Poli Students,

The Baltimore Zeitgeist, a rapidly growing national undergraduate political magazine founded at Johns Hopkins University in 2014, is looking for undergraduate writers. The magazine is committed to expanding its reach throughout the region in accordance with their commitment to engage politically thoughtful undergraduates at peer institutions. 

The staff application and all of our articles are posted to our website -http://baltimorezeitgeist.com.

For questions, please contact Zachary Broner at zbroner1@jhu.edu, or the editor in-chief, Jonathan Loewenberg, at jloewen2@jhu.edu.

Best!

    A post by Women’s Center staff member Daniel Willey

Earlier this semester, as I’m sure you all remember, we got hit (bombarded, pelted, buried, whatever) by winter storm Jonas. BWI airport recorded almost 30 inches of snow and the wind blew the icy flakes sideways into drifts best navigated with a harness and rope or a tunneling machine. 

The sea of snow outside my house in Halethorpe on Sunday

Baltimore shut down the Light Rail, MARC, and buses for almost a week — only the fourth MTA shutdown in the last 40 years. My roommates and I braved the grocery store on Thursday night before the storm hit and it was a nightmare. I thought my mom was just being a mom when she texted to warn me that all the bread was gone. Some impatient man in a business suit chased me away from my parking spot at the Giant by honking his horn repeatedly so he could swoop in and take it. People were getting nasty.

Now, I’m used to this kind of snow.

Our dog Raven wondering how she’ll ever get out to pee

Having grown up in the mountains in Western Maryland, I’ve seen my fair share of snow and ice storms. But I’ve never experienced it in an urban setting and I’ve definitely never been old enough to be the responsible snow survivor before. It got me really thinking about what it means to have a snow day and how the local and state government reactions to something like Jonas has a lot more to do with social issues and inequality than you might think.

The MTA shutdown is what got me thinking first. If you’ve ever taken a Baltimore City bus you know our transportation system is flaky at best. But you probably also know how many people rely on the MTA every day for school and work and errands and everything else. When it shut down, all those people suddenly lost that essential piece to their everyday goings-on. And sure, the first day or so when nobody could leave their homes anyway may not have mattered. But the people who do the hourly and low-wage jobs that are essential to the running of any city had to get to work on Sunday. And Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday.

The MARC and Light Rail didn’t start back up until Wednesday (on a limited schedule) and even though there were buses on Monday, there weren’t very many and it was a total free-for-all in terms of scheduling for several days. While we UMBC students and many people in office or management or government jobs (positions with salaries and benefits and paid leave) had half a week of snow days, the snow plow and bus drivers, food service workers, maintenance and road workers, hotel staff, emergency responders, retail workers, grocery store clerks, pharmacists, and nurses (and the many many others who rely on pay from every hour they can get their hands on) made the trek to work with basically no transit system.

Well, she got out but she is not happy about it

And then I thought about my horrible grocery store experience. I thought about the brave souls running the checkout aisles and managing the rapidly depleting inventory. I thought about all the families without cars or living in food deserts who would struggle to get provisions for the coming storm. What about disabled people or older adults who couldn’t hustle to the store and back in time? I thought about the low income families who are unable to spend large amounts of money at once to stockpile supplies or those who had run out of food stamps because it was the end of the month. What about the people whose heat was shut off? Or those living in abandoned houses or their cars or in the tents on MLK Blvd?

When I picked my boyfriend up from work early on Friday (because there was no bus– surprise!) he said, “The people who are running around and freaking out right now are going to be fine.” And he was right. We had the money to stock up on food. We could afford to live in quality, well-maintained housing with good heat and a solid roof. They had plowed out our whole neighborhood by Sunday afternoon. A friend of mine who lives on Guilford Ave a few blocks outside of Station North said the road was plowed a few blocks down from where it connected to North Ave, but then it just ended. There was no dead end, no cars blocking the street, nothing to indicate it would make more sense to stop there than to continue down into the poorer or residential areas down the street. The lines of where plowing happened first and last show a very clear indication of what areas of the city are important and why.

Taking a snow day is a luxury. Getting a snow day means that if you don’t have a salaried position with paid leave, you have to lose pay for lost hours. Sometimes it means making a choice between braving a dangerous commute and earning your next meal — or even just keeping your job (and if there’s no public transportation, the low-income portion of the 30% of Baltimore residents without cars can’t get to work). A snow day is made possible by people who can’t take a snow day.

Getting a snow day can be fun for some students, but many low-income students rely on free school meals. For some students, this is their only steady source of nutrition.

On the Tuesday after the storm, only female Senate members and their female staff showed up to work on Capitol Hill. Proceedings had been postponed until Wednesday, but someone had to be there to make an official motion to postpone the Senate in order for that to happen. Those people were women. Sure, some may have been truly snowed in but, like I said, a snow day is made possible by people who didn’t get one.

The way a city handles a snowstorm is a social justice issue because socio-economic status is a major factor in the health, safety, and well-being of low-income and at-risk populations. So, think about it. What (and who) made your snow day possible?

A post written by Women’s Center Director,  Jess Myers

*Content Note: Sexual Violence*

• 44% of victims of sexual violence are under age 18
• Approximately 4/5 of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.
• Sexual assault is one of the most under reported crimes, with 68% still being left unreported.
• Victims of sexual assault are 3 times more likely to suffer from depression.

And knowing these statistics and being someone who works on a continual basis with and for survivors of sexual violence, I was shocked and disappointed in myself that it still took me more than half of a novel to realize Melinda, the main character of Speak, was a survivor of sexual assault.

I picked up Speak on a whim after seeing a picture of its front cover on the online Enoch Pratt library catalog. It was a librarian’s recommendation and it was one of the last books I needed to get through from my pile of winter break readings. Reading the vague synopsis on the inside flap of the book, I began reading what I assumed would be any other young adult novel. What I knew –  Malinda was a 9th grader. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Everyone hated her because of that. Consequently, high school was a disaster for her. She had no friends. She stopped doing her homework and cut class. She didn’t have a good relationship with her parents. And, one day, she finally just stopped talking.

I get it. High school can really suck. Being an outsider is awful. Being 13 is awkward and painful and hard to navigate. Been there. Done that. So, with each turn of the page, I became more frustrated with Melinda. She was annoying me. I almost stopped reading the book.

Get it over it, Melinda.

But, for some reason, I kept reading. Melinda left me little clues throughout that led me to understand that she wasn’t sharing her full story. Something was going on with her. Something she was even trying to figure out how to understand. The adults in her life were frustrated with her. Her friends gave up on her. She was a shadow, or at worse, a distraction, to her teachers. Melinda was alone.

Little by little, though, people poked back into Melinda’s life. A strayed friend cautiously begins speaking to Melinda again about their art projects. A teacher gently pushes back on the narrative that Melinda is a bad kid ending one interaction saying, “I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it.” A classmate finds meaning in a history project on suffragettes to push Melinda to consider options outside of remaining silent. And, I too, beckon Melinda. I know something is wrong. I keep reading in an effort to understand Melinda’s story whether she speaks it or not.

In the Supporting Survivors of Sexual Violence: Cultivating a Survivor-Responsive Campus workshop we host in the Women’s Center, I start out with a list of statistics related to sexual violence on college campuses. We may probably know the 1 in 5 women will experience attempted or completed sexual assault in her lifetime statistic but what does that really mean? I break it down in UMBC terms. For a campus that has 6,300 women-identified students on its roster, statistically speaking, about 1,200 women students are or will be survivors of sexual violence. This number does not include male survivors, trans survivors, faculty or staff. I know this number is much higher.

We all know survivors of sexual violence whether we know it or not. Survivors of sexual violence are in our classrooms, living in our residence halls, eating next to us at dinner. They are our friends, our classmates, our partners, our students. Like Melinda, though, they may not feel ready to disclose or come out and share their story with you – or anyone. At least not right away.

And, that’s okay. But, it’s simply not good enough for us to only offer sympathy or change our behaviors around a person once we know their full story. Until I knew Melinda had been raped, I discounted her. In my temptation to stop reading, I turned my back on her. Once I knew her story, though, my heart ached with empathy and I couldn’t get her out of my mind (I am writing this blog, after all). If Melinda was a real person in my life, would my behavior and lack of action reaffirmed her desire to stay silent. Would I have been a safe space for her?

In that same Cultivating a Survivor-Responsive Campus workshop, I share a quote from former Women’s Center director, Dr. Mollie Monahan-Kreishman’s dissertation. It goes,

“The first people who interact with the rape survivor will weave themselves tightly into the fabric of the survivor’s story. Their words will richly color the survivor’s world, no matter if those words were meant to support or demolish.”

Each and every day, on campus, and beyond, all of us are weaving ourselves into the fabric of survivors stories. Our every day actions mean something.  We may support one survivor in a classroom by offering a content note or promoting Take Back the Night. We may demolish a survivor’s experience when we diminish the prevalence of sexual assault, laugh at a rape joke, or give up on a friend who just isn’t the same anymore.

I want to be the person that expresses words and actions that support a survivor whether I know their story or not. I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

So What Can You Do?
(Note: This is not an exhaustive list!!!)

Know UMBC’s campus resources such as the Women’s Center, Voices Against Violence, and Title IX policies 
Read Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence
Listen (and watch) Lady Gaga’s Til It Happens to You
Check out (and support) the Monument Quilt. Their next display is right here in Baltimore on April 9th.
Attend the Supporting Survivors of Sexual Violence: Cultivating a Survivor-Responsive Campus workshop. This Women’s Center workshop is offered on a quarterly basis for faculty and staff and once a semester for students. We’ll also happily accept invites to present at department or student org meetings.
Show Up at  UMBC’s Take Back the Night on Thursday, April 14th (stay tuned for details)