good things in dark times

[hermionesviolin]

I saw 2 Bluesky threads today liveblogging Rümeysa Öztürk's court hearing today [Joshua J. Friedman and Adam Klasfeld], but I didn't entirely believe ICE would actually honor the court order to release her.

But someone posted in a local Discord tonight "Rumeysa is OUTSIDE of the CAGE" with a link to this Reddit post (which shows a screenshot of CNN showing Rümeysa Öztürk exiting a building, walking in the open air, chyron says "Breaking News: Now: Ozturk released from detention facility") and apparently feeling my feelings meant I low-key cried.

(Someone else later posted this NBC article, which has video.)

[idk how much anyone has followed this particular case -- there are SO MANY horrors -- but Öztürk lives one town over from me.]

***

In less "pushing back against the apocalypse" good news, my 20-year college reunion is next weekend, and I believe I have achieved on-campus housing!

Background: although I went to register 10 days before the early bird deadline, I was on a waitlist for on-campus housing.

Available campus housing during reunions has become more limited due to a variety of circumstances beyond our control. 2024 was the first reunion where we reached housing capacity, and we expect to regularly sell out in the future. This year, our team worked diligently throughout the year to successfully mitigate some limitations and yield more rooms than we initially anticipated. Still, there is a waitlist due to fewer overall rooms, higher registration rates and a higher percentage of registrants requesting housing.

Abby booked us a room at a hotel about a half hour away (it's also graduation weekend, so I expect that families of those graduating had already booked up the closer hotels). My friend Cate also hadn't registered yet at that time, and we had already been talking about carpooling (she lives like one town over from me), so Abby booked a room with 2 queen beds.

Today I got an email from Reunion Registration:

Good news -- additional housing on campus has become available and you are being offered on-campus housing off the waitlist! In order to secure your requested bed(s) for your registration, please reply to this email no later than Sunday, May 11th and let us know you still plan to stay on campus. There has been tremendous interest from alums in attending reunion this year and our team has been hard at work with our colleagues across campus to offer additional beds.

If you have made other arrangements and no longer need this on-campus housing, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can offer this room to another person on the waitlist.

I would like to stay on-campus for the nostalgia, the convenience, the breakfast-included... But I was worried that Cate HADN'T gotten an offer of a room -- in which case I would feel like a real jerk being like, "Pay for this 4-night hotel stay all by yourself." But she had ALSO gotten an on-campus rooming offer. *PHEW*