Category: Heather Brody (page 2 of 5)

“Breaking the Fast, Keeping the Connection” by Heather Brody

Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. It is a day of atonement, a day of reflection, a day of forgiving and forgiveness. Our tradition is to fast for 24 hours so that we can start the new year having reflected on the past year and feeling renewed and ready for a fresh start. This was the first year that I was unable to truly stick to the fast, and it provided me with a different experience than I have had in previous years. Continue reading

Meet The Editors: Heather Brody

Getting My Hair Wet in 2016

I loved going to the pool when I was younger. My friends and I would meet up and walk through the locker rooms together, speed-walking to the chairs with the most shade and the best view of the sparkling water. I always liked to cannon-ball right into the pool – it helped me get used to the cold temperature of the water more quickly and start the fun right away.

My friends, on the other hand, would slowly wade into the water, putting their hair in ponytails and buns to avoid getting their hair wet at any cost. I never understood it – why do they care so much about getting their hair wet? I loved how it felt to dunk my head underwater on a hot day and glide across the pool as my hair floated around me. It made me feel like a beautiful mermaid queen, claiming the chlorinated body of water as my own. I felt powerful and free and happy. It never seemed very fun to have to worry about your hair on a hot summer day.

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Heather’s New Groove: Volunteering in Cusco, Peru by Heather Brody

I wanted to go somewhere new. I needed to go somewhere new. The school year was draining me of all of my energy and focus and I knew that I needed to get away from my normal routine. I had been searching for months for the right opportunity, and in October I officially signed up to volunteer in Peru with UBelong during my winter break. I didn’t know what to expect, and there were many times in those next few months that I debated calling up my UBelong Mentor to tell her that I had changed my mind and would be staying in the United States. But I knew that this was something I needed to do. I needed to take a risk and do something new and exciting instead of sitting around at home all winter doing nothing. I had travelled to other countries a few times before, but never for more than two weeks and never completely on my own. I was terrified, but looking back, I am so glad that I decided to take this trip and I can’t wait for my next opportunity to travel.

 

I spent 5 weeks in Cusco, Peru, where I volunteered at a shelter of about 15 girls ages 12-18. All of these girls had been sexually abused and, as a result, were taken away from their families by the state and placed in the shelter. Their families either had to take the time to prove to the state that they were safe and could be trusted to have their daughters back again, or the girls would just sit in the shelter until they turned 18 and were released back into the world. They had so little in the shelter, and what they did have was shared among the girls. They were rarely allowed to leave the shelter, which the women in charge said was because they didn’t want the girls to try to escape. While it was very sad to see how these girls had to live, I loved spending time with them every morning. They were all such wonderful and unique girls who I know have the potential to do amazing things in life. I wish I could have stayed longer with them. 5 weeks is nice, but it isn’t going to make a lasting impact on their lives. I wanted to help them, I wanted to do so much more to give them better lives, but as a random volunteer from America, there wasn’t much I could do in that sense. So I used the time that I did have with them to try to make things more fun, teach them about the things that I enjoyed doing, and help them see how great they are.

The other volunteers that lived in the hostel with me were placed at other projects, like nursing homes, day care centers for kids, and centers for children with disabilities. They came from all around the United States and the rest of the world – from Texas to Germany to Australia to New Hampshire, we spanned the globe. Some of my fondest memories were simply spending time with them, whether it be haggling prices in the markets, befriending a group of wild dogs, or buying too many empanadas at the grocery store. I experienced so many amazing things with them – one weekend we went to a part of the Amazon called Tambopata, where we ziplined through the trees and road boats across the river in search of caymans. We went to the Salineras de Maras, giant salt mines that were stunning from up close and afar. We visited tons of ruins, including the most famous of them all: Machu Picchu. We were a family, and each time a new volunteer checked into the hostel, they instantly became a new family member as well. I remember feeling so nervous before my trip, wondering whether the other volunteers would be nice or whether there would even be any other volunteers there at the same time as me. I ended up meeting a group of amazing people who taught me so many things, and I know I will always look back at our time together and smile.

I know that soon enough people will get tired of hearing about my adventures. My friends will roll their eyes at the mention of Peru and I will repeat the same stories again and again, trying to hold onto things that are now part of the past. The other volunteers and I will move on with our lives. The inside jokes will fade from our memories, and our tongues will forget the taste of yoguis on a warm evening in the Plaza. The girls that I spent my mornings with will become attached to new volunteers, and I will become just another “Miss” that left them forever. I am the type of person who does not handle change very well, so having such an amazing experience and then having to go back to my normal life in Delaware has been a difficult adjustment for me. And while I wish I could go back to those nights of eating alpaca burgers and rapping in the hostel lobby, I know that I will eventually be able to move on and take the things that I learned from my trip with me. Traveling to Peru has helped me become more confident in myself and curious about the world around me. I have decided that I want to take time off after graduating from college to travel around the world and see what else is out there. I feel like I am moving forward with a new perspective on life, as cheesy as that sounds, and I will always be grateful for the experiences that I’ve had this winter.

#BlackLivesMatter by Heather Brody

I am the kind of person who tries to have a positive outlook on life. I like to see the good in everyone, to think that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it is hard to keep up this attitude. Sometimes we are faced with something so terrible, that it seems impossible to stay positive. This is something that I have been struggling with these past few days.

On Monday, September 21st, the Students for the Second Amendment brought Fox News pundit Katie Pavlich to UD to speak as a Second Amendment activist. Many students were outraged that the university would allow Pavlich, who has called the Black Lives Matter movement a “violent hate group,” to speak on our campus. They felt something had to be done, that their voices needed to be heard. In no time, a flyer was created and shared on Facebook, encouraging students to join together outside Mitchell Hall, where Pavlich was speaking, for a peaceful protest.

Fast forward to around 11:00PM on Tuesday, September 22nd, when my friend noticed a Facebook status stating that someone had hung a noose on a tree outside of Mitchell Hall where the protest had been held. My friends and I gathered around our friend’s cell phone, appalled that such an act of hatred could have happened on our campus. It left a sick feeling in my stomach as I walked back to my dorm that evening. Around 12:30AM I began receiving UD Alerts and emails addressing the incident and asking for students to provide any information that may help police investigate the hate crime. I am not sure how I was able to sleep that night.

Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 11.00.23 AM The next morning, Wednesday, September 23rd, I awoke to more UD Alerts and emails saying that the objects had not been nooses, but instead were the remains of lanterns that had been hung there earlier in the year. While this was somewhat relieving, I knew that the fact that they were lanterns did not matter. What mattered was the fact that students felt threatened and unsafe on this campus that evening, that they saw those decorations and believed that students had hung up nooses, that social media was flooded with insensitive, racist comments regarding the incident. These events made it clear that the amount of racism and the lack of diversity on this campus is a real issue that needs to be addressed. Acting President Nancy M. Targett seemed to agree, inviting students to join her outside Memorial Hall at 4:30PM that day for a discussion about the incident.

Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 11.00.36 AM I walked to my Women & Gender Studies (WOMS) class th at morning, unsure of what to think. As I sat in my seat, waiting to discuss the readings for the day, my professor decided that instead we needed to talk about what had just happened that evening. We spent the entire 50-minute class talking about our reactions and feelings, how it had affected us and our peers, why we thought it had happened, and what we could do moving forward. Similarly, last semester, after the incidents in Ferguson occurred, my WOMS professor spent the last hour of our 3-hour long class allowing us to express our feelings about Ferguson. I have never experienced anything like it – the entire class, including the professor, was crying as students told us about how being a black student at UD feels like being an outsider, like they do not belong here. It broke my heart to hear it last semester, and it made me angry to hear it once again this semester.

Why are we allowing this to happen? Why are we sitting around doing nothing, as students feel excluded and unsafe on our campus? Why is it that the percentage of minorities at our school doesn’t even match the makeup of minorities in the state of Delaware?

Furthermore, why is it that these important conversations are only happening in my WOMS classes? This is something that that does relate, that needs to relate, to everyone, so why aren’t all of my professors providing space for conversation about these issues?

Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 11.00.50 AM At 4:30PM, I walked toward Memorial Hall, amazed at how many students, faculty, and community members had come to show their support. I listened as Targett expressed how “deeply disturbed [she was] to see how this incident exposed feelings of fear in students,” and how determined she is to find a solution to the racist climate that exists for too many students on this campus. I cringed as students read tweets and Yik Yak posts saying things like “The only problem with the nooses was that they were empty.” And I cried, as students and faculty members climbed those glistening steps, in front of hundreds of people, courageously and selflessly sharing their own experiences as people of color at UD. One student described how it felt his freshman year to be the only black student in a classroom for the first time in his life, and how lonely it was to come to that realization. Another student recited a powerful poem, called “To those who don’t understand the movement,” exclaiming that he “will scream Black Lives Matter from the top of [his] lungs” until he could see real change happen. One student didn’t even need to speak for him to get his point across to me – he apologized as a great sigh came from his lips. That sigh told me everything. That sigh showed just how tiring, how draining it is for these students to walk around campus everyday, their backpacks filled with fear, with hatred, with racist comment after racist comment, feeling as though they don’t belong here. I can’t imagine how it must feel to carry such a load every single day.

Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 11.01.00 AMAnd now I sit here, staring at my computer screen, wondering what I am supposed to do in the aftermath of all these events. It feels like it all happened so fast, and hit us so hard. I look at my Facebook newsfeed and see the University of Delaware as the top trending story, wondering what the nation must think of us now. I think of the students who spoke at Memorial today, wondering what they are thinking and how they are feeling. I don’t know if anything will change tomorrow, or the next day. It will probably take a long time before we see real change happening on our campus. And while these past few days have felt like one huge nightmare, I know that something positive has come from it all. These events have shown me that our campus is ready to start having these necessary conversations, that we are ready to work, however long it may take, to create a safe, welcoming environment at UD for people of all races and backgrounds. It is going to take a while to heal from these wounds that cut us so deeply, but I look forward to healing together, as a school and as a community.

Honoring the Past and Marching Toward the Future

As I looked across the Green at the rainbow of flags waving in the wind, I couldn’t help but smile. What I had been working so hard on all semester was finally here and it was everything that I had hoped it would be.

This year I was accepted to be the Holocaust Education Intern at UD Hillel. My main duty was to organize Holocaust Education Week, and while I felt honored to receive the position, I was nervous about how I would be able to accomplish this task. I had planned events before, but never a whole week of events! Yet, I was able to push these daunting thoughts out of my mind by focusing on why it was so important to me. Last year I wrote a blog post about my experience on the March of the Living, a two-week trip to Poland and Israel where I walked through the concentration camps that still stand today. That trip instilled in me such a deep appreciation for my religion and desire to ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten. That is why I decided to put all of my efforts into creating a meaningful week of Holocaust remembrance this year.

I think that this goal was definitely met. I worked with Hillel to organize many events throughout the week that focused on the untold stories and perspectives from the Holocaust. However, I think that the flag display that we set up on the Green generated the largest impact on our campus. Throughout the week we set up 1,100 colored flags outside Memorial Hall to signify the 11 million people who were murdered in the Holocaust. Each color represented a different minority group that was listed on yard signs by the flag display; we wanted to ensure that this memorial honored all victims, not just Jewish people. It felt amazing to hear students and faculty members tell me about how much they had learned from simply observing the flag display and how much meaning they had taken away from it. Walking by the flags on my way to my classes I would notice more and more people stopping to read the yard signs, taking a moment to think and process what they had just witnessed. There is no greater feeling than knowing that you have impacted someone else in a meaningful way.

That week I also learned that education and remembrance is the first step, but we also need to think about what we can do to prevent genocide like this from happening in the future. We haven’t done a very good job at this – places like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur have all experienced some type of genocide since the Holocaust happened. It is a shame that humanity can create so much evil, but also that we can sit by and watch it happen without taking any action. I urge you to no longer be a bystander. Educate yourself, educate others, and take action, for there is no knowing what the future may hold if we don’t.

~Heather Brody

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