UConn Uncovered: UConn Spidey

Here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, life seems pret­ty nor­mal. Our cam­pus is bustling day to day, we have a great stu­dent body, we have out­stand­ing sports but most impor­tant­ly of all, we have our very own Spi­der­man right on cam­pus. Although most peo­ple may think this is some­thing out of the ordi­nary, most stu­dents here are ecsta­t­ic when they see the icon­ic red and black Spi­der­man cos­tume. This episode, we are div­ing deep into the life of Spi­der­man and what he means to stu­dents here on cam­pus. With hosts Hal­lie Letendre and Ali­cia Gomez, we talk with Emi­ly Markelon and Daniel Suriel to learn more about this sub­ject and we even have a spe­cial talk with UConn Spidey himself!

Tran­script:

Ali­cia: Wel­come to UConn Uncov­ered. Embark on a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery as we unveil the secret cor­ners, unique tra­di­tions, and cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ries that breathe life into UConn Storrs campus.

Hal­lie: Today we’ll be talk­ing about UConn Spi­der­man, also known by stu­dents as UConn Spidey. He walks around cam­pus in a head-to-toe Spi­der-Man cos­tume. Stu­dents see Spidey throw­ing up clas­sic Spi­der-Man web shoot­ing signs while casu­al­ly walk­ing around cam­pus. And although stu­dents don’t know who the per­son under­neath the mask is, this does not stop stu­dents from ador­ing him.

Ali­cia: On UCon­n’s cam­pus, most stu­dents walk past Spidey as if his pres­ence is noth­ing unor­di­nary. He has an Insta­gram filled with pho­tos of him and stu­dents and he has had the chance to be inter­viewed by UCTV and The Dai­ly Cam­pus. And today, we have the chance to talk with him.

UConn Spi­der Man: To me, I’m just a dude in a suit, but I’ve clear­ly made impacts that I just had nev­er even thought of or could imagine.

Hal­lie: I’m your host, Hal­lie Letendre.

Ali­cia:And I’m your host, Ali­cia Gomez. We have two guests with us to dis­cuss Spidey.

Emi­ly: My name is Emi­ly Markelon. I’m a junior jour­nal­ism stu­dent here at UConn and I’m here to talk about UConn Spidey and what he’s all about.

Daniel: Hi, I’m Daniel. I’m also a junior in journalism.

Hal­lie: So, Spidey told the Dai­ly Cam­pus that he first made his appear­ance in Decem­ber of 2021. He has also been seen in a UCTV sit-down inter­view in his icon­ic red, white, black, and blue-fit­ted spi­der costume.

UConn Spi­der Man: I thought that I could take away some of the harsh­ness from real­i­ty because we live in such a stress­ful time, espe­cial­ly now, like more so with like econ­o­my, pol­i­tics, all that stuff. I felt like some­thing we could get behind just for a minute just tak­ing a pic­ture with Spiderman.

Hal­lie: So to our guests what encoun­ters have either you or peo­ple that you know had with Spidey?

Emi­ly: I per­son­al­ly haven’t seen Spidey on cam­pus. A cou­ple of my friends I know they are involved in Moon Club which is a pret­ty pop­u­lar club here on cam­pus and I remem­ber one of the first meet­ings last year they went to the club just to kind of see what it was about, and they look over and they see some­body wear­ing a full Spi­der-Man cos­tume. They took a bunch of pic­tures with him, took self­ies, and they just real­ly had a great time see­ing this per­son that they’ve looked up to for their whole lives. I think it’s kind of cool that he has this per­sona that he can just go and talk to students.

Daniel: For my end, as a part of the Dis­ney club, Spi­der-Man was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to come for a guest appear­ance, but he end­ed up flak­ing at the last minute. If I were to see him on cam­pus, I’d still want to take a pic­ture with him.

Ali­cia: So, UConn Spi­der­man told Esther Ju, who is anoth­er UConn alum­ni, that he gets the most atten­tion at the Stu­dent Union. I’ve per­son­al­ly seen him walk­ing around and also like in the game room giv­ing stu­dents high fives and I always see like the buzz stu­dents have when­ev­er like he’s around. Anoth­er thing is there’s a phe­nom­e­na of super­hero ther­a­py that Esther talked about in her arti­cle where it’s about basi­cal­ly relat­ing to a super­hero, relat­ing your life to a super­hero, and in the arti­cle you can see a lot of the strug­gles that UConn Spi­der-Man has had where he kind of relates them to actu­al Spi­der-Man and hav­ing the mask on real­ly helps with his issues and helps him feel like a hero.

UConn Spi­der Man: So I was in like a real­ly rough place at the time. And I remem­ber I sat by the chem build­ing and I was like, I need like an inspi­ra­tion, you know? And I guess I’ve always just kind of tried to be some­thing for oth­er peo­ple as well. So I became my favorite superhero.

Ali­cia: I want­ed to ask the guests, is that some­thing you would ever con­sid­er doing? Or do you find your­self relat­ing your­self to char­ac­ters in TV shows to kind of help cope with things?

Emi­ly: Yeah, I mean, I think the media plays a big role in how I deal with my issues. I think it’s real­ly impor­tant to see rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and I think it’s real­ly good that UConn Spi­der­man has talked about his strug­gles with men­tal health and his ther­a­pist and things like that. So I think, I’m not sure if I would ever do what UConn Spi­der­man does, you know, keep­ing up that per­sona on a dai­ly basis and hav­ing all these fans on cam­pus, but I think it real­ly is impor­tant, you know, see­ing some­body that strug­gles with the same things that you do and I think every­one kind of sees Spi­der­man as some­one they look up to and I think that’s real­ly important.

Daniel: So in like the movies and stuff, Spi­der­man is Peter Park­er. He’s a broke col­lege stu­dent. He’s as relat­able as he can get. I don’t think I’d have the ener­gy to walk around in a mask every day and greet people.

Emi­ly: Yeah and you know going off of that I think it must be hard to keep that mask on all the time and have nobody know who you are and you know being so secre­tive about it I think that must also be a lit­tle exhaust­ing for you UConn Spider-Man.

Hal­lie: Could you guys keep up that lev­el of secrecy?

Ali­cia: I couldn’t.

Emi­ly: I def­i­nite­ly couldn’t.

Hal­lie: So Ali­cia, you men­tioned an arti­cle that Esther wrote for the UConn jour­nal­ism depart­ment. And in it, she says that Spidey’s deci­sion to take on this per­sona hap­pened at 3 AM on a ran­dom night. Would you guys, if you ever had an idea sim­i­lar to that, some­thing real­ly kind of out there, would you ever act on it?

Emi­ly: That’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. You know, I feel like I’ve def­i­nite­ly had those moments at 3 a.m. where I’ve had some crazy ideas, but I don’t think I could keep up with every­thing like how he does. You know, he’s been doing it for what, a cou­ple years now? I mean, it’s pret­ty impres­sive that he’s been able to like keep this up for so long and you know, he’s a stu­dent so he has his own class­es, so like the fact that he’s had this whole oth­er life out­side of class I think is real­ly inter­est­ing. But def­i­nite­ly not some­thing I could do.

Daniel: Yeah, I have those like 3 AM thoughts where I sleep on it and in the morn­ing full of clar­i­ty I say it was just a bad idea.

Hal­lie: What do you think will hap­pen when he grad­u­ates? Will there be like a new Spidey or will it just die with his legacy?

Emi­ly: I would say I think after he grad­u­ates, you know, he’ll go on and he’ll have his own life, but I’d like to hope that he vis­its UConn every once in a while, makes an appear­ance. I think the stu­dents will def­i­nite­ly miss him if he does­n’t come back. So my hope is that he comes back and vis­its, but maybe that’s just wish­ful think­ing, I don’t know.

Daniel: It’d be great if he could vis­it, even though he grad­u­at­ed. I could real­ly see him pass­ing down the man­tle to anoth­er stu­dent that he maybe trusts.

UConn Spi­der Man: I kind of have yet to find some­body who, in my opin­ion, can ful­fill what this is meant to be. Because when you’re in my posi­tion, you don’t have a lot of pow­er nec­es­sar­i­ly, but you have a lot of pow­er in the way that you’re a pub­lic figure.

Ali­cia: I was read­ing that he actu­al­ly wants to reveal his iden­ti­ty at his grad­u­a­tion. He said that he wants to go to grad­u­a­tion in his Spi­der-Man cos­tume, which would be real­ly fun­ny. It would be awesome.

UConn Spi­der Man: I don’t want peo­ple to know it’s me, which is part of the rea­son I kind of con­sid­er not unmask­ing when I grad­u­ate, because I don’t want that atten­tion, because if I do, then it becomes some­thing a lit­tle more self­ish, and that’s not the intention.

Ali­cia: I also, um, I thought some­thing else was real­ly inter­est­ing, is that he finds that a lot of peo­ple end up vent­ing to him while he has the mask on. In Esther’s arti­cle, she said that a stu­dent actu­al­ly vent­ed to him for like 40 min­utes straight just about her anx­i­ety issues and stuff like that.

UConn Spi­der Man: I remem­ber one girl, she came up to me and she begged me to talk to her. And at first I was like, sure, of course, why not? But then she told me, she said, Spi­der Man. I said, yes? She said, I don’t have any friends. I’m hav­ing a real­ly hard time mak­ing them. I have a lot of social anx­i­ety. She said, COVID’s been real­ly hard. I haven’t gone out as much. And I just want to talk to some­body. I said, sure. She said, I lit­er­al­ly have nobody here. I said, you have me. And she goes, can we just sit and talk? Because you don’t have a face, it makes it eas­i­er to talk to you and it makes it eas­i­er to open up about things that peo­ple will judge you for. But that was the day I learned that this could mean more to people.

Ali­cia: So would you vent to some­body in a mask? Would that make it eas­i­er, like a stranger in a mask? Would that make you feel more comfortable?

Emi­ly: Yeah, I mean, I would think that that would be more com­fort­able just because, you know, there’s no pri­or knowl­edge as to who you are. You know, there’s kind of a sense of no judg­ment because I think the mask kind of sep­a­rates that knowledge.

Daniel: Yeah, with the mask, he kind of like, it’s like a wall of trust that he’s gonna stay with him in the costume.

Ali­cia: Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

UConn Spi­der Man: It’s inter­est­ing because I nev­er expect­ed it to go this far. I thought it’d be a joke that kind of dies off pret­ty quick. You know, I thought, okay, fine, maybe I’ll do it for a semes­ter, if even that long, maybe a week or two. But then it real­ly quick­ly turned into like a cam­pus-wide phe­nom­e­non, like to the point where I’d walk around and I’d hear peo­ple talk about me. Peo­ple would be flex­ing that they got pic­tures with me. I try not to be in the spot­light, but to anony­mous­ly do that was very strange. But then I very quick­ly learned that it means a lot to peo­ple in a way I just nev­er anticipated.

 

Links to fur­ther research:

https://digitaljournalism.uconn.edu/blog/2023/05/behind-the-mask-of-uconn-spider-man/

https://www.denverhealth.org/blog/2019/04/what-is-superhero-therapy