Friday, November 28, 2008

Fashion Statement? Whatever

At Bryn Mawr anti-fashion is the look of the day

By Elizabeth Svokos

When it comes to fashion, there are so many routes one can take. There’s preppy, punk, indie, urban, classic, goth, and the list goes on. But at Bryn Mawr College, the preferred fashion trend seems to be “Whatever.”
“Well, I mean, I just grab whatever’s nearest to me,” says Sophomore Hope Filligin. “And clean.” Freshman Whitney Miller looks down at her raggedy boots and plain outfit. “It’s called I have class at 8 in the morning.”
“This is me trying to wake up,” Junior Becca Rossi attempts to defend her regular maroon shirt and jean get-up.
Walking through Bryn Mawr’s campus is walking through aa world of exquisite architecture and foliage more colorful than a samba dancer’s costume. Against this gorgeous backdrop, Bryn Mawr women embody the opposite of style.
But not without reason.

Work Clothes
Women attending Bryn Mawr College didn’t get there by watching the Style Channel. The women at this college not only take their academics seriously but about 70 percent of undergraduate students also devote their time to work on campus.
“I work in the dining hall from Monday to Thursday,” says Filligin. “So I have to wear pants and a tee shirt for work.”
Senior Stephanie Migliori is clad in a leather jacket and loose jeans. “I work for the theatre doing tech work and things that usually ruin my clothes,” she explains, “so I have to wear clothes that can be ruined.”
Sports teams on campus are also a factor in the choice of what to wear. A normal sports team will have practice after class around 4p.m. Junior Ariel Puleo, member of the cross-country team and sporting a bright red pea coat, explains that she has to dress according to her practice schedule and if she has time to change into her sports clothes. If she doesn’t, she wears her sports sweats.
The ever-changing Philadelphia weather also plays its role in creating the Bryn Mawr fashion trend.

Bundling Up
Juniors Theresa Palasits and Rachel Corey both agree that weather is usually the deciding factor in choosing clothes. Battling the cold seems to be the first concern.
“It gets really cold,” Palasits shudders. “I hate being cold.”
Palasits also raised the issue of her own mood. “If I’m really stressed, I don’t put time into my outfit because I have so many other things on my mind.”
Student’s fashion is also constrained by what they can physically bear. “I can’t wear high heels,” Puleo laughs, “so that definitely dictates what I can and cannot wear. It has to go with flats!”
Even with this general overall lack of fashion sense, Bryn Mawr girls can still spot a student who “tries.”
Junior Rachel Lieberman,says, “I definitely notice the people who put thought into what they wear.”
Even freshmen aren’t afraid to judge fashion on campus. Whitney Miller and Jillian Payne-Johnson walk together from the library, both working the post five-hour study session look.
“Sometimes I see girls wearing leggings and those Ugg boots,” Miller begins, then pauses.. “Listen, leggings are okay, but only if you cover your butt. You can’t just wear leggings and a regular shirt! I can see your underwear!”
Payne-Johnson snickers and chimes in, “That’s not okay!”
Sophomore Amelie Raz realizes that “there are definitely people who clearly put a high value on aesthetics.” Raz prides herself on her predominantly blue wardrobe (“blue goes with everything!”) but also recognizes her and her peers’ lacking eye for fashion.
But this reality doesn’t seem to deter Raz, an intelligent, friendly, and ambitious Biology major.
“I’d like to be one of those girls,” she shrugs and smiles, “but I’m just not.”
Her confidence mirrors the other “regular-clothed” Bryn Mawr students.
At this college, it seems clothes do not make the man. Or in this case, woman.

The Ginger Jesus of BMC

James Merriam is the only male living in the dorms.

By Juliana Reyes

Walk down the halls of any dorm at elite women’s school Bryn Mawr College, and you’ll see girls. Lots of them. They’re plucking their eyebrows in the bathroom, talking to their boyfriends on their cellphones or putting up posters of the hottest young actor. But in one dorm, you’ll see a little something different.
Cascades of bright orange hair usually shield his face, but don’t be fooled. That’s a guy in the bathroom. His name is James Merriam. And he is brushing his hair.
“I think he brushes his hair a lot more than me,” freshman Melanie Levy says. “Somebody braided his hair once. It was really thick. He’s pretty cool about things like that.”
Levy lives on the third floor of a dorm called Denbigh. It is the only dorm on campus where a male lives. Though men from Haverford College, Bryn Mawr’s sister school, often take classes, eat meals and socialize at Bryn Mawr, most choose to live on their own campus. The last time a Haverford male lived at Bryn Mawr was in 2003. Many of the students around during that time have graduated, so to the girls attending Bryn Mawr now, this is revolutionary.

"Ginger Jesus"
“It’s like yeah, I checked that box saying that I wouldn’t mind living in a co-ed dorm, but you always know that’s not going to happen,” says freshman Carrie Schoonover, who also lives on Merriam’s hall. “Well, except for this time.”
Merriam, a sophomore at Haverford, is tall and skinny. He sports a tuft of orange hair on his chin – “It’s weird when you see him shaving,” sophomore Natalie Kauppi admits, and of
course, there’s that unforgettable mass of nearly fluorescent-colored hair that has given him the nickname “Ginger Jesus.”
Save for the times when he’s headed for the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, freshman Katie Sun says, “He’s not really the type to just walk around his boxers.” She remarks on his low-key existence in the dorm, saying it’s not a big deal. Her hallmates all seem to agree.
“He’s not obnoxious about being the only guy,” Kauppi says. She thinks that Merriam’s presence at Bryn Mawr has been so smooth partly because of the “quietness of himself.”
Still, Merriam is certainly aware of his status as “The Only Guy.”
Asked if other Haverford guys ever ask him if it’s awesome to live here because of all the girls.
“Yes,” he says.
“Is it?”
A wide grin spreads across his face. “Yes.”

Man on a Mission
All hormones aside, Merriam had a mission when he made the decision to live here last April.
“I wanted to take action,” Merriam says, “against the animosity between campuses.”
The hostility between Bryn Mawr and Haverford is no secret to the students at the two colleges. Maybe the Haverford girls are possessive over their men, maybe it’s the rumors spread about Bryn Mawr girls being “easy,” or maybe it’s just been going on for so long that it’s become second nature. Whatever it is, Merriam wants to fix it.
“I want to be a symbol of integration,” he says. When asked what college he attends, Merriam will answer “both.” He is a member of both Haverford and Bryn Mawr’s networks on Facebook and has a mailbox on both campuses as well. Two pairs of Haverford flip flops lie around his room, but he also whips out a green pair of Bryn Mawr running shorts.
“I wear them proudly,” he says, grinning.
He feels he can be a source of information about Haverford for the girls on his hall. He is busy promoting the idea of living on the opposite campus, since it so rarely happens.
“Maybe in the two years I have I can step it way up,” he says. “Maybe I can reignite something that has gone away.”

Center of Attention
Merriam’s status as the only male living at Bryn Mawr has gotten him a lot of attention. You can always hear people talking about “Ginger Jesus” on the Blue Bus, the bus that runs between Haverford and Bryn Mawr, or in the dining halls. His name, or nickname, at least, seems to be on everyone’s lips. Merriam says he anticipated it but didn’t let it stop him from his mission.
“It seemed too important to let it get in the way,” he says.
Merriam feels strongly about the cause because he thinks that people who stick solely to their own campus are missing out. He says he finds himself defending both colleges equally. He likens himself to a “forerunner.”
“You know, the guy who risks falling into the canyon because he’s going first.”
Merriam is quick to mention the perks of living at Bryn Mawr. He loves the food and the rooms are nicer. He likes never having to worry about his bathroom being trashed because of last night’s big party, as Bryn Mawr is known for its lack of ragers.
He plans on living at Bryn Mawr next year as well.
“It’s totally worth it, even if you don’t do it for political reasons.”

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

English House Gazette 2008

Welcome to the English House Gazette.
This is the blog that posts stories done by students in the Art 264 W, the News and Feature Writing Class, at Bryn Mawr College.

This week we offer four profiles:

Dina Rubey, who is covering poverty on the Main Line, has a profile of a street person who happens to prefer Ardmore to the big city.
Laura Boyle, whose beat is Parks & the Great Outdoors, tells of a Bryn Mawr student who started her own garden at school.
Rob Breckinridge, one of the Haverford students taking the class, has a profile of Haverford's student government co-president.
Emily Olsen, whose beat is religion on the Main Line, has a nicely done portrait of the Bryn Mawr student who travels from church to church on Sundays.

More to come....

Main Line Rebel


Mark Dewitt's skewed world view

By Virginia Rubey

Mark Dewitt has the look of any big-city bum: unkempt beard, long graying hair, missing teeth, wrinkles. He wears dirty Levis and a secondhand Stanford University sweatshirt.
Men who look like Mark fit right into the urban landscape, their presence as expected as the streetlights, the potholes in the sidewalk, the lack of available parking spaces.
But Mark, 51, never much liked urban landscapes. He lives on the Main Line, among upscale fur and jewelry shops where his presence is as welcome as a stock market crash. He says he has been a rebel his whole life.
“My dear, sweet mother said I was a rebel, a troublemaker, and a hoodlum.” He counts the charges off on his finger. “She was wrong. I’m no hoodlum!” He laughs and points to a tattoo on his right forearm that reads Fight Authority. “But she nailed me on the first two! Yeah!” he roars with a grin. “Hi!” he shouts to a man passing by on the street. The man walks faster.

#%$! Main Liners
“People are too damn snotty out here. Where I’m from, you didn’t stick your nose in the air just ‘cause you had something. F---k the Main Line!” he shouts.
Mark is originally from Montgomery County. He ran away from home when he was 16 to avoid beatings, groundings, and rules. He’s lived on the Main Line since 1998.
“I’m a noted character around the neighborhood,” he says. “They give me s--t here ‘cause I don’t look all hot s--t and whatnot. They say they’ll call the cops? S--t, I know the cops better than they do! I practically lived with ‘em!” he laughs. “But I don’t want to go back there.” Mark says he prefers his subsidized studio apartment near the Ardmore post office to his former prison cell.
The fourth floor walkup is sunny, even with all of the shades drawn. An unmade twin bed stands in one corner beside an ashtray, a pile of empty prescription bottles rests in another. A single chair with a broken back supports piles of mail and loose papers. Narrow wood planks peek out from underneath old newspapers, clothes, and cylinder tobacco tins. A bookcase with a single shelf holds small statues and portraits of Pope John Paul II, Jesus, and Mary.

"My Dear, Blessed Father"
“These things are irreplaceable,” Mark says, lifting a small box from the shelf. “My dear, blessed father gave this to my dear, sweet mother,” he says, uncovering a silver cigarette case. He lifts two black and white photos of a young man and woman and gazes at them. “Hell, that was some woman. She used to whup me good!”
He lifts another photo of a muscular, shaggy-haired but clean-shaven young man wearing Aviator sunglasses and a smile full of straight, white teeth. “You may recognize the man in this one,” he says, grinning at the man he does not resemble. “That’s me on the day I got my GED,” he explains.
“I shouldn’t say it, because they’ll lock me up for it, but I would kill for the things on this shelf,” he says, fingering two wedding bands that his former wives each gave him. “I have memory damage.”
He puts down the photographs. “They tell me I have all this shit,” Mark continues. He nods at the prescription bottles piled in the corner. “15 milligrams to prevent seizures, 15 for tranquilizers, and 10 milligrams to sleep. They tell me I’m confused and I don’t know what the f--k is going on. I cuss ‘em all out.”

Drinking and Drugs
Mark says he started drinking and doing drugs when he turned 13. “Old habits die hard,” he says. He looks at the image of his younger self. “When I used to party, I partied for decades!” He smiles for a moment, then frowns. “But you can’t get high when you’re in the program.”
Mark receives disability assistance from the government and has periodic check-ins with a social worker. He has been diagnosed as suffering from a variety of maladies, both mental and physical.
Looking around his single-room apartment he says, “The assistant director of the program is coming tomorrow. I should clean up.”
Instead, he puts on a Pink Floyd CD, reclines on the bed, and lights a cigarette.
“They, this, that. Lighten up! It’s called life,” he says. “But I really should clean up. Or maybe I should just cuss ‘em all out.”

Kate Allen's Secret Garden


See how Kate Allen's garden grows
By Laura Boyle

Kate Allen likes getting dirty.
That’s how the petite, soft-spoken student at Bryn Mawr College sums up her motivations for starting a vegetable garden on campus.
She digs her pale fingers into the soil, plucks a leaf away from the delicate green shoot that she hopes will one day become a hearty head of mustard greens. She gestures while she speaks, pushing her floppy bangs out of her eyes, and it’s not surprising that at the end of the interview, a smear of fresh, black dirt marks her forehead.
You could meet the student-turned-gardener yourself, but that’s assuming you could find the garden. A broken patch of ground would seem hard to miss on this pristine, suburban campus, where barely a leaf disgraces the cultivated grass.
Kate’s garden, however, lies tucked in a far corner, hidden by trees, concealed behind a falling-down stone shed. The shed slumps adjacent to the home of the English department, the English House, across the street from the main campus.
A Makeshift Gate
If you duck under the low-hanging branches and walk over a bed of neglected, rotting leaves, you’ll come to a green wire fence, latched with a fraying bungee cord. Walk through the makeshift gate and down a step and you’ll be standing in the middle of a concrete rectangle that’s been covered by about an inch of soil. On the side closest to the shed, encased by cinderblocks, raised off the concrete by newly placed soil and fertilizer, is Kate’s garden.
“I just really wanted to garden.” Allen sits on the edge of the stacked cinderblocks, dragging her sandaled foot through the soil. She’s wearing no jacket, and her toes and cheeks are red from the cold. The blustery October day doesn’t seem to faze her, despite the fact that she hails from the warmer falls of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Allen’s desire to get her hands in the dirt doesn’t exactly reflect her past either. She says her parents were avid gardeners, but that she never joined them outside
“I never did it with them,” she says. Allen became interested in gardening herself as part of a desire, as she puts it, to “live off the grid.” Growing food, to Allen, sustains a disappearing part of modern life: independence. With trademark simplicity, she sums up her reasoning: “It makes me feel not stupid.”
Cinderblock Bed
Allen began her quest for a place for a garden last spring. She brought her idea to the environmental group on campus, known as the Greens. Bolstered by their support, she asked the Civic Engagement Office for funds. Nell Anderson and Ellie Esmond, the co-directors of the office, approved the plan, and pledged Allen $250 to help her get started.
Allen didn’t discover until the start of the school year that her allotted land was concrete covered in an inch of soil. The need to buy extra soil and cinderblocks to create a fertile bed cut into her funds. The Greens had donated $80 dollars to her cause, bringing her grand total to $310. That money couldn’t cover the seeds, tools, soil, and cinderblocks, but Allen, “didn’t want it to be a dead-end project.” She put down $90 s of her own.
She also sent out emails to the student list-serve and posted flyers around campus. Each flyer had a plaintive message from Gandhi: “To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”
Five students showed up on the garden construction day. Allen, in a voice equally gentle and ironic, says more students would have gotten in the way. The students shoveled soil into the rectangle they made of cinderblocks.
The Next Step
The next step was planting. Allen chose vegetables because she wanted something “useful.” Student Anna Lehr Mueser helped her figure out what fit the climate: kale, mustard greens, mesclun greens, spinach, arugula, and garlic. Mueser also suggested a cold-frame to protect the shoots and Allen contrived one of her own making, using dusty old window frames scavenged from the basement of English House.
It’s a few weeks later and Allen’s planning has yielded tender green spokes in the dark soil. Still, she worries. She wants the garden to be a legacy, something that future students will preserve and protect. She wants lettuce from the garden to find its way to a dining hall. So she collects orange rinds in her room for compost, and grows potted lettuce on her windowsills, “just in case.”
Every other day she hooks up the hose and waters what she calls her babies.
Allen tries to explain why she has put so much effort, both time and money, into growing something she could walk into any dining hall or grocery store to get. She tries to put words to the crazy desire to grow green things from concrete. At last, she sighs. “This is life,” she says. “This is earth and how it works.”

Haverford's Mr. President


By Robert Breckinridge

The dorky looking kid with glasses who is already balding at age 20 is the last person you might expect to be one of Haverford College’s Student Council (SC) co-presidents. But that is exactly who Will Harrison, class of 2010, is. And he pulls it all off pretty darned well.
Harrison is surely one of Haverford’s quintessential students; intelligent, driven, well rounded, and pretty nerdy. He has flourished at Haverford in spite of the fact that he said, “in high school I wasn’t particularly popular. I never would have been elected to this sort of thing [Student Council]. I guess college is different.”

Indeed, college has been different because he has been involved in almost every facet of student life at Haverford. Some organizations he’s been a part of include the housing committee, the council of 12, the Bi-college chamber singers, the Bi-College news paper, the cricket team, and an upper class advisor to freshman.
He is the only returning member to Student Council so students are lucky to have him as one of the SC presidents. Here is a guy who knows how to balance what ever is on his plate. And the SC co-presidents have more on their plate than almost any one of Haverford’s 1,200 students.
And for the sake of the students, Harrison has made his Student Council plate even bigger. Some of his causes include construction of a new dorm to free up what little living space students have, building a new theater, and syncing the major requirements at both Bryn Mawr and Haverford so students have more options for classes in their major.

Oh yeah, and helping to raise $300 million dollars to get all that done.
With 10 meetings a week for Student Council causes, it’s not surprising that he said, “I don’t do as much homework as I should.” But it is his electorate that reaps the benefits.
Regardless of the short term in office that the Haverford Constitution allows, Harrison feels that all of his forward looking projects are taken seriously by the administration, including the Board of Directors whom he meets with and presents to four times a year.
It was writing for the Bi-College newspaper that first got Harrison interested in student affairs at Haverford. The second semester of his freshman year, he co-wrote every front page of the weekly newspaper. But it took a special friendship with then senior and chair of Haverford’s Honor Council, Travis Green, to push Harrison to get off the sidelines and into the action.
Harrison first ran unopposed for a regular position on Haverford’s Council of 12, a 13-person SC constituent that, according to Haverford’s Haverpedia (a database for all things Haverford), “provides the information, resources, and representation necessary to implement Student Council’s broad, proactive, forward looking policy initiatives.”

But Harrison wanted more.
He has since ran for and won SC co-president on two separate occasions. The first time his co-president was Dan Kent, the second time was Harrison Haas, his current co-president. They joke that, “he’s [Haas] the writer and I’m [Harrison] the speaker.”
Harrison has lived an interesting life before his time at Haverford. Born in Manhattan, Harrison spent most of his childhood in Montana. He has since lived in 9 different states, including, Montana, Virginia, New Mexico, and Tennessee for 2 years.
Harrison attended Episcopal High School in Washington D.C. on scholarship after spending his freshman year of high school at a Montana public school. He has since lived on Haverford’s campus for the last three years including the summers.
This was probably to avoid having to work the night shift at McDonald’s, a job he held the summer before freshman year of college.
He has certainly moved up in the world since then.

The Church Lady Steps Out


By Emily Olsen

While many members of the Bryn Mawr campus are still sleeping off Saturday night, Mariah Pepper is out of bed and walking toward the train station. She hopes to reach Old First Reformed Church in time for their 11 a.m. service. Last week she attended the service Bryn Mawr Presbyterian, a five-minute walk from her dorm.
“That’s where I go when I want to sleep in” said Pepper.
Pepper, 21, a senior a Bryn Mawr College, has visited many of the churches in the Bryn Mawr area as well as churches in Philadelphia. Her trips have included United Church of Christ, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, and Episcopal Churches and even Quaker meetings.

The reasons for Pepper’s wandering worship are many. Above all, she says she is curious about other denominations and religions. She also likes the different tastes in music she sees in each church she visits. These include the enthusiastic, but off-key, UCC choirs and the semi-professional Presbyterian Hand bell performances. In addition, Pepper is charmed by church communities.
“The regular church goers are all slightly odd in a way that’s really friendly,” she said. “I’m comfortable in any church I go to and enjoy having an affinity with the worshippers.”
On the train, Pepper eats apples and peanut butter from a Tupperware container. The dining halls don’t open until after her train leaves and she usually doesn’t get back to
campus until 2 p.m.
Pepper thinks Old First, a UCC church, is worth the trip though. She especially enjoys the church community there.
Not all of Pepper’s visits have been so positive. Once when she was attending a service for the first time at Lower Merion Baptist Church, a member accosted her with the church directory.
“I’m sure she meant well, but it came off as if she just wanted another butt in the pews” said Pepper. She hasn’t been back to Lower Merion Baptist since.

Then there was the Presbyterian Church that used Wonder bread for communion wafers. Still, Pepper says she has largely enjoyed her visits to other churches.
Pepper feels most at home in UCC churches. As a child she attended Church of the Covenant, which combined UCC and Presbyterian practices.
Church of the Covenant was made up of a diverse community that encouraged Pepper’s interest in other religions through discussion during Sunday school and the celebration of the Passover Seder during Holy Week.
“It made me consider my religion to be one of many and made me curious” said Pepper.
At Old First, Pepper is in her element. She shakes hands with the families in the neighboring pews and glances over the worship program. The congregation is on the small side, but diverse. There are elderly members, but also families with young children. There are a variety of races and sexual orientations.

Pepper especially enjoys the welcoming and tolerant atmosphere of Old First. It is similar to her home church.
“From early on I associated church with social justice” said Pepper.
This association was only strengthened when Pepper switched to another UCC church when she was 13. This church had a strong homeless ministry and a refugee immigration ministry.
At Bryn Mawr College, Pepper used to be a leading member of the Visiting Houses of Worship Program run through the Interfaith Alliance. Visiting Houses of Worship sponsored field trips to different worship centers. For a variety of reasons the program is no longer in existence.
“It’s a Bryn Mawr thing, we needed strong leaders to plan and organize transportation and everyone was just too busy,” Pepper said. “People were also interested in non-Christian religions and there just aren’t that many places around Bryn Mawr.” .

The program visited Our Mother of Good Counsel, Old First Reformed Church and a Sufi Mosque.
“I found the mosque especially interesting because I’d been to Friday services with Muslims, but never to an actual mosque” said Pepper.
Other than the Interfaith Alliance, Pepper has usually kept her distance from campus religion groups. She mostly finds them to be too conservative.
“I’m not evangelical by any stretch of the imagination” said Pepper.
After the service at Old First, Pepper shakes the minister’s hand on the way out. She says likes how he encourages a personal relationship with God.
“I go to a UCC church when I need the community and Quaker meetings when I need the quiet. I go to the Methodist churches when I need the spiritual, but not a formal service and Bryn Mawr Presbyterian is the best place for music” said Pepper.

While Pepper will always identify herself as a member of the UCC, she’s glad to be able to visit so many churches.
“Going to different churches opened me up to different forms of worship and has helped me figure out what I do believe.”