Anyone who has been to a Rho Epsilon Pi (Rho Ep) event, watched a game of women’s ultimate frisbee, or even just spent a night on Fountain Avenue has probably run into Melody Oliphant ’13. Oliphant has a big personality, a one-of-a-kind flair, and what some would call red hair. The Argus sat down with Oliphant to talk about her corgi puppies, her reckless driving, and her watch that doubles as “gaydar.”
The Argus: What do you think makes you a WesCeleb?
Melody Oliphant: I think you can credit most of my WesCeleb-dom to my overcommitment in my extracurricular activities and, as my housemates would call it, my Douche-McGee alter ego. It’s when I choose to give people a hard time for not responding to my text messages or Facebook messages. I do a lot of pointing, I do a lot of loud outbursts in Usdan, and I do a lot of shameless self-plugs.
A: What’s your average Friday night like?
MO: I don’t think I should talk about my Friday nights, because then it won’t be something that my mom can read.
A: Okay, what are your average Monday nights [like]?
MO: Overcommitted. “[The] Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” is a staple in my average Monday nights. Most people probably wouldn’t guess [that] about me, but I am an avid fan of Bravo thanks to my housemate Margo Tercek [’13].
A: I noticed you have a lot of puppy pictures on your Instagram. Would you like to talk about your dogs?
MO: I am obsessed with my dogs. I have two corgis. One of my good friends, who was also a WesCeleb—Adam Rotstein [’13]—has told me that I am in-corgi-able about them… I got them in August for my mom’s birthday, and it’s been true love since then.
A: What are their names?
MO: Chipper and Chewbacca. Chewbacca has the nickname Chewy. You can put a picture of them in my WesCeleb instead of me. My mom likes to comment that we both have the same coloring in our hair.
A: Would you label yourself a ginger?
MO: Absolutely not. I would call myself what’s called a “day walker.” In my research of the topic, I’ve discovered that day walkers, in opposition to gingers, have nearly a complete soul. So, they’re able to do the activities of human kind rather than gingers… You have the red hair, and that’s about it. You’re able to step out in the sun, which is an amazing element of not being a ginger, and you’re able to not have rampant freckles all over your body, which makes me look a lot more normal.
A: Can you tell me about a few of the student organizations that you are on [or] run?
MO: I was on the WSA [Wesleyan Student Assembly] my sophomore year, the same year I founded Rho Ep. I have done a lot of stuff with the environment, I also helped start the composting club, [I am one of the] clinic escorts, [and I am] president of the women’s ultimate Frisbee team—I’ve done that all four years. I also have a lot of on campus jobs. I was a Red and Black caller and now I’m a Red and Black manager. I was [also] a historical society intern.
A: How did you get started in women’s ultimate Frisbee?
MO: I think that’s when my social compulsiveness really sprouted at Wesleyan, was through ultimate Frisbee… I remember as a freshman walking around campus and waving to what my friends called “random upperclassman girls,” and they would always ask me, “Who is that girl? How do you know them?’ And I would say, “Oh, they’re on Frisbee with me.” That became a catchall… I was like, “Wow, I should take this concept and run with it and just become a part of tons of extracurriculars so that I have tons of people to wave to on campus.”
A: Can you talk a little about your hometown?
MO: I consider the South in general my hometown, because the South is such a charming and welcoming place that any town you walk into is like your hometown. I’m a little upset that not only have my housemates not visited my house, they haven’t even visited my region of the country. I love the South. I say that I love the South rather than I love Alpharetta, Georgia, which is my amazing hometown, because I went to boarding school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
A: So, I asked you before if you’d label yourself as a ginger, and you said no. Would you label yourself as anything else?
MO: Southern. Southern is about the only label that I would accept.
A: So you like America?
MO: I love America. American is right up there, yeah, absolutely.
A: Would you talk about the incident in Usdan that involved an America[n] flag-patterned suit?
MO: I would like to consider that just another part of my crazy antics with my housemates that have probably contributed to me being a WesCeleb: American ninja suits in Usdan, screaming arguments with my housemate in the parking lot of WesWings, joy riding all around campus.
Another fan favorite is driving on the “road” between Foss Hill Drive and the Hewitt circle. I like to drive down that as if it’s an actual road, which it’s not. We call it off-roading, and I’ve also been known to off-road in the WestCo courtyard before it was transformed through WildWes. Drive across Foss Hill, drive up the road from Usdan to Hewitt—especially when I was hooking up with someone who lived in Hewitt.
A: Cougar?
MO: No, that was when I was a sophomore. But now I sometimes hook up with younger ones, so I guess you could call me that.
A: You’ve certainly left a big carbon footprint on Wesleyan’s history. Where do you plan to leave your footprints next?
MO: What about my handprints? I meant that in a sexual way. Hopefully I plan to leave my footprints in a job, like, in a place of employment. I hope to be walking around my place of employment next in my life, but maybe that won’t work out.
A: What do you plan on doing if you can’t find a job?
MO: Train my corgis to be really incredible. We already went through our first puppy kindergarten class over winter break. They were phenomenal. In fact, my dog trainer may or may not have said—she did in fact say—“I wish that all my students were like you.” To which, I was incredibly flattered because I wanted to ask her out on a date.
A: Backtracking a little bit, what’s your thesis on?
MO: My thesis is about depictions of race in textbooks from the 1950s to the 1970s, and how those depictions reflect president Nixon’s policies in the same period. It’s kind of confusing. It’s really not interesting to most people. I really, truly feel badly when people ask me about my thesis because I know they’re doing it to be nice, but I also know they’re not terribly interested in my response. That’s one of the formalities that I wish we could do away with at Wesleyan—where people feel this responsibility to ask people about their theses when they just don’t care.
A: How did you get intrigued in your topic?
MO: I became interested in my topic really [by] thinking about race, racism, and regionality. Being from the South, the reputation of the South is one that I always worked to dispel at Wesleyan. Whenever I’m in the North, I feel like there’s a perception of the South that it’s racist, backwoods, and, you know, sort of not sophisticated. When I went to school in Rhode Island for a year, people asked me if I wore shoes to school when I lived in the South. And those questions [seem] silly, but I get questions all the time about racism in my town and my city when I’m from a suburb of Atlanta, which has one of the highest affluent black majorities of any city in the country.
So, I became interested in my topic because I was interested in city versus rural communities and how they handle race. That sort of sparked a whole [trajectory] into race and racism and civil rights, and how it’s easy to get stereotypes… I was interested in doing a thesis that’s like, “The North sucks! The South is awesome!” That didn’t seem exactly scholarly, so I tried to work it in a different way, but hopefully my message still stays the same.
A: All right, so if you could end [with] one interesting fact that you don’t think anyone should die without knowing about you, [what would it be]?
MO: True life: I was a middle school bully. I think it’s one of the things about me that’s come out to my friends at Wesleyan only in the last few months… I think I was too…I don’t want to say ashamed, because I don’t really perceive the emotion of shame. I don’t really feel shame, but I was a middle school bully. And I was bullying this boy on the bus with another girl. I know right, female empowerment from [eighth] grade.
[The] next day we were called into the headmaster’s office… and we were separated for eight hours and not allowed to eat lunch. But the first thing that I said upon being called in was, “I want to speak to my lawyer.” I think now, really though, my friends have just learned to be tougher. So, I’m still sort of the same old bully, but they can just take it.
A: You have so many good stories.
MO: Those are definitely my best. Oh, also, this isn’t really something that everyone should know about me, but it is one of my favorite things about me. I consider my watch that I wear a gay Bat Signal, because the only people who compliment me on it are lesbians and middle-aged men. So, if a woman compliments it, she’s almost sure to be interested in meeting up for a drink later.