THE AMHERST
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 11 l WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2017
Men’s Squash Goes 2-0 to Open Season See Sports, Page 10 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU
Amherst to Host Puerto Rican and USVI Students Sylvia Frank ’20 Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Shawna Chen ’20
Soledad Slowing-Romero ’20 turns in the major declaration form for Latinx and Latin American Studies (LLAS). The program, which was approved in the spring of 2017, offered over 10 courses this fall.
New LLAS Major Surpasses Expectations Natalie De Rosa ’21 Staff Writer After years of advocacy from students and faculty, the Latinx and Latin American Studies (LLAS) major has debuted this semester. The major was approved after a unanimous vote from the faculty in the spring of 2017. Despite its recent creation, the major has seen growth beyond expectations, said professor Rick Lopez, chair of the program. “We didn’t know that we would have this many courses,” Lopez said. Over 10 courses related to the major were offered this fall.
The courses spanned a wide variety of disciplines, including American studies, history and black studies. From these courses, the major is organized into three subtopics on which declared majors can concentrate: U.S. Latinx, Latin America and the Caribbean. The LLAS major is a program rather than a department, so the curriculum is comprised of courses from various other departments across campus, and its faculty are professors in other established departments. This benefits the major, Lopez said. “There’s a strength that we don’t have to
deal with the bureaucracy around that, and instead we can focus on what a program can look like and what kind of alliances we can make with other programs, with students, with the Five Colleges,” he said. Leah Schmalzbauer, a professor of sociology and American studies who teaches in the major, held a similar view. “We take the best of [other departments] and put it into this very efficient program that really connects other departments,” she said. “Through this program, these depart-
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Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein announced the college’s plan to host students from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands affected by Hurricane Maria on Wednesday, Nov. 14 in a community-wide email. In this upcoming spring semester, she said, a limited number of students whose studies were disrupted by the hurricane will come to the college for one semester of study. “Earlier this fall, President [Biddy] Martin’s senior staff discussed how Amherst might support students and colleges and universities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands impacted by Hurricane Maria,” Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Katie Fretwell said in an email interview. “Anticipating that we would have a high number of vacant beds on campus for the spring semester due to an unusually high count of current students opting to study abroad enabled us to envision a special visiting student program,” she added. According to Fretwell, the number of students accepted will depend on the quality of applications and amount of available housing. To participate in the program, the students must be U.S. citizens attending a post-secondary educational institution in Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands. Additionally, students must have completed at least 32 credit hours of coursework. Students accepted into the program will complete the spring semester at Amherst before returning to their home institutions, but they will not have the option to transfer to Amherst full-time. Epstein asked the Amherst community to share information about the program and encourage students from Puerto Rico and the
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GAP and Dining Services Partner for Meatless Mondays Sehee Park ’20 Staff Writer Valentine Dining Hall and the Green Amherst Project (GAP) are currently collaborating to raise student awareness about the environmental effects of eating meat by promoting “Meatless Mondays.” Their goal, according to GAP members, is to encourage students to decrease their meat consumption on these days. GAP E-board members Dominique Iaccarino ’19 and Annabelle Gary ’20 met with Director of Dining Services Joseph Flueckiger and Executive Chef Jeremy Roush on Nov. 9 to discuss how the dining hall could support the “Meatless Mondays” initiative. The current plan is to incorporate more vegan and vegetarian options into the traditional side of the meal on Monday nights, while having a limited meat option on the “Lighter Side.” Both Dining Services and GAP hope that adding vegetarian or vegan options to the traditional menu, which currently usually consists of heavier entrees featuring meat-
based foods, will make it easier for students to go meatless for a day. “We’ve found that just even from watching people walk into Val, the first thing they’ll do is get in the traditional line,” Gary said. “If the main dish is vegetarian, then you’re not even going to think about it; you’re just going to get it,” Iaccarino said. “And then afterwards, you might realize there’s no meat and … look for [it], but hopefully not.” Gary and Iaccarino stressed that they do not plan on completely removing meat during Monday night dinners. Gary said they want to meet the dietary needs of every student at the college, but they aim to provide “full protein meals” while “making it easy for people to see that they can have a … delicious meal without eating meat.” Flueckiger also discussed a possible incentive-based event around Meatless Mondays that would start next semester. “What we’ll do is we can have stickers we give away, or people can sign up for a raffle,” Flueckiger said. The goal is to “try to create some engage-
ment around understanding how meat impacts the environment, just over the carbon footprint of meat, and how that one choice can actually make a real difference,” according to Flueckiger. For “Meatless Mondays” to succeed, however, participation by both students and the dining hall is essential, according to Flueckiger. “Ultimately, the program is for students,” he said. “There has got to be a strong collaborative effort that’s made, and that’s my approach anyway, that we have to do this as a group,” Flueckiger added. “I think programmatically, [Meatless Mondays] can fit in really well with where we’re trying to go.” The movement to go meatless for a day is not just an Amherst initiative, Gary said, but “a worldwide or a nationwide campaign that shows up in a bunch of different forms.” According to Iaccarino, members of the class of 2018 held a “really big Meatless Monday” during their first year at the college. “They would take over the entire front room,” Iaccarino said.
“When I was a freshman at Amherst, [GAP] tried to pick that back up again, but it just didn’t happen,” Iaccarino added. “There’s never enough people to sustain the movement.” This time, they hope that the addition of appealing vegetable-based alternatives on the “Traditional” side of the dining hall, along with collaboration between the dining hall and GAP to raise awareness of the issue, will lead students to be more conscious about their meal choices. “Our larger goal is to get it into people’s consciousness,” Gary said. “It doesn’t have to be Monday where they go meatless,” she added. “I’m not a vegetarian, personally, but I understand my impact on the environment when I do eat meat, and so I’m definitely trying to reduce it as much as I can. We’re just trying to get people to think about it.” GAP will continue to table in the Valentine atrium every Monday, and the Meatless Monday changes to the dining hall menu are expected to come at the beginning of the spring semester.