Throughout the entire day of April 18, students gathered in the Tau Zeta Epsilon (TZE) house for “Music, Dancing and Mutual Aid,” or “MDMA,’ a two-part event co-hosted by Wellesley’s Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and TZE, the College’s art and music society. 

The first part of the event featured indie rock music from local student bands, along with a student-run flea market with clothes and handmade crafts, and the second part of the event was a punk show at night featuring bands Subcutaneous Noise, AFK and Film and Gender.

By the end of the night, YDSA and TZE raised $1,696.49 to donate to the Mass Deportation Defense, a legal clinic “fighting for the return” of Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a student at Babson who was suddenly deported to Honduras in November 2025. 

Ashley Chen ’27, TZE’s social chair, and Sinéad O’Sullivan ’28, YDSA’s co-Vice-President and Treasurer, collaborated to organize the event along with other members of both organizations. Both said they were motivated by a desire to foster community on campus through live music and to rally mutual aid during a turbulent time.

Audience member and punk enthusiast Beverly Cohen ’26 echoed this sentiment.

“I think it can be hard to get a mass of Wellesley students to show up for anything, but this was a fun event that incorporated donating to a cause we all care about, so people actually showed up and were committed to staying,” Cohen said.

Since Lopez Belloza’s deportation, Wellesley students have spoken out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action, attending rallies in Wellesley and Boston. O’Sullivan said that this made supporting Lopez Belloza the “obvious and natural choice.”

QR codes at both concerts encouraged students to donate to “Any Lucia’s Dream” through Mass Deportation Defense in lieu of an entry fee. Flea market vendors, who were all students, also traded their goods for donations to the fund.

“It’s something that’s close to home, a fellow student in the Wellesley area. It’s an issue we care about and we can actually make a difference with,” Chen said.

During the day, students’ voices hummed against acoustic covers from Wellesley students as they browsed a makeshift flea market of student creations, from Anna Perttula ’28’s handmade mugs to Ashley Song ’27’s custom portraits. They laughed with friends as they tried on secondhand clothes and snacked on freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

At one point, students cleared a dance floor in the center of the house, pulling their friends into twirls and singing along as “Ollie Mann and the One Mann Band,” a Berklee student band, played Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie.”

“I was so full of joy the whole time … the music was playing; the people were filling the house. It was such a surreal moment,” Chen said.

As soon as students had filed out of the house in the afternoon, TZE and YDSA members began working together to prepare for MDMA’s second phase: a punk show. By 9 p.m., the house had been transformed into a concert venue. Organizers cleared cozy furniture to make room for a mosh pit, dimmed warm lighting to a moody glow, and lined the walls with more QR codes to donate to “Any Lucia’s Dream.”

Throughout the night, the mosh pit grew larger and larger. By the end of the concert, the pit stretched across the entire house as students reached for each other’s hands to dance. Cohen mentioned they “went to punk shows growing up in LA,” but noted that many students may have never been before because there are limited opportunities to attend shows in our area, so “it made it all the more exciting that it was in our backyard.” 

“So many people who I know have never moshed before in their entire lives were really moshing, and that was a beautiful thing,” O’Sullivan said. “Two people fell down, and everyone picked them up. It’s so punk, it’s awesome.”

Contact the editors responsible for this article: Emily Kohler, Jessica Chen