile fi ghter jets should not always be the auto-matic go-to tools for the job at hand.

With President Obama’s recently an-nounced timeline to end American involve-ment in the Iraq War, it is unclear how much longer Human Terrain teams will continue to operate. However, the confl ict in Afghan-istan, now in its eighth year, shows no signs of stopping, and with neighboring Pakistan increasingly unstable, it is fair to predict that U.S. and NATO involvement in the region will continue for some time. Under these circumstances, it is unfair to criticize a suc-cessful program—one aimed at providing basic improvements and helping to re-create the tribal structures destroyed by decades of Taliban control—simply because it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of social scientists comfortably ensconced in the ivory towers of universities.

Kristina Costa ’09 ([email protected]) has hollow bones, like a bird.



P O L I T I C S

WAFL: A Political MinorityPro-life students make their voices heard

Dee Garrahan ‘09 can trace her political roots to early Middle School, when she began in-

tensely questioning what was important to her. “It was a way of testing myself,” she remembers, “I wanted to know what I really believed in.” During her search for a political identity, she became an advocate of the pro-life movement with a passion that continued into high school and col-lege. “It’s a part of me, now, more of a part of me than I thought,” she said. Garrahan is now president of the Wellesley Alliance for Life (WAFL), and a participant in a movement that is both pro-life and pro-women. While to some these stances seem in opposition, to Garrahan there is a nat-ural connection. “Real pro-life, respecting all of life, comes with an understanding that you’re helping women, you’re helping everyone,” she said.

Pro-life feminists have similar prin-ciples to the greater pro-life movement in that they believe that life begins at con-ception, and that abortion is rejecting that life. But as outlined by Feminists for Life, the organization with which WAFL is most closely affi liated, they believe that the call for abortion reveals society’s fail-ure to meet the needs of women. “We believe in supporting women, supporting mothers, women’s centers, women’s initia-tives… we want to give women a better choice,” said Garrahan. “Pro-choice is not the only pro-women stance.”

Garrahan does not like the labels pro-life and pro-choice – “it seems like they’re

opposites, when really there is a lot of common ground,” she explains. “Both sides want to reduce the number of abor-tions; both believe that women should not have to make the choice between liv-ing a good life and having a child.”

In Wellesley’s liberal environment, however, it is diffi cult fi nding others who see these connections. Garrahan remem-bers writing a comment in support of a pro-life student on Community. “I woke up that morning with hate mail in my in-box,” she said. “Th ere is that list of things to do at Wellesley, and one of them is ‘get fl amed.’ Well, I got to check that off .” Ab-igail Friedman ‘10 is another member of WAFL, who transferred to Wellesley this year. “Th ere’s the stereotype that if you’re pro-life you’re Republican, super conser-vative, straight edge,” she noticed. Both believe these stereotypes are easily broken by listening to the other side’s views. Gar-rahan attends pro-choice speeches, but the opposite isn’t true. “Pretty much nobody pro-choice comes to pro-life events,” she said.

Th is feeling of isolation is wider than Wellesley. After eight years of the Bush administration’s ideologically driven pro-life policies, President Obama is unam-biguous about his support of reproductive rights. “Th e fi rst thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” he famously stated at Planned Parenthood meeting in 2007. Two years later, the act has passed, Bush’s global gag ban has been lifted, and pro-abortion Gov. Kathleen

Sebelius is expected to be elected as Heath Secretary.

Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center poll shows that 18- to 29-year-olds are more likely than older adults to favor strict limits on abortion. A Gallup sur-vey in 2003 found that 72 percent of teens call abortion morally wrong and 32 percent believe it should be illegal in all circumstances. Obama’s critics aren’t just aging, out-of-touch conservatives, as they are often characterized; there is a new gen-eration of Americans who are actively, vo-cally in opposition to his policies.

Both Garrahan and Friedman remem-ber attending the March for Life, the fi rst youth-oriented pro-life rally. “You’re with so many people cheering and marching, there’s so much energy, it’s an amazing experience,” she remembers. Feeling sepa-rated from their own communities adds to their momentum. “Th ere were so many college students,” Garrahan remembers. “It was like I wasn’t alone; it’s just so nice to get that reassurance.”

Members of WAFL are some of many young pro-life activists who are passion-ate, outspoken, yet moderate (“I am no fan of the ‘dead baby’ pictures,” Garrahan said emphatically). Th ey are also open to fi nding common ground in a polarizing topic. Excluding these voices, whether in a country or a college, fuels animosity that is potentially dangerous for groups who could be working together. Th ere was one pro-choice speaker that was particularly memorable for Garrahan. “She said that a battle is taking place, and the pro-choice side needs to pick it up.” Perhaps, though, through more understanding, this issue doesn’t have to be played out as yet an-other war.

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All Farah Ahmed ‘11 ([email protected]) is saying is “give peas a chance.”

L A S T P A G E


Rosie Rosebrock ‘10 ([email protected]) is twelve hours of sleep a day, a healthy diet, and lots and lots of makeup.

TLC & Me{ b y r o s i e r o s e b r o c k }

March09

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