Camille Casareno, Wesleyan senior, female gamer, doula, chef, and tour guide extraordinaire, is pretty frank about why she’s a WesCeleb. “I mentioned to [a] couple of my friends that one of my lifelong dreams was to be a WesCeleb,” she said at the start of our interview. One of those friends or, Casareno suggested, perhaps a first-year from one of her tour groups over the past two years finally nominated this superstar for celebrity status.
The Argus: Wha makes you a WesCeleb?
Camille Casareno: I feel like half the freshman class knows me.
A: So freshmen you give tours to disproportionately come to Wesleyan?
CC: Yeah, actually. I’ve had at least 15 freshmen come up to me over the last year or so and be like, “You were my tour guide!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?”
A: Do the other tour guides have a similar success rate, or are you the most successful?
CC: I think I’ve been the one who’s been more vocal about it. I like to brag to people, at least [to] the other tour guides.
A: Other than being a tour guide, what else do you do at Wesleyan?
CC: I’m the coordinator of Clinic Escorts. We go to a clinic in Bridgeport. We send out one group of students three times a week, and we help women come into the clinic when there are protestors around. We just try to be a good support for people coming into the clinic. There are no security guards in the parking lot, so it can be a little scary. Other than that, I’m an abortion doula in New Haven, and I’m physically helping out the physicians and nurses during the procedure, which is a pretty intense thing to do, but I’m pretty involved in reproductive justice here.
A: Cool. And you also started WesWIG?
CC: I did. It is a new, female-minded gaming group. Its longer name is Wesleyan Women in Gaming. My goal is to get people who have played video games, mainly females, who may not have grown up with older brothers or may not have a lot of friends playing games with them, because it’s kind of hard to find other girlfriends, or just friends in general, to play video games with. At least it was for me, so that’s why I started it.
A: So do you play together in a room? Or do just your avatars play together?
CC: We like to do gatherings, so we tend to meet at my house or my cofounder Katie’s LoRise. We bring our consoles together, mainly PCs and DSs, and we’ll play together and chat. Sometimes we’ll play on the same thing; Katie has an Xbox so we’ll play together on that. We’ll also get together and talk about social issues in the gaming industry right now. It’s sort of half social and the other half is political-minded discussion.
A: And you’re also Internet-famous for a blog?
CC: I don’t know about Internet-famous, per se, but yes, I started a cooking blog. It’s called 303Wash; everyone should go visit it at 303Wash.com. But I founded it with one of my housemates who I’ve been living with since junior year. We wanted to have a place where we could document our food adventures and cooking as a college student. It’s harder as a college student to feed yourself really well when you’re not only short on money, but you also don’t have a lot of time. I think this is a good medium for us to be like, “Hey, we’re broke on time and money, but we’re still eating pretty well.” I think my mom would be proud.
A: What’s your favorite thing you’ve made for the website?
CC: Oh man, I don’t know. One of my favorite things I’ve made for the site is actually my favorite recipe for cookies: it’s brown butter coffee chocolate chip cookies.
A: Yum.
CC: I know! It’s actually pretty easy. You just have to brown the butter—you cook it on the pot for like ten minutes until you start to smell it—and then you just do a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe, and you add a splash of coffee to it.
A: Like, liquid coffee?
CC: Yeah, old coffee from your breakfast or whatever. You let it sit in your fridge for a couple hours and then you just bake it like regular cookies. They smell amazing and they’re so good.
A: Do you have any WesCeleb words of wisdom for the student body?
CC: Oh my gosh. I always like to tell people to try something new—even something you’re not very comfortable with. Get a friend to do it with you, of course. Mine was definitely Drawing 1 when I was a freshman. I drew in high school, you know, everyone does something kind of artsy, but I didn’t know how to draw mechanically well or anything graded. But I had a really good experience. The first day of class you draw naked people, and I was like, “Wow, I thought I’d see vases.” Definitely a big plunge. But it helped me get out socially because if I can draw naked men, I can talk to a couple people at Usdan.