UConn Uncovered: ‘UConn Spidey’

Wel­come to UConn Uncov­ered! This week, we will dis­cuss UConn Spi­der­man, a cur­rent cam­pus favorite! Join us as our hosts, Ali­cia Gomez and Hal­lie LeTendre, chat with UConn stu­dents Emi­ly Markelon and Daniel Suriel to dis­cuss our expe­ri­ences and thoughts about the anony­mous UConn Spi­der­man. We also heard from Spidey himself!

Learn more:

‘Behind the Mask of UConn Spi­der­man” — Esther Ju

‘What is Super­hero Ther­a­py?” — Den­ver Health

Audio tran­scrip­tion:

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Ali­cia Gomez: 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’s campus. 

Hal­lie LeTendre: Today, we’ll be talk­ing about UConn Spi­der-Man, 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. 

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 Markalon: My name is Emi­ly Markalon. 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 Suriel: Hi, I’m Daniel. I’m a junior in jour­nal­ism as well. 

Hal­lie: 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. 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, and they took a bunch of pic­tures with him, took self­ies and they just real­ly had a great time, you know, kind of see­ing this per­son that they’ve looked up to for their whole lives. And I think it’s kind of cool that he has this per­sona that he can just go and talk to stu­dents. So I thought that’s real­ly the only encounter that I’ve had with him. But I think if I were to see him on cam­pus, it would be amaz­ing, and I hope to see him soon. 

Daniel: From 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. But if I were to see him on cam­pus, I’d still want to take a pic­ture with him.

Ali­cia: So, UCon­n’s Spi­der-Man 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 like, I always see like the buzz stu­dents have, when­ev­er, like he’s around. He also told Esther that when he was appre­hen­sive about dress­ing up as Spi­der-Man at HuskyThon, which is when he first want­ed to dress up as Spi­der-Man, he told his ther­a­pist and his ther­a­pist told him that he might end up get­ting beat up by stu­dents. Yeah, Esther talked about that in her arti­cle. She wrote a fea­ture arti­cle for the UConn Jour­nal­ism Depart­ment about UConn Spi­der-Man. Anoth­er thing is there’s a phe­nom­e­non of super­hero ther­a­py that Esther talked about in her arti­cle where basi­cal­ly it’s about 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. And I want­ed to ask the guests, is that some­thing you would ever con­sid­er doing? Or do you find your­self relat­ing your­self to char­ac­ters and 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 Spi­der-Man 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’s Spi­der-Man does, you know, keep­ing up that per­sona on a dai­ly basis and, you know, 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 that has hon­est­ly helped bring UConn togeth­er in a weird sort of way. You know, I think every­one kind of sees Spi­der-Man as some­one they look up to, and I think that’s real­ly important. 

Daniel: Um, so in, like, the movies and stuff, is it a Dan, he’s Peter Park­er. He’s a broke col­lege stu­dent. So 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, UConnSpider-Man. 

Hal­lie: Do you guys think he goes to class in the cos­tume, or he’s just incog­ni­to as in his real self? 

Ali­cia: From what I read, even his room­mate does­n’t know that he’s UConn Spider-Man. 

Hal­lie: Oh my god.

Ali­cia: His girl­friend knows, and she has to hide it when­ev­er peo­ple send pic­tures of him, self­ies with him, like her friends, and she has to hide that’s her boyfriend, which I thought that was real­ly funny. 

Hal­lie: That’s crazy. Could you guys keep up that lev­el of secrecy? 

Ali­cia: I could­n’t.

Emi­ly: I know I def­i­nite­ly could­n’t. Going back to your orig­i­nal ques­tion about him going to class, I feel like it depends on the day, you know? Maybe cer­tain class­es he goes to Spi­der-Man, but oth­er class­es he does­n’t. I don’t know. 

Hal­lie: Yeah, I’m going to ask him. 

Emi­ly: I’m curi­ous to know, honestly. 

Daniel: Well, I don’t think he goes to his class­es in cos­tume. I’ve heard that he’s gone to class and just sat down and lis­tened in costume. 

Ali­cia: Oh, that’s so nice. 

Hal­lie: That’s so funny. 

Emi­ly: So like class­es that he’s not in, he’s like lis­ten to them? 

Daniel: Yeah.

Ali­cia: He should come to this class. 

Emi­ly: Yeah, he def­i­nite­ly should. 

Hal­lie: He should do it on one of those days where some­one takes in a future husky, and they sit in on class­es. It’s like husky for a day. 

Ali­cia: Yeah. Oh my God. That would be cool. 

Emi­ly: They would get the whole UConn expe­ri­ence if he did that, honestly. 

Hal­lie: Yeah.

Ali­cia: Oh my God. They would com­mit to UConn like right away.

Hal­lie: So, Ali­cia, you men­tioned an arti­cle. Wait, I need to get her name. I’m sor­ry. What was it? Esther. OK. 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 and wear the cos­tume and go around cam­pus 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. 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. He’s been doing it for what, a cou­ple years now? I think that’s com­mit­ment. I don’t know if I could do that. 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 a.m. thoughts where I sleep on it in the morn­ing full of clar­i­ty. I said I was just a bad idea but for him to just ful­ly com­mit and do it day after day, I think it’s real­ly impressive. 

Ali­cia: Yeah.

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, you know, he vis­its UConn every once in a while, you know, makes an appear­ance. I think the stu­dents will def­i­nite­ly miss him if he does­n’t come back. So my hope is that, you know, he comes back and vis­its, but maybe that’s just wish­ful think­ing. I don’t know. 

Daniel: It’d be great if he could like vis­it even though he grad­u­at­ed. You could real­ly see him pass­ing down the man­tle to anoth­er stu­dent that you maybe trust. 

Hal­lie: Yeah.

Ali­cia: I was read­ing that he actu­al­ly wants to reveal his iden­ti­ty at his grad­u­a­tion. We could ask him about that too, but he said that he wants to go to grad­u­a­tion in his Spi­der-Man cos­tume, which would be real­ly fun­ny. It would be awesome.

Emi­ly: Oh, wow. Do we know when he’s grad­u­at­ing? Is he like… It says… ..pre­sent­ing this year or next year? 

Ali­cia: It says this year because arti­cles were writ­ten next year. Yeah, so this year, he should be graduating.

Daniel: I will be there. 

Emi­ly: Hon­est­ly, I’ll be there just to see him reveal himself. 

Hal­lie: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I’m excit­ed now. Yeah, that would be crazy if it’s some­one you knew or had class­es with or recognized. 

Ali­cia: Yeah, I won­der if peo­ple rec­og­nize his voice. 

Hal­lie: Yeah.

Emi­ly: That’s anoth­er inter­est­ing ques­tion too. Like how do you keep up that like secre­cy part of it too? You know, you think that if you like inter­act­ed with stu­dents on a dai­ly basis, they would start to know your voice, but like how do you, when you’re in cos­tume, you know, you have to cov­er that up.

Ali­cia: Yeah. I won­der if he feels like a voice change. Yeah. 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. Like, uh, in the 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. So do you guys think that if you had a real­ly deep prob­lem, 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 in a weird way, you know, because you don’t know who he is and he like may or may not know who you are, but because I think the mask kind of sep­a­rates that knowl­edge. Yeah, I mean, I can see why stu­dents would like vent to him. I think. He def­i­nite­ly has helped a lot of stu­dents through­out the years with that phe­nom­e­non, I think.

Daniel: Yeah, with the mask, he kind of like, it’s like a wall of trust that is going to stay with him in the cos­tume. But once he is like out­side of cos­tume, he’s not going to like bring it up. 

UConn Spi­der­man: Peo­ple would come up to me and they were just like, I remem­ber one girl, she came up to me and she like 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 and 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, we have me. And she goes, I know. Can we just sit and talk? And that was actu­al­ly real­ly close to where we are right now. But that was the day I learned that this could mean more to peo­ple. And then very short­ly after, anoth­er girl said some­thing very sim­i­lar. She just said that 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 I’d be able to judge you for. And that’s when I real­ly real­ized the impact I could have.

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