If you’re looking for a comprehensive tour of Wesleyan, Asher Lipsett ’14 is your guy. Whether he’s walking you down Foss in person or sending you play-by-play Snapchats of the scenery, he’ll be sure to get you the whole story. The Argus caught up with Lipsett to talk about his sexy history thesis, his work as a tour guide, and his struggles at Pi.

 

The Argus: What makes you a WesCeleb?

Asher Lipsett: So I guess I was sought out because of my ability to be sought out, one might say. That’s actually a complete lie. I really have no clue, so this is a big mystery for me. I’m looking to get some answers, possibly through this interview.

 

A: All right, well, what should we talk about? Let’s talk about you.

AL: The big thing right now is that there was some sort of electrical thing at Olin yesterday.  Apparently it was in 2A. A couple of things about that: that’s where my open carrel is. [An open carrel] is like a lame second-place prize for people who didn’t get a carrel on the randomized list, so that’s great. But the bigger problem is that that’s where a lot of my books are for my thesis. So I have no idea if they’re burnt to a crisp or if I just am imagining that because I haven’t actually been to the library yet, so I’m just kind of making a scene in my own head about what I think happened. So I’m actually probably going to go check on that and see if my books are alive, if I can even get to that floor.

 

A: If you can’t, you might as well just drop your thesis.

AL: I’m thinking of doing that regardless of electrical wires. Not really. But it’s truly tempting. Like, maybe if all my work was there, I could say, “Listen, I can’t do one now, but it’s not my fault.” But I did not set that fire to try and eliminate my thesis, if that’s where you’re going. Because I know that The Argus was on the scene, so yeah, it wasn’t me.

 

A: So how was your weekend?

AL: It was good! A lot of fun social events, a birthday party, I got a bruised bone in my leg that I’m working through right now. I slipped. There were a lot of leaves around, and I missed a step and hit that [points to his leg], and then I fell on it again in the same place later that night, so I feel like that probably did it in. You can’t really see the bruise, but it’s on the actual bone, which is inside of my leg, so you can’t quite see it. It hurts, and I have four tours this week, so I’m going to be putting a lot of weight on it, which is really bad.

 

A: So you’re a tour guide. Tell me about that.

AL: So that’s sort of a thing I do, other than starting electrical—I mean, other than just doing my college thing. I’ve been doing that since second semester freshman year. The seniors now who got hired then are seasoned vets, if you will. It’s a good gig; I love it. I love talking to parents and having them be nosy. At this point, I just kind of talk about whatever I want, which is really nice. I have a lot of latitude, and, you know, job security’s great, especially in this struggling economy.

We always have fun people come. Like, Public Safety came once to do a training for us about what to do if a tour gets out of hand, which I think is outrageous. So we learned about standing your ground, like, not in a Florida sense, in sort of a balancing sense with your feet apart. We did a little combat simulation with the Public Safety officers. It was unexpected, and I didn’t really know how to interpret that. I think I Snapchatted it, and that’s how I responded to it.

 

A: Has anything like that ever actually happened to you on a tour?

AL: No, there’s never been an incidence of violence or anything like that. I had a couple of pledge brothers who dressed up in those bodysuits and then put on tacky sweaters and then wrestled each other on North Quad. Roth was actually talking to my group at that time, and he was like, “Oh, there’s the dean of our science faculty!” So he played it off very well, of course. And another time someone got thrown into a pool, and it always smells like weed on the hill, but that’s small potatoes. What am I supposed to do, defend the group like a warden? No. So I’m not really sure why [Public Safety] did that, actually. It was entertaining enough. I got a kick out of it, literally.

 

A: Tell me about your thesis. What’s it about?

AL: So I’m doing it in history. What’s nice about history is that everyone has to do something, whether it’s an extended seminar paper, which is just a long paper, a senior essay, which is a half thesis—which would be great right about now—or the year-long one, which is the one you can do for honors. So that’s what I’m doing. Everyone’s in the same boat, doing something, so that’s really nice. And the department, I think, gives a lot of support.

So my thesis is looking at the Freedmen’s Bureau, which is this agency created by the War Department in 1865 that essentially went to the South after the war, to the Confederate states, and was tasked with bringing American citizenship rights to about four million ex-slaves who were now suddenly free and had a couple amendments to say that they were free.

So there’s that story, and then there’s what actually happened. So you have reconstruction, but what I’m looking at specifically is Georgia, where I’m from, my home state. And I’m looking at the approximately 372 bureau agents who operated in Georgia, who no one really knows about all of them. So there’s some good stuff on some, but what I want to do is look and see where they came from, where they went. Were they rich, poor, foreign-born? Were they southern or northern, military, ex-mil? And [I’m looking at] how that influences their bureau work. There’s sort of a gap in the historical understanding.

A lot of people are really driven with their theses, like “I want to explore this.” I like mine, it’s interesting, but I guess a big motivation was that the history department said, “We would like something original,” and a lot of this stuff doesn’t exist—no one knows it. So I have very secret knowledge, which is great, but I have a lot of latitude in what I get to talk about because of that, so that’s really nice. It’s going well.

I have my colloquium next week, where I give a little talk about what I’m doing, and I have to defend the idea of what I’m doing. So I’ll give a little twelve-minute talk, I have little handouts, and hopefully people will say, “Good job,” because I’m looking for positive reinforcement at this point.

 

A: So that’s for the faculty?

AL: Faculty and students come. We [students] have to go to five, or something. That’s why they’re there, because it’s required.

 

A: If people want to come to your colloquium, when is it?

AL: It’s next Wednesday, November 20, at I think 4:15, I don’t know, sometime between 4 and 5. It’s the same day as Daniel Greenberg’s, and he’s looking at regicide, so we’ve got some really sexy historical work being done on that particular Wednesday. I definitely encourage you guys to come out, if not for me, for Daniel Greenberg.

 

A: Anything else you want to add?

AL: I was trying to get a Chaider this morning, and the line was too long, and I didn’t even have an internal monologue about how mad I was about it, because I was just going with it.

 

A: So are you still dejected about that?

AL: I’m a little upset, and if I get one at this point, I don’t know if the time is right. I might still do it, because I have a hard time committing even to things that I’m upset about, which I guess is interesting. But I’ll probably end up drinking that beverage regardless of how I feel right now. Probably after this.

 

This interview was edited for length.