THE AMHERST
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 4 l WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2017
Field Hockey Notches Impressive Victories See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU
Students Host Disability and Inclusion Forum Shawna Chen ’20 Managing News Editor
Photo courtesy of Faith Wen ’20
Representatives tabled at Valentine Dining Hall to publicize the College Council’s release of a survey on Wednesday, Sept. 20, that evaluates the future of cable television in student dormitories.
Cable TV Survey to Reassess Student Needs Emma Wilfert ’20 Staff Writer The College Council distributed a survey to students through email regarding the college’s television programming on Wednesday, Sept. 20. Voting will remain open until Oct. 4. Since 1997, Amherst has provided cable television in dormitories’ common areas. As usage of these televisions declines, the Council is giving students the option of reallocating some or all of the approximately $100,000 spent on cable to other student activities. Professor Andrew Dole, who currently serves on the College Council, said in an email that this cost to students is the primary concern regarding cable TV. According to Dole, “Every student pays a fairly large amount of money to the College for cable TV, but very few students actually use the service.” The survey was sent out by Chief Information Officer David Hamilton and included three different options with pros and cons listed for each. Students could choose to maintain the “status
quo” and continue receiving consistent access to cable programming. With this option, programming would stay the same. The survey noted that this is particularly useful for live access to sports programming and political coverage. Alternatively, Amherst could eliminate its cable services from common areas altogether. While certain programs would be harder to access online, this option would allow the College Council to return the $100,000 currently spent on cable to the Student Affairs budget. The third option would result in the pursuit of “a new model of providing television programming,” the survey said. According to the survey, this option would entail installing more modern programming with channel guides, digital video recorder and pay-per-view programming while maintaining access to sports programming. This change could potentially save the student body up to $60,000, but the survey also noted that if cable usage increased under this new program, costs could rise even higher than it currently is and some costs may be covered through a student billing service.
Benjamin Aliaga ’21 voted to eliminate cable from dorm rooms completely. “When most students watch TV, they use Netflix or Hulu or some sort of streaming service,” Aliaga said. Considering how little cable is currently used, he said, he would rather see the $100,000 go to the Student Affairs budget. “I think it would be good to funnel at least part of the money into [RC’s budgets], so we could do more fun things as a dorm,” Aliaga said. First-year dorms in particular could use more money for “bonding activities,” he added. According to Dole, the individual or office that would decide how the money would be spent is still undecided. “There would have to be a subsequent set of conversations about how the Student Affairs budget would be impacted by this,” he wrote. He added later in an in-person interview, “The process of deciding what would happen to the money would involve both the administration and the student body.”
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Students held a forum on disability and inclusion on Friday, Sept. 22, to discuss issues of accessibility on campus. Organized by Matt Walsh ’19 and Annika Ariel ’19, the forum was an open space for conversation on topics ranging from misperceptions of disability to steps the administration could take to better address inclusion. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), discrimination against individuals with disabilities is prohibited in all areas of public life, including school, as well as public and private places open to the general public. The college’s Office of Accessibility Services is led by Accessibility Services Manager Jodi Foley and offers accommodations to students with documented disabilities according to the college website. Ariel is a member of the Presidential Task Force on Accessibility and Inclusion, but the forum was organized independently of the task force and was not sponsored by any student organization. Walsh and Ariel started the dialogue by asking students to introduce themselves and why they were at the forum. Most students came with the intention to learn more about issues of accessibility both on a personal and campus-wide level. “Coming to Amherst, I was very interested in getting more active in different political spheres and learning about racism and all the ‘-isms,’” Alyssa Snyder ’19 said. “One that I’m very much lacking knowledge about is ableism.” Hannah Firestone ’19 also said her interest in the forum stemmed “from loved ones who need accessibility and don’t have accessibility.” The forum moved into discussing perceptions of disability on campus. Ariel noted that the ADA “takes a really broad definition of accessibility.” Walsh added that disability “isn’t binary.” Rather, he said, it’s “about the things that you need to fully access the resources that Amherst has.” “It’s not even necessarily an issue of being able or disabled,” he said. “It’s about equal access in designing this school physically and policy-wise so everyone can access it, not just people who are ‘not
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‘Trump: Point/Counterpoint’ Features Diverse Ideologies Ariana Lee ’20 Staff Writer An ongoing conversation series, titled “Trump: Point/Counterpoint,” began on Sept. 19 and will continue until Nov. 16. Featuring various guests in discussion on issues relating to the current political climate, the five-part series is hosted by Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring professor of humanities and Latin American and Latino culture, and is funded by alumni William Eisen ’70 and Robert Duboff ’70 in celebration of their approaching 50th reunion. “Trump: Point/Counterpoint” was originally created as a “concept to help engender openmindedness at Amherst through a seminar which demonstrates the value of considering points of view other than your own as a key part of education,” said Eisen and Duboff in a joint email statement. “Professor Stavans decided to use the current political protagonist as an ideal
environment.” “It seems to me that we do a disservice to ourselves, certainly to the younger generation, the student generation, when there is a diversity of racial or class or geographic, national, international backgrounds, but not a diversity of political ideological views,” Stavans said. “It’s very important to me to open up to different views and understand them and not ridicule them or [stereotype] them.” The series features four speakers, two representing one ideological viewpoint and the others representing the other side. Speakers engage in a one-on-one dialogue with Stavans, during which they answer specific questions and present their own arguments. The fifth component of the series will focus on immigration, and in that event, members of the community — including local workers, students, restaurant staff, janitors and gardeners — will share their stories. Speakers featured in this series “have distin-
guished themselves for having viewpoints that are strong and clearly presented, and are rational [and] intelligible in the way they pitch [viewpoints] to the general public,” said Stavans. “In the media in general … there are a lot of people screaming and shouting, and what I wanted was people who would talk — who would engage coherently and rationally.” The biggest challenge, Stavans said, is “seeing what we do with the information that [speakers] provide to us” and how “respectful we can be with people whose views are clearly going to be very different from ours.” “Can we allow ourselves to be exposed to those views and engage with them without screaming and shouting or silencing them?” he said. The first event in the series, “Why BLACK LIVES MATTER Matters,” took place on Sept. 19 with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wesley Lowery. Lowery covers law enforcement, race
and justice for The Washington Post. “I went to hear Wesley Lowery talk because I remembered reading his work when he wrote for the Boston Globe,” said Jeremy Margolis ’19. “On one of the nights of the [Ferguson] protest, Lowery was arrested while he reported from a local McDonald’s, and I remember following along as that took place. It was really powerful to hear him tell that story during his talk last week.” Through this series, Eisen and Duboff hope that the Amherst community will “foster … a willingness to welcome all viewpoints that are expressed without violence.” The next conversation, “Illiberalism in the Age of Trump,” is set for Thursday, Sept. 28 at 7 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium and will feature The New York Times reporter Bret Stephens, who has won a Pulitzer Prize and written the book “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.”