THE BELFIELD BANTER • BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION • AUGUST 19TH | BANTER PUBLICATIONS | ISSUE I
Fall Doesn’t Have to be Only About School By Imogen Fagan ‘27 Summer may have come to a close, but that doesn’t mean your fall has to be completely consumed by schoolwork and college applications. Here are four events to look forward to this upcoming autumn season: Local: Live Arts’ mainstage musical, Come From Away, will be performing October 23 - November 15 on the downtown mall. While many students and faculty might prefer a movie to a night at the theater, the show has been praised by audiences and critics alike for its heartwarming humanity and connection. To quote the Chicago Tribune, “there are shows that you should see right now, for the benefit of your own spirit, and this is one of them.” TV/Film: Looking to fill a soccer ball sized hole in your heart now that the World Cup has ended? Good thing the fourth season of Ted Lasso is being periodically released each Wednesday through October 7. The world’s most kindhearted coach, surrounded by his lovable cast of friends, is back on the field, perfectly timed to fill the soccer void before the 2027 World Cup in Brazil! Music: With albums being released by Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams, and Maisie Peters, this past summer has been a busy one for female pop stars. To finish the quartet, Lizzy McAlpine will be releasing Angel, her fourth full-length album, on September 18. Having already released “The light in the painting,” the lead single for the album, it’s safe to say we can expect a sound that relies on the simple things, subtle instru-
mentation or specific syntax, to convey her story, as opposed to showy vocals or busy arrangements. Literature: Hernan Diaz’s first novel was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. His second novel won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. His third novel, Ply, an exploration of technology and community in a futuristic America, is scheduled to be released September 29. Early reviews praise Diaz’s humanity, explaining that Ply is a novel where, despite the science-fiction label, people are the focus and technology is the backdrop. If the novel is anything like Diaz’s previous work it is sure to be a must-read, and it will soon be claimed by the upper echelons of exceptional literature.
What I Wish I Knew as a Freshman By Ellie Womack ‘27 Going into your senior year is an indescribable feeling, simultaneously exciting and scary, unbelievable yet comforting. Looking back on the past three years, so much has happened, but sometimes I still feel like a freshman walking into the doors of Randolph for the first time. That’s the thing about learning: there is always something that will make you feel like you are just beginning and heading into uncharted territory. To my freshman self: Throughout high school you will be challenged in all aspects of your life. You will struggle through cross country workouts on sweltering August afternoons, stay up far too late trying to cement every piece of information into your head before a test, spend hours brainstorming the best ways to serve on the honor council, and spend plenty of time wondering if you are doing enough. But throughout all of that you will have a support system. You will have friends who truly care about you and teachers who want to see you thrive. Whenever you need anything, all you have to do is ask. There will be plenty of bumps in the road but there will also be smiles, laughter, encouragement, and success.
If I could speak now to my freshman self, I would tell her not just to soak in every moment or participate fully in the St. Anne’s community, but I would tell her this is only the beginning of the beginning. Next year I’ll be a freshman again, which seems to me a fitting metaphor for all of life: once you finish one chapter, you open a new one full of new decisions, possibilities, and things to learn. Today, on my last first day of high school, I know that I will have many more first days, all supported by my 14 years at St. Anne’s, which provided the foundation for the way I go about my life.
Summary & Review of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital By Frances Lawson ‘27 Orbital is a 24 hour glimpse into the consciousnesses of six astronauts, from five different countries of origin, residing on the International Space Station. With her book, Harvey offers us a chance to not only get to know the lives and characteristics of each astronaut, but also their perspectives on their extraterrestrial circumstances. Moreover, the reader gets a better sense of the true weight, or weightlessness, of humanity’s ever expanding frontier, and the true significance, or lack thereof, of their role in this expansion.
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I, for one, absolutely loved this book. I think the reason I personally am so drawn to it is because of my love for nature and geography. The bountiful amount of breathtaking imagery in this book truly made me smile while turning the pages. Each chapter consists of numerous accounts of Earth’s beauty from countless regions of the globe, and I think there are two things that make these descriptions so alluring. First, the common denominator throughout all of the painted pieces of scenery I read about was motion. The style was distinctive because typically, natural imagery is static – it can be rich in detail and cover a wide range of vision but the domain remains the same. On the contrary, as Harvey wrote it (or as the astronauts saw it), the natural wonders present in the book were always reaching new horizons, morphing into further atlas, as the earth reeled backwards. And that’s another thing – the earth’s movement itself put the book into an interesting perspective: the space station’s orbit around the earth was written as its reciprocal, meaning it came across as though the vessel was still and the planet was spinning away from the viewer, revealing her spherical beauty one coordinate line at a time. I think this brought the earth to life, and this animation was a key theme in the book. Additionally, the diction in the imagery itself made
Redefining Refuge: How U.S. Refugee Policy Has Changed By Grace Browne ‘28
Across the globe, an estimated 25 million refugees are currently living in long-term exile. For an average of 10 to 15 years, they live in foreign nations, with no knowledge of when, or if, they will have the opportunity to build a permanent life. Historically, the US has been a vital global leader in welcoming many of these displaced people. Since the inception of the U.S. Refugee Program in 1980, the American president has had the power to set a ceiling for the number of refugees who may be admitted to the country. Despite significant variance, the cap has averaged around 100,000 refugees annually. From 2022 to 2025, the ceiling stayed steady at 125,000. In recent years, the most common countries of origin were Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Venezuela, with our refugee community here in Charlottesville being largely Afghan. In 2026, the US’s admissions limit was lowered by 94% to 7,500 refugees, the smallest yearly allowance in history. In addition to this drastically reduced number, the spots are now predominately reserved for one specific group of people. From October 1, 2025 to June 6, 2026, 6668 refugees were admitted to the United States; 6665 of these refugees were South African Afrikaners. In recent months, the refugee ceiling was increased to 17,500 refugees to admit additional Afrikaners. The prioritization of Afrikaners has gone beyond preference; it has redefined the meaning of a refugee. According to the UNHCR, “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.” However, Afrikaners do not have to cross an international border to apply for refugee status. Instead, they fill out an online application and remain in their homes until they move to the United States. The changes in the Refugee Program have affected hundreds of thousands: both those waiting indefinitely in camps and those recently settled here in America. A 2025 federal law narrowed eligibility for SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act benefits for many refugees, making the transition to their new lives in America more difficult. They often arrive with little English knowledge,
Summery & Review of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital Cont. the earthly illustrations stand out to me. This is because instead of just using nature-related adjectives and personification, the earth’s crust and the light bouncing off of it was written in such a proximal way. In other words, Harvey writes the earth to make it feel ours. Hence, she wove in sentiments regarding the havoc we’ve wreaked on the ecosystem, and I believe the relationship she built between the reader and the earth, through the eyes of the astronauts, helps inspire opposition to pollution in her audience.
Moreover, the fashion in which Harvey displayed just how destructive humans are is another feature that makes the book distinctive. While initially focusing her observations on how surprisingly humanless the earth appears from space at first glance – city lights invisible in the daylight, a lack of man-made creation physically large enough to be seen from 250 miles above – she later makes known the clear evidence etched into the earth of our kind’s unkind force. The receding white, the growing blue, the scorched vastness and extreme weather. In my view, this evolution in the temperament of her observation is an attempt to split open the common human denial of our effect on the environment’s trajectory. On a lighter note, this is a great book. I hesitate to call it a story - I see it as more of a one sided conversation. A strikingly beautiful one, at that, which makes clear to me the importance of listening, of building a connection through observation and understanding rather than intervention. P.S. In this review, I mostly discussed the side of the book focused on the earth, but just as much exploration can be done into humanity and its meaning, which is also written about in a most stunning way.
Redefining Refuge Cont. few financial opportunities, and a lack of community. National organizations like the IRC and local non-profits like International Neighbors and Cville Tulips do their best to step in to help despite drastic funding cuts, but recent changes have created an uphill battle for our newly settled neighbors.
Sheep Detectives: A MustWatch from this Summer By Quinn Humphreys ‘27
I did not expect to get emotional over a group of talking sheep. I chose to watch Sheep Detectives with certain expectations about the kind of movie it would be. On paper, it sounds like a predictable and unassuming film for younger audiences, but due to its lovable, chaotic characters and incredible delivery of a very sweet message, this movie will work its way into the heart of every viewer.
Rethinking Success in Microlending By Liam Gundersen ‘28 Every investment decision requires an objective. In traditional finance, investors maximize financial return while managing risk. With microfinance lenders and institutions must decide which borrowers to support in order to maximize impact. This problem requires two considerations. The first consideration determines the direct impact of a loan while the second determines how much additional impact that capital can create over time through a high rate of repayment. To explore this relationship between repayment and impact, I used metrics that I developed for STAB Microfinance’s loan analysis tool. The impact score uses an LLM to evaluate each loan across multiple dimensions of social impact, including borrower vulnerability and the immediate, future, and community benefits. I then compared these impact scores with the loan’s default risk generated by a predictive machine learning model trained on historical Kiva data. The results were unexpected. A linear regression of 50 loans, randomly selected from a historic
The 2026 film with standout cast members such as Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Bella Ramsey, and Brian Cranston centers around a flock of sheep whose shepherd reads murder mysteries to them every night. When the shepherd is found dead, it is up to his flock to solve the case. Rahul Menon, in a Script Magazine review, writes that it blends “the pastoral warmth of Babe with the puzzle driven pleasures of Knives Out,” a combination that honestly shouldn’t work as well as it does. Throughout the movie, the flock starts to question everything they knew about the world. Through loss, grief, and confusion, the sheep learn about acceptance and courage, and although it is definitely still a silly comfort movie, it doesn’t stray away from the heavier topics.
This movie is certainly a hidden gem, and it has something for everyone. I went in expecting a childish movie to watch over dinner, but I was completely wrong. Sheep Detectives is a funny and surprisingly thoughtful whodunnit, and if you do watch it, prepare to care more about a flock of sheep than you ever thought you could.
Rethinking Success in Microlending Cont. dataset ranging from 2005 to 2015, yeilded an r2 value of .001, meaning only 0.1% of the variation in impact scores is explained by its linear relationship with default risk. In other words, there was no meaningful relationship between a loan’s predicted default risk and its impact score. While this analysis does not prove that no relationship exists, it challenges two common assumptions about microlending. The first is that repayment serves as a proxy for impact. Due to the difficulty of retrieving accurate impact data from individual borrowers, repayment is one way that lenders or researchers often judge the impact of individual loans. Repayment is seen as proof that the loan financed viable economic activity. Our findings suggests, however, that the extent to which this is true or directly connected with improvements to quality of life may have been overestimated. Critics of the use of repayment as a proxy for impact point to situations in which borrowers struggling to repay debt will take on more debt, sell property or other assets, or stop paying for basic needs such as quality food or their children’s education in order to repay their debt. Conversely loans that cover borrowers’ medical bills, tuitions, or food costs, lead to limited viable economic activity, but can be incredibly impactful. The second assumption is that maximizing impact requires accepting higher default risk. If that tradeoff were consistently present, we would expect to observe a strong relationship between default risk and impact. We saw none. Instead, high-impact opportunities appear to exist across a wide range of risk levels, suggesting that helping borrowers and maintaining strong repayment performance are not competing objectives. Ultimately, these findings suggest that inefficient allocation of capital could be one factor contributing to the shortcomings of microfinance. If repayment and social impact are largely independent, then it is plausible that there are loans with both a high potential for impact and a high likelihood of repayment. However it is only possible to recognize these loans by evaluating repayment risk and impact independently.
Surf’s Up: Album of the Summer By Josephine Carter ’27 In true summer fashion, I spent the last three months listening to the Beach Boys so much that I think Brian Wilson’s twiddling melodies and spacey harmonies may be the waiting room music in my mind for the rest of my life. In particular, I kept returning to Surf’s Up, with its charming sun-and-sandstreaked title contrasted against the album cover: a moody painting of James Earle Fraser’s statue “End of the Trail.” This 1971 album has a hopeful and dreamy quality to it that I find myself searching for in the music I listen to during the summer months. The lyrics of the album all echo themes that surround the passage of time, change, and decay, a kind of deterioration that isn’t rotten but instead hints at the excitement of renewal.
One of my favorite songs on the album is; “Long promised road.” The song is about one’s ability to change the future, to break out and “sew up the wounds of evolution.” Carl Wilson, lead vocalist and youngest Wilson brother, wrote and composed this song on his own and plays every instrument in the recording, making it his first solo composition, and it is a standout among the 10 tracks and listening to him sing, one starts to believe that they are not doomed after all. But the true star of the album is the final and title track: “Surf’s Up.” Co-Written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks (with Wilson as composer and Parks as lyricist), “Surfs Up” was only the second song the duo ever collaborated on. Initially written and recorded in 1966 during the infamous “Smile Sessions,” “Surf’s Up” ended up being one of the few songs not scrapped entirely, yet also not included on the eventual 1967 Smiley Smile album. “Surf’s Up” is not of the early Beach
End of Summer Jams “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” The Beach Boys “Stupid Song” Olivia Rodrigo “Dreams” Cranberries “Dine N’Dash” The Strokes “Driveway to Driveway” Superchunk
Surf ’s Up Cont. Boys cheery doo-wop sound, consisting of lyrics that make the listener imagine sailboats and the scent of sunscreen, but is instead an airy ballad, mainly comprised of solo piano and vocal harmony with bits of orchestral and brass instruments to add to the echoey and delicate sound of the entire song. Similar to the feeling behind the art on the cover, the lyrics of “Surf’s Up” describe images of a velvet draped concert hall and its wealthy, blasé audience. The distinct clink of the hi-hat is the tinkling of jewelry and the sharp notes of the piano are the movement of the conductor’s baton, all used as a representation of Park’s and Wilson’s perspectives on the changing tide of American culture in the late 60s. In my opinion, all of the Beach Boys most meaningful songs (lyrically meaningful that is) were written by Van Dyke Parks. He has a certain way of writing so nonsensically that it somehow makes perfect sense and that sentiment sums up Surf’s Up as an album. Originally titled LandLocked, Surf’s Up is an album that describes over and over how humans have trapped ourselves, whether it’s the boxes we put ourselves and others in or the way we blindly take from the world around us. Regardless of this, it does not leave the listener without hope.
“I Do” Stray Kids “If Not for You” George Harrison “Hung velvet overtaken me / Dim chandelier awaken me / To a song dissolved in the dawn / (Bygone, bygone) / The music hall, a costly bow / The music all is lost for now” - Surf’s Up, The Beach Boys, 1971
Literary Travels A Thousand Splendid Suns Khalid Hosseini
Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishigiro The Odyssey Homer (Translated by Emily Wilson) The Woman Destroyed Simone de Beauvoir
White Noise Don Delillo
Perspective(s) Laurent Binet
Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief Quinn Humphreys ‘27 Senior Editor Imogen Fagan ‘27 Formatting Head Nori Zhang ‘27
Editor’s Note Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone has had a wonderful summer! It’s so great to see the entire Upper School community back on campus together. We are thrilled to share the Back to School Edition of the Belfield Banter with y’all. The Banter staff has been working hard over the summer to publish this edition on the first day of school, so huge shoutout to everyone who helped make the Back to School Edition possible. We’re always looking for more writers, editors, and formatting team members, so please reach out if you’re interested in being a part of staff or helping out in any way. We would love to have you! Enjoy the articles and the start of the school year! Quinn Humphreys (Editor-in-Chief)
Beach Read Emily Henry
The Summer I Turned Pretty Jenny Han
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