Issue 22

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Women’s Lax Matches Best Start in Program History

See Sports, Page 10

THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

VOLUME CXLIII, ISSUE 22 • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2014

Admissions Selects Class of 2018

College Accepts 13 Percent of 8,468 Applicants

Senator Debuts Take Your Room Out Program Sophie Murguia ’17 Managing News Editor

Photography Editor Olivia Tarantino ’15

Natalie King ’14 answers phone calls at the front desk of the Office of Admissions. This year, the Office of Admissions admitted 1,103 out of 8,468 applicants. Elaine Jeon ’17 Staff Writer The College has accepted 13 percent of applicants for the class of 2018, offering admission to 1,103 out of 8,468 students who applied this year. Applications to Amherst rose by more than 6 percent this year, making this the second largest applicant pool in the College’s history. The Office of Admission received its highest number of applications in 2012, when 8,565 applicants applied for the class of 2016. Earlier this year, Amherst accepted 169 students from the Early Decision pool for the class

of 2018. At end of March, the College accepted 934 Regular Decision applicants. The acceptance rate for Regular Decision applicants alone was 11.25 percent. One thousand students were placed on the waitlist. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Tom Parker said that usually about 500 waitlisted students choose to accept their spots on the list. However, he said that it is quite possible that even fewer students will remain on the waitlist this year. “We were the second to last college to notify applicants about the result, so by then, students had already heard back from most schools,”

Parker said. “It is likely that they do not need to stay on Amherst’s waitlist because they have another college to attend.” Students who remain on the waitlist are selected based on the needs of the class once accepted students have decided whether or not to attend Amherst next Fall. “There is certainly a waitlist within a waitlist,” Parker said. “For example, if the number of women is lacking in comparison to the number of men, we can repair that ratio with students from the waitlist, and vice versa. Likewise, if diversity is not what we would like it to be, or if Continued on Page 3

Current and former Williston residents will gather together next Friday for the pilot event in a planned series of “Take Your Room Out” dinners. Association of Amherst Students senator Juan Gabriel Delgado Montes ’16 is spearheading the program, which aims to forge new connections between students by inviting them to share a meal with the other students who once occupied their first-year dorm room. For instance, first-year Michael Bessey, who lives in Williston 210, will have the chance to eat dinner at a table with his roommate and the six other current Amherst students who lived in Williston 210 during their first year. “I think it’s a really interesting idea,” Bessey said. “I’d love to meet upperclassmen. I’d love to make some more friendships with people who have been here longer and who have a lot of valuable experiences to share.” Take Your Room Out, or TYRO, draws the inspiration for its name from the popular Take Your Professor Out and Take Your Staff Out dinners. While TYPO and TYSO allow students to invite College faculty and staff to dinner at a restaurant in town, TYRO will take place entirely on campus. All current and former Williston residents who attend will gather in Lewis-Sebring Commons next Friday, and tables will be assigned by room number. The attendees will share a meal in a casual atmosphere and listen to a speech by President Biddy Martin. “The idea is to have Take Your Room out be a new campus tradition,” Delgado Montes said in an interview. “For first-years there’s a chance to meet upperclassmen with all kinds of differContinued on Page 2

Getting Strategic: Diversity and Community Sitina Xu ’16 News Section Editor This article is the third in a four-part series about the four core committees involved in this year’s strategic planning process. This year, the Diversity and Community Strategic Planning Committee has been working to examine the meaning of diversity at Amherst. Along with the three other main committees involved in this year’s strategic planning process, the Diversity and Community committee has been involved in thinking about the College’s identity and plans for the future. In meetings and discussions about the College’s future, the committee has been discussing such issues as what it means to live in a community of heterogeneity, and what it would mean to truly make diversity a core value of the College. Amherst is already recognized for its high commitment to racial, ethnic and socioeconomic student diversity. In recent years, the Office of Admissions has stepped up its commitment to

admitting a diverse body of applicants that includes many low-income students, first-generation students, non-U.S. citizens and students of color. “The College was thinking about representation, of having as many different people as possible come in the door,” said Shruthi Badri ’16, an Association of Amherst Students senator and member of the committee. “We always say that it’s a small thing, but it’s a huge thing. It involves unprecedented, massive amounts of financial aid and a great deal of outreach.” However, the committee is also interested in moving beyond the representational diversity of admitted students and thinking about how to increase the Amherst’s commitment to diversity within the College community. “We hope our students will go out into the world and make things happen in a world that is increasingly multicultural, and so why not start that process here?” said Professor Rhonda Cobham-Sander, professor of Black Studies and English and chair of the committee. “The idea that people could come together to collaborate and

learn from each other, is really, really important to how we see learning at Amherst and intellectual development at Amherst.” According to Cobham-Sander, the committee recognizes that in order to build a community of diversity in which different groups can learn together and communicate meaningfully with one another, the College must do more than simply get diverse groups of people to live in the same place. “Putting people of different races and cultures together does not guarantee that they will get along or learn from each other,” CobhamSander said. Cobham-Sander said the committee realizes that simply putting people of difference together can actually lead to harm instead of good. In order to address this problem, the Committee has put forth plans for a safe and secure environment that supports and respects difference to enable all members to freely communicate across difference. Psychology Professor Elizabeth Aries, a member of the committee and author of the

book “Race and Class Matters at an Elite College,” cited a study she did about the anxiety that can prevent intergroup dialogue. Aries has found that a major obstacle to intergroup dialogue is fear of saying something wrong or unintentionally offensive when discussing charged and sensitive topics such as race or socioeconomic class. “Two-thirds of the white students in my study and half the black students said they’d wished they had more conversations about race when they were here,” Aries said. “They felt that they missed an opportunity.” Aries also found that when students were asked why they didn’t have these conversations, they said they were afraid of what might happen if they did have conversations about race. “It’s because it’s anxiety provoking,” Aries said. “They can go badly, people can get very heated and angry. People can say things that offend each other, unwittingly.” According to Aries, teaching community members cultural competency, empathy and Continued on Page 2

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