The independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis since 1878 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
VOLUME 143, NO. 11
MARRIED STUDENTS
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FACULTY FELLOW
The average marriage age is 32 years, but these WashU students already have rings (Scene pg A4)
What life is like for the adults who live alongside students in a dorm on the South 40 (Scene pg A5)
RETHINKING LEGACY
The University refers to one of its founders as an abolitionist, but was he really one? (Forum pg B1)
SU FALL ELECTIONS OPEN
What’s at stake in today’s SU elections KASEY NOSS AND ORLI SHEFFEY NEWS EDITORS Editor’s note: This article contains discussion of sexual assault. Resources for anyone impacted by these topics are listed in the online version of this article. The Student Union fall elections are here, and although they typically do not garner much student attention, this year’s election is highly contested. Here is what you should know: When can you vote in the elections? Online voting began Thursday, Nov. 18 at 12:00 a.m. and ends on Monday, Nov. 22 at 11:59 p.m. a Editor’s note: This article contains discussion of sexual assault. Resources for anyone impacted by this topic is listed at the bottom of this page. The Student Union fall elections are here, and although they typically do not garner much student attention, this year’s election is highly contested. Here is what you should know: When can you vote in the elections? Online voting began through WUGO at midnight and ends on Monday, Nov. 22 at 11:59 p.m. Which seats are contested? Twenty-two students are running for 11 open Treasury seats and 20 students are running for 11 open Senate seats. There are two contested elections in the Arts & Sciences Council, with two students running for VP of Academic Outreach and two students running for VP of Administration. You can see some candidates’ platforms in SU’s voter guide. What power do these positions have? The Treasury consists of 22 elected students who have the power to allocate all of the money from the student activities fee, which is equal to 1% of the cost of undergraduate tuition. Last year, the Treasury passed a general budget of $3.9 million, while still denying $618,811 of requested funds. Last week, the Treasury unanimously reallocated $145,000 from funding originally designated for fall WILD to the spring WILD budget. In addition to allocating large sums of money, the Treasury hears appeals from student groups and approves new student groups. The Senate consists of 22 students who advocate for the student
SEE ELECTION, PAGE A2
CURRAN NEENAN | STUDENT LIFE
Students discuss funding appeals at Tuesday night’s Treasury meeting. Eleven Treasury positions and 11 Senate positions are up for election this weekend.
Some frustrated with SU funding ahead of elections GRACE KENNARD SENIOR NEWS EDITOR Students expressed frustrations with Student Union’s allocation of funding ahead of fall elections this week, though Wednesday’s resolution of a miscommunication alleviated some concerns regarding Treasury’s Nov. 9 decision to reallocate fall WILD funding for the spring. The frustrations come as SU fall elections open today and as SU continues an overhaul of its financial system, with the most significant change in the student group funding process moving from budget allocation to flat and rolling appeals-based funding. Senior Briana Garil, president of Hillel Leadership Council (HLC), submitted an opinion submission to Student Life calling for changes to the process of allocating SU funds, specifically the appeals system. Twenty-seven additional student group leaders signed the submission, including the president of Catholic Student Union, co-executive Directors of Lunar New Year Festival and executive director of WashU Dance Marathon. “We, the student groups signed on to this statement, have seen, experienced and/or recognized the consequences of significant
flaws in the financial structure of Student Union, particularly in how it allocates funding to student groups,” the submission reads. “As SU exists today, one person (the Vice President of Finance) is able to review all student group appeals under $1,000 without oversight, opening the door for personal bias and discriminatory practices to influence who receives funding, how much, and when.” Garil told Student Life in an interview that the motivation behind the statement and why she thinks so many student groups are signing on is that one individual should not hold unilateral power. “It’s the unilateral power to make those decisions without contest,” Garil said. “There’s no way to appeal the appeal, in a sense. So I truly believe that deep down it is a systematic issue, regardless of if we’ve seen elements of discrimination.” Vice President of Finance senior Fadel Alkilani told Student Life in an interview that he did not believe that the VP of Finance held too much power in deciding the appeals under $1,000, adding that he wanted students to come to him to address specific appeal decisions. “If anyone has any issues… I would love if you gave me a specific example, because I don’t want
to be biased,” Alkilani said. “I want to be as fair as possible with my funding decisions, and I run my funding decisions by financial leadership very often, especially if I’m iffy about them. And you know, these things are always murky, because it’s always a judgment call when you’re funding something.” Garil went on to detail a specific example that motivated her to draft this statement. HLC was planning a Pride Shabbat dinner in partnership with multiple other groups on campus. Since the appeals submission was at the beginning of
October and it was only a couple of weeks before the program would take place, HLC decided to submit an appeal under $1,000 at $980. When the appeal was rejected, Garil found that the explanation was “very vague” and insufficient. Explaining some of his appeals decision-making process, Alkilani said there are multiple aspects of the appeals review process. “Sometimes, something isn’t close enough to the stated mission of the group and Student Union’s
SEE TREASURY, PAGE A3
A CAPPELLA DOUBLE FEATURE ON THE 40
HOLDEN HINDES | STUDENT LIFE
The Mosaic Whispers perform in Risa Commons last weekend.
How Dining Services has addressed student complaints this semester JULIA CLEARY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
SARA REED | STUDENT LIFE
A student grabs a slice of pizza from the Bear’s Den.
With Bite of St. Louis and local food trucks, Dining Services has been working this semester to expand and improve dining options on campus in an effort to address complaints from students about the variety and quality of campus food. The complaints come as Dining Services struggles to compensate for supply chain interruptions and staffing issues. Washington University Associate Director of Dining Operations Andrew Watling said the food trucks were “brought in largely to help us add more variety and options where we’re having a
hard time staffing, especially some of the opening shifts at Bear’s Den.” Some students have liked the addition of the food trucks in front of the South 40, which have ranged from Seoul Taco to Zacchi to Pappy’s. Sophomore Kiana Angela Macharia said that she has been to the food trucks three times and “two of the three times I really liked the food” and that she would go again. Other students were frustrated by longer lines at food trucks. “A lot of times when they start, I’m on campus and I’m not able to get the food truck stuff, and I know that even if you get there at 5:00 [p.m.] you can be waiting for
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an hour,” sophomore Lara Briggs said. “It’s often not even an option to get that because I would be joining the line at 5:30 [p.m.] and they might be sold out by then.” In addition to food trucks, Dining Services has implemented other food initiatives such as Bite of St. Louis, which brings local food to campus dining. Moreover, Watling said that Dining is aware of students’ wishes for more food variety and is attempting to bring back more custom options, such as Danforth University Center quesadillas — a widely popular food choice before the pandemic.
READ MORE AT STUDLIFE.COM
A2 STUDENT LIFE
GRACE KENNARD & ORLI SHEFFEY | SENIOR NEWS EDITORS | NEWS@STUDLIFE.COM
theFLIPSIDE THURS 18 SUNNY 48/26
FRI 19
MOSTLY SUNNY 49/35
SAT 20
CLOUDY 54/41
TUE 23
MON 22
PARTLY CLOUDY 42/24
PARTLY SUNNY 48/36
SUN 21
PARTLY CLOUDY 57/26
WED 24
MOSTLY CLOUDY 56/38
EVENT CALENDAR THURSDAY 18 PAD Presents: ‘The Science of Leaving Omaha’ A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. The Performing Arts Department is proud to present “The Science of Leaving Omaha,” an originally commissioned and produced play by the PAD. The play, written by Carter Lewis and directed by Andrea Urice follows an interaction between a funeral home worker and a widower as he mourns his late wife. The show opens Nov. 18 at 8 p.m. with performances on Nov. 19 and 20 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 20 and 21 at 2 p.m. Tickets are free for WashU students.
FRIDAY 19 Roundtable Event: Community Centered Data Practice Virtual Event, 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. This virtual event hosted by the Social Policy Institute will introduce responsible and equitable data-sharing practices for social development organizations in the St. Louis area. To access the Zoom link for the event you must register online through Eventbrite. Kids on Campus Sketch Comedy Show Village Black Box, 8 p.m. - 9 p.m. Kids on Campus is back with its first live sketch comedy show in 1.5 years. There will be two performances of the show — one on Friday Nov. 19 at 8 p.m. and on Saturday Nov. 20 at 8 p.m.
SATURDAY 20 Film Screening: ‘Since I Been Down’ Brown Hall 100, 7:30 p.m. The film “Since I Been Down” follows a group of prisoners dealing with the effects of the 1993 three-strike law passed by the state of Washington. The law relegated children the State deemed irredeemable superpredators to prison for life without parole. “Since I Been Down” spotlights one of these children — now an adult — Kimonti Carter and shows how these prisoners have created a community of healing and educated through self-motivated efforts.
SUNDAY 21 Choir Concert E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall, 560 Music Center, 7 p.m. Works by Tallis, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Walker, Whitacre and others will be performed. The event will also be live streamed.
TUESDAY 23 The Myth of the Thanksgiving Story: Transforming our Relationship to this Beloved Holiday Virtual Event, 12 p.m. - 1 p.m. Hosted by the School of Medicine Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, this event hopes to bring awareness to the community about the first Thanksgiving and how we understand that truth while spending time with family and friends. Articles that will be discussed during the event can be found online, as can the link to register.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK ‘Tis the time to be thankful! Are you on good terms with your freshman year roommate? Yes: 46.4% Kind of: 32.1% No: 21.4% Check our Instagram this week for next week’s question! Responses will be published here every Thursday.
ELECTION from page A1
body to administrators. Senate releases reports and resolutions to advocate for student concerns and opinions, such as calling on the University to achieve carbon neutrality, advocating for the expungement of marijuana and alcohol offenses from student conduct records and supporting options for less expensive textbooks. There are four committees senators can sit on: Academic Affairs, Campus and Residential Experience, Diversity and Inclusion and Health and Wellness. The Arts & Sciences Council meets with the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and relevant faculty committees to relay student concerns and bridge connections between faculty and students. Which issues are at stake in this election? At an SU online candidate forum Monday evening, candidates were divided on the future of Greek Life. While the 2021-2022 Student Union platform advocated for “working together with the student body to abolish
Greek Life,” including promoting the dehousing of fraternities, rejecting InterFraternity Council (IFC) and Women’s Panhellenic Association (WPA) recruitment and attending and supporting protests, some candidates spoke in support of Greek Life. “I think Greek Life has a place on WashU’s campus,” sophomore Senate candidate Ned Dybala said. “I think it’s important that we all hold Greek Life accountable but at the same time, I think it’s important that we’re able to see the positive impact that Greek Life has on this campus, that it has had in years past and that it will continue to have. It’s a great place for people to find role models and friends for life.” Freshman Artsci VP of Administration candidate freshman Alan Wang agreed with Dybala. “I think Greek Life is very necessary because historically and statistically, people have connected to very helpful social networking resources through Greek Life and [it] boosted GPA and leadership
ability. And with that said, I think we need to repurpose Greek Life and eliminate all the bad things such as sexual assaults by bringing in WPA and IFC to serve as a bridge and a protector between different fraternities.” Freshman Treasury candidate Jonathan Sagel said that he believed “Greek Life does have a place on this campus,” and referred to instances of sexual assault as “mistakes” and “poor decisions.” Freshman Senate candidate Hussein Amuri directly responded to him. “You referred to the many instances of sexual assault abuses [and] racism in Greek Life as ‘mistakes’ when it’s clearly a big, big problem,” Amuri said. “Greek Life has no place on our campus because too many times people have been hurt; people have been dehumanized.” Sophomore Senate candidate Seth Fisher-Olvera also responded to Sagel. “When you look at the history and the repetitiveness — they’re not ‘mistakes,’ anymore — it is an epidemic of sexual assault. And I think the fact
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
WU prepares for more active flu season amid ongoing pandemic As winter approaches, the Washington University campus community is preparing for a more active flu season amid COVID-19 through measures such as the continued indoor mask mandate and the flu vaccine requirement for students that went into effect Nov. 1. Although active COVID19 cases have remained relatively low on the Danforth campus, Habif Health and Wellness Center Executive Director Cheri LeBlanc believes that winter conditions and more indoor activities could result in an increase of COVID-19 and flu cases. To address student’s medical needs when Habif is closed on the weekends and in the evenings, Washington University has partnered with TimelyCare, a telehealth service, as a way for students to get evaluated after hours. “Habif is back to full scheduling for students with any medical concerns. We are seeing many patients with cough/colds,” LeBlanc said in a statement to Student Life. “All are being tested for both COVID and flu. Most of the tests are negative for these diseases, so the infections are from the usual viruses circulating in the community this time of year.” With most classes being in person this semester, some students have noticed an increase in the amount of coughing among students during classes and other campus activities. “I think it should be more like if you have to excuse yourself from a cough, maybe you shouldn’t be sitting in that class,” freshman Sam Brady-Myerov said. “I hear that a lot of people will get sick and then they go get tested for COVID, and it’s not COVID, but they’re still still sick and they still go to class because it’s not COVID.” As in-person activities have increased compared to last semester, LeBlanc believes more student interactions could be an explanation as to why more students are getting sick with non-COVID-19-related illnesses.
“It is not unusual for students to catch more than their average number of colds when starting university. I have seen this for the 30+ years I have been in Student Health. When people come together from all over the world and engage in social activities it is common for respiratory viruses to circulate and infect many people,” LeBlanc wrote. Senior Ritu Trivedi believes that professors should extend some of the accommodations made for students with COVID-19 to other illnesses like the flu. “I think having that extra precaution[ary] measure and having greater allowance in being able to attend class on Zoom or stuff like that is helpful and decreases the pressure of going to class even though you’re not feeling well,” Trivedi said. Last winter, the number of flu cases across the country hit record lows, likely due to the measures that were being taken to prevent COVID-19 also preventing the flu. “We are just about 100% certain we’ll see more of [the flu] this year, compared to last year, but we really don’t know if it’s going to be a terrible flu season - which is something that could happen and we’re a bit concerned about that - or if it will still be somewhat muted because there is still some degree of masking going on in our broader community,” Dr. Steve Lawrence, one of the University’s top infectious disease experts, said. According to Lawrence, the most important measures that make a difference in keeping COVID-19 case numbers low are having a vaccinated campus and wearing masks. Despite more in-person activities and more students on campus, COVID-19 numbers are lower compared to last year. However, Lawrence also stressed the importance of remaining vigilant with these measures to prevent increases in numbers as the weather gets colder. “If you do have symptoms, you really do need to test so that it doesn’t lead to a cluster that could impact operations. and so I think it’s just important to still remember the screening
as a tool is not necessarily popular, people love to do it. But even if the tool itself isn’t being used, the concepts are critical. Don’t go to class, or even worse don’t go to a party. If you’re having symptoms, please get tested before going to a party,” Lawrence said. Although Brady-Myerov supported and complied with the flu vaccine requirement, she believes Habif and the University could have communicated with students in more ways about the Nov. 1 deadline. “I was a bit not happy with how WashU told us. We got like one email and it was at the bottom of an email that was like, hey, you need it by next week. I was like, oh, okay, I guess I need this and there was one available slot to sign up. I was just more frustrated that they never told us and then had very limited availability to get [the flu shot], and the only CVS is like a 20-30 minute walk from campus,” Brady-Myerov said. Although the first step in preventing both the flu and COVID-19 is getting vaccinated, Lawrence believes there are other measures students can take to further reduce their risk. “If you want to completely avoid or minimize your chances of getting COVID or flu to very low levels, after being vaccinated, the next step is just a simple rule: don’t spend time indoors with other people that you don’t live with while unmasked,” Lawrence said. After wearing masks for over a year, Lawrence does believe there is potential for a mask-free future, possibly as early as latespring. In the meantime, St. Louis city and county both still have indoor mask mandates in effect, which requires the University to continue its indoor mask mandate. “I also think there’s a plausible chance--and I think a lot of us believe this--that at some point in the spring we will probably see some sustained decreases to the point where we don’t think wearing masks universally is going to be necessary to keep risk at a very acceptable level,” Lawrence said.
is, is that fraternities should basically commit to sexual assault prevention training and bystander training. And if they don’t do that, then they should face repercussions and potentially get kicked off campus,” FisherOlvera said. “If they’re not able to commit to those things, I think it’s indicative of a continued apathy towards sexual assault.” After candidates responded to Sagel, he apologized in the Zoom chat. “To everyone, my use of the word mistake was wrong, and I’m extremely sorry. I was trying to speak fast and clearly was wrong regarding the use of the word ‘mistake.’ If I were to go back in time, I would replace that word with something to adequately address the problems that Greek Life causes. My apologies to all.” Although some candidates spoke in favor of Greek Life, others, including freshman Treasury candidate Saish Satyal, advocated for its abolition. “[Greek Life] ends up being more of a harm than a good,” Satyal said. “When
students look at SAE and then commonly call it ‘sexual assault expected,’ I think abolition is sort of the best route to take.” Mental health was another issue discussed at the candidate’s forum Monday night with the conversation around mental health on campus being a pressing issue, exacerbated by the pandemic. The moderators, freshmen election commission members Sarah Karbachinskiy and Soomin Kim, asked candidates what tangible steps they plan to take to address student mental health concerns. “There are many things that contribute to mental health. And much of that stems from students’ academics and so as VP of Academic Outreach, like I’ve said multiple times before, it’s important to create better standards between faculty and students,” sophomore Sai Vuda said. “And I know many people echo this sentiment as well, of creating better communication between faculty and staff and making it easier for
students to be able to communicate their concerns with their respective faculty. I think that will do a lot in promoting mental health among students.” “In terms of practical actions that I would take to respond to mental health, first would be to catalogue the current quality of therapists that we have available on campus,” junior Treasury candidate Michael Allison said. “Step two would be to survey the market in our surrounding area to see what the quality of the competition of therapists are and improving the quality of WashU mental health because that is the seminal concern that has been mentioned about our mental health services — the quality.”
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
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STUDENT LIFE A3
WU senior’s tech start-up raises $1.5 million NINA GIRALDO STAFF REPORTER Utopia Labs, a business founded by a Washington University senior, raised $1.5 million of equity-based venture capital funding in its efforts to increase the efficiency of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). DAOs, organizations that operate without human intervention and by means of a programming code, provide a simple structure for groups across the globe to pool money together and make strategic decisions with these shared resources. As a company, Utopia Labs helps “DAOs focus on what’s important by building the
infrastructure to support them as they scale.” Co-founder and chief operating officer senior Pryce Yebesi is taking an extended leave of absence from the University to dedicate himself to Utopia full-time. He insisted that though it sounds like a leap of faith, this was something he always wanted to do. “Not only do I get the chance to build something that really aligns with my values,” Yebesi said. “The opportunity for impact is right there.” Launching their first product less than a month after beginning, Utopia quickly became successful, which Yebesi attributes to its “rockstar” team. With the rest of
Utopia’s co-founders living in Canada, the team met through crypto events on Discord and Twitter. Yebesi said that the diverse backgrounds and experiences from which each member comes allow members to “learn and grow” from each other, and each is excited for incoming members to join and do the same. Yebesi recognizes his past internships with Facebook and Invisibly Inc., his experience running the Code Black organization and being a teaching assistant for Academic Director and Professor of Practice of Entrepreneurship at the Olin Business School Doug Villhard as experiences that were all instrumental in
his current contributions to Utopia. In particular, Yebesi is interested in helping underserved communities build economic opportunity. “For the first time I’d say I think in history, what DAOs allow is for groups of people to pull money together and then make decisions on that money, and it provides a very easy structure to do that,” Yebesi said. “I’m super excited for… the potential for communities to be able to pull resources to make investments or in other projects or even their own community through these structures.” Villhard said Yebesi stands at the “forefront” of these new types of companies known as DAOs.
TREASURY from page A1 constriction of the stated mission of that group,” he said. “That’s one thing and the second thing is what precedent is set by funding a certain thing.” Both Garil and Alkilani said there should be checks and balances for the VP of Finance. “If there’s at least a mechanism where, say, the executive board is able to hear appeals that are being contested. That’s at least one way that’s better than the current system,” Garil said. “I think that there are possible checks and balances that need to be implemented,” Alkilani said. “I don’t think that necessarily we need to have a committee of people processing under$1,000 appeals. That’s not feasible.” Speaker of the Treasury senior Bryan Peltier echoed Alkilani’s claim that the logistics of the appeals process precludes Treasury from addressing every under$1,000 appeal. “Do I agree that yes, better decisions can be made the more people you put on something? Yes, but there’s also a logistical factor you have to consider with getting decisions back to groups in a timely manner,” Peltier said. “And it’s just the combination of those logistical issues and trying to get decisions back to student groups as fast as possible. I don’t think it’s a perfect system, but I think as of right now, it’s probably the best system that we have.” In addition to the concerns raised regarding the student group appeals process, Uncle Joe’s Peer Counseling and Resource Center and EST released a joint statement on Monday condemning the reallocation of fall WILD funds to unprecedented levels
Welcome
for spring WILD, stating that the funds should have been used to support the Student Union Mental Health Fund. Both Uncle Joe’s and SU Treasury released statements Wednesday addressing the “miscommunication” between student groups. “The mental health fund was brought up as an erroneous example of something that could potentially go underfunded if the student group appeals account runs out of money before the end of the school year,” the Treasury statement reads. At the Nov. 9 Treasury meeting, a Treasury representative had said that “Last year we discussed how WILD was an example of something we would spend a ton of money on and we would sometimes run out of money for other things, especially, in that case, it was the Student [Union] Mental Health Fund, stuff like that.” Alkilani told Student Life in an interview that the mental health fund has never run out of money and it currently has available funds. “As far as I know, though communication with [the Office for Student Success] has been a bit spotty, as far as I know it is operational, it has not run out of money,” Alkilani said. “So I think the central assumption of this, which is that the mental health fund is not being funded, is inaccurate.” In a statement to Student Life, Angstreich and Swenson wrote that upon reading the article in Student Life last week about the WILD funding reallocation, they were frustrated reading about Treasury representatives discussing whether the money could be spent elsewhere, particularly the Student Union Mental
Health Fund, and wrote to SU to understand the situation. “We emailed members of the Executive Student Union Board with our thoughts and specifically asked them about the quote from the previous Student Life article,” Angstreich and Swenson wrote. “However, the response we received was confusing and did not clarify any of our questions about the mental health fund. It also did not dispute the quote we had sent. We sent a follow-up asking why the mental health fund was not being prioritized and received no response.” Members of Uncle Joe’s and Treasury met Wednesday to clarify the situation. Despite the initial misunderstanding, members of both SU and Uncle Joe’s agreed that the University has failed to provide adequate mental health resources for students. “Maybe Student Union’s budget from the University should be reduced in order for the University to fund for [the mental health fund],” Alkilani said. “But the problem here isn’t Student Union. It’s Habif ’s job and the University’s job to allocate to Habif the amount of money needed to support the student body when it comes to these things.” “If the University is refusing to step up, should we provide help to students even if it is not our responsibility? For Joe’s, the answer has always been ‘yes,’” Angstreich wrote in a statement to Student Life. “That’s why our counselors take calls at 3 a.m., go through 100+ hours of training and regularly sacrifice their own time to help our community.”
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really invigorating. You start seeing problems all over the place that you want to solve to help people and then magical things start happening.” Villard suggested students interested in entrepreneurship should visit the Skandalaris Center, which he said Pryce did before founding Utopia Labs. “I believe that there are hundreds of WashU students like Pryce ready to have these opportunities as well, and I think he’s a great example to follow,” Villhard said.
“Pryce is an exceptional person who put himself while he was at WashU in the right places to learn as much as possible, so that he would eventually find this opportunity that he’s found and jump on it,” Villhard said. “It wasn’t magic. He went out and made this happen for himself.” Villhard emphasized the importance of any entrepreneur to not pay attention to any possible failures, mistakes or sacrifices involved in the making of a business, but rather focus on the creative opportunity and the impact that it will ultimately have. “You’re really spurring the economy forward when you get this stuff right,” he said. “Once you get a mindset around that it’s
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Editor’s note: Doug Villhard is a member of Washington University Student Media, Inc., the Student Life publisher.
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VOLUME 143, NO. 11 Matthew Friedman Editor-in-Chief editor@studlife.com Jayla Butler Em McPhie Ted Moskal Isabella Neubauer Managing Editors Grace Kennard Orli Sheffey Senior News Editors news@studlife.com Olivia Poolos Julia Robbins Senior Scene Editors scene@studlife.com
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
Tying the knot in college: Students on engagement and newlywed life KEONA DORDOR STAFF WRITER For many Washington University students, college brings a lot of firsts –– first time away from home, first time living semi-independently and often, a first serious relationship. For a select few, however, college brings both a first and a last: the end of casual dating, and the start of a lifelong commitment–– namely, marriage. Ella Henning: A match made in high school chemistry class It all started in a highschool sophomore science class for senior Ella Henning and her now-husband Matthias Henning. “We met in chemistry class, and we were best friends, and now we’re married,” she reminisced. They didn’t get together until their junior year of high school, though. “Lots of drama!,” she joked. But after about four years of dating, staying together throughout their upper-class years of high school and
throughout college, they tied the knot in the summer of 2020. The current national age for marriage is 32 years old; Ella departed from the norm and chose to get married almost 10 years before. “I think a lot of [the reason I chose to get married] has to do with my Christian background. It just changed my outlook on life.” Ella and Matthias attend church every single Sunday. While engaged, she routinely met with her reverend to prepare herself for marriage. With the support of her family, along with Matthias, they saw no reason to pause the progress in their relationship. “Why are we waiting for something that we’ve been preparing for and working on, and we know that we are the people that we want to work on things with and do life together?” Well aware of the questions and the doubts that come when people get married young, she noted, “I think I would say it’s working beautifully for me. And a lot
COURTESY OF ELLA HENNING
Ella Henning and her husband on their wedding day.
of that has to do with God. And then a lot of that has to do with a little circumstance and then also the work that you put in it.” So they threw away the cultural and collegiate norms and got married. They chose August of 2020 to get married, and some of her friends from Washington University were included in her wedding party. “Everyone in my circle was just so excited for me. I think more of the reception for them was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ it’s like an age shock. Now we’re in the realm of ‘some of my friends are married’ and ‘some of my friends are going out on a Thursday night.’” While Ella said that her marriage is one of the most important aspects of her life, she also makes it a point to prioritize her friendships. “Marriage has helped me see that I want [friendship] to be a higher priority in my life.” Ella noted the difficulty of balancing being a newlywed, a senior in college completing a dance major and simultaneously contending with what lies beyond college.“You have Matthias, somebody who is very go with the flow and then me, who needs structure, structure, structure.” As for the future? “Babies!” Ella immediately exclaimed. “You can put that on the record! I’ll show him the thing!” She laughed. “I very much love the idea of having a family, growing a family yeah, all of that stuff.
So I’m excited!” Emma Thorp: “I should just spend my life with my best friend” For Emma Thorp, an engaged graduate student at the University, getting married wasn’t about wanting a new experience. “At this moment in my life, I don’t think being married would really change my life dynamic, really that much at all,” she said. “The way that I live my life, the way that my partner and I live our lives together, whether or not we’re titled as being married, I don’t think would change our day-to-day at all.” In the past, though, Thorp never thought marriage was for her. “I used to get so sick of the idea of wanting to be next to the same person every day for my whole life.” But then she met Oldi her freshman year at WashU. After three years of being best friends, moving in together and living together for the whole pandemic, spending countless hours together and participating in various theatre productions together, she realized that Oldi was the one. Thorp made this realization while watching Gilmore Girls with Oldi — specifically during the scene in which Luke realizes he was in love with Lorelai. She explained how Luke received a tape that started to ask him questions. It inquired, “Think about the person that you want to tell the good news to.
COURTESY OF EMMA THORP
Emma Thorp and her partner during Halloween this year.
Do you see her face? Think about the person that you want to see as soon as you get home.” She, too, began to grapple with those questions. “Throughout all the questions, I was like, ‘[Oldi] is the person that I want to do all those things with. I should just spend my life with my best friend.’” So they got engaged. Inspired by her parents, who also didn’t have a traditional engagement but rather a conversation initiated by her mom and then a ceremony, they didn’t have an official proposal either. “I knew my whole life I did not want a surprise proposal or anything like that.” Thorp works as a wedding DJ on the weekends, so conversations about the aesthetics of her dream wedding flowed into some of their conversations. “I love weddings!” she said. “[Oldi] knew I was excited about weddings so like, she just kind of brought up, ‘Do you want to do that?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh yeah, of course.’ And then we just
started kind of planning our wedding.” As a three-two master’s student studying to become a substance-use therapist, both her and her partner’s busy schedules pose the biggest challenge in their relationship. “If anyone messes up, it affects the other person. Like if I’m late, or if I need to stop for something, that affects someone else now, someone who’s like waiting up on me. If I forget to get things in the grocery store, that no longer affects just me.” To Thorp, being engaged, and eventually married, means always making sure each partner is on the same page. And both she and Oldi are on the same page about moving to New York after graduation. “We also want to get a dog at some point in the near future. My partner is originally from New York. She’s staying in St. Louis for two years while I get my degree. Have you ever met a New Yorker? She is doing the ultimate sacrifice right now.”
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
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A look into a Living Learning Community for Muslim-American students OLIVIA POOLOS SENIOR SCENE EDITOR It’s still dark out at 6:40 a.m. when sophomore Muneeb Malik wakes up to pray for the first time each day. In fact, it’s supposed to be dark. Malik is a practicing Muslim, meaning that he prays five times each day, three of which must be in darkness. Malik isn’t the only one up that early, however; though he prays alone in the mornings, he is in sync with many other Muslim students on campus, most notably with three other suites on his floor. That’s because Malik lives in Sakeenah, a Living Learning Community (LLC) “designed to engage students around the Muslim-American experience, with an emphasis on communal, personal, spiritual and individual growth,” as described on the LLC website. Sakeenah, which means “tranquility,” is located in the Lopata and Village houses, specifically to be near prayer rooms in the basement, said Associate Director for Residential Faculty Engagement Stephanie Weiskopf. To Malik, the purpose is simple: Sakeenah is a group of people from all sorts of backgrounds that are connected through shared religion and way of life. “Even though we’re all Muslims, [we are] a very diverse group,” he said. “We just have this one thing in common that I think impacts all of our lives in almost an equal way, so given our situation we can live accordingly.” Sakeenah was started in the fall of 2016 through the efforts of WashU graduates Ali Ilahi and Mohammad Dialo, with Professor Younasse Tarbouni as faculty advisor. At first it was
a cultural group, which got together to pray and socialize together. In 2019, the club applied to be an LLC, in order to more easily fulfill cultural and religious needs –– such as communal prayer and live-in community. According to Malik, all members often socialize and pray together, and are friends outside their LLC as well. Sakeenah includes both men and women, each assigned a floor of a dorm in the village. Though there is almost an entire floor of men — three suites and 12 members –– there is so far only one women’s suite, with three members. The three women are the first to apply to Sakeenah, three years after it was initialized. For junior Sufyaan Ali, Sakeenah is a place where he feels comfortable practicing his religion, since everyone understands and accepts his beliefs. Living in Sakeenah also has practical benefits, especially on holidays. “Ramadan has fallen into the school year now, so I find it to be really helpful to have other Muslims to be around when I’m fasting, just to wake up to pray and eat our breakfast together,” Ali said. Sophomore Haziq LatifJangda emphasized that the friendships he has formed through Sakeenah are more than just casual social connections. “Sakeenah helps provide a certain line of stability, both spiritually and religiously, especially with so much going on and being a minority on campus,” he said. Sophomore Zanib Mairaj is an agent for the women’s branch of Sakeenah, meaning she is in contact with Residential Life and is a representative for the community. Coming from the
suburbs of Chicago, Mairaj didn’t have a robust community of other Muslims until coming to WashU. She roomed with two other Muslim girls freshman year, and this year the three were the first women who applied to be in Sakeenah. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here,” Mairaj said. She has appreciated the constant discourse and support that comes from being around more Muslim students. “Being a Muslim in America… it can be hard to navigate at times. Those conversations have allowed me to be more confident in my identity.” Sophomore and Sakeenah agent Ilyas Mehkri, who came from a larger hometown Muslim community, is appreciative of the diversity in Sakeenah. “We’re [all] on the same wavelength, but we all have different backgrounds, different experiences, and to learn from Muslims that have come from different hometowns... it’s a unique experience,” he said. An especially salient moment in the lives of many Sakeenah members occurred in the weeks following Sep. 11 this year, when a student’s protest ignited Islamophobic threats from hate groups across the country. That week, Malik said, members of Sakeenah were constantly checking in with each other about threats and the latest updates surrounding the event. “There were a lot of things going through my head, like all the time; it was just almost constant stress for a few days,” Malik said. “But if I was a woman wearing a hijab, I’d be so much more nervous about everything going on.” Mairaj, who wears
a hijab, did feel immense stress. “Me and the other women, you know, we’re very visibly Muslim, so we were a bit more nervous,” she said. “We actually took our name tags off our doors... for safety purposes.” Other members of Sakeenah stepped up to support those who felt unsafe. “If [people] chose not to go to classes, I would try to take as many notes as I [could]” Latif-Jangda said. “If they were afraid to leave the room, I would grab dinner for people.” Mairaj and the rest of Sakeenah were relieved that none of the threats aimed at Muslims at WashU became a reality. However, Malik was frustrated that conversations about Islamophobia only happened after Muslim students were stressed and scared. “I feel like things always have to happen for us to have these conversations that are so important,” he said. “Every time something does happen, it’s always like, in retrospect, ‘Oh, what could we have done better,’ but it’s never, ‘Oh, what can we improve for next time,’” he said. Most of Sakeenah’s current sophomores are not planning to live there next year, but are excited about the future of the community. Mairaj has heard of others hoping to join the women’s branch next year, and a few members are applying to be RAs for the Sakeenah floors. According to Weiskopf, LLCs will expand with the demands of the members –– meaning that the more people that join Sakeenah, the bigger the living space. Mairaj sighed when she admitted she probably will have to leave Sakeenah her junior year. “I’m going to miss it,” she said.
STUDENT LIFE A5
Inside the life of a faculty fellow ELLA URTON STAFF WRITER The hallways of WayCrow residential college are decorated by quirky name tags imbued with an RA’s genuine effort. A variety of music and other sounds emanate from within the modern doubles. However, one door on the hallway that is notably different from the rest. Instead of a quirky name tag, there is a whiteboard with undergraduate pleas for the latest chemistry quiz to be curved. This is the door of William Tolman, Vice Dean of Research and Entrepreneurship, and Bonnie Gruen, Senior Science Editor in the chemistry department. From the moment I got my housing assignment and began researching my residential college, I was fascinated by the idea of faculty fellows, professors who live within a residential college for a term of three to four years. It seems crazy that within the chaos of an undergraduate dorm building, there are professionals creating a home. After talking with Tolman and Gruen, I found that the incongruency is part of what makes the position enticing. They are able to be fully immersed in campus life and become a bigger part of the community while still leading lives otherwise similar
to their peers. The role of a faculty fellow requires taking on extra responsibilities to create the residential community. This is a coveted position with a long wait list of faculty, and the selection process prioritizes those with more teaching experience and established careers. Even though they live in a dorm building, each faculty fellow has a unique home layout that they can renovate before moving in. Renovations can be minimal, such as changing the paint color, or more extreme. For example, Tolman and Gruen took out an entire bedroom from the apartment to extend their living room, making it a spacious 2-bed-2-bath home within Nemerov. They have huge windows facing out towards Shepley and a tiled patio on which they can grill. They were sure to point out their apartment’s artistic nods to their time spent working at the University of Minnesota, like a portrait of Prince and a wood carving of the state.
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Tolman and Gruen stand in their Nemerov apartment.
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WashU’s founder was not an abolitionist: Who was William Greenleaf Eliot? ADAM TEICH, AIDAN SMYTH, CECILIA WRIGHT, DETRIC HENDERSON AND NKEMJIKA EMENIKE CLASS OF 2022, 2023, 2023, 2021, 2023 By most contemporary accounts, Washington University’s history with slavery begins and ends with its founder, William Greenleaf Eliot, who along with co-founder Wayman Crow established the school in 1853. Virtually all modern histories present Eliot as a strong abolitionist figure. In a 2016 article about Eliot and Archer Alexander, an enslaved Black man
University press release announcing WashU’s decision to join Universities Studying Slavery (USS), a consortium of 80 institutions examining their connections to slavery. Indeed, WashU’s own library guide brands Eliot as a “moderate abolitionist” who “came out strongly in favor of union and emancipation” when the Civil War broke out. But in the interest of honestly examining WashU’s relationship with the institution of slavery, a task that must be undertaken to understand and change the University’s relationship with the city of St.
devoted himself to improving education in the city and was instrumental in establishing the St. Louis Public Schools district, among numerous other educational institutions. He helped found the Western Sanitary Commission during the Civil War to provide much-needed medical care and supplies for sick and wounded soldiers. Eliot worked throughout his lifetime to construct the cultural and educational infrastructure that St. Louisans benefit from today. Despite these laudable efforts, Eliot was no abolitionist. Instead, he vehemently defended forms of gradual emancipation
understand the University’s role — our role — in shaping St. Louis’s racial past, present and future.
Courting colonization Five years before founding WashU, Eliot addressed the St. Louis’s Young Men’s Colonization Society as its president, boasting that he had been a friend of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and its efforts for 16 years. Colonization societies in the 19th century offered an alternative to immediate emancipation, dedicating themselves to colonizing Africa, specifically Liberia, with free Black Americans. While colonization societies attracted men opposed to the institution of slavery, their anti-slavery position often had more to do with creating a country without Black people than it did with achieving racial equality in the United States. Echoing the racist rhetoric that permeated colonization societies in the 19th century, Eliot explained to the Young Men’s Colonization Society in 1848 that “to place [Black people] upon an equal footing [to whites], to give them equal political, social, and civil privileges with the whites, is quite an impractical thing in our day, and probably will be impracticable for many generations to come, if not forever. I am
Authors’ note: This article was written in tandem with a 10-month-long research project being done under the guidance of Professor Iver Bernstein and Professor Carl Craver, with the end goal being that this research would support a new first-year Ampersand course entitled, “Rethinking WashU’s Relation to Enslavement: Past, Present, and Future.” The goal has always been, and continues to be, to shed some light on our university’s complicated and oftentimes violent history with St. Louis and enslaved people. We continue to embark on the ongoing task to fully recognize St. Louis’s Black history and the role our institution has played in neglecting those stories.
SCAN THIS QR CODE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION IN THIS STORY. by no means sure it is desirable [emphasis added].” He supported the gradual emancipation of slaves “on condition, or with the hope of [their] being removed to a country [Liberia] suitable for [their] physical, moral and social improvement.” Undoubtedly, Eliot’s justifications for supporting colonization and the conditional emancipation of slaves stood in sharp opposition to the core beliefs of the antebellum American abolitionist movement, which wedded an active and urgent engagement with the liberation of Black Americans to
a strong affirmation of the right of Black people to live in the United States.
W.G.E.: William, the gradual emancipationist Abolitionism, as Manisha Sinha explains in her landmark study of mid-19th-century abolitionist movements, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition,” was a radical movement that advocated strongly both against slavery and for Black citizenship. Abolitionism as conceived
SEE ELIOT, PAGE B2
COURTESY OF THE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ELIOT ARCHIVES
A young William Greenleaf Eliot. He co-founded Washington University in 1853.
whose tenacious efforts at self-emancipation during the Civil War Eliot assisted, WashU’s “The Source” described Eliot as “a Unitarian minister, staunch abolitionist and first president of Washington University [emphasis added].” The characterization of Eliot as an “abolitionist” was reiterated in the Spring 2021
Louis and the marginalized communities most directly impacted by slavery’s pernicious legacy, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: William Greenleaf Eliot was, by no measure, an abolitionist. WashU does have reason to celebrate some of Eliot’s contributions to the building of St. Louis. Eliot
and colonization, both of which were opposed equally vehemently by abolitionists at the time. In fact, Eliot was an anti-abolitionist, by definition and by his own insistence. Untangling why Washington University has insisted on revising historical memory so that Eliot is misbranded as an abolitionist is imperative if we are to
COURTESY OF THE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ELIOT ARCHIVES
Archer Alexander, model for the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington D.C., was the subject of Eliot’s “The Story of Archer Alexander: From Slavery to Freedom.”
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UNPACKING ELIOT’S LEGACY from page B1 at the time was incompatible with colonization precisely because the latter implies that white people knew what was best for Black Americans; this was not only antithetical to abolition, but it explicitly neglected Black people’s birthright citizenship claims, their right to self-determination and their stated desire to fully realize such self-determination in the United States. The ACS was explicitly antiabolitionist. Henry Clay, president of the Society, stated in 1837 that “It has been objected against the Society that… its purpose is
approach to emancipation. Sinha argues, in contrast, that abolitionists were immediatists, not gradualists. Indeed, Eliot decried those who supported immediate emancipation, writing in 1835 that he “would make any degree of effort, to induce [immediate emancipationists] to be still. Their zeal is wholly without knowledge; they know nothing of the true difficulties of the case, or they would not speak and act as they do… We would say to these erring philanthropists, ‘for God’s sake, desist; for liberty’s sake, for your coun-
it is notable that he seems to have avoided the topic from the pulpit. Notes on a sermon against slavery, it seems, were never delivered to his congregation, for example. And when in 1857, the year of the Dred Scott decision, the conference of Unitarian ministers in Alton voted to take an official doctrinal stance against slavery, Eliot felt so strongly that the Church should not take an official stance on the issue that he resigned his position as president of the conference. In the same month as that conference, Eliot wrote, “If the clergyman feels it
COURTESY OF THE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ELIOT ARCHIVES
A photograph of Eliot in his later years. He lived to the age of 75 and died in 1887.
to abolish slavery forthwith, and to let loose the untutored and unprepared slaves upon society. Both objections cannot be founded in truth. Neither is.” Black abolitionists, Sinha writes, were “the standard-bearers in opposing colonization,” and with their anti-colonization position, they “rejected any solution to slavery that did not encompass Black rights.” Eliot himself would have rejected the abolitionist label; his views on the matter were much more nuanced but squarely opposed to the demands of the abolitionists. In 1853, the year that marked both the founding of WashU and the year that Eliot was elected vice president of the Missouri Colonization Society, Eliot expressed in a letter to the editor of “The Christian Messenger” that he “would not advise the present emancipation of those held in bondage,” arguing for a more gradual
try’s sake!’” In 1862, Eliot mocked Northern abolitionists, who he saw as radicals that would thoughtlessly burn the country to enforce their morality: “The war is not felt, and the Abolition Pharisees having set the house on fire and with their hands + chuckle to see how splendidly it burns.” Eliot, not only as a University founder but also as a leading minister in the Unitarian Church and a prominent member of St. Louis society, was much more concerned about keeping the peace for the white moderates and his many social projects than he was about seeking justice for enslaved Black people. To call him an abolitionist is to whitewash Eliot’s true beliefs, running roughshod over views he considered deeply and took pride in. While there is no doubt that Eliot’s personal and professional writing evinces a clear moral stance against many aspects of the institution of slavery,
his absolute duty to discuss questions of constitutional law and judicial authority, and the like, let him do so on the week day at the political meeting, as a citizen; not on the Sabbath as a religious teacher, in the pulpit.”
Profit over principles
Eliot’s complex relationship with his anti-slavery beliefs can be further examined through his willingness to bankroll his fledgling university with money gifted by multiple enslavers and official supporters of the institution. Seven of Washington University’s 17 founding members were enslavers, including John O’Fallon, a significant land benefactor who enslaved 39 people in 1850. Also on the charter is John M. Krum, who ruled in a circuit court case that “no one but free white persons should attain to the condition of citizen in these United States [emphasis added]” as justification
for barring Charles Lyons, a free Black man, from living in Missouri without a license. Even Wayman Crow, a personal friend, co-founder of WashU and member of Eliot’s congregation for over 20 years, enslaved many people over decades before manumitting them in the 1850s. For someone who seemingly detested the institution of slavery, Eliot was clearly willing to associate himself and the institution he founded closely with several men who upheld it. This act alone represents, at the very least, a substantial concession by this builder of civic and educational institutions to the hard realities of attracting investment and allies in a slave state. Moreover, Eliot’s and the Washington University’s founders’ relationships with what might be called a foundational event of St. Louis’s racial experience — the horrific lynching of Francis McIntosh — is a disturbing but vital topic for future research, as the impact of this event still reverberates to this day. A Black boatman who had been arrested for killing a white deputy sheriff, McIntosh was pulled from jail by a murderous white mob and burned at the stake in April 1836, a sequence of events that according to at least one account all occurred within one hour of his setting foot on the St. Louis levee. O’Fallon, a founding member of the University, acted as the foreman of the grand jury of the McIntosh case and, as one of the region’s most influential men, must have played a substantive role in reaching the decision not to indict any of the individuals culpable for McIntosh’s death, though his personal contributions to the grand jury remain ambiguous. Eliot’s thoughts on McIntosh’s lynching and his contribution to the cultural landscape of St. Louis in the wake of this tragic event are more available to us than those of O’Fallon, having been immortalized in his September 1836 “Letter from St. Louis,” published in the Western Messenger. In the opening paragraph of his work, Eliot attempts to create an image of McIntosh that is wholly unsympathetic, someone who deserved some sort of severe punishment independent of the events on the St. Louis waterfront, writing that McIntosh “was, in the first place, obnoxious on account of his former insolent demeanor, from the fact that he had killed one or two whitemen at the south, and attempted to kill one of our citizens a year ago, and especially from his supposed connexion with abolitionists of Pittsburg [sic].” With the use of the word “especially,” Eliot designated McIntosh’s abolitionist connections as a more grievous sin than
even the supposed long history of murderous violence that Eliot constructed. Eliot built his argument from here, having made McIntosh into something of a moral monster: claiming that the lynching could have happened anywhere, that worse lynchings had happened in other cities and that St. Louis was, ultimately, a respectable city inhabited by moral people, at least no more disreputable than any other city. In a pivotal moment, Eliot chose to protect the reputation of St. Louis as a place of great future progress at the expense of closer and more humanizing attention to Francis McIntosh as a person, as a free citizen of Pennsylvania and as an American. Eliot did not reflect upon what it might mean for his city to be built on Francis McIntosh’s ashes.
Who was WashU for? All of this is to say that questions of Eliot’s and the University’s principles and practices in the founding era must be examined. No doubt, Eliot’s insistence on gradual emancipation seemed to wane as the country divided and descended into civil war, the primary outcome he was seeking to avoid with his gradualism. But Eliot held on to his colonizationist perspective even as contemporaries, such as President Lincoln, moved away from it. Moreover, men like Krum and Crow remained in their University positions decades after the Civil War; their influence was of long standing. Knowing this, we then must ask ourselves: To what extent were the beliefs and practices of Eliot and the men he relied upon a product of a desire for unity and compromise within a polarized city and country? To what extent were they a product of a white supremacist vision of the world, and what did that mean, exactly, in 1853? And were gradual emancipationists such as Eliot truly committed to the liberation of enslaved Black people in the U.S., or were they emancipationists in name only? Understanding Eliot will help us to better understand our university, its relationship with slavery and the history of St. Louis, for these histories are inextricably linked. If WashU is truly committed to examining those links, the way the University addresses the fraught legacy of the institution’s founders must be a critical starting point for that work. In a February 2019 statement discussing William Eliot’s relationship to Archer Alexander, Chancellor Martin describes Eliot as “a hero who used his privilege to become a catalyst for change. He was a man who continuously
STUDENT LIFE B2
fought for the rights of our African American colleagues and friends.” We know that Eliot tried to buy at least three enslaved persons with the intention of freeing them and supported the education of Black St. Louisans later in his life. But Eliot was not a continuous supporter of Black rights; after all, he presided over organizations that advocated for colonization and, ultimately, a United States devoid of Black Americans. There is even a “W.G. Eliot” listed in the 1840 census as owning at least two enslaved people, the only record of someone with that name in the city in the 1840 federal census. As far as we know, St. Louis City records only indicate one emancipation on the part of Eliot — Amanda Holmes on July 7th, 1845. We understand these evidentiary traces to create a more complicated version of Eliot than previously understood. History demands a more accurate picture of Eliot than the distorted one of him as an abolitionist and defender of Black rights. After all, the University’s motto is Per Veritatem Vis, strength through truth. We will become stronger as an institution, but more importantly as a community, as we uncover the truth about our relationship to slavery in the past and to the city of St. Louis in the present. Why does it matter that William Greenleaf Eliot was so demonstrably not an abolitionist? Why does it matter that he saw no meaningful future for African Americans in the United States? Why does it matter that he may well have enslaved people? Abolitionism was radical, indeed, but it was full of revolutionary possibility. It not only required the destruction of the institution of slavery but the rebuilding of an entire society that guaranteed a future for Black citizenship and self-determination. Eliot and his fellow associates were in the midst of constructing a city where slavery and white supremacy were often cultural and economic foundations for success; hence it is worth asking whether abolition had any place in St. Louis if these men were to keep their prestige and financial power. This raises perhaps the most profound and urgent question: Who was Washington University supposed to be for? And the answer, so it strongly seems, is for William Greenleaf Eliot and people like him — decidedly not for African Americans. What are the longer-term implications of this foundational fact for Washington University? The research that we and others are now doing will no doubt shed light on this complex and profoundly important question in the coming months and years.
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STUDENT LIFE B3
STAFF EDITORIAL
Once again, we need reform, not another public safety committee
I
n March, we asked the University to take tangible action toward removing the Washington University Police Department from mental health crisis response. Yet here we are: The University is back to square one, and students will have to wait for change once again. Washington University’s public safety committee first announced its recommendations to reimagine WUPD’s involvement in mental health crises in February 2021. In May, we saw the University promise to partner with a local provider to create a system wherein mental health crises calls are responded to by mental health professionals, not WUPD. Now, six months later, we have seen little change: Police officers still respond to campus mental health crises. After the long-awaited partnership with an outside mental health provider, Behavioral Health Response (BHR), failed to come together over the summer, the University plans to create another task force to
advise on the implementation of the public safety committee’s recommendations. With last semester’s public safety committee taking five months between creation and the generation of a plan, it’s once again unclear when and how further progress will be made. The failure to partner with BHR is not an excuse to give up or continue to push back these essential changes. We don’t need another committee — we need action. WUPD officers are not sufficiently trained to tackle mental health crises. And they are never going to be. Mental health crises are complex and difficult to navigate, and they deserve proper responses. As Tennyson Holmes, a student on the public safety committee, told Student Life in the spring, “For so long we’ve always thought if we could just give [police] more training, then the problem would solve itself over time. But the issue is… it’s never going to substitute for a degree in social work or a degree in counseling.” And even the
training the University promised in its May announcement still seems to be missing. Part of the implementation of the public safety committee’s recommendations involved training for the WUPD dispatch team, yet the WUPD training website currently just says “Under Construction…” Beyond a lack of training, a significant number of WashU students, especially students of color, have expressed not feeling safe around WUPD officers. While 68% of white respondents reported feeling comfortable during interactions with WUPD, that number was just 50% for Black respondents and 55% for Hispanic or Latino respondents. That lack of comfort potentially deters students from seeking aid in moments of crisis, making hard situations even more difficult. As Executive Vice Chancellor for Administration and Chief Administrative Officer Shantay Bolton told Student Life this month, WUPD gets an average of two mental health crisis calls
per month. But that number does not account for those who may hesitate to call because of distrust in the police. Mental health crises are happening on our campus, and as long as police officers are the responders, these crises will continue to be approached with an inadequate amount of training, and some may be left unaddressed due to hesitations to call WUPD. The University has implemented some structures that address mental health concerns, such as TimelyCare, which has partnered with the University to provide supplemental online mental health services. However, TimelyCare, in its online format, cannot provide aid in mental health crises that require in-person intervention; that role is still left to WUPD. This service does not address the promises made in February’s public safety committee. Existing programs like WashU Cares are helpful for connecting students to resources, and TimelyCare is
an important addition to student well-being on campus, but as long as WUPD remains the option for in-person crisis intervention, both students’ concerns and the University’s promises remain unaddressed. Directing police officers away from mental health crises should not be an unattainable goal. Throughout the country, various cities are reconsidering the role of their own police departments in mental health crisis response as more evidence emerges of the benefits of dispatching mental health providers instead of police. In Anchorage, Alaska, the city has created a program that pairs mental health clinicians with paramedics to respond to mental health crises. New York City has noticed improvements in mental health crisis response when approached by mental health specialists instead of police officers. Additionally, Washington University’s own Brown School of Social Work has partnered with the city of St. Louis, aiming to
provide social workers and mental health professionals as responders to mental health crises in the city. The growing success of these partnerships proves that the administration continues to be behind the times in prioritizing the safety and comfort of undergraduate students in crisis. While WUPD remains the only University resource for direct intervention in a mental health crisis, students still have the option to call BHR to receive care, which can be a valuable alternative for those seeking mental health help. However, BHR functions separately from the University, which does not solve the need for the current WUPD response to be replaced with trained mental health professionals — a promise made by the University back in May. WashU: If you care about your students, it’s time to reform your mental health crisis response — not by creating another committee, but by making changes now. No more stalling and no more empty promises.
OPINION SUBMISSION
A call for checks and balances in the allocation of SU funds BRIANA GARIL PRESIDENT OF HILLEL LEADERSHIP COUNCIL; UNDERSIGNED STUDENT LEADERS
Y
ou’ve spent weeks planning your student group’s latest program, agonizing over every last detail –– the content, the marketing plan, the location –– excitement building as your idea begins to materialize into reality. Yet, one crucial last piece remains. How will you receive the funds you need to succeed? With lofty aspirations for the year, Student Union’s annual flat funding can only carry you so far. You opt to follow SU’s small appeals process to get the supplemental programming you need. With only one week to
go before your program’s date, there is an unexpected twist: A brief email informing you that your appeal for funds has been denied. You struggle to find funding elsewhere, hoping this one decision doesn’t prove to be a fatal blow for your highly anticipated program. Worst of all, there feels like there’s nowhere to turn — minimal room for clarification on either party’s behalf and no potential for reconsideration of the funding decision. Though you were able to find an internal solution this time, the experience leaves you disheartened and discouraged from engaging in this process again. We, the student groups signed on to this statement, have seen, experienced and/ or recognized the consequences of significant flaws
in the financial structure of Student Union, particularly in how it allocates funding to student groups. As SU exists today, one person (the Vice President of Finance) is able to review all student group appeals under $1,000 without oversight, opening the door for personal bias and discriminatory practices to influence who receives funding, how much and when. We firmly believe that one individual should not have sole authority to approve or deny funding, and that the current structure creates opportunities for biases to be acted upon. At present, there is no sufficient mechanism to contest such decisions nor are there alternate means to attain funding should an appeal be unilaterally denied. Therefore, we call on SU to immediately
reform the funding process, allowing for checks and balances in the financial branch, helping to ensure equitable distribution of resources across all current and future SU recognized student groups to benefit the entire student body. Signed, Briana Garil, President of Hillel Leadership Council Heather Grossman and Amy Lewandowski, CoPresidents of First Year Students of Hillel (FYSH) Jocelyn Epstein, Treasurer of oSTEM@WashU Evan Zhou, General Body Member Chair of Chinese Students Association Jacob Leon, President of The Alexander Hamilton Society Cam Lind, General Man-
ager of KWUR 90.3 FM Jessica Huang and Ally Sun, Co-Executive Directors of Lunar New Year Festival Emily Angstreich and Lily Swenson, Co-Directors of Uncle Joe’s Peer Counseling and Resource Center Lily Cohen, Executive Director of WashU Dance Marathon Eli Nirenberg, President of WU Israel Public Affairs Committee (WIPAC) Michelle Perez, President of Alpha Psi Lambda Daphne Liu, President of Phi Gamma Nu (PGN) Carlos Cepeda and Bryanna Mendez, CoDirectors of Latinxpresión Magazine Sabrina Lozada, CoDirector of Carnaval Christian Monzon, Pres-
ident of Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) Herman Gonzalez, Vice President of Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) Noah Kaplan, Treasurer of WashU Students for Israel (WSI) Christine Nguyen, President of Catholic Student Union Nayana Vuppala, CoCaptain of WU Garba Inara Khan, President of Olin Business Council Alice Na, Co-President of PL4Y Onyi Onyeador, President of Teaching Racial Understanding Through Honesty Arielle Smith, Western President of Washington University Equestrian Team
Let’s do ourselves a favor and drop toxic positivity SERIN KOH STAFF WRITER
A
few years ago, as I sat lamenting over a test, a friend told me to look on the brighter side: The test was over, and everything will be fine. While I appreciated her attempts to comfort me, in actuality, they did little to affect my emotions. Instead, my questions and concerns only grew: Will things truly be fine? Why should I look on the brighter side? And should I ignore my negative thoughts and just move on? This form of “positive” thinking is toxic positivity: a term coined by psychologists to describe forced and feigned happiness, the disregard of the lows of reality and the suppression of difficult emotions (such as anxiety, fear or sadness) to cope with challenging
times. At first glance, this mentality may seem harmless. Yet toxic positivity can harm mental health because it urges people to suppress negativity rather than embracing and growing from it — and it’s time for it to go. Toxic positivity is not always obvious, and hints of it are riddled throughout everyday life. Teachers or parents telling students overwhelmed by work to “not stress out”; Instagram hashtags such as #goodvibesonly or #behappy, each boasting more than 14 million posts; and perhaps even the bright wallpapers screaming “Life Is Good” in neon colors crowding my Pinterest page are all examples of society contributing (sometimes unknowingly) to toxic positivity. While I have been a victim of toxic positivity, I am guilty
of practicing it as well. When a friend would talk about a bad day, I would often find myself at a loss of words before a feeble encouragement tumbles out of my mouth about moving on, looking for the silver lining or thinking positive thoughts. I realize now that these phrases were merely shells of words — hollow, meaningless, dead. In fact, they diminished my friend’s dilemmas and feelings by attempting to distort them through a positive lens. Toxic positivity falls short on the delivering end as well: I felt disappointed in myself for being unable to offer true encouragement or comfort. Toxic positivity also transcends into work and academic culture, which can be seen at Washington University. Being a student is not an easy job; long nights, stiff shoulders and daunting exams are
OUR VOICE: EDITORIAL BOARD Staff editorials reflect the opinion of a majority of editorial board members. The editorial board operates independently of our newsroom and includes members of the senior staff. Editor-in-Chief: Matthew Friedman Managing Editors: Jayla Butler, Isabella
only a few of the countless challenges students across the country must tackle. Bad days exist, and mental health can decline. Yet when I find myself feeling overwhelmed, I unconsciously resort to my own form of toxic positivity — a cycle of hollow and persistent phrases urging myself to “push through” and “just focus.” I invalidate my own emotions and smother them because I feel pressured by both myself and the academic institution to always work and reach expectations. The results of this cycle, however, are not productivity and satisfaction but frustration and resentment towards myself, and it could easily lead to a decline in mental health. Throughout the semester, I discovered that this pattern of toxic positivity prevails among my classmates and friends. In this aspect, students are the victims of their
own toxic positivity. So how can we all move beyond this shallow form of positivity? One way to avoid inflicting toxic positivity on others is to simply listen. Instead of focusing on how to drown out the negativity and change their narrative, think about empathizing and addressing their struggles and emotions. Sometimes, validation is all someone needs. Other times, no words even need to be said — silence within itself is a powerful form of comfort. Individuals can also shift their focus from keeping a smile on your face, to detecting better solutions during distressing times in order to achieve true positivity. Instead of turning their heads in denial, acknowledge those obstacles and seek a path around them. One well-known method to adapt such a mentality is
journal writing. Whether it is something as small as waking up before your alarm or saying hello to your favorite professor, writing about gratifying experiences throughout the day may lead us closer and closer to confidence and health. Similarly, writing about negative experiences can be equally freeing and helpful; acknowledging the struggles of reality instead of stifling them has helped immensely with maintaining a healthy mentality and letting go of toxic positivity. The first and most important step to dropping toxic positivity, however, is to simply become aware of it. As our nation and world face challenges that may seem disheartening, it is vital for our society to adopt a healthier form of positivity where struggles and solutions can openly be addressed.
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B4 STUDENT LIFE
CADENZA JORDAN COLEY & GRACIE HIME | SENIOR CADENZA EDITORS | CADENZA@STUDLIFE.COM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
Alum produces dark comedy about the Watergate scandal JORDAN COLEY SENIOR CADENZA EDITOR Producer, director, filmmaker and Washington University alumnus Dan Mirvish recently released his film “18½,” a dark comedy following fictional transcriber Connie Lashley (Willa Fitzgerald), who stumbles across the missing 18½-minute tape from Nixon’s Watergate scandal. When Mirvish, an Omaha, Nebraska native, attended WashU, there was no film department, so he majored in History and Political Science. Though he is now a full-time filmmaker, his majors aided him in becoming a Senate speech writer shortly after graduating, as one of his professors at WashU was former Senator Tom Eagleton.
After being a speech writer, Mirvish went to graduate school for film at the University of Southern California. Though he was not a film major, Mirvish “had taken some film classes at UCLA during the summer after my freshman year [of college],” where he learned about cinematography and how to use 16mm film. On campus, he was president of Film Board, “a student-run group that showed movies at Brown Hall every night.” Once Mirvish learned how to make 16mm film, he shot movie trailers with other members of the group and showed them before screenings. WashU may not have had a film department at the time, but Mirvish was very connected to WashU’s film scene.
Mirvish remarked, “I spend most of my time actually as a producer,” despite also being a writer, director and filmmaker. Most of his work comes from fundraising and overseeing the production process, which is essentially “everything after you’ve said ‘wrap’ on shooting.” Mirvish explained that while a crew may only film on set for a month, post-production work can last about a year. Regarding “18½,” Mirvish came up with the story idea with Daniel Moya, an intern of his who went on to write the script. At the time, Watergate had already been on his mind. “I co-wrote a novel a few years ago, and we have a whole chapter about Watergate in it.” Senator Eagleton, Mirvish’s professor, was actually involved with the
campaign that Watergate was about. “18½” was filmed in Greenport, New York. Mirvish originally went there to show a colleague another one of his films, but as soon as he saw the location, he knew he had to film something there. “In indie film there’s an old adage: ‘If you get a great location, you can write a movie around it.” In the movie, Connie Lashley (Fitzgerald) stays at a motel in Greenport with Paul Moore (John Magaro), a New York Times journalist she reached out to when she first found the tape. Paul tries to get Connie to give him the tapes immediately, but when she refuses he suggests they go to the motel to listen in private. At the motel, they meet the extremely talkative
owner, a group of hippies and a strange elderly couple who make their stay much less private than expected. “Growing up in the ‘70s, if you said 18½ everyone knew you were talking about the gap in the Nixon tapes.” Mirvish’s film is incredibly well done with aesthetically pleasing cinematography and a high quality cast. The camera pans were always a pleasure to look at, and the movie beautifully utilized its scenery. The costumes are finely done, and it’s clear how much work everyone involved in the project went to it. Understandably, Mirvish said his experience with audiences of the film was quite different because of COVID. “The funny thing about making a film in a pandemic… [was that] we couldn’t do a
test screening because you couldn’t get people together. So the first time I saw it with an audience was less than 2 months ago at our world premiere at the Woodstock film festival. And then last night [Wednesday] was the second time I saw it with an audience, at the Tivoli.” When asked what he wanted audiences to feel after watching the movie, Mirvish said he wanted them to have “questions about what happened in real life, and also what happens to our fictional characters [at the end] too, because we definitely don’t answer everything.” We’ll never truly know what happened with the missing Watergate tapes, and the unknown truth is exactly what Dan Mirvish’s intriguing “18½” speculates on.
The Martian (Boot-Scootin’) Boogie GRACIE HIME SENIOR CADENZA EDITOR After sitting in BD for approximately seven hours, I started to notice an alarming amount of cowboy hats peeking through the masses of students. At first I was confused, but soon after I appreciated this sentiment that reminded me of home. Not long after did I realize that the line for the Mosaic Whispers and The Amateurs concert was flooding out of Risa
Commons and into the dining area. At this point, I decided to jump in line to secure a good place to sit. The turnout was amazing, and the show ended up selling out. People were so eager to watch that they chose to stand in the back of the room throughout the show. A friend and I anxiously awaited the show to start, and when they finally did, we were absolutely blown away. The Mosaic Whispers kicked off the night with
three amazing soloists who immediately set the energetic tone for the rest of the show. The first song, “Particular Taste” by Janelle Monàe and Shawn Mendes, featured soloists Manasi Gummaraju and Henry Goddard, demonstrating the great bond between the members of the group. After an amazing performance with soloist Kidist Taye, The Amateurs took the stage with the soulful classic “Take the Box” by Amy Winehouse. Covering someone like Amy
Winehouse is a heavy task, but The Amateurs exceeded expectations. Soloist Grace Brady brought the perfect amount of emotion to match Winehouse’s energy but still allowed for her own musical creativity to flow through. My only question: Who hurt you? I was in for a surprise when intermission came; the WU Juggling Club showed up and showed out. While they seemed to exhibit some hesitation upon performing for the first time in 2 years, they
amazed the crowd. From the behind-the-back tricks to the juggling of shoes and cowboy hats, the Juggling Club proved that WashU does in fact have school spirit. The two groups made their way back after the intermission in formal attire instead of the alien cowboy look they previously rocked. After the jugglers left, the lights were dimmed again, and the music commenced. Senior Madelyn Quiroz led with a heartfelt solo, noting her final
performance with the Mosaic Whispers. Her vocal range was on display; she demonstrated such strong vocal control while still perfectly executing those belted notes. The Amateurs sang the night to an end, leaving the audience stunned by the diversity of talent. The groups seemed to adapt well to having to wear masks while performing, and they proved that they could still execute at such a high quality regardless of the restraint.
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B5 STUDENT LIFE
SPORTS GRADY NANCE | SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR | SPORTS@STUDLIFE.COM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
More than an inspiration: The thrilling story of three-time Paralympic champion Kendall Gretsch GRADY NANCE SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR It’s August 2021, and the sweltering Tokyo sun beats down on a large blue racetrack in Odaiba Marine Park. It’s quieter than usual – pandemic protocols still restrict most spectators on this day, save for a small bundle of athletes at the front of the largely empty stands. They let out a cheer as U.S. Paralympian and Washington University alum Kendall Gretsch settles herself into her racing wheelchair for the final leg of the paratriathlon. She’s over a minute behind world No. 1 Lauren Parker, the current first-place occupant. With four laps left to make history, Gretsch pushes off, looking to gain ground. She has a lot to cover. Competing in the Paralympics was not always the goal for Kendall Gretsch. Growing up in the suburbs outside of Chicago, she competed in a slew of sports — softball, basketball and even swim all throughout high school — but she wouldn’t have defined herself as an athlete. She was competitive, but mostly with herself; she had never seriously trained for anything, and she had never heard the term “adaptive sport” in her life. Her passion for math and science, as highlighted by attending, in her words, a “really nerdy” engineering camp as a teenager, occupied the majority of her focus growing up. Like many STEM-inclined high schoolers, WashU seemed like a natural choice for Gretsch. “[Growing up] outside Chicago, I think WashU is kind of always in the back of your mind on the list of places to go,” she said. “I just kind of went down and visited and really loved the campus.” Gretsch, for better reasons than most freshmen, was nervous about her first days on campus and how people would make their first impressions of her. Gretsch was born with spina bifida, a spinal condition with a wide variety of effects that largely depend on the individual; for Gretsch, it means she walks with crutches and competes with the help of more complex adaptive equipment, such as the racing wheelchair she uses during the final leg of the paratriathlon. But while it may be the first thing people noticed at a glance, Gretsch says that after she settled in at WashU, her condition did not factor much into her college experience. “It really didn’t stand out as a barrier. At that point, I’ve had a disability my whole life, so I was used to adapting so much,” she said, joking that walking around on crutches even came with its perks. “I got to sign up for classes first, and I got all my electronic books from the disability office, which was pretty sweet.” After a year off from sports during her freshman year, Gretsch ached for an athletic outlet. That came in the form of Dare2Tri, an Illinois-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to “removing barriers to sports and fitness.” It was there that she was introduced to adaptive sports, the paratriathlon and the idea her athletic pursuits could go beyond just a hobby. “[Dare2Tri] basically takes away any excuse that you could have to say no to doing a triathlon. And so as soon as I did that, I was just hooked,” Gretsch said. “I was
also introduced to this path, that it can be more than just some exercises. I could be an athlete and I could be competing at the highest level in the sport.” In keeping with her penchant for choosing the most difficult option, the paratriathlon was an immediate fit for Gretsch. “I think I just like the challenge of it. There’s something that’s so intriguing about it,” she said. “You have to have that that mindset of pushing yourself because you’re riding this line of ‘How hard and how painful, or how long can I enjoy the pain for?’” If that sounds insane, you’re not alone — Gretsch knows, but she still loves it. That same competitive edge drew her to WashU’s notoriously difficult biomedical engineering (BME) program, where she excelled. As is the case with most BME students, Gretsch was busy — very busy. By senior year, Gretsch was working on her senior project — 3D printing a functioning prosthetic arm for a young girl — while training on the weekends she had free. It was a grueling schedule, one Gretsch credits for ingraining in her such a strong work ethic. “It’s a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice of having to not do things because it’s not the right decision,” she said. “As an athlete, you can’t go home all the time, and so I think that mentality translates.” In her sparse free time, Gretsch made sure to enjoy her time at WashU, whether it was watching Major Lazer at WILD or spending afternoons with her friends getting milkshakes at Fozzie’s Sandwich Emporium (she highly recommends the salted caramel pretzel milkshake). Still, as for many WashU students, long nights in Olin Library or marathon study sessions at Kaldi’s (formerly Kayak’s, her favorite study spot) were a staple of her experience. It didn’t take long to see her work pay off. After training for two years while working for her diploma, Gretsch jumped off the graduation stage and onto the podium, capturing first place in her first serious competition, the 2014 Pan American Championships. From there, the awards quickly piled up: the 2014 and 2015 national championships, world championships from 2014-2016 and an ESPY nomination to boot. In just a few years of competing, Gretsch had skyrocketed to the top of her sport. *** *** Kendall Gretsch is through lap two of four in the biggest race of her life. She’s 44 seconds behind Lauren Parker, who is still too far out in front for Gretsch to see. Her arms are screaming at her. Her entire body is screaming at her. She grits her teeth and keeps pushing. Gretsch has never chosen the easy path. Whether it’s enrolling in arguably the most difficult major at WashU or choosing the most grueling event in the Paralympics, second best has never been an option. So when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not choose her paratriathlon classification for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Gretsch didn’t sit on her laurels and hope for better luck in 2020. She found a winter event — scratch that,
she found two winter events: cross-country skiing and biathlon. The director of the US Para-Nordic Skiing program in Madison, Wisconsin reached out to her in 2016 and invited her to try out another endurance sport to give her a medal opportunity in the winter games. In between the summer season, where she trained for national paratriathlon competitions, Gretsch now spent her winters training for the 2018 Pyeongchang games. She understated the difficulty when talking about it, but make no mistake: learning a new event is incredibly challenging. Gretsch said it took three years before she felt comfortable with the paratriathlon, so learning two entirely new events, faced with an even shorter timetable, seems impossible. Especially for the biathlon, with its seemingly arbitrary combination of long-distance skiing and riflery, Gretsch had to “make that switch from one type of athlete to the other,” from extreme stamina to deadshot accuracy in a heartbeat. It’s not something most athletes can do. Despite the challenge, she found herself in Pyeongchang for the 2018 Winter Games. Gretsch said that since she wasn’t exactly competing in her primary event, some of the pressure was off. “I was still pretty new to the scene at that time, so it was great because I could just come and enjoy the experience so much and not really have an extreme amount of pressure, or expectation of how I should be doing,” she said. How did she fare in those games? Two gold medals. On top of that, Gretsch became the first American woman to medal in the biathlon in either the Olympics or Paralympics. Despite starting the event only two years prior, despite having to learn to shoot, despite splitting training with the paratriathlon, Gretsch went into Pyeongchang and made history. Looking back, she thought the lack of experience in those competitions actually benefited her. “I’m almost glad that I was pretty naïve going into it,” Gretsch laughed. “It really just allowed me to enjoy the experience and not get caught up too much in the competition of it.” Coming out of those games, while she appreciated how incredible her performance was, she also acknowledged that her work was not done. With her sights focused on Tokyo after the 2018 games, she was going to do whatever it took to secure a gold in the paratriathlon. And if Pyeongchang proved one thing, it is that Kendall Gretsch is more than capable of pulling off the impossible. *** *** It’s the final lap of the 2021 Tokyo Paratriathlon. Kendall Gretsch has cut the gap between her and Lauren Parker, but she still needs an incredible final lap to have a chance at winning. In a few minutes, somebody will break the blue tape suspended at the finish line. Gretsch pushes on, hoping she has enough in the tank to be the one to do it. On the sideline, her handler, Dan Tun, shouts out her splits – she’s 26 seconds behind. As Gretsch disappears around the curve of the track, Tun heads toward the finish line, hoping his friend can pull off a miracle. This wasn’t unexpected.
COURTESY OF JOE KUSUMOTO PHOTOGRAPHY
Kendall Gretsch skis towards the finish line at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympic Games. She won two gold medals that year before adding another this summer in Tokyo.
Coming into the race, both Tun and Gretsch knew that a come-from-behind scenario would be almost certain given the way the paratriathlon works: The athletes’ starts are offset based on their disability — the more limited they are, the more of a “head start” they receive. It’s a complicated classification system, one that even the athletes joke you need a PhD to understand, but the result is that Gretsch started the race about four minutes behind. It’s nothing new, but that makes it no less stressful for Tun, who, while Gretsch makes up ground, is wearing a path into the bright blue carpet as he nervously paces back and forth. Tun is on the sideline acting as Gretsch’s handler. For
athletes in the PTWC-H2 of which Tun is co-founder. Tun says that Gretsch classification, such as Gretsch, handlers help in the struck him as remarkably transition between legs of the laid back upon first meetrace, exchanging equipment, ing. “Kendall is very much changing clothing and prep- the same now as she was ping for the next leg. In the then, just a very cool, calm, final transition, Tun helped collected person, and that’s Gretsch out of the bike and what I sort of appreciate into her racing wheelchair. about her,” he said. That’s Time doesn’t stop during not to say that Gretsch didn’t transitions, so a good handler push herself. “I think she can make the split-second dif- likes that drive. She likes to ference in a close race. For see, whether it’s competing Gretsch, Tun says, it’s not too against others or maybe even tall of a task. “Because she’s just competing against herso organized and indepen- self, what’s the next challenge — ‘I know what my limit is, dent, it’s fairly easy.” Still, the relationship and now I want to get to that between handler and ath- limit, push it and then find lete, especially on the biggest what my new limit is.’” Tun watched in awe as stage, takes a strong relationship. For Tun and Gretsch, Gretsch scorched her way that goes back to 2012, when Gretsch first joined Dare2Tri, SEE GRETSCH, PAGE B6
B6 STUDENT LIFE
GRADY NANCE | SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR | SPORTS@STUDLIFE.COM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2021
KENDALL GRETSCH’S JOURNEY FROM OLIN TO GOLD to the top of her field. “She took all the right steps. It was a natural, smart progression. She didn’t go from, ‘I’m this new athlete, and I want to go right to the Paralympic Games,’ she did all the work in between to become the athlete that she is today.” Now, at the precipice of a gold medal in the Summer Games, Tun hopes that the steady climb she’s taken to get here lands her on the top of the podium after the race. Tun says that Gretsch is a perfect example of what Dare2Tri tries to emphasize as an organization: Paralympic athletes are far more than their disability. “This isn’t just an inspirational story, this is something they do for a living,” said Tun. “Inspiration is great, and everyone becomes inspired for different reasons, but these athletes, that’s not their sole purpose. Their purpose is to train and race to be the best in the world.” Gretsch is undeniably an inspiration to anyone who watches her compete, but to label her — or any Paralympic athlete, for that matter — as simply a heartwarming story is reductive. It’s an all-too-common narrative that she and everyone involved with the Paralympics wants to change. These aren’t participation medals — they’re taken with grit, heart and the drive to push harder than the next athlete. Gretsch has devoted her life over the past years toward this race, and the Tokyo games are an opportunity for her to prove on the largest stage that she and everyone competing have the same capacity for greatness as those without disabilities. *** *** Lauren Parker, having held the lead for the entire race, turns onto
the blue carpet, the final stretch leading up to the finish line. She looks exhausted, but the finish looms right ahead, and it seems like the gold is hers. Just a moment later, Gretsch flies around the corner, head full of steam and barreling to the finish. The American athletes watching from the sideline, realizing she has a shot, go crazy. Among them is her best friend and U.S. teammate, Hailey Danz, yelling at the top of her lungs. Danz doesn’t know it, but Gretsch can hear her. Gretsch keeps pushing, and as the gap between her and Parker quickly shrinks, Danz can tell — it is going to come down to the tape. Danz knows what Gretsch is feeling right now. In fact, a mere 24 hours earlier, it was Danz who was gritting her teeth through the final lap of the paratriathlon. But while her race didn’t end in the result she wanted (she finished with the silver medal), the thought couldn’t be farther from her mind. She’s here for Kendall. Danz, who went through an upper-level leg amputation as a teen and competes using a prosthetic leg, is in a separate classification as Gretsch. But while the two can’t race alongside one another, they still have been together for every step of this long journey. Danz and Gretsch met back in 2013 through Dare2Tri, where they bonded over their mutual love of competing and, of all things, junk food. “I feel like one of the very first conversations that we had was about how much we loved Ben and Jerry’s and wanted to be sponsored by them,” Danz joked. In those early days with Dare2Tri, Danz says that, as the Paralympics had not gained as much traction then as they have now, she and Gretsch were “pioneers” of
the paratriathlon. As they both developed as athletes, Danz quickly learned of the “quiet confidence” that made Gretsch so successful; throughout the years, the two continued competing and maintained a friendly relationship, but it wasn’t until 2019 that they became the tight-knit pair they are today. After qualifying for the Tokyo games, they both traveled to the U.S. training facility in Colorado to prepare full-time for the games. When COVID struck, however, the two were stranded in a facilityturned-ghost town. “It was us and maybe 10 other people that we never even saw. And so we really relied on each other very heavily during that time,” Danz said. “I don’t think I could have survived it without her.” It’s during this time that Danz saw the other Kendall Gretsch emerge — the funny, insightful, charismatic person that few get to see. “I think the biggest misconception about Kendall is, everyone thinks that she’s just super quiet and shy and reserved, and that is true until she feels comfortable around you, but once she feels comfortable she’s the funniest person that you’ll ever meet,” Danz said. “She just drops these like these truth bombs that put people in their place. And they’re just so funny because you don’t expect it to come from her, because when you are first getting to know her she’s just so quiet, and then when she just says these super savage remarks, you’re just like, ‘Oh my god, that’s so funny because I wasn’t expecting you to say that,’” Danz said. From binging Gossip Girl to making pizzas in a waffle maker, it’s not an
understatement to say that both Gretsch and Danz found a best friend during their time in quarantine. Danz says that the two now “basically speak in our own language” given how much time they spend together. They even began their own Instagram series reviewing various Trader Joe’s items, of which they have too many to list. When the IOC approved Gretsch’s classification for the 2020 games and they both qualified, Danz and Gretsch were over the moon. And after a year’s delay, when they finally made it to Tokyo, they didn’t quite know how to react. “I think one thing I wasn’t anticipating was just how emotional that whole week was going to be like,” Danz said. “With so much pressure around the event, and just reflecting on all the years that went into it, there were just moments where it would all just hit you.” Just like they had during quarantine, the two relied on one another as the pressure mounted before their race. As Gretsch prepared for a race nearly a decade in the making for her, among her other teammates, it was Danz who reminded her she was ready for this moment. And Danz, being one of the few with true insight into Gretsch’s full character, knows that beneath the cool demeanor, the light-hearted jokester and the caring friend, Kendall Gretsch is a competitor – she wants to win. *** *** With yards to go to the tape, Gretsch rockets up from behind, moving faster than seems possible. As Lauren Parker fades, Kendall Gretsch pushes harder. Maybe it was the late nights she spent in the Lopata Hall basement working instead of sleeping. Maybe it was the endurance she
gained from Nordic training to become the first female American to win the biathlon gold. Or maybe it was the drive to prove to the world just how good of an athlete she is. Whatever it was, Gretsch has come back from a minute behind in one of the greatest efforts in Paralympic history. At the last possible moment, Gretsch inches past Parker and breaks the tape first. Nine years ago, she wanted to start exercising more and tried a paratriathlon on a whim — today, she’s won Paralympic gold. She gradually brings her chair to a stop. After the moment of shock subsides, Kendall Gretsch breaks into a triumphant smile. It’s rare in life to experience a pause in time where everything you’ve sacrificed — long days of training, injuries, years of wondering whether it’ll ever happen — crystallizes into a single moment that rewards it all; a moment so pure that you might think you’re peering into a snow globe or emerging from a deep fog. Kendall Gretsch got just that. Crossing that finish line, she accomplished a dream hatched nine years prior, and in doing so, she perfectly captured a critical message that she, Danz, Tun and countless other people with disabilities have worked to amplify to the public. The Paralympics don’t indulge some fantasy of “actually competing.” They are a platform for the most talented athletes in the world to compete at the highest level. It takes blood, sweat and tears. It takes dedication and drive and sacrifice. It takes failure. Kendall Gretsch didn’t make it to this stage, to this moment, because she simply asked for it. She took it. On that track on a hot Tokyo afternoon, she proved that while athletes take
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many different appearances, excellence is universally recognizable. “I think a lot of people just look at [the Paralympics] like, ‘Oh wow, it’s so great that you’re just out there,’ and, you know, we’re not just ‘out there.’ We’re doing some serious stuff,” Danz said. “It’s legitimately impressive.” The Tokyo games were the most widely-broadcasted Paralympic Games in their 60-year history, and that exposure is critical towards changing the narrative and giving these athletes the credit they deserve. Events like the Paralympics that prove to skeptics that, yes, people with disabilities are still capable of great things are the first of many steps toward destigmatizing disability and providing social equality for a group of people who, for too long, have not been treated with it. Gretsch sees the public perception surrounding the Paralympics and disability in general beginning to change. “Growing up, I never thought of myself as an athlete because I didn’t see other athletes with disabilities,” she said. “I think seeing that we are true athletes that are working just as hard as other athletes, and seeing that you can have this full life and full experience… is important for people with disabilities, but just everyone seeing it is awesome.” The 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles are of particular focus for athletes like Gretsch, who want to further disability awareness in the U.S. But for now, Gretsch is staying focused on what lies closer ahead. With the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing just around the corner, followed by the 2024 games in Paris, Gretsch will be busy. Like that’s ever stopped her.
Women’s soccer makes the Sweet 16 ANDREW KASTELMAN STAFF REPORTER
Another weekend of playoffs:
Defense has been the calling card this season for the Washington University women’s soccer team and that was true yet again this weekend, as the Bears advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament on the strength of two shutout victories, 4-0 over Beloit College Saturday and 1-0 over Dominican University Sunday. The Bears, who now have 11 shutouts on the year, will face the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse next Saturday. “That whole back line is probably one of the best in the country,” head coach Stephanie Gabbert said of the WashU defenders. On Saturday, the Bears jumped out to a quick start against Beloit, scoring three goals in the first 18 minutes. After senior Erin Flynn opened the scoring with a goal in the fifth minute (her team-leading sixth goal of the season), senior Gabbie Cesarone followed it up with two of her own to quickly put the Bears up 3-0. Both of Cesarone’s goals came off corner kicks, with the first being a
header to the back post and the second coming off a deflection from senior Jess Shapiro. The goals were the first two on the season for Cesarone, who primarily plays defense. “She’s hungry to score,” Gabbert said of Cesarone. “She likes to score, so I’m glad she’s gotten a few of those out of her system.” In a dominant performance, WashU added one more goal in the second half, courtesy of junior Sydney Essler. As a further testament to WashU’s defensive prowess, Beloit failed to register a single shot or corner kick in 90 minutes of action, and the ball rarely even crossed into WashU territory. By completely controlling the game, WashU was able to rest many players in the second half, gaining an important advantage for Sunday’s second round contest. Sunday’s game against Dominican University was more balanced, with an uneventful and scoreless first half. However, Dominican was constantly on the defensive, and WashU’s relentless attack finally broke through in the 68th minute; a strong
EMMETT CAMPBELL | STUDENT LIFE
Sophomore midfielder Anna Viscovich kicks the ball past Beloit College defenders in the first round of the playoffs Saturday. The Bears beat Beloit 4-0 before defeating Dominican University 1-0. They will next face the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse.
Essler throw-in coupled with junior Riley Alvarez’s
Cross country:
National championships Louisville | Saturday 11 a.m.
Women’s soccer:
Sweet 16 vs. UW - La Crosse Dubuque, Iowa | Saturday 11 a.m.
Football:
Isthmus Bowl vs. UW - River Falls Madison, Wisconsin | Saturday 3 p.m.
causing havoc in the box resulted in an own goal by Dominican, putting the Bears up 1-0. Gabbert was proud of Alvarez’s effort on the play. “I think it was just great of her to stay stuck in there and get a toe on it,” Gabbert said. “Whatever it took to get the ball in the goal.” Despite only winning 1-0, the Bears dominated the shot chart, outshooting Dominican 16-2. Those were the only two shots sophomore goalie Sidney Conner saw all weekend. “Sid’s always great in the back, and I know she
didn’t get a ton of shots this weekend, but she does a lot behind the ball to help us organize and that makes a big difference,” Gabbert said. After the regular season finale against Chicago, Gabbert emphasized that finishing scoring opportunities would be key for the Bears. Despite scoring four goals in the first round, converting on scoring chances was still a concern against Dominican. “The main thing for our team right now is not missing really good opportunities because we’re not
composed,” Gabbert said. The win clinched the Bears’ sixth straight Sweet 16 appearance (the tournament was cancelled in 2020). Gabbert hopes that the team will play with a quicker pace going forward, which she said could help open up more scoring opportunities against teams like UW-La Crosse. “The teams we’re going to meet in the next round are going to be better than the teams we met in this round, so we’re gonna have to play smarter and take advantage of our opportunities a lot more,” she said.