Issue 17

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THE AMHERST

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 17 l WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018

Men’s Basketball Tops Polar Bears in Quarterfinal See Sports, Page 10 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU

Former Marine Discusses War and Journalism Sehee Park ’20 Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Alura Chung-Mehdi ’19

The Office of Accessibility Services released changes to housing accommodations policies on Feb. 14 that allow students using housing accommodations to enter Early Room Selection with friends.

College Pilots Early Room Selection Emma Swislow ’20 Managing News Editor For the first time, students with housing accommodations will be able to enter Early Room Draw, an effort by the Office of Residential Life and the Office of Accessibility Services to allow students with accommodations enter Room Draw with friends, an option that was not previously available. The update was announced in an email on Feb. 14 from Director of Accessibility Services Jodi Foley to students previously using housing accommodations. In previous years, students who had documented housing accommodations submitted their top three dorm choices to Foley. They would then be placed in housing based on accommodations needs and preferences (such as substance-free or single-gender floor). This year, ResLife is trying out a program called Early Room Selection. The goal of the system is to create “an ethical and transparent process of room selection for students who choose to use approved housing accommodations for their documented disability(ies)” that provides students with housing accommodations “the opportunity to choose a friend or friends who would live in the same residence hall with the student who has housing ac-

commodations,” according to a document sent by Foley to students with housing accommodations. Under the new system, students with accommodations will receive a lottery number based on their class year and will have the option to bring one or two friends to participate in Early Room Selection. This new system makes it possible for students with single-room accommodations to have friends live on the same floor as them. These changes come after recommendations from Roosevelt @ Amherst, a branch of the Roosevelt Institute, which brings students together to research policy. Last March students in the group published an article in The Student that outlined their suggestions for how to improve life for students living with disabilities on campus. One of these suggestions was to create a “Buddy System” for students with housing accommodations, much like the one introduced this year. The process of securing Early Room Selection was not easy, according to Annika Ariel ’19, the current president of Roosevelt @ Amherst. After meeting with a variety of administrators in in October 2016, Roosevelt @ Amherst created a survey to research students’ satisfaction with housing accommodations. However, the survey never reached the student body, according to Ariel. “When two of us [from Roosevelt] brought

this up at a Presidential Task Force on Accessibility and Inclusion meeting, we were told Accessibility Services and ResLife didn’t feel there needed to be a survey,” Ariel said. “So Joshua Ferrer ’18E and I posted on Facebook about everything that had transpired, [and] AAS wrote a letter in support. Shortly afterwards, according to [Chief Student Affairs Officer] Suzanne Coffey, [President] Biddy [Martin] convened a meeting of staff to talk about changing this. And then the policy was finally implemented.” Though Ariel said the accommodations changes are “satisfactory,” she felt that student input was overlooked during the creation of the policy. “The new system finally provides most of the same opportunities non-disabled students have to disabled students,” Ariel said. “I think the process is what Roosevelt @ Amherst is more concerned about. Student voices were ignored and only deemed relevant after a Facebook post. While the end result is wonderful, the process is worrisome.” “Other colleges have been doing this for years,” Ariel added. “Hundreds of students have missed out on the opportunity to live with friends, which is disappointing. Speaking personally, I missed out on two years of living with my friends because I’m

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The college hosted a conversation between Marine Corps veteran and investigative reporter Thomas Brennan and Boston Globe reporter Kevin Cullen on Feb. 15 in Stirn Auditorium. Dean of Faculty Catherine Epstein, host of the event, introduced Brennan and Cullen. Brennan is a retired Marine Corps sergeant who served in Iraq during the Battle of Fallujah and was also a squad leader with the First Battalion, Eighth Marines in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. He was medically retired in 2012 and is a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. After his retirement, he turned toward journalism, and in 2016, he founded The War Horse, a nonprofit investigative newsroom focused on the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. He spoke at Amherst about his new book, “Shooting Ghosts,” which he co-authored with war photographer Finbarr O’Reilly. Cullen has written for The Boston Globe since 1985 and has been part of the Spotlight Team, the Globe’s group of investigative journalists, several time in his career. In 1988, along with other journalists, he helped uncover that mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was an FBI agent. Cullen was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for his commentary on the Boston Marathon bombings in 2014. Brennan and Cullen were invited to Amherst College by the President’s Office. Events Assistant Davis Bannister said that Cullen Murphy, chairman of the Board of Trustees, helped bring the two to campus. Murphy worked with Brennan during his time as editor-at-large of Vanity Fair. The talk was preceded by a short video produced by Vanity Fair in partnership with The War Horse, which detailed the recovery process of Marine veteran Kyle Carpenter after he lost an eye and most of his teeth and shattered his jaw and right arm when he threw himself on a grenade, saving a fellow Marine in Afghanistan. Carpenter received a Medal of Honor for his service and sacrifice. Cullen started the talk by welcoming the audience, thanking the veterans in the audience for their service and presence and asking Brennan to describe how he joined the Marine Corps. Brennan said that after graduating from high school, he joined the Marine Corps in 2003 because he didn’t know what he wanted to do with

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Amherst Receives Grant to Support Minorities in Academia Emily Young ’20 Staff Writer The college has been awarded a $500,000 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program grant. The grant was gifted to the college by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and will help fund an initiative to help underrepresented groups pursue graduate studies in the humanities. According to the college website, the MMUF Program was established in 1988 by the Mellon Foundation with select colleges in order to help underrepresented groups work towards doctorates in the humanities. The MMUF Program currently includes 50 member colleges in the United States and South Africa. Administrators and faculty members at each of the colleges are responsible for

selecting the fellows to participate in the program. Students selected must demonstrate strong intellectual ability and motivation to attain a doctoral degree in a humanities program. Students are usually selected their sophomore year. According to an email from Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Norm Jones sent to the college community on Wednesday, Feb. 14, Rosemary Effiom will serve as coordinator for the MMUF program at Amherst. Prior to joining the Amherst community, Effiom spent the past nine years coordinating the MMUF program at Bowdoin. Marisa Parham, a MMUF alumna and Amherst professor of English and faculty diversity and inclusion officer, and Allen J. Hart, chair of the psychology department and a faculty diversity and inclusion officer, will be mainly responsible for

planning MMUF programs for Amherst fellows. Additional professors from black studies, English and sexuality, women’s and gender studies have signed on to help as well. A second email was sent out to the class of 2020 on Tuesday, Feb. 20 further explaining the program and the requirements to apply. Students are encouraged to apply in the spring of their sophomore year. Students must have at least 3.0 GPA and be a U.S. citizen or have permanent resident visa status in the United States. Students must also “possess intellectual and academic promise” and come from traditionally marginalized groups. Fellows selected for the program are encouraged to conduct individual research with a faculty mentor and will receive support and an en-

vironment conducive to a high level of academic achievement. Fellows will also participate in programming scheduled by Amherst faculty in charge of the MMUF program. The two conditions of the program are that the fellows are expected to apply to a doctoral program in a Mellon-designated field of study within 39 months of graduation and pursue a doctoral degree in one of the approved areas of study. Jones said in an email interview that it is an honor to be able to work with the Mellon Foundation and with MMUF in particular. “Amherst students have a powerful influence on academic discourse in the humanities and social sciences, and I’m excited that those contributions, through this program, will also strengthen the faculty pipeline,” he added.


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Issue 17 by The Amherst Student - Issuu