ehgazette.blogs.brynmawr.eduENGLISH HOUSE GAZETTE | News & Information by students at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges

ENGLISH HOUSE GAZETTE | News & Information by students at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges Skip to primary content Skip to secondary content ENGLISH HOUSE GAZETTE News & Information by students at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges Search Main menu Home About the English House Gazette Post navigation ← Older posts Coming Apart Posted on January 30, 2020 by tferrick Whatever happened to Haverford College’s strong sense of community? Haverford First-Year students, 2018-19 By Zachary Broadman Haverford College has an enrollment of just over 1,300 students, making it one of the smallest private liberal arts colleges in the country. Its students live and learn on a beautiful 500-acre campus where they can engage in academic discovery, participate in athletics, clubs, and student organizations, and support each other’s growth as they experience new ways of thinking about and participating in their community and their world. It sounds like a perfect recipe for a tight-knit, cohesive, and engaged community centered on Haverford’s stated values of “trust, concern, and respect.” But tragically, it is not. Talk to students, teachers and administrators about the community at Haverford, and many will say they are dissatisfied with it. Most feel that any sense of a campus-wide community is either in decline or nonexistent. Sydney Dorman, a senior astrophysics major at Haverford, has watched people become less interested in large campus-wide events and more focused on their increasingly-small friend groups. “People were a lot more passionate about school events,” Dorman said of the community she encountered upon arriving at Haverford. Now, she says, “school dances seem smaller and there’s less energy and excitement about them.” Her concern extends beyond the events. In her first two years at Haverford, she said that friend groups tended to be bigger and more diverse – full of people with a wide range of backgrounds, interests, and living spaces. “Now,” Dorman said, “I feel like there are smaller friend groups of people from similar backgrounds.” Dorman is not the only senior who feels the community has become more fractured during her time at Haverford. Neel Shah, a senior who transferred into Haverford his sophomore year, said that his first impression of the school was that it was a very close community. But in the past two years, he has noticed a change. “As I’ve spent more time here… Haverford has become slightly more individualistic as opposed to whole-community oriented,” Shah said. Haverford College football team 1897-98 These views are echoed by faculty and administrators whose detachment from day to day student life gives them a wider field of vision when it comes to campus affairs. Michael Elias is the Dean of Student Engagement, Leadership, and Divisional Initiates at Haverford College. He oversees Haverford’s freshman orientation program and is one of the primary advisors to all student council positions, student organizations, and campus programming. He, too, said that he’s noticed a change since he first came to work at Haverford in 2010. “I think that some of our larger events that we have historically planned – I don’t know that they necessarily feel like community events anymore,” Elias said. “I feel like we’re missing something.” Continue reading → Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bryn Mawr College , Clearness Committee , community at Haverford , English House Gazette , Haverford College , Zachary Broadman The Bryn Mawr Lexicon Posted on January 30, 2020 by tferrick What you need to know to be a true Mawrtyr. By Chloe Vilkin Bryn Mawr College is known for its major traditions, but the everyday traditions are just as important. Learning the campus lingo can be confusing as a new student. Here is a lexicon of helpful words to know to become a true Mawrtyr. Bra tree [brah][tree] noun a Weeping Hemlock located outside of Rockefeller dorm. This tree is often found with a bra or two strewn about its branches. The scent of pot can be smelled wafting around the walkway next to this tree most days, as it is visited daily by students who wish to smoke marijuana cigarettes under the privacy of its floor-length tangle of branches. At some point, probably years ago, students maneuvered a wooden bench between the branches of the tree so they could sit comfortably while smoking: “I heard a few underclassmen outside of the canopy ask each other if they thought it smelled like weed, and I looked over to my friend and whispered, “Don’t they know they are right by Bra tree? ” Bryn Mawr Chop [brin][mahr][chop] noun a dramatic haircut often gotten at some point during a student’s time at Bryn Mawr College. The haircut stereotypically involves one “chopping” their hair from a long A Bryn Mawr student getting her chop length to a collarbone-or-shorter length. This change often—but definitely not always—coincides with some sort of shift in the student’s gender identity or pronouns. This haircut is not necessarily a one-time-only experience: “I saw that Meagan had shaved her head before the school year began when I walked in to the first journalism class of the year. The year before she cut her long locks into a short bob, and the year before that she shaved one side of her head. I asked how she would continue her yearly tradition of the Bryn Mawr Chop if she had already shaved her head, but she did not have an answer.” see also: post-breakup haircut Cancel culture [ kan -s uh l][ kuhl -cher] noun the general ease with which people are “cancelled” for because of statements or actions made that go against the unspoken norms of the political, social, and philosophical beliefs of the student body and faculty. The cancel culture at Bryn Mawr is substantial, despite the fact that the norms shift with time. Students seem always ready and willing to call each other out for doing or saying “problematic” things; the issue with this sort of culture is that students are so ready to “cancel” other people they often do not give them a chance to correct their behavior or change their point of view: “I told my friend that I like to watch Jeffree Star’s YouTube videos and she asked me if I did it ironically, because he is cancelled. “ “In my head I thought: “Well, he apologized for using a slur, which was like 10 years ago, and he has changed his behavior since then, and this is why I hate cancel culture because people are not allowed to move on after they make a mistake.” Out loud I just said, “no.” Chamber of Secrets [ cheym -ber][uhv, ov][ see -krits] noun a small, unlit room within the depths of Old Library. This room sits at the very end of the odd tunnels in the basement of Old Library, formerly known as Thomas Hall. It is located next to a door that leads from the tunnels to the lobby area of the graduate student lounge. The Chamber has been blocked off with a chain link door and a padlock since 2015, although this has not stopped students from maintaining the tradition of writing their names in the Chamber. Instead of writing on the walls and across the pipes that run along the low-hanging ceiling inside the Chamber, students scroll their Sharpies along the edges of the door and the eggshell-colored walls: “It was 2016 and I was a first-year contemplating what incredible thought to write outside the Chamber of Secrets as part of the first night of Hell Week. “Fuck the Patriarchy,” I said out loud as I uncapped my pen.” Continue reading → Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Athena , Bryn Mawr chop , Bryn Mawr College , Bryn Mawr lexicon , Cancelled , Chloe Vilkin , English House Gazette , Haverbro , Haverford College , M. Carey Thomas Three Poets, Three Poems Posted on January 30, 2020 by tferrick The poems and their creators By Meaga n Thomas Vivian The first reader to take to the lectern, she wears a yellow dress over a black turtleneck and tights, like a cheerful shell over mourning clothes. Her voice wavers for a moment, then takes on a smooth legato quality, lulling, soo...