As I was telling the officers that I didn't need to go to the hospital, they both took me by the arms and dragged me by force to the ambulance, also placing me on the stretcher by force. I have friends who saw me trying to wrestle out of the officers’ grip and can testify to how aggressive they were as well as that I did not need hospitalization. One of my friends who witnessed the incident came forward to argue in my defense to the officers. I was even sitting on the stretcher arguing with the officers and paramedics, but they refused to listen to me. Other boys also gathered around to protest what they were doing, and my friend told me that once I left they started physically pushing the boys away and even arrested one of the boys for “getting in their way.”

In my opinion, as well as everyone’s to whom I have talked to so far, this is completely unacceptable and abusive behavior on their part, and there is no one yet who thought that that was an agreeable thing to do. I woke up at around 7:30 in the hospital, and had been completely stripped of my belongings. I asked to leave, and they prohibited me to do so until my alcohol level dropped to 0.08, which is the driving limit, and again makes no sense as a parameter since I wasn't going to drive home anyway. They “breathalized” me (which at least in Brazilian law where I am from, I should not be forced to do) and refused to give me my cellphone so that I could let my friends know where I was and that I was okay, because for all they knew I just suddenly disappeared and I knew they would be worried.

I told all this to a friend of mine who is a nurse intern and she said that patients are allowed to leave the hospital if they want; also, she said that nurses do give back a patient's phone even when they ask for it immediately after surgery, and that it is wrong that they refused to give mine when I asked for it. I didn't need glucose, an adrenaline shot, or even IV fluids, and on top of that, all the time I was awake no one even offered me a glass of water, which obviously is the first thing you give someone if you want them to sober up, and to me that is a clear indication that no one in that hospital really believed I needed help, again confirming the unfairness of my being there. They told me to go back to sleep because I would still need some time for the alcohol to leave my system. I was also on the middle of the hallway and had to complain to have my bed put in the room with the other boys present.

I woke up again at 10, and only a half hour later did a nurse come in offering a glass of ginger ale, still no water. I asked for water myself and from the third glass on I just got up and started pouring myself water, since I would clearly not have any help from them to get me out of there as soon as possible. I also had to ask for something to eat, because I just wanted my level to drop fast to get out. I got to the point of just being up and chatting to the nurse, “doing time” while binging on water and in need of no assistance whatsoever to justify my being there. In the end, this action by the PSafe officers just wasted my time and the hospital’s, as well as taking up ER space and resources which could be used with people who actually need it, and generating unnecessary costs.

I am sure everyone knows that the drinking age in my country, Brazil, is 18, which even though it doesn’t justify me going against US drinking age law, at least allows me to affirm that I have experience drinking and know that this was a very invasive overreaction of the officers. I am sure if a regular police officer saw someone vomiting they wouldn’t force them to go to the hospital. Now, I don’t know if the Wesleyan Health Insurance covers the costs of the ambulance and ER, but if they don’t, I assure you that I will raise great noise and refuse to pay for something that I was forced into while I was conscious and without my consent. It is my belief that they were doing this forcefully simply so that they can create shock at the number of hospitalized students to create a negative image of the Tour; however, there is no way anyone could convince me now that any of these statistics are at all credible, and I think no one else should either, because what they were actually doing was harassing students instead of protecting them as they should. I did not feel protected, I felt violated, and that to me is unacceptable.

The FYI Program consists of freshmen-only courses taught by professors who specifically volunteer to participate in the program. FYI courses admit a maximum of 19 students and focus on topics related to each professor’s expertise that are appropriate for first-year students.

“The rationale for the FYI is to facilitate the academic transition from secondary school to college by providing a challenging but supportive academic experience in the company of peers, to feel academically home [at Wesleyan] as quickly as possible,” the University website reads.

FYI courses do not have a particular proscribed structure or content; up until now, the only requirement has been the class size limit. These classes are especially small to facilitate more intimate discussion, exchange of ideas between students, and more personal interactions between students and faculty.

Although the FYI was launched as a pilot program in 1993, previously there has been no official evaluation of the program.

“Last year, before I was dean, I was asked to be on a FYI task force which is at the origin of the overall evaluation of the FYI,” Dean of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of French Andrew Curran said. “South College and the Provost [Rob Rosenthal] asked me—in consultation with the other deans—to think through the program and propose something else, with writing as a major component.”

The result are FYS, which will closely resemble current FYI offerings but will now emphasize writing as a major component of their syllabi. According to Curran, many FYI courses are being retrofitted to reflect that new emphasis.

“Students will simply have a serious writing component,” he said. “20 pages of polished writing, and a combination of pedagogical strategies associated with the teaching of writing: oral or written feedback, peer mentoring, group discussions about writing process in or outside of class, etc.”

In addition to traditionally writing-based disciplines such as history and English, the FYS program will also focus on science courses, and the FYI task force plans to add more courses that educate students on science writing.

“One of the things that these classes can do is to help students present evidence and documentation,” Curran said.

According to Curran, in the future, there will still be classes reserved for freshmen that will not include a heavy writing component, but they will not be classified as FYS.

Much of the prejudice against people with disabilities is rooted in the infantilization that is used to justify the oppression of people with disabilities and allow them to be treated as second-class citizens in the eyes of the law. The same logic has been used in the past to deprive women of sexual agency. In light of the recent surge in legislation aimed at restricting women’s reproductive choices, the issue of governmental control over medical practices and stigmatized bodies makes the analogy more relevant.

The negative stereotypes about women and about people with disabilities, especially stereotypes relating to weakness, are each used to reinforce the oppression of the other. The depiction of women or people who experience disabling pain as weak and less capable is a perfect example. It depicts the pain of women with disabilities or chronic illnesses as less legitimate or irrational. It also hurts men, who may experience this type of pain but are ignored in the narratives of “female illnesses” and female “problems.” Men can have these same conditions, and may even have trouble having sex because of pain-related disabilities, but the narratives surrounding pain disability and sexuality never even address their existence. Queer people with disabilities face similar erasure.

It is important to remember that many disabilities are invisible. Whether people identify as disabled or not, many of us have particular needs and preferences that we might find difficult to discuss with our partner(s). For many people, different physical or psychological needs or concerns may be intensely personal and difficult to share, especially in an intimate setting. Keep in mind that disclosure of a particular need, desire, or disability is often made in confidence, and sometimes with some difficulty. Our society’s reluctance to openly discuss sex and desires makes these conversations more difficult as well. However, this kind of discussion is an important part of treating one’s sexual partners with respect, and it allows everyone to have better experiences.

If our culture stopped ignoring the fact that people with disabilities are sexual beings, then perhaps this would be less of a problem. As a queer person with an invisible disability whose needs change from day to day, I know that most people who see me as a sexual being don’t see my physical limitations and prefer to associate queerness with promiscuity. Even when I try to communicate my personal needs or preferences, they only see what they find attractive. I consider this a form of privilege, but also a source of frustration.

The idea that it is permissible for a woman, but not for a man, to avoid sex because of physical discomfort is a form of ableist and sexist discrimination, and it highlights the issue of how we understand consent. The question of consent should not ever hinge on physical abilities. The fact that an excuse like physical discomfort is even necessary is itself problematic. Anyone has the right to refuse any act at any time, regardless of whether they do so because they are physically or mentally unable to participate in the act. Any conversation about consent should include physical limitations in the same way it includes personal preferences. Just like consent, negotiating you and your partner’s needs and desires is an ongoing conversation about what both of you like, want, and need, regardless of a disability which may inform some of these needs.

Most processed foods sold in the U.S., even those labeled “natural” and “all natural,” contain at least one GM ingredient—soy, corn, canola, cottonseed, or sugar—yet they carry no labels declaring, “contains GMOs.” Just last week, Kashi responded to consumer backlash against the company for using GM soy in its “natural” cereals by announcing it would formulate new products to be mostly organic and Non-GMO Project Verified starting in 2015, and that existing popular products would be Non-GMO Project Verified by the end of 2014. Lesson learned—the desires of the American consumer reigned supreme.

GMOs are organisms whose genetic characteristics are purposefully changed through genetic manipulation or modification. Through laboratory processes, DNA is extracted from one species of plant, animal, bacteria, or virus, and forced into another unrelated species of plant or animal to exactly confer a desired trait that would not occur in nature or be possible through traditional crossbreeding methods. In agricultural products, the most common GMOs are engineered to tolerate herbicides or produce their own pesticides. Twenty years ago, the FDA declared that GMOs were not materially different from their conventional counterparts and therefore were generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and required no safety testing or labeling. Consequently, no independent, long-term scientific testing has been conducted on GMOs to show that they are safe for humans, animals, and the environment.

Due to growing concerns about the safety of GMOs and polls consistently showing that over 90 percent of consumers want GMOs labeled, lawmakers in 17 states, including Connecticut, have introduced legislation that would mandate, in some form, the labeling of genetically modified foods. In February, State Representative Richard Roy (D - Milford), co-chair of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Environment Committee, introduced HB 5117, An Act Concerning Genetically-Engineered Foods. Connecticut had the potential to become the first state to pass a bill mandating the labeling of GE foods. Despite grassroots advocacy by the Right to Know CT campaign that resulted in widespread, bipartisan support from state legislators, fears of a lawsuit by the biotech industry led to the labeling provision being excised from the bill before it had a chance to make it to the floor of the House of Representatives. Lesson learned—the will of the people does not reign supreme.

The FDA so far has dismissed pleas to update its arcane GE food labeling policies. Not even a bicameral letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg, signed by 55 members of Congress in support of the Center for Food Safety’s (CFS) legal petition filed on behalf of the Just Label It campaign, could sway the agency. It is essential to label GMOs so consumers can choose whether or not to eat them. When a GMO labeling bill is introduced in your state, send your legislators an email saying that you believe we have a fundamental right to know what’s in our food so we can make informed choices about what we feed our families. Remember that the American consumer reigns supreme, and each and every organic and Non-GMO food vote you cast with your wallet will likely carry more weight than the votes of our legislators in support of GMO labeling bills.

Analiese Paik is the co-founder of Right to Know CT (RightToKnow.org) and the founder and editor of the award-winning website FairfieldGreenFoodGuide.com.

A: Why are you a better WesCeleb?
TC: I’m a different WesCeleb, hopefully because my entire WesCeleb won’t be based on my Facebook. I’m second—so she’s better technically if you’re going to rank us.

A: You wrote a creative thesis in the English department.
TC: Yes, I did, with Amy Bloom, who has been an awesome advisor. I wrote some short stories, and now I’m done.

A: How’d that process go?
TC: It was awesome. Really hard, though. I probably wrote over 200 pages, of which 88 made it into my thesis. But I ended up with four stories, two of which I’m really happy with, two of which don’t need to see the light of day, but that’s OK.

A: Did you know what you wanted to write going in?
TC: My advisor told me to pick a place and link four stories based on place and the people in them. And then I really only had three places to choose: Maine, which is where I grew up; North Carolina, where I was born, where my family is from; and New York, where I spent the last two summers. I was a little too vitriolic towards Maine, so I rejected that, and feel like I idolize New York too much, because I haven’t lived there long enough to really resent it. With North Carolina I sort of have a connection, but I’m less biased about it, so I chose North Carolina.

A: Could you tell me more about living in Maine?
TC: I’m from Southern Maine, half an hour outside of Portland, which means I have some connection to population. I live on an old farm—47 acres, four stables, and all sorts of woods. And my town is population 1400. We don’t have a high school, so I went to high school in Portland. And neither of my parents were from Maine, so we’re outlanders, outsiders.

A: And why didn’t you write about it?
TC: Well, here’s why. There’s a good phrase from “Mainahs”: “If a cat crawls into the oven and gives birth, you don’t call the little kittens ‘muffins.’” So essentially, even if you were born in Maine, if your parents aren’t from there you aren’t a real “Mainer.” At least I’m many generations North Carolinian—even more than that, since I’m technically part Cherokee, so I’m really, really from there.

A: Having been on the Cross Country team for all four years, would you say there’s a divide between athletes and non-athletes?
TC: I think it’s less of a divide than at most schools; most people at Wesleyan don’t give a shit about athletics, and that can make being an athlete a difficult thing. It’s hard to feel as if no one else cares. You really have to do it for yourself, and after years of competing, staying in on Friday nights and stuff, it can be kind of underwhelming. You question whether it’s worth it, but at the same time, it is nice that the social atmosphere isn’t dictated by athletics, and that an academic focus can carry social weight. I’ve definitely had moments of resentment, but at the same time, I think that that actually is an advantage at Wesleyan as a whole.

A: What advice would you give to underclassmen?
TC: For me at least, having the confidence to not do everything was one of the best things that happened to me senior year. I had athletics, academics, and a social life.

If you want to sleep, you can really only dedicate yourself to two of those, because of scheduling, logistics, and emotional capacity to focus on things intensely.

After three years, I realized I could handle all of these responsibilities, but I didn’t have to. That has made my senior year one of the most balanced experiences I could have had. It doesn’t change who you are as a person or make you any less talented a person if you don’t do everything you want to do.

Phil Ross: I had a high school teacher named Dr. Fass who kind of loved/hated me and told me that if I was ever going to give an interview someday when I was a famous asshole writer, I was supposed to do it while drinking a peach wine cooler, which I think was how he met his wife or something?
The Argus: So you followed through?

PR: I did. Belatedly, but I did.
A: So, do you consider yourself a famous asshole writer?

PR: No, but hopefully soon. I’m actually going to be spending next fall and winter in Russia—this is still in the works—but my goal is to be traveling with a professional Russian hockey team named Yaroslavl Locomotive. Last year, their plane crashed and the whole team was wiped out, and there was one player who was told to stay back from the team and to play with the junior team for a while. So they’re rebuilding this team around this one kid who’s totally traumatized, all the pressure of this one town is on him. I’m basically hoping to travel with this hockey team as they rebound.
A: What inspired you to do this?

PR: I just couldn’t shake the story. I remember hearing it and I couldn’t get over how shell-shocked this kid looked. The thing that caught my attention the most was not how much pressure would be on him from the hockey-watching public, but from the state. Hockey is such a political, propagandic device. This league is only in its fifth year, so the state sees it as essential for it to succeed and for it to grab attention across Europe and America. And this kid is the epicenter of all of this—he’s going to be the captain of a team at 21.

So, it’s this amazing story. No one is really covering it, and I did as much research as I could on it and sort of cold-call-emailed this writer Wright Thompson, pitched the idea to him, and hopefully I’ll be writing it through the website Grantland.com.

A: Have you been involved with writing at Wes?
PR: I am an English major, and I took a pretty good number of creative writing classes. I took a semester off and lived in Shakespeare and Co., an English language bookstore in Paris.

A: You lived in Shakespeare and Co.? How?
PR: I just walked in and asked them if they knew where I could stay and they took me there.

I was traveling around Europe, and I was supposed to stay with Monica Fuhrmann [’12] in Paris. When I got there, I had no phone, I realized how shitty my French was, I was carrying my way-too-big backpack, and I freaked out—and the only place I knew was this bookstore my crazy hippy friend Danny had told me about. So I went in there, and someone tapped me on the shoulder—and it was Monica Fuhrmann. So I stayed with her for a few days and I asked the bookstore if I could stay there and they took me in. And I wrote every day when I was there. That’s what got me really into writing.

A: Didn’t you temporarily go to University of Miami?
PR: That was immediately after my semester off. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back. May or may not still be registered there. Also, partially at some point, it seemed like I was registered at three other schools. But I only actually go here.

A: Why?
PR: I guess it took me while to find my place—

A: No, don’t give me that bullshit. Be honest.
PR: I really fucking hated Wesleyan for a while. Sometimes, Wesleyan can be so sunless and cold and awkward, and I just really want everything to be exactly the opposite of that all the time. I realized it was better to just make Wesleyan like that rather than to transfer to UM.

A: What ways have you gotten involved in things on campus?
PR: I try to act in at least one show a semester. I’ve gotten varying degrees of involved with helping Second Stage, Relay for Life, and—I don’t know—the Hill. I’m not really good at being formally involved in anything.

A: If you have to give advice about how best to be informally involved, how do you achieve that?
PR: I would say generally go with the whole dangerous animal thing: people are generally more scared of you than you are of them. Go out and be super ostentatiously available. Go to everything. I don’t know, what makes you think, “hey, Phil Ross—he should be a WesCeleb?”

A: What makes you think that?
PR: I wanted to do something in college. Fuck.

The Argus: How have rehearsals been going?

Dylan Zwickel: Rehearsals have been amazing. My cast is incredible, and so is my creative team.

A: What’s the cast dynamic like?

DZ: It’s such a collaborative process. I don’t think I’ve ever been involved in a large cast musical that was this collaborative. Last semester I directed a two-person show, and obviously that was very collaborative because there were three of us. But there are 17 people in this cast, and everyone has contributed something, at least, that everyone now does. Like a piece of choreography. I collaborate really well with my choreographer, and even my scenic and lighting designer has suggestions about blocking. I’m not one of those directors who’s like, “Only my idea counts.” I will take the best idea, whoever came up with it.

A: Has is been hard keeping control of such an enormous cast?

DZ: Yes. [laughs] They’re all so talented, so they’re involved in, like, five other things.

A: As the director of a musical, you have to oversee a lot more aspects of production than someone who chooses to direct a straight play. Do you give your team free reign with things like musical direction and choreography?

DZ: I definitely talk to them about what I want. So my choreographer is Tess Jonas [’15], and “Urinetown” parodies a lot of musicals, so we communicated a lot; for example, “This song’s gonna parody this show.” “Do we agree?” “Yes.” So then, once we agreed on that, she could use whatever choreography she wanted as long as I could stage it properly. Because we have a two-level set—we use the floor and the stage—it was like, is there room for me to put this on the stage or in the house?

A: So why did you pick “Urinetown”?

DZ: The thing is, it’s really a love letter to musicals, and I love musicals. It parodies other musicals to point that out. The content makes a serious topic funny and funny things real and serious, which is something that I feel like musicals can do in a way almost nothing else can. So that’s kind of the connection between the fact that it’s both a musical parody and this really satirical political topic. So I just loved that about it.

A: Have you faced any specific challenges as a result of the campiness and satirical nature of the show?

DZ: Some of my actors have more experience in other types of theater and were not used to the idea of just being ridiculous. Does my character necessarily have motivation to behave this way? No, but it’s hilarious. And you can always find motivation. You can.

A: How has being a member of Second Stage influenced your approach to directing a show here?

DZ:  I think it’s easier to have confidence  if you’re on staff because you’ve seen other people do it. You’re really familiar with the process of putting up a show through Second Stage. So you don’t have to worry about their rules and stuff like that because you just know them. That’s the only way I think it’s advantageous. A lot of people accuse us of staff nepotism and stuff, but that’s really not the case. The thing people always say is, “Well, staff members always get the ’92,” and it’s like, “Yeah, staff members know that if you choose a show that needs the ’92, you’ll get the ’92.”

A: And “Urinetown” clearly needs the ’92.

DZ: Exactly. It’s very possible that a future show that I do will not be in the ’92 because I won’t pick a show that needs it. Or if I really wanted the ’92, I would just pick a show that needed it, and I would get it. That’s the thing that people don’t realize. I would say that being on Second Stage does help with little things, like having keys to the ’92. That helps, and obviously we can’t give that to everybody. But we’re always willing to help people we let in. I would say it’s advantageous just in that I know what’s going on more.

A: It seems like Second Stage generally puts up a lot of what’s considered conventional drama because the department here leans toward the experimental. Do you think student directors are reacting to a lack of mainstream theater?

DZ: When Second Stage first started, the department did really mainstream theater, and Second Stage started as a place for experimental theater. And now, the department kind of looks down upon Second Stage because they’re like, “You’ve gone away from your experimental roots, and now everything you do is mainstream!” And it’s like, “Because now everything you do is experimental. There has to be a venue for what you call mainstream and what I call entertaining.” I just feel like specific department shows are really pretty, but make me feel nothing. A musical will always make me feel something. No musical is just two hours of pure “This is funny!” That just doesn’t happen. And if it does, who cares? Let’s have a good time. It’s not the end of the world. So yeah, I would say that there is a tendency towards more mainstream theater, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and we need a place to do it because the department acts as if it’s terrible.

A: Haven’t there also been a lot more musicals [that have gone up through Second Stage] lately?

DZ: There have been. Musicals are awesome! I don’t know why there wouldn’t be even more musicals—I mean, we can’t afford it, so let’s not have more. But it’s what I want to do with my life. Like, what am I gonna say? “Musicals suck?” No, they’re awesome. I love musicals, so it’s great that there are a lot of musicals lately, and a lot of other people agree with me. It’s like what I said about “Urinetown.” The fact that it can make a serious topic so funny and a bunch of people singing and dancing actually have a really important message is so incredible. There aren’t that many other art forms that can do that. So why wouldn’t people do musicals?

When Zeitlin graduated from Wesleyan in 2004, he knew he wanted to move to New Orleans and continue making movies. That’s precisely what he did. (His thesis film, “Egg,” has been described as “a surrealistic interpretation of Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick.’) “Beasts,” his first full-length feature film since kicking off his filmmaking career with a short called “Glory at Sea,” tells the story of a girl named Hushpuppy living with her father in the flooded post-Katrina Louisiana delta. As the acclaimed filmmaker puts it, “I’ve managed to recreate my favorite parts of being [at Wesleyan], which was always being around a bunch of artistic, excited, creative people and charging into the abyss like we’re invincible.” He makes it sound so simple.

Last Saturday, I talked over the phone with Zeitlin about making “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” accepting the Sundance award, and living in the squash courts while working on movies during his Wesleyan heyday (I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the building in question, 41 Wyllys, has since been converted).

The Argus: Hey, this is Zach from the Wesleyan Argus.

Benh Zeitlin: I remember it well!

A: That’s great. Can you tell me briefly about your film, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”?

BZ: It’s a story about a little girl who lives in this town called Bathtub that’s been cut off from the world by this gigantic water protection system. It’s a story of this series of mythological catastrophes that happen to her and the town that she’s caused. It’s about her learning to survive and try to save her town.

A: From where did the idea for the film originate?

BZ: From a couple of things. I came down here right after I graduated, pretty much, and made this film called “Glory at Sea.” After I finished that, I made all these really close friends, and I sort of got addicted to Louisiana. Instead of going back home, I decided to stay here. I wanted to tell a story about why, to try to understand the magnetism of Louisiana, despite the fact that it is such a dangerous place to live. It has this hold on me and on so many people who kind of stuck it out because of all the hardship they went through trying to keep their homes. I really wanted to tell a story about hold-outs and figure out that experience for myself and explain it to the world. That idea kind of fused itself with this play a friend of mine, Lucy Alibar, wrote about a little boy whose father got sick, and it seems like the end of the world. The connection of the story and the experience of a kid losing her father...I found that emotional similar to a community losing its home. When those two things sort of combined, that was where the story found its footing.

A: So what brought you to New Orleans after college?

BZ: Well, I had been here a couple of times with my parents—they took me to roam about town when I was a kid, and I went back right after I graduated. A bunch of my friends did this road race called “Wheels of Fire,” where we took four cars down to Louisiana on a scavenger hunt. I met all these people down here and it was in my head that I wanted to come back here, move here, and make a film. It was after the storm, when I was sort of searching for a place to make “Glory at Sea” and it sort of struck me that the nature of that story would really come alive in New Orleans. I called up a couple [of] people I knew, and they had couches and sides of their houses that were available. I basically came down and lived at a friend’s house and started working on this film by myself. It snowballed and snowballed, and now the bulk of my friends and collaborators live down here.

A: What was your reaction when you heard you won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance?

BZ: It was crazy. It was like walking into the Bible—something where things get really epic really fast. It’s weird. You believe that what you’re making can communicate with people and they’ll understand what you’re saying when you’re making a film. But everybody thinks that, and you don’t really know how certain things will develop when you make the film in such a bubble, in such a surreal and specific place. When you bring it to the public, you don’t know if it’s going to make any sense. So I think that moment of winning the Grand Jury Prize was kind of the culmination of that. The real joy was when we started to see that people were understanding the movie the same way that we did and that the things that we were trying to say were actually communicating—that was really thrilling. The prize was sort of the cherry on top.

A: How do you think your experiences at Wesleyan helped inspire this film, if at all?

BZ: We make films in this really collaborative, kind of grassroots, DIY way, which I invented when I was making my senior thesis film, “Egg,” at Wesleyan. I think it had a lot do with my time there. There were a lot of really creative kids who were constantly mixing in things outside of their education. It wasn’t like everyone was doing art for their homework. We took our art classes, we took our theater classes, and after we finished that we would just keep plowing away. I put up two musicals at Wesleyan, wrote the music for those, collaborated and helped put up tons of theater stuff. There was a real collaborative energy there, and also a really healthy competition in which we were trying to outdo each other, in a good way.

I’m sure that kind of push was really good. There was such a great crop of artists that came out of that era while I was at school. We took over the squash courts that got torn down right after I graduated. That squash court was this weird haven for us—I moved out of my house on Vine Street and moved into the courts to keep working on my film 24 hours a day. Something about that experience made me and all the people who were there helping out with that want [to] to continue working with our friends. A lot of those formative moments happened at Wesleyan. Also, Jonathan Cutler in the Sociology department taught me how to think, so I have to credit him.

A: What are some of your favorite memories from the film department at Wesleyan?

BZ: There was this dude teaching at Wesleyan my first year—he was gone after that. I didn’t know I was going to make films when I got to Wesleyan. I mean, I was interested in it, but I was interested in a lot of things. But I remember that Film 101 class with him, his name was Bob Smith, and the fact that Film 101 included “Starship Troopers” and “Showgirls,” and the quality of the Film Series was [what made it] so amazing. The ability to watch great movies five nights a week on film—I remember that was the first time I saw Herzog and Sturges and Lubitsch...I remember a lot of really extraordinary moments watching films, and with Jeanine [Basinger] and [Richard] Slotkin, who was there, and Scott [Higgins], who all taught me.

I always appreciated that at Wesleyan, that film wasn’t this elitist high art film education. It has a real respect for crowd-pleasing movies and populist cinema. They teach film language in a way that allows you to understand how to manipulate an audience with form, which is something that is really important and is ignored in a lot of more elite film programs that are completely focused on what is considered to be higher art. I have a lot of great memories as a projectionist there, handling film and projecting the movies and all that stuff, that even though Wesleyan isn’t a Film School with a capital F, with the resources that are there, it allows you to fall in love with the magic of film. Appreciating it as an art form, not just a high art form.

A: What were you involved with at Wesleyan outside of film?

BZ: A million things. I did a lot of theater—I wrote two musicals while I was there—but my career as an athlete fell apart pretty quickly. I wanted to play hockey, but I didn’t make any of the teams. I set off a lot of fireworks, snuck into the tunnels a lot [laughs]. I was always working on movies—I was really a hermit, animating things and putting these films together. My life was pretty dominated by making movies and working on theater.

A: What do you miss most about Wesleyan today?

BZ: [laughs] I dunno. I was never a “school lover;” I don’t think I’ve had too many sad days where I really wanted to go back to college or anything. But every time I make a film, it feels like I don’t miss it because I’ve managed to recreate my favorite parts of being at school, which was always being around a bunch of artistic, excited, creative people and charging into the abyss like we’re invincible. That was my experience at Wesleyan, and every time we make a film we follow that model and mission. We also end up with, like, 70 Wesleyan students on our films every time. It’s cool—I graduated in 2004, but I have close friends who graduated last year, who are still going to school, who through the different generations have gotten involved in the film. It seems like a great breeding ground for really fearless, energetic, smart people. So I don’t know if I miss it, but I definitely appreciate that I had that experience back then, and I’ve tried to continue it.

A: Do you have any final messages to the Wesleyan community today?

BZ: Yeah, I guess—I think it was so important to have a life outside of classes there. The art that we were making outside of the academic programs that was really important and pushed us all to continue doing it after we got out of school. I think you can get trapped in the idea that the opportunity of being at college is like, you’re in this surreal zone packed with young, creative people at a point in their lives where they can do anything. It’s the greatest moment to take advantage of that kind of collaboration and fearlessness.

Oh, and I miss taking Sociology classes. You get out of school and you’re making films and your lens kind of shrinks a little bit. I always wished that even after I graduated from Wesleyan, I could still be permanently in Jonathan Cutler’s senior Sociology class. That’s one of the great things of my time there. [laughs]

A: Did you do that with someone else?
AS: Mhm! Taylor Sander [’12], who’s one of my good friends here. We had taken it the previous year, and then we made our own version of it. It was really great—I wish I could have done it again this year, because this past summer I interned with this feminist pornographer and writer, Tristan Taormino [’93], who actually went to Wesleyan.

A: How was that internship? What did you do?
AS: It was so…normal! It’s funny. Like, my boss isn’t running around sticking her boobs onto things. I spent a lot of time organizing and doing basic office stuff, doing some editing, and some scanning and just putting things in binders, except for that the things that I was scanning were naked pictures of people. I spent four days just organizing her dildo collection.

But after you get over the hype of like, “Oh! This is what it is! It’s so giggly!” it just becomes a job, which was really fun and great to see.

A: Do you want to work in the sex industry?
AS: Yeah…I think so? I’m not really sure what my trajectory is... see, I need to actually sit down and process… or maybe not! Maybe I should just stumble into whatever. But if I tried to actively go into the creation of pornography—which I’m probably not going to end up doing—I’d really need to reevaluate my whole life, because that is such a life-choice and would affect a lot of things down the line.

I’m not going to perform in pornography—parents, I’m not going to perform in pornography. But I think that I’d love to write about sex. Yeah, I would love to have my own little line of goofy little books, but realistically, I’ll probably end up going to social work school in like, five years and be a sex therapist. I’m probably going to end up sitting down and talking to fifty-year old couples about what position gets them off. That’s probably where my life is going.

A: Let’s talk about your blog. How do you decide what to write about?
AS: People who I don’t really know will come up to me at parties and say, “I read your blog and I have the funniest story.” And they’ll tell me things about female ejaculate and period stains and parents walking in on them and them walking in on their parents—just crazy stuff, and I’m like, “I don’t even know how to turn this into a story. You need to write that story!”

Most of it, though, is just inspired by a lot of things that they left out, that I feel the media just left out. And not that I’m blaming them for it, but no one ever told me what happens if someone ejaculates inside you and where that ejaculate goes. I don’t know if that’s too inappropriate, but you never see a girl in a movie walking away and there’s like, a dribble down her leg. People never say that!

People never say that your period isn’t going to be blood-red. Why didn’t they tell us that? Periods are not red and ejaculate dribbles and people queef.

The first time I had sex, the penis didn’t just miraculously stay in the vagina. They make it look like you can just stand up and it will miraculously find it’s way! That’s not the way bodies work! It’s really important for people to know that they’re normal if their bodies work that way.

A: How do you deal with blogging on such a small campus?
AS: At times it’s been uncomfortable when I reference a certain experience. The time that I would reference in particular is that I wrote about someone going down on me and I had a piece of toilet paper stuck down there—it was a very specific incident and it was very clear who it was.

There are some repercussions to what I write—like when I wrote about the guy who I lost my virginity to in high school, about feeling like a dead fish being poked by a fisherman’s incredibly small rod. And I just got a Facebook message like a week ago with that line copy-pasted and him writing, “Really?” And I just had to be like, “No, not really! No! That’s just what it feels like when you have sex!” You expect it to be this magical thing and you just end up being this starfish and you’re just confused.

A: Any advice to Wesleyan students about sex in general?
AS: It’s just going to be weird! The most vivid image of not-real sex in my head is—have you ever seen Atonement? They’re standing up against a building and like, she’s having an orgasm and they’re just standing there and I mean, it was really hot. But sex is more complicated, and sex is weird.

Similarly to the opening scene from 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” the film wastes no time in introducing most of the major players and the main conflict of the film. Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s half-brother, returns to Earth through the portal created by the Tesseract, a powerful source of energy that Loki uses in a deal with an alien race whom he hopes to use to subjugate the Earth. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) wastes no time in activating The Avengers Initiative, uniting all known superheroes to help save the Earth from Loki’s vengeance. From here on out, the film jumps back and forth between stunning action scenes and the best writing for a Marvel film since the original “Iron Man.”

The film is masterfully crafted by Wesleyan’s own Joss Whedon ’87, who takes the helm as both writer and director. “The Avengers” proves that Whedon’s finally ready for the inevitable flood of studio offers he’s about to receive—the script is filled with vibrant dialogue, and Whedon has perfected the vernacular for each individual character so well that it quickly becomes sheer entertainment to watch the sharp taunts and bickering within the provisional family that he has made out of this ragtag team of heroes.

Loki himself is an extremely significant upgrade from his flat portrayal in “Thor.” Hiddleston seems to be having a lot more fun with his malicious character, and this translates into a much more threatening and compelling villain to watch. Along the same line, the biggest surprise of the film for me was Mark Ruffalo’s spin on the Hulk. Eric Bana and Edward Norton never really seemed to properly fill the role of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-turned-comic book scientist. In a fantasic delivery, Ruffalo gives Dr. Banner a number of wonderfully awkward quirks that underscore his extreme anger as the Hulk, making his transformation into the Hulk all the more satisfying.

Even Captain America (Chris Evans), whose individual movie lacked the vigor that most of the other tie-in movies had, has some great humorous and action-filled sequences throughout the film. Perhaps the reason that he and the Hulk felt more accessible to me as an audience member this time around was that they were two members of an all-star ensemble cast rather than starring characters in their individual films. The film didn’t heavily focus on their own stories, but they still were given enough importance for me to care about them and excitedly anticipate their presence in the immense battle scenes. As for other major characters, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man is just as good as his previous two turns as the character, although it’s not too difficult to see that he’s essentially playing himself on screen as playboy-billionaire-genius Tony Stark.

Overall, “The Avengers” definitely performed well while juggling what one might consider too many characters to handle, a problem which resulted in 2007’s “Spider-Man 3” failing miserably. Even Black Widow and Hawkeye, the seemingly less important Avengers, find a good deal of purpose in the film aside from just being eye candy (as in the case of Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2). At the same time, their characters do feel slightly underdeveloped in comparison to the main four heroes of the group. Hardcore fans of Whedon will likely not find Black Widow as strong-willed as most of his other female protagonists in the past.

Still, “The Avengers” has shown that it’ll be a force to reckon with, both financially and critically, in terms of summer blockbusters. It’s a tremendous start to a hopefully amazing year, and it should be the first thing on your summer to-do list if you haven’t made it down to Destinta yet.