THE AMHERST
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 19 l WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018
Men’s 4x400 and Distance Relays Qualify for Nationals See Sports, Page 11 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU
Budgetary Committee Revises Funding Policy Sehee Park ’20 Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Jacob Gendelman ’20
Award-winning author Junot Díaz (right) spoke on March 2 at Lit Fest, a three-day literary festival founded by The Common editor-in-chief Jennifer Acker ’00 (left), who facilitated the conversation with Díaz.
Junot Díaz Speaks at Amherst on Immigration and Family Natalie De Rosa ’20 Staff Writer Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz spoke to the college community on March 2 in Johnson Chapel. The event was a part of Lit Fest, a three-day literary festival that celebrates the college’s literary history by inviting distinguished writers to campus. Lit Fest is sponsored by Amherst College-affiliated literary magazine The Common, the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI). Martha Umphrey, director of the CHI, introduced Díaz as “one of the most remarkable writers working in the U.S. today.” Díaz’s writing melds together Spanish and English and explores combinations of different styles, including academic prose and street language, as well as science fiction and melodrama, according to Umphrey. Díaz is most renowned for his works “Drown,” “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” and “This is How You Lose Her,” all of which have won
several prestigious writing awards. Díaz received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008 and the title of National Book Award Finalist in 2012. Díaz began the talk by reading his essay, “Money,” which recounts childhood memories of his mother sending money back to the Dominican Republic. Upon returning home from a short vacation, Díaz’s family discovers that neighborhood thieves had stolen their remittances. Díaz learns that his friends were the thieves, and after going to great lengths to reclaim the money, Díaz proudly presents it to his mother. He receives no reaction from his mother, however. After his reading, Díaz transitioned into a conversation with The Common Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker ’00. Acker began by asking Díaz why he chose to write about this particular episode in “Money.” “I think that most of us know the particularity of most of our lives that we don’t hear in literature,” Díaz answered. “It spends more energy erasing
lives of people of color or immigrants than it does in any way presenting them.” Díaz said that even a small thing like remittances begins to show the everyday details of those experiences and speaks against the shortage of narratives about immigrant lives. Acker then proceeded to discuss the children’s book Díaz is currently working on, “Island War.” The book follows a young girl named Lola as she completes a class assignment for which she has to draw her home country. As Lola tries to collect details about a place she doesn’t remember, she must use her imagination to fill in the gaps. When asked asked why he chose to write about a young girl seeking information about a home she doesn’t know, Díaz responded by comparing the different experiences among siblings from immigrant families. “Some siblings remember the place they’re
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The Budgetary Committee (BC) announced a policy change that would open up funding for both on-campus and off-campus activities over break on Dec. 2, 2017. Off-campus activities, however, would not be eligible for funding related to accommodations, transportation or food. A few months after this change, students are starting to feel its effects, both positive and negative. In the original email that notified the student body about recommended club budgets and the change to the spring break trips policy, Jacob Silverman ’19, treasurer of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), wrote: “New BC policy mandates that off-campus break requests (ex: spring break trips) can only be approved in club budgets and are not eligible for funding related to accommodations, transportation or food. Funding for on-campus breaks can be requested through the discretionary fund, however.” Isiaha Price ’21, a member of the BC, said that “historically, we don’t fund trips, or fund anything that’s over break — over summer, over [winter] break, over Thanksgiving break.” He added that the reason behind this was budgetary restraints; last semester, the BC got down to the last five percent of their budget without covering the costs of activities over breaks. There have been some exceptions to this rule, however. For the last 14 years, the men’s and women’s ultimate frisbee teams have received funding from the BC to travel to the High Tide Ultimate Tournament, which takes place over spring break in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The funding covered the tournament fee and housing. AAS President Aditi Krishnamurthy ’18 said that the ultimate frisbee teams’ spring break trips have been funded for so long because “some
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Underspent ResLife Budgets Elicit Concern About Lack of Transparency Kathleen Maeder ’20 Staff Writer The tendency for residential counselors (RCs) to underspend their budgets, coupled with a lack of clear communication to RCs on Residential Life policies, have raised concerns among some RCs about the Office of Residential Life’s lack of transparency. On-campus student residents are charged a fee — $59 in Fall 2017 and $60 in Spring 2018 — part of their semester bills, which is intended for residential programming and community activities such as Tea Times. This fee is the basis of each RC’s budget for student programming within the dormitories. The amount that each RC spends varies significantly by dormitory. Spencer Quong ’18, a RC for North Dormitory during the 2016-2017 academic year, spent less than his floor had originally been allocated. “For my own floor, I estimate that I spent about half of the budget in the fall and two-thirds of the budget in the spring,” said Quong. He added that this was likely a slight underestimate of the total spending on his dorm; occasionally, he noted, he went shopping with his area co-
ordinator, who paid for the dorm supplies directly. Quong added that, in his experience, the Residential Life staff encouraged him to be creative with the ways he used his dormitory budget to engage with residents. “I would say that my area coordinator did discourage us from spending too much money on food. I actually appreciated that advice, because I think it forced me to think more creatively about how we could go about spending our budget,” said Quong. “The bigger question was how were you spending your budget thoughtfully, not how much of your budget were you spending,” he added. A current RC for an upperclassmen dorm, who requested anonymity for fear for job security, raised questions about Residential Life’s budgetary decisions. In particular, she voiced concern with the RC budget policy — from what her area coordinator has told her in the past, she said, unspent money from one semester’s budget does not necessarily roll over into the next semester’s budget. In a joint email response with Director of Student Affairs Budget Chad LaDue, Andrea Cadyma, director of Residential Life, said over email that unspent portions of RCs’ dorm budgets do,
in fact, roll over to the next semester, according to Cadyma. “[P]revious year net residuals would augment the current year per-capita allocations and used in the same manner — to support hall programming,” she wrote. Unspent money is divided up across dormitories for the next academic year. The anonymous RC, however, expressed frustration over Residential Life’s lack of communication on the use of unspent per-capita dormitory funds, both with its student staff and the larger campus community “At the end of the year, you don’t get your [unspent] money back. It just kind of vanishes,” she said, estimating that she spent only 70 percent of her budget last semester. She added that Residential Life never discussed with her or her peers where the unspent money from their budgets is used. “I think there should be more transparency about what happens to the money, and accountability for the residents — because that is their money,” she said. “I don’t think people are aware of it, necessarily. Like, I don’t think people know that their money is going to [dorm programming … especially when]
some of it isn’t being spent,” she added. RCs work with supervisors to host events within the breakdown of their budgets, according to Cadyma. Though Cadyma said that Residential Life encourages funds to be utilized to the fullest extent possible each year, there is no penalty for RCs who choose, intentionally or unintentionally, to spend substantially less than their budget allows for. Oftentimes, she added, RCs are not intentionally underspending; rather, they are trying not to exceed budgets. Residential Life works with the Office of Student Affairs to determine budgets, which are typically determined a year in advance, according to Cadyma. When asked why the college does not just lower RC budgets instead of allowing underspending, Cadyma said the question has not been raised for discussion but may be on the table for the future. Frequent underspending of the dorm’s programming funds, however, combined with a lack of information regarding where leftover dormitory funds go at the end of each academic year, often results in frustration on the part of some RCs, who seek more clear, consistent communication from the Residential Life office.