In hindsight, deciding to interview Christian Hosam ’15 in Usdan might have been a bad idea for an interview location: the extent of his WesCelebrity grew apparent as people came up to say hi (which resulted in Ammie Tea ’18 sitting in as a guest for this interview). The Argus sat down with Hosam to discuss his work as a senior interviewer, his interest in racial issues on campus, and people with good pants.

 

The Argus: So what do you think makes you a WesCeleb?

Ammie Tea: He’s very outgoing, and he’s part of a lot of groups, and he shows up to a lot of discussions and inputs his opinions all the time. All the time!

Christian Hosam: Oh my gosh.

AT: He’s not even in my student forum, and he showed up!

CH: I was invited, by the way. It’s because my thesis was around those issues, so they asked me to show up. I mean, why do I think I’m a WesCeleb? Maybe because I’m too nice to people, and I don’t break friendships easily. That’s why she’s still around [laughs].

AT: And he buys people food! That’s why.

CH: I think it’s because I know that you have to buy your way to the top [laughs]. O.K., what else, why am I a WesCeleb? I think because I genuinely like Wesleyan.

 

A: Why?

CH: That’s a better question that I have a much less coherent answer to. I’ve learned a lot, and I guess I know how to hold people accountable without trying to be mean to them. One thing that I’ve learned at Wesleyan that’s actually really disturbed me is that people think that you can’t be critical without being confrontational. Like, I can’t call you out without feeling that I want to fight you, or that I have to be scared when I want to talk to you, so I ignore you, then throw shit behind your back. So I think people are usually just nice to each other, but I think people tend to like me, maybe, because—

AT: He’s constructive, not critical, that’s why!

 

A: When have you had to be critical without being confrontational?

CH: A couple years ago, when there was racial profiling on campus, [it affected] black men. I was one of the people that was asked to talk about these issues, like what’s going on, what’s happening. And there was a lot of hurt going around—and I was hurt, too—but at that time, I was more someone that was trying to address the problem. Thing about this was that I gained an appreciation of calling shit out just to call shit out. ’Cause sometimes people always want to go to places and be like, “Well, this wasn’t productive,” or “This is rude,” when people were almost getting arrested, to me, because they were black. I think they had the right to be more than fucking pissed off. And I think understanding that, of being able to move in and out of that emotional place, maybe makes me more, I guess, easier to deal with. Like when I talk about why I’m a WesCeleb, I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing. I like it that people like me, but I also recognize that sometimes maybe the people that might ruffle a couple more feathers, might be the people we need to listen to even more.

 

A: Can you tell me more about the racial issues and discussions that you’ve been involved in on campus?

CH: A couple of big ones. The first one that I planned was way back. It was actually like a prologue to all the Asian American stuff I do now, and the reason I did it was because a friend of mine, Lynna Zhong ’15, [and I] were having all these conversations when we were freshmen. One thing we did at the beginning of our second year was plan something called Misunderstanding Minority, which was around issues of how different racial groups exist on campus. And we had professors there: Lois Brown, who is now the chair of [the African American Studies Program]. It was her first semester here, and she was on that panel. I’ve been doing these kinds of things for years. I’ve always been interested in how my racial experience is different but also similar to those of other races. Intellectually, it’s what my thesis is on. But also, on a college campus, you’re conflated as a student of color in ways that you won’t be anywhere else in the world. And I think that’s interesting.

 

A: How was your overall thesis experience?

CH: The thesis experience was hard, so I have to say this ties into a lot of why I care about racial issues on this campus—because I was really screwed over in a lot of ways, because of how this university works. So currently at Wesleyan, no one teaches a class on racial politics, and that’s what I’m interested in academically. The one that did something closest to that did African American history but also through the lens of party politics. She talked about black Republicans, which I think is fascinating, and I was her research assistant. So she, at the end of last year, was going to be my thesis advisor, but she got a job at Harvard. And [another] person that got a job went to Yale, who was also my close academic advisor. So I was out two people at like one time, in one fell swoop. Now, at the same time, I’m a double major in the Government Department and it’s much larger than the African American Studies program, but they were kind of tentative in taking me on. Now, what ended up happening was that I knew someone in AFAM who really wanted to work with me, who knew me as a person, and he was not going to let me not do a thesis. But I think what that story shows is how much or how little the University is committed to talking about people of color.

Now in terms of writing my thesis: so, writing my thesis is funny because I wrote most of my thesis in the last seven weeks. Don’t do that. I was really slacking. I did it from the beginning of March. Beginning of spring break, I wrote all of my chapters. Now I had written things before, and parts of my chapters were written well before. But just sitting down and writing page 0 to 102, I wrote that within the last month. That’s bad [laughs]. Don’t do that. It was really stressful, but I think what it helped me realize is that once you start writing something you’re interested in, you’ll keep writing. And I think that was what I had to learn. The fact that I was writing before [the thesis] is what kept me writing.

 

A: What more do you do on campus?

CH: This year, I was a senior interviewer in admissions, which was interesting. I loved it. I really enjoyed the experience. I had a lot of qualms about taking the position once I got accepted before I decided to take the role, because I was like, “So I going to be telling kids lies?” I was just worried about lying to them. I didn’t end up lying to them. High school students are usually quite smart, and they’ll ask questions that they want answers to. I don’t need to tell them all the gnarly stuff that goes on here, unless they ask, because if they do ask it shows that they have a level of sophistication and they really care about coming to this campus. I think it would really hurt us more than the institution for me to lie to them when they have deeper, harder questions for me, and if I give them bullshit superficial answers.

 

A: What are your plans after Wesleyan?

CH: Lord, I don’t know—

AT: You said you were going to take a break, and then maybe go to graduate school, right?

CH: My representative says that that’s what’s going on [laughs]. That’s what I told her. So I’ll be spending some time out of school, or in school. I don’t know, life has a way of just bringing you places you don’t know. But, like, who knows? We don’t know what happens.

 

A: Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

CH: Two things I always wanted to talk about. Best thing about people on campus are the variety of pants that they wear. People wear different kinds of tops, but if people wear good pants, they’re my favorite kind of people. [Laughs] I’m not wearing good pants. I’m never wearing good pants, so that’s a problem.  Second thing—it’s random—but I’ve been waiting to say this for years and now that I’m on the record I’m going to say it. In terms of people being funny, I’m so interested and also concerned with how people at Wesleyan view themselves sarcastically. Sometimes people are often sarcastic, in a way that I think sometimes ironically, shows how vulnerable they are. I think that one thing I love about Wesleyan is that you’re able to learn about yourself, and you’re always held accountable. But sometimes this place is very small, and you don’t know it.

It’s more that I’ve observed it because I’m sarcastic, but in relation to other people I’m just really straight up. People have called me real and I’m like, I don’t know, you know much less then you think about me. Or I’m usually just so ironic to them. Or sardonic, whatever. But just as I’m looking back at four years at Wesleyan and realizing the kind of person we get that comes through the door every year, most of these people protect themselves with sarcasm, and it’s sometimes cool, sometimes funny, and I’m sometimes into it. But I always wondered why that was a thing that was so intense here. It’s not that people aren’t straight up. I think people use comedy to deflect a lot of the pain that they feel on campus.

 

A: Any other closing remarks?

CH: Hashtag AFAMisWhy: I think that we need to understand that when we have strong relationships with each other, then we’re able to have strong relationships with faculty and staff, or allyship. I’ve heard it through four years. People are always wondering why we don’t care about each other, whether it’s people of color, as a campus, black people, any kind of way that you want to slice it. And I also hear, “Why aren’t faculty showing up to these things? Why don’t they go to these things?” It’s part of a broader thing that has over time made it so we see a problem like AFAM underfunded and underdeveloped. It’s because we’re not together, they’re not together, and neither of us are together, too. There’s no cohesion. And over time, it’s broken down because a lot of faculty have left, a lot of staff have left, and they were the ones who’ve provided that long-term context. And then we get mad at each other. We’re like, “Well, shit, you should be working this hard, you should be doing all this,” and then not realizing that if you had those advisors to help you out, you wouldn’t be in my situation.

This interview has been edited for length.