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Dan, Hummingbird, and Michaela,

Your zine is a wonderful example of how “play” as an approach to a question or dilemma can in fact open up a new and surprising space for learning/researching/teaching.  Some aspects of the zine that seem to me playful in this way include:  your use of cross-outs, e.g. title, claim/ed; your anxious captions under the photo of smiling students (which bodies seem to be superimposed over the room pic--?); the poignant cartoon about ‘fresh people’s seminar.” 

What makes the play work for me on multiple levels has in part to do with the way you’re continually moving us back and forth across different kinds of sources and commentary, and also the overarching movement from past to present.  The sources and commentary come to us/readers largely in the form of ‘voice’ J -- we hear Thomas’ commitments and her tone and likewise we listen in on the ‘dearest mother’ requests and the stress of the fresh person trying to work through the cacophony of voices in her head.  Also, though, the visuals provide point and counterpoint, from the diagram of Pem to the march of young women without sufficient funds leaving Bryn Mawr.  The medium of collage materially expresses the juxtapositions here, making a deceptively simple narrative readable and entertaining on the one hand and quite provocative on the other.

I’m left with questions about institutional change and the role individuals and groups might have in such a process.  You leave us with the reminder that students on financial aid “are not alone” – interestingly, directed to those students – and the exhortation for those students not to be “afraid to talk about campus class issues.”  Several of the comments here highlight issues for the well-to-do on campus; might you want to include them in that final exhortation, or do you want to deliberately address this to particular students?  And what about the institution – are there ways Bryn Mawr could and should be addressing these issues, perhaps going beyond the Class Dismissed project to take next steps…?