Indian Media Focus on Drug Scandals Obscures the Country’s Crises

By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23

Staff Writer 

Bollywood film and its supporting industries have long been a source of fascination and devotion for Indian audiences, permeating our lifestyles and making us experts on its movies and stars. However, this obsession has pervasively occupied media and government focus in recent times, making it a playground for controversy and moral debates. This has strengthened misogynistic discourses within the country and replaced media spaces meant for more critical national information. 

The media focus on the Bollywood industry began with the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in mid-June. The resulting investigation has heavily focused on his girlfriend, Rhea Chakraborty, who was recently arrested on charges of supplying him marijuana. The media coverage has repeatedly slandered her and spread several conspiracy theories. Had she intentionally made him overdose? Was she trying to steal his money? Even leading news platforms such as Republic TV — a right-leaning prominent Indian news channel — painted her in a negative light, insinuating that she was a gold digger who had murdered her boyfriend. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? 

The case also led to a separate drug probe in which other Bollywood stars were questioned for their involvement with marijuana. Interestingly, all of the accused so far have been female actors. 

This issue illuminates moral debates about women in India. There have been long-standing stereotypes against women in the film industry, regarding them as morally loose since they perform and showcase their bodies on screen. Adding in drug use only furthers the patriarchal practice of policing female bodies. Associating women’s usage of recreational drugs with the death of a man demonstrates the perceived danger of such behavior and results in criminal allegations against women. 

Recently, a relative of mine mentioned how there will only be a change in drug usage and other habits in the common people when more prominent names are punished. Surely, if drug usage in everyday people is a problem, there is a better and more systematic approach to this, one that does not involve a smear campaign against solely female celebrities. Additionally, if we are debating recreational drug usage (mainly marijuana), why are only women being pulled into it? It is hard to believe that no men use marijuana. 

Media outlets have become saturated with accused actresses’ names flashing across the headlines of different papers, tablet screens and ordinary conversations. In this process, other news, such as that regarding the pandemic, has been pushed to the sidelines. The government recently claimed it had no data on the deaths of health care workers and migrant workers. This reflects the irresponsibility of the government to support its biggest sources of support during this time. Tracking the numbers of deaths is the least the government can do to pay respect to these workers. If headlines and government agencies can find so much information relating to one superstar’s death, why can’t they document the deaths of thousands of heroes? 

The Indian government has consistently centered itself around ideologies. Is this another tactic for the government to shy away from their responsibilities and preoccupy their citizens with more sensationalized headlines? Silence is the only thing honoring these workers’ deaths. 

Mahua Moitra ’98, a member of India’s parliament and a Mount Holyoke alum, spoke to these events via Twitter. “Turning SSR into Bihar vs Maha & now a new Bollywood drama to focus attention from -23.9 percent GDP growth, Centre’s default on state’s GST dues, China border fiasco & host of other issues. No one plays the distraction game better than ModiShah!” one Tweet read. 

Another of Moitra’s tweets stated, “Once the ModiMedia stops obsessing over Bollywood dramas maybe they’ll ask the @BJP government questions about what really matters.” 

The other day, when I told my friend about my article, she laughed and told me to keep myself and my social media apps safe from the government. Have they achieved their goal? To use controversies to incite fear in their citizens and use this as their ruling weapon over open and well-informed media and structural change? 

Media in India has become a platform for patriarchal discussions on morality, drugs and Bollywood, instead of grounds for more meaningful conversations such as the pandemic and the government’s response to it. Is the Indian media hiding its reality behind the Bollywood industry’s controversies and feeding this to the cinephilic commoner instead of important news on government policies and responsibilities?

Mount Holyoke Virtual Events Lack Community Inclusion and Cohesion

By Kaveri Pillai ’23

Staff Writer 

On Sept. 30, Mount Holyoke announced that Mountain Day 2020 would take place during the fall break between the two modules, a divergence from the tradition’s usual scheduled date sometime during class time in the first semester. Under normal circumstances, the announcement of Mountain Day would’ve ignited a flame of rejoicing and celebration. However, this year, student responses ranged from confusion to disappointment  

A virtual Mountain Day continues to push the boundaries of our new expectations regarding school events, and one big question remains: Will replicating these long-established traditions online result in a failure to create an in-person feel? Should Mount Holyoke adapt to this online setting and create more suitable traditions? Most importantly, can one leave out traditions like Mountain Day and still create the sense of belonging students crave right now? 

 From “It’s Mountain Day!” chants in the hallowed hallways of the Community Center to the long lines that lead up to the white shuttles, there’s more to Mountain Day than trekking up Skinner State Park. The feeling of waking up in the morning and having brunch with friends, followed by eating ice cream and pie on the summit while taking beautiful pictures, goes beyond just documenting our memories — we get to live this experience. With this event going completely online, it is fair to question what will happen to these experiences. The COVID-19 restrictions globally don’t allow most students to step outside their house, let alone to climb a mountain. 

The College seems to think that replacing the actual hiking with mountain documentaries and festive Zoom backgrounds can still create a sense of community, but students have their doubts. Shreya Nair ’22 said, “As an international student, the thought of going on Zoom for Mountain Day is not exciting at all, it just reminds me that I’m not on campus.” This comment echoes a shared sentiment among students: fear of not replicating the joy and excitement of actual Mountain Day, compounded by missing out on breaking in new winter shoes and scarves, not to mention the chance to miss classes. 

 Mountain Day is such a treasured event because it gives students a much-needed break from the academic workload that starts to intensify around mid-semester. Given the shift from the traditional semester system this year, it is understandable why the College decided to keep Mountain Day during the intermission between Module 1 and Module 2. The module system requires academic rigor and is constrained by time; however, this time allocation for Mountain Day led to an exponential decrease in the appeal of the event. With no one missing any class this year, it can be assumed that many students won’t tune in to the online celebration. 

 Mountain Day isn’t the only tradition being undermined due to its virtual celebration status. Other Mount Holyoke traditions and webinars are being negatively affected by the lack of in-person elements. M&Cs, a cherished tradition among all students on campus, is one of them. The entire appeal of a tradition like M&Cs is to allow students to take a break from their hectic academic and nonacademic responsibilities and enjoy the childhood joy of having late-night milk and cookies in dorm common rooms with friends. I remember the many nights I spent in MacGregor Hall pulling all-nighters for research papers and finding comfort in the fact that I could take a break and go to the ground floor if I wanted a snack. Virtual M&Cs defeats the purpose of this tradition. Moreover, like many other Mount Holyoke events, virtual M&Cs fails to include international students and blatantly homogenizes the applicability of Eastern Standard Time. Mount Holyoke administration should understand that 8 p.m. in South Hadley is 4 a.m. in countries in South Asia, which forces students to make a decision between sleeping at a normal local time or conforming to this facade of inclusion and community with cookies and milk from their own kitchen. 

Ava Healy ’24 understands the struggles of making friends and fitting in during her first year at MHC. “I work a lot outside of school and I'm afraid that I might miss the online events,” Healy said, further highlighting the problem with these synchronous events and the lack of participation that comes with them. 

 Isshita Fauzdar ’23 said, “As times change, MoHo should modify their traditions accordingly. Replacing Mountain Day with something more practical like a virtual indoor activity makes more sense.” 

It is important to acknowledge this need to create a community off-campus now more than ever. With students all across the globe, altering traditions to fit our new circumstances in an online platform would help unite students. It might be best to designate events like Mountain Day or M&Cs as on-campus activities and instead create new ones that can only be done virtually. The sense of belonging and the creation of a tight-knit community that new virtual events would create is part of what makes Mount Holyoke so inclusive. It would be a shame if we lost that due to the pandemic.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Exposes the Dark Side of Exam Culture

Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22

By Shloka Gidwani ’22 and Lauren Leese ’23

Copy Editor and Staff Writer

This semester, Shloka Gidwani ’22 is taking a microeconomics class that uses the mastery-based grading system to evaluate students’ performances. According to the Connecticut Department of Education, a mastery-based learning system helps to “produce grades that more accurately reflect a student’s learning progress and achievement, including situations in which students struggled early on in a semester or school year, but then put in the effort and hard work needed to meet expected standards.” Rather than judging a student’s performance based on letter grades obtained after exams, the mastery-based grading system does not penalize students for getting the answer wrong the first time, but allows them to understand the gaps in their knowledge and aims to reinforce areas in which they might be struggling.

As the world grapples with a pandemic, we are noticing more and more glaring flaws in our educational systems, many of which are related to exam culture. Even beyond the fact that traditional timed closed-book exams are difficult to proctor over the internet, they also exacerbate inequalities in education. 

“I tend to think that exams are not a very effective way to assess a student’s understanding, and especially not in a pandemic,” Mavis Murdock ’22 said. “I think that steady work and class participation is much more important than a single high-stress exam, which is more likely to promote cramming and introduces a lot of factors that have nothing to do with a student’s understanding of the material.”

Moreover, the exam-based system promotes unhealthy competition instead of collaborative learning. From an early age, students are pitted against each other in an attempt to get the highest grade. This defeats the primary purpose of education, which is to understand a concept rather than memorize material just to regurgitate it on an exam. Exam culture inculcates fear of failure rather than a love of learning, which makes students more likely to cheat. A Fordham University poll affirms the benefits of cheating, having found that students who cheat had GPAs an average of 0.56 points higher than their honest counterparts. The Open Education Database speculates that “many probably feel compelled to compromise their school's ethics policies in their own self-interest — especially considering the significant number of academic rewards hinging on one's GPA.”

Students’ incentives to cheat only increase while taking exams remotely, since there are limited ways to supervise test takers. While exams are showing loopholes in our educational system, they also prove ineffective when assessing a remote learner’s performance. 

Sal Khan, founder of the online education platform Khan Academy, is an influential proponent of the mastery-based grading system. “Instead of artificially constraining, fixing when and how long you work on something, pretty much ensuring that variable outcome, the A, B, C, D, F — do it the other way around,” Khan said in a 2015 TED Talk. “What’s variable is when and how long a student actually has to work on something, and what’s fixed is that they actually master the material.” Khan went on to say that, today, the U.S. has achieved close to a 100 percent literacy rate, so why can’t we achieve a high rate of people who understand calculus or organic chemistry? The answer is that we do not teach people to master these subjects, instead relying on exam systems that penalize students for not understanding the material on their first try.

Khan’s philosophy is more pertinent now than ever, as students across the world are learning remotely. We are now limited in our face-to-face interactions with professors: Office hours have been reduced or are at inconvenient times because of time zones, making it difficult for professors to keep track of students’ progress. In the midst of all these problems, adding an exam to the mix makes for a stressful concoction. 

It is important to note that as an elite private liberal arts institution, Mount Holyoke has the resources to foster a collaborative and mastery-focused learning environment more effectively than many other universities. While Mount Holyoke has a ways to go in terms of promoting mastery, its learning environment is much better than that of many state universities, which disproportionately serve low-income and marginalized students. 

Lauren Leese ’23 has experience taking classes at large state schools where the teaching method is often based around reading a textbook, memorizing the study guide, regurgitating the information for a multiple choice exam, rinsing and repeating. Until mastery-based learning becomes a widespread educational philosophy, this method will be confined to privileged institutions with the right resources. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that our educational system needs radical reform — not only to adapt to online education, but to better serve students’ needs in general. The mastery-based grading system is a more equitable method that shifts the focus away from judging and often belittling students for their mistakes and toward instilling a passion for learning.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Legacy Should Be Honored, Not Overlooked

By Kaveri Pillai ’23

Staff Writer

Sept. 18, 2020 seemed to cast a shadow on all those preparing themselves for the revival of American democracy. Sadness, confusion — probably the first few emotions that clouded my mind when I read about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing. However, my social media platforms managed to turn this grief into frustration and anger. 

 My classmates’ posts from all over the world overcrowded my social media feed. The first few stories honored “The Notorious RBG’s” legacy and her contributions in the field of justice, but they didn’t seem to overpower the content that was fueled by irritation and sheer distaste in the 87-year-old associate justice’s work. It was surprising to see so many students my age flood Instagram with posts saying that “RBG could have done better.” These posts were created and shared by those who were focused on simply replacing her now vacant Supreme Court seat, preferably with a left-leaning candidate. 

I understand the importance of moving on and focusing on the future of how rights are addressed and how inclusive our legislation will be, yet this blatant neglect of Ginsburg’s contributions undermines her legacy. 

The 2020 presidential election is being viewed as the turning point for the United States. CNN confirmed President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett a few days after Ginsburg’s death. While one could have anticipated this strategic move from the Trump administration, it is worth seeing how Democratic voters have responded. Over the past few years, the Supreme Court has been divided into right- and left-wing groups, making the last standing apolitical branch political. With Barrett taking anti-abortion, ambivalent LGBTQ+ and pro-gun stances, she is being seen as the antithesis of what Ginsburg stood for. Her possible win could most certainly make it the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s. 

 As much as I understand the dangers of a 6-3 highly polarized Supreme Court, I can’t seem to put aside my respect for RBG. Not just her role and position as a justice, but as a woman who fought for change. She is the reason why gender discrimination was addressed as a clear violation of the 15th Amendment that supposedly champions equal protection. Anybody can be a caregiver or a breadwinner, regardless of their gender, a point that took Ginsburg decades to popularize. Does it really hurt to celebrate the woman she was? And can we take a second away from the scheming and focus on altruistic gratefulness for her service? 

With the current political and social climate in the U.S. drawing attention to the non inclusive environment we have created for many marginalized groups, many young voters argue that Ginsburg didn’t do enough. Her propagation of white feminism and her Supreme Court rulings catered to white women and disadvantaged women of color. American lawyer, activist and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, in her argument for promoting intersectionality, spoke about the “double jeopardy” faced by Black women in which they appear to be fighting for their race and gender. This ideology has been seconded by all the posts that demand Ginsburg supporters own up to her mistakes. 

Can one person really fight for every cause under the sun in a just manner? Can real change only be made in small steps? As a young advocate for civil liberties in the 1970s, Ginsburg’s first step for achieving gender equality was to establish precedence that this gender discrimination existed. Califano v. Goldfarb and Moritz v. Commissioner echo her fight for the right to fair survival conditions for women. It makes this hatred look severely gendered. If it were a man who fought for a few monumental causes, he’d be praised. Are we more critical of the lack of holistic approach to law taken by Ginsburg because she is a woman? And is it truly fair to spend days that should be spent honoring her cherry-picking her achievements? 

Ginsburg was more than just an American justice; she shaped how we view women’s rights all over the world. By remembering the woman she was and the legacy she left behind, we will get the closure required to ensure that the administration and the Supreme Court we get post-November is just and fair to all. 

Remembering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22

By Lily Reavis ‘21

Editor-In-Chief

As this edition of Mount Holyoke News is released on Sept. 24, 2020, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lies in repose at the Supreme Court. Late Friday night, Ginsburg died at age 87 late due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer. From Ginsburg’s early legal career and through her 27 years as the second woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court, she was a true champion for women’s and reproductive rights. The last decade of her life was marked by fame, as she became a cultural, legal and liberal feminist icon and her prominence on the Court expanded. 

While Ginsburg’s sharp focus on the advancement of women’s rights was profound and notorious, it is crucial to remember her mixed and, at times, problematic treatment of incarcerated individuals and people of color. Her legacy as a liberal icon will remain — with it, her silence on this year’s Black Lives Matter campaign, her dismissal of Indigenous rights and her disengagement with prison reform. 

Still, a fact remains: Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the ways of life for American women and LGBTQ+ individuals. She worked tirelessly for 60 years to undo the restraints placed on women in the home, in the workplace and in the courts. In 1972, Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and quickly convinced the Supreme Court to further consider laws that discriminated on the basis of sex. She pioneered same-sex marriage legislation in the Supreme Court, directly leading to its federal legalization in 2015. As a society now left without Ginsburg’s voice, we must recognize both her failures and her successes, holding in remembrance the rights and achievements she worked to give the American people. 

Ginsburg’s death will inevitably spark a torrid and polarized political debate, as it opened a seat on the Supreme Court just 46 days before the upcoming election. Her dying wish, we are told, was that her replacement would not be selected “until a new president is installed.” As we watch the next few months unfold, Ginsburg’s words regarding gender equality and representation remain. When will there be enough women on the Supreme Court? “When there are nine.”

‘Classic’ Books Must Be Evaluated for Their Prejudice

by Nina Larbi ’22

Op-Ed Editor

During these past six months of social distancing, I have been obsessively revisiting my favorite childhood media, going through my old bookshelves and rediscovering kids’ cartoons. Rereading my trusty favorites with a new pair of eyes made me realize how many stories I once loved were actually terribly bigoted. Had I tried to read the “Narnia” series now, I would have put it down 10 pages into “The Horse and His Boy,” because I don’t want to read about the nice white boy and the bad brown people who are polytheistic. 

Poor representation of marginalized groups in media isn’t just a problematic element to stories — it greatly impacts how they are consumed. Individual consumers have the right to refuse to read “1984” because of its sexism, or “To Kill a Mockingbird” because of its white savior complex, but rather than tacking on warnings telling audiences that “it was a product of its time,” we need to reconsider our literary canon and our discussions of how we approach media.

 The literary classic genre is highly esteemed by a number of influential people and has been deemed to have had a significant cultural impact over time. For example, “Catcher in the Rye” is an American classic because it was one of the first mainstream novels to discuss the problems of adolescence. The people who decide its cultural influence are those with high socioeconomic status, and thus have the means for their voices to be heard. Publications like The New York Times also have a hand in determining literary tastes, decisions that are then corroborated or rejected by the upper class. 

There are other “essential” media that are not of the 50-plus-year-old literary genre that may have been constructed by a wider audience, like the graphic novel series “Watchmen.” However, they did not rise to their status in a bias-free market. Western graphic novels like “Watchmen” have a very white and male audience, and the novel’s success was predicated on their tastes and prejudices. There are popular works now that have held their own for a handful of years, enough for socially distanced people like me to have gone back and revisited, like the children’s book series “Harry Potter” or “Percy Jackson,” but neither have existed for long enough to determine their relevance over time.  

The lack of diversity in the bodies of individuals who decide the cultural value of books is why book lists are completely populated by a homogenous group of authors, save for the occasional Maya Angelou. Furthermore, the authors of the popular books among my classmates that were not assigned in classes were also overwhelmingly white and male, except for the occasional white female author like J.K. Rowling who wrote the “Harry Potter” series. 

Understanding that classical literature is not neutral is key to deconstructing it. But we also have to reexamine our own feelings towards the specific classical works that we like. Do I like this because it’s nostalgic? Or do I think the message is poignant? If you enjoy reading “1984,” you can still like it, but you have to recognize and accept its sexism and understand that others may not want to read it because of that. 

Because of the multiple factors that go into what we consider classical, for both ourselves and for society at large, what I consider to be good but problematic might not be worth it for someone else to read. Additionally, there are other books out there! Librarians across the country have been rewriting their book lists to replace classics containing prejudiced language with books that are written by a more diverse range of authors that are not as “problematic,” like on the School Library Journal’s website. Ultimately, it’s not bad to like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but recognizing a work’s faults and why others may not like it is crucial to understanding its place in society.

International Students Bear the Burden of the College’s Decision to Go Remote

Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22

By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23

Earlier in August, on a breezy Friday evening, I got on a call with my college friend from Bombay, discussing Daal from the Dining Commons, Target hauls, Creighton Hall luxuries and our recently booked flight tickets back to the world of Mount Holyoke. After months of speculation, the international flights from India had finally opened up, and we had hurriedly talked to travel agents and finalized our not-so-cheap flight arrangements. To our great disappointment, just a couple hours later, College President Sonya Stephens’ email flashed on students’ screens across the globe, disinviting us from living on campus and instead moving to a completely remote system. 

While Mount Holyoke’s decision to move to an online forum prioritizes health and safety in the face of the growing pandemic, I found that this decision had added more challenges for international students than domestic students. 

The last-minute decision to close campus left many of us with a mess in regard to flight bookings and other expenses. I remember calling my friends back later that evening, asking them what they would do with their recently booked flight tickets. A cancellation would mean a 10 percent fee, which is expensive for an international flight. The 48-hour deadline to apply for extenuating circumstances did not give me time to consult with my parents on taking another new decision, and so we, like numerous other international students, resorted to doing my semester from home. Soon, my friends and I began frantically calling travel agents (for the umpteenth time), storage units and domestic relatives who had sent out our boxes to stall everything. While perhaps many domestic students have gone through flight cancellations and shipping reversals as well, the situation has been a lot more confusing and costly for international students, the flight expenses being a clear cut example of this. 

The online module has also not been an easy feat for international students. The classes are structured mainly around Eastern Standard Time. This leaves several of us, international students more so, having to take classes at extremely odd hours. For example, I dread having to stay up for my classes from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. during Module 2. This module, my professors have personally been extremely understanding of time differences, but there is nothing that can make them eradicate synchronous classes altogether and stay true to the College’s academic commitment. 

Sohini Bhatia ’23, also residing internationally for this semester, echoed this concern as well. While acknowledging the sincere efforts of the professors, Bhatia expressed how “trying to attend synchronous classes and getting all your quizzes and assignments on time” can be harder for the international student to do, especially while at the same time “juggling social lives and family time.” 

This is the same for clubs and organizations as well, having to attend meetings in the middle of the night. Siona Ahuja ’24 discussed these difficulties, stating, “My only fear is that of missing out on socializing with fellow first-years because they hold their plans when I am asleep.” 

Similarly, living in a modestly sized house myself, the sound of my classes carries through the house, disturbing the sleep of the rest of my family. Staying up so late inevitably leads me to sleep into the mornings and not be able to pitch in to help with the morning chores. 

Rameen Farrukh ’24, currently in Pakistan, has also experienced additional challenges for the household. “The power cuts and unstable internet has been one issue I recently faced in the storm season because every time there was a bad thunderstorm outside, I would have a class. This had given me so much stress mentally and financially because I had to arrange a heavier generator that could cope with a 12-hour power failure,” Farrukh said.  

There is also the added woe of not being able to take up campus jobs. On July 31, the student employment office sent out an email in which they noted that “due to issues related to international employment law, students who are living abroad, unfortunately, may not work for the College. This is true regardless of citizenship or previous employment with MHC.” They listed how, since employment laws vary widely from country to country, Mount Holyoke would not be able to comply with all these different regulations to “lawfully employ students living in various international locations,” according to the email. 

This revision to the employment plans prevents all of us residing abroad from taking up any offered campus jobs. For many international students, making this money is a big deal. What happens to those that rely on this income for work-study? Has all of this only become a perk to those residing domestically within the United States? 

Additionally, I watched international students from other American colleges take up college jobs and work in research labs, as teaching assistants and in writing centers. If other colleges are not necessarily following this procedure, why must Mount Holyoke? 

I acknowledge that Mount Holyoke is striving to best support all of its students, including the international population that it boasts of. However, I still find there is an inevitable and additional burden on international students’ shoulders compared to domestic students on the online platform. We are compromised in the face of classes, time zones, campus jobs and other expenses.

Performative Activism: Social Media’s Newest Problematic Trend

Graphic by Trinity Kendrick ‘21

By Kaveri Pillai ’23

In a world where social constructs like gender, race and religion seem to divide the public, social media has provided a platform to bridge that gap. For the past decade, social media users have been using their platforms to express their opinions. With the work of social movements rising in 2020, critics must question if this expression is just a way of ranting, or if it actually is a revolutionary form of activism. 

According to Robert Putnam’s work in “Bowling Alone,” social capital is a network of relationships made within the society, enabling them to work efficiently within the system. He highlights how active civil engagement has been decreasing for the past 30 years, which gives critics a reason to analyze this new type of activism more carefully. This is where the question comes up: Do we post on social media to enhance our social capital? Or do we attempt to be “woke” and conform to the trend of speaking up out of fear of being left behind? 

 Performative activism is a superficial way of demanding or making change. New York Times writer Nikita Stewart’s article, “Black Activists Wonder: Is Protesting Just Trendy for White People?”  is about a new wave of protests that consisted of predominantly white people during the Black Lives Matter marches in 2020. She expressed her reservations regarding their involvement, fearful that it would only be temporary. Her piece communicates a common theme of frustration with the fact that “allyship,” especially that of white people, has only occurred in response to recent social media trends. The immediacy of social media makes it easy to engage with, but this version of activism does not go far enough. 

Often, the core motivations for activism are misconstrued on social media. The “Challenge Accepted” trend resulted in women across the globe posting black and white pictures of themselves to show the idea that women stick together. Not only was the origin of this online trend eliminated from the posts, but it also merely scratched the surface of the original feminist issues which started the trend. 

Gendered honor killings is an issue Turkish feminists are attempting to combat with. The recent brutal killing of a 27-year-old student Pınar Gültekin by her ex-boyfriend reiterated the importance of raising awareness of femicide. The trend of posting these monochrome pictures was initiated as a way of echoing the pictures of murdered Turkish women that end up in the newspapers on a daily basis. 

This strong wave against patriarchal and misogynistic oppression was unfortunately reduced to young women using photoshoots to showcase their superficial solidarity with other women instead of honoring the original purpose of the challenge. This not only cheapens the social capital produced by a generation working tirelessly to demand legitimate change, but it also damages the growth they have accomplished in the fight to achieve justice. 

 On any given day, social media is flooded with content regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. Posts and stories address a myriad of points from checking your privilege to signing petitions calling for real structural change. “People know that Black people are constantly being murdered at a disproportionate rate, and seeing a video on Instagram that ‘proves it’ isn’t going to make any real change — the fact is that they just don’t care,” Chia Webb-Cazáres ’24 said. 

An overt sense of hypocrisy is laced in these posts. Many of the same people who repost CBS footage or the unforgettable words of Martin Luther King Jr. are the ones who fail to turn up at the voting booths. While performative activism may turn out to be a shortcut to increasing one’s social capital, it is constant engagement with the system which fulfills democratic duties. 

Voting is one such democratic duty that is an integral element of activism. In 2016, only 13 percent of the youth voted in the presidential election. In that same election, 47 percent of white women and 62 percent of white men voted for President Donald Trump. These staggering numbers justify the apprehension people of color have regarding the idea of allyship.

If this new age of activists is all about the talk and not about performing one’s duty as a democratic citizen, there will be no change in the way we view BIPOC, rewrite legislation or implement a sense of human decency in everyday life. The youth, regardless of their #blacklivesmatter posts and signatures on “Justice for Breonna Taylor” petitions, will continue to casually use racist slurs and make racist jokes because they haven’t actually committed themselves to the eradication of systemic racism. 

 A #blackouttuesday post does nothing, and neither does sharing videos of violence toward marginalized groups — which, if anything, desensitizes others to human rights violations. Generation Z might have produced great activists like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai, but in the end, our fight to be trendy over our fight to make real change has made our social performance meaningless. We have become the epitome of performative activism and social media has unwittingly promoted that.

‘Never Have I Ever’’s Representation of Indian Culture Misses the Mark

By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23

Staff Writer

This summer, as my Netflix subscription was renewed, I excitedly scurried to my laptop to watch Mindy Kaling’s new and much-hyped show, “Never Have I Ever,” pakoras and coffee in hand. But, as the show progressed and my coffee cup was downed, a sense of disappointment set in. “Never Have I Ever,” while striving to fill in the space of representation, falls short of the goal it sets out to achieve, instead caricaturing Indian identity and recycling regressive stereotypes. It doesn’t attempt to explain the origins of these practices, nor does it try to challenge them. The show works to reimagine what it means to be Indian in a way that caters to non-Indians and reinforces casteism, racism and other stereotypes.  

The show begins with our protagonist, Devi Vishwakumar, arms folded and praying to a set of Hindu gods — and her geometry textbook. She prays for a high school survival kit: parties, alcohol, drugs, thinner arm hair and a boyfriend (“a stone-cold hottie who could rock me all night long”). As she prays, a different voice takes over, introducing us to Devi and himself — legendary tennis player John McEnroe — the narrator throughout the whole season. The problems start here. “Never Have I Ever” could have been an opportunity for an Indian voice to talk about the Indian experience, but instead, this voice is handed over to an American man, one who cannot tell the story from the inside and one who cannot even correctly pronounce Ganesh Puja or Devi Vishwakumar. The very idea of representation is defeated by delegating the voice of the Indian diaspora to the white man once again. 

John McEnroe’s clumsy placement is coupled with cringey characters, mainly Devi’s mom Nalini and cousin Kamala. Both characters talk with an eccentric accent, desperately trying to establish their “Indianness.” On a talk show with the Los Angeles Times, Richa Moorjani, who plays Kamala, describes how she watched YouTube videos and underwent coaching to establish her “Indian accent,” as she herself had more of an “American accent.” While Moorjani claims this as a move to establish authenticity, it does quite the opposite. It others the Indian from the Indian American, making the former seem backward. Worse, it sounds nothing like an actual Indian accent. 

I have personally viewed the Indian accent as a source of embarrassment. I remember arriving in the United States before my first year of college to stay with family. I was asked how I would manage my accent in the United States and was advised to take accent classes to fit in like they had decades ago. Did I want all the contact numbers? I politely declined. Devi feels similar embarrassment when Kamala speaks, and the Never Have I Ever team does nothing to battle this, instead normalizing this feeling.

The caricaturing continues throughout the show. As writer Paroma Soni discusses in The Swaddle, a gender and culture magazine in India, “inspired in part by Kaling’s own life, this show does touch on many experiences familiar to Indians everywhere,” but “points them squarely at a Western, non-Indian audience in an exotified treatment of everyday Indian life.” From Nalini and Kamala to the group of gossiping aunties, an endless volley of tiresome tropes permeates the series. Nalini bears the brunt of several of these, from commenting on dropped textbooks to chiding Devi for wearing sleeveless clothes during a TikTok dance to telling her that the itchiness of her saree is a “rite of passage for women.” These dialogues scratch the surface of the ideas they want to explore. Introducing the superstition of books falling on the floor, for example, provides no context for why the religion holds that practice. Additionally, is it an oversight that the mangalsutra, an auspicious thread that is worn during marriage by a woman, still hangs around Nalini’s neck? Or is it a tokenistic attempt to make her look more culturally Indian? 

The cliches continue; Devi's crush, Paxton Hall Yoshida, likens Devi's beauty to Priyanka Chopra in a dream sequence. This generalizes all Indians to look like the token Indian actress in Hollywood, again catering more to Western audiences. Mindy Kaling’s position as an Indian American assumes the audience will accept the show as gospel. Simply having a diverse cast does not absolve her of her responsibilities to the South Asian diaspora. 

The show also asserts its main characters as complacent upper-caste Hindus, as seen in their trysts with marriage. Aarti Mann makes a cameo as Jaya Kuyavar, a woman ostracized from the community (and her family) for the cardinal sin of marrying a Muslim man. When she later dialogues with Kamala on her marriage and divorce, she regrets not listening to her parents, warning Kamala not to screw up her own impending arranged marriage. This quietly encourages the formula: Adhere to existing upper-caste Hindu norms and marry within your community, and you will be happy. When Kamala finally finds herself preferring her arranged marriage to being with her boyfriend, Steve. While trying to foster the idea that all arranged marriages are not bad, “Never Have I Ever” does so while once again promoting caste endogamy and pushing out characters like Steve and Jaya’s ex-husband as examples of what not to do. 

As discussed in Wear Your Voice magazine by Monica M, “Kaling is more interested in packaging Indian upper-caste Hindu American identity for the white gaze than she is in authentic storytelling. Shows like these continually erase the complex dynamics of South Asian experience and place their heads in the sand when it comes to critical socio-political realities that ground their shows.”

Coming from a Tamilian family like Devi’s, I felt a twinge of discomfort when I saw my cultural practices tossed about carelessly. I hope “Never Have I Ever” does not stop at making the show relatable, but in season two, takes the opportunity to question and challenge stereotypes. Only a show that commits itself to these goals will give the South Asian diaspora more of what it deserves in terms of representation.

Letter to the Editor - Dismantling Racism: Our Collective Responsibility

Here’s what the Dance department is doing.

We’ve heard from Kijua Sanders-McMurtry and Sonya Stephens about the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and so many others. We have also heard from our academic department — have you heard from yours? While the initial email that we received from our faculty fell short, it helped catalyze conversations among students in the dance department that have been long overdue.

At the Five College Dance town hall listening session, Kiara Badillo ’20 (Hampshire College) brought up the key point that this is not the start of the conversation — what’s changing now is who is in the room and who is listening. As protests began to gain more visibility on social media, Miranda Lawson ’22 messaged our dance group chat to stress the importance of continuing our outrage and action past this initial wave. The next day, we received an email from Five College Dance announcing an online dance festival. The email included no mention of the recent police murders and the protests. Soukeyna Abbott ’20 messaged the chat to urge us to write replies to FCD and its director, Alex Ripp, denouncing this insensitive and hurtful lack of recognition of current events and ongoing racism in the dance field. Lawson called our attention to the absence of teachers of color from the festival schedule. On Wednesday, June 3, we received an email from the Mount Holyoke dance department offering “support and solidarity” yet failing to back those sentiments with action. After Olivia Lowe ’21 replied all to denounce the hollow statement, many students sent emails to Chair of Dance Charles Flachs, cc’ing all dance faculty. After Sophie Clingan ’22 met with Ripp on the morning of June 4, they sent a summary of what they learned to the group chat and called for a meeting among the students in the dance department to discuss next steps.

In this two-hour-long meeting attended by many Mount Holyoke dance majors and minors, hard conversations were had. In our department, as well as across the Western world, focus is often laid heavily on the importance of modern and ballet, yet we fail to recognize the contributions of BIPOC to these forms. Meanwhile, dances of the African diaspora and other non-Western dances fall to the wayside. This is not surprising when our department does not have any full-time faculty of color. Discussing concrete examples of racism, as well as unveiling the trauma and hurt our Black friends and peers of color had experienced, brought us to a list of actionable demands for our department. 

These ideas are not perfect. Certainly, they need more funding than we have — and transparency about said funding is a crucial item on our list. How can we advocate for the hiring of faculty and staff of color, or bringing in a variety of dance companies to perform, when we don’t know where the money is coming from or going to? We want a dance history class that doesn’t focus on white narratives. We want more levels of hip-hop, house, West African and other non-Western dance forms. We want full-time professors of color in our department. We want a stronger connection to people outside our department, specifically with the dance organizations on campus that, it is worth noting, have more students of color than we do in our department. The racism in our department must be dismantled at the same speed at which we invite students of diverse racial and dance backgrounds to participate in our community. 

The intersection of racism and dance was acknowledged by the overarching body of FCD only after numerous frustrated emails were sent. As disheartening as that is, it makes it absolutely clear that the student communities at Mount Holyoke need to get in touch with their respective departments as well. Higher education is an institution built on racist ideologies and white supremacy. Each academic department must actively work to dismantle this foundation. While we are sharing what is happening in the dance department, that is not the only place these conversations are or should be occurring. Did your professors reach out to you when the protests began? Are they having conversations about the classes they teach and the resources they promote, as well as what they may be leaving out? Are you joining your academic community to make a push against the implicit racism that all white students on our campus engage in daily? As white people writing this op-ed, we are working to straddle the tension between not expecting BIPOC students to do the emotional labor of educating us about these issues, while also recognizing that we can’t know what changes to advocate for without listening to the lived experiences of our peers. When BIPOC share their experiences, we need to value the time and energy that takes by amplifying their voices and concerns and demanding action and accountability from those in power. 

On June 16, MHC dance faculty and students gathered for a smaller discussion. These exchanges are an encouraging sign of change to come, yet reveal how much work there is to be done. This is not the beginning of the conversation. Many of us are just showing up. What is your way in? 

- Sophie Clingan ’22 and Izzy Kalodner ’21

Letter to the Editor - Low voter turnout: An urgent national crisis

Amid the current public health crisis and racial justice protests across the country, the U.S. is facing an additional problem: a significant decline in voter registration. According to a recent USA Today article, new voter registration is down 70 percent in comparison to this time four years ago, a substantial decrease that will have serious repercussions for the presidential elections in November. Low voter turnout among young people is not a new phenomenon, because despite being the largest age demographic in the country, people aged 18 to 29 vote at rates 30 percent lower than other age groups on average. This discrepancy needs to be addressed immediately, for young people deserve to express how a plethora of political issues uniquely impact their age group. 

While it is improbable that all young people across the nation will be given easy access to voting resources, outreach on college and university campuses is an effective place to start. It is key that campuses create active voting coalitions to ensure that voting is easy and safe, as well as engage students with the democratic process as a whole. It is imperative that members of the administration, faculty, staff and student organizations work together to actively promote voter registration resources and encourage students to have their opinions represented on Election Day.

Young people will inherit the political decisions made by elected officials, and the effects of these decisions have the potential to drastically impact our lives, for better or for worse. We deserve to have our opinions heard. We must vote.

Kate Murray

Mount Holyoke Student

Student PIRGs Summer Intern

Letter to the Editor: Voting at MHC

My generation, 18-to 21-year-olds, make up the highest eligible voter population in the country, but have the lowest voting rate. Before COVID-19 took over, organizations like Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) were focusing on campaigns like the New Voters Project on college campuses to motivate students to vote. What can we do to fix this while still making sure people are voting safely?

At Mount Holyoke, in 2018, our campus had a 59.9 percent voter turnout, which means that over 700 students did not vote. For our school, that is more than an entire class year! It is time for our campus to get as excited for voting as we do when we hear “Baby’s starting Mount Holyoke College in the fall.” Our international students will be affected by whatever policy or official is in office so those who have the ability to vote, should!

The state of our college is unknown right now but elections will still take place in the fall even if we are virtually learning. Reach out to your local congressman about how you can vote safely in your hometown.

I vote because it is my right. It is my way of having a voice at an age where I can’t run for office. Mount Holyoke is a place of inclusion and where leaders are educated so our campus should work on being the leading college with voter turnout in the Pioneer Valley. 

Jaxzia Perez

Mount Holyoke Student

Student PIRGs Summer Intern