Aspen Rush

Editor-In-Chief

Born 337: The Love Fortress

First, I begin with freshman year. Before college, I had few friends and I was terrified that college would be high school all over again. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In my first weeks, I met some of my best friends. It was love at first sight. From the instant we connected, I knew things would be different this time. My hurt was their hurt; their joy was my joy. They taught me how to love and how to be loved in return. 

The Calcei House Porch:

Sophomore year, my freshman friend group gave birth to a house with the most absurd combination of residents, ranging from a chess enthusiast to a soccer player to a rodeo queen — just to name a few. My room was on the second floor but I could hear laughter echo all through the house. It felt like home. 

That year, I gave myself permission to change. I broke up with my high school boyfriend and I joined the Voice, something I never thought I would do. I started dating non-men for the first time. I spent the weekends dancing with my friends, throwing themed parties and chain smoking cigarettes on the porch. I was thrilled by my classes. It was bliss. Until it wasn’t. 

That year, I lost two friends to suicide and my depression grew from annoying to crippling. My friends began to drift away even as we were under the same roof. I felt completely and indescribably alone.

…and then came COVID-19.

On a walk:

Junior year, I became comfortable with my aloneness, not necessarily by choice. Despite the looming cloud of depression and constant pressure of the pandemic, I began to get to know myself for the first time. I began to pursue my passions that were unrelated to my aspirations. I started dancing by myself and listening to music, not to drown my thoughts, but to enjoy the sounds. In that time, I learned to give myself the room to feel and the grace to change.

Henderson B Stoop:

The fall of my final year began feeling much like my first. Everyone made the journey back to campus. So many questions, this time they felt more pressing, more serious, questions about the rest of our lives.

It was the year of lasts: the last time to see the trees change in the fall, the last first day of classes, the last Ohio winter (thank god), the last Covers, the list goes on. Now, as I sit in my last Voice layout, writing my last Viewpoint, I find that I have no regrets. My time here has been dominated by images of disco balls and long, honest talks laying on the floor with my best friend. While I admit I am terrified of whatever is to come and the last of my lasts inches closer and closer, I also find myself sitting on the cusp of many firsts. This time, I don’t know what those firsts will be but I think I’m ready. I hope I am.

Kayla Bertholf

Science Editor

When I started my four years at the College, I did not plan on participating in half of the organizations that I do now. However, my friends have influenced me to try and stick with more than I thought I would. This is one of my favorite things about Wooster, the people. The people at Wooster understand that you are busy yet still hold you to high expectations, all the while encouraging you to try new things and do the best you can. When I graduate and head out into the real world, I will miss the people the most. 

I especially did not expect to join the Voice editorial staff during my last year of undergrad, but I am sure glad that I did. Ed Boards are now one of my favorite parts of the week and I look forward to hanging out with the Voice staff. As one of the Science and Environment editors, I get to learn about new topics each week. The BCMB major in me got to talk about pollution in Lake Erie one week and volcanoes the next; it was fantastic. Some of my favorite memories from senior year are laughing at layout on Tuesday nights, and I cannot thank the Voice staff enough for making my senior year great. 

Bijeta Lamichhane

News Editor

This VP was not sponsored by the College’s marketing team.

While I always looked at any graduation event as a celebration of getting a degree, May 16 for me will be just as much about celebrating the community that I was fortunate to be a part of, and everything I have gotten to learn from my interactions with people I have met here.

For many of us, the campus community will be the most diverse place that we will ever get to live in. We have people from all across the world, with all sorts of backgrounds and experiences living in this small space. Being here for four years is the one chance we have to try to understand all these experiences that are different from ours.

We have chances to learn about why people have the values and beliefs that they do. We have chances to understand different cultures and identities. We have chances to realize how stereotypes limit us from knowing somebody else. We have chances to understand, empathize, and learn every day.

And I know we have been taking those chances. We’re learning every time we meet someone who knows a language that we don’t and ask them to teach us a few words. We’re learning when we make mistakes in assuming people’s identities and make sure we get them right next time. We’re learning when we see people we care about struggle because of injustice and when we try to understand just how systems work.

While we always want to welcome this growth, I also understand that learning every day can be tiring. It’s easy to fall back into groups and cultures that make us feel comfortable and we can understand each other without trying too hard. It’s nice to be around those who always agree with us. And that’s okay. All of us are away from home, so we need the comfort of familiarity. The important part is to not get so comfortable that we leave campus without appreciating our differences. Because our community is a snippet of the world, and I’m sure we agree that the world needs more acceptance. So when we leave this place, I hope we leave to create our own spaces where there is a place for everybody who does not intend any harm.

I know for sure that I will be looking at my camera roll from August 2018 to July 2022 more than I will look at my degree. And I will turn to all the narratives that I had a chance to be a part of in buildings, offices, hammocks and hiking trails every time I need hope for a better world.

Jonathan Logan

Editor-In-Chief

In the acknowledgements of my IS I left a note for my Mom and Dad: “Few are the parents that recognize the value in a child trained not specifically for any one job, but a child who sees the potential in every person and idea.” I reached a tipping point my sophomore year where I considered leaving Woo amidst a coming-of-age/identity crisis. My reasoning went something like “look at this mountain of debt I’ll be in and as a physics major, how will I ever find a job to pay off that debt?” I was missing the whole point of studying at a liberal arts school – a really good one at that. In my four years, I have seen a complete and total shift in student’s attitudes towards their Wooster education where we obsess over the future but fail to realize we’re all flowing downstream.

We all want to know how we can do the best in our classes so we can achieve the highest level of prestige later in life. This isn’t your fault; we all have great expectations and families who want us to get the best job or attend a top graduate school. Not to mention the fear of failing a class and our crammed schedules. We’re all obsessed with the right answers and because of the institutionalized nature of education, learning has become less about curiosity and patience and more about efficiency and productivity. I’m not trying to tear down the system, but I want all Wooster students to start to ask the questions “Why the $70,000 price tag? Why is education so intertwined with the idea of productivity? Why have I seen students leave a professor’s office hours in tears because they couldn’t get one problem right?”

Wooster is a reality to be experienced. I have this thought process where I imagine removing all of the drama, stress and striving from this place. Then, I imagine all of the people here and all of its history as a river (poetic, right?). There is an energy and passing of time unique to Wooster that all of us have glimpsed once or twice, but ultimately fail to flow with. Maybe you glimpsed it at a party or on a weekend in the fall when the absurdity of it all flashed across your mind and left you numb but stuck in a moment. It’s like Po’s inner peace journey in “Kung Fu Panda” in that you can only flow when you least expect it.

Wooster – its faculty, staff, student body and energy – is not at peace. The river we’re all floating down has lost its ocean. Our administration is making decisions that have dammed up our river, but our lives are so stressful on their own that we’re forgetting how to let go of the dangling tree branch and break the dam. I envision a bunch of rubber duckies bunching up against the dam before wondering how they got there.

In plain terms, Wooster and the liberal arts education are not designed to give you your life’s purpose or a job. It is designed to help us all meander down the same river. For me, I was too focused on not having enough and being fulfilled when I left Wooster. The reality was that I was too focused on the next thing or thinking I was better than Wooster. I love this place and all of the people I have met here, and, without sounding like an alarmist, I would like to implore all of you to help Wooster find its ocean again since we’re all downstream from someone.

Travis Marmon

I like to think of myself as a socially liberal and progressive person. My vote is always most likely to go toward the candidate who supports marriage equality and wants to reform our country’s many racist institutions. I consider myself a feminist, because I understand that feminism’s ultimate goal is equality between the sexes, not the destruction of men, as some seem to think. I don’t think this country, let alone the world, is anywhere near where it needs to be in regard to tolerance and understanding of various cultures (as evidenced by the backlash against Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl ad, among many other things).

All this being said, there is a point where we as a society need to reevaluate which groups are actually being oppressed. When I saw a poster in Stevenson for a meeting of “romantic minorities,” I almost beat my head against the wall. The rise of Internet social justice movements through websites like Tumblr has led to a point where literally every aspect of a person’s personality becomes part of an identity that makes them a “minority.” This kind of thinking is absurd at best and damaging to actual minorities at worst.

I don’t mean to pick solely on romantic minorities, but for the sake of this viewpoint I am doing so, because it was their posters that got me thinking about this. Looking at the advertisement for this group, a few terms stand out. The first of these is “demiromantic.” According to AVENwiki (part of the Asexual Visibility and Equality Network), a demiromantic is someone who “only experiences romantic attraction after developing an emotional connection beforehand.” Not sexual attraction. Romantic attraction. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t romantic attraction require an emotional connection by definition? Isn’t this how most people operate? Have I been misled about what love is for my entire life?

The other term that had me doing immediate Internet research was “queerplatonic.” I was again taken to AVENwiki, which describes it as “a relationship that is not romantic but involves a close emotional connection beyond what most people consider friendship … The commitment level is often considered to be similar to that of a romantic relationship.” Does this really mean anything? Having one or two extremely close friends sounds typical to me. Does this commitment level mean it’s possible to cheat on my friends? That just sounds petty.

My larger point here is not that these romantic identities are ridiculous but that identifying them as “minorities” is a great way for privileged, often white, cisgendered and heterosexual students at a private liberal arts college to act oppressed. I realize that sometimes college feels like a place where everybody is trying to have as much sex as possible, but, I assure you, that is not the reality.

Even if it were the reality, “romantic orientation” is just a personality trait. Nobody has ever been discriminated against in the workplace because they are lithromantic (“a person who experiences romantic love but does not want their feelings to be reciprocated”). There is no institution in this country that prevents someone from climbing the economic ladder because they have a low sex drive or don’t want a romantic relationship.

I think that the phrase “check your privilege” is often misused to dismiss the opinions of people in privileged positions, even if they have a good point. However, There is no better time to use it than when it comes to a completely non-oppressed person identifying as a minority. Focus your social justice endeavors on the people who could actually use allies.