The Activist: Samantha Kuperberg '10
Samantha Kuperberg experienced mixed feelings on the night of Election Day 2008. She and many of her friends were elated over Barack Obama's election, but devastated over California's passage of Proposition 8. A Santa Monica native, Samantha had anticipated a "no" vote by her fellow Californians on the proposition to overturn a state court ruling and outlaw same-sex marriage. "A lot of us thought we could have a vote showing California's support for equality and civil rights," she says. "Instead the election results were very frustrating and immediately affected a lot of people's lives. I have a friend who married her partner during the period between the court decision and the vote, and on election night she wanted to know if her marriage would be valid in the morning."
The setback fueled Samantha's determination to pursue a career in human rights activism. Now she says that immediately after graduation, rather than heading directly to graduate school, she'll "get involved with a queer rights nonprofit and see where I fit in."
Samantha fit in very well at the American Civil Liberties Union during her spring 2008 internship for the organization's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Project. With financial support from Barnard's Halpern Family and Peter H. Juviler Human Rights Internship Fund, she worked in the project's lower Manhattan headquarters on research for anti-discrimination lawsuits and on launching a new Web site. "I loved working there," she said of the sizable responsibilities she assumed while continuing to pursue her Barnard studies. This academic year, Samantha has been volunteering with the Gay Health Advocacy Project on the Columbia campus, where she provides state-mandated counseling to people coming in for HIV testing.
Elsewhere on campus, she serves as vice president of CU Sign, an American Sign Language club. Though no one in her family is hearing-impaired, Samantha took ASL classes at Santa Monica College while still in high school. "The concept of speaking with your hands looked interesting to me," she says. "The summer after 11th grade, I went to the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, Connecticut, to fully immerse myself in deaf culture." For that internship, Samantha lived in the dorms and helped run the school's summer program.
In New York, she discovered ASL classes offered by one of Barnard's local educational partners, LaGuardia Community College. Every Saturday morning during her sophomore fall semester, she traveled to LaGuardia's Long Island City campus to continue her education in deaf language and culture. And for Samantha, any early Saturday endeavor follows a busy Friday night of Sabbath services with Kesher, the Reform Jewish group on campus.
At other moments, when she's not completing the requirements for her major in anthropology, Samantha is pursuing her interest in the dramatic and comedic arts. For LateNite Theatre, a troupe that stages works by Barnard and Columbia students, she recently directed a piece she wrote herself. It was wonderful, she says of that opportunity, "to have a really great place to try out new stuff, and just go for it in a very accepting environment." She has also honed her craft in playwriting courses offered by Barnard's English department, and in sketch-comedy classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in midtown Manhattan.
As she takes advantage of the rich resources of the campus and adopted city, Samantha finds the Barnard experience fulfilling all the hopes she had on her first visit. Early in that exploratory visit, she recalls, "My mom and I were running late from the hotel, and when we got to the campus, we weren't sure where the admissions tour group was. Someone immediately approached us and said 'Let me help you.' I felt so welcome. And since then, that's what my experience has been-of people and a college that care about the individual."
In Samantha's case, as in so many others, the College that truly cares is nurturing a young woman who truly cares about the world around her. She's modest and matter-of-fact about the work she has done on behalf of a wide range of people. But for anybody so dedicated and active, inevitable pressure comes with fulfilling voluntary commitments while maintaining a successful academic record. One of Samantha's solutions is to dance her worries away. "I've taken ballet, Indian dance, and tap dance at Barnard, and next fall I hope to get into a very popular African dance class. I'm currently in the dance department's Tap Ensemble," she says of a group of students who earn academic credit for learning and rehearsing a sophisticated repertory and then staging a public performance at the end of the semester.
This all brings to mind an early line from "Top Hat," perhaps the most famous tap-dance song of all time: "Nothing now could take the wind out of my sails." The line's rhythmically clipped lyric and melody perfectly capture the exhilaration of dance. They also capture the fast tempo and free spirit of dancer/playwright/humanitarian activist Samantha Kuperberg.
—Anne Schutzberger
|
