Volume 152, Issue 15

The new Latin honors system has relaxed grade thresholds, but has introduced a breadth requirement.

Faculty Approves Changes to Latin Honors

Yee-Lynn Lee ’23 Editor-in-Chief, Emeritus

The faculty voted to approve new eligibility criteria for summa and magna cum laude honors — the highest of the Latin degree honors, which are only awarded to students who complete a senior thesis — in a faculty meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 7. The new policy, which was developed over two years by the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP), passed 68-48 after a contentious discussion that began at the previous faculty meeting held on Dec. 6.

The new policy bases the college-level determination of Latin honors on (1) a student’s median grade across all full-credit cour-

FEATURES 9

ses taken for a letter grade in the Five College Consortium, and (2) the fulfillment of a breadth requirement, which stipulates that a student have taken and passed at least one course or two half courses at Amherst in each of four disciplinary categories: arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics, and social and behavioral sciences.

The new requirements replace the previous criterion which determined eligibility for summa and magna honors based on a student’s class rank, as measured by their overall GPA.

“The goal of this proposal is threefold: to make Latin honors determinations more transparent and equitable, to eliminate uncertainty surrounding

Mammoths in Love: Mina Enayati-Uzeta '25, in honor of Valentine's Day, spoke with five couples who met at Amherst over the past few decades.

Panels, Exhibitions, Dinners

Highlight Black History Month

Dylan Vrins ’26 Senior Staff Writer

With the arrival of February, the campus — students, faculty, and staff alike — has come together to celebrate Black History Month. The events range from keynote speakers to art festivals, but all share the common goal of celebrating Black history and experience, at Amherst and beyond.

class rank, and to encourage exploration of the curriculum,” the CEP wrote in its proposal to the faculty.

Many faculty members took issue with the newly introduced breadth requirement, expressing particular concern about its implications for the open curriculum. Nonetheless, the proposal managed to pass after being discussed across two faculty meetings.

The new policy is effective immediately starting with the graduates in the class of 2023, although all current students are also grandfathered into the old policy and will thus be evaluated under whichever policy would award them higher honors.

Under the new policy, eligi -

OPINION 13

bility for both summa and magna honors requires a student to first have satisfied the breadth requirement. The breadth requirement category that a given course counts toward is determined by the four-letter subject code in the course number, with every subject code except COLQ (Colloquium), FYSE (First-year Seminar), and INTE (Interdisciplinary) belonging to one category. If a course is cross-listed, its category designation is determined by the four-letter subject code that appears on the student’s transcript.

Courses taken pass/fail and passed can be counted toward the breadth requirement. Five College, study away, and transfer

Continued on page 2

Latin Honors: The Editorial Board takes issue with the faculty's decision to impose a breadth requirement on students seeking Latin honors.

Following a community dinner hosted by the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) on Tuesday, Feb. 7, the MRC will host two more major events this February. These events were facilitated by the MRC’s Black History Month Planning Committee and members of the MRC staff — both of which include students.

The first event hosted by the MRC will be an alumni panel on the 2015 Amherst Uprising. The panel will be held on Feb. 16 at 6:30 p.m. in the Powerhouse and will feature alumni from the classes of ’15 to ’18 to discuss the significance of the Uprising on and beyond campus. Both the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (ODEI) and the Cultural Heritage Committee collaborated with the MRC to organize

Continued on page 5

ARTS&LIVING 22

DC Universe: Vaughn Armour '25 writes about the recently-announced expansion of the DC Studios cinematic universe, hoping for more relatable characters.

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

News POLICE LOG

>>Feb. 8, 2023

10:14 a.m. Cohan Hall ACPD responded to a pre-fire alarm. Cause of activation was from a hair straightener.

>>Feb. 9, 2023

2:40 p.m. Morgan Hall Observatory

ACPD took a report of a minor motor vehicle accident.

>>Feb. 9, 2023

9:41 p.m. King Hall

ACPD responded to a prefire alarm. The cause was a dirty detector.

>>Feb. 10, 2023

8:55 p.m. Quadrangle Road ACPD stopped a motor vehicle operating in the wrong direction on the Quad. A warning was given.

>>Feb. 10, 2023

11:49 p.m. Stearns Hall ACPD responded to an emergency call from the elevator phone. No one was in the area.

>>Feb. 11, 2023

8:58 p.m. South Prospect St. ACPD stopped a motor vehicle operating the wrong way on a one way street.

>>Feb. 11, 2023

11:38 p.m. Humphries House Community Safety responded to a noise complaint.

>>Feb. 12, 2023

12:16 p.m. Hitchcock Hall

A staff member reported an exit sign and a common room wall were found damaged. ACPD responded and created a report.

>>Feb. 13, 2023

7:39 a.m. Alumni Lot

ACPD investigated a suspicious vehicle and found it to be occupied by two people. The occupants were spoken to and sent on their way.

Latin Honors Changes Stoke Controversy Among Faculty

Continued from page 1

courses do not count toward the requirement.

Whether a student who meets the breadth requirement is awarded summa honors or magna honors then depends on the student’s final median grade and the departmental recommendation they receive for their honors thesis. A student’s median grade is the grade such that half of the student’s letter grades from Amherst and other Five College courses are above or equal to it, and half are below or equal to it. Double, triple, and quadruple courses are counted as two, three, and four courses, respectively, whereas half courses are excluded from this calculation.

A student is eligible for summa cum laude honors if they have a median grade higher than A- and receive a departmental recommendation of summa for their thesis. A student is eligible for magna cum laude honors if they have a median grade of A- and receive a departmental recommendation of summa, or if they have a median grade equal to or higher than A- and receive a departmental recommendation of magna.

All other students who complete an honors thesis and receive a departmental recommendation of any level of honors — in particular, students who do not

meet the breadth requirement, have a median grade lower than A-, or receive a departmental recommendation of cum laude — are awarded cum laude honors.

The criterion for awarding English honors remains the same, with students becoming eligible for a degree with distinction if they have an overall GPA in the top 25 percent of their class.

Under the old policy, a student becomes eligible for summa cum laude honors if they receive a departmental recommendation of summa and have an overall GPA in the top 25 percent of their class. A student becomes eligible for magna cum laude honors if they receive a departmental recommendation of summa and have an overall GPA in the top 40 percent but not the top 25 percent of their class, or if they receive a departmental recommendation of magna and have a GPA in the top 25 percent of their class. All other students who receive a departmental recommendation of any level of honors are awarded cum laude honors.

The CEP’s discussions to change the policy began in the 2020-2021 academic year at the strong urging of student member Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22, said William McCall Vickery 1957 Professor of the History

of Art Nicola Courtright, who served on the CEP while it was crafting the new policy. The final proposal was the result of two years spent investigating the Latin honors systems at peer institutions, compiling relevant data on recent graduating classes, and considering a variety of possible alternatives, she added.

In developing the new policy, the committee primarily sought to address concerns that faculty and students had expressed over the years regarding the fairness of the GPA criterion.

“It seemed to us unfair that you needed an extremely high GPA to receive a summa or a

magna for the year-long thesis work, which many of us on the committee felt was the laudable culmination of a student’s education at Amherst,” Courtright wrote to The Student.

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein, who serves as an ex officio member of the CEP, wrote to The Student that “[b]ecause so many students are tightly bunched in class rank, it seemed very arbitrary if someone was going to be in the top 25% or only in the top 26%--but that would make the difference between summa and magna, for example.”

In its final proposal, the CEP

maintained that the use of class rank “rewards risk-averse course selection, penalizes students who have had difficult semesters, and creates stress around final cutoff points.”

The use of median grade rather than GPA is designed to eliminate the uncertainty and arbitrariness of class rank by relying instead of a fixed grade criterion. As the median grade is much less impacted by low outliers than GPA is, the new criterion is also far more forgiving, allowing students to still qualify for high honors even if they’ve

Continued on page 3

Students seeking honors are required to take one class in each of four subject areas.

Graphic courtesy of Sam Spratford '24

Changes to Latin Honors Include Breadth Requirements

Continued from page 2

received a number of lower grades from exploring unfamiliar subjects or having a couple rough semesters.

Indeed, according to the CEP’s proposal, nearly 40 percent of all May graduates in the classes of 2017 to 2021 had a median grade higher than A(the requirement for summa honors), and nearly 75 percent of these graduates had a median grade equal to or higher than A- (the requirement for magna honors).

Furthermore, while only 39.1 percent of the graduates who had been recommended magna by their department were actually able to keep that designation (with the rest dropping to cum laude), 94.3 percent of these candidates would have been awarded magna cum laude honors had the new median grade criterion been applied. The percentage of summa-recommended students receiving summa cum laude honors also would have increased, from 80.2 percent to 89.6 percent.

Epstein noted to The Student that a major concern for the committee is that the new grade criterion provides less of a check on departments making high numbers of summa and magna recommendations. “Some might argue that the value of the summa and magna will be reduced, since it is likely that (many) more students will receive those levels of Latin honors,” she wrote.

While less selective than the class rank criterion, the median grade criterion nonetheless preserves a college-wide achievement component to the designation of Latin honors, which the CEP felt was important since Latin honors are ultimately awarded by the college and not by individual departments, Epstein wrote.

The newly introduced breadth requirement is also motivated by the idea that Latin honors should reflect the college’s evaluation of a student’s accomplish -

ment. “[T]he College’s definition of excellence in coursework, and hence summa or magna honors, includes the willingness to explore unfamiliar intellectual and/ or creative fields,” the CEP wrote in its proposal. “Regarding the proposed breadth criterion, we believe that it should be a modest but still meaningful requirement, to ensure that students the College declares worthy of high honors are indeed living up to the liberal arts ideal of exploring the curriculum beyond their own fields of expertise.”

According to the proposal, only 51 percent of all students and 57 percent of all honors candidates in the May graduating classes of 2017 to 2021 would have satisfied a breadth requirement similar to the one that was passed. (As the data was collected early in the CEP’s discussions, the categorization of subject codes differed slightly from the final version.) Arts was the most commonly lacking category, with 38 percent of all graduates taking less than one full course or two half courses in the arts.

“This decision [to add a breadth requirement] acknowledges that we faculty sense that we are not doing as good a job at advising as we might, because even though we make great cases for students to take a variety of subjects in fascinating fields, students shy away from certain areas that we believe our excellent colleagues teach very very well,” wrote Courtright, who noted that the CEP discussed the requirement at length given the long-standing tradition of the open curriculum.

She added that the CEP decided to count courses taken pass/ fail toward the requirement in order to make it less burdensome for students who “really feared” one of the disciplinary categories.

The breadth requirement was particularly contentious among the faculty, who discussed the CEP’s proposal at the faculty meetings held on Dec. 6 and Feb. 7.

Some faculty members expressed concern that the breadth requirement was a threat to the college’s open curriculum and may start a larger shift toward the implementation of distribution requirements across the college.

At the Dec. 6 meeting, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat proposed an amendment to drop the breadth requirement and determine eligibility for honors solely based on the median grade criterion. The amendment failed by a vote of 46-75.

Other objections to the breadth requirement included concerns about the difficulty of scheduling courses to meet the requirement, as well as about the restrictions on courses that count toward the requirement.

“If a student only decides to write a thesis late in their junior year, without having previously considered this possibility, scheduling courses in their last year to satisfy this breadth requirement may be difficult,” Assistant Professor of Computer Science Matteo Riondato wrote in a statement to The Student. He added that the exclusion of transfer and Five College courses from the requirement disadvantages transfer students and students who want to study subjects not offered at Amherst, such as some foreign languages and musical instruments.

At the Feb. 7 meeting, Rion -

dato advocated for an amendment to the breadth requirement that would reduce the requirement to at least one course in three out of four of the categories. Robert Benedetto, the William J. Walker professor of mathematics and chair of the CEP, noted that the CEP found this to be essentially the same as not having a breadth requirement at all. He also explained that non-Amherst courses were excluded due to the difficulty that would come with categorizing them. The amendment failed by voice vote.

Faculty also raised concerns about whether the arts departments are sufficiently resourced to handle the influx of demand that would come from instituting the breadth requirement. Epstein confirmed at the Feb. 7 meeting that there are indeed enough available slots in arts classes to support the new requirement.

The categorization of departments under the requirement was another point of contention. Christopher van den Berg, the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 professor in classical studies, argued that language courses are too unlike the other humanities to be categorized with the humanities and also expressed concern that the new policy would formalize divisions between disciplines.

At the Feb. 7 meeting, Associate Professor of American Studies Robert Hayashi urged

the faculty not to focus too much on the possible negative consequences of the policy, advocating for the breadth requirement as a way to encourage academic risk-taking and exposure to new perspectives at a school where students often “burrow into” their majors and disciplines.

Benedetto also acknowledged that the new policy had its imperfections, but likewise called on the faculty to “not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.”

While the faculty ran out of time to vote on the proposal at the Dec. 6 meeting, the proposal passed 68-48 at the end of the meeting on Feb. 7.

“The discussion made clear to me that the faculty remain committed to the open curriculum, and are also seeking a way to encourage more students to take advantage of what it offers — a chance to study widely in a variety of disciplines and methods,” President Michael Elliott wrote in a statement to The Student. “The resulting policy is an attempt to find a balance between those priorities, and the new course requirements for Latin honors constitute a very modest change.”

“The College faculty continually evaluate the curriculum and the policies of the College, and the administration will work with them to observe the effects of this policy change over time as part of the work of faculty governance,” he added.

The ultimate Latin honors designation depends upon thesis quality, grades, and breadth.

AAS Aims To Overcome Turmoil, Focus on Future Projects

Maggie Sher ’26 Senior Staff Writer

“Last semester really gave me a sense of how startling it is to be a member of an organization that’s fallen into disarray,” said Association of Amherst Students (AAS) Senator Zane Khiry ’25.

The senator’s comment comes in the wake of a one-month stretch, at the end of the last term, of disruptions to the student government’s usual activities: a budget crisis, the resignation of the AAS vice president, and special election issues, all culminating in early December in the impeachment trial of AAS President Sirus Wheaton ’23 — the first in recorded AAS history.

Nevertheless, Khiry said he is “more hopeful than ever for the upcoming semester.”

In addition to Khiry, many other members of AAS view the new semester as a chance to move past the turmoil of last semester. This week, The Student spoke with senators and E-board members alike to learn what efforts they are taking to right the course of student governance at the college, particularly on an individual level through their senate projects, which Senator Hedley Lawrence-Apfelbaum ’26 described as one of the best ways members can “get specific things done” without facing procedural obstacles. These projects address a wide range of community concerns but are all guided by a vision of a more effective and representative student government.

President Sirus Wheaton ’23

Wheaton’s main focus throughout the past semester has been working with the town of Amherst’s African Heritage Reparations Assembly. With Amherst Councilwoman Michele Miller, co-founder of the grassroots organization Reparations for Amherst, Wheaton has tried to figure out ways the college can contribute to the town’s reparations work.

“Black students represent a third of the total Black population in [the town of] Amherst,” he said. “It was important to me to indicate that we, as a student body, want to contribute

to this fund.”

One way Wheaton envisions the college’s involvement with Reparations for Amherst is an increase in the student activities fee, the $300 included in the college’s comprehensive fee that all students pay toward the AAS’ funding of Registered Student Organizations.

Wheaton’s plan was inspired by the GU272 organization, which was founded by the descendants of 272 enslaved peoples sold by Georgetown University in 1838 to save the university from bankruptcy. The organization asked Georgetown students to raise their tuition by $27.20 each semester, with the hope that the funds would be allocated toward reparations efforts.

Another in-the-works project of Wheaton’s is his effort to extend the hours of Frost Library and Keefe Health Center, and ensuring that health center information remains up-to-date so that its services are made more accessible to students.

“There are options that are free at the health center that [the health center] doesn’t really communicate,” Wheaton said. “One thing that I really suggest they do is just change the signage, the voicemail — really simple stuff.”

On a personal level, Wheaton’s goal is to “not get impeached” during his last semester as AAS president.

Claire Beougher ’26

At the start of this term, Beougher created the Committee on Public Relations, which aims to increase student-body engagement with the AAS and transparency about the goings-on of the Senate.

“A lot of the questions [senators] get are just the bare-bones, like, ‘What does the AAS do?’” she said.

“[The AAS] has kind of lost touch with the community that it is meant to serve.”

This semester, Beougher hopes to kick off the committee by sending out a regular newsletter to the student body containing brief descriptions of current Senate projects or other AAS initiatives. Additionally, a digital suggestion box will be included in the newsletter for the larger student body to submit their ques-

tions, concerns, or ideas.

Part of the Committee on Public Relations’ responsibility will be to parse these suggestions and determine which ones are relevant and valid, Beougher said. These can also act as starting points for the formation of new, additional committees to address student concerns.

According to Beougher, the AAS is also working to reinstate regular Senate office hours. While the hope is that some issues with student engagement with the AAS would be improved by the digital suggestion box, Beougher said that there have been talks within the AAS about how to make office hours more accessible to students, as they previously saw low student engagement and thus were “not really beneficial.”

For Beougher, the “spectacle” of last semester’s impeachment trial showed students the “dysfunction” within AAS firsthand. For many students, she believes, the trial was the first time they had engaged with the AAS at all.

“If anything, [the trial] reminded us why we need to be better and who we’re trying to be better for,” she said. “I really want the Senate to have a much more active role in the community and for more people to know about it, be engaged with it, and to trust it.”

Shane Dillon ’26

At the end of last semester, the AAS voted to pass Dillon’s proposal for a Student-Board of Trustees Relations Committee. The overall goal of the committee is to increase transparency between the Board of Trustees and the campus community at large.

The committee’s creation was the result of a discussion between the board and senators about the possibility of adding a student representative to the Board of Trustees, an idea toward which the board was reluctant. Dillon created the committee proposal as a compromise — it aims to facilitate communication between students and trustees.

According to Dillon, the committee would be composed of three senators and three members of the general student body who would meet with select members of the

board after each board meeting to share minutes, exchange agendas, and provide general updates. Afterward, the committee’s responsibility would be to communicate updates from the board to the greater student body.

“The other responsibility of the committee would be to research models of student reps at other institutions to eventually seat a student,” said Dillon. “One [Board] member did say ‘I believe it will eventually happen, so let’s start here.’”

Hedley Lawrence-Apfelbaum ’26

Lawrence-Apfelbaum’s main focus for the spring semester is creating a centralized platform on which professors and students can upload syllabi for classes to aid students registering for or shopping certain courses. To go through multiple channels to access a course syllabus, said Lawrence-Apfelbaum, is a “needlessly burdensome task” that he hopes to amend by next fall.

For Lawrence-Apfelbaum, rebuilding the senate after the “drama” of last term depends on gaining the trust of the student body.

“[Drama] doesn’t benefit anyone,” he said. “[The AAS is] not meant to provide entertainment — we should just really be there to get stuff done. So trust is another big goal.”

As a freshman senator, Lawrence-Apfelbaum experienced what business as usual looked like in the AAS “for a few weeks” before it “devolved into a very personal, political sort of environment.”

What’s important this semester, he said, is that Wheaton push ahead

with the initiatives for which he’d been “laying the groundwork” before the impeachment trial took priority over personal projects.

“Sirus did important work in bringing [the reparations initiative] to our attention,” he said. “Whatever we can do to help that is very important.”

Ayres Warren ’26

Like Wheaton, Warren also aspires to make Keefe Health Center’s services more accessible to students. Specifically, she expressed her hope that its hours could be extended “in order to accommodate everyone being back on campus.”

In the near future, Warren said that she would like to update the health center’s website to include information on the health services that the college shares with UMass Amherst.

Zane Khiry ’25

Khiry’s senate project centers around hosting a Social Impact Career Fair in March along with Senator Mollie Hartenstein ’23; with plans to host alumni in social-impact fields on campus in the spring, their goal is to increase awareness among current students about these professions.

More generally, Khiry, citing his belief that members of the AAS “have all been working to learn from our mistakes,” hopes that the new semester will bring a “return to normalcy,” and that a collective effort from the AAS to be more transparent with the student body would restore the Senate’s legitimacy.

The AAS held its first meeting of the semester last week.

Photo courtesy of Erin Williams '26

College Looks Back on Amherst Uprising During BHM

will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 6:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room.

the panel.

MRC Program Organizer

Victoria Thomas ’25 said she was especially looking forward to the Amherst Uprising retrospective.

“[The] Amherst Uprising is something that is so significant to the activist culture and history on this campus, but because most of the students now were not there, a lot of people don’t know the details about it,” she said. “I’m hoping that it can really spark a shift in Amherst’s current culture surrounding student advocacy and activism.”

The second MRC-hosted event will be a keynote speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. symposium, Nekima Levy Armstrong. The MRC describes Nekima as an “award-winning civil rights attorney, activist, and racial justice advocate,” and planned the event in collaboration with the ODEI. The event

Armstrong will speak about her work in racial justice — particularly with her work with the Wayfinder Foundation, which supports activist women of color. She will also touch on her experiences as the founder of the Racial Justice Network, an organization that leads protests and supports communities of color in the Twin Cities.

Students at Amherst were crucial to the organization of these events, said Lupita Mendez, Director of the MRC’s Diversity and Student Leadership.

“The MRC student staff helped quite a bit with these programs — the idea for the Amherst Uprising Panel actually came from one of our current student staff members,” she noted.

Another group of students planning and scheduling activities this February is the Black Students Union (BSU). Accor-

ding to Ernest Collins ’23, the junior chair of the BSU, they are “partnering with Val dining hall to have a dinner for the Black Community on February 26 in Lewis-Sebring.”

“We are also [planning] a Trivia Night and/or a Karaoke Night with Student Activities,” he said. The details of when and where this event will be are forthcoming.

The MRC and BSU aren’t the only organizations coordinating Black History Month programming. Notably, the student-led, Sixth Annual Black Art Matters Festival will take place over the first week of March. The festival was created by Zoe Akoto ’21, with the goal of celebrating the artistic creations of Black students. Partnerships with the MRC, BSU, and African & Caribbean Student Union (ACSU) have kept the festival going for six consecutive years.

Student-submitted visual artwork for the festival will be

displayed in The Mead’s public gallery this year between Mar. 7 and Jun. 25. Student submissions from both this year and last year will be displayed, as The Mead’s galleries were closed during last spring’s festival. There will also be a performing art showcase March 5 at 8 p.m. in the Powerhouse.

The Black Studies Department is also an essential part of Black History Month on campus.

Olufemi O. Vaughan, professor in Black studies and chair of the Black studies department outlined the department’s goals for this month. “We try to encourage our majors and minors to organize events. We co-sponsor events and support them with financial resources,” he said.

“So February, for us, is really a time to come together to engage our students,” he added. “We see Black history month as [providing] critical momentum to actively engage a range of issues about the Black experience

throughout the semester.”

Vaughan also emphasized that the department supports student events year-round, not just in February. This aligns with the department’s commitment of cultivating a Black community at Amherst outside, as well as inside, the classroom. “We're very intentional in building and sustaining a culture of the Black studies community on campus,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we obsess over it.”

Overall, Amherst is geared up to make the most of this year’s Black History Month with a wide variety of events and initiatives.

Mendez underscored that February is a time for celebration of Amherst’s vibrant Black community and that this celebration involves everyone on campus. When asked, Mendez expressed the most important goal behind events this February: “To engage non-Black folks in learning and action to support Black individuals and communities.”

College Hosts Panel on Local Refugee Resettlement

Julia Gentin ’26 Senior Staff Writer

Natalie Rubanska just started a job in Amherst, 5,000 miles away from her home town of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Even though it’s been a year since her departure, Rubanska still constantly asks herself, “What am I doing here?”

Rubanska spoke on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at an event titled “Refugee Settlement in the Pioneer Valley: A Panel Discussion of Process, Challenges, and Client Experiences,” sponsored by the college’s Center for Religious and Spiritual Life and its Office of Immigration Services.

Rubanska served as a panelist along with Urszula Wolanska-Fettes and Kathryn Buckley-Brawner from Catholic Charities and Sara Bedford from Jewish Family Services of Western Massachusetts (JFS). They defined relevant terms describing

displaced persons, gave statistics on the refugee crisis, explained the resettlement process from the international to local level, and offered anecdotes from clients.

The event is particularly pertinent in the context of ongoing global humanitarian crises, including those in Afghanistan and Ukraine, Buckley-Brawner said.

Before 2022, there were 44.7 million displaced persons and 26.6 million refugees globally while as of 2022, the global number increased to 100 million displaced persons and 32.5 million refugees, Fettes said.

Bedford drew from her 17 years of experience to respond to turmoil caused by the Afghan evacuation in addition to other crises.

The center, which Bedford said had been “shriveled like a raisin” before the current crises,

Natalie Rubanska (second from left) spoke about her experience fleeing from Ukraine.

Photo courtesy of Harrison Blum

Notes From the Newsroom: Valentine’s Day Vignettes

The Editorial Board

Graphics by Nina Aagaard ’26

A Rude (But Thoughtful) Awakening

In a state of shock, I called out after them, “I only wish I had pants on.”

I’ve heard reports since then of similar encounters with these musical marauders. Stay safe out there.

Special shout-out to my lovely girlfriend. You got me real good. Never, never, change.

—Liam Archacki ’24

A core tenet of journalism is, write the story, don’t be the story. But this morning, as I lay in bed, having just awoken, basking in the new sunshine, clad only in boxer-briefs — at peace — I would soon find myself becoming, in this instance, the story.

My roommate and I were discussing our plans for the day. He didn’t have any classes and wanted to grab a coffee; I had just one and was also interested in obtaining a soul-warming chai latte. It was normal. Too normal. We had forgotten something important.

Then came a knock at the door. We heard a ripple of masculine giggles out in the hall. He and I looked at each other, confused. This had never happened before. Who could it be this early in the morning? What could they want? Before either of us could move, we heard the first clear sentence: “Fuck it, let’s go in.”

The door opened and in walked a bevy — at least five, but it all happened so fast — of smiling, preppy, well-groomed young men. I feared robbery. Perhaps they were looking to take all of our quarter-zips and hair-styling cream. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” they cried in unison. “Which one of you is Liam, anyway?” It was me. They began to sing.

One very peppy a capella rendition of the Frank Sinatra classic “The Way You Look Tonight” (“Lovely, don’t you ever change…”) later, the talented trespassers vanished as quickly as they arrived.

Addendum, from Sonia Chajet Wides ’25 and Eleanor Walsh ’25: We had the same experience but at 7 a.m. So there.

Addendum to the addendum, from Caelen McQuilkin ’24E: I had the same experience. But at 6:15 a.m…

Addendum to the addendum to the addendum, from Dustin Copeland ’25: I did not have the same experience — but one Ian Dopp ’24 did, also extraordinarily early that morning. But he had the dubious pleasure of greeting the singers not just that time, but again a half hour later! Then again, another half hour on. And, finally, a half hour after that. I have heard tell that the whole event was orchestrated by Olivia Lynch ’25, who was very conspicuously absent from the scene.

Love on Fire

through the toast room, and I watched the omelet chefs roll their eyes. “We knew this would happen,” one said, gesturing to the air vent above the cooking station. I stayed firmly rooted in place. I would not abandon my omelet, so close to being finished. But then I watched as people in the front room begrudgingly shrugged on their jackets, picked up their backpacks, and headed for the door. The chefs turned off their burners. My omelet lay there, adjusting to the sudden cold. With my head turned back to it wistfully, I exited the building.

Outside, I was met by a crowd of people, including my roommate and friend Eleanor Walsh ’25, and fellow managing features editor at The Student. Eleanor had just gotten out of the shower, and was looking like a stereotypical fire alarm evacuee, dressed in a bathrobe, her hair wet in the freezing cold. As the crowd downstairs grew, my fellow Val-dwellers filled the Valcony, looking down at their peers from overhead. (Thank goodness it wasn’t a real fire — a wooden deck would not be a great place to stand.)

I looked around at the beautiful pink and red outfits beside me. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” my girlfriend shouted from the Valcony. After 10 minutes, the awful blaring ceased, and we were beckoned back inside, to many whoops and cheers, just catching a glimpse of the retreating firefighters.

those other great venues of people-watching. Lucky for us, a college campus is one of the last refuges of this forgotten haven. Today, especially, the mailroom struck me for its cultivation of charmingly quaint expressions of love.

beginning. It all started Monday night, when Milo had a better idea than just shipping Sam a bouquet. Instead, he would get a bouquet for all of us, to split amongst ourselves and deliver to Sam whenever we happened to see her on Valentine’s day. By late evening, Milo managed to deliver 10 roses (along with a vase!) all the way from Bhutan — and with not a petal missing!

To Post or Not To Post

As I rushed up to the parcel window in the 30 minutes between my 2 p.m. lunch and 2:30 class, I was thoroughly self-absorbed in a mission to obtain my mom’s surprise Valentine’s Day package. My boyfriend, Milo, is studying abroad this semester, and so she sent me a thoughtful assortment of material compensations, namely a dinosaur bookmark and Sour Patch Kids.

As I stood in line, I noticed the marks of the day’s festivities on the shelves behind the counter — flower bouquets and pink envelopes were scattered among the usual monolith of Amazon packaging. I wondered who would receive these gifts, who sent them; I imagined a glimmering network of love all coalescing between these walls of mailboxes.

As someone with a deep fear of posting on social media — I have posted once on Instagram since seventh grade — this Valentine’s Day was hard for me. I woke up to an Instagram full of loving partners who, by 8:30 am, had somehow already assembled photo collages for their significant others. Stressed out and slightly put off by the performativity of the whole enterprise, I leaned towards not posting anything for my girlfriend, Stormie. She knew how I felt — what did it matter what I put on my Instagram story?

As the day crept on and the stories continued to pile up, and as my girlfriend assembled her own tasteful three-slide story for me, the pressure became crushing, but still I demurred. Posting one’s significant other was vain and pointless, I decided. I would never do anything vain and pointless.

My love of Val’s omelet bar was born on Valentine’s Day last year, and this year, I was ecstatic to once again find myself standing in front of a talented chef sprinkling vegetables and cheese over the pan. Valentine’s Day heart decorations dangled overhead. Everything was as it should be.

And then: disaster. The blaring sound of a fire alarm rang

I rushed to my omelet. It was still there, valiant. After another minute of heating, my omelet hero slid the eggs onto my plate. I was left with five minutes to scarf it down before my 8:30 class.

—Sonia Chajet Wides ’25

A Rose From Bhutan

A mailroom is among the world’s most productive vignette-factories, pumping out sparkling slices-of-life at a rate equal to or surpassing the airport, the coffee shop, and all

As I walked to my class, the omnipresence of the holiday was more palpable than it was that morning: friends smiled sweetly, sharing candy; people tried not to spill water from their vases as they carried them, awkwardly, uphill to the first-year quad; rosebuds poked their heads shyly out of tote bags.

In fact, not five minutes later, my friend Gabe came up to me and, with a flourish, produced a rose from his backpack, telling me it was sent with love from Milo, from the other side of the world.

—Sam Spratford ’24

Addendum, from Dustin Copeland ’25: But that really isn’t the end of the story — nor is it really the

But then I took a glance at my archived Instagram stories. The results were striking. In the last six months, I have posted to my Instagram story one picture of Huevos Rancheros, one video of elks walking across a putting green, and two photos of the soccer player Mohammed Salah. In the last year, I have posted at least five photos of the soccer player Mohammed Salah.

My conception of myself as a high-minded conscientious objector to social media was thoroughly popped, so I decided that Stormie probably warranted a post.

That story got quite a few likes so I have decided that my feed will be a more equal mix of her and Mohammed Salah going forward.

—Leo Kamin ’25

Panel Sheds Light on Refugees in Western Mass.

Continued from page 5

has gone from resettling 60 people in a year to 200 in just four months.

Given the sheer volume of refugees, it can be easy to “forget that each person is an individual with faith, hope and aspirations,” Bedford said.

Rubanska, in her public speaking debut, relayed her first-hand refugee experience to close the panel.

When the Russian army invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Rubanska fled her hometown of Kharkiv with her 11-year-old daughter, Sophia and booked an Airbnb in Munich.

The first night, Rubanska woke up to calls from her family in Kharkiv.

“They said, ‘You were right to leave.’ … My mom could see bombs from her window,” Rubanska said. “But it didn’t feel right. I had a business, employees, and family in Kharkiv — I asked myself, ‘What am I doing in Munich?’”

While she stayed in Germany, Rubanska used her time recruiting volunteers to help others in

similar positions cross the Polish border into Munich.

“I must have done that 14hour drive from Munich to Poland 20 times,” Rubanska said.

Four months later, Rubanska realized she couldn’t pay for the Airbnb anymore, and ended up crossing the ocean, settling in Northampton, Massachusetts.

“My case was easier because I speak English but I had no idea what to do with health care, education for my daughter, or insurance,” Rubanska said. “It’s important to have someone in the beginning to help you.”

The worst part about the refugee process is that the future remains uncertain, Rubanska said.

Daniya Ali ’25 said that it was wonderful that Rubanska felt comfortable enough to share her story, especially given the vulnerability of a first-hand account.

“I’m hoping that we can do more events like this at Amherst,” Ali said. “This was a really good step.”

Ali is taking a special topics class that focuses on storytelling as a way to treat trauma caused by the migration process, so she wanted to attend the event to

meet people with knowledge of the subject.

Ali said that it was interesting to learn more about the technicalities behind the national system, and the differentiation of terms like immigrants, refugees, humanitarian parolees, and displaced people, especially given the agency of the individuals in each category.

“I’m looking forward to finding ways that we can be supportive without taking agency and dignity away from people,” Ali said. “There are power dynamics and complexities that arise from this work.”

Ali said she was struck by how bureaucratic and politicized the resettlement process is.

“You need a lot of money to help people, and that money is coming from the United States Bureau of Refugees and the state of Massachusetts,” she said. “I didn’t realize how much that influences what people can and can’t do with clients.”

In past experiences with refugees, Ali said, she has focused on building relationships with children.

“There is a psych[ological]

study about how most refugees are brown and Black, while most people on the giving end tend to be white. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance as a child when only receiving from a white person,” Ali said. “How do we change that so that children realize that, with time, they too, can be on the giving end? We need more representation in resettlement work.”

Chris Tun ’25 is the son of refugees from Myanmar, and said he chose to attend the talk because “it was right up [his] alley and because there’s not much on campus about refugees and the process of resettlement.”

Tun grew up surrounded by refugees. Every Sunday, his family would drive to church in Clarkson, Georgia, a major refugee community, and congregate with fellow members of the Karen ethnic group. He also interned at Catholic Charities in Atlanta, Georgia.

Because of his volunteer experience, Tun was aware of how the refugee resettlement process worked, but was able to learn more about state-specific actions during Tuesday’s Massachusetts-centered presentation.

Tun added that volunteering made the adverse effects of current events feel more tangible.

“We hear about the evacuation in Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine all the time, but we don’t actually see the outcomes of these global events in our daily lives,” Tun said. “Going to a refugee resettlement agency, you see the gravity of these situations. You see how much is going on that you’re not aware of.”

Tun said that he values the importance of a first-hand account, but also acknowledged the difficulty of sharing a traumatic story.

“I’ve heard stories from some refugees that are extremely traumatic. It’s definitely hard for some people to talk because it’s going to a place they haven’t reached a resolution with,” Tun said. “For [refugees] who can speak, it’s very important that people listen and engage with what they’re saying.”

Tun said that he would like to see more panels like this on campus, in order to promote public service and diverge from the preponderance of academic-based panels.

Mammoth Moments in Miniature: Feb. 8 to Feb. 14

The Editorial Board

Office of Student Affairs Hosts

Drop-in with Interim Director

On Monday, Feb. 13, new Interim Chief Student Affairs Officer Angie Tissie-Gassoway announced that, as part of their efforts to cultivate an equitable and welcoming campus community and learn more about students’ visions for the college going forward, drop-in hours will be held on Feb. 24 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Keefe Campus Center with the hope of facilitating dialogue between the Office of Student Affairs and the student body. Popcorn and Boba tea will be provided.

Admissions Office Seeks Hosts for "Be A Mammoth" Program

The Office of Admissions is currently looking for student volunteers to host first-generation and low-income admitted students overnight as part of the office’s “Be A Mammoth” program. This year’s iteration of the program, which will be held from April 10 to April 12, is expected to bring over 200 overnight visitors to campus to experience a taste of college life before the fall semester. Students who volunteer to host will have the opportunity to decide how much of their time they wish to spend with the students they host, and will only be asked to provide floor space for the attendees.

College to Host Craft Talks with LitFest Authors

As part of the college’s variety of LitFest events, on Saturday, Feb. 25, students will have the opportunity to meet with the festival’s visiting authors in an intimate environment through craft talks to discuss the art of writing, participate in informal writing exercises, and ask the authors questions about the life of a writer. Students interested in attending any of the workshops are asked to complete a form indicating their preferences for individual workshops by Feb. 17. In addi

tion to the craft talks, the col

lege will be holding several other student-only events including a Spoken Word Slam.

Graphic courtesy of Amherst College

Staff Spotlight

Features Michelle Phillips

Q: What is your role at Amherst?

A: I’ve been here since 1993. I’m sure you can do the math yourself. I started here in the salad department ever so briefly, and then moved quickly into catering, [where I spent] 17 years. I then came over to retail for the last 13 or 14 [years], which was more along the lines of what Schwemm’s is over at the Science Center. Then it transitioned into Grab-n-Go, because [that] was a [much] needed program on campus, but it was a beast to take over. With that program, I really try to make sure that we’re really genuinely just taking care of you kids. I have two kids who are around your age, so it’s such a great connection with you all throughout the day, because I feel like I totally get what you guys are going through. It’s really important to me to support you guys and foster what you’re doing, and if there's a step in your day that we can make easier, that’s awesome.

Q: How do you spend your time outside of Amherst?

A: Well, this is funny but I’m an avid cross country skier, so I keep my skis in my car. And I keep hoping that we’re gonna get a dump of snow, so I still have my skis in my car, even though it still hasn’t snowed. So that’s kind of a bummer. Lately, though, I’ve been targeting newly built trails on conservation land to explore the woods. For me, it’s a pretty big deal to spend time in the woods. Spending time in the woods is really amazing –- I feel like I can breathe differently and it makes me feel better. It’s very nurturing, and it’s good for the soul. I also love gardening and flowers. I always have flow-

ers on my table. They’re very joyful.

Q: What do you keep in your garden?

A: Perennials. The typical lilies and hostas and stuff like that. I just enjoy looking at the flowers. In the morning, I love to have my coffee and look out the window and watch the birds in my birdhouses. There is something so peaceful about it, and there’s so many different colors. I feel like when I see different birds visiting my bird feeders, it reminds me that the world’s a pretty amazing place. So I’m a bit of a birdhouse collector. I have birdhouses all over. I love to go out thrifting and searching for them in antique stores. My garden’s full of flowers and birdhouses.

Q: Where are you from?

A: I was born and raised in Northampton -– always been there. It’s a great town. Very progressive, super fun. It’s the kind of place where everyone wants to be, which is pretty darn awesome. I often drive up north of Boston, and when I drive back down into the valley on [U.S.] Route 2, I’m like, God, it is so dang pretty here. So it’s a really great experience to feel like I have deep roots and ties to this area.

Q: How has the area changed since you were growing up?

A: When I was growing up as a kid, there were a lot of things that people needed to learn and that we didn’t deal with as a society. And I’m thankful that now we’re in a time and place where we can deal with them and move together towards greater good. I think there’s a lot of different parts to having conversa-

tions and moving forward. I’m a gay woman myself. I remember when, even in Northampton, with the gay movement, Pride was initially 50 people and they felt like they had to have bags on their heads. That is really sad to me. Now, it’s evolved to a day to celebrate community, joy, and acceptance, and there’s so many people there. I’ve seen that evolution and change. And that could be about so many different other subjects. It’s one of the things that I think about often with my own kids and I wonder how much of this you all understand at your age. When I was your age, I was just kind of focused on what I was focused on. But I would like to believe everybody’s a good person. I believe in that and I believe in finding better ways.

Q: What does fostering the community look like to you?

A: I spent a lot of time as a community-sports coach, specifically for my son’s team. But I was introduced to community when I was a kid myself. I was introduced to it by these ‘grandfathers of community’ who encouraged me and taught me how to give back in a good way. Once I had kids, it was essential for me to give kids a place to go out and enjoy themselves and learn about [being on a] team. Because of coaching, I went to a few conferences on team-building, which were just fascinating. Team is very important to me. Coaching has been a really great experience.

At Amherst, there’s a lot of things going on that are fun. Whenever students invite me to a performance or a sporting event, I make my best effort to get there. I tend to go to softball

and baseball the most because of my background, but I’m very spirited with everything here. I’m absolutely a Mammoth. And the theater events are mind-blowing. I went to one a couple weeks ago because students invited me, and it was just so cool. I’ve never been to one that I didn’t leave feeling impressed. It’s important for me to go when I get invited because I’m at a juncture in my life as an empty nester where I have a lot of time. I love supporting you kids and seeing what you’re doing.

Q: What is your favorite part of your days at Amherst?

A: I’ve been here for 30 years and I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the kids. Sometimes I’ll get to have great conversations with students. It’s just nice to let you talk about yourselves for a bit. I feel so lucky to hear about what’s going on and what your dreams are, and what you want to do with your lives. You all have such a busy schedule, and I like to give you a chance to check in outside of all that stress. You all are so fortunate to have these faculty members teaching you. Sometimes I get to have conversations with faculty, and when they have a chance to share what’s going on, I’m blown away. I just think it’s really awesome to hear about what’s going on around campus.

Q: If you could take a class at Amherst, what class would it be?

A: I would love to take one with [William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science] Austin Sarat or [John E. Kirkpatrick 1951 Professor in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought] Adam Sitze. Kids come in here so excited to talk about the research they work on with Austin. And I’ve had a few short conversations with Adam when he comes through Schwemm’s or Grab-n-Go, and I really like his trains of thought. Even in such brief conversations, it feels like he makes such brilliant associations. The other one that sounded really cool was [Poler Family Professor of Psychology] Catherine Sanderson’s class on happiness. I

also think anything going on over at the science center would be super wild and really awesome. Even geology — I always thought of geology as just rocks, but I realized it’s really about so many different things. I’d also love to take a class with [William McCall Vickery 1957 Professor of the History of Art] Nicola Courtright. I read a spotlight about how she was teaching art history during Covid, and I was so impressed by it. I think art history is really cool, especially thinking about the period of buildings. When we go to museums, my partner and I do quizzes on the pieces of art, and try to figure it out. She’s much better than I am, because she was actually an art major, so she nails it almost every time. For me, it’s a bit of a guessing game, but I’m learning a lot about it from her. But you kids are really lucky to have the faculty that you do.

Q: Do you ever keep in touch with students after they graduate?

A: Most of the time if kids come back, they’ll pop in to see how I’m doing, and it’s super sweet. I usually tell them when they come through, ‘I think you were in my seventh class, or 14th class…’ So when they come and ask, ‘Oh, Michelle, how are you doing?’ I have to stop and ask myself, ‘Michelle, how are you doing?’ But that’s good, because it means I’m still young! It’s really rewarding. It’s like when I run into parents of kids that I used to coach at the grocery store, and they say, ‘Thank you so much for the experience you gave my kid.’ It’s very humbling to realize that I might have impacted someone. And you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a good thing,’ you know? That’s kind of neat.

Q: Do you have any advice for us?

A: Yeah. Be patient in life. Be patient. You know, life is long, so follow your dreams. Go for it, and don’t be afraid to ask for help, or even the fundamental things. Don’t be afraid to advocate and get the best for yourself. And be kind to each other. You know, that’s what’s important.

—Anna Penner ’24

Photo courtesy of Erin Wiliams '26

Michelle Phillips is a Cash Operations Supervisor who currently works in Grab-n-Go. We talked about her 30 years at Amherst, Pride, birdhouses, and her advice for Amherst students.

Mammoth Meet Cute: Alumni Couples Share Stories

Mina Enayati-Uzeta ’25 Staff Writer

Awkward eye contact with a Tinder match in the Science Center. Pointed avoidance of last semester’s situationship by the bagel station in Valentine Dining Hall. Amherst can be a lot of things, but for many of us, it’s not where we find The One. As a belated celebration of this campus’ most awkward pseudo-holiday, here are four glimpses into the stories of alumni who have done the impossible: they all found love at Amherst.

had their first-year seminar and a Mandarin class together, the two were acquaintances at best. “We just saw each other around,” said Jennifer. “We were — we still are — very different people.” Jennifer was a WAMH DJ and a member of the Bluestockings’ founding class; Sam was a lacrosse player with a habit of early-morning bike rides through the bird sanctuary.

sitting there staring at each other’s faces, like for hours on end. And so we started to spend a lot of time talking to each other.”

ter-writing summer … an epistolary romance.”

“I don’t think we were that forth-

coming in real life — we were both a little bit shy. And yet, with a letter … maybe [we] felt safe,” she said.

Jennifer Jang ’92 and Sam Becker ’92

Years Together: 34

Jennifer and Samuel’s freshman year was a series of near-misses. Though they lived only a few rooms apart in Valentine Dining Hall, and

But they bridged the gap between their social circles in their sophomore year, when they ended up in a third class together — an arts course, this time as partners. “The point of the class’ projects were, with your partner, to sculpt each other,” Jennifer explained. “So it’s a lot of time together … just the two of you

As the two grew closer, they went on a series of “un-dates” — situations where one considered it a date while the other didn’t — a reggae concert, a trip to Puffer’s Pond, a movie. At the end of the school year, Jennifer returned home to California, while Sam went to lead a white-water rafting expedition in North Carolina.

“Me, I’m a letter writer. So I sent him a letter that summer … and his parents forwarded it to where he was, in North Carolina,” Jennifer said. “I was astonished — I was actually very surprised when I got a letter back.”

And so began “a whole let-

called Alina. “Like going-homeacross-the-country[-to-]Arizona-right-after bad.”

The two first met during auditions for a Green Room production of “Into the Woods,” at which they both were trying out for Little Red Riding Hood. (“She got it, and I got some random ensemble part. I was just along for the ride,” Paola said). Paola, whose freshman-year friend group had recently been dissolved by a messy breakup, began to hang out more with the theater community.

[Paola] was my neighbor, she kind of became co-dog mom,” Alina said. (Her dog, Mugsie, was said to have been a minor campus celebrity.)

relationship.

Years

Paola and Alina’s story began

the night before Alina’s graduation, when an alcohol-induced commencement party hookup pushed their two-year friendship into uncharted romantic territory.

“It was like, really bad,” re-

The following school year, when Paola was a junior and Alina was a senior, the two arrived on move-in day to find that they were neighbors.

“I had an emotional support animal my senior year, so because

Throughout the year, Paola and Alina grew closer, with Paola choosing to stay on campus rather than study abroad and miss Alina’s final semester at Amherst. But even as their chemistry, which “was always there,” grew more palpable, both tried to prioritize their friendship. “We were part of this larger group, and we didn’t want to mess up dynamics,” said Paola.

Even after their first foray into romance, both women harbored serious doubts about the future — they were reluctant to do long-distance or even label it a

“We decided — let’s kind of put it on pause and see where we’re at after I graduate,” Paola said. The next summer, the two made it “official official,” and Paola moved to Arizona, where Alina was living.

“I would definitely say this is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in,” Alina said.

“I had all these rules in my mind about what relationships were like, and how much I was allowed to express and give, and all of that … totally dissolved,” Paola added.

The couple got engaged in December 2021 — they both proposed to one another — and are looking to get married in Amherst.

Continued on page 10

Graphic Courtesy of Nina Aagaard '26

Paola Garcia-Prieto ’18 and Alina Burke ’17

Together: Five or Six (Depends Who’s Counting)

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Jang '92

Photo courtesy of Paola Garcia-Prieto '18

The couple's romance took off during a summer of letter-writing.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Jang '92

The couple were co-dog parents to Mugsie, a minor campus celebrity, before they were officially together.

A sophomore art class proved fateful for the pair.

Amherst Couples Reflect on Love, Relationships

Continued from page 9 erywhere. Though, in Jenn’s words, “the clouds of time and other substances” have made the meet-cute’s details hazy, the couple first clicked in the basement of Pratt dormitory: They were working as editors in what was, at the time, the newsroom for The Student (yes, the very same!).

“It was kind of grimy. There was one big room and a little room with computers, like really old fashioned computers. You had to be in the space, on those computers, and you’d run into people,” said Jenn. “And it was all encompassing … [we] lost three days a week to it.”

of Amherst or Northampton were frequent — often to restaurants or pubs that have since been replaced, they noted. Now, the couple live only a few hundred feet away from that newsroom, and walk into the same downtown they visited when they were college students. “It still has the same earthy, liberal-New-England vibe it did then,” Jenn confirmed, though certain 2000s classics — like Antonio’s, which opened in Michael’s senior year and after Jenn had already graduated — are notable new additions.

Perhaps Amherst’s most wellknown alumni couple, Michael and Jenn provide a glimmer of hope for self-proclaimed newspaper nerds ev-

In their (limited) time outside of the newsroom, the couple focused just as much on getting off campus as staying on it. Trips into the town

“Mind you, I've never actually done theater before. I hadn't been in any kind of production,” Stuart said. “But I thought Michael was really cute.”

On the day of auditions, Stuart arrived feeling prepared (“I have an audition. It’s gonna be great. I show up.”), and was promptly informed that there will be a singing component to his audition (“And I am not a singer, I will tell you that”).

Though it’s perhaps a bit “swankier” now, the couple feels that Amherst’s campus also holds the same charm that framed their “golden experiences” at the college. As they

I forget the alphabet… at H.”

Michael asked him out for a celebratory coffee anyway, and Stuart ended up as the butler in “The Importance of Being Earnest” — a play that does not require any singing.

list off different buildings, comparing those that stood during their four years at Amherst, certain places and anecdotes shine through those clouds of time — setting off the Hitchcock fire alarm with an attempt

to make nachos for the Super Bowl; the classrooms where Michael did research assistant work for Emeritus James E. Ostendarp Professor of English Barry O’Connell, who would later officiate the pair’s wedding.

off campus.”

“We tried [dates] in Val a few times,” Michael explained, “and we always ended up eating with six or seven other people,” finished Stuart.

Stuart and Michael are getting married this September –a celebration that will also serve as a reunion for their Amherst friends.

Driven by a crush he was harboring for the head of Green Room, and with absolutely no acting experience under his belt, a freshman-year Stuart decided to audition for one of the theater club’s plays.

Ellen Lake ’91 and Chris Green ’91 Years Together: 33

Ellen and Chris seem like a case study in successful Amherst socializing — their cross-quad friendship began their freshman year (when they lived in North and Pratt, respectively), and held strong through the following years. Both were heavily involved in campus clubs and activities, working as DJs for WAMH and in the then-campus center snack bar, playing rugby and soccer.

It was near the end of their junior year that their friendship started to transform. Chris, a geology major, helped tutor Ellen, who was taking an introductory geology course — a rock-tray-inspired connection that

Faced with the choice of any existing song, Stuart decided on the ABCs.

“And so I’m walking around the stage, singing my ABCs for this group of Michael and his friends,” he continued. “And then, I kid you not,

Ellen pointed to as a significant step in their shift towards romance. The two finally got together at the school-sponsored Casino Night, a semi-formal event held in Valentine Dining Hall and “one of the only dress-up parties” they attended at Amherst. The next morning, Chris overslept and missed a geology field trip, a mistake that he did not hear the end of from his teasing friends.

Ellen emphasized the role of spontaneity in both their relationship and other Amherst relationships at the time. “Things have changed so much — we had no cell phone, no laptop. I mean, people were just starting to get emails at Amherst in the computer lab. So it had to be a lot more spontaneous.”

With respect to dating culture at Amherst, or lack thereof, the couple mentioned hearing more conversations about hookup culture than actually bearing witness to examples of it. “It’s a very different experience to be dating at a small school,” Michael said. “A lot of people at Amherst are very awkward, and it does feel like things are very high stakes, but [they’re] really not.”

Stuart’s words of wisdom: “If you want a private date, you have to go

Their adventures took place in and out of the classroom — at the bird sanctuary; the art studio where their shared printmaking class was held. With Chris living in Humphries House and Ellen in off-campus housing, the two would trek back and forth — “down the tracks, which then wasn’t paved, wasn’t like a real path, it was just railroad tracks. So we would walk down the tracks over the trestle,” Chris described.

“There was no social media… you hung out with somebody physically all the time,” Ellen reiterated — food for thought, perhaps, or something to disregard altogether as we reach for Instagram.

A parting disclaimer — at the end

of the day, whether you spent Valentine's Day yesterday with the love of your life, crying into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, or leafing through homework in Frost, “it’s all nonsense,” in the words of President Elliott.

“There’s a constant state of anxiety on college campuses — there’s al-

ways somebody wringing their hands about how terrible it is that there’s hookup culture and not formal dating. It was true 30 years ago, and it will be true 30 years from now. And it actually always turns out just fine.” After all, we can’t all be the guy who proposed in front of Jenkins.

President Michael Elliott ’92 and Jenn Matthews ’91 Years Together: 33

Stuart Robbins ’20 and Michael Barnett ’18 Years Together: Six

Photo courtesy of Michael Elliott '92

Photo courtesy of Stuart Robbins '20

Photos courtesy of Ellen Lake '91

The couple, who famously met in The Student's newsroom, now live just a few hundred feet away.

The pair pose in a handsomely-decorated dorm.

Photo courtesy of Michael Elliott '92

With a relationship defined by spontaneity, the rock tray for intro geology helped their romance crystallize.

Years after an awkward first encounter, the couple now finish each other’s sentences.

A mammoth skeleton hovers behind the pair.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Robbins '20

Tracking the Rise in Online Ordering at Amherst

Emily Byers ’25

Contributing Writer

Last year, Amherst students collectively ordered almost 75,000 packages. According to Post Office Supervisor Don Kells, this averages nearly 40 packages a student — almost a 60 percent increase from levels in 2014. These staggering numbers correlate to detrimental environmental impacts and an increased strain on staff at Amherst College. So why are Amherst students ordering so many more packages than we used to? Advents in online ordering and the lasting effects of the pandemic have both contributed to this change. The Student attempted to piece together how this rise in shopping habits has impacted our campus community.

Kells says he has witnessed first-hand how package deliveries “have just shot up.” Since he started working at Amherst in the 1990s, Kells has noted a steady but significant increase in students’ online ordering. However, it has become increasingly clear that the problem has only worsened since the start of the pandemic, he said.

While many expressed understanding that the amount of online ordering increased substantially

when students couldn’t leave campus due to Covid, what’s perhaps more surprising is that those numbers haven’t gone back down as other parts of life return to normalcy. With close to 80,000 packages arriving on campus for students in 2021, and with close to 75,000 arriving in 2022, online ordering has decreased only minimally since the start of the pandemic.

Etta Gold ’24E, who has worked in the post office since before students got sent home because of the pandemic in March 2020, shared that she’s noticed “a steady increase in packages.” Gold echoed Kells’ observation, stating that she “can’t believe people order so much” and noting a “huge increase in package ordering during Covid.”

Amherst is one of many higher education institutions facing difficulties with increased online ordering — other colleges like Bowdoin College and Ithaca College are reporting similar trends. What the post office supervisors of these schools reaffirm is that “The influx [in packages] is fueled not by care packages from Mom, but by a surge in online shopping — for textbooks, Halloween costumes, Valentine[‘s Day] sweets, dormitory décor, even mini-fridges.”

Kells confirmed that, in the past decade, he has been constantly surprised by the items students order to campus. While hard-to-find textbooks or birthday care packages feel more justifiable according to Gold, she said it seems like “the majority of it is stuff people don’t need,” and that the basic items students do need are oftentimes readily available at campus stores or within walking distance in town. She recounted one instance of students ordering snow tires, which require large amounts of packaging and are much easier to buy in-person when you already have a car on campus.

This trend isn’t isolated: Across the country, online sales increased by 44 percent from 2019 to 2021, with “e-commerce sales accounting for 21.3% of total retail sales in 2020.” Today, nearly a third of all U.S. internet users report shopping online at least once a week, while another third of internet users online shop at least once a month. With more access to online ordering, people are opting to get products shipped to them, rather than buying products in-person or foregoing the purchases in the first place.

But this new habit has a price.

On a national scale, online ordering heightens our waste production and supports large companies like Amazon while edging out small, local businesses; closer to home, the surge in package deliveries has placed a real strain on the work of Amherst’s mailroom staff.

Impact on Post Office and Staff

Kells reported that limited mailroom space has caused major package processing problems for staff for almost as long as he has been working at Amherst. For starters, the Keefe mailroom was never designed to process packages. Kells' job used to consist of primarily processing letters and magazine subscriptions. Now, he handles around 400 packages a day during the school year. Kells said that the number of packages has gotten “out of hand, [it’s] nowhere near where it once was.” This increase in packages has caused the post office to spill over into Kells’ workspace and even extra rooms like the McCaffrey room to accommodate students’ online ordering at particularly busy times of the year.

Note: The 2014-2019 data represents the corresponding academic years, while the 2020-2022 data represents the calendar years.

Gold highlighted the strain the increase in student packages has had on full-time post office staff.

“It’s just very stressful and a really

Kells' job used to consist of primarily processing letters and magazine subscriptions. Now, he handles around 400 packages a day during the school year. He said that the number of packages has gotten "out of hand, [it's] nowhere near where it once was.

difficult job for Don and Bobby and Chris,” she said, describing other members of the post office staff. “For them, it’s … difficult physical labor; you’re on your feet all day lifting boxes and running around,” she said. “I think when the post office is super full after a break or something like that, it’s just really really stressful, like packages get lost more easily … Everything gets disorganized and there’s no space.”

Continued on page 12

Photo courtesy of Emily Byers '25 Notecard displaying package totals from 2013 to 2020. The Post Office team recorded package totals by hand until switching to a new electronic system in 2020.

Graph courtesy of Emily Byers '25

Spike in Packages Impacts Mailroom Staff, Environment

Continued from page 11

Environmental Impacts

Increased online ordering also makes an environmental impact. For one, increased plastic pollution has reached the forefront of many environmental activists’ minds, who are concerned that packaging like plastic film surrounding products, bubble wrap, and exterior packaging will contribute to further plastic pollution. Plastic waste produces threats to soil, air, and water systems and can cause direct damage to wildlife and human health. The waste also releases tiny fragments of material, called microplastics, that can take hundreds or thousands of years to break down, along with toxic chemicals in the production and disposal processes.

While many may view cardboard and plastic as easily recyclable materials, plastic packaging waste has the lowest recycling rate among recyclable materials, with only 9 percent of all plastic waste being recycled. The vast majority of plastic waste either goes to landfills, is incinerated (releasing toxic chemicals), or directly pollutes the environment. Apart from packaging materials making up a large

portion of the associated environmental impacts of online ordering, greenhouse gas emissions are closely tied to online shopping. The integration of rush deliveries and even same-day shipping has drastically impacted the environment. Companies need to expend vast amounts of resources and energy fulfilling rushed orders, reducing the perceived efficiency of online ordering in the first place.

The Prevalence of Amazon

Of the packages that students order, Amazon takes a large share. Amazon orders made up nearly a third of all packages arriving for students on campus in 2021, and currently make up nearly a quarter of all packages. Kells recounted seeing three Amazon vans waiting in line at once to deliver all of the packages students ordered one morning. This phenomenon would have been extremely out of the ordinary 10 years ago — now, this quantity of packages has become the norm.

Gold remarked that since the post office was not designed for packages in the first place, “well, it obviously wasn’t designed for Amazon … The space just doesn’t have the capacity or the system to han-

dle the volume of packages.”

Amazon is notorious for its varied negative environmental and social impacts. The non-profit Oceana recently estimated that Amazon’s plastic packaging waste in 2020 “would circle the Earth more than 600 times.” Not to mention that Amazon workers have re-

ported “grueling” conditions, with low pay, minimal time off, and intense and tiring shifts, and that Amazon’s business model hurts small, local businesses who are struggling even more during the pandemic.

Moving Forward

Already in mid-February of 2023, Amherst students have collectively received nearly 10,000 packages. This number suggests no sign of online shopping subsiding among Amherst students anytime soon. As we gradually return to a more “normal” version of college life post-pandemic, we have a chance as a school community to reflect on the impacts of online shopping.

To mitigate negative impacts on the environment, Office of Sustainability EcoRep Izzy Perozek ’25 suggested “[buying] secondhand or [trading] clothes with friends instead of buying brand new.” Apart from forgoing buying new items in the first place, Perozek said that one big way Amherst students can limit the impact of buying new items is simply “shopping at the Hampshire mall” or other local stores. The associated environmental impact is much smaller

for in-person “brick-and-mortar” shopping in comparison with online ordering.

The New York Times also suggests grouping your purchases — especially from places like Amazon that tend to send multiple items in many different packages — to limit the amount of packaging and skip out on rushed shipping. In addition, choosing slower delivery options dramatically reduces your package’s carbon footprint. Perozek added that “If you have to order online, [try] doing it with your friends so it only ships once.”

Lastly, Kells shared that students often leave packages in the mailroom for days — sometimes even weeks — on end before picking them up, which places an added strain on already limited mailroom space.

The next time you get a notification from the post office telling you a package has arrived, consider picking up your packages as quickly as possible to aid post office staff in their processing operations. Gold emphasized that she hopes “people appreciate the hard work that [Don, Bobby, and Chris] do … it’s a more difficult job than you might expect.”

Photo courtesy of Emily Byers '25

The back room of the post office, which is crowded by packages ordered by students even during relatively quiet times of year.

Graph showing carrier distribution among student packages. Amazon packages are a close second to packages ordered through USPS.

Graph courtesy of Emily Byers '25

Opinion

To Honor the Open Curriculum

Last Tuesday, the Committee on Educational Policy passed a proposal to amend the college’s policy on Latin honors. Under the previous system, Latin honors were awarded based on class rank, as well as the relevant department’s assessment of the student’s thesis. The new policy maintains the thesis assessment, but now evaluates summa and magna honors based on median letter grades and whether a student has passed at least one course in each of four academic disciplines: arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics, and social and behavioral sciences. Students currently enrolled in the college are grandfathered into the old system, though. They will be evaluated with the system under which they would receive the highest honors, but all matriculating classes henceforth will receive honors under the new policy.

Although the Editorial Board approves of the elimination of class rank as a Latin honors consideration, as it alleviates student stress surrounding rigid grade cutoffs, we believe that the new breadth requirement is fundamentally harmful to academic culture at Amherst. The breadth requirement’s call to exploration reflects the tensions between the open curriculum and the values of the liberal arts: While many students develop well-roundedness by exploring the curriculum, others use the freedom to specialize in the department of their expertise. The new policy intends to encourage a more explorative approach to the open curriculum rather than a path of specialization. While The Editorial Board affirms the value of an interdisciplinary education, we believe that the policy’s top-down prescription to encourage greater variety damages student curiosity and class dynamics and is ultimately at odds with the college’s institutional academic values — namely, freedom and student-directed exploration.

On one hand, the breadth requirement will impact the actual classroom experience. While it may seem fruitful up front — students will stretch themselves to discover passions that they may not have otherwise and departments will better be able to source students of different academic backgrounds — this requirement overlooks the power of the open curriculum to cultivate genuine curiosity and passion through choice. When students are given freedom, classes are more often composed of those who are present because they want to be there, regardless of whether they have

THE AMHERST STUDENT

to. With the policy in place, courses will become increasingly filled with students enrolled for the wrong reasons — box-checkers obligated rather than moved to explore. It stands to reason that such a shift in composition will alter the classroom dynamic, reducing the depth of learning due to a shallow motive for inquiry.

Moreover, the grade change would likely help students explore the open curriculum anyway without the college’s top-down breadth requirements. By reducing the pressure of class rank, students are encouraged to dabble outside of familiar terrain. This was the line of thinking responsible for the implementation of the Pass/ Fail policy in 2021. Another alternative to administrative prescriptions for breadth may be to increase the number of interdisciplinary courses within departments. Regardless, a natural change to the college’s academic culture rather than top-down prescriptions, no matter how wellintentioned, must be put into effect.

But beyond how the changes will impact, on a tangible level, the academic Amherst experience, what’s just as important is what they mean for Amherst’s institutional identity. With the open curriculum, design-your-own-majors, and limited major requirements, Amherst has always been, in the eyes of the Editorial Board, defined by academic freedom and student-directed exploration. A decision made by the faculty — not the students themselves — to institute a breadth requirement, even if it won’t immediately drastically alter our experience, signals that the college is one degree less committed to the ideals with which it has become synonymous.

The Editorial Board appreciates the administration’s new emphasis on exploration and transparency in its consideration of a broader academic portfolio. However, education through administrative policy is counterproductive to the college’s vision for its curiosity-driven culture and learning environment. A policy-enforced education soon becomes a chore rather than a pursuit; it is precarious territory for the college to claim that it knows what is best for students without allowing them the room to come to such a conclusion themselves.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of the majority of the Editorial Board — (assenting: 11; dissenting: 9; abstaining: 2).

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Under the Rubble: A Tragedy Reveals Cultural Bias

Noor Rahman ’25 Managing Arts and Living Editor

“Should we consider the deaths of 30,000 people a tragedy?”

If I were to pose this question to every member of the Amherst College community, I would be hard-pressed to find someone who answered in the negative. Yet this week, when 30,000 human beings died, this campus did not mourn or recognize their deaths. By and large, this campus did nothing to aid the global humanitarian effort to help ensure that this staggering number does not continue to grow. This campus was so unmoved by this devastating loss of human life that not even one collective thought or prayer was spared for the deceased and injured.

I am, of course, alluding to the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria that claimed the lives of at least 30,000, a number that will undoubtedly grow as more bodies are recovered and the victims succumb to their injuries.

There is a striking disconnect between this reality and the level of empathy felt at Amherst. With the exception of a brief mention in the weekly email from the Amherst Association of Students (AAS) reporting on the activity of the Budgetary Committee, there has not been a single public acknowledgement of the tragedy, event honoring the dead, formalized fundraising effort, or a Turkish or Syrian flag raised in solidarity since the earthquake struck last week. And while I don’t believe that activism via social media is always effective, it is an apt indicator of the stances that are perceived to be virtuous by the larger community at a given time. Even in this relatively trivial regard, Amherst has failed.

In the face of such a monumental calamity, the absence of basic human compassion displayed by the Amherst community is not simply benign apathy. It is a political statement that says that the lives lost were so

meaningless that they do not even warrant a false show of compassion. Why these deaths in particular are of such little consequence to our community is not a mystery to anyone paying attention: The individuals affected were Muslim people of color. The Amherst community is not alone in this lack of compassion. The Western world is so desensitized to death and destruction in the Middle East that even such a tremendous disaster has barely captured its attention. (While Türkiye is not in the Middle East, the West does not make much of a distinction.)

It would be convenient to bring these charges only against the white community, but the truth is that leaders of student spaces intended for communities of color have been almost equally silent on the issue. With the exception of the the Middle Eastern North African Association (MENAA) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA), large and well-established affinity groups such as the Black Students Union (BSU), La Causa, and the Asian Students Association (ASA) have not bothered to hide their indifference to this tragedy.

It’s true that any formal response to the earthquake is outside of the scope of their respective missions. However, I believe that solidarity among communities of color is an ideal to which the Amherst community should aspire, and the lack of response in this situation is especially egregious given the magnitude of the disaster. Regardless, the silence from these communities will make any future plea for solidarity among communities of color or cross-cultural activism a bitter pill for me to swallow. Parenthetically, it should be noted that Syria and Türkiye are Asian countries, and so a response from the ASA is a reasonable expectation.

Others might retort that Amherst College has no control over natural disasters and very little ability to contribute to re -

lief efforts beyond fundraising. So why does its response matter? A population’s response to a tragedy is indicative of its humanity. The lack of response to the fatalities and destruction has revealed a heartless, racist, and uncharitable Amherst community, which includes its students, faculty, and administration.

It’s difficult not to compare this callousness to the energy that brought the community together following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The myriad ways that Amherst united to express solidarity with Ukraine, in a situation they similarly had little control over, are too many to enumerate here. A few are worth mentioning, however: A letter from former President Biddy Martin was sent out to the Amherst community; a public statement was made on social media; a vigil was held for the victims of the war; the Mead Art Museum put together an impromptu exhibit; and panel discussions of the implications of the crisis were convened. The Amherst community rallied compassionately around the Ukrainian students on campus, recognizing the tangible ways that the tragedy was touching community members. More generally,

there was a sense on campus that something bad was happening in the world, and that we ought to care.

None of the same can be said amid the crisis in Türkiye and Syria.

Of course, the comparison between the invasion of Ukraine and this earthquake is not perfect. The former is a geopolitical issue with consequences involving NATO and involves the perceived oppression of a group of people. The latter is a natural disaster without an instigator or clear military repercussions.

But the lack of complexity of an earthquake, the absence of sides to be taken, ought to make a compassionate response easier. In my view, it makes such a response all the more mandatory. Additionally, during any discussions of the war in Ukraine on campus, there was always a sense that the community was not only invested in the geopolitical consequences as an intellectual exercise; there was an intangible sense of empathy that accompanied these discussions. Such empathy is what is missing from campus in this critical moment.

But it would be unfair to say that the college doesn’t care

about the suffering of Muslims and people of color at all. When their suffering upholds Western notions of female oppression and repressive Islamic regimes, Amherst is quick to voice its sympathy and draw attention to the topic. Such was the case last semester when nationwide protests erupted in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Such a response was appropriate and well-executed on the part of the college.

But the fact that this event, which upholds Western ideas about the Middle East, garnered such a response throws into stark relief the lack of attention the earthquake and its aftermath have received. One shouldn't take it as a coincidence that this event, which can't be leveraged for these ends, has been ignored.

The college’s cold-hearted indifference to this disaster is not at all surprising. Nor will I demean myself by begging Amherst to act like it cares about the brown-skinned, Muslim lives lost — I know it does not. This past week has left me bitter and angry. And while this lack of response was expected, I am deeply disappointed in my friends, my professors, and my school administrators.

The aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey.

Photo courtesy of Foreign Policy

The Quiet Death of the Open Curriculum

Sophie Durbin ’25 Contributing Writer

Whenever someone asks me why I chose to attend Amherst, my first answer is usually the open curriculum. Few other colleges offer students complete freedom to choose their course of study, as Amherst does (apart from the classes required for a major). To me, the open curriculum represents Amherst’s commitment to students’ intellectual autonomy. Our lack of a core curriculum and distribution requirements ensures that students take classes they want to take, not classes they’re forced to take. When I enter the classroom, I know that all of my classmates want to be there.

This will all change beginning with the class of 2027. Last Tuesday, the faculty passed a proposal to amend the Latin honors program. Students and faculty alike have long expressed dissatisfaction that the honors program depends upon class rank. The proposal, written by a committee of professors and Association of Amherst Students senators, addresses this common complaint by shifting from a GPA-percentile requirement to one based on the median of all your final class grades (higher than an A- for summa, and equal to or higher than A- for magna). Students will know for certain whether they achieved their desired median grade instead of guessing whether they made the top 25 per-

cent of their class.

But I’m concerned by the proposal’s second clause: the introduction of “breadth requirements” for students pursuing magna and summa cum laude. In addition to writing a thesis and meeting the GPA requirement, Latin honors students will need to take at least one class each in the “arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics, and social and behavioral sciences.”

The breadth requirement may seem like a minor detail that encourages students to explore the liberal arts — something we should do regardless. It may also boost Amherst’s humanities numbers at a time when humanities enrollment nationwide is shrinking, which I fully support as an English major. However, I argue that this amendment to Latin honors will fundamentally change the spirit of Amherst and, ultimately, mark the end the open curriculum.

Although it may sound as though the breadth requirement only applies to a select group of high-achievers, in reality, it will affect a huge portion of campus. Around 50 percent of Amherst students choose to write a thesis, which is the primary requisite for Latin honors. If the majority of the college must fulfill distribution requirements, no matter how mild they are, how can we claim to have an open curriculum? Even if some thesis-writers choose not to pursue

magna or summa honors, I imagine that most would at least like to try. Writing a thesis is arguably the most arduous element of earning Latin honors, so meeting the breadth requirement may seem trivial in comparison. And thus a tweak to Latin honors requirements suddenly transforms Amherst’s entire curriculum.

Once the changes go into effect, Amherst’s classrooms will be filled with people who don’t want to be there. Professors who already worry about lack of participation in class discussions will face even more apathy from students who only want to check off a box. The breadth requirement doesn’t guarantee intellectual risk-taking because students can simply seek out easier courses in departments they dislike. It may even hurt the students who are risk-takers. As Assistant Professor of Computer Science Matteo Riondato noted during the faculty meeting wherein the proposal was passed, some students may have developed an expertise through self-study and choose not to take courses in this area. These students would be forced to spend a class slot on a subject they already know well when they could instead take new and challenging courses in another department.

The changes to Latin honors will undermine Amherst’s collaborative and learning-based environment. As students begin to consider breadth requirements while choos-

ing courses, an uneasy divide will emerge between those who pursue honors and those who don’t.

Amherst has a remarkably uncompetitive culture among elite institutions and few students openly discuss their academic aspirations.

I’m a sophomore and I’ve never heard anyone announce their plans to graduate with honors. However,

I fear that increasing the academic demands for Latin honors will encourage competition and credentialism. Students will need to decide whether they want to go for honors even earlier thanks to the breadth requirement. Those with demanding courses of study like pre-med might need to factor in the breadth requirement as first-years. And people who previously would have

avoided talking about Latin honors might find themselves explaining their ambitions whenever course selection comes around.

Yet, graduating without honors won’t prevent anyone from finding a job or going to graduate school — it’s an academic achievement that provides recognition and little else.

I doubt any of these shifts will happen overnight. Instead, I’m worried about Amherst 10 years in the future, when no student remembers the college prior to the breadth requirements. Will students actually be more intellectually curious? Will first-years announce to their friends that they want to graduate summa cum laude? Will we still boast to prospective students that we have an open curriculum?

by Alice Burg ’23

Sophie Durbin ’25 discusses how the breadth requirements will undermine the strengths of and weaken the open curriculum.

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard '26

Val for Pal: Maintain Your Long-distance Friendship

Pho Vu ’23 Contributing Writer

As we grow older, we inevitably welcome sundry connections under different categories into our life. However, the people who we find it easy to stay close to are often those that have followed us since our early childhood. However, Amherst, in opening its doors to students from all corners of the world, has birthed new beginnings for international friendships. But how do we maintain these long-distance connections? During this time of the year, when one of the most wholesome holidays to celebrate friend love rolls around, it feels right for me to sit down and unfurl the efforts that have prevented me and my BFFs in Vietnam from being “out of mind” when we’re “out of sight.”

1. Remember Important Dates and Do Something Special for Them

It is an unspoken rule that our best friends should shower us with birthday wishes on the exact date, even when Facebook doesn’t send the reminder. For my group of five, we take turns spamming the group with all kinds of customized wishes. It went from sentimental text messages in the early years, to planned birthday videos full of improv footage, to pandemic-isolation styled celebrations with filter-laden Zoom calls. Have you ever typed “Happy Birthday” with your friend’s name or nickname next to it on Youtube?

There’s a good chance you will find a funny video that celebrates the birthday of someone whose name matches your friend’s. Send the video at your discretion to your friend. I’m sure they will laugh for a really long time, and that’s the best sign of a good birthday one could ever have!

2. Engineer Nicknames That Keep the Spark Alive

When you’re far from home, you don’t get to form new spatial memories with your loved ones. A nickname is an integral part of long-distance relationships that tells your friends that you care about them and can relate to them from

any visible dimension, often stemming from memorable events or observations of certain conspicuous traits of a person. Up your name game by changing the nicknames of the members on your messaging platform every six months. I often surprise my friends with new quirky names taken straight from my observation of their reactions during our most active discussions. For instance, a couple of months ago, I waited for the entire group to go to sleep in their local time zone, then surreptitiously nicknamed them after their boyfriends’ names. As soon as one messaged the group, others were alarmed because they thought the boys joined the group. That name change received quite a lot of positive feedback, unofficially filling the chat box with only the best vibes. A good nickname entails dedication, and it only matters that they get what you mean!

3. Treat it Like a Registered Student Organization: Don’t Flout Regular Meetings!

In comparison, a group of friends is not much different from a family-owned business, a church convent, or a membership-exclusive organization with a common cause: existing as living proof that longterm friendship is possible. With that being said, like any Registered Student Organizations (RSO)s on campus, we are also powered by regular online group meetings, and the recent one was an group-wide Uno tournament ight during Lunar New Year. I had the opportunity to do my favorite activity, that is, to send lucky money to my friends in Vietnam through Sendwave. Seeing them engage in the games and work their way to the prizes really warmed my heart in an indescribable way.

Love knows no distance. Although it’s a bummer that I was not yet back in Vietnam, I led the agenda for my friends’ New Year celebration. Researching meeting locations, menus, and prices that best cater to my friends’ funds gave me the most wholesome experience and helped me make positive contributions to my clique in the most creative way possible. It can be said

that arranging the time to be fully present is a gift horse that connects us between two distant lands.

4. Virtual Game Nights Makes Distance a Vantage

One great thing coming out of being the one and only (hopefully) batch of young generation in Covid era is that, sometimes, being far away is a legit blessing in disguise. Virtual entertainment-wise, you can always rely on skribbl and Gartic Phone where you can play countries apart. You should also try out a Zoom version of Scavenger Hunt where everyone gets up and runs around the house trying to snatch all the items on the list in the shortest amount of time.

5. Design Your Group’s Social Media Purpose of Use

Instagram and Tiktok are particularly great for the most fashionable poses when traveling and viral trends to do with our best buddies, which you can definitely resonate with. In our case, we view our connectedness on these platforms as backup emergency cards. There are days when one of us just can’t help but want to lock ourselves from the outside world and deactivate one of our social media platforms. Finding alternative platforms helps us stay close and look out for each other during those trying times. There are days when we just decide to go professional and educational with the platforms: We edited our LinkedIn profiles and celebrated each other's studying more than 10 lessons or reaching a new league on Duolingo. Surely I don’t need to mention sending Instagram reels or sharing Facebook memes to the messenger group so you can all laugh off your life’s shared sufferings!

6. Changes Happen, but Nothing Will Change Our Friendship

It’s inevitable that as I leave my hometown for education, my mindset is bound to change. Faced with problems that triggered an existential crisis, caused me to cancel plans to fly home, and a million unfinished future plans, my tectonic plates were shaking because things wouldn’t turn out like what I

wanted. It felt as if it was Judgement Day when our middle-school pact of “Forever Alone” and the plan of living together until old age was put on halt when my friends met the guys that made their hearts flutter. Friendship can make you feel possessive: There were times when I thought I was being left out, and it felt like our friendship was on the verge of falling apart. But I’m really grateful that we got a second chance, then a third chance, and many other chances to learn how we can cherish this kismet. I have come to realize that my place in their hearts remains unchanged. I was introduced to my friends’ new friends in college. Maybe these people have helped my friend through a tough time when I wasn’t around, and I really owe them a big hug.

7. As We Learn From Each Other, We Grow

Self-growth is the raison d’etre of all relationships, and friendship is the ne plus ultra (a.k.a best example you can have?) of this virtue when we get to improve together with our amigos. My group of friends is made up of five individuals with different personalities and as far as the “opposite attracts” tenet goes, our friendship only reached a new level when we came to appreciate each other’s unique beauties and learned to adopt these traits to create our most concrete first steps into the real world. On a more entertaining note, growth does not always have to be something that

sounds life-changing. Try living the life of your friends by binge-watching a recommended list of Netflix series by them, or keeping yourself engrossed in a book that they keep rambling about. You may realize the values of life that your friend secretly embraces from their point of view.

Friendship takes time. Sometimes as a human that still needs to learn many things, I become impatient and annoyed because unpredictable outcomes of human relationships can still leave you at square one no matter how much effort you put in. In the highly commendable series “Lucifer,” Dr. Linda tells Mazikeen — the demon that follows Lucifer to Earth — as she explores the concept of friendship: “Emotions are hard, but they make you stronger.” We need friends to mollify the pressure that comes from the entities that we are chasing after and running away from. But when friends are the main reason why we feel hurt, we learn to take the problem into our own hands with a new kind of strength.

While at Amherst, I have met wonderful people whom I hope to call friends and get to know better for the rest of my life. It’s the friendship that I’ve kept with my friend group over the years that have allowed me to take on a glass-half-full approach that I can open myself up and face whatever comes. If you are reading this article with questions about friendship, I hope it brings you to the place closest to the answers you are looking for.

Pho Vu ’23 outlines some strategies for maintaining long-distance friendships.

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard '26

ChatGPT’s Apocalypse Already Happened

Sam Spratford ’24 Editor-in-Chief

Nearly every day since Christmas, I’ve received an email newsletter with a subject line overridden by techno-panic. The culprit this time? ChatGPT.

“How ChatGPT will destabilize white-collar work.”

“ChatGPT is AI’s ‘Jurassic Park’ Moment.”

“It’s easier than ever for students to cheat on that five-paragraph essay.”

Notably, the vast majority of these headlines foretell the disruptive impact of ChatGPT on productivity, speaking in the future tense about some doomsday for which all we can do is hold our breath and wait.

But the crisis is already here — in fact, it’s been a long time in the making.

Being born in 2002, I am part of a generation whose social devel-

opment was hijacked by the smartphone. As online gathering spaces proliferated, the percentage of 8th graders who reported meeting up with their friends almost every day fell by about 40 percent from 2008 to 2016.

This figure comes from sociologist Jean M. Twenge’s widely-read 2017 cover story in The Atlantic that quantified the pervasiveness of smartphones for my generation and the corresponding impact on our mental health.

The advent of ChatGPT should alert us to an oft-overlooked aspect of the Twenge-pocalypse, and one that has been particularly consequential to my personal development. It is something that became clear to me during the first bleak winter of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was Jan. 2021, and my overcast days at home in the Chicago suburbs were punctuated only by the icy chirps of lost cardinals and the Zoom-screen effigy of the bespectacled and effervescently animated Senior Lecturer in English Benigno

Sanchez-Eppler. There were 40 of us enrolled in his 2021 J-Term course, “Letter Writers and Epistolarity,” and probably fewer than 10 of us had ever written a letter more complex than some perfunctory thank-you note. But at our very first meeting, while we were distractedly texting and scrolling and commenting off-camera, Sanchez-Eppler interrupted with a warning:

“It is the act of writing about your life that creates experiences. And so, it’s possible to go your whole life without having a single experience — that is, if you don’t write.”

After a total of 180 hours of class meetings and hundreds of Gmail correspondences, I can confirm that the lost art of letter-writing enchanted those isolated days: I learned more about myself over that time than any other in my young adulthood. The process of writing letters bestows context and form on the ephemerality of consciousness; it is a careful process, a process of translating muddled moments into an intimate narrative, a suspended bit of

space-time, for your recipient.

It is not just that smartphones have displaced our venues of socialization, but they have increasingly reduced the intentionality behind our daily communication — language is being brutally instrumentalized. As digital social platforms, aided by AI, have ascended to lord over our linguistic practices, they have threatened to make the writing process obsolete, according to the preliminary findings of American University Professor Emerita of Linguistics Naomi Baron.

In Baron’s upcoming book, titled “Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing,” she argues that ChatGPT is just the most recent invention in our quest to automate writing for the sake of productivity. Along the way, we have forgotten that writing is not just a commodity, but an everyday facilitator of thought.

In a 2015 BBC essay, URochester Professor of Technology Evan Selinger wrote about AI-driven predictive text as a harbinger of a world

where people stop thinking about their words. Like Baron, the problem to Selinger wasn’t that writing would become more homogenous, per se. “We’ve got spontaneous things to say that we never anticipated … [But] as communication becomes less of an intentional act, we give others more algorithm and less of ourselves.”

The techno-panic surrounding ChatGPT is misplaced. While we conjure dystopian futures of robotic journalism, AI-ghostwritten essays, and jobless communications professionals, the automation of writing has (and continues to) rob us of original thought.

Text-generative AI takes this automation to the next level — but this should not come as a surprise. In order to reclaim the true value in writing, we need to push against the ever-intensifying grain of profit-value and productivity, towards a world where we more intentionally outsource this process to machines. Only then will we remember what it means to experience.

by Miles Garcia ’25

Amusements

Not a Good Beginning... |

1 "___ Cop" (1987 film)

2 Symbols of strength

3 Elton John and Paul McCartney, e.g.

4 Hot reel?

5 Beating

6 Withhold

7 100 percent

8 "Sesame Street" network

9 Indian Pale ___

10 Like dark humor, for short

11 Art supporter?

12 Do a 5K, perhaps

15 Henri's head

20 "Pick a card ___ card!"

21 Protagonist of Pixar's "Inside Out"

25 Crow's call

26 Word that's often clicked on in a browser

27 Biggest of the Three Bears 28 Be ___

Carle

"The

Feb. 15, 2023

Solutions: Feb. 8

John Joire ’26 Managing Puzzles Editor

Arts&Living

“Ancestral Bridges”: Exploring BIPOC History in Amherst

Noor Rahman ’25 Managing Arts & Living Editor

On Thursday, Feb. 9, Frost Library hosted a reception in honor of the opening of “Ancestral Bridges,” an exhibit featuring photographs and artifacts representing the lives of Black and Afro-Indigenous residents of the town of Amherst in the 18th through 20th centuries, some of whom were employed by the college.

The exhibit, which will be on display through summer 2023, is the product of a collaboration between Amherst College and the Ancestral Bridges Foundation, a local nonprofit organization that uplifts Black and Afro-Indigenous arts, history, and culture in Western Massachusetts.

The individuals featured are also ancestors of Ancestral Bridges Founder Anika Lopes, who curated the exhibit. At the opening reception, Lopes noted that the collection seeks to celebrate the buried histories, not only of her family, but of all BIPOC residents of Amherst, “who gave so much to the town that they loved, but did not love them back.”

While the exhibit pays tribute to the overlooked achievements and contributions of the Black and Afro-Indigenous members of the Amherst community, it also serves as a record of the persecution they endured. Sarah Barr, the advisor to the provost on campus initiatives and director for community engagement, who helped put the exhibit together, highlighted “the ways in which her family story really fits into a broader story about what happened in the United States at the time.”

One photograph depicts Perry

Roberts, an employee of the college who was born into slavery and later emancipated, standing in front of Porter House. The exhibition also features a set of Amherst College dishware from Lopes’ family collection, decorated with former college mascot Lord Jeffrey Amherst, who encouraged the use of smallpox-infected blankets as a means of warfare against indigenous people, aiming weapons at Native Americans.

But the antique artifacts and black-and-white photographs also tell a more optimistic story: a narrative of surviving and forging paths forward in the face of horrifying oppression and humiliation. Aging family photos depict three generations of the family in their residence on Snell Street. A display case contains an engraved ivory cane that belonged to Gil Roberts, an acclaimed jazz musician. The cane was gifted to Roberts by King Farouk of Egypt after he performed in his court.

At the opening reception, faculty, staff, and community members packed into the second floor of Frost. It was a unique and diverse gathering, with faculty from the Five Colleges, elderly residents from across Western Massachusetts, and local politicians present. But the most notable attendees were Lopes’ family members: her mother Debora Bridges and her great-aunt Edythe Harris (née Roberts), affectionately known as “Aunt Edie.”

As the guests started to file in, Roberts escorted the 95-year-old aunt around the hallway where the photographs were displayed. Harris excitedly pointed out herself in the family photos, as well as her parents

and her grandfather. The emotion of the moment was tangible to those around them — for me, witnessing their emotional response to their family mementos was just as important as seeing the exhibit itself.

The event kicked off with Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker, a film producer and friend of Lopes, delivering a beautiful vocal rendition of “Lord Remember Me.” Her rich voice conveyed both the sorrow of a painful history and the joy of a triumphant moment for the community.

Harris, who worked as an educator in the Amherst public school system, shared her experiences growing up during the Great Depression. She recalled stopping by the college’s fraternity kitchens, where her father and uncles were employed, to get cookies on the walk home from school as a young child.

“There is a very important message to be seen here in the photos,” Harris said. “And that is [that] people of color have been an integral part here in Amherst, Massachusetts, for many, many years.”

Lopes’ mother, Roberts, also shared a story from 1961, when she was a fourth grader in the Amherst school system. “We were doing our social studies lesson,” she recalled, “and my teacher asked me, ‘You’re a little colored girl, what do you think it was like to be a slave?’ I think that was the first time I’ve ever felt singled out.”

Lopes later told The Student how much the event meant to her personally: “I was just at a loss for words. I felt very emotional in a way that I hadn’t expected.” The reception continued long after the conclusion

of the formal programming; a sense of true community enveloped the room, as old friends embraced one another and new connections were forged.

Both Lopes and Barr emphasized their hope that this exhibit would be the beginning of a meaningful partnership between the college and the Ancestral Bridges Foundation. Lopes highlighted her hope “that people will leave in the look at [the exhibit] and be curious and question how they can be involved. There are so many stories within the stories that need to be discovered.”

“Students, faculty, staff [and] community members all have an opportunity to get involved in the project — of shared memory and of history and telling stories,” said Barr, echoing Lopes’ sentiment. “It really was meant to sort of create an invitation for people to get involved.”

Barr and Lopes, the co-organizers of the exhibit, felt that the collection was an important way to bring to light the shared history of Amherst College and the BIPOC residents of the town of Amherst. Lopes remarked that “there's no time period, unless we're talking about when we predated the college, that there was not the connection with Amherst College in some way.”

“I think it helps us know our own history in very important and powerful ways because I think we don’t often talk about the staff experience at Amherst College,” remarked Barr. She hopes that this exhibit and this nascent partnership with the Ancestral Bridges Foundation can be the beginning of the student body becoming more integrated with the

town. “Maybe what Ancestral Bridges offers us is an opportunity to get to know each other better,” she said.

Lopes emphasized the importance of the celebratory aspect of the exhibit. She would like for BIPOC history to involve “learning more about your history than just being a slave or genocide.” She continued, “We’re not used to hearing these types of stories.”

Lopes and Barr are both enthusiastic about the potential of the exhibit to help us understand racial and economic stratification in the present day. Barr personally felt that she gained a greater understanding of how historical injustices impacted BIPOC families: “It’s very real and present, it’s not like some far off historical thing. It’s a thing that had an impact on that family.”

In the same vein, Lopes wrote in her curatorial statement, “I hope these images and stories raise questions, prompt further research, and challenge us all to meet our collective responsibility to build a more just and equitable future.”

She hopes that the exhibit will make people question the idea of Amherst’s racism as a historical narrative, as opposed to a present-day reality: “Where do we go from here? Yes, it’s history, but it isn’t really, in terms of action and how people are living? Is it that far away?”

“We can’t really do much about what happened in the past, but we can certainly move forward,” said Lopes, “It’s really about what action can we take and learn from this and from certain struggles and wrongdoing, and turn that into benefits for our future generations.”

“Ancestral Bridges” maps the history of a sixth generation Black and Afro-Indigenous family in Amherst. Managing Arts & Living Editor Noor Rahman ’25 covers the opening reception, which featured a photo gallery and historical artifacts.

Photo courtesy of Jessie Gwilliam

Kobe Thompson ’24 Staff Writer

“...so I sent him a screenshot of the Fantano tweet and I said, ‘Fuck you, look at me!’” Gregory R. Smith III ’25E is an outspokenly confident musician with many achievements under his belt. I had the opportunity to speak with Smith about the “Context” of his guitar-playing, the “Creation” of his live and recorded performances, and how he sees himself on the “Come Up,” as he gains more appreciation and recognition both online and on stage.

“Suga Fingaz,” “Street Whisperer,” “He Who Stalks the Night and Devoureth Whole,” “Black Pinocchio,” or just “Greg,” — Smith’s choice of name reflects his personal mix of humor, creativity, and defiance, traits that are emblematic of his music. “I think aliases are hilarious. Who’s going to tell me I can’t [have them]?”

Smith particularly loves the name “Suga Fingaz,” a suggestion that came from an Instagram poll nearly a year ago. The name sits alongside Smith’s real name on his account, and has emblazoned posters and announcements for the various live performances he’s done.

A multi-instrumentalist, Smith said that his first love was the guitar. “My second semester of freshman year of high school I was dating a girl and she played the guitar. I was

like, ‘Damn, I’m trying to impress shawty.’” An interest that outlived his relationship, Smith’s motivation to play guitar eventually changed, from wanting to be better than his sister at the guitar, to wanting to make music just for the sake of it.

“At 16 I wrote my first song, it was awful. I’m not even gonna tell you the name of it, but it’s out there.” Regardless, the song motivated Smith to play more and more, leading to songs he described as “Art Pop… Dream Pop… Bedroom Pop kinda stuff.” Greg’s musical progression was accompanied by consistent, four-hour-a-day practice sessions on the guitar and lessons that were available to him at the School of the Arts in Tacoma, Washington.

“I took a really good theory class. I took audio recording, that’s how I learned how to mix as an engineer and set up mics. Then I took classical guitar which is also really important because it’s good for [technique].”

And the extra time afforded to Smith during the Covid-19 pandemic gave him the opportunity to learn other instruments, such as the bass guitar and drums, and to master the art of mixing music. Smith admits that his virtuosity across multiple instruments was born out of impatience. “I don’t like doing everything myself. But I’m a very impatient person so I don’t want to wait for people to get shit back to me.”

Smith had more to say on his repertoire of self-taught instrumentation. “I’m always a guitarist, I will always have the most fun playing the guitar. Except sometimes I really like playing the drums and recently I got a killer bass … Once you know one [instrument], you kind of know them all.” He attributes his ability to learn to instruments to the patterns present in music, translating sounds between instruments, how the guitar voices a lick versus the bass. Listening, Smith notes, is also an important part of learning how to play. He explained his influences, which starts with “A lot of Neo-Soul. I was born in Philly in 2002, and my parents were … going around listening to Erykah Badu, Jill Scott — concerts and all that.” Smith’s soulful playing, with emotional and at times mournful singing, highlights these inspirations. Through a strong emphasis on rhythm and a personal exploration of the Black struggle, Smith mixes R&B, soul, and funk in his music, following his stylistic admiration of artists and bands like Funkadelic, Jimi Hendrix, D’Angelo, and Lianne La Havas.

Smith’s style of music contains touches of all these genres but is still a far cry from sounding truly similar to these artists. “I suppose I didn’t strive to be unique, I suppose I ended up being unique. It’s not like I want to go around playing guitar like oth-

er people. But I wasn’t trying to play like myself, I was just trying to play the guitar and I knew how because I taught myself,” he said. “I played by myself in my room for six years so it was nobody’s style, but the way that I came up with that works for me.”

Speaking from personal experience, Smith’s playing style is unorthodox, using hand positions and finger techniques that the average guitar instructor might frown upon. But Smith more than makes up for it with the inventiveness of his unique approach to the guitar. Since his days in his childhood bedroom, Smith said, his style has developed in unexpected ways. “I went from, in 2018, emo music, which is really funny, to really laid back R&B with really big vocal stacks. Weirder harmony, crazier guitar solos, wider mixes, as well as a little more variance in song structure and funkier basslines. Crazier drums, if I had to guess,” he said. “If I had to describe my style it would be moody and spacious.”

Songwriting is an integral part of Smith’s music, which provides him another avenue of expression. While capable of harnessing emotion with his stringed instruments, the ability to explicitly explore topics through lyrics is a muscle he enjoys flexing. “I like writing and I like the strength of language. I like figurative language, and for a while I was a big philosophy guy, a big poetry guy,” he said.

While Smith does get creative with his songwriting, he says “all of it is real.” It comes from a place deep inside him, experiences and emotions that are sincere regardless of an inevitable shuffling-around of events.

Smith also professes to have a predilection for live performances.

“When I’m outside busking, I just play like I would play at home, but I get to turn my amp up louder.” Smith’s playing was a common sight on campus, in and around whatever dorm he’s living in. He also busks as a side hustle when he is back home in Seattle.

In the past few months, Smith has received a surge of support and appreciation for his work. He had the chance to play on stage with R.A.P. Ferreira (FKA Milo), an alt hip hop artist who is a personal favorite of both Smith and myself.

Smith was pleased to have secured a follow from the artist on Instagram, prompted by a positive review in a retweet from popular music reviewer Anthony Fantano.

“I was chilling in my room and I looked at my phone and I was like, ‘No way!’ But the Milo-follow happened because I’m a little asshole,” he said. “I DM’d [Milo] before the Fantano tweet, but he didn’t respond — but he read it, because he’s reachable. So I sent him the screenshot of the

Continued on page 21

Graphic courtesy of Alex Brandfonbrener ’23

Songwriter, Musician, Producer Shares His Process

Continued from page 20

Fantano tweet and I said, ‘Fuck you, look at me!’ And then he followed me.” While Smith didn’t notice an uptick in listeners, he was happy with “all the positive feedback. People telling me they really liked [my music]. That means more than any amount of plays.”

But Smith says he doesn’t do it for the recognition. “I don’t make songs for other people to like, but I do make songs and I would like to be heard,” he said. Above all else, Smith is grateful for all the support he gets, maintaining a humility and self-awareness that stood out to me. “I receive positive feedback, and it feels like I did something right. I’ll just bite the bullet when I receive negative feedback. I always take it into account, because I want my own expression of myself to be as good as it can be.”

Smith takes this negative feedback seriously, and is always searching for problems within his own music. “I critique myself a lot. I will listen to a song I made that day [for the rest of the] day, and the following four days, literally the only thing I’ll listen to and I’ll keep tweaking it.

It’s a really arduous process but I enjoy it,” he explained. He also holds in high regard the opinions of his close friends, specifically referencing his friend Ryan, a “snob” who’s also “really shy. He doesn’t know what advice to give that’s positive, he only ends up giving negative advice.”

Putting this feedback to good use, Smith has developed an intentional approach to making songs and producing entire projects. He likes to gather ideas for a song, basic sonic cues like bass lines, drums, and melodies that he loops. He continues with improvisation over the loops until he finds something that feels right. To me, this technique makes his recordings and their subsequent live performances feel like bolts of lightning captured in a bottle, small moments of time that represent immediate events yet paradoxically feel so timeless.

“It works itself out because the timing in which I made [these songs] is how I was feeling for that period of time,” he said. “It’s a genuine reflection of myself. I make music in bursts or a very long continuous lot of songs.”

At the time of this interview, Smith has released one project so

VALHACKS

“Val Hacks” is a column dedicated to exploring the culinary possibilities of Valentine Dining Hall. This week, Ivy Haight ’25 presents her recipe for “The Secret to Strawberry Shortcake.”

When presented with the components of “strawberry shortcake” at Val, some questions might come across your mind: What is strawberry shortcake? How can cake be short? And what do strawberries have to do with it? I don’t have the answer for any of these questions, but I can say that I have perfected the strawberry shortcake recipe at Val.

Directions

In a bowl, mix together ingredients in the following ratio:

• 3/5 vanilla soft serve

far, “Weight in Gold,” which can be found on all streaming platforms. He shared his feelings about the project and its reception. “[I felt] very good because I knew it was killer. The EP was done for two weeks to a month before I turned it in,” he said. “I was listening to it that whole time and I really liked it.”

Despite his years of experience as a musician, Smith’s delay in releasing more music is split between apprehension — “I was scared to put out an EP before because I criticize

myself too much” — and a self-admitted laziness: “I really could be releasing so much music — I’m just lazy. I make the songs and I just, [laughs].” While he has the desire to release his music, Smith confessed that his true desire is to make it. All of the other aspects of the sharing process are a necessary evil. “I’m really bad at promoting my [music]. I’m telling you, I’m so lazy,” he said. “If all I had to do was make music, that is all I would do.”

As a self-made artist, Smith had

some things to say about the beginnings of learning how to make music like he does: “Why not? If you want to, do it. That’s all it has to be. Listen a lot, play a lot if you want to be good. It’s about how much time you put in. I don’t think talent is a real thing, quite frankly. I think that if talent is anything, it’s the amount of dedication you naturally have towards the task.”

Read the full article online at www. amherststudent.com

• 1/5 strawberry compote

• 1/5 dairy-free whipped topping (trust me on this one — the dairy-free is better)

On a separate plate:

• Gluten-free biscuit

The key here is to heat up the biscuit for 8 to 12 seconds. It’s a game changer. The biscuits look moist, but they’re not, and the microwave solves all your problems. From there, you can dip the biscuit in the strawberry-soft-serve whipped topping concoction.

Ivy Haight ‘25 presents her recipe for Strawberry Shortcake, using gluten-free biscuits, strawberry compote, and dairy-free whipped topping.

Kobe Thompson sits down with Gregory R. Smith III ’25 to discuss his process and his journey as a self-made musician.

Photo courtesy of Ivy Haight ’25

Photo courtesy of Eric Shelby

“Gods and Monsters:” DC Studios’ Last-ditch Expansion

Vaughn Armour ’25 Staff Writer

On Jan. 31, DC Studios announced their plans for 10 future projects. Entitled “Gods and Monsters,” these will make up chapter one of the new DC Universe (DCU). Fans are excited but skeptical about these plans: For many, “Gods and Monsters” is DC’s last shot.

The DC Extended Universe (DCEU), which the DCU is replacing, was a mixed bag. Some movies, like “Wonder Woman,” were adored by both critics and fans. That film has a 93 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and made over 800 million dollars at the box office. For the most part, though, DCEU movies were either well-received by fans or critics, not both. “Shazam” and “The Suicide Squad” had scores over 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but only made 360 and 170 million dollars respectively. DCEU films typically cost about 150 to 200 million dollars to produce, so these were major disappointments. Conversely, “Aquaman” made 1.1 billion dollars with a 65 percent RT score, and “Batman v Superman” made 870 million with a lowly 29 percent score. Some films were disliked by both fans and critics, such as “Wonder Woman 1984” (58 percent and $170 million) and “Black Adam” (38 percent and 391 million).

All of these movies have their fervent defenders, but lack continuity within the franchise, leading to a muddled fandom. Each felt like its own universe, as the DCEU was marred by inconsistency in quality and tone. Releasing director’s cuts such as David Ayer’s “Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition” and Zack Snyder’s “Justice League” further splintered the fanbase, making the overall narrative messy and unsatisfying. Without a sense of coherence between movies, DC’s cinematic universe fails at being a universe.

Because of this, DC Studios’ new co-CEOs face an unenviable task. They have to have to craft a cohesive and enthralling story while also fighting the ghosts of the past. One of those men is James Gunn, who previously directed “Guardians of the Galaxy” and its sequels for Mar-

vel, as well as “The Suicide Squad” for DC. The other, Peter Safran, is a more traditional executive. He produced “Aquaman,” “Shazam,” and various movies in The Conjuring Universe, Warner Bros. Studios’ high-earning horror series of films. Despite the difficulties of their positions, both are qualified to run DC, and their plans sound promising.

Chapter one will be comprised of five movies and five shows. One of the shows, “Paradise Lost,” will be set in Wonder Woman’s birthplace, Themyscira, before the events of the “Wonder Woman” films. Gunn and Safran described it as a Game of Thrones-style drama about political intrigue. Another show, “Lanterns,” is about the Green Lantern Corps. A fixture of the comics, the Green Lanterns have been grossly misrepresented in previous film adaptations. Because of this, “Lanterns” will be watched closely. Hal Jordan and

John Stewart, iconic figures from the comics, will be the main characters in what Gunn and Safran described as an Earth-based show about space cops in the vein of “True Detective.”

On the film side, the first Superman movie since “Man of Steel” will be released in 2025 under the title “Superman: Legacy.” Safran described Superman as “kindness in a world that thinks kindness is old-fashioned,” perfectly exemplifying the character. He will not be played by DCEU lead Henry Cavill, but instead by a younger actor who has not yet been chosen.

The DCU will also introduce its Batman during Chapter One. That film will be called “The Brave and the Bold,” adapted from a classic Batman comic by Grant Morrison. In it, Batman meets Damian Wayne, his 14-year-old biological son who had been hidden from him and raised by his assassin mother, Talia

Al-Ghul. This will be Damian’s first live-action appearance as Robin. Although Robert Pattinson will not be the DCU’s Batman, he will return in “The Batman Part II.” “The Batman” was also outside of the DCEU continuity, but was well-received by both critics and audiences with an 85 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a worldwide gross of $770 million.

The project I’m personally most excited for is “Swamp Thing.” This will be a horror movie based on the titular Swamp Thing, a humanoid creature made of plants. I’m a massive fan of the character, and the thought of mixing the horror and comic book genres is very intriguing.

The DCEU failed because it tried to follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe formula. In reality, the two properties differ greatly. Marvel heroes are more human. They have powers, obviously, but they tend to

be flawed and relatable, especially in the comics. Iron Man is a narcissistic alcoholic. Spider-Man is a broke teenager, and Captain America is born scrawny and weak. They’re real people with real flaws, making it easier to empathize with them.

DC characters are gods. Superman, Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing, Martian Manhunter and many others are simply too powerful to identify with. This announcement sounds like DC has finally learned that they shouldn’t strive to emulate Marvel. Instead of pouring on the feels about how Batman and Superman’s moms share the same name, I now have hope that DC will understand that their characters aren’t relatable and embrace it. If they do, they can give us an epic saga of gods battling monsters that even Marvel never could. I have hope for “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters,” but it’s DC’s last chance.

Last month, DC Studios announced the first chapter of their upcoming new extended universe, with plans for 10 new projects. Vaughn Armour ’25 sees this as the studio’s last effort to shift toward a more cohesive cinematic universe.

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard ’26

Around the Herd: Feb. 8 to Feb. 14 in Amherst Sports

Slate Taylor ’25 Managing Sports Editor

Women’s Hockey

In the team’s only game of the week, Rylee Glennon ’24 scored two goals as the Mammoths defeated Suffolk University 2-0 on Monday, Feb. 13. With no goals in the first period, both of Glennon’s scores came in the second, one in the final seconds of the game. On the defensive end, Natalie Stott ’26 made 21 saves to secure her eighth shutout of the season. The Mammoths won 31 of the 51 face-offs and killed off both Suffolk power-plays while going one for 5. The Mammoths improved their record to 20-2-0 for the season and will face rival Williams on Friday.

Men’s Hockey

Amherst’s 41 shots on goal were not enough to avoid a 2-0 loss to Tufts University on Friday. However, on Saturday, Feb. 11, the Mammoths won 4-0 in a Senior Day shutout of Connecticut College. Senior Dan Dachille ’23 achieved 20 saves, while senior Evan Lichman ’23 scored the first goal of his career. The win placed Amherst’s season record at 14-5-3 overall, with a NESCAC record of 12-3-1. The Mammoths’ next game is against rival Williams on Feb. 17.

Women’s Basketball

Women's basketball team won two NESCAC games over the weekend, beating Colby 56-42 on Friday and Bowdoin 64-45 on Saturday. The weekend's second game featured a 24-point performance from guard Kori Barach ’25. The win over Colby moved the Mammoths to a four-way tie for fifth place with Bates, Bowdoin, and Hamilton, while the win over Bowdoin secured the sixth seed in the NESCAC Tournament. The Mammoths will play third-seeded Trinity on Saturday, Feb. 18, in the quarterfinals.

Men’s Basketball

During Friday night’s game,

Ryker Vance ’25 set a career record with 20 points, but ultimately the men’s basketball team lost 71-56 to Colby College. The following evening the Mammoths were able to finish their season strong with a 56-39 win at Bowdoin College. This was thanks in part to Will Phelan ’23, who scored a season-high 15 points despite only recently recovering from a month long injury. Amherst finished their season with a 10-14 record.

Men’s and Women’s Squash

The women's squash team won 6-3 against Middlebury on Saturday but lost 0-9 to Trinity on Sunday, Feb. 12. The men's team won 8-1 against Bates on Saturday but lost 0-9 to Trinity on the same date.

Women’s Swim and Dive

Over the past week, the women’s swim team competed at the 2023 NESCAC Championships, hosted by Bowdoin. They finished in third place with a total of 1107 points, behind Tufts who won with 1984.5 points and Williams in second with 1614.5 points. After winning two of the diving events, Sydney Bluestein ’25 was recognized as the NESCAC Diver of the Year. Additionally, assistant diving coach Kai Robinson ’09, was awarded Diving Coach of the Year for the fifth year running.

Men’s and Women’s Track

Over the weekend the track and field teams competed in events at the Middlebury Field and Track Meet and the David Hemery Valentine Invitational. The women's team won three events at the Middlebury and set a season-best time in the distance medley relay at the Valentine Invitational. Meanwhile, the men's team won four events at Middlebury and set times among the nation’s best at the Valentine Invitational. Six Amherst athletes qualified for the New England Division III Championships. The track and field teams will compete next Saturday, Feb. 19, in the Triangle Classic at Springfield College.

The men’s track team won four events at the Middlebury Field and Track Meet.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

The women’s hockey team won against Suffolk University, 2-0.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

The women’s basketball team won two NESCAC games over the weekend.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Captains Reflect on Alpine Ski Team’s Renaissance

Hedi Skali ’25 Managing Sports Editor

This past Sunday, Harrison Lundy ’25 slept in for the first time in six weeks. Every day since the beginning of January, he’d wake up at 6:30 am, stretch a little bit, and methodically wax his skis. Finally, he’d arrive with his teammates at Berkshire East, a ski resort an hour drive from Amherst, in an AAS van, by the time the lifts began moving at 8:30 am.

A year prior, Lundy, now captain of the men’s alpine ski team, could only have dreamed of this exhausting routine. Because of last year’s late start to the semester due to the sudden rise in Covid cases, the team participated in only one out of their three scheduled races. They didn’t even come back for the second day of that one race, nor did they have a single practice. The ski team, mostly composed of graduating seniors, had fun that day, but it was a casual atmosphere. In addition to Lundy, the five other freshmen (now sophomores) on the team at the time were James Knowlton ’25, Jack Dunham ’25, Sam Maynard ’25, Ziji Zhou ’25, and Nikash Kathuria ’25, and they all imagined a more rigorous future for

the ski team.

“I remember having this discussion after the race, we were all kind of standing around. We were saying how cool would this be? What if this was more serious, a more put together group, more of a team,” Lundy said. “And that was sort of like the beginning.”

Lundy was on skis only a year after he learned how to walk. His parents, avid skiers themselves, go skiing every year. Lundy’s father, an alum of the college, was a prominent member of the Amherst ski team when it was a Division II varsity sport, before the college cut funding for the team in the late 90s.

“I had always grown up with stories of the Amherst Ski team and its community and of all the great times that he had when he was here. I also had the privilege of meeting a number of his friends who were also on the team,” Lundy reminisced. “[Skiing] has always been a part of my life, something that's been a happy place.”

From the moment they left the mountain, Lundy and Dunham were on a mission to restore the ski team’s previous glory — to spearhead a ski team renaissance.

“For like, two hours, we're just

SWIM & DIVE

talking about like, well, how can we do this? What is preventing us from getting to the place that we want to be?” Lundy reflected.

After the seniors graduated, they named Lundy the new captain, and he brought Dunham on board with him. By partnering with the UMass Amherst ski team, they selected Berkshire East to be their practice mountain early in July, but Lundy and Dunham came upon many obstacles regarding the financing of the team.

“Skiing is an implicitly very expensive sport … And Amherst has funding policies that aren't very conducive at all to us operating,” Lundy noted. “[The] AAS has a long standing policy that [denies] fund[ing to] any clubs during academic recess, which means that for all of January, we were unable to access any money from [the] AAS and also from student activities; they follow the same policies. AAS paid for our season-long expenses like season passes, our mountain’s training fee, tuning kits, and other communal equipment.”

In order for the team to have a chance of petitioning for alternative avenues of funding, they had to show

they had dedicated interest. Their first meeting brought over 30 interested students, and as they got closer to the season they ended up having 22 dedicated athletes.

“After we didn’t really have any success going down the student activities route for the January only expenses” they had to find an alternative route. “[Student Activities] suggested the athletic department and the president's office. So we contacted both of them, discovered that there was an account available at the athletics department for us. And then with a lot of back and forth ended up ended up submitting a formal application to request funding from the President’s Office for like special circumstances.”

The team was able to secure funding that covered all of the team’s January expenses including race fees, lodging, and gas. While Lundy is unsure if they can maintain funding from the office in the future, it proved to be the perfect resource to support a high-caliber season this year.

Men’s Team Captain Nikash Kathuria ’25 commented on the palpable excitement the first time the team arrived at Berkshire East for

practice. “It felt exhilarating. I could tell the atmosphere was set up for a much more competitive season than last year,” he said. Lundy agreed, adding, “It was beyond any expectations Jack and I had only a year prior.” While getting a season was already in and of itself a success, the team proved to be extremely competitive. Both the men’s and women’s teams secured second place in their division, made up of 11 other teams. Women’s Team Captain Sam Maynard ’25 secured 1st overall individual in the division. While another women’s team captain, Lauren Dinhofer ’23, and Ahanu Youngblood ’25 each secured first overall individual in snowboarding — they will both be attending USCSA National Championships. Lundy suggested this was the first full season that the team has had in probably 10 to 15 years.

After a long year, Lundy not only set up a season, but an extremely successful one. His first Sunday sleeping in was bittersweet: “I'm exhausted right now. I know it's gonna be nice for like a week to have that weight off my shoulders, but as soon as that's over, I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”