When most people think of the circus, they picture elephants, clowns, and acrobats. On campus this year, though, a group of creative students are beginning to reimagine circus as a different kind of performance art.
Their more modern take on circus, titled “The Dream Circus Project,” will run in the ’92 Theater from Nov. 14 to 16. Directed by Michayla Robertson-Pine ’22 and Elizabeth Woolford ’21, in collaboration with Second Stage, the performance will feature many different talents ranging from your typical acrobats to visual artists, musicians, writers, and playwrights.
“We’re really trying to get this to be a learning and sharing process,” Robertson-Pine said. “So being able to come in and, if we’re trying to write something, playwrights can teach us, and if we’re trying to do a movement thing, the dancers can sort of lead it.”
But what makes the performance a circus? The answer lies in the theme and subject matter of the production, rather than the form. The Facebook page for “The Dream Circus Project” provides a brief explanation of the initiative.
“The Dream Circus Project is an immersive theater experiment investigating ‘Circus,’ and all that it represents,” reads the page.
The aspect of circus that the show explores is the spectacle and the seemingly infinite possibilities of interactive performance. It aims to investigate the magic and wonder that many associate with being under the Big Top.
The performance is “devised,” meaning that there is no script or definite choreography. Instead, the performers will improvise interactions with the audience. The entire show is crafted during the rehearsals, three times a week, with the cast developing the show and their skills through activities that explore the three main themes: spectacles and intimacy, commodification of bodies in performance, and power dynamics.
Sarah Norden ’22, the project’s choreographer, has a robust background in circus and performance. She will play an integral role in facilitating the performers’ expression of these ideas.
“What I’m not gonna be doing is what most choreographers typically do,” Norden said. “My role is helping give people prompts and games and ways to generate movement with their own bodies, getting beyond the conscious editor brain that’s telling them what to do to look good, and helping them find things that are interesting and unique to their bodies.”
The performance is also immersive, meaning the audience is heavily involved throughout the course of the show. There is no stage, just rooms and hallways.
“The audience will be moving through the space,” Norden said. “Like a haunted house, but not scary.”
The interactive nature of the show is very important to directors Robertson-Pine and Woolford, who met last year in an immersive theater class during Winter Session. Woolford said she first became interested in immersive theater when she experienced it firsthand.
“[I] had seen an immersive theater show in New York and thought that it was, like, the most powerful theatrical experience I’ve ever had,” Woolford said.
Unlike her co-director, Robertson-Pine said that she had performed in immersive theater before coming to the University.
“It’s my favorite kind of theater to make,” Robertson-Pine said. “I knew I wanted to keep doing that here…. I wanted to get theater a little weirder here and just, like, do some weird stuff and have a really good time doing it.”
“The Dream Circus Project” was born through Robertson-Pine and Woolford’s desire to go beyond the typical theater performance. They want the performance to be intimate and for the line between the audience and the performers to be blurred. They said that the space in which the performance takes place will also play a role in the production.
“We’re doing it in the ’92, which is like a performance space,” Robertson-Pine said. “And many people in the theater community and at Wesleyan in general know the ’92, so we hope to be able to play with that and use that as a character, and have audience members coming in who already know what the space should be or have associations with it.”
But, “The Dream Circus Project” isn’t just about the show itself and its impact on the audience. Its aim is also to build a community within the cast and provide a learning experience for everybody involved.
“Our goal is that by the end of the process, everybody—including our designers, including us, all of our actors—will feel as though they had learned something,” Woolford said. “Our product is a whole other thing…. We’re going to put up a show, and it will be cool, but I don’t really care what it is as long as everybody feels like they can learn something in the process.”
Norden also spoke to the communal aspect of circus as the ultimate reason she is passionate about this project.
“To me, circus is, by definition, athletic art,” Norden said. “But it’s also a home, a family, a safe space, a place of expression and adventure and belonging.”
Every vegetarian has a food that they miss. A lot. For a friend of mine, it’s pulled pork; for another, Taylor Ham. But my bane has always been buffalo wings.
In the four years I’ve been a vegetarian, the one and only time I’ve broken my meatless streak was to eat a single chicken wing (this promptly made my unprepared stomach very upset, which was only compounded by guilt). A search for alternatives has been mostly in vain: imitation chicken is always too salty, and though the seitan at Swings is really close, it just doesn’t quite have the crunch that I crave. It took years for me to find something to fill that gap—years of watching jealously as friends, covered in buffalo sauce and grease, taunted me over dinner.
But no more. I’ve stumbled upon a near-perfect alternative: one that, though hard to mistake for meat, hits all my spiciness/crunchiness/savoriness standards. Whether you’re a carnivore or an herbivore, this recipe will not disappoint. I’ve even had meat-eating friends tell me they prefer the lighter and less-greasy taste. The answer? Cauliflower.
Not raw, obviously—that’s disgusting, and anyone who tells you they like raw cauliflower has something to hide. But if you dress it up with a few simple ingredients, even the worst vegetable in existence can get you where you need to go. Just trust me on this one.
What to get:
1 head cauliflower
1 cup flour
2 cups breadcrumbs
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup buffalo/hot sauce
salt, pepper, red pepper to taste
What to do:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (you can pan-fry these if you like, but the oven is more efficient and probably nominally more healthy).
Put the flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs in separate containers. Bowls work, I use shallow tupperware.
Add salt, pepper, and red pepper to all three (be generous here).
Cut the cauliflower into florets. If you don’t know how to do this, it helps to cut the whole head into quarters, then cut the fluffy parts away from the bigger main stem. From there, you should be able to pull these into smaller pieces by hand.
Working one floret at a time, cover the piece in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. After the third step, it should be dry to the touch. Place it on a baking sheet. Repeat until you are out of cauliflower, or out of space.
Bake for 30 minutes, turning halfway through. Cauliflower should be browned.
While baking, combine the butter and hot sauce in a bowl.
Immediately after removing from the oven, use tongs or a fork to toss cauliflower in the butter/buffalo mixture.
Set cauliflower to cool and dry. They should absorb any excess moisture from the buffalo sauce.
Enjoy!
I’ve done some tweaking to this recipe over the past few months—for example, I use way more red pepper than I probably should—but the process of making these is so simple and straightforward that they’re hard to mess up. Though the breading stage is a bit messy, the preparation and tossing shouldn’t take you all that long. These bad boys are best on their own, dipped in some blue cheese or ranch, but also make for good sandwiches or wraps. The crunch and spice of the cauliflower, minus the messy grease that wings create, make for an easy hot or cold lunch when you’re in a hurry. You can even get creative—I’ve tried these tossed in sweet barbecue sauce and a lighter garlic and herb concoction. Whether you eat meat or not, it’s a great alternative. Get some friends together, get your hands covered in breadcrumbs, and make an afternoon out of making and eating these. You’ll be glad you did.
“My friends say being from Texas isn’t a personality trait, but they’re wrong.” So says Club Tennis captain and Rho Ep Member Initiator Caroline Bhupathi ’20. In between organizing tennis tryouts and making new hires in the Scientific Computing and Informatics Center (SCIC), Caroline can be found at Swings or Usdan, sharing a meal with whichever new person she met that week. Even still, she found the time to sit down for an interview this past week, sporting a sweater with “TEXAS” in big block letters splayed across the front. The Argus caught up with Caroline about what’s changed since her first year, her future plans, and a whole lot in between.
The Argus: First of all, just because they’re fantastic, can you talk a little about the “come to Wesleyan” videoswe found of you online?
Caroline Bhupathi: I still can’t believe you found those. Those were the most embarrassing things I’ve ever done. ’Cause it was like…they emailed me, and were like, “do you want $150?” And I was like, “yeah!” And they were like, “just record yourself going around campus.” But I didn’t do that. I forgot. And it was the day before, so I was going to bed, recording myself, like “hey guys, come to Wesleyan.” It wasn’t the best argument, honestly.
A: Did people see them?
CB: You are the first person to ever mention them. So I was like, good God, they’ve surfaced. I mean, they’ve been there for months, maybe even a year. And nobody’s seen them. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. There’s one video that’s good—it’s my two friends, talking about Wesleyan, and it’s so organic. It was beautiful, almost. Everything else is trash. Honestly, it wasn’t even worth the $150. I fully regret it.
A: Amazing. But maybe we should rewind a little bit. How’s senior year?
CB: Senior year’s great, I love it a lot. I mean, it’s only been like a week or so. I haven’t done any work. I’ve been…. Honestly, this year, there’s just a lot more responsibility, and delegating, and doing things. I think it’s everything it’s shaped out to be. The house is awesome, you get all the classes you want. I feel like I used to be scared of the seniors, so I’ve been trying to be nice to the freshmen. I was in the package line, and it was basically orientation 2.0. Everyone was like, “I’m a freshman, I’m from here, blah blah blah.” And one of them turned to me, and they were like, “Are you a freshman?” And I was like, “No.” “Are you a sophomore?” [sighs] “No.” It was cute though, meeting the freshmen has actually been nice. How’s senior year? Am I sad? I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it ending. I’m a mixture of happy, excited, but not sad yet. I feel like if you asked me in May, I’d be pretty sad, but right now I’m having a good time.
A: You mentioned a lot of responsibilities this year. You have about a million things going on…
CB: I mean, it’s not that much. I’m the captain of club tennis. That’s more work than I thought—figuring out practice times, matches, funding. We just had tryouts, that was exciting. I work at the SCIC, I had to make everyone’s schedules. And then I tutor. And Rho Ep. I’m the new member initiator, it’s like new people come to me and I’m supposed to know all, even though I know nothing. I’m doing a tutorial with a professor, taking classes, but besides that I’m just kind of around. You have to balance life, you know? Go to class, go to Fountain. The two things that you need.
A: Tell me more about your role for Rho Ep. Are you excited to bring new people on board?
CB: Yeah, I’m excited. Rush! Rush Rho Ep. Well, not you. But other people. Next semester, once they’re already in we’ll have meetings just for the new people. I’m not really thinking too much about it, right now I’m just meeting all the girls that might want to join, spreading awareness, telling people that it’s a very chill thing. It’s fun, you know, but there’s more to it—community service, and we have talks with the Resource Center, we do social events as well. It’s also just meeting people. I joined it sophomore year, because I went through, like, a rebrand of my life—you get there, sophomore year is hard—I needed more friends, and I was like, this group of all women should be a good place to start.
A: Sophomore year is hard, that’s so true. But what did you mean by rebranding? What’s the difference between first-year Caroline and now?
CB: Honestly, the transition from Texas to Wesleyan was a really big culture shock for me. My first year, I was always nervous and always trying to fit the mold I thought a Wesleyan student was—overly politically correct, super activist, all those stereotypes of Wesleyan. I don’t know if I completely fit that mold, and so I didn’t feel like I belonged here. I thought about transferring. And then sophomore year came around, and it was the second semester, and I was thinking about how to make new friends at such a small school. And so a lot of what I did, besides joining Rho Ep, was just going to the library a lot, sitting in SciLi like every day, made friends from people just studying all the time. That was the rebrand. And so not much is different for me—I guess I dress more like I did back home now, and I guess I’m not so nervous. It was good. It’s nice to know there are different groups of people at this school, and you can kind of pick one. I think I just picked the wrong one at first.
A: So given that kind of idea you came into Wesleyan with, of who Wesleyan people were, how has that changed? What’s surprised you about actually living here?
CB: Honestly, when you do the tours and such, I thought it was super artsy and activism-centered and that was great, and I wanted to do a lot of that, but I didn’t want that to be my whole life. And so that was the vibe I got, and now, I’m really surprised that there are the more Greek life-y, athletic-type people that I grew up with, that I thought didn’t exist here. Not saying I exclusively hang out with those people, but. There are both groups—I mean, the first time I was taking an art class, I was in the printing-press room, and this guy slid me a concert flyer. I was like, okay, that’s the Wesleyan I thought of. It’s still alive and well. I’m just not really a part of it. I stop by the concert, but that’s not my life. It’s like…as part of a club sport, you’re a non-athlete, but you still get to take part in both.
A: Well you are an athlete, though, right? I mean, club tennis is not a joke.
CB: Yeah, I mean, last year we went to nationals, which was really exciting and fun. We’ve only been a team for five years, so when I was a freshman you could just show up, but now we have tryouts. Last year, we had 60 people try out. Even still, though, we only practice one or two times every week, matches every couple weeks, we just happened to do well last year. I love club tennis, it’s a big part of my life.
A: Are you happy with that change that happened? From a traditional club team with not that much commitment to a team going to national competitions?
CB: When it happened, I couldn’t believe it. It felt so good. It was such an emotional, fun moment, and it was great taking something that wasn’t taken as seriously to seeing results and a payoff. It makes me feel proud, and it’s nice that nobody on the team has to have any intense training or anything, beforehand or during. I guess what is kind of hard is that my friends who graduated recently weren’t necessarily the best on the team, but they had really great team spirit, and so this year we’re trying to strike the balance between skill and…not personality, but team spirit and dedication, because that’s just as important. It’s like when I hire people for work—someone who is capable of tutoring, yeah, but also someone who is actively present and wants to be there.
A: Let’s talk about that, then. You’ve been a tutor yourself, right?
CB: Yeah, mostly for computer science classes. I love the SCIC, I’ve worked there since my sophomore year. It’s funny how I got the job. I was actually at a pregame—so go out, kids—and this guy walked up to me and was like, “Hey, you’re in computer science, would you like a job?” And I was like, “Okay, sure.” So, that’s when I got it. A day after that pregame, I got the job. Honestly, that justifies me going out now. You never know what can happen. But yeah, I’ve been there since sophomore year, I’m there a lot. I’m either home or there, and it’s like, a closet. But it’s nice, you know, everybody has there little nooks at this school. I’m interviewing and hiring people for it now, and it’s cute. One person called me “Professor Bhupathi,” instead of Caroline, and I was like, “Whoah! Absolutely not.” It’s really nice—they go from being really nervous to getting really comfortable with themselves, and I probably did go through that process too, and it’s just nice to see it in other people. I make friends tutoring there, too. There’s this one girl who’s abroad, and I was able to check in with her and talk about it just because of how much I tutored her last year. It’s a social thing as well. I think everything I do is in some way social.
A: That’s a good segue into the big question—why do you think you were nominated?
CB: [laughing] I have no idea! My friends and I were asking why! If anyone did nominate me, shoutout, let’s get a meal. I’m always one of those people who says, “Let’s get a meal!” It’s this saying, but people don’t follow through. I follow through. People will say it and brush it off, but I want to get a meal with everyone. I don’t know, how does this even work, anyway?
A: People nominated you online! And they mentioned tennis, and Rho Ep, and that you know basically everyone. Maybe that’s why—maybe it’s because you follow through on your meal plans with people.
CB: That should be the title, like, “Caroline Bhupathi wants to get a meal with you.” I actually love getting meals, because you’re so stressed with work, but you know in that hour that it’s just you, a person, and food. What more could you ask for? I guess maybe I got nominated because whenever I’m out somewhere, I always will stop to say hello if I’ve met you before. I try, anyway. I think that’s what’s most important after all this, when I leave Wesleyan. Beyond just academics, I think the most important thing is the connections I’ve made, the people I’ve met. You can learn way more from the people you meet than you can in class. I think it’s just a two-way street: I say hi to them, and they give me knowledge of them and their life. Other than that, I’m not sure. Maybe I just have a couple of fans.
A: Any fun memories you want to share?
CB: Well, I don’t know if it’s fun, exactly, but there is “In the Company of Others,” which I did for two years. That was so Wesleyan-specific. I was a sophomore, I showed up for orientation just so I could move in early, and this woman was like, “Okay, now write a 10-minute monologue about a part of your identity you struggle with, and you’re going to share it with the entire freshman class.” And I was like, “This lady’s crazy, she’s not for real,” so then I wrote a very of-the-surface-level thing, and she told me she wanted me to go deeper. And so I did this 10-minute monologue in front of the entire freshman class about how I’m half-white and half-Indian, and how I’ve struggled with that. Kind of how I got to where I am today. It was something beyond anything I could’ve ever done in class, or in a club. This school offers opportunities to not only grow as a student, as a friend, but just as a person. It was such an integral part of how I view myself. And it was so nice to do this, and then have freshmen come up to me later, at a party, or in the brunch line, and tell me they could relate to that. It wasn’t fun, always, because you had to deal with things you didn’t want to deal with. But it was impactful and cool. It was definitely cool. So I recommend people do that.
A: I’m glad you brought up the kind of impact you had had on people you met. I wanted to ask, since you’re graduating soon, and there are going to be a lot of people who you met that will still be here next year—what do you hope they remember about you?
CB: I guess what I hope they remember is that I always wanted to be their friend. I guess that sounds cheesy, but just making an effort every year and all the time to meet people, and wanting to get to know them. Because sometimes at smaller schools you get cliques, and some people when they want to meet others, they can’t. So I guess I just want to show underclassmen that it doesn’t stop at any point. You can be a senior, second semester, and still be meeting brand new people that will be your friends after school. That’s why I think the whole “get a meal” thing, I think it’s funny, but it could lead to any relationship or any friendship to the people around you, and I think that’s really cool. It’d be cool if they remembered me by that. I know that’s like, weirdly deep—they might remember me by like, tennis or something—but wanting to be their friend is pretty cool, too.
If you’ve ever been to the Mongolian Grill Station at Usdan, colloquially known as “Mongo,” you have probably encountered the friendly face of Sue Scarrozzo. Sporting the Bon Appétit uniform, often with the addition of dangly earrings, Sue greets almost every student with a smile and a simple question:
“How are you today?”
For as long as students can remember, Sue has been a Usdan icon; because she was born and raised in Middletown, she has long felt at home on Wesleyan’s campus. In fact, one of her high school dances was held at Wesleyan’s old dining hall, McConaughey Hall, known around campus and town as MoCon.
“I remember going to a senior ball there when I was in high school,” Sue said. “We thought it was just so beautiful, like, ‘Oooh a senior ball at McConaughey Hall.’”
At the time, she had no clue that in just a few years, she would be back.
Following high school, Sue attended Manchester Community College. However, soon after college, she returned to Middletown, where she raised her two sons.
“I started this job [at Usdan] when my youngest was in kindergarten, and he is now 31 years old,” recalled Sue. “I started working here on weekends because I was a stay-at-home mom and it just evolved. Twenty-five years later, I’m still here.”
You read that right: Sue has been working at Wesleyan for just about 25 years. In fact, her now 31-year-old son Matt works alongside her at the pizza station a few nights a week.
In her 25 years here, Sue has seen many changes to campus. Her first year at Wesleyan preceded Usdan University Center’s construction in 2007, as well as the addition of many other campus dining options.
“There was no Pi back then,” she said. “There was Summies, but it was totally different.”
Sue said she fondly recalls the old University Center, located in the Allbritton building, and McConaughey Hall, which served as the main eating areas.
In addition to physical changes around campus, Sue recounted other unusual things she has witnessed in her time here.
“I’ve seen streakers run through at the old campus center, MoCon, across the football field,” she said. Sue even described how students somehow managed to get a car on top of one of the Foss dorms.
When asked what her favorite part of working at the University was, Sue was very quick to respond.
“The students,” she answered without any hesitation. “Definitely the students. Getting to know them. I mean, they come all the time. You know their orders, you know which ones don’t have rice, you know which ones want cheese on their food, which ones want brown rice and which ones want white. It’s just those things I remember.”
In addition to keeping track of students’ favorite orders, Sue said that she has also fostered many close relationships with students over the past 25 years.
“I’ll go out of my way for a student,” Sue remarked. “I’ve taken them to the airport, I’ve picked them up from the airport. If a student gets into trouble with something it’s like, ‘What do you need?’”
Sue’s kindness toward Wesleyan students is a product of her personal motto, which originates from the famed Golden Rule.
“Treat others as you want to be treated.” Sue explained. “And you know what, just be pleasant because one person could be having a really bad day, and just by saying, ‘Hey, how you doing?,’ it could just change their whole outlook…their demeanor.”
Sue is very empathetic of students’ struggles as they come to college for the first time.
“You never know what’s going on,” she continued. “No one knows how different anyone else’s life is or how difficult or what problems they have. You know, kids are away from home. Some kids have never been away from home, so I try to make them feel comfortable because they come in…and have no idea what’s going on.”
One way that Sue tries to make students comfortable is by getting to know their names. One of her sayings is, “Learn a new name every day.”
This effort is well-appreciated by Wesleyan students. Sue recalled that there was a student a few years ago who, a week before graduating, informed her that she had been calling him the wrong name for his four years. After asking why he didn’t correct her, Sue said that he simply replied:
“‘I was honored you were calling me by a name.’”
In addition to building relationships with students at Usdan, Sue spends her free time reading, gardening, traveling, and baking. In fact, Sue’s knack for baking has resulted in a nickname among her fellow Usdan employees: “Sugar Baker.”
Even though she enjoys her free time away from Wesleyan, Sue said that she is not quite ready to leave for good.
“I’ll be here for a couple more years at least,” she said with a smile. “Definitely. Students come and go, but the students are all the same, basically. Still good kids.”
Though waiting in the long line at Mongo can be tedious, it’s also a great opportunity to introduce yourself to Sue. Chances are, she’ll remember you.
In late June, Carly Blue ’22 led a rambunctious group of summer squash campers down the hill from the Butterfields to the Rite Aid that once anchored Middletown’s Main Street. After a long day of training, the campers were exhausted to the point of incredible irrationality and disobedience, focused only on the promise of sugary treats and salty snacks in their future.
Blue was the first to reach the door of the Rite Aid, but something seemed off. The usually bright windows were dim, no customers streamed in or out, and, sure enough, the door itself was locked. Thinking on her feet, and fearing for her job, Blue directed her young charges down the street to Froyo of Middletown. Luckily for Blue, this dessert spot was still open in June, though it has since closed its doors for good.
Ben Lefkowitz ’20 said he had a similar experience on a recent visit to Rite Aid, when he walked down to Main Street with a friend to pick up some household items for the beginning of the semester.
“I tried to open the door, but it was locked shut,” said Lefkowitz. “Looking inside, the entire store was stripped away. It was a bit of a shock.”
The Middletown Press reported that the Rite Aid on Main Street closed permanently on May 20, due to competing pharmacy Walgreens’ acquisition of the company. The Pressexplains that Walgreens bought out Rite Aid for $4.4 billion, causing 1,932 Rite Aid stores across the United States to shut down.
Middletown’s Rite Aid specifically closed because of its relative proximity to an existing Walgreens, on 311 E. Main Street. According to a sign on the door of the old Rite Aid, all prescriptions have been transferred to the Walgreens.
As it turns out, Rite Aid and Froyo of Middletown aren’t the only two stores on Main Street that have closed this summer: Subway, First and Last Tavern, and Mexican restaurant Iguanas Ranas also shuttered their doors for good. Ron Meehan ’21, who works as the Director of Field Operations for Middletown mayoral candidate Ben Florsheim ’14, said that the closings are related to an upward trend in Main Street rent prices.
“The contracts to lease the buildings on Main Street came up for renewal recently, and due to increasing rent prices many businesses decided to leave,” said Meehan. “One of which was Iguanas Ranas—a family-run restaurant that had been in service for over 10 years and had meant a great deal to the community.”
Meehan added that a major component of Florsheim’s mayoral campaign is downtown development and that the candidate aims to make Main Street a place that attracts both retail stores and family-owned businesses.
For many Wesleyan students, particularly those who relied on Rite Aid for medication, the turnover of businesses on Main Street poses a dilemma. The Walgreens on East Main Street and Washington Street are at least a 20- or 25-minute walk from campus along heavily trafficked roads.
Blue said that for the rest of the squash camp, she and the campers relied on Neon Deli to supply snacks, Gatorade, and other day-to-day items. However, this was only a temporary solution.
“It’s frustrating that there isn’t another walkable place to buy food and necessities,” Blue said. “Neon Deli isn’t a great substitute for a full pharmacy.”
c/o WesAdmits 2022
As students begin to return to campus, the lack of a local Rite Aid is already throwing a wrench in people’s shopping plans. Several students took to Facebook to notify their peers of Rite Aid’s closure, posting in WesAdmits about the inconvenience. Lefkowitz broke the news in a post which reads, “PSA: Rite Aid is closed for good on Main Street – I just found out,” followed by a distraught-looking emoji.
The post had racked up 95 reactions and 27 comments at the time of publication. Commenters on the post pointed out that, without a pharmacy in walking distance, students will have trouble filling and picking up prescriptions, as well as obtaining some of the more basic household items that the pharmacy sold.
One student who commented on the post, Gad Licht ’20, was willing to further explain his frustration about Rite Aid’s closure.
“Students, when sick, don’t want to walk that distance,” Licht said. “Now I have to rely on a friend if I’m sick, borrow a car, or take a long walk. This will hurt sick Wes students the most and make us rely heavily on others or go through complicated processes.”
Unfortunately for students, there is no indication as to which store will fill the space of the vacant Rite Aid. In the meantime, students will have to turn elsewhere for their medication, Gatorade, and Flaming Hot Cheetos-related needs.
Emma Smith can be reached at elsmith@wesleyan.edu.
The exterior of Taíno Smokehouse can be summed up in one word: unassuming. It sits in a large parking lot off of South Main Street, nestled up against an Ace Hardware. The Smokehouse can be difficult to spot from the street, but once you arrive, the large sign beckons you in.
As a party of eight on a Friday night, my group decided to call ahead for dinner. We were informed politely that it would be about a thirty minute wait. By the time we got there, albeit closer to twenty minutes after calling, the servers were able to push two tables together to accommodate us. We were hungry, buzzing with anticipation for the weekend, and excited to eat as much as possible.
Taíno Smokehouse was ready for us. Their menu is divided up into several simple sections: snacks, plates, comfort food, sandwiches, wood-fire burgers, and, my personal favorite, side dishes. The menu boasts barbecue classics, like cured meat, mac and cheese, and collard greens, as well as some interesting deviations, like fried shrimp and spicy smoked drunken noodles. There are also some mysteries, like the Alabama-flavored chicken wings.
As soon as we sat down, our waitress informed us that they were out of ribs, pulled chicken, and garlic mash. Missing out on the ribs was a disappointment to some of us, but no one seemed to have any trouble selecting something different from the menu.
I decided to sample the pulled pork BBQ sandwich, which came with chips, a pickle, and coleslaw. With the addition of cornbread on the side, my order came out to around $14, which I thought was a very reasonable price for a filling, sit-down dinner. One of my friends, who is vegetarian, ordered the Taíno mac and cheese and was able to substitute out the bacon without any problems. Other members of our party tried the fried chicken sandwich, the pulled pork platter, and the fried pickles.
As we waited for our food, we took a moment to comment on the restaurant’s decor. One wall is covered with vertical slabs of wood, perhaps paying homage to the burning wood required for barbecue. The tables and chairs are also wooden, rustic, and comfortable, though a little cramped in the small dining area. Past the seating area is a counter, and beyond that counter is the barbecue pit, where several chefs bustle around.
It is small enough that the chatter of other customers fills the space with a pleasant din, comfortable for conversation. Apart from our group, the patrons of the restaurant were probably Middletown residents or passers-by, mostly in larger groups. Some of the locals went up to the counter to chat with the staff while they ordered.
The first plate of food to hit our table was the fried pickles. Though they looked like misshapen fried blobs, they were gone in seconds. The puffy fried exterior complemented the saltiness of the pickle surprisingly well. Still, I’m not sure any of us could have eaten more than one or two.
c/o yelp.com
After a few more minutes of waiting, the rest of our food arrived. The pulled pork sandwich was simple, really just meat on a brioche bun, but it could not have been more delicious. The meat had a strong smoked flavor and was fatty enough that it almost melted in the mouth. The pickle, coleslaw, and homemade potato chips were also delectable, despite being entirely overshadowed by the sandwich.
As we dug into our meals, our waitress brought the cornbread. This cornbread is not to be missed. It is buttery, it is sweet, and most of all, it is fluffy. Its only true flaw is its small size, because this cornbread is so outstanding.
In short, Taíno Smokehouse surpassed my expectations. The meat was exceptional, the sides were delicious, the wait staff was friendly and accommodating, the prices were fair. Good barbecue is relatively rare in the Northeast, so coming across a spot like this is nothing short of a treat.
Interestingly, Taíno Smokehouse’s mission extends beyond making food. The restaurant’s website offers a lengthy explanation of their philosophy about cooking: a “purist” approach to wood-smoked barbecue in which the main ingredients are salt, pepper, and fire.
The website also explains that their name, Taíno, comes from the etymology of the word barbecue: this word originated from the Taíno word “barabicu,” which means “sacred fire pit.” The Taíno people were an indigenous tribe that populated the Caribbean.
Though the owner of Taíno Smokehouse is not indigenous himself, the restaurant’s website includes an entire page that gestures to Taíno history and tradition.
“Our mission is to have [the Taíno] remembered and to educate the public,” the website’s “Brief History” section reads. “We pay homage to them for their contributions to the world. Our goal is to open the first Taíno Museum in the United States. We would also like to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Finally we would like the history books/schools to include the regional indigenous tribe history. In Middletown it would be the Wangunk.”
It is unclear as to how Taíno barbecue is working to achieve these goals. In the restaurant itself, the only gesture to the Taíno tribe is the logo on the sign, which features the profile of a man wearing a headdress. Neither the website nor any kind of signage in the restaurant makes an indication as to whether this logo is also directly affiliated with the Taíno people.
So, the restaurant’s mission is a little unclear. As far as supporting indigenous people, though the thought is evident on the website and in the restaurant’s history, Taíno Smokehouse slightly misses the mark. But when it comes to cooking delectable barbecue: bullseye.
With Wescam’s official release yesterday, campus is buzzing with theories about secret crushes and flirty messages. The mysterious, Wesleyan-only version of Tinder has been stimulating students’ hook-up lives since 1998.
For those who may be unfamiliar with Wescam, it functions differently than most dating apps. Unlike Tinder or Hinge, you anonymously add someone, and the other person tries to guess your identity. If you’re a first year, sophomore, or junior, you can add as many seniors as you want, but you only get one Super Crush to add non-seniors.
This year, however, there is a minor change added to Wescam: In the confirmation email that students receive once they sign up, there will now be a line that asks students to agree not to use the platform for any kind of sexual harassment or to violate a no-contact order.
“[This change is] really, really straightforward,” said Emma Freeman ’19, who is in charge of running and managing the website this year. “This was already in the terms of service you agree to when you sign up, but since nobody tends to read those I thought it was better to make it more explicit. I just wanted to remind people that being on Wescam is a privilege that you forfeit by using it improperly.”
Freeman is the first woman to head Wescam in its nine-year online history and cited a personal experience that prompted the new agreement.
“I personally had an unpleasant experience with someone sending me overtly sexual, unwanted messages anonymously last year,” she said. “I think there are many people, especially women, who have had similar experiences. My hope is that we can eliminate behavior like the kind I saw.”
Students expressed excitement about Wescam’s return to campus and were reassured by the non-harassment agreement.
“I personally haven’t heard of any instances of sexual harassment,” Sara Clothier ’19 said. “But since Wescam is (mostly) anonymous, I think a lot of people may think they could get away with saying inappropriate things. I think this policy is a really good idea to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Jessica Mason ’20, who had an extremely negative experience with Wescam as a first year, thinks that the platform promotes sexual harassment in and of itself. As she described, a senior male in one of her classes sent her explicitly sexual messages that made her feel very uncomfortable. Mason said that the aspect of Wescam that made it so scary for her was the anonymity.
“My general feeling is that Wescam will always inherently be problematic, especially for underclassmen, because it’s setting up a dynamic in which you have an older student knowing who they’re messaging,” Mason said. “There’s an anonymity and an age dynamic that are functioning that put the underclassman in a disadvantageous position.”
Mason continued, explaining how Wescam is particularly uncomfortable for underclassmen women because of the power dynamic between them and the upperclassman men that might be messaging them. As a junior, she said she feels less threatened by Wescam now.
Mason also emphasized that she does not think a non-harassment agreement will do anything to change the nature of the site as long as anonymity and age dynamics play a role in the platform. However, she recognizes that many people enjoy the mystery of Wescam and are not bothered by the types of messages they may be receiving. To these people, she offered some advice.
“You have the right and power to say no, and to ask for things,” Mason said. “That’s something that I didn’t recognize as a freshman. The flirting process can be empowering and fun, but it’s so important to remember that whatever that person is saying, you are also in control, and you should never relinquish that control.”
In discussing the workings of Wescam, Freeman also noted a feature that was implemented on the site last year, which allows students to block or report a user that is sending unwanted or inappropriate messages. This measure is further intended to protect students from any kind of sexual harassment or unwanted attention.
When asked, most first years seemed to only have a fuzzy understanding of how Wescam actually works. Some mentioned feeling a little creeped out being messaged anonymously by older students.
“I can understand how it could be fun and silly, but it just seems like the potential for people to have a bad experience way outweighs the potential for a good experience,” Rowan Beaudoin-Friede ’22 said. “Also, I think the upperclassman-underclassman aspect may put a lot of pressure on underclassmen.”
Nonetheless, Beaudoin-Friede said that he will probably participate.
Wescam season is in full swing, so whether you prefer to do your flirting online, in person, or not at all, be sure to do it responsibly.
Zoe Reifel ’21 spent the majority of her fall break this year sticking post-it notes to her wall, then rethinking and rearranging them. No, she wasn’t plotting any kind of scheme. Nor was she trying to solve a murder mystery. Rather, Reifel was trying to piece together classes and requirements that would allow her to create and fulfill her own major.
The Wesleyan University Major program that Reifel is pursuing is geared toward students who are interested in an area of study that encompasses a variety of topics, which are not combined in a major that the University currently offers. Sophomores create a proposal, including the classes they plan to take and a list of faculty advisors, to submit to a committee for approval.
Reifel, for example, is interested in Interaction Design, or how humans interact with technology, and how devices can be developed to better cater to people’s needs. She said that while many majors at the University captured portions of her field of interest, no one major really tied them together.
“My whole life, I’ve felt like I’ve had a wide range of interests,” Reifel said, “I didn’t exactly come into Wesleyan thinking the University Major was the right choice for me. It happened more serendipitously.”
c/o Linkedin/com/Eiji Frey
After encountering a similar gap in the the University’s curriculum, Eiji Frey ’20 also decided to build a University Major that centers around design. He calls his area of study Industrial Design, and it combines physics, studio art, and digital design, or 3D modeling.
“Even though these things are pretty disparate, everything is related to product design and industrial design of consumer products that can one day be usable,” Frey said. “For me, I didn’t just want to do design, I wanted to be able to make some stuff too. I’m combining trade skills with software skills and the theory behind how these things work.”
c/o Dylan Shumway
Like Reifel and Frey, Dylan Shumway ’20 has decided to consider engineering and technology through the lens of other academic fields to build his own University Major.
“What I’m doing is a mix of music, neuroscience, and then engineering through the IDEAS minor,” Shumway said. “The goal is to look at how cognitive science can be applied both in creative disciplines, but also through product and system design, and how we can make various products or systems more user intuitive.”
Though design and engineering represent a void in the University’s available major tracks that many students are working to fill, others are using the University Major to pursue different multidisciplinary interests.
c/o Kyllian Pather
Kyllian Pather ’20 has titled his University Major “Race Studies in Africa and the Diaspora,” which he will pursue along with the College of Social Studies (CSS) major. He is interested in looking more deeply into racial hierarchies and racial orderings, particularly as they relate to gender.
“I’m a big fan of CSS, and I think it’s a good program, but it’s quite a Eurocentric program,” Pather said. “And it’s ultimately very interested in studying different concepts with large breadth, so it’s quite a large major. I wanted something with more depth, and this was really the field that I wanted to look into.”
At the start of the application process for the University Major, students are required to connect with three faculty members who will advise them and support their work. These professors must not only be relevant to the field that the major concerns, but also tenured or tenure-track professors, which students said, across the board, made the process rather challenging.
Though Reifel said that many professors were happy to meet with her and she was impressed with their accessibility, she encountered significant problems finding actual sponsors.
“Building my advisory board was actually kind of a wild goose chase,” Reifel said. “At Wesleyan I feel like there are people who want to study design and not a lot of resources for people who want to study design.”
Shumway cited additional concerns with the administration’s approach to the University Major.
“There’s not a lot of support for it from upper levels of administration,” Shumway said. “This might just be the faction of faculty and staff that I’ve interacted with, but I went to talk to my class dean, and the majority of the meeting was him just telling me that I shouldn’t do it.”
That said, all four students made note of the professors and faculty that have been helpful to them, saying that they have taken a genuine interest in their studies and provided invaluable time and assistance.
Although Pather said he was able to find faculty to support him without too much trouble, he does wish that the University would develop a more streamlined track for students who are interested in incorporating different fields into a multidisciplinary area of study. He referenced race studies as something he would particularly like to see developed, as many students are already engaging in dialogue about this topic across campus.
“I think one of Wesleyan’s greatest talents is the professors that are operating in this type of world and across these different departments,” said Pather. “I think it would be helpful if there were at track that captured more of them and allowed students to think critically across them.”
In fact, Pather is not the first student to suggest that an integrated course of study might be an interesting addition to the University’s major and minor offerings. The Urban Studies course cluster, for example, was born from a past student’s University Major.
Students interested in design also acknowledged the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to learning. Reifel mentioned that although the University lacks some of the resources that a school with a more established design program might offer, the liberal arts component of her education is very valuable to her.
“I think that taking a liberal arts approach to design gives you an edge in the world because a lot of people come out of these super practice-based fields with little understanding of cultural theory and these really important components of people’s lives,” Reifel said
However, given the complicated nature of this path of study, University majors said that they would only encourage other students to follow in their footsteps if they have a unique interest that any other major could not fulfill.
“I would encourage people to take the University Major if they’re not satisfied with what Wes already has to offer,” Frey said. “If you really want to just study across different subjects, then all you have to do is prove that, prove why it’s important, and why it matters to you, and hopefully everyone will be on board.”
By the end of this semester, the juniors said that they will have completed most or all the courses they listed for their major. Now, the bulk of their work awaits: They must write a thesis or create a capstone project, a requirement of the major.
Whereas Pather said he has a pretty clear idea of the shape that his thesis will take, those whose majors are centered around design were not as certain about their final projects.
“I will probably do a thesis project, something that is more product-based,” Reifel said. “I’m hoping that that will be a fully fleshed user interface for some sort of app that I come up with, that will involve a lot of user research.”
Frey said he hopes his final project will take a similar form.
“I’m working on a project for the new makerspace that’s going up in Exley,” he explained. “So I may continue with something like that as my capstone, but all of that is still up in the air. In an ideal world I would come up with a product and take it straight from conception to market and do everything in between.”
As far as the more distant future goes, University majors said that they hope to continue the course of study they have already set out for themselves, mainly because their major is representative of their passions.
“Leaving Wesleyan, I think I’ll apply to a couple masters programs that I might further this work in,” Pather said. “I’m a little jaded with academia at the moment. Not for good, I hope to study more, but I feel like working and being in the real world for a bit. But yeah, I love the idea of taking up some of this work and maybe moving toward producing something more substantial.”
Frey expressed similarly exciting, albeit less concrete, plans for post-college life.
“As long as I keep crafting plans for myself,” Frey said, “I think my future will be alright.”
Associate Professor of Religion Andrew Quintman’s office seems to be built for conversation. His desk takes up one corner of the room, while the rest of the space is filled by several chairs, a small coffee table, and a little bowl of candy. The most notable feature of his office, though, is the colorful volumes that line the walls in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The Argus sat down with Professor Quintman to learn more about his work and these texts.
The Argus: What kind of reading are you doing at the moment?
Andrew Quintman: Oh, boy. Well, here I am surrounded by books in this office. I often think that it’s an academic hazard. If there was ever an earthquake, I would die. Live by books, die by books. So, I read many different kinds of things. There are books that I read in professional life that have to do with Buddhist studies, with translation of Buddhist texts, and with studies about the Tibetan and Himalayan world.
My reading sort of spans translations of traditional texts but also the kind of social history of the Tibetan Buddhist world. I have a big project on the life of the Buddha from an extraordinary set of 17th-century Tibetan mural paintings that are related to a parallel 17th-century text that tells the story of the Buddha. I am working to relate the text, or literary narrative, with the visual narrative, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading about analysis of visual narratives and the different kind of logics that are involved in understanding visual narratives in relationship to textual narratives. I also try to read fiction when I can, you know, but during the school year it’s hard. I live for summer and winter breaks when I actually get to read things for fun.
A: Can you speak more about the 17th-century text you mentioned?
AQ: Sure, well, this is actually a long-running project, it’s called the Life of the Buddha Project, and there’s a whole digital component, Lifeofthebuddha.org. It’s based on the murals from the monastery called Phuntsholing Monastery, in Western Tibet. There was a text that tells the life of the Buddha written by the abbot of the monastery, and it’s called, in translation, “The Sun of Faith.” There are hundreds of accounts of the Buddha’s life; this one is really unique, for many reasons. It’s quite extended, it’s very detailed, the author works from sources that other Tibetan authors ignored, and what’s so amazing is that not only did he write this extended textual narrative, but he painted this exquisite, extraordinary mural-scape of the Buddha’s life as well, that covers about 1500 square feet of surface. It matches pretty much chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene of the text that he wrote.
A: So it sounds like many of your readings involve translations. Do you read any Tibetan?
AQ: I do, I spend a lot of my time reading old Tibetan books. I was trained in part in a subject called philology, which is the study of old texts, but also in translation, so some of the early work I did was about one of the earliest Tibetan narratives. It was a hagiography, or the life story of a Tibetan Saint, whose name is Milarepa. It was called “The Life of Milarepa.” I made a new English translation of that story and also a literary historical study of the importance of that story. But I’ve now become interested in Buddhist poetry and translations of Buddhist poetry. I’m currently working on a project that is the history of Buddhism in the Himalayan borderlands, looking at the role of one particular monastery that was five kilometers from the border of Tibet and Nepal, on the Tibet side. It was a small monastery, but historically quite important and deeply influential. I’ve spent the last couple years reading texts written by a famous abbot of this monastery, to try and understand the history of Buddhism in this borderland area as a kind of unique tradition. Since borderlands are places where various traditions meet, they intermingle, they can test one another, and they’re often reformulated into something new, so I’m trying to understand what Buddhism looks like in the Himalayan borderland areas. Much of that work has been dependent on reading these old historical accounts, reading classical Tibetan. So I read mostly classical Tibetan, but was also trained in Sanskrit.
A: Do you feel that being able to read those texts as they’re written, in their original language, changes your understanding of the content?
AQ: Oh, without a doubt. That was one of my interests honestly, going into the field. When I was finishing up my undergraduate degree and also when I started graduate school, was the knowledge that there is such a vast universe of Tibetan literature written in Tibetan that has never been studied. It’s often said that Buddhism is not a religion of the book, it’s a religion of books. The Buddhist Canon, in the Tibetan formation, is usually over 300 volumes of texts. Thousands and thousands of individual texts, hundreds of thousands of pages, and that’s not even taking into account the writings of historical teachers, throughout the centuries in Tibet. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of texts that are philosophy and doctrine, they’re history, they’re ritual, they’re descriptions of sacred sites and pilgrimage places. I would say only a very small percentage, less than five percent of that literature has ever been studied by scholars in the West. You could almost close your eyes and point at a text and it would be something that no one has ever looked at before. So that, to me, is really exciting.
A: Could you tell me about some of the specific texts that are meaningful to you in terms of your study or your area of work?
AQ: These days, I’m most interested in two sorts of texts. I’m really interested in narratives. So this goes back to my work in “The Life of Milarepa,” and now the life of the Buddhaalso. “The Life of Milarepa” in some ways was based on the life of the Buddha. I’m interested in those kinds of works as literary works. There’s a history in the scholarship of Buddhist studies to look at texts as containers of data. So we can read a text and maybe we can understand who this figure really was, what he really did, or we could find out something about the worldview of its author, when it was written, the communities in which it was written, and who was reading those texts. And those are important questions to ask, but I’m increasingly interested in the texts themselves as works of literature. And this is something very common in the study of the great books and English lit, or even in French or German or Latin; you can study texts and think about them from an aesthetic point of view. And that’s really been lacking in the field of Buddhist studies, and it’s something I’ve become interested in. So reading narratives as literary works. And that’s also led me to reading and thinking more about poetry too, about Buddhist poetry.
A: That’s all for the questions I have, but is there anything else you’d like to add about your books, your work, or religion in general?
AQ: I would just add that I’m new to Wesleyan; this is my first year here. I’m absolutely thrilled to be here. It’s a really exciting group of colleagues, the other faculty in this department, doing really interesting, exciting work. But I’m also really excited and inspired by the passion and energy and creativity of the students that I’ve encountered so far. It’s been a great place to work and teach and think so far.
When The Argus approached Mike Misenti to learn more about the Halloween display he was creating in Usdan, Misenti requested that he “work and talk.” You might have seen his final product, a display of delicious cakes and crumbles arranged in a “War of the Worlds” theme, on your way into Usdan on Wednesday, but it started out as just a couple of pieces of cardboard and some icing. Misenti worked on the project for hours in order to have it ready for dinner at 5 p.m., which included the addition of some pieces that he had been building for days in advance.
Misenti said that he has been creating displays and decorations on Halloween for about 14 years now, at his previous place of work and now at Usdan, but he does his best to change it up a little bit every time.
“I like doing something different every year because it gets boring to do the same thing,” Misenti said. “I did a pirate thing last year, and this year I’m doing ‘War of the Worlds’ because it’s actually the 80th anniversary of when that happened on the radio.”
For those unfamiliar with the name “War of the Worlds,” it refers to a radio broadcast created by Orson Welles. Though the broadcast was intended to be a radio drama, it took the form of music interspersed with the voices of newscasters reporting that the world was being attacked by aliens; as you can imagine, many people believed this was a real newscast. Chaos ensued.
Misenti said he chose this theme because it reminds him of his childhood, when the original “War of the Worlds” broadcast would often air on or around Halloween. His display featured aliens and spaceships surrounding the large pieces of cake and crumble that represented land and cities.
Aiti Rai ’20, who also works in Usdan, said she heard about Misenti’s project when he asked her to come in early one morning instead of her normal shift, so that he could spend time working on his project.
“I had a lot of homework, I was tired and honestly, Halloween is not my favorite thing,” she said. “I never celebrate. But how could I deny it when he was dedicating his time for [the students]?”
When Rai found out about Misenti’s Halloween decorations, she was so appreciative of his efforts that she posted pictures of him to the WesAdmits Facebook group, reminding students to thank him for all his hard work.
Despite all the extra time it takes out of his day, Misenti said he works hard to build these Halloween creations because he loves to make the students happy. And between the spooky theme and delicious desserts involved, Misenti clearly has a pretty good idea of how to make Wesleyan students smile.
With the opportunity to give back to the students and the excitement of it all, as you might have already concluded, Halloween is by far Misenti’s favorite holiday.
“It lets everyone be a kid, and no one criticizes anyone for doing it,” Misenti said. “It’s 24 hours you can be a kid without ever being made fun of.”
As long as the world does not come under attack by aliens any time soon, Misenti said he has some pretty big plans for the future, which continue in the spirit of putting kids first.
“I’m actually trying to get a gluten-free restaurant going, where the profit goes to after school programs,” he said. “I haven’t had any luck yet, but I’m trying to get one going.”
As one of the first to point out Misenti’s commitment to others, Rai said she is excited for more people to learn about Misenti so that his work to make Halloween fun and exciting can be appreciated.
“I think it is important to recognize people who do things for us selflessly,” Rai said. “Lastly, we should thank Bon Appétit and its members because they also had a role in making this happen.”
Even though the “War of the Worlds” dessert creation seemed to appear in a poof of holiday magic, don’t hesitate to say thank you to the Halloween master himself, Mr. Misenti.
Emma Smith can be reached at elsmith@wesleyan.edu.
With Wescam’s official release yesterday, campus is buzzing with theories about secret crushes and flirty messages. The mysterious, Wesleyan-only version of Tinder has been stimulating students’ hook-up lives since 1998. 
