Volume 152, Issue 20

The researchers discussed a novel three-pronged approach to preventing sexual assault on campuses.

Researchers Talk Sexual Assault Prevention

Liam Archacki ’24 Editor-in-Chief

Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault.

“There is no solution to sexual assault,” Shamus Khan, a professor of sociology at Princeton, told a packed auditorium last week, “by which I mean, there must be dozens of solutions to sexual assault.”

Khan — alongside Jennifer Hirsch, a professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia — discussed their research into sexual assault on college campuses, as published in their 2020 book “Sexual Citizens: Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus.” The conversation, which was held last Thursday in the Mead Art Museum’s Stirn Auditorium and organized by the Department of Resi-

FEATURES 8

dential Engagement and Wellbeing, revolved around the researchers’ novel three-pronged approach to understanding sexual assault, based on sexual projects, sexual citizenship, and sexual geography.

This approach, the researchers explained, is a reaction to traditional attempts to understand sexual assault through a single lens, like toxic masculinity or rape culture. While these are important elements, Hirsch and Khan opted for a public health approach that aims to encompass the many factors that contribute to sexual assault.

The first prong, sexual projects, refers to questions relating to the purpose of sex, which may seem to have straightforward answers but become more complex upon further reflection. Sexual citizenship, for

Geothermal Energy: Nife Joshua ’26 looks into the college's plan to install a geothermal energy system as part of the Climate Action Plan.

which the conversation was titled, is the idea that each person has a right to sexual autonomy and self-determination. And sexual geography signifies the importance of space and power in sex.

One of the key realizations of their research, Khan and Hirsch said, was that many perpetrators of sexual assault, especially on college campuses, did not intend to hurt anyone, and were sometimes unaware that they had committed sexual assault at all.

They referenced the story of a young man who only realized that he had committed sexual assault when asked to define the term during his interview with researchers, then broke down in tears.

This insight led the researchers to an important conclusion: “We can’t

OPINION 11

punish our way out of this problem,” in Khan’s words. “Many of the experiments that we’ve had with mass incarceration have had really disastrous consequences for communities. And in colleges and universities, if we think that punishment is basically the pathway to transformation, I would say yes, but it’s going to be a bad transformation.”

Khan and Hirsch advocated for many different preemptive measures as an alternative to what they see as a current overreliance on punishment.

For one, they said, sexual education plays a crucial role. Even though women who receive sexual education are far less likely to experience assault in college, many states

Continued on page 3

Attendance Policies: Zane Khiry ’25 argues that strict attendance policies fall more harshly on some students than others.

Sam Spratford ’24 Editor-in-Chief

The second annual major fair, the culmination of an Association of Amherst Students (AAS) Senate project seeking to build academic support and resource-sharing networks among students, took place last Saturday afternoon. Sporting academic department apparel and equipped with informational printouts, upperclassman representatives of each department congregated in Middleton Gym to counsel undeclared students on the opportunities and limitations that different majors bring.

Fair organizer and AAS Senator Hannah Kim ’25 wrote in a statement to The Student that the fair saw a bigger turnout than last year’s, despite being forced indoors by rain from its planned location on the First Year Quad. “There were more decorations and more supplemental materials on the major tables, which made for a more interactive experience with visiting students,” she reflected. “We also had more visitors overall.”

Kim, who originally spearheaded the event as her Senate project in the 2021-2022 election cycle attributes this success to the evolution of publicity tactics employed by her and fellow senate organizers Jaimie Han ’26 and Isaiah Doble ’25. To attract upperclassman volunteers, the sena-

Continued on page 3

ARTS&LIVING 14

Choral Society: Madeline Lawson ’25 recaps the Choral Society's most recent concert, which included music and lyrics written by the Amherst community.

Photo by Chris Tun ’25, courtesy of Amherst College

>>March 21, 2023

9:34 a.m. Dakin House ACPD responded to the report of a suspicious person in the area of a College owned condemned building. The individual was spoken to and sent on their way.

9:34 a.m. Dakin House ACPD took a report after someone posed as a staff member online with the intent to defraud a student.

>>March 23, 2023

11:23 a.m. Woods ACPD investigated aban -

doned camping sites on College property off South East St. Arrangements were made to have the abandoned property removed

>>March 24, 2023

7:46 p.m. Boltwood Avenue

ACPD stopped a motor vehicle being operated in the wrong direction on

a one-way street. The operator was found to be unlicensed. The incident remains under investigation.

8:25 p.m. Quadrangle Road

ACPD stopped a motor vehicle being operated in the wrong direction on a one-way street. A verbal warning was issued.

>>March 26, 2023

9:34 1:28 a.m. Morris Pratt Hall

ACPD took a report of vandalism that occurred during a party.

>>March 27, 2023

10:21 a.m. Marsh House ACPD took a report after a student discovered their bike was missing.

Jones Library Moves Ahead With Major Expansion

Maggie Sher ’26 Staff Writer

At a trustee meeting on March 15, the board members of the town of Amherst’s Jones Library unanimously reaffirmed their support for the library’s expansion and renovation project, which is currently estimated to cost around $43 million, up from a $36.3 million estimate in 2021.

Austin Sarat — president of the library’s Board of Trustees

and a professor of political science and law, jurisprudence, and social thought at the college — proposed the re-endorsement of the project. The proposal was approved by a vote of 6-0, despite recent increases in the project’s estimated cost.

The expansion would allow for ample space for existing programming and historical collections; additionally, Sarat expressed the board’s hope to make the library more accessible to a more diverse population of patrons. During

construction, projected to last over a year, the library will be moved to a temporary location.

In an interview with The Student, Sarat said the idea for the expansion began when he first joined the board in 2011, as it was clear that there was a need for revamping of some of the library’s more outdated systems. The board consulted the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and concluded that their vision for the new and improved library could

not be achieved within the existing space.

“It was apparent that the function of a modern library was changing,” he said. “The Jones [Library] needed both more space and a reimagining of its space in order to serve its users.”

An initial draw-up of a 100,000 square feet renovation by the board was reworked in consultation with an architect, who was able to fit the proposed changes into a 66,000-to68,000-square-foot space. The

library is currently about 50,000 square feet.

Funding for the expansion includes a $13.8 million grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, $15.8 million pledged by the town of Amherst, $2.25 million from private donors and $4.65 million secured via the Jones Library Capital Campaign. Additionally, a recent $1.7 trillion federal omnibus spending bill guaranteed another $1.1 million for the expansion.

Part of the expansion includes creating more space for their special collections; among these collections include a variety of original manuscripts and correspondence from local literary legends Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. “Special collections are where the collective memory of the town lies,” Sarat said. “If you care about democracy, you have to care about history.”

According to Sarat, a primary goal of the expansion from the beginning has been to increase its accessibility to the community. Libraries, he said, are places of congregation for people of diverse backgrounds, and thus “the most democratic institutions in any community,” along with public schools.

“The library right now is not accessible,” he said. “For me, the commitment to support the library’s renovation, which will better serve the diverse communities that

The Jones renovations include a new wing that will be added onto the library’s existing structure.

Continued on page 4

Photo courtesy of The Jones Library

Speakers Propose “Public Health” Approach to Prevention

Continued from page 1

— Massachusetts included — do not require it to be taught.

“Young people are very underprepared,” Hirsch said, adding that not being educated about sex limits one’s sexual citizenship, or their ability to practice autonomy in sexual situations.

The sexual education that does happen, the pair noted, often focuses just on physical health, like the risk of sexually transmitted infections. Hirsch likened this to only learning about stoplights before starting to drive. “You need to have a broader education,” she said.

The researchers also emphasized the role that physical spaces play in creating power dynamics, particularly on college campuses.

For instance, they pointed out that dorm rooms are one of the main places where students hang out. “When parties end,” Hirsch said, “and people are funneled back into sleeping spaces, that’s a sexual assault opportunity.” The researchers

have recommended to many colleges that they add new public spaces for students to congregate, even late at night.

They also suggested that the policy of many colleges, Amherst included, to give priority dorm selection to upperclassmen can create power inequalities, as younger students who attend parties are often “funneled” into spaces controlled by older students.

“It creates an environment,” Hirsch said, “where you’re in a space where someone else is operating the keg, where someone else knows the rules, where someone else lives in that space and is surrounded by their friends.”

Hirsch and Khan agreed that designing spaces to limit these power inequalities is one of the most immediate ways colleges can address sexual assault. In Khan’s words, more generally, “If power is the problem, then equity is the solution.”

And part of creating equity, the researchers said, is being aware of the ways in which identity interacts with

power. For this reason, they recommend an intersectional approach to sexual assault prevention.

“Every single Black woman with whom we spoke in ethnographic interviews recounted experiencing unwanted sexual touching,” Hirsch said, “every single one.” She added that it’s important to view these experiences not only as sexual violence, but also as anti-Black racism.

Khan also recounted the story of a young gay man they interviewed who experienced sexual violence from his partner, but didn’t feel comfortable coming forward about it.

While the anecdote speaks to the way that sexual assault can be different in an intimate relationship, Khan said, it is also important to consider that “his sexual project of being a gay man was profoundly illegitimate to his family, and it created a context where he experienced an enormous amount of silence and shame for his sexuality — and that put him at risk.”

The point, the researchers said, is that context matters in sexual assault. “And creating contexts of equality is going to require a lot of work in a lot of different sectors by pretty much all of us,” Khan said.

The researchers encouraged the audience to support the Massachusetts Healthy Youth Act, a bill that aims to require schools that teach sexual education to provide a “scientifically accurate curriculum that features age-appropriate information about gender identity and sexual orientation.”

The event was moderated and organized by Lauren Kelly, associate director of health and wellbeing, who explained that its content aligns with the college’s own efforts. Amherst’s Sexual Respect Education Program, she said, “provides a comprehensive approach to sexual violence prevention using evidence-based public healthy theory and rooting our work in a social justice framework.”

Emma Strawbridge ’25, who attended the talk, said that “the pub-

lic health approach is really good. The educational approach is excellent. I think that’s really the way we should be thinking about things and thinking about sex and sexual citizenship.”

However, Strawbridge expressed concern about the speakers’ decision to focus on cases in which perpetrators of sexual assault do not intend to commit harm.

“It was jarring for me, as [someone who’s] not a man, to hear them kind of dismiss, and not talk about a lot of the people who I do feel like come to the situation with malice,” Strawbridge said.

With regard to the anecdote about the man who didn’t realize he had committed sexual assault, Strawbridge added, “that sort of really upset me because I felt like they didn’t spend enough time talking about the fact that he was in the wrong.”

“I think serious miseducation is a big problem,” they said, “but it was jarring to hear it spoken about in that way.”

Undeclared Students Learn About Academic Programs

Continued from page 1

tors used faculty and departmental coordinators as a go-between. “Advertising, both to volunteers and visitors, was a challenge that loomed over us during the entire planning period because we wanted to entice people to spend two hours talking about their major,” Han said.

Effective communication with and among the student body has been a concern for this project — and the Senate more broadly, leading to the advent of the Public Relations Committee earlier this semester.

When asked how the major fair fits into her senatorial platform, Han said, “one of my broader policy concerns is an increase in peer-topeer interaction on campus.” Kim echoed her, writing, “I want there to be more easily-accessible areas where the whole student body is brought together to share information and thoughts.”

When she came up with the idea for a major fair (with the help

Managing Arts & Living Editor and roommate Noor Rahman ’25) Kim saw it as a natural complement to the Get-Involved Fair — the latter counseled new students in their extracurricular pursuits; the Major Fair would give students an “idea of what it’s like to venture down [different academic] paths.”

While Han acknowledged that students can always consult faculty members, she emphasized that “it’s a little daunting to cold-email a professor to ask about the department and major.” The fair, by contrast, was meant to be a much more “low-pressure” environment.

Chemistry major Zoe Jonas ’25 represented the department at the fair and echoed Han’s vision for the event. “The most important part of the major fair for the campus community is the ability to … ask questions you’re not comfortable asking a professor,” she said. Jonas mentioned the experience of demystifying “lists upon lists of [major] requirements” for attendees, as an example.

Jonas and English department representative Jordan Trice ’24 also valued the opportunity to share their excitement about their majors with their peers. For Trice, it wasn’t difficult to extoll the virtues of the English major, and he was gratified by attendees’ enthusiasm. “It feels like the humanities are so deeply valued [at Amherst],” Trice wrote to The Student. “I’ve been told that it’s better to not … ‘waste’ time and money on a degree in the humanities. Despite all this, the students … that I talked to at the major fair did not seem concerned with these questions. What seemed to concern them was studying something they were really interested in,” he said.

The fair was, for Jonas, an opportunity to dispel “negative feelings toward chemistry in general.” “I really enjoyed … boasting about the department’s professors,” she said. “I chose the chemistry major because … I felt like the culture was not competitive but supportive,” she continued, “and I wanted to show

[attendees] that chemistry can be fun.”

Organizers share Jonas’ hopes. Including a raffle and plenty of free Antonio’s Pizza (Kim had to double the order at the last minute to accommodate all the attendees), the major fair strives to be an annual space where students can gather and enjoy the sharing of academic experiences as they work through the sometimes stressful exigencies of major declaration.

Attendee Winton Garrelts ’26 lauded the senators’ efforts, saying

that the AAS would do well to “focus … more towards events like these that have a broader application to the general campus.”

Working with Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein and the Faculty’s Ad Hoc Committee on Student Learning to increase the project’s impact, Kim foresees next year’s fair taking place in the fall (further in advance of sophomore’s major declaration deadline) and accompanied by a celebratory “Major Declaration Day” for sophomores in the spring.

Photo courtesy of Erin Williams ’26 Student representatives promoted their majors.

Jones Expansion and Renovation Will Cost $43 Million

use it, is part of supporting an infrastructure for democracy.”

The vision for greater accessibility includes improved resources for programs like the English Second Language (ESL) & Citizenship Program, which provides tutoring for English and citizenship courses for adult immigrants in the Amherst area; Sarat said the program would have a designated space in the new layout. Improved spaces for teens and kids are also in the works, and Sarat said that environmental sustainability has taken higher priority concerning the renovation in recent years.

With cost estimates going up due to the Covid recession, subsequent inflation, and increased concern for sustainable building, Sarat said the board is hoping to get more federal funding. The need for the expansion has not changed despite increased costs, he said, noting that his recent proposal for the board’s re-endorsement of the expansion was especially important in light of the new cost estimates.

“We wanted everybody to know that the original vision was still the right vision, even though it’s now years later,” he said.

Sarat hopes that Amherst’s student population, though they are “guests” in town, will find the renovated Jones Library as a resource and integral part of the college’s welfare.

“The well-being of the college depends upon the well being of the town, and the well-being of the town depends upon its civic infrastructure,” he said. “And healthy civic infrastructure supports the well-being of a town.”

Julius Tyson ’25, who has volunteered at the Jones Library in the past, is optimistic about the

upgrades.

“I think renovation is necessary,” he said, referencing an event space and kids’ area he described as “run-down.”

According to him, the renovations should be largely focused on kids’ and teens’ spaces. “They’re the majority clientele,” he said.

In harmony with Sarat’s view

that a well-kept library, town, and college are all mutually beneficial, Tyson remarked that his work at the library helps him feel more connected with the town.

“I appreciate that because of how insular the college can feel,” he said. “Maybe the renovations will bring more students [to the library].”

Catherine Lhamon ’93 Speaks on Career in Civil Rights

Peter Finnerty ’25 Staff Writer

Students and faculty gathered in Pruyne Lecture Hall for an event on the future of civil rights education with Catherine Lhamon ’93, the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, on Thursday, March 23. The event, hosted by the Amherst Political Union (APU), featured a conversation between Lhamon, APU President Melanie Schwimmer ’23, and President Michael Elliott.

Lhamon served as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education under President Obama from 2013 to 2017, and was again nominated for the role under President Biden in 2021. She has also worked as a civil rights lawyer and

law professor.

The event was months in the making, with Schwimmer spearheading the push, discussing the matter with the executive board and reaching out to Lhamon in August.

“I’m someone who personally has a real interest in education policy, civil rights law, especially around Title IX — I’m a peer advocate for sexual respect on campus — so this was an event I’ve been wanting to do for a while,” Schwimmer explained.

The event covered the Assistant Secretary’s role presiding over the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education, which enforces federal civil rights laws in schools. The three main areas the Office focuses on are gender-, race-, and disability-based discrimination.

“Our job is to enforce what President Kennedy called the ‘simple justice’ — that no federal funds should be used to discriminate,” Lhamon said.

Logistical practicalities can pose difficulties to enforcing this justice. Lhamon said that recordhigh case numbers have forced the 600 employees of the Office of Civil Rights to take on rigorous workloads, some having over 40 cases at once. While the Office tries to give the tools to accommodate everyone, this overextension can have concrete consequences.

As an example, Lhamon pointed to a case in which a school district placed an arbitrary cap on the number of students with learning disabilities they would accommodate.

“It’s so obviously unlawful, but they were doing it. They did it for

five years, it took us five years to resolve that question,” Lhamon said. “So, some of those kids don’t go to that district anymore, and they were forced to learn in school without support all that time. There are real consequences when we take too long.”

The vitriolic national climate around education has also affected Lhamon’s work. In response to President Biden’s budget proposal, the Republican head of the committee overseeing the Office’s budget opposed Biden’s plan to increase funding for the Office.

“He [Congressman Jodey C. Arrington, ] said we shouldn’t have any more people because we would use the money to advance the transgender agenda,” Lhamon said. “So, you know, I don’t think we can see eye to eye.”

The discussion also touched

on what civil rights enforcement in education will look like in the future in light of current threats to affirmative action, and Elliott and Lhamon both responded to the possibility of the Supreme Court deeming race-based admissions unconstitutional. Lhamon said that while she would personally disagree with the Supreme Court eroding affirmative action, it would still be her responsibility to enforce it.

“I enforce the law as it is. If, as we predict, the Supreme Court changes the law on affirmative action, I will enforce the law as they prescribe,” Lhamon said.

Elliott explained that Amherst filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing in favor of affirmative action. While Amherst will

The renovation will revive run-down spaces and aim to accomodate more diverse patronage.

Photo courtesy of The Jones Library

Alumna Describes Role at Department of Education

Continued from page 4

continue to work towards student diversity, Elliott explained that the college would have to make changes if the court overturns precedent.

“The Board of Trustees very clearly stated that [it] is committed to aggressively working to ensure that we continue to have a richly diverse student body. We do have to follow the law,” Elliott said.

Alongside their discussion on education, as alumni, both Lhamon and Elliott reflected on how their times at Amherst affected their trajectories in life, with Lhamon pointing to their own intersecting experience as fellow editors on the Student as a key influence.

“The ways that you led us to dissent and to come to what consensus we could, and to then present positions about which we had strong feelings, and sometimes strong different feelings, was very instructive for me,” Lhamon said.

The conversation provided new insights into the Office of Civil Rights’ work for many. Laura Gottesfeld ’23, an attendee of the event, was struck by both the importance of the Office and the challenges they face.

“There seems to be an exploding number of cases,” Gottesfeld said. “But it’s also hopeful that there are people who really care about the job [of] trying to enforce the law.”

Schwimmer noted that seeing the struggles of working in the

system while trying to make the best of the circumstances, whether in response to disagreements with possible future Supreme Court rulings or logistical difficulties with case loads, was an important perspective.

“Often in the academy we can be very idealistic and critical,” Schwimmer said. “It’s like, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong — and then seeing someone who’s really trying to make as much positive change as possible inside the system in front of her — it’s important that there’s someone in this role who understands both that it is their job to execute the law but also trying to come up with ways to make sure justice is expansive and broad.”

Despite the challenges Lhamon faces, she is still grateful for the opportunity to do her job.

“It was amazing beyond my wildest dreams and beyond my wildest expectations, in terms of what I can do, in terms of reach,” Lhamon said, responding to a question about her plans after her tenure as Assistant Secretary. “I don’t know what I’ll do after this, because I am living my dream right now.”

Arrington, ] said we shouldn’t have any more people because we would use the money to advance the transgender agenda,” Lhamon said. “So, you know, I don’t think we can see eye to eye.”

The discussion also touched on what civil rights enforcement in education will look like in the future in light of current threats to

affirmative action, and Elliott and Lhamon both responded to the possibility of the Supreme Court deeming race-based admissions unconstitutional. Lhamon said that while she would personally disagree with the Supreme Court eroding affirmative action, it would still be her responsibility to enforce it.

“I enforce the law as it is. If, as we predict, the Supreme Court changes the law on affirmative action, I will enforce the law as they prescribe,” Lhamon said.

Elliott explained that Amherst filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing in favor of affirmative action. While Amherst will continue to work towards student diversity, Elliott explained that the college would have to make changes if the court overturns precedent.

“The Board of Trustees very clearly stated that [it] is committed to aggressively working to ensure that we continue to have a richly diverse student body. We do have to follow the law,” Elliott said.

Alongside their discussion on education, as alumni, both Lhamon and Elliott reflected on how their times at Amherst affected their trajectories in life, with Lhamon pointing to their own intersecting experience as fellow editors on the Student as a key influence.

“The ways that you led us to dissent and to come to what consensus we could, and to then present positions about which we had strong feelings, and so -

metimes strong different feelings, was very instructive for me,” Lhamon said.

The conversation provided new insights into the Office of Civil Rights’ work for many.

Laura Gottesfeld ’23, an attendee of the event, was struck by both the importance of the Office and the challenges they face.

“There seems to be an exploding number of cases,” Gottesfeld said. “But it’s also hopeful that there are people who really care about the job [of] trying to enforce the law.”

Schwimmer noted that seeing the struggles of working in the system while trying to make the best of the circumstances, whether in response to disagreements with possible future Supreme Court rulings or logistical difficulties with case loads, was an important perspective.

“Often in the academy we

can be very idealistic and critical,” Schwimmer said. “It’s like, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong — and then seeing someone who’s really trying to make as much positive change as possible inside the system in front of her — it’s important that there’s someone in this role who understands both that it is their job to execute the law but also trying to come up with ways to make sure justice is expansive and broad.”

Despite the challenges Lhamon faces, she is still grateful for the opportunity to do her job.

“It was amazing beyond my wildest dreams and beyond my wildest expectations, in terms of what I can do, in terms of reach,” Lhamon said, responding to a question about her plans after her tenure as Assistant Secretary. “I don’t know what I’ll do after this, because I am living my dream right now.”

Mammoth Moments in Miniature: March 22 to March 29

The Editorial Board

College Brings Back Five College Film Festival

On Saturday, April 1, the college will be hosting the Five College Film Festival for the first time in four years. The festival, whose mission is to “share the stories of students from across the Five Colleges through the medium of film,” will consist of three programs of curated short films from

students across the consortium, with an awards show following the showings.

Advocates for Reproductive Care Host Doula Training

The first of four doula training sessions, hosted by the Advocates for Reproductive Care on campus with funding from the Association of Amherst Students, began on March 25. The sessions, which were open to students, faculty, and

staff, provided subsidized attendance for seven students. All those who participate in the full training program will receive official certification as birth doulas.

Morris Pratt Loses SHEP Status

After sustaining continuous exit sign damage and the shattering of a custom-cut window on the night of Saturday, March 25, Morris Pratt will no longer be eligible as a registered party

space. In the email announcing the change, Community Development Coordinator Alyssa Carlotto explained that between September and December custodians worked fifty hours cleaning after parties in addition to their regular hours.

“Non-alcohol related programming” will continue in the dorm.

Administration Begins Providing Free Access to Calm App Chief Student Affairs Officer

and Dean of Students Angie Tissie-Gassoway announced on March 28 that all students would have access to Calm, a top-rated mental fitness app that features guided meditation sessions, music playlists, sleep stories, and more features designed to lessen stress and improve focus and sleep quality. Both students with and without preexisting accounts with the app will be able to access the service.

The APU's Melanie Schwimmer ’23 interviewed Lhamon.

Photo courtesy of Jesse Gwilliam

Features

Susannah Auderset Thoughts on Theses

one of her favorites. Arbodela, now her thesis advisor, has helped her structure her research methodology and interview questions, and helped her foster a partnership with Way Finders.

Willow Delp

Staff Writer

For many students, writing a paper is a solitary practice — sequestered away from the supposed “real world,” digging through dusty archives. Susannah Auderset’s architectural studies thesis, however, has proved a much different experience.

Her thesis asks the question, “What does ‘thoughtful’ affordable housing mean?” In addition to studying blueprints, she has been talking to residents of the Library Commons multi-family

housing community in Holyoke — an affordable housing property managed by the non-profit housing developer Way Finders, and designed by the architectural firm Dietz & Company.

Auderset describes discovering through her work that thoughtful affordable housing extends beyond the physical space itself — although that too, of course, is a component, with residents often talking about the entrances and the aesthetics of the space. But the physical is intertwined with the social, she has found: Safety, interactions with neighbors, and proximity are all

equally important to the tenants, and critical in conscious urban planning. The tenants Auderset has spoken to have also emphasized the range of community services and programming Way Finders offers, which include employment support, first time homebuyer workshops in English and Spanish, and financial assistance for homeless families.

Auderset’s thesis was inspired by the architectural studies course “Housing, Urbanization & Development” (ARCH-204), taught by Professor of Architectural Studies Gabriel A. Arboleda. She remembers the class as

“I’ve always really been interested in architectural design that provides a social benefit,” Auderset said. She is a self-described advocate for the architectural studies major, a relatively recent program, only added to Amherst’s roster in 2012. She describes it as “one of the most flexible majors on campus,” as it encompasses a range of topics, such as architectural history, urban planning, and sociology. Auderset herself has chosen to focus on “hands-on studios and to explore the field of housing.” Post-graduation, she hopes to find work as a housing practitioner within the field of urban planning.

For her, the thesis has been “a great lesson of patience and being flexible,” due to the fact that much of her work is composed of conversations and unstructured interviews with res-

idents. In her work, it has been pivotal to “[learn] how to meet people where they are.” The lack of a script has meant that she’s needed to pivot to what people are bringing up, as she receives a “myriad of answers” that often fall outside her purview, and she describes the experience as a positive learning opportunity which has “benefitted [her] in a number of ways.” She is “thankful for the opportunity to learn on [her] feet.”

Auderset cites the biggest challenge of her thesis as beginning the thesis itself, noting that, for months, she had a blank document before she was able to “convince [herself] that she knew enough to start.” She encourages students who are considering writing a thesis to take a “leap of faith,” and to utilize Amherst’s resources and flexibility to do something that “they wouldn’t be able to do anywhere else.”

She hopes that her thesis will be helpful to Way Finders, and useful in informing future developments to create architecture with a social benefit.

Digging Into the Process of Snow Removal on Campus

Caelen McQuilkin ’24 Managing Features Editor

“Auxiliary Services has worked through the night to clear the campus walkways and roads.” When students open their inboxes during the winter, we’re often greeted by this phrase — a snowstorm hits, and we await the announcement about whether campus is clear enough to continue operations as normal.

The process that makes this possible takes place behind the scenes for students but occupies center stage for others in the college community. To learn more about it, The Student spoke with staff who work on snow removal at the college.

These staff work within the custodial and grounds departments, which together oversee snow removal. According to Supervisor of Landscape and Grounds Kenneth

Lauzier and Custodial Supervisor

Liz Pereira, the custodial department is responsible for clearing snow on walkways, staircases, and entrances to the dorms they clean and maintain, as well as the general surroundings of those buildings. Meanwhile, the grounds department oversees roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, and “floating staircases,” or staircases that are not immediately attached to buildings.

Staff working in snow removal said that the preparation and work necessary to clear snow depends on the timing and severity of the storm, but consistently requires different types of labor. Essential staff on hourly wages also spoke on the labor that snow removal adds to their schedules and what this means for how they see their pay. And more broadly, staff shared stories about how snow removal work has shaped

their understandings of the Amherst campus.

Before the Storm

According to Lauzier, the process of preparing for a snow storm typically begins about a week before it is predicted to hit. He described “constantly toggling back and forth every five minutes between every possible weather app” as soon as snow appears on the radar. No matter how large the snow storm is, custodial and grounds will anticipate some work to clear it. But to get more clarity on how much snow is expected, the college receives special briefings from the National Weather Service that include confidence ratings in their predictions for the storm. These updates come in every twelve hours for several days leading up to it, and help departments make decisions about what clearing the

snow will entail.

Part of this planning process involves employee schedules. Custodial employees add snow removal to their typical schedules, which for most is Monday through Friday, from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The grounds department changes its hours more often in order to adjust to snow predictions, often working through the night.

“Most people wake up at seven, eight, nine o’clock in the morning. “But we’ve been here physically removing snow since midnight, or since 10 p.m. at night the day before,” Lauzier said. “Most people’s days are starting, but we’ve just ended two days worth of work.”

Before the storm, the departments also prep their equipment and “pretreat” walkways and stairs with salt. Having this preparation before snow falls is important, Lauzier said.

“What people don’t always see is the work that is done when it’s not snowing.”

Once the storm is closer or has begun, the Human Resources, Safety, and Auxiliary Services Departments assess and then make a recommendation to the senior advisor to the president and to the chief of campus operations about whether the college should call a snow day and officially close. According to Chief of Police John Carter, one of the many factors the college considers when deciding to close is “whether custodial and grounds are able to clear roadways, parking lots and walkways so that the community can move about the campus safely.” This constitutes the last part of the snow day decision-making process, as the departments usually

Continued on page 7

’26

Photo courtesy of Susannah Auderset '23

Susannah Auderset ’23 is an architectural studies major writing a thesis on affordable housing in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Her thesis advisor is Chair of Architectural Studies Professor Gabriel A. Arboleda.

Custodians, Grounds Staff Reflect on Clearing Snow

Continued from page 6

determine whether or not they can clear the snow on time sometime in the early morning the day of the potential closure.

Even when the college decides to close, custodians and grounds employees still work because they are considered essential employees. During these official closures, non-exempt employees (including custodians, and typically other employees paid by the hour) get paid double time, two times their usual wage.

Employee A, a custodial employee who preferred to remain anonymous to protect their comfort in the workplace, said that on snow days, they usually feel like they are performing similar shoveling work for double the pay. “But,” they said, “if campus isn’t closed, and we are here [on our typically weekly schedule] … shoveling, we are just getting paid our hourly wage.”

For this reason, they also questioned the external considerations that go into keeping the school open, especially from the perspective of an employee whose pay doubles on a snow closure day. “For us, we’re like, ‘Why? Why isn’t there a snow day?’” they said.

Lauzier and Pereira, who supervise these employees, noted that

while the large storms that usually lead to closures are always intense, smaller storms are usually more taxing on their departments. These kinds of storms make it harder to predict just how much snow clearing is really needed, and can end up producing a lot of work, Lauzier said. “Every time you plow it, white sticks to the ground, but when you don’t plow it, it’s never more than just that layer of white,” he said. “So you end up plowing nothing five times over and over for hours, and you’re just waiting for the last flakes to be done so that you can make that last pass and say alright, we’re done here.”

The snowstorm that occurred on Saturday, March 4, of this year was one such example, said Lauzier. Because the storm lasted for so long but never quite accumulated, he and the rest of the grounds team started clearing snow around midnight, and stayed until 3:30 in the afternoon the next day. “We got 2 inches of snow,” marveled Lauzier. “Thirteen hours of snow removal, and 2 inches.”

Lauzier and Pereira also said that some of the rarer, large storms are predicted to be so large that staff may not be able to drive from their homes to campus. In cases like these, they have the option to come to campus before the storm be-

gins and stay to clear snow. Hourly non-exempt employees receive double and a half their usual pay rate for storms like these, because they are working on emergency closure pay and, after the first eight hours of work, overtime pay as well.

Pereira recounted a storm like this several years ago, when she was working as a custodian. Because the storm was so large, she and 17 other staff members arrived on campus at 5 p.m. and stayed until 2:30 the next afternoon, sleeping in an apartment in the basement of Charles Pratt Dormitory that was vacant at the time. Staff took shifts in order to continually keep clearing snow, and went to Val for coffee and meals. “To go into Val and see other people, [and ask], ‘How’s it going for you?’ ‘Yeah, it’s pretty bad.’ ‘You know, the wind is pretty crazy.’ It was just like a team. The sense of a team, it was there,” she said. Lauzier remembered a storm in February 2020 that also required staff to stay overnight. In the end, custodial and facilities cleared snow for a total of 72 hours because it just kept falling.

Clearing the Snow

In any size storm, grounds and custodial departments prioritize clearing snow from the areas that will be most heavily-trafficked the

day of the storm. They use a list of events occurring on campus that day in order to plan effectively — for example, the walkways around the gym become more important if there is a game occurring that day.

For this same reason, the stairways and entrances outside dorms and academic buildings like the science center are also a priority. “If it snows, no matter what the case is, you’re responsible for maintaining clear sidewalks and stairs to your building,” said Bryce Benware, a custodian at the college. He described that this responsibility looks different depending on “how much snow we get, how fast it’s coming down, and when it starts.”

“If it’s snowing all day, then you typically would find yourself spending the majority of your day just shoveling. Because by the time you cleared your last place, your first place is already building up snow again,” he said. But if the snow is lighter or doesn’t continue for long, its impact is more just that he has to adjust his cleaning schedule slightly. “It does take away some of your time, so now you just gotta figure out how you’re gonna manage some of your time.”

Employee A mentioned the additional labor that shoveling adds to their responsibilities, especially when it is snowing heavily. “Physically, mentally, and emotionally. Your body hurts, you know? You’re already required to do a physical task inside, and then you’re outside,” they said. “It’s tough. And the clothing thing. You’re soaking wet, you’re sweating, you have to change … And then to come in and have to clean.”

Because custodians are responsible for both cleaning and shoveling around the dorm, Employee A described having to adapt their regular cleaning schedule in order to keep the walkways clear of snow. “You’re juggling running in and out to shovel … the entrances always have to be clear,” they said.

Employee B also said that while shoveling can be fun at times, “It’s super exhausting when you have to finish working outside in order to begin [cleaning] inside. There are times when you hurt your back

from overwork.”

Given the tax of this additional work, “We don’t get paid accordingly,” said Employee A. They noted that oftentimes custodians do not come to work with proper attire to be shoveling outside all day. If employees from an outsourced snow removal company came to clear the snow, Employee A said, they guess that they’d be paid more than custodians do for their work. Employee B agreed.

“I think we should be paid more. Because we add more work to our shift. Remove all the snow, sprinkle salt, and then we have to clean the buildings inside,” they said. “Our work is on the rise but our salary is not.” Employee B noted that they see these feelings as common among their coworkers, too. “I don’t only speak for myself,” they said.

Benware said he personally only notices the extra burden when it’s snowing heavily and he has to spend the whole day shoveling. The lighter snow responsibilities are something he signed up for on the job. “And what I think it really comes down to is just making sure that everyone who has to walk across the campus is safe,” he said. “I don’t really think … much thought goes into ‘Oh, their workload is bigger,’ or ‘Oh, let’s lighten it a little bit.’ No matter what, we gotta do the work. It’s about the people who are using the campus and the facilities, and just keeping it safe.”

Employee A said that preparing for snow adds stress to their life. “When you’re preparing the night before for a storm, you’re thinking about yourself, your home, your family, and then you also have to think about the work aspect of it,” they said. “Is your family going to be safe? Are you going to have power at home? And you have to shovel your way out of your home to arrive here on time.”

Employee A cited this as another reason why they would often prefer the college to call an official snow day closure even if it may be physically possible for staff to remove the snow while keeping campus open. This way, essential staff could take

Continued on page 8

Staff in the custodial and grounds departments discussed the planning, labor, and knowledge that goes into snow removal at the college.

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard '26

Looking at Campus Through the Lens of Snow Removal

Continued from page 7 more time to safely commute to the school, and would have the flexibility to take more time to clear snow. “We wouldn’t feel as pressured and anxious to actually have to do all of it. We’d get it done, but it wouldn’t be as much pressure,” they said.

Custodians use shovels to remove snow around buildings, while supervisors use RTVs, all terrain type vehicles with plows and salters, to help out in these same areas. The grounds department uses two large construction loaders for the main roads and parking lots, Bobcat toolcats for the main sidewalks, and their own RTVs for buildings, patios, crosswalks and dumpster areas.

Additionally, grounds staff use shovels and snowblowers for areas that larger equipment can’t access. Both teams also use salt, which makes snowy areas less slippery by creating “a barrier between the snow and the roads so that there’s a minute layer of melted snow [so] that the snow can’t stick to the asphalt,” Lauzier said. “Think of Pam in your pan when you’re cooking.”

After a storm is finally over, the departments take a day to decompress — Lauzier calls that the “24hour rule.” After those 24 hours, the custodial and grounds teams reconvene to discuss how the process went. “What was successful? What

wasn’t successful? What do we need to do better next time?” Lauzier said they ask. “We don’t want to be the kinds of teams that draw, literally, lines in the salt and say, ‘I do this to over there, and you do that to over there … ’ We have those conversations frequently to make sure that we’re not opposing each other, and we’re helping each other. Because we are here for the same task.”

A Deeper Understanding

Employees also reflected on the stories and place-specific knowledge that comes with the job of snow removal.

Lauzier has observed small microclimates within the Amherst campus itself. For a reason that nobody is quite sure of, snow seems to behave differently on the main quad than it does at the Science Center.

“I’ll see snow stick to the main quad sidewalks before it sticks to the Science Center sidewalks,” Lauzier said. “Even within campus, [there are] pockets.”

He noted the importance of using a range of weather sources. For trustworthy information about the Pioneer Valley’s local weather patterns, Lauzier says he follows Dave Hayes the Weather Nut, a local man who is not formally trained in meteorology but has extensively educated himself about weather. He

posts forecasts on Facebook and, as Lauzier put it, is “more accurate with weather forecasts than any legitimate meteorologist.”

Hayes refers to Amherst as part of “the snow lover’s triangle of disappointment” because of its low snowfalls in comparison to surrounding areas. The March 4 snowstorm, for example, dropped 3 inches in Amherst but 8 in Northampton. Lauzier recounted an even more extreme instance in March a few years back, when weather forecasts predicted three consecutive storms that would drop around 18 to 24 inches of snow in the region. While Pelham, which is about 8 miles away from Amherst, got almost 30 inches of snow in the storms, Amherst got less than 3.

Pereira mentioned the new ways you come to see campus after having experienced plowing snow on its pathways. For example, the patio behind Johnson Chapel, and the one between James, Stearns and the Mead are known to be difficult for plowing because they are hard to navigate and are unevenly paved with stones. Before recent maintenance and repairs on the main roads on campus, too, Pereira and Lauzier recounted the common experience of hitting a small, obscured bump in the road while plowing. For example, if there is a small manhole

in the road, “you’re just plowing, and plowing and plowing, and … a plow doesn’t just glide over that. You crash into that,” said Lauzier. “And somebody watching you just sees you hit nothing in the road, but your whole plow goes five feet in the air.”

Pereira said that inside jokes and community form around common experiences like these. “After we go around and we plow, then we go back to the office, and we sit down and we start talking,” she said. “‘Oh my god, you’ll never believe what happened to me, I was plowing and all of the sudden, the plow hit

this stone … ’ ‘Did you go there?’ ‘Were you able to plow?’ Things like that, telling stories about what happened.”

Benware said he looks at snow, and the responsibilities that come with it, as one part of a job that changes with the seasons. “In the fall, you’ll end up getting all sorts of leaves and pine needles tracked into your building, or blown in through the wind. In the spring, you end up with muddy footprints all through your building, from people out at the sporting fields … In the summer, it’s the pollen,” he said. “Every season has its own thing.”

Geothermal Energy Switch Makes College History

Nife Joshua ’26 Staff Writer

The college marked a tremendous milestone in reducing its carbon footprint over Spring Break when it broke ground on a construction project that will transition the campus’s heating and cooling system to being powered by geothermal energy, an environmentally friendly alternative to the current steam-powered system. In the words of Director of Sustainability Wes Dripps ’92, who explained the new system and its significance to me, “We need to walk the walk; we can’t just talk the talk.” The new construction signifies that the college is doing just that.

This development, which comes after years of planning and collaboration between the college and partner groups, is a key step in the Climate Action Plan (CAP), which aims to decarbonize the campus by 2030 — meaning that the college will eliminate or offset all their carbon emissions and be effectively carbon neutral.

The construction will reconfigure campus piping infrastructure, as the new system will heat buildings using low-temperature hot water instead of steam. The water will be heated using geothermal energy, which is a renewable resource. Steam production, in contrast, depends on the emissions-heavy burning of fossil fuels.

The low-temperature hot water will still be able to meet the college’s heating needs without requiring as much energy for production. This ultimately allows the college to use renewable geothermal energy to power the heating system, instead of burning natural gas. The new system will still require a small amount of additional energy to heat the water, but this will be covered by electricity, which can be powered by renewable energy in the future

This brief summary aside, fully appreciating the significance of the college’s transition to geothermal energy requires an understanding of the history of energy generation at Amherst — from the college’s old

system, to efforts to bring about change, to the nuances and rationale underlying our new system.

Our Old System

Since 2009, a large component of the college’s energy needs have been fulfilled by anatural-gas-powered cogeneration system. This means that the college’s heating and cooling system relies on steam generated by burning fossil fuels. This process takes place in a power plant behind the Science Center and across the train tracks, which burns natural gas to produce much of the college’s electricity and heat power. Being a cogeneration system, the heat generated from the plant is used to boil water that gen-

erates steam, which can be used for two purposes: burning more natural gas or driving a steam turbine to generate more electricity.

Emissions associated with cogeneration are considered “Scope 1” emissions under the Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines for classifying the sources of an organization’s greenhouse gas emissions. “Scope 1” emissions come directly from sources owned and operated by the college, while “Scope 2” refers to indirect emissions caused by the college’s purchasing of energy generated by another plant.

Amherst’s on-site electricity

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Clear paths on campus the day of a snow storm.

Photo courtesy of Dustin Copeland ’25

New System Paves the Way for Decarbonization at College

Continued from page 8

generation totals 9,233 megawatt-hours per year (MWh/yr), emitting greenhouse gases equal to over 15,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (c). However, all that only amounts to about 40 percent of the college’s energy demand. To cover the campus’ remaining energy needs, the college purchases electricity from a local provider, Eversource.

Emissions from this purchased electricity make up our “Scope 2” emissions. Our purchase of electricity from Eversource provides us with 11,786 MWh/yr, and the highest percentage (34.14 percent) of EverSource’s system power comes from natural gas. According to data from 2015, our purchase at the time from Eversource meant that our purchased electricity emitted the equivalent of 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. All told, the college emitted greenhouse gases in 2015 equal to the release of almost 20,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Acknowledging a Need for Change

In 2015, this alarming number gave rise to a new group on campus to try and assess how we could manage our large carbon footprint.

At that time, the college formed a Climate Action Task Force. The original members of the Climate Action Task Force included the former director of sustainability, chief of campus operations, director of facilities, chief student affairs officers, the chief financial office chair, and various professors from the geology and environmental studies departments who all helped craft a “carbon management hierarchy” approach.

The Climate Action Task Force set forth some propositions for how the college could most efficiently become carbon neutral. They brainstormed with an energy consulting firm, Competitive Energy Services, to reduce carbon emissions by almost 12,000 metric tons by 2034. They discovered that this reduction could only be achieved with new infrastructure, regional improvements to the electrical grid

via Eversource, and various other conditions that would require mass changes. In determining the feasibility of these mass changes, the group looked at Smith College, and instead of focusing on small projects to reduce emissions, Amherst committed to a total overhaul of the major source of its Scope 1 emissions: the natural gas-powered cogeneration system.

To tackle the carbon emissions from the natural gas-powered cogeneration system, the college worked with another sustainable engineering firm, Integral Group, to form a report on Amherst College’s energy profile. In 2019, Integral found that the college’s natural gas-powered cogeneration system had been deteriorating in efficiency over the years, with more than 4,000 lbs/hr, or 10 percent, of steam being lost before reaching the campus distribution network.

The decision to rework Scope 1 emissions also came with some immediate action to address the college’s carbon emissions from offsite electricity generation — its Scope 2 emissions. In 2019, the year of Integral Group’s report, the college participated in a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with NextEra Energy in Farmington, Maine, along with four other universities. In the agreement, Amherst purchases 10,000 MWh/yr of solar energy, which offsets the emissions from EverSource purchased energy. The purchase allows us to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 3,200 metric tons. This sort of renewable-energy purchase offsets Scope 2 emissions as well as current inefficiencies in the steam cogeneration systems, while on-campus solutions, like geothermal wells, can be implemented.

The New System

According to Amherst’s website, the geo-exchange of energy that the college’s new system will utilize is a natural process that occurs because of the direction of heat transfer. This is why geothermal energy is considered renewable.

In the new system, surface-temperature water will flow into geo-

thermal wells and experience geo-exchange, taking on the temperature of the earth belowground, about 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit. The system “allow[s] us to then utilize the ambient air temperature at depth to … preheat or precool,” said Dripps. Once the water has reached this temperature, the pumps will use 1kw of electricity to finish heating the water up to about 90 degrees in order to be pumped back up to the surface and be of use in the low-temperature hot water heating system. In the summer months, a cooling system will work in reverse, bringing the temperature further down from 50 to 60 degrees.

The amount of energy required to bring the water up to temperature is significantly lower than what is needed to produce steam. This ultimately allows the college to use only geothermal and electricity to power the heating and cooling system.

The college has a higher heating demand than cooling demand, particularly in the winter months. That means that the geo-exchange system’s renewability is not in equilibrium, and therefore not optimized. Thus, part of the transition requires the installment of a solar thermal system to prevent the exchange from failing and prevent the ground from cooling too much during our winters as we use heat energy from the earth to warm our system.

This combination of geothermal and solar thermal recharge will account for 100 percent of the cooling demand and 87-88 percent of the heating demand. According to the Integral Group report, the remaining 12-13 percent of our heating demand will need to be covered by switching our fuel from natural gas to biogas.

There are three phases of implementing the new geothermal system. The college is currently in the first stage of construction, in which campus buildings will get a new piping infrastructure to carry heat via low-temperature hot water rather than steam. The second phase will begin in 2025, with the digging of geothermal wells for the

vertical, closed-loop system and the connection of heat pumps to the closed-loop system powered by renewable energy. The third phase will be in 2030, and will put together these components: all of the fossil-fueled steam boilers will be shut off, and the campus will only be heated by the new geothermal system.

Amherst has contracted Finegold Alexander Architects to identify code and accessibility issues with specific buildings, and the replacement of the steam and hot water systems for 26 buildings along with a design for the campus Energy Center which will be a “low-embodied carbon structure” that has a green roof and will be constructed using heavy timber. This construction is projected to be completed by 2030.

Why Geothermal Energy?

The transition to geothermal energy will mean the college will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions from 14,000 to 680 metric tons per year just by reducing natural gas alone. The new system is also more cost-effective: It would cost $12,544,456 every 15 years to update all of our cogeneration infrastructure, but with the new geothermal system it will only cost us $4,385,216 every 17 years to update all of our infrastructure (Integral Group).

The college’s transition will be following the example of its

neighbor school, Smith, as they started their geo-exchange construction summer of 2022. In the process of meeting their climate action goals, Amherst will hopefully become another successful example of a carbon-neutral campus.

Senior Lecturer in Biology and Environmental Studies Rachel Levin, a member of the Climate Action Task Force, spoke to the broader movement that Amherst is joining. “Geothermal has shown to be really successful in a lot of places,” Levin said, “I know Carleton College has switched to [geothermal] and done a similar approach … I’m really excited to see how [geothermal] progresses.”

Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies Anna Martini, another member of the task force, was similarly excited about the decision. “Geothermal was on the table from the very beginning,” Martini said, “It is the best option for our goal, although it will be a bit disruptive for the next few years. I’m really happy to see the project finally begin, and I'm glad everyone is pushing forward here, even in the face of some economic headwinds. When reducing your carbon footprint, sooner is far better than later.”

“This will go down as one of the most transformational projects the college has ever done, and probably ever will do,” affirmed Dripps. “And it’s history.”

Graphic depicting the current stage of geothermal construction on campus.

Graphic courtesy of Amherst College

Defamiliarizing Discourse

Between the Point/Counterpoint series, LitFest, the Presidential Scholars Program, and innumerable weekly events, Amherst students have access to a wealth of visiting speakers on campus. Indeed, it feels as though one can’t go a week without being bombarded by fliers in a GroupMe chat or Valentine Dining Hall for at least one talk, often by impressively big names in government and academia.

Though we are extremely privileged as an institution to be able to bring these outside perspectives to our campus on such a regular basis, the Editorial Board feels that we need greater diversity in the types of speakers we bring onto this campus. The vast majority of speakers the administration brings are figureheads whose talks often feel surface-level or highly predictable, and allow little room for students to critically discuss or debate with the speakers. Beyond our typical candidate pool — which mainly encompasses Capitol Hill Democrats and professors from peer institutions — there are guests who could turn the worn-out speaker format into a truly provocative and stimulating event on campus.

This reflection is crucial in the context of impending school-wide budget cuts, which will likely limit the number of speaker opportunities in the next academic year. Now, we need to seriously think about the sorts of speakers and outside perspectives we want to bring to our campus, and how we want to engage in dialogue with those speakers when they do come.

While there's some truth in the claim that the lack of speaker diversity reflects Amherst’s strictly progressive politics, there are plenty of differing opinions about issues within our majority left-leaning campus: last year’s Point/ Counterpoint debate between Kwame Anthony Appiah and Adolph Reed Jr. over the extent to which race can be reduced to a function of class is a stellar example. Amherst could do more to highlight these points of friction among leftleaning intellectuals. Furthermore, although political diversity is important, speakers do not have to always be brought in to discuss important societal and global issues. We can just as easily bring in more light-hearted speakers who would rather discuss, say, the philosophy of love and marriage.

That being said, there is absolutely space to

Opinion

THE AMHERST STUDENT

bring in speakers who do not share progressive viewpoints. The question that arises here, however, is how we as a student body should engage with those speakers, and where and how we should draw the line between violent and merely oppositional speech.

Stanford Law School made headlines nationwide last week after students protested and shouted down a conservative judge brought onto campus by a student group. A school official criticized the student body and apologized to the speaker for the students’ betrayal of his right to free speech, while many students argued that they had a right to protect their campus from the presence of a judge whose past court decisions have limited the rights of women, immigrants, and LGBTQ individuals.

Before we invite any speaker to campus, controversial or not, there are several questions we should ask of the process. What constitutes hate speech from a speaker? How much should a speaker’s past history factor into their present role as speaker? Should students be allowed to protest speakers or even shut down events that they believe will have a harmful impact on our community? What is the goal of our bringing a speaker in the first place — to endorse their beliefs or generate dialogue?

These are not questions the Editorial Board can or should answer alone. Instead, we call for the student body to reflect on our values as a campus community, and consider how we can implement more diverse voices while preventing real harm to members of our community. Certain formats that are not widely used, currently, may be more conducive to productive engagement with ideologically-challenging speakers: organizing for a debate between a conservative and liberal speaker, for instance, is better than letting the former take the podium unquestioned. Or, we as a student body need to commit ourselves to challenging speakers — something that is currently disappointingly far from the norm. After all, when we bring a speaker onto this campus, we don’t just give them a platform to speak: we bring them into our universe of discourse.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of the majority of the Editorial Board — (assenting: 11; dissenting: 0; abstaining: 1).

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Letters Policy

The opinion pages of The Student are intended as an open forum for the Amherst community. We welcome responses 50-800 words in length to any of our recent articles and aim to publish a diversity of views and voices. If you would like to submit a response for consideration, it must be exclusive to The Student and cannot have been published elsewhere. The Student will print letters if they are submitted to the paper’s email account (astudent@ amherst.edu) or the article response form that can be found on The Student’s website, by 8 p.m. on Saturday, after which they will not be accepted for the week’s issue. Letters must bear the names of all contributors and an email address where the author or authors may be reached. Letters may be edited for clarity and Student style. The editors reserve the right to withhold any letter because of considerations of space or content.

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All rights reserved. The Amherst Student logo is a trademark of The Amherst Student, Inc. Additionally, The Amherst Student does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age. The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of The Amherst Student.

The Inequity of Strict Attendance Policies

Zane Khiry ’25 Staff Writer

There are a number of professors at Amherst who will dock your grade proportionally to the number of class meetings you miss: be absent twice, and your A becomes an A-; miss class three times, and you’re brought down a whole letter grade. The harm these policies cause disadvantaged students — often forcing them to make the impossible decision between academic success and their own wellbeing — cannot be understated, and faculty must recognize that their strict attendance policies are inequitable. It is time we do away with them in pursuit of a more just and equitable curriculum.

Professors often base these policies on an idealized notion of the college experience: the idea that we students are here, first and foremost, for academics — and, to their credit, many of us are. A large portion of Amherst students come to campus with the economic privilege to be able to solely focus on their schoolwork. They’re motivated, excellent, and relatively unobstructed in their intellectu-

al pursuits. The problem, however, begins when this isn’t the case.

These policies harm the students who don’t have the privilege of engaging in academic life without external constraints: namely, first generation low-income (FLI) students, students with mental illnesses, students with disabilities, and students with other severe health conditions. It is important to note here that these students are still motivated, excellent, and worthy. However, through no fault of their own, they are unable to put as much time and focused energy into academic life as their peers. Strict attendance policies only harm them — as they are made to choose between their grades and their own well-being.

These policies sometimes force FLI students into a predicament in which they have to choose between financial security and academic success. Additionally, students with pressing health concerns are made to sacrifice their wellbeing for the same reason. In both cases, students are prompted to make an impossible choice between caring for themselves and succeeding academically. The undue stress this

Big Stick Energy: Engineering Excuses

by Miles Garcia ’25

imposes on disadvantaged students increases inequity, harming the very students the college should be seeking to support the most. Some faculty might argue that these attendance policies serve an important pedagogical purpose: strengthening class participation. It should be acknowledged, however, that participation grades are much better at achieving this end, as they take into account meaningful contributions to classroom discussions, rather than only the fact of attendance in and of itself. Doubly so, they still incentivize students to show up to class. While an accommodation does exist for students who need flexibility with attendance, this measure alone does not do enough to support all students who are disadvantaged. Students who are undiagnosedn — sometimes due to socioeconomic barriers — while still suffering from severe conditions, are in no way able to be accommodated. This not only poses a threat to their academic success, but to their entire wellbeing, as students are then made to sacrifice their health for their grades. For this group of

students, it is then left entirely to the discretion of the professors whether or not their absences should be excused — this gives too much power to individual faculty members, and leaving open the possibility for less understanding professors to penalize them for prioritizing their needs.

Lastly, the faculty’s argument itself belies a contradiction. Even if we were to concede to professors that a sizable portion of students are excellent, motivated, and unobstructed in their academic pursuits — which is undeniably true — we would still run into a problem: for if students here are as excellent and unimpeded as professors seem to believe, they would show up to class anyway. The strict attendance policies would then only serve as an empty formality — one that only ends up hurting students without the luxury of engaging with academic life in an unobstructed manner.

One might argue that doing away with strict attendance policies opens a loophole for unmotivated students to exploit, as they’ll no longer be penalized for their absences. It should be noted, first and foremost, that this reason alone is not

a strong enough justification for these policies: progressive changes should not be discounted merely because of the potential presence of a few bad actors. Instead, other, less inequitable policies should be put in place to counteract them — and participation grades serve that very purpose. These grades incentivize students who otherwise may not show up to class to do so, and, moreover, to meaningfully contribute to class discussions. The bottom line is that participation grades do everything these inequitable attendance policies do, and better.

It must be said that many students do not go to college in a vacuum, and it’s time all faculty members come to recognize that fact. The idyllic vision these professors have of an undergraduate experience insulated from intruding obstacles or obligations hurts the students for whom this isn’t the case. This tension between the ideal and the reality of life on a diverse campus is manifest in their strict attendance policies. It’s high time faculty members put an end to these harmful restrictions in pursuit of a more just and equitable curriculum.

Rant vs. Rave: Walking Slowly Around Campus

Liam Archacki ’24 and Yasmin Hamilton ’24 Editor-in-Chief and Managing Opinion Editor

Liam’s Rave

In some sense, it comes as no surprise that Amherst students tend to be fast walkers. After all, what got us here other than our ability to strive forward, rushing fearlessly toward whatever sits on the horizon? Hustle culture can be shockingly literal.

But it can also be disruptive. Especially if you’re standing on

the First Year Quad enjoying the first true day of a spring — balmy, sunny, a cool breeze — and gazing listlessly at the distant Holyoke Range, reflecting on all the beauty the natural world has to offer. Then, suddenly, the clock strikes 11:20, and like the world’s most frantic flash mob, a flood of students envelopes you, perhaps casting snide head-shakes as they pass: Almost all are moving at the speed of a neighborhood Honda — or the typical Queens resident — and you’re slowing them down.

If you’re a part of this mob, I have a modest request: Take a minute. Appreciate your surroundings. Commit the outline of the mountains to memory, preserve a picture of a rose blossom. Walk, don’t run (or speed-walk), to your next class.

Yasmin’s Rant

We have a problem on campus. It’s spatial awareness. Too often I am stuck in Val behind a group of people ambling, directionless, while I wait behind them, plate-in-hand, desperate -

ly wishing that they would hear me saying “excuse me.” Other times, I am forced to awkwardly overtake a fellow pedestrian looking at their phone or listening to music, looking dazed.

I recognize that I likely have a bias toward fast walking thanks to my New York City upbringing, which is a stark contrast to Liam’s Austin, Texas, roots. Although I tend to partake in the 11:20 mobs that Liam describes, I am also a fan of slowing down. When I do that, however, I make sure to make space

for those who are less blessed with free time. I would like to make the case for being aware of your surroundings, and understanding that although you may be happy on your leisurely stroll or talking to several of your friends on a narrow path, there may be other people who are deathly late to something struggling to get past you. Make some room, and let them pass. I’m all for taking time to enjoy life and meander, just as long as it’s not getting in the way of other people.

by Quinn Nelson ’25

Amusements

Flip-flops | Wednesday, March 29, 2023

ACROSS

1. “That’s amazing”

4. Network that banned drinking on air for New Year’s Eve in 2022

7. SUV maker

10. What may trip you up?

13. Principal Coleman in “Abbott Elementary”

14. Sea goat follower, astrologically

15. Roadside assistance org.

16. Barely make it

17. People who are good on their word

20. Tic-tac container

21. Day on which Rutherford B. Hayes first started the tradition of rolling eggs on the White House lawn

22. Popular, as a trend

24. Hestia’s domain

27. Candy with cherry, lemon, lime, orange, and strawberry flavors

30. Super Bowl highlights, for some

31. Play ground?

32. Place to make an entrance?

35. Meat-based sauce commonly served on tagliatelle

37. Companies that increased their prices by an average of 25% in 2022

38. When you should go in reverse?, whose rule can be applied to

19 clues in this puzzle

42. Object whose displacement can be described by a sinusoidal wave

44. The witching hour

47. Colorful songbird

48. DDE follower, presidentially

51. Game whose official rules do not allow Draw Two cards to be stacked

52. “I smell ___!”

53. Plumed

56. Reduce to smithereens

59. Like a rock-climbing wall

60. Two-piece piece

62. Collectible that has sold for $5.275 million dollars

66. Bit of feedbag

67. Writer with an NFL mascot named after him

68. Early bird?

69. Debtor’s letters

70. Diss

71. Resting place 72. Supertonics

73. Calm as can be

DOWN

1. Skulling need

2. Egg cells

3. “Don’t let ’em get to you”

4. Lets go of

5. Parent company of Butterfinger and Laffy Taffy

6. Fast

7. Long-nosed fish

8. Anti-drinking org.

9. SensiTive ToPic iN thiS clUe?

10. “Keep your guard up!”

11. Berkshire East activity

12. Lair

18. Main squeeze

19. Character progression

23. NFL great Peterson who was on the Minnesota Vikings

24. Nearby

25. Activist Wells that helped to found the NAACP

26. Disorganize

28. ___ kwon do

29. Part of GPS, Abbr.

33. You dig it

34. Juvenile

36. Ignore iOS notifications, perhaps

37. Strive for

39. Curly-tailed cur

40. Grand ___ Opry

41. Switch channels?

42. School org.

43. Musical skill

45. Number signaling off bits in binary

46. Physical sign of disagreement

48. Overhead frisbee throw 49. Numbskull 50. G-string alternatives

54. Amherst to Albany dir.

55. And so on, briefly

57. Boom Beach and Clash Royale, e.g.

58. Single iteration

“Hip hip hooray!” 61. Lame 63. Mauna ___

selection 65. Raging success

Solutions: March 22

John Joire ’26 Managing Puzzles Editor

Arts&Living Amherst Choral Society Blossoms in Spring Concert

Madeline Lawson ’25 Managing Arts & Living Editor

On March 25, the Amherst College Choral Society, composed of the Concert Choir and Glee Club, performed its Spring Concert to a packed crowd in Buckley Recital Hall. The groups were conducted by Director of the Choral Music Program and Lecturer in Music Arianne Abela and accompanied by Maura Glennon on piano.

The smaller Concert Choir performed before being joined on stage by the other singers to form the Glee Club. The evening was filled with Amherst music, with lyrics by Amherst poets and compositions by Amherst faculty, students, and alumni.

“Unclouded Day” was the first performance. With a strikingly powerful opening, the gospel song featured heavy call and response from the group. The world premiere of “One Voice,” written specifically for the Choral Society by Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music Eric Sawyer, followed. It featured solos from Alice Rogers ’23, Alex Conklin ’25, Shuyao Charlotte Wang ’24, Katya Besch ’25, Anna Hogarth ’23, Sam Wright ’23, and Nat Roth ’23. The vocals in this piece, which were reminiscent of a woodwind ensemble, were calm but still engaging.

Finally, the Concert Choir performed “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Using the text of the William Butler Yeats poem by the same name, Sam Wright ’23 composed the piece, a hopeful but slightly sorrowful meditation on the water. This is not the first time Wright’s compositions have echoed through Buckley — in February, his composition thesis, “A Second Seed,” premiered. This piece had the same folk-inspired feeling as his thesis, with massive ranges in each section and a resonant final note.

The Glee Club then joined the stage. Abela composed its first piece, “We are the night ocean,” but she did not conduct it. Instead, Wang came down from the risers to lead

the group. The piece was accompanied by Gil Wermeling on electric bass and featured Patrick Spoor ’23, Cameron Mueller-Harder ’23, and Brenna Kaplan-Keshguerian ’22 as soloists. The song only had three lines — a poem by Rumi (“We are the night ocean filled with glints of light. / We are the space between the fish and the moon, / while we sit here together”) — but the dynamic piece’s layers and complexity rose to a cresting wave, never losing the audience’s attention.

The next two songs were composed by alumni, both of whom were in attendance, and turned Amherst poetry into melodic harmonies. Commissioned by the Class of 1973, these pieces premiered for the first time at the concert. The first song, “Acquainted With The Night,” was hymnal and rich, featuring the words of Robert Frost’s sonnet of the same name. The piece was authored by Scott Wheeler ’73, and the next song, “I sing to use the waiting,” was composed by Paul Salerni ’73. The choir sang Emily Dickinson’s poem

with a meditative, slightly melancholic tone, ending with a high vibrato solo from soprano Annika Bajaj ’25. Both pieces were dedicated to Lewis Spratlan, a composer who taught both Wheeler and Salerni at Amherst and worked at the college for 36 years.

For the next piece, the Glee Club sang an upbeat melody that had members clapping and laughing along with the music. “Walk Out on the Water” featured percussion and electric bass, and each section was individually featured in the spotlight.

The Concert Choir then returned to the stage, performing “Your Spring,” composed by Wang with text by Haoran Tong ’23. It evoked the first feeling of a spring breeze, floated on by returning birds. Rogers led a meditative glimpse into the blossoming daffodils and budding trees in her solo. “Angel Band” was contemplative and wistful, a hymn taken from minister Jefferson Hascall’s 1860 sermon, “My Latest Sun is Sinking Fast.”

The Concert Choir’s final piece certainly had the most infectious energy. The group stood in a semicircle to sing “Kanaval,” an ode to the Haitian carnival season that was sung in Haitian Creole. It was an exciting piece that the choir clearly loved performing — at one point, they jumped up and shouted laughing, before leaning in, as if to tell a secret. It featured solos from Wright, Andres De La Torre ’22, and Shay Hernandez ’23, as well as Kai Glashausser ’23 and Lennon on percussion.

Finally, the Glee Club returned for the end of the concert, a compilation of Amherst songs and odes to the college. They sang “Three Gifts,” featuring Kaplan-Keshguerian as an American Sign Language interpreter, who matched the grace and rhythm of the piece. The group also sang the classics “O Amherst, Our Amherst” and “Hand Me Down My Bonnet,” the latter led by Graduate Associate in Music Alyssa Tsuyuki. In line with tradition, Tsuyuki held a shield to protect herself from the

Glee Club members throwing pieces of candy at her during the line “First she gave me candy / and then she gave me cake.” Abela invited alumni in the audience to come on stage, and they gladly joined in.

The concert also honored the graduating seniors. This is the Choral Society’s last performance with the seniors, and they wore purple stoles to commemorate their time with the group. The seniors sang three pieces alone. The first two were serenades to the class, as they were standing in two semicircles at the front of the stage. “Miyagete Goran Yoru no Hoshi o” was performed by the tenors and bases, while “Parting Glass” showcased the senior sopranos and altos. The final piece of the night was “Senior Song.” The rest of the Glee Club left, and the seniors sang while passing around and drinking from a golden chalice full of a mysterious liquid. It was a playful but bittersweet ending to the night, and the lights dimmed on the Class of 2023’s final Choral Society performance.

The Choral Society performed their Spring Concert last Saturday, featuring pieces written by Amherst community members and honoring the group’s graduating seniors.

Photo courtesy of Madeline Lawson ’25

Ten Minute Play Festival Spotlights Student Theater

Alex Brandfonbrener ’23 Managing Arts & Living Editor

On March 24 and 25, the Amherst Green Room hosted its fourth annual Ten Minute Play Festival in Johnson Chapel, featuring four student-written plays chosen from over 20 submissions. The festival celebrates the writing, acting and directing of Amherst’s talented student theater community. I had the opportunity to attend a dress rehearsal two days before opening night, and I was struck by the passion and commitment of the students involved.

After receiving the 20 play submissions, director of the festival Isabelle Anderson ’25 and the Green Room E-board were tasked with choosing the plays that would be performed. The process was completely anonymous, and they did not know who wrote each play. In previous years, the festival featured six plays, but this year there were only four. Anderson admitted to me that “there were only four shows because we had difficulty finding people to stage manage and direct … We would rather have four really well directed and stage-managed shows than overwork the productions.”

“But there were a lot of submissions that I would like to see submitted again next year,” she said. She told me that she was proud of the directors and stage managers — some of whom had never been involved in theater before — and hopes the event continues in future years.

First up was “The Great, Big Mammoth Caper,” written by Shay Hernandez ’23 and directed by Bek Herz ’25. Bickering friends turned partners-in-crime Charles (Austin Xiong ’23) and Mona (Taylor Brentjens ’26) are visitors to the illustrious Beneski Museum of Natural History. Soon their loosely-veiled intentions are revealed: They want to steal the prized skull of the mammoth Bebu and other goodies.

The play was chock full of Amherst campus culture jokes. The duo needs a student ID to break into the museum at night; they simply walk up to the audience and grab one from a backpack. Later, the alarms in the museum go off, but they are mistaken for the Jenkins Dormito-

ry’s fire alarms. A lot of the fun of the play comes from the ridiculous circumstances of the plot. Charles sports an outspoken top hat, while Mona wears a steel wool wig with pink curlers. Perfect for a heist.

I also enjoyed the levity that Sadie (Zoe Callan ’25) brought to the performance. She is a Geology major who works security at Beneski and almost foils the scheme. But she isn’t the best at her job, more focused on her Paleontology exam than the robbers right behind her. As a result, Charles and Mona manage to tie her up and ball-gag her mouth in a complex moment of stage action.

Likewise, a highlight for me was the off-kilter physical humor. How often do I get to watch a thief struggle to wrench the tusks out of a mammoth skull? Or try to avoid triggering a pressure plate by replacing a meteorite with an equally weighted object? These moments of humor were contrasted by the occasional contemporary theme, such as colonial theft of ancestral items.

All that being said, I don’t think that the play was an all-around success. For a comedy performance, “The Great, Big Mammoth Caper” felt a little sparse, as if there could have been twice as many jokes. And the jokes that were there felt a little banal; I had to read into them a lot to find the humor. In this day and age of ubiquitous overstimulation, it takes a lot for comedy to be fully satisfying.

The tenor of the event switched from comedy to drama in “Atrophy,” written and directed by Bianca Sass ’23 and choreographed by Sydney Ireland ’23. Two lovers (Alfie Cooper ’26 and Kobe Thompson ’24) are committed partners, cuddling in bed and reading C. S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia.” They decide to do some reminiscing — “I’m tired of hearing other people’s stories … Tell me something you miss” — in order to reignite the flickering coals of their romance.

But it turns out that “remembering” is hard work, involving muscles that must be exercised in order to stave off the titular “atrophy.” While Thompson’s character is initially resistant, Cooper’s character becomes fully immersed in nostalgia. They

describe a childhood snow day in vivid detail, both celebrating the past and mourning its loss. The dialogue was accentuated by evocative choreography, and Cooper moves across the stage with wide sweeping arms, making snow angels in the air, transfixed.

But that sort of remembering can be compulsive, too. When Thompson’s character recalls a community potluck after a hurricane, he overflows with details: his first taste of neapolitan ice cream, eating deviled eggs with olives in the middle and the intoxicating feeling of a first kiss. His ecstasy is interrupted by a startling fact: “I don’t remember her name … I don’t think I ever learned it.”

At the climax of the play, an alarming twist sneaks in. Turns out the lovers are reminiscing because they have been stuck inside for 12 years, after an ecological disaster has left the outdoors uninhabitable. All the things that they miss really are gone, and all they have left is each other … and Narnia. The longest of the four plays (by quite a bit), “Atrophy” soaked itself in the nostalgia of mourning things that can never return — and I felt fully immersed in that feeling.

Next was “Holistic Review,” written by Nathan Grove ’23 and directed by Erika Andrade ’25. The setting is “a legally indistinct liberal arts college,” where five admission counselors each give their pitches for who should be admitted: A picture-perfect student who namedrops a famous parent in the first line of the essay: rejected. A student

that wrote their essay about using homophobic slurs: accepted, but only because the hockey coach put in a good word. And when an applicant is from Wyoming, they ecstatically chant, “50 STATES!”

As the play progresses, it settles on some puzzling conundrums. Should they accept a student who had to take medical leave for their OCD, but chose to write about climate change? Gina (Piper Mohring ’25) posits that climate change essays are impersonal, making for bad stories. If she really wanted to put her best foot forward, then she should have chosen the more compelling topic (or something like that). And what if two bassoon players apply to the same schools: Would all the Ivies choose the same one?

The dialogue was clear, active and energetic. Cory (Lily Brenner ’26) did a lot of the comedic heavy-lifting, and her over-the-top character was really fun to watch. I also liked Beth (Hunter Kloss ’25), who advocated for the students more than the others (but if an essay has “you’re” in place of “your”? — rejected).

At times, I felt like the play couldn’t decide if it was comedy or not. Maybe that was because the characters inhabited the full spectrum of seriousness, though. That being said, I still really enjoyed it.

Last up was “Last Laugh,” written by Luke Herzog ’24 and directed by Owen Gaydos ’25. Yorick (Clay Zachary ’23), the skull from “Hamlet” but still alive, is a court jester set to be executed for making fun of the king. The executioner Severin (Sebastian Paredes ’26) can’t under-

stand why he did it.

“Routine ruins men like me …” admits Yorick, and the two set off against each other. “You called him fat!” “I called him rotund.” With a poetic and fluid Shakespeare-esque language, the back and forth kept me interested. Severin pushes Yorick to admit his shortcomings:

“You were the second most powerful man in the castle …” And the twist early on that Severin is the executioner was satisfying, but I felt myself craving another twist at the end.

An undeniable highlight was Zachary’s performance. Even though Yorick was the one whose head was on the chopping block, he controlled the scene and kept it focused. And he maintained the tone needed to portray a man with his life on the line, particularly because the play ends with an execution onstage.

I did think that Severin might have been a little too chipper; he does kill people for a living, right? Still, “Last Laugh” felt balanced, and it rounded out the event. I left not wanting much more from these four productions.

For me, the Green Room Ten Minute Play festival was a breath of fresh air. These days, entertainment media competes for our attention through advertising and micromessaging, incessantly and expeditiously. And the messaging is full of token queer characters, stories that pass through corporate meeting rooms, and reboots everywhere. The space of student theater at Amherst feels a whole lot freer.

“Atrophy” starred Alfie Cooper ’26 and Kobe Thompson ’24 as lovers who take comfort in nostalgia after an environmental disaster destroys their world.

Photo courtesy of Isabelle Anderson ’25

Amherst STEM Network THE STUDENT ×

This article is brought to you as a collaboration between Amherst STEM Network and The Student’s Arts & Living section. Check out Amherst STEM Network’s website (amherststemnetwork.com) for more cool articles about scientific research at Amherst and beyond.

Nora Lowe ’26 Amherst Stem Network Writer

If you’ve ever come face-to-face with a squirrel eyeing your granola bar on the First-Year Quad, you’re no stranger to the rodent’s cleverness. Eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) are considered an invasive species in certain places, like when they set up camp in African and European countries. But they truly hail from North America. And believe it or not, gray squirrels have great memories — because they stash nuts all across their territory and have to recall where to retrieve them in order to survive. They show signs of learning when completing simple brain teasers and can even remember how to solve them months later.

These impressive feats beg an important ecological question: Do these animals have enhanced problem-solving performance because they must constantly adjust to unfamiliar environments, or can their talents be chalked up to intrinsic characteristics? In other words, is their impressive performance due to nature or nurture?

A study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution documents how researchers from Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United

States dug deeper into this question. The researchers started by using historical and genetic records to hunt down founding gray squirrel populations in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire, the places where the squirrels originated after traveling overseas. They also looked at New Jersey and Pennsylvania squirrels to represent a native population. These two non-native and native populations were further subdivided into urban and rural groups, yielding four total groups for the study: native rural, native urban, non-native rural, and non-native urban. Sixty-six squirrels participated overall. A “mark-recapture” method was used, meaning the researchers analyzed video footage to pick out unique markings and bodily features that distinguish the squirrels from one another. The study performed three intelligence-related tests on all four groups to measure innovation, recollection, and spatial learning abilities. These assessments relied on contraptions involving plastic containers, levers, and edible rewards. Hazelnut kernels were used to attract squirrels to the test sites, and participation was completely voluntary — which ensured the squirrels weren’t too squirrely about getting involved.

In the end, all four groups had similar results across the three

tests, so the researchers concluded that enhanced cognition is a “pre-adaptive phenotypic trait” in gray squirrels. Simply put, inherent characteristics increase their fitness (chances of surviving and finding a mate) and make them more competitive against other species and other less fit squirrels, given that there are limited resources.

There were a few notable differences among the groups, though. Compared to their non-native counterparts, native urban squirrels were more successful at solving the trickier of the two brain-teasers (meant to measure innovation) on their very first try (around 70 percent versus around 30 percent success rate). This might have to do with persistence, or whether the squirrels were willing to go through trial and error (maybe the snack was too tempting to pass up). The researchers also suggest that it might relate to differing degrees of readiness to take advantage of new resources, or neophobia, the fear of new things.

But the native urban squirrels took longer than non-native rural squirrels to remember how to solve the tricky innovation problem 25 days later. Though the native urban squirrels showed signs of learning when encountering the same problem for a second time.

The Amherst Student × The Lilac

This edition of The Lilac x The Student, brought to you by The Poetry Club and the Arts & Living section, features “Rainforest Gothic,” a poem by Willow Delp ’26.

“These findings bring insights in understanding the mechanisms that facilitate some species adapting to new environments, and why some species thrive or decline,” said Dr. Pizza Ka Yee Chow, psychology lecturer at the University of Chester and the University of London, and the study’s corresponding author.

So, have gray squirrels conquered many countries because of their natural problem-solving abilities, or is it their invasive nature that makes them so smart? The verdict: it’s mostly due to innate characteristics, but perhaps their squirrel smarts are heightened a touch when acclimating to new environments.

you’re lost in a tangle of greenery, nature gone wild. sunlight seeps through the leaves, bleeding your retinas while

you listen to the scream of howler monkeys, primal and macabre. the flowers are all too bright — colors you’ve only read about in books, with lurid names like: “viridine,” “heliotrope,” “citreous.” the jungle does not know you, and it certainly does not like you. the trees are inching towards each other and if you’re not careful, the last thing you’ll see is the forest floor.

Nora Lowe ’26 dives into the clever mind of the Eastern gray squirrel in Amherst STEM Network x The Student.

Photo courtesy of Nora Lowe ’26

CONTEXT,

CREATION, COME UP

Kobe Thompson ’24 Columnist

“I have to do it with my whole chest,” says Jerome Raymond ’24. “You can’t be a half-assed musician.” For this week’s Context, Creation, and Come Up, I interviewed Raymond about the “Context” of his passion for singing, his “Creation” as he enters “recording mode”, and what’s on the “Come Up” as Raymond returns from a two-year hiatus.

Singing is one of Jerome Raymond’s first loves. However, circumstances relegated this passion to a hobby and ever-shining green light. During the Covid quarantine, Raymond made time to answer his musical calling and released his first song. The briskness of it all left Raymond needing a name, deciding on “J.Jerome. It was supposed to be a placeholder. I needed to have a name to put up [on streaming services] and I’m not going to put Joseph Jerome Raymond — that’s a mouthful.” Opting instead to go by his first initial and middle name, J. Jerome has been the singer’s nom de scène ever since.

This first song of Raymond’s was a long time coming. For many years, Raymond’s other great talent, playing soccer, competed with his interest in music. Instead of pursuing a dream of singing, Raymond was pushed to follow other goals. “I think that’s because it was what a lot of people around me wanted, not for me, but maybe for themselves. But I had always been singing.” Nurturing his desire to perform, Raymond credits his godmother for encouraging his songwriting. “She told me this … probably since the time I was 12. She was like, ‘You need to start writing music. Write everything down. You’re going to sing.” It would take more than his godmother’s in-

sistence to break Raymond’s devotion to soccer — something like a global pandemic.

“And then Covid happens. Everything’s put on pause. Everybody’s in their rooms going crazy. I was just bored one day. I was like, ‘fuck it, let me just make a song.’” Using his brother’s old MacBook, a $20 microphone from Amazon, a MIDI keyboard, and free software, Raymond wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered “Playin’ Me,” a song that was long overdue. “People liked it … it was cool to see that people were willing to listen as well.” For Raymond, this flipped a switch in his relationship with singing. It was a neglected passion, one he had yet to show the proper respect. The process of creating and releasing this first song brought his fondness for the craft into a more serious context. “I did not actually have aspirations of being a musician at all until Covid.” But with his history of singing, it was only a matter of time.

“I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. So I sang in the Wilmington’s Children’s Choir from the time I was six until I was 12.” Even after leaving the Children’s Choir, Raymond continued singing when he moved to Washington State. “Music has always been around, but it hasn’t always been what I wanted to do.

I sang because it was fun.” Over a decade later, Raymond remarks on the ways the choir stays with him.

“The directors [of the choir], Kim and Phil, are still very close to me. Every time I go back to Delaware I always make sure to visit them. I think about them as the start of my music journey.”

Soon, Raymond tried out songwriting. It did not come to Raymond as easily as singing did, and it wasn’t until his high school’s “Project Week” that he ever made an attempt at it. He was assigned to write a song

in one week. Being both a first attempt and happening during a time of Raymond’s relative indifference to music, he made something that was “very bad, it was so bad … That was technically [my] first song, but that was when I wasn’t taking music seriously; I was doing it because I had to participate.” This Jerome Raymond is almost unrecognizable from the avid songwriter I’ve come to know only four years later. Raymond’s successes are embodied in his curiosity and drive to capture the world in a poetry uniquely his own, in its rawest essence. His passion moves him forward not just as a singer or songwriter but in all aspects of music.

However, taking these inspirations from the world offers a double-edged sword for Raymond as he fights with and against the influences of his youth. Growing up, Raymond enjoyed music from his grandparents’ collection of records, such as The Delltones, The Temptations, and The Supremes. “That definitely influenced what I found as good music, in a sense. Granted, a lot of that is just tied to being Black.”

Raymond’s musical journey was tied to diversity, cultural affirmation, and familial love. It’s no wonder he prides himself on his ability to create resplendent melodies from guitar riffs and basslines in mesmerizing ballads delivered in his one-of-akind voice. “That’s something I bring to the table when I sing. But it took a long time to come to that.”

While Raymond was being exposed to genres and eras that gave him a broad appreciation of music, he fell into the pitfalls of any aspiring singer. “This is typical of anybody that sings — you want to sound like your favorite singers.” Listening to the likes of Usher or Trey Songz, some of Raymond’s favorite musicians sang in a manner that his own dulcet tones struggled to reach. For him, this meant going through the motions of accepting his own sound even when it wasn’t reflected in his favorite artists. “I found new favorite singers, but at that point in time I was like, ‘Damn, I can’t do this with my voice.’ But I’m cool, I’m growing into it, [I’m] still maturing. So I love my voice. It’s a journey, but I like it.”

Raymond has an uncanny ability to construct harmony within his music while still taking risks. Behind these impressive feats are days

of trial and error, “asking questions, just trying to learn [to be] an open book.” Whether it be picking up the bass himself and finding out what works, or his collaboration with fellow musician Gregory R. Smith III '25, Raymond pushes himself to find a common thread while unraveling complex and unconventional rhythms and instrumentation. Raymond adds his voice as the linchpin that brings the composition together, a skill passed down to him from observing how the musicians around him approach some of the same challenges he faces.

The singer’s creative process includes listening with purpose and holding onto ideas as soon as they appear to him. “Everything starts with a voice memo. It might be the smallest thing, and this comes back to what my godmother said about ‘write everything down.’”

A well-learned lesson, Raymond speaks about the middle-of-thenight strokes of inspiration, even “four or five” seemingly inconsequential words, that lead to “a couple of months down the line where I’m playing the piano and I’ll scroll through my phone and be like, ‘Oh my God, I can use that!” Raymond follows along with the music he listens to by humming harmonies,

writing down thousands of “notes of phrases or stanzas of poetry” that eventually become music. To see this in effect, Raymond “[listens] to music intentionally,” saying, “A lot of times [we] listen to music to pass the time, which is okay. But I think as somebody who wants people to engage with my music, I have to be engaging with other people’s music in the same way.” Raymond practices listening to a different album every day, offering “Raven” by Kelela as his most recent listen. Raymond also draws inspiration from a diversity of cultures, citing a class he took with Five College Professor Olabode Omojola, African Popular Music. This listening practice coincided with the release of his first EP two years ago. “I really started listening to more music, but before I dropped [“Where the Petals Fell”] I wasn’t listening to music critically.” Raymond believes this is one of the reasons behind his improvement as an artist. He cites another as his growing comfort with his voice since he began taking lessons with Classical Voice Instructor Thomas Oesterling. Now, Raymond has also been writing more than ever …

Read the full article online at www. amherststudent.com

Jerome Raymond ’24 is a singer-songwriter with an upcoming EP, “Monochromatic.”

Photo courtesy of Anniyah Rawlins ’23

“Survivor”: Season 44, Episode 4 Recap and Review

Vaughn Armour ’25 Columnist

On March 22, “Survivor” released episode four of season 44. It was a fun romp, and this season is quickly becoming must-watch television.

At the beginning of the episode, we learned that Josh is on the outs of the Soka tribe. He thinks he’s in the middle — aligned with Danny and Heidi as well as Frannie and Matt. In reality, both pairs are aligned against him.

At Tika, Carolyn continued to be hilarious. She concocted a wacky plan to trick someone into finding the fake idol she uncovered last episode, and it worked! She made an X out of sticks, and put it on the birdcage. She then hid the fake idol with her previously found note under a branch, which she marked with another X. Sarah ended up finding the fake idol, completely believing that it was real. It’s hard to watch players celebrate after finding fake idols. No matter how smart a player is, of course they’re going to fall for the fake, just like Sarah. It’s easy to laugh at the mistake, but there’s no way that Sarah could have avoided that scenario.

For the reward challenge, “Survivor” brought back the slingshot from “Survivor: Cambodia.” Soka won a large tarp, but the real prize was the ability to pick which player on each tribe would go on a mysterious solo journey. They chose Josh from their own tribe, Carson from Tika, and Jamie from Ratu.

This journey ended up having massive strategic ramifications. Each player was given an idol that will expire when the tribes merge, but they are now forced to swap into one of the other tribes. Being the only new member of a tribe is a horrible spot to be in, so it makes sense why they were given idols. I found this mechanism fascinating — it emphasized that Survivor is fundamentally a social experiment, which is why I grew to love it in the first place.

Josh went to Tika, Carson went to Ratu, and Jamie went to Soka. They all had idols (Jamie thought that she had a second one because she found Matthew’s fake).

At Tika beach, Josh lied about being a surgeon. The rest of the tribe saw through this, as he had previously mentioned having steady hands, and the timeline he gave for becoming an athletic trainer didn’t

VALHACKS

make sense. I get why he’d want to downplay his intelligence, but getting caught in a lie mere minutes into joining a new tribe is a rough first impression.

Matthew told Carson that Jamie found an idol in an attempt to gain his trust. He withheld the fact that Jamie’s idol was fake, which made this a very strong move. Jamie’s new situation was the worst of the three. The remaining four Soka members were close to each other, and they even searched Jamie’s bag to see if she had an idol. This is why Survivor contestants should never keep idols in their bags. In my opinion, they should always be buried. Luckily, Jamie had both her idols safely on her person, so the Soka four found nothing.

Switching tribe members didn’t help Tika in the challenge department, as they lost yet another chance at immunity. Josh was the initial target, but Yam Yam did a poor job of keeping Carolyn on board. He was mean to her, telling her that she should be the decoy boot because she’s a smaller target than him. He also told her to vote for Josh, instead of asking her opinion; no one wants to be told what to do.

Carolyn took matters into her

own hands. She approached Josh and told him that she was on the bottom of her tribe. Josh informed Carolyn that he had an idol and offered to use it on her to flip the votes against Yam Yam and Sarah. Carolyn knew that most players were voting for Josh, so she told him to use it on himself instead. Sarah went home (thankfully without playing her fake idol) and Carolyn grabbed the power from Yam Yam. Now, Carolyn and

Josh have a two-to-one advantage over him.

It was an immaculate move from Carolyn all around — she didn’t even have to use her own idol. Carolyn may be a wildly erratic character, but she’s making solid game moves. I definitely have my eye on her going forward.

Twelve players remain. Tune in next week to see what happens as we rapidly accelerate toward the merge!

In this edition of Val Hacks, Ivy Haight ’25 cooks up a recipe for cinnamon rolls! This super simple recipe only has four ingredients, but the results are delicious.

Val only has cinnamon rolls on Thursday mornings, and let’s be honest, either you’re not up for breakfast on a Thursday or not quite in the mood for those cinnamon rolls. Enter the anytime, not your average cinnamon roll. I know it’s not pretty, but I promise it tastes amazing. Not convinced yet? Well, when I finally persuaded my friend Gaby to try a bite, she exclaimed that it was “actually pretty good!” If that doesn’t convince you, then I’m not sure what will. If you’re like me (and 90 percent of the cinnamon-roll-eating population), the center of the cinnamon roll is your favorite part. Now

imagine a warm, gooey roll that is all center. That’s what this recipe gives you.

Directions:

• Flatten out a piece of bread of your choosing (I chose white bread and took the crust off to maximize the squishiness). You can flatten it with your hands, in a panini press, or just skip this part.

• Spread a decent layer of butter or plant-based alternative on one side of the bread.

• Sprinkle a hefty amount of cinnamon on the bread (cin-

namon can be found by the waffles, by the yogurt toppings in the morning, or in the spice bins).

• Cover the bread with one packet of sugar (from the coffee station).

• Roll it up! (Don’t worry — it’s not as complicated as rolling a burrito. All you have to do is roll it up like you’re in the 1700s sending a scroll to your dear friend studying abroad.)

• Heat it up in the microwave for around 18 to 22 seconds, depending on how gooey or soft you want it.

Photo courtesy of Alex Brandfonbrener ’23

This recipe uses the microwave to transform bread, butter, cinnamon, and sugar into a gooey cinnamon roll.

Vaughn Armour ’25 breaks down this week’s “Survivor,” featured important strategic developments.

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard ’26

Around the Herd: March 21 to March 28 in Athletics

Hedi Skali ’25 Sports Editor

Women’s Lacrosse

The women’s lacrosse team continued improving their record this Friday against the Westfield State Owls. After Amherst tookthe initial lead, the Owls scored four straight goals to make it 4-1 halfway through the second quarter. Nevertheless, Senior Fiona Jones ’23 won a rebound, taking the ball away from the Owls goalie and passing it to Sydney Kang ’25 for the score. Each team traded goals, and the score grew to 5-3 with about five minutes left in the half. And yet, this proved to be enough time for Sydney Larsen ’23 to score an incredible goal from a free-position shot, Emily Petersen ’26 to score from a Larsen assist, and Clara Sosa ’26 faking her defender out in a 1v1, easily put the ball in the top of the net. Amherst took thelead 6-5 at the half, and never let go. Sosa scored 2 straight goals right out of the half and Petersen had another stellar 1v1 run to end the game at 11-8. On Tuesday, March 28, the Mammoths secured a summary four-game win streak with a 16-2 victory against the Keene State Owls.

Men’s Lacrosse

The men’s lacrosse team extended their win streak to four, after their games against Springfield College and St. John Fisher University on Wednesday, March 22 and Sat., March 25.

Their game against Springfield started off quite slow with the first quarter ending in a 1-1 score. About five minutes into the second quarter, midfielder Matt Adams ’23 scored, beginning a five unanswered goal streak ended by Adams with five seconds left in the half and making the score 6-1. At the start of the second half, it seemed like Springfield would fight back with a quick goal from midfielder, Jackson Lane. However, the Mammoths immediately

staved off any comeback attempt with four goals of their own in only 70 seconds. Springfield was never able to come back, even though they scored three goals to end the game, granting Amherst a dominating 17-8 win.

Against St. John Fisher University, the Mammoths were the clear favorites as the Cardinals were 0-6 coming into Saturday. As expected, Amherst dominated the first quarter with eight straight goals after falling down a goal at the beginning of the game. They continued scoring at the startof the second quarter, extending their lead to 112. Like Springfield, all of the Cardinals’ attempts to remedy the deficit proved to be insignificant. The Mammoths outshot the Cardinals 60-38, winning the game 22-15.

Baseball

The baseball team recorded two losses against Western New England University and Wheaton College over the past week.

On Wednesday, March 22, Western New England went up 16 runs by the fourth inning, which proved to be too large of a margin for the Mammoths to come back from. Western New England won 27-12.

On Saturday, the Mammoths faced Wheaton College, who was coming in on a nine-game win streak. They continued their momentum to go up four runs in the bottom of the first inning, and while Amherst tried to catch up, they kept exchanging runs, and the comeback never arrived. The game ended with a score of 9-5.

Softball

In the past week, the softball team played two double headers against Worchester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and Bowdoin College.

In their first game against WPI, the Mammoths quickly got a 4-0 lead, with the notable highlight of a two-run homerun from Sadie Pool ’24. In the sixth inning, Randi

Finklestein ’24 sealed the win with her fourth home run of the season. The game ended 8-2 in favor of the Mammoths. In the second game, the Mammoths immediately fell 2-0 in the first inning, but, in the second inning, Abby Moravek ’26 got two runs in off of her double, and got herself home off of Rachel Lovejoy’s ’23 own double, ending the inning on top with a 3-2 score.

While Amherst fell 4-3 again, they were able to score five runs in fifth inning, mostly due to Finklestein’s three-run home run, her fifth of the season. The Mammoths held their lead, ending the game at 11-9.

In their first game against Bowdoin, Angelina Mayers hit a three run home run in the top of the second inning along with two other runs, and the Mammoths were

never able to come back from the deficit, recording their third loss of the season. In their second game, however, Amherst didn’t evenlet Bowdoin score, recording their 13th win of the season in a 5-0 victory. First-year pitcher Abby Moravek only allowed one hit in the last five innings of the game, while also recording 2 RBI in her one hit of the game.

Mammoths secured a four-game win streak with a 16-2 victory against the Keene State Owls.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

The softball team played two double headers this week, winning three of the four games.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Athlete Spotlight: An Inteview With Sydney Bluestein

Hedi Skali ’25 Sports Editor

Q: So you’re a sophomore, you still have two long seasons ahead of you, and you’ve already won nationals. How does it feel to have so much ahead of you while having already accomplished so much?

A: It’s really exciting and shocking, honestly, to do it this early in my career, because , obviously, in the back of my head, this has been a goal for a while. But to have it done already, I mean, in some ways, it takes the pressure off, because the thing you tried to achieve your entire life, I mean, since you were eight, has happened. But then also you’re expected to, like, do this more than once, have some more solid performances lined up. So, that’s a little scary. Going into the future, I definitely have some new dives to learn that I’ve been working on. Hopefully, while getting stronger, and practicing those a lot, I’ll be able to put those on my list for next year. I’m keeping

focus on consistency.

Q: Now that we’ve gotten the context out of the way, talk to us about this season. What led up to you winning the NCAA Championship?

A: Last season, I was out until January because I had hernia surgery. So, honestly, at the start of the year I was like, I just want to get through the season and be healthy and make it through every week. Accomplishing that was already exciting. I started off the first meet of the season with some new dives so that was exciting, and I was nervous about how those were going to go in competition but the first competition ended up going pretty well. To get to regionals you need two scores from two different meets. I got those the first two weeks of the season and I was like alright, pressure’s off … Going into regionals, I just needed to get the job done, I needed to qualify for nationals. It didn’t have to be pretty, and it really was not pretty. But I got the job

done. And then going into nationals, my goal really was to final in three meter because I didn’t last year. But for one meter, I snuck into a final and ended up seventh after finals. So I really wanted to redeem myself in the three meter.

Once again, I had a terrible prelim[inary round] and missed two dives pretty badly, but ended up making it into the final which was exciting. I do a lot harder dives up in three meter, where I have a lot more room for error. So one meter is kind of like my safe space. So I was not really that stressed about one meter, because there’s only so much that can go wrong. So I was pretty relaxed, during the prelim just doing my best, you know, nothing crazy, it was fine. And then going into finals. I don’t know. I just was kind of I was relaxed. I was diving. I was like, alright, this has been pretty good so far, like, pretty consistent. And I come for my last dive. My adrenaline kind of got the best to me and I over-rotated a little bit. And I

thought to myself, “oh, well, that’s still pretty good meet, whatever.” I looked at the scoreboard and my name is up top. I’m thinking, “no, that’s weird. That’s crazy.” Then I’m waiting for these other people to go and they feel like some pretty solid dives, still, nothing’s moving on the leaderboard. This is insane, right now. I’m looking over at my team. And they’re looking back at me like biting their fingernails.

And then the last diver goes, and my name is still up there. My jaw is wide open. My coach comes over and gives me a big hug. And the whole team comes over and we do a group hug. And it was honestly the sweetest moment ever, when they all ran over. They were so excited for me, which shows what great teammates they are. I was in disbelief. And then you have to change really quickly and go over and I was shaking on the podium during my interview. All I could do was keep my mouth shut and act like I knew what was going on.

GAME SCHEDULE

MEN'S TENNIS

April 1: vs. Tufts 10 a.m.

April 2: vs. Bates College 10 a.m.

WOMEN'S TENNIS

April 1: vs. Tufts 10 a.m.

April 2: vs. Bates College 10 a.m.

BASEBALL

March 29: vs Clark University 4 p.m.

March 31: vs. Hamilton College 4 p.m.

April 1: vs. Hamilton College 12 p.m.

April 1: vs. Hamilton College 3 p.m.

April 4: vs. Westfield State University 4 p.m.

Q: Maybe this it’s too early for you to answer this question, but what role do you think diving will play for you after college?

A: Yeah, I think it’s taught me a lot about myself, as a learner, as a competitor, that sort of thing. I’ve learned time management, I’ve formed great relationships with teammates, with coaches. I want to go to medical school and become a radiation oncologist. That’s the dream. At the same time, I would love to like coach diving on the side, if that’s possible. I was taught by a bunch of people that were right out of college that coach diving on the side. And they made a really big impact in my learning process as a diver. I would love to do that for other people. At the end of the day, diving will always mean a lot to me, and I would love to keep up with it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full version online at www.amherststudent. com.

MEN'S LACROSSE

March 29: vs. Western New England 6 p.m.

April 1: vs. Bowdoin 1 p.m.

WOMEN'S LACROSSE

April 1: vs. Bowdoin 12 p.m.

SOFTBALL

April 1: vs. Tufts University 12 p.m.

April 1: vs. Tufts University 3 p.m.