The Amherst Student Magazine Issue 2

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 Photo Courtesy of Matai Curzon ‘22

TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2021

AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

In This Issue 4 5 6

NEWS

Students Look Back on Inaugural January Term Classes Rebecca Picciotto ‘22 One Year In, Students Reflect on the Pandemic Yee-Lynn Lee ‘23 Following Cancellation of Spring Study Abroad Programs, Students Consider Alternatives Zach Jonas ‘22 and Ryan Yu ‘22

8

One Year Since the College Shutdown, Local Businesses Are Struggling but Hopeful Sophie Wolmer ‘23

10

A Sit-Down with Senior Presidential Speechwriter Dan Cluchey ‘08 Sophie Wolmer ‘23

12 13 14 15 16 17

OPINION

An Open Letter for Open Educational Resources Nadia Tokovic ‘22 Seeing Double: Bridging Amherst’s Athletic Divide Thomas Brodey ‘22

ARTS & LIVING

Watching “Gummo” (1997) in 2021: A Violent Exploration of Class in Contemporary America Yasmin Hamilton ‘24 Life at Amherst in 2021: A Reflection of the Loss of Student Spaces Alex Brandfonbrener ’23 Superliminal Put in Perspective Ross Kilpatrick ‘23

SPORTS

NESCAC Spring Sports Announcement Prompts Athlete Responses Anya Ramras ‘22

18

Recent Mega-Contracts Heighten Pre-Existing Gender Pay Gap in Sports Alex Noga ‘23

19

Euro 2021 Will Show a New-Look Europe – But Will It Help Mend Racial Divides?

Ben Gilsdorf ‘21

2 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

THE AMHERST

Editor’s Note Over the past year, The Student, like the rest of us, has undergone both voluntary and involuntary change. The weekly newspapers that used to cover the entrances of Frost Library, Keefe Campus Center and other campus buildings have been put on pause due to Covid restrictions.

In its place, our newsletter and website have become our central platforms of news delivery. The involuntary shift in medium has led us to confront our digital presence, leading us to expand. To that end, we launched two podcasts, Tusk Talks and The Student Sums It Up. Now, we introduce this new project as the next step in that progression, with all of the change of the past year in mind.

The Amherst Student Magazine is an initiative designed to do a couple of things. First, it aims to archive. By republishing top stories of the past couple weeks, in the familiar (though slightly updated) style of our print newspaper, we continue to catalogue the defining moments of Amherst life in the 21st century. You’ll hear from our News, Opinion, Arts & Living and Sports sections to get a sense of what, in hindsight, we have seen as the most notable moments of the preceding weeks.

Second, and equally as important, we launch this magazine with the intention of creating space for other types of storytelling. We want to make room for longform features and deep dives; for personal essays and creative nonfiction; and for narratives that go beyond the written word, such as the visual arts or works that span different media. This is also where you, our readers, might come in. We hope this magazine can also be a forum for you to engage with our content and with the broader Amherst community through either contributing the type of unconventional narratives mentioned above or a more traditional “Letter to the Editor.”

As it stands now, The Student Magazine is but a prototype. There is much work to be done in terms of both content and design. But creating a space for the Amherst community is not a journey that we wish to embark on alone. In these next few issues, we will experiment with a number of variations of this new project, with the goal of refining a framework that best enables us to tell and retell these important stories. Throughout and after this process, we want to hear from you about what is and isn’t working, and where you think our next steps should lead us.

We are truly grateful for your readership and engagement, especially at this important time in our college’s history. As always, we invite you to submit your queries, ideas or thoughts to astudent@amherst.edu, and we hope you enjoy not only this issue of The Student Magazine, but of all the issues to come.

STUDENT E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Editors-in-Chief Ryan Yu Rebecca Picciotto Managing News Zach Jonas Sophie Wolmer Assistant News Yee-Lynn Lee Managing Opinion Scott Brasesco Skye Wu Managing Arts and Living Theo Hamilton Lauren Kisare Managing Sports Ethan Samuels Assistant Sports Liza Katz Liam Archaki Managing Design Anna Smith Digital Director Dylan Momplaisir S TA F F Publisher Emmy Sohn

Letters Policy The opinion pages of The Amherst Student are intended as an open forum for the Amherst community.

The Student will print letters under 450 words in length if they are submitted to The Student offices in the Campus Center or to the paper’s email account (astudent@ amherst.edu) by noon on Sunday, after which they will not be accepted.

The editors reserve the right to edit any letters exceeding the 450-word limit or to withhold any letter because of considerations of space or content.

Letters must bear the names of all contributors and a phone number or email address where the author or authors may be reached. Letters and columns may be edited for clarity and Student style.

Publication Standards The Amherst Student is published weekly except during college vacations. The subscription rate is $75 per year or $40 per semester.

The offices of The Amherst Student are located in the basement of Morrow Dormitory, Amherst College. All contents copyright © 2020 by The Amherst Student, Inc. All rights reserved. The Amherst Student logo is a trademark of The Amherst Student, Inc. Additionally, The Amherst Student does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age. The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of The Amherst Student.

Connect With Us

Email: astudent@amherst.edu Twitter: @amherststudent Instagram: @amherststudent Facebook: @amherststudent

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 3

News

Students Look Back on Inaugural January Term Classes Rebecca Picciotto ’22 Editor-in-Chief This past winter, from Jan. 4 to Jan. 29, the college offered its first-ever selection of optional January Term (J-Term) courses, allowing students to choose one class to take intensively over the span of four weeks. According to Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein, 813 students enrolled, 45 professors taught and 51 classes were offered.

The new J-Term academic program came with the general overhaul of the academic landscape in spring 2020 as Covid-19 forced in-person classrooms to online class-Zooms. In preparing for the 2020-2021 school year, Epstein explained, the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee on Academic Structures wanted to find a structure that would alleviate some of the pressures of remote learning. With that in mind, the committee recommended that students take three courses instead of four per semester during the 2020-2021 year and added the January Term intensive course as an option for students who still wanted to take at least seven courses (or in some cases, eight or nine) over the academic year. The faculty thus voted for academic offerings for the 2021 and 2022 January Terms.

Historically, the Interterm period, which takes place between the fall and spring semesters, has been used as a time for students to prepare for athletic seasons on campus, work on a senior thesis, participate in a special program offered by the college or just take a break before the next semester begins. Because the J-Term is only four weeks, the college did not see the full-semester courses as a viable option.

However, “given the pandemic, the faculty was willing to experiment with the academic calendar in ways that it has not recently,” Epstein said.

That experimentation involved pushing the start of the spring semester back by two weeks, with the first day of classes taking place on Feb. 15 instead of the original Feb. 3. Two more weeks of J-Term ended up being essential to making this new academic program work.

It allowed for faculty and academic department coordinators to complete the necessary administrative work to wrap up the J-Term and prepare for the spring semester. “We are concerned about next year, when there will likely be less than a week between the end of January term and the start of the spring semester,” said Epstein.

The two-week extension also gave students enrolled in a J-Term class some time off before their next course load began. Jennifer Fuentes-Rodriguez ’22, who took an Asian Languages & Civilizations J-Term class called “Health Policy in China,” said, “If the beginning of the semester hadn’t been pushed back by two weeks, I’m sure I would not have been ready to get back into coursework.”

Silvia Huang ’22, another student in “Health Policy in China,” even noted that the two weeks may not have been enough of a buffer: “Transitioning was a bit rough because I only

had two week breaks between last semester and January term and between January term and this semester. I definitely felt a bit burnt out at the beginning [of the spring semester] but it’s getting better!”

Of course, the first trial of this new program came with its initial kinks. Adriel Roncal ’21, who took “Guns in American Politics” in January, said, “At first, I was overwhelmed with the work the class entailed, especially given that we met every day and had substantial readings to complete. I also had an internship at the time as did a few others in the class.”

J-Term courses were also not immune to the general struggles of remote learning. Fuentes-Rodriguez recalled her class’ inconvenient schedule: “We met at night from 8:30 p.m. [to] 10 p.m. because of differences in time zone. I would have preferred a different time, but I understand that we’re all in various locations.”

On remote J-Term learning, Sophie Chen ’22, a student in “Health Policy in China,” said, “I was at home while taking the class, and that definitely contributed to this feeling of disorganization and bad time management.”

But the J-Term experience was primarily a welcome opportunity among students, especially given the variety of opportunities that have been taken by the coronavirus pandemic over the past year. Chen continued, “The class was also very interesting to me, and I thought I might as well take advantage of the additional course load.”

For others, the J-Term class served a more logistical purpose. Roncal noted, “Frankly, I needed two classes to complete my Political Science major, and I wanted to spread those two out over J-Term and the Spring semester so I could take other classes I am interested in taking before I graduate.”

The main concern of the administration that has prevented it from offering J-Term classes in the past is that three to four weeks is simply not enough to cover a semester’s worth of material. However, students felt that the intensive, one-course structure provided a fundamentally new and interesting learning experience. Chen noted, “It’s inherently going to feel rushed and not as substantial as a regular semester, but I would probably still take a J-Term class if it were offered again.”

Heloise Schep ’24, an international student from the Netherlands who completed her first semester of Amherst during the fall, said, “I felt I could dive much deeper into the material because I could devote my full day to our readings and discussions. Though I really enjoy connecting different subjects and concepts through taking multiple classes simultaneously, I felt we could still connect the class to the broader world.”

Fuentes-Rodriguez echoed this point: “Health Policy in China is actually one of my favorite classes so far at Amherst. While it was intense and over one month, I felt that I got to know my class, the material, and the professor better than over one semester.”

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Picciotto ‘22

4 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

News

One Year In, Students Reflect on the Pandemic Yee-Lynn Lee ’23 Assistant News Editor It’s been a year since the college shut down and the Covid-19 pandemic became a visceral reality for everyone in the United States. Few anticipated then that the pandemic would still be continuing to this day. The Student sat down with several students virtually to ask how the past year has treated them. Though challenges and hardships defined the pandemic, many students highlighted what they have done to make the most of the past twelve months.

The pandemic has brought about tremendous loss in many dimensions — loss of life, loss of time to connect and deepen relationships, loss of day-to-day experiences that were previously taken for granted. Even as life turned upside down for students in the midst of the first lockdowns in the country, many expected the whirlwind changes to blow over as quickly as they had come. As the pandemic dragged on, however, students had to come to terms with the reality that the normalcy that they craved would be a while away.

“At first, I thought [quarantine] would be something really quick,” said Adriel Roncal ’21. “[So] see[ing] the days go by and realizing that we weren’t getting out of this anytime soon was hard to deal with.”

“It was very hard [in] the first half of the year, just because you always thought, ‘Maybe it’s going to change soon, maybe it’s going to change soon,’” said Majo Jaramillo ’24. “But then once you start accepting that this is going to go on for a long time, it kind of feels like a new norm.”

Although the disappointment brought by the pandemic has been hard to grapple with, it has also been reorienting for students, giving them a new perspective. “[I’ve learned that] nothing is a given, everything is uncertain and [that] you have to adapt to that and make the most of it in the moment when you can,” said Roncal.

“If [the pandemic has] taught me anything, it’s that you have to learn how to adapt,” echoed Jaramillo. “Nothing is set, so I feel like flexibility [has been] one of the main takeaways for me through all of this.”

Several students reported that dedicating time to introspection has been one way that they have centered themselves in a time when much is out of their control. “At first, the pandemic was a huge disruption in my life,” said Ethan Spingarn ’23. “It threw the expected trajectory of my life way off course, but I think that as the pandemic has gone on, I’ve found [that] it gives me an opportunity to reflect on myself, undisturbed by the normal activities of life.”

“I definitely think I’ve gained an improved relationship with myself,” echoed Mariama-Alexis Camara ’21. “[In] spending a lot more time with yourself, you find things you love about yourself, things that you might like less about yourself [and] the more you know [about] yourself, the better.”

Roncal added, “Even though the future seems really uncertain, I have, more than ever, been planning for the future. I don’t think my future’s ever been sharper or focused than it has now, [in terms of] the direction I want my life to take.”

Staying in touch and spending time with friends and family is another important way that students have coped with the pandemic, one that many cherish even more now than before.

“Since the pandemic ha[d] caused us all to go into isolation, it made it so that opportunities that before were kind of a given — like hanging out with friends — were no longer just a natural part of your life,” said Spingarn. “I’ve had to be more intentional about making time for those interactions to happen.”

“Valuing the relationships and friendships that I have — whether that be on campus, off campus, with my friends and family — [has helped me deal with the pandemic],” said Roncal. “[The pandemic] has really put into focus how essential that connection that was absent during lockdown and quarantine is to having a fulfilling life.”

Students also reported becoming more aware of their connection to a larger community as a result of the pandemic. “Living through the pandemic has taught me a lot about the importance of solidarity and having compassion for other people — really looking at the world from others’ perspectives and recognizing that even if you are going through struggles, other people go through the same struggles,” said Sophia Harrison ’22. “[The pandemic] has definitely changed my perspective on what it means to be a community member,” reflected Camara. “It’s shown me that what I want to do is not the most

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

A student waits to be tested for Covid-19. important thing and [that] it’s really about looking out for the people around you. We’re all connected in ways we might not know, and it’s important to keep those things in mind.”

In reflecting on the compounding crises and immense loss of life that the pandemic has entailed, many students expressed feeling fortunate for their privilege despite personal disappointments. “[The pandemic] really just made me feel very grateful for the life I live now and lucky that my family was not deeply affected by Covid,” said Harrison. “If anything, it’s just instilled a sense of gratitude in me.”

“I’ve been extremely lucky in the particular position I was in at the time of the pandemic, both how old I am and the socioeconomic status of my family,” added Spingarn. “It allowed me to continue living without making major adjustments to my life, but I also understand that for many people, this year was a catastrophe.”

Erxi Lu ’24 echoed, “I do want to keep in mind that for a lot of people, this year has been really bad, and for a lot of people, it’s just been really awful. For me, I don’t think I’ve lost a year, because I’m still in college, I’m doing my first year of college, and I’m really happy that I’ve been able to be on campus for two semesters in a row.”

Such difficulty in reconciling the contrasting aspects of the pandemic certainly presented itself as students attempted to sum up their experience with the past year. “Everything that comes to mind [about the pandemic] is a contradiction,” said Jaramillo. “I want to say [this year has been] eventful, but also it’s been uneventful.”

Several others expressed the same sentiment, with Spingarn calling the year “simultaneously the most isolating and the most fulfilling year of my life” and Camara describing it as “draining [and] confusing, [but] enlightening, [having] refram[ed] what’s most important to me.”

For Roncal, the year has been difficult to endure, but has prepared him to be more resilient for the future. “I’d say it’s been worth it to slow down and really try hard to ground yourself while everything is crumbling away before your eyes,” he said. “Though it’s been overwhelming, I think I’ve had a lot to learn from this past year that will help me throughout the rest of my life, [in] facing challenges at a global scale and a personal one.”

This article first appeared on March 17, 2021

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 5

News

Following Cancellation of Spring Study Abroad Programs, Students Consider Alternatives

Click the image above to stay up to date on the latest study abroad changes.

Zach Jonas ’22 and Ryan Yu ’22 Managing News Editor and Editor-in-Chief Over two dozen students had their spring 2021 study abroad plans nixed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Students reported feeling disappointed by and understanding of the college’s decision not to support their programs. The Office of Global Education (GEO) has since identified a number of fellowships and internships for students to look into for the summer. A decision about fall 2021 programs will come later this year.

Over the past year and a half, students and the GEO have faced multiple disruptions to study abroad programs. In October and November of 2019, students in Chile and Ecuador were faced with student-led protests, blocked transportation and limited class schedules, prompting institutions in those countries to enact curfews until the end of the semester. In early February of 2020, the partners of the college’s study abroad program in China suspended the spring semester due to the novel Covid-19 epidemic at the time. Programs during fall 2020 and the latter part of spring 2020 were similarly affected by the pandemic.

Over two dozen students planned to study abroad during the spring of 2021, according to the Director of Global Education Office Janna Behrens. The college opted to cancel its support for the majority of study abroad programs in late December, mere weeks before some programs began. Four students are currently enrolled in spring programs in South Korea. Two students are currently completing year-long programs with the support of the college: One is on a niche domestic program studying remotely, and another is an international student studying abroad in Europe.

Without sponsorship from the college, students must pay for a program’s tuition themselves and take a semester off from Amherst. During a normal year, the college chooses to support programs by consulting the U.S. Department of State

6 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

(U.S. DOS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) travel advisories. The highest travel warning for the U.S. DOS is "Level 4: Do Not Travel," and the highest travel health notice from the CDC is "Level 3: Avoid Nonessential Travel.” During the pandemic, the college has also consulted Covid ratings, the peer school network, AIG Travel Guard (the college's emergency medical assistance provider) and program providers and exchange partners (who have provided detailed on-the-ground details), Behrens said in a statement to The Student.

The decision to revoke the support of some programs was made by the international risk management group at the college. The group consists of Provost and Dean of Faculty Catherine Epstein, Chief Student Affairs Officer Karu Kozuma, Director of Media Communications Caroline Hanna, Chief of Staff Bett Schumacher, Associate Provost Austin Sarat, Director of Emergency Management Matt Hart, Director of Immigration Services Hanna Bliss and Janna Behrens. It is advised by Deputy General Counsel Justin Smith.

“Around Thanksgiving, the CDC published new country-specific Covid ratings on a scale from one to four and only permitted travel to countries with a level 1 or 2,” Behrens said. “The new CDC Covid ratings came very late. The risk management group met in mid-December, which gave us time to review student petitions to the travel policy, review the new CDC Covid ratings, review U.S. DOS travel advisories and hear from our program partners and others in our network.”

There was always a possibility that the abroad programs would not be supported by the college, and the GEO advised planning students to make back-ups plans to study at Amherst. Nonetheless, students whose abroad programs lost the college’s support noted the late decision date as the crux of their disappointment.

Lucy Carlson ’22 was incredibly disappointed when she learned the college would not support her study abroad experience. She is an English and Asian languages and civilizations major who knew she wanted an immersion experience in Japan even before arriving at Amherst. In November 2020, she committed to the

News Middlebury program in the Mitaka region of Japan, near the suburbs of Tokyo. The language intensive program takes place at the International Christian University.

Though Carlson acknowledged the difficulties of experiencing an abroad semester during the pandemic. “Because I need financial aid and credit, I needed the college to sponsor the program. I didn’t want to take a semester off, either.”

The decision came just in time for Carlson to indicate that she would return to campus. “The college had certain deadlines by which we had to confirm if we would be on campus, and if we would be a student that semester. I was worried that if the college made the decision after that deadline, which was in early January, I wouldn’t have been able to come to campus. Worst case scenario would have been if they canceled study abroad after the deadline to enroll in the spring semester,” she said.

The semester abroad would have been canceled anyway, Carlson said. A month after Amherst’s decision, Middlebury suspended its program once Covid cases in Japan began to rise. When new strains of Covid were found around the world, Japan closed its borders. Middlebury, known for its language-intensive abroad programs, has since canceled every program it runs.

Taylor Thomas ’22 planned to study at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Her program was scheduled to run from Jan. 11 to May 22. She enrolled in two Scottish history and culture classes and one philosophy course at Edinburgh. She had received her housing and flatmates, and made plans to explore the city. Two weeks before she expected to depart the U.S., she received an email from the college that confirmed her program would not be sponsored.

“The program I applied through had everything ready to go for us students,” Thomas said. “We already had booked our flights, received our housing info and had a couple Zoom meetings with the program managers and other exchange students. Everything was a go, two weeks out from my departure.”

Thomas was especially disappointed that the program, even without the college’s sponsorship, would accept students for the spring semester. “My host institution was willing to bring foreign students onto their campus and accept the risk, while Amherst, the college I would not be physically attending that semester and still paying the same amount of money to, said ‘Sorry, we won’t support you financially or academically,’” she said. “There is little to no loss to Amherst if I studied abroad, so why not let me go?”

Hannah Zhang ’22 made plans to study in Copenhagen, where she could have taken classes to support her degree in English and Russian. She planned to leave for Denmark on Jan. 15, but received the college’s notice on Dec. 30 that her travel would not be supported.

The news was upsetting for Zhang, who looked forward to escaping Amherst, getting to know a new city and taking specific classes. “There was a comparative literature class with a professor who specializes in Russian literature. It was exactly what I wanted to learn and explore,” Zhang said.

Zhang noted that she understood the college’s decision. “At the time, cases were starting to rise again. I understood how the college would feel if they sent us and we got stuck there,” she said.

The GEO is already looking ahead to the fall 2021 abroad programs, though still warning students to be prepared for their plans to be canceled. “Some fall programs have already announced their continued suspensions, often because of government travel restrictions (e.g., New Zealand, Australia),” Behrens said. “Most programs, though, are encouraging students to apply and they have plans to run.

Study away programs have three semesters of experience adapting to the pandemic, e.g., moving courses to a virtual environment, adapting cultural activities to be socially distanced, following the host country's public health guidance.”

In the meantime, students can take advantage of a variety of summer study away options identified by the GEO, though they are not sponsored by the college.

The college “does not grant credit nor award financial aid for summer study — whether in the U.S. or abroad — we encourage students to participate in summer programs,” according to the GEO website.

Summer study away programs include fellowships and research internships, both of which can be found in a range of countries. In the U.S., students might consider a semester at sea, language programs at Middlebury and others.

After Carlson had her plans canceled in late December, she applied to the Shoyu Club of Japan Fellowship. The Shoyu Club, not the college, sponsors the travel.

Through the fellowship, two Amherst students study Japanese during June through the Ishikawa Japanese Studies Program. Whether the program will run remains uncertain, though Carlson said she felt fortunate and lucky to be given the opportunity to study what she’s interested in.

Other students turned away from their spring programs are looking to the fall semester to go abroad. Thomas expects to arrive in Edinburgh in the fall. “I am still planning on going to Edinburgh in the fall. Because of what happened last semester, I am very apprehensive as to the viability of the opportunity, but will try my hardest to have it happen,” she said.

“Studying abroad has always been something I envisioned occurring in my college experience, and I won’t give up on the chance to have such a unique and special experience easily. In that sense, I do feel as though I have missed a dream because of the college’s decision this semester. Going later doesn’t necessarily bother me because in this time of unprecedented reality, going away Senior Fall is nothing out of the ordinary anymore. Covid has changed a lot of aspects of college life and it wouldn’t be wise to dwell on the what-ifs, but rather hope to have a better future.”

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Picciotto ‘22

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 7

News

One Year Since the College Shutdown, Local Businesses Are Struggling but Hopeful Sophie Wolmer ’23 Managing News Editor In a single year, the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders have transformed the face of the town of Amherst. At its peak, the unemployment rate for Amherst was 39.6 percent. The number of registered businesses decreased from 1505 to 1415 in the past year.

Local businesses, in particular, have struggled to keep their doors open since last March when local colleges, including Amherst, ousted its students from campus.

Though the town has demonstrated tremendous resiliency in light of the negligible retail activity and a lacking student population, the pandemic will have permanent effects for businesses just beyond the boundaries of the college bubble.

Retail activity in the town of Amherst came to a screeching halt when the students of local colleges Amherst College, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass) and Hampshire College were sent away from their campuses. Seemingly overnight, the Pioneer Valley’s population dropped and the local community was launched into an indefinite economic crisis.

Because restaurants pivoted to mostly take-out dining models and many retailers were unable to accommodate in-person shopping, nearly 100 local businesses closed.

These effects decimated the job market and left Amherst businesses struggling.

Chief of Campus Operations Jim Brassord, who is on the board of directors of both the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID), said, “The economic vibrancy of downtown Amherst is significantly dependent upon the faculty, staff and students of the local colleges and university who frequent the restaurants, stores and entertainment venues. The impact of Covid on these institutions, as well as the state-imposed restrictions over the past year, has impacted the business volume for downtown businesses.”

Claudia Pazmany, the executive director of the AACC, shared that over 80 percent of the businesses in Amherst alone are made up of 20 employees or less and that a majority of other organizations are associated with nearby colleges, universities and health centers. She expressed that no business has been immune to the economic downturn. “Budgets were slashed, and, as a result, we have consistently held the highest unemployment rates in the state. Our restaurants and most businesses are still operating at 25 to 30 percent of where they would have been at this time in the 2019-pre-Covid era. All the aid — state, federal and local microgrants — that our team along with the Amherst BID offered, has kept [businesses] afloat but just barely, with skeleton crews, and business owners taking on many roles,” she said.

Amherst Books, a staple of the Amherst community, has seen the repercussions of the economic decline firsthand. Nat Harold, co-owner of Amherst Books, stated that sales have been down since the pandemic began. “Aside from students who can’t come into town or are studying remotely, many non-academic people have stopped coming.

So browsing [of] our ‘curated’ collection is down and that’s probably the most important part of our income,” he said.

Harold also told The Student that people have grown wary of eating in restaurants due to the associated pandemic risk factors and that many of the most popular restaurants have since closed. He noted that Amherst Cinema closed, switching to virtual screening, and other shops have closed or reduced hours — all of which make Amherst less of a destination.

For A.J. Hastings, the economic impact has influenced day-to-day operations significantly. In mid-March of last year, the college’s go-to collegiate office supply store was forced to lay off part-time staff and high school students. They put their remaining full-time staff on furlough, meaning that their full-time employees retained their health insurance and any eligible employee could collect unemployment.

Before the pandemic, the shop’s open hours were 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Its current hours of in-store shopping are

8 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sharon Povinelli, co-owner of A.J. Hastings, said, “The intangible [changes brought on by the pandemic] are our customer interactions and our goodwill in the community.”

“Part of the appeal for our customers and, to be honest, us, is the day-to-day interactions with the people who shop in our store. There is now a special and mental barrier to that interaction which is difficult to adhere to even though we all know it is essential,” she added.

The AACC and Amherst BID have collaborated throughout the pandemic to support local businesses and foster continuity in the business sector. Among their initiatives, the two organizations have created the Downtown Amherst Foundation (DAF), which raised more than $400,000 of donations to provide relief and continuity grants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 based on demonstrated need to over 60 small Amherst businesses. Amherst College contributed $50,000 to the DAF in support of local businesses.

Chief Brassord also reported that an “Amherst Area Gift Card” was created so that individuals can reinvest in local businesses. Over $16,000 worth of gift cards have been purchased thus far. Additionally, the two organizations created the Relief & Resiliency Microgrant program and #IAMherst, which caught the attention at the state level and has been used as a model for marketing downtowns. Funding from the state enabled the Chamber to distribute $23,000 microgrants to Amherst Area small businesses.

Additionally, the AACC and BID have procured and provided more than 10,000 pieces of PPE to businesses. The BID and AACC were also able to supply restaurants with umbrellas, tents and plants to beautify the outdoor dining the Town set up, as well as bring into town and pay close to 40 local artists to paint the barriers and turn downtown into a public art walk.

Pazmany told The Student that the AACC has a new vision for the area. “We are ready to reinvest, reimagine, rediscover and re-energize. We believe we need to harness the ‘‘#lovemylocal’’ fever for the long-term. Nothing captures the spirit of supporting locals [more] than investing in your local businesses,” she said. “We are also hyper-focused on tourism; building our town as a true destination. And using this time to rebuild infrastructure to not only serve our town’s needs but to be a true economic driver as a host of tourism. Our area hosts ten museums alone, and amazing institutions that are truly iconic and global, while the local flavor of our downtown serves up global dining.”

Despite the severity of their struggles, businesses are ready to adapt to whatever the world will throw at them next. “We’re still trying to figure the long-term impacts of Covid-19 out,” Harold said. “A lot of it depends on what happens in the country. And we’re running the numbers to see whether we can sustain ourselves the way we’ve been going or if we’ll have to change somehow — suggestions are welcome!”

Povinelli misses the Amherst College student population, but is hopeful that things will return to normalcy in the near future. “Our business success is tied to the broader success of the downtown, the college, the university and the Amherst area. This town is, and has proven to be during this time, an area that people are grateful to live in and willing to be in — even if they are on lock down,” she said. “We appreciate the strong community support from our year-round residents, our part-time residents and visitors. We made it through the first pandemic, so on we go!”

Owners and leaders of Amherst business organizations are looking up despite the decline in economic activity. Brassord is proud of the strength that folks in Amherst have displayed in spite of the circumstances. “Local businesses have shown grit, determination and resiliency throughout the pandemic, and many have been able to weather the storm, in part due to the support from the BID and AACC,” he said. “I’m hopeful that, as the pandemic abates and businesses aren’t subject to restrictions that they will regain solid financial footing and return to pre-pandemic status.”

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

News

Photo courtesy of Blake Nissan

Two people walking on an empty street in the center of the town of Amherst.

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 9

News

A Sit-Down with Senior Presidential Speechwriter Dan Cluchey ’08 Sophie Wolmer ’23 Managing News Editor Dan Cluchey ’08 is one of three Senior Presidential Speechwriters for President Joe Biden and a former speechwriter and advisor for the Obama administration. He graduated from Amherst College in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in political science with honors. Cluchey was elected by his class to serve as the student commencement speaker and was a recipient of the Densmore Berry Collins Prize for best honors thesis in political science. He earned a doctor of law degree from Harvard Law School, where he served as the 2012 Class Marshall.

Q: How did you become interested in speechwriting? Did you think growing up that you were going to pursue a career in politics?

A: From a pretty early age, probably like high school-ish, I developed a real interest in politics and a consciousness about what was going on in the world. That was during the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War. It was around that time that I started thinking about the [political] sphere as a place that I wanted to be a part of and contribute to.

The concept of being a speechwriter isn't really a job that a lot of young people consider, or even necessarily know about. They might know it exists, but are not sure how to get into it. That is why I realized my passion for it later on towards the end of college. At that point, I knew that I loved to write, and to write creatively. Speechwriting struck me as a way to marry those two things: progressive politics and creative writing. There are not a ton of jobs at the confluence of those two things, so after I found it, I did my homework and started from there.

Q: What did you major in at Amherst? Outside of academics, what activities were you involved in?

A: I was a poli- sci [political science] major! Since I have graduated, the department has changed their requirements, but at the time it was really easy to complete the political science major. I’m fairly certain it was only nine credits and no comps. I was gung-ho about being a poli sci major, and pretty much only took political science classes my first two years. I finished my major requirement my sophomore year, and that's when it hit me — “you're being an idiot, take some more interesting classes and diversify your education!” So I eased up after that, and took music classes, English classes, Russian literature and exposed myself to the breadth of courses offered at the college.

Outside of class, I was super involved in Mr. Gad’s House of Improv. That activity was one of the most formative things that I did. It is the closest to my heart. I joined in my first year, and did it for all four years. I was in the DQ, which was a lot of fun as well, and I also had a couple of different terrible radio shows at various points.

Q: How were you recruited to become a head speechwriter for President Biden?

A: I had been a speechwriter in the Obama administration for most of the second term. I wasn’t one of President Obama's head speech writers or Vice President Biden’s key speech writers. I was in the tier below that, a few dozen speech writers who serve in the cabinet secretaries and work across the administration.

I held a few different jobs in the Obama administration. Towards the end of the Obama Administration, I linked up with my wife, went to law school and we left D.C. for a few years. We took a step back from the whole orbit for a little while. My wife graduated law school and we decided to come back down to D.C. At that point, I was looking to get reconnected to the D.C. political and speech reading space. It happened around that time in the summer of 2018, that President Biden, who was a private citizen, was looking for a speechwriter to help him with domestic policy issues. The timing just lined up well, and I was able to jump on a great opportunity. I have been with him ever since.

10 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

Photo courtesy of Dan Cluchey

Q: What does your day-to-day life look like as a presidential speechwriter? Who are your main points of contact in the White House?

A: There's no typical day, I would say. It sounds like a cop-out, but it's true! My schedule depends on what's on the table on any given day. On the most basic level, there’s a team of three core speechwriters who serve the president. That number definitely undersells the number of people who are involved in the speechwriting process. There’s a senior advisor to the President, who guides the speech writing process and oversees it all. He determines the direction and does some writing himself in addition to the three speech writers.

Every day you're connected with, firstly, a lot of very, very smart policy folks. Depending on what you're working on, they might be folks with great expertise in veteran affairs or racial equity or climate — whatever it is that you need knowledge on. We’re very fortunate to have incredible teams with incredible brains, who were able to connect with.

News Most of the speechwriting process is about gleaning knowledge from these folks within the administration. They help us learn about issues and our target audience.

There are also our research teams, all of which inhabit the White House. They are called the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council and the National Security Council. You see that the speechwriting process entails a lot of information gathering and then involves a big communications team as well. There are a ton of people that I am connected with throughout the process. Now, there is also a whole Covid team as well.

Depending on the nature of the speech, the statement, the video that’s being recorded or the op-ed, you will be talking to any number of individuals. This pretty big group of people leads to lots of email chains!

Q: After you're told that a speech is needed, what is the first step that is taken? What are the necessary steps that must be taken before the speech is delivered?

A: The first thing you do is call on the people who know the event — whomever is in the White House that is running point on the speech’s topic. These people will provide the really basic information. From there, lots of meetings and calls are conducted to talk about the speech’s anticipated audience, the venue and whether the President has a connection to what’s happening at the venue.

We also have to learn about who else is speaking. This may impact his speech around the edges or lend some texture or color to it, particularly the stories of everyday Americans who are involved with this place, this event space and this community.

After substantive information collection, we call on policy people who can tell us the latest facts and figures we will deploy. We then speak to the communications team and the senior staff, as well as advisors and people who will guide us in prioritizing our message. It’s a real team effort.

Finally, the job of the speechwriter there comes a time to lock yourself in a small quiet room and just write. But mostly, a lot of the job is synthesizing information and priorities, facts and figures and figuring out the kind of story that needs to be told. All that happens in the first draft, essentially, and then there’s a whole iterative process after that of people weighing in. It’s like the iceberg metaphor — all lot more going on than you might anticipate.

Q: What are the differences between preparing different writing pieces (an inauguration speech in comparison to a campaign speech, for example)?

A: What’s great about higher profile speeches is that they’re on the calendar. You know about inauguration day a long time in advance. You know about the Democratic Convention well in advance. With those, there's more time — not just for me — but for everybody I mentioned [who is involved in the process] before. When you see them coming, you can be more thoughtful and “Aaron Sorkinish.” This enables you to define a story’s rhetoric.

The reality is, most speeches aren’t like that — they come on the calendar a little bit quicker. Oftentimes, speeches are a reaction to the news of the world. When news is unexpected, you have a short window to think through them and this accelerates the process.

Q: How do you channel the President’s voice in your writing? Have you picked up any of President Biden’s linguistic mannerisms?

A: Definitely to the second question! I would say to the first that the whole job of a speechwriter, no matter who you're writing for, is to embody a character and a voice that isn't yours. It’s like fiction. Your goal is to completely subsume yourself into the speech-giver and and write through them. Essentially, you must erase or subjugate your own instincts and voice because you need to authentically speak through them. I like to think of myself as a novelist with an official character.

The really nice thing about writing for the President, particularly for this president, is that he has been around for a while and he’s spoken on all sorts of subjects. I’ve written for other people who don’t have a defined public voice. That’s not the case with the president. People know what he sounds like and people know his stories. He’s got mannerisms like “I give you my word as a Biden,” or “not a joke, not a joke,” that people already know, and there are thousands of hours of video and thousands of pages of transcripts that make my life much easier. I feel confident embodying someone who’s that well documented and well defined. My goal is authenticity as a speechwriter, and understanding

how he’s made certain arguments allows me to not necessarily recycle that material, but extrapolate from it.

Q: When you’re writing a speech, how do you anticipate which lines may be picked up as sound bites or applause lines?

A: I wouldn’t say that we have the best track record. The reality does not always line up with our expectations. Part of being a speechwriter, and it’s something that everyone on the team is attuned to, is how the news is consumed. There aren’t many people who will sit and watch another person speak on a subject for 20 minutes. Most people consume the news in a headline quote or soundbite, something that so you have to be attuned to.

We do our best to anticipate it and make sure that the heart of the matter comes out in that soundbite, but it’s not always predictable.

Q: Throughout his presidential term, President Obama stressed the importance of addressing cynicism. How do you avoid becoming cynical, working in contemporary politics?

A: Working in contemporary politics has made me less cynical, which is heartening.

In my experience, the further away I was from the center of it all, the more cynical I was.

Working with this team, around the President, and I don't mean this to sound sappy, makes me less cynical because I see what truly motivates people. And a lot of people in D.C. are because something drove them to be there — to make life easier for folks, and to make life better for folks. Maybe that doesn’t always come out in everything that happens in Washington, but the more time I spend in Washington, the higher opinion I have of those who work in politics.

By no means is it always easy, but sometimes you get a win. Like today, the American Rescue Plan is on the brink of passing, and I’m thinking about how this bill is projected to cut child poverty in half in America. This one piece of legislation is enough to curb cynicism.

Q: What makes a speech great?

A: Different speech writers will have different answers to this, but I think it’s great if it gets the job done. Every speech is different: It could be to motivate people, it could be to educate people, it could be to call people to action. I think that if it accomplishes its goal, that’s the prerequisite to being a great speech, but it’s not the whole picture. There’s still an English department component of. Greatness lies in whether the speech resonated and rose above the words on the page. For me that comes through the music of the prose and its delivery. A large part is also the narrative thread that floats throughout the whole way and ties the speech together. This is what makes it more than just a collection of interesting or well-written lines. That’s all sort of nebulous, but those are the key ingredients.

Q: Do you still think about your time at Amherst?

A: I think about Amherst every day — I’m, like, the biggest Amherst booster. It’s where I met my wife and we got married on campus. We’ve never detached from Amherst. I think about it every day in that sense, because it shaped and continues to shape me so much. My closest friends are my friends from college.

I would also say that the political atmosphere shaped me as well. It's hard to sort of parse the influence of college because people change so much during those four years. I'd like to think that the values that shape me emerged from my professors. The professors and courses that I took influenced my writing on a practical level and had a profound impact on me as a writer. When I call professors to mind, the memories rein me in as a writer. Not only specific classes, but also the atmosphere of Amherst has infused me with greater empathy and got into my soul. I come from a pretty small town in Maine, and so college was a wholly new experience for me.

Q: Outside of your work, what do you do during these Covid times for fun?

A: My wife and I are committed to our dog. We do as much hiking as we can (there isn’t a whole lot of nature around D.C.) but we do as much as we can with our dog. We keep in touch with friends. Other than that, work is pretty consuming. We’re very lucky that our literal next door neighbor is a friend from Amherst and so we do Zoom trivia every couple of weeks. But we’re definitely ready for the pandemic to be over, particularly as the weather gets a little nice. Obviously we’re ready for it to be over for greater, main reasons but we also miss the outdoors as well.

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 11

Opinion

An Open Letter for Open Educational Resources Nadia Tokovic ’22 Contributing Writer To the faculty and administrators of the college, When I arrived at Amherst College as an international student on financial aid two years ago, I was shocked by the prices of the textbooks required for my classes.

A significant proportion of the budget that I set aside for living expenses would actually have to go to books, I realized, and I was left with little help from the college.

As I explored the various courses offerings of the History and Political Science departments, it struck me that I would have to purchase a total of 20 to 30 books for just four courses. Certain professors expressed a strong preference for hard copies of books, too, in order to minimize the distractions that electronics might pose in a classroom. Despite the fact that we would only be focusing on excerpts from these books, we were also expected to obtain whole copies at our own expense.

Even with that financial sacrifice, I ultimately had to opt out of a class I was particularly interested in because I simply could not afford all of the required books.

Although I sympathize with the concern about the distraction that online resources may cause, it is not fair that such an assumption precludes some students from taking the courses they like, as with professors who disallow digital devices in class.

I eventually learned about the option to purchase used textbooks, and occasionally was able to access required texts online through our library system. And I’ve been fortunate to take several courses with professors who made materials for their classes entirely available online for free. However, the problem of accessibility remains in my other courses, not to mention the impact finances had on my first year

when I was still unaware of the limited alternatives mentioned earlier.

I urge Amherst College to take a much stronger initiative in publicizing alternatives such as used books and the library system. But further than this, I would like to call upon the administrators of our college to implement an official campus-wide Open Educational Resources initiative through faculty grants. OER are freely available, openly licensed resources used for teaching, learning, assessment and research purposes. To point to a specific example, UMass successfully launched their OER initiative in Spring 2011 and according to their website, “has generated a total savings of over $2.3 million for students.” Not only increasing access, and eliminating costs for students, OER also provides more room for professors to customize their curriculums and make them more engaging.

Students should not have to make choices about their Amherst education based solely on what is accessible and affordable. They should be able to take any course that sparks their interest without financial stress! While one solution could simply be asking professors to limit their courses to accessible resources, we should similarly avoid limiting teaching quality based on the availability of free articles and books. Rather, the college should make accessibility to academic resources a priority, especially in the midst of a pandemic, when students studying off-campus have even less direct access to Amherst resources. For a college that boasts that its financial aid allows students to choose a college based on “educational objectives” rather than cost and has a $2.5 billion endowment, this isn’t an impossibility — it’s common sense.

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

Click the image above to watch a video on Open Educational Resources, and click here to read about the UMass initiative.

12 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

Opinion

Seeing Double: Bridging Amherst’s Athletic Divide Thomas Brodey ’22 Columnist Any student who has lived at the college pre-Covid has experienced the immense divide between athletes and non-athletes. Every evening, varsity teams would fill the back room of Valentine Dining Hall, while non-athletes would instinctively avoid that back room. It isn’t often that the dividing line between two groups is so obvious that it could literally be drawn on the floor.

The athletic divide at Amherst pervades nearly all aspects of campus life, from Val seating to parties to study groups and even housing and choice of major.

Among non-athletes, the phrase “He’s on a varsity team” is synonymous with “You wouldn’t know him.” Similarly, athletes have learned that the chances of a non-athlete attending a sporting event to support an Amherst team are about equivalent to the odds of my co-columnist accepting an internship at Goldman Sachs.

The divide is deeply harmful to both types of students. Athletes, seen as less intelligent by many non-athletes, can lack academic confidence, which may partly explain why while 49 percent of non-athletes write senior theses, only 16 percent of varsity athletes do. Non-athletes, on the other hand, often feel crowded-out of any athletic activity. Varsity teams possess a stranglehold over reservations of the athletic facilities, as well as the gym, and the small student-run athletic clubs stagnate under the huge shadow of varsity athletics. These club sports are often reduced to asking their members to pay dues in order to fill out their club budgets, while varsity athletic programs receive millions annually.

Finally, the divide causes the inevitable missed opportunities for friendship and shared enrichment that occur whenever two large populations within a community refuse to interact. Beyond the exchange of an occasional “Hello” on the way to classes (in pre-pandemic times), non-athletes might as well be living in a school with 1250, rather than 1900 students, and athletes find their social network largely limited to a mere 650 peers. I myself sometimes wonder how different my Amherst experience would be if I had kept in touch with the athletes I exchanged numbers with during first-year orientation.

Inevitably, the divide has caused varsity teams to become insular. That insularity, however, has resulted in a troubling culture of frequent misogynistic and racist behavior. Part of the problem lies in the shocking lack of diversity on Amherst’s varsity teams. In 2017, 73.5 percent of varsity athletes were white, compared to only 35 percent of the non-athlete population. At the same time, only about 4 percent of athletes came from low-income backgrounds, compared to 31 percent of non-athletes. All in all, the oldest collegiate athletic program in the country is suffering against its toughest opponent yet: itself.

Students and administrators have tried a variety of techniques to solve the problem, with little success. Orientation and first-year seminars are both designed, in part, to encourage athletes and non-athletes to mingle, but if the current state of the divide is any metric, these programs have had little effect. The same goes for a student-led effort to “decolonize Val” in 2017. The divide is deeply rooted in the history and culture of Amherst as an institution, and cannot be solved by anything as transient as a lunch buddy program.

A clue to the solution lies in the unique organization of the Amherst College Rowing Association, or Crew Team. Before the late 1990s, Crew was a varsity team, but since then, it has evolved into a hybrid system somewhere between a varsity and club team. Crew gives its members the best of both worlds. As a club, Crew does not recruit through admissions, nor does it hold tryouts or reject players on the basis of ability. It does not dominate members’ lives in the same way as varsity sports. Participants join the club knowing that, while they will compete against other schools and have a regimented practice schedule, it is nothing more than a fun extracurricular which they are free to leave whenever they want.

Crew offers a far more rigorous and developed program than other Amherst clubs. Crew has a passionate alumni network which provides huge amounts of

funding to the club, and the team has won numerous medals in past years. Crew demonstrates that an organized and institutionally-supported club team can be athletically competitive while offering a more inclusive admissions policy.

Crew is not without its faults though. Despite its inclusive policies relative to varsity teams, it has struggled to attract a diverse group of students, in part because it practices a traditionally lily-white sport and inexcusably requires 200-dollar dues of its members. The key, then, is to incorporate the best aspects of crew into the campus athletics culture by turning club sports into something that all students feel comfortable joining, not just those students interested in one extremely niche sport.

I propose turning all official athletics at the college into special athletic clubs, open to all students, regardless of experience. No more athletes would be recruited primarily to play on a specific team (although athletic ability could still help a student’s application). Instead, students would be allowed to join or create any athletic club they choose, and be trained on the job by their coaches and more experienced peers.

Athletes might protest that this policy would deemphasize athletics at Amherst, but the opposite is true. A campus-wide collection of large, well-organized athletic clubs would turn athletics from a pursuit split between insular varsity teams and under-supported club teams into a campus-wide culture. In this version of Amherst, every student would be strongly encouraged to take part in some athletic club, as an integral part of the liberal arts experience. How much or how little time a student spends actually participating in sports would be up to them. All the money currently used to support varsity teams could be lavished on clubs, with the additional option to solicit donations from Amherst’s numerous and generous athletic alumni. With all of this funding, clubs could offer a varsity-level experience to students without the need for income barriers, recruitment or an insular culture. We might not win quite as many medals, but Amherst students would see athletics as a crucial part of the college community. This type of transition has worked well for colleges in the past. In 2012, Spelman College adopted a broadly similar system and immediately noted an improvement in the health and happiness of its students.

All Amherst students would benefit from the numerous advantages of playing sports in college. It’s no secret that loneliness is an epidemic at the college. Easier access to organized clubs would give more students access to inclusive and tightknit social groups, and give them a chance to improve their physical and mental wellbeing. In fact, team sports consistently improve participants’ academic performance, by giving students a way to relax and socialize in a healthy environment. Amherst students, even those currently classified as “non-athletes” would likely jump at the chance to participate in institutionally-backed and welcoming groups.

This solution gives everyone what they want. Athletes can continue to spend as much time as they want on their passion, without being excluded from campus life as a whole. The rest of the school would have the opportunity to freely participate in organized and well-funded athletics programs, regardless of background or skill level. The numerous advantages of athletics – social groups, exercise and relaxation– would be available to everyone equally.

Unlike previously proposed solutions, this idea would get at the root of the problem by making the distinction between athlete and non-athlete meaningless.

Instead of a binary, Amherst athletics would become a spectrum, where everyone is, to some degree, an athlete, but everyone is also first and foremost, a student.

These changes might seem radical, but they aren’t. In 1860, this college invented collegiate athletics. It’s time for us to do it again.

Many thanks to Camille Blum ’20, Jack Kiryk ’21 and William Friedrichs ’20, who worked with me to develop this plan and generously allowed me to turn our ideas into a column.

This article first appeared on March 17, 2021

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 13

Arts and Living

Watching “Gummo” (1997) in 2021: A Violent Exploration of Class in Contemporary America Yasmin Hamilton ’24 Contributing Writer Shaky handheld clips of dilapidated homes, power lines and families flip through the screen as a child sings an expletive-filled nursery rhyme. A child starts to mumble:

“ Xenia, Ohio. A few years ago, a tornado hit this place. It

killed the people left and right … Houses were split open …

People’s legs and neck bones were sticking out … I saw a girl fly through the sky, and I looked up her skirt.

”

The narrator jumps between sounding like a child and like he’s spitting prose. The seemingly arbitrary and blurry visual footage of dogs stuck in trees and children riding bicycles burn into my subconscious as I listen to this anonymous narrator speak, gluing me to the television.

Last week, after a particularly long, grueling day of Zoom calls and minimal social interaction, my friend suggested we watch “Gummo” (Korine, 1997). Exhausted from staring at screens all day, we logically decided to stare at a larger screen for another hour and a half.

I had never heard about the movie, but I approached it with an open mind, even after my friend admitted that it was probably going to be “foul” or offensive — definitely an understatement.

The image of a child holding an angry cat by its scruff violently seizes my attention. He walks up to a trashcan full of water and plunges him in. In my stunned stupor, I assume that the child is trying to bathe the cat. After a few seconds, this assumption is proved wrong when we see a close-up of the struggling cat’s face underwater. This isn’t the last moment of violence in the movie. Much to my dismay as an ardent cat-lover, it is not even the last moment of terrorism and violence inflicted against cats. The characters of Solomon (Jacob Reynolds) and Tummler (Nick Sutton) ride around for a large portion of the movie hunting stray cats for the local grocery store.

“Gummo’s” mostly pointless violence extends to all aspects of the residents of Xenia’s lives. The audience becomes a spectator to numerous scenes of physical violence, as well as disturbing scenes depicting emotional abuse, glue-sniffing, child-molesting, hoarding, a disabled prostitute and racism, among many other things. Like many other viewers, I came to the quick conclusion that these scenes were put into the movie for shock value and that “Gummo” was an exploitative film made to laugh at poor Americans. After letting it stew in my mind for a few days, I looked into the details behind the production process, and what I found changed my mind. If more people approached “Gummo” with an open mind, they would find that it has a lot more to say about isolation and class in contemporary America than its low ratings and occasionally shocking images and language would make it seem.

The rest of “Gummo” is composed of a collage of vignettes, centering around characters portrayed by the only five professional actors in the movie (Chloe Sevigny, Nick Sutton, Jacob Reynolds, Linda Manz and Jacob Sewell). “Gummo’s” film director Harmony Korine grew up in the same poor neighborhoods in Nashville, Tennessee that “Gummo” was filmed in. For casting, Korine asked random Nashville residents to volunteer. The misconception that I had after first watching the movie, that “Gummo” is a form of “poverty porn,” was thrown out the window once I realized the attitude that Korine took towards filming the people he grew up around. Most of the characters in “Gummo” are essentially portraying themselves. If “Gummo” was poverty porn, Korine would have pushed viewers to take some kind of satisfaction out of the chaos and absurdity that the characters live alongside. Whether it be humor or moral superiority, Korine would make sure that the viewer felt uplifted by the end of the movie. But this is not the experience of watching “Gummo.” Korine does his

14 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

Click the image above to check out the DVD from Frost Library. best to portray these people without any modifications. If there’s anything that he wants, it is for these people to be taken seriously regardless of their decisions.

So, while the motif of cat abuse is not comfortable to watch, it is not gratuitous violence.

It is recurrent to emphasize how little value these people place on their own lives. If the lack of resources and aid these people receive from their country has taught them to accept that their lives are not valuable, then why would they value the lives of cats? They don’t have the luxury to treat cats with respect.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the direction “Gummo” takes depends on the mindset of viewers. Its characters are not meant to be laughed at and the people in it are not meant to be judged. Instead, “Gummo” forces citizens of “flyover country” into the viewer’s consciousness without using them as a strawman for the viewer to judge and feel superior to.

The movie demands that the viewer acknowledge these people exist and insists that any immoral and destructive behavior committed directly results from the negligence of their own country. During the final stretch of a pandemic that has both revealed and worsened class divisions in America, “Gummo” is the perfect watch to reflect.

This article first appeared on March 17, 2021

Arts and Living

Life at Amherst in 2021: A Reflection on the Loss of Student Spaces Alex Brandfonbrener ’23 Contributing Writer Small pieces of snow, carried by the wind, sail across the First-Year Quad and collide with red bricks. In many ways, it is a typical winter in Amherst. The college has entered its second full semester during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is clear to everyone on campus how different life is compared to before.

Whole buildings that used to brim with student activity are now unused. Campus no longer stirs with packs of eager students on their way to class. These spaces, whose original uses are lost to time, interest me as a student who has lived on campus both before and after the start of the pandemic. As a community and institution, Amherst is changing, and thinking about the loss of our most important spaces has helped me process this change.

I grew up listening to stories about my dad’s college days. His favorite moments were in the dining hall, meeting up with friends (and strangers too), mingling and eating for hours.

While such stories may not have been passed down to every Amherst student, these collective images and narratives in media representations of college inevitably inform how students interact with the idea of college life.

That place my dad loved to spend time in, the dining hall, feels like a thing of the past on this semester’s campus. At Amherst, Valentine Dining Hall, universally known by students as “Val,” is no longer what it once was. While the building is still frequently used by students who pick up three meals a day in a buffet-style line and by students who live in Val as a residence hall, the dining space is otherwise empty. The spaces where students used to eat, mingle and study for hours on end are filled instead by stacked chairs and tables.

I spoke to a sophomore about her favorite space in the dining hall, the balcony-like upstairs space with guardrails overlooking the lower seating areas. “I miss being able to go up there and always, no matter what time it was, running into someone who I would be so excited to see. I don’t tend to run into people like this anymore because we don’t overlap in the same way. I miss how cozy it was and that it was really a bonding space.”

Val was a place where we could eat with friends easily and spontaneously. I miss walking into Val, looking around the spaces and finding my friends in the same spots they usually were. I liked being able to choose where to sit and who to eat with. There was a sense of freedom attached to being able to come and go as one pleases.

Now, students have to rigorously plan in order to make meals social. It’s difficult to run into someone and make a plan to eat, all in the food pickup line. Of course, students have people they can text or knock on their door. But, while this can be both social and flexible, it just isn’t the same.

Not all of the spaces lost to Covid exemplify the pristine, collegiate buildings shown in Amherst’s brochures and campus tours. The biggest absence that students may currently feel is the loss of party spaces. According to the administration’s community safety guidelines, students cannot gather in groups larger than 10 people and must wear masks and maintain social distance. Before Covid, students gathered, drank and danced in specific party dorms, like those on the Triangle. It was an experience that students connected to being at college, or at least discovering what it meant for them to be at Amherst.

I’m not a partier. It wasn’t something I did very much in high school, but during my first year in college, I still pushed myself to experience the party scene at Amherst because I wanted to expand my social boundaries.

So, like many first-years used to do every weekend, I would file into Jenkins Dormitory, one of the quintessential party spaces at Amherst that is now the site for isolation housing, where students packed inside the small common room spaces. One student I spoke to fondly recalled the “sticky floor and the smell of beer,” as memories lost to the past.

“It was a place where you would run into people you coincidentally knew and like to see but don’t run into in other places,” she continued. And I miss that space, where you can run into people you haven’t seen in a while.” Like Val, the party spaces at Amherst facilitated a spontaneity that has been lost to Covid rules and regulations.

Of course, not all students envision the loss of these spaces as I do. But certainly, these

Photo courtesy of Anna Smith ’22

Many campus spaces remain closed to students. shared spaces are tied to many students’ ideas of what Amherst is. These spaces are places for students to relate to each other, to bond over. When I talk to my friends about our first year at Amherst, we focus on these spaces as reference points for what life used to be like. It’s partially why I wanted to write this article. Amherst, of course, is more than an academic institution to those who end up devoting four years of their lives to its campus.

Some of the student body’s most beloved spaces are still open, like the Science Center, Frost Library, Beneski Museum of Natural History and the Mead Art Museum. Students are able to access these spaces freely, albeit with masks and social distancing. But I find that in a conceptual context, these spaces fundamentally differ from the lost spaces. The students I have spoken with on this topic both touch upon the joy of seeing someone in an organic, unplanned way; this is an aspect of social life that may be irreproducible during the pandemic, without such spaces as Val and party spaces.

As Covid has shifted campus life from common social spaces into atomized single dorm rooms, the current student body has a new conception of what Amherst is. I spoke to a firstyear who said that Amherst is unique in that, “it’s [currently] entirely possible to exist here without interacting with anyone else.”

To those who have not lived on Amherst’s Covid campus, it might be hard to imagine what life is like here. The school publishes plenty of information about its number of Covid cases or the state of regulations. But, as anyone living on campus knows, these features are not what constitute life as a student. We go about our days alternating between Zoom class, picking up food, going to get tested, doing school work and hanging out with friends. It is an isolating life for many, especially for those who were not able to establish a support system during normal times.

For example, the Class of 2024 has faced collective isolation at an unparalleled degree.

They had a fully online orientation, few in-person social events and a campus that has been under lockdown for the entire time that they have known it. These days, the college experience at Amherst only vaguely resembles the brochures.

For better or worse, students now bond over newer experiences than before the pandemic.

And of course, life will eventually return to some version of normal, like the ground thawing into spring. But in order to move into the post-Covid world, Amherst, both as an institution and a community, has to acknowledge that the social needs of the student body may not be fulfilled until spaces lost to the pandemic can be recovered.

This article first appeared on February 24, 2021

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 15

Arts and Living

Superliminal Put in Perspective Ross Kilpatrick ’23 Contributing Writer In the video game “Superliminal,” items that look bigger become bigger. If a player drags an item into the air so it looks larger, it will become larger. The player uses this to manipulate the world around them, solving a series of puzzles, all while voice-overs shepherd the player through the game’s narrative — an experimental therapy being given to the player character for some hinted at mental illness. This therapy is, in the game’s world, a sleep simulation. Very shortly into the game, something goes awry. The rest of the game follows the player as they try to escape the malfunctioning simulation solving increasingly bizarre and surreal perspective puzzles along the way. Despite how unique it sounds, the game is actually really simplistic. And because of that, I loved it.

When I started “Superliminal,” I was expecting deep, intricate puzzles.

Most puzzle games demand that the player perform a complex series of interlocking tasks, drawn from a toolbelt of abilities the player has learned to appreciate.

“Superliminal,” in contrast, is about fumbling blindly to find one correct action, like trying to fit a square peg into the appropriate hole while blindfolded. One early puzzle involves a button, which needs to be pressed to open a door, placed on a ledge unreachable to the player and a small wedge of cheese. The player must scale up the cheese by dragging it into a position where it looks large, so they can use it as a ramp to reach the button. There is one correct action to solve the puzzle. The player either understands what they need to do, or they don’t.

That may sound negative, but it isn’t necessarily. “Superliminal” is so brief and so continuously creative with what it demands, while its puzzles remain easy to solve, that even if I was frustrated for a little bit, that frustration was quickly re-

Click the image above to watch the launch trailer for Superliminal.

placed by joy at the ingenuity and sheer visual spectacle of the solutions. Most puzzle games are interested in creating deep puzzles. “Superliminal” is more concerned with variety, and keeping each puzzle simple, yet striking and memorable.

The narrative of “Superliminal” focuses on the same thing the gameplay does: perspective and, specifically, the player character’s perspective. As the game ends, the doctor in charge of the simulation explains the need to find a unique perspective by stepping outside of oneself. This explanation is framed as the point of the therapeutic treatment given to the player character. The revelation is somewhat sophomoric, but it nonetheless works because the player has experienced it themself. They’ve had to consciously think about the way they see things, and the way that can be reframed to solve puzzles. To get through the game, the player has to continually adopt new perspectives.

In a novel or movie, I would dismiss “Superliminal’s” thematic revelation outright, but because they find expression in mechanics, in a way I’ve not often experienced, I have to give the game credit. Part of me wants “Superliminal” to contemplate more hefty and interesting themes, or use its mechanics to tell a more compelling story. But the other half of me thinks that would rob “Superliminal” of its unique power; it is so short, so pointed and so effective in its use of its core mechanics to convey its theme and ideas that any extra story, anything more interesting in its own right, would distract from that.

“Superliminal” is a game singularly obsessed with one mechanic, and it rehashes that mechanic so often, in such a short space of time, that it can’t help but be memorable. The game is, in many ways, simplistic. It has simple puzzles and a simple story. But what it builds from that simple foundation is an experience that is complex and compelling.

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

Sports

NESCAC Spring Sports Announcement Prompts Athlete Responses Anya Ramras ’22 Staff Writer On March 9, President Biddy Martin announced that colleges across the NESCAC have agreed to a limited spring sports schedule. Since many spring student-athletes were not expecting to play competitively this semester, this news came as quite a surprise. To gauge general attitudes towards the decision, The Student spoke with a number of student-athletes.

While no two athletes echoed identical sentiments, one theme was common: shock.

Anna Madden ’22 (Women’s Track and Field): “I was honestly shocked to hear the news of having a spring season (as were many others). Even my coach had no clue that it was even a possibility, and I thought he was joking when he told us the news at practice. We still don’t know too much about what our season and meets will look like, but it’ll definitely be a lot different. We hope to run in a few meets during the last four weeks of our semester against some other NESCAC schools. I’m sure meets will feel a lot different, but it’ll definitely be nice to finally get on the track again!”

Jackie Bukzin ’22 (Women’s Tennis): “I am so excited and grateful to have a season. I didn’t think this was even possible coming into the semester in order to maintain the bubble and everyone’s safety on campus, so it is a bit shocking as well. We have just enough players on the women’s tennis team to make it happen so I’m super pumped to get back out into NESCAC competition and represent Amherst.”

Henry Buren ’22 (Men’s Track and Field): “I was shocked when the announcement was made. I didn’t think that neither NESCAC nor the school would allow us to compete. I came back this semester with the mindset that I was not going to be competing. And I don’t think I’m alone in that reaction because a lot of my teammates were also not expecting to compete this season. As for concerns, I am cautiously optimistic. I can very easily see our season being shut down due to a couple of athletes contracting Covid, which is appropriate. I want to see more on how Amherst and NESCAC are going to proceed in order to make competition safe, but I am sure my worries in that area will be answered once competition time is closer. We still have a lot of time before all this is going down. Finally, I am very happy for the seniors who are able to compete one last time.”

Paul Richardson ’24 (Men’s Lacrosse): “As a student-athlete, I am excited that spring athletes will be able to compete in their respective sports. As of right now, the men’s lacrosse team will not have a season. I have little to no concerns about the decision because I believe that Amherst has done a great job preventing the spread of Covid, and I believe that will continue even with sports resuming.”

Caitlin Hoffman ’24 (Women’s Lacrosse): “Right now it’s a confusing time for the team. If Amherst lets off-campus [players] onto campus then we will be able to play, but it’s looking like that won’t happen any time soon. If that doesn’t happen, it’s very unlikely that we will have a season because we don’t field a team with the five girls on campus. It’s definitely upsetting that it doesn’t look like we can play, especially since other colleges are playing full seasons like normal. I know our coaches and AD’s are working to see if they can make some sort of competition, so we are all trying to stay hopeful that we will be able to compete in some way this spring! I know that hearing the news that we probably won’t have a season was upsetting for everyone on the team, especially the seniors.”

Kevin Ma ’21 (Men’s Tennis): “I believe I reflect the general sentiment of student-athletes on campus that we look forward to the opportunity to have a season for spring sports. Being able to safely and responsibly compete for Amherst is something that I did not anticipate would be possible when I arrived on campus around a month ago. While I personally think that the college will be able to handle Covid-related safety issues, I have concerns over the fairness of allowing student-athletes to ‘break the bubble’ to play a sport while other students can’t leave campus for a haircut. Overall, I welcome the opportunity to have a season my senior year and recognize that having a season is a privilege that should not be taken for granted.”

Tyler Marshall ’21 (Men’s Baseball): “I was really excited when Coach Pyne told us that we would get the opportunity to play this year. It was great to hear that me and the other seniors

Click to read the full NESCAC Presidents’ Statement on Spring Sports. on campus would be able to compete for Amherst for one more year. It was disappointing to hear that the seniors who aren’t on campus won’t be able to play, so we definitely feel bad for them. We are going to do all we can to represent Amherst in the best possible way this spring.”

Ryan Wagner ’21 (Men’s Golf): “We have yet to receive concrete details about events, but Coach [Davis] gave us a general idea. Three events: Williams Invitational, “Little Three’s” and the NESCAC Championship. [I] would say that my reaction was being surprised, and I am primarily concerned that I may be a bit rusty considering the fact that I have not played much golf this past year.”

Sadie Pool ’24 (Women’s Softball): “At first I was super excited and I think it’s safe to say that the whole team was stoked! It’s been over a year since any of us have played a game, so we are thrilled to even have the opportunity to play! Once the initial excitement passed, I truly realized what a blessing this is! I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to be at a school like Amherst, where we have so many resources to be able to participate in this season safely!

I think that the NESCAC put a lot of thought into this decision so that we can all be as safe as possible, and I am looking forward to getting back on the field!”

According to these student accounts, this spring season will be unlike any other sports season the college has ever had, and a number of health protocols in place to ensure the safety of the players. The season will be abbreviated for some teams, like women’s track, who will only compete during the last four weeks of the academic year. Other teams will likely remain with no season at all such as men’s and women’s lacrosse.

Still, student-athletes are evidently feeling very fortunate to be able to compete. Amid all of the excitement, there are a few concerns raised by the student-athletes. Some feel that athletes being able to “break the bubble” is unfair for the non-athletes who cannot leave campus for even miniscule needs. Additionally, there are still plenty of Covid-related safety concerns among athletes, not wanting themselves, their teammates or their coaches sick.

While uncertainty about the coming months remains for many athletes, every day brings more clarity. Each team has a distinct roadmap forward and most expect to salvage the spring semester in the best — and safest — way that they can.

Giving students more information on how athletes and coaches will stay safe this season should be a high priority for NESCAC schools.

This article first appeared on March 17, 2021

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 17

Sports

Recent Mega-Contracts Heighten Pre-Existing Gender Pay Gap in Sports Alex Noga ’23 Contributing Writer It is no secret that modern day athletes are among some of the wealthiest people on the planet. This fact has only been accentuated by the recent contract extensions of San Diego Padres’ shortstop Fernando Tatís and Dallas Cowboys’ franchise quarterback Dak Prescott.

The two deals are record-setting in their own ways and illuminate the rapidly increasing price tags for premium athletes in professional team sports, while simultaneously furthering the pay disparity between male and female athletes at the highest levels.

Tatís’ deal sent shockwaves throughout the MLB. Three hundred and forty million dollars — fully guaranteed as all MLB contracts are — paid out over the course of 14 years to a 22-year-old shortstop who has only appeared in 143 major-league games, less than a single full season. The contract is unprecedented in terms of length, the longest in MLB history, and takes Tatís all the way to his age-35 season. It is also the third largest contract ever signed in the MLB, behind deals signed by perennial superstars Mike Trout and Mookie Betts. Given Tatís’ lack of experience in a league where volume is paramount in determining a player’s value, this decision by the Padres may raise eyebrows but is very consistent with how general manager A.J. Preller has built his team. Since being hired in 2014, Preller has been extremely aggressive in trying to win San Diego its first World Series. Twice he has traded over twenty players in just a three-day span, the only GM ever to do so. He also sent ripples through the league in 2019 after signing Gold Glove third baseman Manny Machado to a 10-year $300 million contract.

Tatís and Machado are the only $300 million teammates in American sports, but it is incredible to consider how early into his career Tatís was able to earn his payday — his new ticket is the largest contract ever for a player who has yet to hit arbitration. Though still relatively unproven, Tatís is undoubtedly a transcendent talent and one of the largest personalities in a sport that desperately needs entertaining stars. He finished fourth in voting for National League MVP last season and if he continues at his torrid pace — though it may be crazy to consider — he will likely be even more expensive in the future.

Dak Prescott, on the other hand, has proven himself to be a winning quarterback in the NFL. A former fourth round pick and two-time Pro Bowler, Prescott boasts a 42-27 overall record with the Dallas Cowboys over his five-year career with two playoff appearances, starting every single game before an ankle injury ruled him out for the remainder of this past season after just the fifth game. Prescott gambled on himself last season by playing under the franchise tag, preventing him from becoming a free agent, but performed well enough in his first five games — along with the Cowboys basically imploding without him behind center — to solidify himself as the team’s permanent franchise quarterback. With this enormous amount of leverage, Prescott was able to secure a four-year extension with the Dallas Cowboys — good for $160 million. Prescott’s $66 million signing bonus has him making $74 million in the first year of his new deal, both of which are records for the NFL. Unlike the MLB, NFL teams are forced to operate under a salary cap that restricts the amount of money a team can spend on its players in a given season, which makes Prescott’s deal all the more significant. Prescott is guaranteed to make $126 million over the duration of his contract regardless of his production, and his average annual salary of $40 million is the second highest in the league behind only Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

These numbers will only continue to go up for young marquee quarterbacks, with Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills and Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens next in line for a payday that will likely match or exceed the value given to Prescott.

While top male athletes have seen their pay increase almost exponentially, the same cannot be said for female athletes. The gender pay gap spans nearly every industry and is extremely pronounced in professional team sports. Female athletes make just a fraction of what their male counterparts do. In 2019, all WNBA athletes made a combined total of $12.5 million.

In that same year, Golden State Warriors’ star Stephen Curry made $40 million alone, over three times the total of all 123 WNBA players. The Lakers’ Anthony Davis will make over $32 million this NBA season, while Nneka Ogwumike of the Los Angeles Sparks will earn just

18 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

Photo courtesy of Anna Smith ’22

WNBA teams earn significantly less than NBA teams, possibly explaining the pay disparities. a little over $190,000. Both players are former first overall picks, six-time all-stars and have won their team a championship, yet Davis makes nearly 170 times what Ogwumike does for playing the same sport.

While difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for these vast pay disparities, a major factor is the differences in revenues that male and female sports leagues generate. In 2019, NBA teams brought in a total $8.8 billion, while WNBA teams earned just $70 million; the NBA’s television deal is worth nearly 100 times more than the $25 million deal the WNBA has with ESPN. There have been mass calls for equal pay, most notably from the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. The women’s soccer team actually generates more revenue than the men’s team with their success in recent World Cups and have filed lawsuits in the past alleging that their less successful male counterparts earn more money per game than they do.

This problem exists on the international level as well. The most recent women’s World Cup garnered 31 percent of the total audience that the most recent men’s tournament drew in. Prize money allocated for the women’s tournament, on the other hand, was only 7.5 percent of the total prize pool for the men’s World Cup — $30 million to $400 million.

The call for equal pay doesn’t necessarily mean equal in the literal sense. Rather, athletes are calling for a greater investment and commitment to their leagues in order for figures on their contracts to naturally increase. Currently, male professional sports leagues capture 93 percent of the $31 billion that corporations spend on sports. An increase in the share spent on women’s leagues would go a long way towards decreasing the massive gap in pay.

Small amounts of progress have already been made in certain cases among the players themselves. Most notably, the WNBA opted out of their collective bargaining agreement in the beginning of 2020 for the first time and landed a new labor deal, guaranteeing improved pay with a higher minimum salary and enhanced health benefits. Other leagues will hopefully follow suit and with a greater commitment to women’s sports and growing audiences, female athletes will hopefully see an increase in their salary to be more proportional to what their male counterparts earn.

This article first appeared on March 17, 2021

Sports

Euro 2021 Will Show a New-Look Europe – But Will It Help Mend Racial Divides?

Ben Gilsdorf ’21 Columnist One of the first major international footballing casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic was the postponement of the European Championships from 2020 to 2021. While many details of the Euros have yet to be hammered out, including finding a host, the competition is still highly anticipated across the world. Not only will the tournament feature many of the 2022 World Cup favorites, but it will also showcase a new generation of European talent ready to dominate on a continental stage.

Beyond their talent on the field, what is notable about the Euro players is that many of them are Black. The last rendition of the Euros featured many dominant Black players — the winning goal in the final was scored by Black Portuguese player Éder Militão, a goal that secured victory over the mostly-Black French team. But this season’s tournament will have more Black players who are the face of their team, and therefore, the face of their country.

Take the French, whose best player in the 2016 tournament was white forward Antoine Griezmann. There is no doubt that Griezmann is still a talented player, but the torch has already been passed to Black 22-year-old sensation Kylian Mbappé, who is already one of the best players on the continent.

The same is true for the German national team, whose best attacking talent is Leroy Sané, born in Essen to a German mother and Senegalese father. The best player for the Netherlands is Virgil Van Dijk, born to a Dutch father and Surinamese mother, while one of England’s most promising young players is Jadon Sancho, whose parents came from Trinidad and Tobago. Spain’s best young prospect, eighteen-year-old Ansu Fati, was born in Guinea-Bissau but moved to Spain at age six and became the nation’s youngest ever goal scorer in the fall of 2020.

The changing racial make-up of European national teams is one of the most visible legacies of nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism. A remarkable 87 percent of the French team that won the 2018 World Cup was either immigrants or the children of immigrants, which sparked conversations over whether France had won the World Cup or “Africa” had.

This debate was not limited to Twitter spats or complaints in bars, either; French ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud wrote a letter to South African-born comedian Trevor Noah, who had joined the chorus of voices saying “Africa won the World Cup,” in which Araud wrote that “This, even in jest, legitimises the ideology which claims whiteness as the only definition of being French.” Araud also pointed out that Noah’s argument, made in support of the players’ African origins, mirrored claims made by white nationalists that Black players like Paul Pogba and N’golo Kanté are not truly “French.”

With anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe rising, nationalist racial politics will certainly spill over onto the pitch at a time where the sport is struggling to determine how best to take a stand against racism. Black players have become increasingly disenchanted with the tactic of taking a knee before games, which they see as nothing more than a symbolic gesture that fails to actualize any real change.

Having Black players in star roles at Euro 2021 might seem like an opportunity to make real inroads in combating ethno-nationalism across Europe. Football can serve as a microcosm for the nation, showing players of all racial backgrounds working together to represent their country. Similarly, with Black players like England’s Marcus Rashford, the Netherlands’ Virgil Van Dijk or France’s Kylian Mbappé serving as the faces of their respective nations, there will be a positive image of Black leadership on a European stage.

Yet these aspirations carry with them the unavoidable burden of reality. The 2018 France squad showed that even winning the World Cup is not enough for many critics, who see racial identity as an insurmountable opposition to French-ness, even if you win the sport’s greatest prize with a French flag on your shirt.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Black 22-year-old sensation Kylian Mbappé.

If teams fail to perform, the backlash is even worse. As former German star Mesut Özil, whose family is Turkish, told reporters upon quitting the German national team, “I am German when we win, an immigrant when we lose.”

This is the inescapable double bind that Black footballers face. Win, and you win for “Africa”, lose, and you lose for “Europe.” With more and more Black players breaking into European teams this summer, this double bind will be on display for the whole continent to see. Even if the winning country does so on the back of Black stars, they will leave in their wake a slew of other nations’ defeated Black players left to face ostracization and rebuke.

Football should not be make-or-break for the fight against racism in Europe. Similarly, Black Europeans should not have their loyalty to their country or their acceptance be based on their performances on the football pitch. But public opinion does not work along the lines of “should.” With the added dimension of Covid, Euro 2021 will be a tournament where the political and societal storylines might outweigh the football. It will be important to remember that while increased representation of Black footballers at the Euros is a good thing, it cannot be seen as a solution to racism in football or in society.

This article first appeared on March 10, 2021

March 23, 2021 | The Amherst Student | 19

20 | The Amherst Student | March 23, 2021

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Photo Courtesy of Matai Curzon ‘22