A blue unicorn stares at me from the corner of my desk, approximately four inches tall with a light pink and ivory horn protruding from its foam head, seated on top of a white binder that houses momentos and documents from past editors of the Technique. 

This nameless creature has served as my companion during the late nights spent in room 137 of the Flag Building, the home of the Technique. 

At first glance, those unfamiliar with the space might take a peek into room 137 and see trash — countless stacks of yellowing newspaper pile up against one wall while a pop-up Trojan-branded hamper full of broken water guns and a collection of random hats sits in the opposite corner. 

If you are brave enough to walk through the door and turn around, you will be confronted by a collage on the wall featuring pictures of past staff members as adolescents in their awkward prepubescent stages. 

I accidentally purchased the blue unicorn over a year ago when I was the Managing Editor, and in an attempt to get rid of the unusually soft stress toy I handed it off to the Editor-in-Chief. 

My predecessor then placed it on the corner of her desk, where it still lives to this day, and it became yet another coin in this treasure chest of a room full of questionable but sentimental knick knacks. 

This unicorn, albeit an inanimate toy, has sat by me as I have typed away into the early hours of the morning, immersed in an investigative piece or sweating while rushing to submit a homework assignment by midnight so I could then return my focus to editing the paper. 

It has quite literally seen my blood, sweat and tears more than most others who have the luxury of leaving the office before me. 

So while some may peer into our office and scoff with distaste at the mild chaos and disorganization, I look at it now — on the very last Wednesday night I will ever spend working on this newspaper as the Editor-in-Chief — and I see a historical archive. 

Traces of everyone that came before me live on in this room, many of them likely to be forgotten or misplaced as we relocate to the new student center in mere weeks. Some have already started to sort through the items left behind and discard what they believe to have no value. 

A few hours before sitting down to draft this, the new Editor-in-Chief of the paper was elected and confirmed by the Board of Publications. By the time this gets printed and distributed to the rest of campus, my successor’s name will be public knowledge, and I will officially have one foot out the door. 

It is a bittersweet moment, and I can’t help but wonder if the pieces of myself that I’m leaving behind will one day be misplaced and forgotten, too. 

It is also bittersweet in the sense that I have spent most of this semester counting down the days to when I get to pass down my responsibilities to a successor while investing the last few remnants of my college career into this paper, and now that the time has come, I’m not sure I know how exactly to let go. 

Do I just close the door to the office tomorrow afternoon after submitting the paper one last time and hope that I’ve been the leader this paper and its staff deserved? Or will I turn back a few weeks from now and regret not doing more?

As I sit here in my editor’s office and watch the clock approach 4 a.m., what I do know is that I will curse myself in a few hours when I wake up for my 7 a.m. work shift and blame myself for procrastinating. 

But in reality, I could not force myself to write this “swan song” earlier because I knew these words would be the last of mine to ever print in this paper. More than that, how could I possibly condense the last four years of my life into half of a page? 

We’re living through more history than most anticipate in a lifetime ­— surviving a pandemic, wars erupting and the overall chaos of the world makes the woes of running a paper seem minuscule, yet I cannot find the words to encompass all that I have done and felt in my time here.

As Riverdale’s Archie Andrews poetically put it, “You haven’t known the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football.” 

Similarly, I simply did not know the epic highs and lowest lows of being Editor-in-Chief until I one day found myself entrusted with this entire publication. 

However, it is not too far off from many other Tech students’ experience; there are moments where you will feel small and under qualified because trying to manage a staff of 25 will feel like there’s 23 too many people you hired but also not enough, and surely, the previous board must have made a mistake in electing you. 

On other days when you watch your staff pour their hearts and souls into stories that matter, stories that would otherwise go unheard, you will feel like you are on top of the world and your half-empty cup will overflow with pride and admiration.

In this way, it also feels like I’m leaving a toxic ex behind. Not because I feel wronged by this experience in any way, but because I knew from the very beginning that I would be investing myself in a relationship that would not last forever, into something that was never mine to keep.

I’m leaving that relationship with the knowledge that I did my best, and perhaps there were some things I could have worked on given more time. 

But, I will never regret being in the relationship itself, and traces of it will shape me for years to come.

Approximately nine out of ten Americans considered love to be a “very important reason to get married” according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. Following love, 81% cited lifelong commitment and 76% cited companionship as additional important reasons. When Netflix announced a new approach to reality dating shows in 2020 with “Love is Blind,” they designed an experiment that set out to answer exactly the question in the title: is love truly blind?

“Love is Blind,” revolves around the idea that love can be based on an emotional connection more than a purely physical one; thus, contestants are placed into soundproof pods where they can chat with others but never see them unless one of them eventually proposes. The contestants can finally meet each other after they are engaged, and then they have four weeks to plan a wedding and say “I do” or “I don’t” on public television. The reality show provided much-needed entertainment at the beginning of the pandemic when the country was first going into lockdown, and viewers found comfort in watching the participants of “Love is Blind” navigate the murky waters of modern-day dating.

The first season was filmed primarily in the heart of Atlanta, and the cast involved 40 to 50 contestants who were quickly filtered out based on how well they were connecting with others in the pods. This eventually led to six couples being engaged, five of them actually making it past the honeymoon stage in Mexico and two couples saying “I do.” Season one’s Lauren Speed-Hamilton and Cameron Hamilton are one of my favorite married couples to emerge from the show with Tech’s own Matthew Barnett and his wife Amber Pike following close behind. 

After getting engaged, both couples claimed to be physically attracted to each other but then had to learn how to adapt to each others’ lifestyles in the real world. Barnett and Pike seemed to be in different stages of life, financially and in other manners, with him being an engineer with a stable income and house while Pike, an ex-tank mechanic, worked very occasionally and had accumulated credit card debt. 

One of the biggest challenges for Hamilton and then-Speed was navigating how to be in an interracial relationship; Hamilton had previously been in a long term relationship with a Black woman but had to actively work to win over Speed’s father and address certain privileges he carried as a white man. Speed, on the other hand, had never dated a white significant other before and had to mentally prepare herself for the challenges she was expecting with her family and within society by marrying a white man. On top of that, another source of tension was Hamilton constantly asking Speed about how certain she was about saying “I do,” to which she replied she could not give him a definite answer. 

Nonetheless, despite all of the obstacles the couples faced, they learned how to communicate with each other and addressed any differences as soon as they arose rather than letting doubts fester and erupt, and both pairings made it successfully down the aisle while the remaining three couples all rejected each other at the altar, leading to some very dramatic exits from the weddings, namely Giannina Gibelli and Damian Powers. 

Season one was filmed in 2018, meaning the couples were married for over a year by the time the show released, showing that they were at least somewhat sustainable at the time, and now four years have passed with both of these couples going strong, at least on a surface level, proving that love truly can be blind in some cases.

While a bit skeptical of the premise of the show at first, I ultimately found myself admiring many of the couples that both lasted and broke up for being willing to step out of their comfort zones to pursue the promise of love but also recognizing their own boundaries and prioritizing themselves by ending an engagement rather than staying in a relationship out of obligation. There was some drama — especially with Jessica Batten as she accepted Mark Cueva’s proposal and then indirectly pursued Barnett after he was engaged — but overall the couples seemed to like each other to at least some degree, which cannot be said for all of the contestants in the most recent season. 

When season two was released this past February, social media came abuzz with reactions provoked by very strong personalities such as Abishek “Shake” Chatterjee and Shayne Jensen. This most recent season presented a multitude of conflicts between the couples that emerged from the pods and drama that was greatly elevated in comparison to any of the tensions in the first season. Out of the nearly 30 contestants on this season, six couples left engaged and two ended up married: Nick Thompson and Danielle Ruhl were the first couple to be engaged and married followed by Jarette Jones and Iyanna McNeely.

Viewers were taken aback by Shake’s superficial questions pertaining to how much the women he was talking to weighed and whether he would have any trouble lifting them on his shoulders at festivals. Shayne frequently started most of his conversations with love interest Shaina Hurley by asking what she was wearing and Shaina was under the impression that she was Shayne’s top choice in the pods until he asked Natalie Lee to be his girlfriend and eventual fiancé. Shaina, a devout Christian, then went on to accept a proposal from Kyle Abrams, an atheist, despite having hesitations about their differences and still hurt from Shayne’s rejection. Similar to Jessica, Shaina constantly mentioned Shayne after they were both engaged to different people and left the pods, even going as far as confronting Shayne in Chicago and claiming his relationship with Natalie was fake. 

Although I appreciate the more diverse couples represented in the second season in comparison to the majority-white cast of season one, at times the pairings felt forced based on the participants’ cultural backgrounds. Namely, Deepti and Shake were a couple that left me feeling both proud and perplexed — proud in the sense that this was the first time I was witnessing a South Asian couple in mainstream media, something I never experienced as a South Asian myself growing up in the south. 

At the same time, their pairing absolutely confused me because it seemed as if they had nothing in common besides both being Indian; in fact, both Shake and Deepti both admitted that they both have a history of dating white significant others. While their past partners do not define who they can be with in the future, Shake repeatedly mentioned that he did not feel physically attracted to Deepti in almost every episode following their physical reveals, even going so far as to say she felt like his “Aunt.”

Behavior like this is what makes me question the intentions of the contestants of season two. While the pairings in season one had their own reservations about jumping into engagements and ultimately marriage, they at least attempted to further deepen the connection with their significant others outside of the pods. Meanwhile, in the second season’s reunion, Shake revealed that he didn’t think the show was a place to find a wife and instead wished love was “blurry” and not completely blind so he could have taken physical attraction into account while dating in the pods.

Ultimately, whether love is blind or not is a question I am still debating myself, but for now, it is something I am okay with letting other people figure out first. 

In 1961, Tech became the first public university in the Deep South to peacefully integrate without a court order when Ford C. Greene, Ralph A. Long Jr. and Lawrence Williams enrolled as the first Black students. 

Two years later in 1963, John Thomas Gill III followed in their footsteps by enrolling at Tech and created his own lasting legacy. He was the first Black Editor-in-Chief of the Technique and the first Black member of ANAK. 

From the sixth grade, Gill excelled in mathematics and his parents knew a bright future lay ahead of him, prompting the Atlanta native to move to Rhode Island to attend St. Charles Academy, a Catholic boarding school, in pursuit of a better education. After his third year at the boarding school, Gill made plans to graduate early and apply to three schools: CalTech, MIT and Tech. Both MIT and Tech accepted Gill, and Gill once again found himself back in his hometown to pursue his undergraduate education. 

“A lot happened in the sixties,” Gill said. “It wasn’t just that African Americans got to come to Georgia Tech, but co-eds … they didn’t start until a couple years before. I remember that there were 80 at Georgia Tech compared to almost 8,000 students.” Gill referred to female students as “co-eds,” a common term at the time when women were first admitted to the Institute in 1952. 

In his last two years at St. Charles, Gill served as the editor of the newspaper, The Hilltopper, so when he arrived at Tech, he knew he wanted to get involved with the Technique and joined the staff in 1964. 

After serving as a writer for one year, Gill quickly moved up the ranks as the Copy Editor before becoming Managing Editor from 1965-1966 and then Editor-in-Chief from 1966-67. 

“Working on a newspaper like this was almost like being in combat,” Gill said. “Because you make connections and it takes a long time for them to disappear, even spread out to the four corners of the country literally. I was in touch with a couple of people for decades.” Gill wishes he could go back in time and enjoy those days again.

Those days and the position did not come without any pressure, however. When Gill stepped into his Editor-in-Chief position, he did it out of his passion for the paper, but he was aware that it was something bigger than him. Apparently, so did local news outlets, who began reporting on the first Black editor on Tech’s campus. 

Gill feels lucky that during his time at Tech, no one made him feel unwelcome on campus or at the paper.

“‘Atlanta the city, too busy to hate’ was a popular phrase at the time, and it felt a similar way at Tech. People here were too busy studying here to pay attention.” 

Similarly, when Greene, Long and Lawrence were students here, they felt that their biggest issue was being generally ignored by the campus, according to an interview with the AJC. 

During Gill’s most recent visit to Tech a year before the pandemic began, Gill reminisced over all of the major changes made to campus, but one that struck him the most were the statues in Harrison Square. Gill credits the Three Pioneers and The First Graduate, Ronald Yancey, for clearing the path that allowed him to be at Tech.

“There was a lot of new stuff that I saw, but I was just really moved by that statue … it was emotional to see that place after driving by it thousands of times.” 

On Aug. 5, 2020, Catalyst Apartments, a new student apartment complex, announced that they would be opening in West Midtown, Atlanta in fall 2021. One year later, hundreds of students have been stranded in hotels and temporary housing with no confirmation of when they will be able to move into their leased apartments in Catalyst Midtown.

According to the Catalyst website, the apartment promises to “set a new standard for your everyday student experience that’s unlike anything you have ever seen. Catalyst in Atlanta, Georgia will offer world-class student living that’s truly in a league of its own.” With multiple move-in delays, little if any communication from Catalyst employees and unfinished construction, the student housing complex certainly set new standards that most have never experienced before.

“At the time, Catalyst had the best deals in comparison to all the other student apartments around like Inspire. That’s really why I picked Catalyst,” said Caleb Page, fourth-year ME. Page first learned about Catalyst while researching different apartment options near campus and after realizing that the complex would be both in proximity to his friends and within his price range, he decided to seal the deal and apply for an apartment online.

With an original move-in date of Aug. 15, students from schools all over Atlanta including Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta were expecting to move in prior to their first day of class. At the same time Catalyst Apartments announced its development, two other student apartment complexes, Inspire Atlanta and Here Atlanta, also announced that they would be opening in Fall 2021 in Midtown near Tech’s campus. Both Inspire Atlanta and Here Atlanta completed construction on time, and residents were able to move in as planned with time to settle in before classes began.

However, on Aug. 11, days before the set move-in, Catalyst sent an email to residents informing them that “… unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances related to completion and final safety inspection of the elevator, we will need to delay your move-in at Catalyst until at least August 26th.”

“When I got that email, I was a nervous wreck,” said Mishi Banerjee, a recent alumna of Nicholls State University who moved to Atlanta to be closer to her sister while she took a gap year before graduate school. “I was trying to pack up my whole life in Louisiana into my little SUV … I had planned for a month to be moving into this place, so I just had a complete nervous breakdown.”

Catalyst offered two different options for accommodations: if residents were able to delay their move to Atlanta or not require alternative housing, they would receive a credit of $50 per day on their account for each night they chose not to stay in a hotel. Alternatively, if residents were unable to delay their move to Atlanta and required housing, Catalyst would pay for hotel costs including room, tax and parking if it was included in their lease, but they would not receive the $50 credit.

Angelik Laboy Torres, fourth-year CS and film studies minor, is from Puerto Rico and had no family near Atlanta to stay with, but fortunately, a friend near Emory offered to house her and she opted to receive the $50 per day credit.

“It’s really nice of my friend to drive me every single day to school because it’s pretty far,” Torres said. “But at the same time, I shouldn’t be this burden on her and I should just have my own place… I can’t just go back to my apartment and feel comfortable after I finish a class.” Others like Banerjee, who had already enrolled in cosmetology classes, had no choice but to continue her drive to Atlanta and request a hotel.

“I’m lucky I’m not in college anymore, but [Catalyst’s] doings have really disrupted plans I had like applying to graduate school,” Banerjee said.

At first, residents like Banerjee and Page were patient and understanding of the delay, believing that Catalyst was trying to prioritize their safety by pushing move-in by a few days.

Yet, as residents waited in an awkward limbo to move into their new homes, Catalyst sent out another email to residents on floors one to three in Building 100 on Aug. 24, stating “It is our expectation that move-in will be on Saturday, August 28th. Many residents have requested a weekend move-in to work around class schedules,” implying that the move-in was pushed due to the request of students and not other factors like inspection or construction delays.

The email also informed residents that although they will be able to move in, elevators would not be in service and amenities would not be available. Residents on floors four to five were notified that there is no set date for them to move in yet because of a missing certificate of occupancy for those upper levels.

Residents had already paid a full month’s rent for August at this point, which Catalyst required to be paid despite the delayed move-in date, and there seemed to be no sign of a refund insight. With the entire month of August almost over, people became more anxious about whether they would actually be allowed to move in.

“A lot of us have just walked by the apartment and we know that it’s not just [the inspection],” Banerjee said. “It seems like they plan on moving us in when it’s still under construction, which I don’t like because that’s a safety hazard.” On Aug. 27, one day before the new move-in date, residents of floors 1-3 in Building 1000 received yet another email from Catalyst informing them that they would not be allowed to move in until Sept. 1 due to “unforeseen construction final construction issues” and the city inspection approval process. Building 2000 residents were also notified that their building had received a certificate of occupancy and they would be permitted to move in on Sept. 1.

Residents of floors four and five received no further information at the time, and all residents of Catalyst were still required to pay rent in full for the month of September before moving in.

“They need to communicate better. They can’t just say something and then disappear. Being in limbo about somewhere you’re supposed to live is so hard. We’re living in hotels but it feels like we’re homeless,” said Banerjee, who was assigned to an higher floor of Building 1000.

When the Technique reached out for a comment, Catalyst did not respond. Additionally, the number on the complex’s website would not connect, and multiple residents have reached out to leasing officers and employees only to receive silence.

Families and friends alongside residents themselves have turned to social media and writing online reviews in an attempt to get a response from the complex, many leaving one-star reviews online. One Google review by Dajanae Mckinney read, “If we were able to give 0 star reviews I’d make 10000 different google accounts to do just that.”

Frustrated by the lack of communication and never-ending delays, the students of Catalyst also formed a GroupMe to connect with each other amongst the shared confusion.

As of Sept. 2, the group chat contained 336 members voicing their concerns over the management and progression of the building so far.

On Sept. 1, residents of Building 2000 were able to move in, but floors one through three of Building 1000 were once again delayed to Sep. 2. Those who did move in shared pictures in the chat of the building and complained of leaky sprinklers in the ceilings, unfinished elevators and uncleaned apartment units while others still await communication on when they can finally move in.

“It’s been absolutely ridiculous,” Banerjee said. “When you think of student housing, you think the priority is the actual students who are in school.”

Sometimes I feel like I have lived through two different versions of the same year. It almost feels as if we are in the Twilight zone per se.

On one hand, many people have suffered unimaginable losses and pain that no one could have imagined. On the other hand, some people have been living their best lives possible with no regard to the pandemic.

Last fall, I wrote a piece called “The peas that bruise us,” and discussed how people from my hometown showed ignorance and inflicted microaggressions upon the AAPI at the beginning of the pandemic. For those who might not have read that original piece, it came to fruition specifically after a girl from my high school posted a picture on her social media platforms labeled “Global mall definitely has Coronavirus.”

For those unfamiliar with the mall, it is a well-known hub for small South Asian businesses.

Now, this occurred at the very beginning of the pandemic, merely a few weeks in when everyone was ecstatic to have a prolonged spring break and expected to come back.

Yet, it bothered me that lockdown had barely begun and people were already making small jokes towards the AAPI community, a fear that had been brewing among certain communities long before the United States decided to take COVID-19 seriously.

This small annoyance festered in my mind over the weeks that followed until it exploded into full-blown anger.

It kept me up one night until I got out of my bed at 6 a.m. and wrote out my feelings about the attitude and behavior of the people I had gone to school with.

Thus, “The peas that bruise us,” was born, and I could finally find some semblance of sleep.

However, even after writing out my feelings and sending it to the girl who provoked my anger, even after I turned it into an editorial piece and it got published for the world to see, I could not help but wonder if I was overreacting.

I wondered if I had made a mountain out of a mole hill. Even though others that went to the same high school reached out to me and said that my piece put into words what they had been feeling themselves over the past few years and upon seeing the post that was made about the Global Mall, I wondered if we were all just being too sensitive.

In light of the BLM movement that grew even more over the summer, the APPI community could not complain about our discomfort for fear of taking awareness away from others in our community that greatly needed it. But after a year, during AAPI hate has become more and more visible, I find myself growing more and more fearful for my friends and their families. I find that despite engaging in meaningful conversation with the girl from my high school who ridiculed the South Asian community a year ago, no one’s attitudes have changed. The same people that were posting black squares over the summer have been silent over the past few weeks, as eight innocent people were killed only a few miles away.

While others have been crying for help and awareness for the crimes committed against their communities, others have been posting endless pictures after pictures of them traveling from one city to another showing off their vacations. It is not fair. I don’t expect social media to offer solutions to all of our problems, and nor do I expect everyone to voice their opinions and support on their accounts. But I do think it is very telling when people do not know how to read the room, and if they do choose to post if at all, what the content of those posts address. All I can say is after the past year, but especially the past few weeks, I am exhausted.

The peas that bruised my back last summer have officially gone rotten.

After 28 years at Tech, senior director of the Campus Recreation Center (CRC) Michael Edwards has officially entered retirement.

Edwards was first recruited by Patrick Crecine, the former president of the Institute, in preparation for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. He spent his first 12 years working in capital planning and space management until Wayne Clough, the 10th president of the Institute, hired him as the director of the CRC.

Prior to arriving at Tech, Edwards served as a diving coach at Syracuse University and later managed a sports complex similar to the CRC at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

Although Edwards ended up working in primarily recreational planning, he initially aspired to go into teaching and coaching football. However, when Edwards struggled to find opportunities in these fields, he turned to sports and recreation.

“I never really saw myself in any of these positions,” Edwards said. “But when I had the opportunity to mentor young professionals, it was about taking advantage of opportunities that presented themselves and sometimes their risky propositions.”

Nonetheless, Edwards tackled many challenges throughout his career which earned him a well-known reputation as a leader in the world of campus recreation. Over the years, he has contributed to three different Olympic games: the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In addition to the Olympic games, Edwards has also worked on the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis and multiple national and international championships.

To the Tech community, however, Edwards will always be remembered as the man who built the CRC, a campus center like no other when it was first came to fruition. Upon completing his two-year term with the Olympic Committee as the venue manager of the aquatic center, Edwards returned to Tech and placed his focus on creating the new recreational center.

“My assignment, which was always the plan, was to build a recreation center around the Olympic Aquatic Center. That’s really why the Olympic product center was built in the first place — to be an anchor for the development of athletic and recreational facilities on campus,” Edward said.

This plan took years to develop and execute, with the CRC team facing obstacles like utilizing the aquatic center’s existing infrastructure and footprint of the land surrounding it. Eventually, once the CRC was constructed, it became known as an “engineering feat,” according to Edwards, referring to the unique post-tension concrete and bridge technology that made the construction of the gym over the aquatic center possible.

“It was those kinds of things — the problem solving and the excitement of being able to do something that others have not done, things that others said couldn’t be done — those are the kinds of things that keep you coming back,” Edwards said.

Despite leading the development of one of the most notable landmarks on Tech’s campus today, Edwards is most proud of the work he has done with his CRC team to serve the community’s physical and mental health, especially for students.

“We had a lot of accomplishments over my 28 year period of time,” Edwards said.

“But the accomplishment of building a structure and department that can truly have a lasting impact on the health and well being of the overall Georgia Tech campus community is what is so important. I think we sometimes overlook that.”

Edwards explained that data gathered from a 10 year longitudinal study conducted with the CRC shows that students who frequent the CRC two to three times a week have a higher GPA, retention rate, and graduation rate than those who do not go to the CRC.

“Social connectedness is part of the CRC. Sense of community is part of the CRC. Physical activity is part of the CRC, and those are three components to help with the number one and number two, mental health issues on any campus … depression and anxiety,” Edwards said.

During Edwards’s time as director, the CRC also began a collaboration with the Counseling Center and the Center for Assessment, Referral and Education (CARE) called Healthy Minds. The program aims to promote a healthy, active lifestyle by focusing on five dimensions of well-being: physical, emotional, social, spiritual and professional.

“The CRC is the cornerstone of a thriving and active health and well being community,” Edwards said.

“To have the opportunity to impact the health and well being of thousands of students is what I would say is one of my proudest accomplishments.” After creating such a lasting legacy on Tech’s campus, Edwards decided that it was time for him to step down from his role and let others take the reins, but he does not plan on slowing down completely.

“I am retired from Georgia Tech, but I don’t intend to retire from life or my professional career,” Edwards said. “I still want to have involvement in things, whether that’s something is at Georgia Tech or whether it’s on a national level.”

For now, Edwards looks forward to presenting and speaking at conferences in the upcoming fall as he moves onto the next chapter of his life.

John Lewis (1940 – 2020)

On July 17, 2020, a legend died. Born outside the small town of Troy, Alabama, John Robert Lewis came from a family of simple means. As a little boy, he aspired to become a minister, but little did he know that he would go from preaching to his chickens to speaking to crowds of hundreds of thousands of people.

While many people today spend their youth finding themselves and building their own lives, Lewis spent his days fighting for others.

Dubbed “the boy from Troy” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), Lewis went on to become one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders in his lifetime, helping with the March on Washington and speaking to the masses directly before MLK delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Lewis was also one of the thirteen original freedom riders who rode interstate buses from Washington D.C. to New Orleans while violating segregated seating rules and facing multiple arrests, beatings and harassment from the KKK. He eventually went on to become one of the most well-known politicians in Congress, representing Atlanta specifically time and time again.

Lewis was also known for having an affinity for Tech students because of his close ties to the city of Atlanta, but also because of the emphasis he placed on the value of education. In fact, Lewis frequently visited campus while in Atlanta, and he even spoke at an SCPC event in 2017 pro-bono so he could share his stories with the Tech community directly.

Elizabeth Krakovski, PUBP ‘20, was one of the SCPC members who worked the event and had the opportunity to meet Lewis.

“What I admire the most about him is his resilience,” said Krakovski. “And his commitment to his own words — he’s very true to himself, and I feel like that’s not an easy thing to say about a politician.”

Lewis may have been born in a segregated America, but he worked hard to make sure that he would not die in one. Nonetheless, the same struggles he faced as a young Black man in America are ones that still exist today, and although Lewis may no longer be here physically, he undoubtedly leaves behind a lasting legacy that will empower the generations today to work even harder and continue the work Lewis began.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933 – 2020)

On Friday, Sept. 18 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away from complications related to pancreatic cancer. News of her death swept through campus as students took to social media to express their feelings over the loss of one of the most prominent cultural icons of our generation.

The Atlanta community switched from watching the Braves beat the Mets that night by 13 runs to watching masses gather (an unfamiliar scene in the current pandemic) outside of the Supreme Court steps to pay their respects.
In the following days after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, students posted photographs, clips and quotes that memorialized Ginsburg’s impact on the country.

Many of the designs featured illustrations of Justice Ginsburg’s “dissent” collar, an iconography associated with her likeness that has been used on everything from t-shirts to action figures.

Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Justice Ginsburg joined the Supreme Court bench in the fall of 1993.

At the time of her appointment she was only the second woman to join the Supreme Court, with Sandra Day O’Connor being the first in the court’s over 200 year existence. During the span of her career she has been hailed as a hero of gender equality and a feminist icon.

Justice Ginsburg’s journey to the steps of the Supreme Court is an inspiring one to say the least. She was an incredible academic and scholar of the law.

Ginsburg enrolled at Harvard Law School not even a full year after giving birth to her first child, Jane.

She juggled the responsibilities of motherhood, marriage, legal academia and the pressures and discrimination associated with attending a male dominated learning institution.

Despite all of these factors, Ginsburg maintained her position as one of the top students at Harvard until she transferred to Columbia Law School where she graduated at the top of her class.

Before she became a Supreme Court Justice, Ginsburg argued many cases revolving around sex discrimination on the other side of the bench. One of the most famous of these cases was Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, where she argued in favor of male widows receiving Social Security benefits.

Ginsburg leaves behind a legacy that’s larger than life.

As a champion of gender equality and women’s rights, she has helped pave the way for younger advocates and pre-law students to pick up where she left off and continue to march on towards the goal of constitutional equality.

It costs $1,331.52 in tests and five vials of my blood for my primary care doctor to tell me that I needed to make an appointment with a gynecologist to receive an actual diagnosis for the issue I need help with.

It costs a minimum of $55 to over $110, with my insurance, just to visit a gynecologist because technically, they are specialists, which my insurance company has deemed an unnecessary visit.

If I manage to make it to the gynecologist, it would then cost anywhere from $300 to over $1000 to get an ultrasound, depending on the complexity of the visit and the type of ultrasound the gynecologist prescribes. These are all rough estimates according to my insurance provider’s portal — I don’t know the exact cost, nor do I know how to navigate the American healthcare system as a young undergraduate student.

What I do know, however, is that healthcare is a privilege in this country, and it is a privilege that my family has struggled to gain access to for most of my life.

I remember when I was in middle school, my mother would yell and cry because she felt a pain near her stomach for months. I remember feeling helpless because she could not go to a doctor without insurance, so she would take some anti-acid medicine and ignore it. I remember feeling helpless because I couldn’t drive her to a hospital myself and force her to see a doctor. I remember her being in so much pain one night that I had to call my friend’s dad to buy Tylenol and drop it off because we ran out, but neither my brother or I was old enough to drive and go to the store ourselves.

When she finally did cave a few months later and pay out of pocket to see a doctor, they told her nothing was wrong and that she probably had bad acid reflux. Nonetheless, they conducted countless useless tests — for cancer, heart disease, and a million other scary potentials — just to give her no diagnosis in the end and expensive bills to pay. This continued until my mother decided that the pain was so much she was going to die, but she didn’t want to die in America; she would rather go to her family in India and die there. So she went, and she got more tests done until the doctors there found out that she had gall stones and cysts in her gallbladder.

One month and a gallbladder removal surgery later, my mother returned home to us in America different than when she had left — pain free and relieved to know that she wasn’t “imagining” like previous doctors had made her believe.

That year was a nightmare for my family, and I thought I would never have to deal with it again, but I find myself in a similar situation now, years later as a young adult. I have suspected that I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome for over a year now — I have all of the symptoms of PCOS, and my doctor is mostly sure that I have it and she ordered endless tests to check for it (hence the whopping $1,331.52 bill I received in the mail, which was thankfully covered by the insurance coverage I just gained access to one month ago). The only test left to do to confirm it would be an ultrasound conducted by a gynecologist. But what’s the point of spending so much on getting a diagnosis that would not have a clear course of action anyways? There’s no “cure” to PCOS, and my doctor already prescribed my birth control and other medication to manage the symptoms, so other than making some lifestyle changes, I see no reason to drop a few hundred to a thousand dollars to essentially just label what may or may not be wrong with my ovaries.

I could be completely fine or I could find out years down the line that I am in fact going to struggle having my own children or that I face the multitude of other risks that accompany PCOS. The only thing that I know with complete certainty about my body right now is that I don’t know anything at all.

A lot of people have heard the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.” If you have not, the basic gist is this:

A prince is looking for the perfect princess to marry, and despite traveling all over the world, he fails. One night, a girl comes to his castle claiming to be a princess and requests to stay the night to shelter from a storm. That night, the prince’s mother places a pea in the princess’ bed and then covers said pea in 20 mattresses and 20 bed-downs. The next day when she asks the princess how she slept, the princess complains that she slept horribly and felt bruised because of something hard in the mattress, confirming to the queen that only a true princess could be so sensitive.

I’m not a princess nor do I consider myself to be a sensitive person, but let me tell you about the peas that I have uncovered bruising my back. 

I live in Peachtree Corners (PTC), GA. PTC is a city that can fairly be described as privileged, which according to the city’s website has a demographic that is 60% white, the median home value is $325,000 and the average household income is $102,565. If I think about my own family, we fit into none of these categories. 

We are not white, our home is well below the median value, and I cannot recall a single year in school that my family’s income was ever high enough to disqualify my brother and me from the free lunch program. As I went from elementary to middle to high school, I was constantly aware of these facts, but I never realized how much all of the privilege surrounding me truly impacted me.

The schools I attended were relatively diverse, but as I got older and began entering my gifted, honors and AP/IB classes, my classmates became whiter and whiter. High school, in particular, was an uncomfortable four years of sitting in classrooms surrounded by people who didn’t look like me. As the time to apply for colleges came closer, the more painfully aware I became that the people in the same room had some advantages I did not — whether racially or financially.

My ultimate goal for high school became to get through it and get out. I naively began to hold onto the idea that once I got to college, I would meet so many new people that I could forget the ones from my hometown.

Once I came to Tech, I tried to do just this. In high school, I was vehemently opposed to Greek life, but during my freshman year at Tech, I found myself joining a multicultural sorority, drawn in by its South Asian roots and the idea of finally connecting with more people I could relate to culturally.

For the past two years, I have enjoyed my new bubble at Tech — the mix of old and new friends. But a few weeks after being sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I uncovered a pea and realized that my back had been bruising for years. 

This all came to light when a classmate from my high school posted a picture to her Snapchat story of the Global Mall, a well-known South Asian shopping mall located a mere four miles from my house, with the caption “Global mall definitely has Coronavirus.” On top of that, another girl then reposted the same picture to her story as well. 

When I first saw it, I was taken aback, but I did not say anything. This type of behavior and language was not anything I had not already seen from the people in PTC. 

The girl who originally posted the picture of the Global Mall also later posted the comment, “Privilege is when you think something isn’t a problem because it’s not a problem to you personally!” to her Facebook page in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement. When I saw that post, I wondered whether anyone had bothered to talk to her about her own privilege, especially about how obviously it had shown through her Snapchat post. 

But it was not until two weeks ago, when my other classmates publicly addressed the post online and expressed their own disdain for it, that I truly realized how much the Global Mall comment had been bothering me. That time, I did say something. 

I finally allowed myself to feel the pea of privilege in between all the layers I had built around myself over the years. And after spending a night tossing and turning due to the discomfort, I picked the pea out and described it to my classmate in a lengthy letter that I posted to her Facebook page.

I expressed to her that I understood she probably wrote the caption in a joking manner, but frankly, it was not funny. The picture might be of a building, but the remark was implicitly aimed at the people inside. The people that look like me. The people with a skin color that was rarely seen inside the privileged walls of our Honors/AP and IB classes despite attending a school with a majority-minority population.

These are the people within the walls of the Global Mall, a known landmark of South Asian culture in the Norcross area, that she was targeting for spreading the coronavirus. Yet, I did not see this same disdain for my people and our culture when she and her friends were fawning over the henna art being drawn on people’s hands at our high school’s Relay for Life campsite. And if this remark about coronavirus is what was seen on public social media, I didn’t want to know what might have been said by her and her friends behind closed doors.

And as I picked apart this pea for her, I realized how many more peas I had hidden underneath the layers of my metaphorical mattress. So I picked apart another pea and gave it to her. 

I described to her how for years I avoided inviting friends to my house because of something one of our classmates said in the seventh grade — how he claimed to be better than me because he could afford to live in a “normal house” because his parents could afford it, but my low-income family could not afford to move out of our “old townhouse.”

This was a pea I was especially ashamed to find because it meant that I allowed the words of a twelve-year-old undermine all of the love and labor my parents put into putting a roof over my head, and it was one that had bruised badly. 

But that is what privilege is to me: a small pea. A pea stemming from ignorance and indifference, whether that is because of the color of people’s skin or because of the wealth to their name. These peas of privilege don’t bother those who create them, and they might hide where no one can see them, but they still dig deep into the backs of people who don’t warrant them.

And yes, growing up, these peas might not have hurt as much to me because I never realized they were there. But they hurt even more. How could they not? 

Because I now know that no matter how uncomfortable I might have felt in PTC, it doesn’t measure anywhere near the level of discomfort that those with black skin probably felt in the same schools as me. For every pea that I have gathered over the years, I know that the black community has been bombarded with a multitude more. 

I have never felt scared to leave my house because of my skin color. I have never feared getting stopped by the cops and having the interaction go anything but smoothly. I do not see people who look like me being killed at alarming rates whether it’s at the hands of cops, an unjust criminal system or some other systemic flaw in our country. I know that my woes compare nowhere near to the ones my black classmates have faced. 

Those are not the peas that bruise me, but I do see how they bruise others. That is my privilege, and I recognize that. But it is high time that we identify our peas and pick them apart before they bruise others.

Keval Bollavaram, fourth-year BME, is one of 56 students from 41 different universities across the country to be awarded a prestigious scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). 

As a part of the 2020 Astronaut Scholar Class, Bollavaram is considered one of “the best and brightest minds in STEM who show initiative, creativity, and excellence in their chosen field,” according to ASF. ASF’s mission is to “aid the United States in retaining its world leadership in technology and innovation by supporting the very best and brightest scholars in science, technology, engineering and mathematics while commem-orating the legacy of America’s pioneering astronauts.” 

Bollavaram is most excited for the opportunity to be mentored by astronauts as a perk of the scholarship. The monetary value of winning $10,000 aside, “that’s really what I hope to get out of this — just the networking and mentorship opportunities,” said Bollavaram. 

When Bollavaram initially applied for the scholarship during his sophomore year at Tech, he was not selected as a scholar for the year, but he did not let this rejection hold him back. Instead, he shifted his focus to gaining more experience in the field of research and developing his passion for BME. 

“I want to go to medical school … and that was kind of the big long-term goal for a while — be a doctor and go work in that field. What Tech did is it really introduced me to a lot of research opportunities,” said Bollavaram. 

Since his sophomore year, “I’ve had so much more research experience. I had an opportunity last summer to do research at Harvard …. and I have so much to talk about like so many papers that I’m working on, or have already been published,” said Bollavaram. 

“So, between all those things … it kind of made me think, okay, maybe I should play against the astronaut scholarship odds and try again — see if I can get it the second time around.”

Bollavaram credits the consistency of the research he has done as one of the reasons why his application stood out the second time around and led to his selection as a ASF scholar.

 “‘I’ve done a lot of research that’s built on top of one another … When you’re doing something that’s involving biomedical engineering, it always relates back to some health issues — something that’s going to change the world, or that’s going to influence a field at least in a very impactful way. And I think that’s probably what helped me stand out. My research — I believe it’s very very impactful and will promote change.”

This deep interest in research can be traced back to Bollavaram’s passion for the sciences and technology that is rooted in his high school experience. Bollavaram attended the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology (GSMST), a public school that has consistently been ranked first amongst public high schools in Georgia and is currently ranked twelfth nationally. 

In high school, “I was really attracted to [STEM]. I learned a lot at GSMST. I loved the science courses, and I was involved in clubs like Science Olympiad there so it was kind of a natural progression to go from being so science heavy at GSMST to being very engineering and science based at Georgia Tech. It’s fun, and it’s helped me a lot.”

Bollavaram’s “science heavy” high school experience grew into a wider love for biomedical engineering once he arrived at Tech.

“BME is very interdisciplinary, so it’s not just about learning one specific engineering discipline … I felt like I could not only learn biology and engineering, but also apply what I learned to real world applications.”

For now, Bollavaram’s short term goal is to work towards getting into a fellowship program after he graduates so that he can take a gap year before pursuing medical school in the long term. He hopes to one day start his own research lab and continue the work that drew him to the sciences in the first place. 

“It’s been kind of a crazy journey … overall it’s been kind of phenomenal to just be part of the Georgia Tech Community,” said Bollavaram. 

“A lot of my professors have inspired me one way or another.”

However, once Bollavaram graduates and leaves Tech, he will always keep his days as a Jacket on campus close to his heart. He also expressed interest in potentially coming back one day for Emory and Tech’s joint BME Ph.D. program.

“There’s a lot I’d miss, but I love the environment — everyone’s been extremely friendly. I would just really miss the people at Tech.”