Administration should stop holding Mountain Day on Friday

Graphic by Hale Whitney ’26

Abby Paull ’28

Staff Writer

“I hope the rapture doesn’t happen so we can still have a Mountain Day!” was the internal monologue of many Mount Holyoke students during the week of Sept. 21. Fortunately, the rapture did not happen that week, but Mountain Day did, on Friday, Sept. 26. The reception for this was overall poor. Some rejoiced that it had finally happened, while others were left confused.

Many students do not have class on Fridays, so many spend this day off campus or sleeping in and resting. Over the course of my day I heard many disappointed conversations. President Holley’s choice of holding Mountain Day on a Friday leaves out students who typically use Friday as a day off.

Mountain Day is a well-loved college tradition where every year, the president of the College cancels morning and early afternoon classes. On the day of, the clock tower’s bells ring a hundred times at 7 a.m., commencing Mountain Day. Students and faculty alike hike to the summit of Mount Holyoke, Joseph Allen Skinner State Park. Historically, Mountain Day has been held on a weekday, giving students a break from their classes.

However, by holding Mountain Day on a Friday, the majority of students who have few, if any classes that day, and who may have already had plans are left neglected.

The various issues associated with this year’s Mountain Day likely come from poor planning on the administration’s end. For example, the week of this year’s Mountain Day was also the week of ​​Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish holiday in celebration of the Jewish new year. The administration would have known about this prior to booking Skinner State Park for the week: Calendars exist for this reason.

There was also a torrential downpour the night before Mountain Day, Sept. 25. Despite this, administration still chose to hike the mountain. The planners of Mountain Day should have taken proper precaution after the rainfall. Rainfalls like this in Western Massachusetts are pretty awful mud-wise, which could have endangered students.

To plan Mountain Day better, College administration should have booked the mountain for a week where there are no major religious holidays or significant rain showers, both of which present limits and challenges to student participation.

The College puts an emphasis on community on Mountain Day. But how are we to have true community when most of the student body is off campus, attending to other matters? You are not giving students a break by putting Mountain Day on a Friday, because most students have already finished their academic week. Mountain Day should be held on a weekday — not a Friday — to give students a true break.

Mountain Day’s true purpose is meant to bring students out of their stress and remind them of their community. Mountain day can’t be perfect every year, but instead of holding it on the Friday after a major rain storm and religious holiday, the College should have eaten the cost and rebooked it for the next week. Friday is not a major academic day, so most people already have a break and use this time to go home or catch up on well-needed rest.

Either way, Mountain Day should not be on Friday.

Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact-checking.

Queer operas and us: Representation is important

Photo courtesy of Anna Goodman ’28

The all-Korean production of “Bare,” an American musical from the early 2000s, inside a performing arts center in the heart of Seoul, South Korea.

By Anna Goodman ’28

Staff Writer

Content warnings: homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia.

(This article uses “queer” extensively as it is how the author identifies; if this makes you uncomfortable, please do not read.)

It’s already past 6 p.m. and I’m standing at an intersection in the middle of Seoul, conspicuously blonde and conspicuously lost, when I admit to myself that this was a terrible idea. I’m searching for a performing arts center, and in it the all-Korean production of a show most people haven’t heard of.

“Bare” is an American musical from the early 2000s, and in many ways, it feels like it. Set at a Catholic boarding school in 1990s America — MHN’s entire queer readership is already wincing — it follows two boys, Jason and Peter, who are secretly lovers, in their final semester before college. It’s moving, it’s heartbreaking, it features a bewildering amount of Bible verses and Shakespeare quotes for a two-hour show, and, like most queer media of its time, its ending is undeniably tragic.

But why go? In an era with hundreds of hours of media at my fingertips that make it a point to emphasize queer joy, why am I sitting in this theater, hoping for a happy ending when I know there won’t be one? Thinking, “maybe it will be different this time?”

Well, the first time I listened to “Bare,” at the ripe old age of twelve, I had been teetering on the edge of telling my parents the truth for at least a year.

“911 Emergency” is a song written so long ago that its main hook is about putting change into a payphone and telling the operator to connect you. But its message — that your parents will love you anyway, and that you deserve to live as who you are — is evergreen. I replayed it more times than I can count. Because, finally, someone understood.

Peter picks up the phone. And so did I.

I soon began wondering if other people also felt this kind of deep, immediate emotional connection when seeing themselves for the first time. So I asked twelve people, six Mount Holyoke students, six not, ranging from ages 15 to 68, to name me queer media that meant something to them as a teenager or young adult.

The difference in their responses — which amounted to 34 separate pieces of media — is telling. The four non-students I asked, aged 36, 40, 53, and 68, took much longer to answer and had far less to choose from. Every one mentioned at least one work with what I’d consider a “tragic” ending, where at least half of the couple dies or where they do not end up together because of societal pressure.

By contrast, my fellow students, and the two other interviewees younger than me could point to any one of a number of shows, movies, musicals, songs, video games, et cetera, that fit their specific experiences. “Red White And Royal Blue.” “Heartstopper.” “Our Flag Means Death.” “Alien Stage.” “She-Ra.”

My mother, who’s roughly the same age as the writers of “Bare,” said, “When I was in high school and most of college [from 1985 - 1992] it was the time of the AIDS crisis … I don’t think the word ‘gay’ was said in any of my high school or college classrooms. If I try to think back I just picture, hazily, a few caricatures on TV and very serious news reports and films about people dying.”

“The queer media representation that came out of the AIDS crisis can be seen as a double-edged sword,” scholar Lillian Joy Myers says in an overview of the changes in queer media. “On one hand, the representation of this time was incredibly powerful and influential … [in describing] how this crisis shook the queer community…[yet] these depictions continued to perpetuate the queer trauma narratives of years past, maintaining a one-dimensional, negative view of queerness and the association between queerness and trauma.”

The effect growing up in this environment has on a queer person can’t be underestimated and is palpable throughout “Bare.” To this day, I come back to Jason’s lines at the end of Act 1 of: “Not all tales have happy endings …‘cause there's no such thing as heroes who are queer”. To this day I wonder how many children still grow up feeling the same way.

The answer: Too many.

But, hopefully, because of media like “Bare,” less.

Speaking to Playbill on the 15th anniversary of the show, “Bare” writer Jon Hartmere said, “I came out while writing ‘Bare.’ I didn't learn I was gay. But I learned it was okay.”

Hartmere’s characters may not have gotten their happy ending. But he helped create a world that meant that he could. He’s now openly gay, and still with his partner of nearly 20 years.

Hilariously, despite all of my preteen angst, neither my parents nor I remember the specifics of when I came out to them. It ended up being so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that the most any of us could remember was that I was probably still twelve.

And, despite the fact that I (thankfully) had what was probably the least eventful coming out in history, “Bare” has held a special place in my heart since. Not only as the capstone of my own journey, but as my reminder not to grow complacent.

In a way, it’s heartwarming that a show made almost thirty years ago can still connect with someone who is lucky enough to have never experienced what its protagonists — or its writers — have.

But it’s heartbreaking too. Because when I watch “Bare,” I don’t just see Peter and Jason. I see the little kids in each of my friends that aren’t quite healed from that feeling of growing up on their own. I see the kids of generations long gone — and far too recent — that never even had the chance to live the lives they wanted.

And then I see my friend Ella, who I often call my ‘honorary little sister.’ When I asked her about what it was like growing up seeing people like her on screen, she said, “Seeing so much casual queer representation at such a young age was amazing for me and my girlfriend … Nothing to make a huge deal about, just something that you are and can be happy with.”

Clearly, we have made progress. We have made change. But I can’t and won’t sit here and argue that we’ve made enough.

In 2024, GLAAD reported that the number of explicitly LGBTQ characters on television was 468, which, while an incredible change from thirty years ago, is still a decrease of over 100 characters since the year before, and less than 1 in 10 characters overall.

When you consider that over 1 in 5 of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ+ today, it’s clear that our media still lacks the numbers that would allow the diversity and humanity really present in our community.

As Myers puts it, in the same piece as above, “Queer characters and storylines are still underrepresented compared to … non-queer plots … Many of them still center white, cisgender, affluent, able-bodied, adult, and/or male characters… [there’s also] the continued use of stereotypes and the prevalence of queer tokenization.”

It's easy, especially for someone like me, to get so swept away in how far we’ve come that we neglect the fact that we still have so far to go. I have two very progressive parents who, despite the time they grew up in, have always made it clear that their acceptance does not come with an asterisk. I go to Mount Holyoke, a very queer-accepting college. I am publishing this in their newspaper. I do not need “Bare” in the same way my twelve year old self did.

But that’s okay, because someone else always does.

Back in Seoul, when I look to my left in the theater, I see something stuck between realization and fear in the eyes of the boy next to me. When I look to my right I see the palpable guilt in the faces of nearly every person old enough to have kids. When I look down at the stage, I see tears on the faces of every performer as the actors who play Peter and Jason hold each other one more time as the curtain closes.

So, I turn to that boy, with fear in his eyes, and we talk. And we keep talking. He’s 15. He walks me home and he complains about his math classes and I gripe about how terrible my Korean is.

I want to ask. I’m scared to ask.

It’s past midnight and I’m standing at an intersection in the middle of Seoul, when this boy tells me, quietly, half through a translator, half through hesitant English, about his best friend. When he stumbles over the words, and he just can’t say it. I hug him. I tell him I understand. That it’s going to be okay.

He’s just a kid. He should be allowed to just…live.

When my parents’ plane lands the next morning, I hug them harder than I have in a long time.

The truth is, I know how the story of “Bare” will end every time it starts, and still, every time, I think to myself: maybe it will be different. Maybe it’ll have a happy ending. And then I realize: Who says it can’t?

My mom grew up in a world that gave her stereotypes and fear; Ella is growing up in a world that gave her “She-Ra.” I’m not naive. I know it’s not easy. It’s a scary world out there, and it’s only getting scarier.

In just a few months, the Trump Administration has rolled back Biden’s protections of LGBTQ+ youth as a whole, made it even harder than it was before for trans youth to access gender-affirming care and surgery, cut federal funding for HIV research and treatment, and issued an executive order stating that that there are only two genders, based on “biological sex.”

They tried to erase us before, and they’re trying again.

But it will be different this time. Maybe not for Jason, or for Peter. But for Ella. For every friend who’s ever called me late at night on the edge of something they don’t understand or told me they were scared to go home. For the boy who hugged me in the middle of Seoul because he had no one else to tell.

For me and for you.

The people who came before us fought tooth and nail for us to be where we are today. And there is no way on this side of the grave that anyone is going to tell my children that “there’s no such thing as heroes who are queer.” Don’t let someone tell yours either. Call your mom. Hug your friends. Tell someone you love them.

Be brave. Be loud. And live.

Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact-checking.

Fizz goes against the Mount Holyoke Honor Code

Graphic by Brianna Stockwell ’28

By Abby Paull ’28

Staff Writer

“I will honor myself, my fellow students and Mount Holyoke College by acting responsibly, honestly and respectfully in both my words and deeds.” For those who are not aware, this is the Mount Holyoke College Honor Code pledge. Students during their first year are expected to sign the honor code in order to show their commitment to the school’s ideals. It was put in place to hold the students of Mount Holyoke to a certain standard that reflects the College. But due to the rise of anonymous social media apps, students are no longer able to be held accountable for breaking certain aspects of the code. The only way we can prevent this in the future is to get rid of this pathetic anonymity. 

Fizz is an app that allows Mount Holyoke students to sign up through their school email and post their thoughts anonymously, similar to apps such as the University of Massachusetts’ Yikyak or Smith College’s Confesh. The problem with Fizz is its anonymity; allowing students to engage with each other namelessly gives them the opportunity to cyberbully each other without consequence. 

Over my first year, I saw Fizz users express Islamophobic, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic sentiments. And, Fizz doesn’t have a limit on how much you can post, making it possible for these controversial comments to be created by one student or a collective of like-minded students. The effect of this is that it floods the app with these comments, setting a standard for the conversations the students are having, and distorting the overall image people have of the campus community 

One may argue that the app’s anonymity is actually helpful because it allows students to share resources and ask questions about campus they might’ve not been able to or comfortable doing before. One student can ask another the easiest way to get back to Mount Holyoke from Smith on a weekend. Though this is helpful, it is few and far between. More often, Fizz being anonymous allows students to ragebait each other and target individual students without consequence from the school. 

The Honor Code  tells us that: “A Mount Holyoke student demonstrates their respect for individual freedom by conducting themselves with maturity and honor, and by showing due concern for the welfare of other members of the community.” I ask this question: How are Fizz and other anonymous apps helping the welfare of the community? To help the welfare of the community, we should work on students being able to respectfully confront people and communicate instead of brewing hatred and letting it explode online.

It is urgent that we hold students at Mount Holyoke up to the standard of The Honor Code. Hiding behind anonymity creates the opportunity for ragebaiting, discrimination and bullying to come into the community. There is enough discourse outside our college. If you as a student are going to use your Mount Holyoke College email to spew hatred about your community that you CHOSE to be a part of, you owe it to your fellow students to reveal who is spewing that nonsense.

The College’s community fears confrontation, and some believe that anonymous platforms such as Fizz will heal our ailments. But what good will getting into an argument with your classmate online do for your mental health? I urge the Mount Holyoke community to address this and find different ways to express their emotions.

Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact checking. 

Jimmy Kimmel's suspension is a threat to free speech

Graphic by Mari Al Tayb ’26

By Angelina Godinez ’28

Opinion Section Editor 

Sept. 17 marked the suspension of Emmy-winning late night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, after the host, Jimmy Kimmel, made comments regarding the shooter of Charlie Kirk and his affiliation to the far right. Shortly after MAGA media personality Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, outbursts from both the left and right sparked debate on not only the Second Amendment, but also the first: The right to free speech, regardless of your political viewpoints. After weighing in on the debate, and calling out Kirk’s shooter for his affiliation with MAGA, Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily suspended from ABC, a television network that is widely controlled by President Donald Trump's censorship. 

This suspension is quite ironic, considering Kimmel’s comments on Kirk's death are also a form of free speech, something Kirk has been celebrated for posthumously; yet, Kimmel was not glorified nor promised a Presidential Medal of Freedom by the president as Kirk was. The fearmongering influence Trump holds over big news and broadcasting companies should be no surprise, as censorship and bribes have been seen within The New York Times, ABC, PBS, and even The Washington Post, which is owned by right-winger Jeff Bezos. 

Kirk was a close confidant of Trump and a great supporter of his agenda. He was very passionate about traditional, all-American ways of living, such as the right to own firearms. Prior to becoming a victim of gun violence, Kirk once stated, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.” This rationale seems to only be true, however, when the violence is not being perpetuated against the far right, but against marginalized groups such as transgender youth and people of color.

Minutes before losing his life, Kirk was being questioned about gun violence. He continued to voice biases against supposed gang members and trans youth, painting them as the stereotyped perpetrators of gun violence. Despite these beliefs, Kirk was ultimately killed by a white and cisgender man. This discovery led left- and right-wing politicians alike to debate the glorification of a man who once preached that gun violence — which is most commonly perpetrated against minorities and children — is in fact necessary in order to maintain the right to bear arms. 

Most American late-night television shows use lighthearted rhetoric to discuss politics, so it is in no way shocking for Kimmel to speak on recent events in this way himself. He said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it." This comment is nothing more than a mere observation, especially when compared to the radical and violent threats that MAGA participants commonly make. Regardless, Kimmel was temporarily suspended for his comments criticizing the United States government. It is clear that the current administration would not only rather protect access to firearms over protecting its own supporters, but also has no hesitation in using dystopian censorship to silence anyone who even attempts to rebut their statements. 

It is alarming to see the amount of coverage given the shooting of one cisgender white wealthy man by another, as opposed to the paltry amount given to the Colorado school shooting that occurred the same day as Kirk’s. Or to the teachers, students and international advocates who continue to face daily threats for advocating against what the United Nations Human Rights Council has recently deemed a genocide in Gaza. Prior to this declaration from the U.N.H.R.C., even mentioning genocide and Palestine in the same sentence came with extreme risk, a hypocrisy that is a perfect example of the dictatorial administration we are forced to live in silence under. 

Although it is unfortunate that Kimmel was suspended after such minor comments about the right wing, the same is happening every day on a much smaller, but nevertheless important scale; something that is failing to be covered by news outlets out of their own fear of censorship and lawsuits from the Trump administration. 

It is no doubt that, regardless of Kimmel’s suspension status, he still holds great status and voice within American news outlets. Now, how he and other white men respond to censorship still remains a question. In a day and age where even wealthy white men are at risk of censorship, who will be the first to cross the line and speak up for the years of silencing and threats that marginalized groups have faced? 

Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact checking. 

Without memory, there is not a future: Fascism and you

Photo courtesy of Steve Goodman

Anna Goodman in a former Portuguese prison.

By Anna Cocca Goodman ’28

Staff Writer

“You know,” my father said, “Portugal is supposed to be sunny.”

But instead, it’s 2 p.m. on a rainy Sunday in January 2024, and I’m tumbling into a museum whose entrance is tucked into a Lisbon street corner, with soaking wet hair, rudimentary (at best) Portuguese, and an umbrella broken in ways I didn’t know umbrellas could break.

To be honest with you, I agree to go inside partly just to get dry.

But once there, ticket in hand, I find myself faced with a deep red wall, painted with the words: sem memória, não há futuro. I ask the first person I see to explain. “It means,” the woman replies, “without memory, there is no future.”

When someone says “fascism,” what do you picture?

I asked three Mount Holyoke College history professors who specialize in different time periods and continents to see what they thought.

“In Ghana, around the …'70s and the '80s, there were several revolutions and what a lot of people may consider authoritarian rule,” Professor of Pre-Colonial African History Ishmael Annang said.

“I mean, there's a lot of oligarchies in history,” Professor of Modern African American History, Caleb Smith replied. “But if you're talking about a dictatorship, I mean, Putin … that's as good an example as there gets.”

“Especially as a Jewish studies professor,” Yiddish Book Center Director and Professor Madeleine Cohen said, “when I think of fascism, of course, I tend to think of Nazi Germany.”

Whatever you think of, I don’t think it’s Portugal.

So let me change that.

The story of Portuguese dictatorship officially begins with a military coup in 1926, when António Salazar came to power; a man, who, according to the Huxley Almanac, was “a rather strange dictator … Despite being an autocrat, he didn’t build any palaces for himself, nor did he wage any wars … [but] he remained at the top for 36 years, becoming the longest-ruling dictator in Europe.”

Salazar’s reign of terror was marked not only with extreme violence but with a widespread suppression campaign which was nicknamed “Lápis Azul,” or “blue pencil,” after the tools his censors used to strike out content deemed unsuitable for publication.

In 1936, after drafting a new “constitution,” Salazar made a speech whose most famous lines were as follows: “We do not discuss the fatherland and its history. We do not discuss the family and its morals. We do not discuss the glory of work and its duty. We do not discuss authority and its prestige. And we do not discuss God and his virtue.”

“It sounds like a really good, almost textbook example of dictatorship,” Cohen said, later in our interview, “So what it makes me think of is, why in the U.S. do we only talk about Hitler?”

And it isn’t just the U.S. either. The Museu do Aljube, the museum I mentioned at the beginning, says in their mission statement, “[We] intend to [take] on the struggle against the exonerating, and, so often, complicit amnesia of the dictatorship we faced between 1926 and 1974.”

The museum itself is actually located in a building that was once used to imprison and torture political dissidents, and it is a hauntingly immersive experience. There are the sudden flashes of camera light. There are the cell bars criss-crossing the ceilings. There are the telephones that ring through the loudspeakers, making your heart race out of your chest before you can remind yourself that you haven’t done anything wrong.

But the most affecting part is a dark, silent space, a seven foot by four foot room, kept pristine from its days as an isolation cell. Inside, there’s just enough room next to the wooden pallet and flea-bitten blanket masquerading as a bed for seventeen-year old me to walk up to the opposite wall and see, scratched with some kind of sharp rock, 12 tally marks and the words: “João, 1940.”

It is an image that will never leave my mind. And, really, that’s the point.

“Sem memória, não há futuro,” or, as the stranger I met kindly translated, “without memory, there is not a future,” is a quote all over the museum. Its mission statement, as it says on its website, is “[to preserve] the memory of histories and active citizenship, and [to break] the silence in which everyone was submerged and rescue them in order to educate the younger generations.”

But who are those younger generations? Who are these people that the museum is fighting for?

I’ll tell you.

It's the Angolan teenager in the cafe who showed me a video of him playing fútbol with his team and said with a wink, “Promise you’ll look for me on the TV one day.” Fifty years ago, they wouldn’t have let him play.

It's the German waiter who bartends part-time for fun, and, in between spouting cheesy pick-up lines and unserious marriage proposals, tells me about his gay brother and what he said when he came out to him. (“The way I see it, if everyone only liked rice, nobody would buy pasta. And then all of Italy would be out of business. You need variety!”) Fifty years ago, he would have been arrested.

It's the Korean exchange student in the Museu do Aljube, who managed to teach me the little phrase in Portuguese that made this article come to life with her own alphabet. (“No-no, ha, ha, like laughing in Hangul.” Ah! Jaraesseoyo!). Fifty years ago, she wouldn’t even have been there, and she definitely wouldn't have been allowed to study journalism.

It’s the seventeen year-old American girl who complains when her father drags her to some museum because he remembers when he was her age and hearing about a revolution half a world away, not knowing that she’ll be just as moved by the story as he was in real time. She’s also a reporter. But she hasn’t written this story yet.

And it’s you too.

Because knowledge, protest, dissent – it isn't just important for those at the highest level. From the dissidents imprisoned in claustrophobic isolation cells to the journalists who printed their calls to action in secret, to the people marching in the streets, to everyone who had the strength to keep living anyway, their actions matter.

After thanking each of my interviewees for their time, I asked if I could read a short quote from a poem by Manuel Allegre, drawn on the museum’s walls. “Mêsmo na noite mais triste, em tempo de servidão, há sempre alguém que resiste, há sempre alguém, que diz: não.” Even on the saddest night in times of servitude, there is always someone who resists, there is always someone who says: no.

“It is so true,” Annang said. “I think society has created the false notion that those who do not get on the streets or those who do not gather on the field are probably not in some form of dissent or resistance. But just saying no is resistance.”

It’s 2 p.m. on a sunny Wednesday in May 1974, and a waitress is walking home from work. When she passes a young soldier, she hands him a carnation, which he puts in the barrel of his rifle. Within hours, every soldier has a red flower in his gun, and thus, because of Celeste Caeiro, the day the Portuguese dictatorship crumbled is known as the Carnation Revolution.

And I would be lying if I said all this and didn’t tell you that, in writing this article, I was a little scared. I’m still scared. Just a little over a week ago, ABC was intimidated by the White House into pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the air after he even dared to insinuate that President Donald Trump was not as broken up about Charlie Kirk’s death as he claimed. I’m eighteen now, and we are watching a fast-paced descent into fascism in real time in our own country.

But I’ve seen change happen with my own eyes, from the women’s marches in 2016 to the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and, on a smaller scale, on campus, with the protests over fair wages for our staff.

Change wasn’t just made by the members of the Mount Holyoke workers’ unions striking, but by the students who marched with them, by the choir who turned their backs during Commencement, by the speakers who took pains to show their support, by the people who painted signs even if they couldn’t walk, by the photographers who documented the protests and by the journalists here at MHN who wrote so beautifully about them.

“The museum is what taught me that you can do something small,” I said to Smith during our interview. “I'm kind of curious what you think, say, an average person could do?”

“I would challenge the word ‘small,’” Smith answered. “I would use everyday acts of resistance. Truth is, no act of resistance is small ... And so that has been something [constant] throughout, especially looking at the American Civil Rights Movement [in the] African American context. Everyday resistance has always been a thing. And collective organizing, whether it is pickets, boycotts, or even, putting on stage shows. It all counts.”

“I think that there is so much that students can do,” Annang said. “You have the ability to educate yourself and educate your peers so that when we have people protesting, it's not just because they're following the crowd, but they really know and have a conviction of what exactly they are protesting about.”

Sem memória, não há futuro. Without history, there is no future. Without history, there is no us. And without us, there is no history.

Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact checking.