Category: Written work

Spring Valley Student Farm brings fresh produce to UConn

The UConn Spring Val­ley Stu­dent farm hosts a small group of stu­dents to work and live at the farm each semes­ter. This slideshow show­cas­es the farmer’s mar­ket the group sets up each fall. / Pho­tos, video and sound edit­ing by Emi­ly Sharkis

By Emi­ly Sharkis
Fea­ture Writ­ing Class
April 28, 2024

Step­ping onto the prop­er­ty of the main loca­tion of the Book Barn in Niantic, Con­necti­cut feels like enter­ing a new world. Bright red pic­nic tables, lush green­ery, and play­ground equip­ment all evoke a sense of child­like won­der. One might think the Barn was a nurs­ery school if not for the main attrac­tion: thou­sands of used books. 

“Dur­ing the busiest sum­mer buy­ing sea­son, it’s stan­dard for us to pur­chase any­where from ten to fif­teen thou­sand books a week,” said long­time Book Barn cus­tomer and employ­ee Glenn Shea. 

Many bib­lio­philes enjoy the wide vari­ety of titles. “It’s like a lit­tle trea­sure hunt,” said UConn junior Emi­ly Good­win, “When I first get [to the Book Barn], I’m not over­whelmed. I feel this boost of joy being sur­round­ed by books. Books just make me so hap­py because I know that every sin­gle one of them can take you away.” 

While the Barn is known for hav­ing one-off copies of rare finds, the young adult sec­tion har­bors plen­ty of mul­ti­ples: rows of John Green nov­els, dystopi­an clas­sics, and an entire shelf ded­i­cat­ed to copies of If I Stay by Gayle Forman. 

The main build­ing at the Main Barn holds an expan­sive young adult sec­tion, where cus­tomers can often find an adorable cat named Cheesepuff. 

Good­win, who just so hap­pens to be my room­mate, calls this sec­tion her favorite. “It’s very nos­tal­gic for me because it’s all these books that I want­ed to read or had read dur­ing my child­hood,” said Goodwin. 

The Book Barn also has two oth­er loca­tions. The Book Barn Down­town is a three minute dri­ve from the Main Barn. Pur­chased as an over­flow space, the Book Barn Down­town is full to the brim with children’s lit­er­a­ture, fan­ta­sy, and unique titles such as How to Sur­vive a Shark­na­do and Oth­er Unnat­ur­al Dis­as­ters by Andrew Shaffer. 

 Opened in May 2014, Chap­ter Three sits right down the road from the Main Barn. This cozy spot sells Book Barn appar­el and has a focus on romance, enter­tain­ment, and mil­i­tary titles. Vis­i­tors of Chap­ter Three are often greet­ed by the feline trio of cats Rose­mary, Thyme, and Cutiepie. The expan­sive prop­er­ties and unique quirks make the Book Barn feel like more than just a used book store. 

“Many teach­ers bring their class­es to the Barn stores as days out, and because the main prop­er­ty has play areas — swings, a slide, a play­house, kid cars, a chess set–as well as a sup­ply of cats and goats, they react to the Barn as if they were hav­ing recess,” said Shea, “We often hear sto­ries from par­ents who tell us their child asked to come to the Barn for their birthdays.” 

Good­win first found out about the Book Barn through a Google search last sum­mer. Dri­ving down from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut took my friends and I about an hour, but com­pared to some of the Barns’ oth­er cus­tomers, this dis­tance is rel­a­tive­ly short. 

“We get vis­i­tors reg­u­lar­ly now from all over, rang­ing from a cou­ple who’d dri­ven from Penn­syl­va­nia express­ly to vis­it the Barn, to a fam­i­ly I see every year…that live in India, who come to buy books for their kids and bring me the gos­sip about what’s going on in Del­hi,” said Shea. 

Part of the rea­son peo­ple trav­el far and wide for the Barn is that they do not offer any kind of online shop­ping. When Ran­di and Mau­reen White opened the Book Barn in 1988, online book­selling was not near­ly as pop­u­lar as it is now. Plus, “Ran­di want­ed to build the store up to have enough books to draw peo­ple in from a dis­tance,” said Shea. 

One of the biggest draws to used book­stores is the fact that their stock is often priced quite low. A fact that Shea says could not exist if the Barn went online. 

“If we sold online we’d have to raise prices pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as we’d need to hire at least two more peo­ple to do the cat­a­loging and mail orders…Because the prices are low we have the best turnover I’ve ever seen in a sec­ond­hand book­shop; we reg­u­lar­ly cull and dol­lar old stock. So all of this hangs togeth­er: peo­ple will come a good dis­tance to find cheap books, we’re the only place local­ly that offers cash as well as store cred­it for books, and so all this saves us from hav­ing to deal with sell­ing online. Ran­di did­n’t want the best and rarest of our stock going out to some­one sit­ting at home in Nebraska–he want­ed to pull peo­ple in, and it’s worked,” said Shea. 

It’s not just the low prices that draw in cus­tomers, how­ev­er, it’s also the large sense of com­mu­ni­ty that can be felt at all three Book Barn locations. 

This sense of com­mu­ni­ty starts with the book­sellers them­selves. “The empha­sis when [Ran­di and store man­ag­er T. Hagan] inter­view or hire is that we all sup­port each oth­er when some­one needs a day off, or has a med­ical emer­gency, so on and on. I know this sounds like cor­po­rate­s­peak, but it’s always great to see it in the flesh. I think this is vis­i­ble to the peo­ple who come to vis­it and shop, and they often become part of the place as well,” says Shea, “I can’t tell you how often, when a cus­tomer has asked me a ques­tion I can’t answer, the answer has been called out by one of our reg­u­lar cus­tomers, kib­itz­ing from the side.” 

As for the future, Shea says he hopes to keep up the good work, with­out any major changes. “God knows we have enough books, and we have enough cus­tomers. If some­thing’s work­ing as it should, you try not to jim­my with it.” 

By Emi­ly Sharkis
Fea­ture Writ­ing Class
April 7, 2024

In 2024, if you glance around a mall, con­cert hall, or col­lege cam­pus, chances are, you will see at least one piece of fast fash­ion cloth­ing — often with­out even know­ing it. 

Accord­ing to con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny, fast fash­ion is defined as arti­cles of cloth­ing that are rapid­ly and cheap­ly pro­duced, often accom­pa­nied by strong man­u­fac­tur­er-to ‑con­sumer sup­ply chains and loy­al cus­tomer bases. 

The fast fash­ion mar­ket is grow­ing quick­ly, with Sta­tis­ti­ca pre­dict­ing that the mar­ket val­ue of fast fash­ion will reach a val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly $185 bil­lion by 2027. Just the oth­er day my friend casu­al­ly men­tioned drop­ping $300 on clothes from Shien, a pop­u­lar online retail­er, for an upcom­ing vacation. 

How­ev­er, the neg­a­tive effects of fast fash­ion are a lot more wide­spread than many ini­tial­ly real­ize. Along­side Shien, stores like For­ev­er 21, Zara, H&M, Old Navy, and Urban Out­fit­ters, fall under the fast fash­ion umbrella. 

Although peo­ple often deem pur­chas­ing fast fash­ion to be moral­ly wrong, many col­lege stu­dents con­tin­ue to buy from these retail­ers — myself includ­ed. But why? When speak­ing to some fel­low col­lege stu­dents, 5 key themes seemed to emerge. 

1. It’s Absolute­ly Every­where — And It’s Cheap 

Fast fash­ion cloth­ing options tend to be cheap­er than cloth­ing from sus­tain­able com­pa­nies, a fact men­tioned by 15 of the 18 peo­ple I spoke to. Fast fash­ion is not only wide­spread, but it’s often hid­ing in plain sight. 

“Fast fash­ion is so preva­lent we don’t even real­ize it. Almost every store at the mall is fast fash­ion no mat­ter the price. Zara for exam­ple, is so expen­sive, but one of the least eth­i­cal brands out there. Price does­n’t equal qual­i­ty, and qual­i­ty does­n’t equal sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” said UConn junior Maria Ada B. 

This preva­lence is fur­thered by fast fashion’s pres­ence on social media. “I see a lot of peo­ple on Tik­Tok doing huge (and often spon­sored) fast fash­ion hauls and it real­ly con­tributes to a strong sense of over­con­sump­tion,” said UConn junior Mia Keazer. 

2. It’s Size-Inclu­sive 

“I remem­ber going to the mall with my friends in high school and being so excit­ed to go into For­ev­er 21 because that was the only store that I could actu­al­ly buy things in,” said UConn Junior Nala Davis. 

It’s a frus­tra­tion I share: many cloth­ing brands sim­ply do not have size inclu­sive options. 

“I’m plus-sized and it’s hard to find any­thing in my size that’s afford­able and is a style that I like. Sad­ly only [fast fash­ion] com­pa­nies check all the box­es,” said Katiely Mer­cedes, a Junior at Hunter College. 

“As a curvy girl, some­times the sus­tain­able fash­ion lines do not have my size or are not flat­ter­ing on me. I know my weight fluc­tu­ates and when buy­ing jeans I would rather buy the ones that are less expen­sive,” added UConn Sopho­more Cian­na Tangishaka. 

3. Green­wash­ing 

Green­wash­ing is the prac­tice of mak­ing a prod­uct or activ­i­ty appear to be less dam­ag­ing to the envi­ron­ment than it real­ly is. Green­wash­ing prac­tices can include a lack of pub­lic infor­ma­tion, reliance on dis­cred­it­ed mea­sure­ment tools, hav­ing unreg­u­lat­ed “eco-con­scious” col­lec­tions, and more. 

Accord­ing to the non-prof­it Green­peace UK, stores such as H&M, Zara, Pri­mark, and more, are guilty of green­wash­ing. While green­wash­ing can be dam­ag­ing, many peo­ple are unaware it is even happening. 

“I remem­ber see­ing a pro­mo­tion­al adver­tise­ment about H&M cre­at­ing an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly cloth­ing line, and then research­ing for a class that this was actu­al­ly total­ly false (at least back then). Almost any com­pa­ny can claim “clean & sus­tain­able fash­ion” through plain imagery of green leaves/recycling logos on the tag to imply clean fash­ion with­out actu­al­ly claim­ing it,” said UConn senior Eliz­a­beth Agarunova. 

“I used to work for Uniq­lo, and I would notice how many ship­ments would come in…from third world coun­tries, and the amount of waste with­in the ship­ments despite the company’s claims of car­ing for the envi­ron­ment. Out of curios­i­ty, I searched it up and they’re a green­wash­ing fast fash­ion com­pa­ny, and their prices seem to tell peo­ple oth­er­wise. I real­ized price real­ly doesn’t dic­tate” Mer­cedes added. 

4. Trends Move So Fast 

One of the biggest advan­tages of fast fash­ion com­pa­nies is their wide vari­ety of styles and large num­ber of new designs per day. How­ev­er, with these seem­ing­ly non­stop new items, trends move so fast, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to keep up. This has only encour­aged a cul­ture of con­sumerism and overconsumption. 

“Our soci­ety val­ues keep­ing up with the fash­ion of today so much that step­ping out­side of that mind­set can feel like social death to an extent,” said UConn Graph­ic Design stu­dent Car­o­line Strapp. 

This issue is espe­cial­ly preva­lent in col­lege, where hav­ing both a pro­fes­sion­al and par­ty wardrobe and stay­ing on-trend are the norm. 

“I had got­ten a whole bunch of going out tops and by the time I tried to wear them peo­ple had stopped wear­ing that style of top,” remem­bers Buf­fa­lo State fresh­man Allie Cigna. 

Some peo­ple also men­tioned need­ing quick and qual­i­ty out­fits for con­certs, Hal­loween, and oth­er spe­cial occasions. 

“I think the way we will see the most change in regards to this top­ic will be when the cul­ture shifts to val­ue our envi­ron­ment and health more than mon­ey and mate­r­i­al items. The Unit­ed States lives and breathes cap­i­tal­ism and the pil­lars of that belief sys­tem direct­ly oppose those who val­ue sus­tain­abil­i­ty and social­ly con­scious ini­tia­tives. Until there is a cul­ture shift in val­ues we will con­tin­ue to see this bat­tle between ethics and greed,” said Strapp. 

While buy­ing fast fash­ion can seem inevitable, there are still ways to cut down on consumption. 

1. Go Thrift­ing 

Shop­ping at thrift stores is a fun and easy alter­na­tive to pur­chas­ing from fast fash­ion com­pa­nies. Accord­ing to Cap­i­tal One Shopping’s 2024 Thrift­ing Report, “83% of Gen Z con­sumers have either pur­chased or are inter­est­ed in sec­ond­hand appar­el, 10.7% more than the aver­age for all age groups.” 

2. Re-Wear Old Clothes 

Try to end the cycle of end­less con­sump­tion, what eBay calls “sin­gle-sea­son wear,” by mix­ing and match­ing to cre­ate new out­fits or sim­ply keep­ing and actu­al­ly wear­ing the cloth­ing you already own. Amy Ban­ner­man, eBay’s Pre-Loved Style Direc­tor, sug­gests dye­ing old cloth­ing and lay­er­ing dif­fer­ent pieces to keep your clos­et fresh. 

While it might be nice to tell peo­ple to shop more sus­tain­ably, mar­keters and onlook­ers must remem­ber the rea­sons why young peo­ple turn to fast fash­ion. Rel­a­tive to fast fash­ion, sus­tain­able fashion’s high price point and non-inclu­sive siz­ing just isn’t for every­one — at least not yet. 

By Emi­ly Sharkis
The Dai­ly Cam­pus
March 7, 2024

I’m sit­ting in McHugh 101 watch­ing some movie that’s required for my Univ 3820 class. It’s incred­i­bly dark, the only light com­ing from the screen. Sud­den­ly, a door creaks open, light pour­ing in as a red and blue sil­hou­ette ducks into the room, quick­ly looks around, and ducks out. I laugh and shoot my friends a look as if to say “Was that him?” They all smile, con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cions. UConn Spi­der-Man is in the building. 

It has been almost two years since UConn Spidey first appeared in Storrs, yet I have only seen him in per­son a hand­ful of times. The seem­ing­ly con­fi­dent man was often sur­round­ed by groups of starstruck fans, yet his moti­va­tions and day-to-day life had always been some­what of a mys­tery to me. 

For two years I had thought about what I would say to Spidey if giv­en the chance. I was about to hop on a Zoom call with him. 

Using Insta­gram DM’s, Spidey and I had set up a time to chat. How­ev­er, as I sat in the emp­ty Zoom room I won­dered if I had got­ten the time wrong. 

“Holy shit, I am so sor­ry I for­got,” Spidey texted me three min­utes after our set time, “I’ve been cram­ming for exams.” 

I laughed at the relat­able mes­sage and sud­den­ly, Spidey felt like less of a celebri­ty and more like a peer. 

“No wor­ries, I total­ly get it,” I respond­ed, try­ing my best to seem “chill” in front of what some have called a “cam­pus legend.” 

“Let me just make sure my room­mate doesn’t walk in…he doesn’t know,” replied Spidey. 

The sec­ond Spidey joined the call, I dis­re­gard­ed all of my pre­pared ques­tions, excit­ed­ly ask­ing “Your room­mate does­n’t know? How does that work?” 

“Yeah. I mean, it’s hard keep­ing a secret like that. I had a dif­fer­ent room­mate when I first start­ed this, so he does know but he has­n’t told any­one… my new room­mate does­n’t know,” Spidey explained, “He’s not real­ly much of a social per­son, so I kind of doubt he’s heard of me.” 

Spidey went on to explain the hid­den “go bag” he keeps in his closet. 

“If I ever need to put on the suit or some­one needs some­thing, I quick­ly go back to my room and grab my oth­er back­pack. It’s got every­thing I could need. My suit, the mask, the face shell. It’s got wipes in case it’s dirty. It’s got like a stick of gum for breath, just like any­thing I could need in that moment, it’s there.” 

“But why Spi­der-Man as opposed to oth­er super­heroes?” I asked. 

“It was the eas­i­est. It does­n’t have a face. You know, you could get a suit any­where. But I also grew up with Spi­der-Man too, so he very eas­i­ly became the first choice. And I mean every­body likes Spider-Man.” 

UConn, in par­tic­u­lar, seems to love Spi­der-Man. This pop­u­lar­i­ty is best exem­pli­fied by a time he attempt­ed to walk past Gam­pel Pavilion. 

As is nor­mal for bas­ket­ball sea­son, the street sur­round­ing Gam­pel Pavil­ion was lined with stu­dents hop­ing for bas­ket­ball tickets. 

“The lines were long and I mean like around the cor­ner, in every exit kind of long and every­one was cheer­ing for the bas­ket­ball team,” recalls Spidey. 

How­ev­er, as he turned the cor­ner the crowd of stu­dents began cheer­ing Spidey’s name instead. 

“The cra­zi­est part was that peo­ple actu­al­ly got out of line to come take a pic­ture with me and then went to the back of the line because they val­ued that pic­ture more than the bas­ket­ball game. It was­n’t even like two or three. I had like a line of like 40 peo­ple, like imme­di­ate­ly. Thank God I had a mask because I was cry­ing, tak­ing all these pictures.” 

While his main goal is to make peo­ple smile, Spidey has also been involved in more seri­ous efforts, such as stand­ing up against the homo­pho­bic street preach­ers that fre­quent UConn’s campus. 

Accord­ing to an arti­cle from WHUS Radio, the pres­ence of street preach­ers at UConn goes back at least a decade. When they showed up on Sept. 28, 2022, Spidey knew what he had to do. 

First, he told his boss he need­ed an hour off to com­plete a job interview. 

“Fuck­ing lie straight up,” Spidey revealed, “I had to get out there. That was one of the times I felt the most loved by the cam­pus. I felt like an avenger walk­ing in.” 

While Spidey is cer­tain­ly a sym­bol of hope and joy, he also wields a lot of pow­er, a fact he learned while attend­ing his sec­ond protest. 

While stand­ing in the hot sun, Spidey noticed the crowd start­ing to get violent. 

“I very quick­ly real­ized my role in the sit­u­a­tion. I was like, although I may dis­agree with the preach­ers here, like fun­da­men­tal­ly, there’s no rea­son to fight them. We don’t want to get the police involved here,” said Spidey. 

“It’s fun­ny,” I added, “Because I imag­ine peo­ple would be like ‘Spi­der Man save us!’ And then they’re like…wait.” 

“You’re not wrong. Peo­ple did that,” Spidey began, “But I real­ized that when I was shout­ing at them, the crowd got real­ly excit­ed and they began, you know, almost try­ing to fight these guys.” 

Not want­i­ng to be the rea­son for vio­lence, Spidey decid­ed to step away from the ener­gized crowd and stand in silence. 

“The crowd sort of just fol­lowed what I did…it was real­ly strange,” said Spidey, “but it was worth it because even­tu­al­ly the preach­ers walked away.” 

One of Spider-Man’s biggest appeals is that while he web-slings through­out New York City, under­neath the mask, he has a some­what reg­u­lar life. While UConn Spidey is no dif­fer­ent, stay­ing anony­mous is some­thing he is sure about, at least for right now. 

“Maybe when I grad­u­ate I will [reveal my iden­ti­ty],” said Spidey, “At the same time, I don’t real­ly want to be known for it. I like the idea that it could be any­body, that it is just an anony­mous guy try­ing to be nice and help out people…I’d hope to have it revealed in a dra­mat­ic way though.” 

“Well, no mat­ter how you do it, I’m sure peo­ple would be real­ly excit­ed,” I told him. 

“I hope peo­ple don’t see me and they’re like damn, he’s ugly…that’s part of why I’ve just been so secre­tive. I’m not ready to be judged by the inter­net. I’m shy as shit in real life as it is,” Spidey said. 

Spidey con­sid­ers him­self to be a reg­u­lar stu­dent, bal­anc­ing work, stud­ies, and being a super­hero. He’s even changed his major mul­ti­ple times. The hard­est part, he says, is liv­ing a dou­ble life. 

“[When] my friends are like, ‘how was your week­end,’ I’d have to be like, ‘Oh, it was bor­ing,’ but real­ly I was like a frat rager…at some points, I got con­fused as to who I was and I got frus­trat­ed because I could­n’t share the expe­ri­ences that I want­ed to at the expense of the secret iden­ti­ty,” said Spidey. 

While Spidey has suc­cess­ful­ly remained anony­mous for close to two years, there have cer­tain­ly been close calls. 

“I was study­ing with this group of peo­ple and I had to leave in a few hours because some­one else want­ed to do an inter­view for a pod­cast thing. [When] I was head­ing over to the pod­cast room, this woman start­ed call­ing my name. I turn around and it’s the woman I was just study­ing with. And I was like, oh fuck, this is it’s game over. This is where I get revealed…all she want­ed was just a pic­ture and then she walked away…I thought that might have been game over, but no, it was okay,” recalls Spidey. 

Look­ing toward grad­u­a­tion, I asked Spidey about the lega­cy he wants to leave behind. 

“I hope that the peo­ple I had expe­ri­ences with keep them in their heart and move for­ward in the same way I do and for those who see me, just think back and laugh and take a minute away from the harsh real­i­ty of school and edu­ca­tion, and stress and exams and just remem­ber that there’s a dude in a Spi­der­man suit just chill­ing,” said Spidey. 

Do you think you’ll try to recruit some­one to take over [after you leave]? I asked. 

“I don’t know. It’s hard because at its best, this is a great way to social­ize and at its worst, it’s cheesy. You need some­one who is will­ing to do it and not take the fame for it…I haven’t real­ly found that per­son yet,” he explained. 

While Spidey is a hum­ble indi­vid­ual, there is no doubt that he has reached a cer­tain lev­el of fame on UConn’s cam­pus. He’s even dealt with imitators. 

“One per­son told me that some guy tried to claim that they were me and pick up [a girl]…and I just I was like…what woman is going to be like, Oh, that’s so hot. You’re Spider-Man,”Spidey joked. 

“You’d be shocked,” I said.

Rutgers University faculty go on strike for the first time 

April 10, 2023 | Updat­ed 10:29 AM

Thou­sands of fac­ul­ty mem­bers from New Jersey’s Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty went on strike Mon­day, April 10, caus­ing class can­cel­la­tions and pick­et lines. Three fac­ul­ty unions rep­re­sent­ing about 9,000 fac­ul­ty mem­bers at the New Brunswick Uni­ver­si­ty autho­rized the strike after con­tract dis­putes, ACCORDING TO WHO? PIX 11 News?

“We are fight­ing for bet­ter work con­di­tions for our fac­ul­ty so that stu­dents’ learn­ing con­di­tions can be improved,” Media Stud­ies Pro­fes­sor Deepa Kumar told NBC New York.

Rut­gers said in a state­ment [LINK TO THE STATEMENT] Sun­day night that they were com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that the aca­d­e­m­ic progress of stu­dents was unaf­fect­ed by the strike. 

How­ev­er, by Mon­day morn­ing pick­et lines were being set up through­out Rut­gers’ cam­pus­es in New Brunswick/Piscataway, Newark and Cam­den. Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, most class­es were still being held, while some were can­celed due to the strike. 

In a tweet on Sun­day night, New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor Phil Mur­phy invit­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both the uni­ver­si­ty and union bar­gain­ing com­mit­tees to his office to nego­ti­ate and have a “pro­duc­tive dialogue.”

Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty is one of the nation’s pre­mier insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing. I am call­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty and union bar­gain­ing com­mit­tees to meet in my office tomor­row to have a pro­duc­tive dia­logue. pic.twitter.com/KTDmpm3LKD

— Gov­er­nor Phil Mur­phy (@GovMurphy) April 10, 2023

Nego­ti­a­tions were expect­ed to begin Mon­day after­noon, Rut­gers AAUP-AFT Gen­er­al Vice Pres­i­dent Todd Wolf­son told NPR.

“We feel hope­ful about bar­gain­ing pro­duc­tive­ly, and we appre­ci­ate the governor’s sup­port,” Rebec­ca Givan, pres­i­dent of one of the Unions, told the New York Times.