Baseball Records Third Straight Sweep of Ephs See Sports, Page 9
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Students Search for Clarity in Party Registration Policy Ethan Corey Managing News Editor This is the first of a two-part series on the College’s alcohol policy. The second part will be in next week’s issue. According to the Dean of Student Activities’s web-page, all parties must be registered with the College if any of the following conditions apply: College funds are used, common or public space is used, the party is being advertised, when alcohol is being served in a common or public space. In order to register a party, students must complete a party notification form including the date, time, location and expected attendance of the event and turn in the form to the Dean of Student Activities at least five business days in advance of the event — two weeks in advance if expected attendance is 75 or more or if alcohol will be served. Additionally, the sponsor of the party must meet with the Dean of Student Activities in order to review College policy and the details of the party notification form and fill out a common area reservation form in order to guarantee the space at which the party will take place. Once this has been done, the sponsor of the party must distribute the completed party notification forms to the Campus Police Department and in some cases to the Lead Party Monitor as well, as determined by the Dean of Student Activities. Moreover, in order to be eligible to be registered as a party, the event must take place in one of the College’s “designated campuswide party venues:� Crossett and Stone basements, Seelye and Hitchcock first floors, Lipton first floor and basement,
Keefe Campus Center, O’Connor Commons, Alumni and Lefrak gymnasiums and several outdoor locations. According to Hannah Fatemi, Dean of Student Activities, party registration is important for ensuring student safety and compliance with College policies. “The college’s party policy has been approved by the College to facilitate the planning of safe and successful parties and events, to assist in the adherence to college policies and procedures, to comply with Town of Amherst and Massachusetts laws and regulations and to ensure sufficient time for the coordination of facilities, support services and security,� Dean Fatemi said. However, the difficult and confusing nature of this process has meant that the vast majority of parties at the College — only about 40 parties are officially registered with the school each year, even though campus police records shutting down upwards of 140 parties each year for noise complaints and other violations. Additionally, the limited number of spaces listed as “designated party spaces� has meant that students wishing to hold parties in other venues have been unable to have their events registered. For example, Monica Cesinger ’15, president of Marsh Arts House, recalls struggling to have Marsh Mardi Gras, an annual event that has had no problems in past years, registered as a party with the College. “I went in to try to register Marsh Mardi Gras as a party, because it’s something that has happened in Marsh for years, and it’s kind of a tradition. Nothing seems to have been wrong with it in previous years, but when I went to register it as an event, Dean
Photo Courtesy of Chief John Carter
Only about 40 parties are officially registered with the school each year, even though campus police records shutting down upwards of 140 parties each year. Fatemi said that no parties would ever be allowed to be registered in Marsh,� Cesinger said. “I thought that was kind of strange because I’ve been to parties in Marsh, and they’re just a completely different social experience than parties in the Socials. I asked her why Marsh was allowed to have registered events like Coffee Haus but not parties, and she said that it was because it was an event, not a party. I asked her what the difference was between an event and a party and she said that a party has a DJ and people dancing, while Coffee Haus does not.� Dean Fatemi confirmed this distinction between events and parties and said that the distinction resulted from the Massachusetts crowd management law passed in 2011, which requires that there be a designated crowd manager whenever there is a gathering with am-
plified music and dancing in a room with a capacity of 99 or more. “Students can have campus-wide gatherings, but it has to be in a venue that is designated to accommodate a dance party. The goal is always to try to give students options to help them create the program and experience that they want. If students want to have a dance party, there are all of the other spaces that we have designated to have those events. If students are flexible enough to envision their program in the way that the College has defined for use of the spaces that we have that’s where they can take their idea and make it happen,� Dean Fatemi said. Yet, this explanation did not satisfy Cesinger, who said that she was frustrated that her attempts to accommodate the College in planning the event failed and called the College’s party
policy “Footloose-like� in its ban on dancing, after the 1984 film of the same name about a town that banned dancing. “It’s really absurd that when a group of students tries to make any kind of event or party on campus into a safe space where student security is present so that students can feel safer, they actually can’t. I’m not allowed to bring student security in for events in Marsh that involve dancing and music,� Cesinger said. “I find that really absurd because I was trying to accommodate Amherst administration, and we were really willing to cooperate. The Amherst administration is preventing students from creating safe party spaces through the party registration atmosphere and the party registration process.� Moreover, the crowd manager requirement for registered parties means that registering parties with the College can be prohibitively expensive unless students also have College funding for the event, according to Lindon Chen ’15, who has organized several registered parties and concerts with the College. “You have to pay for a crowd manager. The crowd manager costs $34 an hour. It seems like this would be impossible for a regular party; you don’t want to hire a police officer to be there for three hours for just a casual gathering,� Chen said. Additionally, the restriction of registered parties to spaces officially designated as party venues by the College has struck some students as arbitrary, capricious and counterproductive. For instance, although the Marsh ballroom Continued on Page 2
Faculty Vote Down Joining edX Pilot Program Alissa Rothman ’15 Assistant Editor-in-Chief On April 16, the faculty met to discuss the motion to join the edX and begin creating MOOCs through their company. The faculty voted against joining edX, instead approving a motion to have the College pursue its own initiatives to move more class material and classes online and to create ways to incorporate technology in the classroom. The faculty meeting opened up with remarks from President Carolyn “Biddy� Martin on the death of Five-College Fellow Merle Ivone Barriga Ramirez, who worked in the Department of Theater and Dance. After her remarks the faculty observed a moment of silence. Dean of the Faculty Gregory Call then made a few remarks, stating that edX had recently proposed another option to the faculty regarding its programming, offering a self-supported model, otherwise known as the edX “beta� MOOC model, as an alternative to their “supported� MOOC model. This model would allow the College to decide whether or not to offer a certificate the first time each course was offered and would not have to pay edX for the initial beta courses. However, if a course was offered more than once, certificates would be required and the College would still have to cre-
ate the courses themselves and would get minimal assistance from edX when creating the courses, which would incur infrastructure and staffing costs to the College. This resulted in three options, the edX “supported� MOOC model, the edX “beta� MOOC model and the option of the College working to create more open source options itself, all of which would have comparable costs. The faculty opened up the discussion of MOOCs with the “Sarat� Motion, put forth by LJST and Political Science Professor Austin Sarat, which stated “that the Faculty endorse Amherst College’s participation in the AmherstX pilot project and within five years vote on whether Amherst College should continue to offer online courses.� However, another motion was put forth by Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Stephen George as an alternative motion, which stated “The Faculty ask that the College invest in making it possible for Amherst courses and course materials to be available online, to the extent desired by those teaching the courses. The online courses would be free of charge and without credit or other certification. Amherst’s stated mission is to offer ‘learning through close colloquy’ that takes place ‘in a purposefully small residential community.’ That mission is best served by having the College itself, rather than an outside organization that offers so-
called massive open online courses, develop and offer these online courses and course materials.� Professor George presented this motion as a way to reject joining MOOC organizations such as edX while moving forward with online courses and course materials to try to continue to improve classes. He stated that there were other options for obtaining technology similar to those offered by edX, and that joining MOOC programs weren’t necessary to gain access to those technologies. Furthermore, he stated that there were better ways to assess student learning than simply giving out a grade, such as giving comments that help students grow, and that edX as it currently stands is not capable of providing this through their technology. Furthermore, he said there were other ways to increase the visibility of the College, such as putting more materials online directly, and that pursuing online education on their own would allow professors more freedom to teach their way. Other professors agreed, adding that they were underwhelmed by the tools edX currently offered, that edX seemed too new and unreliable a program, that there were better things to spend money on and that the requirement to offer certificates, either immediately or after the first time the course is offered, was against the College’s interests. However, other faculty members were for join-
ing edX, and were particularly drawn to the new “beta� model due the optional nature of offering certificates for the original courses. The proponents of edX insisted that it would not be easy for the College to set up technology that edX provides, that edX evolving was a good sign because they were becoming more flexible to the College’s demands and cheaper, that with the “George� motion faculty members would be unable to experiment with MOOCs, that if the College did not join edX now it was unlikely that the College would make the effort to create the technology offered by edX and that online education and MOOCs are not going away, and it would be beneficial for faculty to have the experience of creating MOOCs so that they can help make better MOOC programs. The faculty then voted to adopt the “George� motion over the “Sarat� motion, and ended up approving the “George� motion by paper ballot, with 70 yeses, 36 noes and five abstentions. Following the vote, President Martin stated that the College would not sit by and do nothing when it comes to online education and improving technology in the classroom, stating that they can not sit on the laurels of being Amherst forever, and that many faculty members want to do more and should be able to do more when it comes to experimenting with online learning and technology.
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