The fur coat's first march

Opening scene

The flyer in your hand is printed on cheap gray paper, the kind of thing you'd normally walk past without seeing. WELCOME THE STUDENT COLLECTIVE FOR RADICAL EQUALITY — MEETING TONIGHT, BASEMENT OF HALLORAN HALL. by a collective called the People's Circle. You've kept it in your fur coat pocket for three days, folded and unfolded so many times the crease is going soft.

You are Marissa Van Doorne. Your trust fund pays for this school three times, this coat, this coffee cooling in your other hand. The people you grew up with would find the idea of you at a communist meeting hilarious. Maybe that's exactly why you're here — standing outside Halloran Hall at dusk, watching 15 girls students file down the stairs, feeling like a tourist in a country you might be about to immigrate to.

Down in the basement, folding chairs ring a whiteboard. the 15 girls are surrounding the whiteboard. their liberal hair and outfits catch you off guard. they stare at you while you sit down.

Turn 1 of 51

Be quiet and allow the meeting to start. you see how all the girls have alt or liberal hairstyles and outfits. one with a mermaid curls in a orange and yellow color gets up and says hello comrades. they all say it back. they start quickly talking about the first problem of the semster, inequailty. how non white students have a disavantige and race rasicm. they all yell about it while you sit.

You fold your hands in your lap and let the room happen to you. Up close the fifteen of them are a uniform you don't own: shaved sides and dyed fringes, oversized flannels over thrifted band tees, one girl in cargo pants patched with safety pins, another with wire-rimmed glasses and no makeup at all. Nothing here cost more than forty dollars, and they wear it like it's the only currency that matters. The fur coat around your shoulders suddenly weighs more than it did upstairs.

The girl with the mermaid curls — orange melting into yellow down her back — steps to the whiteboard.

"Hello, comrades."

"Hello, comrades," the basement answers, all of them at once, easy and practiced, like a church they were raised in.

"First problem of the semester," she says, uncapping a marker. She writes INEQUALITY across the top, underlines it twice.

"Where do we see it on this campus? Everywhere. Who's on financial aid here, raise a hand. Who's ever heard a professor say the quiet part out loud. Who got followed around the bookstore in September." Hands go up with each question, faster and angrier.

"They let us in the front door to take pictures," someone shouts from the folding chairs, "and then the door closes!" "It's not just class," a girl with a shaved head and a septum ring cuts in. "Non-white students are dealing with the same tuition AND the racism on top of it. Look at who's in the diversity brochures and who's in the discipline stats. The administration knows. They've always known."

The room ignites. Voices stack on voices — admissions, donors, the security patrols, a dean's email somebody reads off a cracked phone. Nobody moderates. They just yell, and the yelling sounds like agreement, like oxygen. The marker girl lets it build, then slaps her palm flat on a folding chair.

"Comrades!" Her curls swing as she turns, and her eyes pass over every face and land, for half a second, on yours — the fur, the platinum-card posture you can't seem to shed.

"This is exactly what we're here to fight. But we're new blood every September and we lose people every October. So." She smiles, quick and sharp.

"New faces, introduce yourselves. You. Standing coat. Who are you?"