Gideon Levy is regularly referred to as maybe the nicest guy on campus. The Argus sat down with Levy to talk wrestling, Jewish bros, and lack of winter wear.
The Argus: What makes you a WesCeleb?
Gideon Levy: I don’t know. I mean, I do a lot of stuff on campus, but so does everybody else. I helped start up a chapter of AEPi at Wes and helped to form the IGC—Inter-Greek Council. I’m pretty involved in the Jewish community. I’m on the wrestling team, and I’m the Head
Resident for ResLife for WestCo, Nics, and Hewitt. And, besides that, I just like chillin’ with people.
A: That’s probably why you’re a WesCeleb—the chillin’. So when did you start AEPi?
GL: That was fall of my freshman year—2009. We’ve gone from nine [members] to 38, so we’re doing pretty good.
A: How has AEPi evolved since then?
GL: We’ve tried to take a Wesleyan approach to the whole fraternity thing. We’re pretty unique. We have a good mix of guys. We like to recruit pretty hard at the beginning of the year and get a lot of guys from different backgrounds. We get a lot of athletes, a lot of people with political aspirations, musicians, artists. We pretty much represent the Wesleyan student body. A lot of our guys like theater. Besides that, we try to stay active with philanthropy and pretty involved with Wes overall. It’s a Jewish fraternity, so we stay involved with the Jewish community as well.
A: And the Inter-Greek Council?
GL: I helped to form it last year with Lucy Finn [’14]. We got the ball rolling after the administration contacted all of us. We’re just trying to help Wesleyan to see Greeks in a better light than stereotypes in “Animal House” types of things.
A: What have you done so far?
GL: We have bi-monthly meetings. We go over collective philanthropy projects, things we want to do with all the Greeks for community service projects, how we want to approach Greek-specific issues, such as things about housing and social scenes. It’s a good way for us to get to know each other better because we are each other’s allies, and it is a platform to get Wesleyan and the administration to see us in a different way.
A: Has the administration responded positively so far?
GL: [President] Roth has certain policies we don’t like toward Greeks, but apart from that it’s an uphill battle, but we’re going.
A: Is AEPi looking to get a house at some point?
GL: Yeah, we’d love to. We’re trying to see if we can apply for a program house that’s actually opened up [formerly Interfaith House] with Rho Ep. Currently that’s not going so well with the administration, but hopefully that changes.
A: I always hear the thing about sororities not being able to have houses in Connecticut because—
GL: It’s considered a brothel. Yeah, I think that’s not true. It’s just these weird laws that haven’t been written off yet. In Florida, you can’t marry a goat or something.
A: Are you from Florida?
GL: Yeah, the cold sucks. And it’s either a goat or a donkey. I don’t know. It’s something weird. But the point being that women deserve housing just as much as men do.
A: That’s a controversial stance to take.
GL: That’s Gideon. That’s why he’s a WesCeleb.
A: So you don’t like the cold?
GL: It’s terrible. Every year it’s terrible. I still don’t have adequate gear for this. I have one giant jacket and one pair of boots.
A: What other differences have you noticed between Florida and Connecticut?
GL: It’s a different lifestyle. In Florida people are just really laid-back, and everyone’s really busy up here. That took some adjusting to. And Wesleyan has its own time system. If you’re having a meeting at 11, Wesleyan students show up at 11:15. In Florida we’re laid-back, but we’re punctual.
A: What’s being Head Resident of ResLife like?
GL: Lots of emails. I supervise a staff of 24. Twenty RAs and four program hall managers. It’s a lot of fun. It’s very rewarding, but it’s challenging. It keeps me busy. It’s helping people to get forms done and programs off the ground. I help solidify plans for building-wide programs. I help them manage their budget so they don’t spend more money than ResLife has allotted them. Besides that, I help them come up with strategies for the individual residents who sometimes have troubles, like roommate conflicts. I’m basically a student liaison to the Office of ResLife.
A: What’s your major?
GL: My major is physics. Most days I love it. The other days I’m doing problem sets.
A: Do you have plans, post-Wes?
GL: No, I wish. I’m potentially going to work for my fraternity. I’ve recently developed a passion for psych, and I’m going to pursue some research next semester. And if I like it, then I’ll try to pursue it post-Bac.
A: What sparked this passion in psychology?
GL: So I took Intro Psych—loved it. Stemler was great. Took Social Psych—loved it. Plous was great. I still apply lessons I learned in it. Just so you know, you should really take that class. It’s probably one of the best at Wesleyan. This semester I took a follow-up course to Social Psych called The Social Self. We read a lot of interesting articles about the different ways people form their identities based on social situations, and it’s really changed my outlook on people in general.
A: Did you enter Wesleyan planning to major in physics?
GL: I did. I had a great high school physics teacher—Ms. Stackpole, shoutout. She really got me on the track to physics, but the one thing she didn’t tell me is it’s not always perfect. So I get to college, and physics is a little more imperfect than I thought, and that was frustrating at times.
A: So, you also wrestle.
GL: I wrestle. I love it. I started in high school. I came to Wes looking to do wrestling and football, [and] went with wrestling. It’s really great to be part of the team. Last year we won the championship for New England, and that was something that hadn’t happened since 1984, I believe. It’s really great to be coming back from that win, and we have a lot of great starters.
A: On an unrelated note, Judaism. You’ve been so involved in Jewish life since you’ve been here. What changes have you noticed in the community over the years?
GL: I like to think I’ve brought more men to Judaism. If you go to a Jewish service, most of the time it’s a lot of women and not as many guys. When I found that pattern freshman year, I thought it was very unfortunate. Coming from Florida, there weren’t a lot of Jewish people, growing up. I came to Wesleyan wanting to explore [Judaism] and found that there weren’t a lot of guys. That was one of the reasons I started AEPi: to bring some more men into the [Jewish] social scene here. And I think it’s worked. I think you’ll see a lot more men applying to the Bayit now. The year after we started AEPi, the Bayit went from having three guys out of 23 people to about half. So I think the trend’s on the rise.
A: Did you live in the Bayit?
GL: I lived there my sophomore year and was House Manager my junior year. Being HM was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It’s a fantastic house, a fantastic community. We have a lot of fun, and I love seeing all of them still. We had a Thanksgiving dinner that was epic. We had house dinners all the time that were a little less epic, but still pretty cool. People were close with each other and had deep friendships, and I think that’s the point of program housing.
A: What contributed to Thanksgiving’s epic-ness?
GL: We went to West Hartford to get a kosher turkey. We get there, buy this 20-pound kosher turkey, get back and realize: it’s 20 pounds of meat. It’s going to take a while a cook. So we cooked it and served it, and when people started cutting in, we realized, “Oh, this turkey is not cooked enough.” But overall it was really fun.
A: Do you keep kosher?
GL: I do. I don’t know what bacon tastes like.
A: Thoughts on the kosher station at Usdan?
GL: I used to love it, but now it seems like they’re always serving tofu. And it’s like, if I wanted tofu, I would go to the vegan station—which I do. The kosher station does have an amazing barbecue chicken, and sometimes they serve this really big couscous with mushrooms in it. I love that. And hotdogs with hummus. Nobody else does it, but I do it. It’s really good.
A: What is your favorite Jewish holiday?
GL: My favorite Jewish holiday is Passover. People hate the food, but my grandmother just cooks the best stuff. Ever. The things she does with matzo, it’s amazing. She makes this banana-nut kugel. It’s delicious.
A: I did a little stalking and noticed you’ve gone through several different phases of facial hair. What’s the inspiration there?
GL: In high school I shaved every day. I didn’t realize I could actually grow a beard. So when I got to college, I grew a beard. I did that for a while, and then I realized, wow, I could have muttonchops. And then for Halloween I was a lumberjack. I shaved it, and a couple months after that I was like, “I could grow a full beard and look like an actual man. That would be great.” Then I was like, “What if I grew a moustache?” So I did a moustache. And I’d say 95 percent of the Wes community found it creepy. And the other 5 percent were attracted to the ’70s porn star look. So overall that didn’t go over so well. My girlfriend wouldn’t kiss me. During wrestling season the only facial hair you can have is a moustache because everything else is a weapon for some reason, so a few of the guys on the team grew them. I thought I would look cool, but I didn’t. The fact is if you’re wearing a moustache, it probably looks stupid, but it shows you’re really confident. This look [gestures to his beard-moustache combo] is me being lazy, because shaving is hard.
A: What is it about a beard with a moustache that negates the creepiness of a lone moustache?
GL: I don’t know! It’s the same thing, right? But you see guys with no moustache and just a beard, and they’re weird too. It’s these norms we have in place! Sociology of the Beard is a class I’d like to take.
A: That sounds riveting. Did you have to plan ahead so you’d have fully formed muttonchops in time for Halloween?
GL: That was actually really last minute. But last year for Halloween, people went as my facial hair. Some friends got together and dressed up as Gideon’s Moustache.
A: Did you know there’s a famous Israeli journalist named Gideon Levy?
GL: Yes. My freshman year I let my Jewish history teacher down. She was like, “I saw your email, and I was so excited! But then it was just a student.”
A: Any final thoughts?
GL: I love Wes. I hope we get need-blind back. People should be nicer to the Greek community. The Greek community should be nicer to Wesleyan. And everybody should love everybody, because that’s just chill.