CW: mentions of gun violence

Punch’s Alley or Pub, Wellesley’s on-campus, non-alcoholic bar, hosted an event on April 22 at 9 p.m. featuring local bands through live performances. The set performed by the band NEETS ended in confusion and chaos after an audience member spotted an object that looked like a gun on stage. Unsure if the gun-like object was real or fake, some audience members evacuated the building. Following the performance, audience members shared photos of the stage on social media, confirming the presence of an object that looked like a gun on stage. Student concerns about violence increased after photos of the band’s promotional materials, which were passed out before their performance and included a bomb threat, also circulated on social media. 

According to Bridget Lynch ’24, who attended the event during NEETS’ performance, band members passed out a small sheet of paper before their set. The sheet said: 

[PLEASE RAISE RIGHT HAND] 

I SWEAR THAT I AM AN AUTODIALER

I SWEAR THAT I HAVE REJECTED THE LIQUID MAN.

I SWEAR THAT IF 12 POUNDS OF C4 PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES WERE PLANTED BY TWO MEMBERS OF NEETS IN THE ALL-GENDER BATHROOM IN THE CORNER BEFORE THIS PERFORMANCE, I WOULD TAKE FULL LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY.

I SWEAR THAT MY CITIZENSHIP AND ALLEGIANCE ARE TO THE HOSTILE PLAZA.

[PLEASE LOWER RIGHT HAND]

At the time, Lynch did not think much of the pamphlet, recognizing its satirical intent. 

When NEETS took the stage at around 12:30 a.m., Lynch observed that the four band members donned black ski masks. One member was wearing a hat that said, “PLEASE BE PATIENT I HAVE AUTISM”; another hat included the US Central Intelligence Agency’s seal. Another member was wearing a shirt with the Israel Defense Forces’ emblem. At this point of the night, audience numbers had dwindled, with approximately 25 people remaining for NEETS’ set, most of whom were off-campus guests from the bands that had performed earlier in the night. The set initially passed without incident, until the audience member in front of Lynch made a disturbing observation.

“This guy in front of me turned around,” said Lynch. “He was as white as a sheet, and he looked right at me, and he said, ‘They have a gun,’ in a low voice. … That guy in front of us ran out, which caused us to run out. … I was grabbing people by the shirt and saying, ‘Some guy said they had a gun.’ … I was in a real panic.”  

At first, neither Lynch nor the small handful of people who had exited the building with them were able to confirm the presence of a gun-like object, which was later confirmed by an anonymous Wellesley Sidechat user, who posted a photo of two band members holding gun-like objects on stage the next day. 

“My heart dropped to my […] stomach,” said Lynch. “We were, like, 10 feet away from this, and we didn’t even know because there were all these people standing in front of us. If those [gun-like objects] were real, they could have killed every single person in there. A lot of people are being like, ‘Well, it’s obviously fake.’ … But you can’t pull out a gun and not tell everybody that it’s fake. … We’re all traumatized from gun violence in this country, whether we’ve experienced it first hand or not. We all hear about mass shootings every day on the news. So how am I not supposed to freak the hell out when I see this picture of two guys with big, high-capacity guns?” 

Since seeing this photo, Lynch said they have felt uneasy in on-campus spaces. 

“I literally felt like we were at some kind of racist rally,” said Lynch. “I was so upset that I had brought my partner here, and that I had hung out for [the performance]. I don’t rock with any of this. […] I don’t care if it’s a joke, or if it’s supposed to be political commentary. I’ve seen a million different bands do political commentary on how awful the CIA and FBI are, and I never felt like that in my life.” 

Whitney*, who attended the Pub event, disagrees with this assessment of the band. They said that they personally know the members of NEETS, who are committed to anti-fascism and leftist politics. Their use of the rhetoric and aesthetic of the far right is a way to reclaim these images to lessen their power to cause harm. They also believe that other attendees at the event who stayed following the crowd panic understood the satirical intent of the performance. 

Amanda Kaufman, assistant director of student involvement & leadership, said in an email statement that the Office of Student Involvement (OSI), which oversees Punch’s Alley, is investigating the situation. In the interim, Pub will be closed until further notice. She encourages any students with concerns about the situation to schedule a meeting with her or to fill out an anonymous feedback form, which is included in the April 24 Senate minutes. This same statement was also delivered at Senate on April 24.

According to an email statement sent to the News by Tara Murphy, chief communications officer of Wellesley College, after students expressed their concerns over this incident, Campus Police swept the building and began an investigation into the incident. 

“At a time when mass shootings are resulting in tragic deaths across the country, it is shocking that the performers chose to use props like ski masks and fake guns,” said Murphy. “It is understandable why students were frightened and upset by the incident.” 

Murphy said that the College intends to implement new policies for vetting bands and other performers invited to Pub that allow for additional oversight by OSI. 

Wellesley College prohibits weapons on campus in accordance with Massachusetts law, according to the faculty-staff and student handbooks and the student housing agreement. While the city of Boston banned fake guns in 2015, fake guns are not banned in the state of Massachusetts or on campus. Murphy said that the College is reviewing its gun-related policies and considering expanding them to address imitation firearms. 

Lynch said that this incident was especially alarming because it has made some students feel unsafe in their homes. Unlike an off-campus venue, Pub is part of Wellesley’s campus, which is home to most students for four years. Lynch values Pub’s role in the campus community and hope for changes that would prevent this situation from happening again. 

“I would really like to have … some kind of assurance that this isn’t going to happen again, some kind of assurance that these people won’t be invited back onto campus ever again,” said Lynch. “Also, assurance that Pub has some kind of zero-tolerance weapons policy, which our whole campus is supposed to have.”

To kickstart the event, Patricia Birch, assistant dean for intercultural education, facilitated the event by introducing Ferguson and asking her several questions throughout the event. Students comfortably fit in Harambee House’s living room and were enlivened with questions throughout the meet and greet. 

Ferguson opened the talk by sharing her personal and academic background. Originally from Los Angeles, she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Africana studies and sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, before relocating to Washington, D.C. to receive her Ph.D. in communication, culture, and media studies at Howard University. Throughout her studies, she has explored police and prison abolition, starting with her interest in juvenile justice in undergrad, which was informed by her personal experiences with the carceral system as a teenager. 

“Being in the Africana studies and sociology departments gave me a lot of context [and] the language that I needed to understand all that I had seen and observed growing up in LA,” said Ferguson at the event. “Once I got to Howard, that critical intellectual education really did it for me. So my feminist awakening really deepened when I got to Howard. And then I started focusing … on women and incarceration in California.”  

At Howard, Ferguson focused on archival research. For her dissertation, she analyzed CCWP’s newsletter, which has been published since 1996 in collaboration with incarcerated people. 

“I studied the newsletters to … better understand the violence of incarceration and how incarcerated people in women’s prisons are resisting [and] self organizing,” Ferguson said at the event.

In addition to studying the newsletters, she continues to contribute to them in partnership with CCWP when possible. In 2021, she received a grant to conduct interviews with formerly incarcerated women, which provided a “more nuanced account of the violence of incarceration and the real challenges of resisting and self organizing in women’s prisons.” Through her research, she aims to illustrate that “incarcerated women, transgender and gender non-conforming people resist and self organize” in different ways compared to men due to the gender-based violence that is threatened in retaliation. One example she provided is the work of incarcerated women in California to organize against the abysmal healthcare provided in women’s prisons since the 1990s.

“The prison is really a replica of what’s going on out here in society … with sexual abuse, exploitation and all of these issues that are going on,” said Ferguson at the event. “Women are a hidden demographic. You hear a lot about incarcerated men, but rarely do you hear about incarcerated women, particularly when we’re talking about resistance and self organizing, because within … the abolitionist movement, there’s an idea that women’s acts are not aggressive enough. In my work on shifting that narrative, we’re not talking about these passive, helpless observers. Incarcerated women have to think differently, strategically about how to self organize and resist.” 

Maren Frye ’23 said she attended the event because it piqued her existing interest in police and prison abolition. She asked Ferguson a question about her archival research because she was curious to what extent the CCWP newsletter has evolved over the past 30 years.

“I found it to be very telling that [Ferguson] was talking about all these things that had not changed [in women’s prisons] like healthcare, programming and the prison institution as a whole replicating itself over and over again,” Frye said. 

Ferguson’s ongoing book project, “Voices from the Inside: Incarcerated Women Speak,” synthesizes her dissertation and ethnographic research. After she finishes her first book, she hopes to explore how abolitionist activists center self care and wellness in their work. This interest is informed by the burnout that grassroots organizers often experience, which she described as “grueling.”

“Commitment to justice and systemic change is a practice that requires a marathon approach and mentality,” said Ferguson. “Wellness and self-care must be centered in this marathon movement to chip away at racist structures, policies and ideas.”

After describing her past, present and future work, Ferguson opened up the conversation to hear from attendees about their experiences with organizing and burnout, which led to a general Q&A session for the rest of the event. Attendees asked questions about the intersections between motherhood and female incarceration, what activist self-care looks like in practice and other topics.

Reflecting on the event, Frye said that she loved its conversational style.

“I really liked the collaborative element where she was asking us questions, and we were also asking her questions, and she just had so much wisdom to share,” said Frye. “It was incredible to hear her speak about all the work that she has done and from her own experiences being impacted by the system. … Just getting that access to someone who’s so deeply connected to the work and the field and being able to ask these questions that really you can only get answers from people who are doing the work was really exciting.”

Ferguson ended the meet and greet by urging students to get involved in local organizing groups working on issues that matter to them. 

“[Organizing] is a marathon, not a sprint,” said Ferguson at the event. “Those on the frontline have always felt a sense of urgency because there’s always an issue we have to fight against, but if we approach it as a sprint, that becomes detrimental to our health. … So I see it as a marathon now.”

Lynn Sternberger ’07, screenwriter and co-founder of Wellesley in Entertainment, said that the purpose of the screenwriting competition is to forge connections between current students interested in screenwriting and alums in the entertainment industry.

“Having the [submission] deadline would inspire and encourage students to have a tangible goal to work toward their writing projects. … People who do submit receive some sort of feedback, and it’s meant to be encouraging and constructive. … The goal is to … make introductions and start to help them build a community around themselves of not just Wellesley alums, but other professionals in the industry,” Sternberger said. 

Katie Barsotti ’15, an LA-based writer, said that Wellesley in Entertainment was founded partially to fill a gap in screenwriting education at Wellesley College, although the group supports alums working in all roles within the entertainment industry. While the group is focused on alums because it is easier to connect with people based in LA, current students are welcome to join the Facebook group to make connections with alums, who are always excited to mentor current students.

“Anyone can teach themselves how to write. … We were seeing people coming out of Wellesley without the practical knowledge to do well in the industry, and we felt like going to a women’s college, and Wellesley in particular, makes you uniquely positioned to help change the industry for the better,” said Barsotti. “And so we were like, let’s give our alums a fighting chance in the industry instead of floating around in the ether and not connecting with one another.”

Kurdak said that she wrote her winning script, which was the first script she’s ever written, while taking the course Writing for Television in the fall of 2022. She was inspired by her love for kids shows such as “Over the Garden Wall,” which she believes are less cynical than television intended for adult audiences. 

“It’s the pilot episode of a kid’s cartoon about a girl who gets her first period. And then she and her best friend … end up wandering in these fantastical woods and getting lost there and meeting a bunch of strange bugs,” Kurdak said.

Kevlihan said that he started working on his script in Feb. 2022, inspired by his friend’s interest in Formula One racing. The script he submitted is a romantic comedy about queer racecar drivers, but Kevlihan has been exploring his interest in screenwriting outside the competition since he first arrived at Wellesley, inspired by his experience in a class he took in the fall of 2019, The Art of Screenwriting. In the theatre department, he receives hands-on experience through writing and directing.

“My imagery has always been super visual,” said Kevlihan. “Other people have described my short stories as kind of cinematic. Working with visual images to tell the story is such an interesting challenge with screenwriting.”

While Kurdak is a computer science major, she said she is planning to spend next year focusing on her writing to see if she is interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry.

Kevlihan said that he plans to relocate to LA post-graduation to pursue a career in screenwriting. 

“I love writing collaboratively, and TV writing is like a whole writers room full of people working together,” said Kevlihan. “It would be awesome. That’s, like, the dream. I’d love to see some of my scripts made into movies too.” 

When asked about what advice they would give to aspiring screenwriters currently attending Wellesley, Barsotti and Sternberger gave similar advice: to constantly work on improving your writing through practice. Sternberger urged aspiring writers to “seek community and feedback” and to “build a life full of people that you want in it professionally and personally.”

“It’s about giving and receiving creatively. … You will benefit immensely from the input of others. … You don’t have to come to Hollywood right away,” said Sternberger. “You can live life, and you can go do a lot of other things, and you will become a more rich contributor to any writing space you end up in for having done those things. The only thing you have to keep doing is writing on the side.”

“What do we want? Divestment! When do we want it? Now!” “Make my Olin degree fossil free!” “When our future is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” “Hey, ho, fossil fuels have to go!” 

Olin’s divestment campaign regained traction not long after Wellesley divested its endowment from fossil fuels in spring 2021. To progress toward the College’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2040, the Wellesley Board of Trustees ended existing investments and prohibited new investments in fossil fuel funds, following an affirmative vote from the student body, which also agreed to several carbon-reducing community actions. This decision was achieved after years of student activism, with groups such as Fossil Free Wellesley and Renew Wellesley generating community support for divestment by organizing protests and submitting formal requests to the Board. 

After interrupting the meeting, Divest Olin organizers went around in a circle and said why they care about climate justice. Some reasons that were mentioned include the destruction of the Earth’s natural beauty, wildfires in students’ hometowns and the disproportionate effects on communities of color caused by climate change.

Olivia Chang ’25, an Olin student and organizer with Divest Olin, said at the direct action, “Standing in front of you now is where months of working within the system has left us. We’ve been told by Board members on the divestment committee that there are few financial concerns about divestment, that their only concern is setting a precedent for acting upon student input. … Look within yourselves and ask yourself what precedent you want to be setting. Do you want to set one of … denial, or do you want to set one that honors our values, uploads our institutions, and inspires both students and administrators alike to always strive to work together to better the communities that we so deeply care for? The choice is yours.” 

According to Chang, Olin students, faculty and staff have been pushing for divestment since 2016. The campaign became newly invigorated in May 2022, after Chang became frustrated with her on-campus sustainability position, in which her primary responsibility was to remove compost from student dorm buildings. 

“How can this be the only thing I can do at Olin to advance any kind of climate action?” said Chang. “Like, this is not enough. I’m taking out the compost and the world is burning. I’m sick of all these individual actions, like, ‘just reduce your carbon footprint’ things.” 

In summer 2022, members of Divest Olin drafted a 50-page proposal detailing the moral and financial reasons to divest from fossil fuels, which were presented to the Board. Throughout the fall semester, student organizers hosted a variety of on-campus events to raise awareness about the campaign leading up to a student referendum in Nov. 2022, in which 93% of students voted in support of divestment. Following the vote, Olin President Gilda A. Barabino announced the creation of an investment working group committee to consider changes to Olin’s endowment, which Chang and other student organizers were appointed to. After growing frustrated with Board members’ opposition to divestment, Chang and other student organizers decided to start taking direct action, starting with the Feb. 11 interruption of the Board meeting. 

“We realized that we’re not going to let divestment die by committee,” Chang said.

At the direct action, Board members responded to students’ demands. They thanked the students for their passion but critiqued the method by which students delivered their message. They professed their support for the group’s goals of climate action but disagreed that divestment was the right course of action to achieve that goal. 

The Olin Board of Trustees did not respond to a request for comment. 

Following a back-and-forth dialogue, in which students and Board members argued over whether students were given a voice in the Board’s decisions, Board members began to leave to resume their meeting in a different room. Before the last few members left, students orchestrated a die-in, requiring Board members to step over students’ bodies as they exited the room. Students took a seat at the conference table previously occupied by Board members and blasted music. 

Going forward, Chang said that Divest Olin intends “to keep escalating until our demands are met. Divestment is really important to us. We believe our college should not be funding climate chaos. And we also believe the college should listen to students.”

While she is pleasantly surprised that engineering students have been open to embracing community activism, Chang said she is frustrated that the Board’s actions do not reflect Olin’s values of collaboration, experimentation and risk-taking. She urges Wellesley students to get involved by coming to the group’s future actions and holding solidarity with student climate activists. The group can be reached @divestolin on Instagram. 

“I hope that other students see that you can work for change within your community and, like, organize within your community,” said Chang. “We’re not just engineers, we can also be activists. Students have power, and we should take it.” 

“Something to highlight about her is how ‘herself’ she is in what she does,” said Torkornoo at the event. “Fashion has always been an extension of who she knows herself to be inside. My wish for all Black people, all Black girls and women and people, is to really find what makes us feel the most ourselves.” 

Torkornoo is Wellesley’s 2022-2023 national student ambassador for HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest digital archive of African American oral histories. The College recently subscribed to the database, which can be accessed through Wellesley College’s Library & Technology Services. Several HistoryMakers, defined by the archive as people of African descent who have made significant accomplishments or are associated with notable events, were featured throughout Torkornoo’s presentation, specifically those with ties to the US fashion industry. 

Serena Chan ’23 is the president of W.COLLECTIVE. She said that Torkornoo reached out with the idea for the collaboration. Torkornoo said that she wanted the event to come to fruition because “Black trailblazers are crucial and relevant to everything that we do.”

“There’s so many notable Black Americans who are in the fashion and creative industry in general,” said Chan. “As we talked about [during the presentation], not just in front of the camera, but [there’s also] many Black stylists, makeup artists, photographers and designers. So it was really important to pay tribute to a lot of these Black creatives, especially during Black History Month.” 

Desirée Rogers ’81 is one HistoryMaker whose contributions to the fashion industry were celebrated. Following her tenure as the 27th White House Social Secretary under former President Barack Obama, she became Johnson Publishing Company’s CEO; the company produced several African American culture magazines, such as Ebony and Jet, and Fashion Fair Cosmetics, whose products cater to a diverse range of skin tones for people of color. 

“I like the creativity, and the spirit, and the amount of very visible teamwork that you see to come together, get a product done, our project, and finish, and move on to the next one,” said Rogers in a 2007 HistoryMakers interview about the magazine industry — before she started as JPC’s CEO. “And so, everyone kind of starts over again to create something. And I like that kind of movement.”

While other non-Wellesley affiliated fashion HistoryMakers, such as Norma Jean Darden and Ophelia DeVore, were discussed, Rogers was intentionally centered in the presentation to make a broader point about the limited Black representation in Wellesley’s most famous alums. 

“I think it’s actually important to think about who we know that went to this institution,” said Torkornoo at the event. “When we think of alumni, they often look very similar. … And I think it’s important that we honor them, but at the same time, in the ways that we have these household names, Desirée Rogers should also be a household name. So let’s also center and question why the Wellesley alumni that we think of do fit one particular mold, and why someone such as her is not seen as being worthy of the esteem and talk.”

Audience participation was central to naming and honoring many other HistoryMakers — beyond those featured in the online database — that have influenced US fashion, from Billy Porter to Doja Cat and Pat McGrath. Audience members pointed out Black people’s influence on fashion trends, such as the recent resurgence of Y2K fashion, an aesthetic characterized by low-rise jeans, vibrant pinks and purples and saddle bags.

“W.COLLECTIVE is comprised of some of the coolest people on campus, who are always dressed to the nines,” said Torkornoo. “There’s such a tradition within the Black community of dressing to the nines, of using clothing and makeup as self-expression, as extension of life and community. And so, I thought that this is an amazing opportunity for Wellesley to understand that we need to center Black voices in all spaces. And this includes the smaller spaces on campus where we’re having our org meetings.” 

At the end of the event, Torkornoo challenged audience participants to look up their hometowns or high schools on the HistoryMakers database to learn about the Black history at personally significant locations. To incentivize the amplification of Black history, HistoryMakers is hosting a contest in which participants submit written or visual reflections showcasing this history. Submissions are due Feb. 14, and first through third prize winners receive a cash prize.  

Torkornoo said she is grateful to W.COLLECTIVE for giving her the space to present about Black history, which is central to who she is. She hopes that the Wellesley community will continue to center Black narratives in events throughout the year, not just during Black History Month. 

“Professor [Kellie] Carter Jackson always reminds us that Black history is 365,” said Torkornoo at the event. “So what that means is that Black history is everyday. Uplift, validate and affirm the Black people in your life every single day, not just in February, because we don’t just deserve a month. I am Black every day, we are Black every day.”

“I already buy flights to come here, receive financial aid that still forces me to work part-time or more during the school year and struggle to support my family back at home,” Leovan said. “$1.50 may not seem like a lot for a load of laundry, but it adds up fast, even only doing laundry every two weeks.”

In response to concerns like Leovan’s, several groups of students have mobilized to advocate for including laundry in room and board costs, allowing students on financial aid to cover laundry costs. The Community Organizing Resource Collective (CORC), a College Government Committee, and the Wellesley chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) have both made contributions to the included laundry campaign this semester. 

CORC first released a feedback form on on-campus laundry services in Feb. 2022, with an updated version sent to all students in Oct. 2022. Joni Lee ’23, Community Organizing and Inclusion Liaison (COIL), said that the purpose of the form is to develop “a comprehensive understanding of all the issues students face in the laundry rooms.” 

“In addition to the high cost of doing laundry, we’ve learned that the long wait times to do laundry deter students from doing it,” Lee said. “Tower currently has six washers and six dryers for over 300 students. While we are tackling getting laundry included in our tuition, I see many more initiatives that could come from the data we’ve gathered, whether it be getting more laundry machines in larger dorms or making the laundry rooms more accessible.”

Independently, the Wellesley YDSA circulated a petition in support of included laundry in Nov. 2022, which can be found on the organization’s Instagram @wellesley_ydsa. Meghana Lakkireddy ’25, Wellesley YDSA co-president, said that students voiced concerns about laundry costs at the organization’s open meeting at the beginning of the school year, driving the creation of the petition and other actions to support the campaign. Additionally, they encouraged students to fill out the most recent iteration of the COIL’s laundry feedback form and to donate to the YDSA’s mutual aid fund created to “curb laundry inaccessibility in the interim.”

“I think we’ve raised around $500, which is really awesome,” Lakkireddy said. “But we did the math, and after splitting the laundry costs among all 12 dorms, it only evens out to about 10 loads of laundry per dorm … which really goes to show how inaccessible and how expensive laundry really is.”

CORC’s campaign is also underway. 

“If it weren’t for the work of Deavihan [Scott ’22, last year’s COIL] and the previous and current CORC members, we would not be in the position to start working with [administrators] to see this project through finally,” Lee said. “Last year’s CORC also researched how students at peer institutions pay for laundry. For example, some students have subsidized laundry, access to using points to pay for it, or even laundry being tacked into the costs of housing for students … Going into this year, all [laundry] machines across campus have been replaced because [administrators] finally saw how awful and broken the laundry machines really were. Now, I am waiting to meet with [Vice President for Finance and Administration] Piper Orton to discuss what options we have that can feasibly address the high costs for students.” 

Leovan said that free laundry would be highly beneficial to her. Given that she travels to school by plane, she cannot bring many clothes, which means that she must do her laundry frequently. However, the prohibitive costs of laundry deter her from doing her laundry, and she sometimes rewears clothes until they smell. 

“I do not wash everything as much as I would like,” Leovan said. “I also do not separate clothes [by color]. I just wash everything [in] cold [water] and hope it turns out alright.”

Rhonna Bollig, associate director for Residential Life, said that students who are currently struggling to pay for laundry “are encouraged to meet with their financial aid advisor to review their unique aid package and discuss options for additional funding.” 

“If you are interested in helping work to get laundry included in our tuition or the general effort to make laundry more affordable, feel free to come to the CORC’s weekly meetings from 6:30-7:30 [p.m.] in the OSI office or feel free to email me at coil@wellesley.edu,” Lee said.

Lakkireddy said that organizing for included laundry is about more than the campaign’s immediate goal.

“Hopefully if we win this [campaign], it will be a sign for students that our voices and the power that we have on campus is very real, and that there are other things that we can organize around … to fix on this campus through collective action and making our voices heard,” they said.

Changes in staffing have been challenging to adjust to, exacerbated by several staff members currently being out on extended leaves. According to Angela Tebbetts, assistant lead academic custodian, the return of in-person classes and events, shortages in dining hall employees and employee burnout have affected custodial services well into the 2022-2023 school year. 

Tricia Diggins, p.m. academic custodian, said the staff shortages have caused her to “triage her cleaning” each day.

“It’s been rough because I started during [COVID-19] when I was looking for dirt,” Diggins said. “If I found dirt, I was like, ‘Oh, I can clean this area,’ so everything was spotless. Now it’s just really painful to see and make the choices as to what goes into tomorrow unclean. I don’t like it, but it’s an absolute necessity.”

Tebbetts and Diggins explained that custodial teams are divided into two types of buildings: academics and dorms. Each group has several lead custodians, who cover short- and long-term absences, but staffing absences frequently exceed the number of leads for each type of building, especially in dorms, due to the sheer number of buildings that need to be cleaned. To make dorm cleaning more manageable, actions such as reducing the number of trash cans on each floor have occurred.

“If people were clean, we wouldn’t have jobs,” Tebbetts said. “It’s not the cleaning that bothers us, it’s the fact that there’s only eight hours in the day. It’s almost like there’s an unreasonable expectation. … If you’re in a building with someone who’s out [on leave or taking a sick day], especially in dorms, you’re going to be asked to cover that person’s area plus your own. But you can’t get two eight-hour jobs done in eight hours.” 

Tebbets noted that hiring temporary custodial workers for the duration of a staff member’s leave can help bridge the gap caused by long-term absences. Given that temporary positions are only hired internally, Tebbetts believes that the College has been hesitant to post these positions because they would likely draw workers from dining services, where a shortage would more acutely affect students. 

Lane said that the College “follow[s] the terms of the [Independent Maintenance and Service Employees Union of America, also known as IMSEUA] contract in ensuring that Union staff members (in dining and in facilities) have access to [temporary positions] if they are interested. … The College and the Union are continuously working together to ensure that there is adequate staffing across campus.”

As the leader of the Union and Labor Advocacy Task Force, also known as UniLad, in Wellesley Against Mass Incarceration (WAMI), Hannah Grimmett ’25 has been working to raise awareness about issues faced by the College’s maintenance and dining workers and to build solidarity between students and staff. She said that students have begun to notice the effects of custodial staffing changes. 

“I have heard people talking about how it doesn’t seem like the services are at the same level they might want it to be, [such as] the frequency of cleanings,” Grimmett said. “Definitely with paper towels running out in academic buildings, or in common area bathrooms that have paper towels, I feel like that’s an area where it’s pretty clearly noticeable that there wasn’t someone who was able to fill that same shift with the same frequency.” 

In addition to filling temporary positions more quickly, Grimmett, Tebbetts and Diggins all agreed that the College could do more to boost morale for custodial workers, such as providing incentives for employees to work overtime, especially in dorms, where cleaning needs are more likely to occur after hours. Tebbetts said that the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that the best custodians are most likely to be asked to cover other people’s shifts.

“It’s the same people who are repeatedly getting asked to do more,” Tebbetts said. “That’s wearing on you, not physically as much as [you ask yourself], ‘Why am I getting punished repeatedly?’ It’s not rewarded in any way, there’s no ‘attaboy.’”

Tebbetts and Diggins said they believe student voices could be central to driving action. 

“Students should complain, because … administrators in Green Hall aren’t seeing the dorms,” Diggins said. “We hate to have people complain. It’s the worst thing when you’re a custodian, and you have someone complain about your area. But if it’s … impossible to do [the cleaning in time], maybe we’ll get some help.” 

Grimmett said she believes that the issues faced by custodial workers are structural, rooted in inadequate compensation for workers, high turnover and an environment that excludes custodians from the broader campus community. 

“There [used to be] massive community events, like softball games and cookouts and things like that, that were about bringing workers, faculty, students and administrators all together,” Grimmett said. “Having a time to socialize, connect and have those socially nourishing experiences to maintain the health of a community [is important], and those have slowly deteriorated and gotten us to the point where we are now.”

According to Grimmett, student involvement can start small, such as by forging connections with service workers on campus.

“We would ask you to understand the individual custodians and the struggles they’re facing,” Diggins said. 

Until, that is, Campus Police showed up and told me that guests weren’t allowed on campus due to the College’s COVID-19 restrictions at the time. But the weather was so frigid that virtually no one else had dared venture outside — who had called the police on me? The only logical conclusion I could think of was that some student had likely seen me, a person with short hair and a long winter jacket hiding my figure, outside their window and assumed that I wasn’t a Wellesley student — and therefore didn’t belong on campus — based on my perceived gender as male. While I do identify as a woman, this incident was deeply painful as I thought about the vibrant community of transmasculine, transgender and gender nonconforming students on campus who have continuously fought for their right to be, belong and be celebrated at Wellesley. The involvement of Campus Police in this incident was particularly concerning given the disproportionate impacts of policing on people of color, particularly transgender people of color. 

Why am I telling a story from two years ago? The memory of this incident vividly resurfaced when I returned to campus and noticed the creation of a new account on Instagram called “WhoseMansWellz.” The original bio read, “Calling out the boys we see on campus #gtfo / #HistoricallyWomensCollege / DM us if u spot any.” Later, “#gtfo” was deleted, “boys” was edited to “non-Wellesley boys” and “want to create a safe space” was added. True to its bio, the account posted photos of men on campus with an emoji blocking their faces, submitted by Wellesley students. 

To be clear, this account was actively harmful because it reinforced a hostile environment for masculine-presenting Wellesley students, especially trans-masculine students. By asking for student submissions, it encouraged students to engage in gender policing on campus, simultaneously upholding bioessentialist standards of masculinity and exclusionary standards on who belongs at Wellesley. 

While the account has since been deleted, it is worth thinking about the root issues on campus that encourage gender policing. The students that created the account may have been driven by implicit or explicit biases against (or ignorance of) the transmasculine community at Wellesley. The account’s creators should absolutely take accountability for the harm they’ve perpetuated. However, focusing only on the individuals who created the account doesn’t answer the question of what encourages these biases or ignorance on campus. Wellesley’s website points to the answer; despite an increasingly diverse and outspoken transgender, transmasculine and gender nonconforming community on campus, Wellesley administration has doubled down on its “women-only” message, despite consensus within the student body that Wellesley is not a “women’s college” but rather a “historically women’s college.” By continuously using she/her pronouns in reference to the student body and describing all students as “Wellesley women,” college administrators and the Board of Trustees erase the existence of Wellesley’s trans community, a fact that The News has continuously reminded administration of in recent years.

Until the administration listens to trans students and their allies and ceases to rely on gendered programming and language in materials for prospective, current or past Wellesley students, it is up to the Wellesley community to create a safe space for the trans community. The least we — students, faculty, staff and administrators alike — can do is acknowledge the value that the men, transmasculine and nonbinary students at Wellesley currently provide and have been providing for many years.

The structure of the original 1972 Clean Water Act helps illustrate the environmental risks posed by Louisiana v. American Rivers. This version of the CWA encouraged federal environmental regulators to work cooperatively with state and tribe officials — a 1992 Supreme Court decision even affirmed states’ and tribes’ authority to deny certification of fossil fuel energy infrastructure projects such as oil or gas pipelines that threaten to contaminate states’ water resources. Whereas energy companies and federal regulators do not have to experience the negative effects of their decision to create or permit extractive, unsustainable infrastructure, state regulators and the people they represent are much more likely to dissent to these decisions. This federalist structure has prevented many — albeit not enough — pipelines from being constructed. 

The Court’s recent decision essentially revoked states’ and tribes’ right to restrict the construction of environmentally damaging infrastructure. Liberals might retort, “But President Biden loves the environment! This decision is hardly anything to worry about.” This sentiment is a woeful misunderstanding of the agencies and actors that have control over infrastructure siting decisions. For example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees the interstate transmission of natural gas, controls the siting of all interstate natural gas pipelines. It consists of up to five commissioners, appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. I’ll let you do the math of what infrastructure siting decisions look like when only five people are tasked with overseeing the construction of hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines. (Spoiler alert: as of 2015, FERC had only rejected two pipeline proposals since 1985.)

The positive effects of the CWA further highlight just how alarming the Court’s recent decision is. A 2018 study by UC Berkeley and Iowa State University found that 30 years after the CWA’s implementation, most water pollution measures, including fecal coliform bacteria, showed improvement compared to pre-CWA measurement. To make these results more tangible, consider another one of their findings: the number of rivers safe for fishing increased by 12% during this time period. And of course, the CWA made plenty of non-drinkable water potable. 

Essentially, Americans’ access to clean, safe drinking water — particularly communities disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards such as communities of color — hinges on this one law from President Nixon’s administration (I never thought I’d say this, but thanks, Nixon?). Before I get canceled for siding with Nixon on anything, note that I’m not exactly reminiscing about Nixon’s administration but rather the political bipartisanship toward environmentalism that existed in the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps I’ll reserve the comprehensive answer to the question, “What happened?” for another column, but one short answer is time. The majority of comprehensive environmental regulations in the United States were enacted just over 50 years ago. 50 years is more than enough time for collective forgetting. 50 years is license to take environmental regulations for granted — until it’s 2022, and the majority of nine people with too much power decide to take it all away.

Not all of us have been taking environmental protection for granted. Indigenous water protectors have been embroiled in the selfless, thankless act of protecting America’s rivers, both historically and in the present day. More recently, Indigenous communities have successfully stopped the construction of oil and gas pipelines across the United States, mobilizing because “Mní Wičhóni” (a Lakota phrase that translates to “Water Is Life”). The Court’s recent decision threatens to render the work of environmental activists futile.

At the same time, the Court’s decision should awaken our environmental consciousness. Next time you fill your water bottle, think about and participate in the environmental activism and regulations that made that drink possible. 

We hope you can buy into the thoughts presented in this article. Just so you know, The Wellesley News does not collect a share of sales from this article … because that would defeat its whole purpose. 

1. [Insert hyper-specific product made out of plastic that will be used a handful of times before being chucked into a dumpster, which eventually makes its way to the ocean, never quite degrading into a harmless molecule to the ocean’s ecosystems.] 

Promising review: “After a company owned by another company, owned by a conglomerate, owned by Jeff Bezos, bombarded me with sponsored BuzzFeed articles promoting this product, I was convinced that I had to have it! Before reading these articles, I didn’t realize this [hyper-specific need] was unfulfilled. My life has improved a minuscule amount.”

2. Now that I’ve caught your attention by offering you a commodity to purchase, I’m here to critique that very same behavior exhibited by “leisure reading” websites like BuzzFeed. 

I love scrolling through BuzzFeed to quickly assuage my boredom as much as the next Gen Z-er — who doesn’t want to take a quiz on which Starbucks fall drink you are or to read 35 (probably made-up) shocking confessions from users? — but the time to call out the increasing commodification of the platform is overdue. Most commonly in partnership with Amazon, practically every other article published on the website promotes a lengthy list of products in the hopes that you will eventually cave and buy one you probably don’t need. This direction taken by the company has devastating social and environmental consequences, but least recognized is its impact on the “common sense” surrounding consumerism. By verbalizing the beliefs and actions that are normalized through repeated exposure to product advertisements — like environmental degradation as a way of everyday life — we can begin to critique them and propose alternatives. 

3. The social implications of BuzzFeed Shopping become immediately evident when I hover over the product links, which almost always begin with https://amazon.com.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon, and similar conglomerates have committed egregious social and environmental offenses — need I elaborate more? — and there is no reason to financially support them with the unnecessary items aggressively promoted by BuzzFeed. By no means is this an argument against purchasing essentials from Amazon, but I’d hardly describe a charger that makes your phone levitate as essential. (No, I don’t care how cool it is.) 

4. Next, I notice the products themselves — right down to their molecular makeup. 

Single-use mascara, decorative plastic limes and a waterproof speaker that holds your beer while in the shower — all products recently promoted by BuzzFeed — require resource-intensive manufacturing and are very unlikely to be recycled. The chemicals required to produce the disposable makeup, the plastic required to produce the lime and the battery required to create the speaker — all products that you’d be hard pressed to argue are necessities — will linger in the environment indefinitely once disposed of. The production of toxic chemicals results in toxic wastewater dumped into streams, the microplastics that result from plastic production have already entered our bodies and the minerals mined for the speaker’s battery require intensive labor and end up poisoning workers and ecosystems. Nevermind the intensive carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions produced by the shipping industry to move these products thousands of miles from overseas to your home. When you consider the sheer volume at which these unneeded products are being produced, purchased and then disposed of, the outlook for our Earth becomes quite grim.

5. To be clear, this is not a “personal responsibility” argument. Just the opposite, in fact. 

The BuzzFeed reader who logs off the website having bought the decorative limes is not at fault for buying a disposable product they didn’t need. While perusing BuzzFeed Shopping for this article I was nearly convinced that I needed the shower beer speaker. From the punchy, entertaining format of these articles to the promising reviews written by “real people,” it’s incredibly compelling to click that affiliate Amazon link and to press buy. However, it is simultaneously true that not purchasing these products in the first place would alleviate the burdens they pose on workers and the planet. How can we resolve these conflicting viewpoints on the root causes of consumerist culture?

6. The “common sense” framework might help. Specifically, the ways that companies manipulate you to view rampant consumerism as normal, as devoid of consequences on other humans or the planet — all to benefit their bottom line and to ensure infinite economic growth. 

Sheer repetition of consumerist actions helps entrench this “common sense.” The BuzzFeed Shopping homepage literally has no end. (It appears you can click “load more” at the bottom of the page indefinitely.) Of course, BuzzFeed is not the only guilty party here — like most problems in the world, Jeff Bezos is to blame for the strong partnership between BuzzFeed and Amazon — but this behavior leaves an especially bad taste in my mouth knowing that BuzzFeed projects a prominent left-wing image. What about deliberately leading consumers to fund devastating resource extraction and labor exploitation for products they truly don’t need is progressive? 

7. I understand that BuzzFeed’s entire business model relies on these affiliate links. I’m not suggesting that they stop these partnerships entirely (although they should really find an alternate business model that is more in line with social and environmental dignity ASAP), but at the very least they should be much more intentional with the products that they promote. 

What could soon be a promising review: “After perusing a new-and-improved BuzzFeed Shopping page, I was pleased to find lists promoting small businesses with a focus on those owned by marginalized groups, affordable essentials, eco-friendly products and products that make navigating the world more accessible for disabled folks.”