Issue 1

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868

THE AMHERST

STUDENT

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VOLUME CXLVIV, ISSUE 1 l FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019

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International Students Lose Jobs Over Work Authorization Delays Ryan Yu ’22 Managing News Editor

Photo courtesy of Maria Stenzel

Students in the class of 2023 attend squad meetings on the First Year Quad during Orientation week. Out of 1,195 total applicants admitted to Amherst, 469 students matriculated with a yield rate of almost 40 percent.

College Welcomes Class of 2023 Audrey Cheng ’20 and Ryan Yu ’22 Staff Writer and Managing News Editor New Student Orientation began on Aug. 27, when the campus opened the doors on its freshman quad to 469 new students and their families. According to the Office of Admission, these students are among 1,195 students accepted into the class of 2023 and among 10,567 students who applied, representing an admissions rate of 11 percent and matriculation rate of 39 percent.

Students traveled across the country and the world to attend, representing 41 different states and with 11 percent of the class coming from countries other than the U.S. The new students

draw on a diversity of backgrounds, with 45 percent identifying as domestic students of color and 39 different languages spoken at home.

According to the Amherst website, Jack and Sarah were the two most popular names in the class of 2023.

This year’s orientation followed the same goals of building community through student-centered, small-group conversations, continuing many familiar programs while implementing new ones. This week, familiar events such as game nights, Voices, Sexual Health Educator Skits, Title IX and Sexual Respect information sessions and squad meetings commenced.

The annual DeMott lecture, to be given by visiting professor and writer Min Jin Lee, is also sched-

uled on Sept. 1.

These programs have been staples since 2015, when orientation was completely revamped, said Dean of New Students Rick Lopez in a phone interview.

“We’re making them much more student centered, with small groups and conversations. We’re continuing to build on that, and we’ve come up with some new ideas on how to implement that more effectively,” he said.

Many of these changes have been initiated by Marie Lalor, the college’s director of new student programs. For Lalor, whose tenure began on the first day of orientation in 2018, this is her first year directing these programs.

This year, the Learn, Explore, Activate and Participate (LEAP) programs again included FirstYear Outdoor Orientation Trips

(FOOT) as well as Community Engagement Orientation Trips (CEOT), as well as two new trips: Green Building Green Valley, which takes place in the Hitchcock Center for the Environment on Hampshire College’s campus, as well as High Five Adventure in Brattleboro, Vermont.

The topic of Green Building Green Valley is similarities between valley structure and their main building.

This trip focuses on sustainability and the green resources in the area. High Five Adventure is geared toward outdoor, experiential learning.

These programs were selected after the college’s partner for FOOT trips, Adventure In Adventure Out, cut back on the

Continued on page 5

When Tristan Sithole ’21, an international student from Zimbabwe, arrived in Nashville for his summer internship with the accounting firm Deloitte, he expected to quickly get involved with his work. There was one obstacle in the way: he had not received his employment authorization document (EAD) from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and was not legally allowed to start work.

Like many of the other 51 international students and alumni, according to the Center for International Student Engagement (CISE), who applied for work authorization with Optional Practical Training (OPT) — one of the two types of work authorization afforded to students on an F-1 student visa, the most common immigration status for international students studying in the U.S. — Sithole thought he would receive his EAD before his internship started. He submitted his application early on March 5, following the guidelines that suggested he apply no earlier than 90 days before the date he expected to start work. Yet, it was only on June 28 that he finally received his EAD in the mail, four weeks after his internship’s scheduled start date.

“It’s the worst feeling. A friend of mine who had an internship with Microsoft actually lost the internship

Continued on page 3

News

Kristen Luschen Fresh Faculty

April 17, 2019 – April 21, 2019

>>May 20, 2019 Science Center, 6:08 p.m.

An officer responded to a concern that a squirrel was trapped in an area. >>May 25, 2019 King Dormitory, 9:51 p.m.

Officers responded to an individual that was sprayed by a skunk. >>May 26, 2019 Lipton House, 1:18 a.m.

At the request of a parent, an officer confiscated alcohol left behind at a party.

Memorial Hill, 6:10 a.m.

Officers responded to a group drinking on Memorial Hill. >>May 28, 2019 Tyler House, 8:19 a.m.

An officer responded to a request to stop an alarm clock sounding. >>May 29, 2019 Boltwood Avenue, 8:19 a.m.

An officer responded to a report of a carnival crew driving the wrong way down a one-way street. >>June 1, 2019 Valentine Dining Hall, 12:06 a.m.

An individual attempted to steal items from a vending machine and urinated on shelves. >>June 15, 2019

Valentine Hall, 10:39 a.m.

An officer took a report that someone has entered another’s room and urinated on clothing. The matter has been referred to the Office of Student Affairs. >>July 2, 2019 Memorial Hill, 10:38 p.m.

Officers responded to a report of a broken hammock. >>July 24, 2019 Amherst College Police, 11:09 p.m.

An officer took a report regarding a possible catfishing attempt through Facebook. >>Aug. 2, 2019 Pratt Field, 3:47 p.m.

An individual was driving a golf cart in an erratic manner and was advised not to do this. >>Aug. 23, 2019 Bike Path, 3:36 p.m.

An individual reported seeing someone without pants in the woods along the bike path. No description was given and the report was given several hours after the situation was witnessed.

Correction: The Amherst Student regrets the omission of the women’s and men’s golf teams in the article titled “The Year in Sports” in the Commencement edition.

Department of American Studies

Kristen Luschen is the Lewis-Sebring visiting professor in educational studies. She completed a doctorate in cultural foundations of education and a certificate of advanced study in women’s studies at Syracuse University. She joins Amherst after 19 years at Hampshire College.

Q: Can you tell me about how you got to Amherst this semester?

A: Amherst has a burgeoning educational studies program, and you all had a wonderful visiting faculty member Leah Gordon here, but Leah moved onto a different position. At the same time, I was transferring from an administrative position at Hampshire, and going on sabbatical and then moving back into fulltime teaching, when I was contacted and asked if I would be interested in coming to Amherst for two years to continue the work in the educational studies initiative — to keep the momentum going and to continue to serve a number of students who are interested in education studies.

Q: How do you feel about starting to teach at Amherst?

A: I’m excited to get back into the classroom! I haven’t been actively teaching in a classroom for a few years, although I’ve been working with students on their projects and theses. It seems like there’s a lot of energy around education studies, so I’m excited to be part of that and to work with students who are eager to take classes in this area.

I’ve taught at Hampshire, which is pretty non-traditional, for the past 19 years. So I think I’ll have to get my head back into some basic things like grading instead of writing narrative evaluations. That’ll be a tiny bit of a challenge, but for the most part I’m just really excited to get back into the classroom and work with students.

Q: Where did you grow up, and where did you go to school?

A: I grew up in a tiny farm town called Sanborn outside of Niagara

Falls, New York, and went to college at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I was the first in my family to go to college — i.e. a first-gen college student — and a first-gen person to go on to graduate school. I entered thinking I was going to go into law, and then fell in love with sociology.

I came into education studies by way of sociology and women’s studies, and it was really a professor from a sociology and gender course who really opened up opportunities for me to think about gender in critical ways. I then started to take classes with Lois Weiss, who is in the school of education at SUNY Buffalo, who really helped me think about sociology and education. I ended up going from there into a program that allowed me to pursue sociology and education and gender studies at Syracuse. And then I went to Hampshire, and was there for 19 years.

Q: Can you tell me about the classes you’re teaching this semester?

A: I’m teaching two classes. One of them is called Belonging in School — which is really connected to my research. We think about belonging as “Do I belong in this particular space?

Do people like me? Do I get along?

Do I feel connected?” This course looks at the social, political and historical factors that really shape someone’s experience of belonging and capacity to participate in schooling.

The other one I’m teaching is called Gender, Feminisms and Education.

And that’s having us think about the ways in which feminists have framed the issues of girls’ empowerment and educational inequity — what do we know, at this point? What are the nuances around educational inequity

as it relates to gender? And for both classes, we look at the strategies and practices that have been employed to address these issues.

Q: Can you tell me about your research?

A: Generally, my research is broadly looking at girls at school. As an ethnographer, I was looking at a middle school and how it’s involved young people in one of its core missions, which was unconditional positive regard. So, I was looking at how young people make sense of that and what the school climate was like for them, in particular with regard to belonging. At the same time, my students and I were also working to teach a course to help the students define what unconditional positive regard meant for them, and to help create that understanding via a social media campaign related to unconditional positive regard in the school.

So, we were looking at the factors influencing belonging in young women in that school and the ways in which young people can actively help to cultivate a sense of participation and belonging in the school.

Q: What do you do outside of school?

A: Honestly, I spend a lot of time connecting with people. I’m very close with my family. I have two sons: one is in college and one is in high school. I spend a lot of time with my family; I go back to Buffalo and Niagara Falls quite frequently.

And I love going out, having coffee with friends and really connecting with people.

— Ronin Rodkey ’22

News 3

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

New Dean of Students Looks to Listen and Connect Lauren Pelosi ’22 Staff Writer The college welcomed new Dean of Students Elizabeth Agosto to campus in mid-June to begin work in the 2019-2020 academic year.

As dean of students, Agosto will be responsible for overseeing several areas of Student Affairs, including Residential Life, Student Activities and the resource centers, among others. Chief Student Affairs Officer

Karu Kozuma announced Agosto’s hiring in an email to the community in March, writing that “Liz’s approach to her work aligned perfectly with Amherst’s mission: she believes a student’s academic performance is closely tied to their feelings of belonging, their values and sense of identity, and their ability to connect, both with one another across differences and to the community.”

Agosto was chosen by a selection committee comprised of students,

faculty and staff, according to Kozuma’s email. On the committee were Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought Professor Martha Umphrey; Senior Associate Dean of Students Charri Boykin-East; Senior Associate Dean of Students Dean Gendron; Associate Dean of Students Scott Howard; Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Norm Jones; Professor of Geology Anna Martini; Camille Polk ’21; Silvia Sotolongo ’19; and Estevan Velez ’20.

“While the search process produced several very strong candidates, Liz stood out for a few key reasons. Her personal story clearly led to her resolute belief that working in student affairs was not just a job or a career, but a calling,” Kozuma’s email noted.

“From my conversations with Liz during the interview process to the work she has already done in the summer, it is evident that Liz brings so much that will benefit the Am-

herst College community,” Kozuma said in a statement to The Student. “I feel blessed to have a thought partner who cares deeply about the student experience and learning, and I am excited about working with her.”

Agosto comes to Amherst from Dartmouth College, where she had worked as an administrator for the past 12 years. She started at Dartmouth in 2007 as the program coor-

Continued on page 4

College Considers Implementing CPT Work Authorization Option Continued from page 1 because of the delay. So I was really scared myself that I would lose my internship,” said Sithole. “And of course, there’s the financial burden as well. I had already moved to Nashville at that time, and I was just paying rent without actually working. I had nothing to do.”

Sithole is one of thousands across the country affected by delays in OPT processing, which now takes anywhere from “three months to closer to five months,” according to Director of International Student Engagement Hanna Bliss. The delay is especially concerning for to-be graduates seeking Post-Completion OPT, since the USCIS disallows applications more than 90 days before graduation.

Due to the extended waiting period, a number of students and alumni have had their internship or job offers rescinded, their employers unable to handle the burden of an extended absence. Matthew McShane ’21, an international student from Scotland, lost his internship due to the delay, only receiving his EAD on Aug. 2. He resorted to unpaid internships to fill the rest of his summer.

Unpaid internships do not require work authorization for students on an F-1 visa as long as the internship meets certain federal requirements.

“They basically said to me, ‘Okay, we’ll give you until June 6. If you don’t have it by then, there’s nothing we can do. We just can’t support you as an intern,’” said McShane. “There was maybe one person out of around 40 international students [from Amherst] that got their OPT by June 6, no matter how early they applied.”

“Part of how international students are dealing with [the delays] is by doing unpaid internships, and I think it’s a little bit unfortunate,” McShane added. “A lot of people are basically forced to work for free because that’s the only thing they have to get experience and funding for the summer. I was set to make $8,000 or $9,000 from my old internship program, and at the place I’m at right now, I’m making nothing and spending money on rent and things like that … It’s just rubbish.”

In late June, the college approved the use of Curricular Practical Training (CPT) — a work authorization option granted only if work is integral in some way to the curriculum in the applicant’s degree — on an emergency basis as a response to the delays. Whereas OPT takes several months to approve, CPT typically only takes a few days. However, CPT is only available for returning students. As reported by the Center for International Student Engagement (CISE), seven students, including Sithole, were able to start their internships using an emergency CPT option. In an email interview, Bliss said the internships “will be folded into and academically reflected upon via half-credit Special Topics courses in the fall.”

Some students want the college to implement a more permanent CPT option if delayed processing continues in the future. Bliss herself notes that “we should expect similar OPT processing times next year.”

In a private letter signed by eight international students affected by the OPT delays and directed to college administrators, students urged the college to consider “the prospect of

enlarging the Amherst CPT program to enable international students to pursue their summer academic pursuits and avoid the undue financial burden imposed on the students as a result of the USCIS delays.”

The letter cited a number of other institutions with a similar liberal arts focus that have “managed to offer CPT,” including Yale and Columbia — both of which established permanent CPT programs in response to the delays this past summer. Smith and Hamilton also have preexisting CPT programs. Colleges oriented toward the liberal arts often disallow the use of CPT because their curricula do not require practical experiences like internships.

“The CISE has had conversations about CPT with the Provost’s Office, particularly as OPT processing times have generated a level of urgency around eligibility for summer practical experiences for those in F-1 status,” Bliss wrote. “Because CPT is work authorization for off-campus practical experiences that are folded into a student’s academic studies, curriculum drives this conversation.

The Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) will closely examine all aspects of CPT this fall.”

Although the delays significantly worsened this year, issues with OPT processing were prevalent in years past. Yannis Kalogiannis ’19 described how he “anticipated OPT problems last year,” prompting him to request starting his internship in July. Even so, the delayed start date wasn’t enough.

“When my internship was supposed to start, my OPT was still not approved, so I had to postpone my job start date. As you can imagine, it

Photo courtesy of Matai Curzon ’22

International students study and unwind during lunch at the Center for International Student Engagement. was very stressful,” said Kalogiannis.

“I tried to go to the USCIS center in New York and had a terrible experience waiting and being completely brushed off by the people there. I remember that the official said to me, ‘Many people lose their jobs because of this every year.’”

According to USCIS, OPT delays are mainly a byproduct of surges in applications. Others, however, are skeptical.

In a letter sent this past May to New Jersey congressional delegates, 29 New Jersey universities voiced concerns about immigration policy and noted that “the total time it takes the federal government to process foreign visas has increased by 46 percent over the past two fiscal years” while “new foreign student enrollment for undergraduate programs in the U.S. has decreased by 8.9 percent since the 2015-16 school year.” The letter connected the OPT processing delays to more well-known shifts in immigration policy, such as “the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or the travel ban … Taken together, they create a frustrating and sometimes

hostile environment for those wishing to live in and contribute to our communities.”

In a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on immigration policy held on July 16, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, also linked the increase in OPT processing times to higher barriers in immigration and visa processing across the board, such as a surge in the rate of H1-B visa denials, which has gone from 13 percent to 32 percent in the past two fiscal years. USCIS officials responded in the hearing that changes in administrative interpretation — a number of which have been implemented in recent years — mean that they “have to educate the public on what the requirements are as [they] now understand them,” leading to a temporary period of instability.

“For recent graduates with pending Post-Completion OPT applications, there are no alternative types of work authorization that can be issued by the CISE team, and the USCIS has been relatively unresponsive to requests to expedite pending OPT applications,” said Bliss. “It can be a really difficult situation.”

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

News 4

College Among Pilot Group for ‘Adversity Score’ Program Natalie De Rosa ’21 Managing News Editor The college was one of 50 institutions across the nation to test the College Board’s recently released Environmental Context Dashboard during the past admissions cycle for the class of 2023, according to The Boston Globe. The dashboard, more colloquially referred to as the “adversity score,” will become available to 150 colleges and universities this upcoming admissions cycle; The College Board plans to redesign the tool distribute it to other institutions by 2020.

The College Board first announced the implementation of the dashboard this May as a tool for institutions to contextualize students’ academic profile by measuring 16 factors related to their high schools and neighborhoods at large, including statistics like percentage of all households in poverty and probability of being a victim of a crime. Students receive a score only available to admissions officers — not students or high schools — on a scale of one to 100.

A score of 50 indicates an average level of disadvantage, with higher scores representing increasing levels of disadvantage. Though the score will be calculated in addition to a student’s performance on the SAT exam, their score on the dashboard will not impact their overall SAT score.

The release of the dashboard comes after the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal this year, in which high-profile, affluent parents offered bribes for their children to gain acceptance into prestigious colleges and universities across the country. Since the scandal, conversations about wealth inequality on college campuses and barriers to entry for low-income students have gained traction.

Acting among a cohort of colleges and universities including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wellesley, Amherst’s participation in the dashboard’s pilot group is merely a reflection of admissions practices already used by the college, according to Dean of Admission Matt McGann.

As a part of its holistic admissions criteria, an attempt to consider the entirety of a student’s circumstances rather than select features like grades, the college asks applicants to submit a school profile that denotes qualities of their high school including average test scores, course offerings and the demographics of the student population. While the information is useful, its variability across students highlights an inequality of resources.

“One of the problems with school profiles is that there is no uniform school profile. So some schools, often those with the most resources, have very fancy and elaborate profiles to tell the story of their

Photo courtesy of Matai Curzon ’22

The college adopted the “adversity score” to improve its holistic admissions criteria, specifically to better understand the resources students have in their home environment. school and the opportunities therein,” McGann said. “Other schools, more often those with fewer resources and with students who are less resourced, will have school profiles that are not as helpful in helping an admission officer to understand a student’s context.”

To alleviate this disparity, the admissions office has historically relied on public data provided by the Census Bureau to contextualize students in relationship to their surrounding community. Because the dashboard uses the same Census data that the admissions office already pulls from and places it in one tool, McGann said the dashboard’s pilot introduces “a standardized way for all students to provide some contextual infor-

mation about ... their high schools.”

“There are 30,000 high schools in this country and we try to visit some high schools, but we’re not going to be able to visit 30,000 high schools.

And it’s unrealistic to expect any admissions office to know all of those high schools and the many, many communities across the country and around the world,” he added.

The inclusion of contextual environmental information in a student’s academic profile allows admissions officers to better understand what achievement looks like within particular communities.

“There’s some pretty interesting research out there about the difference between a student with say a 1400 who goes to a school where

the median score is 920, and the student who scores a 1400 and goes to a school where the median score is 1500. That gives you some really interesting insight information about the student’s achievement in context,” McGann said.

One recent study from University of Michigan professor Michael Bastedo and University of Iowa professor Nicholas Bowman, for instance, notes that a student from the top income quartile is six times more likely to score a 1200 on the SAT than a student from the lowest quartile. Since the College Board announced its launch, the dashboard has garnered varying responses

Continued on page 5

Dean of Students Strives for Inclusivity in First Year Continued from page 4 dinator of student involvement, and was promoted to associate director of the Center for Student Involvement the following year. She spent 2011 and 2012 as special assistant to the dean of the college before becoming senior associate dean of student affairs in 2013.

During her time at Dartmouth, Agosto helped create the First Year Student Enrichment Program, a peer network meant to help first-generation college students navigate Dartmouth. She also focused on combating sexual violence on Dartmouth’s campus, and reported to The Dartmouth in April that

she is proud of the school’s growth in that area.

Agosto received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Dartmouth. She went on to earn a master’s in sociology from Fordham University and spent two additional years at Fordham completing doctorate coursework in sociology.

Agosto names Amherst’s overt commitment to inclusion and ability to produce graduates who are well-equipped for a rapidly-changing world as factors that drew her to the college.

“As a student-focused, liberal arts institution, Amherst reflects what I believe is the best of higher education,” she wrote in an email

interview.

As the dean of students, Agosto hopes to build an understanding of the community grounded in personal connections. “At a high level, I want to build strong partnerships with students to honor the breadth of identities and experiences students bring to campus while also working together to cultivate community on campus and in our residential spaces,” she wrote.

She added, “I am committed to finding ways to communicate clearly and frequently with students. I am excited to engage in robust conversation with students, where we are able to have differences of opinions, about what makes Amherst special

and how we can continue to support the wellbeing, safety and academic excellence of each student.”

Agosto said her plan “to listen more than [she talks]” will help to inform her visions for the long term.

“Ultimately, my goal is to support processes, policies and practices that are clear, that are grounded in theory and best practice while also being appropriate for Amherst and that allow students to feel a sense of belonging, to have support during challenges and failures and to ultimately thrive at Amherst,” she said.

When asked what she would like students to know about her, Agosto mentioned that her father was in the Army when she was growing

up, and as a result, she traveled all over the country. Later, she became a first-generation college student and “struggled during [her] time in undergrad.”

She added, “I love karaoke, and line dancing, and books, and cooking shows,” and that her spirit animal is the flamingo.

“Mostly,” she wrote, “I want students to know that I am excited to be here at Amherst and looking forward to getting to know you all.

I will be out and about as much as possible. Please reach out and invite me to a meeting with your organization or lunch at Val or a performance. I am really looking forward to working with you all.”

News 5

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Amid Criticism, The College Board Redesigns Admissions Tool Continued from page 4 from the public. Though some have applauded the College Board’s attempt to offer a more nuanced profile of student achievement, others voiced concerns about the dashboard’s lack of consideration for race and its inability to examine a particular student’s individual hardships.

Ryder Coates ’23, who described his neighborhood in Oklahoma City as made up of primarily working-class families, noted that while

his high school maintained a college-going culture, few students chose to leave Oklahoma. Though he viewed the dashboard as “[not] a terrible idea,” he shared some concerns with its methodology.

“I don’t think that something like disadvantage can be boiled down to just a number,” he said in an email interview. “An additional statistic giving a relative idea of how disadvantaged a student’s communities are could give an SAT score some context. But as for considering the

student’s background and history, I’d be surprised if more significant factors and stories didn’t show up elsewhere in an application. My hope is that colleges don’t apply a tremendous amount of weight to the score, and that it’s simply another aspect of a holistic application.”

For Alexis Scalese ’22, the dashboard’s race-blind criteria places the tool at a disadvantage. “I don’t think it can accurately capture the adversities for native/indigenous students and black students. There

is an inherent flaw to it that it does not factor in race. It seems [the College Board] are trying to prove their tests are an equal playing field for students of all races when their tests have a lot of cultural biases in them,” she said. “The adversity score doesn’t factor in race and that’s flawed because race affects how people are treated in schools, from micro biases to big biases.”

“I think the fact that the college board has something like the adversity score shows that their tests and

exams do not level the playing field,” Scalese added.

The College Board has since announced on Aug. 27 that it will revise the original version of the dashboard in response to scrutiny surrounding it, with plans to provide admissions officers with multiple data points about a student’s communities, rather than a singular score, and give students the option to view details about their communities and high schools, among other changes.

to find a sense of belonging on campus and with your peers. You can’t feel like you belong on campus when you’re at High Five, but you belong with the people you’re with in the program you’re in and develop some very good relationships.”

Additionally this year, a new Arabic language reception for students and their families was implemented.

Multilingual receptions for families, which were initiated by Dean of New Students Rick Lopez five years ago, also include events in Spanish, Mandarin and

Korean.

“This is a chance for families who are more comfortable in those languages to ask questions,” said Lopez.

A major procedural change for move-in day was the new system for regulating traffic on campus.

This year, the college blocked off large sections of Route 9 and Route 116 in all directions. Rather than allowing parking on the lawn of the first-year quad, the new process made sure families pulled into campus from the police station entrance, unloaded

quickly, and parked in the lot near the tennis courts.

“This makes it a pleasant experience for everyone,” said Lopez. “Students can play frisbee on the quad, hang out, sit and read, or have coffee.” Iced coffee was indeed provided in the parking lot during the move-in process.

“It’s a good experience for families as well,” he added. “Instead of waiting in the line and worrying about backing up traffic, they can sit back and get some nice swag and meet each other.”

Unlike at other schools, the success of orientation programs relies on the work of student leaders and volunteers, said Lopez. Orientation leaders arrived on campus on Aug. 20 for four days of training.

“Here, it really is students talking to students and us trying to make that possible in every kind of way, and none of this would work if we didn’t have the really great orientation leaders, the RCs, the LEAP leaders, and all the other students who come and volunteer on move-in day,” he said.

within the Amherst community.

Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Norm Jones and Chief Student Affairs Officer Karu Kozuma announced the move of the five campus resource centers in an email to the Amherst community on June 24, writing that they “want to increase the ease with which all students gain access to sources of community and support, while giving staff in both offices greater access to one another in an integrated approach to student well-being.”

According to the email, the move hopes to accomplish three goals: to ease collaboration between the resource centers and the OSA; strengthen the work of student-serving staff; and offer better career development for these staff.

“This transition will free up Norm to pursue initiatives in areas for which he has had too little time, including work already underway

— his work with the dean of the faculty on hiring and retention of faculty, as well as a project to create a meaningful record of the histories and experiences of alumni of color, to cite two examples — and new initiatives he can jump-start to ensure that the College has the most effective strategies for inclusion across divisions, across constituencies, and overall,” Jones and Kozuma continued.

After the July 1 move, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion Angie Tissi-Gassoway and the resource center team (RCT) under her leadership began reporting to the new Dean of Students Liz Agosto. Agosto was hired to Student Affairs earlier this year. The RCT, which includes the directors of the five campus resource centers, supports and advocates for underrepresented students.

In addition to moving the RCT’s

staffing structure, budget and resources to Student Affairs, the resource centers’ staff have begun attending departmental and divisional meetings with the OSA. Most of the transition will come more gradually as the Fall 2019 semester begins.

“We are challenged to create these changes while still preparing for the upcoming semester. We want to make sure all of our staff and services are ready to support students when they arrive on campus. [Yet] knowing that this transition will allow for us to build relationships, systems, and structures to better support all students ability to find community and a sense of belonging on campus [is rewarding],” Tissi-Gassoway wrote in an email interview.

Agosto said she hopes the move will “amplify student voices and find pathways to address student needs.”

The resource centers, she added, are “vital” to those efforts.

“My current focus is on listening to students and other members of the community as I learn more about Amherst and about the needs of students,” Agosto wrote in an email interview. “As I learn more, I will look to partner and engage even more closely with the RCT, other offices in student affairs and across campus and with students to identify programs, policies or processes that can be worked on to help students thrive at Amherst.”

The move, though sudden for much of the larger campus, is intended to provide a stronger web for supporting the community across departments.

“Due to closer partnerships and collaboration, students will experience a more seamless support network across resources and offices on campus,” Tissi-Gassoway said.

Students Embark on Revised Orientation Programming Continued from page 1

number of programs offered, said Lalor.

According to Lalor, college administrators had “incredibly detailed” conversations with LEAP program partners prior to these trips.

Student LEAP leaders also had opportunities during training to work with these program partners in explaining the culture of the student body.

When asked what these conversations entail, Lalor said, “We talk about, overarchingly, how

Student Affairs Given Jurisdiction Over Resource Centers Alison Poussaint ’22 Staff Writer On July 1, all resource centers — including the Center for Diversity and Student Leadership, the Center for International Student Engagement, the Multicultural Resource Center, the Queer Resource Center, and the Women and Gender Center — moved from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) to the Office of Student Affairs (OSA).

The change in responsibility will allow the OSA and ODI to have a greater impact on the Amherst community by promoting diversity and inclusion and allowing faculty to work on new community-building initiatives.

The OSA supports students through student life and health and safety resources while the ODI works to promote a respectful, equitable and supportive environment

Opinion

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The Road to Healing As cars filled with eager first years and their families roll into Quadrangle Drive, our campus community made the first strides into ushering in the much-anticipated school year. Yet, behind the smiling faces of orientation leaders and welcoming speeches made by the administration, our campus hid the hurt and conflict that pervaded our lives last year. As a community, we may have bid farewell to the 2018-2019 school year and all of its controversy, but the start of a new school year cannot and does not wipe the slate clean.

We cannot throw the difficult and deeply hurtful developments of the previous year under the rug.

To move on, we must recognize the source of conflict that divided us in the first place, reckon with our campus’ vulnerability to the national trend of polarization and bigotry and reflect on what Amherst can do to move forward.

This summer alone, our nation reeled from two horrendous mass shootings that took place in the span of one day in the cities of El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. The reality of racism and white supremacy reared its ugly head in the gunmen’s hate-filled manifestos back into the public sphere. And then the president of the United States rampaged on social media against four congresswomen of color, demanding that they “go back” to where they came from.

The events of the last year demonstrate clearly that the evils of bigotry and prejudice have pervaded into each and every aspect of our daily lives. Despite the college’s “bubble-like” atmosphere in the idyllic town of Amherst, we, as a broader community, must recognize the vulnerability of our campus in the face of bigotry.

The controversial, polarizing and hurtful events of last year — the swastika found crudely drawn on a student’s face at a men’s lacrosse party, the botched release of the Common Language Document and the subsequent transphobic comments made by members of the Amherst College Republicans and, of course, the polarizing lecture given by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions — serve as stark reminders to what can happen on a campus like ours in the face of complacency.

But what was the source of all this conflict?

We, the editorial staff of The Amherst Student, cannot explain why any of this happened. What we can speak to, however, is what could have been done to prevent these actions in the first place and what we can do to move forward. In an era when our nation has become so polarized,

so divergent, it was inevitable that cracks would appear on our campus. Despite our small size and relative isolation, students from across the ideological spectrum did not have the ability to engage in productive discourse and conversations that would allow us to reflect on our stances, both personal and political.

The sudden release of the Common Language Document did not aid in this polarization.

Students backed into their ideological corners and did not engage in productive discourse. Instead, groups of like-minded individuals reinforced sides and labelled dissenters as “others,” ultimately culminating in bigoted language disguised as mere “jokes.” While the student body and the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) took respectable actions in the aftermath of transphobic comments made in the ACR’s GroupMe chat ,there was no conceivable effort to initiate a productive discussion with the parties affected.

While swift condemnation by both the studentbody at large and the AAS led to sanctions on the ACR and its leadership, it ultimately failed to affect any change in our campus community, much less the ACR members who actually made those comments. Instead, the polarization and tribalism that led to the incident in the first place continued to increase, culminating in division across the spectrum on the night of April 24, when Sessions arrived on campus to speak.

Since the protests, the comments and Session’s speech, our campus has not fully moved on or begun the resolution process. The individual who drew the swastika and the individuals who wrote the comments have not publicly apologized or recognized the gravity of their actions. The ACR continues to remain defunded in the aftermath of its refusal to comply with even a single AAS sanction.

Now, more than ever, the 2019-2020 school year represents an important opportunity for our campus to heal.

What does that look like? We can’t be completely sure. But we are committed to trying to listen more and assume less — to leaving broad labels like Republican or Democrat to the backs of our heads in order to see complexity and nuance.

Everyone deserves an opportunity to grow and learn, especially when they’ve made mistakes, and extending that grace to Amherst community members — our own selves included — may just be the first step to healing.

THE AMHERST

STUDENT E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Editors-in-Chief Shawna Chen Emma Swislow Managing News Natalie De Rosa Ryan Yu Zach Jonas Managing Opinion Jae Yun Ham Managing Arts and Living Olivia Gieger Seoyeon Kim Managing Sports Connor Haugh Henry Newton Managing Design Julia Shea S TA F F Publishers Joseph Centeno, Emmy Sohn, Mark Nathin Digital Director Dylan Momplaisir

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Opinion 7

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Seeing Double: An Introduction Thomas Brodey ’22 and Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22 Columnists Over 1.7 millions books have been published so far this year.

8,607 tweets are posted every second. And 75 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube in the 15 seconds it took you to read this paragraph. Most of those gigabytes of information will never cross our minds, but the fraction that do still overwhelm us. We have access to so much information in our pockets that it’s hard to develop our own ideas and personal values.

Thinking for ourselves isn’t a new problem, especially at Amherst. Here, good arguments and ideas pop up with as much frequency as social media notifications. When reading a book written by a preeminent thinker, it’s easiest to slide into agreement without asking ourselves if we actually agree. This happens most often when we share ideologies with the author and forget to challenge their assertions.

Too often, ideological labels,

gut reactions and past prejudices help us decide what to ignore and what to believe. Now, this isn’t altogether bad; we should be suspicious about unsupported claims and examine the sources of supposed “facts.”

It’s dangerous, though, when we accept ideas based on whether or not they reinforce our worldview. The algorithms of social media play on this basic human characteristic and magnify our biases, closing off any chance of legitimately encountering the ideological “other.” The vicious cycle of self-affirmation and social media strangles unorthodox ideas and exacerbates political entrenchment.

Since our opinions, thoughts and ideas are based on the information we’re exposed to, trapping ourselves in information bubbles asphyxiates our ability to grow. It’s hard to support our own original ideas, defend them in debate and persuade others to agree.

When surrounded by other voices, it is difficult to find our own. That challenge is the crux

of an academic life. How do we speak our truths? How do we preserve our intellectual integrity? And how do we set aside distractions and find what we believe?

If we said we had the answers, we’d be trivializing those questions. We can’t tell you how to overcome this problem, because the two of us struggle to think for ourselves. We succumb to information overload. We oppose certain politicians without fully examining them. And we’ve written articles formed of wholly-unoriginal ideas.

We’re attempting to do things differently. We pledge to spend time researching to discover new ways of addressing problems. In each article, we hope to highlight an issue of importance and bring up information and perspectives that you, the reader, haven’t seen.

We’ll present thought-provoking, original ideas, forcing ourselves to say what we believe instead of relying on pre-packaged thoughts. The goal, ultimately, is to think for ourselves, in hopes that it’ll be worthwhile

for our readers.

But that doesn’t mean we’ll be deliberately controversial or confrontational. The goal isn’t to be contrarian or stuck in our ways.

In fact, when we’re able to speak our minds, we’re better able to understand and adopt other points of view. When we articulate why we believe something, we’re forced to evaluate those reasons and reckon with their impacts.

Instead of hiding behind ideological labels and marking whatever we don’t like with the stamp of the “other,” we can begin to see the truths that inform those unfamiliar ideas. Ironically, to truly think for ourselves, we have to listen to others.

We’ve found that one way to create original ideas is to combine different perspectives. One person’s idea may be interesting, but it becomes more compelling when shaped by other people’s views. When two worldviews come into contact, they mold and shape each other, creating two new perspectives, each more engaging and dynamic than before.

We disagree on substantive issues, but our tiny room can’t support violent arguments, so our column is founded on productive ideological conflict. Throughout the year, you’ll read our thoughts on topics ranging from current campus events to economics to politics. When we disagree, you’ll read our opposing perspectives in these pages.

But we don’t want the exchange of ideas to stop there. To create new narratives and ideas, the flow of information between columnists and readers should go both ways. We’d love to hear you challenge, build upon, and refocus our ideas.

At the end of each article, we’ll ask you to share your thoughts with us at seeingdoubleamherst@ gmail.com. There, we’ll respond to any thoughts or criticisms you have. Whether or not you agree with what we say, we hope that over the course of the year, our sometimes-esoteric musings will combine with your own diverse values and life experiences to create ideas that are creative, passionate and above all, new.

Do you have opinions about issues on campus?

If you want to write for us, email jham22@ amherst.edu

e Join th ! ff a t s n Opinio

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Opinion 8

What Makes a Vote Count?

Rebecca Picciotto ’22 Contributing Writer The day we elect our next president is over 13 months away. My inner procrastinator finds it ridiculous that I’m giving any ounce of thought to something that distant. (Really? You’re leaving your summer reading for Sept. 2, but this gets 400+ days worth of forethought?) Maybe it’s because we’ve had two rounds of Democratic debates. Maybe it’s because every fourth news notification I get is about the latest Joe Biden gaffe.

For whatever reason, Nov. 3, 2020 is already on my mind.

But maybe I’m not so crazy.

After all, the presidential race is by no means an isolated event.

The issues important to the 2020 election aren’t new — they’ve been circulating in the public dialogue for years. As candidates talk about gun control, it feels like new mass shootings regularly make daily headlines.

As the immigration debate continues, it feels like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests take place hourly.

The 2020 presidential election itself might be far off, but talking about it is not premature — it’s topical. In fact, it’s the perfect excuse for the media to start dedicating their real estate to targeted analysis of the nation’s key issues.

It’s not like I’m already trying to decide on whose name I’ll be choosing when I walk into the voting booth (or more realistically, when I fill out my absentee ballot in Keefe). Still, as candidates suggest new policies and values, I’m beginning to wonder not who I’ll be voting for, but how I’ll be voting.

Let’s face it: voting is inconvenient. Not to minimize the power of the “I Voted” sticker, but sometimes flexing our democratic muscles feels like more work than it’s worth. Ultimately, a single ballot exerts very little influence on its own. So when I do go to the trouble of voting next November, I want to maximize the value of that vote.

It seems like there’s one uni-

versal way to vote. You decide on your ideal candidate and you cast your ballot in their favor. Yet, not every voter uses this thought process. In fact, there are multiple camps of voting methods, the primary distinction lying between sincere voting and tactical voting.

Sincere voting is the process I just mentioned: choosing the candidate one finds to be the best fit for a given position. But sometimes, a voter will vote against their ideal candidate for the sake

“ By processing

people’s true wants and needs through voting, we can attempt to create a system that serves the public will.

of achieving what they find to be a more important political objective. That’s tactical voting.

Tactical voting is finding new relevance in the conversation surrounding the 2020 race. Of course, Republican primary voters don’t have many options this election (President Donald Trump’s only current opponents, Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, present a few alternatives, but it’s historically and practically unlikely that a candidate would win the party nomination against a sitting president).

However, the Democratic side is packed. Whittling down the Democratic race will require more deliberation from the electorate.

And the electorate’s already deliberating. A survey conducted by Monmouth University in February showed that 56% of a pool of Democratic voters “are still so rattled by the 2016 election” that they’re more interested in someone who can take Trump than someone who matches their political values. In other words, for a good portion of Democratic voters, policy and beliefs only go as far as a candidate’s “electability.”

Electability has become a

buzzword in the race so far. It’s the metric used to judge a candidate’s ability to win public office (independent of whether or not that candidate checks all of your boxes politically).

Essentially, voting based on someone’s electability rather than your personal opinion of the candidate is the “tactic” of tactical voting. In that sense, tactical voting is made out to be an alternative to opinion-based voting — it seems to take a more impartial path.

To some, tactical voting may be righteous. Sacrificing your own democratic power for the sake of higher justice — you’re basically a superhero.

Except that as virtuous as it may sound, tactical voting has some significant logical and logistical pitfalls. Let’s start by investigating the supposed “impartiality” of tactical voting.

As opposed to sincere voting, tactical voting is taken to be more objective because instead of judging based on subjective opinion, it judges based on “strategy.” For 2020, that strategy is choosing the most electable candidate. And when we dig a bit deeper into this concept of electability, it actually turns out to not be all that objective (or even logically coherent).

First, voting on electability is a not-so-subtle tautology. The idea of electing someone on the basis that one would elect them is as circular of an argument as it gets. More importantly though, electability highlights the problem with tactical voting because it is a completely subjective term being treated as some sort of empirical game plan. In fact, there’s no single definition of electability, but instead multiple interpretations.

The New York Times lists five of them.

There’s the “political revolutionary theory,” which gauges electability based on which candidate can fight radical with radical. There’s the “Obama coalition theory,” which measures a candidate’s ability to mobilize the black and Latino communities to reconstruct the Democratic base of 2012. The “Trump voters theory”

quantifies electability by how successful a candidate is in winning back Trump voters who were voting blue in 2012.

As certain states find themselves shifting their political hues (e.g. Iowa and Ohio getting redder while Arizona, Georgia and Texas lean bluer), the fourth theory of electability looks at a candidate’s capacity to capitalize on these shifts. That is, whoever can officially flip a state’s color in their favor is the most electable.

Then, there is the “romance theory,” which judges electability based on maximum voter appeal.

The variety of interpretations exposes just how subjective electability really is. Electability isn’t factual — it’s debatable just like any other opinion.

So by choosing to vote for who you think is electable rather than who you really think is a good fit for the Oval Office, you essentially throw away your vote because any one of the candidates may be considered electable weighed against certain standards.

But if tactical voting won’t make your ballot worth more, what will?

Here’s my take: The most tactical way to vote is to vote informed and sincerely. Ultimately, when the votes flood in next November, the government, the media and the rest of the public are going to take it as a representation of what

the American people want and to what degree they want it.

If those votes are made inauthentically (for some purpose of voting “tactically”), it deteriorates the legitimacy of the views they represent. None of us know for sure what the right way to govern is — that’s the very reason we have democracy. By processing people’s true wants and needs through voting, we can attempt to create a system that serves the public will.

So when tactical voting interferes with truthful communication of that will, it undermines the whole system.

The logic behind making choices sincerely rather than strategically translates to other areas of life, too. There is almost never only one correct way to do something so we may as well follow what we genuinely believe to be the right choice. Even if our choice is wrong, at least we’ll have an authentic justification for it.

Then, the most “electable” candidate is the one you believe in most. Even if it turns out on Nov. 3, 2020 that the outcome swings the other way, your vote will still have meant more than if you just followed the “correct strategy” because it represents one less degree of support for that outcome. As far as being a drop in the democratic bucket, a sincere vote will make your ideological drop ripple just a little bit wider.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Rebecca Picciotto ‘22 argues against tactical voting, claiming that we should vote based on our personal opinions.

Arts&Living

Mead Receives Anonymous Donation of Over 170 Works

Photo courtesy of Seoyeon Kim ‘21

A portrait of Sacagawea by Matthew Day Jackson will be displayed in the Mead Art Museum’s fall exhibit.

Seoyeon Kim ’21 Managing Arts and Living Editor This fall, the Mead Art Museum will celebrate a recent donation of over 170 works of contemporary art in the exhibition “Starting Something New: Recent Contemporary Art Acquisitions and Gifts.” Approximately 50 of the gifted artworks, all from an anonymous donor, will be on display.

“It’s a really significant gift for us,” the Mead’s Director and Chief Curator David E. Little said in a phone interview. “I would say, without a doubt, that this is one of the largest donations that we’ve received at the Mead, and certainly the largest contemporary art donation in the Mead’s history.”

Little emphasized that the donation is especially valuable when considering the impact it will have on students. Its featured artworks and the exhibition as a whole will provide students at Amherst College with examples of “some of the finest art made today that they can research and study.” Little also

commented that the gift is of immeasurable worth because most of the artists are mid-career artists whose values are accruing.

In addition, “Starting Something New” will allow students and faculty to create novel connections with prominent contemporary artists. “For instance,” said Little, “if the art history department wants to invite an artist, it makes a big difference if you can say to the artist that we have a work in our collection by you … It has a more personal connection.”

While the announcement of the anonymous donation was made in early August, the exhibition has been in the works since last December when the board approved the gift. Since then, the staff at the Mead have been busy going through the process of paperwork and physically moving the art.

Highlights of the exhibition include works by Analia Saban, a Los Angeles-based artist who was born in Buenos Aires, and Mark Bradford, an American artist who represented the United States at

the 2017 Venice Biennale.

Saban’s “One-Armed, ThreeLegged Chair” will be one of the works displayed in the exhibit. In a video by the Getty Conservation Institute, Saban says “materials have a limited potential … so sometimes by breaking something, by opening something up, by looking at the back of something, sometimes it does open up ideas in a way … not just the material itself but also the idea within the material.”

In delving into the “idea within the material,” there is also a psychoanalytic element to her work — the breaking and opening apart of things because the source of fear and conflict lies within, then putting the pieces back together in a way that is better than before.

Also on display will be Bradford’s collections of printed advertisements for services that are posted in neighborhoods. Before becoming an artist, Bradford worked in his mother’s beauty shop — a place he describes as being a safe place for both him and the greater black community.

In fact, his first steps into the art world began there as he incorporated the shop’s products, specifically permanent wave end papers, into his work. His thoughtful creativity is again exemplified in the prints.

Little described the work as one of his favorites of the exhibit, marveling at the different printing processes that Bradford used and especially at his incredible imagination in transforming everyday objects into powerful messages.

“For Bradford, he knows that there are certain signs you see in certain communities. You wouldn’t see signs for loans or things of that nature in a very wealthy neighborhood, but you certainly see them in lower income neighborhoods.

Bradford is thinking about those socioeconomic issues,” Little said.

Another one of Little’s favorite pieces of the exhibition is a portrait of Sacagawea by American

artist Matthew Day Jackson, who focuses on addressing the fallacy of the American Dream through his work.

“It’s impossible to describe on paper the surface and the material that the artist used to make the portrait,” Little said. “It’s part-portrait because it’s also got this sculptural element … he uses wood [and] he carves into the surface for the portrait and it’s just … there’s a real loving quality to the way that the artist creates the work.”

As a curator, Little’s work includes figuring out how to arrange these amazing artworks. He likened his task to moving into a brand-new apartment and putting together all the furniture, arranging and rearranging the individual pieces until the whole feels harmonious.

“Each artwork has its own personality,” he explained, “and there are some artworks that really like other artworks and there are some artworks that just need to be alone … I’ve been doing a lot of that — trying to figure out how

the artworks speak to one another, and how they can hopefully inspire conversations among the students.”

“Starting Something New: Recent Contemporary Art Acquisitions and Gifts” opens on Sep. 10, 2019, running through July 26, 2020.

Before the show’s opening, the Mead will hold a panel titled “Curating the Contemporary,” featuring museum curators who will discuss their experiences curating contemporary art today.

In encouraging students to go visit the exhibition, Little described the specific charm of contemporary art: “It’s fun. [Contemporary art] is playful. I think they might even be shocked by a few pieces … I won’t tell you which pieces they’ll be shocked by, but they’ll find them very, very funny and maybe a little bit irreverent.

That’s kind of the spirit of contemporary artists: always trying to inspire you, but also really poking at you a little bit to make sure you’re having fun.”

Photo courtesy of Seoyeon Kim ‘21

“One-Armed, Three-Legged Chair” by Analia Saban will also be featured in the exhibit “Starting Something New.”

Arts & Living 10

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Underrated Summer Songs You Might Have Missed Out On

Photo courtesy of Stereogum

Photo courtesy of Pretty Ugly Litttle Liar

Summer releases from artists like Steve Lacy (left) and Angel Olsen (right) are a breath of fresh air from overplayed pop hits on the top charts.

Julian Raiford ’21 Staff Writer The most recent top pop music charts would suggest that the sound of summer 2019 falls somewhere between Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” and Shawn Mendes’ and Camila Cabello’s “Señorita.”

And, yes, somehow Lil Nas X’s long running hit single “Old Town Road” and its many remixes have remained up there too. However, with so many talented rising artists, it feels shallow to define our summer playlists with only these overplayed pop productions.

So to boost our collective musical repertoire, I would like to pose a counter to Billboard and recognize five songs of the summer that may have been denied a Top 40 slot, but are tracks that will surely stay with us into the fall.

1. “Playground” / “Outro Freestyle/4ever” by Steve Lacy Steve Lacy has been proving his production prowess for the past few years alongside his band The Internet, yet his debut album “Apollo XXI” is his most impres-

sive feat of production and lyricism to date.

Lacy epitomizes the seductive and playful quality of his work in the sex anthem “Playground,” which is as tongue-in-cheek as the title promises to be. While “Playground” has received the most praise off of the album, other songs such as the closing track “Outro Freestyle/4ever” pull the album into a cohesive work that is warm, intelligent and undeniably perfect for summer.

2. “Dark and Handsome” by Blood Orange ft. Toro y Moi Just a year ago, independent producer and singer Blood Orange, also known as Dev Hynes, released his album “Negro Swan” to immediate praise (including some from The Student) for his intricate musical explorations regarding the issues of sexuality and race. After the immense success of “Negro Swan,” Hynes stepped away from social media and seemingly dedicated his production hours to fellow artists in collaborative projects such as Solange’s “When I Get Home.”

However, while he seemed to be

taking time off, Hynes quietly produced and recorded his fifth studio album “Angel’s Pulse.” The album stays in touch with familiar themes of Hynes’ earlier work as he navigates his own identity and community as a black, queer artist.

While the album is a dazzling and drifty work that was perfectly released to soundtrack a summer in Hynes’ home of New York City, the most outstanding track of the album is by far “Dark & Handsome” which features Toro y Moi. The two singer-producers create a stripped down R&B beat that is given its melodic partner with Hynes’ vocals and Toro y Moi’s short but lighthearted verse. This track is perfect for your morning commute or weekend kickback playlist.

3. “Still Dreaming” by Ravenna Singer-songwriter Raveena has experienced quiet success over the past three years for her distinctively seductive R&B tracks and soft, longing vocals. Yet in producing her debut album, “Lucid,” Raveena maintained her sultry sound but played more lyr-

ically into a wistfulness for times past. Infusing her tracks with recordings of interviews with her grandmother, Raveena expands her romantic repertoire into a greater love that examines the intergenerational love between the women of her family. The standout track of the album, however, is the romantic tune “Still Dreaming,” a starry-eyed ode to a lover who slips away even as the singer’s love remains.

with Mark. We are both from different production worlds,” but says she was ultimately delighted with the outcome. The track seems to signal a transition within Olsen’s upcoming album “All Mirrors,” which has been teased to have a similarly dark disco feel.

As a bonus, Olsen released the title track for her upcoming album in July, which promises to be reflective, rich and another evolution in her ever-changing sound.

4. “True Blue” by Mark Ronson ft. Angel Olsen Perhaps the most unexpected collaboration of the summer, “True Blue” by Mark Ronson ft.

Angel Olsen is a dark disco track reminiscent of German singer Nico’s deliciously ominous cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” from 1981. Playing on Ronson’s strength as a nearly anachronistic producer with his late 70s, early 80s sound and Angel Olsen’s rich vocals, the track is funky, surprising and entirely consuming.

Olsen took to Instagram to admit her own initial reservations about the project stating, “I wasn’t sure what it would be like to work

5. “Where U At?” by Chinatown Slalom Perhaps one of the most underrated tracks of the summer comes from the rising genre-bending group Chinatown Slalom. The Liverpool-based band reifies the warmth of the summer with “Where U At?” off of their debut album “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” which is reminiscent of early, genre-defying work by The Avalanches. Deftly combining the sound of your favorite lo-fi indie beats study playlist with doo wop elements, “Where U At?” is sunny, distinctive and offers promise for Chinatown Slalom’s growing discography.

Arts & Living 11

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Making Promises: What It Means to Say “The Farewell”

Photo courtesy of New York Post

Actor Diana Lin, writer/director Lulu Wang, actor Awkwafina and actor Tzi Ma (from left to right) of the Sundance hit “The Farewell” pose for a photo.

Ryan Yu ’22 Managing News Editor In Chinese, to say goodbye is to make a promise of sorts. It’s an ostensibly simple promise, one that for most of us, only requires another glance backwards or maybe a short call if the distance is truly great. Indeed, zàijiàn — Chinese for goodbye — is to say in the imperative that we will see each other again. An implicit promise.

To say farewell on the other hand makes no such promise. In fact, it leans into the separation; the Chinese phrases for bidding someone farewell, gàobié and its variants, make clear that there’s little chance of seeing each other soon, that any return would be driven by chance rather than expectation.

Of course, the English language makes no real distinction between goodbye and farewell except in formality. Perhaps that is why writer and director Lulu Wang titled her critically-acclaimed film “The Farewell” in English but named it what translates to “Don’t Tell Her” in Chinese. Because the film isn’t about gàobié or yǒngbié (to part forever, as in death); it’s about the return, the promise of

seeing each other again. Zàijiàn.

Outwardly, “The Farewell” deals with what appears to be the impending death of Nai Nai (Chinese for paternal grandmother — played by Zhao Shuzhen) due to lung cancer. But nobody in the family dares mention it to her, for they’ve decided that it’s better that she doesn’t know. They play charades instead, holding an impromptu wedding to inconspicuously gather everyone together one last time.

Everyone in the story is processing its events with a farewell in mind, save for the most pivotal character. Nai Nai, as the only one ignorant of her medical condition, thinks of the goodbye, of the see-you-again, of the future rather than the end. And, despite the frantic machinations of the family behind the scenes, it’s Nai Nai’s frame of reference that dominates the film and gives it its direction of a recovery and regrouping.

Take Billi (Awkwafina), for example. As the main character, her narrative perspective permeates throughout the film, making the parts outside of Nai Nai’s influence — the beginning of the film, when she’s still in New York — contrast vibrantly with how

she orients herself in Changchun. Whereas we see meek acquiescence to some unwelcome end earlier on, whether it’s on the question of Nai Nai’s prognosis, her career as a writer or her ability to pay rent, Billi moves beyond the trap of resignation and abandons the end when she is forced to act in front of Nai Nai. When she sees the remnants of her past again — her grandpa’s death, her childhood in Changchun, particular mannerisms of Chinese culture — with a renewed understanding, Billi tacitly diffuses those lessons into future possibilities, joining the journey of return at Nai Nai’s behest.

The audience is also taken on Nai Nai’s journey of see-youagains, even while we’re led to believe that we’re approaching a farewell. Especially for Chinese-Americans (or Chinese-Canadians in my case), the film leads us to rediscover aspects of our ancestry and family that we are familiar but not intimate with, to confront what it means to be American with a truly American immigrant story, to live and relive events invariably resembling some dimension of our lives. We are correspondingly pushed to go

beyond our ends, to seize the future — just as Billi was.

Ultimately, it’s Nai Nai’s zàijiàn that prevails over the family’s hidden yǒngbié, when it’s revealed that she has lived six years past her cancer diagnosis. Nai Nai has kept her promise, and the family has seen her again and again. And more, Billi seems to have moved on from the experience, stronger.

In any case, it’s much more common to say zàijiàn than it is to gàobié, so the outcome is fitting. Perhaps it’s that difference in the terms, the constancy of the promise and the rarity of the separation, that even allows for such developments in the first place.

It’s like they say in the oft-cited Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the structure of the languages we speak and think in influences our cognition.

I’ve watched “The Farewell” three times. Once by myself, once with my friends and once with my family. Each time, I find myself not looking deeper into the film per se, but deeper into my own memories, recounting exploits with my family that I’d thought I’d long since forgotten, recounting goodbyes and reunions and the whole cycle. I find myself re-

calling my own grandpa’s farewell four and a half years ago, seeing every aspect of my family’s grief unravel slowly across each consecutive screening: my family’s frantic rush out of our Christmas Eve dinner, the crying and the screaming and the accusations that “you never loved him!,” the messages and gifts we would send to him post-mortem. It’s as if I saw things all over again. Zàijiàn.

It is typically taboo to say zàijiàn to the deceased, given the implication that you might follow them into the dark. But it’s difficult to stop when you’ve made a lifetime of promises to see them again. After I brought her to see “The Farewell,” my grandma remarked to me that she was thinking of her late husband, that she saw grandpa in the film. Maybe she’s hanging onto that latent promise. Maybe we are, too.

On occasion, it strikes me hard.

I’m standing by the door, ready to leave. But he catches my eye. And for a brief moment, I can see my grandpa, sitting at the kitchen table, picking off the ends of the green beans as he does, smiling. He waves, and then mouths something to me. Not a farewell.

A promise. Zàijiàn.

Arts & Living 12

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Jai Paul’s Newest Album Asserts Ownership of His Art

Photo courtesy of yourownradio.fr

The album cover of “Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones)” shows a tough-looking Paul, donning a jersey and streaked facepaint, in the middle of exploding chaos.

Jack Klein ’20 Staff Writer This summer, one of my friends sent me a review he had found of Jai Paul’s album “Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones).”

The first thing I noticed even before I listened to any of the songs was the album cover, which features the British producer and artist himself, wearing an electric blue rugby jersey underneath a neon Adidas red track jacket and donning blue face paint.

The rest of the cover explodes around him with other colors and images: bears, astronauts and coyotes with pixelated faces are meshed with hot air balloons and sports cars.

What I realized after listening to the album was that the eclectic cover mirrors Paul’s musical and artistic style — a controlled chaos and indulgence that stimulates the senses.

“Bait Ones” is genre-defying, able to be classified as alterna-

tive due to its content and Paul’s singing style, but also maintaining the tempo and feel of modern pop.

The first song on the album, “Str8 Outta Mumbai,” is a fusion of old and new — the traditional Indian tabla drum opening melts into a crooning chorus about Paul’s anxieties as he longs to talk to a girl he likes (“And she wants to talk to you but you don’t know what to say / and you don’t know what to do”).

The song is filled with an unexpected and incredible collection of 80s synths, layered over a sample from Vani Jairam’s “Bala Main Bairagan Hoongi.” Paul embraces his heritage by sampling sounds from traditional Indian music on his album.

Other highlights include “Crush,” Paul’s cover of Jennifer Paige’s 90s chart-topper of the same name, “Jasmine,” one of Paul’s first officially released synth-pop singles under the XL Recordings label and “Genevieve,” an energetic homage to a

lost lover.

One aspect of the album that a first-time listener might find strange is the presence of parenthetical descriptors, such as (Unfinished) and (Demo) after almost every song name. Even the name of the album is visually unappealing — “Leak 04-13” (Bait Ones)” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

The reasoning behind the naming schema is the most important aspect of Paul’s work — one which raises questions about the nature of property and the illusion of artistic control in the digital world.

“Bait Ones” was actually leaked in 2013 on a website called BandCamp. The source of the leak is still unknown, and is not really important. Paul’s mental and physical health reportedly deteriorated as a result of the betrayal, and he went into hiding.

This album is his first official release since the leak, and it has been a joy for fans to see him

back on his feet — but one has to wonder what could have been.

Whoever leaked the album robbed us of six years of Paul’s music-making prime. This is not mere speculation — many artists have used Paul’s beats, the most famous of which was Drake’s sampling of the intro of Paul’s “BTSTU” in his song “4pm in Calabasas.”

The benefits and harmful aspects of the digital era affect classes of artists differently. Established artists need to keep their music under lock and key until the official release date.

Otherwise, they could potentially lose millions of dollars due to the malfeasance of an adversary or even the sloppiness of a friend or assistant. These leaks can not only cause financial harm but also, as in the case of Paul, emotional damage.

It is encouraging that Paul was able to regain some semblance of control over his own music by re-releasing and likely profiting off of the album.

However, other artists might not be so lucky or have the support system that enabled Paul to take six years off of music and seek treatment while avoiding financial stress.

Paul had ample time to edit and master the tracks that comprise the album. However, he chose to keep them in their original form — to make the point that he still presides over his music.

The harsh reality is that just like many other artists, he does not have total control. We live in a world where bank hacks are a daily occurrence, and obtaining someone’s personal information is as simple as a dark web search.

Musicians whose work resides on a hard drive should take the necessary measures to secure the precious fruits of their labor.

Paul has learned his lesson, and we are all lucky that he officially released this gem of an album. This unique, well-produced work is definitely worth a listen.

Sports The Dominating Force of the Women’s Soccer Squad Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editor Amherst women’s soccer is as dominant, if not more so, than Alabama football (no, seriously) In Division 1 college football, teams from the top division, the 1A, routinely play teams from the second tier, 1AA in “tune-up” games that prepare their starters for the rest of the season, allow backups to see the field and gives coaches the chance to evaluate their players before more important conference or marquee matchups. Sounds like a win-win, right?

Well, it is. For everyone except the 1AA teams, who routinely travel to Alabama, to Clemson, and on and on, getting destroyed by schools they really have no business competing against.

Similarly, the Amherst women’s soccer team will again open its season against the Mount Holoyoke Lyons in an away contest on Sept. 5.

This will be the fifth season in a row that the Mammoths have begun their campaign against the Lyons. Since 2010, the Mammoths have played the Lyons in one of their first three matches each season, except in 2013 when the match was cancelled.

The comparison between Alabama football and Amherst women’s soccer might not be readily apparent, but it comes into sharper relief when the Mammoths’ unbelievably dominant record against the Lyons is examined.

The Mammoths have outscored the Lyons 47-1 since 2010, averaging almost six goals per game, while their opponents have only been able to muster 0.125 on average.

Needless to say, the Mammoths have not lost since 2010 to the Lyons, the last year that data was available for both teams.

The divergent fortunes of the Mammoths and the Lyons are also apparent when comparing overall

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

For the past five years, the women’s soccer team has opened their season against Mount Holyoke and dominated the games in a way not unlike the University of Alabama football squad. records over the same time frame, a useful barometer in determining team strength.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Since 2010, the Mammoths have not registered a losing season.Mount Holyoke, on the other hand, has had one winning season in the last decade.

Overall, the Mammoths have a record of 115 wins, 35 losses and 15 ties since 2010, while the Lyons have won 43 games, lost 104 and tied 10.

The numbers seem to indicate, in all fairness to Mount Holyoke, that the Amherst women’s soccer team is excellent, and the Mount Holyoke squad is not.

This yearly game is a recent phenomenon. Prior to 2010, the last time the Mammoths played the Lyons was in 2006, and this game was scheduled in the middle of the Mammoths’ non-conference schedule (Amherst won, 6-0).

It is only in the past decade or so that Amherst has taken to scheduling Mount Holyoke as its

first, or close to that, game, a glorified tune-up to get the squad ready for the year ahead.

But why? Most other NESCAC squads do not start their years with non-conference matchups, and none seem to have as easy a time beating these initial opponents as Amherst does.

The matchup does not seem to prime the Mammoths for success any more than their opponents.

And if some were to say, “Well, it’s a Five College rivalry!” one could then ask, “Then why don’t we play Smith every year, instead of just once in the last decade?”

The answer seems simple: Amherst enjoys steamrolling Mount Holyoke at the onset of every season.

So we return to D1 college football, and perhaps the highest-profile example of mismatched teams. In 2016, the top-ranked University of Alabama Crimson Tide faced off against the University of Chattanooga Mocs.

When asked before the game

whether or not he thought his team could win, the Chattanooga head coach said, “Everyone in the country knows it isn’t a great matchup. We’re going to play hard and that’s all we can ask.”

And play hard they did: Chattanooga stormed out to an early 3-0 lead after a field goal … and then promptly did not score again and saw Alabama reel off 31 straight points and cruise to a comfortable 31-3 victory. If one were to ask the Mount Holyoke coach a similar question, it is unlikely that they would be as blunt as the Chattanooga head coach.

However, it would be foolish to expect anything other than an opening-game drubbing for the Lyons, considering the consistent disparity between the two schools on the pitch.

Nick Saban, the head coach of the victorious 2016 Alabama squad, has consistently come out against these games between teams with wildly different skill levels, as recently as last week.

If it were up to him, games like Alabama vs. Chattanooga, Clemson vs. Wofford, Auburn vs. Mercer and, yes, Amherst vs. Mount Holyoke, would not exist.

This is not to say that when the Mammoths line up against the Lyons that they should take it easy, score two goals and then pass the ball around its defense.

To do anything less than compete and win to the best of their ability would be disrespectful to their opponents.

But, in the future, it might behoove the athletic department to question the virtue and value of having their squads voluntarily face off against teams that legitimately cannot compete with them.

A similar storyline to that of Alabama vs. Chattanooga is likely to play out on Sept. 5 when the Mammoths face the Lyons in their season opener.

At least Chattanooga scored some points against Alabama in 2016; history tells us that the Lyons will not.

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Sports 14

Fall Sports Preview Connor Haugh ’21 and Henry Newton ’21 Managing Sports Editors We’re in the business of making bold predictions. Our aim is not to incite, but rather to enable, you, the passing observer, with the ability to accurately talk about an Amherst sports team.

Perhaps it is just to a casual acquaintance or to your uncle who played football in college and always asks you about Amherst’s team.

Men’s Soccer Head coach Justin Serpone’s team is always a physical force of nature in the NESCAC. His philosophy emphasizes discipline and defensive stability in favor of possession and set pieces. It is a system designed for the brutality of the NESCAC and favors itself to tournament play.

Consequently, Amherst at its best can turn a game they are outgunned in into at least a 50-50 chance of victory.

Despite losing talismans like Luke Nguyen ’19, Fikayo Ajayi ’19 and keeper Michael Stone ’21 in the offseason, the squad will surely make a run in the NESCAC tournament, as well as the NCAA tournament.

Predicted Results: 5-2-3 in the regular season in NESCAC play.

This is good enough for a fourth place finish with an excellent run into the tournament, and at least a NESCAC semifinal berth.

Women’s Soccer The Mammoths have just one question mark on a seasoned roster this fall. They return standout goalie Antonia Tammaro ’21, their three starting center-halves, a stable of mobile wing-backs and their midfield engine room. The question remains, however, where head coach Su DelGuercio will find attacking talent worthy to replace all-american, NESCAC leading scorer and human goal machine Rubii Tamen ’19. Some combination of Navva Sedigh ’21 and Alexa Juarez ’22 seems like the obvious answer, but only time will tell if Amherst can replicate its excellent 15-3-2 record this season.

Predicted Results: Their closest NESCAC rivals, Tufts and Williams, have depreciated in strength after the loss of several core seniors, the conference seems ripe for the Mammoths to succeed.

Expect this team to make an 8-02 splash in the league this season and grace another NESCAC Final with their presence.

Field Hockey Since 2015, Amherst has not finished in the top four of the NESCAC. The squad has struggled against powerhouses like Tufts, Middlebury and Hamilton in recent seasons, and they will need to improve their conference record above .500 in order to compete.

A strong recruiting class, however, might change those odds for head coach Carol Knerr’s 19th season with Amherst. Expect Fran-

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Cutler Coleman ’20 will continue to lead the men’s soccer team on defense this fall.

ny Daniels ’21 to improve on her 14-goal run last season and senior Emilie Flamme to step into the limelight to take over netminder responsibilities. The loss of star attacker Kendall Codey ’19, however, will force Amherst into a pinch for goals.

Predicted results: 6-4 in the NESCAC and undefeated in non-conference play will get them a berth in the NESCAC tournament.

Volleyball After a program high 22-5 record last year, the Firedogs look to the 2019 fall season with relish.

Head coach Sue Everden returns all but two of her regular rotation of players, defensive specialist Hayes Honea ’19 and outside hitter Lauren Reppert ’19. They will look to enact revenge on Bowdoin, who stole the NESCAC title and a conference win from them last season, as well as a rematch with powerhouse Wellesley College in the Hall of Fame Tournament the Firedogs host every year.

Predicted Results: We have high hopes for this team. Returning a vast majority of its squad, Amherst will light up the NESCAC again, going 9-1 and facing off against Bowdoin in the finals.

We won’t, however, predict the result of that game.

Football The NESCAC has recently been dominated by two squads: Trinity and Amherst, both of which contended for the conference championship last year in what was again a near-miss for the Mammoths, seeing them finish just behind the Bantams for the second year in a row. Both teams finished at 8-1, but the Bantams victory over the Mammoths saw them secure the conference title.

Amherst again looks to be in contention for post-season honors, as the Mammoths return starting quarterback Ollie Eberth ’20, and many of their other starters.

One notable absence: all-american lineman Andrew Yamin ’19, whose disruptive defensive play

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Franny Daniels ’21 played an important role on the field hockey team’s offense last season with a 14-goal run. will surely be missed.

Predicted results: The maturation of the offensive line will mean Amherst has a better chance against Wesleyan, Williams and Trinity. Football, however, is a game too rife with contingencies to predict games like those with such slim margins for error. Expect them to stomp the other six teams though.

Men’s Cross Country: This is a do-or-die season for Amherst in terms of continuing program success. The team lost several of its aces, seniors Cosmo Brossy, Tucker Meijer, and Kirstian Sogaard. They will, therefore, have difficulty defending their Little Three and NESCAC Championships, as well as repeating their sixth-place finish at the NCAA finals. Head coach Cassie Funke-Harris, however, now in her sophomore season, will certainly hope to coax excellent runners like Clark Ricciardelli ’20E to new heights.

Predicted Results: A respectable fourth-place finish at the NESCAC Championships, as they have lost too much talent.

Women’s Cross Country With only one senior healthy throughout last season, the team has several bright spots to look forward to. Olivia Polischeck ’21, Sarah Gayer ’21 and Kristin Ratliff ’20 all return as crucial members of the scoring five, and a batch of new recruits, after just Julia Dobson ’22 competed last year, will surely propel the squad to success

in the fall. The Mammoths, however, face a difficult challenge in the season to come.

Predicted Results: The Mammoths will beat Wesleyan at the Little Threes and will cap off the season with a fourth-place finish at the NESCAC Championship.

The Short Seasons These teams play in both the fall and spring, with more value placed on the spring season.

Women’s Golf Isabelle Ouyang ’21, India Gaume ’22 and Morgan Yurosek ’20 will lead the charge for the ever-improving Amherst squad this season.

Men’s Golf After a shaky start which saw them fail to qualify for the NESCAC Tournament for the first time in years, Amherst will look to make a push to beat out their opponents in fall play.

Women’s Tennis One can only hope that the younger Mammoths have as great of a start as Jackie Buzkin ’22 did last fall, when she won the singles bracket of the inaugural England Individual Tennis Tournament.

Men’s Tennis Traditionally, younger players prove themselves in the fall tournaments for the Mammoths, and as Amherst finished sixth overall in DIII last spring, the newcomers will be hard pressed to break into the ladder.

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

A Statistical Perspective on the Volleyball Team’s Future Connor Haugh ’21 Managing Sports Editor Last year, the Firedogs went 22-5 overall and 8-2 in the NESCAC, where they lost in the finals of the tournament. This season, they return all but two players. I want to know if the Mammoths can easily replace outside hitter Lauren Reppert ’19 and defensive specialist Hayes Honea ’19 this season. The way to do that is to calculate Wins Above Replacement (WAR). This is a metric which attempts to capture the overall worth of a given player in terms of wins the team would lose or gain if the player was replaced by an average player.

The first thing to consider when calculating WAR is the contribution of each player to the team. In volleyball, we can think of this as both offensive (hitting the ball over the net) and defensive (hitting the ball so it doesn’t hit the floor) metrics. Honea, who was responsible for the back line defense has an offensive contribution metric of 0.037. Reppert, an outside hitter, has .194. Honea has lower offensive requirements in her position, so this is to be expected. What the work of Alan Reifman, professor of statistics at Texas Tech and contributor at VolleyMetrics.com, has shown, however, is that the key indicator of team success is hitting percentage. That holds for the NESCAC as well.

A win in the NESCAC is roughly worth 0.05 hitting percentage.

Our offensive metric is essentially a more nuanced version of hitting

percentage, which includes serves and assists, so Honea’s offensive value of .037 can be converted into +0.74 wins. Reppert seems to be worth about +3.88 wins.

To extrapolate wins to wins above replacement, we have to find the cluster of players who could represent an average player who might replace Honea or Reppert.

Of these players, their average offensive metric is 0.248. Statistically, then, an average defensive specialist is worth +4.96 wins, and therefore Honea could be easily replaced offensively. This might tell us that our metrics might need finer tuning or that volleyball doesn’t lend itself to Win Replacement. However, Honea appears to be a very “defensive” defensive specialist who doesn’t serve often, but gets a lot of digs and assists. Perhaps a better server could lead to better offensive metrics and more success.

Reppert, on the other hand, tells us a different story. Her +3.88 win value exceeds the average win value of outside hitters under the same parameters by a whole win.

Since outside hitters have a higher offensive volume, Repperts’ contributions make her more necessary to produce wins, rather than prevent losses like Honea. As hitting percentages are so crucial to wins, it seems that Honea should be easily replaced by a strong serving defensive specialist, like Skyleur Savage ’22. Savage had nearly as many service aces as Honea in half as many sets played. Reppert’s value, however, will be more difficult to pin down.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

The Firedogs will have a hard time replacing Lauren Reppert ’19, who contributed +3.88 wins as an outside hitter.

Sports 15

Views From Sparrow’s Nest Matt Sparrow ’21 Columnist Matt Sparrow examines the retirement of quarterback Andrew Luck from the Indianapolis Colts. He suspects that Luck, like many other “retired” NFL players, will return to the football field at some point in the future.

In one of the most stunning announcements in recent football memory, Indianapolis Colts starting quarterback Andrew Luck announced his retirement from the NFL. Calling it “the hardest decision of my life” and citing both the physical and mental toll that the game had taken on him, Luck decided that “the only way forward for me is to remove myself from football.”

At just 29 years old, the reigning Comeback Player of the Year joins a list of other NFL greats including Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Calvin Johnson and, most recently, Rob Gronkowski, to call it quits right around their age-30 seasons. However, what makes Luck’s choice all the more surprising is that in the quarterback position, he was just entering the prime of his career. 42-year-old Tom Brady, 40-year-old Drew Brees, and 37-year-olds Phillip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger still rank among the top signal-callers in the league despite their advanced age. And while I commend Luck for walking away from a game that’s taken away so much from so many, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him playing on a football field.

Andrew Luck has been around a football field basically since birth.

His father, Oliver Luck, was a former NFL quarterback for the Houston Oilers before becoming the president of the World League of American Football. As such, the younger Luck spent the earlier part of his childhood in both England and Germany. Andrew moved back to Houston when his father was named the CEO of the Harris County–Houston Sports Authority and he went on to excel both on and off the field at Stratford High School. He was selected to the Army All-American Bowl in addition to being the co-valedictorian at Stratford, giving him his pick of many top D1 schools, but he chose to attend Stanford after being recruited by head coach Jim Harbaugh.

Playing for the Cardinals, Luck Questions lingered about whether redshirted his first year before taking or not he’d be able to throw a footover the starting job the following ball again, but his 2018 season put season and not letting go of it for those concerns to bed as he led the the rest of his time there. He was the Colts on an 11-game winning streak presumptive No. 1 overall pick in en route to being awarded the NFL the 2011 NFL Draft, but Luck decid- Comeback Player of the Year. This ed to return to Stanford in order to was going to be Luck’s coup de grâce, finish his degree and get one more the year when everything finally shot at winning a national cham- clicked and he turned the Colts from pionship. While his playoff fodder to Super title dreams wouldn’t Bowl contenders. But come to fruition, he did that never materialized. have a record-setting A calf injury slowed season, winning the him in training camp, Maxwell Award and and when the healing Walter Camp Player process became longer of the Year Award and than expected, Luck finishing second in hung up his cleats and Heisman voting. With called it a career.

Wikimedia Commons nothing left to prove Except I don’t think Andrew Luck at the college-level, Luck that’s it for Luck. We announced that he was entering the have seen this from players before.

2012 NFL Draft as one of the most Star running back Marshawn Lynch hyped prospects in sports history. retired for a season before coming In an exciting race to see who back to play for his hometown Oakcould “Suck for Luck” and end with land Raiders just a few years ago. the worst record in football, the Indi- Brett Favre came out of retirement anapolis Colts beat out the St. Louis twice. But for Luck, I think that this Rams and the Cleveland Browns for was more an emotional decision the right to draft Luck first overall. than a physical one. He clearly still The Colts had just released a quar- has the tools and ability to be an elite terback of their own, Peyton Man- quarterback in the NFL. It’s probably ning, to allow Luck to take over the frustrating for him to have to rehab franchise from day one. It seemed once again after all of the time he put like a match made in heaven as Luck in last year, so he might need some made the Pro Bowl in his first three time to not have his mind on footseasons, just as the Colts made the ball. Colts owner Jim Irsay certainly playoffs in their first three seasons. did Luck a favor by letting him keep This includes an AFC Champion- nearly $25 million of the signing boship game in 2014 when he led the nus from his deal, but the brash ownleague in touchdowns. Their for- er made no secret that he hopes Luck tunes started to change the next year, will return to Indianapolis. And even however, as Luck would miss nine if Luck doesn’t want to play anothgames with a lacerated kidney and er down in the NFL, he might have partially torn abdominal muscle. He another option. The XFL is set to bounced back the next year, but in- return in the spring of 2020, with Oljuries started to take their toll. After iver Luck as the commissioner. They the 2016 season, he went under the have a franchise in Luck’s hometown knife to repair an issue with his right of Houston, and given that they have shoulder. He wound up missing the no players currently on their roster, entire season even though he was something tells me they could use a supposed to be ready for week one. quarterback.

The Amherst Student • August 30, 2019

Sports 16

Duos to Keep an Eye on This Fall

Connor Haugh ’21 Managing Sports Editor

This summer felt entirely devoid of quality buddy-cop or hero-sidekick movies (looking at you “Hobbes and Shaw,” even as a “Fast & Furious” superfan).

Jason Statham and The Rock could not cook up enough gritty, showstopping synergy for me, so let’s consider the top partnersin-crime for Amherst this fall.

Tennis’ Class of 2022 At the start of last autumn, if you had asked me which team’s recruiting class would have had the most immediate impact, I would have gotten the answer

wrong, since the women’s tennis team wouldn’t have crossed my mind.

That’s my fault, as this past fall, Jackie Buzkin ’22 and Claire Evans ’22 stormed onto the scene.

Buzkin won an Intercollegiate Tennis Association Regional Championship title, kicking off her collegiate career and an impressive spring.

Alongside Evans, she also placed fourth in the doubles bracket, demonstrating that the new generation of Mammoths on the court are a force to be reckoned with.

This fall can only hold more success for the pair as they take

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Jackie Buzkin ’22 stormed onto the scene last year and is expected to continue her dominance into the fall season.

GAME SCHE DULE

down all opposition on grass, clay and concrete alike. (I strongly doubt much collegiate tennis is played on grass or clay, but yours truly has never set foot on any collegiate tennis court other than the illustrious South Tennis Courts.)

Navva & Alexa The women’s soccer team is afforded a unique opportunity.

Their intense, possession-based system – stacking only three defenders behind five midfielders – allows them to play two attacking players with limited defensive duties.

This season’s strike partnership has equal parts grace under pressure, unabashed confidence and creative artistry to hopefully produce awe-inspiring goals.

Alexa Juarez ’22 has a nose for the goal and is lethal in the six-yard box.

Last season, she haunted the left central defender, creating space for her teammates while positioning herself to go for the jugular.

Navva Sedigh ’21 complements Juarez’s poacher mentality with creativity and guile.

She roams in wide spaces, drops deep to aid in build-up play and played an important role without the ball, pressuring opposition

WED

FRI

Men’s Soccer vs. Nichols, 4:30 p.m.

Volleyball vs. Smith, 7 p.m.

THU

SAT

Women’s Soccer @ Mount Holyoke, 6 p.m.

Field Hockey @ Mount Holyoke, 7 p.m.

Men’s Golf @ Detrick Invitational Field Hockey vs. Bowdoin, 11 a.m.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Biafra Okoronkwo ’20, left, and Ollie Eberth ’20, right, are a threat on the field when paired together. center-halves.

Certainly, one may ask a lot for these two, as they replace one of the most talented players Hitchock Field has seen in All-American Rubii Tamen ’19.

In tandem, however, they bring the shrewd confidence in their abilities that are necessary of strikers and will be a joy to watch this coming season.

Ollie & Biafra Biafra Okoronkwo ’20 began his career as an understudy to human-battering ram Jack Hickey ’19, putting up two stellar performances his sophomore season.

Last fall, when Hickey was sidelined with an injury,

Volleyball @ Western New England, 11 a.m.

Okoronkwo took half of all the Mammoths’ carries, and ran just eight fewer yards than three-time all-NESCAC Hickey.

This year, Okoronkwo will likely emerge as the primary usage tailback, utilizing his ability to read the play in front of him to turn openings into big gains.

Ollie Eberth ’20, who has led the Mammoths’ offense since his sophomore year, will rely on Okoronkwo to shoulder some of the load, but Eberth is a dual-threat player, who is unafraid to put the ball in the air or run it down the field himself.

Expect, especially with a maturing supporting cast of linemen, that these two will put on quite a show in their last hurrah.

SUN

Volleyball vs. Emerson, 1 p.m.

Men’s Golf @ Detrick Invitational

Field Hockey vs. Bowdoin, 11 a.m.

Women’s Soccer @ Smith, 2 p.m.

Women’s Soccer vs. Bowdoin, noon.

Men’s Soccer vs. Bowdoin, 2:30 p.m.