“I reconstituted it because I wanted to rekindle the fun that I found back when I was an underclassman,” White said. “I [was] thinking about how those screenings united so many people.”

Co-President Demeter Appel-Riehle ’25 reached out to White, and together they have made the society active again and planned film screenings. Their most highly attended screening so far has been “10 Things I Hate About You.” This past Friday, they screened “Titane” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” for a double feature on foreign films.

“[The society is] definitely a lot more underground than it was before. I feel like beforehand, it was an institution where it was kind of a given that there would be screenings at [7 p.m.] every weekend,” White said. “We’re trying to gain the prominence that we had before.”

While White and Appel-Riehle hope to regain the popularity that the society had before the pandemic, they also want to make changes in the organization. 

“We’re trying to increase the amount of diversity in the programming because we want to reflect the student body,” White said. 

To broaden the scope of the films that the society screens, Appel-Riehle established a subgroup within the society called Film Cult, which is dedicated to “independent, foreign and obscure film” according to the group’s Instagram. Film Cult started out as a casual group composed of Appel-Riehle and his cinephile friends, but once they started inviting others to join, they realized it would be a good idea to make the group more official. Recently, Film Cult screened three films directed by Gregg Araki, a Japanese American filmmaker whose work was instrumental to the New Queer Cinema movement of the ’90s. 

“Our plan for next semester is to have Film Cult programming once a month through the Film Society,” Appel-Riehle said. “[We are] taking an internal look at the directors that we screen and who the lead actors are in those movies … The Film Cult is a way for us to … give people … the opportunity to see something that they would never come across otherwise.”

The society decides what films to screen for next year during the preceding spring, since they have to obtain legal access to screen the films. The society is currently in the final stages of voting for next year’s films, a process in which all members get a say.

“A lot of our submissions were pretty unique,” Projectionist Chair Magdalena Manrique ’25 said. “We have a lot of very specific genres [of] double features that we’re going to be doing. I think that’s a fun way to introduce someone to a genre that they maybe haven’t seen before.”

The society’s e-board encourages anyone who is interested to reach out to them, as their main goal is to get more members and more people attending screenings. 

“We’re obviously getting back on our feet,” Manrique said. “So if anyone’s interested in joining, now’s the time to come and join to be a part of making it what you want it to be.”

Nhi Dang DS ’22 first learned that the water in her dorm, Simpson West, was contaminated with lead through an email sent to the entire student body by Piper Orton, vice president for finance and administration and treasurer, on Dec. 17, 2021. The email read, “We wanted to share with you that a recent result from a routine test indicated that three locations out of the 26 tested had elevated levels of lead. These locations were in the Distribution Center, Simpson Hall first floor all gender bathroom, and McAfee Hall first floor men’s room.” It went on to acknowledge that the previous year’s round of testing had found elevated lead levels in two different locations on campus, which administration potentially attributed to lower population density due to the pandemic.

The email also stated, “We have posted notices and information about the elevated levels of lead and what individuals should do to reduce potential exposure in the three affected locations, and we have posted findings in all of the areas tested. We will place additional signage by sinks where we found elevated levels to help educate our community about easy and effective actions we can each take.” However, Simpson West residents said they did not see signs about the lead in their living spaces until Feb. 11, 2022. By then, students had already started to move out, mainly due to concerns about the lead and safety. There still has not been additional signage as of this writing. 

“The funny thing is that when we read [the sign], it says [the lead] is above the action level. And I was just like, ‘So what actions are you doing here? Like, there’s no actions being done here,’” Dang said.

Lead action level is the level of lead present in drinking water at which action should be taken. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, it “is a measure of the effectiveness of the corrosion control treatment in water systems. The action level is not a standard for establishing a safe level of lead in a home.” The EPA also states that lead is dangerous over time even at lower levels, and exposure through drinking water can cause “cardiovascular effects,” “decreased kidney function” and “reproductive problems” in adults. According to the signs, the Simpson West lead levels reported in December are 0.0443 milligrams per liter. The lead action level for lead in drinking water is 0.015 milligrams per liter, making Simpson West lead levels nearly three times over the action level. 

Simpson West is located on the bottom floor of the Simpson building, which is better known as the location of Health Services. According to residents, it was originally used for offices and was then repurposed as a dorm. The hall has only eight rooms and was originally reserved for Davis Scholar housing along with Cedar Lodge. Last year it was unoccupied, as Davis Scholars living on campus lived in other residential buildings, namely the Shafer basement. This year, due to a shortage of medical singles, some non-Davis Scholar students requiring medical singles were placed in Simpson West. 

“I have a medical single on campus, but I also got put on the housing waitlist … I didn’t know where I was going to live up until like a week before school started,” Gillian Sjöblom ’23 said. “Then they told me I was living in Simpson West. I’d never heard of it.”

Davis Scholars living in Simpson West had reservations about this new change. Alex Ewing DS ’22 emphasized the intentional separate community of Davis Scholars as important due to Davis Scholars’ different ages and experiences compared to traditional students. She also felt that by putting traditional students in Simpson West, the administration was continuing what Ewing saw as a strategic shift to undermine the place of the Davis Scholars program on campus, especially considering last year’s discontinuation of the part-time option for the program.

“My year they [enrolled] eight Davis Scholars, but the year before that they [enrolled] 15,” Ewing said. “This year there are only seven.”

Nevertheless, this year’s Simpson West residents quickly created a strong community. When they received the email about lead levels, they were concerned and worked together to find out more. They were initially unsure whether the “first floor all gender bathroom” referred to in the email was their bathroom, since there is another side of Simpson West that is not accessible to students. Since the administration did not reach out to Simpson West residents about the lead apart from the all-school email, the residents still feel unclear about the scope of the problem. They believe that if their bathroom were not the problem, administration would have reassured them of this, but no one did. 

“Someone immediately emailed [Community Director Don Leach] … I forwarded it to Susan Cohen, our dean, just so she knew what was going on,” Ewing said. “We just never got a response from Don.”

At the start of the spring semester, Simpson West residents continued reaching out to administration and learned that their community director was now Rhonna Bollig and not Leach, as compared to last semester. Residents were not informed of the change. Submitting maintenance requests and contacting administration had always been tricky for Simpson West because they have not had a residential assistant for the past few years, and part or all of Simpson West sometimes did not show up in the system for submitting maintenance requests. Residents wanted the administration to install a water filter in the hall to protect residents from the lead, since the previous filter had run out. These efforts were unsuccessful, so Ewing used her own money to buy a $41.99 filter certified to reduce lead. The administration eventually reimbursed her. 

“I’ve spoken to res life about [the lead], I’ve spoken to my dean about it, I’ve spoken to facilities about it, I spoke to environmental health and safety about it,” Ewing said. “And the common response is, ‘Well, the science is sort of out on whether lead in the water is bad for you. I don’t think you should be worried about showering.’ And then we never hear from them again. I’ve gotten so many people who have been like, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ and then they never get back to you.”

Ewing described her communications with administration as making her feel “gaslit.” 

“They seem to think that we’re hysterical,” she said. “Evidently Rhonna’s response to Susan was ‘the water is very safe,’ which has never been communicated to us because I think they know that they can’t say that.”

Over the academic year, Ewing’s psoriasis — a skin condition causing dry, itchy patches — has worsened, and other scaly patches have shown up on her body. She also began grinding her teeth more in her sleep. She wonders whether the lead could be the cause, as well as the stress that the lead issue has created. Others experienced chronic migraines. Apart from the shower, Ewing is also concerned about the water used in the dishwasher and the washing machine. Although lead cannot be absorbed through skin, there are concerns about accidentally ingesting water that contains lead. Ewing has not been tested for lead poisoning, and neither has Dang.

“I’m like, ‘Am I washing the dishes in lead?’” she said. “But it’s more economically friendly to be using the dishwasher … I try not to think about it … I would just like to not have to shower in it. And they’re not even really trying that.”

After Bollig became the CD of Simpson West this semester, Ewing said she scheduled an all-hall with the residents. 

“She brought up like every single thing that has ever been wrong with the dorm, let us talk for an hour and 40 minutes about it, and then when everyone was getting really frustrated, was like, ‘Well, I can offer to move you out,’” Ewing said.

According to Ewing, Bollig gave residents until the end of the week to decide whether they wanted to move — one day, since the all-hall occurred on a Thursday. Ewing and Dang both chose to stay because as seniors, they only had three months left of school, and moving would be a big time commitment. 

“It’s hard for me to live with 100 traditional students, and I love the community that we used to have here … I don’t think that moving out is an option for us,” Dang said.

Dang, an education major, is currently student teaching and spends a lot of time off-campus, and she has also been going through the graduate school application process and studying for the US citizenship test. Aside from not having time to move to a new dorm, the experience learning about the lead and dealing with it has affected her mental health. Ewing expressed similar sentiments.

“I want to be able to stay and get some of the things that I was supposed to get from living here and not just be told, ‘Well, if you stay here, things aren’t going to change for you,’ which was the result of that meeting,” Ewing said. 

All other residents, besides another senior who is a traditional student, elected to move out. 

“[Rhonna] showed up and just told us, ‘We see all these problems, and we’re not going to do anything to fix them because it just doesn’t seem fiscally worth it,” Sjöblom said. “She kept emphasizing ‘it’s not my job’ … We were like, ‘You’re our CD, it kind of is your job to take care of us.’ Because we also didn’t have an RA … She pulled me aside after the meeting and was like, ‘I have a double in Tower that I can approve as a single if you want it,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I guess I’ll take that.’”

Sjöblom had previously told Bollig one-on-one that she would be interested in moving to Tower Court if the opportunity arose. Other residents who moved out of Simpson West went to Shafer, Munger and Stone Davis.

Two months later, Dang and Ewing have not seen any further action taken about the lead. During the all-hall on Feb. 10, Bollig told residents she would arrange a meeting for them with Suzanne Howard, director of environmental health and safety, but residents have received no further communication on the matter since. Bollig initially declined to be interviewed for the article and did not respond to follow-up requests.

Howard shared over email that — apart from the all-school email in December and “more detailed information” sent to Simpson West residents in December — “as an additional precaution, the College has installed a lead filter in the Simpson West kitchen. The College has also installed many water bottle fillers with lead filters across campus. Students living in Simpson West who expressed concerns were offered space in other buildings. We have posted signage and provided information to the remaining Simpson residents about the easy and effective actions they can take to reduce potential exposure, including using lead-filtered water or allowing the faucet to run for a few minutes before using it for drinking or cooking, consistent with the recommendations in these resources from the EPA, the CDC and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.”

Ewing and Dang denied having received the “more detailed information” in December.

“I bought the filters and installed them,” Ewing said. “When I brought it up to facilities, I was told they had changed it in January, and I had to tell them, no, I had changed it. Eventually I received an email acknowledging that facilities had not changed it in January.”

The Office of Media Relations had no further statement.

Additional reporting contributed by Emilie Zhang.

Upstage, Wellesley’s student-run theater company, put on a production of “Fun Home” this past weekend from March 10 to 13. The musical is based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic autobiography of the same name. “Fun Home” details her experience growing up, coming to terms with her sexuality and navigating her fraught relationship with her father, whom she discovers is a closeted gay man. Bechdel’s name is perhaps most recognized for the “test” she wrote about in her comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For,” which measures female representation in media as a way of commenting on lesbian alienation in mainstream culture. Lesbian identity is also central to “Fun Home,” both the graphic novel and the musical, which was just one of the reasons director Emma Wine ’24 thought it was a unique opportunity for Wellesley College. 

“I was really attracted to, from a directing perspective, the complexity of the characters and the non-linear nature of the show,” Wine said. 

The production had a cast of nine people. The musical splits the role of Alison Bechdel into three parts; Micah Fong ’22 played Alison as an adult cartoonist, Anna Kraffmiller ’24 was college-aged Alison and Ella Stanley ’25 played Alison as a child. As Big Alison narrates her coming of age by writing a graphic novel about it — just as Bechdel did in real life — she sometimes interacts with her younger selves and breaks through the barrier of time. The musical culminates with Alison trying to gain closure about her father’s suicide; she wonders if her coming out played a part in his death. Although the script and songs are emotional and deal with heavy topics, the cast and crew also emphasized the comedic and inspirational aspects.

“While it’s a tragic and heart-wrenching story, it’s really beautiful, and it’s the story of someone coming into her identity,” Ana Luisa McCullough ’22, who played Alison’s girlfriend Joan, said.

Members of the cast and crew alike noted that audiences reacted strongly to Medium Alison’s storyline, perhaps because it is relatable to many gay college students. The musical was meaningful to members of the “Fun Home” team, most of whom are LGBTQ+.

“When actors were auditioning, they also had to fill out this Google Form talking about … why they [wanted] to be involved in the show, and so many people referenced how important ‘Fun Home’ had been to them personally way before Wellesley was planning on doing it,” stage manager Sarah Meier ’24 said. “Almost every actor … was intimately familiar with the play already, so everyone was bringing this sense of importance … and that really showed in their performances.”

McCullough appreciated the thoughtfulness that having a majority-LGBTQ+ cast and crew created during the production. McCullough is bisexual, and after being cast as Joan, they raised concerns about the implications of their character reclaiming the word “dyke” in the show. This led to a conversation with the rest of the cast about the reclamation of slurs, after which everyone decided that it was acceptable for McCullough to use the word in character. Although they are not a lesbian, they still related to many of the show’s themes.

“I have two moms, and I saw [‘Fun Home’ on Broadway] with my mom. Having a gay parent and navigating that was very meaningful for me,” McCullough said.

Wine noted that apart from the LGBTQ+ themes, the musical also addresses topics that many others can relate to, such as trying to fit in and coming to college. 

“There’s a line that’s repeated throughout the show — ‘Everything is balanced and serene, like chaos never happens if it’s never seen,’” Wine said. “I think that it speaks to this idea of covering up messiness … At Wellesley, … there’s also a culture of having to put on a perfect exterior … and thinking about that through this show is a really cool additional layer.”

Although everyone in the crew felt that “Fun Home” was an extremely fitting show for Wellesley, there were some unique challenges in staging it at a historically women’s college. Grey Devlin ’22, the show’s musical director, spent time figuring out how the actors would sing the male parts in the songs. 

“A lot of the roles for male voices were kind of hard to tackle, but I think all the actors that played male roles did a good job adapting their range in voices, and I appreciated all of the vocal approaches they brought,” Devlin said.

McCullough thought that having these roles played by non-men made the performances stronger.

“There is something really powerful about having all of these roles, especially Bruce and the brothers, played by people who have maybe a slightly more nuanced understanding of gender,” they said.

Overall, the cast and crew are extremely happy with the finished production, which sold out days in advance of opening night. For many students, this was their first production since before the pandemic. 

“This was my first experience with theater at Wellesley,” Meier said. “It was really great to be back.”

Slater International Student Organization put on their annual Winter Festival on Sunday, Feb. 27 in Tishman. Students played games, ate snacks and made crafts at booths hosted by Slater and various cultural organizations. In addition, the Winter Festival featured performances by Yanvalou, Aiko and Shotokan Karate Club. The festival is Slater’s largest event of the Spring semester; the Culture Show is the largest for the Fall. 

“The goal is to collaborate with other cultural orgs and host an event where people can get to know Slater and other international cultures,” Angela Qian ’22, Slater’s vice president, said.

This was Slater’s first time hosting the event, which was once called the Spring Festival, since 2019, due to pandemic complications. 

“There was a lot of institutional memory that was lost because Angela and I were the only ones who had actually done Spring Festival, which was our first year,” Sophie Wilson ’22, Slater’s president, said.

This year, Wilson and Qian, along with Culture Show chairs Manasvi Khanna ’23 and Rhea Murdeshwar ’23, led the event’s planning. The Winter Festival was similar to previous years because of loosened restrictions involving to-go food and indoor capacity limits. However, there were fewer booths than before. This year’s booths were run by Wellesley Association for South Asian Cultures, who did henna; Bangladeshi Students Association (BSA), who also did henna; Mezcla, who sold Latinx snacks; Asian Student Union (ASU), who ran yo-yo tsuri, a Japanese water balloon game; Slater, who gave out snacks and sold merchandise; and Kathie Wang ’25, who led Chinese calligraphy.

 “I was doing henna for people, and I really enjoyed it because I enjoy the artistic part of my culture, and it was really interesting to share that,” Lamees Rahman ’24, co-publicity chair of BSA, said.

Wilson and Qian agreed that the event was a success, especially after a two-year hiatus. 

“I really liked how all three performances had drums,” Qian said. “When you’re in the Tishman room, you can really feel the vibrations well, so it feels like you’re part of the performance.”

Wilson was most excited about the international snacks at the event. 

“[Saturday] morning … Angela and I spent four hours in a Zipcar going to different grocery stores around the Boston area to find … snacks from different regions,” she said. “I [was] really excited to try some of the snacks that I bought.”

Qian encouraged students to attend other Slater events in the future. 

“If anyone else wants to reach out to Slater, we have events throughout the year,” Qian said. “This Saturday, [Amélie Washington ’25, Slater’s Europe representative,] is doing a baking plus movie-watching thing in Slater. We have regional events and an alumnae panel coming up.”

“I worked in a couple creative industries at the time [that I founded Khameleon] … and the sheer lack of diversity that I experienced not just in front of the camera … but actually behind the scenes is what I thought was most disruptive,” Shah said.

“Medea,” directed and adapted by Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, was first performed in 2018 with the Oxford University Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) Drama Society. Amewudah-Rivers and Shah are both recent Oxford graduates, and their “Medea” is an adaptation of Euripedes’s play. “Uprooting Medea” aims to help students examine theater in a global, diverse mindset.

“We’re taking workshops using the script, presenting the work, thinking about decolonizing the classics, decolonizing theater; ‘What does it mean to be working with the classics?’” Shah said.

While Amewudah-Rivers chose to produce “Medea” due to the “themes of belonging, home and identity” which are central to Khameleon, Shah makes it clear that classics are not the only option for theater, especially for artists of color.

“Obviously, we’re a company that’s choosing to adapt Greek; I’m not going to … say that we should never put on Greek,” Shah said. “What I think is most important is that … the prestige and immediate importance you gain by using these texts does not overshadow … texts that speak much more directly to issues that are really resonating with communities right now … We must break down and really assess and understand the weight that this supposed ‘canon’ [has].”

Shah acknowledged the complexities of fighting for diversity in a historically exclusionary field.

“We want to challenge those preconceptions of what it means to be a classical text,” Shah said. “It’s a constant battle of ensuring that we’re keeping our work accessible and open while working with a text or … with a field that has a history of being exclusionary.”

Ultimately, Khameleon Productions aims to increase spaces that have a global BIPOC perspective for both contemporary and classical productions.

“It’s not easy to find spaces, but try if there are opportunities to find spaces that are celebratory,” Shah said. “It’s very easy to feel like the work you’re doing and your experience isn’t really valued, but there are so many incredible … people who are constantly doing their best to constantly create space. I also think it’s very important for these young artists to, if they feel they can, … keep opening up space.”

“I was feeling an unordinary amount of exhaustion,” she said. “I just thought that was packing and having all these things going on, but I did have a little bit of doubt in my mind.”

What followed were extensive communications with the College, coupled with a fever Willa developed that same night. Unable to fly to campus, she began classes from home with a large time zone difference. The rest of her household also tested positive for COVID.

Willa’s situation was not unique. Anissa Mansour ’23 also shared her experience of contracting COVID and arriving late to campus. She tested positive the day before her original flight. However, since classes were remote that week, Mansour managed to quarantine at her house and attend online classes. 

“I’m really thankful that everything was online,” Mansour said. 

Mansour also noted that since she is from Florida, classes being held in the EST time zone was not an issue for her, unlike Willa and other students. 

Whitney* ’25, another international student from India, was supposed to fly back to Boston on Jan. 19 but did not because she learned her close family members had COVID days before her flight. On Jan. 20, she tested positive herself.

“I had already planned to postpone my trip before I tested positive,” she said. “It turned out to be the right call.”

Whitney described COVID as feeling like an “intense case” of the flu. Her professors were accommodating, and she only missed one day of classes since she arrived on Jan. 31, the first day of in-person classes. She was originally supposed to arrive a day earlier, but the nor’easter on Jan. 29 delayed her flight. The snowstorm brought with it more than two feet of snow in Massachusetts towns, and it is described as one of the biggest snowstorms in the commonwealth’s history. 

“It wasn’t that bad; I just missed the snowstorm and the sledding part, so that sucked,” Whitney said.

Mansour’s flight was also canceled due to the snowstorm, which was a stressful situation for her. She was able to arrive on Jan. 30 after much difficulty.

“I was really worried about class because everything was in person [by] that point,” she said. “They were not really budging [about refunding my canceled flight, and] I literally was on the phone for three hours. Thankfully the last person was like ‘we’re going to refund you.’”

After her arrival, adapting to a new schedule and organizing things for the next day was an exhausting and hectic process.

 “Just unpacking my suitcase, putting my school stuff out, [and] remembering my routine back was kind of [exhausting],” she said. “Because I only had two hours to do it. I was tired after a flight, and COVID fatigue is very much a real thing.”

Although Whitney no longer has flu-like symptoms and fatigue, she has a lingering sore throat. Willa has no remaining symptoms. A doctor suggested Willa wait to return for a few more days after her mandated quarantine due to possible fatigue, so she scheduled her return flight for Feb. 10. It was also cheaper to fly then, and she was worried that it would take more than two weeks for her to test negative, since some people continue to test positive soon after recovery. However, the College told her she needed to come back by Feb. 4, the earliest possible date she could be out of quarantine. 

“[My dean] told me I should consider taking a gap semester if I came after [Feb. 4] … I would’ve missed too many classes,” she said. “The dean was not very empathetic.”

As an international student, taking an unexpected leave of absence could be especially problematic because of visa expiration. Although Willa emphasized that her professors were kind towards her when she could not attend in-person classes, they refused to let her Zoom into her classes and did not explain why. However, they offered her additional office hours and sent her recordings from equivalent remote lectures from previous semesters. 

After communications with Dean Brown, Slater International Center and student housing, Willa was able to come back on Feb. 4 with money from a college fund paying for her new flight. Although she is jet-lagged and a bit stressed about catching up with schoolwork, she is relieved the situation worked out but somewhat hurt by the way the deans handled her situation. 

“There was so much pressure coming from the College,” she said. “Having a fever, having COVID at the same time was really stressful … I get that it’s really important to tell the College when you’re coming and all that … but you know, they didn’t even care after I booked my flight when I finally told them that I rebooked it. I got no reply back from anyone. They really just wanted to get the job done.” 

*Names have been changed to maintain anonymity.

“I applied to work at the admissions office as a first-year student because I had a lot of imposter syndrome, quite frankly,” she said. “As a low-income student of color, coming into this elite, prestigious predominantly white institution, I was really impacted very positively by the connections I had made with student ambassadors at the Office of Admission who looked like me and had similar experiences. I really wanted to be able to pay that forward.”

Praileau realized she wanted to work in higher education in her sophomore and junior year. As a sociology and education studies double major, she was especially interested in diversity, equity and inclusion work. She finds colleges fascinating because she sees them as “a microcosm of society.”

“I really loved being a soc[iology] major because it taught me to think critically about the structures at play that perpetuate existing inequalities,” she said. “Learning to apply that to specific ideas and entities that we encounter in our everyday lives … that really drew me to the education major.”

As an upperclassman, Praileau decided to apply to admissions jobs. She applied for positions at different colleges, but upon receiving a job offer from Wellesley, the idea of working at her own alma mater interested her most.

“I thought … ‘How cool would it be to be able to think about higher education administration … from the perspective of a recent alum, a recent alum of color, a low-income Black student,’” she said. 

Praileau emphasized how much the pandemic has influenced college admissions and her own life. As a low-income Wellesley student, studying remotely during the fall semester of her senior year was challenging. She found employment and housing much more uncertain after graduation due to the pandemic. However, she also thinks that COVID-19 restrictions have improved college admissions in some ways.

“[Admissions relies] so heavily on travel,” she said. “We’ve turned a lot to virtual programming … Because we’re able to leverage all these different new platforms, in a way it’s made Wellesley and our recruitment strategy more accessible to even more people, like people who are not necessarily able to afford coming to campus.”

In the future, Praileau hopes to continue recruiting low-income students and students of color such as herself. She would eventually like to pursue graduate studies in education. She also stressed the importance of not only attracting students from marginalized backgrounds but also retaining and supporting them once they arrive on campus.

“I think a lot of people assume that because I decided to stay at Wellesley, I had this absolutely perfect experience at Wellesley,” she said. “But the reality of the situation is that throughout my time at Wellesley I learned how to think critically about the institution and about college as a whole and about how schools can better support their most marginalized students.” 

Although she shared that the Office of Admission’s plans for the spring are changing every day due to the unpredictability of the pandemic, Praileau is committed to supporting low-income students, students of color and queer students no matter what. 

“I was also them,” she said. “Very recently.”

The store, located on 65 Central St., is the only convenience store and pharmacy located within a 10 minute walk from the edge of campus.

Representatives from CVS declined to be interviewed for this article, but a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed that the CVS will be closing on Nov. 27 or possibly 29. The Wellesley Square location currently only has two non-pharmacy employees, whom the company will move to a different location. The employees were not told why the store is closing. 

The source also shared that the building the CVS occupies on Central Street changed ownership a year and a half ago, so CVS has been paying rent to a new owner.

Many Wellesley students frequent this CVS location for medical necessities, including over-the-counter and prescription medications. After the Central Street CVS closes, the nearest convenience store will be the one located on Linden Street. 

“I don’t like it. I think it’s bad,” Chloe Ratte ’23 said. “Especially when I lived in McAfee [Hall], which is by the Ville, I relied on CVS for any sort of food and snacks, as well as conditioner and shampoo. Now that I have prescriptions, getting meds is a little stressful since winter is going to come … and the idea of walking [to the Linden Street CVS] is uncomfortable and worrying in the cold and winter.”

Ratte added that buying necessities from the Emporium on campus is also not ideal because they tend to be more expensive there.

Natalia Quintana ’25, the outreach chair for Students for an Accessible Wellesley (SAW), says the closure is a particular loss for students with chronic illnesses or disabilities.

“Whenever I go to the Ville, it’s because of CVS,” Quintana said. “I make it, like, a couple of hours because I’m not going in any other time. And with the CVS being moved — previously, I could at least walk there. I’d need to take breaks, but I could get there. But now, I’ll need to get an Uber — I need to get someone to drive me — because I can’t make it. And I think that’s putting the financial burden on to disabled students to figure this out.”

According to Google Maps, the Central Street CVS is a three minute walk from the edge of campus from the Weston Road intersection. Additionally, it is a 16 minute walk from Lake House, the dorm farthest away from the Ville. In contrast, the Linden Street CVS is a 14-minute walk from Central and Weston, or a 28-minute walk from Lake House. 

These calculations represent the length of time taken by an able-bodied person walking at a brisk pace. 

With the closure of this CVS location, Wellesley students have a few options for how to obtain prescriptions. According to an email to The News from Health Services Director Dr. Jennifer Schwartz, students may have prescriptions delivered to Health Services from Andrews Pharmacy, a pharmacy in the town of Wellesley. Andrews Pharmacy can also deliver over-the-counter drugs and other medical necessities. 

They may also walk to the CVS in Linden Square or have prescriptions delivered via mail order if they have a student health insurance plan. 

“We are open to any other suggestions and are looking into other ways we can help support students during this transition,” Schwartz wrote. 

Though Health Services offers delivery, Quintana believes that the closure of the Central Street CVS will still have an impact on students.

“There’s something to be said about going shopping in person for me,” Quintana said. “When I see things online, it doesn’t correlate in my mind to real physical objects. So being like, ‘Okay, this is the store, this is what they have,’ is a lot more helpful for me to realize what I need.”

After years in the industry, she grew tired of its blatant misogyny and switched fields. As a Wellesley graduate, she had “no patience” for dealing with the tech boys’ club culture.

“I was just tired of fighting those battles … and there were opportunities for tech workers in journalism that didn’t exist as clearly when I got out of school,” she said. “It was nice to go to an office space where there were women at all, doing anything.”

This led her to her current position as a staff engineer for the Interactive News team at The Times, where she has worked for almost 10 years. The team, which deals with data and programming, helps create graphs and maps that track COVID-19 cases, the project for which they won the Pulitzer.

“We really understand the terabytes of data we get … and can analyze that correctly to say, ‘Yes, this is the methodology we can use to identify these trends,’” Fehr said.

Although she did not originally plan to work for a newspaper, she was part of The Wellesley News as an undergraduate. She was mostly involved in graphic design, the field she originally thought she wanted to go into after college, although she also wrote some articles. Similarly, at The Times she has occasionally written pieces that have accompanied the data she has worked on. 

“I definitely valued journalism from my experience with The News, which was the first place … I was exposed to most of its concepts,” she said.

Fehr is much happier with the gender dynamics at The Times, but she recognizes that the journalism field still has much more work to do in terms of equality of various kinds. As an engineer surrounded by writers, she has found that the newsroom has more women leaders in general than her data-driven team. Additionally, engineers in positions such as hers make much less than their counterparts doing the same work in more male-dominated startups and tech companies.

“I don’t think The Times or journalism can really pat themselves on the back about the representation of women on the technology side,” Fehr said. “It’s still a battle.”

Fehr also recognizes her privilege in coming from a wealthy background. While switching to a less financially lucrative career for the sake of happiness was risky, she had her family to fall back on if it did not work out.

“Choosing to be in technology in news is kind of saying, ‘I’m not going to be paid a Google-level salary for the work I’m doing even if the work could be similar,’” Fehr said. “Being able to decide that’s okay is either, you’re okay with the mission behind it because you really value journalism … or you are from a place of financial security where that is worthwhile. That is another bridge that the technology industry needs to understand, is shaping other industries because of competitive pay.”

Fehr has been working on the COVID tracking project since March 2020, virtually the start of the pandemic, and her work has gotten easier as the federal government has started releasing more data and vaccines have become available. After winning her Pulitzer, Fehr continues to work on the project with a smaller team. In the future, she hopes to potentially start a new project collecting data on how mask-wearing affects the yearly flu season. 

“COVID will still be around even in low-level exposure,” she said. “Could be we end up morphing to track [the flu] and COVID is just a subtype of the flu numbers or something … We need to get to this winter before we really find out what the cycle is going forward.”

Although Fehr feels honored to have won a Pulitzer, she noted that prior to the event, she hoped that all the finalists would tie. Fehr stressed the importance of every publication’s data contributions during the pandemic.

“I was really hoping [the Pulitzer board] would come up with, ‘Everyone did a public good because the government did such a poor job [tracking and reporting COVID numbers] … Journalism as a whole did a great job covering the government’s ass on this one,’” Fehr said.

“We had to take steps to protect the Wellesley ‘community’ and limit outside interactions,” Joy St. John, dean of admission and financial aid, said over email.

According to Lorelei Blau ’24, who has worked at Starbucks since September 2020, the restriction occurred after her coworker, who did not attend Wellesley, tested positive for COVID-19. To continue working, Blau flew home early and decided to study remotely for the spring semester. If the College were to ban off-campus employment again, she would take a leave of absence or transfer rather than quitting her job.

“The wages are $5 more at Starbucks than on campus, and I was also working triple the time we [are] allowed to on campus,” Blau said. “Having the off-campus job allowed me to escape for a bit and meet new people.”

Another sophomore, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, continued working in the Ville after the ban. She worked 40 hours a week last year and plans on working 30-35 this year while also holding an on-campus job. As a student on full financial aid, she could not afford to stop working because she has to support herself.

“Not being able to work … cuts me off from my source of income … which jeopardizes academic opportunities and also social ones,” she said.

Although work-study was waived last semester and students could apply for COVID support grants, she did not feel comfortable applying for the amount of money she was making and feared losing her job permanently if she quit. 

Bella Jung ’24 noted the lack of availability of work-study jobs as part of the reason for her reliance on babysitting.

“My first year, I applied to so many on-campus jobs, and I didn’t get any,” Jung said. “How can Wellesley say, ‘Oh, if you have work-study, this part is going towards your tuition,’ but then not guarantee having enough jobs?” 

Students are also encountering difficulties due to the bus schedule, which was altered in accordance with the divestment plan. Theresa Rose ’22, who works at Life Alive Organic Cafe in Cambridge, has to take the commuter rail if they have a shift that falls outside of the bus schedule. If they work later than the last train, they will have to take an Uber or stay with a local friend. 

“It’s a f*cking nightmare,” Rose said.

Despite the setbacks, Rose is glad that off-campus employment is possible again. They take additional safety measures, such as wearing a mask in the dorm hallways, because they do not want to cause an outbreak that could jeopardize off-campus jobs again. Rose and others are worried about this possibility, but they think it is unlikely.

“I think a lot of things would have to change,” Jung said. But if it were to get to a point where they had to close everything again, safety and public health would come first.”

The administration expressed similar sentiments.

“We do not anticipate having to reinstate the ban, but if we see a sharp increase in positivity rates, we will take steps we feel are necessary to help protect our students and community,” a representative from Communications & Public Affairs said via email.