Jennie Kiesling first won the Head of the Charles in 1975, as a sophomore in a Yale Women’s four—joined by Chris Ernst, Anne Warner, and Lynn Baker. The third year in which women were invited to compete marked one year that Kiesling had rowed herself. In the following summer, half of their boat competed in the Olympics. But before their oars could touch the waters of Montreal, Yale Women’s Crew sent ripples across the country. 

Kiesling was one of nineteen rowers to participate in a now-famed Title IX protest. The team captured the scene in words and photographs—searing their stand into the archives of the New York Times. Even now, a shot of Kiesling’s shoulders blazes the cover of a film that was made about the women, twenty-five years later.   “I loved rowing because it was so terrifyingly hard. Every practice, I hoped I would survive,” Kiesling described the physical experience of rowing a 2000 meter race to me, a stranger to boathouses before arriving in New England. Only time in an eight-oar shell could help you understand its oppressive art. “Imagine someone has put a vacuum cleaner hose down your throat and is sucking out your lungs while somebody else pours sulfuric acid on your legs.” 

Professor Kiesling, alternating from rowing to revolving book pages, knows the ravages of war—both in historical text and the physiological impact of crew. Discipline rules her life. A voracious, life-long student of military history and West Point professor of military theory for twenty-eight years, the principles of soldiering combat do not stray far from those that push one to sit in a rowing shell each day. And for the Yale women rowers, daily battles against the limits of one’s own physicality also came with struggle on the Housatonic River shoreline. 

Despite the enactment of Title IX, after completing the same training course as the men, the Women’s Crew team was denied access to the boathouse locker rooms and restrooms—requiring them to sit cold and water-soaked until after dinner. It was from these frigid bus-seat puddles that something began to emerge. 

In March 1976, Yale Women’s rowers entered the athletic director’s office before removing their school sweatsuits to reveal their bodies beneath—naked, their backs and chests adorned with the words “Title IX”. The literal exposure backset a speech delivered by the team captain, expressing the exploitation of the bodies in the room. 

Reparations to the women’s “Declaration of Accountability” ensued, and universities in every crevice of the country followed—scrambling to cover systemic infractions. 

This moment, documented in print and film, was just that—a moment in each of their lives. When I sat down at my dining room table, checking my Zoom background to ensure that you could not see my still-unpacked suitcases, I was not sure of much beyond the archival articles I had read. Of course, I had questions catered to the persistent presence of the 1976 protest within Kiesling’s life. With over two million search results, Google had to agree with me—the hour that proceeded rather brought me to a different place. 

As each woman graduated, continued to study, row, or move beyond both, they maintained a connection that transcended their boat shells. In adulthood, they host “pajama parties”, spending weekends in each other’s homes to “just talk”. Though the dozen women that rotate between houses did not all row with Kiesling, they share a thread. 

“We bond easily, because we have a certain trust, and—I want to say—seriousness about the world. We don’t talk about the past a lot, although it’s not irrelevant. But we’re not fixated on the past, and we don’t just talk about our families. It’s just a little bit more–a little bit deeper. And I have that feeling with the people I rowed with and the people I didn’t, but who came up through the same program. And I think that’s incredibly special.” 

Intensity grips every part of Kiesling’s life—rowing, coaching, learning, teaching. There is even weight to the pauses in her sentences, as she methodically contemplates and reconstructs six decades of life with words. Her earnest framing of the world was apparent long before she spoke to a shared “seriousness”. Through her time at Oxford, where she met her husband of over four decades—between rowing and studying the classics—and Stanford—where a knee injury forced her to trade her aspirations to row in the Olympics for competitive cycling—she carried a sense of momentum. 

It landed her at the University of Alabama, where her battle for tenure was limited by those who couldn’t see her utter gravity about the world—beyond her blue jeans, sweat suits, and the bright red Mazda Miata that so frequently found her at the university boathouse. 

But her ceaseless exploration and experience of the world began long before she touched an oar, rather starting with a book. Professor Kiesling was only eight years old when she began to study military history, with second-grade hands grabbing volumes from the “big kid” shelf—The Monitor and the Merrimack, The Battle of Gettysburg, D-Day. She was only nine years old when she decided that she wanted to be an officer in the Army—an infantryman and a West Point graduate. For her, war was easier to romanticize when it lived in the past—when it wasn’t an immediate threat to her younger brothers. With the rest of the country, she spent highschool with thoughts hitting the ground in Vietnam. 

“Part of being a woman studying war in the 1970s was not being a woman; it was, I can do this just like the men, and I am not going to have any feminine thoughts. And if somebody asked me about the role of women in war, I’d say, ‘That’s women’s history’. I’m a military historian, I do tactics. I don’t study the Women’s Army Corps. They’re not in combat; I’m not interested. I’m tough. I row and I don’t talk about women.”

There is a sternness in Professor Kiesling’s face, laying just beyond her ponytail and fringe bangs, that somehow kept this statement from entirely surprising me. 

Until—within the same breath—she did. 

Professor Kiesling coached Army rowing and taught at West Point for fifteen years before she first began to study the role of women in combat, prompted by a request to give a conference lecture. Her first reaction was to question why she should be asked to speak beyond her field; then, she reconsidered why she hadn’t studied the topic before. 

“I started thinking about all the times that I had said, ‘Well, women aren’t in combat.’ Well, women are killed in combat — women are killed all the time.”

And with time, her exploration of stray combat violence against women became a broader consideration of military services in the United States.

“America is basically a nation of ostriches, who aren’t interested in war at all. There are some hawks, there are some doves and I define these as people who have visceral feelings about war.”

This, perhaps, was the last metaphor I expected Professor Kiesling to draw out for me. Our conversation became something more of storytelling: an experience worthy of a velvet-curtain stage. She was a historian sharing her craft—what she understands now as an art, not a scientific process of data collection.

Her art is to reconcile humanity with physical brutality—forty-eight years after she stood naked in the Yale athletic director’s office. Her stories now feature the cadets that fill her classroom and boathouse with the United States Army–what she calls the “final line of constitutional sanity”. 

Her art of thought exists on cycling trails, ski slopes, rock-climbing walls—and rowing shells.  

Six months ago, in a familiar October chill, Kiesling climbed back into a Women’s Four shell. The three women who joined her had been reaching for blue ribbons, placing second and fourth for the past four years. They wanted to win, and they needed a final rower; Kiesling—who just wanted to have a “good row” —found them rather in a record-breaking win. With four hundred thousand people watching the Head of Charles, they clocked in at twenty minutes and seven seconds. 

“The consistency in my life is rowing—the belief in teamwork and integrity. But the great transformation is the recognition that the hawkish attraction to war tends to have a lot more to do with some personal gratification. I have moved away from that to finding personal gratification in the thought that cooperation—which is a rowing virtue—hard work, and teamwork should be used for peaceful purposes.”

The post Warring tides appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Once I was saved, my interviewee ushered me up the stairs and down a short hallway. Her office is wood-paneled and well-lit, cordoned into a workspace in one half and a seating area in the other. It’s well furnished — homey, even. In the corner, proudly displayed on shelves, are 17 decorative gnomes. I knew I was in the right place. 

Dr. Anjelica Gonzalez holds three official titles at Yale: Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty Director of Tsai City and Head of College for Davenport. To say she wears many hats would be a cliché, but the image of a HOC gnome switching between her many gnome caps is too convenient to resist. 

I asked her what started her on the path to have such a significant presence on campus. She tells me that she used to be unfamiliar with even the concept of graduate school, as the first in her family to go to college. During her undergraduate years at Utah State she had “no idea” what being a professor would be like. By chance, a flyer in the mail led her to apply and attend a summer medical and research training program with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. There, she was able to learn more about the process. Pursuing graduate studies in the sciences and engineering was a way for her to have a job and support her work — even though so many other aspects of academics and careers were foreign. 

Later, she pursued a Ph.D. at Baylor College of Medicine in Structural and Computational Biology. Today, Gonzalez runs a lab at Yale focused on inflammation. Dr. Gonzalez explained the process of trying to model the human lung, engineering the tissue and examining the blood vessels of it, as the lung progresses from an inflamed state then to a scarred fibrotic state. She wants to understand how the blood vessels contribute to the shift in progressive disease. “In doing that, what we can start to work with pharmaceutical companies to say, ‘Oh, if we can see disease starts to happen, can we identify points where we can interject?’”

Dr. Gonzalez is only two years into her tenure as Davenport Head of College. To see students in the classroom or in research labs is wholly different from living with them in the college and sharing the dining hall with them. She describes the role as being a “CEO” of the college: making sure that the budget is aligned, making sure that the college operations run, but also endeavoring to create a space — somewhere that encompasses the great number of passions and interests that its students hold.  

“I get to see students in the whole 360 — as whole human beings. I see what they eat. I see them when they wake up,” she said. “I see them at the height of their accomplishments. I see them at some of the lowest periods in their experience here. It’s different from my role in the classroom. Now, I have a better understanding of who they are and what they experience. I look for ways to support them.”

The way that the Davenport staff, students, and community have embraced her family is one of the highlights of her experience so far. HOC Gonzalez noted how having a dining hall and support system make it possible for her to be present for her boys as a single mother while continuing with her work elsewhere on campus. 

In Davenport, one project she has taken on is the Innovation Studio. This new space was designed in collaboration with the Center for Engineering and Innovative Design and brought resources like 3D printers, sewing machines, and hand power tools to the college. 

“Sometimes the term creative is associated with the humanities in the arts, but in actuality, it spans the STEM fields, the social sciences and so, so many of different areas,” Gonzalez said. 

The characteristic that surprised me the most about HOC Gonzalez was how she seemed reluctant to lay claim to all of the amazing work that she has done. I was sitting on her couch, listening to her speak about building models of human lung fibrosis, creating spaces for entrepreneurial creativity on campus, finding the best way to be there for the students in her college, and raising her sons on campus, whilst never seeing the thoughtfulness and care in her words waver. 

I think we’ve all met someone who makes you want to be a better person — to be a better student or friend or teacher — just by being in their presence. Anjelica Gonzalez is one of those people. It seems like the Davenport students think so, too. I mentioned to several of my friends that I was writing a piece on her, and every single response after the fact was a version of, “ HOC Gonzalez? She is amazing. I don’t know how she does it all.” 

I was sitting on her couch and wondering if this person was uncannily humble or just truly unaware of the respect she has earned on campus. 

What is on HOC Gonzalez’s mind right now? Baseball. Her twins are on a travel team, and HOC Gonzalez was their Little League coach until they aged out of parent coaches. She became interested in how Yale’s student athletes take on the challenge of committing to a team while also pursuing a university education, because — in her words — “a place like the residential colleges are built by so many members of the broader community and they all bring something to Davenport. But what that means for me is that I also have to figure out ways to be uniquely supportive to those communities.” 

What’s her favorite MLB Team, you may ask? HOC Gonzalez has an answer for that too: 

“​​My favorite player is Shohei Oheitani. He switched teams from the Angels, so wherever he is right now.”

I made myself comfortable on her couch. We talked baseball, true crime podcasts and the best spots on campus for when you want to hide away from everyone. The purpose of a head of college is to have a person who is considering the whole student. Their task is to create a place — physically, culturally and socially — that students can return home to during their four years at Yale. 

The post Professor, ex-Little League Coach and Queen of the Gnomes — how does HOC Gonzalez do it all? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

It was a hot May day in central Orlando; I had left the house without putting on deodorant earlier that morning; I was nine years old washing my armpits in the public bathroom and wading through an emotional pool of pure, exquisite shame. My mother stood to my right in the mirror’s reflection, vigorously scrubbing with the cheap neon hand soap. I stared with squinted eyes and scowled with dutiful detestation at her figure. 

Noted. Never leave the house without deodorant. And never, EVER speak to Mami again.

I thrived in 9-year-old naivete for a whole five minutes of silence before promptly realizing I would, in fact, have to speak to my mother again if I wanted her to buy me Dippin’ Dots. 

Ever since the Disney Incident, my relationship with my mom has gone relatively uphill. My mom is my go-to for advice, my confidante and chisme blabber, my favorite cook and raging Ross shopper, my best friend and walking embodiment of home. She has been the mold for how I understand my womanhood. My mother is the woman I aspire to be in all walks of life. 

She’s Dianelys to all besides me and my brother, who adhere faithfully to the trinity of “Ma,” “Mami” or “Moomy.” To me, my mom is caramel frappes from McDonald’s and turquoise blouses. She is her numerous editions of “Les Misérables,” sitting on the garage bookshelf as living artifacts she acquired during her teenage years, her favorite novel and famed piece of literature that she’s begged me to read for years — and thanks to HUMS 366, I finally did! 

My mom is sewing needles and vintage machines, she’s homemade clothes and the cheery yellow sundress she fashioned for me when I was six, she’s the thick glasses that help her thread needles with transition lenses that sometimes help but often overly obscure her rich brown eyes. When I think of my mom, I think of waking up on Saturdays to clean and I think of washing the dishes as I’m cooking and our odysseys to TJ Maxx and unscripted “woops!” and yelps and seemingly endless Facebook scrolling and overused TikTok sounds. 

But I also think of her spurting wisdom, an oracle in her own right—my mom never fails to anticipate my issues, even months before they occur, always with sound advice to follow. I often wonder just how many of my experiences are truly my own, since she seems to have every situation logged in her memory book — that friend, C*******? Yeah, she likes your crush. Your boyfriend, ******? You don’t even like him that much, but it’s okay, we all go through it. 

I don’t know when I stopped asking her about all things practical and shifted toward the more … spicy. Abstract, even. Sure, I remember the trials of my late girlhood, begging her to let me wax my eyebrows and shave my legs at thirteen. These would’ve been blessings for the hairy, Hispanic pubescent girl that I was. I remember asking her if we could drive to Hot Topic or go to the movie theater or how to not wobble in my heels or how to apply lipstick without smudging it all over the place and — oh, how do I use a tampon?

And sure, I still often ask her silly strings of questions and watch her sigh in dumbfoundedness, but now there’s a hazy sense of comfort, of equal understanding in our speech. Our words bob in between the blaring rhythms emanating from the Facebook reels she watches, spanning from neighborhood chatter to questions about love and life and the things I couldn’t understand as a child that I suppose I now have the maturity and experience to know. 

I came to my mom for all the firsts of my girlhood. Besides the natural issues — see tampon above — associated with coming of age, it was in her arms I cried when I broke up with my first boyfriend, when I felt the twinge of betrayal from childhood friends, when I thought my life’s worth depended on my final exams. 

It was also to her I cried when we entered the supermarket and drifted toward the grocery section, and I didn’t know how to explain to anyone else that the Walmart pineapples reminded me of my grandpa’s farm in Cuba, and how I still felt guilty because when we went to visit Cuba in 2016 my grandpa offered me pineapples he grew — widely known to be the sweetest and juiciest pineapples people would ever taste, it was his pride and joy to offer them to his grandchildren — and I refused to try them because I didn’t like pineapples. He looked sad, but he brushed it off. But then I started to feel bad for refusing his offer, but it was too late and we were already eating lunch and I took his kindness for granted and then he lost his farm and now he’s too old and he lives with us and now I’ll never have the chance to try his pineapples again. I recognize that that’s a bit of a stretch, but even through my delirious sobs, my mother sighed gently and held my hand as I finished letting go of my grief. She’s the only person who would understand. 

I admire my mom for her resilience. As I’ve matured, my hazy memories of our first years in the United States have been sharpened by my mother’s recountings. 

It was only recently that I realized she didn’t just work hard during our first few years, she worked 70-hour work weeks receiving scrappy, minimum-wage McDonald’s pay and biking miles each day to get to work and back. Yet, she still managed to bring me and my brother M&M sundaes after every other work shift. 

My mom didn’t just struggle to learn English, she spent hours of her week attending night classes and suffered ridicule from coworkers for her grammatical mistakes. She nearly lost her job for not understanding the dress code; the instructions were in English. 

I also didn’t realize that my mother felt the loneliness I too felt when moving over — this realization was only solidified when — digging through the garage shelves in search of art supplies — I found the hefty bag of years’ worth of letters sent back and forth to Cuba. There were mounds of handwritten letters sent to my grandma, chronicling the plight of our first years in the U.S. and searching for the strength to continue. Only now can I begin to fathom the humility it must’ve taken to admit these hardships and look for support, knowing that ultimately, my mom had no choice but to continue away from her family, with two small children, and push. 

When I got into Yale, my mom was the first person I called. She whooped and cheered and I could hear the echoes of “My daughter’s going to Yale!” resonating through the phone line, no subtlety in her revelry. I could picture her dancing around her work office, singing familiar melodies I’d heard in celebrations past, that relentless, unforgiving joy that only she could conjure.

I admire my mom because she knew how to be harsh when she needed to be, like when her 9-year-old daughter began to reek of rancid onions and endanger public health. But she never failed to sit with me when I felt sad for no reason, and she always knew the difference between scripted smiles and genuine grins. She made sure I learned the life skills necessary to ensure that I can thrive on my own — like deodorant — even at the expense of my being angry at her, though that usually lasted little more than a few minutes.

When I was little, I promised my mom I’d buy her a boat when I was older and rich and full of money, that I would buy her a boat and a house next to mine and we could continue to be best friends and we could gossip together and cook together and be happy together, the way we always did. Although I am persistently changing and weaving new plans for my future, that one goal has remained sound in my mind. I’ll never be able to thank my mom enough for always being there for me, for giving her physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy to her children, and devoting her life to making sure we could enjoy ours to the fullest.

My mom was the catalyst for my sound maturation, and what I like to think is my somewhat stable adult state. My mom and surrogate mothers — namely, my abuelas, my Tia Belkis, my aunt Iris, my best friends’ mother Iraisy, my mom-away-from-home and advisor Mme Koizim — along with the other women I’ve been lucky to have in my life have inspired me to grow into the woman I am today. I am continually fascinated and inspired by the strength, compassion, and love these figures have shown me, and I can only hope to embody them someday.

The post An Ode Para Mi Mamá appeared first on Yale Daily News.

When I first read Truong’s “Bitter in the Mouth,” it quickly became a favorite of mine. My memories of reading the book are ones of home. I read much of the book lying in a hammock in the shade of a magnolia tree fearing the blistering North Carolina weather.

I think my fondness for “Bitter in the Mouth” is due to its familiarity. The book follows Linda Hammerick as she navigates friendship, family and adolescence in Boiling Springs, North Carolina — a small, southern town not too different from my own. Truong exquisitely captures this place, the people that inhabit it and, most acutely, the emotion of this stage of life.

Similarly, her most recent novel — published in 2019 — “The Sweetest Fruits,” is also told from the first-person perspective of a woman; in fact, several women.

When I asked how she would define being a woman, or womanhood more broadly, Truong said:

“It’s to be defined by your body, whether you like it or not. I think to unpack that, it means you are not a blank slate in the world. There is already a narrative, multiple narratives, written about your body that you are essentially born into. Some of it may be things that you can embrace and you feel connected to, and others…are things that you will need to push against.”

In this moment, in the wake of Roe v. Wade and ensuing uncertainty over the governance of female autonomy, it is so pertinent to address how women are often defined by their bodies. 

Truong continued, “I think the struggle for me, and for many women, is that journey of defining what it means to be a woman in relationship to these existing narratives. What does it mean to you and not what others have imposed upon you?”

Reconciling mixed emotions over what it means to be a woman is its own battle. Truong voiced her experiences and the unique difficulties that came with growing up in the South as an Asian American woman.

“I have never been comfortable within my body. Part of it was actually growing up in the U.S. … it was something that was problematic to other people. And it was something that I could not understand as a child because, not only was I in a female body — which later would become even more significant to all that is going to try to define me — but I was in an Asian body. When I came to the U.S. and specifically Boiling Springs I became something that I didn’t understand, which was this racial other, this Asian other.”

When feeling uncomfortable in her body, Truong says that she has always found a certain redeeming confidence in her brain, her intellect.

“The thing about my body that I am comfortable with, and have always been comfortable with, is my brain. That has never let me down!” Truong says laughing. 

Truong then added, “[My brain] has gotten me everywhere that I needed to be in my life today.” 

The everywhere Truong refers to includes Yale College, where she studied literature. 

Truong arrived at Yale, typewriter in tow, in 1986 — 17 years after Yale College first began admitting female students. 

When asked if her educational career’s proximity to Yale College’s first female admits affected her experience Truong began, “I don’t think I understood the impact of the relatively brief history of women at Yale and … what sort of message it sent to me as I was a student there.”

During Truong’s time at Yale, the odes to female success that we see around campus now — The Women’s Table, residential colleges Grace Hopper and Pauli Murray and the Portrait of Yale’s first seven women doctorates in Sterling, to name a few — weren’t around.

Commenting on this lack of representation, Truong said, “There hasn’t been that long history of women playing a significant role at the university. And, you know, that might seem like a kind of superficial or trivial thing like ‘What does it matter if the paintings are of white men?’ Of course it matters! It matters because every single day this is what you’re looking at.”

Female role models are the igniters of progress, as they do what has never been done. Seeing women on screen, or reading about them in books, is what allows young girls to envision their futures unobstructed by what a woman can or should be. 

Truong spoke a lot about how she has been shaped by both real and fictional women, primarily her mother and Jo March from Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” “[Before Jo], I don’t think I had read about a woman, a girl, being a writer or wanting to be a writer,” Truong said. “Reading about her desire and seeing her so doggedly working towards it and wanting this life of letters that was just kind of the beginning of the road map.” 

When asked about who inspires her the most, Truong responded, “…my mother because she has gone through the kind of life changes that I could never imagine: being a woman in her thirties all of a sudden losing her country, her language, her family, everything and coming to the U.S. and having the ability to continue to live and create a life.”

Truong’s mother later went to nursing school in North Carolina to become an Intensive Care Unit — ICU — nurse. Reflecting on this time in her mother’s life, Truong remarked that she didn’t think she would have that kind of strength.

When asked what she would say if she could go back in time and give a piece of advice to the girl who left Saigon, Vietnam for Boiling Springs, North Carolina, Truong provided a sentiment that many, regardless of gender, age or sexual orientation, will resonate with:

“There are certain limits to words. Even though I’m a writer. If I reach back and tell that little girl ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ I don’t think she can actually do very much with that. I think what I would want to do for her is to hug her. You know, there are other forms of communication.”

As March comes to a close, take a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come; as individuals, as a university, and humanity as a whole.

The post Monique Truong on identity and the female narrative appeared first on Yale Daily News.

My first year, I was in and out of the hospital, and while I had dreamed that I would finally have a group of girlfriends in college, my health stood in my way. I studied abroad in Italy that summer and met one girl on my program who told me I should look into her sorority. I liked her and decided to continuous open bid — a more casual process for upperclassmen —  without ever meeting the other girls. I felt so alone and so lacking in female friendships, so I figured I had nothing to lose. I was shocked to receive a bid, considering I had missed all of the events due to more visits to the hospital. I later learned that all it took was that girl from my study abroad saying, “She’s cool and nice, let’s give her a bid.” 

I thought that joining would have had so much more to do with my appearance than it did. When I first met the rest of the girls, I was shy and nervous, but I felt immediately at home.

I originally thought the concept of sisterhood in Greek life was of a bygone era. I understood how girls in my chapter wanted to help me out because I knew them all and we spent at least two hours a week together for months and they weren’t strangers to me. It also aided us that when I joined, we were small enough that I knew everyone’s name within a couple weeks. I hear about their dreams, what’s going on with their families. We’re in each other’s common rooms and apartments every other Saturday, so of course I care about them and they care about me. 

But how could people who didn’t even know me care about me or want to help me just because of three  letters and a badge? I don’t know what the answer is, but every time I have been to an event where I meet Kappas from other universities, I’m met with offers to stay in their sorority house, to visit their campus, to come into their homes whenever I need somewhere to stay or a meal. It’s hard to cultivate environments where people are so open within moments of meeting someone else. I won’t say it is specific to Greek life, but I can’t name another community that has granted me the same privileges. 

Sisterhood connects us not only across space but also across time. When our alumni come to our events, they always ask us what we want to know post-grad. What advice we need, what fears we have, how they can help us. They always say that they’re there because they love the organization and the women in it. Each chapter gets to forge its own unique identity and community that is a product of all of the women that have worn their badge before. 

I don’t think this experience is unique to my sorority. Not to speak for the lovely women of APhi and Theta, but when we had the panhellenic information session in January for women who were considering joining sororities, sisterhood and its value in our lives was a repetitive theme. How much we love and support the women in our sororities like they were our own blood siblings was mentioned. The sorority connects us to our sisters, mothers, aunts, friends, and is so much more than events and recruitment. 

At Yale, I think sisterhood is especially important. The institution has had a long history but a relatively short one with women. Despite the student population being almost half women and half men, it’s difficult to find spaces of supportive women. Yale can feel like a pressure cooker, forcing you into competition with people you’d much rather be friends with, or leaving you so little time for friendship between academics and extracurriculars. It’s nice to know that every Monday at chapter, I get to spend time with my friends, and we don’t have to talk about academics or class performance. It’s an opportunity to meet people outside of my major and my normal bubble at Yale. I also appreciate meeting people from diverse backgrounds and hearing about their experiences and lives. It’s something I would have a difficult time seeking out if I didn’t have my sorority.

I will be the first to admit, despite my glowing review of my own experience, that Greek life isn’t perfect and it isn’t for everyone. I hope that more women join sororities — or at least look into them — with the hope to change the things they perceive as wrong with the system. In my presidency, it has been my goal to open the chapter to as many women as possible because I want to give people the community I wish I had my first year.

It isn’t about — and should never be about — anything but personality and kindness. That’s what forges a sisterhood. I hope that everyone is able to find in their lives the kind of friendship that I have experienced in my sorority, whether that’s through Greek life or something else.

The post Sisterhood appeared first on Yale Daily News.

My name is Alexander, and I am a first year in Timothy Dwight College studying political science. Naturally, my day is complete with writing papers, reading research articles and attending lectures. And as much as I am a Yale student, I consider myself a student of the world with the open road as my classroom.

This travel column, On the Road, recounts several of my adventures on asphalt and all the lessons I have learned from the people, places and things I have encountered on all roads, from those well-traveled to those not taken. 

The sea crinkles the sand as its waves edge closer to the shore. The sun radiates a warm glow from a cloudless afternoon sky. The breeze sifts through your hair to remind you that you are far from the embrace of the city and in the arms of nature. Laughter and screams emanate from the roller-coasters nearby. People of all ages and backgrounds dot the beach in their swimwear, featuring a palette diverse enough to represent the entire rainbow. This is Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz, a coastal town roughly thirty miles south of San Jose and situated on the northern end of Monterey Bay, is, in many ways, the quintessential California town. A star in California’s constellation of world-renowned surf towns, it typifies the image of California you would imagine from a long lecture on a wintry day in New Haven or from a travel ad that disturbs your late-night binge on HBO Max. Stretches of stunning beaches. Sunbathers and swimmers enjoying the Pacific sun. Surfers as innumerable as the sands on the shore. Perpetual games of volleyball that last from dawn until dusk.

Besides being a surfing destination, Santa Cruz boasts another claim to fame: the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The oldest surviving amusement park in California, it has entertained generations of locals for more than a century since its founding in 1907. Any kid who has grown up in the Bay Area during the 2000s and 2010s can remember, just as well as I do, the various commercials advertising the Boardwalk that would interrupt afternoon cartoons. Screaming adults on roller coasters. Kids laughing on carousels. And, of course, a catchy jingle encouraging us to have some fun “in the warm California sun.” Absolute nostalgia accompanies any of my recollections of the times I spent on the Boardwalk as a young kid.

I recall, in particular, one weekend in middle school. My parents decided to drive to Santa Cruz on a whim and visit the Boardwalk. It was a warm April day. Passing through the entrance, I found myself in the shadow of the Giant Dipper. The youthful gleam of its paint belied its age; the Dipper celebrates its centennial this May. Draped in pristine white, its wooden beams shook. Coated in red, its tracks rattled. Joined by the screams of its riders, its cars roared past. I gazed in amazement and awe. I was never one for roller coasters. Thus, anyone who can muster the amount of courage and thrill needed to ride one has my respect and my admiration.

The Boardwalk boasts a thrilling array of rides, from carousels and bumper cars for the young to more advanced machinery for the old. There are the usual fair games that offer stuffed animals as prizes, as well as indoor activities and arcades. That day, I decided to stay grounded on terra firma and enjoy an amusement park staple — funnel cakes warmed and cooked to a golden crisp, topped with chocolate syrup, vanilla ice cream and a generous dose of powdered sugar — before eating lunch.

Canvassing our options, we decided to head to the Santa Cruz Wharf for lunch. After getting our fill of Italian cuisine at Gilda’s, we stepped out and onto the wharf. Walking back toward the city, I saw a sailboat pass by, its immaculate mainsail beating against the wind as its reflection wrinkled across the ocean surface. I stopped for a moment and decided to watch it as it sailed out of the harbor, into the bay and out into the open ocean.

The sea is very much like the road, offering freedom in its vastness, solace in the solitude of its far reaches and a multitude of avenues for adventure. Unlike the road, however, there are no paths to follow, trails to pursue, or highways to dictate the extent of your wanderings. The sea offers no direction except yours, for on the open ocean, you are, as Henley eloquently states, the captain of your soul. You follow no roads in the ocean; you make them. No confines. No constraints. The freedom offered by the sea diffuses into life on the shore and is capable of infecting the restless and the rested with unshakeable wanderlust.

Following our momentary day trip, my parents and I took another a few days later and drove south of Santa Cruz to its neighboring beach town of Capitola. To the outside visitor, at first glance, this small coastal town would seem to be misplaced; its visage resembles that of a Riviera hamlet. If all hints of its location were suddenly erased — from the California license plates on cars to the American units on street signs — one would think that this town was located on the shores of the Mediterranean and not those of the Pacific. The town is charming, unique and well worth a visit for anyone who happens to be fortunate enough to be nearby.

It was a cloudy day when we arrived in downtown Capitola, but the skies did not deter the families at the town beach from enjoying the weekend. Parents relaxed in lawn chairs, their kids building sand castles and chasing each other. We walked on a coastal promenade through the town when we found a strange, amorphous and translucent mass floating languidly in the air. It contorted with every gust of wind as it danced above us, and its movements revealed a membrane reflecting shades of blue, green and pink.

Giant bubbles, like the ones we would see on Cross Campus from time to time, hovered over me like dirigibles taking flight. Guided by the breeze, they were the product of a bearded man on the beach. He exhibited an expert command of his wands, deftly slicing the air with the gracefulness of an artist’s brushstrokes and the precision of a conductor’s waves. His countenance offered no smile but a present humility in the face of amazement and wonder from the crowd. Young children ran to pop each bubble he produced, trying to catch their breath after chasing his newest creations. The bearded man also succeeded in resurrecting the youth in the old, with parents rushing for bubbles with the same enthusiasm and excitement as their kids. Sinatra once sang that “it’s worth every treasure on earth to be young at heart.” In many respects, the bubble-maker of Capitola Beach did not offer an episode of fleeting amusement; he gave new memories for the young and an opportunity to smile for the young at heart. His talent, however humble, gave all on the beach and promenade that youthful, glee-driven “treasure on earth.”

After watching the bubbles and popping some with my parents, we continued walking the promenade toward the Capitola Wharf, a local landmark. On the way there, we strolled through the beach alongside the Venetian Court, a set of Mission Revival apartments built during the 1920s. With its architecture and bright array of colors, it has served as an iconic sight in the region. On this particular day, the Court’s Mediterranean pastel palette was juxtaposed with the dreariness produced by the gray skies above. 

Soon enough, my parents and I made it to the wharf where we found a string of distanced fishermen. The wind formed wrinkles on their jackets that mirrored the wrinkles that crossed their worn and weary faces. Their eyes, squinting seaward, remained unfazed by the gusts of the sea breeze or the sprays that would swell from the waves that pounded the wharf’s posts beneath their feet. There was, in the air, a freshness both brought by the wind and the simplicity of life in Capitola. Time was fast in nearby Silicon Valley. Here, hours passed as hours, minutes passed as minutes and seconds passed as seconds. Time continued forward, and thus, my day in Capitola ended patiently and pleasantly.

For the outside observer, it is easy to see Santa Cruz and Capitola exemplifying the California Dream. For that stretch of coastline seems to be where beachgoing is the main profession, where the soundtrack of life plays to the Beach Boys, where the notion of tomorrow is a fantasy and where the experience of today lasts for eternity. But to idealize that paradisiacal world with ideas furnished by Hollywood and the marketing industry and to characterize it solely with such qualities is to ignore the great and underlying truth that realistically defines Santa Cruz and Capitola. Both are the quintessential California towns in the way that they both embody the California spirit of resolve.

During finals season last December, my study schedule was interrupted by news reports back home of storm events on the coast. California was hit by an atmospheric river that buffeted many coastal communities, among them Santa Cruz and Capitola, with harsh winds and pouring rain. These communities, the idyllic enclaves of fun and excitement for many, became the victims of the hostile whims of nature. Families evacuated their homes, forced to clean up the wreckage wrought by the storm upon their return. Streets of asphalt became rivers of mud-colored water. Stores were disemboweled, and their contents spilled onto the flooded streets. Santa Cruz Beach was covered with the remains of erstwhile trees. Capitola Wharf was split in two. The tide carried what debris it found into the bay, and with it, the memories of communities lost to the indifferent tide.

The accounts from the Santa Cruz Coast brought me undeniable sadness. And yet, despite this destruction and despair, there remained, beneath the rubble and the waves, hope. People from all backgrounds and all walks of life, with the sole similarity shared amongst all being their communities of residence, united as one and set out to rebuild their towns. They returned to their homes. They returned to their stores. Adults went back to work. Children went back to school. The streets were cleaned, and the beaches were cleared. These communities turned heartbreak and loss into hope and renewal. Resilience, as they have shown, is not an abstract or lofty idea; it was one brought down to earth by the humble citizens of Santa Cruz and Capitola.

The California way of life, as the communities of Santa Cruz and Capitola profess and illustrate, is the ability to respond to hardships with hope, to crises with confidence and to trials with triumph. Under every smile of the locals of Santa Cruz and Capitola is a reserve of resolve, a subtle strength and a conviction directed with courage that, while hidden to a passerby, is evident in their manner and to those observant and watchful.

Over the course of my travels, I have discovered that you learn the most about places you see by learning from the people you meet there. Therefore, to say that Santa Cruz and Capitola are the quintessential California towns is to pierce through superficial and constructed images of popular culture and to recognize the authentic qualities of their inhabitants. In doing so, you would realize that their courage and resilience are not unique or distinct, but shared in a way that binds them with other communities. Many other places in California exhibit the strength exemplified by Santa Cruz and Capitola, from the mountain towns that brave blizzards, the valley cities that have survived countless wildfires and sister communities on the coast that have faced the torrents of a Pacific winter. In reflecting about Santa Cruz and Capitola, I have not only observed the profound depths of the human spirit, but have learned more about the place I call home and the people I call my neighbors. I came to understand that the collective elan of Californians is one not born out of unrealistic idealism, but of experience, maturity and accumulated wisdom. It is derived from a fortitude refined and matured into a heritage and an inheritance that inspires inspiration, admiration and even, in the humblest of ways, reverence.

The post ON THE ROAD: Cruising to Santa Cruz appeared first on Yale Daily News.

“The Housemaid”

This domestic thriller centers around Millie, the main character, who secures a job as a maid for the affluent Winchester family. Hired on the spot by Nina, the wife, Millie moves into their mansion, living in the attic bedroom. For Millie, who is homeless, this job signifies a fresh start.  However, Millie harbors secrets of her own — secrets that the Winchesters are unaware of, including her recent release from jail. As tensions escalate and the family’s hidden truths emerge and no one is safe.

This was definitely my favorite of the two. What I loved most was the constant plot twists — there wasn’t just one at the end, but surprises scattered throughout the entire book. The little hints dropped along the way kept me guessing, always on my toes, trying to piece everything together. It felt like solving a puzzle, with everything clicking into place by the end. I appreciated how each character had a background story, and how everything eventually intertwined. Overall, definitely one of my favorite thrillers.

5 / 5 

“The Housemaid’s Secret” 

“The Housemaid’s Secret” still follows Millie, but she is now working for a new family, the Garricks. Millie begins her job, but when she sees Mrs. Garrick with spots of blood around her neck gown, Millie fears for the worse. Millie begins to wonder what is really going on between Mr. Garrick and Mrs. Garrick and she begins to do her own digging. ​

This book features some of the same characters. It could be a standalone and the plot would still make sense, but to really get all of the details and connections I would highly recommend reading the first book. 

I found the first part of this book to be a bit slow, with numerous events occurring without clear purpose. However, the pace significantly improved after the 50 percent mark, with the latter part of the book being a ton of fun and entertaining. While twists at the end were great, I felt that the conclusion was somewhat rushed and abrupt. Despite this, I still found myself unable to put the book down, and overall, I enjoyed the experience.

4.5 / 5 

On Frida McFadden:

Writing Style: 3.5 /5 

The biggest pro is that her straightforward and uncomplicated style makes for an accessible reading experience. I found myself flying through both novels, reading them both in just a few hours. With a clear and simpler writing style, don’t expect to be moved by deeply emotional prose. McFadden’s prose itself isn’t particularly captivating or poetic. Her writing fulfills the expectations of a thriller genre where the plot takes precedence over prose. Ultimately, while McFadden’s writing style is not a standout asset, it doesn’t detract from the overall mystery and suspense elements. 

Characters: 3.8 / 5 

The characters in McFadden’s series were enjoyable, although I didn’t form particularly strong attachments to them. While there were some minor annoyances, they didn’t detract from my engagement with the story. For instance, I felt that Enzo could have been more developed, and I wished for more depth to the main character, Millie, and her backstory. McFadden had the potential to delve deeper into these aspects. Most of the book is narrated from Millie’s first-person perspective, which I found enjoyable. Additionally, occasional glimpses into other characters’ perspectives added depth and a twist on the perspectives. McFadden’s books prioritize plot over character development, with the characters primarily serving as vessels to propel the narrative forward, rather than possessing complexity or emotional depth.

Plot: 5 / 5 

The core of McFadden’s books lies in their plot, which more than compensates for shortcomings in the writing and character development. Thriller novels, in my opinion, hinge on their plot above all else, and McFadden’s series certainly delivers in this regard. Her plots are layered with numerous twists and turns that keep readers guessing. What I appreciate most is that there are multiple twists and they build upon each other. 

The characters’ unreliability heightens the suspense by presenting a series of contrasting perspectives alongside the sequence of events. When the perspectives shift, it offers a fresh lens through which to view familiar events, turning the narrative on its head. McFadden excels in leading readers down one path before completely subverting their expectations, and it’s this skillful manipulation of plot and perspective. If you’re seeking a book with a gripping and eventful plot filled with twists, I recommend diving into this series.

When picking up a book, I felt that I had to learn something from everything I read, making it a challenge to get into longer, more complex books. But reading doesn’t always have to be an intellectual pursuit — it can be for an escape or for entertainment. That’s why I love thrillers. Thrillers are not for deep reflection, but for enjoyment and entertainment. So, if you’re looking for a quick and enjoyable mystery, McFadden’s series is a great start. 

The post Thrills and chills: a book review for The Housemaid Series appeared first on Yale Daily News.

 At the Elm, they offer both gelato and sorbet, offering a wide array of flavors. Determined not to miss out, I tried every one of them. So, here’s the scoop on all the flavors available.

Olive Oil Gelato 

Olive oil gelato has become my favorite flavor and is now what I typically order, although I’m not entirely sure if it’s due to its exotic nature or simply because of its intriguing name. Surprisingly, it doesn’t taste overwhelmingly of olive oil; instead, there’s just a subtle hint of it in the aftertaste. What truly pulls me in is the gelato’s smoothness — effortlessly scoops up and melts in your mouth, leaving a sensation that’s reminiscent of an elevated, unique vanilla flavor, despite it not being vanilla in essence. Among all the flavors, I highly recommend trying this one for its novelty and, most importantly, because it does taste great!

Passion Fruit Sorbet 

Among all the sorbet flavors, this one stands out as my favorite. The tartness of the passion fruit is wonderfully pronounced, making its flavors pop in your mouth. I particularly enjoyed the texture of this sorbet — it’s not icy at all, but rather delightfully creamy while still maintaining its fruity essence as a sorbet. Scooping it up with my spoon was effortless and satisfying. The pasisonfruit’s bright, vibrant golden-yellow appearance mirrors its equally vibrant taste. Overall, I highly recommend giving this sorbet a try! Its tropical, sweet and tart flavors are well-balanced. 

Dark Chocolate Gelato 

The chocolate gelato, although rich and unmistakably dark, didn’t offer the distinctiveness I anticipated. While it has a deeper, less sweet flavor profile akin to dark chocolate, the difference wasn’t significant enough to set it apart. Ultimately, I realized that if I craved chocolate, I could easily get it in the dining hall. While enjoyable, it lacked the uniqueness and memorability I had hoped for.

Cantaloupe Sorbet 

This sorbet tastes exactly like cantaloupe, offering a refreshing burst of freshness akin to biting into the fruit itself. Its sweetness perfectly captured the authentic flavor profile of real cantaloupe, which is one of my favorite fruits. Despite being less creamy and more on the icier side, the sorbet still had a soft texture. Nevertheless, it remained delicious! My favorite aspect was the accuracy of the flavor — it truly felt like a taste of summer with its vibrant flavors, freshness and sweetness.

Pear Sorbet 

I thoroughly enjoyed the pear sorbet — it truly felt like I was taking a bite out of a sweet Asian pear. Despite its slightly icier texture, akin to shaved ice rather than a creamier consistency, it still dissolved effortlessly on my tongue. Interestingly, the pear, orange hibiscus and cantaloupe sorbets all shared a very similar texture. Overall, I highly recommend giving it a try! With its accurate sweet flavor being a highlight, it’s definitely among my favorites.

Cucumber Sorbet 

This sorbet brought to mind the rejuvenating experience of drinking cucumber water. While the flavor might seem unusual at first, its refreshing and cooling essence surprisingly works incredibly well. This would be perfect for the summer or on any hot day. 

Vanilla Gelato 

This flavor was my least favorite due to its texture. Surprisingly, the vanilla gelato exhibited a similar gritty and grainy texture to the hazelnut variation. Unlike the smooth, creamy consistency typical of gelato, it still felt rough. Although the vanilla flavor was still present, the coarse texture was off-putting and I didn’t love it. 

Toasted Coconut Gelato 

Despite my usual aversion to coconut, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this toasted coconut gelato. Unlike the soapy or strange taste I typically associate with coconut, this gelato offered a genuinely good nutty flavor. The addition of toasted coconut flakes provided a delightful texture to the creamy consistency. Its flavor was sweet and toasted, striking a perfect balance without being overly sweet or overpowering in coconut essence. 

Hazelnut Gelato 

While I typically enjoy hazelnut flavors, I found myself somewhat disappointed with this gelato variation. Despite its accurate hazelnut flavor — a bit reminiscent of Nutella — the texture left much to be desired. Rather than smooth and creamy, it felt grainy, as if there were tiny particles present. I suspect this might be due to the inclusion of literal hazelnuts. Unfortunately, this texture issue detracted from what could have been a more satisfying experience. If you prioritize flavor over texture and really like hazelnuts, this gelato might still be worth trying.

Orange Hibiscus Sorbet

The sorbet had a delightful texture that was less creamy and more reminiscent of shaved ice. The orange flavor was incredibly vibrant and pronounced, offering a delightful balance of tartness and sweetness. I appreciated the slight sourness, which added depth to the overall experience. If you’re a fan of orange and citrus-based flavors, this sorbet is worth trying. 

Gelato can be enjoyed anytime and with anyone. Gelato is not just for Sundaes; it’s for every day. Getting gelato can be a study break or a casual hangout. But why stop there? Gelato could be the sweet ticket to romance. Picture this: you, smooth as gelato, finally muster up the courage to ask out that cutie from linear algebra. If they say yes, sweet victory! And, if you can’t get the cutie, you can still get the sweetie aka gelato. It’s a win-win situation either way. 

The post A guide to Elm gelato appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Hi! My name is Eliza, and I’m a sophomore in Pierson College studying comparative literature. I’m one of many Yale students with puzzling backgrounds. I’m trained as a butcher, and I love tofu. I’m Jewish, and my mom’s last name is Church. I’m American, and I went to an international school for 10 years. I quote Proust just as much as I quote Season 8 of Love Island. 

I know all too well that there’s a lot more to people, places and things than meets the eye. And that’s why I love Yale. You can never fully understand everything going on here, but you can try! And that’s what Enigma, this column, is all about — digging deeper into these pressing questions and providing much needed answers.

—

Social media. Let’s dissect the term. Social, in that we as people desire companionship and community. Media, in that we communicate digitally. But what happens when an anonymous group of Yalies is the community?

Enter: Fizz. The mobile app was founded by two Stanford dropouts who wanted to build a college community amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. It provided an anonymous forum for campus discourse, where users with verified Stanford.edu emails could start, continue, upvote or downvote a conversation.

The app has since spread to over 80 institutions across the country, according to the Stanford Daily. And in August of 2022, Fizz came to Yale. Since then, it has blossomed into a vibrant platform that many students engage with regularly. Most Yalies find the highly specific content entertaining. 

If you’re wondering what kind of content goes viral on Fizz, I’ll direct your attention to the “Top” tab on the home screen. Today, the first post I see is captioned, “In case you are having a hard time, here is a video of a squirrel to cheer you up!” This week’s top post screams “PETITION FOR YALE DINING TO BRING BACK BREAKFAST PASTRIES!!” 

A particularly well-loved post is a photograph of someone on the Old Campus Spring Fling stage last year, before it got rained out. The anonymous caption boasts, “I got more stage time than pusha t” and the picture has 2,400 upvotes. The most popular post of all time depicts the winning Yale Football Team holding up a “For Sale: Harvard College” sign. Its caption reads, “This picture is honestly legendary” and more than 2,500 people agree. 

But I’ve always wondered, who are the people behind the posts? What kind of Yale student goes viral on this platform? 

I knew exactly where I needed to go to explore this enigma: the Fizz leaderboard. Every user has accumulated a certain amount of “Karma” while using Fizz. When a post is upvoted, a user’s Karma increases. The leaderboard tracks these points, indicating who has had the most quantifiable virality.

Even though posting itself is anonymous, you can choose to identify yourself on the leaderboard by a name and a profile picture. So, I did some in-app research into the highest ranking Fizz celebrities who had somewhat identified themselves. Then, I directly messaged them through a feature in the app.

I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d get any engagement from these anonymous, enigmatic Fizz celebrities at all. At a certain point, I thought this story would remain an unsolvable mystery. But within seven minutes of my initial messages, I got a response.

FizzGod is ranked second in the last 60 days and thirteenth overall, with 115,082 Karma points. That’s extremely impressive. For reference, I’ve had about 3 relatively viral Fizz posts, and I’m sitting at 5,643 Karma points. That represents a mere twentieth of FizzGod’s six figure total.

We corresponded over DMs for a bit, and I did my best to feel out how comfortable they were sharing details with me. After about nine exchanges, I decided to shoot my shot. And FizzGod, surprisingly enough, agreed to meet with me in person.

In the blustery morning drizzle, standing underneath the Beinecke plaza arch with a green umbrella, I saw a figure rolling toward me at a steady pace. In our messages, FizzGod had mentioned that they’d be skateboarding to our interview, so I waved them over. Right away, I was starstruck. 

Let’s rewind. About a week ago, an anonymous account posted a photo of some guy mewing (if you haven’t heard this term, look it up, because I’m not qualified to explain it). The caption reads “bronson is deadass my spirit animal [crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji]” and the post received 50 upvotes. 

But a repost, which reads “i like how it’s a known fact bronson posts himself on fizz [crying emoji, crying emoji]” has 1,900 upvotes. From there, the Fizz community began lots of Bronson-related discourse. 

I wondered, are FizzGod and Bronson Hooper, Class of ’27, one in the same? 

“Yeah, that’s me!” Bronson responded. He has been on Fizz since September of last year, when a friend recommended he join. He posted for the first time in October. As we’ve established, he’s become known by Fizz-ers far and wide quite recently. 

You might wonder, like I did, where does the name FizzGod come from? Why not just stick with Bronson? Here’s the origin story from his perspective: “I was making a joke with my friend. He sent me a meme, or an IG reels or something, saying “rizz god, rizz god” and it clicked. FizzGod!”

Bronson opened the app to show me Fizz from his perspective. I peeked over his shoulder, incredulous. “Your DMs are kind of crazy,” I remarked. He smiled. “Most of them are just from random posts.” He scrolled past dozens of messages and navigated to the Fizzin’ page, which acts as a trending tab for the app.

“I mean, it is crazy. Half the posts on Fizzin’ are me sometimes.” I asked him to show me. In a span of twenty posts, he claimed authorship of three. Even though none of these had the FizzGod handle, he confirmed each one in his personal profile of posts. 

Another niche of Fizz content that I’ve yet to mention is questions about sexuality. I asked FizzGod what he thought about risqué topics in tandem with anonymity. “Most of the stuff I post on there I would say in real life,” Bronson told me. “It’s not like I’m hiding … some people use it to hide, some people use it as a form of expression. I just find it funny.” 

Bronson is an interesting case of someone who has gone viral anonymously and as an identifiable campus figure. According to him, it was kind of an accident. “I was just messing around, posting one of my IG pictures,” he said. “A lot of my viral Fizz posts are fake. Or fabricated, I’ll say.” 

I found it interesting that parts of his non-anonymous success were, as he put it, fabricated. But some may say that Bronson is just playing the game. “If you ReFizz your own content, you get to promote the original post, and then you get upvotes on [the ReFizz] too,” he added.

Here are Bronson’s final words of Fizz advice. “I’d say, just have fun. Life is too short to try to be something you’re not and to put yourself in a box.” Later, he told me that he aspires to build a time machine, and to start an aerospace company. “I feel like if I can pursue my dreams confidently, I can inspire others to do the same.”

Wise words from FizzGod. He has strong passions he wants to explore, plus an interesting assortment of experiences on campus. Bronson, who hopes to unravel the world’s enigmas someday, is enigmatic himself. Readers, I encourage you to remember that behind the allure of viral Fizz celebrities, is inevitably another Yalie, and a potential friend.

I stopped recording our conversation, and Bronson skated away into the fog lingering over Cross Campus. After he was no longer visible, I instinctively checked Fizz. In the span of two days, my direct messages had gone from response-less to completely full. I’d like to share a couple testimonials of other highly ranked Fizz-ers for a more wide-ranging perspective of the app.

Average Gatsby is third overall on the Karma Leaderboard, with 300,254 cumulative points. They explained that they were trying to take a break from Fizz, which is why it took them a while to get back to me. When I asked why, this is what they said:

“As someone who used to post a lot, I would often see how desperate people would get trying to farm likes and engagement with non-funny posts that sometimes devolved into racism or targeted harassment of student groups. It was just sad to look at because I thought Yale students were better than that, so I started using the platform less.”

I would be remiss to not acknowledge this darker side to Fizz. Average Gatsby has a great point, anonymity can be a dangerous tool if placed into the wrong hands. They told me that they are a moderator on Fizz, and they are doing what they can to make sure every post adheres to Fizz’s code of conduct. 

I’m sure there’s some sort of symbolic, high-school level green light metaphor I could insert here, but I’ll refrain. All in all, it’s nice to know that Average Gatsby is behind the scenes helping to make Fizz a safer app for student use. 

I’ve saved my final DM correspondence for last, and you’ll see why. I feel incredibly lucky that I got a response from Daniel el Guapo, who is by far the highest ranked user on Fizz, with 1,183,305 Karma points. They are ahead of Above Average Gatsby, second highest ranked user overall, by a staggering 800,000 points.

When I asked Daniel el Guapo how they’d categorize their content, they responded, “I don’t have a focus, I just post whatever dumb thing occurs to me at the moment … I’ve never actively tried to get likes, it just happened,” they continued. “When I first downloaded Fizz, there was no leaderboard, then one day they added it and I was already on it… but I literally dgaf. I just post for fun and I actually spend very little time on here.”

Daniel’s approach almost feels too good to be true. It seems like the most successful users on the app try to be authentically funny, but they also have to play the game. About a week ago, the same Daniel el Guapo account reposted some Bronson discourse with the caption, “I’m Bronson” which I can neither confirm nor deny.

As the most popular user, numerically, Daniel el Guapo told me that they receive lots of questions from people who want their advice about how to increase upvotes. “I have none to offer,” they wrote, “because it’s not something I even think or care about. It’s all just random, very stupid stuff. My posts vary so much in content that at this point I’m certain I’ve both offended and made the broad spectrum of people at this school laugh, but none of it is serious.”

Here’s what I’m taking away from this extensive investigation. The people behind the posts all seem to agree that their Fizz fame isn’t everything. Bronson says to be authentic, but play the game. Average Gatsby is wary of anonymity’s evils. Daniel el Guapo doesn’t want to spend too much time dwelling on things. 

Yale Fizz is uniquely powerful, because it has the ability to connect our campus community. But the app can’t escape classic social media issues of performativity and harassment. At the end of the day, I think all three viral Fizz sensations would agree that the app is primarily about having fun. No matter how far down you doom scroll, remember that it’s really not that deep.

The post ENIGMA: Are viral fizz sensations just like us? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Shoot, that’s not it.

Benjamin Franklin never told a lie …

No, no, that’s not it either.

So who was Benjamin Franklin? Today, I set out to discover exactly that.

I hop and skip over to the Franklin courtyard and find him right where I expect to, as tarnished and brassy as ever. There he is: the man, the myth, the legend of Benjamin Franklin, carved out in bench form.

“Hello, uh, Mr. Franklin.” There is no reply. I clear my throat — perhaps this will draw his attention …

“Hello … um … Hello, Mr. —”

“Please, call me Benjamin,” Mr. Benjamin interjects.

“Oh, alright,” I reply suddenly, hoping he didn’t catch my glimmer of hesitancy when I first arrived or sense my sudden intense fear that someone would see me talking to a bench. 

“Why don’t you have a seat,” he says in an inviting tone. “Who, me?” I think to myself. “Where?” 

“Right here, to my right.” Mr. Benjamin concludes, as if reading my mind. I furrow my brow with confused suspicion and slowly sit down, joining Mr. Benjamin on the bench.

I inform Mr. Benjamin that I’m looking to learn more about him and ask if he’d be interested in a short interview. He humbly obliges, though I almost see a subtle smile playing on his steel lips.

I begin by asking Mr. Ben about his hobbies, outside of laying the foundation for the American ethos.

I’m taken aback when Mr. Ben starts telling me about his secret career as a rapper. He went by Ben Frank. “It was marvelous,” he recounts. Naturally, I asked him to drop me some beats, but Ben Frank politely declined. “On that note, though,” he continued, “I did spend some time beating eggs as a part-time chef.” It was at that moment that Chef Frank revealed to me that he was actually the mastermind behind the renowned “Frankfurter.”

“Wow …” I mutter under my breath. “Mr. Chef Ben Frankfurter, I have to say I’m sort of speechless. I never knew this side of you.”

“Yeah,” Ben Frank sighs, looking downcast. “Everyone always thinks ‘Mr. Founder this’, ‘Mr. America that’, but what ever happened to ‘Mr. Heart and Soul’? I know what you’re thinking, ‘Benjamin, you’re looking an awful lot like the Tin Man these days, and you know what they said about his heart and soul …’ Well, that I veto! I may present differently now, but I was once a man of emotion, of love, of fervor.” 

“Mmm” I reply, nodding my head ever so subtly, eyebrows slightly raised.

“If you don’t believe me,” he continues “you can ask my wife — she can attest to the passion I —”

“Right, right” I hurriedly cut him off in a sudden state of rushed panic. I’m not interested in hearing about Bench Benjamin’s sex life.

“Please, allow me to finish.” Mr. Benjamin continues in an ever-diplomatic tone.

Oh no.

“I spent some time as a dancer in my career, and my wife — always my No. 1 fan — could tell you about how hard I hit those boogies and whipped those Nae Naes.”

“What?” I think to myself.

“That’s right,” he counters my unspoken doubt. “But I had my academic side, too. I spent my summers doing research in New Haven. Discovering chemicals and such. Ever heard of benzene? All me.”

“In fact,” he continued, “they considered me a scientist so mad that I became Mary Shelley’s muse for ‘Frankenstein’

“Huh,” I reply, wondering how much of the world as I know it is Benjamin Franklin-coded.

“And lastly, in my free time, I enjoyed modeling cars. I was the first to envision the Bentley.”

“This is all extremely impressive. Is there anything else you want to share?”

“I’ll leave you with one piece of Frank advice. During the extended time I spent with my fellow Founding Fathers, I learned that the most important thing is to poke fun at each and every opportunity. Sometimes, that means opting for creativity and imagination over truth and reality.”

“Like … making things up?”

“Precisely — it makes for the greatest fun.” He finishes with a wink, or perhaps the sun simply flashed across his brazen eye at just the right moment to bring an illusion to life.

Great fun indeed … well played, Benjamin.

The post The Secrets & Sentiments of Benjamin Franklin appeared first on Yale Daily News.