When students arrived on campus two weeks ago with their jeans cuffed and their mustaches flowing, treasures untold were stashed in many a duffel bag. Peer into any given dorm room, and I guarantee you’ll catch a glimpse of a grandmother-granted relic or two. Below lies only a fraction of the secrets and sentiments that are hiding amongst the wooden shelves of Wes.

Name: Fox Hayes

Class Year: 2023

Object: A (half-eaten) Styrofoam Lemon

“One of my good friends from home, Catherine, she has a bowl of styrofoam lemons, and we were hanging out, and I was like “oh my god I’m so hungry,” so I just took a bite—I didn’t eat it, I just took a bite. I did that twice. And so she signed it and gave it to me right before I left for college.”

 

Name: Sofia Liaw

Class Year: 2023

Object: A Wug

“Okay, so this is a wug, and it’s from a linguistic test that was about teaching very young children about language patterns and seeing what they know. Like, we obviously know the word bug, and the plural of bug is bugs, so they showed the picture of this wug, and were like, what is the plural of this? And it’s wugs. I had it custom ordered off of Etsy, because I really wanted one, and my dream is to someday have someone walk in and know what it is, and then they’ll be my best friend.”

 

Name: Asher Edelman

Class Year: 2023

Object: A Sentimental Record

“Okay, so this is the record. It has a portrait by the artist Katie Hawke from the ’70s. And that’s my great-uncle, George Tipton, and this would be my cousin Josh, and those were the two dogs they had. That one was named Starbright. And then, yeah, that’s an actual photo of my uncle on the back in all his ’70s glory. He worked with Harry Nilsson on his first two major records, and after that they had a falling out, for a whole lot of reasons, but he helped produce one of Harry’s biggest singles, ‘Everybody’s Talkin’.’ I was doing a little research into him after he passed a couple years ago, and I found out about this record, so I scoured the internet to see if there were any copies still around, and I found one!”

 

Name: Esme Ng

Class Year: 2022

Object: Grandmother’s Teapot

“It’s kind of one of those weird childhood memories. When my grandmother, who I think at the time was in her mid-’70s, she was moving out of her apartment in the Bronx, which was where my dad spent part of his young adulthood. We were cleaning it out, and that was when I found out she had a really bad hoarding problem. It stemmed from her time growing up in Hong Kong during World War II, so she developed this habit of getting a lot of stuff and hiding it in places. We would open pill bottles, and there would be a bunch of jade pendants in there, that in her mind, she was saving in case there was another war again and she needed something liquid and valuable. We found 13 teapots, and we took them all home, but this one’s my favorite.”

 

 

Name: Lilly Gitlitz

Class Year: 2023

Object: Necklace

“This was a pair of earrings from my grandmother who passed away four years ago. We were super close. She was a writer—so brilliant. I always had these earrings hanging on a little stand in my room, but I never wore them because they were too heavy on my earlobes. A few weeks before I came to Wes, I brought it to the jeweler, and had them cut off the little stem, so I could put it on a chain and wear it as a necklace. The guy was so nice, he did it free of charge.”

 

 

Name: Oliver Egger 

Class Year: 2023

Object: Portrait of Walt Whitman

“This is actually an 1890s photo of Walt Whitman. My dad always had a similar picture up in his office, and growing up, I never knew who it was. I thought he was like a grandfather or something. Anyway, I’m really into poetry, and I read ‘Leaves of Grass’—it’s my favorite poetry book. And so, for my graduation, my dad got me the photo. It sounds incredibly valuable, but Walt Whitman was a big fan of self-advocacy. He loved his image. So there were thousands and thousands printed. I love having a mysterious old man stare down at my desk.”

 

Name: Gio Alvarez 

Class Year: 2023

Object: Wooden Tiger Head

“My grandma brought it over from Mexico. She’s friends with a lot of people that are closely related to the indigenous population in Mexico. They all still practice their art that they used to do. I originally wanted a jaguar, but she could only find a tiger, and I was like, ‘That’s okay, it still looks really cool.’ It reminds me a lot of my ancestry and where I come from. Sometimes you don’t hear a lot about Mexican people and their achievements. To hold something that was hand-crafted brings a lot of pride.”

 

Name: Leah Levine

Class Year: 2023

Object: Fake Candles (for aesthetic purposes ONLY)

“Senior year, four girls in my art class of 30 people, not including the rest of the 800 kids in my grade, were hospitalized for mental health issues. Since my high school was stupid and underfunded, rather than investing in better mental health resources and guidance counselors, they bought a bunch of fake candles for the mezzanine area and designated it a “meditation area” with lace curtains. So, of course, everyone stole the candles and brought them home as a form of rebellion.”

 

 

Name: Lila Blaustein

Class Year: 2023

Object: Handmade Bowl

“At my high school, we had a pottery class that was all about detachment. We would make bowls, and we had to make 20 bowls like this in a very specific process with lots of spiritual elements. You’re supposed to look into the tea bowl, and see the whole universe. On the last day, we all sat and had a tea ceremony. We were supposed to take our favorite bowl and use it for the ceremony. After the ceremony, our teacher ‘invited’ us to go smash our bowls. I decided in that circle that I couldn’t smash it. I still wanted to embody detachment, so I took all the other bowls I’d made and gave them to other people. I decided that when I was ready to smash this bowl, I would, but I just wasn’t there yet. I think that there is meaning in things like this, but you have to choose what’s meaningful.”

 

 

Audrey Mills can be reached at amills@wesleyan.edu.