THE AMHERST
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVII, ISSUE 7 l WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2017
Men’s Soccer Sweeps Homecoming Weekend Doubleheader See Sports, Page 10 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU
Suzanne Coffey Announces Retirement Emily Young ’20 Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Faith Wen ’20
Climate Camp events took place on the Quad from Oct. 11-13 in support of divesting Amherst’s endowment from fossil fuels and private prisons.
DACC Hosts Three-Day ‘Climate Camp’ Kathleen Maeder ’20 Staff Writer Direct Action Coordinating Committee (DACC), a student-run group that aims to promote student rights and social justice on campus, hosted a three-day event called Climate Camp on Oct. 11-13. The event, intended to raise campus-wide awareness and support for divestment of the college’s endowment from fossil fuels and indirect investments in private prisons, took place as a camp-out on the First-Year Quad. The event is part of DACC’s ongoing push for the college’s divestment from sources the group deems problematic, namely investments linked to fossil fuels or private prisons. On the event’s Facebook page, organizers wrote that “DACC believes that the word ‘climate’ does not only have an ecological meaning. ‘Climate’ is also the climate of racialized violence … and the climate of our campus.” The event began with opening remarks and a debate between representatives from the Amherst College Democrats, Amherst College Republicans and DACC. Their dialogue focused on the merits
of a divestment-focused strategy for the college, international environmental agreements and other questions raised by climate change. DACC encouraged students to participate in “fossil fuel-free fun” on Thursday afternoon, hosting a group bicycle ride to a permaculture garden at UMass Amherst and a community soccer game. Later that evening, DACC held a divestment teach-in, where organizers led a discussion on the impacts of the college’s investment in the fossil fuel and private prison industries. DACC member Crystal Ganatra ’19 guided the discussion, which covered the history of the private prison industry and its connections to the fossil fuel industry before moving to a discussion of the college. Amherst “puts their money in a thing that is destroying the planet and also receives money from companies that profit from putting people in prisons, while also making the link that these communities that are affected [by the private prison industry] are the same communities that are affected by the fossil fuel industry,” particularly people of color, Ganatra said. This teach-in was followed by a rally outside of a Board of Trustees meeting, during which a
student-led pro-divestment petition was presented. President Biddy Martin has denied claims that the college’s endowment is directly invested in private prisons after demands for divestment were raised during a student protest on Nov. 16, 2016. More recently, Chief Investment Officer Mauricia Geissler also said that the college was not invested in private prisons, responding to an opinion piece published in The Student. Contributor Bryan Doniger ’18 later retracted the claim but added that the college invests in companies with holdings in the private prison industry. On the final day, DACC held a panel showcasing local environmental activists, including divestment leaders from other Five College institutions and Climate Action Now, a grassroots organization based in Western Massachusetts. Esperanza Chairez ’19, a member of DACC who assisted in organizing Climate Camp, said that they planned the panel so that Amherst students could learn from the experiences of “other people who have done this a lot longer than us.” Later that night, the three-day event culminated in an open-mic Coffee
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After 35 years in higher education, 12 of which she spent at Amherst College, Chief Student Affairs Officer Suzanne Coffey will retire at the end of this year. President Biddy Martin announced her retirement and the start of the search for a replacement in an email to the college community on Oct. 17. The college aims to secure a new chief student affairs officer by July 1, 2018, according to Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein. According to Martin, Coffey first came to Amherst as the athletic director, a position she held from 2006 to 2014. In 2012, she became the campus Title IX leader, and transitioned into the role of chief student affairs officer — the first person in this position — in 2014. Martin promoted Coffey to her current position, intending for it to be a two-year commitment. Working to improve student life, Coffey went “far above and beyond what I hoped she might achieve in the two-year stint I asked her to accept,” Martin wrote. Coffey focused on residential life and helped develop the new Greenway dormitories, designed to encourage social interaction and enhance students’ shared sense of responsibility for living spaces, well-being and campus experience, Martin said. Coffey’s work with the residential halls is one of the many ways she sought to improve the sense of community on campus. The search for a replacement is co-chaired by Dean of Faculty Catherine Epstein and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Norm Jones. The college has hired recruiting firm Isaacson, Miller to assist in the process, and the firm will work alongside the search committee once the college has finalized its members, which will include seven faculty members, one professor and three students. The search committee and Isaacson, Miller will meet independently with different constituencies, according to Epstein. The two groups will meet to discuss what the community is looking for in a replacement, and the search firm will assemble potential candidates.
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Alum Wins Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine Sylvia Frank ’20 Staff Writer Jeffrey C. Hall ’67 received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct. 2 along with two other scientists, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young, for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm. “The paradigm-shifting discoveries by the laureates established key mechanistic principles for the biological clock,” wrote the Nobel Prize committee in a press release. As a result of the work by Hall’s team, “circadian biology has developed into a vast and highly dynamic research field.” Hall began his research by studying genetics using a fruit fly model. The Nobel laureates isolated the period (per) gene in 1984. Although the idea of a gene influencing circadian rhythms was not novel, they were the first to find the gene and research its functionality within the cell. The laureates discovered that the per gene
produces a protein, PER, that builds up in the cell during the night but degrades during the day using a feedback inhibition loop by which the protein would reduce the expression of the gene from which it came. Such expression and inhibition continues in a regular, cyclical fashion. PER is responsible for regulating circadian rhythms, which, in turn, regulate sleep cycles, metabolism, behavior, body temperature and hormone patterns. Eventually, researchers were able to broaden their findings to encompass more complex organisms such as humans, animals and plants. The laureates’ research falls under the umbrella of “basic science research” — research that fills in gaps of scientific information and provides the foundation of knowledge for applied sciences. Basic science research stands in contrast to applied research — such as medical and pharmaceutical research — which focuses on fixing a problem that has direct applications. “It’s just one of a zillion examples of how basic research on a
supposedly irrelevant organism can have broader significance,” said Hall in an interview with Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Media Adam Smith. Hall often talks about his philosophy of “loving the little flies,” which he says is the foundation of his attitude toward his research and the reason he has found success. This attitude was inspired Philip Ives ’32, a researcher and Hall’s mentor when he was a student at Amherst. When he first came to Amherst, Hall planned to go into medicine, but quickly developed a passion for biology and fruit fly research with Ives. “Jeff Hall performed his senior honors thesis research using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to understand basic genetic mechanisms, and he continued to work on Drosophila for his entire career,” said Professor of Biology Alexandra Purdy in an email interview. “So, getting involved with research as an undergraduate can have a real impact.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Tanya Leise lauded Hall as instrumental to her research
— Leise’s collaborations with neuroscientists studying the circadian clock have aimed to link behavioral circadian rhythms with their underlying genetic basis. Their research includes studying per gene expression in mammals. “[Hall and the other laureates] set the stage for this work by identifying the first known circadian clock gene,” Leise said. “The circadian field has rapidly advanced following their groundbreaking discovery, and it’s been amazing to be a part of this vibrant scientific community.” Hall is “a brilliant and restless scientist, who envisioned problems in development through the clear lens of genetics,” Gerald Fink ’62, former director of MIT’s Whitehead Institute and genetics researcher, said on the Amherst website, which published a statement congratulating Hall. Hall is now retired, but taught as biology professor at Brandeis University for most of his career after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He was not available for comment.