AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS
VOLUME CXLVI HOMECOMING EDITION | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2016
HOMECOMING 2016 THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
Photo by Takudzwa Tapfuma ’17
Schedule Events of
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11 - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Check-In Alumni House
8 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Check-In Alumni House
5 p.m. Eras of Triumph: A Forty Year Celebration of Women’s Athletics at Amherst Alumni Gymnasium (Pre-registration required)
9 a.m. Conversation with Dean of Faculty Catherine Epstein Fayerweather Hall
8 p.m. Homecoming Bonfire Valentine Quadrangle
10 a.m. Conversation with President Biddy Martin Johnson Chapel
12 p.m. Amherst Football vs. Williams Pratt Field 2:30 p.m. Amherst Homecoming Fest Alumni Gymnasium
SUNDAY 10:30 a.m. Alumni vs. Student Women’s Ice Hockey Game Orr Rink
9:30 p.m. Amherst Symphony Orchestra Arms Music Center
STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lauren Tuiskula HEAD PUBLISHERS Tia Robinson EDITORS Kelly Chian, Shawna Chen, Gabby Edzie, Diane Lee, George Long, Nate Quigley, Spencer Quong, Isabel Tessier, Julia Turner, Jingwen Zhang DESIGN Justin Barry, Gabby Bishop, Chloe Tausk, Zavi Sheldon, Yrenly Yuan PHOTO EDITOR Takudzwa Tapfuma
2 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
The Amherst Student is published weekly except during college vacations. The subscription rate is $75 per year or $40 per semester. Subscription requests and address changes should be sent to: Subscriptions, The Amherst Student; Box 1912, Amherst College: Amherst, MA 01002-5000. The offices of The Student are located on the second floor of the Keefe Campus Center, Amherst College. Phone: (413) 5422304. All contents copyright © 2015 by The Amherst Student, Inc. All rights reserved. The Amherst Student logo is a trademark of The Amherst Student, Inc. Additionally, The Amherst Student does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age.
Table of Contents ALUMNI PROFILES
4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 14 15 16
Dan Cluchey ’08 Diverse Paths, Yet an Unwavering Love of Writing Chloe McKenzie ’14 Bringing Intersectionality to the World of Finance Peter Millard ’76 Physician Provides Care in Service to Others Gretchen Sisson ’06 Taking an Intersectional Approach to Society Will Gillepsie ’15 Stronger Together: Communicating for Clinton John Porciau ’05 Louisiana Native Dedicated to Public Service Sally Marx ’14 Clinton Staffer Provides a Voice for the Silenced Theo Goldin ’05 Entrepreneur Betters Lives Through Business Ellen Longsworth ’71 Dedicated Art Historian Finds Home at Amherst Christopher Bock ’92 Loving His Job: From Finance to Ice-Cream Angela Brown ’00 An Empathetic Approach to Greater Knowledge
NEWS
10-11
Amherst Uprising, One Year Later
SPORTS
17 18 19 20
Winter Sports Previews Men’s Soccer, Forest’s FastTake Volleyball Women’s Soccer November 11, 2016 | The Amherst Student | 3
Alumni Profile | Dan Cluchey ’08
Diverse Paths, Yet an Unwavering Love of Writing From speeches to a novel, Dan Cluchey ’08 has devoted his life to various forms of creative expression. —Spencer Quong ’18 When I first spoke to Dan Cluchey ’08, I had just emerged from Organic Chemistry on the Friday of a tough week. I remember reading a short bio provided by Alumni and Parent Programs and thinking about how far off his life appeared. It was difficult to imagine life after graduation, and I couldn’t comprehend how Cluchey had managed to do so many incredible things in the eight years since he graduated. Among his many different paths, Cluchey earned a degree from Harvard Law, worked as a speechwriter for the Obama administration and published a novel this past summer. Yet talking on the phone, Cluchey came across as humble and self-deprecating. He spoke about his various stories in a way that revealed a thoughtful character, and a passion for learning and place. Though he has occupied many different roles, the thing that winds its way through all of Cluchey’s adventures is a love for writing.
“Strange” Beginnings Cluchey came to Amherst thinking he would only focus on political science. But after finishing the major requirements by the end of sophomore year, he realized he’d been missing out on the breadth of education that a liberal arts college has to offer. He started exploring classes in different majors, particularly enrolling in more music and English courses. He always knew that he wanted to be a speechwriter, but his love for writing expressed itself in many different ways while at Amherst. He spoke highly of Professor of European Studies and Russian Stanley Rabinowitz, naming his class “Strange Russian Writers” as the best course he took at Amherst. “He has always been a big inspiration,” Cluchey said. “At the time, he was really the first professor I’d had who had made me feel good about being sort of an … unorthodox writer. I thought of him really as a mentor in
some ways. He might not be totally aware of that.” Joining Mr. Gad’s was also a formative part of Cluchey’s Amherst experience. Performing improv was another way to explore creative forms of expression. “I am more of a ‘writeit-down’ first kind of person by nature so for me being able to perform in Gad’s — it helped me bring out that more external side of myself, whereas I think I’m a little more introverted by nature,” Cluchey said. Gad’s gave Cluchey a family that spans generations of Amherst students. “What I love now is I live only about 90 minutes away from Amherst,” he said. “Any time I’m back there it’s like an instant connection through generations to people who are still doing it … When everyone gets together, it’s always a great time because people fall back into the ways that they banter with each other.” He called his Gad’s family a lifesaver. “I had no idea what it was when I decided to try it out, and it ended up being such an emotional support system [and] social network,” he said. “It’s just like whatever you need it to be, which is great.”
Love for Learning After Amherst, Cluchey was accepted to Harvard Law School and began his studies in the fall of 2009. He never worked as a lawyer and actually matriculated with this intention. As an aspiring speechwriter, he had looked at successful people in the field and observed that a lot of them had law degrees. “You look at people who get those positions because it’s not a career where you can just log in and go to a job bank or find an application,” Cluchey said. “You sort of have to chart your own path because it’s such a small, niche community.” Attending law school with different end goals than his peers transformed his experience. “You’re not supposed to enjoy it, but I did — I actually real-
ly loved it,” Cluchey said. “ I think it’s precisely because I knew I wasn’t going to be competing for the same jobs as everyone else. That really took a lot of the heat off.” He also spoke about how his love for learning at Amherst transferred over to his new environment, where he focused mostly on constitutional law and gender equality law. “In some ways, I took the same academic enjoyment from law school that I did from Amherst,” he said.
An Impromptu Project Between graduating from law school and starting work as a speechwriter for the Obama administration, Cluchey had a four-month breather with no obligations. With a “huge chunk of time and no plan,” he took the opportunity to try out creative writing (after a week of “totally free living and no responsibilities”). What began as a private project eventually became the novel “The Life Of The World To Come,” which was published this past summer and follows a junior death row advocate as he tries to save a client and struggles with the question of mortality Though starting the project was an impromptu decision, Cluchey said that “the emotional content of the book was definitely not spur of the moment — it was stuff that had been on my mind for the first 25 years of my life.” Some of his literary inspiration, he said, is rooted in Amherst. “My all-time favorite writer is Vladimir Nabokov, and that I attribute entirely to Amherst because of Stanley Rabinowitz’s Russian literature class,” he said. “He’s a writer whose book I go back to over and over again … I love unreliable narrators, playing with readers and tricking the reader.” Describing his own writing experience with self-deprecating wit, Cluchey said, “For me it was like, ‘Wow, could I write like that too?’ And it turns out I can’t. But it made it a challenge.”
Cluchey and his his wife, Miriam Becker-Cohen ’11 did not meet on campus but bonded over their mutual love for Amherst on their way to Homecoming in 2012. Their wedding was a “quintissential Amherst wedding experience,” complete with cider donuts on their wedding cake.
4 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
Photos courtesy of Dan Cluchey ’08
Before becoming a speech writer, Cluchey began working on his now published novel, “The Life of the World to Come.”
Life as a Speechwriter While the book project was in the works, Cluchey began four years of work as a speechwriter for the Obama administration beginning in 2012. He worked for multiple people within the administration, including former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, around the time the Affordable Care Act was being implemented. Cluchey described his time as “everything I hoped it might be,” highlighting the unique experience of being surrounded by accomplished leaders at a young age, in part due to the nature of the speechwriting profession. “You end up at 24, 25 or whatever age you are in rooms or meetings hearing conversations that you would otherwise have no business being in, because you’re the speechwriter,” he said. When talking about his work, Cluchey focused on the merit of the people around him. He spoke of the opportunity to write about “causes I cared about, which happen to be progressive causes, and work for a president who I really believed in very deeply.”
A Post-Amherst (but Amherst) Love Cluchey later left the Obama administration to spend time with his wife, an Amherst alumna, Miriam Becker-Cohen ’11. They did not meet during their time at Amherst, though they overlapped by one year. Instead, they met for the first time driving up to homecoming in 2012. Cluchey’s college roommate, Chris Gillyard ’08, had two extra spots in his car, and put a note out on Facebook — she happened to respond. Becker-Cohen is currently attending Yale Law, and the two live in New Haven together, but Cluchey says they eventually intend to head back to D.C. Cluchey hopes to continue speechwriting and Becker-Cohen hopes to pursue civil rights law. Cluchey joked, “It might be another last-hurrah for us to do crazy all-hours work on the causes we care about before we move back to the Pioneer Valley and get 10 dogs and work the land or whatever — we’ll see.
We’re very much looking forward to retirement.” The couple married this past year on Memorial Hill, with one of Cluchey’s roommates from his senior year officiating the ceremony. They had a band of Amherst grads and a cake topped with cider doughnuts from Atkins Farm, going for the “quintessential Amherst wedding experience.”
“What we need is here.” What sticks with me is that Cluchey, half-laughing, said, “I would give anything to switch places with you. I’m not going to lie.” I suppose it wasn’t an unexpected comment — I think many students have listened to working adults reflect fondly on their college days. But this particular comment really resonated with me. Perhaps because it was a part of his story that truly reflected its whole. It seems every part of Cluchey’s life has some thread that leads back to Amherst. Granted, I interviewed Cluchey as an Amherst student myself, so perhaps the context of our talk led to these responses. Regardless, his profound love of Amherst was evident even in his tone and diction. “This is slightly embarrassing — I don’t think I’ve ever missed a homecoming since I graduated,” he said. “I’m very into Amherst, not blind to its flaws, but I don’t know, there’s something about it that always gets me. I just breathe easier up there.” While discussing his favorite writers, one poet that came up was Wendell Berry, who once closed a poem with the words, “What we need is here.” Hanging up the phone, I thought about how Cluchey feels like a person who embodies the spirit of that line. He’s someone who cherishes place, and has the ability to show that to others, even to an “other” over the phone. “Maybe you’ll experience this, there’s sort of a weird period for a couple of years after you graduate where you’ll still know people there, and some of the same dynamics are still in play, and for me … when you come back and you don’t know anybody and it’s not about the people anymore it’s about the place, the feeling grew much stronger,” he said.
Alumni Profile | Chloe McKenzie ’14
Bringing Intersectionality to the World of Finance A non-profit entrepreneur, Chloe McKenzie ’14, works to extend financial literacy to women of color of all ages. — Isabel Tessier ’19 One day, while sitting on the couch watching TV, Chloe McKenzie ’14 sent out an email with a simple header: “I’m a doer.” This was McKenzie’s guiding mantra as a college varsity soccer player, a student and, most recently, a young entrepreneur. The email address’ domain was the website for the company McKenzie had just created: BlackFem, a nonprofit venture capital firm that teaches financial literacy to girls and women of color and creates opportunities for investments in their futures. “She’d had this idea in general about wanting to help women and girls of color with finance and increasing their wealth,” said Chloe’s boyfriend, George Tepe ’14. “One day she decided she’d had enough just thinking about it, and she made it. Got the website and just did it.” Today, 257 girls of color have graduated from the BlackFem’s programs and 97 percent have achieved financial literacy. BlackFem has partnered with more than six educational institutions including Columbia Law School, Amherst College, Smith College and Harlem Girls Cheer, and was recently sponsored by Capital One. By the end of 2017, the nonprofit’s goal is to have helped 5,000 new women and girls of color combat debt and become financially literate.
A Woman of Many Interests McKenzie arrived at Amherst somewhat serendipitously, after having accidentally applied and gotten into the college thinking that she had applied to University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Fate really took over there,” McKenzie recalled. “I [knew] ‘this is where you’re supposed to be,’ so I put in my matriculation ticket to Amherst before I heard back from any other school.” At the college, Chloe was a walk-on member of the varsity women’s soccer team, a sports photographer for the Office of Public Affairs and a Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought major.
Service is Healing Since the age of six, McKenzie had been set on going to law school and becoming a lawyer. But when she took a job as a mortgage trader at JP Morgan after graduating in 2014, life “took a right turn,” and she discovered a new passion for finance and trading. She loved the competitive, fast-paced nature of working on the floor and trading stocks, which she said reminded her of playing sports. Throughout her experience at JP Morgan, however, she was always aware that this was not the longterm place for her. She knew that she wanted to serve others. “I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, and so service is really huge,” McKenzie said. “For me … I always saw service as healing, an opportunity for me to heal by helping others.” At JP Morgan she joined the Analyst & Associates Volunteer Group and worked as a financial counselor for homeless families in New York City. This experience inspired her to begin thinking about combining her passions for finance and service but also exposed her to the limitations of philanthropic and volunteer efforts within work environments at for-profit companies. Most of her colleagues had joined the volunteer group to increase their chances of getting promoted. Instead of treating the families they served with empathy and compassion, many were patronizing, McKenzie said. After a year at JP Morgan, McKenzie took a teaching fellowship working at charter schools in New York City. This, for her, was the final puzzle piece. Seeing the education system from the inside convinced McKenzie that the American education system is failing to adequately prepare the next generation of students — particularly students of color. Underserved schools, she said, are not providing students with financial literacy. “That’s how you help people,”
McKenzie remembers realizing. “You take all of the great things that you love about finance and you apply it from the lens of educating people.” BlackFem began by holding financial literacy workshops for post-graduate students of color from Columbia Law School, targeting these students because they would likely be facing debt from student loan payments. She soon realized that even highly educated students at elite institutions could be financially illiterate. So, BlackFem created a high school program to target students at a younger age, and then a middle school program and “we ended up just continuing to pivot and move backwards … all the way down to four-year-olds.” Today, BlackFem offers three programs: “Financial Fundamentals” for grades pre-K through eight, “Higher Education” for grades nine through 12 and “Financial Literacy” for college and beyond. In “Financial Fundamentals,” students learn about “economic empowerment” and “foundational financial and investment concepts,” according to BlackFem’s website. This program teaches young children complicated financial concepts without being overly simplistic. When BlackFem was recruited to do a workshop with a group of fouryear-olds in a D.C. summer program, McKenzie and her team formulated a model that used growing an apple tree as an analogy for compound interest. Evaluations of the children after the workshop showed that 98 percent of the students understood and absorbed the lesson. Making financial concepts accessible but not oversimplified for various age groups and demographics of students is a key tenant of BlackFem’s model. “I don’t want to dumb anything down. I want 10 year olds dealing with $300,000,” McKenzie said. “I don’t want them to be afraid … the more you dumb it down, the less prepared they’ll be.” BlackFem relies on its curricu-
BlackFem, which has graduated 257 girls of color thus far, with 97 percent having achieved financial literacy, hopes to reach 5,000 girls by the end of 2017.
Photos courtesy of Chloe McKenzie ‘14
Before founding BlackFem, McKenzie worked as a mortgage trader at JP Morgan. lum — which McKenzie calls its “secret sauce” — and highly trained teachers to achieve this accessibility. Teachers must be prepared to adapt their workshops and methods in order to relate to students who are coming from a wide range of educational backgrounds. Ultimately, however, McKenzie is adamant that “it [doesn’t] matter if you had no education … or if you were in a failing school system — you can achieve financial literacy if it’s done the right way.” “You don’t get to be like, ‘Oh well, the black kids from the poor areas don’t know how to learn,’” she said. “It’s like, ‘No, you don’t know how to teach!’ That’s the difference, right? It’s an adult problem — it’s a system problem.”
Professional Student When McKenzie decided she wanted her non-profit to focus on educating women and girls of color, she knew she would need to prepare to justify her demographic choices to others. “Pretty much everyone would know that women of color would be at the bottom of the totem pole, but I wanted it to be grounded in research,” McKenzie said. “Numbers don’t lie.” She found government reports and statistics on individual’s net worth in different social demographics and researched the history of how financial institutions have exploited communities of color. Eventually, she had the data and analysis to back her claims up to explain her choice of target demographic. This practice of rooting her work in research comes directly from her time as an undergraduate, McKenzie said. At Amherst, she was an avid student, taking a new language every semester in addition to German. In her senior year, she wrote her thesis on rape in the military, a difficult and heavy experience that McKenzie describes as “the culminating moment of why Amherst was such an amazing experience.” “If I could be a professional student that’s what I would be,” she said. McKenzie directly attributes her success with BlackFem to the skills
she learned as a student. “Going into the process and embracing everything you can learn is really important,” she said. “I think that’s why I’ve been able to successfully build my business.”
Radical, Intersectional Feminism The concept of radical feminism is at the core of BlackFem’s values and practices, and McKenzie places it at the forefront of the company’s goals. “We have to have our everyday practices informed by some version of radical feminism,” McKenzie said. “And to make it even better, intersectional radical feminism.” “People are always like, ‘Oh, what’s your return on investment?’” McKenzie said. “And I’m like, ‘My return on my investment is that I have more girls now going into the economy who can make it better.’ Why are we not utilizing an entire demographic of people who could actually strengthen our economy?” BlackFem’s commitment to intersectional feminist values is also informed by McKenzie’s personal and professional experiences as a black woman. In college, she felt unable to openly take pride in her identity as a woman of color. “I could be an athlete … I could be an LJST major, but could I be a black woman?” she recalls. “People had issues if you were that bold.” At JP Morgan, McKenzie was the only woman and the only person of color on the trading floor. She said the experience was ultimately an empowering one, and she formed meaningful relationships and learned valuable skills. However, “having to deal with a hyper-masculine, overly-misogynistic frat house — let’s just call it that, because that’s all Wall Street really is — was tough.” Although she still feels fear and self-doubt, McKenzie now sees them as something to welcome. “[BlackFem has] continued to grow, even with the mistakes I’ve made,” she said. “So I get to embrace waking up every day and feeling absolutely terrified and realizing if I don’t feel that way, then I’m doing something wrong.”
The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016 | 5
Alumni Profile | Peter Millard ’76
Physician Provides Care in Service to Others Peter Millard ’76 is a pioneering and problem-solving physician and epidemiologist, but most admirable is his commitment to serve the neediest in American society and the world. —Jingwen Zhang ’18 Peter Millard ’76 was once a chemistry and German double major at Amherst, unsure of whether or not medicine was the right path for him. After graduation, he discovered his true passion for helping the poor by using the tools of medicine and public health. Millard’s interests and penchant for adventure have led him to serve patients from Bolivia to Zimbabwe and become the director of a community health center in Maine. His dedication to tackling public health problems has resulted in an invention that could transform the fight against HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Serving the Underserved Millard grew up in rural Maine near the city of Portland. After high school, he attended Amherst because of the beauty of the campus and its surroundings, the college’s small size and its proximity to home. He majored in chemistry because he liked tackling challenges. He also majored in German, which allowed him to study abroad in Germany for a semester. “I think I did it because I wanted to get away from science a little bit and do something different,” Millard said of the German major. To him, focusing solely on science was both stressful and boring, and learning German provided the perfect balance. Like many Amherst students, Millard had an interest in medicine but was not entirely sure that he wanted to pursue a career in the medical field. Following graduation, instead of diving into medical school, he took a year off to hitchhike from Maine down to Bolivia, where he volunteered at a hospital that primarily served a poor indigenous population in Cochabamba. “Once I started doing that, then I realized that I wanted to dedicate myself to serving the poorest people, the underserved,” he said. With more certainty about the path
he wanted to follow, Millard returned to the U.S. to attend medical school at the University of Vermont.
Treating Individuals, Benefiting Communities Millard was drawn to the practice of family medicine because it would provide him with a wide variety of skills that he could use in working with underserved communities and populations. While he could see how specialties such as cardiology could be intellectually stimulating, the real appeal of being a medical doctor was in being able to care for the patient as a whole person. “It’s what surrounds the heart that’s important, I think — the personality and the problems that people have,” he said. “It’s really interesting to hear people’s stories, and if you’re a doctor, you spend a lot of time listening. And you have to listen to some very sad stories about people’s lives, because people’s lives aren’t always easy.” After finishing his medical training, Millard worked at a rural hospital in Zimbabwe. His wife, Emily, also worked at the hospital as a nurse, and they brought their three children with them. It was the 1980s, and the country had just won its independence from British control at the beginning of the decade. Millard found Zimbabwe to be interesting and relatively safe. However, its neighbor Mozambique was caught in a long and deadly civil war, and Millard worked near the Mozambican border. “We saw a lot of casualties — a lot of gunshot wounds, a lot of victims of landmines who came to our hospital and a lot of refugees who just had absolutely nothing,” Millard recalled. He and his wife often worried about the possibility that their family might also experience violence, so when their three-year contract came to an end, they made the difficult choice not to
extend it and returned home. During his time in Zimbabwe, Millard also developed an interest in public health. While physicians treat individuals, public health workers treat the community as a whole by targeting the root causes of sickness and preventing further spread of disease. As a physician in a region with widespread diseases and health problems, he wanted to find solutions that would extend beyond benefiting one patient at a time. Millard considers the greatest societal improvements in health — including clean water, increased public safety and protection against malaria and HIV — to be public health achievements rather than medical accomplishments. After returning to the U.S., Millard got a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He conducted research and taught epidemiology at the University of Vermont and academic medicine at the Eastern Maine Medical Center’s residency program. Now, he teaches epidemiology at the University of New England. He has balanced patient care with classroom and clinical instruction, keeping “one foot in the clinical medicine realm and one foot in public health.” Public health greatly broadened the scope of work that Millard was able to do to serve others. His training in public health and epidemiology allowed him to conduct research that would lead to groundbreaking work in combating the HIV and AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
Finding A Better Way In 2008, Millard returned to Africa, this time to Mozambique. He taught at a medical school, where he began doing research on the HIV and AIDS epidemic and learned of the role of male circumcision in preventing transmission. Millard had once been opposed to routine circumcision and refused to per-
Following his dedication to the underserved has led Millard to three other countries and teach students, such as these at the Catholic University of Mozambique and other institutions.
6 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
Photos courtesy of Peter Millard ’76
Peter Millard ’76, left, with a medical school graduate in 2011 at the Catholic University of Mozambique, where he taught. form it on newborns during his medical training, but he changed his mind after relatively new research demonstrated that circumcision decreased femaleto-male viral transmission. The World Health Organization also recognized the benefits of male circumcision and aimed to circumcise 20 million men in the 14 countries with the highest HIV prevalence. Seeing that circumcision could decrease the spread of HIV, Millard taught the procedure to his medical students. However, circumcising older boys and adult men is much more time-consuming and messy than circumcising newborns and required more skilled personnel. With his research and public health background, Millard was able to design a new approach to adult male circumcisions. His method required less time and skill, was less invasive and used only topical anesthetic cream instead of an injected anesthetic. It relied on a specialized instrument, the Unicirc, which Millard invented and made disposable in order to prevent disease transmission from improperly sterilized reusable instruments. Since developing the Unicirc, Millard has been collaborating with colleagues in South Africa to gather evidence that it is more effective than other existing methods. He has conducted clinical trials on adult men and adolescent boys which show that circumcisions using the Unicirc are faster and cause less adverse effects. The next step for Millard and his partners is to gain approval from the World Health Organization to use the device on larger groups of men. Though Millard’s publications about the the Unicirc are all fairly recent, he has been fighting for years to fund the instrument and necessary clinical experiments. Since he does not come from a larger or more prestigious research institution in the U.S., it has been difficult to catch the eye of funding sources. But without his background in research and epidemiology, Millard may never have been able to carry out his idea to revolutionize adult male circumcision. “I was able to do the research myself to prove that it worked,” he said. “If you were a regular doctor and you got this idea, you wouldn’t have a clue how to go about proving that it was a good idea. But because I had the training in public health, it was easy for me to conduct and design a study and then
publish it.”
Valuing Lived Experiences After returning to the U.S. from Mozambique, Millard began his work at Seaport Community Health Center in Maine, where he does what attracted him to medical practice in the first place: treating patients who are primarily poor and in greatest need. He now directs that center, which provides family medicine care as well as programs such as drug treatment for addicts. In community health, Millard faces many challenging situations and sees patients who come to him not only with health concerns but also with burdens in their lives, such as sexual assault, drug dependency or mental health problems. To Millard, being allowed into others’ stories is a privilege, and he considers it his duty to be sympathetic and provide help however possible. In public health, Millard’s motivation for his work is the potential to create a better future — not just for the current generation but also for many generations to come. Back in medical school at the University of Vermont, Millard met Richard Aronson ’69, current health professions advisor and assistant dean of students. Aronson called Millard a “lifelong friend” who shares “the ideals of service, critical thought, social justice, a fierce quest for a better world and humaneness that define Amherst at its best.” “[Millard] exemplifies the highest ideals of medicine and public health,” Aronson said. “[He is] a brilliant thinker who cares deeply about his patients, with a passionate appreciation of the multiple dimensions of healing and a deep understanding, translated into action, of the social, cultural and psychological factors that are such major determinants of health and well-being.” As an undergraduate, Millard never expected to become the person he is now, but he has found purpose in his career by following his passion and encourages current students to do the same. To those who want to pursue careers in serving those in need, Millard suggests that they begin by living among those they want to serve. “There’s plenty of need in the United States — you don’t need to go to South America or Africa,” he said. “Go and live in an underserved community and find out what it’s like. Find out what people are thinking and what problems they struggle with every day.”
Alumni Profile | Gretchen Sisson ’06
Taking an Intersectional Approach to Society Gretchen Sisson ’06 is a sociologist who currently studies abortion in popular culture. Her work takes a hard look at how society treats different aspects of reproductive health. —Shawna Chen ’20 When Gretchen Sisson ’06 was a senior in high school, she only applied to five schools. When she received her first letter back, she opened it, set it aside and waited. Then she received her Amherst acceptance and didn’t open any of the following letters. “My mom wasn’t too thrilled with that decision,” she said. “But I felt confident and I didn’t want to complicate the decision — I had made up my mind.” Now a sociologist studying abortion and reproductive health, Sisson credits her time at Amherst as critical to her life and career in research.
Nurturing Interest in Research Raised in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, Sisson came to Amherst wanting to be a doctor. Once she arrived at Amherst, however, she realized that despite her original plans, she would not have enjoyed the “process of getting there.” Instead, Sisson pursued a double major in Psychology and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies. The classes she took, she says, gave her the tools to think in interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary ways. “Doing research with demographers and epidemiologists and public health scholars and nurses and physicians, we’re definitely looking at the same issues in different disciplinary contexts,” she said. “I think that that’s what Amherst gave me — the ability to tackle important, urgent, controversial questions in a very thoughtful way.” As a senior, Sisson took a Special Topics class with Professor of Psychology Matthew Schulkind. Together, they looked at gender differences in autobiographical memory and designed an experiment to test their theory. Schulkind remembers Sisson well, describing her as “tough.” “Gretchen was not disrespectful in any way, but if she heard something and she disagreed with it, or she heard something and wanted to know more about it, she would ask,” Schulkind said. “She didn’t just accept what I would tell her. She would challenge
me in the best way, in the way that a student should challenge a professor.” The results of their experiment fell through, but the process of designing an experiment, creating a procedure and executing a methodology gave Sisson insight into what a career in research could look like. “Even though my subject matter today is quite different, that was the first project that I worked on in great detail and it was an opportunity that was integral to me and in my research and work and grad school career and now as a researcher,” Sisson said. Sisson pursued a thesis in her senior year, researching what she called a question “inherently based in sociology.” At the time, the idea of the opt-out revolution was gaining traction in American culture. Well-educated women were leaving the workforce to become parents. For Sisson, the question was why and what drove their motivation. She turned to her peers at Amherst to look at women still in the process of pursuing their education and what their plans were for future parenthood. “What I found was that a lot of my fellow students at Amherst were planning on leaving the workforce before they even entered it, or working parttime or at a limited capacity while they were childrearing, and that it’s not a question of opting out of the workforce — they were never fully opting in,” she said. This interest in parenthood would develop into something much greater in scale once she graduated.
Getting to the Bottom of Parenthood Sisson wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after Amherst, but knew “she was good at being a student” and enjoyed the research process and thesis work, so she applied to graduate school. At Boston College, Sisson took a turn from Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies and Psychology to pursue a Ph.D. in Sociology. Working with a professor on research into the sociology of mental illness was her
first foray into medical sociology. She soon followed an opportunity to look at infertility, reproductive technology and what that means for parenthood. What interested Sisson, she said, was how “infertility is not a real medical diagnosis.” The real medical diagnoses, Sisson said, could be hormonal imbalances, low male sperm count or uterine problems. Infertility, however, is credited as the “catch-all phrase of what’s going on medically.” “What was really compelling for me is that the treatment is always for women’s bodies, for the women trying to achieve pregnancy in these scenarios, even if there’s nothing medically wrong [with] her,” she said. If the problem is with the male partner, Sisson says, women are still the ones receiving treatment. Even with unexplained infertility, when doctors do cannot identify the cause, women still end up receiving treatment. “So what does that mean to have faith in a medical model to derive a solution to a problem that they can’t identify?” she said. “That was my entry into that [area of study].” As part of the research for her dissertation, Sisson began interviewing couples experiencing infertility and pursuing parenthood through reproductive technology — mostly white, upper middle-class heterosexual couples. At the same time, she was also working at the Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, interacting with young women who were becoming pregnant while in their teens and struggling with “so much hardship, so much stigma, just over the top stigma around their choice to parent, their choice to be a mother, around the work involved in parenting and finishing high school and getting an education.” Looking at these two questions at once, Sisson soon identified an underlying, recurring theme in the idea of adoption and how it is often perceived as a solution for both groups. “It really drove home to me the way that we prioritize different people’s parenting choices in ways that ar-
Gretchen Sisson ‘06 presents her work on abortion at the 2016 North American Forum on Family Planning. Since graduating, she has also studied infertility, teen pregnancy, adoption and parenthood.
Photos courtesy of Gretchen Sisson ’06
Divergent interests in women’s and gender studies, psychology and sociology opened up doors for Gretchen Sisson ‘06. en’t based in any way on their ability to parent,” she said. The different ways in which society supports different paths to parenthood while marginalizing or stigmatizing others brought Sisson to the issue of reproduction at large. In May 2011, her paper titled “Finding a Way to Offer Something More: Reframing Teen Pregnancy Prevention” was published in the Journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
De-stigmatizing Abortion In her first year at Boston College, Sisson met her now-husband Andrew McCollum, co-founder of Facebook. When she finished her Ph.D. in 2011, Sisson and McCollum were based in Boston but planned to move to the Bay Area in California a year later after they married. She had no plans to establish a career in Boston in a year, so instead Sisson looked to other projects. After 22 years of schooling, she spent her first year out of school blogging, volunteering with different organizations, working part-time at the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy and planning her wedding. Once she moved to California, she connected with her now-colleagues at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, who at the time needed a researcher to work on a grant. Sisson is a lead researcher for its Abortion Onscreen program, which tracks and analyzes how abortion is portrayed in popular culture — specifically in film and television. “We analyze what abortion decision is made, so we look at any plotline where it’s discussed or considered, even if an abortion doesn’t actually happen,” she said. “We look at character demographics, we look at the provider who’s offering or performing the abortion and the efficacy of the procedure, if there’s any barriers that the character encounters in trying to get an abortion and generally how the procedure is portrayed.” In 2014, part of Sisson’s work was published in the journal Contraception. Her research was subsequently featured or cited in numerous publications, including Slate, Bustle, PolicyMic, Huffington Post and MSNBC. “We do this work because we know that there is a lot of misinformation and social myth around abortion as a procedure and its safety and who gets
abortions and why and the frequency,” Sisson said. “So we want to see how abortion is portrayed in our culture and what the viewing audience is being informed of.” Her work, however, hasn’t come without its challenges. As an abortion researcher, few foundations want to fund her line of work. “Abortion is a word that makes people wary,” she said. “It’s a divisive issue.” One in three women in the United States gets an abortion, Sisson says, and research shows more than 95 percent of these women do not regret their decision. But a social stigma around abortion still exists. Media content creators remain nervous about handling abortion, and with these creators being overwhelmingly men, We must seek out different ways of telling and constructing stories of abortio She encourages students interested in studying reproductive health and abortion to persist in their pursuits. “It’s hard work to do, studying reproductive health, the stigma you run into, the challenges you won’t [face] in other areas,” she said. “The thought that it’s hard doesn’t mean we don’t need to do it, so I would tell people that if that’s where your interests are, be committed to it.” It was not a surprise to Schulkind when he heard of the work Sisson is doing. “The fact that she’s like, ‘I am going to take on this really difficult topic, where there are strong, hard feelings on both sides, and this is where I’m going to stake my intellectual claim,’ makes total sense,” he said. “That’s exactly where she would stake herself.” Though Abortion Onscreen is her current project, Sisson hopes to return to a focus on adoption and parenthood in the future. Looking back, she says her journey through varying interests has come full circle. “I had this interest in medicine and patient experiences and the health care system and its institutions, and I moved away from that for a while because these questions in Women’s and Gender Studies, in psychology and sociology were so compelling to me,” Sisson said. ”But I’ve ended up doing research in a medical environment and doing a lot of medical sociology. I think my interests definitely evolved while I was there, and they brought me back to a completely different place than from what I’d first envisioned, but probably in a better way for me.”
The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016 | 7
Alumni Profile | Will Gillespie ’15
Stronger Together: Calling for Community A passion for collaborative work drove Will Gillespie ’15 towards the campaign trail. —Gabby Edzie ’17 This election, the Hillary Clinton campaign was based out of Brooklyn, New York. A 10-minute walk from the headquarters will land you at the Gillespie household where Willy Gillespie ’15 grew up. As I witnessed at a Pennsylvania outreach base for the Clinton campaign, the family is tight-knit. It’s no surprise that it has given rise to Willy, someone who recently devoted months to encouraging others to take action with the possibility of making the country a better place. After graduating from Amherst as a law, jurisprudence and social thought major, Gillespie set off to work at Perella Weinberg Partners doing Mergers & Acquisitions and Restructuring. “I had worked there the summer prior. I enjoyed the time enough to take the return offer despite some of the miserable hours we worked,” Gillespie said. “The pay was good and it was interesting work so I decided to take it but after three months [...] it became pretty clear to me that finance was not something I wanted to stick with.” His interest in finance quickly dwindling, Gillespie found that he ended up spending most of his free time reading about the election. He reached out to fellow Amherst grad Sally Marx ’14, who was working at Clinton headquarters as a political assistant to the national political director, and the ball was set in motion. “I knew that politics was something I was interested in generally, intellectually and felt that what I was looking at, primarily organizing, was something that was more suited towards my strengths,” Gillespie said. “Numbers were never something I was really a star in. I think I took pre-calc senior year of high school, but never took a math class after that.” Gillespie’s initial interest in politics was in large part rooted and nourished by his family. He volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 and then again in 2012. Although the first two attempts were rather minimal, Gillespie had caught the political bug. “In 2008 I volunteered with my family. We went and knocked on doors in Pennsylvania,” Gillespie said. “And in 2012, I wasn’t very active. I volunteered with Amherst democrats, but just enough to make me feel good about it. I went to New Hampshire. I made 10 calls, so it wasn’t something that was really in the forefront of my mind. I hadn’t imagined doing this. I had read a book called the accidental investment banker, and though that’s what I was going to be. Clearly not.”
Driving to the Race Gillespie’s brother and parents were increasingly politically active, but it was the nature of this partic-
ular race that really made him dive in completely. Marx ’14 put him in touch with someone at the Clinton campaign, and the process was set in motion. After a series of interviews, Gillespie’s future with the campaign hinged on one thing: a driver’s license. A native New Yorker, he’d never been behind the wheel. The entire process took three weeks, practice and a stroke of luck. “This woman took it easy on me,” Gillespie said. “She said ‘you were really close to failing. In fact, you should have failed, but I’m gonna be nice.’ so I profusely thanked her. She probably should have failed me because about five weeks later I got into a fender bender.” License in wallet, Gillespie started his job as a field organizer for the Pennsylvania Democrats on July 11. He was eager and inspired, having supported Clinton from the beginning. Clinton was an embodiment of the genre of politics that Gillespie finds inspiring: that which relies on realistic, yet meaningful change. “I agree with the model of politics that relies on steady and incremental change and with realistic approaches and thoughtful frameworks,” he said. In addition to his support for Clinton, Gillespie felt that he could not disregard the monumental nature of this race. “For generations, people are going to be talking about this race. I don’t think this is a race that’s necessarily a contest between two political opponents, and I think most are. I think Obama said recently that when he was running in 2008 and 2012 he disagreed with McCain and Romney, but when it came down to it, he still thought the country would be safe if he had lost. I feel very strongly that Trump represents an existential threat to our values. I think Donald Trump is the antithesis of the very basic values that are American that often bridge the gap between republican and democrat.” Gillespie joined the race because Donald Trump seemed to disregard that which “seems to really make America great, as it is.” “I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore,” he said.
With Her As a field organizer, Gillespie organized people into action. He reduced the task to “making a lot of phone calls.” But the job is no easy task — it requires connecting with hundreds of people a day. It takes a person that is not only apt at interacting with others, but at inspiring them to believe in a cause. “People often expressed surprise when I told them Will had left Perella Weinberg to join Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but they shouldn’t have been,” Gillespie’s brother Cullen Gillespie ’18 said. “Politics, and
14 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
political campaigns especially, are about people. And Will has always been about people. He’s always been at his strongest when working with others to achieve a common goal, and to see him on this campaign was to see him at his best, at his most vibrant and most passionate.” Gillespie had the opportunity to work with a diverse group of people from law school students to local volunteers. Most of the organizers won’t continue on with politics, but have joined to help support the candidate they believe in. “It’s a goofy mood,” Gillespie said. “From late night dancing to Brian flicking rubber bands and making necklaces out of paper clips. It’s goofier than most people would like to admit.” Leading up to the election, Gillespie made four or five hours of calls a day to people who have either indicated interested in volunteering, have donated or have indicated some sort of interest beyond your average supporter. He reached out to 200 to 300 people a night. “Of course you’re not speaking to 200-300 people,” Gillespie said. “Most of them will never take your calls. But the idea is you make enough casts, you catch a fish.” The weekends varied as the campaign progressed. Prior to the registration deadline, they focused on voter registration, holding various voter registration drives. Closer to Election Day, Gillespie managed volunteers to knock on doors, identifying voters and reaching out to them. “In some cases, we were persuading them,” Gillespie said. “Most of the time not. Canvassing tends to be an exercise in information gathering.” During GOTV, volunteers were sent to speak with voters to make sure they had a plan in place. To Gillespie, each volunteer was important in their own right. On Election Day, he split his time hunched over a computer, smiling while entering in the remarkable amount of volunteers that had showed up, and interacting with people at the canvassing base. He offered me coffee as I walked in, and kept me excited, and hopeful. “When you do develop a team of volunteers and they are effectively put to work it’s always a great thing to see,” Gillespie said. He explains that he owes part of his love for communicating to Amherst. “Discussion based classes create an environment to learn strong communication skills,” he said. “Those are important to have in organizing and trying to get people to do things, organize them into action.” It was obvious this skill runs in the family. His parents and brother rushed around the room, helping
Photos courtesy of Will Gillespie ’15
Before becoming a field organizer for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, Gillespie ‘15 worked for Perella Weinberg Partners. organize materials, and sitting down to chat about the milkshakes at the diner down the road. “They love it,” Gillespie said. “They’re great. They came out almost every weekend over the past month and a half.”
Stronger Together What Gillespie values in Hillary Clinton is the trait that he himself has, and which made him such a successful organizer — her unwavering regard for togetherness, for coming together to be better as a whole. “Hillary Clinton, her entire life, has fought for children and families. It’s clear to me that she is not seeking office for political ego or anything like that. I think she really does want to work hard. And I think she’s proven that — there is no evidence to the contrary. She works hard and is driven by cause not ambition and she really does believe she can make this country a better place,” Gillespie said. “I’d also love to see a woman in the White House,” he added.
Election Day On Election day, Gillespie woke up early to make sure the staging location — where volunteers would be gathering before heading out to canvas — was set up. He managed and launched canvases to several boroughs in Pennsylvania, and managed requests for rides to voting locations. Additionally, his team was responsible for flagging ground specific information, like the poll lines being too long or supposed voter intimidation. In a back room of the base, Gillespie eagerly reported canvassing statistics. The day was fast-paced, and
Gillespie was moving the entire time, inspired by the potential of Clinton and the threat that is Donald Trump. “I think the rise of someone like Donald Trump is pretty concerning,” he said. “I think it’s remarkable that you have a president whose approval rating is like 60 percent and yet almost 45 percent of the country supposedly supports a man who is in diametric opposition to what Obama stands for. Donald trump gets away with so much blatant lying and it’s concerning that so many people are willing to listen to him and are willing to forgive the unforgivable things he’s said or done. I also think it’s concerning that the best predictor of a Donald Trump supporter is their score on an authoritarian scale — a test of their authoritarian tendencies.” “It’s like an alternate reality and so many people buy into it,” he said. “So many people are fueled by hate and that’s concerning. But other than that, I’m optimistic. It’s clear the country has a lot of work to do, no doubt about that. But I think we’ll come out alright.” As the results started to come in, I sat surrounded by Gillespie, his family and his coworkers. The room was in disbelief, but Gillespie never gave up hope. He cheered at every little success, communicated with everyone in the room and refused to go home to sleep until 7 a.m. To be able to communicate not just an idea, but also a feeling, is something we look for in a leader. Gillespie is an embodiment of that, and as his brother Cullen said, “I could not be prouder of the work he’s done nor more excited to see what he will do next.”
Alumni Profile | John Porciau ’05
Louisiana Native Dedicated to Public Service John Pourciau ’05’s passions for political involvement and genuine human connection drives his successful career in legislature. — Nate Quigley ’19 Growing up in Baton Rouge, John Pourciau ’05 has long felt a special connection to the bayous and back roads of his native Louisiana. The distinct culture and people endowed Pourciau with what he termed “a tremendous sense of place,” one that he carried with him throughout his travels and, ultimately, drew him back to his home state. Not only did this bond lead him back to the vibrant city of New Orleans, but his deep relationship to the state of his youth has no doubt drawn him into the career of public service that he’s embarked on since graduating Amherst.
A Public, Political Persona Pourciau started on this political path at an early age, crediting both Lousiana’s deeply political nature and his upbringing in the state capital as driving factors for his start in public service. Pourciau’s early interest on politics manifested itself when he got involved with the student government of his Catholic high school in Baton Rouge. However, his desire for involvement wasn’t sated by high school politics, so he got a job as a page for the Louisiana State Senate. Laughing, he noted that the job “really consisted of getting coffee and making copies for people.” He even made copies of any newspaper clipping that included a senator’s name — a job that he ruefully noted is now utterly obsolete with the
advent of Google. Yet Pourciau says this job was invaluable to him as a teenager, and it provided “access to government and access to the way that things work … it’s great to be at the ground level of it.” This passion for political involvement and his desire to continue to act on it in college was pretty much the only surefire idea that Pourciau carried to Amherst, a college he’d never heard of before being offered a subsidized trip to the students of color open house. Immediately upon his arrival, he acted on his passion by running for first-year class president. Imbued with what he termed “a profound sense of justice,” he campaigned on a promise to make sure each of his classmates’ voices would be heard. “They have to feel that they are important to the system,” he argued. This dedication and belief that politics is, at its core, rooted in caring for people — not just status or some meaningless line on a resume. “When seriousness overtakes him, he has wisdom beyond his years,” English professor Barry O’Connell said. Although he lost in a runoff by what he remembers to be a margin of only 14 or 15 votes, this defeat, if anything, spurred him on to throw himself into the Amherst community with an even greater vigor. Pourciau, as was and still is the case for most Amherst students, joined countless organizations, from La
Causa to the Black Students Union, a group he chaired during his time at the college. He distinguished himself, though, through his dedication to the larger community. While on campus, he worked for ABC (A Better Chance) tutoring and led a campus-wide effort to redefine the college’s relationship with the surrounding area. “I was active in trying to coordinate some volunteer work even my senior year, trying to connect some organizations and clubs to outreach work,” he said. “[We were] trying to transition from a concept of charity to a more equitable relationship with communities and with the work that’s being done with the people that needed that help.” Yet even with all this time dedicated to the wider community, Pourciau still had a larger than life presence on the campus. His enthusiasm was infectious and many of his peers fondly remember the joy he brought to the Amherst community and his ability to strike up a conversation with seemingly anyone he met. “Everyone at Amherst College knew John,” his classmate Peter Weiss ’05 recounted. “It was next to impossible to walk to Valentine with him because you’d never make it … before the dining hall closed — he was constantly stopping to say hi to people. Just the friendliest dude.”
Character in Action
A True Public Servant
Pourciau capped off his Amherst career with the commencement address. After his classmates selected him for the honor, he validated their selection with a moving speech that emphasized a simple message: “What you do and who you do it with are the best examples of who you are.” By this maxim, his actions over the next years clearly illustrate his dedication to public service in the truest sense of this phrase. Leaving Amherst with a degree in political science, Pourciau immediately returned to his hometown and launched into politics, finding a job as a legislative assistant for the Committee on Health and Wellness in the Louisiana State Senate. His first month on the job tragically coincided with one of the worst events in the past decade of American history, when Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the state in late August 2005. As a staffer for the the Committee on Health and Wealthness, he played an integral role in trying to help the city of New Orleans rise from the ashes. Focusing on “issues relating to how to rebuild the New Orleans system,” the committee dealt with problems ranging from destruction of one of the biggest New Orleans hospitals, Big Charity, to the exodus of huge swathes of the health care workforce and to the lack of mental health professionals in New Orleans. Even as a junior staffer, Pourciau played a central role in drafting legislation for the state senate that would deal with these issues. Working for this committee provided him with “a really good experience,” he said, “because again I felt like I was on the frontlines of policy and of government and of things happening.”
After 17 months working for the Committee on Wellness, Pourciau chose to carry on in Louisiana state politics rather than attending law school, becoming Director of Voter Outreach for Louisiana’s new Secretary of State, Republican Jay Dardenne. While Pourciau is a registered Democrat, he saw his new job, that of expanding the electorate and giving a voice to the voiceless, as something that transcends partisanship. Dardenne “respected that there was really important work to do outside of politics,” he said. After moving to Philadelphia to attend Temple University’s law school and work for a health care organization, he returned to the world of bayou politics that he knew and loved so well. Instead of taking a job at a big law firm or becoming a congressional aide, he joined New Orleans Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell’s team, becoming her legislative director. Pourciau is still working for Cantrell, where he has led the charge on drafting legislation to deal with several issues currently facing the Big Easy, most notably in regards to smoking bans and housing affordability. Although he is quick to assign credit to Cantrell’s excellent leadership and direction, Pourciau was vital in drafting the legislation that banned smoking from casinos and bars. This victory was not just some minor city ordinance that would affect few, but rather represented Pourciau’s dedication to fighting for the voiceless. “The city’s musicians particularly thanked him, since now they don’t have to sing in a fog of cigarette smoke,” Weiss said. Pourciau himself sees his success in this situation as an example of how “stuff gets done on the city and state level.” “I really like working at the state and city level because I’ve been able to see stuff move in a way that’s been great,” he said. His commitment to action and actual progress ties into his work on housing. As in most cities throughout America, New Orleans has experienced rising rents and is losing many of its older residents who simply can’t afford to live in the city any more. Pourciau sees the housing crisis as one of the biggest problems faced by New Orleans. “What New Orleans has is its people,” he said. “It has cultural producers. It has chefs and artists and Mardi Gras. If we lose our people, we lose what makes us as a city special.” He and Cantrell have taken steps to begin to address these issues by arguing for the creation of inclusionary zoning policy and a rental registry, measures that would increase the number of affordable housing units in the city and improve the quality of such units. Although these measures haven’t yet been successful, he said he hopes to continue fighting for these and other issues that will improve the life of every Louisianan for the years to come.
Photo courtesy of John Pourciau ‘05
Pourciau was known for his loud, welcoming personality while at Amherst. Now, he uses it as a way to connect with his neighbors and constituents in the hopes that he can take steps to better the lives of Louisianans today and in the years to come.
The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016 | 9
Amherst Uprising,
A year ago, students at Amherst joined those at other institutions around the country with a student-driven protest against racism, discrimination and exclusion. Called Amherst Uprising, the protest led to demands and discussions that became well-known among members of the community, including families and alumni. Even now, the memory of the protests affects the campus, especially as students face a country that is rapidly changing. From the controversial ex-mascot Lord Jeff — the subject of The Amherst Student’s last Homecoming feature — to diversity in the college’s faculty and staff, here is a review of Amherst Uprising’s effects and its legacy and memory on campus.
Oct.-Nov. 2015
Student protests against racism and discrimination at the University of Missouri, which began in September, gain national attention and lead to the resignation of the university system’s president and chancellor. Other institutions, such as Princeton, Yale, Ithaca and Oberlin, soon join Mizzou in protesting racial insensitivity and making demands to administrations for short- and long-term solutions to the issues.
Nov. 12, 2015
Students held a sit-in at Frost Library on Thursday, Nov. 12. Organized by then-sophomores Katyana Dandridge, Sanyu Takirambudde and Lerato Teffo, the sit-in was planned to show solidarity with other college protests and to last only an hour. As news of the event spread and as students began sharing their own experiences of racism, exclusion and other forms of discrimination, the sit-in evolved into a larger event. Some students formed a group to lead the protest called Amherst Uprising, which was also the name given to the protest as a whole, and met for several hours to plan further action.
Nov. 12, 2015
President Biddy Martin, who had been on her way to Japan, cancelled her trip and returned to the college. The leaders presented her with a list of demands, among them for apologies from several administrators for racism and discrimination and a condemnation of the Lord Jeff, the unofficial mascot. Martin did not respond immediately to the demands, and the sit-in continued, with some students and staff staying
Nov. 14, 2015
At the Amherst-Williams football game in Williamstown, students continued their protest of the Lord Jeff. They displayed posters of support for the Amherst athletes and condemned the unofficial mascot. Students also put up flyers around Amherst’s campus condemning Lord Jeffery Amherst’s advocacy for biological warfare against Native Americans. Members of Amherst Uprising organized themselves into committees to work on specific topics that were brought up over the course of the protest, such as academic policy, faculty and staff diversity, mental health and relationships with alumni. The movement continued to receive letters of support from academic departments and divisions.
through the night in Frost.
Nov. 15, 2015
The sit-in in Frost Library officially ended in the afternoon after Martin gave a statement expressing support for students involved in the protest. Martin did not agree to the demands presented at the start of the protest, explaining that they either required more authority than she had, but she presented a list of goals that included diversifying the faculty and staff, providing more opportunities for conversations between students from different backgrounds and considering the implications of the college’s symbols.
Nov. 17, 2015
According the results of an Association of Amherst Students (AAS) poll, 83 percent of students supported removing the Lord Jeff as the college’s unofficial mascot. The response rate was 90 percent. In an informal straw poll during the Nov. 16 faculty meeting, the faculty unanimously voted against the Lord Jeff.
Nov. 18, 2015
Students in Amherst Uprising released a statement with the movement’s clarified goals and intentions. The initial list of demands were made “in haste” and were not meant to be binding, the statement said, and students were collaborating with administrators, faculty and staff to meet their goals. Among the new goals were plans to hire more faculty and staff of color and to use funding to support diversity.
Dec. 1, 2015
Of 5,974 alumni polled by the Alumni Executive Committee, 52 percent viewed the unofficial mascot, Lord Jeff, unfavorably. Of the rest, 38 percent favored it and 10 percent had no definite opinion. Dec. 15, 2015 Martin announced at a faculty meeting that the college will create five new tenure-track faculty positions, or FTEs. The new tenure lines would help diversify the faculty, a goal outlined by by the Committee on Academic Policy’s 2006 report and by the strategic plan, published in June 2015, and galvanized by discussion of faculty and staff diversity during Amherst Uprising.
Jan. 26, 2016
The college’s board of trustees announced the removal of the Lord Jeff from the college’s official communications, messaging and symbolism. This included phasing out Amherst athletic gear and apparel displaying the Lord Jeff.
Aug. 1, 2016
Cullen Murphy ’74, chair of the board of the trustees, published a piece titled “Home: Some Thoughts on the Frost Library Protest” in the college’s quarterly magazine. Among other topics, Murphy referred to the college’s history of student protests and activism and focused on the lessons and growth that stemmed from sit-in that started Amherst Uprising.
Feb. 5, 2016
The Presidential Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, which Martin created to review and help implement diversity-related initiatives from Amherst Uprising as well as the college’s strategic plan, held its first meeting. The task force was comprised of staff, faculty and students who represented groups such as Amherst Uprising, the Committee of Six and the AAS. It held its first open meeting on April 29.
Oct. 24, 2016
The Committee of Six announced that the five new tenure lines opened in December 2015 will be allotted specifically for senior black and Latinx scholars as part of the ongoing effort to diversify the faculty.
— Shawna Chen ’20, Isabel Tessier ’19, Jingwen Zhang ’18
10 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
One Year Later Biddy Martin’s Reflections The students who gathered in Frost Library on Nov. 12, 2015 focused our attention on the barriers that prevent them from feeling they belong here. Those barriers include experiences of implicit and explicit bias, various forms of inequity in students’ access to academic, social and financial opportunities and alienation in an environment that does not always seem welcoming of who they are. Those of us who listened, and there were hundreds of us who did, came away with a better appreciation of the richness of our community and the courage of our students. We also gained a clearer understanding of the distress that is felt by too many students. By virtue of our commitment to identifying, recruiting and supporting the talent that exists in every part of the country, our student body now reflects the demographic realities of the U.S. and parts of the world beyond. But changing the composition of a student body is not enough. The college also has to let itself be changed. It has to make inclusiveness as central as access. It has to ensure
that students can take their physical safety and their sense of belonging for granted. We owe those students who took part in the sit-in a debt of gratitude for sharing their experiences and emphasizing these points. Over the past year the college has accelerated its efforts to improve the learning environment for all our students while also working to recruit, retain, and support a more diverse faculty and staff. Our faculty and academic staff have launched curricular and pedagogical initiatives that are enhancing the intellectual experience and setting new standards for liberal arts education everywhere. Under the leadership of Norm Jones, our Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, the college is drawing on the best research and the most effective practices to reach our goals. All this preserves what has made Amherst great — unsurpassed intellectual and educational quality, unparalleled opportunity, and an environment that promotes friendship as a private good and a civic necessity. - President Biddy Martin
Thoughts from Norm Jones When last year’s Frost Library sit-in occurred, Norm Jones had not yet joined the college. However, when he took on the role of Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer over the summer, he became an integral part of the administration’s response to concerns that students raised during the Amherst Uprising protests. Many of the central issues in Jones’ work, such as faculty and staff diversification and providing resources to support diversity and inclusion, stem from last year’s student activism. He also works with groups of students in an effort to understand the climate of the campus and shape existing programs to address student needs. “In many ways, my day-to-day life is an actualization of the Uprising,” he said. According to Jones, the wave of campus protests last year, including Amherst’s own, expressed students’ desires to see institutional advancement of diversity and inclusion. Institu-
tional focus, Jones said, “is sometimes slightly different than programmatic focus on diversity and inclusion — that is to say, that there is a whole spectrum of work outside of the programmatic space.” “We’ve reached a point whereby those pieces of the work needed to be formalized,” he continued. “You really can’t do that outside of a chief diversity and inclusion officer role. That’s how I make the connection between the Uprising and my role.” The intersection of various markers of identity is integral to his current engagement with students, administration and the campus at large. “The newer conversation, in many ways, is what it means to think about these things at their intersections,” Jones said. “That’s what often complicates the work in a healthy way, because we’re not unidimensional individuals.”
Q&A with Two Uprising Leaders, Katyana and Lerato Q: What’s one moment that stands out to you from last year? L: Standing up, I think it was 10 minutes after we’d scheduled the sit-in … and looking out and seeing how many people were in this library was unbelievable. We had stayed up until like 2 or 3 a.m. trying to organize this, [and] we thought only 20 people [were] going to come. It just was a moment where I was like, “This is actually going to be something where there’s so much potential for something to happen.” K: The moment where we all lined up to read off the demands … people were shaking, they were so scared about what their future and their status was at this school … Nobody knew what was going to happen next. It was really scary. Q: What are you most proud of from Amherst Uprising? L: I think I’m pretty proud of the conversations that started happening just actually everywhere on campus. Literally even on a Saturday night you could start talking about race, class, sexuality — it just was happening everywhere. so that’s something I think that was incredible that came out of it … That was our intention — to bring awareness to it, you know? People will always remember this. Q: What’s the next challenge? K: Sovereignty. This whole conflict about whether Amherst Uprising should be integrated into the fabric of Amherst life, and if it is, is it going to lose its radical connotations, is it going to lose its effectiveness? And is it going to be reshaped and repurposed? L: Because we were a body that pushed the administration into doing things, so once we become integrated with that, who’s going to hold the administration accountable?
Students and Alums Remember and Reflect to fight for the Asian and Asian American voices on campus is deeply rooted in that moment that we all shared together.” - Rachel Nghe ’16 “Last year during the Uprising, I stood at the front of Frost and said that we have to create a community of love … I’ve reflected on the idea that through love, we can overcome. It’s false. Members of this community and the country as a whole have proven and will continue to prove that just saying “we need to love each other” is not enough … Amherst Uprising is becoming an allusion, a memory, a historical event that we can cite as evidence this community is “woke.” The pain and discomfort that spawned the Uprising didn’t stop when we created an archive for it. Until every member of this community actively learns about who they need to love, togetherness at Amherst will only be a façade.” - George Long ’17 Photo courtesy of Sophia Salazar ’18
Students occupy the lobby of Frost Library during last year’s sit-in and dialogue on Nov. 12, 2015. “A year ago, Amherst Uprising unified the student body. Many of us earnestly listened. Because we attempted to understand one another, we grew as a community. In the wake of this past presidential election, we must re-express this desire for understanding found in the heart of the Uprising. I do not presume that we will all become friends or create a beautiful campus community in trying to understand our peers who voted in opposition to the “acceptable” vote. However, I do maintain that in earnestly listening and seeking to understand, as we did in the Uprising, we better equip
ourselves for navigating these next four years.” -Emmanuel Osunlana ’18 “Amherst Uprising was a moment of internal confusion and identity realization for Asian and Asian Americans at Amherst. Students questioned where they stood or where they were suppose to stand in the movement relative to their fellow classmates and friends. When we all got into one room to share those sentiments, we found a voice within that confusion. Many of our motivations to continue
“Because of Amherst Uprising, the music department revised their instrument lessons policy to allow students on financial aid, like me, to get aid for lessons at beginner level. I started guitar lessons this fall, and am excited to continue learning through the spring semester.” - Takudzwa Tapfuma ’17 “I was proud of my teammates for investing their time in listening to the pains their classmates endure on a daily basis, and proud of all the teammates that took a stand for a more inclusive mascot in the week following the Uprising.” - Brianna Cook ’16
11 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
Alumni Profile | Sally Marx ’14
Clinton Staffer Provides a Voice for the Silenced With over 500 days spent working on the Clinton campaign, Sally Marx ’14 works to leave a lasting mark in history. —Julia Turner ’19 Sally Marx ’14 knew that if Hillary Clinton ever ran for president, she was going to be part of it. A Bethesda, Maryland native, she has been following the former Secretary of State’s lengthy public career and admiring Hillary as a strong female role model since she was old enough to recognize Clinton’s face on television and in the news. “She’s such a kindhearted person — you could see that from afar,” said Marx on what initially drew her to Clinton. She continued to trace Clinton’s sometimes turbulent career as she committed to play basketball at Amherst College.
A Better Chance Sally was a decorated high school basketball player who considered several Division I offers, but ultimately ended up at Amherst in pursuit of the “best school” and “best fit” she could possibly find. From her time at Amherst, Marx remembers highlights on and off the court, particularly volunteering with her teammates at Amherst A Better Chance, or the ABC House. A Better Chance is a national high school program that facilitates the recruitment and care of high-achieving students from underserved neighborhoods and school districts, providing them residency and access to the exceptional resources and education at Amherst Regional High School. Sally cites this as one of her favorite experiences during her time at Amherst and a crucial part of her team culture.
On the court, Marx was a part of the 2011-2012 Division III National Championship team as well as the third place squad in the previous year. The 5’8” shooting guard saw the court in eight games her second year at Amherst and was an integral part of the team dynamic moving forward.
Living History In the classroom, Marx was a history major, and she shared a close relationship with her advisor and professor Frank Couvares who remembers her as “tough and cheerful, even through adversity.” In her role on the Clinton campaign, Marx often thought back to one of her favorite classes at Amherst, Writing the Past with Professor Dwaipayan Sen. “The course made us take an in-depth look at how we understand and tell history in [the] present day,” Marx said. “We were taught to think critically and even question the validity of the stories [and] memories that people rely on to understand history.” As an integral part of the campaign, Marx felt that she was living through history everyday, surrounded by her “incredible” colleagues and working to elect the first woman president.
Finding Hillary Marx’s dedication to electing Clinton as the country’s first female presidential candidate is evident in the path she took to help her get there. After graduating from Amherst, Marx took her first job with The Ben Barnes
Group, a government affairs consulting company founded by former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes. She took the position with the understanding of her supervisors that if Clinton decided to run, Sally would be leaving the office and “going wherever Hillary needed [her].” She waited and watched, anticipating Hillary’s next run for the presidency, ready to help in whatever way she could. True to her word, Marx left The Ben Barnes Group in April 2015, as soon as Clinton’s campaign was announced. Few concrete jobs were available at the start of the campaign, but this did little to deter Marx, who took a volunteer position at Hillary’s headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. Her hard work and dedication impressed those around her and she soon landed the coveted position of National Political Assistant. In this role, Marx gained a more comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of the campaign. Her admiration for Clinton grew as she became further entrenched in the campaign and, commenting upon meeting her for the first time, she said that “[Clinton] is one of the most wonderful people you will ever meet.”
A Champion for the Silenced Anyone who talks to Sally can immediately feel the passion that she has for her work on the Clinton campaign. “She has been fighting for women and children her entire life, global-
Photos courtesy of Sally Marx ’14
Sally Marx ’14 began work on the Clinton campaign in April 2015, gaining an understanding of the campaign’s goals and strategies. ly,” Marx raves. Since her time at the ABC House in Amherst, this has been a cause very near to Sally’s heart: providing a powerful and equitable voice for the rights of people who were less fortunate. At the ABC house, Sally had the opportunity to work with bright, motivated students who otherwise would not have had the chance at the education and challenging environment that Amherst provided. Seeing the world of the students that she tutored and visited on weekends inspired her to fight for more adolescents like the ones at the ABC House. When Marx witnessed first hand in Brooklyn the steps that Clinton was taking to serve the underserved, she was sold. “Seeing what she did for other people and knowing what she could do for the country and for the world
drew me to her,” she said. Beyond what Sally admired about Clinton, however, her background in world history made her aware of all of the potential outcomes of this election, and she said the words that were on many people’s minds: “I fear having someone like Donald Trump as president”. After the primary elections and once the campaign started to pick up speed, Marx’s dedication was rewarded with an in-office promotion to National Voter Outreach and Mobilization Project Manager. “It’s a long title, but basically, we are running a fifty-state strategy on this campaign, so my job was to help out with our states that are not battleground states, just to make sure that we have the capacity to build,” said Marx about her position. She took to her new job quickly and easily, taking on big roles with coalition groups within the campaign. Sally had the chance to work closely with African Americans for Hillary, Latinos for Hillary, and Women for Hillary, making sure to get everyone involved and once again fighting for underrepresented communities to make sure that “everyone involved knows that Hillary is supporting them.”
Moving Forward
“She is one of the most wonderful people you will ever meet,” comments Marx about Clinton, the woman she has been working tirelessly to support for the last year and a half.
12 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
The outcome of this election was especially devastating for the men and women like Marx who have worked so hard throughout the last several years campaigning for Clinton. Marx commented that throughout this entire process she has been solely focused on, and has put all of her energy into the campaign. “We are just trying to live day by day and make it through each day,” said Marx prior to Election Day. This sentiment prevails, however, even in the aftermath of the election. Marx will continue to hold her values, and the values that Clinton stood for, close to her. Staying true to the description provided by her Amherst advisor and trusted friend and mentor Frank Couvares, Marx is continuing to stay tough through adversity. Undoubtedly, she will continue to serve as a champion for the underserved. As for her time with the Clinton campaign, Marx said, “It has been an absolute honor doing this work.”
Alumni Profile | Theo Goldin ‘05
Entrepreneur Betters Lives Through Business Curious and dynamic in nature, Theo Goldin ’05 has pursued many pathways after graduating from Amherst, all in the hopes of changing the world for the better. —Kelly Chian ’20 From lawyer to healthy lifestyle entrepreneur, Theo Goldin ’89 has strived to make the world a better and healthier place throughout his journey after Amherst. Chemistry turned English major, Goldin used Amherst to explore a multitude of interests on which he then capitalized on throughout his career. Goldin and his wife started Hint Water together, a $30 million beverage company that sells unsweetened, flavored water.
A Change in Direction Goldin chose Amherst for the opportunity to study multiple disciplines and explore various passions. “I wanted a great liberal arts education and I had a lot of different interests,” Goldin said. “I felt like I could pursue them at Amherst; I was very interested in chemistry but I also loved to write.” A long history of Amherst alums within his family, including his father Howard Goldin M.D. ’57, uncle Joel Goldin ’59 and sister Jane Zeitler ’91, also helped solidify Goldin’s interest in the college. At Amherst, he played rugby, intramural football and attended Tuesday night taps — house-hosted parties. Though he started as a chemistry major, he turned his interests elsewhere after finishing a little more than half of the requirements. “I was thinking about doing a career in science, but I freaked out one day and realized I didn’t want to spend my life in a laboratory,” he said. Seeking more personal interactions with others as well as projects with shorter goals and more frequent feedback, Goldin became an English major.
“I really thought it was a well-rounded education,” he said.
Pathways After Amherst After Amherst, Goldin attended New York University Law School. The location and social atmosphere at NYU was jarring for him in comparison to that at Amherst. “I would highly recommend NYU for law school, but it wasn’t as immersive of an academic or social experience as Amherst was. It’s not a campus the same way Amherst is,” he said. “I’ll be honest: I cannot remember why I went to law school. I think I felt like I had impression of law as a very logical discipline that didn’t involve the time frame of science research and I could use my writing skills,” he said. “I didn’t really love law school. Law is really illogical and internally inconsistent and not very scientific.” After law school, Goldin found a job in San Francisco at Brobeck Phelger & Harrison. From 1994 to 1998, he worked in their business and technology group. In 1998 Goldin moved to Netscape, a computer services company that had just created the first widely distributed graphical web browser. “[Netscape was] in the beginning of a huge battle with Microsoft,” he said. “I thought it’d be very interesting to be on the inside of a company in this David and Goliath fight and we were on the right side of it.” As technology counsel, Goldin Netscape promoted open standards for software to be widely distributed instead of being proprietary. “I am very proud of the work everyone did at Netscape to ensure that … the internet [could] grow in-
dependent of a big company’s agenda,” he said. “We took the source code of our browser software and released it as an open source product. We took a major commercial application and released it as open source, which was the first time it had happened in that scale.” Later, Netscape split up and was acquired by America Online and Microsystems. Although offered a position in the business affairs group at AOL, Goldin didn’t want to work at such a large company and declined..
A Focus on Health Though he started out in technology, Goldin said his interest in health has always been a part of his life. “[I grew up] in a family that wanted to give back,” he said. “My dad is a great doctor … Growing up, he was always involved in a variety of causes that were about making the world a better and safer place. I thought about following him in that career path but it didn’t seem right to me … [but I still wanted] to do something to help.” When a former employer — Goldwin’s boss while in high school — approached him about starting a software company to make healthcare more effective, Goldin took on the role of chief executive officer and helped develop the company, which focused on streamlining communication with patients. “I love the idea of being able to hand the doctor all the key information that they are going to need from their patients but also the medical rules of practice for optimal care of the patient,” he said. “I was motivated in trying to give back and try and make the world a lit-
Theo and his wife Kara Goldin launched the flavored water company Hint Water, which has encouraged healther lives for its consumers.
Photos courtesy of Theo Goldin ‘05
The critical thinking and analytical skills that Goldin accrued at Amherst are crucial to his business success. tle better and healthier place. The program ended up working really well.” Zakim and Goldin ultimately disagreed on the application of the product as a consumer or professional. They sold the company to Robert Bosch Foundation, which is the largest charity in Europe and owns a large hospital chain in Germany.
Developing Hint Around the same time Goldin sold ZMedix, his wife, Kara Goldin, came up with the idea for Hint Water. “She had been prototyping [the unsweetened, flavored water] in our kitchen. Basically anyone who came through our door was handed a glass of hint and asked for feedback,” Theo Goldin said. Many people they talked to expressed a desire to drink more water, but didn’t because they found plain water boring. “I thought we could help a lot more people if they drink more water than we could if I was diagnosing them when they are starting to get sick,” he said. When Kara approached him about working for the company, Goldin found two big surprises awaiting him. “The way she told me about it was, ‘Theo, I think we are going to start this flavored water company and launch our first product in eight months and right around the same time we’re going to have our fourth kid. I am going to need your help,’” he said. Today, the feedback and connection from consumers on social media, through emails, by phone and in person motivates Goldin to keep working. Never before working with a tangible product, he finds rewarding “that feeling of satisfaction and that direct impact on people you can meet and have a conversation with.” “[Food and beverage] is a really tough industry,” he said. “It is the largest industry in the planet and touches every single person’s lives at least in industrialized countries. If you can make a product that peo-
ple feel is helping change their lives, I don’t know what else you can do that you can feel better about.” Within Hint, Theo focuses on the operations of creating product quality, managing stock and working across departments. Kara, the CEO and face of the brand, runs strategy, marketing and sales directly. “A lot of my day is talking to our team of 50 people that are spread across the country, checking in, approving stuff, challenging their ideas and making sure they are giving good communication,” he said. “It’s a lot of different things but it’s always moving the businesses forward.” Rather than balancing his professional and personal lives, Goldin instead believes in integrating both. “On some level we are always working and on some level we are always paying attention to our family and taking care of daily life things,” he said. A large focus for Goldin is continuing the growth of Hint. They launched the direct consumer business two years ago and Hint has been growing about 60 percent from the previous year to the next. “I really want to ride this out and make sure it’s big enough that no one can make us go away or slow us down,” he said. “There’s a million things I could see myself doing, but right now we’re totally focused on Hint.” As a student at Amherst, Goldin never could have imagined being where he is today. He is happy with the path he took and how his time at the college influenced and continues to influence his life. “The ability to solve problems and ability to think about things in a disciplinary way is a thing I use every single day of my life, he said. “It comes from being able to think and take in a lot of information from a lot of different types of sources and draw on the different types of abilities people have to integrate them and come up with the best solutions — I credit a lot of that from having a great liberal arts education with phenomenal people around me.”
November 11, 2016 | The Amherst Student | 13
Alumni Profile | Ellen Longsworth ’71
Dedicated Art Historian Finds Home At Amherst Ellen Longsworth ’71 was a student at Mount Holyoke College who participated in a co-educational experiment allowing her to study “abroad” for a year at Amherst. —Lauren Tuiskula ’17 Ellen Longsworth ’71 enjoyed a non-traditional tenure at Amherst, spending a year at the college thanks to a “co-educational” experiment program that allowed her to take two semesters away from Mount Holyoke College. The art historian and professor has held fast to her commitment to education and continues to pull on her Amherst experiences throughout her tenure as a professor in the Visual & Performing Arts department at Merrimack College. A Familial Path to Amherst Longsworth grew up in Hicksville, Indiana, a place she describes as “a little farm town, and a very nice place to be.” Her path to Amherst can largely be credited to her family. Her uncle moved out from the Midwest to Massachusetts, facilitating her cousins’ enrollment at Amherst. Her cousins Charles “Chuck” Longsworth ’51 and Maurice Longsworth ’53 both attended and strengthened
the family ties. Subsequently, her older brother Robert Longsworth ’65 played football at Amherst as co-captain of the team. Longsworth and her family often visited the campus to see him play. After spending so much time in the Pioneer Valley, she fell in love with the area. Because Amherst was not yet co-educational at the time, Longsworth applied to surrounding schools and ended up at Mount Holyoke College. During her time, Amherst took part in a “co-educational experiment,” one that permitted her to apply for a semester “abroad” at the college. Her application was accepted, and she embarked on the eventual year-long transfer, a time she calls her “happiest and most successful academically.”
during the academic calendar year of 1969-1970. She says it was quite a chaotic year, characterized by sit-ins, protest and riots decrying the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, she greatly enjoyed her time here. She graduated from Mount Holyoke with a double degree in art studio and art history and took many classes at Amherst that supplemented this education. She credits professors in the art history department with fostering a love for the specific disciplines in which she focuses now, like 19th century American landscape. Longsworth worked hard academically and made the dean’s list, something she had not done at Mount Holyoke College. “It was all-together a very happy experience,” she said. “I felt like I had a good community.”
Studying “Abroad” at Amherst Longsworth came to Amherst
A Love for Education Longsworth then continued her education at the University of Chi-
Photo courtesy of Ellen Longsworth ’71
After receiving two degrees in art history at the University of Chicago and Boston University, Longsworth became a professor at Merrimack College where she has been for 33 years.
14 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
cago. She spent a calendar year at the school and two more subsequent years to finalize her thesis. Soon after, she was hired at Bradford College, an institution that has since dissolved, but had been based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. There, she embraced her love for teaching and decided to apply to Boston University, a school that would allow her to teach part-time while also working towards her second degree. Finally, in 1985, she was hired at Merrimack, where she has since worked for 33 years. “It’s a wonderful place to work,” she said of Merrimack. “They work hard … and are enthusiastic.” My conversation with Longsworth fell right after she returned from a field trip to the Courrier museum with her students, one of many that she takes with her Art History I class. These moments outside of the classroom are the ones she truly enjoys. “They were beside themselves at what they saw,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see this. It’s one of the parts of my profession; my job … that I love is getting students excited about the visual world. And no, I don’t mean iPads. I mean fine art.” A Myriad of Interests Longsworth teaches and studies a wide range of disciplines, but her primary interests are in sculpture, specifically 14th, 15th, and 16th century tomb sculpture as well as Lombard sculpture. Her dissertation focused on art of these three centuries, which at the time was “the type of study that had never been done,” she said. “The other thing I work on specifically is … Lombard renaissance sculptures,” Longsworth said. “These are done by artists whom practically no one has heard of if you’re not Italian. They worked in the Northern part of Italy, around Milan, in the region known as Lombardy.” Since it was a subset of art previously untapped, Longsworth’s dissertation was published among a list of other groundbreaking dissertations in a publication called The Art Bulletin. “After my dissertation was listed, I got a phone call from a professor who had done and continues to do archival research in Milan,” she said. “He became a kind of mentor to me and showed me around Milan. He and another woman (Joanne Bernstein) who is now retired from Mills College were the two few American scholars working in that field.” In the Classroom When asked about her philosophy as a professor, Longsworth was quick to reify her commitment to her discipline. “I’m a traditional art historian,” she said. “I want to see that my students understand works within a chronological and social and cultural context. That’s traditional art history.” She is also particularly fond of the “experiential learning” elements within her classes. “It’s not only the learning, but the guidance and learning, that takes place in the classroom but outside as well,” she
said. In her classes, Longsworth teaches about varying subjects and within many different scopes. Each fall semester she teaches two sections of Art and Material Culture or Art History I as an effort to “try to build up the interest in art and art history for my department.” Her spring semester has a bit more flexibility — she has the ability to teach more specialty courses. This coming semester she has the opportunity to teach a class on-site in Tuscany. Longsworth credits much of her focus and teaching style to her time spent at Amherst. “I took classes at Amherst with subjects that became particular loves of mine … like 19th century landscape painting, Milton, Dante. They all come into play often in my own career as a teacher.” Longsworth also holds a special admiration for the relationship between her work and students. “As I put it on the first day of my survey course, this is a course really about who we are … how we’ve developed as humans,” she said. “I get to talk to them about some of the grandest, most beautiful, most provocative works … that human kind has ever made … what we’ve created as people is just stunning.” History of Philanthropy Just as many of Longsworth’s relatives also attended Amherst, so too does her family have a long history of giving back to the institution and the larger area. Her aforementioned cousin Charles served as a member of the board of trustees and now holds status as Life Trustee. He later helped found Hampshire College and went on to serve as the school’s second president. Charles’ wife Polly is an Emily Dickinson scholar and was instrumental in the creation of the Emily Dickinson Museum and the homestead’s continued healthy state. Longsworth spoke enthusiastically about the work her family has done to continue to give back to the institution. “I think you can tell how proud of them I am,” she said with a laugh. With this pride in mind, it’s no surprise that Longsworth has continued the family legacy and done her own fair share of giving back to Amherst. She has served as a Friend of the Mead and also led her class as vice president of the class of ’71 and co-chair of her classmates’ 45th reunion. “The class of ’71 kind of adopted us, those of us who were at Amherst from 1969-1970,” she said. “At some point they just decided we should be part of their class — it’s wonderful. Now I call these people my classmates.” With her personal commitment to giving back, Longsworth’s advice to current college students reflects Amherst’s impact on her life. “Take advantage of as much as what the college has to offer as you can, any particular category besides academics,” she said. “As long as they … dig in and do the very best, they can cull from those experiences as much as possible.”
Alumni Profile | Chris Bock ’92
Loving His Job: From Finance to Ice Cream Chris Bock ’92 takes to grassroot efforts, leaving behind a career in finance for entrepreneurial endeavours. —Diane Lee ’19 Beneath his name on his business card, Chris Bock ’92 has the title “Gray Hair.” Once a two-season student-athlete at the College, Bock spent close to 20 years in finance in New York and Denver. He now uses his financial acumen and experience to invest in local businesses, notably Stem Ciders and his family’s business, Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato. His biggest advice for Amherst students is: “reassess and don’t be afraid to try something new.” From the high-powered financial world to small town Colorado, Bock’s adventurous attitude has led him to pursue his personal passions, advance his professional skills and still have time to drive his kids to school.
Changing Course at Amherst A Colorado native, Bock wanted to play hockey in college and saw Amherst’s balanced athletic and academic programs as a significant draw. He eventually played for both the hockey and lacrosse teams on campus and initially pursued the pre-med track. He looked forward to medical school until he took the course History of Medicine with Professor John Servos. “It’s funny. I almost completed the pre-med requirements, but I enjoyed history so much and wanted to follow the liberal arts idea of taking courses that spoke to me,” he said, “The flexibility to take courses in whatever disciplines is what makes Amherst great.” After graduating as a history major in 1992, Bock went to New
York in search of a job. He landed an offer at a small investment bank, Hambro Resource Development, a few months after graduation. After working there, he moved to National Westminister Bank as an analyst. “The single greatest thing Amherst taught me was to write. I became a great writer and a good communicator. The quantitative elements always came naturally for me, so I was able to apply those skills together in order to succeed within the finance realm,” he said. After five years in New York, Bock decided to move back to Colorado where outdoor activities like skiing and biking were more readily available. Initially jobless, he eventually joined KRG Capital Partners a year after the company’s founding as its first professional hire. During his 15 years there, Bock saw the firm grow to 50 employees that managed close to four billion dollars of capital. “It was a very fun, very exciting time of my life. But it was also very exhausting – there was always lots of travel, lots of hours.” Bock’s life took a turn when he got married in 2002 to a high school classmate. “My wife was looking to get into the working world, and I was actually burnt out. After some period of time, I had to decide what I really wanted.”
Ice Cream, More
Cider
and
In 2012, Bock decided to resign from KRG and found himself scooping ice cream instead. Two self-proclaimed lifelong ice
cream lovers, Bock’s father and wife, Sarah, started a local ice cream shop in Denver. They had seen a bigger market for homemade ice cream in the area and wanted to explore the growing trend. In addition to installing shelves and scooping ice cream, Bock “became the financial mind behind the operation,” Sarah said. Offering gelato made with fresh ingredients, Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato is now opening its third shop in Denver, and it aspires to grow to seven-10 stores and solidify a local presence. “Unlike at KRG, starting at a grassroots level in business means that all your decisions will impact what you do next week, next month and even next year. So it’s a lot more personal and a little more intense. But, it’s also a lot more fun and much more meaningful.” In addition to Glacier, Bock’s latest project involves something he and his peers cared deeply about at Amherst: alcohol. Bock actually brewed his own beer during his Amherst days with some dorm mates, but he quickly discovered that he was not a “world class brewer.” (Nobody took the beer.) Bock is now part of the board of managers at Stem Cider, a local hard cider brewery in Denver where brewing is a big trend. At first, Bock thought the market was too saturated, but a friend introduced him to Stem, and he began investing in the company in January. “Their position in the market is really interesting. Cider is now growing at a pace that microbreweries were 15 years ago. It’s in the
Photos courtesy of Diane Lee‘19
At Amherst, Chris Bock majored in history and took advantage of the liberal arts curriculum. high growth early phase and Stem “I’m a little more seasoned and definitely has the opportunity to be older, so I give them the benefit of the cider company in the area.” experience. It’s a lot more free form As a “Gray Hair,” Bock spends than what I was doing before, and I 10-15 hours a week advising Stem’s really enjoy that,” Bock said. finances and negotiations in addition “In addition to his knowledge of to investing in the company. One of finance, Chris is just a great guy to his most recent contributions was work with. I’ve been in the business communicating with banks in the for a while, and there are a lot of difconstruction of the company’s new ferent people I’ve worked with. Chris production facility. is a true pleasure to be around. He’s laid back and easy to talk to,” Stem’s Founder and CEO Eric Foster said.
Hockey Dad Next Door
Chris Bock ‘92 became the financial mastermind behind Glacier Homemade Ice cream and Gelato, which was started by his father and his wife, Sarah.
In addition to Glacier and Stem, Bock looks to continue exploring how he can help companies grow. He seeks to work on two to three companies at a time. When he isn’t busy building companies, Bock is a stay-at-home dad. In addition to driving his children to school, he serves on the board of his children’s private school. He also uses his experience as a hockey player to coach at the local rink at night. “I think my life right now suits me very well. I didn’t like the long hours and travel at KRG, and eliminating that travel has been great. I’ve had the flexibility to do what I love.” In this day and age it may be hard to do what you love, but Bock offered some optimistic advice: “It’s really hard to leave a job that pays reasonably well, but I couldn’t have been happier with the way that it turned out. Just keep your eyes open for what you want, and it’ll lead you to what you love,” he said with a smile.
The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016 | 15
Alumni Profile | Angela Brown ‘00
An Empathetic Approach to Greater Knowledge At Amherst, Angela Brown ’00 learned the value of acceptance in effective communication. Today, she endeavors to teach her students the importance of compassion. —George Long ’17 Recognized in education for her diligence and leadership, Angela Brown ’00 asks the big questions and lives through faith and compassion.
A Natural Transition When she first made the decision to attend Amherst, Brown did not have to travel far. Though she grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, she spent three years at Phillips Academy Andover, an elite private high school near Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating from Andover, the choice to enroll at Amherst was easy. “After submitting my application, it became crystallized in my mind what I wanted, and what I wanted was attention, and I mean that in the best way possible … I enjoyed parts of Andover where teachers were very involved in different parts of your life … I knew I still wanted that relationship,” Brown said. Amherst touts close faculty-to-student relationships as one of the hallmarks of the institution. Amherst “just made my heart happy,” Brown said, reflecting on her visits as a prospective student.
Making Amherst Home
Before coming to Amherst, Brown was sold on the liberal arts as a way to direct her energy into various fields of interest. She appreciated the flexibility the open curriculum would offer her. Eventually, Brown decided to major in French, but actively embraced the options that Amherst provides for its students. Amherst, like Andover, makes intimate classrooms a pillar of its educational atmosphere. Upper level courses were a special draw for Brown for this reason, and she thrived on interpersonal connections with professors. Although she gravitated toward the humanities, she shared a fond memory of a lab course she took during her junior year. “I was probably in the professor’s office more than she was because it was particularly challenging, but I was really excited that I pushed myself to do something outside my comfort zone,” she said. Brown also saw engagement with the Five College Consortium as being an integral part of her experience here. She spoke of how it opened Amherst up and exposed her to new possibilities. “My senior year I took a choral
conducting class at Amherst that had seven students. My next class that same day was at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Intro to Accounting, and it had 700 students. To have that flexibility, to have such a small intimate experience and then go to this huge lecture hall where I felt like a number, afforded me a lot of different experiences that you don’t get to have if you’re not at a large university,” she said. Outside the classroom, Brown developed a deep appreciation for her peers and the impact that the Amherst community had on her. Her proudest memories of Amherst centered around the Bluestockings, an a capella group that continues to have a strong following on campus. “[Amherst’s] nickname is the singing college and I happened to be a singer, so that certainly spoke to me,” she said. “When I think of Amherst, I think of the Bluestockings. They’re really inseparable because of the amount of time we spent together. Working, rehearsing, and practicing, we developed a bond that we built with really strong, opinionated, talented women.” She cited another strong, talented woman, Onawumi Moss, the
Photo courtesy of Angela Brown ’00
Angela Brown ‘00 was a member of the Amherst College Bluestockings during her college career and was also an active member in the Black Student Union.
16 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
soulful author and storyteller who served as an Associate Dean of Students at the college from 1985 to 2006, as a figure she looked up to while at Amherst. Just as Dean Moss still commands a presence in the hearts of the Amherst community, Brown continues to support current students. While the power of her voice drove Brown to join the Bluestockings her first year, the strength of the sisterhood and community has driven her to give back to students. She has done so in small ways, like bringing cookies to a 2014 Bluestockings rehearsal, and on a larger scale by mentoring women through the annual Women of Color Retreat.
“Saving the World” Seniors at Amherst flock to the new Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning throughout the fall for interviews in investment banking or consulting, which are common landing spots for recent graduates. Among high achieving peers, the expectations are always high. Brown knew, though, that she wanted to use the skills she’d acquired here to make a difference for people around her. “At Amherst during my senior year, I thought I had really three choices: grad school, venture capitalism or save the world. Those are the unspoken rules and that was what I was supposed to do with myself,” she said. She chose St. Paul’s School. As the Assistant Director of Admissions, Brown would have the chance to spread the word about the opportunities available at independent schools. While at Amherst, Brown made a place for herself and valued the opportunity to engage with the diverse student body. A member of the Black Student Union, she appreciated learning in an environment where everyone offered something unique. She brought this philosophy to the table as she started her new job. Any Amherst student knows that blessing of education here has the potential to change life of its students. Brown cherished the chance to make a young student’s dream possible and give them the opportunity to get a highly valuable education. “Because of the role I played … I could make the decision that this was going to be a complete game-changer for a child and for their family,” Brown said. “It is really a blessing and a gift that I was able to do really every year of my life in Admissions.” Having started at a suburban public school herself, Brown embraced Andover as a path to greater knowledge and more open doors. She recalls that neither she nor her parents would have ever known about Andover, but that stumbling upon the private school set her on a new path to success. Amherst stresses the importance of community engagement and caring for others. It was the urge to give back in a constructive manner that drove Brown to join St. Paul’s staff.
She had seen and felt the value of independent schools and sought to spread that value to positively impact the lives of students around the country. “I, as an Admissions person, was able to give access to families who would’ve never had access,” she said. Coming from Atlanta, she recognized that her path to boarding school and then to Amherst was out of the ordinary, but she sees the potential for independent schools to make a massive impact on students and families who may not even know they exist.
Growing Never Stops Brown prides herself on being a lifelong learner. She said that as graduation approached, she realized that after a high level of rigor at Andover and then at Amherst, she “didn’t want to take another test or take another exam, or read something someone else told me to read. It was this mentality that drove her to look for jobs straight out of college instead of following many of her peers to graduate school. However, looking back, she wouldn’t change a thing. “That was, for me, the absolute best decision to wait, because by the time I got to graduate school, I was so ready to learn and so refreshed that I soaked up every bit of it,” she said. “I feel like I would’ve been just going through the motions had I started at 22.” After years of working hands-on in administrative leadership roles in education, she completed her M. Ed. in Organizational Leadership at Vanderbilt University in 2015. Drawing on experience that took her San Francisco, to Nashville and eventually back to The Pike School in Andover, Brown now applies herself as an educational consultant and executive coach, focusing on strategic planning for independent schools. No matter what role Brown is holding at any given time, she has stayed true to her core values. She sees enormous potential in asking the right questions and believes that the basis of any good relationship is constructive dialogue. “I think communication is the most important skill of being an adult, being a child, being anybody,” she said. “Your ability to defend your opinion or to state what you want and also hear what someone else wants and to recognize that there are many different perspectives, that will help make everyone be successful.” She lives by these words and maintains that the ability to say what you think and really listen to others is invaluable. As a member of the Alumni Executive Committee, she has applied her wealth of experience and intuitiveness to make Amherst a better place. Brown encourages students to “listen well and to empathize and to articulate your own story and experience.” She believes that there is always more to learn, and she’s lived that to the fullest, never ceasing to engage with subjects that “make her heart pitter-patter.”
Women’s Basketball Seeks to Build on Last Year’s Postseason Success Julia Turner ’19 Managing Sports Editor
Men’s Basketball Returns Majority of Last Season’s Final-Four Squad Nate Quigley ’19 Managing Sports Editor After last season’s remarkable successes, including a 26-6 overall record, a second place at the NESCAC tournament and a berth in the NCAA Division III final four, the Amherst men’s basketball team heads into this season with high hopes. Though the team lost Connor Green ’16, the program’s second all-time leading scorer, and Ben Pollack ’16, who provided significant moral leadership from the bench, this year’s senior class is more than capable up picking up the slack. The seven-man-strong class of 2017 is anchored by the twin pillars: seniors
Photo by Amherst Athletics
Junior guard Jayde Dawson returns as an offensive weapon for Amherst.
Jeff Racy and David George. Racy paced the purple and white’s prolific offense last season, average 3.0 made three pointers per game and shooting 48.7 percent from beyond the arc. George, meanwhile, led the Amherst defense with an impressive 2.1 blocks per game and is team’s highest returning rebounder, averaging over six a game. The purple and white also will rely on Eric Conklin ’17, whose 8.1 points and 4.1 rebounds will provide much-needed front-court depth, Reid Berman ’17, last year’s leader with over four assists in just 15 minutes per game and Jacob Nabatoff ’17, whose athleticism and well-rounded game will help fill in the team’s cracks. Though considerably smaller, the junior class will be just as essential to the team’s success with Jayde Dawson ’18 likely reprising his role as the team’s starting point guard and Johnny McCarthy ’18 looking to replace Green as the team’s offensive catalyst after scoring 13.0 points per game last campaign. Michael Riopel ’18 also figures to play prominently into coach David Hickson’s plans for the 2016-17 campaign. Although last year’s first-years got minimal playing time, Vic Sinopoli ’19, C.J. Backmann ’19, Dylan Groff ’19 and Joe Schneider ’19 all will likely play bigger roles in this season. The purple and white also hopes to get production from the incoming first-years, including three guards, Stephen Clapp ’20, Tommy Mobley ’20, Josh Chery ’20 and forward Eric Sellew ’20. All four first-years excelled through high school, each scoring more than 1,000 points over the course of their four years. Sellew was also named 2015-2016 Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year. The purple and white begin this season hosting the Ken Wright ’52 tournament over the first weekend of Thanksgiving break. The first match of the tournament pits Amherst against Green Mountain on Friday, Nov. 18 at 6 pm.
Division III women’s basketball national runners-up, the purple and white of Amherst, return to their home court this season, looking to dominate the NESCAC and into postseason once again. Last year, before falling to Thomas More in the NCAA championship finals, the team capured a NESCAC championship and finished the season with an impressive 30-2 overall record. The Amherst squad looks to start the season strong, as they return the majority of their starting lineup and add four newcomers. An all-star senior class highlights the returning group, composed of Jamie Renner, Meredith Doswell and sister Ali Doswell, who has just been named a D3hoops.com Preseason All-American. Ali Doswell was one of two NESCAC players to be honored, along with Tufts’ Michaela North. Last season, Ali Doswell averaged a team high 14.3 points per game, 5.7 rebounds per game, and connected with 36.7 percent of her shots behind the arc. Twin sister Meredith Doswell returns as a defensive powerhouse for the team, averaging 7.9 rebounds per game and 1.6 blocks. The team will also be glad to have Renner back. A guard averaging 7.4 points per game, Renner is a workhorse on the court, averaging 2.9 assists per contest. The talented purple and white squad also looks to return a promising junior class led by forward Hannah Hackley, the only player to start all 32 games for Amherst in the 20152016 season. Hackley adds another versatile offensive weapon to the purple and white’s starting lineup, having averaged 11.5 points per game last season, five rebounds per game and 1.6 helpers per contest. Rounding out the class of 2018 are Jackie Nagle and Jenna Schumacher,
both looking to make triumphant returns to the floor this year for the purple and white after suffering injuries that ended their seasons early last year. An up-and-coming class of 2019 composed of Meghan Sullivan, Maeve McNamara and J.J. Daniell rounds out the returning players. The purple and white welcome four firstyears to their squad. The team will add guards Madeline Eck and Hannah Fox, forward Natalie Nardella, and forward/guard Cameron Hendricks. McNamara will join the team after finishing out her soccer season for Amherst; the purple and white are currently competing in the NCAA tournament. Sullivan also looks to return from an injury stronger this year, while we can watch Daniell to improve on her breakout, first-year performance. One of the biggest components that will be returning to LeFrak for the purple and white is ECAC New England Coach of the Year J.P. Gromacki. Gromacki returns for his 10th season at the helm of the Amherst team, boasting an overall 262-24 record and six NESCAC championships. Gromacki currently holds the second highest winning percentage (0.873) among all active Division I, Division II and Division III collegiate coaches. Joining veteran Gromacki on his coaching staff is a fresh face in Victoria Stewart, who will serve as the team’s only assistant coach for the upcoming season. Stewart is a 2016 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst women’s basketball program, captaining the team in her junior and senior seasons and acting as the team representative for the Student Athletic Advisory Committee for three years at UMass. The purple and white hope to kick off its 2016-2017 campaign with a win when it hosts its annual tip-off tournament and faces Albertus Magnus College at 6 p.m. in LeFrak Gymnasium.
Did you know that you have access to thousands of learning resources? http://amherst.edu/go/lynda Over 4000 courses in Business, Technology and Creative Skills taught by industry experts. Example topics at Lynda.com: • Business and Leadership skills • Self-Improvement skills • Software: Adobe, CAD, 3-D, Animation, Office, Video, Web, and others
Amherst College IT • 413-542-2526 • AskIT@amherst.edu The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016 | 17
Forest’s Fast Take
ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT
Forest Sisk ’17 Columnist Forest Sisk relives the Cubs’ astonishing comeback to win a long-awaited World Series title — Cubs’ fans have waited 108 years for a chance at the playoffs — over the Cleveland Indians. Ever felt like you’re so close yet so far away? Sort of like the Val line on buff chick wrap day. You know there’s that glorious breaded chicken rolled into a cozy tortilla snuggie waiting only for your consumption. Patiently you wait — sometimes all by yourself with no conversation to distract you from the long wait. Finally, you round the bend. The wraps are in your line of sight, but hordes of people still stand in your way. Then, at long last, you stand at the front of the line. But, to your horror, and everyone that cares about you, Val dropped the ball and ran out of buffalo chicken strips. Gutted, you wish this feeling on nobody else, not even your worst enemy. However, there’s a whole nation of people who have watched the chicken slip out of reach for the last 108 years. For 108 painstakingly long years, generations of Cubs’ fans watched their team wait through 162 game seasons just to get their foot in the door to the playoffs. As they rounded the corner to the final stages, the World Series was in sight, but each and every year, someone else took it from them. At the front of the line, Cubs nation stood with their heads down, their hearts broken and their hands empty. Until Wednesday night. For the first time in over a century, the Cubs said, “enough is enough” and muscled through to grab their rightful wrap. Yes, the Cubs brought a World Series title to North Chicago for the first time since when Teddy Roosevelt was in the Oval Office, when the Ottoman Empire was still doing its thing and when World War I wasn’t even a thought yet. For a long time in America, baseball was the only sport that mattered. The AFL merged with the NFL in the late 70’s, the NBA wasn’t even formed until halfway through the 1900s and hockey has always struggled to get the ratings of the other big four sports. This makes it tough for us, all 90’s kids and millenials, to fully understand what this victory really means to Cubbies worldwide. Before I dive into what a World Series truly means to Cubs fans, it’s important to note how amazing the World Series itself was. Through four games, the Cubs were down three to one. Things looked pretty bleak. Memories of ’84, ’03 and many more, where the Cubs looked like they had what it took to win it all but inevitably fell short, permeated Cubs nation. They managed to take game five, but faced a tall order in winning two consecutive games in Cleveland. The bats were hot and the pitching cool in game six, comfortably forcing a decisive game seven the next night. All of America would be watching. The fans knew this; the players knew it, too. All the same, the sun came up the next morning and faded behind the Cleveland skyline until all that lit Progressive Field were the towering stadium lights and the energy of a nation. If there were any nerves in the building, Dexter Fowler wasn’t going to let anyone know about it. As the leadoff hitter, he took the fourth pitch of the game over the fence for a
homerun. Chills of destiny ran up the spines of all baseball-followers, regardless of affiliation. However, the Indians were also dealing with a World Series drought, one of 68 years, and weren’t simply going to put the championship rings on Cubs’ fingers. They evened the score in the third. Game on. Runs traded back and forth over the next few innings, but the Cubs found themselves on top 6-3 in the eighth inning. I’d bet the stadium’s celebration crew was already beginning to ready the visitors’ locker room for postgame festivities, but the unthinkable happened. 108 years of treading on the edge of winning it all likely led everyone to have lingering suspicions that they would fall off the precipice towards defeat. “Six outs. That’s it.” Easier said than done. Hard-throwing Aroldis Chapman took over for the invincible Jon Lester, who had walked the leadoff man to first base. Manager Joe Maddon made a couple of questionable changes, and this would prove to be the most significant: Chapman immediately allowed for a seeing eye double to bring the Indians to only two runs away from the lead. Cubs fans were apprehensive, but they still only needed one hand’s fingers-worth of outs before they could cast the curse aside. Then the Indians were rocked. Rajai Davis stepped to the plate, a sturdy man with forearms as big as most legs. However, his bat speed had no chance at keeping up with Chapman’s threedigit speed pitching, so he choked up on his bat, much like a nervous fourth grader playing against the “big kids.” To the delight of the home faithful and the utter horror of traveling Cubbies, Davis stuck out a strong forearmed swing and sent the mach-five fastball out of the park at an even higher speed and incredible distance. It’s a tie game. Past nightmares began to flash in front of Cub faithful’s eyes, blocking out all of the other senses. The same chills that tickled the spines of Cubbies anticipating victory returned with a cruel unforgiving notion of a familiar fate. However, the tension in the building was relieved by a divine storm that swept in and forced the tarps out and the players in. Nerves were settled, heart rates came back to resting and the game continued. To extras we go. No later than the 10th inning, just as the rain subsided, the floodgates opened for Chicago. Cubs bats brought the consistent contact that won so many games this season. Ben Zobrist, the series MVP, and Miguel Montero drove in a pair of runs to put the Cubs up eight to six. Three outs. That’s it. The Indians, however, have been a nuisance for teams in the postseason, always finding and manufacturing runs when they need them most. Sure enough, they drove in a run with two outs still in the bank. This wasn’t enough. The long years of wait, the near bids at glory, both came to a swelling head as the last out was recorded. The Chicago Cubs won one of the best Game Sevens in MLB history.
Have a passion for sports, stats and writing?
Write for the sports section!
Contact jturner19@amherst. edu to learn more.
18 | The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016
Luke Nguyen ‘19 Favorite Team Memory: Winning the night after the National Championship Favorite Pro Athlete: Adrian Peterson Dream Job: NFL Waterboy Pet Peeve: When someone sets an alarm and doesn’t wake up to turn it off Favorite Vacation Spot: Florida Something on Your Bucket List: Skydiving Guilty Pleasure: “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” Favorite Food: Fruit Snacks Favorite Thing About Amherst: Crossett 105 How He Earned It: Midfielder Nguyen scored his first two goals of the season this past weekend in the NESCAC Championship finals. He led the team’s offense to a 3-0 shutout victory as the purple and white captured their fifth NESCAC championship. He scored his first goal with two seconds left in the first half and found the back of the net again early in the second half. Nguyen didn’t allow an injury earlier this season to discourage him, as he’s back starting on the field and looking forward to this weekend’s NCAA tournament.
Emily Hester ’17 Favorite Team Memory: Winning NESCACs this year Favorite Pro Athlete: David Ortiz Dream Job: Working for National Geographic Pet Peeve: Don’t have one! Favorite Vacation Spot: Barbados Something on Your Bucket List: Cage Diving Guilty Pleasure: Cold brew iced coffee Favorite Food: Ice cream Favorite Thing About Amherst: The people How She Earned It: Hester played an important role for Amherst this past weekend as the team captured a NESCAC Championship, their first since 2011. With the score tied 1-1 late into the second half, Hester netted the game winning goal against Trinity. The senior captain was awarded second team All-NESCAC accolades for the second year in a row. This past weekend was not the first time Hester has proved to be a valuable asset in on the field; she’s scored three game winning goals over the course of the season and eight over the course of her career.
Men’s Soccer Garners League Title With Home Wins Over Bowdoin and Hamilton Delancey King ’18 Staff Writer The Amherst men’s soccer team will head into the national tournament this weekend, looking to build on their 2015 championship title. The purple and white became the 2016 NESCAC champions after beating both Bowdoin and Hamilton, in the semifinals and finals respectively, on Hitchcock field this past weekend Nov. 5-6. Consistent with the emerging trend of this year’s squad, Amherst overcame the Polar Bears in the concluding minutes of the semifinal game. After a scoreless first half, in which Amherst dominated the action, Will Herman gave Bowdoin a thoroughly unexpected lead in the 75th minute of regulation. With only 15 minutes left to play, Herman looked as though he would be the hero of the match and the Polar Bears seemed to be on their way to a shocking upset over number-one seeded Amherst. However, the purple and white are no stranger to these seemingly insurmountable odds, having come back against Massachussetts Institute of Technology in eerily similar circumstances. Yet again, Amherst managed to find the back of the net twice within the final 10 minutes of the game to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In the 80th minute, senior defender Justin Aoyama ripped a shot from 40 yards out. Misjudging the ball in the air, a Bowdoin defender redirected Aoyama’s shot into the back of the Polar Bear’s net, knotting the game at one and firmly swinging the matchup back in favor of the hosts. Making the most of the purple and white’s newfound momentum, Weller Hlinomaz ’18 put away the game winner a mere two minutes later. After receiving a pass at the top of the box from senior captain Chris Martin, Hlinomaz found the back of the Bowdoin
net with a low, driven shot, his eighth on the season. With the win, Amherst advanced to NESCAC final, where they would face rival Hamilton. The first half of the final match was highly competitive, as both Amherst and Hamilton continued to create quality chances. However, it was Amherst who notched the first goal of the game. The purple and white were awarded a free kick in the closing minutes of the first half, and Bryce Ciambella ’17 sent a long ball into the Hamilton box. Luke Nguyen ’19 found the ball amidst the scrum that ensued and fired a shot past Hamilton’s Linds Cadwell with only seconds to spare before the halftime whistle. Hungry to find the back of the net once again, Nguyen came out hard in the second half and notched his second goal of the match in the 50th minute. Once again capitalizing on a set piece from Ciambella, Nguyen got on the end of a corner kick and met the ball with his forehead, sending it into the back of the net. This two-goal effort from Nguyen, who is recently returning to the field after an injury, earned him NESCAC player of the week honors. It was Hlinomaz who extended Amherst’s lead to three in the 65th minute. After beating his defender in a one on one battle, he ripped a shot top shelf from 35 yards out. The goal was Hlinomaz’s second of the weekend and eighth overall on the season, bringing him into a tie with Ciambella for the most on the team and helping to secure the program’s fifth NESCAC title and fourth in the past five years. The purple and white now look to defend their 2015 national title in this year’s NCAA tournament. Having recieved a first-round bye due to their status as conference champions, they will play the winner of Daniel Webster College vs. Worcester State University on their home turf on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 1:00 p.m.
76985
YOUR WALLET WON’T KNOW YOU RETIRED. You could get over 90% of your income and maintain your lifestyle in retirement. Start now at TIAA.org/results
INVESTING
ADVICE
BANKING
RETIREMENT
BUILT TO PERFORM. CREATED TO SERVE. Retirement income depends on asset allocation decisions and income strategies chosen during accumulation and retirement phases. Results based on our analysis of participants in TIAA employer-sponsored retirement plans. TIAA-CREF Individual & Institutional Services, LLC. TIAA-CREF products are subject to market and other risk factors. C32708
Volleyball Ends Season with Tough Loss in NESCAC Semifinals to Middlebury 5021A0133 TIAA_2016_FALL WALLET WON’T KNOW_C32708_10x10_Various_1.indd Katie Bergamesca ’18 Duran also helpedPRINT_ direct the YOUR offense with a Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Staff Writer team-high 21 assists. Kate Bres ’17 supported The 2016-17 season came to an end this past Saturday for the Amherst volleyball team as they fell to the second seeded Middlebury 3-0 (25-22, 25-16, 25-23) in the NESCAC semifinals. Top-seeded Tufts hosted the threeday conference tournament, which began Friday, Nov. 4 and concluded on Sunday, Nov. 6. The third seeded purple and white first took on little three rival Wesleyan in the quarterfinal match on Friday. Wesleyan proved no match for the Firedogs as Amherst emerged victorious from the match in three dominating sets. The team took the first set 25-20 and never looked back, winning the second and third sets by increasingly large margins, 25-16 and 25-14, respectively. Maggie Danner ’17 paced the offensive effort with 15 kills. Three players, Mia Natsis ’18, Lauren Reppert ’19 and Annika Reczek ’18, each contributed to the team’s overall impressive defensive effort with two blocks against the Cardinals. Hayes Honea ’19 was a defensive force, accumulating 22 digs. Honea also served up one ace during the match. Charlotte Duran ’20 and Nicole Gould ’17 provided a single service ace a piece in addition to Honea’s, while
Duran’s efforts, adding on an additional 19 helpers. With their victory over the Cardinals, the purple and white advanced to the conference semifinals the following day. In three sets, Amherst fell to Middlebury for the second time this season. Despite an impressive 13 kill and three-block performance from Danner, the Amherst women were unable to hold off the eventual NESCAC champions. Seniors Bres, Danner, Gould and Kelci Keeno capped their decorated careers with a valiant effort in the final collegiate volleyball match they will play. Bres handed out 22 assists, while Gould tacked on eight kills and Keeno provided two of the team’s three service aces. Honea remained a dominant defensive force up until the end of her season, diving for 19 digs. Asha Walker ’18 tallied an additional 13 digs. With this heartbreaking loss, the purple and white concludes its season with an overall record of 17-9 and conference record of 7-3. With the Panther’s victory over the previously undefeated Tufts in the conference final, Middlebury automatically qualified for postseason play in the NCAA Division III tournament.
Photo courtesy of Mark Box
Defensive specialist Kate Antion ’18 added four points to Amherst’s total.
The Amherst Student | November 11, 2016 | 19
Sports
Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics
Standout junior forward Hannah Guzzi leads the team in goals scored this season with 15, she has 29 overall in her career, and she has totaled 34 points this season.
Women’s Soccer Wins Fourth NESCAC Title, First Since 2011 Season Hayes Honea ’19 Staff Writer Amherst women’s soccer took down Middlebury (2-0) on Saturday, Nov. 5 and then went on to defeat Trinity (3-2) on Sunday, Nov. 6 to claim the 2016 NESCAC championship. After losing to Middlebury earlier in the season by just one goal, the purple and white were thirsty for revenge. It was revenge that they won, and on Sunday they clinched the long sought-after league championship title. This marks the first time the Amherst women’s soccer program has won the NESCAC championship since 2011. The purple and white bussed out to Williamstown for semi-final action on Saturday. As the Panthers were responsible for one of the two losses Amherst has on the season, the women were ready to set the record straight. The first half played through scoreless, but Middlebury led the offensive efforts with a 7-5 shot advantage.
However, Amherst flipped a switch and came out firing at the start of the second stanza. At 51:57, the purple and white scored the first goal of the game. Maeve McNamara ’19 collected the ball and sent it to teammate Rubii Tamen ’19. Tamen ripped a shot off, but Middlebury’s goalie was able to put up a block in time. With the ball back out into play off the goalkeeper’s hands, however, Hannah Guzzi ’18 put it in the back of the net, scoring her 15th goal of the season. Just minutes later, Amherst increased its lead to two. Morgan Machiele ’19 sent a through-ball to Tamen, who outran the opposing goalie and put the ball across the goal line. This marked Tamen’s fifth goal of the season. On the defensive end of the field, Chelsea Cutler ’19 had an impressive 10 saves, denying the Panthers from scoring for her fourth shutout of the season. “It felt incredible,” Cutler said. “Midd beat us in the quarterfinals last year too, so
Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics
Photo courtesy of Amherst Athletics
SAT GAME SCHE DULE
Men’s Cross Country NCAA Regionals @ Westfield State University
it was such a meaningful win for us to finally show up and beat them cleanly.” Not finished yet, the purple and white took the field the next day against Trinity for the 2016 NESCAC championship title. At the beginning of the contest, there was a lot of back and forth. However, Trinity was able to get a shot into the back of the net at 10:52 to make the score 1-0. The purple and white were unable to tie the score for the remainder of the first half. However, in the second half, Amherst came out firing again. In the 52nd minute, Hayley Roy ’20 sent a pass to Tamen who scored the tying goal, her sixth goal of the season. With just five minutes remaining in regulation and the score still knotted at 1-1, a sequence of passes from Sloan Askins ’20 to Guzzi to Emily Hester ’17 resulted in the game-winning — and NESCAC championship-clinching — goal. “I don’t really remember shooting,” Hester said. “I just remember getting knocked off balance and being surrounded by my team-
SUN Football Women’s Cross vs. Williams., noon Country New England Regional Championship @ Westfield State University Women’s Soccer vs. Lasell, 11 a.m.
Men’s Soccer vs. TBD, 1 p.m.
mates.” Hester’s NSECAC tournament performance undoubtedly helped her secure second-team all conference accolades along with teammate Caleigh Plaut ’19. Alongside Plaut and Hester, classmates Guzzi and Delancey King ’18 garnered firstteam recognition for their performances this season. Rounding out the honors was head coach Jen Hughes, who was named the NESCAC Coach of the Year for her team’s outstanding performance this season. With the league title under their belts, Amherst gets an automatic bid to NCAA action. This will mark the team’s sixth straight appearance in the national tournament, and 16th overall since 1994. The purple and white hope to extend their winning streak all the way to the National Championship. They take their first step when they host the first round of NCAA play on Saturday morning, facing Lasell University at 11 a.m. on Gooding Field.
Photo courtesy of Janna Joaissante