Category: Uncategorized

By Jess Gaul

A stone path leads to a small cottage dusted in purple, near a quiet pond at River Park North in Greenville, North Carolina.

Little girls and boys wearing sparkly fairy wings gathered sticks and leaves in a wooded area speckled with sunlight.

As visitors of the park hiked, fished and kayaked, several dozen children made preparations for the magical visitors—no smartphones, iPads or any other screens in sight.

At the third annual Fairy House Festival on Saturday, Feb. 24,—which had originally been scheduled to include a campfire and hot chocolate—the weather was so warm that most children wore short sleeves and shorts.

“We definitely took advantage of the time of year,” said park attendant Caethe Vance.

Real-life fairies

Sitting on round stumps, children listened to park attendant Andrew Wimsatt read “Fairy Houses” by Tracy Kane.

Just as the main character of the book sees a beautiful monarch butterfly in the forest, a toddler, wearing monarch fairy wings, tumbled forward.

The other kids were not distracted. They were captivated—by the story, by the sunlight and by the possibility that fairies might move into the homes built for them.

Child architects

At a drawing station, a blonde girl and her mother made textured designs on construction paper using rocks and crayons.

“It’s kind of just a cute way of getting kids into nature as we move into these warmer months of the year,” said Wimsatt. “It’s like the awakening of the park for spring.”

Each fairy house was uniquely designed, from towering teepee structures to tiny bungalows. Most houses leaned against trees as an effort to shelter their winged inhabitants.

5-year-old Beni Florero pieced together his fairy house of sticks and shells all on his own. Despite his accomplishment, his shyness prevented him from posing for a photo.

“I saw the posting on Facebook, and we’re always looking for stuff to do in Greenville,” Melissa Bump, Beni’s mother, said. “It sounded fun and the weather’s been good.”

The impact of the outdoors

Vance, one of the organizers of the event, said that getting kids to do things like creating fairy houses will help to continue the positive trend of a growing interest in outdoor activities.

“We want tomorrow’s children to get outside today, so they can encourage everyone around them,” said Vance.

Vance said that unsupervised nature play allows kids to get in touch with natural elements on their own.

Detail is everything

Parents made suggestions about which stick to use, how tall the house should be or if leaves will make a nice decoration.

7-year-old Raye Wade sprinkled her fairy house creation with green chalk as a finishing touch. Her mother and grandmother help her add pine cones for a fireplace and trees.

“It’s always fun to get out and do something outside—and it’s a beautiful day,” Raye’s mother, Liz Wade, said. “Fairy houses seemed like a really fun idea for her. She’s very creative so I think she’d like something like this.”

Does the colorful chalk dust attract potential fairy tenants?

“I don’t know,” replied the 7-year-old.

“She’s very practical,” Liz said with a laugh.

Wimsatt said learning how plants and animals interact in nature is valuable, and that not all learning can take place indoors.

“I think it’s important for kids to enjoy (nature) versus always just sitting in front of a computer, because not everything is going to be found there,” Wimsatt said. “You have to experience things.”

Park attendant Wimsatt confirmed the presence of magic at the park.

“Of course I believe in fairies!” he said.

Rumor has it that fairies moved into the houses during sunset on Saturday evening.

Edited by Liz Chen

By: Cailyn Derickson

At 3 a.m., Chapel Hill’s Homegrown Halloween festivities were dying down. The only two places open on Franklin were [B]Ski’s and Sup Dogs, and senior Rachael Scott and her friends were starving. They chose [B]Ski’s.

One of Scott’s friends had just broken up with her boyfriend, so the night was supposed to focus on girl time. Fate had a different idea.

The line was 40 minutes long, but Scott took one for the team. She waited in the line to get her exhausted friends, who snagged a corner booth, some food. A group of guys, dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, stood in front of her. The red turtle, Raphael, noticed Scott, who was dressed in a bright pink Britney Spears costume.

“The guy, 20 minutes into the conversation, asks, ‘Can I take you on a date?’” Scott said. “I looked at him, thinking, ‘I just met you 20 minutes ago. You’re dressed as a Ninja Turtle. How is this going to happen?’”

Scott gave him her phone number, expecting to never hear from him again.

But she did. Her mysterious Ninja Turtle texted Scott asking to read some articles she wrote for The Daily Tar Heel.

“I thought, ‘Wow, he actually wants to know, maybe, about my life,’” Scott said. “He maybe wants to know me.”

Corey James, who graduated from UNC in 2014, did want to get to know her. The two have been dating ever since they met in [B]Ski’s in 2015.

Stories like Scott’s aren’t all that common in the college dating scene.

From hang out to hookup

The hookup­­—a catch-all phrase describing casual romantic or sexual activities—has altered how students are meeting.

“Significant relationship events occur in a different order for college students now,” Tatum Jolink, a graduate student in psychology, said. “It often kicks off with hooking up.”

Jolink studies the development of close romantic relationships from initial attraction to long-term commitment. She said physical intimacy used to develop after a date, but now it’s what initiates relationships.

Although the process has changed, Jolink said students still prefer meeting their significant other through traditional means, like going to dinner or meeting in class.

“People have these ideas and these goals for how they’re going to meet their partner,” she said. “If they hook up with someone and that’s not really in line with how they imagined meeting someone, they think, ‘I’m not going to date them because we hooked up already.’”

Sophomore Breanna Welles said going on dates in college is nearly nonexistent.

Changing dating traditions

“I’m very traditional,” she said. “I wish it was more prevalent in today’s society. It’s better if someone asks in person or actually goes on a date, like dinner or coffee. Instead of this ‘let’s hang out’ type of thing.”

Senior Chandler Starr said he takes a more relaxed approach to dating. He doesn’t have a certain idea of how he should meet his significant other.

“As long as you both meet in a place or situation where you were comfortable, then you’re doing something right,” he said. “If you feel comfortable with that person, you should keep talking to them.”

Although students idolize this traditional dating process, senior Maggie Berra said it never happens—reflecting what Jolink has observed.

“You hook up first,” she said. “If that goes anywhere, you’ll text for a while. You’ll start hooking up regularly. You’ll hang out more. You’ll meet their friends. Then, you’re talking. Then, you’ll be an exclusive thing and then, you’ll date.”

The introduction of dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge have further altered the college dating scene.

“They have to learn what the norms are,” Jolink said. “Is Tinder more for hooking up or finding a relationship? What about Hinge? What about Bumble? Is one of them more respectful?”

These apps still don’t align with many students’ ideas of how they should meet their significant other.

“Technology has really altered dating,” Welles said. “[Men] will hide behind their phones by asking girls to go out with them. If she says no, the phone is a way to protect themselves from rejection.”

Berra said she had a success with Tinder. She matched with a friend on the app, who she had met before. The two began spending more time together, eventually dating for a semester.

Although Berra had a success on a dating app, she said her ideal situation still aligns more with a traditional scenario.

“I would love for someone to come up to me in the library and say like, ‘You look so nerdy cute studying.’ That would be awesome,” she said. “But that’s never going to happen because no one would ever do that in this day and age.”

In addition to desiring a traditional dating process, Jolink said students, in heterosexual relationships, opt to follow traditional gender roles—even though many claim they don’t need to.

Jolink said there is equal endorsement among men and women to initiate a date or define the relationship.

“However, it’s typically the men who do both,” she said. “Both genders are saying it could be either of them who progress the relationship along, but in reality, women aren’t active in those roles. It’s the men who are both proposing dates and defining the relationship.”

Sophomore Jose Espitia said he prefers asking women on dates, rather than women initiating them.

“There’s this certain feeling or connection to a person,” he said. “For me personally, I will know if I want to date a girl within a couple of moments of interacting with her. You just have this feeling of wanting to spend time with a person and if I don’t have that feeling, then I don’t want to date. If she asks me to dinner or to hang out, and I don’t feel that initial connection, then I’m more inclined to say no.”

“Matching” doesn’t always guarantee a good match

Rooted in the prevalent desire for a traditional dating experience, Scott said students come to college expecting to find their match. She said she had this expectation too, and though it worked out for her and James, she recognizes it doesn’t for most.

“Coming from high school, you feel like all of your market is saturated,” she said. “You’ve met the people. You’ve probably gone to school with them your whole life and you just want to meet people you’ve never met before. You think ‘there’s got to be someone for me.’”

Espitia said the larger array of people in college encourages students to date multiple people.

“There’s more opportunity here, so you don’t settle,” he said. “You have an image of a girl you want and you’re like ‘I’m bound to find her because there’s a lot of people here.’”

Juniors Marigny Strauss and Trent Martensen faced a similar challenge. The two began dating their first year at UNC. Although they spent a majority of their time together, Strauss wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a relationship.

“I thought that for the long run we should take the first semester and not date because we had just come to college,” she said. “I felt the need to have a good college experience.”

Martensen felt differently. He said he pursued Strauss for three months. He wanted to take the traditional approach by beginning their relationship as friends.

“I didn’t have money to go on really expensive dates,” he said. “We would go to the gym and shoot hoops during breaks because she couldn’t go home, so I would stay here too. There would be no one else on campus, which was nice. I remember spending hours passing the football in my room and just talking.”

Strauss said it’s challenging to date in college, but it’s worth it.

“It’s hard when you feel like everyone else is going out, flirting with people and having fun being single,” she said. “But I think a lot of people are looking for their person and they’re going out to hook up, so it’s nice knowing I don’t really have to do that because I already have my person.”

Scott said [B]Ski’s will always have a significance to her. Her boyfriend got her a necklace last year for her birthday before she went abroad. It was a plaque necklace with what he said were the coordinates of Chapel Hill engraved on it.

“When I got back, he later told me it was the coordinates of [B]Ski’s.”

Edited by Jack Smith

By Jess Gaul

In 1978, Randee Haven-O’Donnell looked down from the plane and saw the diverse North Carolina landscape for the first time.

After whipping past the Outer Banks, Haven-O’Donnell suddenly saw the lush Piedmont covered in pine trees.

“I said, ‘This is special. It feels like home,’” said Haven-O’Donnell, a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.

As North Carolina transplants, Haven-O’Donnell and her husband Gerry O’Donnell settled in Carrboro. The couple lived in The Chateau Apartments with their lab, Bessie. N.C. 54 had only two lanes. Each morning, they woke up with a view of idyllic Lloyd Farm.

“We’d wake up in the morning to cows, and it was perfect,” Haven-O’Donnell said.

Today, Carrboro is regarded as a beacon of progressivism and equality. In 1995, the town elected the state’s first openly gay mayor and the first lesbian police chief in 1998. It was also the first North Carolina municipality to provide benefits to same-sex couples.

But, like any other place, Carrboro has a past.

Exploring the Cities Controversial Beginnings

Some have called it Chapel Hill’s “even more liberal” neighbor. The unique atmosphere of inclusion and diversity is one that defines the town of Carrboro and makes its namesake surprising — because it’s named for Julian Shakespeare Carr, an infamous white supremacist and industrialist from the early 20th century.

Today, walking down Weaver Street on a sunny Sunday afternoon, you’ll be met with what appears to be an escape, an oasis, a community of completely individual and unique members.

The cow population has probably dwindled, but it still feels just as quaint and idyllic. Musicians plunk away for the enjoyment of the public. Young families enjoy local shopping and a healthy meal. And there are dogs — so many dogs.

 This isn’t the first time that Carrboro’s name has been a hot topic. Carrboro first existed as the unincorporated community of West End. The community was then named Lloydville in 1900, after Chapel Hill businessman Thomas F. Lloyd.

The town was also briefly named Venable, after University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chemistry professor, Francis Venable. But after two years, Julian Carr requested the name be changed to “Carrsboro” in exchange for electricity provided by the Durham Hosiery Mill, which Carr operated beginning in 1898.

June 2, 1913, was the erection of Silent Sam, the infamous monument of a Confederate soldier on the UNC-CH campus. Carr was famously known for speaking about whipping a female slave following the Battle of Appomattox.

Carr never lived in Carrboro. Like any historical figure, his identities were complicated — he celebrated a massacre of black people in Wilmington in 1898, was a private in the Confederate Army and endorsed the Ku Klux Klan.

But Carr also gave land for portions of Duke University’s campus, and supported the founding of what would be known as the African American-owned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He also contributed money to the North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, which would become North Carolina Central University.

Richard Ellington, president of the Chapel Hill Historical Society and Carrboro native, said that this complexity is why it’s important to consider the context of Julian Carr.

“I see no reason to change the name of the town,” Ellington said. “The historical context is going to be forgotten. If you don’t have a past, you don’t have much of a future.”

Like any town, Carrboro has grown and shifted socially and economically. There tends to be a separation between young Carrboro transplants and the Old Carrboro community.

Celia Pierce remembers a segregated part of town, between Chapel Hill and Carrboro on Rosemary Street. She remembers separate water fountains. She remembers when her high school was integrated.

Pierce lives in “Old Carrboro,” in the home that she grew up in as a child — the same one that her mother and her grandmother grew up in, too.

“Roots go pretty deep here in Carrboro,” she said.

Pierce, while ultimately supporting a name change for the town, acknowledged that many of the young innovators in local politics tend to forget the lessons of the past.

“When you reach a certain age you come to realize that ‘OK, if we keep moving forward without nodding to the past’ … What we end up doing is kind of discarding the older people,” Pierce said. “And what I see in Carrboro is — it’s getting to the point to where older people cannot afford to live here because of the taxes.”

Changes in the makeup of Carrboro also reached its racial demographics.

“Carrboro, in 1920, was the most integrated town in North Carolina, I’ll bet,” Ellington said. And you know why? Because they were all poor, working class people. They couldn’t afford to hate each other! They had to worry about feeding their kids.

“They didn’t have the luxury of hate. It was just a fact of life — they had to help each other. It was a much smaller town, and it still had this ‘We’re all in this together’ attitude.”

Jim Porto served as the mayor of Carrboro from 1983 to 1987. A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Porto moved to the Triangle as a young adult to attend Duke University.

In April 2016, Porto sent an inquiry to the Board of Aldermen inquiring about the possibility of a name change for the town.

In his request, Porto suggested the name “Paris,” partially due to his time spent teaching in the French capital and his admiration for the city’s livability. Carrboro was also jokingly coined the “Paris of the Piedmont” in 1970 by a local reporter.

“The goal of the town is to have a little community that’s at a scale that people can feel good about,” Porto said. “We start thinking about how we can emulate our namesake.”

For Porto, a name change is an important step in propelling the town forward to its goals for the future.

“By taking a stand like this, it basically enshrines that whole notion of progressive community,” he said. “I think there is a loss of opportunity in a way for us to go beyond even what we are now, and become a national statement for what we stand for.”

Part of what drew Board of Aldermen member and Texas native, Damon Seils, to Carrboro was its reputation for being a trailblazer of progressivism. He said he thinks that focusing on changing the name could distract from other steps toward racial equity, such as fair policing and equal treatment in schools.

“I think Carrboro and the people of Carrboro over many, many years have created a community that in a lot of ways, sticks it to the reputation of Julian Carr,” Seils said. “And to me, that’s a legacy we ought to be a part of.”

In August 2017, an unknown person started an online petition to change the name of Carrboro to “Unicornboro.” The petition garnered 53 signatures. Whether the petition was serious — or in jest, as Porto speculates — is uncertain.

Additionally, a Chapel Hill High School senior wrote to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in late January requesting that a name change be considered.

Porto, Haven-O’Donnell and Seils each acknowledged that if a name change was to occur, it would be because of a majority public opinion. The likely next step would involve some sort of community forum where citizens could discuss changing the town name.

“The work that would be needed and the attention that would be drawn to something like a name change for the town would, to be honest, distract us from what I see as the real work in advancing racial equity, which is hard and long-term, and requires a lot of energy and patience,” Seils said.

Edited by Brittney Robinson

 

By Chris Cotillo

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – If you happen to stop by the Joe Van Gogh coffee shop at the Timberlyne Shopping Center, the employee who may make the biggest impact on you will do it without saying a single word.

Owen Davis, a 23-year-old with non-verbal autism, has worked at the shop for about a year. He washes dishes, cleans tables and sometimes makes coffee or serves customers.

Working at Joe Van Gogh is one of Davis’ two jobs, with the other being a custodial position at Reality Ministries, a non-denominational Christian gathering space for young adults with intellectual disabilities in Durham. He works at least one of those jobs (and sometimes both) five days a week, establishing a routine that his mother, Patty Davis, says has been extremely beneficial.

“He has a routine, and it keeps him busy,” Davis said. “And I’ll tell you what, the work ethic on these young adults with disabilities… I would say 95 percent of them never miss a day of work.”

Owen’s job is an example of a growing trend in which businesses are becoming more likely to hire individuals with developmental disabilities. People closely involved with the special needs community, like students with UNC’s Best Buddies initiative, are working hard to raise awareness about the benefits of a diverse workplace, attempting to end the prevailing stigma about hiring employees with disabilities.

“I think people hear ‘disability’ and quite literally, the word means, the inability to do something,” said Caroline Folz, a UNC senior on the executive board for Best Buddies. “That’s not true at all. It’s just that individuals have different needs, difficulties and strengths.

“There’s the idea that individuals who have disabilities are worse employees and maybe wouldn’t be worth the investment of an employer, but honestly, that isn’t the case. Having individuals who have disabilities in the workplace actually has a ton of positive effects on the work environment,” Folz said.

Benefits of workplace involvement

For individuals with developmental disabilities, the benefits of having a job extend beyond receiving paychecks. Owen doesn’t make much money, but his mom says he likes having just enough to take his grandmother to lunch.

“That’s not what it’s about,” Davis said. “It’s about having self-worth. It’s just having money that you don’t have to ask for all the time.”

In addition, the social impact of employment for individuals with developmental disabilities is unmatched by other opportunities. Unlike schooling, which is largely segmented, being a part of the workforce gives these individuals a chance to make friends that have rarely existed in other aspects of their lives.

At Joe Van Gogh, the employees view Owen as a friend, taking him to the zoo, movies and other excursions throughout the last year. Although he is non-verbal, he’s able to communicate via sign language and writing, which his mom said isn’t a barrier once people get to know him.

“There’s no place that these kids get to meet people,” Davis said. “[Owen] wants so badly to find a girlfriend. I asked him today, what’s your favorite thing about your job? What’s the most important thing? And he said it was just seeing all the beautiful girls.”

Scott Lambeth, a clerk in the UNC mail room, is in his 19th year at his current job. The Chapel Hill native is a self-described hardcore Special Olympian. He competes in basketball, kickball, track, swimming, soccer and flag football. Lambeth says his job keeps him moving, even when he’s not practicing for sports or at one of his beloved Zumba classes.

“That’s a big reason why I don’t look my age,” Lambeth said. “No one would ever guess I’m 41. I have so much energy. I’m moving like I’m a planet.”

“It’s really important for the supervisor, or whoever the boss is, to be patient with whoever they’re working with,” Lambeth said. “People have different disabilities, as opposed to others.”

Performance, retention and perception

Research has shown that individuals with developmental disabilities aren’t the only ones who benefit from being in the workforce. Businesses that hire from this specific pool of applicants benefit in three specific areas – performance, retention and perception – according to UNC senior Cait Rosica, who is completing an independent study on neurodiversity in businesses.

According to Rosica’s research, employees with autism perform better at data-driven tasks and problem-solving than those who don’t have intellectual disabilities, largely due to their strong attention to detail. In terms of retention, the difference in average turnover rate is stark, with the average turnover rate for people with intellectual disabilities equaling just 7 percent in comparison to the national average of 49 percent.

The lack of turnover means businesses add stability and save money, as the cost of replacing employees can vary from $3,000 to $8,000. In addition, businesses benefit greatly from hiring those with developmental disabilities in terms of perception, with a staggering 92 percent of people surveyed stating that they “regard companies who employ people with disabilities more favorably than their competitors,” according to the “Return on Disability Group” report from May 2016.

Rosica said her passion for helping people with intellectual disabilities and the business world has made her see the gap between the services that people receive in the education system and getting to the actual job world.

“I think it’s beneficial for both sides,” Rosica said. “Many companies are taking advantage of the talent pool, but for others, I think the link is still missing. That’s what I’m trying to address some of it with my project.”

Demonstrating their ability

Locally, there are plenty of programs designed to help individuals with developmental disabilities enter the workforce. Project SEARCH, a national program that helps individuals transition out of high school with interview training, life skills and a job coach, was instrumental in Owen landing his two jobs. UNC has a similar program, called PATHSS (Project Achieve for Transitioning High School Students).

To create the link between individuals with intellectual disabilities and potential employers, organizations like Best Buddies are attempting to be more active. Folz, who serves as the Community Buddy Coordinator on campus, said that the organization is hosting a LinkedIn-themed art showcase at the Student Union on March 2 aimed at highlighting the individual accomplishments and interests of those associated with the program.

“We’ll highlight their hobbies, their interests and the work they do around Chapel Hill,” Folz said. “We want to show the professional side, but also the extracurricular side of what our buddies like to do.”

“The purpose is to showcase the important role that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities play in our community,” Folz said, “and also to give our members a way to be recognized for all the work that they do.”

Edited by Megan Cain

By Jessica Abel

Sixteen years ago under the florescent lights of University Family Physicians in Charlotte, a little girl with dark blond ringlets rode her plastic tricycle around her mother’s office.

She waved at the nurses who gave her brightly colored lollipops as she passed the front desk. She smiled at the patients who were always glad to see her speed down the halls on her signature blue and yellow three-wheeler.

From age 4, she saw people in pain and sickness being loved by a community. From age 4, Jane Henriques was destined to be a doctor just like her mom.

Now a 20-year-old pre-med student at UNC-Chapel Hill, Henriques is following her destiny. She’s a biology and anthropology double major. She cares for sick children as a volunteer at UNC Hospitals. She’s a licensed EMT, chair of Carolina for the Kids charitable organization and frequents health care lectures through the UNC-CH club, The Medical Dialogue.

There are only four letters standing in her way.

MCAT.

The MCAT, or Medical College Admissions Test, is the standardized exam required by all medical schools. Broken down into four sections that cover the breadth of a pre-med education, the MCAT tests students’ knowledge and reasoning as well as their test-taking stamina. A perfect score of 528 is nearly unheard of.

“The MCAT is the barrier to becoming a doctor,” John Robertson, an instructor and tutor at the Princeton Review, said.

Robertson spoke on Jan. 24 at UNC-CH’s MCAT Info Session, a free event coordinated by the Learning Center and The Princeton Review. It was over an hour long, devoid of free food and filled with sobering medical school admissions statistics.

The room was at capacity 20 minutes before the session began.

Breaking it down

“The MCAT takes complex human beings and squishes them down into numbers you can compare on an Excel sheet,” Robertson said to the standing-room-only crowd. “They’re trying to write the questions so that you get them wrong.”

Henriques is well aware of the MCAT’s deception methods, but takes them as a personal challenge to succeed.

“They will purposefully take an article, switch the order of the paragraphs and add in a thesis that isn’t even related,” she said, thinking about the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills, or CARS, section. “They are absolutely trying to trick you.”

CARS is recognized as the toughest section on the exam because it tests reasoning and focus instead of formulas and facts. Science and math-geared students often struggle.

But not Henriques.

Science meets fiction

Henriques credits a childhood filled with fiction as her secret weapon.

In elementary school, she relished the American Girl books, historical fiction stories about young women pursuing seemingly impossible dreams. She tore into intense series like Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter, navigating the tangled storylines with ease. Oh, and there was that intense vampire stage after “Twilight” was released. She laughs about it before tossing her still blond ringlets behind her shoulder.

These stories set the groundwork for Henriques’ understanding of nuance in narratives. Today, she uses those skills to decode CARS passages like a recent essay on the historical and symbolic significance of bears in North America.

“It’s not what you’d expect to find in the MCAT,” Henriques said, “but, personally, I find the passages really interesting. I think it’s what helps me do well.”

Opportunity costs

The exam’s masterful manipulation also drove Henriques and her 17 Princeton Review classmates to enroll in an MCAT review class despite the $3,000 price tag. That cost is on top of the $315 initial registration fee, travel expenses and anywhere from $100 to $500 for study materials.

But undergoing financial strain is just one of ways she has sacrificed for the exam.

Every Saturday morning while her neighbors in Townhouse Apartments are recovering from Friday night in a college town, Henriques prepares for three hours of grueling review. Her king-sized bed has become semi-permanent storage for over 40 pounds worth of biology textbooks, test prep guides and study sheets.

She rolls out of bed, throws on a sweatshirt and grabs some yogurt and granola from the fridge she shares with her roommates, Leah and Whitney. Then it’s a hilly, mile-long trek up Hillsborough Street to the office.

She does this four times a week.

The class’s intense schedule has left Henriques feeling a little alone at times. She hasn’t spent a weekend at home all semester.

“I get really homesick,” she said. “I love my family so much. My mom said I can come back any weekend I want, that she’ll just pick me up so I can do laundry and hang out. But I can’t. Not when I have class Saturday and Sunday.”

But for Henriques’s family, this level of commitment is nothing new. It’s just a sacrifice they’ve all made for her dream.

“There was never a time she didn’t want to be a doctor,” Dr. Anna Guyton, Henriques’ mother, said. “Never even an astronaut or ballerina phase. For whatever reason, it was always ‘I want to be a doctor.’”

Students who study without an official review course like Henriques’ Princeton Review class save $3,000, but often feel the same amount of academic pressure as students taking a course.

“It can feel like you’re stuck flipping through the same book over and over and over in search of the myths of organic chemistry,” joked Sean Adkins, an academic coach at UNC-CH’s Learning Center.

Anusha Doshi, a junior biology and chemistry double major with a French minor on the pre-med track, decided to save the money and brave the organic chemistry book, as well as a dozen others, on her own.

She completes one chapter — 30 pages of reading — each day and uses the weekends to catch up. She’s timed it so that her summer can be used for practice tests and final review. Sometimes she and her friend, Amanda, study together just to remember that someone else is going through it, too.

Hard work pays off

Like Henriques, Doshi works each day with the goal of joining a community dedicated to helping others. The stress, time and effort can be overwhelming, but, once in a while, there are moments that remind her it’s all worth it.

Last fall, she was dressed in her Carolina blue volunteer polo shirt in the art therapy room at UNC Hospitals.

She walked up to an elderly man and offered to make art with him. She learned he had stage IV colon cancer. It was terminal. His family hadn’t visited in months.

She gave him her time, her patience, an afternoon filled with conversation and creation. He turned to her to thank her when she had to leave.

“He said, ‘I am so glad you came here and sat with me. Today, you made a dying man smile,’” she said.

Edited by MaryRachel Bulkeley

By Michelle Dixon

“You’re a defective Asian.”

Britney Nguyen was struck by those harsh words from a boy in middle school band class. She didn’t excel in math or science, so she was deemed as defective. At almost every class assembly, her last name was mispronounced by teachers who didn’t care to learn it. Though she was Vietnamese, she was mistaken for Chinese or Mexican. From kindergarten to high school, her identity was marked by prejudiced statements and ignorance.

“I just saw myself as American,” Nguyen said. “I grew up here, so I am American, but I lost my Asian identity.”

Nguyen struggled to discover who she was and accept her identity as an Asian American woman. She was the only Vietnamese student in the rural small town of Whiteville, North Carolina.

“Most of the students in my class were white,” she said. “And then there was me.”

Nguyen was grouped under one ethnicity, Chinese.

“I think it was just disregarded because everyone saw Asians as the same,” she said.

In first grade, one of her peers had mistaken Nguyen for Chinese, so the girl rejected Nguyen’s friendship.

Nguyen said the girl told her, “I thought you were Chinese, so I thought you were weird.”

For a Christmas presentation in second grade, Britney wore her “áo dài,” the traditional Vietnamese dress, to school. She was showered with compliments, and for a moment she was proud of being Vietnamese. But an internal battle started. One side glorifying her distinction and the other side resisting it.

Middle school

This internal battle continued in middle school. Nguyen began to notice the prejudices of her Southern Baptist town. The desks in her middle school gifted class were mostly filled with white students, and it wasn’t her test scores that made her peers assume she would succeed. It was her race.

Nguyen said, “I didn’t excel in math class, so people would say ‘Oh I thought you were supposed to be good at this.’” She laughed with them agreeing with the bigoted statement.

“I just laughed everything off,” she said. “And I think that’s just because I didn’t really want to defend myself, and I really can’t trace that back to anything just that I was used to it for a long time.”

The model minority myth

Dr. Dana Griffin, associate professor in the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill, teaches a class on racial and ethnic identity. Griffin said it’s a positive stereotype to assume that Asians receive the highest test scores.

“That’s the model minority myth,” she said, “and this is something in the Asian culture only, where Asians are supposed to be smart in math and science, and if you’re not, then you are that ‘defective Asian.’” She said people who don’t meet those stereotypes can internalize it and believe they’re inadequate.

Griffin said it’s normal for people of color to experience “internal oppression” against their own ethnicity.

“It’s having pride in who you are versus how society views you,” she said. “If no one is there to validate who you are as an ethnic minority and the messages you receive are negative, you will start to believe that for yourself and try to distance yourself from that ethnic group.”

Saigon Market

Nguyen’s prejudices against her race were revealed most at the Saigon Market, the Asian market in Wilmington, North Carolina. Nguyen would eagerly wait to purchase her favorite snacks from the market — shrimp crackers and dried squid.

But her excitement eventually turned into embarrassment. She walked in the market with her head down, barely speaking to anyone.

Nguyen said, “I was cringing on the inside, but also really excited. It’s kind of like inner turmoil again with the whole I want to get all this stuff, but also being embarrassed that I was able to get dried squid or shrimp crackers or something weird like that. I just didn’t identify as Asian,” she said. “And I’m still not very comfortable with that. And I think it’s just because my whole life I was trying to get rid of that part of myself.”

Nguyen would fantasize about her dark brown hair turning blonde. She thought maybe then she could pass as American.

But Nguyen knew that was wishful thinking. Each time she looked in the mirror she was reminded that she was Vietnamese. She returned home from high school, speaking to her parents in English while her mother responded in Vietnamese. Each year she celebrated Chinese New Year. Before she ate dinner, her family prayed in Vietnamese.

Nguyen couldn’t escape who she was.

 Embracing your culture

Britney Nguyen’s mother, Tara Nguyen, said, “I told her you have to embrace your culture.”

Tara Nguyen wanted to share the language of her homeland to her daughter. She said when Britney Nguyen was a child she read bedtime stories to her in Vietnamese. She bought a DVD of a popular little girl in Vietnam who spoke Vietnamese, but it didn’t interest Britney Nguyen.

Tara Nguyen said she regretted leaving Los Angeles, which is where most of her family is. If she stayed there, she said her daughter could have been introduced to more of their Asian culture.

But in Whiteville, Tara Nguyen said “it’s lonesome.” Nothing in Whiteville reminded Tara Nyguen of who she was.

When she was younger, she came to the United States to escape the Vietnam War with her family, so she wasn’t able to learn much about Vietnam. Tara Nguyen and her siblings attended school in Los Angeles where they were teased by other students.

She said, “Everybody was scared when the children looked at you and point at you when you don’t understand what they are saying, but Britney has an advantage because she can speak the language.”

A story shared

Learning the English language as a child influenced Britney Nguyen’s passion for writing and civil rights. By 2016, Twitter was a civil rights platform where people shared their personal stories of bigotry.

Through Twitter, Nyugen saw that her past was similar to so many other stories. This sudden realization forced her to reflect on the times she ignored the remarks made against her.

But this time she didn’t normalize it. She finally put a name to the words and comments her peers and school administrators said to her about her race.

Their words were racist, and she was able to admit it.

“I should’ve said something,” Nguyen said. “And I should’ve defended myself better even though I was in elementary school or in middle school or younger.”

It was a recent realization for Nguyen. She spent most of her life ignoring the painful words thrown at her.

But now if you see her at the Saigon Market, you will see her interacting with other Asians and proudly buying dried squid. If you talk with her at Whiteville, she will speak more openly about her traditions. If you talk to her in class at UNC-CH, she might seem shy at first, but just ask her about her history, and she’ll open up.

Nguyen is still processing, but she’s making steps toward accepting who she is.

Edited by Janna Childers.

By Heather Prizmich

Hands over his face, he can barely look at the game playing out in front of his eyes. It is now in double overtime. Everything is too intense, so he rests his head on his desk and listens to the crowd’s reaction. He turns up the volume to the point it shakes the painting of the Millennium Falcon hanging behind him. The final shot is taken, and it’s a tournament winner. The Boston crowd goes crazy and so does Brendon McGay.

This wasn’t a Celtics or Bruins game. This was a major tournament for a video game called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The winner was an all-American team called Cloud9, which you’ve probably never heard of unless you partake in the 21^st century pastime of eSports.

Millions of people worldwide were watching this international tournament, but they weren’t tuned in to ESPN or any other network. They were all sitting in front of computers watching a live stream on the website Twitch.

Twitch is a live-streaming video platform owned by a subsidiary of Amazon, and it has been active for seven years. The site primarily focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of eSports competitions, in addition to creative content such as “IRL” (in real life) streams, which are like reality TV, but live and unedited.

Like many YouTubers who make a living by creating videos that are monetized, the same goes for gamers on Twitch. On Twitch, you can subscribe to a person’s channel for $4 a month or watch an ad or two during the live stream. McGay, a software engineer, live streams on Twitch almost nightly and makes enough to pay off a few smaller bills every month. It’s not enough to live on, but he said that is his dream.

“Make no mistake, I love my job and I love coding, but if I could play video games for a living I would. It’s like asking avid sports watchers if they’d like to play baseball or basketball for a living instead of their mundane nine-to-five jobs,” McGay said.

McGay is in the process of starting his own podcast on gaming in the hopes that it gains him subscribers who will watch his podcast and then explore his other content.

Twitch vs. YouTube

The only dilemma for him is deciding on which site to do the podcasts: YouTube or Twitch. Both sites pay between 10 to 30 cents per ad, but YouTube has more traffic on its page, which can increase the likelihood of people watching a video. As for Twitch, it’s where the gamer base is. Fewer people are on Twitch, but they are the people who would most likely want to watch a gaming podcast.

Other gaming companies like Rooster Teeth publish most of their content on YouTube, where there is a larger viewership, but individual employees of Rooster Teeth who have a large following stream on Twitch.

The UNC-Chapel Hill eSports club streams games and competitions on Twitch. Club member Eugene Zhang said the club loves Twitch because its format is gamer-friendly and members don’t all need to be in the same room to stream a game together.

Zhang said, “We find Twitch to be great for our club because it is great at promoting our club, because we’ll have viewers who are still in high school watch us and will want to join the club if they come to UNC. We have even seen support from people across campus who aren’t members of the club, but are gamers who watch our live streams, which makes us feel good as a group.”

The UNC-CH eSports club does have a YouTube channel where they post some videos highlighting events they have held, but the view counts are low on those videos compared to the numbers of viewers they get on Twitch.

The North Carolina State eSports club has a similar attitude when it comes to which site it prefers to use. Club member Cara Garrison said Twitch is superior to YouTube when it comes to gaming.

“I love Twitch. It’s been the better option for me when I want to watch live streams and for our club when we want to live stream,” Garrison said. “We also get to watch the live streams of teams we compete against in tournaments, which is great when preparing for competitions.”

The risk of demonetization

Another deciding factor between Twitch and YouTube is the inconsistency of their rules for videos and streams. Videos can easily lose out on ad money if the content is flagged by YouTube’s software, but the rules about which content is or isn’t advertiser-friendly is not always the same for every video. People have been especially critical of YouTube for this issue.

McGay is concerned that his videos may get flagged on YouTube, because he and his friends will more than likely use profanity on his podcast. He said that’s how they talk in everyday life, and he wouldn’t want his podcast episodes missing out on ad money because he and his friends were acting like themselves.

“I don’t want to host a PG podcast that is censored like if I were on television and needed to make everything FCC friendly. My friends and I curse like most 20-something-year-old guys,” McGay said. “The people watching my podcast will most likely be people who speak the same way my friends and I do, so this should be a non-issue.”

According to Newzoo, a market intelligence company that specializes in the eSports industry, the expected revenue of eSports by 2020 is expected to be $1.5 billion.

Leaning back in a chair with a vape pen in his hand, McGay said, “I’m excited to see the gaming industry boom. I really like those numbers, and I want a piece of that pie.”

Edited by Lily Stephens

Everyone cringed on the sideline, as they watched Justin Cole’s face get trampled by a stampede of cleats. The referee rushed out onto the pitch, blowing his whistle in sporadic chirps, calling for a halt to the game. Picking himself off the ground, and relying on walking support from the sport medics, Cole revealed his bloody eye to the silent crowd.

This injury marked the beginning of a sequence of unfortunate events for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Quidditch team at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. They would experience three additional concussions, and the well below freezing temperatures of a northern winter, in following day and a half of the competition.

Why would 21 Carolina students endure these conditions for a sport based on the Harry Potter franchise? The answer differs from person to person, however, the following four stories share a common theme of playing because of the bonds formed with other teammates.

Sam Doughton: Beater and Chaser

Lounging on the sofa in his family’s living room, a teenage Sam Doughton watched “CBS Sunday Morning.” On the television screen, college students nationwide were shown riding white plastic pipes, or PVC pipes, and throwing a volleyball into hoops during fast-paced and contact-heavy Quidditch matches. It was this moment that Doughton said he became certain of two things: “I had to go to a college with a journalism school and a Quidditch team,” said Doughton. “So I applied to UNC.”

Four years later, Doughton weaved through the crowd at FallFest, UNC-Chapel Hill’s annual club and organizations fair.

“First thing that I did, [after] getting out of convocation, was walk straight to the Quidditch table,” said Doughton. “I really wanted to get involved. I just loved Harry Potter, and it seemed like the type of people that I would like to be around.”

Over his six semesters on the team, Doughton has played as a beater, using bludgers (deflated dodgeballs) to disrupt other players, and a chaser, using the quaffle (volleyball) to score points by throwing it through three hoops. In addition, he has also become a certified referee for U.S. Quidditch. This has allowed him to travel.

“The coolest thing about the Quidditch community, for me, is the opportunity to go to these other colleges, and meet people from across the country. Sometimes, there are players from all around the world,” said Doughton.

Louis Torres Tailfer: Beater

After coming to America, Louis Torres Tailfer, a “Star Wars” fan, was determined to trade in his lightsaber for a broomstick. However, what he did not expect was to fall in love during the process.

“I really like ‘Star Wars,’ but unfortunately, UNC doesn’t have a lightsaber dueling club,” said Tailfer. “Luckily, I found an equally nerdy, but challenging sport in Quidditch.”

As the lights dimmed on Hooker Fields, Tailfer felt a tap on his shoulder while leaving his first practice. Turning around, he found the shadowed figure of a blond woman that he had talked to during team introductions. She asked if he could walk her home, considering it was 11:30 p.m.

This moment of fate blossomed into a routine. After every practice, they walked home together. Often speaking as late as 4 a.m. on her dorm’s front steps, they learned they shared a lot of the same interests.

The only difference between them was that he lived in France, and she lived in America.

“I was not going to allow the distance to be a factor,” Tailfer said, “I was convinced we had met each other for a reason. I am a strong believer in the concepts of soulmates, and mine just happened to be halfway around the world at a Quidditch practice.”

Looking back, Tailfer said that meeting his girlfriend was the best thing to come out of being on the team.

Annie McDarris: Chaser

Annie McDarris joined the UNC-Chapel Hill Quidditch team to stay active, and as a joke. She anticipated a bunch of gawky students gabbing about Harry Potter in the middle of a field. If anything, she thought she would have a good laugh.

It did not take long however, for her to appreciate the athletic skill the game required and lifelong friendships she would make.

“It is a legitimate sport,” said McDarris. “We get tackled a lot. It is definitely intense being a girl, because you can get slammed to the ground by a 6-foot guy. Meanwhile, you are getting hit by bludgers.”

Thus, it comes as a great shock to her that she has not been severely injured yet. Regardless, she continues to play, because she has found a second family in her teammates.

“I feel like we are always there for each other. If someone posts that they need a ride to the airport, there will be like three responses offering to pick them up as early as 3 a.m,” said McDarris.

Though her classmates occasionally raise an eyebrow when McDarris tells them that she is heading off to Quidditch practice, she no longer finds herself laughing. Instead, she is confident to be a part of the sport that has a dash of magic, as she proudly mounts her PVC pipe with her closest friends.

Gabriella Williams: Beater

Gabriella Williams wrote her admissions essay for UNC-Chapel Hill about Harry Potter, so it comes as no surprise that she would want to play a sport based on her favorite novels.

However, Williams said that the appeal of being on a Quidditch team expands beyond simply playing the game. As a sociology major, Williams said she appreciated that it was co-ed sport that furthered gender equality.

“The Quidditch community, in general, strives for having team diversity. This really appealed to me,” Williams said.

In addition, Williams is on the executive board of the UNC-Chapel Hill Quidditch team. She claims that their biggest challenge is moving the sport away from just being an aspect of the Harry Potter franchise.

For example, actors from the films, such as Evanna Lynch (who plays Luna Lovegood), used to attend the World Cup. As appreciated as these appearances were, many were concerned that they were weakening the athletic credibility of Quidditch. Therefore, there have been efforts to reduce the number of such invitations to tournaments.

World Cup-bound 

It is the end of the second day of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship, and the UNC-Chapel Hill team is waiting anxiously in the gravel parking lot next to the frost-covered fields. Sam Doughton said that despite their many losses due to injuries, they may still have a chance of making the 2018 World Cup in Round Rock, Texas.

All they needed was for one team to score a slightly less then they did, and they would make it in the lowest bracket.

Crushing the last bit of heat out of her hand-warming packets, Williams looked at her team sitting in the trunks of cars. Even if they returned without victory, she would be proud of them.

Suddenly, Cole, with his eye-patch, came over the hill. Doughton followed closely behind.

“Sam said we made it!” Cole said enthusiastically, “We barely did, but we made it! You crazy nerds are going to nationals in May!”

 

Edited by Liz Chen.

By Rachel Jones

LaDarian Smith was fed up.

After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill in May of 2014, he was in his first few months of teaching 10th grade English at W.W. Samuell High School. At the Dallas Independent School District campus, 98.5 percent of the students were classified as economically disadvantaged. Reading proficiency hovered at 50 percent – 23 percent less than the state average.

And he had a student who would not, for the life of him, turn in his work.

“It was really easy for me to say, ‘oh, he doesn’t care,’ or ‘oh, he doesn’t want to be here,’ or things like that,” Smith said.

But the student did care. A conversation between the two would radically change the direction of Smith’s classroom.

“He was like ‘you keep saying I don’t want to be here, but don’t I come to class every day? If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here,’” Smith said. “And as simple as that statement is, I think that put it in perspective for me, because truancy was also a very real thing.”

A new mindset

After that, Smith started earnestly listening to his students — not just for test answers or roll calls, but for ideas on how he could help them. They reformatted his classroom participation grading system. Instead of deducting points for inattentiveness, they would all start at zero and earn participation points throughout the year. They helped pick quiz questions.

And almost immediately, they respected Smith a lot more.

“(Students) don’t care what you know until they know you care,” Smith said. “So I spent my first year in the classroom, after those three months of hell and high water, resetting.”

He reset with his 10th graders that year, and he carried that mentality into his 12th grade classroom the next year.

And then, as his students graduated, he left teaching permanently.

Smith was a part of the Teach for America, a program that recruits college students to teach in low-income communities across the country, placing them in these communities for a five-week boot camp that ends in getting a teacher’s license and a school assignment for two years.

He feels that he met the goals of the program — but that often means different things to the communities that TFA serves than it does to the students who participate in it.

A Carolina connection

There’s an Easter egg in the Teach for America website for UNC-CH students. In a subsection of a subsection of the JOIN TFA heading on the site’s homepage, there is an example resume for a college senior applying to the program. And there, under “Extracurricular Experience” and “Work Experience,” things begin to get familiar.

“Dance-a-thon, 24-hour dance marathon,” said Jacquelyn Gist, reading the resume off of her computer screen. She’s worked at UNC-CH’s University Career Services center for 26 years, and has been helping people apply to Teach for America for the better part of two decades. “I mean, what do you think that is? University newspaper, uh-huh. And then career center.”

It makes sense that a UNC-CH experience is used as the corps-provided template for TFA applicants. The founder of the corps spoke at UNC-CH’s spring commencement in 2006. The University first appeared on TFA’s list of schools with the largest incoming corps classes in 2008, and has consistently stayed there since – the program has partnered with N.C. schools since 1990, when it established a presence in the Eastern region of the state. But despite 28 years of partnership in the state, there are still some misunderstandings between program and community, and questions about who, exactly, TFA is teaching for.

UNC and back again

The resume on TFA’s website isn’t LaDarian Smith’s, but they’re both clearly products of UNC-CH.

Where the sample says Dance-a-thon, newspaper and fraternity, Smith’s says Black Student Movement, Carolina Union Activities Board and UNC Red Cross; where it says University Career Center and Communications Office, Smith’s says Orientation Leader and Office Assistant at Morrison Residence Hall. But while the sample stops in 2016 — “they’re still using that one?” Smith said when told about the sample UNC-CH resume — Smith’s has extended past the University and back again.

Smith, an English major, started a relationship with TFA during in 2013, the first year that TFA piloted an early-admittance program that allowed juniors to apply. Smith, then a junior, was encouraged by the job security TFA offered and by honest discussions of the workload with corps members he trusted: a former UNC Black Student Movement president and a resident advisor in his dorm. But, he initially didn’t believe in the program’s promises.

“I just didn’t buy the entirety of bringing in college students and them teaching right after they graduated if they hadn’t majored in education,” he said. “It just was not computing for me that this program could be as impactful and as successful as it has. But I mean, it’s been 28 years and the organization is still around, so obviously something is going right.”

Nevertheless, he applied to the corps. He also applied to a job as a campus campaign coordinator — “which is a pretty watered-down version of what I do now as a recruiter” — and found out that he had been accepted for both within the span of a week.

Beyond the classroom

After the end of his two-year commitment in Dallas, he applied to be a recruiter at UNC-CH, and has been in the role for a year and a half.

One of the students that Smith recruited is Katie Arney, a senior public policy and sociology major who’ll be teaching middle schoolers in Houston after graduation. Arney wants to eventually go into education policy and research, and believes that classroom experience is essential to this career path.

“A lot of different programs are focused on keeping people in the classroom, and while I’m not opposed to that — it could be that I do my time in the corps and absolutely love the classroom — I wanted something that was going to encourage me to take my knowledge and experience and apply it in a way that can make change be out of the classroom,” she said.

Despite loving his job, Smith harbors some reservations about the program.

“I’m still not drinking the Kool-Aid,” he said. “Teaching is something that you have to grow into. It’s something that you don’t get the hang of the first two, three, four years, really.”

The drawback to this is that TFA is a two-year program. According to a 2014 study by the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina, approximately 10 percent of teachers who were trained through TFA return for their fifth year of teaching, compared to 76 percent of teachers who were trained through a UNC system undergraduate program.

But on average, TFA teachers outperform their UNC-system education major peers, and have “significantly greater odds” of being scored proficient on N.C.’s five professional teaching standards.

Smith sees this as a result of the program’s mission, but he thinks that that mission isn’t what the public perceives it as.

“I think there’s some brand misalignment, not necessarily on our end, but with people who come to the table,” he said. “But I do take it seriously, my job to find people that I think would thrive at this, and then task them with taking what they’ve learned and becoming lifelong advocates. And if that’s staying in the classroom, great. I’m not going to come and kick you out. But if you do decide that your impact is better suited elsewhere, then go for it.”

Edited by Mimi Tomei

By Danielle Chemtob

Drug paraphernalia and bleach stains surrounded Rachel Lankford as she sat in the bathroom of her ex-boyfriend’s single-wide trailer. He hovered over her as she took her ninth pregnancy test in three days.

It was the last stick in the three-pack she had picked up from a dollar store — she’d already taken two in front of him, one result was unclear and one positive. He still didn’t believe her, despite the previous six tests and a visit to Planned Parenthood.

It was positive. Again.

Immediately, she walked through the graffiti-laden hallway and showed the plus symbol to his mother. Both of them encouraged Lankford, then 20, to get an abortion.

But she knew that was not an option. She had already been to the Planned Parenthood in Chapel Hill earlier that day, her paperwork signed and everything in place to get an abortion. Lankford had already had two abortions, one at 13 and one at 19. When she made her appointment, she figured this time around would be no different.

High on prescription painkillers, she walked into the clinic with her mother. She stepped into the doctor’s office and undressed from the waist down for the ultrasound. The technician turned to her.

“You’re 21 weeks and five days pregnant,” she said. “You’re not having an abortion.”

In the corner, her mother sobbed. Lankford was five months pregnant and weighed just 84 pounds. Her words racing — an effect of the opioids — she pleaded with the technician, told her she was a drug addict, that she couldn’t have a child. But nothing could be done.

She knew in that moment that her ex-boyfriend would never be there for her, or her daughter. Still, she held onto a sliver of hope, and drove to his house after her appointment where she took the pregnancy tests with him.

But when she told him that she’d already tried to have an abortion, he attempted to convince her the baby wasn’t his.

She felt heartbroken and desolate. She was too afraid to tell her father, and her mother still lived in Virginia at the time. Without anyone to help her, she lived in her car for a few weeks.

——————————

Four years later, Lankford, now 24, loves Marleigh, the healthy, energetic child she so desperately didn’t want that day.

“She’s my whole wide world,” Lankford said, “but she wasn’t at first.”

Woman and the crisis

As the opioid crisis devastates American communities, women are among the most vulnerable. Between 1999 and 2015, the rate of deaths from prescription opioids increased by 471 percent among women, compared to 218 percent among men, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. While research is still emerging on gender disparities in opioid addiction, studies have shown that women are more likely to be prescribed prescription pain relievers and become addicted more quickly.

Pregnant women are particularly at risk, as the substance abuse can harm both the mother and her child. Between 2007 and 2012, an annual average of 21,000 pregnant women aged 15 to 44 across the United States had misused opioids in the past month, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Yet as overall opioid use rates surpass capacity rates for treatment centers in most states, options are particularly limited for pregnant women, who often travel far and face waiting lists to access programs like UNC’s Horizons, a drug treatment program for pregnant and parenting women and their children.

“I think there’s still this underlying belief that pregnant women should be able to just walk away from substances fairly easily,” said Elisabeth Johnson, director of health services at Horizons.

A coping mechanism

The trauma from Lankford’s parents’ bitter divorce, especially after her father remarried, drove her to substance use at just 13. She first tried Vicodin after her wisdom teeth surgery at 16, and her addiction to prescription painkillers didn’t take long to develop.

During and after Lankford’s substance use, she wound up in several abusive relationships. While she was pregnant with Marleigh, but before she was aware of it, she fought with her ex-boyfriend constantly. But because he was her supplier, she was stuck.

When the two would use opiates together, it often exacerbated the physical abuse. She’s recovered from her addiction, but her abuse still haunts her.

“I guess I feel like that’s what I deserve because of what I went through in my past, and I’m damaged goods, and no decent person would ever love me,” she said. “And then I challenge myself with that all the time.”

Johnson said around 80 percent of the women who enter Horizons report having experienced trauma at some point. A 1996 study found that women who are victims of violence are much more likely to use substances in general and during pregnancy.

“Women often end up using drugs because they’ve got no other coping mechanism,” said Hendree Jones, executive director of Horizons. “They’ve grown up being told that they’re nothing more than dirt.”

Access to care

After 120 days sober in a treatment program — when Marleigh was around 6 months old— Lankford returned home, determined to turn her life around. She enrolled in college and got a job.

But it wasn’t easy to stay sober in a college filled with childhood friends she used to get high with. In a span of two weeks, she relapsed and picked up two felonies for stealing her mother’s credit card and money from her job at Goodwill. She lost her job, dropped out of school and lost custody of Marleigh.

She was devastated. For two months she slept in her Honda and on people’s couches. She got high.

“I didn’t know how to live,” she said. “My whole world from when she was born was to take care of her, and then when she was gone, what do you do?”

She had weekly meetings with her social worker and Marleigh, but the one hour wasn’t enough.

“I wouldn’t use before I would see her, and I’d walk out that door and go get high,” she said. “Because leaving her was just… It was awful.”

During a 30-day period in jail, Lankford assessed her options for treatment. She wanted to participate in Horizons so she could stay with Marleigh, but the program was full.

Just 20 percent of treatment services offer programs for pregnant or postpartum women, according to a survey of providers from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

“We have women who drive an hour and a half to two hours to come to their prenatal visit from other parts of the state just because they cannot find in their area a provider who has experience dealing with women who are pregnant,” said Kim Andringa, director of research and evaluation at Horizons.

Among programs that do serve pregnant women, many don’t allow children to live with their mothers. Horizons allows children up to 12.

“You may have a mom who comes into treatment who has to choose of her three or four kids who she’s bringing with her and who she’s going to leave with someone at home,” Johnson said.

Facing a four-month wait for Horizons, Lankford’s only option to get out of jail was a facility in Asheville, but she couldn’t bring Marleigh.

When she returned, Marleigh had been in foster care for six months. She finally regained custody of her daughter, and the two started the Horizons program together.

She hasn’t let her go since.

In July, she’ll be three years sober. Last year, 266 women received treatment at Horizons, where Lankford now works.

“I might not have stopped right away and I might have screwed up a lot in her first year and a half of her life, but I feel like I’m here now and I feel like I’m a good mom,” she said.

Edited by David Fee