Are You There God? It's Me, Jake Peralta

February 23, 2018 by Editor-in-Chief in Arts & Culture

By Abby Schneider '21

For y'all unaware of the greatest television show of all time, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a sitcom about the shenanigans that the police detectives get up to in a fictionalized version of Brooklyn's 99th precinct. The show first aired in 2013 and has been wildly successful amongst twenty-somethings and college students ever since. Created by Michael Schur (The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place) and Dan Goor (Parks and Recreation, The Daily Show, Conan), the show seamlessly incorporates pop culture, millennial humor, and even addresses current, culturally relevant issues without morphing into a drama.

La Vie en Rose: My Year With a Conservative Catholic Family in France

February 23, 2018 by Editor-in-Chief in , Identity, Politics

By Anonymous

Content warnings: homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny

When I decided in my first year at Wellesley that I wanted to spend my junior year in France, I hadn’t realized how being a lesbian might affect that experience. As I prepared to leave during sophomore spring, I decided I would not come out to my host family, but remain quietly closeted. In any case, I assumed LGBTQ+ issues would rarely come up and, if they did, that my imagined host family would be tolerant at best or indifferent at worst.

I'm Sorry I'm Not Perfect

February 23, 2018 by Editor-in-Chief in , Arts & Culture, Identity

By Olivia Funderburg '18

Overall, I was left with a burning question: what if Lady Bird had really pushed boundaries? What if the film took its mother-daughter story and complicated it?

The Day After the Protest

February 19, 2018 by Editor-in-Chief in Campus Life, Politics

By Anonymous

Content warning: discussion of transphobic rhetoric, mention of restricted eating

Yesterday, a Freedom Project speaker’s presence was an attack on trans students. Last year, it was an attack on assault survivors. What if something changed?

More Than Just Stress Culture

December 13, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Campus Life

By Deb Rowcroft '19

If grades didn’t matter, why would we need a grading policy? Wellesley’s grading policy—or as it’s popularly known, the grade deflation policy—was supposed to attract students to STEM majors and make it so those who “really earned” an A got the recognition they deserved. I mean, really, how will we know how amazing and hardworking a student is if they’re stuck among others with the same grades?

Shipwrecked

December 13, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Arts & Culture, Mental Health, Identity

By Samantha English

Content warning: mention of anxiety, depression, and emotional abuse

I fell in love with the Brontë sisters when I was sixteen. I read Wuthering Heights in a slow-churning tempest of terror and intrigue, Cathy’s ghost lingering over my shoulder as I drew complex family trees of the Earnshaw and Linton families at my kitchen table. I carried my black-penned copy of Emily’s singular work to you, Wellesley, where it sat watching me, witchlike, waiting to be joined by its sister novels. It didn’t take long. By my second semester, I was in the Nineteenth Century Novel class, combing obsessively through Jane Eyre. I wasn’t just hooked. I was haunted.

On Taylor Swift's Art and Actions

November 27, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Arts & Culture

By Olivia Funderburg

Content warning: mention of sexual assault

My first Counterpoint article was about Taylor Swift. I was a first-year trying to figure out how to be a college student; now I’m a senior trying to come to terms with the person who I’ve become. On the eve of the next Taylor Swift album—and wondering if it could be the last—I’m sitting down to write about her again. I’ve never been in a serious (or really any) romantic relationship, so the reason I like Taylor’s music isn’t that I relate to most of it. I definitely didn’t start listening to her music because I’m a country fan. You can’t really choose who you love. If you could, I don’t know if I would have chosen Taylor.

Hebron: A Day in the Life

November 27, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Identity, Politics

By Charlotte Kaufman

Content warning: description of anti-Palestinian violence

Our bus pulled in from Ramallah to the place that people told me I should not go: Hebron, the formerly thriving capital and largest city in the West Bank of Palestine. Even members of my immediate family warned me it could be dangerous for an American Jew.

Exposure "Therapy": Being Low-Income at Wellesley

November 26, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Campus Life

By Anonymous

Content warning: mention of anxiety

The American ideology of self-sufficiency and inherent, unbounded individual potential, reinforced in many ways by Wellesley, has deeply poisoned how I perceive myself. Being poor at Wellesley has always felt like a personal failure. Why can’t I just work more hours at my jobs? Why can’t I get a job during the school year that pays better? The reality is my jobs can’t give me more hours, I already have two of the best paying jobs on campus, and I need time to devote to academics as well as taking care of my health. How can I pull myself up by the bootstraps if I can’t afford boots?

Aguas Negras

November 01, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Identity, Mental Health

By Alicia Margarita Olivo

Content warning: description of violence, implication of depression, mention of hurricane, flood

Being at Wellesley makes me feel like I’m wading through flood waters (I remember when Tropical Storm Allison hit home and my dad took my hand and helped me walk through the water to see the cars stuck on the street; I thought they were sharks in the deep), or that I’m carrying a weight on my chest. Now that I’m 1,806 miles away from home (if I were to walk home—sometimes I imagine society collapsing and everything going to complete shit [more than it already has] and, stuck without the availability to drive, I would walk those 1,806 miles back home) and family, bringing up any topic that might be considered Heavy seems rude.

Luisa and Luis Meet and Ariana Happens: A Wellesley Story

November 01, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Identity

By Ariana Gonzalez-Bonillas

Content warning: binary language to honor how Luisa and Azucena experienced Wellesley

August 1990.

Luisa arrives at Wellesley, Purple Class of 1994. The Latinas that Azucena had adopted and helped to grow in turn adopt and care for Luisa. Luisa majors in Latin American Studies, becomes a Mellon Mays Scholar, and struggles to learn how to be at a predominantly white institution. Soon, she will find a companion in her struggle who knows what she is going through, too.

Kamala Khan: The Ms.-Ing Piece of the Marvel Universe

October 31, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Identity, Arts & Culture

By Padya Paramita

Content warning: mention of Nazis

On the day after the 2016 US presidential elections, a queer international student of color found herself at a comic book store face-to-face with a superhero she had never seen before. In encountering Kamala Khan—known by her superhero alias, Ms. Marvel—I discovered a girl much like myself: brown, Muslim, fighting demons, trying to find a balance between Americanization and her South Asian roots.

Three Flakes, Then Four: John Green's Turtles All the Way Down

October 31, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Mental Health, Arts & Culture

By Samantha English

Content warnings: description of anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder

When I was fourteen years old, I bought The Fault in Our Stars at a Barnes and Noble in Darien, Illinois. It was a hot summer weekend, and I spent the afternoon in my grandmother's air-conditioned basement curled up on a blow-up mattress, falling in love with John Green's most recent novel of the time.

Falling (Back) in Love with Peter Parker

September 27, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Arts & Culture

By Samantha English and Olivia Funderburg

Content warning: implication of anxiety and claustrophobia

Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen Spider-Man: Homecoming or Captain America: Civil War, read with caution.

The original Spider-Man was created in 1962 by Stan Lee, who had noticed a rise in teen comic book readers and a lack of teen comic book characters. Most Marvel characters were adults at the time—take, for instance, Iron Man and Captain America, who both have origin stories linked to war even if their comics were written with a young audience in mind. Lee wanted a teen character that young people could identify with. He created Peter Parker, a fifteen-year-old New Yorker who loved science, was the victim of high school bullying, and, because of a radioactive spider-bite, spent his after-school hours protecting people on the streets of Queens in a mask and spandex.

When Marvel decided to incorporate the character of Spider-Man into the complex, multi-character, multimillion-dollar Cinematic Universe, the company finally took Peter Parker back to his roots

Wellesley's Remix Through Student Voice

September 27, 2017 by Editor-in-Chief in Campus Life

By Amanda Wahlstedt '20

If you weren’t aware, college freshmen have been known to party and test the limits of their newfound freedom. “Wellesley,” you may be asking, “where are all the parties?”

For the last two years, the answer has been, “off-campus at MIT, Babson, Olin, or Harvard.” Small dorm kick-backs happen, but there is no school-wide event for Wellesley siblings to celebrate the milestone of a new college semester together…or at least there hasn’t been one since the Class of 2020 got here.