I was very young during the aftermath of 9/11, but I still know exactly how the average American, including my friends, perceived Islamic expressions like “Allah hu akhbar.” These days, the usage of phrases such as “glory to our martyrs,” “from the river to the sea”, and “intifada” during pro-Palestine protests is vilified by mainstream media, politicians and university presidents. Any flag, poster or chant in Arabic is immediately interpreted as pro-ISIS or pro-Hamas. It is incredibly frustrating to have even the simplest parts of your religious expression bastardized and associated with evil. Arabic is not my native language, but I know how exhausting it is for Arabs to contend with these extreme misinterpretations. It feels like we are being told that there is something inherently wrong, violent and shameful about who we are, and we should hide or reject it. 

I know that I’m speaking from a different place than most people, especially non-Muslims and non-Arabs who did not grow up with these words as part of their everyday vernacular. When I think of the word “martyr” (شَهيد) I remember my friend’s little brother, who passed away after a long battle with a disease doctors could not diagnose. He is a martyr. The thousands of Palestinian children who were killed by Israeli airstrikes, who died of illness because there are fewer and fewer functioning hospitals in Gaza and who are starving to death due to Israel’s siege are all martyrs. I say “Allah hu akhbar” (ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ) when I pray because I believe God is the greatest. Moreover, it’s because I think belief in God as the most powerful has always been a source of hope for oppressed people, from Iraq to Yemen, from Afghanistan to India and from Palestine to Sudan. 

Racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia aside, I find it hard to believe that a country that is so diverse, and that speaks a language with so many borrowed words, is so afraid of the Arabic language. This fear is prevalent across the political spectrum. While conservatives engage in explicit anti-Arab rhetoric, liberals tone police Arabs and Muslims by discouraging the use of phrases that might be interpreted as hostile. Even at Wellesley, where students love to think of themselves as progressive and accepting of other cultures, the vilification of Arabic persists. In a Letter to the Editor published last month, a group of students labeled the phrase “glory to our martyrs” as antisemitic, claiming that it celebrates “terrorists who [died] with the mission of murdering all Jews.” I would invite these students to examine their Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, and then maybe Google the phrase before maligning it. We won’t stop saying “glory to our martyrs,” “intifada” or “Allah hu akhbar” because there is no reason to stop. And we will not allow a farcical discussion of semantics to distract us from our goal: freedom for our brothers and sisters in Palestine. 

Around the world, in Muslim countries and Christian ones, in religious countries and secular ones, governments are obsessed with controlling what women wear. Last March, the high court of the Indian state of Karnataka upheld a ban on girls wearing the hijab in classrooms. Egypt’s government banned the niqab, a face covering worn by some Muslim women, just last week. In Iran, women who fail to comply with mandatory veiling laws are beaten, arrested and sometimes killed. Saudi Arabia only loosened its mandatory hijab law in 2018, not with the aim of supporting women’s right, but rather to attract non-Muslim visitors and investment. 

As a Muslim and a feminist, I believe women are entitled to show as much or as little of their body as they want. These laws force women to dress in a way that makes them uncomfortable, that conflicts with their religious beliefs and excludes them from public life if they refuse to comply. They are purely misogynistic and emblematic of one of the core beliefs of patriarchy: that men are entitled to control everything about women, including their autonomy and sexuality. These laws infantilize women, particularly women of color, who are already viewed by men — and white women — as incapable of making decisions on their own. 

Responses to these laws, especially from non-Muslims, vary greatly. For example, after the death of Mahsa Amini and subsequent protests in Iran, celebrities, politicians and institutions like Wellesley College condemned the actions of the Iranian “morality police” and explicitly supported the actions of the protestors. The outpouring of support was remarkable, and I was glad to see that powerful figures in the West were seriously recognizing the plight of women in Iran. However, when a law demands that women show more of their bodies rather than less, these figures rarely express the same level of support. Few celebrities condemned Karnataka for banning the hijab in schools, and few institutions criticized the French government for essentially demanding that teenage girls show more skin in order to attend school. For some reason I have never been able to comprehend, men — and even feminists — in the West are incapable of understanding why a woman or girl might want to dress modestly, and that she might be dressed the way she is out of her own volition. I believe this makes them just as ignorant and misogynistic as those politicians in Iran or Saudi Arabia demanding that women cover up. 

This past spring, my mom bought some “abayas” as gifts for myself and my little sister. My sister ended up wearing one of them as her graduation dress when she finished middle school in June. In our small, predominantly white, and almost 99% non-Muslim town, she would be the only one wearing a dress like that. My mom realized this, and told her that if she felt uncomfortable wearing it, we could go buy her something else. She said no, she loved that dress, and she definitely wanted to wear it to her graduation. If she went to public school in France rather than America, her principal would have turned her away at the door and told her to change. As for me, I wore those “abayas” all semester long at Wellesley: to grab food from Lulu, to events with Al-Muslimat, and to MIT to eat iftar with Muslims from all around Boston. 

Reflecting on that experience in light of the “abaya” ban deepened my appreciation for living in a country that values and protects freedom of religion. At Wellesley, I can sit in class with students who are wearing whatever they want and know that we are being judged for what is in our minds, not what we choose to wear on our bodies. 

ChatGPT wrote that astoundingly mediocre opening paragraph. There’s nothing wrong with it on a factual basis, but the way it’s written is mechanical and filled with jargon. I would never write that paragraph, much less use that paragraph to start an article that I hope people will read. This is why I am so hesitant when people claim that ChatGPT can replace work written by real people, especially work that requires any modicum of creativity. I’m even skeptical when people say that a professor or teacher wouldn’t recognize AI-generated writing, or would ever give it a passing grade. Anyone can write a paper that states facts or cites other papers, but what makes all writing — academic, journalistic or creative — good, is diversity and originality, which ChatGPT undoubtedly lacks. 

Of course, ChatGPT isn’t completely stupid. It has passed advanced business school and law school exams, AP exams and the bar. I also believe that if I had access to thousands of practice exams and all of the information I was being tested on (which ChatGPT does), I could pass those exams too (maybe not with an A). Realistically, most of these exams would be taken closed book, because their goal is to test your ability to recall information accurately, yet people seem to forget this almost immediately when presented with dazzling statistics about ChatGPT’s intelligence. 

ChatGPT is also skilled at coding and data analysis, leading to predictions that it will make jobs that require those skills obsolete. This fear also ignores the human thought processes that make people effective at these jobs. ChatGPT is also biased, as it was trained on data reflecting human biases — here’s a recent Tweet demonstrating how the model repeatedly denies that a woman can be a doctor. It is also not always correct, even when it comes to basic facts or calculations. I honestly believe the current iteration of ChatGPT would be a really poor replacement for a human data analyst or software engineer. The debate reminds me of an IBM slide from 1979 that states “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” ChatGPT can never be held accountable, so it should never make a management decision, or any decision with real world implications at all. 

I believe ChatGPT’s true utility is not that it might replace us, but that it can make our lives demonstrably easier. It is exceptional at drafting emails and summarizing long pieces of text, two tasks which I use it for frequently. It is also decent at some mathematical operations and getting a quick brief on a certain topic. This is why I love ChatGPT, despite its biases and limited capabilities. It’s hard not to love something that makes these mundane tasks easier, or takes care of these tasks for me altogether. Janelle Shane captures  these sorts of feelings really well in her 2019 book on artificial intelligence, titled “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You.” ChatGPT looks like a “thing,” it can have conversations with me, give me advice and help me out with daily tasks. It’s like having an assistant, or someone to bounce ideas off of. I appreciate what ChatGPT can do for me, not what it can do instead of me. 

War is not a natural state, and certain groups of people are not more prone to violence than others. Natural disasters are mostly beyond our control—although climate change is making some types of disasters stronger and more frequent. Natural disasters are not God’s wrath. All these statements feel like common sense, yet many of us in the US and Europe believe that horrific events are more common in other countries. 

Part of the reason might be bias in the media we consume; perhaps we only hear about these countries when something terrible happens there. We might believe that acts of violence and disasters occur less frequently where we live, and when they do occur, they are not as bad. We might find it difficult to empathize with and help people who we have been told, over and over again, are not like us. In the US and Europe, we have become desensitized to the plight of non-Western nations.

A more complex reason is that we are often responsible for the wars, and sometimes even the natural disasters, in many of these countries. The US and other European nations have coordinated regime change and provided arms to various paramilitary groups across the Middle East, Latin America and Africa for decades. The destructive floods in Pakistan last year, as well as severe drought in Somalia today, were both caused by warmer temperatures due to climate change as a result of emissions primarily generated by Western nations. These are only a few general examples, and they do not even make mention of how hundreds of years of imperialism, colonialism and divide-and-rule strategies provided the conditions for war and violence in the Global South. 

In Jan. 2020, President Trump’s former Deputy National Security Advisor, KT McFarland said, “I always look at the Middle East and think, you know, in America, we think that the default position is peace. And we go to war, we have a war, somebody wins, somebody loses, we finish, we have a peace agreement, we go back to our lives. The Middle East…their normal state of condition is war, and the peace is when they have pause, regroup, fight again.”

McFarland’s reasoning is comical to me, as America’s default position, and the default position of most European nations, has never been peace. America has had a mass shooting nearly every day of 2023 so far. In Ohio, a train derailment caused an environmental disaster that polluted drinking water for millions of people. Hate crimes exceeded 100,000 in the UK last year. In 2021, floods killed hundreds in Germany. Lest we forget, violence and war were so common in Europe that two World Wars originated on the continent. 

This is not to say that any nation deserves to suffer. Suffering and death happen every day, all around the world, because that is the world we live in. If we ever want to live in a world where that is not the case, I would suggest that those of us in positions of relative comfort and privilege examine our biases regarding our fellow human beings, wherever they may live. 

Professor Levine began by discussing the MyinTuition College Cost calculator, which he designed. MyinTuition launched in 2015 at Wellesley, and is now used by 75 other colleges and universities. 

“The insights I gained while working on MyinTuition allowed me to learn the complexities and inner workings of the college pricing system. It also allowed me to relate economic knowledge to the situation,” Professor Levine said. 

The main issue Professor Levine highlighted was that while college is not right for everyone, those for whom it is should attend institutions that are the best fit for them. However, due to inequities in K-12 school and barriers in the college admissions process, this goal is not being met. This led him to the title of the book: “A Problem of Fit.” 

The book focuses on two key issues in the college pricing system. The first is the complexity of pricing and the lack of transparency regarding the actual cost of college. The second is the price level, namely how the price is too expensive for many low-income students and families. According to Professor Levine, colleges typically charge a lot less than the “sticker price”, and students do not know that. Nevertheless, even with the lower price, the cost is still too high for low-income students. He found that institutional constraints lead to these unaffordable prices. 

To address the transparency issue, he believes that college costs could be reported in a more accurate way. The “full cost of attendance” label is very misleading, as few students actually pay that cost. He suggests calling this the “maximum cost of attendance.” He added that the “average net price” label is also misleading, as almost nobody is average. For the most realistic estimate, colleges could use targeted net prices, which are generated by calculators like MyinTuition. 

Professor Levine used a targeted net price calculator to generate prices for families of various income levels at four types of schools: “high endowment private colleges,” “highly ranked/ R1 public colleges,” “other private colleges” and “other public colleges.” He found that high endowment private colleges are the cheapest or most affordable for low-income students. The most expensive option was non-elite private colleges. His findings contrast the commonly held belief that state schools are the most affordable options for low-income students and families.

Overall, Professor Levine believes that colleges want to offer more financial aid — so why don’t they? He explains the issue using basic economic concepts. State schools have a price ceiling imposed on how much they can charge students. This benefits high income students but reduces affordability for low-income students. Non-elite private colleges cannot compete directly with these public colleges, and they have no state funding and little endowment support, so they end up charging low-income students the most. 

Professor Levine’s proposed solution to the price level problem is doubling the Pell Grant. He states that this would ensure that “the right amount of money goes to the right people.” He also adds that information regarding college pricing should be made available earlier, so students do not have to make these decisions in their senior year of high school. 

“[These problems] result in everybody being misaligned. The problem is not just that qualified low-income students are not coming to Wellesley. Everybody’s in the ‘wrong’ place. That’s what we need to fix.”

“Our primary concern is just protecting the well-being of immunocompromised siblings on campus. There are quite a few people who are immunocompromised, who may not share that because that is personal,” a student representative said. “Vaccines sometimes are not really effective. Some [siblings], because of other medications, can’t use Paxlovid or something like that. And for them, COVID is a really huge risk… they are at risk of a very severe illness, which can put them in the hospital, which can kill them.”

Currently, Wellesley Covid Action has implemented several student-run initiatives to protect immunocompromised students and encourage responsible practices with regards to COVID-19 at Wellesley College. They are running a volunteer food delivery service for those in isolation, an anonymous COVID-19 dashboard for students to self-report test results, an overall COVIDovid-19 policy survey and a rapid test donation drive. The anonymous dashboard is intended to serve as a voluntary replacement for the official dashboard run by the College until this fall.  

“Self-reporting was an idea that previously came up with other disabled students. For us, the COVID-19 dashboard was a way that we could gauge the relative safety of going to class or going to events, because we could tell the community level, so we could know the risk of engaging with other people. When that was taken away, we kind of lost that gauge,” the student representative stated. 

Another representative mentioned that they had not noticed the gaps in the College’s policy until they themself tested positive for COVID-19. 

“When I got sick myself, I actually noticed all of these glaring holes. It was really hard for me to get a rapid test. It was really hard for me to get food from the dining hall. There are no to-go boxes other than the green ones. Dining hall workers have complained to me about how COVID-19 positive students will use the Ozzi boxes and just return them, which is dangerous for the workers,” they explained.

The same representative added that the changes to academic policies, particularly stricter attendance policies, have made circumstances difficult for students who test positive and close contacts. Thus, many students are avoiding testing so they do not miss class. 

“I think Wellesley’s move to move past this pandemic and become more rigorous is very regressive and counterproductive,” they added. 

Beyond the initiatives Wellesley Covid Action is running, they have also released a document titled “Recommended Best Practices for Covid-19”. The practices they recommend include masking, even when it is not mandatory, opting in to testing, reporting results, getting booster shots, informing others when they are close contacts and quarantining until testing negative. They also encourage hybrid events and choosing well ventilated locations for in-person events. Wellesley Covid Action believes that “Covid safety and a fully operational campus life are not mutually exclusive; rather, Covid safety expands the potential of our full student body to flourish.” 

Danielle Ellis ’25

“Right now, [working at Mail Services] is a little stressful, but usually it’s just very fun for me. It’s obviously work … but I look forward to going to work most days because the people really make it fun. I worked there this summer. We would listen to music, and we would have informal dance breaks if there was no one there and we’d already scanned everything in and that would be really fun. Just please be patient with us or recognize that we’re humans. If we say hi, just like, say hi and then say your unit number. It’s little things, but sometimes people will come and be very aggressive or hostile. If you have a lost package, we feel genuinely bad, or at least I know I feel so bad for you, and we didn’t intentionally lose your package. Please don’t take your anger out on us. We are trying very hard! Most people are good about [that].”

Eve Butterworth ’25

“I did most of my work before everyone came back to school. [During] the first giant wave of packages, it was one the most hectic places that I’ve worked, because we had no space to put anything away. We’re continually accepting new packages, and UPS or Amazon just throw them here! That’s why you see piles and piles of packages, because we don’t have any space. We’ve been packed floor to ceiling the entire time. I’ve seen a lot of hate towards the mailroom, honestly, especially on YikYak and Twitter, and there’s literally nothing that the student employees or even the mailroom employees can do about it. We’ve spent months trying to get delivery trucks and drivers so that we can transport the packages to the dorms like we’ve been doing it. I know waiting for your package forever can really suck, but just go easy on us, we don’t like this any more than anyone else does. Oh, and for the first-years, no one finds it easy to open their mailboxes on the first try, or on the 50th try.”

Raines Seeley ’25

“The first couple of weeks have been crazy. We’re just getting such a large volume of packages coming in. Other than that, I love it. I love interacting with a bunch of people. I feel like it’s a really fun place to work because you do get to see a lot of people, you’re also in the middle of Lulu so you can see everybody walking by. We all kind of bonded over the chaos that has been the first couple of weeks.

“The playlist is one mailroom tradition definitely. I’m always very self conscious about my aux. My friends don’t really let me on aux that often because I can’t really assess the vibes very well. But yesterday, I was setting the playlist and everyone [in the mailroom] was like, oh my gosh, this is so good.

“Don’t forget to write your unit number on your packages because when you don’t write your unit number you have to go through the system, figure out who the person is … it’s just a whole process. And come to the mailroom only when you get emails. Sometimes I feel like people get kind of irate just because … you ordered a package. You want your package. But just remember that we’re all students working there and, like, we’re all doing our best. Just remember that we’re also Wellesley students just trying to get through our day.”

“We were going to do ‘Mulan’ [my] sophomore year,” Anna Hu ’22, co-president for Wushu, said. “We got pretty far into [planning the event], and then we couldn’t do it … This year, we brought it back but made some changes.”

This retelling is a combination of multiple versions of the story, including the animated and live-action Disney versions, to portray more characters and eventually have Mulan fall in love with a witch. The show had guest performances by the College’s Freestyle and Shotokan Karate, the Wellesley Asian Dancer Organization, Brown Lion Dance and MIT Spinning Arts.

One of the struggles with the event was the long period of time without consistent in-person practices. This year, Wushu has had more members but less experienced performers.

“The seniors are the only ones left who know how to do all these weapons and choreo,” Wushu Co-President Eugenia Zhang ’22 said. “We are basically timing ourselves to kind of, you know, teach all these weapons, create choreo and manage the show ourselves and kind of teach the underclassmen, ‘this is how you do it.’”

While the difference in experience adds some difficulty to directing a show, Hu noted that the underclassmen and new members also added a lot to the planning experience.

“It’s been really nice to see the younger members sort of step into leadership roles because the way we plan the shows is through a bunch of different committees,” she said. “We have a lot of younger members sticking up to lead those committees and they’re doing a great job.”

As seniors, both Hu and Zhang find it fitting to have their final show be “Reflections,” where they can share the culmination of their year’s work in the organization.

“It’s kind of like coming full circle that we [had a show] in first-year and now we [had a show in our] fourth year,” Zhang said. “It’s just a nice way to have our own show to display what we’ve been working on the entire year.”

“We like to keep our titles and our shows just really fun and upbeat, and there are only so many songs that are appropriate to really tap to, you need to have a strong beat. The title came from ‘what’s a good pun we can make?’ So that’s how we get ‘Tap Me Baby One More Time,’” Zoe Owens ’22, Wellesley On Tap’s president, explained. 

This is the first live performance for many of the organization’s members and only the second live performance for the seniors. 

“We haven’t had a show since my [first] year. We did ‘Hot Tap Time Machine’ and we haven’t been able to perform since. We have tried to share our dances through various pathways … Tik Tok, Instagram, trying to bring the joy of tap to Wellesley,” On Tap’s Vice President Mackenzie Jordan ’22 said. 

In addition to staying active through social media, Wellesley On Tap was able to keep practicing and meeting as a group through the pandemic. 

“We were setting up for our spring performance when we got told to go home, so rest in peace ‘I Want It Tap Way.’ Because of the way we’re structured, we never had more than 10 people practicing at any one time, so we were able to have in-person practices all throughout last year. Due to that, we were able to cultivate a nice community and it’s great, especially for tap because it’s something you can’t really do over Zoom,” Owens said. 

Sophia deCubellis ’23, Emma Kotar ’24, Yoonseo Lee ’25 and Gabby Mackiewicz ’24 noted the strong community and welcoming nature of On Tap as one of their favorite parts of the organization. 

“Anyone in Tap who wants to choreograph can choreograph. There’s an open choreography policy, which I think is a really great thing about our organization. The choreographer picks the songs and then, as long as they’re on beat, they’re in the show,” deCubellis said. 

“It’s really interesting to see people’s different choreography styles because there are people who really focus on the musicality, versus other people who are a bit more lyrical with it,” Owens added. 

Wellesley On Tap requires no previous tap or dance experience to join the organization, and they provide tap shoes to anyone who is interested. 

“I really liked being able to come with no materials, no experience and then being able to do a show only a few months after I started.” Penelope Gordon ’25 said. 

Owens also encouraged anyone who is interested in tap to join. 

“You shouldn’t be worried about cost or skill level. We’re really here to work with you and just give you the experience of tap dancing.”

“I was like, it would be amazing if this happened all year round … a sustainable, affordable system [for thrifting] just happening all the time,” Padam said. 

Padam set up an Instagram account, @Wellesley_Thrift, to facilitate sales. She said the logistics of Wellesley Thrift are simple and streamline the process for buyers and sellers. 

“You bring your clothes, you can do the price you want to sell it for and I sell it for you. That’s literally it. You drop off the clothes and tell me the price. I take $2 per item sold. Someone can just browse during drop in hours or on Instagram, I post pictures of the clothes and then people can buy through Instagram. Then we just get paid via Venmo and Zelle or cash, whatever works best for you,” Padam explained. 

Another goal of Wellesley Thrift was to make thrifting easier for students who may find it difficult to get to thrift stores off campus or be turned away by high prices. 

“It’s really convenient to have a store on campus rather than trying to go out to thrift stores like Savers, or to Boston. It can get expensive. Nothing here is over 25 bucks, I want to say the average price of things is like 11 bucks,” she said. 

Sustainable fashion is important to Padam on a personal level. Like many students, she wanted to change her style after coming to Wellesley but didn’t want to buy dozens of completely new outfits. She didn’t like the environmental impacts of fast fashion, but as a college student, affordability mattered as well. 

In the future, Padam wants to have a permanent location for Wellesley Thrift, as she is currently storing all the clothes in her room. If there is interest, she is hoping to hold drop-in hours in the East Side dorms so students who live there can check out clothes as well. Drop-in hours for March and April will be on certain Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-8 p.m. in the Pomeroy media room. Drop-in hours are posted and updated on the Wellesley Thrift Instagram account. 

“What’s the point of just buying more clothes when there are other clothes that people aren’t wearing that honestly fit your style and your fashion?” Padam said.