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Volume 83 ◆ Issue 9
Th u r s d ay, N o v e m b e r 1 7 , 2 0 1 6
11 SGA: How the Vadnais lecture to address climate change money works Inside
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Narcan is worth having
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Mary Ruefle reading at G51
By Mitchell Chapman Managing Editor
Photos from bookjacketbios.blogspot.com and Amazon
Harris published “Returning North with the Spring,” which documents his 2012 retrace of Edwin Teale’s 1947 journey documented in the seminol work “North with the Spring.”
This year’s installment named after Harris’s book, “Returning North with the Spring” By Mitchell Chapman Managing Editor
Climate change poses a serious threat to the well-being of our planet. Tonight, Dr. John Harris, executive director of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce University, will present a lecture about precisely this at 7 p.m. in 218 Murdock Hall. It is free and open to the public. The lecture is part of the annual
Elizabeth and Lawrence Vadnais E nv i r o n m e nt a l Issues Lecture, which is named after a former North Adams State College professor and his wife. While Harris at the College, Professor Vadnais founded and ran the Center for Resourceful Living from 1975-1981. The
program was described as “highly experimental,” teaching students sustainability practices gleaned from local farmers. Harris’s entry in the lecture series is titled “Returning North with the Spring,” and is expected to address the negative impact fossil fuels have on our climate. He has held his position at Franklin Pierce VADNAIS Continued to page 5
How are faculty coping post election? By Harmony Birch Editor-in-Chief
Last Wednesday a dark cloud seemed to have fallen over MCLA. Classes were canceled, opinions, confessions, and criticism littered our Facebook news feeds. One truth resonated: Donald Trump was the winner of the 2016 presidential election. For many students this was the first presidential election they were eligible to vote in-- but what of our mentors, those we look to for guidance and wisdom? What
was the faculty’s response to this historic election? Psychology professor Maria Bartini was disappointed. Originally a Bernie Sanders supporter, she later hopped on the Hillary Clinton bandwagon. Bartini remembers being “distraught” over the 2000 Al Gore versus George Bush election. She remembers rationalizing it to herself and questioning, “how bad can things get?” Eight years later she is regretting those words. During this election cycle she, like many others, found herself
continually appalled by the comments Trump made. “The big thing that I want to be doing is focusing on what I can control,” Bartini said. She noted that today the simple desire for wanting equal rights has become, “politicized.” As a developmental psychologist she noted that there is a large disparity in our country, and it impacts people of differing religious, socio-economic, and racial backgrounds. FACULTY Continued to page 11
When the SGA allocates a budget for any given fiscal year, it is done before that year is in effect. This can cause issues, as it forces SGA to predict the future. For example, this year’s budget was allocated based on an expected drop in enrollment that never happened. In the 2015-16 school year, enrollment was down, but it bounced back in 2016-17 “We cannot predict the amount of students coming in every year so we base the club budgets off of an estimate on the upcoming enrollment,” SGA Treasurer Kayla LaVoice said. “If the amount of students who actually enroll is over our estimate, the amount clubs get does not go up. This also
President’s letter to the Editor
means that if enrollment is less then the amount we estimated that we will not pull money from the club budgets. By doing it this way the club knows exactly what its budget is for the upcoming year!” According to LaVoice, any extra money not allocated to a specific club, such as money that came as a result of SGA having more money to work with, is allocated to the SGA supplemental budget, which is used for programming, emergencies, and big projects on campus revolving around student life and student activities. At the end of the fiscal year, if the supplemental budget is not used, that money goes into a reserve fund for special SGA projects. SGA MONEY Continued to page 3
Come together, get uncomfortable, MCLA By Nick Tardive
Staff Writer Grey clouds and rain came, cascading down on a somber day in North Adams. Students, faculty and administrators gathered around the Amsler Campus Center Marketplace, as opposed to the Quad like originally planned. Although it was an event formally under the Latin American Society sphere, the rally was not under the guise of one club for one demographic. This was a rally for unity, shared accountability, persistence and self-love. From the top down, almost every speaker called on the campus community to embrace those who feel alienated and terrified by the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. “Hatred is a cancer that can only be cured by understanding and unquestionable love,” Kyle Oxx, a student who identifies as transgender, said. Don’Jea Smith called on the people at the rally to make MCLA uncomfortable until some sort of change is made. Many other students
who spoke also pointed out that change had to come first on the campus, among the community, so that the community could spread the love and change back home wherever that happens to be. “We have to start calling out the bad, and calling out the unfair,” Smith said. “We have to call out everybody: professors, administrators, until we are all on equal ground.” She spoke out against the school’s Diversity Task Force, calling it a failure. Smith claimed that, by the time students of color had learned about the task force, a board and student task force had already been created. Smith admitted that she feared the school’s Diversity Task Force would listen to the problems of the students, and simply not act. Smith’s friend, Dee Davis, went on to deliver an emotional address that bordered on speech and poem. By the end, she was tearful, attempting to hold back the fear and disgust and instead replace it with peace and unity. RALLY Continued to page 11