The University of California Berkeley’s student newspaper, The Daily Californian, has launched a new project to catalogue all the places on campus that students weep for their future.
The “Where We Cry” map appeared this week as part of an effort to collect stories about students and alumni being emotional, crying in dorm rooms, classrooms, libraries, and outbuildings, over everything from tough tests to triggerings. So far, the map has more than 360 entries.
Thanks to Google Maps technology, you can even pinpoint every place a student at Berkeley has gotten in touch with their emotions. Some stories are legitimate: there are lots of breakups, makeups, missing family, sleep deprivation, failed exams, and feeling overwhelmed — things that come as part of nearly every college experience.
But, of course, it wouldn’t be Berkeley if some of the entries weren’t about feeling oppressed, targeted, triggered, and at the mercy of the Patriarchy.
For example:
Trump won.
And:
walking to class the day after the election
And:
I had just come out of Asian American Studies R2A, which I was taking over summer. The class was the first time I had dealt with so many issues regarding my identity, specifically coming to terms with my non-heterosexualness. One day, discussion was open to reflecting upon our identities. It was the first time I had talked about my sexuality in such a serious manner, and I bawled my eyes out.
And:
Existential crisis about where I fit into the world and this intense political culture we are currently in. Right before I took a midterms of course.
Another student cried during a “trauma poem.” Several students were triggered into “PTSD” by readings, assignments, professors, and misogyny. Unsurprisingly, students at Berkeley have pretty much cried everywhere on campus.
