Culture

Hello everyone, my name is Camilla Fezzi, and you probably know me, always running around, without any free time, and I am kind of recognizable because of my Italian (fashion style) 😜. I’m a freshman at Caltech, with the goal of double majoring in biology and chemistry and dreaming, one day, of becoming a doctor and researcher in the oncology/neuroscience field. But before I am any of those things, I am Italian—a daughter, a sister, a friend. I grew up beneath the Verona sun, in a place where the dinner table is sacred and where family is the compass that guides everything. I have always known warmth—of home-cooked meals, of laughter echoing through ancient streets, of a mother’s arms around my shoulders. I know what it is to feel safe, to take fresh water and a doctor’s appointment for granted.

Last Saturday, the delicious scent of crème brûlée and chocolate croissants wafted through the alleys of Blacker Hovse. Moles hurried around the Hovse, tidying up their courtyard and dining hall for their annual Interhovse. The theme? The French Revolution. After months of preparation—with input from what felt like the entire Hovse—a production worthy of that era’s dynamism and ingenuity came together marvelously, complete with a panoply of renegade constructions and toothsome dishes.

Watching William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is always a delve into the delightful confusion between desire, identity, and illusion, in a dramatic comedy that plays with what we feel and how we show ourselves. In the production directed by Miranda Stewart, presented at the Ramo Auditorium between April 25th and 27th by EXPLiCIT (EXtracurricular PLayers at the California Institute of Technology—the ‘i’ is imaginary), the 1601 classic from the Elizabethan era gains new life with freshness, rhythm and a staging that honors the carnival spirit of the work without losing its emotional depth.

I’m Still Here is a 2024 Brazilian historical drama that won Best International and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress in a Leading Role at this year’s 97th Academy Awards. It is set in the 1970s, in Rio de Janeiro, during the dictatorship that lasted 20 years in Brazil. The story portrays a beautiful family consisting of Rubens Paiva (played by Selton Mello), Eunice Paiva (played by Fernanda Torres), and their five children.

“For stars from Bette Davis to Angelina Jolie, the ultimate rite of passage since the 1950s has been sitting for the legendary Don Bachardy,” Michael Slenske wrote for The Hollywood Reporter. On Saturday, over 100 works of art and archival materials from Bachardy’s life and career will be on display at The Huntington’s MaryLou and George Boone Gallery.

We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Jenijoy La Belle, a trailblazing administrative leader, devoted professor, and outspoken advocate for academic integrity and the rights of women. Along a career trajectory marked by keen intelligence, unyielding resolve, and passion for literature, La Belle was the first woman to be hired as a faculty member at Caltech. The indelible contributions she has made to Shakespeare, William Blake, Theodore Roethke, and 17th-century poetry remain attached to scholarship in literature.

JPL implemented its third round of layoffs in 2024 on November 13, cutting 325 employees—roughly 5% of its workforce. This latest reduction follows earlier waves: 100 contractors in January and 570 additional employees and contractors in February. As a result, JPL’s workforce now stands at approximately 5,500 employees. These job cuts stem from a funding crisis centered around the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a flagship NASA initiative designed to retrieve and analyze Martian rock and dust samples on Earth.

Nicholas Winton is an English stockbroker who has a comfortable life in 1930 London but knows that Hitler’s Germany is invading Praga, Czechoslovakia; with a humanitarian group, he helps save 669 children from Nazism. Winton worked quickly to find foster families for hundreds of children—a beautiful and sad biographical story. Winton was a kind of Schindler but an English one. Nicholas saved these children, but always wondered what was going on with them. He kept this story a secret. Only the people who helped save these children knew until his wife found a scrapbook with photos of the children decades later (in 1988) and, talking to her husband, discovered the whole story. Grete, his wife, shared this story with a historian, which led to a British TV show. This widely-watched program interviewed him and allowed him to meet these “children” again, who were already adults at the time, in a very moving encounter that was the film’s climax.

We don’t talk about it. We don’t want to admit it. But racism is still here, still present, and each one of us feels its weight in some way. How can we still believe that a person’s worth can be defined by the color of their skin or where they were born? How many times have I heard, “Oh, you’re Italian? So, the mafia? Pizza? You don’t do much, do you?” Stereotypes. Labels. Concepts created decades ago that somehow still manage to stick. It’s in my bones, this feeling of being judged, of being categorized. I don’t have darker skin, but I was born Italian. I don’t deny it. I embrace it. And yet, I feel the sting of assumptions, of remarks that make me feel misplaced in a world that should have moved past this nonsense already.

I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Parker speak at my astronomy club and was greatly dismayed at how brutally and abruptly he was laid off at your prestigious institution. I worked at JPL as a temporary secretary while working on my software engineering degree in the early 1980s and loved it there.