THE AMHERST
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 10 l WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2017
Men’s Soccer Advances to Sweet Sixteen See Sports, Page 12 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU
Obama Staffer Speaks on Climate Change Emily Young ’20 Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Faith Wen ’20
Route 9 and South Pleasant Street are public roadways on which some students have experienced vehicle accidents. Amherst College Police Chief John Carter said his department has taken measures to improve safety on these streets.
Traffic Safety Concerns Persist for Some Students Shawna Chen ’20 and Emma Swislow ’20 Managing News Editor and Assistant News Editor During a late afternoon last October, Lizzie Lacy ’19 was crossing Route 9 near Valentine Dining Hall when she saw a car approaching. The driver, a student at UMass Amherst, slowed down. “I thought he was stopping, since he saw me,” she said. But he didn’t, and she was hit, going over the hood of the car to the side of the road. The driver “seemed really frazzled,” Lacy recalled, and pulled into the next parking lot “freaking out” and asking her if she needed to go to a
hospital. But she felt that “there was nothing immediately wrong with me,” and it was an accident, so she didn’t consider calling campus or town police. The driver told Lacy that the glare of the setting sun had compromised his vision when she crossed. Lacy said she replied that she understood the issue, adding that he should still have accounted for that while driving. Later, however, Lacy’s hip began hurting and remained painful for a few months, which affected her performance as a runner on the women’s cross country team.
Traffic Accidents According to Amherst College Police Chief John Carter, the majority of the traffic accidents on campus are “parking-lot-type accidents” — slow and easy to report. From 2014 and 2016, campus police received 129 total calls involving vehicle accidents. Each year, Fayerweather Drive saw the highest number of accidents, excluding off-campus accidents involving pool vehicles. The First-Year Quad is another location where accidents frequently occur, with a total of 10 throughout the time period.
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Dan Utech ’88, former deputy assistant to President Barack Obama for energy and climate change, spoke at the college on Wednesday, Nov. 8 about issues related to the state of climate change and potential policy solutions. Utech’s talk, which took place in Converse Hall, was held by the Amherst Political Union. Before becoming Obama’s deputy assistant for energy and climate change, Utech spent 10 years as an aide in the Senate and later served as senior advisor to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, according to the White House website. Utech is currently a lecturer at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. In his talk, Utech focused on the human contribution to the problem of climate change and policy options to remedy the effects of global warming. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of global warming since the mid-20th century,” Utech said. “There are no convincing alternative explanations supported by the extent of observational evidence,” Utech added. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, according to NASA, and Utech said that this trend is likely to continue through this century and beyond. The magnitude of this trend is partially based on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted globally. In 2010, human activity had contributed 46
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Proposed Tax Bill Poses Problems to College, Students and Alums Kathleen Maeder ’20 Staff Writer Days after the announcement of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, introduced by the House Committee on Ways and Means on Nov. 2, the college publicized its concerns with various elements of the bill, including a proposed excise tax on some colleges’ endowments. President Biddy Martin’s email, sent to the Amherst community on Nov. 7 and published online, outlined the elements of the bill that she said may threaten the college’s ability to fully support its mission and students. Martin’s email highlighted a specific proposal to establish an excise tax on the college’s endowment earnings. Unlike many universities, Amherst receives over 50 percent of its budget for operations through its endowment, making any significant taxes on endowment a fairly serious concern for the college. “The exact financial impact of the proposed endowment tax on Amherst is not clear at this early point; it will depend on the final definition of net investment income and future investment performance,” Martin said. Unlike for-profit corporations, which Martin said are able to “fund federal income taxes from free-and-clear operating profits,” Amherst and other not-for-profit institutions are unable to do the same. “Our early estimates suggest the impact on Amherst could be in the tens of millions of dollars over the next decade,” Martin said.
Her email concluded with a call for community members to contact their federal elected officials to voice their opinions and concerns with the bill. Dean of Financial Aid Gail Holt said that currently, there have been no specific discussions regarding where money would come from to reconcile losses in the endowment should the tax plan pass. “What I will say is that Amherst has been, always been and I hope will continue to be, dedicated to the financial aid program,” Holt said. “I think that’s evident in the policies we have today, which are more generous than others.” According to Holt, similar threats to the college’s endowment in the past have taken the form of proposals on the state level. “But they’ve never passed, and I think the reason they don’t pass is because the value that legislators come to realize in terms of the public good that institutions are serving,” Holt said. “All the dollars that Amherst is bringing in are trying to benefit students … Biddy’s letter, I think, is quite clear in helping our community understand what’s at stake.” Holt also drew attention to other areas of the bill that could potentially impact students, such as the act’s proposed eliminations of tax deductions on student loan interest. With approximately 29 percent of the class of 2017 graduating with student loans, according to the college’s financial aid website, the possible removal of this provision raises concerns for many current and future Am-
herst graduates. “This is an opportunity for students to speak out and say, ‘Listen, we’re already paying as much as we can, we’re already struggling to afford an education so that we can go out and contribute to the public good. Our college is helping us as well, and we want you to recognize that support,’” said Holt. Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Kevin Weinman said in an email interview that the college is “closely monitoring developments on Capitol Hill” and called the tax proposal “disheartening.” A tax on net investment income would reduce future endowment valuation, he said, and decrease funds available for future budgets. It could also serve to discourage future gifts to endowments, according to Weinman. Further, he said the proposal to eliminate tax-exempt financing by not-for-profit institutions would make borrowing more costly and harm the college’s ability to undertake future facility renovations and construction projects. “It is my hope that there will be a realization of the societal benefits provided by higher education institutions of all types, and that these proposals will continue to evolve to remove the elements that would harm the educational mission and affordability of colleges and universities,” Weinman said. Daniel Ang ’15 voiced his concerns with the proposal in an online interview. As an Amherst alumnus and current graduate student at Harvard University, he criticized a particular component of
the bill that would tax graduate students’ tuition waivers as income. “I think this is unfair for students in researchoriented Ph.D. programs, because most programs are structured like a full-time job rather than an educational program focused on taking courses,” Ang said. “Most of our time is spent working in the labs or teaching. Most graduate students, including myself, entered such programs with the understanding that they come with a full, tax-free and loan-free tuition waiver on top of the stipend we are paid for our full-time work.” Senate Republicans released their own tax plan proposal several days after their counterparts in the House unveiled their bill. Though this plan retains the endowment tax present in the House version of the bill, the portion of the proposal that allows graduate students’ waivers to be taxed as income was removed. Ang, however, was still frustrated by this development and by the lack of significant media attention surrounding the tax plan. “This only further illustrates my frustration with how little conversation is taking place about this outside of graduate student and higher education circles — that such a provision can be added or deleted without much fanfare from major news publications,” Ang said. “This seems to show that our Ph.D. programs in the sciences are not regarded as very significant by Congress, despite that they are the only pipeline by which we produce future scientists and scholars — the drivers of technological innovation and hence economic competitiveness,” Ang added.