User talk:Trouble among sovereigns (JHU 22.1)

Hey. Switch here. My session at JHU in 22.1 was a GREAT time for me to be around and a year I felt went much better than expected in terms of the spread and re-introduction of JHU tradition after covid. However, not everything went to plan and this was mainly due to opposition and dispute over the state of student hierarchy (especially concerning nevermore and monarchy). There is a supporting document to this article that can be found here which shows screenshots taken before discord had timestamps and with the dates slightly skewed due to the pictures being taken on a device in BST. This document shows the 24 hour timestamps in EST and has some typo correction, as well as the convenience that the dates aren't skewed by timezone changes. I've still kept the old one incase people think "edited" and a late date means more than just typos corrected.

Before I begin, I wish to make it CLEAR that I do not want ANY hate sent to anyone involved in this story, should they be found. We all did what we thought to be right to spread and preserve tradition, even though some such methods I and others may personally doubt. If you disagree with me (which I know some people will) I hope you can at least acknowledge my intentions as being for the good of the site. Either way, make of this article what you will and remember this will contain a level of personal biases as it is… well… personal. Also, I do acknowledge the supporting document. I know that quoting and/or showing discord messages sent between us may be considered a breach of privacy… but they are my messages too. And I want to explain my intentions as well as I can, and though these messages don't come with much context and the way they may undermine the gravitas of what we were going through (lets just say those words cut a lot deeper when you had to wait for them to be sent and then scramble to type out a response), they are hard factual evidence of that I can use to support my account.

OK, let's start from the beginning. As you probably know, Covid-19 caused two years of CTY on-site program cancellations. During this time, the future of JHU tradition was uncertain. The '20 monarchy weren't on any community platforms and most of them had aged out anyway, making their lineages very much at risk… but Amelia Orwant, the 19.2 Empress, was still around and managed to come into contact with me. Long story short, I was crowned and set off to become Empress of 22.1.

If anyone was around on server 42 or my inbox (which I hope you weren't) during the 1st week of 22.1, You'd have seen me frantically messaging every position holder I knew to ask for advice on networking… and one thing I thought of which everyone I asked approved of was going around tables in the cafeteria to find anyone who knew of/was interested in tradition so I could network and scout out a council, and did so on 1st Wednesday(I was particularly motivated to do so as I had been approached alone by the SRA on 1st Tuesday and felt the pressure to scout out people who would be willing be my co-monarchs). I met quite a few people, and one was Adrian. When we met he introduced himself as from JHU 18.1 and Los Angeles… Immediately asking if we could implement a trinity and make him part of it. I had to decline. This would not be the last I saw of him, because he would later find me around campus asking if he could be emperor. He said it would be nice, as he was a nevermore (direct quote). I once again had to decline. I hardly knew him or any reason he was interested in tradition except to become monarchy. I did say that if he was particularly interested in tradition, I could consider him for an elder or even a monarch of the blood, but that would have to wait.

Now Adrian wasn't the only person I'd meet who was interested in tradition over my cafeteria adventure. On 1st Thursday, the SRA told me a group had approached him wishing to speak to me about tradition. We did so during unstructured time and this group included Yeonsu, Lalo, Aidan and Adrian. Out of them I only knew of Adrian and Lalo. Lalo was a Skidmorean who I'd actually met on my pick-up from BWI and during my cafeteria-scout had asked me about BLAMMO… RIP. Yeonsu and Aidan were other Skidmorean flying-squirrels. We all spoke about plans and interest in spreading tradition. At the end of our talk, they would ask what position I would be (after I explained the monarchy of JHU) asking if I could be monarch of blood and have the four of them be emperors/empresses. I was quite taken a back by this. I'm not entirely sure how things are done at Skidmore, but at least at most sites (including JHU), someone crowned Empress will be empress unless that person is unable to return to site. This I made clear to them, stating that I would do my job Empress, as I was set off to do. They then raised the question of how I could do this as a non-nevermore, so I explained that at JHU the title of nevermore carries no significance in the coronation of a monarch and that only knowledge, passion and commitment are taken into consideration. They acknowledged this, but also asked I consider a more Skidmorean four empress/emperor system… as unstructured time came to an end.

I would later agree to this four emperor/empress system due to two reasons (Fig 1). A) The ability to appoint up to four emperors/empresses would make the return of a JHU empress/emperor more likely. At JHU quite a few artifacts have been lost due to position holders being unable to return and several emperors or empresses were forced to serve alone. B) These people seemed very passionate about traditions and I wanted to co-operate with them.

Yeonsu, Lalo and Aidan I trusted, but I was skeptical of Adrian. We had a very long discord argument before his coronation and late at night (Fig 2), where it seemed that he wanted to start controlling traditions as soon as possible whilst not understanding the nature of tradition and not taking things seriously (and outright said it). However, Aidan assured me that Adrian was just very unfocused at times and would be very blunt and straight-forward and this characteristic may be throwing me off. I could see this to be true (despite my doubts), so agreed with him and decided to be more accepting of Adrian.

Eventually, Adrian would get his wish of becoming Emperor. Aidan would be the monarch of the blood and Yeonsu and Lalo would also be empress and emperor respectively. Yeaonsu, Lalo, Aidan and I would do much to continue tradition. We would hold announcements about spirit days and the boys and I would practice raving together (with me ending up lending Lalo my poi set). However, Adrian was never active in the spread of tradition or on our discord group chat. The only activity I saw him at that was related to tradition was the first dance. However, I certainly knew he was spreading his message. I would hear murmurs of campers talking of tradition with reference to him. Aidan was right, Adrian was idle but could work when he wanted to. But he WAS missing out on all our discussions. He even missed our announcement and reinstatement of Isabella Paladino as Rave monarch. Izzy had been crowned 20.2 rave monarch by Amelia Orwant. Yeonsu, Lalo, Aidan and I had therefore decided to appoint her as rave monarch due to her experience and fact she was only one of two of us on site with a legitimate coronation and hence claim to a position… even if from session 2.

At this point it is worth noting that my co-monarchs and I weren't exactly close. Aidan I love to bits and he actually helped me through a pretty tough time. Izzy was a honor to work with and certainly fulfilled her duty as rave monarch. She even raved on the second dance when we were told raving may be cancelled. Adrian was Adrian. The last time we spoke was on the first dance, as we were heading into the third week. Things seemed to have smoothed over slightly, but with such lack of communication, it was hard to tell. Lalo and Yeonsu, I respected, although they had always doubted me and I can only presume they felt I was bringing the team down. Let's just say they also weren't the most supportive people about spreading tradition. We had to cancel or push back a number of plans and even spirit days. These two also tried to alter JHU traditions to better match that of Skidmore. We always came to compromises over these matters because I made it clear that JHU traditions must be respected, even if Skidmorean ones may seem more intricate and interesting. I also raised the point that JHU tradition should be kept fairly simple because JHU traditions have a history of being hard to pass down. Any past JHU traditions should be fought hard for, as they had evidently been very popular over a number of years in order to survive.

However, much of our tradition attempts yielded more success than I could have imagined when I first came back to site. Lalo and Yeonsu also brought over some Skidmorean spirit days. I was quite open to these, as these spirit days were fun to experiment with and were ones a number of campers enjoyed.

As the third week panned out, the matter of succession arose. Typically the Librarian (so me) would be the ultimate authority in the choice of successors. However, Yeonsu and Adrian found successors who they very much wanted to crown. I let this go ahead. It didn't matter to me who crowned the next monarchy of JHU, as long as I found someone to pass the book of love on to. I planned to have my successor as emperor/empress and the librarian and also to appoint a monarch of the blood. Aidan had no plans to have a successor, and Monarchs of the blood have always been appointed by emperors/empresses anyway, so this was not a problem (Fig 3) . However, my lack of a nevermore title became reason to dispute again, and I came close to deposition. This was also due to the mentioning of the fact that only nevermore would attend passionfruit (which was untrue). The entire argument is an absolute mess, but you can view it if you feel like it (FIG 4).

Although it may seem mad, I genuinely feared I wouldn't be able to pass on the book and that tradition would end here. And it was mad! When I was in that argument it felt like the room was falling apart, even if I can't remember how much I cried as I read back over the document. If you've heard my passionfruit or looked over my realcty user page, you probably know I'm quite strongly attached to CTY and it's culture… so the thought that I could end what remained of the community values SO MANY CTYers had toiled for and grown to love haunted me. In this argument, I had my job and legitimacy completely undermined (Izzy faced this too to a lesser extent) and found aspects of tradition I had made clear disparaged. I even faced wrong accusations of misconduct. I was called immature for running off from site when this had not occurred! Once my hallmates thought I was lost during a storm because they were unable to call my international number and another time I had gone to Gillman hall during unstructured time and was thought to be going out of bounds. Gillman hall is perfectly within bounds and some classes were taken there. At this point, I was so panicked that I asked Lauren Schwartz, a former son of the Lancastrian trinity, for help in my situation. You can see her response in (FIG 5). She said "This is the part of tradition that should have died with covid"

Luckily, Passionfruit came and went. I gave my speech and passed down to my wonderful successor and appointed a great monarch of the blood. Although Passionfruit was unfortunately run so that only nevermores could speak, anyone could attend. And many did. Ironically, it was Adrian who would miss Passionfruit. He would have therefore failed every duty a JHU Emperor is given. This is absolutely unforgivable and something hope that no future position holders will bring upon themselves. This should act as an example of what not to do as a position holder… and as an example for those with the power to appoint monarchs to be recognize their own power and trust their better judgement.