Author

Keating Zelenke

Browsing

Since its birth in the early ‘90s, the riot grrrl movement has been criticized for being exclusive, and many of the earliest riot grrrl acts did follow a certain mold: white, American, cisgender, thin, English-speaking. Because of this exclusivity, many critics of the movement — and even its founders — have said riot grrrl is dead, and rightfully so. Others, like Larissa Oliveira, are less sure.

Damilola Oseni sat on a cushioned bench in the brand-new Student Union. Her braids swung as she examined the new building — the high ceiling, the glossy white floors, the prison-made furniture. Anger — maybe disgust, maybe disdain — crawled up her throat like hot vomit.
“I know they have money, they just built this whole building,” she said, throwing her arms up. The Stony Brook Union cost $63.4 million to demolish and rebuild. The university seemed to produce the money with ease. Her first semester cost only a little over $5,000. They had nothing to give her.

When we found the key to the Press archives, I only remember finding a box or two of old magazines tucked away. The rest of the long walk-in closet was instead full of records. Boxes and boxes of old WUSB promotional records from the ’80s and ’90s — relics from when the radio station was affiliated with the magazine.

In the SAC plaza beneath a gray sky, Julie Sato held a megaphone to her mouth and read her favorite Nelson Mandela quote to the 50 Stony Brook University students assembled in front of her.
“People must learn to hate,” she said, “and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”
Sato is the secretary for the Japanese Student Organization, which held a #StopAsianHate Awareness Walk on Saturday, April 17.

If you ask a Stony Brook University student about activism on campus, they’d likely have little, if anything, to say. To Mitchel Cohen, a student from 1965 to 1975, that reality is hard to swallow. Just half a century ago, Cohen’s days were punctuated with protests on what, according to him, was the most politically active campus on the East Coast. As it turns out, the history of Long Island’s “sleeper campus” is littered with smashed windows, smoke bombs and student arrests.

I like being out at night. I like the way buildings look when they’re empty, and I like to see which windows are still lit up. I like lying in the middle of the sidewalk and listening to music. I like seeing which doors are still unlocked, and I like to look inside. I like who I am at night, when no one is around to see.