Senior Profile | Noah Wheaton
Defending Equality, Across His Fields As a pre-med student, Noah Wheaton exemplifies active service for kind causes; his work with the Black Student Union and other groups has transformed Amherst, leaving a lasting impact on the frontier of equality. —Jack Dove ’23 When I sat down to talk with Noah Wheaton ’20, he recounted a story from when he was ten years old, trading Pokemon cards with his brother Sirus Wheaton ’23 at a Los Angeles summer camp; he heard a loud “pop,” and Sirus abruptly stood up, walking away with his hands on his head. Noah realized something was wrong when he saw blood staining Sirus’s head and hands — someone had thrown a rock and hit his brother square in the head. As a child who hadn’t even lost all of his baby teeth, Noah reacted with decisive, selfless passion and dashed to nearby counselors, instructing them to get medical help for his ailing brother immediately. “Even if I can’t do that much,” added Noah, “I was just trying to do anything possible to help.” Even now, it’s clear how Noah remains just as compassionate as he was back then, dedicating his past four years at Amherst to bettering the college community and pursuing an academic track that will prepare him to better the world, too.
L.A. Soccer Star A Los Angeles resident
from birth, Wheaton credits his athletic experiences for much of his character development from a young age. “Soccer has been the biggest way for me to figure out who I am; I figured out how to communicate with people and become a sociable person,” he said. Besides representing a platform for making friends, Wheaton thinks of the sport as an emotional escape: “I feel like the place where I have the right to feel comfortable in my own skin is through just playing soccer.” Perhaps his biggest fan is his teammate and brother Sirus, who considers Noah to be possibly the greatest player to have ever played for the Amherst Football Club (AFC). “He is better than a lot of the varsity players,” bragged Sirus. “He wins every ball and then goes in twice as hard for the next tackle or run. He’s a true offensive threat and someone you could always rely on defensively; he was the lifeline of the team.” Noah is a center midfielder, which is considered the most taxing and most involved role on the soccer field.
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He credits his leadership role on the field with building his confidence and helping him find a home at school. “It now very much feels like family,” reflected Noah.
Integrating Amherst Soccer was also a motivating factor for Noah to begin exploring the topic of racial equality. “Sometimes walking to a soccer practice with my club team, cops would pull me over,” said Noah. Noah has multiple memories of police officers stopping him on his walks to his private high school science lab “because I was a Black man on his phone that shouldn’t have been at a private school,” he said. Growing up, Noah found that, while he wasn’t necessarily too cognizant of being Black, other people were instead emphasizing his skin color to him. Wheaton recalls a fifth-grade classmate demanding him to “say the N-word,” simply because he was Black. Just as he felt a racial divide in his hometown, Wheaton also noticed separation within the Amherst student body.
Photo courtesy of Noah Wheaton ’20
Noah is well known for his smile and can-do initiative in matters concerning equality across and beyond the Amherst campus. “You can really see it where the parties are, as well as with the whole mixer dynamic,” he said, referring to mixers between athletic teams and other groups. The college is known for being extremely diverse relative to its peers, with a 56.2 percent non-white student body. However, Noah believes diversity doesn’t tell the whole story: “As much as Amherst says that we are diverse, the truth is we are not very inclusive.” It was this dichotomy between diversity and inclusivity that drew Noah towards the Black Student Union (BSU). With no simi-
lar group at his high school, Noah quickly joined the Amherst affinity group after his first meeting when he was a first-year. Ascending to the executive board (E-board) his sophomore year as the club’s treasurer, Wheaton took on multiple roles with the BSU before becoming co-president during his senior year. As president, Wheaton facilitated group meetings and provided inspirational leadership and direction to all members of the club. Many Amherst community members took notice of Noah’s efforts, including Professor of Psychology and
