Commencement 2021

VOLUME CL COMMENCEMENT EDITION

SUNDAY, MAY 30, 2021

AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

COMMENCEMENT CC Photo Courtesy of Maria Stenzel

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

Table of Contents SENIOR PROFILES

10

Natalie De Rosa Stewarding Stories, From Newark to Amherst

12 14

Jeremy Thomas “It’s a Beautiful Time for Change”

16

Manuel Rodriguez A Cultural Scholar with a Knack for Building Community

18

Joe Palmo A Star Seeking More of His Kind

20

Yaqui Montes de Oca Her Mission to Make Incarceration Humane

22 24

Bella Edo Pursuing Justice With a Passion

26 28

Margot Lurie Championing Justice, One Question at a Time

30

David Rosa Embracing Change and Building Community

Seoyeon Kim Transcending Fragmentation through Storytelling and Activism

Dylan Momplaisir A Builder of Software Stories and Community

Cy Nguyen Taking Life by the Reins

4 The Year in News

&

5 Snapshots from the Police Log

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Noah John Shaping the Future of Music Through Journalism

32

Braxton Schuldt A Future Neurosurgeon with a Cross Country Runner’s Heart

34

Sirig Gurung A Commitment to Curiosity, Compassion & Care Arielle Kirven A Daring Pursuit to See Beyond the Image Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet An Interdisciplinary Thinker and Empathetic Leader

46

Jea Adams An Astrophysicist Finds Her Space

48

Daniel Rendon Not Your Classic Story Arc Sarah Montoya How Family History Led to a Fulbright

50 52

Eniola Ajao The Noise Found in Silence

54

Olivia Gieger The Activist Behind the Byline

&

40 44

Enoch Shin A Teacher and a Storyteller

Fellowships and Scholarships

38 42

Ayo Lewis A Voice and Vision for Change

6

36

56 To Our Seniors

May 30, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 3

The Year in News

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AUGUST The fall 2020 semester began in an unprecedented manner. The 937 students who lived on campus were greeted with a Covid test and a 48 hour isolation period, with much of orientation taking place online and many classes held in tents propped up on the quad.

Meanwhile, professors designed new, online only courses, relearning how to teach through a different medium.

The college adopted a new anti-racism plan following the nationwide resurgence in the Black Lives Matter, the #ReclaimAmherst campaign and the @BlackAmherstSpeaks Instagram page, which highlighted injustices students have faced on campus. The plan, announced on August 3 by President Biddy Martin, made seventeen pledges, including reallocating funds from the Amherst College Police Department (ACPD), providing mental health resources to support Black students and implementing more bias-training for faculty.

Photo courtesy of Matai Curzon ’22

SEPTEMBER The Office of Residential Life (ResLife) transformed the duties of resident counselors (RCs), who are now called community advisors (CAs).

The CAs will receive increased compensation, more supervision and additional accountability. The changes come after the Organizer Team voiced grievances to ResLife about the RC position last semester.

The college has adopted a new Interim Title IX Policy in accordance with the Department of Education’s guidelines released in May. The changes limit the behaviors that qualify as violations of Title IX, with the college planning to expand its own policy to compensate for federal regulation.

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OCTOBER

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To limit the spread of Covid, the college took a number of health and safety measures, including holding some classes in tents.

Photo courtesy of Maria Stenzel

After the killing of Daunte Wright, the BSU coordinated a #BlackMindsMatter walkout and called, with the AAS, for the abolition of ACPD.

The college will implement an education studies major starting in the fall 2021 after the faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor during a faculty meeting on Oct. 20. Previously, the college was one of the only top liberal arts colleges to lack an education major or program and the only one in the Five College Consortium. “I was elated, delighted because I had been working with the students on this from the start,” Robert Siudzinski, program director, careers in education professions in the Loeb Center said. “I thought of all the students I had been working with since 2013 when I heard the news.”

NOVEMBER Following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in which now-President Joe Biden defeated then-incumbent President Donald Trump, students expressed a wide range of emotions, ranging from hope to confusion to frustration.

While most students were glad to see Trump leave office, many were also skeptical of Biden, and many were also worried about whether there’d be a peaceful transition of power.

The Association of Amherst Students (AAS) senate voted to change the current voting system to ranked choice voting (RCV) for all elections on Nov. 17. Under the RCV system, students may rank candidates one through five during AAS presidential elections.

In the event that a candidate does not earn more than 50 percent of the vote, the Elections Committee will hold an automatic runoff to determine the winner. Students may contest the proposed amendment for the next week by garnering 10 students’ signatures and submitting their petition to the chair of the Elections Committee.

JANUARY Over 800 students enrolled

in the college’s first-ever January Term courses. The program launched as a part of the general academic overhaul brought on by the pandemic.

FEBRUARY The college has transitioned to Workday to keep track of work hours for students and staff, replacing the paper-based system of ACData timesheets. The transition is part of the Business Improvement Group (BIG) initiative, which aims to both modernize existing administrative systems and simplify usage of such tools for the college community. A second phase, called Workday Student, will phase out ACData for academic purposes and will begin shortly, being projected to finish in two years.

A Covid outbreak at UMass Amherst, which contributed to cases from more than 1000 community members, rippled through the town, and subsequently to the college. Although the “bubble” remained intact, the spike posed a significant health risk to staff who live in town and students living locally off campus, groups which both saw small spikes in cases as well.

MARCH After three Black and/or international students were told to leave campus due to dining together during quarantine, over 200 students signed onto an open letter criticizing an apparent double standard wherein larger gatherings and parties on campus — mainly attended by students that were white, domestic and/or affluent — did not result in removal of students from campus. In response, the college issued additional communications clarifying specific expectations and consequences of violating Covid rules, and ultimately reversed the initial removal decision.

The college’s Asian and

Asian American community was devastated by the killing of eight people, six of whom were Asian women, on March 16 in Atlanta, Georgia. In an email sent the following day, President Biddy Martin condemned the hate and offered resources and support to community members. But after a year of elevated anti-Asian racism due to the pandemic, many students felt that it wasn’t enough, calling for more sustained action and change.

A Stop Asian Hate rally was held on the front lawn of Porter and Garman House on Saturday, March 27. The gathering of Amherst students, staff and faculty was part of a larger public

rally taking place across the street on the Town Common. Following the recent Atlanta spa shootings, the rally was organized to provide a space for AAPI women to speak about their experiences facing racism and sexism in their daily lives.

President Martin officially launched the Amherst College Bicentennial on Feb. 24, a two-fold initiative dedicated to analyzing the college’s past and setting goals for the next century. The 200th anniversary of Amherst College was most recently celebrated with a “Masked Mammoth Meetup” which hosted food from local vendors and live music. It is one of numerous projects associated with the Bicentennial.

The NESCAC announced that the member-institution presidents had reached an agreement in favor of a limited schedule of conference competition for spring sports.

The Mammoths ultimately participated in conference play for baseball and softball, golf, women’s tennis, track and field, and cross country.

APRIL In a letter to the college community on March 31, Board of Trustees Chair Andrew J. Nussbaum ’85 announced that the college will not be making any new investments in fossil fuel funds and will phase out

its remaining investments in fossil fuels by 2030. Students and faculty saw the announcement as a step in the right direction but demanded more immediate action to address the urgent problem posed by climate change as well as other sources of inequity, such as the prison-industrial complex.

Prompted by the recent killing of Daunte Wright by a Minnesota police officer, on-campus students rallied and remote students logged on for a #BlackMindsMatter walkout coordinated by the Black Student Union on April 13 at 10 a.m. At the walkout, students shared their perspectives and experiences of being Black at and

outside of Amherst, remembered victims of police brutality and participated in a teach-in on the history of policing. During the rally, the AAS joined the BSU in demanding that the college abolish the ACPD. MAY The college delivered the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to 336 students and 42 staff and faculty members on April 28 in a pop-up clinic set up in Coolidge Cage. The second dose was administered on campus on May 19.

The men’s baseball team swept Tufts to claim the NESCAC Championship for the fifth time in program history.

Snapshots from the Police Log September 24, 2020 10:56 a.m., Campus Grounds An officer took a report of two stolen “College Closed” signs. One sign was at the base of Tuttle Hill and the other sign was next to the bike path by South Amherst Drive.

September 26, 2020 8:56 p.m., Tuttle Farm An officer took a late report from a student. The student reported that while they were with a group of AC students on Tuttle Hill, an individual not affiliated with the College approached the group of friends and spoke against safety precautions for COVID-19. The individual left the area and did not have any further contact.

September 27, 2020 3:23 p.m., King Dormitory Officers and Student Affairs staff responded to an individual stuck in an elevator. The individual was released and there were no other issues.

October 7, 2020 11:11 p.m., College Hall Officers responded to a report of a bear on campus. The bear was monitored to ensure no one encountered it. The bear later left the area on its own.

October 10, 2020 4:31 a.m., Williston Hall An officer observed a group of students and an employee violating College COVID-19 policies. The group was sent

on their way.

5:08 p.m., Book and Plow Farm An officer took a report of swastikas carved into picnic tables. The tables were removed from the area.

October 17, 2020 2:26 p.m., Cohan Dormitory A toilet was accidentally broken.

November 1, 2020 8:16 a.m., North College An officer responded to a report of someone accessing locked, vacant rooms. It is unknown who is using these rooms at this time.

November 4, 2020 5:24 p.m., Frost Library Officers responded to a report of an individual climbing a wall. The individual stopped upon officers’ arrival and left the area without issue.

November 17, 2020 7:36 a.m., Appleton An officer took a report of a past burglary into a student’s room. The room was vandalised and an item was taken from the room. The student was later pushed by an individual involved with the incident.

November 20, 2020 10:24 p.m., The Octagon An officer observed a group of students near an access point to a roof area not permitted for use. The group dispersed upon the officer’s arrival.

December 21, 2020 9:02 p.m., Music Building An officer observed an individual attempt to steal a bicycle. The individual ran from the area and officers were unable to locate the person.

February 23, 2021 7:00 p.m., Johnson Chapel Environmental Health & Safety and officers responded to a report of a bat in a building. The bat was no longer in the area upon arrival.

January 26, 2021 11:31 a.m., New Science Center Officers, Environmental Health and Safety, and HVAC responded to a report of possible odor of fuel or propane. The odor was found to be food in a microwave.

February 26, 2021 11:45 p.m., The Quadrangle A CSO responded to a report of a party gathered in a tent. The CSO found alcohol and a group of approximately 50 people left the area upon arrival.

February 3, 2021 11:58 a.m., Memorial Hill An officer responded to a report of people sledding on Memorial Hill that refused to leave when asked by another staff member. The officer found the individuals were not affiliated with the College and they left the area without further incident.

February 7, 2021 1:04 a.m., Railroad Right of Way An officer spoke with three individuals that got lost while walking on the train tracks, not dressed for cold weather, and not wearing masks. The group was returned to their intended location.

February 14, 2021 9:10 p.m., Cohan Residential Life staff confiscated a table used for drinking games. The table is secured in police storage.

March 15, 2021 4:15 p.m., Alumni Gym An officer took a report of a stolen mannequin used for CPR training.

March 25, 2021 8:38 a.m., Valentine Residential Hall Officers responded to an event at the request of residential life staff and Campus Safety Ambassadors (CSAs).

There was an individual at the event being confrontational and refusing to wear a mask. The person ran away from the area upon the officers’ arrival.

April 2, 2021 8:44 a.m., Mead Art Museum An officer took a report of a rolling cart found on a rooftop. There were no other issues found.

4:48 p.m., Off-Campus Locations An officer responded to a report of four individuals smoking inside the fence of Amherst Farmers Supply. The group left upon the officers’ arrival.

April 19, 2021 12:19 a.m., Hitchcock Parking Lot An officer responded to a request from Residential Life staff to provide for assistance with a group of people continuously gathering after being told to disperse.

April 30, 2021 10:31 p.m., Greenway Tent Campus Safety Ambassadors (CSAs), Community Service Officers (CSOs) and Residential Life staff responded to a report of a large group gathered with music and Covid violations. The group was dispersed. Officers staged in the area in case their assistance was needed.

May 9, 2021 6:05 a.m., Mead Art Museum Officers responded to a report of individuals on the roof of a building. The officers assisted the three off of the roof.

May 13, 2021 10:04 a.m., Valentine Residence Hall An officer responded to a report of a bias-related incident where a racially offensive word was etched into a chalkboard.

May 15, 2021 1:12 a.m., Campus Grounds A CSO responded to a report of individuals trying to knock over a portable toilet. There was no damage and no one in the area.

May 30, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 5

Fulbright & Watson Scholars Watson

ENIOLA AJAO

A double major in English and computer science, Ajao looks forward to the chance encounters with strangers and unexpected opportunities for growth.

Ajao spent her childhood in Nigeria before immigrating to the United States. Her experience at a U.S. boarding school served as one of the inciting moments for her interest in nonverbal communication. Ajao found that her introversion was often conflated with the assumption that she was unable to communicate, even though she had a multitude of other means of self-expresion besides talking.

Since then, she has continued on a lifelong investigation of the misconceptions and value of noiseless communication and expression.

As a 2021 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Eniola Ajao will spend her year in three places around the world where communities engage in distinctive forms of nonverbal communication. She will be learning from those who play the traditional “talking drum” in Tamale, Ghana. After that, she plans to take lessons in corporeal dramatic mime and to interview mime students and street performers in France. While at her final stop in Bhutan, she hopes to explore nonverbal forms of communication from the local monastic community.

MARGOT LURIE Environmental studies major Margot Lurie plans to take advantage of her Thomas J. Watson Fellowship by traveling to as many as six different communities around the world including in Peru, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, the Philippines and South Africa.

The theme that connects these six locations — and which will ultimately serve as the frame of her exploration — is that each community she visits will have been the previous location of a mine that no longer functions. She is ultimately interested in investigating how the industry of extraction interacts with global power dynamics.

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This fellowship project stems directly from the interests and involvements that Lurie has engaged with on the Amherst campus. Lurie has often been drawn to questions about the intersection between the environment and institutions of power.

For her senior thesis, she investigated the relationship between environmental movements and Indigenous resistance movements in the southwestern United States.Further, Lurie helped spearhead the Amherst Sunrise Movement, which pushed for Amherst’s divestment from fossil fuels, which the college recently affirmed.

As Lurie translates her investigations of the environment and power to the international scale, she will look specifically at how the countries she visits are connected by their environmental industries.

Fulbright BENJAMIN ALIAGA Benjamin Aliaga looks forward to traveling to Taiwan next year for his Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program.

The anthropology, Asian languages and civilizations, and Latinx and Latin American studies triple major also plans to explore Taiwan’s LGBTQ+-friendly bookstores, theaters and social groups, along with volunteering for a nonprofit that support people living with HIV/AIDS.

EVAN DAISY With his Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, Evan Daisy — a biology and math double major — will head to Taiwan to build on his previous experiences supervising and teaching children.

As an active participant in various musical groups, Daisy looks forward to connecting with people in Taiwan through the universal language of music.

During his time in Taiwan, Daisy also aims to get involved in nature-oriented projects and explore the country’s conservation lands.

ABIGAIL OFFEI-ADDO Next year, English major Abigail Offei-Addo will be moving 13 time zones ahead to South Korea, teaching English under a Fulbright ETA. As a former homeschooler and a Sunday School teacher to 25 children, Offei-Addo also plans to engage with the Christian community in South Korea.

Her honors thesis about webtoons (comics that are ingrained within South Korean culture) will also inform her experience.

SABRINA LIN Sabrina Lin, an anthropology major and pre-med student from San Francisco, was awared a Fulbright English Teaching Assistanship, which she will use to volunteer at local health nonprofits in Taiwan.

The aspiring doctor is excited to gain the transnational perspective, language proficiency and relationship-building skills necessary for serving recently immigrated Chinese and Taiwanese Americans.

She is also interested in using the experience to further understand the origins of her Taiwanese mother’s worldviews.

LUKE WILLIAMSON Luke Williamson received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, which he will use to volunteer with a nonprofit in Saint-Denis, the poorest region in France.

The English major and former intern at the Mead Art Museum intends on pursuing a master of arts in French at Middlebury College upon returning to the U.S. and eventually a Ph.D. in art history.

SARAH MONTOYA Sarah Montoya, an environmental studies major, will travel to Lithuania next year on the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program.

Being both Lithuanian-American and Navajo, Montoya has future hopes of working in education as a professor of environmental history and to serve as both a mentor and an advocate for the Native student community.

Montoya especially looks forward to visiting a town in Lithuania where she has located her ancestry.

Photos courtesy of Amherst College

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Rhodes, Goldwater & Critical Language Scholars Rhodes

JEREMY THOMAS Jeremy Thomas is a double major in English and law, jurisprudence and social thought who will be headed to the University of Oxford this year as a Rhodes Scholar.

At Amherst, Thomas has also been a campus tour guide, a resident counselor, an alumni liaison in the Black Student Union, captain of the Mock Trial team and president of the Association of Amherst Students.

Thomas is Amherst’s first U.S. Rhodes Scholar in 15 years. Through his scholarship, Thomas plans to pursue two master’s degrees in Criminal Justice and Criminology and Comparative Social Policy.

“I have witnessed the law’s ugliness reflected in its instrumental brutalization, and also

how we may salvage its hope, justice, and mercy,” he wrote in his application.

Thomas has dedicated his time at Amherst to creating spaces for community members to productively engage on topics of systemic inequity.

He is a founding student director of the college’s Office of Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (OSDEI). Through his work with the OSDEI, Thomas has been able to localize his broad interests in restorative justice practices and equity education within the Amherst community. Thomas’ heavy involvement in the Amherst community has allowed him to see the college from a multitude of perspectives, which allows him to approach his advocacy from a multifaceted point of view.

After Oxford, Thomas will attend Yale Law School, continuing his investigation of how the law upholds systems of inequity.

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Goldwater HELENA TREIBER Helena Treiber is a double major in astronomy and physics. She started working in Professor of Astronomy Kate Follete’s research lab in the summer of 2019, as part of the college’s Science Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program. There, she “worked on some of the faintest and some of the brightest astrophysical objects,” but always “look[ed] for the connections between the two,” she wrote in her application for the Goldwater Scholarship.

In January 2020, Treiber also spent four nights in Tucson, Arizona working with telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. She now works remotely with re-

searchers at Yale studying Be/X-ray binaries. Both projects involve astrophysical objects gathering material in a process called accretion, which she will study further this summer in working with a professor at the University of Hawaii to search for galaxies that have supermassive black holes at their centers.

Treiber plans to pursue a Ph.D. after graduation and eventually become a professor of astrophysics. She is passionate about the teaching aspect of such a career as much as the research. Currently active on a committee that looks to increase equity and diversity in the college’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, she hopes to design courses that are not only engaging and instructive, but also accessible to students of all different backgrounds.

HYERY YOO Hyery Yoo had been a double major in chemistry and math when she applied for the Goldwater Scholarship in the fall, but a research opportunity brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic ultimately led her to change course.

Yoo’s earlier research experiences included conducting biochemistry research at the University of California, Berkeley, in the summer of 2019 and working in Professor of Biology Nidanie Henderson-Stull’s research lab, which she did until the pandemic sent students home in March 2020.

In the summer of 2020, Yoo had a chance to study the

novel coronavirus itself, working remotely with a bioengineering professor at the University of California, San Francisco, to develop ways to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells. The experience introduced her to computational biology, and her newfound interest in the field prompted her to switch to a computer science major in January 2021.

Her work last summer also made Yoo certain in her desire to pursue research as a career. “I realized that research satisfies my desire for a career that constantly challenges me and leads me to new realms,” she wrote in her Goldwater application.

This summer, Yoo will work with scientists at UCLA on bioinformatics research, before doing her senior thesis next year with Professor of Chemistry Jacob Olshansky.

Critical Language REID DODSON With her Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), Reid Dodson plans to immerse herself in Russian language and culture this summer.

The prospective Russian major from Charlottesville, VA, aspires to become a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. State Department. Dodson’s desire to study Russian stems from her background as a flautist.

“All three of my favorite composers are Russian: Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov,” she wrote in her application for a CLS. “I spent the summers before my last three years of high school at an intensive music institute. Like CLS, the experience was immersive.”

The intersection of Russian language and Russian music is a running theme for Dodson. She plans to use what she learns through the CLS program to read the titles of the sheet music of Russian composers.

As a first-year, Dodson spent her first semester on Amherst’s campus amid a host of safety protocols instituted by the college due to Covid-19. Still, she has managed to make the best of it by pursuing her passion for Russian in full force. As the state of the pandemic remains somewhat uncertain, the CLS summer immersion program will take place virtually.

Given Dodson’s demonstrated ability to follow her passions for language and music even while the environment around her is restricted, she will surely still be able to absorb the experience in a virtual setting.

Photos courtesy of Amherst College

May 30, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 9

Senior Profile | Natalie De Rosa

Stewarding Stories & Schools, From Newark to Amherst A deeply thoughtful journalist and a passionate advocate for social justice, Natalie De Rosa shines beneath her quiet demeanor.

—Ryan Yu ’22 By her own admission, Natalie De Rosa ’21 is a shy person. She isn’t usually the first person to speak up in a class discussion, or the type of person who spends her nights out at raging parties. But beneath her reserved demeanor, Natalie shines like no other. To her friends, she is tenacious, inspiring and kind. To her professors, she is thoughtful, curious and deeply generous. And to me, she is a mentor and friend who has formed the heart and soul of The Student for as long as I’ve been around.

I’ve had the privilege of knowing Natalie since my first semester at Amherst, when I stumbled into The Student’s basement Morrow office for the first time and took a seat next to her as she was busy laying out stories for the week. Admittedly, we didn’t interact all that much at first — she always seemed to be working on the task at hand with a dedication that I could only aspire to — but over time, I got to know Natalie for the wonderful person she is. On our Tuesday production nights, she would always ground us in a way that helped us get through the last few hours. When we worked on articles together, she would always bring a compassionate lens — as is characteristic of her reporting — that would add a new (and necessary) dimension to the stories at hand. At the most difficult times, she was a calming force, whose presence always provided the quiet leadership to resolve whatever complication had arisen.

There’s so much to be said about Natalie, and I could write pages about the various quirks that make up her personality or the stories that

have arisen from her time at Amherst. Still, as I write this profile, I hope to capture at least a snapshot of her story, as is only fitting for someone who has cared for as many stories as her.

A Newarker’s Way Perhaps one of the most essential facts about Natalie is that she was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, a place she loves and is proud to call home. She remembers some of her fondest memories from Newark, whether through walks from the dense city streets to the nearby parks or soaking in the “culturally and artistically vibrant” atmosphere that dominates the area.

In particular, Natalie highlighted the diversity of Newark as something she’s grown to appreciate and realized to have been uniquely formative in her upbringing, especially considering her current status as a Latinx first-generation, low-income (FLI) student.

“Most people who know me know that I’m from Newark, since I take a lot of pride from being from Newark,” she effused. “My mom is Brazilian, and I grew up in a heavily Brazilian and Latinx community at home, so being around people who innately understood that was something I didn’t understand as a valuable experience until I came to Amherst, where that wasn’t the case anymore.”

But living in Newark still had its challenges, particularly with respect to education. Although Natalie consistently sat at the top of her class, the public schools she went to faced persistent issues due to budget cuts and lack of control over operations.

10 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

For example, the math olympics team, of which Natalie was an active member, was shut down due to budget cuts.

During her sophomore year at East Side High School, these compounding issues came to a head after the institution was deemed a failing school and brought into the turnaround program, which would have meant longer school days, bringing teachers in for extra work for no additional pay and other major shifts in the school’s institutional structure: Policies that would’ve particularly harmed low-income students and students of color.

Having “an acute understanding of school as a place that breeds inequality,” Natalie knew that those policies would ultimately harm her community if enacted. So, building on the culture of activism instilled by her teachers and by Newark’s penchant for social justice, Natalie sprang into action, becoming an organizer for the Newark Students Union (NSU) in an effort to prevent her school’s redesignation. “It was through [the NSU] that we organized multiple sit-ins and walkouts, with over 2000 people attending them,” she said. “And ultimately, it was this sort of guidance from the NSU that led the district to reverse its policies, so my school wasn’t a full turnaround school by the end of the year.”

For Natalie, it was ultimately an instructive experience. “Of course I knew I wasn’t going to Exeter at that time, but to have something so drastic come face-to-face with your experience in ways that other people don’t tend to have, and really seeing how these policies manifest in per-

Photos courtesy of Natalie De Rosa ’21

Natalie De Rosa ’21 has, in many ways, been shaped by her home city of Newark, a place in which she holds a lot of pride. sonal ways, that was significant,” she reflected.

A Turbulent Landing at Amherst When it came time for Natalie to think about applying to college, she was in a stressful position. Coming from a high school where most students don’t ultimately matriculate to a postsecondary institution, she represented a beacon of hope in possibly being admitted to an elite university, due to her status as valedictorian and president of the student council.

“From really early on, I was primed to think, ‘I need to go to an elite school.’ And I think it was really that FLI ‘making it out’ atmosphere, where if I don’t go to Harvard, I’m disappointing my family, and I’m disappointing my high school,” she recounted.

Accordingly, in her junior year of high school, Natalie applied and was admitted to the Questbridge College Prep Scholars Program, a program meant to connect exceptional low-income students with elite colleges. In particular, at a conference that was part of the program, she attended a panel on liberal arts

colleges, which put Amherst in her mind as a possible option. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is exactly the experience I want,’ … but I also remember thinking ‘This is so perfect, but no one knows what Amherst is in my high school,’ so I was really hesitant to lean into that,” she noted.

When it came to her senior year, Natalie was still undecided. She felt particularly attracted to Amherst after attending the Diversity Open House (DIVOH) fly-in program, where she learned about Amherst Uprising, which had taken place a year prior. Ultimately, after becoming a finalist in the Questbridge National College Match and facing a rejection through the program, she received an email from Amherst inviting her to apply early decision irregularly, and then, realizing it was indeed her top choice, she took the leap — and was admitted.

Arriving at Amherst was a big culture shock to Natalie. In her first year, although she struggled to keep up academically, she still “looked at things through rose-tinted glasses,” chalking the difficulties up to the transition from high school to

Senior Profile | Natalie De Rosa college. But when those challenges persisted into her sophomore year, she was demoralized. “At that point, I couldn’t use the fact that I was a first-year as an excuse,” she recalled.

“I remember thinking, ‘I’m still having a hard time speaking up in class and writing my papers. I’ve been at Amherst for a full year; why am I still struggling?’”

At the same time, Natalie took a class called “Schools, Poverty and Social Policy,” which she cites as being particularly influential in shaping her perspective. “Taking that class concurrent with all the things I was feeling sophomore year was just so powerful for me because I was able to historically explain my high school experience and why I’m struggling so much at Amherst,” she said. “It changed my understanding: How do I find my way, academically and personally, in a school that wasn’t designed for someone like me?”

Also in her sophomore year, Natalie became much more active in the college’s FLI community, becoming vice-president and eventually president of the QuestBridge Low-Income Community, and speaking more actively about her positionality, her FLI status and her resultant

trials with bodies like the Center for Diversity & Student Leadership. “It was really demoralizing, but it was also empowering to know that I’m a FLI student at Amherst: I’m here, and I exist,” she noted.

Storytelling and Identity All that while, Natalie had also immersed herself in The Student, wanting an outlet to be able to write.

But, although she made her way up to becoming a news editor, many of the same challenges she faced more generally reappeared at the newspaper.

“I didn’t come from a high school with a journalism program, and — this is less true now, but especially when I started — most people had come from high schools with really strong journalism programs, they had done journalism programs over the summer,” she explained. “It was a really intimidating environment to come into as someone with no journalism background or experience at all.”

Still, as she spent more time with it, she slowly became acclimated to just what news could do and gained confidence in her abilities. That, combined with a new willingness to

Photos courtesy of Natalie De Rosa ’21

Natalie reporting on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s visit to Amherst in early 2019.

integrate her identity into her investigations, ultimately culminated in her two proudest pieces: a four-part series (co-written with then-editorin-chief Shawna Chen ’20) analyzing the state of Amherst admissions and the experiences of FLI students in wake of the 2019 college admissions scandal, and an investigation into some faculty members’ opposition to an affordable housing unit, the latter of which prompted widespread discussion and activism on campus.

“While it was very important to elevate [the stories of FLI students] on a journalistic level, it was really valuable to me personally. Being able to listen to them for six hours on a Saturday, it made me feel so seen.

I’m not the only one having a hard time here; you’re saying exactly what I’m feeling,” Natalie recalled about her experience investigating the admissions scandal. “And I think that was one of the first times where I was like, ‘this is what journalism can do.’ If this is how I’m feeling as a reporter, how might people who are reading these stories feel?”

For Natalie, those stories became the lynchpin of her philosophy on journalism: Journalism is fundamentally concerned with stewarding and nurturing stories, and enacting change based on them. “My experience [with journalism] isn’t about accolades or accomplishments; it’s really about the people who’ve entrusted me with their stories and let me talk to them for extended periods of time,” she stated. “I don’t take lightly that people have shared with me some very vulnerable things that they’ve experienced at Amherst, and I’m forever grateful to have been able to steward those stories and share them — hopefully well.”

She held fast to these ideas as she was promoted to editor-in-chief in the spring semester of her junior year, with a number of specific goals at hand, including diversifying The Student and making journalism more accessible through a number of media literacy workshops and events. For the first while, things were going swimmingly.

And then Covid hit.

Back to Newark “That spring was so hard. I could not study at home. I was just so upset with the way the semester was going out; I could barely finish my classes,” Natalie recalled, speaking about the spring semester where students were sent off campus due to Covid. “And meanwhile, all the people I had classes with were at their parents’ vacation homes, or on the beach, and they were talking about how easy the semester was, while I was just trying to pass.”

Natalie had been thriving in her junior year. She had finally settled into her academics; after deliberating between English and history, she had decided to embrace being a history major, with a focus on social history and education studies; and she had a number of coming plans for both The Student and for a possible senior thesis in history. But being forced back home threw all those things in the air.

For The Student, Natalie and co-editor-in-chief Olivia Gieger ’21 ended up redirecting their time to moving content online and to covering the myriad angles of the Covid crisis.

As Natalie wrote in her farewell letter, “In a year clouded by immeasurable loss and suffering, tuning into what’s happening on our campus and in the world at all times is emotionally exhausting. Pair that with writing, editing, keeping up with finances, checking in on the paper’s digital platforms, emailing back and forth with students, administrators and everyone in between, running The Student over the past year has felt like an impossible task.”

Still, despite having a few things inevitably slip through the cracks, they managed to stabilize.

For her academics, the prospect of doing a thesis was now uncertain.

Due to the increasing difficulty of the pandemic, Natalie was unsure whether she’d even be capable of finishing such a project. But after a conversation with Professor of Black Studies and History Hilary Moss, who suggested that, being at home, she should write a thesis on Newark, Natalie became a bit more receptive to the idea. Despite not wanting to be

pigeonholed as “the Newark girl” or to appear as too biased by choosing a personal topic, Natalie eventually overcame those barriers thanks to Eve Ewing’s “Ghosts in the Schoolyard,” a work conducted in similar circumstances and on a similar topic as hers. Natalie ultimately settled on the tension between the concepts of “community control” and “local control” in Newark schools, a topic that was indeed near and dear to her.

“The process of writing a thesis was a lot harder than it normally would be, and I feel like most of the process just sucked. I’d be sitting at my computer, thinking ‘I don’t even know if I can finish this thesis,’” she reflected. “But I think Professor Moss’s encouragement, that I should write about a place that is familiar to me and that is important to me, really helped. Especially at the end, when I was starting to see it come together, I was like, ‘This is so cool.

I feel like I actually understand a little bit more about the place I come from and about the experiences of the people before me, who have really shaped the city I grew up in and came to know.”

Finding Her Way Now that she’s graduating, Natalie is relieved. Although she doesn’t have anything lined up immediately after college, she is glad to be able to take a breather after such a tumultuous period.

“As an underclassman, I always thought that if I didn’t have a job by the time I graduated, that was a failure on my part. That’s just not true for me right now, and I’m really grateful for that,” she said.

“This summer is going to be the first summer I’ve had since high school where I’ve done nothing: no jobs, no internships, no summer programs, no research. Right now, things are uncertain, and it’s really liberating to not have anything lined up and to have my future be up for grabs.”

Indeed, where Natalie goes from here is uncertain. But if nothing else, it’s difficult to imagine that her caring determination won’t carry her far, or give her more stories to steward, or obstacles to overcome.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 11

Senior Profile | Jeremy Thomas

“It’s A Beautiful Time for Change” The most extraordinary thing about Jeremy Thomas is not his solemn understanding that there are violent histories playing out around him — it’s that he has never waited to act on his visions for change.

—Samantha Spratford ’24 Even before interviewing him over Zoom, the face of Jeremy Thomas ’21 was already familiar to me. Out of all the political science lectures and panels I’d attended, it was rare if I didn’t see Thomas’s name somewhere on the screen. Most of the time, in fact, his name was front and center. Effortlessly put together in a jewel-toned polo shirt and blackrimmed glasses, Thomas was often a mediator or a featured guest giving advice to younger students.

He laughed when I told him this at our interview, and from that moment, I knew that my sense of intimidation had been unwarranted. Despite his warm demeanor and the fact that he self-identifies as a “rambler,” I still felt nervous talking to him. Just like Thomas, I hope to pursue a career path which allows me to “resist the U.S. criminal legal system and the violence it perpetuates.” But these are his words, not mine.

I spoke to one of Thomas’ close friends Maya Foster ’23, who initially met Thomas last year when he served as her Community Advisor (CA). She, too, mentioned that Thomas seems eternally “put-together” — and yet, as Foster put it, “He is a person, not just an idea.” She recalled one long evening spent in their common room, debating over who was the greatest rapper of our generation. I understood her perfectly when she described Thomas as dualistic: human and playful, and yet extraordinary in his accomplishments.

Thomas is the epitome of

what I and many other students interested in legal and political studies hope to achieve. He was one out of only 32 people in the United States to receive the 2021 Rhodes Scholarship, which entails a full ride to Oxford for postgraduate studies. Thomas will be spending four years at Oxford to earn a Master of Studies (M.St.) in English and American Studies along with an M.St. in US History. After that, he will attend Yale Law School — perhaps one of the most prestigious law schools in the world.

John E. Kirkpatrick 1951 Professor in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought Adam Sitze served as Thomas’ thesis advisor and taught him in multiple courses. He praises Thomas extensively on the “extraordinary daring, verve, truth, and imagination” expressed in his writing.

“Jeremy reads in the way that students used to read before cellphones were invented. He chases down footnotes, he nurtures doubts and harvests open questions, he keeps a thought-notebook, and he listens to his gut feelings,” Sitze effused. “This is part of the reason why he writes with such originality.”

On top of his academic achievements, Thomas has continuously created positive change within Amherst’s institution and community throughout the past four years. It took everything in me not to just blurt out, “How did you manage to do all of this?”

Over the course of our 90-minute conversation, my question was

12 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

gradually answered — by his eloquence, creativity and deep passion for bettering society.

Grounded in Law, Wading in Histories Thomas is from Missouri City, a seemingly ordinary suburb of Houston, Texas. But, over quarantine, the discovery of a sugar purgery by an archaeologist revealed a shocking past that had been lying dormant underneath the manicured lawns of Missouri City: The land Thomas’ family lives on was once just a small part of a sprawling sugar plantation.

“It’s what Toni Morrison meant by her writing of Beloved — she wanted to memorialize the violent histories layered on the ground beneath our feet,” Thomas said. “And, in spite of repression, history always emerges.”

Years earlier, Thomas had attended high school on that same land. It was a public magnet school with a focus on global studies, and Thomas graduated with an interest in pursuing a career in international human rights law.

“Like Amal Clooney,” Thomas laughed. “She’s amazing.”

“My ‘tagline’ in my college applications was that I wanted to explore the relationship between narrative and the law,” Thomas explained. And, typical of the depth and coherence of his accomplishments, Thomas is graduating Amherst with a double major in English and law, jurisprudence, and social thought (LJST). “My English major gave structure to exploring the abstract

Photos courtesy of Jeremy Thomas ’21

Thomas has spent college giving back to the Amherst community and has a future of change-making ahead. concepts communicated through narrative, and the LJST major sort of grounded these questions,” Thomas elaborated. “The active translation between the two has been a really generative experience. And it will hopefully turn out to be fruitful, as well, once I get to Oxford.”

Specifically, Thomas noted three courses which invigorated this process of “translation.” The first was called “Black Speculative Fictions,” taught by Professor Marisa Parham, now a tenured faculty member at the University of Maryland. “She is quite easily the smartest person I’ve ever met,” Thomas enthused, “and that doesn’t even do her justice.

If there are words to capture how that class changed the way I think about the world, I don’t currently have them.” The other formative courses Thomas noted were “Introduction to Legal Theory” and “Apartheid,” both taught by Professor Sitze. “I’m lumping those two courses together because they

did two specific things in common,” Thomas explained. “They both seriously interrogated the category of ‘the law’, really questioning that label instead of taking it for granted. And then that segues into a realization that the changes in ‘the law’ as a category guide the direction of history.

With this idea in mind, you can look at an event in history and realize that it didn’t have to happen that way.”

I began to see how Thomas’ interests in English, law and history coalesced into one coherent passion. But I was still curious as to why and how Thomas had shifted his focus from international to domestic work throughout his time at Amherst. The answer was rooted in a few formative internships, serendipity and — of course — intimate histories.

Recognizing Injustice On top of the rich history grounded in Thomas’ hometown, his own family carries a complex

Senior Profile | Jeremy Thomas history — one which is not tethered to the land in Missouri City, but rather, reaches across the United States’ time and space. “Being back home in Texas feels like a return to the South, in terms of my family,” Thomas reflected. “My great-great-grandparents were born and raised on plantations.

Then, my maternal grandfather’s family came from Arkansas. And both of my paternal grandparents are from New Orleans.”

Just as Thomas learned that the law informs the windings of history, he also knows that the time and place into which a person is born informs the available opportunities, which informs their whole life.

“Thinking about the fact that I had family members three generations back who were enslaved, and then comparing that to my own experience — it’s a really stark difference. When I was younger, it struck me as uncomfortable, but now it just strikes me as … so unbelievably random,” Thomas expressed. “I have cousins who have been incarcerated. They came from the same grandparents, and yet their life trajectories are so dif-

ferent. The criminal legal system fabricates our understanding of — for lack of a better word — ‘good choices and bad choices.’

I just happened to be born in a place and time where the ‘good choices’ were available to me.”

It is clear that Thomas has a profound understanding of his personal interconnections with history’s randomness and the criminal legal system’s arbitrary exercises of power. Casting off from this bedrock, he completed several internships which rendered concrete his passion for resisting this systemic injustice. All three involved working with attorneys to provide representation for those who fell victim to chance and the specter of “good choices”.

With each successive internship, Thomas felt more and more certain that he wanted to devote his life to “fighting the violence of the criminal legal system.” The summer before his junior year was particularly influential: Thomas did investigative work for attorneys at the Southern Center for Human Rights.

“A lot of those were felony cases,” Thomas elaborated, “and

some were even life without parole or death penalty cases. It involved some really intense conversations, but it enabled us to get to know these individuals in a way that the criminal legal system typically doesn’t allow for.”

Thomas went on: “We would have to ask these really asinine questions, sometimes — saving someone’s life in this system doesn’t depend on questions of justice, it depends on calculations of ‘innocence’ or ‘guilt’. The nicest word I have for those experiences is ‘frustrating’ … but it’s also necessary.”

Thomas grimaced, and then inhaled.

Advocacy at Amherst The most extraordinary thing about Thomas, though, is not his solemn understanding that there are violent histories playing out around him — it’s that he has never waited to act on his visions for change.

“Throughout my childhood, my parents would always repeat these few specific phrases to my siblings and [me]. The one that I think has been most consequential

Photos courtesy of Jeremy Thomas ’21

After weeks of momentous work, Thomas is pictured with his fellow interns at the Southern Center for Human Rights during the summer before his junior year.

to my mindset these past few years is: ‘We should always leave places better than when we came,’” Thomas told me. “The world is available to my siblings and I in extraordinary ways. But you can’t walk around with gratitude weighing on you — you have to actively pay it back.”

Thomas has more than “paid back” his gratitude to the Amherst community. Most recently, he served as the president of the Association for Amherst Students (AAS). In this role, Thomas helped catalyze the movement throughout the Five Colleges to officially recognize that the consortium is situated on Nonotuck land; he also played a part in beginning the “Amherst Acts” donation match campaign, and he was able to participate in the conversations involving the defunding of the Amherst College Police Department. Outside of student government, Thomas served as the founding director of the Office of Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, focused on improving the wellbeing of all students through equity education and restorative justice. Thomas was also a captain of Amherst’s Mock Trial team. But despite the many roles Thomas has held, he explained that these community-based leadership experiences complicated his understanding of “advocacy.”

“For me, being able to see both the student and administrative sides of the institution solidified the idea that ambivalence can be just as destructive as bigotry,” Thomas stated bluntly. “When you’re working to create change, the most important thing is to have living principles, so that you have the tools to push through bureaucratic resistance. It just comes down to the fact that representatives must also be advocates.”

Foster reaffirmed Thomas’ commitment to authenticity and morality, telling me that Thomas is “kind and thoughtful to his core.”

“Jeremy is the definition of ‘kind but not nice’. In his advocacy and activism, he is not at

all afraid to say what makes people uncomfortable — because he knows that that’s the only way change will happen. And yet, he has an extraordinary capacity to read the room and communicate in a productive way, without faking it. It’s exactly how he treats his friends, too: with kindness-driven-honesty. He’s truly a people-oriented person.”

Serendipity Before we parted ways, I asked Thomas to sum up his experience at Amherst in five words or less.

Though I thought this would be a difficult question, there were only a few moments of silence before Thomas confidently gave me just one word: “serendipity”. This word permeates everything from his friendships, to his academic direction, to his understanding of his place in our society.

As Thomas elaborated on his reply, he seemed to wander through these past four years, using the word “serendipity” as a trail marker. “I met Arielle Kirven ’21 on my creative writing LEAP trip during my orientation. She has helped me make it through these past four years,” Thomas said, smiling. “My thesis was called ‘Ida B. Wells, Lynching, and the 14th Amendment,’” he laughed, “and I know those three things seem so random to put together! But you need to interrogate what seems random to find hidden connections; that’s how my brain works.”

Between now and the fall — when Thomas will head off to Oxford — he’ll probably be listening to podcasts (he recommends “Still Processing”), taking his dog for long walks and finding joy in the serendipity of everyday life with his friends and family.

“I’m so looking forward to seeing how Amherst students will continue the legacy of improvement started by Charles Hamilton Houston,” Thomas expressed, “because the moment we live in is a terrible time, but it is also a beautiful time for creating change.”

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 13

Senior Profile | Seoyeon Kim

Transcending Fragmentation via Storytelling & Activism Through exploring aspects of her own identity, Seoyeon Kim has leveraged her experiences to advocate for the Asian American community as she leaves a legacy that will continue to inspire.

—Skye Wu ’23 I met Seoyeon Kim ’21 through Zoom in “Non-Fiction I” last semester. In addition to being impressed and inspired by her beautiful writing and brilliant insights, I also felt an indescribable closeness to her. Despite seeing her only through the rectangle on my computer screen, she became full and vibrant in my mind. In class, Kim listens and responds with deliberation and thoughtfulness. She writes with delicate strokes and brutal honesty. It was hard not to see her as someone I could trust, confide in and learn from both inside and outside the classroom.

I met Kim for the first time in person when interviewing her for this piece. She was in a sage-colored mini-dress with a white knitted cardigan loosely tied around her shoulders. It felt like we had already known each other for a long time. It’s always gratifying when Zoom faces are finally brought to life right in front of you. But with Kim, it was more than that. In an hour-long conversation amid the New England summer breeze, I was able to get a deeper glimpse into the tremendous depth of her character, her strength and her grace. And on top of that, I gained a new friend.

Finding Her Voice at Amherst When the college asked Kim to put down hometowns for her graduation slide, she didn’t know what to put. She was born in Korea, moved to Maine when she

was seven years old and lived there up until she relocated to Singapore to attend an international high school. Now her parents live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she will be off to New York City after graduation.

When living in her predominantly white neighborhood in Maine, Kim was one of two Asian students in her entire school. “My whole elementary school, middle school years were spent trying to pretend like I was also white,” she said. Things didn’t change after she moved to Singapore because she still hadn’t had the opportunities to discuss and reflect on identity-related topics.

In the personal essay she wrote in her application to Amherst, Kim reflected on the feeling of not having a home. But while being asked “Where are you from?” still throws her off today, her 4 years at Amherst have changed the way she approaches the question. “I moved on from thinking of [the question] in binary terms,” Kim said, her face glowing. “I think the classes that I’m taking really helped me explore that question. I’m taking a class right now called ‘Narratives of Migration and Transformation.’ Multiple people in that class have the same problem [as I do]. And I feel like in that togetherness, I’ve been able to find something that makes me feel stabilized even when I’m moving all over the place everywhere.”

Learning about her history allowed Kim to realize that her ex-

14 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

periences were not only valid but also valued. The Asian American studies classes she has taken at Amherst have ignited and deepened her reflection on her identity. “Those courses gave me the language to actually say things that I’ve been wanting to say all those years, and think about things that I wanted to think about,” Kim said.

Translating Self-Discovery into Activism Through learning about and exploring her identity as an Asian American woman, Kim recognized the value in herself and her voice. Beyond self-discovery, she has continued to translate her newly-found strength into relentless activism.

As a former senior chair of the Asian Students Association (ASA) and member of the Asian Pacific American Action Committee (APAAC), Kim has been a leader, a mentor and a tireless advocate for increased attention to and resources for Asian American Studies at the college. Her commitment to fighting on behalf of her community and her own identity demonstrates her courage in finding her own voice, as well as her passion for uplifting others’ narratives.

Kim recalled that, as a freshman, she felt out of place in the Asian American community at Amherst because not having a chance to explore her identity before college made her hesitant to join in spaces such as ASA.

Photos courtesy of Seoyeon Kim ’21

Seoyeon Kim ’21 wrote a critical-creative hybrid thesis in the English department exploring how dislocation affects a sense of self.

Equipped with the language she gained from the Asian American studies courses she began to take at Amherst, however, Kim gathered enough confidence to go to ASA meetings and eventually take on the position of vice chair in her junior year, before becoming senior chair the following semester.

“She definitely knows how to leverage her voice and advocate for herself and advocate for others,” said Mica Nimkarn ’24, the current vice chair and upcoming senior chair of ASA, “She’s taught me how to be better at voicing my own opinions.”

Leading ASA amidst a pandemic and escalating anti-Asian racism was not easy. Organizing events and maintaining effective communication were especially challenging, but Kim remained proactive in her support of other community members. “She is a very warm presence,” said Sung Kwak ’22, current senior chair of

ASA and Kim’s vice chair. “She makes light of not-so-great situations with her great sense of humor.”

As an inspiring leader and mentor, Kim also takes care of her community. “She was one of the first people to reach out to me and other people who are in ASA [after the Atlanta spa shootings], just letting us know that it’s okay to take time for ourselves as leaders,” said Nimkarn. “She supported a lot of us through that.”

Kim’s dedication to uplifting Asian American voices is undeniable as her humility and thoughtfulness shine through.

Breaking Through Academically As a sociology and English double major, Kim has developed her own narrative as an Asian American woman and sought to challenge her perspectives of the self and the society through her academic career. The course “In-

Senior Profile | Seoyeon Kim troduction to Sociology” opened her eyes to the ways of thinking that relate personal issues to public issues. It was also illuminating for her to learn about how rigged the elite education system is in the U.S., which propelled her to major in sociology.

In her sophomore year, she took “Narratives of Suffering,” a course that transformed her perspective of what writing could be like and ignited her desire to major in English. It allowed her to abandon her preconceived notion that there was a certain shape that you had to fit your writing into in order for it to be considered as academic writing and let her pen go free. “I felt so liberated writing in that way, and I just couldn’t forget that feeling,” she said. Kim continued to seek out courses that challenged aspects of her identity and shaped her ways of creative expression. For example, in “Decolonial Love,” she reflected on and wrote about the experiences of marginalization and racializa-

tion and their connection to imperialism and colonialism.

The combination of sociology and English allowed Kim to tell stories through both personal and social lenses. “I always think about the context as a sociologist, but it’s not distancing like how academic writing is sometimes,” she said, “Literature lets me get close to the experiences without forgetting about the social context.”

For her thesis, Kim experimented with the relationship between critical and creative forms.

Her project explores how dislocation affects the sense of self, challenging and complicating the Western frameworks of the self through the examination of Asian American literature. “I always thought my feelings of disembodiment and dissociation were a bad thing. And then, through taking those English seminars, I got closer and closer to asking the question: what if dissociation could be thought of as a strange gift?”

Turning the feeling of frag-

mentation and emptiness into a space for possibilities and potential, Kim’s hybrid critical-creative thesis also includes her own creative work on the struggle to feel real, dissociation and reaching toward feeling pulled together.

“Seoyeon has truly embraced the hybridity of ‘creative/critical’ format,” said Professor of English Amelia Worsley, Kim’s thesis advisor. “She arranges her argument so that paragraphs slowly transition into a series of fragments that mimic the fragmentary, cinematic method that [Theresa Hak Yung Cha, the writer whom she analyzed,] engages in.”

Moving Forward Until Kim received her honors recommendation for her thesis, she did not know what Latin honors were. She FaceTimed her mother and her mother’s first words to her were: “What’s summa cum laude?” She spent an hour on the call explaining

what it was. The generational gap between immigrant parents and their daughter did not deter their connections. “I think there’s something beautiful in the way that we’ve managed to communicate despite all those gaps,” said Kim. Kim has critically examined what it means to be a 1.5 generation immigrant through her experience at Amherst. She got to understand more of her own identity while serving a larger community through both leadership and storytelling. When asked what she would do differently if she could start her college career over, Kim said she would center herself in her decision-making more. “Self-questioning just never became a part of my life until I actually thought enough of myself to ask myself those questions,” she said.

Amherst has been integral to Kim’s self-discovery both personally and socially. Both inside and outside the classroom, “she

radiates independent energy,” said her friend Haley David ’21.

“Committed,” “powerful” and “uncompromising” are three words that have repeatedly come up when friends, colleagues and professors were asked to describe Kim. As an Asian American woman who has found her voice and continues to deepen her commitment for community advocacy, Kim leaves Amherst with an impact that will reverberate even after her departure.

After graduation, Kim will relocate to New York City where she will be working as a legal assistant at Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP, an employment litigation law firm. While law school could be the logical next step for her, she is still open to different directions for her academic and career path, such as going to graduate school for English. Although Kim’s future may be uncertain, she will certainly continue to lead, inspire and create far beyond her college years.

Photos courtesy of Seoyeon Kim ’21

Kim has actively engaged in a variety of activist initiatives, including coordinating a panel on Asian American feminism at the Center of Humanistic Inquiry.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 15

Senior Profile | Manuel Rodriguez

A Cultural Scholar With a Knack for Building Community A capable scholar with an impressive ability to connect with those around him, Manuel Rodriguez has all the skills necessary to achieve success as a researcher and educator.

—Liam Archacki ’24 Manuel Rodriguez ’21 has an incredible capacity to make those around him feel at ease. I know this from experience, having spent a sunny hour on the Valentine Quad chatting with Rodriguez about his four years at Amherst. Whenever Rodriguez speaks to others, his frequent smile and welcome affirmations relay an air of open-mindedness and an overwhelming sense of warmth.

An easy-going nature belies Rodriguez’ intellectual acuity, which emerges when he is engaged on his academic specialties — like his research into the role of religion in the identity formation of Latinx communities in the United States.

His eyes sharpen as he explains the intricacies of this topic, which has consumed his past two summers, culminating in a recently completed thesis.

Given that Rodriguez seems to possess the rare combination of both social and academic mastery, one would never guess that he has struggled with “impostor syndrome” — a persistent feeling of self-doubt despite his concrete successes. Only by taking advantage of Amherst resources — like the writing and quantitative centers — and by building bonds with professors and peers, particularly those who are also part of the first-generation, low-income (FLI) community at Amherst, has Rodriguez been able to realize his vast potential.

Path to Amherst Hailing from San Angelo, Texas, a town of around 100,000 residents located in West Texas, Ro-

driguez — from a first-generation, low-income background — has had a rather improbable journey to Amherst College. Up until his senior year, Rodriguez hadn’t heard of Amherst and had not considered attending college out of state. It was only after he received an email inviting him to apply to Amhert’s Diversity Open House (DIVOH) — now called Access to Amherst — that he considered the possibility of studying further from his home. Nevertheless, the financial burden of paying for an elite education — especially one with a sticker price as high as Amherst’s — weighed on Rodriguez’s mind.

“I remember I was a little skeptical at first because I had never heard of a school like Amherst, and seeing how expensive it was, I was like, ‘OK, there’s no way I can afford to go to this school,’” Rodriguez said. After he was accepted to DIVOH, which allows prospective students from underrepresented backgrounds to visit the campus, Rodriguez’s visit to the college allayed his concerns and cemented his desire to apply to Amherst. “It was a really great experience, just being able to see the school, learn about its open curriculum [and] learn about need-based financial aid. I think that was most critical for me … because my family didn’t have the financial resources to be able to help me, so I knew I was going to be mostly on my own,” Rodriguez recalled.

Rodriguez was accepted during the regular decision round and decided that the value of the liberal arts education was worth the toll of

16 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

traveling across the country. The significant distance meant that Rodriguez’s family could only accompany him to the airport in Austin, Texas. From there, he was on his own. With just two luggage bags in tow (supplemented upon arrival by visits to Target and Walmart), Rodriguez moved into the Amherst campus by himself — but he wouldn’t stay alone for long.

Making the Transition When he started out at Amherst, Rodriguez struggled to build a sense of comfort in his new environment. “For me, it was weird because I came from a public high school that was a little bit low-resource, and it didn’t really provide the proper training for a school like Amherst.”

Rodriguez credits the Summer Bridge Program — which provides three weeks of academic programming, in addition to other resources, to incoming FLI students — with helping to smooth his transition to Amherst. “That three-week program, where I got to meet other first-gen, low-income students, really helped me feel a little bit more community on campus,” Rodriguez said.

Allyah Pimentel Landestoy ’21, now a close friend of Rodriguez’, met him in Summer Bridge before their first year even began. She characterized Rodriguez as impressively disciplined, noting that he often wakes up at 6 a.m. to hit the gym. Pimentel Landestoy also remarked that Rodriguez has a rather eccentric personality. “The other day he was so invested in this

Photos courtesy of Manuel Rodriguez ’21

After Amherst, Rodriguez hopes to benefit the next generation of first-generation and low-income scholars. cop chase [on TikTok], and he was just watching it for 30 minutes until he realized that it was actually on loop, and he had been rewatching it,” she said between laughs.

During his first semesters, Rodriguez mostly constrained himself to math-based classes, in which he had excelled throughout high school. He harbored doubts, however, about his ability to succeed in classes that emphasized writing.

The now-Latinx and Latin American Studies (LLAS) major credits the influence of Professor of Sociology Leah Schmalzbauer — who has been his advisor, professor and research supervisor — as crucial in building both his academic skill set and self-confidence.

Schmalzbauer lauds Rodriguez’s diligence as a student as well as his capacity to care for those around him. “Since I’ve known him, he has been the person and the student who’s taken advantage of every opportunity that has come his way, and I’ve always appreciated that about him,” she said.

Schmalzbauer also noted that Rodriguez has been an “important leader” for younger students in his classes. She recalled a time when she intentionally placed a first-year who seemed reluctant to speak in a group with Rodriguez because of his ability to encourage others.

Despite his early successes, Rodriguez informed me that he endured a “sophomore slump” after he realized that he wanted to pursue LLAS and sociology, as he still had to finish courses in math and economics that were no longer engaging to him, while also dealing with difficulties back home. He was able to make it through this period by leaning on his family, friends and communities for support.

A Distinguished Scholar

Having overcome early roadblocks, Rodriguez was soon able to find his academic niche and achieve impressive success as a student. During his sophomore year, Rodriguez was selected as a Mel-

Senior Profile | Manuel Rodriguez lon Mays Undergraduate Fellow — a program that seeks to benefit students from underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in pursuing a career in academia.

Rodriguez told me that his time as a Mellon Mays Fellow has been incredibly valuable to his longtime goal of becoming a professor. “The program has been very impactful because it has given me the cultural knowledge needed to enter those spaces, learn how to navigate those spaces and feel more confident,” Rodriguez said.

As a Mellon Mays Fellow, Rodriguez explored research areas of

personal interest that would later become his senior thesis. Rodriguez comes from a Mexican-American background and describes himself as “culturally Catholic.” From his individual experience, Rodriguez was able to identify an under-investigated research topic: the role that religion plays in Latinx identity formation. For his thesis, Rodriguez localized that topic by investigating how religion influences the identities of Mexican-American students at Amherst College.

From January to March of 2020, Rodriguez was able to study abroad at Universidad Autóno-

ma de Yucatán in Mexico — an experience which allowed him to understand the country of his heritage in a new way. Rodriguez’s parents are from Durango, which is in Central Mexico, while Yucatán is in the southeast.

Rodriguez expressed appreciation that he was able to learn about the “cultural history” of the region and some of Mexico’s most “pressing issues.”Although his time abroad was cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Rodriguez found the experience valuable in his development as a scholar.

Having long wanted to become

an educator, Rodriguez will utilize the academic expertise he has gained at Amherst as he enters the sociology Ph.D. program (with an emphasis on Latin American studies) at the University of Notre Dame.

To secure a spot in his Ph.D. program, Rodriguez had to undergo the strange experience of applying during a global pandemic. Some schools weren’t even accepting Ph.D. applicants because of Covid-19, and Rodriguez was off campus during the fall semester, taking classes from his computer.

Nevertheless, with the help of his mentors, Rodriguez was able to compile a list of schools and gather the necessary materials to send in his applications. In total, Rodriguez applied to 14 schools and was accepted to six — a particularly impressive achievement given the competitiveness of this past admissions cycle.

Building Community

Photos courtesy of Manuel Rodriguez ’21

Rodriguez’ research as a Mellon Mays Scholar regarding the influence of religion on Latinx identity formation would become the basis of his senior thesis.

While Rodriguez has excelled as a student, perhaps his most impressive achievements emerge from his ability to bring people together. During his freshman year, Rodriguez applied and was selected to be a Diversity Outreach Intern — a student who works with the Office of Admissions to reach out to potential students from different backgrounds. Rodriguez values the connections he was able to make with prospective students as a result of this program.

“Some of them are students who do end up [attending] and so it’s always nice to see them, and some reach out to me and say, ‘The conversations I had with you really impacted me and influenced my decision to come to Amherst,’” Rodriguez remarked.

During his sophomore and junior years, Rodriguez was president of La Casa — Amherst’s Latinx culture house. His desire to help build a community for Latinx students motivated his decision to take on the leadership role. Rodriguez remarked that having the support of a group with a shared background was particularly valu-

able when his schoolwork was getting heavy.

Rodriguez has also contributed to the Amherst community through his musical talents. Having played bass clarinet and saxophone since middle school, Rodriguez has been a member of the Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble.

For him, music is both a form of self-expression and source of connection with other musicians. He recalled an open-ended jam session that Jazz Ensemble put on for first-years soon after he arrived on campus, which provided an ideal opportunity for bonding.

Beyond Amherst After he graduates from Amherst, Rodriguez will pursue a Ph.D. in sociology, focusing on Latin American studies, at the University of Notre Dame. His eventual goal is to become a professor in the field of Latin American studies.

As an educator, Rodriguez hopes to develop the next generation of first-generation and low-income students, crediting his own professors as inspiration. “I think the big motivational factor is the professors and mentors I’ve had in my time at Amherst. … Being firstgen and low-income, coming from an underrepresented background, sometimes I’ve been told, ‘Yeah, you are exceptional,’ but I want to get to a point where people like me that have those success stories aren’t rare or an exception.”

As a cloud drifted in front of the sun over the Val Quad and our conversation approached a close, Rodriguez imparted the following advice based on his time at Amherst: “As important as academics are in terms of your future, I recommend that you also be involved with your community and make the most of the time that you have with your close friends.”

Armed with the knowledge and relationships he has gained in his time at Amherst, Rodriguez will leave a lasting impact in the college community. He will go on to foster enriching cultural and academic communities at Notre Dame — just as he has done at Amherst.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 17

Senior Profile | Joe Palmo

A Star Seeking More of His Kind Joe Palmo exudes positive energy on the baseball field, during his astrophysics research, but most importantly in his daily interactions with fellow Mammoths.

—Jack Dove ’23 To the naked eye, a star is a beacon of hope, used by many as a guiding light in the sky.

The amazement some feel when stargazing is rooted in the idea that stars burn brightly enough to bring joy to those millions of miles away. The radiance of a star, however, can sometimes blind us from finding its individual planets in orbit. With a closer look, stars might be hiding worlds with new resources, life and talents.

The Mammoths who have spent time in an astronomy research lab, on the baseball field or simply enjoying a Val-sit with Joe Palmo will tell you that their first impression of Joe is the star-like warmth he brings to those around him. Teammate Kai Terada-Herzer ’21 raves about Palmo’s care for others, applauding the “great energy” he emits and calling him “one of the nicest people” he knows.

Upon first impression, many people at Amherst see Joe Palmo as a bright star because of his energy, kindness and humility he brings to each interaction. What his closest friends, coaches and professors will tell you is that if you zoom in on the telescope and look a little closer, you’ll find a series of unbelievable accomplishments orbiting around him that he’d only tell you about if you asked twice.

A Star is Born Before arriving at Amherst, Joe grew up in Austin, Texas; it was during those early days

when his family molded him into the kind-hearted individual he is today. “Big shout-out to my parents: they instilled in me a respect and kindness for everyone around me,” said Palmo.

Picking up his first baseball bat and basketball around six years old, Joe quickly fell in love with sports. “I was always a competitive kid,” Palmo noted. By the summer before his senior year at Westlake High School, Joe knew he wanted to play competitive baseball in college. “I wanted to go to a place I could play,” remarked Palmo, “but also wanted to do everything I wanted to do academically.” Joe knew that he wanted to “study something STEM-related, like chemistry or physics.”

Luckily for Amherst, Joe chose to visit the campus that summer and quickly fell in love.

Palmo liked how he didn’t sacrifice depth in his pursuits of strong baseball and academics.

“I was attracted to Amherst because of the history of the baseball program, the small school environment, the professors I met on my visit and the science center I saw being built,” he recalled.

Memorial Field Supernova On the field, Palmo quickly established himself not just as a force to be reckoned with, but a player who led the way through quiet, humble work ethic. As a freshman, Joe chose to cure any college adjustment nerves

18 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

with baseball. “My dorm was a 10-second walk to the field.

Tyler Marshall ’21 and I went down to hit and practice all the time. It was a good break from studying.”

Hard work paid off for Joe that year, as the Amherst baseball team marched all the way to the NESCAC Championship against Tufts University. In his first year, Palmo made an immediate impact, playing in 36 games as an outfielder and posting an elite batting average of .314. A starter in the championship game, Joe registered a hit, and Amherst came out on top to win the conference. In typical fashion, when asked about how it felt to start as a freshman on that team, Joe focused on the relationships he developed, and not the accomplishments he piled up. “I looked up to all of the seniors so much. We had some great leadership.”

Now, Palmo has racked up a 2018 NESCAC Championship win, a 2019 All-NESCAC First 1st team award and multiple NESCAC all-academic team selections as an elite outfielder for the Mammoths. Palmo’s achievements came in a career with a major coaching change and a pandemic-canceled 2020 season. Much to the credit of Head Coach J.P. Pyne, the Amherst administration and the NESCAC, the baseball team was able to compete in a shortened 2021 campaign, but still faced serious roster concerns, as only 19 players had returned to cam-

Photos courtesy of Joe Palmo ’21

Palmo has conducted research at Amherst, NASA, and soon at Boston startup QuantAQ through his data science role. pus, ten of whom were freshmen.

The biggest challenge for the Mammoths was that none of the team’s catchers were available, a position that requires a unique skillset, strong leadership and high baseball IQ. In a move that surprised all except those who know Joe well, he left his outfield glory behind to suit up at catcher for Amherst. “Without Joe volunteering to catch for us,” remarked Coach Pyne, “I have no idea what our season looks like.

During my three years with Joe there have been countless times where he has made a decision to put the team ahead of his own interests.” As team captain, his senior leadership helped instill confidence and work ethic in the younger Mammoths, driving the squad to yet another championship contest with Tufts. Joe launched a key home run and won NESCAC co-player of the week for his efforts that series, as Amherst yet again climbed to

the top of the conference, this time in dominant fashion.

While one might anticipate that players and coaches would rave about his quick bat and rocket arm, most consider those qualities secondary to his star-like energy in all interactions. Terada-Herzer sees Joe’s unwavering positivity as an uplifting force: “He’s always been a guy that roots for his friends and classmates regardless if we’re up or down.” Coach Pyne summed up Joe’s true star power: “Between his work ethic, his demeanor, his ability to connect with people and his intelligence, he is an amazing young man and I am proud that he will forever be associated with the baseball program at Amherst College.”

Data Science Outer Space

Meets

One might think the time commitment it takes to be an all-NESCAC athlete might be

Senior Profile | Joe Palmo too much to achieve at a similar level academically. Of course, this was not the case for Palmo, as he ended up completing a double major, a difficult internship and even a successfully defended thesis in his four years at Amherst.

Palmo’s path as a STEM-driven student began at Westlake High School, catalyzed by some “really, really good physics teachers.” His journey sped up at Amherst upon arrival, when he was assigned Professor Friedman of the Physics Department as his academic advisor, who convinced Joe to take “Modern Physics” as a freshman. While the work was challenging, Palmo viewed completing the class as an accomplishment that inspired him to dig deeper: “Having that trial by fire was big. I learned to start problem sets early, and I

felt that, after that experience, I’d got to finish the major.” Palmo then took a sophomore year elective that would alter his academic and professional trajectory, “Introduction to Astrophysics” with Professor of Astronomy Kate Follete.

That summer, through the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), Joe worked in Follette’s lab, where they searched for undiscovered planets orbiting stars. Because of the distance measured in lightyears and the blinding luminosity of stars, those planets are hard to see. Joe helped build models of stars with Python code, then subtracted those models from images of stars to find visible exoplanets. While his technical skills helped Follette make contributions to the scientific community, it was Joe’s appreciation

of the broader implications of each experiment that made his contributions so valuable. “Joe has an exceedingly rare ability to see quickly how specific physical concepts fit together into the ‘big picture’ of a phenomenon,” lauded Professor Follette, “and to draw intuition from these relationships.”

Those advanced research skills landed Joe a junior summer internship at NASA. Palmo’s research assignment focused on columns of air in the atmosphere. Under Dr. Donald Blake from UC Irvine, Palmo helped visualize air plumes through airborne plane data. Using that information, Joe was able to pinpoint the sources of those plumes to the ground, which was a key finding in the realm of atmospheric chemistry as air plumes can be analyzed to gen-

erate insights on air quality and pollution.

After one summer studying planets orbiting stars at Amherst and another visualizing atmospheric air data at NASA, Joe was ready to spearhead his own research and write his thesis. Using similar techniques to his past research, Palmo simulated observations of a specific star formation process. “I wanted to learn more about the uncertainty surrounding the process, and how accurate our observations are today,” said Palmo. His simulation can be used for planning observations in the future, and also to learn more about the formation mechanisms of stars. According to Follette, “His thesis is among the best that I’ve supervised, and is both an impressive intellectual achievement and an important contribution to the field of understanding how stars and planets form.”

Perhaps his largest academic contribution to Amherst has been the warm personality he brings to the library, research lab, and classroom. According to Joe’s peer Lena Treiber ’23E, “Even in the face of endless problem sets and exams, among other commitments, Joe can both work hard and maintain a kind and positive presence.” Students in the physics and astronomy majors even have a running joke about studying with Joe. “Work sessions often went for hours,” said Treiber, “despite him having quick intuition for physics and data analysis. He would always start and entertain random conversations, stories or insist on doing something ‘fun’ like drawing a perfect representation of an electromagnetic wave.”

The Next Frontier

Photos courtesy of Joe Palmo ’21

Palmo’s selflessness and leadership helped lead the Mammoths to two NESCAC baseball titles in his Amherst career.

Palmo’s next destination can be derived from an interest that spawned in high school, but flourished at Amherst: climate change and air quality. “I was always interested in climate change in high school, and I soon became aware of how big

of a problem it was,” reflected Palmo. After interning at NASA, where he conducted climate science through atmospheric chemistry, Joe was “completely convinced of how important the problem is, and how we really needed to act on it.” Joe will be applying his analysis and research skills as a data science intern this summer at QuantAQ , a Boston startup that builds and deploys low cost air quality sensors; the job couldn’t be a better fit, as it combines Joe’s quantitative skills with his desire to improve the others’ quality of life.

Stargazing When I mentioned his athletic accomplishments to those who knew Palmo from astrophysics circles or his astrophysics accomplishments to his teammates on the baseball diamond, the interviewee typically displayed surprise, but followed with an honest, “Well …… That’s Joe.”As a star at Amherst College, Joe’s warmth, energy and humility can initially blind those he interacts with from the all-NESCAC baseball awards and NASA internships orbiting around him.

Joe’s wisdom for incoming Amherst students, besides trying Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza at Antonio’s, is to branch out and dive into opportunities. “Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and work hard to achieve your goals,” advises Palmo, “Because there are plenty of people who are happy to help you at Amherst.” When asked about his own Amherst goals and successes, Joe went in depth about the strengths of his mentors, including Professor Follette, Coach Pyne, and Coach Odenwaelder.

It’s this constant, energetic uplifting of others through praise or through a smile that makes Joe a star. And while his orbiting exoplanets, from an All-NESCAC baseball swing to NASA-level research skills, are significant, the vibrant light of his character will shine most brightly on Amherst College for years to come.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 19

Senior Profile | Yaqui Montes De Oca

A Floridian’s Mission to Make Incarceration Humane Throughout her time at Amherst, Yaqui Montes de Oca has worked to uplift and to create spaces for others, and she hopes to continue this effort beyond her time at the college.

—Yasmin Hamilton ’24 On a typical day, you might find Yaqueline “Yaqui” Montes de Oca ’21 in room 018 of Keefe Campus Center, the Office of Student Activities. She’s worked there as an assistant to the Office Assistant for two years, and according to Student Activities Coordinator and Business Manager, Monica Soto, she has been “nothing less of a rockstar and a shining light.”

This sentiment likely follows Montes de Oca to the many communities and groups she invests time into. From the African and Caribbean Students Union (ACSU) to La Causa to the Center for Restorative Practices (CRP) to the numerous research positions she holds and her double major in psychology and Asian Societies, Languages and Cultures (ASLC), Montes de Oca is a very involved person on campus.

Although she is extremely accomplished and successful, what struck me about Montes de Oca during our hour-long conversation was how unfocused she was on herself. As Director of Student Activities Paul Gallegos said, “Yaqui is one of those unique individuals that can immediately create connections with others. Genuineness is talked about a lot, but you don’t really know what it is until you encounter it.”

Indeed, in every anecdote she told and every sentiment or aspiration she shared, the center of

the story was always to uplift others, and it’s that selflessness that always shines through in every facet of her personality.

Growing Up in Miami Montes de Oca grew up in Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban city within greater Miami.

Her mother immigrated alone from Honduras at fifteen, and her father immigrated with his family from Cuba when he was eight; neither had gone to college, making Montes de Oca a first-generation student. She grew up with a sister who is two years younger than her, and now attends Valdosta State University. Her parents separated when she was in fifth grade and eventually got divorced, but Montes de Oca maintains a relationship with both and always sees both when she visits home.

When I asked Montes de Oca about Miami, I could see her eyes light up as she described the city where she grew up with her younger sister and her parents.

“I’ve been there all my life,” she says. “The house I live in now –– I’ve been there since [I was] two and a half.” She went on to describe the things she does when she’s home: “I love, love, love, love going to the beach and finding new restaurants to try in Miami and just like, being outside.”

Montes de Oca’s experiences growing up in such a culturally diverse city heavily influenced her experiences at Amherst.

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Since almost everyone in Miami is Hispanic or Latinx, people identify with their nationality.

For Montes de Oca, moving to Amherst and having to use the umbrella term Latina was a culture shock, because “it doesn’t seem that people really know the diversity within that term.” Additionally, Montes de Oca says that “the culture being from Miami … all the schools I went to were always predominantly Black and Latinx, and I never went to a PWI [predominantly white institution] or even knew what a PWI was.” Although Montes de Oca loves Amherst and is glad to have studied away for college, she looks forward to settling in Miami or some part of Florida in the future to return to the warm weather and cultural diversity.

“A 180-Degree Shift” When I asked Montes de Oca about where she went to high school, she paused for a beat, laughed, and then said, “interesting” and proceeded to tell me about how she attended Law Enforcement Officers Memorial High School (LEOMHS) in Miami.

Anyone who knows about Montes de Oca’s current interest in fixing flaws within the criminal justice system might be surprised to find out about her experiences in high school. Montes de Oca joined the Homeland Security strand at LEOMHS and got certified as a 911 dispatcher. She

Photos courtesy of Yaqui Montes de Oca ’21

Montes de Oca plans to attend Florida State University in the fall to obtain a master’s in social work and criminology. also joined the Police Explorers –– a program that gives teenagers the opportunity to explore a career in law enforcement –– which she says gave her the opportunity to have “a very different experience with cops than the general public.” She most enjoyed the drilling competitions and recalls winning second place as the first all-female drilling team.

Although Montes de Oca did eventually move up the ranks to become chief and is generally proud of her accomplishments within the program, she also recognizes that there are flaws within the system that she didn’t yet have the vocabulary to criticize.

While graduating high school, Montes de Oca said that she still held hopes to become a behavior analyst for the FBI. She even decided to double major in ASLC with a concentration in Arabic at Amherst because she figured it might make her more attractive to the FBI, given U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

When she revealed these goals to her new friends at Amherst, however, their response was completely contradictory to the experiences she’d had in high school. Although Montes de Oca acknowledged their criticisms of the system, she says “my response to them was always: yes, the system’s messed up. But sometimes, you shouldn’t only be fighting externally for the system to change. Sometimes, it may be helpful to have someone inside to help change the system as well.”

This continued to be Montes de Oca’s mindset until she took George Daniel Olds Professor in Economic and Social Institutions Kristen Bumiller’s class “Justice” in her sophomore year. Bumiller’s course is part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which works to “bring traditional college students and incarcerated students together in jails and prisons for semester-long learning.”

Students in these courses inte-

Senior Profile | Yaqui Montes De Oca grate themselves within the prisoners during the course but are not allowed to have contact with them after the semester ends.

Forming close connections with prisoners and witnessing how few mental health resources they had access to made Montes de Oca realize that she wanted to help incarcerated people. Because of this sentiment, Montes de Oca made what she calls a “180-degree shift.”

“My thinking shifted to: I don’t want to be someone putting people inside,” she said. “Maybe instead, I can be on the side where I can help the people that are inside and help them reintegrate to society.”

According to her advisor, Professor of Psychology Julia

McQuade, Montes de Oca’s shift has put her entirely in the right direction: “Yaqui has had aspirations of working therapeutically within the correctional system; she’s been asking big and important questions about the intersection of mental health and our justice system. I can’t think of anyone better suited for this important work!” For Montes de Oca, her main goal is now to become a social worker in prison settings.

Plans for the Future According to Montes de Oca, the last couple of weeks before our interview was an “up and down roller coaster.” “Once my goal shifted away from being a behavior analyst, to finding out

how to [better treat] people in prison, I still didn’t know what that [change] could look like,” she said.

Initially, Montes de Oca planned to take a break from school and work a two-year position in social work. After some consideration, she decided this year that it might be a better decision to go straight into graduate school to get her master’s in social work (MSW). She ended up applying and being admitted to the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Boston University, UCLA and Florida State University (FSU). At the same time as being admitted to all these schools, the Center for Restorative Practices opened a Green Dean position — meant

for graduating seniors or recent alumni — it was a position that she was interested in.

“I had a lot of conflict,” Montes de Oca said. “Do I put grad school on hold, and then stay and continue to help the center grow?

Do I just go to grad school since it’s the most recent initial plan?”

After consulting McQuade and other mentors and “doing a bit of soul searching,” Montes de Oca decided that the best move was to go to FSU to get her master’s in social work (MSW) and master’s in criminology.

Luckily, she will not have to give up working for the CRP immediately and will have an interim position with the center over the summer to aid in the search for a Green Dean position. While

Montes de Oca looks forward to a return to warmer weather, she is excited to be involved in the growth of this new center. As for her plans past getting her master’s — Montes de Oca is looking at potentially getting a Ph.D. in the distant future.

Before she does so, she would like to gain more experience as a clinical social worker. Additionally, she has hopes of one day building a justice nonprofit with her friends David Rosa ’21 and Allyah Pimentel Landestoy ’21 that would include a treatment center for recently released prisoners.

Wherever Montes de Oca ends up, it is certain that she will have a positive impact on the communities she engages with.

Photos courtesy of Yaqui Montes de Oca ’21

After being an active member of the African and Caribbean Students’ Union (ACSU) for four years, Montes de Oca celebrates herself and other seniors at the ACSU Stole Ceremony. This tradition started in 2014 to recognize ACSU seniors for their commitment to the dance group during their Amherst careers.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 21

Senior Profile | Bella Edo

Pursuing Justice with Passion In all that she does, Bella Edo approaches her advocacy with a sincerity, intensity and courageousness that has guided her efforts to make life at Amherst better for students and faculty.

—Lauren Kisare ’22 Sitting across from Bella Edo ’21 over Zoom the other day was a strange, yet familiar experience. As it would happen, Edo was actually my Resident Counselor (RC) during my first year at Amherst College.

One scroll through my contact list, and you’ll find her listed as RC Bella Edo. Of course, such a title feels stiff and awkward now and makes me chuckle looking back. But rest assured, Edo has always been someone that I knew I could reach out to, as a mentor and as a friend.

To me, Edo will always be RC Bella, but for other students on campus, her purpose has expanded to encompass that and so much more. Although I no longer see her every day on the fourth floor of Stearns Hall, her warm presence has undoubtedly made an impact on campus, and it’s fitting to hear that Edo, for all of her candor, brilliance and authenticity, has continued to spread her vibrant influence across campus, in the classroom and over her four years here at Amherst.

Close to Home Growing up, Amherst was surprisingly not far off Edo’s radar. As a resident of Massachusetts, Edo spent most of her formative years traveling across the state. She was born in Boston and then lived in Medford for a few years before eventually settling in the small town of Boxford, which she jokes is “as far as you can get from Amherst but still in the state of Massachusetts.”

Attending a private school a few towns over, she remembers Boxford distinctly for how sheltered it was, where she navigated predominantly

white spaces and the all-too-familiar feeling of “being the only Black person or person of color in the room.” After moving to a boarding school in New Hampshire, however, Edo looks back fondly on her high school experience. From playing three varsity sports (lacrosse, field hockey and basketball) to taking part in student council, Edo’s interests stretched across a wide variety of hobbies. Above all, what Edo cherished most about her formative years in high school was the community it engendered. “I really loved being in community there,” she expressed. “And I knew that in college, I wanted to have similar feelings.”

Coupled with her growing interest in pursuing Division Three (DIII) lacrosse, Edo’s desire for a close-knit community would lead her straight to the neighboring steps of Amherst College. Surprisingly though, Edo admitted she had never visited Amherst before applying, despite its close proximity. As someone who wasn’t too keen on campus tours, Edo’s ultimate decision to attend Amherst was rooted in a confidence that the college, both for its academic rigor and location, would be the right fit for her. All the pieces fell into place, then, when she visited the college for the first time in the summer before her first year for a field hockey camp. Having already been accepted to the school on Early Decision, the experience she had at the camp was just the icing on the cake for a school Edo knew would become her second home.

Coming into Amherst, however,

22 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

Edo was initially concerned about how much of a role sports would play in her Amherst career. “When I was in high school, my identity wasn’t made around the team that I was on … that was just one thing that I did,” she observed. Knowing how much of a time commitment college sports can be, Edo worried that she wouldn’t have space for activities that weren’t sports. And as time passed, the natural demands of being on a college sports team did, at times, impact Edo’s ability to branch out during those first years at Amherst. But with the swift arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in Edo’s junior year, she found that the time away from sports really allowed her to explore those interests again, more deeply and passionately than before. Student government, for example, is an interest Edo left behind in high school that she, fortunately, was able to pick back up again during the pandemic, serving as a senator on the budgetary committee of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) for the rest of her senior year.

When approaching the academic side of college back in her first year, Edo was able to “play to her strengths” with Amherst’s open curriculum, which greatly impacted her eventual double major in Black studies and law, jurisprudence, and social thought (LJST). From a young age, Edo expressed always having an interest in “studying Blackness and understanding Blackness, but not always in the ways that I knew how to articulate.” It was only through taking an eye-opening course called “Incarcerating

Photos courtesy of Bella Edo ’21

A natural-born leader, Edo has spent her four years at Amherst inciting change for various communities on campus, making sure that student demands are heard and met.

Blackness” in her first semester at Amherst that she was really able to “give language to” the phenomena and experiences occurring around her. Equipped with this language and theory, Edo dove deeply into the Black studies department, which was complimented nicely by her related interest in legal theory and its intersection with the Black experience in the United States.

Holding Space As Edo soared to new academic heights at Amherst, she also embedded herself well into community.

Arielle Kirven ’21, Edo’s longtime friend, remarked that “over time, I have watched Bella grow from a careful and conscientious freshman to someone who was born to be a leader … From the Covid-19 Task Force, to CACSAC [Council of Amherst College Student-Athletes of Color], to the Anti-Racism committee, to AAS, to casual chats in the common room, Bella holds space for people.” Such a refrain, of

holding space for others, was also echoed tangentially by another one of Edo’s close companions, Avery Farmer ’20, who was coincidentally Edo’s RC during her first year as well.

To Farmer, Edo is brilliant and accomplished, but also someone who is predominantly concerned with uplifting and elevating the community around her. On campus, Farmer noticed that “[she] chose to spend her time and energy bringing other people into the fold, making them feel welcome.”

Even in the classroom, Edo carried this same personable attitude, along with a persistent inquisitiveness and a zeal for learning. In Emily C. Jordan Folger Professor of Black Studies and English Rhonda Cobham-Sander’s fall 2019 course “The Creole Imagination,” for instance, Edo’s insatiable curiosity was on full display.

A niche seminar offered at 8:30 a.m., “The Creole Imagination” naturally yielded only two juniors

Senior Profile | Bella Edo during pre-registration, of whom included a determined Edo and an equally motivated Jeremy Thomas ’21. With such a low turnout, Cobham-Sander recalls tentatively wanting to call off the course. But Edo remained steadfast, urging Cobham-Sander to hold the course in the fall. Presumably, a course held together by the participation of only two students would appear doomed from the start. But Edo’s fierce engagement with the course material was enough to supplement a class meant for 20 students.

“It was like a graduate seminar,” Cobham-Sander exclaimed. “It’s the most esoteric stuff about Creole languages and things that feel as if they would be far off from some of the things that she’s interested in, and she did it. She did all the work and she loved it, and she did more of it than I asked her to do.”

Edo’s Black studies advisor and capstone professor, Professor Olufemi Vaughan, picked up on this relentless intellectual curiosity as well, describing Edo as a diligent student who was “always on time, always erudite, always insightful, always impressive, [someone who] will always go over and above what

is required.” What emerges about Edo from these accounts is not only a gentle kindness that extends to include everyone around her but also a strong dedication to building community and generating advocacy for that community. “The practical application of what I’m interested in is policy, creating policy and creating good people-centered policy,” she told me. Her relentless charge to improve the quality of life for those around her is palpable, and her academic pursuits are a testament to this spirit.

A Tireless Advocate This passion is also notably reflected in the activities that Edo has pursued at Amherst. Upon arriving at the college her first year, Edo immediately ingrained herself in CACSAC. Now, in her senior year, Edo stands as its president, and Kirven, who witnessed Edo’s rise in leadership first-hand, expressed great admiration for Edo’s commitment to building community within the group.

“As a first-year, I watched Bella dive headfirst into that community, becoming friends with students in all years and beginning to chart

out a course for this organization … As a sophomore and junior, she increasingly took on more responsibility, consecrating CACSAC as an important tombstone in her life. As a senior, she dedicated meaningful hours to both the organization and its students.”

Even during a virtual term, Edo has successfully steered the organization towards making positive changes for student athletes of color, putting advocacy at the forefront of the group’s mission this past year. From encouraging the college to provide financial aid pre-reads for prospective student-athletes of color to holding discussions about what it means to be anti-racist within the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) league, there is no shortage of work that Edo has done to lower the barriers impacting student-atheletes of color on campus. But she hasn’t stopped there.

What makes Edo’s advocacy even more impressive is her continued efforts to improve issues that are affecting the Amherst student experience. Her work with the Covid-19 Student Task Force and the Student Anti-Racism Advisory committee

Photos courtesy of Bella Edo ’21

Edo put theory into practice during her stint as a campaign fellow for U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey, a pivotal step in her path towards working in policy.

this year can attest to this.

Farmer, who founded the Covid-19 Task Force as the former AAS President, mentioned that Edo immediately came to mind when recruiting for the team in the spring of 2020 and added that she was “instrumental in setting the tone for the group.”

“My favorite memory was just watching Bella set aside her own personal intuitions about what should happen and really step up to become a leader and an arbiter and representative of that group,” he said. “She sought to tease out as many different people’s perspectives as she could, and then put those perspectives in [conversation with each other].” These talks, led distinctly by Edo, resulted in the college setting up a food delivery system for on-campus students and more opportunities for off-campus excursions — among others.

Edo continued to “bring student concerns to the forefront” in the school’s first-ever Student Anti-Racism Advisory committee. As CACSAC President, Edo was invited to take part in the fall of 2020, where she and several other student leaders from the affinity groups on campus spoke with the administration weekly to ensure the college upheld the promises outlined in its Anti-Racism Plan.

Her advocacy has also extended beyond the Amherst campus. In the summer of 2019, Edo worked part time as a legislative intern for the office of Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Robert DeLeo, and as an intern for the office of U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey.

Not too long after, Edo was brought on as a campaign fellow for Markey, where she helped organize phone banks, attended Democratic town meetings and much more.

Coming out of that experience, Edo emphasized how rewarding it felt “to be part of something that I believe in,” and it was during that summer that Edo realized that “this is what I would want to do with a law degree, working in government.”

On Morrison, Blackness and the Law But I would be remiss if I didn’t also spotlight Edo’s thesis work, for which she impressively analyzed three of Toni Morrison’s most prominent novels, “Beloved,” “Jazz” and “Paradise.” In her examination of Morrison’s work, Edo argued that the acclaimed novelist sheds light on “what I call a Black jurisprudence that functions … as a response to the way that Black people are othered by judicial systems and practices because of how rooted in white supremacy and chattel slavery they are.”

“Each novel is rooted in a historical event,” she continued. “And [Morrison] creates these stories that imagine what would happen if her worlds existed under these Black jurisprudences.” A coalescence of her academic interests in Blackness, law and legality, this thesis was certainly a passion project for Edo, who has been a longtime fan of Morrison and her work. Behind the scenes, Professor Vaughan also stressed to me how scrupulous Edo was with the research process. “It [was] really a mastery of the most amazing and critical close reading of African American literature that I have seen [from a student]. I simply have never seen a student do anything like this [before].”

Acceptance Endgame for Edo has her working in policy and government, as she feels this line of work — of fighting to create a better quality of living for others — “never really goes away.” And in typical Edo fashion, she hesitates to embrace what she has accomplished on campus, mentioning that she hopes she has “done good [work] for others” through her advocacy.

Her humility is admirable, and as Kirven said, “It is rare to find someone who is so inclined to celebrate others and their causes.” But as Farmer also perfectly phrased it: “[Bella] should be careful never to lose sight of the fact that as much as she can bring people into the fold, she’s also just a really exceptional intellect and leader.”

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 23

Senior Profile | Dylan Momplasir

A Builder of Software, Stories and Community Dylan Momplaisir’s empathy and drive have allowed him to not only find his own path, but help others find theirs and tell their stories.

—Liza Katz ’24 It was only fitting that my Zoom interview with Dylan Momplaisir ’21 started with technical issues. A double major in computer science and architectural studies who has served as digital director of The Student for the past three and a half years, Momplaisir is well-accustomed to jumping to the rescue when something’s not working.

But of course, the software that all of us have spent the last year learning to navigate still managed to confound the both of us.

After a few minutes of troubleshooting, various meeting restarts and some frantic messages exchanged over Slack, we finally were able to start talking. In a way, that relatively minor inconvenience encapsulated everything that Momplaisir has spent his last four years at Amherst accomplishing. Underneath his calm and lighthearted exterior is someone who just wants to help people and find a way to make their stories heard by any means necessary. Now, it’s time to tell his.

“I’m gonna way out”

make

a

Born and raised in New York City, Momplaisir has always been surrounded by people different from himself. He grew up in a small community in the outer borough of Queens, in a neighborhood filled with people from different countries all around the world, including the vibrant Caribbean community that he and his family are proud

to be a part of.

He credits this blending of cultures with shaping his desire to learn more about the people around him and help them achieve their goals. It has also influenced his ideas about his own goals — this community taught Momplaisir that to make his way in the world, he would have to carve his own path.

Everyone around him growing up was hungry for greatness, said Momplaisir, desiring to create opportunities for themselves to make their way out and find greener pastures. He was no different. Never wanting to say no to a project, Momplaisir would pick up what he described as “random hobbies,” including learning Latin on a whim, and it was here that his love for telling stories would first develop.

One of these hobbies was graphic design, which would eventually lead to him joining his high school’s literary magazine, introducing him to journalism for the first time. He later became editor-in-chief of the magazine, and after that experience, it was only natural that his interest in technology and storytelling would grow. It was here that he found that the things he created for others allowed him to connect with people and enter spaces that he wouldn’t have otherwise had the chance to interact with, and is something he credits as his pathway into the world of technology. “As a 13- or 14- year old in New York, the fact that I could go into rooms and be like

24 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

‘I might be 14, but look at this code I got right here, there’s something really [interesting] here,’ that was always my peak interest,” said Momplaisir.

It was this inclination towards technology, and his love for his community, that sparked his enthusiasm for showcasing the stories of people around him and drove him to ask the question of how he could make his city a better place. This question was one that stayed with him as he left bustling NYC to the relative quiet of Western Massachusetts.

From Storyteller to Digital Director and Back Again Momplaisir didn’t take the traditional path to Amherst. He enrolled after being offered a spot off the waitlist, which he jumped at the opportunity to accept. As someone who cherished his community so much, having the ability to be close to home while also fulfilling his desire to find his voice was a chance he couldn’t pass up.

Coming to Amherst was a way for Momplaisir to foster the connections he wanted, as well as better himself and others in a way that he hadn’t been able to in high school. On New Year’s Eve in 2017, shortly after Momplaisir finished his first semester at Amherst, he made a resolution: “I’m not gonna talk crap about things unless I can do something about it. I need to face what I want to be and what I want to do because if I don’t

Photos courtesy of Dylan Momplaisir ’21

Momplaisir used the experiences and independent thinking he developed growing up in New York City and applied them to all that he did during his time at Amherst. speak for it, it’s not going to happen.”

It was this philosophy that led him to join The Student and become its digital director, an experience that has become foundational to his time at Amherst.

In the newspaper’s staff, he saw a group of people who were deeply engaged in the stories they wanted to tell, but didn’t have the technological infrastructure in place to do so in an efficient way. He decided that he would be the person to fix this.

But Momplaisir’s dedication to The Student didn’t stop at just fixing what Editor-in-Chief Emerita Natalie De Rosa ’21 bluntly stated was “a janky website that looked like it came from the ’90s.” Rather, he transformed the website into a modern, functional platform that was iterable and changed with the times.

“I remember the countless hours [I’d] spent with Olivia Gieger [’21] (my co-editor-in-

chief) gawking at The Atlantic’s website, or comparing The Student’s layout to The Harvard Crimson,” said De Rosa. “While Olivia and I were simply gawking, Dylan had a vision. He showed us the skillset and the tenacity to take these fantasies we had for The Student and attempt to make them a reality.” In the span of a few short months during his sophomore year, Momplaisir had used his skills to completely remake the website, and enabled The Student and its staff to better use technology to report the stories that he had come to Amherst looking to tell.

Back to the City Working on The Student wasn’t the only outlet for Momplaisir’s interests. Momplaisir took his first architectural studies class during his first year and loved that it connected his education back to his pre-college experiences growing up in New

Senior Profile | Dylan Momplasir York. Specifically, he was drawn to the idea of depicting and exploring how he could give a voice to marginalized identities in the city space, both through photography and through construction of technology that could create anti-poverty solutions for those people.

This passion is what motivated him to declare as a computer science and architectural studies double major, and eventually write a thesis with Professor of Art and the History of Art and Architectural Studies Gabriel Arboleda focusing on the “People’s Plan” and the mandatory promise of urban planning. In particular, he studied the neighborhood of Bushwick, Queens, and how technology can be used to empower communities to take

control of their own destinies.

“Dylan is a keen urban thinker, a critic of how cities are presently conceptualized in ways that often end up normalizing them as spaces of exclusion,” said Arboleda. “In search of an answer, Dylan has been reflecting upon the possibility for people in South Queens to act as their community’s own planners … I feel honored [to] hav[e] worked with Dylan as his advisor, and in this capacity having witnessed his intellectual and personal growth throughout the past four years.”

Like in his time with The Student, Momplaisir’s goal for his thesis was to find a platform for people to express themselves.

In doing so, he deepened his roots both inside and outside the Amherst bubble. He credits this

experience with sparking his interest in data journalism, which he will continue to pursue after graduation while working as a data journalist at The Atlantic.

Covid Character This intellectual and personal growth that Arbodela highlights even continued to shine through during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Momplaisir has had a blast being back on campus this year, even saying that his last semester was one of his best. He sees the pandemic as having allowed him to reconnect with people on a deeper level than he otherwise would have, creating an intentionality in his relationships that he didn’t have beforehand.

Specifically, Momplaisir has made time to support the people

who have made his time at Amherst so special to him, even if he needs to take time out of his day to do so. Of this quality, Gieger explained, “I noticed his great desire to support his friends, his teams and his larger community. It is truly amazing how much Dylan lets empathy drive the work he does in everything. It’s … so unique, that no matter how poorly people treat him, he still is able to see humanity and goodness of people underneath the surface and act on that (even if he sees the badness too!).”

Gieger isn’t the only one who has noticed this exceptional quality. “This past year especially, I’ve found it incredibly easy to beat myself up for all the things I haven’t been able to accomplish, but Dylan encourages me to give

myself grace,” said De Rosa. “He sees the value in people beyond their labor and productivity, and really treasures his relationships and the people around him.”

This is certainly why so many people are sad to see Momplaisir leave Amherst. As someone who has only been a member of The Student’s Editorial Board with him for the last four months, I already share this sentiment. His hard work and dedication to everything he does and the care he shows for his friends, family and strangers alike is what makes Momplaisir so unique. The world can only become a better place with him there to advocate for anyone that needs it and create opportunities for people to tell their, as well as others’, stories.

Photos courtesy of Dylan Momplaisir ’21

Momplaisir will use the experience he gained forming relationships at Amherst through both in and outside the classroom after graduation, working in data journalism at The Atlantic.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 25

Senior Profile | Margot Lurie

Championing Justice, One Question at a Time While she lives in a world full of questions, to most on campus, Lurie provides a steady source of answers.

—Melanie Schwimmer ’23 As she walked the halls of her deeply segregated Colorado high school, Margot Lurie ’21 saw injustice everywhere she looked. The structural inequalities of American society were lived out each day in school, where only a few would go on to attend four-year colleges and the limited resources were filtered to the predominantly white International Baccalaureate (IB) program. While many accepted these conditions as a fact of life, Lurie started asking questions about the roots of inequality — and since she started asking, she has not stopped.

While she lives in a world full of questions, to most on campus, Lurie provides a steady source of answers. Whether sharing her groundbreaking environmental activism research, showing a new tour guide the ropes, serving on the Environmental Steering Committee to increase the diversity of thought in the department, explaining a problem set as a Teacher’s Assistant or leading the Amherst College Sunrise Movement to demand divestment from fossil fuels, Lurie’s work inspires others to interrogate the world around them.

Fellow Sunrise organizer Jeanyna Garcia ’23 credits Lurie’s steady support for allowing her to flourish at Amherst: “She has taught me so much about navigating this campus and creating institutional change and I don’t think I would be where I am without her.”

Anchored By Academics Drawn to Amherst because of the small class sizes, open curriculum and opportunity to work closely with professors, Lurie took full advantage of the wide variety of academic opportunities and sought out as many unique classes as possible. While most of Amherst felt like a huge culture shock, as fellow students’ extreme wealth seeped into most conversations and extracurriculars, she always felt at home in the classroom.

Her first year, Lurie took classes in many different departments and relished the opportunity to learn new ways of asking questions. She explored Philosophy, Biology, Statistics, Political Science, Economics and any other department that sounded interesting. Lurie laughs playfully when I ask if she knew what she wanted to major in when she arrived in Western Massachusetts: “I didn’t even know my first year and a half, I liked so many departments.”

As she adjusted to Amherst, she found joy in the passion and support of her professors. Lurie explains, “I always felt they truly cared about me, about the things I wanted to learn and the questions I wanted to ask.”

Finding a Home After spending a year and a half exploring classes and departments, picking up new questions along the way, Lurie found her home in environmental studies.

26 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

She credits the class “Unequal Footprints on the Earth” taught

by Professor Hannah Hollerman with changing the trajectory of her life. The course takes root in environmental sociology, and Luries believes it provided her with the lens for integrating her academic interests with her concerns for the injustices she saw around her. The class gave her a “radical shift for how to see the world as it led me to understand that if I am serious with tackling inequality I need to understand that the environment has been a space for the elite production of power, wealth and colonialism.”

The course provided Lurie a lens to start answering the questions she had been asking for years while also pushing her to ask brand new ones.

An essential piece of this lens rests in intersectionality.

While people throw the word around frequently on our campus, Lurie’s work lives and breathes it. In just our short conversation,Lurie and I discussed ecofeminism and the feminization of land and its connection to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and two-spirit people, extractive colonialism, the bodily impacts of fracking, how environmental exploitation impacts bodies differently and the racialization of exploitation.

Many of these intersectional questions came to Lurie in the classroom, but she believes her time studying abroad in Ecuador proved essential to chal-

Photos courtesy of Margot Lurie ’21

For all of her accolades at Amherst, Lurie will be remembered not by what she won but the people she inspired. lenge her pre-established way of thinking. While the readings and conversations in her classes often applauded attempts at conservation, Lurie discovered the lived experiences of displaced people in the Galápagos as a result of environmental preservation.

She further explored conservation in her research with Professor Katharine Sims which examines who New England conservation serves and who it hurts, finding large disparities by race and income level. Sims shared that Lurie is constantly inspiring everyone around her to reach the next level: “Margot’s ideas provided the spark for this paper; her passion for research that can advance social justice has motivated everyone on the team.” These neauces all came together in Lurie’s honors thesis work. Her experiences in Ecuador led her to further investigate Indigenous land stewardship.

While most Western scholars ask what are Indigenous people

doing differently to address the environment, Lurie asked a different question. “What would it mean to take Indigenous resistance movements seriously as a means of protection, especially the work of women, non-binary and two-spirit people who are leading these movements in Turtle island?”

Lurie centered her questions on the place she knows best: the Southwest. She conducted ethnographic research relying on the methods of Māori scholar, Linda Tuhiwai Smith who centers on reciprocity rather than extraction in research. After concluding that the resistance of Indigenous women and binary people in the Southwest presents a meaningful alternative to mainstream methods of environmental protection, Lurie’s goals grew even bigger. She ultimately wants to take the burden off Indigenous people to teach settlers, a mission she incorporates into her daily conversations and

Senior Profile | Margot Lurie academic endeavors .

Professor Hollerman, who served as her thesis advisor, emphasized Lurie’s commitment to ethical scholarship. “Margot stands out as a consequence of what she asks of our society and herself. She doesn’t take anything about the present for granted, but instead works very hard to understand how we arrived at the present moment and where we should go from here.

She also takes responsibility for acting on this knowledge. In other words, she is both a highly committed, ethical scholar and intellectual, as well as an effective activist. In her work, this is a powerful combination.”

From Student to Activist Lurie has never been satisfied with simply asking questions; she works to turn answers into action. Lurie started on a smaller scale, working with Facilities, Dining Services and the Office

of Environmental Sustainability to reduce landfill waste and serving on the environmental studies steering committee to make the department more inclusive for first-generation students, low-income students and students of color. Lurie wanted to do more, and during her senior year, saw an opportunity to create largescale change as part of the newly established Amherst Sunrise chapter.

While the group has no official leadership structure, Lurie’s experience organizing on campus, her inquisitive nature and thoughtful listening ability have brought her into a de facto leadership position. A group of current sophomores brought Sunrise and its divestment coalition to Amherst in 2020. One of those sophomores, Garcia explains that Lurie “is the only upperclassmen that empowered our group … the divestment coalition would not be where we are without her.” Garcia aspires

to follow in Lurie’s footsteps on campus as a fearless organizer. Another Sunrise founder, Meenakshi Jani ’23, shares that “Margot was a brilliant leader … willing to put in the work when others were unable and step in when support was needed.”

Lurie’s activism has brought her into conversation with President Biddy Martin and the Board of Trustees. She ultimately convinced the Board to publicly announce they will divest from fossil fuels by 2030. She explained that “this doesn’t come close to Sunrise’s demands, but it is a huge win because divestment at the end of the day is a political act … what matters is removing the social license to operate from fossil fuels and the prison-industrial complex … so this statement represents a giant step in that direction.”

While continuing to hold the administration’s feet to the fire, Lurie is working to hold Sunrise itself accountable, es-

pecially when it comes to their relationship with the Native and Indigenous Student Association (NISA). As the group moves forward, Lurie is determined to build a broader coalition that centers Indigenous communities who are usually most impacted by environmental injustice.

Even as her time on campus concludes, Lurie plans to continue her work with Sunrise and the Divestment Coalition to build a strong alumni network.

Asking Questions Beyond Amherst After graduation, Lurie will continue to ask questions as a Watson Scholar. A scholarship created to allow students “purposeful, inde­pen­dent explo­ ration,” the Watson seems tailor-made for Lurie.

Her scholarship will take her to six different countries to explore post-extractive communities. Lurie wants to learn more about what takes place after

extraction, explaining no place is truly post-extractive “because the nature of extractive economies is that they continue to yield extractive economics.”

This project reflects on her family’s past, as coal brought her grandfather to Colorado from South Africa, to forge her future.

Upon completing her Watson, Lurie plans to pursue a Ph.D in Environmental Sociology. Lurie chuckles as she shares that she wants to be a professor, a path she never pictured for herself. Yet, the potential for continued activism draws her to academia. Lurie hopes to help undergraduates foster their own activism while continuing her research and advocacy.

As Lurie ventures beyond Amherst, we can all rest assured knowing she has helped shape the next generation of Amherst leaders, and the questions she will ask in the future will most certainly bend the arc of history towards justice.

Photos courtesy of Margot Lurie ’21

Dedicated to sharing her knowledge and amplifying the voices of others, Lurie moderated an expert panel on divestment for the campus along with Meenakshi Jani ‘23 pictured top right.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 27

Senior Profile | Cy Nguyen

Taking Life by the Reins Cy Nguyen is one of a kind. Her resilience, courage and warmth are sure to take her places.

—Fiona Antsey ’24 A movie aficionado, frog figurine collector and demography enthusiast, Cy Nguyen ’21 is not your typical Amherst student.

A Vietnamese American transfer from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Nguyen only spent two years of her college career at Amherst.

But looking at all she has pursued and achieved during her time here, you wouldn’t be able to tell.

In the words of one of her professors, William R. Kenan Professor of American Studies and Sociology Leah Schmalzbauer, “Cy is one of the most passionate and bold thinkers with whom I have worked. She thinks outside of all boxes, bringing creativity to all that she does. She also infuses the communities of which she is a part with humanity, honesty and authenticity.”

Early Life: A Bold Independence Born in Vietnam, Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. when she was just a toddler. She grew up in various parts of California but spent most of her time in Orange County, where she went to a performing arts high school.

Nguyen moved out of her parents’ home at the young age of seventeen, a difficult decision that ultimately proved fruitful for both her career and her mental health. Ever since, Nguyen has moved from place to place, never staying in one home consistently for more than

a year. “Unfortunately, my home life just wasn’t conducive to the things that I was hoping to pursue,” Nguyen reflected. “[Moving out] has allowed me to get to the point that I am.”

In high school, Nguyen was a budding creative writer and decided to pursue English at community college. After two years, Nguyen continued her study of English at UC Berkeley for two semesters, ultimately transferring to Amherst for her junior and senior years.

Coming to Amherst, she remembers, was the first time she’d ever been to the east coast.

The shift from a large public institution with over 30 thousand students to a small liberal arts school on the other side of the country was a significant one. “As a transfer, but also a first-generation, low-income student, I just had no idea what I was getting myself into,” Nguyen remarked.

It was the small class sizes and bucolic setting that drew her to Amherst. “I knew that if I didn’t take [this opportunity], even if it was going to be incredibly difficult, I would just end up regretting it forever,” she said.

Amherst Eyes

Through

Her

At first, Nguyen found it difficult to find her niche at Amherst, having entered the college as a junior. “I think by the time that people are juniors, friend groups are already well established and the dynamics of clubs

28 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

are already well established,” she commented.

Nguyen attended around ten different club and organization meetings within weeks of arriving at the college, eventually joining the Asian Students Association (ASA), becoming a member of the transfer student E-board and working for the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC).

Being a part of these organizations allowed her to interact with and participate in an extensive array of clubs on campus without necessarily being a member.

Nguyen really made the most of her two years at Amherst.

Aside from engaging in these organizations, she studied abroad in Japan, double majored in Sociology and Asian Languages and Civilizations, wrote a thesis and took part in an intensive language program through a grant she received from the US State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program.

Nguyen studied Japanese through the CLS program in the fall of her senior year. With travel limited by the pandemic, the program was moved online and shifted from the summer to the fall. “It was a really intense and crazy experience,” she remarked. Taking one to two hours of Japanese lessons every day on top of her full college course load was certainly a challenge.

When asked about her most memorable class at Amherst, Nguyen answered that the

Photos courtesy of Cy Nguyen ’21

Nguyen used her thesis to do a rigorous investigation of the transfer student experience at Amherst. classes she took with Professor Schmalzbauer — especially “Being Human in Stem” — were her favorites. “[Being Human in Stem] was one of the best classes I took at Amherst,” she said. “It is really interesting because you have people from all different kinds of majors.”

And if she had to pick one professor to take with her to a desert island, Nguyen decided it would have to be Professor Schmalzbauer, partly because “she works out every day.” And, she added, “All my other professors, God bless them, are quite old.” Taking them to a deserted island would be cruel and unusual, she said with a chuckle.

Despite the difficulties Nguyen faced at the beginning of her career at Amherst, and the fact that she has only been physically on campus for one semester as a result of the pandemic, she reflected that the amount of opportunities, quality of education

and lifelong friendships that she has been able to forge have made her time here a “truly wonderful experience overall.”

As someone who has experienced education at a plethora of institutions — both private and public — Nguyen added that “Amherst has really been a cornerstone of being able to propel me into whatever direction that I want to go in life.”

Discovering Demography, and Becoming TikTok Famous And that direction, as of now, is demography. Having started off with an interest in English at community college, Nguyen discovered sociology, and then demography, and in her study of demography, she discovered Japan. “When I came to Amherst,” she said, “I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which is quantitative sociology with a specific interest in migration in

Senior Profile | Cy Nguyen Japan.”

Before the pandemic hit, this was exactly what she wanted to write her thesis on. But since being in isolation disrupted research opportunities for her, Nguyen turned her focus to explore the topic of insulated belonging within transfer communities at Amherst College.

In spite of the obstacles that the Covid-19 crisis has presented — limited travel and research opportunities, and personal and academic challenges — Nguyen maintains a positive outlook, reflecting on the paths that the pandemic has opened up to her, like meeting her partner and becoming famous on TikTok. Nguyen and her partner went to high school together and reconnected when Nguyen returned to her hometown

to quarantine. “While the pandemic has been god-awful for so many, I genuinely would do it all over again, just to be able to be with my partner,” she said.

And, to her surprise, her TikTok account (username: cyeatsfood), which currently has over 120 thousand followers, started rapidly gaining popularity over the past couple of months.

Planes, Trains and Bicycles: A Semester Abroad in Japan Nguyen received the MacArthur-Leithauser travel award in 2019, a grant that allowed her to travel abroad to around ten different countries for two months before spending the second semester of her junior year in Kyoto, Japan through the Doshisha exchange program.

Nguyen described her time in Kyoto as “one of the most peaceful experiences that I’ve had in my entire life.” When she first came to Amherst, studying abroad was one of her primary goals — and she was particularly interested in studying Japanese.

Her fascination for the language stemmed from having grown up in California, with its large population of Japanese Americans. Nguyen was surrounded by Japanese entertainment, food and pop culture as she grew up and was eager to learn the language.

One of her favorite things about her time in Japan was how much she cycled. “I biked anywhere and everywhere,” she said. “It was ridiculous!” Sometimes even opting to cycle over taking the train, Nguyen said she

was able to appreciate the natural surroundings.“Iit was great exercise, and just a fantastic experience overall,” she commented.

Movies and frogs In her free time, Nguyen likes to collect frog figurines. It’s a pastime she’s enjoyed since middle school, and now has anywhere from 20 to 50, she told me. Her collection includes bobblehead frogs, little baby frogs and even a rubber-ducky style frog.

When asked what drew her to the animals, Nguyen replied that “there’s a certain hideousness to them that I just found absolutely endearing!”

Her other big hobby is watching movies; for several years now, her goal has been to watch

100 new movies every year. In 2018, using a movie pass service, Nguyen managed to watch 200 new movies! Her two favorites, she said without hesitation, are “Howl’s Moving Castle,” a Studio Ghibli anime film, and a Korean thriller called “The Handmaiden.”

Onward!

After college, Nguyen will be working as a full-time summer intern for the Federal Aviation Administration. She also plans to apply to graduate school within the fields of sociology and demography. Her ideal career path, she said, is either working for the U.S. Census or becoming a professor.

Ultimately, “who knows?” she told me. “I’m just hoping that I will be happy!”

Photos courtesy of Cy Nguyen ’21

Nguyen spent a semester abroad in Kyoto, Japan — her favorite part was getting to cycle everywhere.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 29

Senior Profile | David Rosa

Embracing Change and Building Community At his core, David Rosa values community and he has an exceptional ability to strengthen it in every space he enters.

—Emma Rial ’22 “Never stop advocating for other people, caring for other people, and trying to make this campus a better place,” said David Rosa ’21 as advice to underclassmen at Amherst before we finished our conversation. This also encapsulates how he leads his own life.

Our hour-long conversation made it obvious how much Rosa valued community in every space he enters. Allen Hart, director for the Center for Restorative Practices (CRP) and professor of psychology, insists that “the skills he has honed during his four years at Amherst will be deeply beneficial to the communities lucky enough to embrace him.”

Sprawling City, CloseKnit Community Rosa grew up in “the best neighborhood in Brooklyn,” Bedford-Stuyvesant. He reminisces of the hot summers spent playing with other children in his neighborhood while parents sat and watched together. Even at a young age and in a bustling city, Rosa was a part of a close-knit community.

Rosa went to Brooklyn Technical High School with more than 5,000 students — the size of his graduating class is comparable to Amherst’s total enrollment. “It was easy to get lost in the hallways,” he explained.

Aside from the lack of connection among the masses, Rosa was involved in musical productions and plays, describing himself as a “theater nerd.” Brooklyn Tech

also offered different majors for students to focus on, allowing Rosa to study “Law and Society,” piquing his interest in a legal career.

As the first person in his family to attend college outside of the City University of New York City, Rosa navigated the college application process on his own.

He was drawn to Amherst because of the small size and the open curriculum that would allow him to “shape [his] education into whatever [he] wanted it to be.”

The first time Rosa stepped onto the Amherst campus was for the Summer Bridge program, in which a small group of first-generation low-income (FLI) students is invited to campus before their freshman fall to acclimate to college life. In that moment, he recalls feeling “like a clean slate” with “excited new energy.” Despite not knowing what to expect in the years to come, Rosa had an open mind and looked forward to the new adventure ahead.

The three-week Bridge program prepared Rosa socially and academically for the looming start of his undergraduate career. “You’re really just learning and making mistakes and figuring out how to find your own voice in your writing,” he explained of the summer classes.

Rosa is still close friends with the other Summer Bridge students and “will always be rooting for Summer Bridge students.”

30 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

The Clean Slate Summer Bridge provided Rosa with a community before starting school, but the transition to life at Amherst still came with difficulties. He managed three jobs during his first year and felt the burden of time management.

As a FLI student with immigrant parents, Rosa explains that he was not financially literate and the campus lacked adequate resources. Still, Rosa was able to create a home away from home in the Amherst community and identify his own ability to make his experience whatever he wanted.

Rosa felt confident in making Amherst a space for him to “discover [himself] and learn about other people.” And during his first year, Rosa did exactly that.

He was not as involved on campus as he would be in the coming semesters, but instead, he valued social spaces like Val, where he could meet new people, and Frost Library, where he worked the front desk and studied with friends.

Coming into Amherst with a clean-slate mindset allowed Rosa to hone into what he wanted and not limit himself to certain expectations. Focusing on law in high school and through internships, Rosa thought he would major in law, jurisprudence and social thought (LJST) and become a judge. But after taking “Personality Psychology” during his first year, Rosa fell in love with the subject, especially with learning about why people do

Photos courtesy of David Rosa ’21

Rosa helped implement the Center for Restorative Practices and hopes to receive his J.D. and M.S.W. to apply these skills outside of Amherst. the things they do — an essential understanding for community leaders.

Eventually, Rosa’s involvement on campus started to reflect his commitment to community building as a member of La Causa, African and Caribbean Students Union, Black Students Union, Amherst College Debate and the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), eventually becoming vice-president and later interim president when we were sent home last spring.

His sudden passion to join student government arose after the Common Language Document was released his sophomore year and the campus erupted into chaos. From that moment forward, Rosa could not ignore the lack of communication on campus that divides that student body. He realized that “we don’t have the proper channels to communicate and discuss and dialogue” and knew

he could take action by running for vice-president. This catapulted Rosa’s commitment to actively strengthen the Amherst community.

“It was definitely weird entering a space where it’s your first time in there and you’re already in a position of power,” he said.

As vice president, Rosa was responsible for facilitating meetings. “It definitely taught me a lot about myself and my own abilities,” Rosa added. He noted that When the pandemic hit, Rosa was pushed into another role as interim president. He was responsible for communicating between the administration and students as everyone panicked about what would happen next.

While juggling the responsibility of supporting students at home and on campus, Rosa helped implement fundraisers through the summer for Black mutual aid groups and donation matches

Senior Profile | David Rosa from the college. Rosa’s experience on the executive board exposed a much deeper level of disconnect between AAS and the student body between members of AAS. He wanted another way for the community to be connected outside of the student government.

That’s when Rosa’s advisor and role model, Allen Hart, asked him to help implement the Center of Restorative Justice.

This has allowed Rosa to engage with many different circles across campus on restorative justice philosophies that hold students accountable while healing the community.

“David brings empathy and gentle wisdom to his meetings and personal interactions”, Hart stated, “He sees and reads the room and individuals beneath the surface. David is a pensive listener and has been a great facilitator for some very difficult conversations.”

Rosa explained the importance of restorative practices: “We’re all here together. We have each other and we just have to figure out how we can understand each other… the better that we understand and are in community with each other, the better equipped we’re going to be to handle [these] situations.”

Beyond Amherst The passion and love that Rosa has for his communities is most evident when talking about his peers and mentors. No matter who he was referring to, Rosa spoke with the utmost respect for those that have helped him through Amherst. He credits his friends, family and therapist for supporting him the most.

“They have seen my ups and downs and, you know, pushed me to think outside the box and then push past my fears and they helped me grow. I honestly don’t think I’d be the person I am to-

day without them,” he said.

Rosa has the same passion with the professors that have contributed to his success both in and out of the classroom. “I just love that man. I really look up to him,” Rosa said about Hart.

“He’s always interested in who you are and what you are doing.

Not just academically but personally.”

Even through difficult times, Rosa expresses gratitude. “I feel like she always kept me really, really centered and balanced,” he says of mentor Martha Umphrey. “She always gives me a balanced perspective and she was really always encouraging me to do more and to be attentive to myself and my needs.”

When I asked Rosa what the most valuable thing he learned about himself was, he responded simply, “I don’t think change on this campus happens because of one person’s accomplishment,” and continued to thank about a

dozen more names.

Rosa’s humility does not hide the fact that his infectious laugh and warm personality has left an indelible mark at Amherst. Umphrey insists that “worlds continue to open up for David because he greets life with hope and resilience and a wide open mind and heart.”

Rosa is leaving Amherst with the skills to impact even more communities. He has a job offer from Perry Guha LLP, a law firm in New York City, as a legal analyst and hopes to eventually earn both his J.D. and MSW. In the long run, Rosa wants to continue the work he has done at Amherst and open his own restorative justice and treatment center with other Amherst friends.

Despite these plans in place, Rosa understands his future as a clean slate. “Now, you’re being released from school and you can literally do anything. Anything.

The possibilities are endless,” he

explained. “And so, I don’t think that it’s a matter of being prepared, per se. I think it’s about outlook again. Embracing that change, right? Because things will perpetually go awry or go well in the rest of your life and it’s just knowing that at the end of the day you have yourself and that’s what matters.”

Above all, David Rosa has come to know the power of community during his time at Amherst. “I think the one thread that has pulled through for me at Amherst has been love and that’s been really central in my experience and me discovering what that is, what that means to me, how it can really change people around you. And I’m not just talking about having a partner or something, but the connection you feel to other people.”

He left me with four words that describe how he guides his life: community, love, balance and change.

Photos courtesy of David Rosa ’21

As a member of ACSU, BSU, La Causa, Amherst Debate and AAS, Rosa has committed his time at Amherst to strengthening community.

Pictured above, Rosa attends Commencement for ACSU and BSU.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 31

Senior Profile | Noah John

Shaping the Future of Music Through Journalism With a uniquely honed eye for critical music theory, Noah John’s passion for music has led him on the path to becoming a prominent voice in the world of journalism.

—Alex Brandfonbrener ’23 At a college like Amherst, it is easy to follow the beaten path.

The trail markers that guide most students are getting good grades, securing an internship that might lead to a job and maybe being lauded along the way.

But to succeed in those things, and also to dedicate yourself to a new path that’s entirely your own is much harder. Noah John ’21 is one such person who does so, who is committed to doing things his way.

In just one conversation with John, I found him to be well-spoken, self assured and a compelling thinker. Olivia Gieger ’21, a close friend of his, passionately agreed. ”I would describe [John] as extremely thoughtful in the very true sense of that word, in everything that he encounters.

It’s really easy to just hear things that people say and just respond really quickly, like the front of your brain on autopilot. Noah is someone who hears things, sees things and then always takes some pause to reflect and think about it, and be, like, a true journalist in that way, always.”

His interest in music has led him to start the creative platform, “Without Warning,” which engages with what he sees to be the future of Black music through the lens of journalism.

But John’s identity as a critical music analyst extends beyond “Without Warning,” from his coursework to his thesis and extracurricular activities.

John’s pursuit of his individual, unshakeable perspective is

something that all Amherst students should acknowledge, admire and aspire to.

“The Blueprint”: From Albany to Amherst “I mean, music and sports have always been like my two biggest loves.” These two interests, in John’s words, guided his passions even before he set foot on Amherst’s campus.

Growing up in Albany, N.Y., John started playing the clarinet when he was eight. He was immediately drawn to jazz, “because of the opportunity it gives you to improvise, to really be creative … It’s so collaborative and just fun to play off of other people’s ideas. But also, it’s [about] using your own within those constraints.” He also participated in his school’s marching band, orchestra and pit for musicals.

Along with his musical proclivities, John was also an active athlete. At the same time he was learning clarinet as a kid, John played baseball, which he continued through middle and high school. He is also a talented football player, and was his high school team’s quarterback.

His love of music and sports pointed him to Amherst. He appreciated Amherst’s strong music program and was also recruited for football. However, he decided to quit the team after his first year, and in his junior year took up rugby instead.

“I didn’t know anything really about rugby before,” he ad-

32 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

mitted. “I kind of just went out at first for the social aspect of it, and ended up falling in love with the sport.”

Unfortunately, Covid-19 interrupted John’s final two seasons. With the college’s safety guidelines preventing contact sports from practicing in the spring 2021 semester, rugby has been, as John puts it, “not a thing.” They were able to meet and practice twice a week, though. “It’s not the same, but it’s the best we can do now.”

John has also pursued music at Amherst since arriving as a first-year. He remembers reaching out to Bruce Diehl, director of jazz, who helped introduce him to Amherst’s jazz program.

During his second semester at Amherst, John took alto saxophone lessons, a new instrument that he was able to pick up easily because of his experience playing the clarinet. From there, he participated in jazz combos and honed his musical skills.

“Without Warning”: John’s Creative Focus But John’s interest in music cannot be talked about without mentioning “Without Warning,” which he devotes much of his time to. Named after 21 Savage, Offset and Metro Boomin’s 2017 album, “Without Warning” is a creative agency that produces detailed podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, TikToks and interviews with up-and-coming artists.

The breadth of his creative

Photos courtesy of Noah John ’21

After NYU journalism school, John plans to develop his music media platform into a self-sustaining business. dedication to “Without Warning” cannot be understated. But it started with just a few of his friends from high school in June 2019.

“We set up a little studio in my garage, me and some of my friends from home. So I got equipment like Best Buy and like, even some like lights and Home Depot and stuff, and just set up a makeshift studio in my garage in Albany. We started by just doing podcasts talking about new music that’s coming out, albums that we were listening to, artists that we enjoyed. And then that summer coming into my junior year we also interviewed a lot of artists in upstate New York, kind of the underground scene, which is really fun too.”

After talking to John, it’s clear to me that “Without Warning” is the core of his creative vision. The organization acts as a collaborative effort between him and the other co-founders, Joey Karandy, Myles Murray, Tyson

Jones and Jaan Choudhri. They each take on different roles, but all do some of everything. It is a difficult process, requiring a number of skills and mediums: writing critical articles, posting on multiple social media platforms, recording videos, being on camera. But for John, the challenge is worth it — “Without Warning” is his pride and passion.

“The (not) College Dropout”: Cultivating Critical Musical Studies in Academics Cultivating the brand of “Without Warning” has taken place simultaneously with John’s rigorous course load, taking classes both in the history department for his major and in other departments.

His area of interest is 20th Century American History, stemming back to courses like “The U.S. in the World” with Professor Vanessa Walker and

Senior Profile | Noah John “Introduction to the Black Freedom Struggle” with Professor Alec Hickmott. He has also brought his music into his studies, as a specific focus of his history major. In particular, he said that courses with Professor Jason Robinson shaped his thought, such as “The Blues Muse: African American Music in American Culture.” He also took advantage of the open curriculum, and appreciated “Introduction to Psychology” and “The Practice of Art.” John also writes for the Arts & Living Section of The Student. He started as a contributing writer, and became a staff writer during his senior year.

Since joining, he has applied his skills from “Without Warning.”

“The first article I wrote [for The Student] covered a rapper from the Bronx named Kemba, who came to perform here [at] the Powerhouse. I was gonna go to that event anyway, and [I thought that] I’m probably gonna cover it for ‘Without Warning,’ so I figured I could hit two birds, one stone.”

As one of John’s editors, I can attest that he is one of our strongest and most consistent writers.

He usually writes about music, and always ties in the political, economic and systemic forces that affect how we interact with music. Even in a simple album review, it is about more than just the sound for John. But he doesn’t always stick to his comfort zone, and often branches

out his critical voice, in articles like “Revaluing Cinema in the Age of Streaming Services” and “The Rise of TikTok During the Covid-19 Pandemic”.

However, he truly thrives in critical music theory, which he has honed for his thesis, titled “Changing Masks: Black Jazz Musicians and the Politics of Racial Authenticity Before, During and After the Second World War.” “I’m really proud that I’ve completed a thesis,” he says.

“That was something that coming into [Amherst], I wasn’t completely sure that I was going to do. And yet, just that I got that done, I’m proud of the work I did. That’s probably [my] biggest academic accomplishment,

I would say.”

He was inspired by “The Origins of Cool in Postwar America” by Joel Dinerstein, which interrogates “a strong aesthetic change in popular entertainment in the United States” after the second World War, John explained. His thesis looks at this same time period, focusing on the perception of Black artists as a tension between the pre-war “Uncle Tom” entertainers, who played into jovial stereotypes to appeal to white audiences, and post-war artists who claimed to defy and rebel against commercialisation. The thesis also ties in John’s interest in journalism, comparing reviews from Black and white-run historic publications.

Professor Jen Manion, his thesis advisor, told me that she was impressed by his work and achievements at Amherst. “One of Noah’s strengths as a thinker and writer is his comfort with nuance. All of his arguments are so carefully drawn, allowing the complexity and humanity of those he writes about to really come through.”

“Take Care”: Beyond Amherst

Photos courtesy of Noah John ’21

Through “Without Warning,” John interviews prominent artists, runs an active blog and manages multiple social media accounts with over 200,000 supporters.

After Amherst, John plans to attend graduate school for journalism in New York University’s “Studio 20: Digital First” program. John described the program to me as a small, groupproject-based process that pairs students with New York media companies. “I’ve loved Amherst, but going from the more rural setting to New York, I think will be a good transition,” he admitted. Professor Manion agreed, and noted that graduate school will serve as a strong jumping-off point for John.

“It will allow him to bring together his love and passion for music writing as well as his talent for research and asking really good questions. I think he is going to be a major voice in American journalism working at the intersection of entertain-

ment and politics.”

In the more distant future, he hopes to develop “Without Warning” full-time, which he spoke about with a critical purpose: “I feel like a lot of socalled media outlets, or journalists in music today, particularly in the hip hop space, it is basically a modern payola, and they just take money from labels and artists to do [things like] playlist placement or blog coverage. It’s something I don’t want to do.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make content that’s engaging enough to audiences to support ourselves that way, either through subscriptions or ad revenue.” He acknowledged that it will be a difficult task but one that he is eager to take on.

And even though he is excited to move on to new and better things, John made clear what he has appreciated about his time at Amherst.

“I think a lot of people’s main complaints with [Amherst] is [that] it’s kind of small, and you see the same people a lot.

But that’s something that in a way I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve gotten to know so many very different people on a really personal level. And I feel like one of the coolest things that I love about Amherst is like when I meet new people and just being really blown away by their really niche interest. When you talk to somebody, you’re like, ‘I would never guess that like this is what this person is into.’”

Finally here’s a message from Noah to his friends, family and supporters: “I would like to sincerely thank everyone that has supported me and helped me reach the point where I am today. Thank you to Professor Manion, Professor Robinson, Professor Walker and many more for helping make learning at Amherst such a valuable experience. Most importantly, thank you to my parents, Megan and Robert John for always doing everything they could to lead me to success. I owe you the world.”

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 33

Senior Profile | Braxton Schuldt

A Future Neurosurgeon with a Runner’s Heart During his years at Amherst, Braxton Schuldt has relentlessly pursued academic and athletic excellence.

Schdult’s path as a dedicated student-athlete led him to rediscover the importance of community, inspired excellence in his teammates, and prepared him for the rigors of medical school.

— Sophie Wolmer ’23 Braxton Schuldt ’21 is the epitome of excellence and resilience. His intelligence, work ethic and drive to help others has molded him into an exceptional Amherst student-athlete. As a future physician, two-sport varsity captain, long-time Educational Director of Amherst College Emergency Medical Services (ACEMS) and neuroscience major, his resume and accomplishments are truly remarkable.

Behind the curtain of achievement lies a dedicated and selfless man who is always there to support his teammates. His relentless pursuit of greatness inspires others to act in the same way.

A Small-Town from Illinois

Kid

Future Dr. Schuldt grew up in Sterling, Illinois — a small, rural town two hours from Chicago. A classic small-town kid, he lived with his mother, father and Fireball, his 16-year-old cat. Because everyone knew one another, life in Sterling was quiet but wholesome. As a child, Schuldt went to church every week and knew everyone in the congregation.

It was his close-knit town background that taught Schuldt the importance of community early-on.

Schuldt’s mother and father greatly shaped his interests and ultimately led him to pursue a career in medicine. Despite the fact that none of his family members were doctors, Schuldt knew that he wanted to be a doctor when he was a young kid.

His inspiration, he says, was his mother’s line of work.

Schuldt’s mom was everyone’s favorite fourth-grade teacher and built lasting connections with her students. The bonds that she created with her students led Braxton to do the same in his career. Combined with his intrinsic love for the sciences, he was motivated to pursue a career in pediatric medicine.

Mr. and Mrs. Schuldt also influenced Braxton to take up the sport of running. His dad was a distance runner, and his mom was a sprinter. Though there was some controversy over which he would become, distance-running won out. He started competing in cross-country and track meets when he entered the fifth grade.

Though they always encouraged and supported him, Schuldt’s parents never pushed him. He was given the freedom and trust to choose his own path.

Academic Awakening After his first year of high

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school, Schuldt transferred to the Illinois Math and Science Academy, a boarding school a few hours away from Sterling.

He was quickly introduced to a level of academic rigor to which he was not accustomed. Though the environment first felt like a “punch to the face” he quickly adapted and rose to the occasion.

Schuldt learned fairly quickly that the Illinois Math and Science Academy was a competitive environment, and embraced the hard-working mentality. He learned how to put his head down and work in academics and athletics. Yet, Schuldt also learned that putting his foot to the gas all the time had its drawbacks. After coming to Amherst, he has realized the unrealistic nature of perfectionism. High school awoke Schuldt’s drive, and turned him into an “academic weapon,” a jestful nickname given by his college teammate.

Even though Schuldt had the requisite marks, he had a tough college application process. He was accepted to his safety school, waitlisted at Amherst and rejected from most of his top-choice colleges. After getting off the waitlist, he grabbed the spot and never looked back.

Photos courtesy of Braxton Schuldt ’21

Schuldt leaves behind a legacy in the lab and on the cross country and track programs.

A Revitalization of sport was far from linear. The Communal Values key to unlocking his potential in When Schuldt arrived for the sport came down to not carhis first-year orientation, he de- ing so much. He found that he cided to pay a visit to the head trained and raced better when he cross-country coach to see if he did not put as much pressure on could walk on to the team. The himself. Slowing down and apcoach said that there was a spot, preciating non-outcome-based but that he would have to fight metrics did the trick. He won for it at a 5 a.m. time trial the all-academic honors on the nanext morning. Sure enough, tional level and scored in the 5k Braxton made the cut and began and 10k at the NESCAC chamhis college athletic career. pionships (on the same day!)

By his own admission, in 2019. Head Cross-Country Schuldt was not a remarkable Coach Cassie Funke-Harris dehigh school runner. But because scribed coaching Braxton as an he had started to see improve- honor. “I treasure the time we ment in his final senior season had, joking about his race tacand qualified for the state cham- tics, planning out workouts, and pionships, he decided to take on trying to avoid steeplechase barthe challenge of college athlet- riers. He has been a consistent ics. This choice was certainly presence on the team since his the right one, Schuldt went on freshman year, always working to become one of the best dis- hard, steadily improving and tance runners on the team and a finding joy in all the parts of this two-year cross country and track sport that make him the athlete captain. he is today,” Funke-Harris exSchuldt’s progression in the pressed.

Senior Profile | Braxton Schuldt When asked about Schuldt, Alfred Kibowen ’23 noted that “Braxton is a bona fide workhorse.” As a fellow distance runner and neuroscience student, Kibowen has been astonished by Schuldt’s commitment to work in the lab at all hours of the night and simultaneous improvement on the track. “By his own estimations, coming into college, Schuldt was a mediocre runner, but as of this graduating year Braxton was a brilliant athlete!”

Kibowen proclaimed.

Schuldt also relearned the importance of community on the cross-country and track teams. His teammates helped him to grow out of his shell and revitalize his social life. Daily practices, lifts, track meets and team social events showed him that it’s good to take breaks from schoolwork. He credits his teammates for his evolution into a “more social being.”

But Schuldt did just as much for his teammates as they did for him. William Snead ’23, a fellow member of the cross-country and track teams, described Schuldt as the ideal role model for underclassmen: “Braxton’s work ethic and ability to compete on the track or cross country course at a high level while excelling inside the classroom has been an amazing example for myself and the younger guys on the team. He has led by example and influenced me to hold myself to a higher standard.”

Achieving Academic Excellence and Securing Medical School Dreams Schuldt came into college knowing that he wanted to major in neuroscience. He considered doing a Spanish double major so that he could become fluent in the language. His goal

was to communicate with Spanish-speaking patients without a medical interpreter. After he accomplished this task, he decided to focus his energy on neuroscience.

Citing himself as a “huge nerd” when it comes to the brain, he is commonly contemplating questions about consciousness and inner-thought.

Of all his classes, those in the neuroscience major were always his favorite. His passion for the discipline led him to determine that a career as a neurosurgeon will be a perfect fit.

As a sophomore, Schuldt decided to apply to the early assurance program for Mount Sinai Medical School. He received an interview and was admitted in his sophomore spring, guaranteeing him a spot at the school when he graduated. This meant that Schuldt did not have to take the MCAT and was not bound

Photos courtesy of Braxton Schuldt ’21

In the fall of 2020, Schuldt ran a masked 10k time trial on the track with the pacing help of Oliver Spiva ’24. He inspired his teammates to keep training even though three of their sports seasons had been cancelled.

to strict pre-medical requirements. After his stressful college application ordeal, getting into Mount Sinai was a huge confidence booster.

“Being accepted into Mount Sinai took a huge weight off of my shoulders, especially after the whole college ordeal of just getting rejected everywhere.”

For the Mt. Sinai Early Assurance Program, Schuldt was required to complete a thesis.

In the adverse circumstances caused by the pandemic, this proved tremendously difficult.

Notably, he lost crucial summer and interterm time in the lab.

This meant that Schudlt spent most hours in the lab the three weeks before the thesis was due.

Even though he had to sacrifice a lot of sleep, he overcame his adverse conditions and pulled it off: Schuldt’s thesis was one of the best-written this year and made him a finalist for the three-minute thesis competition.

In simple terms, his research implicated the novel protein in neuronal development, a key process in the development of autism spectrum disorder. The next step of his thesis is publishing: “Going forward, I’m staying at Amherst this summer to keep the project rolling and publish sometime soon. We have promising results, especially since the protein is so new. The next goal is to publish my results and make them known to the scientific community.”

Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Sally Kim, who advised Schuldt in the thesis process, said that “Braxton has been an amazing student to work with, particularly as a new faculty member. His passion for understanding the sciences, tireless work ethic and quick ability to learn and integrate ideas has made him an advisor’s dream.”

Strength of Character Schuldt’s relentless determination and natural intelligence shaped him into a premier student-athlete. He managed to

lead his team to compete at the national level while maintaining his diligence as a student-researcher. Schuldt sets an example of excellence for his peers, and inspires them to expect more of themselves.

Functioning at such a high level has not come without its challenges. Schuldt’s commitment to his thesis meant that he had to scratch from most of the meets of his senior spring season.

It also took a tremendous toll mentally. The thing that got him through the tough time was the mental assets he had acquired through distance-running. “My thesis kind of killed me — it knocked me down. But the reason why I was able to finish in such a short amount of time was because of the lessons that I had learned from running. Like running, when faced with academic challenges, you can’t freak out or get paralyzed with fear and anxiety. Instead of beating myself up, I just got it done,” he said.

Professor Kim admired Schuldt’s perseverance throughout the unprecedented thesis process, “As a student-athlete, Braxton applies his disciplined approach to running to the lab; I’ve seen him practice a technique or protocol as many times as it takes until he has it down cold. Especially during the pandemic, I have been impressed by his maturity, determination, patience and clear vision to pursue his thesis work. It’s been my pleasure and privilege to mentor Braxton, and he will be greatly missed as he starts his new chapter in medicine.”

Schuldt has had a lasting impact at Amherst College. His legacy will remain long-after he begins medical school. He hopes to continue running and competing in his free time in New York City.

While his next athletic move is uncertain for now, his career in medicine is secured. There is no doubt that Schuldt will continue to build community at Mt. Sinai and raise the bar for his medical school classmates.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 35

Senior Profile | Sirig Gurung

A Commitment to Curiosity, Compassion & Care Whether supporting the international student community at Amherst or looking to make a difference in his home country of Nepal, Sirig Gurung always has an eye toward improving the experience of others.

— Yee-Lynn Lee ’23 Sirig Gurung’s ’21 unassuming and humble disposition belies the large impact he has on those around him.

Originally from Kathmandu, Nepal, Gurung is a beloved member of the international student community at Amherst, which he has actively contributed to through his work with the Center for International Student Engagement (CISE). A double major in economics and math, he has gotten deeply involved in both departments, serving as a Math Fellow and writing a senior thesis in economics. In the future, Gurung plans to pursue research in development economics, specializing in international migration from Nepal.

When asked to describe Gurung, those close to him painted a person who is poised and wise, kind and welcoming, thoughtful and supportive — someone who is great at listening and giving advice and has an incredible sense of humor to top it all off. But the common feature that drives all of Gurung’s pursuits and underlies his most notable qualities is the genuine curiosity and compassion he brings to connecting with and learning about people.

Creating a Diverse Community Having come to Amherst without a clear idea of what he wanted to do, Gurung recalled feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities that were available to him: “I saw the open curriculum and all the courses

here, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna do everything,’” he said about his first year at the college.

Gurung recounted approaching his social life in the same way at first: “I thought I could make friends with everyone, you know?” He spoke, however, about becoming disillusioned by a social scene that was not always accepting of the diversity of its members. Part of sustaining a diverse community is having the understanding that not everyone “interact[s] with people the same way people here do,” he said. “I was disillusioned by the fact that that understanding doesn’t necessarily exist within the wider community.”

Gurung credited this disillusionment with pushing him toward finding community among his fellow international students.

He began seeking out active roles in building up this community his sophomore year, serving as an International Student Leader (ISL) before starting to work as a program coordinator for the CISE that fall. The inspiration for taking on this role came in part from his experience attending an international school in India, said Gurung, where “there [were] a lot of people who were feeling out of place … but the fact that everyone was out of place made sure that no one was out of place.”

“I wanted to replicate that environment at Amherst, at least a microcosm of it, by working at the CISE and making sure that international students feel

36 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

supported through their time at Amherst,” he explained.

Gurung’s approachable and reassuring nature served him well in this work, said Hanna Bliss, the former director of the CISE who supervised him in his two years there. “Welcom[ing] folks into the center [and giving them] what they need in order to participate, in order to be present, in order to be comfortable … are things that he always did really seamlessly,” she said. “I have seen Sirig be a really calming presence for other students in moments where they’re struggling.”

Bliss added that Gurung was always ready to step up in support of his colleagues as well. “If ever anybody needed a helping hand, he was the person to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll be there for you. I can do that thing to make it easier for you,’” she said.

At the CISE, Gurung devised and implemented programs that served to not just foster community among international students at Amherst but also expand the idea of community itself. He collaborated extensively with other resource centers at the college to bring more intersectionality to conversations that often take place in a U.S.-centric context on campus. Working in conjunction with the Center for Diversity & Student Leadership (CDSL), for instance, Gurung coordinated a program that examined from an international perspective the meaning of class in the student experience.

Photos courtesy of Sirig Gurung ’21

Gurung has drawn on his deep well of kindness and curiosity to touch the lives of those around him and uplift the communities of which he is a part.

The initiative Gurung took in breaking new ground with such programs was emblematic of the ways in which he had grown in his time at the CISE, said Bliss.

It was really exciting to “see that shift from being more ready to help out others to … moving into the driver’s seat, coming up with new ideas and pulling them off in really beautiful ways and creating new relationships that have never existed before,” she said.

In Gurung’s own words, “The goal [of his work] wasn’t to create a cliquey environment of international students. It was to make sure that visibility was there for international students — that when people thought of community at Amherst College, they didn’t block out the fact that there’s a minority of international students living here.”

“One of the reasons why I collaborated with different resource centers was because there’s a shared experience between mi-

nority groups here,” he continued. “It’s very important to put our strengths together to make sure that there’s more diversity in the idea of community.”

Realizing his Passion in the Classroom Gurung has also been actively involved in contributing to academic communities in his time at Amherst. He is a Math Fellow for the Mathematics & Statistics Department and has served as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for a multitude of math courses at Amherst. At the end of his junior year, he was honored with the Walker Teaching Award, which recognizes students for “accomplishment and promise in teaching and tutoring mathematics or statistics.”

It was evident from the way Gurung spoke about his experience as a TA that this accomplishment comes from his compassion for the diversity of

Senior Profile | Sirig Gurung student experiences and genuine interest in learning from and about others. “Especially in the entry-level [math] classes, there are people of very varying degrees of pre-existing knowledge of math,” he said. “When you’re trying to communicate ideas to a group of people, you need to be cognizant of the fact that people learn differently.”

Gurung’s role as a TA has been a great way for him to meet new people and watch them grow, he continued. “I’m [a TA for] ‘[Introduction to] Analysis’ this semester, and a lot of people who I TA’d for Math 121 [‘Intermediate Calculus’] are in that class. It’s nice to see ‘character arcs’ throughout.”

But despite Gurung’s active participation in the math community at Amherst and his continued interest in math throughout his undergraduate career, he realized early on that pure math wasn’t what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing.

He explained that he had always wanted to do something related

to math, but he wanted his work to have a more direct connection to the reality he observed around him.

He ended up finding this connection in economics, which he decided to major in after taking “Advanced Microeconomics” in the fall of his sophomore year.

The course showed him that “econ[omics] [has] actually quite serious math going on behind the scenes,” Gurung said, convincing him that economics was the intersection between math and real-world applications that he was looking for.

In focusing his academic trajectory on economics, Gurung has challenged himself with the highest level courses offered in the department, engaging his coursework with care, collaborating with classmates and winning accolades for his academic achievement. Peers and professors alike were quick to note that this earnestness is driven by Gurung’s deep curiosity and an underlying passion for improving people’s lives, particularly in the

country he calls home.

“He’s very, very interested in getting to the nitty gritty [of economics],” said Guillermo Rodriguez ’22, a close friend of Gurung’s. “He’s very much focused on improving living standards and people’s situations from a humanitarian perspective.” “[Gurung]’s deeply motivated, and he’s really passionate about important questions, particularly for people in developing countries, and particularly for people in Nepal,” echoed Professor of Economics Caroline Theoharides, one of Gurung’s thesis advisors. “He’s made sure that he has all the mathematical and economic tools to be able to [explore those questions] really successfully.”

Gurung used his senior thesis as an opportunity to investigate one such question, drawing from his personal experience living in India to study the spillover effects that a demonetization policy in India had on Nepal.

His work exemplified his unique ability to “com[e] up with

[questions] that are at the cutting edge of economics, but that he comes up with totally tractable and possible ways to [study],” said Theoharides, who added that the topic “speaks well to how he’s been able to use his own life experiences to inform really important questions that economists haven’t thought about.”

For Gurung, centering his research on “issues that plague Nepal” is a key way in which he has been able to connect back to his home community: “I’ve been away from home for six years, essentially, and making sure that my work grounds me to where I’m from is something that I find is pretty important to me.”

Looking Forward What’s Next

to

Gurung, who hasn’t left campus since the pandemic hit the U.S., said it has made him more excited for the next chapter of his life. “The pandemic has really changed my outlook on what it means to be graduating and how I feel about that,” he said. “It’s

been stressful. But it makes the end more sweet.”

He’s headed off to Dartmouth College, where he will be conducting research on globalization, international trade and political economy in the university’s Globalization Cluster initiative.

Gurung plans to enroll in a Ph.D. program in economics after he finishes with the research lab.

Reflecting on his time at Amherst, Gurung said it’s been most rewarding in allowing him to hone in on an idea of what he wants to do. He expressed gratitude for the support professors have given him in his intellectual development and the strong relationships he’s fostered in collaborating with fellow students.

Of course, Gurung has more than reciprocated in the amount of warmth and support he has given to those around him and larger communities at Amherst.

They can’t wait to see him get out into the real world, where he will continue to engage his passion and connect with people in new and beautiful ways.

Photos courtesy of Sirig Gurung ’21

As a program coordinator for the CISE, Gurung worked with other resource centers to increase visibility for all minority groups on campus. Above, Gurung (right) tables for the CISE and the Queer Resource Center (QRC) for National Coming Out Day and International Pronouns Day.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 37

Senior Profile | Arielle Kirven

A Daring Pursuit to See Beyond the Image In her time at Amherst, Arielle Kirven has sharpened her interdisciplinary mind, trained her artistic eye and has found a unique and authentic voice — one she is ready to share with the world.

— Hannah Zhang ’22 In an increasingly turbulent and disorienting world, Arielle Kirven ’21 knows exactly what she wants and who she wants to be — and she will, without a doubt, make it happen.

After a nearly two-hour long conversation outside the steps of Johnson Chapel, Kirven, with her unwavering focus, precise articulation and subtle, yet steadfast confidence, convinced me of this fact.

Her sharp and attentive gaze paired with the clarity and intentionality of her words invited me to see the exceptional architecture of her world — one rooted in a firm foundation and designed with a committed and nuanced eye toward beauty and aesthetic value.

The Base Layer Growing up in a small town in Connecticut, an hour outside of New York City, Arielle was exposed to the worlds of literature and art at an early age.

Whether she was devouring the library’s deteriorating copies of the Nancy Drew series or attending theatre shows at the local playhouse, the influences of her surroundings seeped into the fabric of her daily life and laid the foundations of her passion towards the arts. Living in a place populated by literary and artistic icons, Kirven was raised “in the energy to be invested in the arts” and described “how that became a critical part of looking at the world, engaging with people and truly understanding who people

are and where they come from.”

When she entered high school, Kirven dove into the realm of journalism, and for three years, dedicated herself to her school newspaper — which was, by 2015, already operating in a fully digital form. She was instantly addicted to the immediate feedback of digital media.

From being a staff writer, to the editor of the Entertainment and Arts section, to editor-in-chief her senior year, Kirven explored the intricacies of digital-first media, learning how to inspire young audiences and readers to engage with the longform in new and innovative ways.

High school introduced Kirven to the excitement of being on the precipice of print and digital journalism, and as she entered college, the fascination and enthusiasm remained an underlying current. Over time, it emerged as a guiding force in her academic pursuits at Amherst.

did.

In her first two years at Amherst, Kirven made a conscious effort to explore all that the open curriculum had to offer. From math to American studies to economics, she experimented with the expansive courses that Amherst presented. She was excited by the opportunity to receive a true liberal arts education, but after spending time in so many different departments, she felt like she was losing sight of her true interests. By the end of her sophomore year, Kirven began to connect the dots between all of her experiences growing up, throughout high school and finally, in college. She realized that, for her entire life, she had been building a foundation in the realms of literature and art.

Kirven decided to devote the rest of her time at Amherst towards pursuing these passions, plunging full force into her interdisciplinary studies of art and English.

A Blank Canvas

Training the Eye

When deciding to attend Amherst, Kirven was instantly impacted by the space.

“I think that when I walked onto the campus, I sort of knew that this was where I wanted to be. I feel like that’s the case for a lot of people who are interested in the arts. You’re impacted by the visual, almost first before anything else. This was a blank canvas, so to speak, where I could chart my own territory.”

And that was exactly what she

Kirven returned for her junior year more focused on her passions than ever before: she was committed to fostering her intellectual curiosity in art and literature.

The dedication to diving into her academics, writing and research grounded her again, reminding her of why she was at Amherst in the first place. Having declared her double majors in Art History and English, she began developing her own crit-

38 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

Photos courtesy of Arielle Kirven ’21

Kirven’s intellect and ability to notice subtleties help her navigate the fast-paced world of digital journalism. ical and interdisciplinary approach to perceiving the world around her, guided, always, by the intricacies often overlooked by other passing observer. She was drawn to the complexities in narrative and context that exist behind the singular image hanging on the wall, and found herself saturated in questions that demanded more from the story: “Who was the person making it? Where did they come from?

What community are they from?

What has that community experienced or suffered? What is that person trying to communicate to the rest of the world? Or is this work in a museum? Why is it in this museum? Who acquired it? Or who bought it on the art market? And why was it being sold for that much money? What is the inherent value assigned to certain types of art? I think it’s very interesting to see how communities, and communities of color specifically, have responded to their conditions by creating

art,” Kirven articulated.

Taking a plethora of courses in architecture, performance studies, media studies and creative writing, Kirven not only built an impressive archive of knowledge in these fields, but also began to develop a unique and personal eye towards aesthetic design and its relationship to the ever-fluctuating shifts in culture and media. After enrolling in “Creative Nonfiction” with Professor Min Jin Lee in the fall of her junior year, Kirven seriously considered a future career as a writer for the first time.

“What I love about Amherst is obviously learning so much from professors and academics. But I think having someone who’s a career writer teaching me for the first time was really helpful. And she helped me see that there’s a pathway to it. And it can be tangible.”

The respect between Kirven and Professor Lee was mutual — when describing her interac-

Senior Profile | Arielle Kirven tions with Kirven, Lee expressed that “during office hours, I got a greater sense of her vulnerability and goodness, which shine through even greater one on one. Arielle cares deeply about the world and her place in it.

She has a great aesthetic and intellectual sensibility, which I admire.”

A Distinct Voice As the pandemic unraveled during the spring of Kirven’s junior year, she launched her very own newsletter on Substackcalled “Wild Tortoise.” At the time, Kirven was working as a managing Arts and Living editor for The Student but wanted a space for more free-form and casual writing.

Inspired by one of her favor-

ite writers, Haley Nahman, who had also started publishing on Substack, and with the encouragement of her friends, Kirven dedicated her free time to writing about fashion, aesthetics and culture in her “bi-weeklyish dispatches”. Her post “media, performance, & activism,” published at the height of the George Floyd protests, was widely circulated among a diverse online audience.

Distilling the scholarship she had learned from her art history theory and English classes into a more widely accessible form, Kirven wrote a passionate and informative piece on the importance of posting on social media as a way of spreading awareness, getting involved and showing solidarity.

When the post went semi-viral, Kirven realized that her voice was powerful and that she had something valuable to say. “Now, more than ever, it is possible to be in media, to be a writer, to be a creative, to be [a] YouTuber. And you dont come into Amherst thinking you’re going to do something like that, but Amherst also gave me the tools to do whatever I want. It reaffirmed to me that I’m capable and smart and creative and I can do it.”

When I asked why the newsletter was named Wild Tortoise, Kirven responded, “I think when I was younger I was always drawn to the tortoise as an animal … the slow and steady, which I definitely identify with.

I’m very intentional with my

actions and with my words and how I approach people in situations. And Wild Tortoise, I think it just came to me. I liked the tension, the juxtaposition and the oxymoronic nature of it. And I feel like that’s what I wanted to come across in my newsletter — not everything is simple. There’s tension between everything. And that’s why it’s interesting to write about.”

In Wild Tortoise, Kirven’s willingness and commitment to explore the complexities hidden behind the image hanging on the wall saturate her words.

Her honesty, empathy and critical eye, developed through her time at Amherst — and her time away from it — is prominent, and not only in her work as a scholar and writer.

Reflecting on their friendship over the last four years, one of Kirven’s closest friends Jeremy Thomas ’21 expressed “She’s honest with herself and with others — that’s extremely rare because it requires making vulnerability your strength. It’s not something I do well or often but when I am able, it’s often been because of her. Grateful doesn’t do justice to how I feel about her but it’s certainly one piece.”

In the thesis, she deftly unites extensive formal analysis of specific works of art by Adrian Piper with theoretical concepts of vision, identity, and surveillance drawn from a range of writers associated with a range of disciplines—a true liberal arts project! Of the students I’ve gotten to know at Amherst, Arielle stands out for her love of writing and her interest in drawing together a wide range of interests through that medium.

“I Can Do This”

Photos courtesy of Arielle Kirven ’21

In perpetual search for new perspectives, Kirven takes a photograph of a contemporary art piece at The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

After conquering the enormous task of writing a thesis during the pandemic, Kirven solidified her voice in the larger academic discourse of contemporary art criticism.

With the help of her advisor Professor Niko Vicario, Kirven’s

thesis “deftly unites extensive formal analysis of specific works of art by Adrian Piper with theoretical concepts of vision, identity, and surveillance drawn from a range of writers associated with a range of disciplines—a true liberal arts project! Of the students I’ve gotten to know at Amherst, Arielle stands out for her love of writing and her interest in drawing together a wide range of interests through that medium,” Vicario explained.

The process allowed Kirven to recognize how much her own experiences were reflected, especially in the realm of academia.

“It was sort of crazy to see how much of her experiences have been my experiences as a Black woman navigating space, navigating academia and social space.” The thesis, though challenging, was a rewarding experience that validated her place as a scholar and expert in the field.

Now, at the end of her Amherst career, Kirven addresses her future in full confidence: “I can do this, but [it’s] not going to come without challenges and work.”

In a world where pursuing a creative path may feel especially daunting, Kirven is relentless in following her passions.

“I want to be a writer,” Kirven declares, “Coming off of the whole ‘print is dead’ era, there’s a full force push into digital, and I’m really excited to see how legacy print publications adjust to moving into the digital realm and the democratization of media as a whole … I really want to be a part of that.” In the two hours I had the privilege of speaking to Kirven, she convinced me full-heartedly that she will be.

With her multifaceted intellect, commitment to honesty and critical eye paired with a prominent voice, Kirven is bound to end up exactly where she wants to be — dressed, without a doubt, in a well-tailored jacket and perfectly baggy pants at the scene.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 39

Senior Profile | Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet

An Interdisciplinary Thinker and Empathetic Leader Through all of its stages, Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet’s journey through Amherst has remained consistently grounded in empathy, introspection and sharp intellectual curiosity.

— Theo Hamilton ’23 In the words of his thesis advisor (Professor of Political Science Thomas Dumm) Toma-Jin Morikawa ’21, also known as Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet, is “a brilliant example of a new generation of Amherst students with a truly international perspective.” Born in France but raised in the U.S. and Japan, Morikawa-Fouquet has had no shortage of opportunities to develop that international perspective and observe cross-cultural interactions, becoming increasingly interested in the moments of crisis that can cause “the most severe forms of conflict” between and within cultures and states.

At Amherst, Morikawa-Fouquet has channeled his interest in the international world, cross-cultural communication and community-building into numerous endeavors. As president of the college’s Transfer Student Association he has helped develop a “really tight-knit community” of students from across the world. As the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) Senator elected by the school’s transfer students he has been able to advocate for “transfers’ interests, on and off campus,” whether by “facilitating the integration of new transfer students into a campus made particularly difficult to navigate by Covid-19” or by holding events for them.

In the classroom, Morikawa-Fouquet’s time at Amherst has been equally impressive. As a political science major, Morikawa-Fouquet put together an

impressive thesis questioning traditional assumptions about structural theories of international relations. As an anthropology major, he has found ways to move away from strictly quantitative visions of culture.

Coming to Amherst Before coming to Amherst, Morikawa-Fouquet spent three and a half years enrolled in Kyoto’s Doshisha University. Founded by the Protestant missionary Joseph Hardy Neesima (Amherst College’s first Japanese alumnus), Doshisha University grew from relatively small origins into one of Japan’s most prestigious universities. At Doshisha, Morikawa-Fouquet threw himself into studying international relations, hoping to eventually work as a diplomat where his “kind of multicultural background could contribute to international peace.”

It wasn’t long before Morikawa-Fouquet secured an internship at Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs — an experience he described as simultaneously rewarding and disillusioning. Despite being tasked with interesting work, he said that the push to represent Japan as a country and its national interests made “all of [his] other identities feel kind of marginalized … it made [him] realize that, maybe, government isn’t really what [he] wanted to do.”

Briefly dispirited, Morikawa-Fouquet quickly bounced back when he reflected upon his study abroad experience at

40 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

U.C. Berkeley in 2018. He described one of the major intellectual turning points of his life as a course he took there called “Language and Power,” which he recalled as his “favorite class in [his] undergraduate career.”

While he originally enrolled in it as an “outlier course,” Morikawa-Fouquet found himself immersed in and fascinated by a new way of thinking. He recalls that the course not only enabled him to see the discipline of international relations as a discourse, but also granted him the means to examine the lives of everyday people and the ways in which language shapes our understanding of identity, culture and power. The class also led Morikawa-Fouquet towards a fascination with the French philosopher Michel Foucault, which would fully bloom when he began to write his thesis.

His time at U.C. Berkeley also inspired Morikawa-Fouquet to “transfer to an American institution, especially a liberal arts college where [he] could explore more classes and get rich feedback on [his] work.” As a result, he applied for and was selected to transfer into Amherst College in the fall of 2019 through a program that allows one student from Doshisha per year to enroll at Amherst College.

Leadership in the Transfer Student Community Transitioning to Amherst wasn’t an easy process. A

Photos courtesy of Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet ’21

Morikawa-Fouquet sits on the first-year quad in Fall 2019, the year he began his journey at Amherst. forty-hour trip featuring a grim ten-hour layover in Seattle was a fairly inauspicious omen, but a more significant challenge was the small cohort of transfers in the 2019-2020 school year.

“There were only like 16 people or so transferring in the fall, and like six in the spring,” Morikawa-Fouquet pointed out, and most returning students “already had their own friend groups.” As he found his feet and adjusted to the college as a whole, Morikawa-Fouquet found the transfer community to be an extremely helpful pillar of support — a perception that would later make him determined to help maintain the tight-knit nature of the transfer community.

Michael Keating ’22, another transfer student who lived in Seligman Dormitory during the 2019-2020 school year, is one of the many friends Morikawa-Fouquet gained through the transfer student community. Although Keating’s first impression was

that Morikawa-Fouquet seemed “pretty shy,” the pair grew closer through further interactions.

“We kept bumping into each other in the hallways, and I was quickly swept away by the energy of his internal life and creativity,” Keating said. Keating further remarked that “Amherst talks a lot about producing free thinkers … but Jin is really unique in his ability to perceive and challenge status quos.”

Morikawa-Fouquet got his chance to do just that in the summer of 2020, when he was elected joint president of the transfer students’ association and began the task of helping new transfer students integrate into the Amherst environment. While this job was made particularly difficult to navigate by the Covid-19 pandemic, Morikawa-Fouquet says that he had one especially important advantage when it came to this task: As an international student, he stayed on campus over the summer of 2020

Senior Profile | Toma-Jin Morikawa Fouquet and was able to see many of the changes Amherst made before the new school year kicked off. As a result, he had an increased ability to guide new transfer students through the unfamiliar systems and set up events in accordance with Amherst’s new policies that would help develop group bonding.

At the same time, summer 2020 also saw Morikawa-Fouquet elected into the AAS Senate as the first-ever holder of a new seat voted on exclusively by transfer students. While he regrets that all of his AAS meetings had to be held over Zoom, Morikawa-Fouquet is proud to have spent a year representing the interests of Amherst’s transfer community.

A Thesis Challenging Existing Assumptions Beyond his increasing leadership in the transfer student community, Morikawa-Fouquet also

spent summer 2020 in a state of intense introspection. “I mean, there were only 40 or 50 students on campus — most of whom I did not know,” he remarked.

Morikawa-Fouquet pointed out that this was an environment very well suited to prompting “a period of self-reflection.”

“I spent a lot of time thinking alone [on] Charles Pratt[‘s] third floor just about what I wanted to do and what I wanted to get out of my time here.” Increasingly, he thought about branching away from his focus on international relations and ultimately decided to declare a second major in anthropology, a decision that helped him develop a more qualitative and less quantitative perspective on the humanities.

As he began to engage more with anthropology, Morikawa-Fouquet also decided to write a senior thesis in the political science department that tied

together many of his experiences in political science and international relations. Morikawa-Fouquet’s first thesis idea was to visit Princeton University’s archives and conduct research into President Dwight Eisenhower’s nuclear policy towards East Asia.

When the Covid-19 pandemic nixed that plan, Morikawa-Fouquet stayed positive, identifying an opportunity to write a more personal thesis capturing his “initial fascination with the discipline of North American international relations theory, but also [his] later disappointment with it.” He added that he wanted this thesis to encapsulate “[his] encounter with Michel Foucault in the Language and Power Class at U.C. Berkeley,” which played such a significant role in Morikawa-Fouquet’s disaffection with certain elements of the field of international relations.

To capture this experience,

Morikawa-Fouquet moved his thesis into the realm of political theory, began working with Professor Dumm as a thesis advisor and continued reading intensely to hone his ideas. Dumm reflected on the process fondly, praising Morikawa-Fouquet’s intellectual sharpness, curiosity and upbeat spirit: “In a sentence, he is the sort of student I looked forward to meeting over Zoom every week — which isn’t always the case.”

Ultimately, Morikawa-Fouquet’s thesis took shape as a critique of prominent structuralist descriptions of international relations which assume that “anarchy is a natural structure [and an] inevitable result of the Westphalian state system.” One example that Morikawa-Fouquet critiques is Kenneth N. Waltz, a prominent structuralist scholar who framed the study of international relations by heavily drawing

Photos courtesy of Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet ’21

Morikawa-Fouquet gives a speech at the Center for Diversity and Student Leadership’s Commencement on May 15, 2021. Photo taken by Harufumi Nakazawa.

from the language of economics.

While Waltz claims that his theories are merely descriptions of the reality of international relations with predictive capabilities, Morikawa-Fouquet identifies “an implicit logic that makes his theory normative — which means it describes what Waltz thinks states ought to do [in the anarchical system].” Morikawa-Fouquet demonstrates how Waltz moved from the descriptive to the normative by using and expanding on Foucault’s ideas. Drawing from Foucault’s idea of governmentality, Morikawa-Fouquet shows how Waltz discursively invokes (via economic metaphors) international anarchy as a realm that is endowed with structural rules, which in turn generates implications for how a state ought to conduct policy.

Next Steps In the aftermath of this monumental year at Amherst, Morikawa-Fouquet is looking forward to a break. “This summer,” he smiled, “I’m just going to take it easy. I’m going to fly back to Japan — because I haven’t been back in a year and a half — And I’m just going to spend time with my grandparents and read things that are interesting.”

After that, Morikawa-Fouquet has lined up a one-year Master’s program in Japanese Studies at Oxford University. As a Clarendon scholar, Oxford will cover all of his tuition and living expenses. From there on, all sorts of possibilities are open. Professor Dumm projected a bright future for Morikawa-Fouquet: “In twenty years I can see him in a lot of places. He has the talents to be a top international diplomat or a highly respected professor, where he goes next is up to him.”

Whatever happens next, there can be no doubt that Morikawa-Fouquet’s time at Amherst has left a strong impression on the college, both through his vibrant intellectual activities and through his leadership and persistent community building.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 41

Senior Profile | Ayodele Lewis

A Voice and Vision for Change Driving positive change at Amherst and beyond, Ayodele Lewis is a leader among her peers and inspires others through her passionate pursuit of justice.

—Brooke Hoffman ’23E From conducting critical research to igniting change at Amherst and beyond, neuroscience major Ayodele (“Ayo”) Lewis has built a stellar track record over the course of her four years.

While her accomplishments are undoubtedly impressive, they are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the depth that is Lewis’s intellect and character. The driving force behind it all? An unwavering passion for and commitment to uplifting marginalized groups.

Life Before Amherst A proud native New Yorker, Lewis credits much of her personal development to her upbringing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Lewis said “that will always be my home and I really attribute the great diversity of that community to who I am today. It’s a proud Puerto Rican and Orthodox Jewish, Black [community] and Chinatown is right next door — it’s just such a beautifully diverse neighborhood.”

Lewis also spent a significant portion of her formative years on the Upper East Side, attending the Brearley School for grades K-12. An active student, Lewis dedicated her time to diversity work, notably leading Umoja, the school’s Black student union.

Her passion for science began around age seven and was largely influenced by her close relationship with her grandfather, who was an obstetrician.

She recalled being fascinated by their conversations, explaining, “he sat down and talked to me in the most scientific, adult way possible and I was like: ‘This is so cool!’ I didn’t understand a word of what he said, but I just fell in love from that moment on.”

Those moments sparked a deep interest that has only continued to grow as she’s gotten older. Her passion took on new meaning when she began to uncover the grave disparities in healthcare, specifically in her primary area of interest: reproductive health.

Describing it as a “beautiful, sad intersection of [her] passions,” Lewis has been able to pursue her academic interests while simultaneously supporting marginalized communities through this work: “To know that I could make a difference within my community ... that’s what’s kept me going all these years… I feel like I have to do this.”

Lewis’s path toward public health isn’t merely an intellectual pursuit — it’s a calling that embraces everything she stands for as a person. “I really hope to dedicate my life to ... supporting Black marginalized people, especially Black women and that is the through line through everything I do from the BSU [Black Student Union], to medicine, to neuroscience … literally everything I do is devoted to uplifting and supporting Black women,” she explained.

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Journey to Amherst While Lewis has thrived in the liberal arts environment, she didn’t originally see herself at a school like Amherst. “I wanted to go to a big school with one of those fast-track medical programs and be super into science, not even look at a book, for my entire four years of college,” Lewis joked.

Yet a talk by an Amherst admissions representative illuminated the Amherst experience and reminded her of someone very dear to her. Describing him as “the most well-rounded man [she] knew,” and “a man of science but also… music… art… history and English,” Lewis explained that her grandfather, an Amherst alumnus, was very influential in her life. “As I sat there that day with the Amherst admissions rep, everything he said about the Amherst education was everything I valued in my grandfather. In everything he said about an Amherst student, I saw my grandfather and that was what I wanted for myself.” At that moment, Lewis set her sights on a liberal arts education at Amherst.

Discovering Passion and Direction in the Sciences Upon arriving at Amherst, Lewis wanted to embark on the pre-med track and major in Black studies. While she ultimately did not pursue the latter, she’s incredibly happy with the path she’s taken in neuroscience.

Photos courtesy of Ayodele Lewis ’21

Through her academic and extracurricular work, Lewis has made an indelible mark on each community she’s touched.

For Lewis, neuroscience is very interdisciplinary and strikes a unique balance between humanities and STEM, distinct from other STEM majors.

Lewis also emphasized the passion she has developed for statistics and how it has informed her professional career path. Speaking on the first statistics class she took with Professor Shu-Min Liao, Lewis explained, “that course has probably changed the trajectory of my life … the whole reason that I’m into public health now is because of her” and later proclaimed that “falling in love with stats was the biggest, lucky decision of my life.”

Lewis’s love for science has been further bolstered by her research experiences with Amherst alumnus OB/GYN James Greenberg ’84 and teams at the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (IECS) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Conducting clinical research focused largely on dis-

parities has strengthened her desire to pursue public health.

During her time with Dr.Greenberg, Lewis has done everything from researching point-of-care testing for biomarkers during labor to spending time on an actual labor and delivery floor.

“I focused primarily on whether or not being a person of color, someone who doesn’t speak English, a low-income person, whether those factors change your birth outcomes, whether or not you have a C-section, whether or not it’s a traumatic birth … so that’s something we’re still currently working on,” Lewis said.

She’s even had the opportunity to apply her studies in statistics and neuroscience to the research, opening new doors and a compelling path for her. She described one particularly transformative experience in which she volunteered to do a statistical analysis on a set of abstracts (data). “I did it with the help of

Senior Profile | Ayodele Lewis everything Shu-Min taught me … and it got me on two abstracts where all of my peers just had one.” This work inspired her decision to study abroad and continue exploring this area as a professional career path: “That’s when I was like, ‘What?! You can do it all? You can do stats and public health and caring about disparities and all of that’ … that’s the reason I went abroad to study public health and how I ended up at IECS. ” At IECS, Lewis assumed an integral role working on an international team. “They threw me on a team to come up with

a new set of guidelines for the WHO [World Health Organization] about postpartum hemorrhage …[and] how it can be applicable because, right now, there’s a lot of really good information and … techniques but they’re really only applicable to high-income countries.” She further explained, “we’re going over all the work and seeing what is the best route of care for everyone, from low-income to high-income countries.”

Active Engagement “She doesn’t take the easy route… you can expect her to

give more than 100 percent. She sets her own bar and goes above and beyond it,” said Lewis’s mom, Denise Greene.

On top of her academics and research, Lewis’s impact extends even further to her diverse extracurricular activities.

A senior member of the BSU, as well as member of Hillel and the Equestrian team, Lewis’s extensive involvement reflects a genuine interest in contributing to each community of which she is a part. Commenting on Lewis’s self-propelled drive to explore new spaces, Greene shared, “she’s driven by curiosity and

Photos courtesy of Ayodele Lewis ’21

Lewis’s highly intensive research experiences have inspired her interest in pursuing public health.

when she attaches herself to a community, she goes all in and wants to know everything and participate even though it might not be comfortable … I think her greatest strength is her ability to try new things … Not too many people have that bravery and to do it without being pushed — you know, pushing herself — I think it’s just so impressive.”

Lewis’s commitment to uplifting marginalized communities transcends everything she does. Regarding the BSU, Lewis shared the group’s commitment to “creating intentional space for Black students but then also informing the non-Black community members about the joy that we hold and everything, our accomplishments on campus and raising awareness for the issues … that are still out there.”

As a leader of the BSU, Lewis has driven critical initiatives that have sought to hold institutions of power accountable for their history and perpetuation of systemic racism.

She has had a major role in movements on Amherst’s campus such as Reclaim Amherst, Integrate Amherst and Black Minds Matter. She also had a hand in conceiving of and propelling the “Black At” movement, a social media campaign that highlights the day-to-day microaggressions experienced by students of color at predominantly white institutions. She started “Black At” with some high school friends after Brearley released a tone-deaf response to George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing protests.

“We created an account so that Black students could share their stories and … traumas and things that they had experienced at Brearley, and it blew up overnight. Now there are hundreds of ‘Black At’ accounts for institutions across the country and across the globe, including Black Amherst Speaks. It’s really brought light to the day-to-day struggles of Black students, not just the larger, the ones that get

publicized, the scratching of slurs into dorms, but the actual lived experience of a Black student day-to-day at their institutions.”

When asked to describe Lewis, close friend and BSU peer, Zoe Akoto ’21, said, “a humble, strong mind … She’s so determined, such a brilliant person, but doesn’t give herself the credit she deserves on what she brings to the community, the table and all the different spaces and organizations she’s a part of.” Akoto further underscored how much Lewis’s leadership has shaped the BSU: “She’s such a natural leader and I’m not really sure she even realizes it because I think it comes so inherently to her … [her] ability to facilitate, to bring a group together or work a room in that way is so impressive to me.”

Akoto also emphasized the extent of Lewis’s outreach as a Brearley alum. According to Akoto, Lewis has successfully compelled Brearley to significantly improve its diversity and inclusion efforts.

“In this space where these changes don’t actually affect her, she’s literally doing it for the next generation because she knows this is the right thing to do and she can’t not do it,” said Akoto.

The Next Chapter After graduation, Lewis hopes to kick-start her career in medicine by first becoming a doula. Next year, she will return to Amherst for post-baccalaureate studies and anticipates conducting research within the statistics department.

From there, she plans to attend medical school and ultimately pursue a master’s or Ph.D. in public health, specifically focusing on obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive justice. With an incredible college career behind her and passionate drive propelling her, the future is undeniably bright for Ayo Lewis.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 43

Senior Profile | Enoch Shin

A Teacher and a Storyteller Enoch Shin’s passion for storytelling is the driving force behind a number of his multidisciplinary accomplishments at Amherst.

—Ethan Samuels ’23 I’ve heard before that we don’t remember what people do, but instead remember how they make us feel. This quote seems to be perfectly crafted for my first interaction with Enoch Shin.

As my interview with Shin approached, I could not help but be reminded of a story from a previous semester. I could not recall much about the event, but I do remember seeking help for a challenging homework problem in teaching assistant (TA) office hours. After struggling with the TA on the problem for quite possibly an hour, I nearly accepted defeat. Right before the assignment was due, however, an email popped into my inbox from the TA. The email not only included steps to reach the correct answer, but why our office hours approach was flawed. For those unfamiliar with the workings of office hours, this is quite unusual. TAs do not typically spend their own time challenging themselves to solve a younger student’s homework problems, and understandably so.

In preparation for my interview, I searched “Enoch Shin” in my inbox because of a growing suspicion that he was the TA of semesters before. And there it was, the first sentence reading, “Hi Ethan, the conditional bar chart problem was weighing on my mind, so I decided to create it and get back to you…” After expressing my gratitude, I responded with honesty. “[Enoch], this is why one chooses a small

LAC [liberal arts college] like Amherst — where you’re surrounded by curious, intelligent people who want to see others succeed.”

What I came to realize during my time speaking with Shin was that this interaction was by no means fortuitous. Shin’s passion for teaching others — his love for passing on not just knowledge but a path to deeper learning — drives his life.

Finding his way Shin hails from the fair-weathered capital of the world, Anaheim, CA. He ended up enrolling at Amherst College for a variety of reasons, most notably financial aid packages and the open curriculum, but also a simple desire to get “far away” from Southern California.

He came in expecting to study history, a subject he’d always felt was academically stimulating, but decided to take a statistics course in his first semester. Shin was fully swept into the power of data and eventually decided to declare majors in both the history and statistics department.

Reaching that point, however, was admittedly difficult.

The 2017-2018 winter was one of the worst in recent memory, and Shin recalls returning home during that first-year break seriously considering the possibility of dropping out. Shin noted that in his first year, he was just trying to keep his “head above water,” and that it was the intellectual rigor of Amherst

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that allowed him to do so. “I just wanted to take advantage of the open curriculum and really figure out what I wanted to do, which I think is an ongoing process,” Shin said.

Shin took classes not only in the statistics and history departments but in the sexuality, women and gender Studies (SWAGS) and theater and dance departments. These courses provided Shin an escape from the specific intensity of statistics and history, but presented another realm — of equal, but distinct, academic rigor.

In his second year, Shin became a tour guide for the admissions office. He lists his email on the admissions website, urging potential students to reach out if they have any questions.

Shin pointed out how rewarding it is to accurately and honestly depict campus life for a high school student. Additionally, Shin joined the Buddhist meditation group and consistently attended weekly meditations by Mark Hart, a religious advisor at the college. While he noted that he isn’t religious, the meditation groups — which consisted of students and staff from all of the five colleges — “definitely kept me sane for a lot of my time at Amherst,” Shin said.

Motivated by a love for teaching, Shin began to involve himself in the pedagogy of the statistics department. He became a teaching assistant and a statistics and data science fellow in his sophomore year. As

Photos courtesy of Enoch Shin’21

Shin has been awarded the Walker Teaching Award, a Five College Statistics Prize and the Beinecke Scholarship for his work in the history and statistics departments. a statistics and data science fellow, Shin held drop-in tutoring hours for students in lower-level stats courses, and took on college-wide projects that needed to be aided by data scientists.

One of which was helping Solsiree del Moral, a professor in the Black Studies department, research her book on institutionalized and incarcerated children in Puerto Rico. In his role as a teaching assistant, Shin held course-specific office hours for students — like me — who needed assistance. In 2019, Shin was awarded the Walker Teaching Award from the faculty of the college. The Walker Teaching Award is awarded to a student for accomplishment and promise in teaching and tutoring of mathematics or statistics.

A Storyteller at Heart In the midst of our interview, as he periodically took sips from his “Keep Calm & Study Histo-

ry” coffee mug, it became clear that Shin’s love for teaching is deeply rooted in his passion for storytelling.

In his youth, the teachers who left an outsize impact on Shin were all history teachers.

“Teaching and storytelling go hand-in-hand,” Shin said, “You have to be able to figure out the situation, the context of the student you’re teaching, the context of the material you’re teaching, and how to make that mesh and adjust it to make sense … teachers have to make an effort to make it interesting.”

In college, the roots of his love for history crept deeper. It was no longer just about reading the stories but about analyzing why the stories are written how they are. “I really enjoyed the feeling of history being storytelling. I think that’s a really rewarding process trying to figure out how people tell stories, how people remember things.” Shin

Senior Profile | Enoch Shin claims that history “came alive” when he researched the origins of the stories we learn — why we tell stories, who gets to tell them and how we collectively remember them.

The other courses Shin found transformative were entrenched in these same questions. His Theatre and Dance courses, “Reimagining the Classics” and “Contemporary Performance” did not involve acting — thankfully, Enoch jokes — but analyzed the theoretical foundations as to “how a playwright crafts their narrative,” Shin said. “In a way, you can analyze history like a play or a theatre production, because it does involve characters, the plot, different points of view and an audience response.”

For Enoch, the thread be-

tween history and statistics is indeed storytelling. Just like history, data can be morphed by those in charge. According to Shin, statistics is about “teasing out a story from the numbers, but also about being aware of how you’re telling that story, because it’s really easy to twist the numbers to fit a specific narrative.” One must collect accurate data, wrangle the numbers, then present their findings in a socially responsible way. If they do so successfully, the data can tell stories that would otherwise go untold.

For example, when Shin assisted del Moral with her research, his job consisted of analyzing hand-written census records. Along with other Black Studies students and data sci-

ence fellows, Shin turned the extremely messy data into clean tables in hopes of answering the question of which racial and gender groups were being put in which institutions. “It’s been the most complicated data wrangling project I’ve ever been involved in,” said Beitzel Professor in Technology and Society Nicholas Horton, “We’re enormously proud of what he and the team have accomplished.”

Professor of History and Environmental Studies Rick Lopez, who taught Shin’s first history course “Environmental History of Latin America” and served as his thesis advisor, praised Shin for his ability to always dive deeper. “He got the best grade in the class because no matter what it was that we read he nev-

Photos courtesy of Enoch Shin ’21

Shin’s thesis centered around Mexican culture in California following the 1848 Mexican-American War.

er just looked at the surface of it,” Lopez said, “I was impressed by the richness and subtlety of his analysis.”

be tough because there are different cultural memories of the event.”

Beinecke Scholarship

Anchored by a desire to engage deeply with his state’s history, Shin wrote his history thesis about Mexican culture in Californian following 1848, when Mexico ceded much of modern-day California to the United States. In it, he used the framework of labor to explore how Mexican culture clashed and persisted through Anglo-domination in the region.

Many of the historical archives that Shin wanted to access were “down the road” from his California residence, but closed due to Covid-19.

“He wasn’t able to get into the archives, but made the most of it,” Lopez noted, “It was a really impressive thesis.” Shin’s creativity shined, as he was able to utilize sources he did find in unique ways, such as analyzing the structure of three Southern California homes.

After Amherst, Shin will be working at Cornerstone Research, a firm that specializes in data and legal analytics for its clients. His interest in the job can be traced back to the fulfillment Shin felt when working with Professor Del Moral.

“Teaching [others], like a humanities teacher, how to use statistical technology and what the data analytics process looks like is a rewarding process.” At the moment, he remains undecided if he will pursue a Ph.D. in history.

Even after all the accolades, Shin told me that he doesn’t actually view himself as one of Amherst’s accomplished students, “There are so many students here who have had really rich careers,” Shin said, “I wish I could have done more at Amherst.”

And yet there he sat, humble as can be, guiding me through all of the richness of his time at our college.

Perhaps the most impressive honor Shin has received during his time at Amherst is the Beinecke Scholarship. History professor Jen Manion recommended to Shin that he apply for the scholarship after taking note of his intellect and passion. “Enoch is an incredibly rigorous thinker and persuasive writer. He loves history in the best way. He sees its value and potential but never takes it at face value,” Manion said. A national competition, the Beinecke Scholarship is typically awarded to 17 or 18 highly motivated students to pursue graduate opportunities in the study of arts, humanities and social sciences.

Shin indicated that he did not expect to win the Beinecke Scholarship; only three Amherst students were selected for the Beinecke Scholarship in the previous decade. Nevertheless, Shin became one of 18 students to receive the scholarship.

If he does decide to study history in graduate school, Shin plans to focus on urban history, specifically the interactions between different marginalized groups. This interest was sparked by researching the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, in which the tension between Black Americans and Korean Americans is largely overlooked in history textbooks.

According to Shin, “Recent history has been designed and intended to address specific marginalized groups, but it’s a different equation entirely when you think of the interactions between multiple marginalized groups.”

Shin notes that writing an honest history of these events is challenging because “you’re trying to bring together a conversation with scholars who focused on one racial or cultural group, and bringing those togethers can

Thesis and Beyond

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 45

Senior Profile | Jea Adams

An Astrophysicist Finds Her Space Jea Adams’ accomplishments were driven by a profound curiosity about the workings of the universe and a determined drive to learn as much as possible.

—Scott Brasesco ’22 When I first met Jea Adams ’21, I was unsure what to expect.

From the research I had done before our interview, I knew she was extremely accomplished like many other Amherst students, but from the moment she started talking, I learned that there was more to her than accomplishments. Behind her accolades is a profound curiosity about the workings of the universe and a determined drive to learn as much as possible that are rare in college students, even at esteemed institutions like Amherst.

Over the course of our interview, she smiled as she talked about her passion projects, excitedly explaining to me the complex web of information that makes up her research — which investigates exoplanets — all while downplaying some of her most impressive achievements with a natural humility. My later interviews with her friends and mentor confirmed these initial impressions and began to shed some light on who Adams was and how she got to where she is now.

From Guyana to America Before moving to the U.S. to live with her father and pursue an American college education at the age of 18, Adams was raised by her mother and grandmother in Georgetown, Guyana. Her sister Sadie, now 10, still lives there with them, and Adams visits as often as she can.

Most of her family, however, live on an Indigenous settlement in Essequibo, where they live in “little huts called benabs, made of banana leaves and palm trees” without basic amenities like electricity. Adams credited this part of her family for her deep and continued interest in the stars and space — an interest which ultimately led her to Amherst College astrophysics.

She went to a small high school of only 100 students in the heart of Georgetown called Queen’s College, where “despite our limited access to certain educational resources,” Adams recalls learning from “some of the best educators I’ve met to date.”

For as long as she can remember, Adams has had a passion for science. Her favorite books as a child were Robin Cook’s medical thrillers. Inspired by them, she remembers being confident in her future path, thinking “I’m definitely going to be a biologist.”

But when she took her first high school biology course, Adams’ confidence wavered. Biology just wasn’t for her. “Physics made more sense to me,” Adams said. “It was also extremely difficult, and some part of me loved figuring out those hard questions.”

While she was in high school, Adams decided she wanted to become a physicist, or a scientist at the very least. “Unfortunately, careers in science are quite limited in Guyana,” she told me. “I knew that if I wanted to follow that dream, I’d have to go some-

46 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

where else.” It was then that she decided to move to live with her father, who was working in the United States, in order to pursue a science degree at an American college.

Falling in Love with Astrophysics When I asked Adams about the most important academic experiences she had at the college, she quickly told me there were three — no, wait, four — courses that had shaped the way she thought and learned over her time at Amherst.

“Introduction to Psychology” with Poler Family Professor of Psychology Catherine Sanderson was a course that “broke down all [her] misconceptions about learning” by teaching her that being fast wasn’t the same as being smart.

“Democratic Backsliding” with Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science Javier Corrales taught her the value of open discussion between those who share opposing views, while also raising what Adams, as a native Guyanese, viewed as relevant and important questions about Venezuela.

“Intro to Data Science with Astronomical Applications” with Professor of Astronomy Kate Follette forced her to learn how to communicate her thoughts and projects to a non-expert audience — a skill that proved immensely useful over the course of our discussion.

And, finally, she credited “In-

Photos courtesy of Jea Adams ’21

Adams is the first Black woman to graduate as an Amherst College physics major since 1982. termediate Calculus” with Professor of Mathematics Danielle Benedetto with showing her that “anyone can do anything if you give them the tools to do it,” and helping her overcome her imposter syndrome.

Ultimately though, Adams said she views “Alien Worlds” as the course that determined her eventual academic trajectory. She remembers thinking, “This all makes sense now,” as she connected astronomy to her Indigenous cultural roots and references to the sky and stars.

“A part of me had previously registered it as a spiritual experience without realizing that there were some real meanings behind those things that [Indigenous Guyanese] might not necessarily describe scientifically, but that were scientific,” she reflected.

While she had always been interested in space, “Alien Worlds” gave her passion a direction and provided an outlet for her endless curiosity. “She loves finding

new things,” her friend Stephanie Calderon ’21 told me. “Jea always has something that she needs or wants to do and she always puts so much of herself into it.” Another friend, Breanna Richards ’21, shared a common experience she had with Adams, “Whenever we would walk back from Val, she would be like, ‘Breanna, look up at the stars!’ She was always explaining what was happening up in the sky.”

The professor of the course, Kate Follette, later became Adams’ advisor. “I remember her distinctly from that class for a bunch of reasons,” Follette told me.

“Her level of engagement and enthusiasm for the subject matter was really remarkable.”

She shared that Adams has been an excellent addition to her research lab the summer after that first year, told me that one experience that had really stuck out to her was when Adams thanked her for her mentorship after their

Senior Profile | Jea Adams work together. “As faculty I think we pour a lot into our students and particularly our research mentees,” Follette said, sharing that few students often openly recognized and thanked mentors for that work. “She just came out and thanked me to my face,” she laughed, “I think that really speaks, not only the fact that she’s an incredibly competent scientist, but also an incredibly compassionate person.”

The admiration is mutual.

“She really changed my life,” Adams said. “She was the first astrophysicist I ever met, and I would go to her office hours every week and we would talk and talk and talk.”

Follette was the first person to give Adams an opportunity to work in a research position, and her patience with Adams’ many questions inspired her to delve deeper into the subject. “That,

for me, was a career-defining moment,” Adams said.

Follette was also the major influence behind Adams’ decision to pursue the Goldwater Scholarship, a scholarship supporting undergraduate researchers in natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering, which she won in 2020. “I really did not want to apply because I thought there was no way I was going to get it,” she recalled, sharing that she only conceded to apply after weeks of persistent encouragement from Follette. “It was difficult to write,” Adams told me, but it was also one of her most useful learning experiences as it taught her how to write in a detailed yet understandable manner, something she told me many scientists seem to struggle with.

That knowledge came in handy as she ventured into long-form research writing for the first time

— writing a thesis on exoplanets and the algorithm that helps to find them.

Finding Planets “My first project with [Follette] was finding planets,” Adams shared, telling me about the algorithm used to find new planets using telescope data. “[But] we didn’t find any.” She said it was a hard experience for a firstyear, but taught her that science doesn’t always work — at least, not the way you want it to. After that experience, she stayed away from planets for a while, focusing her studies on galaxies and stars, but ended up coming back to planets at the end of her junior year.

The summer after her junior year, Adams took part in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology’s

Photos courtesy of Jea Adams ’21

Adams leads a team of researchers as they develop a plan for analyzing algorithm data.

Exoplanet Technology Lab — an internship focused on the very same algorithm she had tried to use, unsuccessfully, with Follette in her first year at Amherst. “It basically models starlight and subtracts it from an image,” she told me. “It seemed so crazy that that was something that you could even do.”

Eventually, she turned to focus more heavily on the computer science portion of the research, working with the algorithm’s creator, Jason Wang, to make the algorithm work for the James Webb Space Telescope, a new telescope launching October 2021 as the “successor” to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

“It was super exciting,” she said.

“It was my first time doing something where people were depending on the code that we were writing.”

Over time, however, Adams noticed that she “only loved coding as it related to astronomy.”

This would prove the discovery that inspired her thesis question: “How do we optimize this algorithm?”

She said the question was inspired by her first-year experience working with the algorithm to find planets: “Why didn’t we find any planets that first time?

Was it something wrong with our data or was it something wrong with the way that we are using the algorithm?”

As she conducted her research, Adams would eventually decide that it was the latter. She told me Wang had written the algorithm while in graduate school and that, while everyone uses the algorithm to do this type of planet-finding research, “no one made sure that they were using it properly.”

“It takes over 25 user input parameters, some of which can be valued anywhere between zero and infinity,” she elaborated.

“It was never optimized.” Much of her experience of astronomy, then, was the experience of guesswork, trying out different values to see which produced re-

sults and which did not. “At the end of my thesis, what I was able to show was that there are techniques that you can use to optimize all of those parameters,” Adams said. “I focused on detections that [astronomers] had already made and showed that I could double the signal of those detections.”

What does that mean for astronomy? “We were not detecting planets as easily as we could be,” she said. “And we are probably missing a lot of planets that we should be finding simply because we didn’t understand how to work the algorithm.”

Life after Amherst So what’s next for Adams?

Unsurprisingly, she continues to be driven by curiosity and an interest in future research. Adams told me that she would be attending Harvard University, pursuing a Ph.D. in astrophysics and astronomy, with a focus on exoplanets that stems from her studies with Follette.

But she wasn’t sure what would come next. “I’m on the fence about what comes next after that,” Adams told me. While she knows she wants to pursue further research opportunities and continue to learn more about the exoplanets that she has come to love, she said she also loved the experience of teaching and academics.

For that reason, Adams currently plans to become a professor after finishing her education.

She’s had some practice — she served as a Teaching Assistant for the “Alien Worlds” course that made her want to pursue a career in astrophysics in the first place.

“It’s really the point where you get to see students fall in love with a subject,” she said, extolling the value of introductory courses for non-majors. Her time at Amherst has taught her the lessons she needs — how to foster open dialogue and encourage confident student scholarship — in order to excel in the role.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 47

Senior Profile | Daniel Rendón

Not Your Classic Story Arc From Massachusetts to California and back again, Rendón’s life, fragments of which are represented in his thesis production, has been anything but linear.

—Zach Jonas ’22 “There was no way I could genuinely recreate everyone. If I were to make an honest attempt — and this isn’t to say I don’t trust my writing — but theater never ends up being exactly like the sort of thing that it’s trying to represent.”

Daniel Rendón said that to me while describing the writing process and character development in his theatre and dance thesis “I Met God (and the Devil) in an Uber.” When I sat down to write Rendón’s profile, I felt the same way. As he told me, it’s hard — if not impossible — to capture the intricacies of life in just an hour or two on stage.

How could I begin to describe Rendón in just a few thousand words?

What became abundantly clear to me is that Rendón hasn’t followed the well-paved road to graduation.

Now that he’s graduating, he looks back at when he first arrived and notes the more diverse student body, supportive administration and science center that the college didn’t have when he matriculated in 2012.

During his junior year, he took an extended medical leave of absence — nearly five years — which he spent in California working. When he returned to finish the theater and dance major, he came back healthier, with a newfound appreciation for what it means to be human and a sense of maturity and humility that is rare on campus.

Finding the Stage Rendón grew up in Malden, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. He lived with his mother, Gloria Emilse, father, Hernando León and older brother, Juan Davíd. Rendón’s first language was Spanish. His parents emigrated to the United States in the late 1980s from Medellín, Colombia. He spoke Spanish at home and English at school, and some of his earliest memories are of grappling with his dual American and Colombian identities.

“It was very imperative to me as a child to speak English without an identifiable accent, so that I wouldn’t attract attention to my family and that kind of way,” he said.

He found the stage for the first time during his years at Malden Public High School. At the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival hosted by the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild at the John Hancock Hall, Rendón won an outstanding acting award for his performance in a piece written by his high school class. That recognition and others he earned during high school encouraged him to become an artist, he told me.

But it was a difficult decision to pursue the arts. “I think you can get the same type of story from a lot of people with immigrant parents,” he said. “Saying that you want to be anything other than a doctor, lawyer or anything prestigious of that na-

48 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

ture almost equates to failure.”

Rendón found Amherst by a stroke of luck. A friend in high school had applied to Amherst through the Questbridge program and recommended it to Rendón. He applied through Questbridge, did not match through the program, but was accepted during regular decision nonetheless.

In the spring of his high school year, the decision to attend Amherst was an easy one.

Rendón was in the fortunate circumstance of choosing between Brown University and Amherst, and because Amherst provided a more generous financial aid package he accepted the latter.

It wasn’t an easy transition.

“I had a hard time adjusting. I had this idea of ‘Do I really belong here? Did I earn my right to be here?’ It’s a thought that a lot of students have at some point,” he said. During the fall of his junior year, a combination of physical and mental illnesses forced Rendón to take a medical leave of absence.

The California Years Following his temporary departure from Amherst, Rendón moved to the Bay Area in California with his significant other at the time, but when they separated he went to Long Beach, California, in part to pursue a career in acting and because he had a mutual friend there. But he never found time to audition.

It was a dark period of time for him.

Photos courtesy of Daniel Rendon ’21

Just as Rendón aims to portray unconventional narratives through his theatre, he has a unique story of his own.

In the fall of 2017, Rendón was houseless. He worked at Trader Joe’s from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., took shifts as an Uber driver in his gunmetal-colored 2016 Nissan Sentra until four in the morning and if he couldn’t find a friend in Los Angeles to stay with for the night, he slept in his car.

“It was weird because I was working as an Uber driver and taking these riders to different places in my car, and in the back of my head I thought, ‘I wonder if they realize that I’m living in my car at this moment … I remember there were moments when I was behind on car payments, and I got a call from repo companies that said, ‘The repo men are out looking for your car right now.’”

“And then, eventually things

turned around,” Rendón said.

He saved enough to get his own apartment, and found a new job at an immigration law firm just down the street from where he previously worked as a butcher in a Brazilian steakhouse in Oakland.

He worked as a file clerk for the law firm in Oakland that is now called Fuerza (strength in Spanish). He typically ran between his office and San Francisco to get official documents stamped by court clerks. His favorite part of the job, he told me, was giving clients their green cards.

As the son of immigrants, he felt a special connection to the individuals he helped. That same desire to help others might have been the reason Rendón returned, after three-and-a-half

Senior Profile | Daniel Rendón years, to Amherst. While working at the law office, he realized that to achieve his ultimate goal of supporting his parents, he needed to first earn his degree from Amherst.

Returning to Amherst So he came back. He continued with his theater and dance major, and pursued writing a thesis. Inspired by his own life and conversations with individuals while driving Uber, Rendón wrote “I Met God (and the Devil) in an Uber” (which is available to view on the Squarespace).

“One thing that always fascinated me was the divine comedy,” he said, “how you end up in purgatory and then eventually you end up in heaven.”

But the classic “rise of the

hero” story arc is overdone, he told me. Real life isn’t a perfect story arc with a set-up, rising action, climax and resolution — it’s filled with turns, falls, leaps and rises, but not always in that order. The thesis topic isn’t grim (though it does have a content warning at the beginning) — it’s realistic. In some ways, it’s meant to mirror Dante’s Inferno, where there are different levels of hell, and the main character goes down, down and down until he’s torn apart.

How boring theater would be if all characters were correct, or politically correct. “I always wanted my thesis to be representative of the real world,” Rendón said. This part of our conversation is where I picked the quote from the beginning of this article.

It’s difficult to capture the nuances of a person, but Rendón does just that with his piece. In fact, he goes a step further and illuminates what people want to hide.

“I think people often don’t recognize how complex we actually are as people. The fact of the matter is, in the real world, there’s an aspect about you that is conservative to the tooth. We like to condemn someone based on one action, but that’s selling a person short. It’s saying they’re not capable of growing up, or they’re not capable of changing their behavior. That’s what I was trying to get at with my piece,” he said.

“It has been a privilege to work with him,” Ron Bashford, the chair of Amherst’s theater and dance department and the

scene director for Rendón’s thesis, said. “When [Rendón] left Amherst about five years ago in the middle of his junior year, I didn’t know if I would ever see him again. It is a testament to his tenacity and growth as a human being that he got through difficult times, returned to Amherst and completed the theater and dance major with an ambitious and personal honors project,” he said.

Balancing His Dream When I asked Rendón what he would like to do in the future, without hesitation he said “My dream is to be able to support my parents as they live out their golden years.”

That led to a topic that came up multiple times during our conversation — pursuing a ca-

reer in acting is … risky, to say the least. But he’s a great actor, and in Rendón’s opinion, it’s good to believe in yourself sometimes.

But it’s a secondary goal beneath supporting his family. After graduating, Rendón will be looking for a job that pays well.

He was quick to note that his acting career isn’t over — he’d like to pursue it as a hobby, and if it goes well then he could see himself picking it up full-time.

Rendón hinted that he might like to work at a law firm, as a testament to his father who was just a few semesters away from becoming a lawyer when he arrived in the United States.

Until then, what’s certain is that Rendón’s future is bright.

In the future, it might be even brighter under the stage lights.

Photos courtesy of Daniel Rendon ’21

Rendón performing in his theater and dance thesis, “I Met God (and the Devil) in an Uber.” Many of the characters were based on individuals who he met, briefly, while driving for Uber.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 49

Senior Profile | Sarah Montoya

How Family History Led to a Fulbright When Sarah Montoya arrived at Amherst, she was worn out, but she quickly came into her position as a natural leader and, as she graduates, is leaving behind many important legacies.

—Milo Leahy-Miller ’24 At the start of our interview, Sarah Montoya ’21 seemed businesslike. We barely exchanged greetings before jumping right into the questions. But, as we kept talking, things felt more and more comfortable and, by the end of the interview, I felt like I knew her quite well.

Montoya is easy to talk to.

There were almost no lapses in our conversations, and, once she warms up to you, she has a fantastic sense of humor that makes you feel comfortable around her. It is easy to see that she is grounded and practical. She is determined, and once she sets her mind to something, nothing can stop her. A charismatic person, she grabs your attention, and you want to hang on to every word. These characteristics have made her a natural leader. As such, she has served as president of the Native and Indigenous Students Association (NISA), as well as a board member of the Lakota Youthstay — a program that connects Native American youth with hosts in the greater Boston area — and a Fulbright recipient.

Hailing from Belmont, MA, Montoya is an environmental studies major, focusing on environmental justice, with a focus on the Navajo Nation. Both Montoya and her father are Navajo, and she wears this on her sleeve as a badge of honor. Her mother is of Lithuanian descent.

She values both of these cultures and considers them part of her identity. You can see this in her involvement in many In-

digenous groups and programs both on and off campus, as well as her intention to go to Lithuania after graduation. She grew up surrounded by music, which she pursued both in high school — where she was involved in marching band, jazz ensemble, jazz combo and pit orchestra — and here at Amherst, where she has been involved in both the orchestra and jazz programs.

Identity and Amherst Montoya was introduced to Amherst through College Horizons — a non-profit that provides Native American students with college application workshops and resources. She was supposed to go on a week-long trip with the organization to Amherst, but was unable to due to a concussion.

This concussion led to a long legal battle with her high school that exhausted her, and after it was finished, she was looking for a fresh start. That fall, she took “Law and Disorder” with Professor Mona Oraby, as well as “Footprints on the Earth” with Professor Hannah Holleman. These two subjects both took hold of her interest, and she ended up taking many classes in the law, jurisprudence, and social thought (LJST), while also majoring in environmental studies.

Within the Navajo Nation, Montoya was born for the Ute Clan, and she considers this an important part of her identity.

When she was a child, her grandmother said to her: “the only people who care about Navajo

50 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

women are Navajo women.” This powerful statement stuck with her, and is one of the reasons that she became involved with Native groups on campus and beyond.

During her first year at Amherst, she was appointed president of NISA. One of the first things she did was organize a vigil for a missing and murdered Indigenous woman: “It was after Tina Fontaine … was murdered. The guy who was accused of killing her got off. And [lots of people] were basically saying, oh, she did this to herself, or, there were drugs in her system. And this is just a 15-year-old kid. And that’s why I planned that event. I was so upset I couldn’t even sleep.”

Another of Montoya’s accomplishments as president of NISA was getting Amherst College to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which, as she says, was a tough battle. For the Bicentennial Celebration, Montoya is working to get the college to release a Permanent Land Acknowledgement, a formal statement (in this case, a plaque) that recognizes the land that the college now stands on as Native land, and that Indigenous peoples are the longstanding occupiers and caretakers of the land.

One of Montoya’s goals as president was to create a welcoming space on campus for Native students. She told me about how many Native people cannot register as Native with the government because of trivial details — a misspelling on the birth certificate, for example — or because

Photos courtesy of Sarah Montoya ’21

Montoya considers her heritage an important part of her identity. She decided on her environmental studies major in order plans to explore her Lithuanian family history as a Fulbright scholar. of the fact that the government determines Native identity based on the amount of “Native blood” you have — a colonial construct.

She tries to make people who are in such scenarios feel welcome.

The Dickinsons and Ancient Cookbooks

Montoya has a special bond with Lisa Brooks, a professor of American studies and English.

They met during Montoya’s first semester and got to talking after they found out that Brooks had been a professor to Montoya’s auntie, Ethel Branch — who is the former attorney general of the Navajo Nation — at Harvard.

When Montoya was interested in finding a summer job at the end of her sophomore year, she reached out to Brooks. Montoya ended up helping Brooks on a research project about the Dickinson family and their relationship with Native Americans.

She spent the summer reading all of Emily Dickinson’s letters. The Dickinsons’ had gained much of their wealth and prestige during the French and Indian Wars, and were actively present and involved with many of the massacres of Native people that happened during the war.

Brooks recalls Montoya often coming to her office right after visiting the Dickinson house “just bubbling with new information … about Emily and her family and their relationship to Native dispossession. And even though it’s about some pretty heavy dark history, Sarah would be effervescent … When she’s walking by Emily’s house, she’s also walking with Emily.”

When I asked her what she thought about Montoya, Brooks, without hesitation, said: “Her leadership skills have always really impressed me … She’s delightfully quirky and eclectic.”

Senior Profile | Sarah Montoya To this day, Montoya has still not read a single Emily Dickinson poem.

Montoya also has done research after receiving the 2020 Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship. She and 8 other students had the task of translating a cookbook from 1740. The students had the job of transcribing and even recreating the centuries-old recipes. There were many instances of reading between the lines (for example, adjusting the 7 pounds of flour that the recipe dictated for a plum cake), and the fellowship culminated in a feast of traditional mid-18th century food.

A Musical Life Montoya has been around

music since a very young age.

Her mother listened to songs on the radio all around the house, and her grandfather played the guitar.

This music-heavy environment inspired her to start playing upright bass, her primary instrument, in elementary school — despite being told she was too short for the bass. Since then, Montoya has been involved in music programs for all four of her years at Amherst. She has participated in orchestra, jazz combo and jazz ensemble. Jazz Director Bruce Diehl said: “I think her best work was with the jazz ensemble this semester.”

Her favorite artist of all time is Charles Mingus. Famous for his temper, Montoya told me how

“he was kicked out of the Ellington band for chopping up Juan Tizol’s [the trombonist] chair with a fire axe while on stage.”

Other artists she enjoys are Dusty Springfield, Warren Zevon, Rina Sawayama and Dmitri Shostakovitch.

Montoya also mentioned that she has a way of listening to music that I found interesting. She listens to one song on repeat for hours, sometimes days, paying attention to each instrument, one at a time and how they all work together. She credits this to her training as a musician since a very young age.

In addition to playing music, Montoya spends her free time talking with people — friends and strangers alike — and has

recently been taking a beadwork class. She also loves talking with her grandparents, and fondly remembers the conversations with her late Lithuanian grandmother.

Love, Life and Lithuania Montoya grew up hearing her mother’s Lithuanian folk stories and eating her grandmother’s homemade Lithuanian cooking. But neither her mother nor her grandmother had been the most informative when it came to their Lithuanian heritage. This inspired her, and by the time she was 12 years old, she would tell anyone who would listen about how she would go and live in Lithuania when she was older so that she could learn about the

culture of her grandmother. And that’s exactly what she plans to do now. As a Fulbright Scholar, she is going to go teach English in Lithuania.

She plans to teach Lithuanians about her culture, both as an American and a Native American, including everything from unions to the Black freedom struggle to Indigenous peoples.

She hopes to be able to educate people on the colonial history of the United States, as well as about Native tribes, cultures, and their relation to the United States and its government.

Afterwards, Montoya doesn’t have too many plans. She hopes to be able to just live in the present and appreciate the culture of her grandmother.

Photos courtesy of Sarah Montoya ’21

Montoya has been interested in music since a young age, and has been involved with Jazz at Amherst throughout her undergraduate career.

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 51

Senior Profile | Eniola Ajao

The Noise Found in Silence Eniola Ajao’s passion for ASL is truly inspiring. Her curiosity and ambition will serve her well when she travels the world to pursue her research.

—Anya Ramras ’22 While I was experiencing technical difficulties at the beginning of our conversation, Eniola Ajao ’21 sat patiently, smiling, immediately reducing the stress that always comes when things don’t go as planned.

Even though this was the first time we had ever met, Ajao’s smile and comforting present persisted during our one-hour Zoom meeting, making it feel like I have known her for many years. Her comforting and happy presence is reiterated by her friend Faith Merritt ’22: “Eniola is such a beautiful person both inside and out. Her energy and happiness are contagious.”

A Small Town Called Brattleboro Born in Abuja, Nigeria, Ajao moved to the United States when she was 11 years old to a small town in Vermont called Brattleboro. Coming from a strict private school in Nigeria that allowed for very little creativity, Ajao described her two years in middle school in Vermont as the most impactful and formative early educational experience for her.

As someone who likes to journal and write short stories for fun today, Ajao describes her schooling experience in Vermont as where she developed her love for reading and writing. Before living in Brattleboro, Ajao felt more comfortable with math and quantitative reasoning, and while she still enjoys quantitative reasoning, a defining moment

happened to her in fifth grade, when her teacher gave her “The Book Thief ” to read.

Ajao described this moment to me: “I remember my fifth grade teacher giving me a book at the end of the year. And that was the first time a teacher ever gave me anything ever. And I remember it was ‘The Book Thief.’ It was the biggest book I’ve read up to that point. And she said something like, ‘I think you’re ready for this.’ And yeah, it just meant so much to me. I was so flattered. I was flattered that she’d given me a book. I was flattered that it was a big book. It was bigger than any of the other books. And that meant a lot to me. So that’s a memory I cherish.”

An Amherst Superfan After living in Vermont for two years, Ajao moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, a place many of us are familiar with.

While many people immensely enjoy Amherst, I have never met someone who expressed their love for this town as much as Ajao, calling herself an “Amherst Superfan.”

While her mother was pursuing a doctorate at UMass Amherst, Ajao attended middle school in Amherst. Her favorite memories were the field trips to various parks: “It was just really fun to play in the water. Run through sprinklers, all that good stuff. Melting popsicles.” However, despite Ajao’s love for Amherst, Amherst College was not

52 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

initially her first choice: “So my dream school was Williams. But I knew that if I didn’t go to Williams, I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college.”

Being a part of the Questbridge program, Ajao ended up being matched with Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and despite this college being last on Ajao’s list, she ended up spending her first two years there. Due to the “ugly dorms,’’ and overall not totally fitting in with the school culture, Ajao transferred to Amherst for her final two years.

“I just think I should have just been at Amherst from the start, because I love the town.” When I asked her why she loved Amherst so much, she said, “I love Amherst natives. I think they’re really unique and interesting.

A passionate community. I love Main Street. I know it’s little, but I think there’s so many gems in this town. What else? Oh my gosh, the town fair. I think most students are not around when it happens. But it’s so much fun.

I love the farmers markets that happen on Saturday.”

The Power of Gestures Ajao is graduating from Amherst with a double major in English and computer science.

English for Ajao was a natural choice, still having a strong passion for it since that defining moment in fifth grade. At Haverford, having to take a quantitative class to fulfill the requirements, Ajao decided to

Photos courtesy of Eniola Ajao ’21

Ajao has presented her research on Black ASL via Zoom to an audience of over 200 Amherst students, faculty, scholars and artists around the world. take computer science. With reservations at first, Ajao ended up deeply enjoying the class, and she decided to keep exploring the discipline. Ajao said, “[English and computer science] balance each other out. And also, they just were the most engaging subjects.”

Despite having these two majors, Ajao continued to expand her knowledge by taking classes in other subjects, including a colloquium class called the “Hearing Difference: The Political Economy of Accent” with Professor Rangan. This class was especially interesting for Ajao because of her passion for American Sign Language (ASL).

Her passion for ASL began during her time at Haverford.

Since there were ASL classes taught at the University of Pennsylvania, which was in the same consortium as Haverford, Ajao decided to give the new language a shot — she ended up loving it.

Ajao’s passion for ASL is strongly associated with her own participation style in class. She describes her classroom behavior as, “Definitely not very vocal. I think I participate just enough to get those points in. I think that’s one of the things that was so amazing about ASL, is that that’s probably the class I participated in the most because it was very gestural. I don’t know, I just felt so much more comfortable participating or expressing myself.

In that class, it was a no speaking class. Nobody spoke ever, actually. The penalty for speaking is very severe, like one letter grade.

So nobody ever spoke.” She added, “I really enjoy other ways of engaging and participating using reactions and whatnot. I really like facilitating discussions.”

So in “The Political Economy of Accent,” it was only natural for Ajao to write her research paper about ASL. Specifically, Ajao researched Black ASL, which is

Senior Profile | Eniola Ajao a dialect of ASL. Rangan shared how important Ajao’s research was: “Her research interests in signing cultures and the nonverbal arts are urgent, timely and deeply humane.” Her paper ended up earning her a Watson Scholarship, which is a one-year, fully funded grant to spend a year abroad in a self-directed project.

Rangan added to the power of Ajao’s research: “Eniola presented her research on Black American Sign Language, or Black ASL, via Zoom to a captive online audience of over 200 Amherst students, faculty, scholars and artists around the world who had gathered to discuss the politics of accent. For most of these auditors, it was their first time learning that the racial prejudice reserved for AAVE

(African American Vernacular English) speakers extends to Black signers, and that the experiences of Black Deaf people have given rise to unique forms of communication, art, fashion, and protest.”

Due to the pandemic, Ajao has postponed her trip for a year until next August, but her plan is to study mimes in France, the silent monks in Bhutan and talking drums in Ghana. With many other potential destinations on her radar, Ajao will be studying non-verbal forms of expression around the world. Rangan has the utmost confidence in her: “She is scrappy, resourceful and dependable, and perhaps as importantly, has deep respect and curiosity about what she does not know. These are all qualities that will serve her well as she embarks

on a project whose defining experience will be its unpredictability.” Until then, Ajao will be working in risk and quantitative analysis at BlackRock in NYC.

The Little Things Despite Ajao telling me that she is “definitely introverted” in social settings, her favorite experiences from growing up and during her time at Amherst all revolve around being with her friends or her siblings. Growing up, Ajao would hang out with her four other siblings (one oldest brother and three other sisters) all the time, and she smiled as she recalled “getting into mischief with them.” She recalls how she spent her free time in Nigeria: “All my memories just revolve around hanging out with my siblings and playing in

the backyard...just a fun happy childhood.”

At the boarding school she went to in Massachusetts, Northfield Mount Hermon, she notes how strong her friendship with her roommate was: “I developed a really, really close bond with my roommate and we’re still good friends today.” They studied together, watched Netflix together and had sleepovers in people’s dorms together on Friday and Saturday nights.

At Amherst, Ajao’s favorite memory was the Loeb Center’s Tech Trek to San Francisco, a 10-day trip where they met with alumni and visited Apple, Google and PayPal headquarters.

They got to explore the city and went to museums.

During this trek, Ajao met many new friends. Luke Wil-

liamson ’21 described Ajao in social settings: “In social settings, you’d probably assume Eniola was an extrovert. She’s got a great sense of humor and a great laugh, and her reactions during conversations and stories (raised eyebrows, ‘if you say so’s’) are always hilarious.” I guess it is clear that Ajao’s passion for gestures extends beyond academics and into casual interactions with friends.

Beyond small gestures, Ajao is also a member of two campus dance troupes, regularly attends Deaf lectures and poetry slams and is an active participant in online Deaf forums. In addition, with a few of her friends, Ajao restarted the Computer Science Club.

Despite only having a small amount of time actually on campus due to the pandemic, it is clear that Ajao used every minute of her time well at Amherst.

When everyone was told they had to go home last spring, Ajao said she actually ended up having the best time because people were so desperate to make the most of those few days and be together and meet new people.

Past, Present and Future

Photos courtesy of Eniola Ajao ’21

Ajao enjoys golden hour with her frined Luke Williamson ’21 during Fall Fest 2020.

When I asked Ajao what her dream jobs were, she said it would either be being a high-profile lawyer in international human rights law or being a screenwriter with three successful shows on HBO. After having a one-hour conversation with her, I’m sure either of these goals can definitely come true.

In the meantime, Ajao loves to sew, cook vegan recipes, read a book a week and watch lots of television (but never the same thing twice!)

And while Ajao’s time at Amherst might be coming to a close, one of her sisters will actually be attending Amherst in the fall.

What’s Ajao’s advice to incoming first-years like her sister and current students at Amherst?

Talk to strangers!

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 53

Senior Profile | Olivia Gieger

The Activist Behind the Byline At the crossroads of journalism and activism, Olivia Gieger follows her instincts for how to use storytelling as a mechanism of positive change in the communities she serves.

—Rebecca Picciotto ’22 “This is the only way I know how to talk,” admits Olivia Gieger ’21 after we both realize our conversation has unknowingly been going for almost two hours.

It is 85ºF in Amherst, Massachusetts and Gieger is sitting across from me at a Valentine Quad table, with wisps of blonde hair framing her face, which is rosy from the heat.

Foolishly, I had arrived to the interview with a couple of pages worth of questions even though, of course, no conversation with Gieger can be contained to the standard Q&A format. She is the best kind of interview in that she makes you forget you are in one.

When I joined The Amherst Student during my sophomore fall, I already knew of Gieger, even though I didn’t quite know her yet. We had crossed paths in a couple of other club meetings and she frequented similar study spaces in Frost — the Amherst way to get to know someone from afar. Working on the newspaper team, I finally got the opportunity to cut the distance. I watched her take the helm of The Student and lead the publication through the storm that was 2020. Even amid arguably the most trying circumstances of recent Amherst College history, Gieger was constantly interrogating how the newspaper could better serve its community.

Perhaps Gieger will not realize the impact she has had on me until she reads this profile. As a

rookie student journalist, I have been hesitant to acknowledge my passion for the field — it’s a difficult path to choose, especially in a time when journalism seems to reckon with a new existential crisis each year. But in Gieger, I see someone who approaches the things she loves without reservation. She was proud to be in the newsroom (or, later on, the newsZoom) on Tuesday evenings. She took the work seriously and made you feel like your role on The Student truly meant something.

Her pride for and dedication to journalism assured me, for the first time, that this path did not have to be a pipe dream. She does not second-guess her interests, even and especially when those interests lead to uncertain places. Instead, when she finds something that sets her mind on fire, she simply leans into the blaze.

The Right Kind of Stubborn The natural question, then, is what ignited Gieger’s first flame? The answer involves a dispute with her mom. During Gieger’s early years of middle school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, her mother had decided to cut down some trees in their backyard. With the initial seeds of environmental consciousness having already been planted in her brain, suddenly, fifth-grade Gieger had a cause. “I was very stubborn and impassioned as a small child, and I think that for

54 | The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021

some reason, I was like, ‘This is a plucky fight that I can take up.’”

From there, she joined her middle school’s Green Team and learned more about environmental activism. On the Green Team, Gieger wrote an article about what can and cannot be recycled at her middle school, which was published in “The Locker,” the school-wide newspaper. The editors on that newspaper urged her to join as an official editor. With this first entrance into journalism, one might expect the story to follow the classic love-at-firstsight trope.

But interestingly, once she joined “The Locker,” Gieger “really hated it.” Still, even as a middle schooler, she subconsciously understood the necessity of journalism regardless of the drudgery one must sometimes endure to execute it. By the end of her tenure at The Locker, Gieger was one of the only committed staff members — but she would not quit. “I was like, if I’m not going to do it, then who’s going to do it?”

At Wellesley High School, Gieger would go on to take formal journalism classes where she would realize, “Oh, I actually really like this and I might even like this more than I like the activism stuff.” She graduated from The Locker to Wellesley High School’s Bradford Student Newspaper where she eventually became editor-in-chief. But even as she fell harder for journalism, she

Photos courtesy of Olivia Gieger ’21

For Olivia Gieger ’21, there is often a sense of activist purpose behind her journalism. never left activism behind.

In fact, the fifth-grader who would not let her mom cut down the backyard trees would soon become one of a couple high schoolers in a courtroom, suing (and ultimately winning against) the Department of Environmental Protections for negligence on climate change policy. Her childhood stubbornness had evolved into a steadfast intuition for what is right — which would go on to fuel things much deeper than mother-daughter quibbles.

Unglamorous Moments at the Helm From the outside, Gieger’s path seems to decouple into two distinct threads: activism and journalism. But talking to Gieger, it becomes clear that, for her, those parallel interests are inextricably connected. “Over time, I’ve come to really strongly believe in the power of journalism to have a political and activist force.” As an English and envi-

ronmental studies major, Gieger likes to reside at the intersection of journalism and activism, and it is that niche which has characterized her time at Amherst.

But the work of both of these fields is notoriously difficult and can often require high amounts of behind-the-scenes work with little recognition to compensate.

Still, Gieger knows the work of journalism and activism is essential, even in the unglamorous moments. As editor-in-chief of The Student during a pandemic and a nationwide reckoning with racial injustice (plus episodes of blatant racism on our own Amherst campus), Gieger encountered a slew of those unglamorous moments.

When news broke about a hate crime committed by members of the men’s lacrosse team in March 2020, The Student got into full gear trying to ethically and effectively cover it. Then, just a couple of days later, Amherst College notified students that they would have to clear

Senior Profile | Olivia Gieger their dorms and move out due to the escalating severity of the coronavirus. “I’ve never felt so close to my actual wit’s end,” Gieger recalls. The journalist and activist knew that even amid the chaos spurred by the coronavirus, it was imperative that the racial culture that caused harm to Black students on campus not be forgotten. In the face of these sort of obstacles, Natalie De Rosa, her co-editor-in-chief, describes, “Olivia is more like, ‘How are we going to fix this, I want to make things right.’ And she’s very forward with that in ways that I am never brave enough to be, and that’s something that I will always take with me and will always be inspired by.”

So even as she anxiously attempted to defeat the coronavirus by wiping down every corner of her dorm room with Lysol, her duty as a leader of The Student was still at the fore of her mind. With the backlash

resulting from the men’s lacrosse team hate crime now forced to take place remotely, Gieger recognized that The Student could act as the forum students needed to process the harm and demand change.

“This was a time when our whole campus was disparate and there was no shared meeting grounds — like quad-equivalent area — and I think that The Student was able to be that communal space,” Gieger explained. The racist incident with the lacrosse team incited a slew of remote activism. The Black Student Union published #IntegrateAmherst, an op-ed series in The Student that interrogated the college’s racial history and laid the contextual groundwork for later movements like Reclaim Amherst to put forth concrete demands for the college administration. The Student’s editorial board also did its own self-reflection, led by Gieger and De Rosa, reformulating the newspaper’s

mission statement to examine how this newsroom has contributed to the institutionalized inequity of the college.

Absorbing Life “In The Most Saturated Way” Throughout all of the tough executive decisions and journalistic dilemmas, there were also glimmers of hope and accomplishment. It is easy enough to list off Gieger’s resume and feel impressed. However, the moments that Gieger reflect on as true successes cannot be summed up by a C.V. bullet point. Instead, Gieger’s victories are found in the experiences that helped her discover her values and bring her closer to understanding what her place in the world of journalism could be.

During her sophomore summer, as an intern at Forbes, Gieger learned not only the daily work life of a journalist, but also, under the guidance of her mentor, Anne Glusker, found ways to

Photos courtesy of Olivia Gieger ’21

During her junior summer, Gieger worked on Ed Markey’s senate campaign, traveling across Massachusetts to help garner support for a Green New Deal.

absorb the full energy of New York City. Glusker took her to plays and restaurants, encouraging her to experience the city in its complete pre-Covid glory.

“It was awesome to do something that you cared about and do something that you loved and write about things that felt important and then also just soak in the world in the most saturated way,” Gieger reminisced.

In college, Gieger followed in her middle-school self ’s footsteps by making large contributions to environmental activism on campus. Megaphone in hand, Gieger helped lead an October 2019 rally to put pressure on the administration to execute the Climate Action Plan, which commits the college to climate neutrality by 2030. But despite her common interests with her childhood self, Gieger “would like to think that — even though I am still very much environment-centric — I’m a lot more broad in my activism and that my concerns for the world are not just environmental now.”

Exploring the intersection of her environmental concerns and other interests is what eventually led Gieger to pursue a thesis in the English department. Her paper, titled “Rethinking Rupture,” was advised by Professor of English Anna Abramson, who also attended Wellesley High School, coincidentally enough. Through her thesis, Gieger investigated the conventional narratives about the nature around us through the lens of three different works of literature. Completing a thesis is difficult in a normal year, but it is especially tough when thesis meetings and research are forced to take place remotely. Luckily, Abramson and Gieger were living in relatively close proximity during the fall of 2020. They were even able to have several thesis meetings in person in Abramson’s backyard. “We sat in these red beach chairs I pulled out of the garage,” Abramson recalls, “The fall leaves were scattered all over the yard, we were

wearing masks, the pandemic was still raging globally — and yet there we were, doing the intellectual work of crafting a thesis. It was surreal and different and utterly memorable; I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

A View from Somewhere Part of the reason it is so easy to lose track of time in a conversation with Gieger is that, over the years, she has developed a perspective that is hard to come by at a place like Amherst.

It can often feel like this campus is designed around next steps. We choose our courses, our living spaces and our jobs before we’ve even had a chance to finish the current ones. Sometimes, it feels that we’re all being propelled along a preset trajectory with a right and wrong direction.

But in the middle of our conversation, Gieger gave me a book recommendation, which I took a quick moment to scribble down. It is “The View From Somewhere” by Lewis Raven Wallace. It investigates the journalistic ideal of objectivity that has governed the industry for so long — the idea that a journalist’s perspective should be so impartial that it is equivalent to a “view from nowhere.” Wallace instead posits that human subjectivity is inevitable and instead of industry-wide denial, journalists should recognize their “view from somewhere” as an inseparable part of their storytelling.

Gieger’s approach to life feels distinctly influenced by this idea: Rather than follow what some may see as the objectively right path, she takes time to immerse herself in experiences that give her a better understanding of her own perspective — and how that perspective influences how she tells stories. Wherever she goes next, I know I will continue to look to her as a reminder to never hesitate on the things you love, because for Gieger, the right path is whatever helps cultivate her own “view from somewhere.”

The Amherst Student | May 30, 2021 | 55

VOLUME CL COMMENCEMENT EDITION

SUNDAY, MAY 30, 2021

AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

To Our Seniors,

STAFF EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Ryan Yu Rebecca Picciotto

Natalie de Rosa ’21 Editor-in-Chief, Emerita

Olivia Gieger ’21 Editor-in-Chief, Emerita

Dylan Momplaisir ’21 Digital Director

Julia Shea ’21

Managing Design Editor

EDITORS Zach Jonas Sophie Womer Yee-Lynn Lee Scott Brasesco Skye Wu Theo Hamilton Lauren Kisare Brooke Hoffman Alex Brandfonbrener Ethan Samuels Liza Katz Liam Archaki DESIGN Anna Smith

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Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editor

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We will miss you.

Thank you for everything!

Seoyeon Kim ’21 Managing A&L Editor

CONTRIBUTORS Fiona Antsey, Jack Dove, Yasmin Hamilton, Milo Leahy-Miller, Anya Ramras, Emma Rial, Melanie Schwimmer, Samantha Spratford, Hannah Zhang DIGITAL DIRECTOR Dylan Momplaisir HEAD PUBLISHER Emmy Sohn PUBLICATION STANDARDS The Amherst Student is published weekly except during college vacations. The subscription rate is $75 per year or $40 per semester.

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