Show and Tell
The looming humiliation of Annenberg; the Darwinian process of forming blocking groups; the problem sets and papers; the slow and purposeful slides up the totem pole. What do you get after three years of toil? One night at Iruña a group of fifteen—err, make that 11—seniors joined together as they do every year at FM’s behest, and tried to answer that question.
Alex L. Pasternack arrives in a funky red hat and starts chatting about seniors’ favorite topic. “Garbage. My thesis is about garbage,” he says.
Tension is thick as some guests wait for the call with the results of the UC presidential election. “I brought tissues for either event,” says Alicia Menendez, who, like fellow guest Brandon M. Terry, is a Moore-Nichols supporter. The split-ticket disappointment revealed later in the evening casts a pall.
Yan Xuan (who is in two bands with the same members but different names) consults with fellow artiste Terry about his rap group Tha League’s recent music video.
In the absence of Sameer Narang, who’s stuck in New York, Xuan observes that he is “the one Asian dude” at the table. Joyfully, he performs what was referred to in the seventh grade as “raising the roof.”
Beside him, Terry and Trager are similarly absorbed with race relations. Trager, a vocal conservative, asks Terry, a former president of the Black Men’s Forum, about the existence of racism.
“I grew up in New York City, and I just don’t see it,” Trager says. “Maybe because I didn’t grow up in Alabama?”
“Being black in America means you get just one chance,” says Terry. “I’m not going to say you don’t get one. But you sure as hell don’t get two.”
Safo looks on admiringly. “Brandon Terry embodies blackness at Harvard,” says the joint African-American studies concentrator. “People drop his name all over the place.”
At the other end of the table, Abby L. Fee and Katherine J. Thomspon trade tips on theater and big boat sailing (both participated in a semester at sea-type program). Fee worries aloud that she is not interesting enough. She says she’s pretending to be interesting.
Pasternack can relate. “I brought some notes just in case I got boring,” he says.
On the subject of dating, Trager says he only dates liberals. “Cause the thing is, I only date Jews.”
On the other end of the table, Emma S. Mackinnon and Menendez turn out to have gone to camp together. Reka Cserny and Melissa L. Dell, both full from Winthrop’s festive meal, turn out to be blockmates. FM hangs its head. Mackinnon, who thought she might have been the “token activist” of the group, was relieved that she was not seated next to Trager—seating a notorious activist next to a notorious conservative would have been a little too sadistic, she thought. Red Stater Dell didn’t mind when Menendez, Mackinnon and a host of leftist FM editors started talking about who had cried the hardest after election day.
Although people from her Oklahoma hometown ask her how can she stand liberal Massachusetts folks, Dell has nothing but praise for Harvardians.
After an hour of liberally (no pun intended) partaking in sangria and giving the no-shows—Warren M. Tusk, Ryan J. Fitzpatrick, Sameer Narang and Caleb I. Franklin—a chance to make an appearance, each of the seniors present an object that tells a story about themselves.
Fee, credited with returning reproductive rights activism to campus, brandishes a female condom. Safo displays a bracelet that only upon close scrutiny is revealed to be a catalogue of Kama Sutra sexual positions. And after checking with the crowd that talk of her self-professed favorite topic, sex, wouldn’t make things “awkward,” Menendez quotes a Harvard interview subject for her senior thesis: “Please, I’m not going to get an STD—I only sleep with guys who wear loafers.”
But it’s not all sex. Terry is inspired by fashion in an altogether different manner. “I’d hoped I could make a pun on this tie with Ty winning,” he says regretfully.
Instead, he talks about the complexities it represents in his life.
Pasternack reads enigmatic correspondence from a recent letter-writing event organized by Present!, the zine he co-founded.
Dell and Mackinnon dig deep into the supply closet for their items. Dell compares herself to a paper teacup: it’s international, cheap, versatile and intense. MacKinnon’s roll of magic tape, she says, represents “making things stick.”
Cserny’s choice of a pillow represents her favorite pastime besides basketball—napping.
Thompson confounds the group by presenting a piece of “basalt, an igneous rock” that she dreamily relates to the movie Dante’s Peak.
This volcanologist (yes, it’s a word) describes a harrowing series of events that had her risking her life in the name of science. “I don’t know if any of you have ever run on recent lava flows, but it’s kind of rough,” she says nonchalantly.
Suddenly, senior year doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.